Countdown

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! For me, this time is always a chance to spiritually reset myself, to make some plans, both for the immediate future and the distant future. Whether or not those long-term plans work out isn't a huge concern for me. It's just fun for me to think about them. And, if I somehow feel like I've gone off track, this is a great time for me to forgive myself and start fresh.

So, I hope everyone is looking forward to the new year! Dare to dream big and go after those dreams!

What Do 12 Readers Represent?

Bailey really messed things up this time. He did our year-end post already, making the next two days very anti-climactic by comparison. Talk about weak endings!

Luckily, in our Just Ask section, Julie described the completion of her newest novel and the recent popularity her book has received among some local readers. She wonders: So several people like what I wrote does that really mean squat in the grand scheme of publishing? How do you know when you're getting closer to publication?

Julie, Scott already gave you some good advice already. I couldn't help but say something too. And, funnily enough, the subject of trying to figure out when your novel is done is actually the very first blog post I did, back in January of this year--when edithroad was my one faithful follower! Check it out if you like.

My implied conclusion there was that an inner feeling told me I was done.

I think, as writers, one of the things we need to know about ourselves is our own habits. I'm the type of writer who always fidgets with my work, so to say that my book is done when I can't find anything more that I want to change would be naive of me. I'd say you need to discover whether or not you are the same way, or maybe the opposite, calling things done when you might realize that there is plenty more work you'd like to do on it. Being done with a book is more of a decision rather than an actual moment, and you need to get to a place where you can make that decision with a clear head.

Your other question was about the "grand scheme of publishing." For that, I'd also say you must look inside yourself. What EXACTLY are your goals? For example, how many readers would you need to have to really feel satisfied? I asked this in a past post, and may writers said that they weren't looking for big numbers, that they would be satisfied if they moved just one reader. If that's the case for you, then you really have to admit to yourself that you've reached that goal. To please 12 readers must be a thrill, and you shouldn't belittle that. You've brought your art to the world; you've made a difference! Some painters have probably been satisfied with far less success.

So, if I were you, I'd consider what you've done already as a great forward step. You've got readers, many of them, though, no, if you're trying to be a New York Times Bestseller, probably not enough yet, or not enough to know. But, you've written several novels before, and I trust that you have enough experience to be able to tell when you're done and what you want out of submitting to agents.

Year In Writing: 2009

I promised Michelle that I wouldn't do much thinking for the rest of this year, so today I'm going to open the floor to everyone and ask you to talk about your Year In Writing. Tell me:

1. How your 2009 began
2. What you accomplished in 2009
3. Where your 2009 ended
4. Plans for 2010

I'll start, shall I?

At the beginning of the year, I had finished my fifth revision of "So Honest A Man," my novel that riffs on Shakespeare's "Hamlet." In February I began querying agents, and in March I found an agent I wanted to work with. Good conversations with him led to two more revisions of the novel, and presently my agent is doing a "line edit" preparatory to sending the book out onto submission in 2010. A couple of months ago, after the last revision to "So Honest A Man," I began a new novel called "Cocke & Bull" and I am presently about halfway through the first draft of it. In 2010, I hope to finish that draft and begin revisions by springtime. I also hope my agent and I manage to sell "So Honest A Man" to a publisher next year.

Also in 2009, Davin Malasarn invited me to join him and Lady Glamis on this very blog, and that's been fabulous. I hope to help make 2010 a fabulous year for the Literary Lab as well. Don't forget that in about a week and a half, we hope to announce winners of the "Genre Wars" short story contest. Stay tuned for that!

So that's my 2009. Your turn!

Skip The Starting Line

Having my characters start to do something has always been a habit of mine, and I know from some comments here that at least some of you suffer from the same thing:

Anton started to climb the hill before noticing that his boots were untied. He started to bend over to tie them when the red-speckled warbler started to call out for its lost young.

For me, having my characters start something comes naturally whenever I include an interruption. The character doesn't have the opportunity to finish whatever it was he or she was doing, so he or she was only able to start to do it.

I don't think this is a major problem, but I find that when I go back and read my prose, the "starts" often feel like extra words.

The solution I've found is that I have to be more precise about the actions my characters carry out. Instead of starting to climb the hill, Anton can step up to the trailhead, or pass the trail marker. In other words, the bigger action of climbing the hill can be broken up into smaller, more specific actions that bypass those sometimes-annoying starts.

In general, sharpening your characters' actions as precisely as you can makes for far more powerful writing.

My favorite painting in the world is Jan Vermeer's "Girl With The Pearl Earring." At first glance, this work might appear to be like any other portrait. After all, it's a depiction of a girl cropped in a rather typical way. But, as we look closer, we notice that the girl is turning back slightly, like she has been caught off guard. Vermeer seems to have crept up on her. A bit of white on her lower lip implies that she was drooling over something, perhaps an erotic thought, something she might be embarrassed about. This painting has not only captured the portrait of a girl, it has captured her in an extremely precise moment in time, and one has the impression that waiting too long or starting too early to paint her would have missed at least some of the information we are able to extract.

As we write, we have the same opportunity to maximally reveal our characters by catching them in perfect spots. It's not enough to have vague ideas of what our characters are doing. We need to focus, study them thoroughly, analyze all of the potential details and record what matters most.

Bless Us, Every One

He dressed himself all in his best, and at last got out into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows said, "Good morning, sir. A merry Christmas to you." And Scrooge said often afterwards, that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.

He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his counting-house the day before, and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe." It sent a pang across his heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.

"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and taking the old gentleman by both his hands. "How do you do. I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!"

"Mr Scrooge?"

"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness" -- here Scrooge whispered in his ear.

"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. "My dear Mr Scrooge, are you serious?"

"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favour?"

"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him. "I don't know what to say to such munificence."

"Don't say anything please," retorted Scrooge. "Come and see me. Will you come and see me?"

"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he meant to do it.

"Thank you," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you. I thank you fifty times. Bless you!"

Merry Christmas. Happy Winter

Hi everyone! Happy Winter! Merry Christmas!

We hope that everyone is feeling happy, healthy, and full of writing joy. Scott, Michelle, and I are working away on the Genre Wars anthology. We're also hard at work on our various personal novels.

I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say how grateful we are to have met so many wonderful people here. We thank you for supporting us and giving us your writing insight.

Feel free to drop in and say hello over the next few days. We'll be reading comments.

Automatic Adjustments

Yesterday morning, I was reading through some of my own prose, and I realized that I slipped into a weird tense.

"Dennis had been sleeping when Margaret came into the room."

I decided it would be tighter if I wrote instead:

"Dennis was sleeping when Margaret came into the room."

Then, I had the brilliant idea of doing a systematic change, telling my computer to find all the had's so that I could quickly run through them all and change the ones I wanted to change.

It was a fast way to do it, but now I'm worried that my prose won't flow, that I'll have inconsistencies because I didn't read through the entire draft again during this last correction. So, possibly, this edit created more work for me rather than less.

Do you ever rely on these types of automatic changes? Does it work for you?

Making A Scene

I am currently working on the middle section (or Act Two, if you use the three-act structure) of my novel-in-progress, Cocke & Bull. This section essentially does one thing: it leads up to a climactic emotional moment between two of the main characters to resolve a conflict that began at the end of Act One, the resolution of which conflict will lead to the climax in Act Three which deals with the conflict that started off the story. If that makes no sense, imagine the story as a conflict/climax within another conflict/climax. Conflict 1 is the story's outer problem, and Conflict 2 is the story's inner problem:

Act 1:
CONFLICT 1 begins
CONFLICT 2 begins
Act 2:
CONFLICT 2 climaxes
Act 3:
CONFLICT 1 climaxes

I'm very happy with this overall structure and I may just use it for every novel I write from here on out. Unless I don't. I'm capricious that way. Anyway.

The emotional climax at the end of Act 2 is a big moment in the story, making the climax in Act 3 inevitable. So I need to have this emotional climax really stand out and I have to lead into it well. I'm going to use an idea that I got from reading "The Art of Subtext" by Charles Baxter. In this book, Baxter talks about how in real life, most people avoid "making a scene." Most people bite back their strongest emotions and try hard not to bare their souls. There are things we would love to do, but we do not do them because such things are not done or because the price we'd pay for these acts would be too high.

For example, imagine two men. Let's call them Andy and Tom and let's say they work together in a large office. Tom's the sort of guy who objectifies women and is obsessed with the size of their breasts. In fact, one of his habits is to whisper his estimate of women's breast sizes to Andy whenever they're together. "Check it out," Tom will say. "38D!" He also gives nicknames to the women who work in the office with him and Andy. These nicknames all have to do with the women's breasts and are, of course, private and only used by Tom when speaking to Andy.

Andy is uncomfortable with this, but when he was first getting to know Tom, he said nothing about this behavior and subsequently it's only gotten worse as time goes on and now what Andy wants is for Tom to just leave him alone. But it's awkward. They work together on some of the same projects, and frankly Andy isn't sure how to bring the subject and his objections up. It's outside of his comfort zone. He doesn't want to make a scene at the office.

If this were the basis of a story, the climax of it would be Andy, finally unable to hold his tongue, busting out with a highly-emotional demand that Tom shut up about their coworkers' physiques and, you know, we're just not going to be friends anymore so just leave me alone. Andy will let out all this bottled-up frustration and embarrassment, unleashing it on Tom in a compressed moment, preferably in a too-small physical space like an elevator or a supply room or something, because small spaces increase emotional force. What happens after the climax will depend on if Andy or Tom is the protagonist, and that's not really the point here.

Leading up to the moment when Andy makes a scene, we'll need scenes that increase the tension between him and Tom, with Andy biting back words and being increasingly embarrassed by the whole thing. We'll have to make it clear that the one thing Andy would love to do is tell Tom to shut up (hey, maybe Tom is Andy's superior or team leader or something?), and make it clear that Andy would never do this, and then have Andy do it anyway. That's drama, folks. The conflict and tension increase over time and then are paid off in the climax.

So in my own book, I've got a character who knows that the real solution to the inner conflict of the story (Conflict 2 in my chart above) is an act that he will no way never commit. So what I'm doing now is having him fight against his urge to commit that act, putting in scenes where it will look as if that act won't be necessary and then...oh, gosh I guess it will be after all. He's faced with the decision to solve his problem and pay a very high price, or not solve his problem and live with a misery more-or-less of his own making (because the drama is better when the crisis has been brought about by the character himself).

Anyway, I just wanted to talk about this idea of "making a scene" and how the common-enough situation of demonstrating admirable restraint when we'd rather not can be the model for larger emotional movements in novels. It's a new way of seeing the dramatic arc for me, so I'm sharing. Also, this is my way of recommending Baxter's book: The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot.

Random Rhythms?

I've tried to fool myself by saving my novel under a different file name, but I can no longer deny that I'm on draft 53 of Rooster. Which isn't really that big a deal. I probably save more drafts than most writers; it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm making more changes.

But, what it does mean is that I've written and rewritten some passages of this book hundreds of times. And, what I realize frequently is that I'll revise a paragraph to make the rhythms of the sentences more pleasing to me one day, only to change them back to the original rhythms the next day.

My internal rhythm keeps changing. A sentence that sounds rhythmic in one reading suddenly doesn't at another reading. So, I wonder: Are these rhythms random? If that internal beat keeps changing, how can I decide which rhythm is the right one?

On Titles

I am absolutely the worst person in the world when it comes to creating titles, or naming things in general. When I was a youngster I was in noisy rock bands and whenever it fell to me to name the group, you could rest assured that we'd have a totally lame band name. Don't ask. I was also usually the songwriter for the bands I was in, and I could never come up with good names for the songs, either. I'd end up using the first line of the chorus or the first line of the lyrics or just give them meaningless, dada-esque titles because, as I say, I suck with titles and names.

The first novel I ever completed was called The Jack of Hearts Remembers Me. That's an okay, literary-sounding title. In fact, that title is better than the book itself was. Don't ask.

The novel currently in my agent's hands, that will some day actually go out on submission to publishers, is for now called So Honest A Man. I don't like that title, but I can't seem to come up with anything better. The book is a sort of retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet, from the point of view of Horatio, Hamlet's best friend. Hamlet is not the main character, so I don't really want "Hamlet" in the title, though I've toyed with Killing Hamlet. Other titles have been:

Elsinore
Ophelia's Ghost
Dead For a Ducat
Death in Denmark
Horatio

but none of these really do it for me. My friend Alexandra MacKenzie has suggested Hip-Hip-Horatio but that just won't do. Right now, I'm thinking of calling it Eelsinore or Hamlet, Prince of Eels. Other eel-inspired titles would be appreciated.

The book I'm currently writing is called Cocke & Bull because those are the names of the two main characters, I think it's catchy and easily remembered, and I like the ampersand. I like the word "ampersand."

The book I have planned after Cocke & Bull has no title. I don't even have the faintest barest inkling of what I'd call it, and I assume I'll be going through the same sucky torture with it that I've been going through with the "Hamlet" book. It will be a book set partially in Antarctica, so maybe I can work penguins into the title. Penguins are way cool.

After that, I'm going to write a book that will be called The Builder's Wife because it's a good title and it actually makes sense for the book.

There seem to be a couple of ways that literary (at least) authors find titles. We scour the manuscript looking for a good phrase or sentence or image. We read through our favorite Shakespeare or John Donne (damn that Hemingway for already using For Whom the Bell Tolls!). We use the protagonist's name as the title of the book. We Google words or phrases and hope to stumble across a quote that uses them, something from the Bible or the Koran or the Sutras or Dickens or whatever that will be a suitable liteary allusion.

There's also the sort of reverse-title method, which is where you come up with a really cool title that's got nothing to do with the book, and then you go back into the manuscript and slyly insert that title so that it looks like you pulled a reference out of the book to use as a title. This rarely works and when the reader hits the title where you've stitched it into the narrative, it stands out in an awkward, embarrassed manner. That's what happened with my first novel's title. I found a place to put the words "the jack of hearts remembers me" into the mouth of a character, and it made No Sense Whatever but there it was, in the body of the book so Big Win, right? Not so much.

So titles, then. Talk to me about yours. Did the title come first, or did it develop while you were figuring out the story premise, or did you come up with it after you'd written a draft or two, or what? Also, what titles do you think are really terrific titles, and what do you think are really awful ones? I happen to think that "Twilight" is a great title, because I like the word and it seems to encapsulate the space where the vampire world and the non-vampire world meet, so well done Ms. Meyers or whoever thought up the title. I think Under the Dome stinks as a title, but honestly, Mr. King could call his next novel This Book Sucks and I Hate Your Mom and it would be an instant best-seller.

Comparison of a Self-published book versus a Publishing house-published book

Thanks a lot to everyone who commented on yesterday's post. I'm sorry I didn't have time to respond to everyone. I got caught up doing some aquatic chemistry modeling, but that's beside the point.

When I posted yesterday, I felt like I was more or less rambling about social circles, and it was interesting to me how that led to a discussion of self-publishing versus publishing house-publishing, and the idea of having strangers read your work rather than friends who are simply supporting you blindly, if you will.

I wanted to say a few more things about this. And, again, please keep in mind that I bring this up as a discussion point rather than an effort to persuade. I'm very much in the middle of the debate as I can't really decide if I would ever self-publish or not. I'm open to it.

A few months ago, I did a case study on two books. I happened to know two talented writers who published their books at the same time. One published through Scribner, and the other self-published through Amazon's site. What both of these writers had in common was their talent, and the fact that neither one was the type of person to do much in terms of self promotion.

For two weeks, I followed the Amazon sales rank for both of these books, which indicates approximately how many books are selling better than the book in question--meaning the lower the number, the better. (I know this is NOT the best metric, but it's what I had to work with.) From September 3rd to September 18th, the Scribner book had a sales rank ranging from 272,000 to 67,000. The self-published book ranged from 1.4 million to 690,000. (Incidentally, another self-published book by someone who did do a lot of self-promotion reached 57,000 during this time, and that book had been out for a few years.)

I then wanted to see what would happen to the sales rank, I bought just ONE copy of the self-published book. Before the purchase, the sales rank was 1.6 million. After the purchase, the sales rank was 192,000, within the range of the Scribner book. I took this to mean that, while the Scribner book was consistently selling better than the self-published book, it wasn't doing better by that much. Perhaps fewer than 5 copies a week.

As I mentioned before, neither author self-promoted much. The Scribner writer had done one public reading and got a book review in the Los Angeles Times. The self-publisher mentioned his book on Facebook.

So, I wonder if it's not a matter of how you publish, but a matter of who you reach. I no longer think publishing-house publishing guarantees better advertisement when compared to a self-publisher who has a decent platform. Like Terresa mentioned in the comments yesterday, there's a tipping point in sales, and any way of reaching that tipping point will suffice.

Arguments? Different interpretations? Other thoughts?

Running Around In Circles

Lately I've been thinking about social circles. Here in the blog-o-sphere, for example, I know a lot of genre writers, a lot of people interested in getting an agent and publishing traditionally, a lot of people who are willing (if not happy) to deal with the business side of writing.

But, among other circles, I'm surrounded by people who eschew plot, people who are more than happy to find a small press to sell a few hundred copies of their work, people who are perfectly satisfied to self-publish because they fear they may not live long enough to find an agent to represent them.

I'm straddling at least three different writing circles, each with its own ideals and standards.

The funny thing is that I can't distinguish these groups based on talent. In all of them, I have met writers that I consider to be extremely talented. This only helps me to see that a lot of the goals we strive for can sometimes be the result of the people who are around us. They can be arbitrary.

The other thing about these social circles is that they represent groups of people that are often largely distinct from one another. Though I feel like I belong to them all, I can still see that they tend to stay separate, so that the people I know through blogging don't know the people I know through my other online community, or through my in-person writer's group. And, I wonder how far these slightly overlapping circles can reach, if eventually they do interact enough to represent a bigger writing whole, or if the connections are so tentative that groups will forever remain distinct.

This blog, for example, has a pretty fixed set of readers. Do each of these readers have other circles that they are familiar with that I'm not familiar with at all? And, if we traced through these circles, in a six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon sort of way, would we eventually be able to reach ALL writers and readers, even those rare and precious outsiders?

I once sat down and tried to come up with a list of people I knew for sure would buy my book if I were to publish it traditionally. My number was 63. Then, I counted the people who would PROBABLY buy my book, which gave me an additional 36 people. With a grand total of 99, relying strictly on friends and family wouldn't result in very impressive sales figures.

But then, I wonder, assuming the book's reputation was worthy of spreading through word-of-mouth, if those 99 people could reach hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. What are the limits of our social networks to spread our art? What would it take (i.e. how good would a book have to be) before a person would start to recommend a book to others?

If I can get 99 people to buy my book based solely on who I know, my guess would be that each one of us has the potential to reach a vast number of readers if only we can inspire our networks to spread the word about what we do. And, the nice thing about that system is that the quality of the book (at least in the eyes of those readers) will probably determine how well the book can sell.

This sort of thinking often makes me feel like it doesn't matter how I get my book out there. If it is good enough, if it can stir up the masses, it's probably enough to have 10 friends who are willing to give you that first bit of blind support.

What do you think about social circles? Are our current social circles capable of making big things happen, or would we have to start with an initial group that is much bigger than, say, 99 to make a difference?

And, I'm curious, how many friends and family members do you all think would buy your book just because they're supportive? And, what would it take for that first group to spread the word? What would it take before YOU spread the word about a book you liked?

Sorry, a lot of questions for you all today. Answer any or all of them.

The Point of "Point of View"

I Avoid Defining My Terms

I would like to talk about the idea of "point of view," which is usually discussed in terms of storytelling mechanics, as in "who is telling the story to the reader." There are traditionally about four possible points of view: First-person, second-person, third-person (limited) and third-person (omniscient). It's also possible to have both singular and plural POVs, as in first-person plural ("we"). The verb tense of the telling is also considered to be part of the point of view, as in second-person singular past tense ("you were doing") or third-person present tense ("she is doing"). All of these are ways of showing the story to the reader through characters (and yes, I consider the narrator in third-person to be a character in the novel). All of these points of view have advantages and limitations, and there is no general "best" point of view, nor (I think) a "best" point of view for any particular story; there are only different choices and the results of those choices.

Anyway, this post isn't about comparing POVs. What I want to talk about today is the idea that point of view is a decision writers will make once for the duration of the story, and that the established framework of this point of view will remain constant for the length of the tale. That is, a story "written in" first-person singular past tense, for example, will (and should) remain in that point of view from beginning to end. This is a widely-held idea. But in actual fact, this is rarely the case in good writing and point of view will shift, however subtly, throughout the story.

We are told that point of view is a system for establishing a stable narrative framework for the story, of determining through which character's experience the story will be told, and controlling how much of that character's internal reality will be part of the storytelling mechanism. This way of talking about point of view sometimes treats the experience of the so-called "point of view character" as the most important experience of the story. This is incorrect.

Whose point of view matters?

The most important experience of the story is that of the reader. The reader is always present, as is the writer. The reader and the writer are the only real people involved in the telling of this story; everything else is artifice. Point of view is therefore a matter of distance between the reader and the writer (or between the reader and the story, if you like) and the writer uses character and voice to manage that distance. What the writer is doing with point of view is, in a way, determining from moment to moment how involved in the action--how deep into the story itself--the reader is allowed to be. Think of point of view as something like a zoom lens through which you show the story to your reader. You're able to zoom in or out on not only what is visible, but on what is invisible as well (memory, emotions, thoughts and attitudes).

You have to keep in mind that your reader is, in a very important sense, a character in your story. With point of view--more than any other tool in your writerly toolkit--you are able to effectively place the reader however you like in relationship to the story and its characters, actions and emotions.

What Can You Do With Point of View?

Shifting point of view within the story has been done for a long time. Homer's "Iliad" is about 3,000 years old, and is written in third-person omniscient, so you can see the thoughts/emotions of any character Homer wants you to. But there are also shifts into first-person where you know the narrator is talking directly to the reader. The first line of the poem is Homer speaking to his muse: "Sing, O goddess, the wrath of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans." Homer is not just addressing his muse, but also the audience, telling us what story he's about to tell. The narrator reappears later, at the beginning of Book XII, when he steps outside of the "story present" and discusses, in a brilliant digression, what happens long in the future, when the fortifications built by the Greeks on the Trojan beach erode and rot away.

What Homer is doing here, by skipping in and out of the action of the narrative, is to show the reader the place of the story within history, and to show the reader his own place within history; to demonstrate in a subtle manner that although history is made by real people who experience the drama of the real historical moment, time will pass them by and some day they will be part of the past, for there is not only a historical past and a historical present, there is also a historical future. So Homer is playing around with time and tense in his epic poem, focusing the attention of the reader alternately on past, present and future.

Just as you can direct the reader's attention to different levels of time in a novel, you can direct their attention to different levels of emotion. I think of this as the story's "emotional distance." This emotional distance is usually a fixed distance in work of beginning writers, but by manipulating the point of view, you can change this distance at will.

Herman Melville in "Moby Dick" is allegedly using a first-person narrator named Ishmael to tell the tale. "Ishmael" is of course not the narrator's real name (we never learn what it is), and is given as a symbol; the first line of the book is beginning a process of reference to things hidden, buried, submerged as it were. But that's the least of it, when we consider the levels of viewpoint Melville uses. There's Ishmael, telling about his voyage on the Pequod under the command of Ahab, and once the voyage gets underway Melville--not Ishmael--elbows his way over and over into the narrative and brushes his narrator aside to put us directly into the minds of Ahab and Starbuck (not to mention a host of minor characters). There's also a fun moment in a later chapter when Melville is clearly addressing the reader directly to discuss his difficulty as a writer in describing certain behaviors of whales. The reader is thus pulled to and fro in the narrative, suddenly inside Ahab's head, suddenly sitting next to Ishmael (a bright but inconsequential character), suddenly standing outside the story with Melville. All of it works, too. There is disorientation in the reader (but that's quite deliberate, I'm sure) as the landscape shifts beneath his feet and Melville takes the reader's hand and points at the story, saying "Look here! Now here! And here!"

You can also remain within the "story present" and do more subtle things, like increase the reader's emotional involvement here and there, or pull the reader back emotionally, sort of like playing with the lens of a camera or, maybe, like turning the heat up and down in the shower or under a boiling pot. For example, consider this passage:

"The woman looked the three travelers over. They seemed respectably dressed though the Irishman had some dark stains on his coat and breeches. That one and the handsome one had spoken to each other mostly in half sentences and single words. Irish had all but ignored the lady, who’d doted on Handsome all through the meal."

We begin at some distance, as observers outside the scene, and then we get the woman's opinion ("respectably dressed"), and then we are seeing slightly from her point of view ("that one and the handsome one"), and finally we are inside her head ("Irish had all but ignored the lady..."). The emotional distance has moved, in four sentences, from neutral to intimate and personal. You can draw into your characters this way for private thoughts and observations which can tell us about the people in our story. The woman in the passage above is making observations about three travelers that the travelers themselves wouldn't make. When you "drill down" from third-person to first-person like this, you are in effect allowing characters to speak directly to the reader, person-to-person. Which is cool; don't tell me it's not.

Just for Davin, I'll also mention that Tolstoy was a master of point of view. "War and Peace" is written from maybe fifty characters' points of view, including, at one critical point, the viewpoint of a dog. None of this shifting of POV is done mechanically or as a matter of course as scenes and characters change. Tolstoy (like all good writers) has considered what the effect on the reader will be, and how close to the emotion of the story the reader should be in each scene (or part of the scene) and has chosen his POVs accordingly. Good writing isn't done by rote or on autopilot.

So, by shifting POVs around, either in a subtle or direct manner, we can:

Change the (emotional) distance between the reader and various characters. We can see characters as they see themselves, so that we see what they themselves hold important (about themselves and other characters).

We can also use this technique to introduce irony. Story knowledge is given to the reader by one character but that knowledge is not given to other characters in the story.

Point of view is a tool that you can use for more than one thing. It's a complex subject (or it can be, and I don't think I've really done it justice in this post) and, as usual, the best way to learn more about it is to read well-written books and pay attention to what the writer is doing. I know that some writers can't (or don't bother to) control the point of view in their stories. When done sloppily, it ends up being something called "head-hopping" (where the POV changes so rapidly that you can't really be sure whose POV it is; note that sometimes this is done deliberately for effect and can be powerful and dramatic) or "point of view slippage" (a phrase which never ceases to amuse me and refers to writers not realizing that the POV of the story has changed--usually just for short passages--because the writer wasn't paying attention).

But just because it can be done badly (and often is by writers who are just starting out), that doesn't mean it can't be done well. I suggest that you think about point of view as less a set of imaginary cameras through which the story is viewed, and more as a system for communicating the fictional experience with the reader. Follow the emotional line of the story through your characters, in and out of the hearts/minds/souls of those characters, and take your readers with you.

The Power Of Persuasion

As I become a better writer, I realize that I'm not picking up on more things I'm doing wrong. Instead, I'm learning to keep from persuading myself that something is right when I already know it isn't.

Here's a typical conversation I might have with myself:

"Okay, self, I know this scene doesn't exactly fit with the rest of the story. Adele really isn't staying in character when she collects ceramic rabbits. But, it is really neat that they all shatter when the Northridge quake hits, isn't it?"

"Wait, self! What if it is in character? What if the reason Adele collects ceramic rabbits is because rabbits symbolize fertility and Adele has always wanted to have a child--which is why she's so in love with Ivan, who is so much younger than her."

"Come on, self. Is that really in the story?"

"No, but one could interpret it that way if one really wanted. It still makes sense. So let's keep the rabbits. They become cool symbols!"

"Sounds good to me!"

"You're the best. I love you."

Maybe you aren't wrestling with rabbits. But, it could be anything: eels, monarchs, horses, steam engines, or even eels.

Writers tend to be smart people. For stories to work, a logical thread needs to exist that connects one idea to another, one scene to another. Often as we write, we are perfectly aware of that thread, and yet sometimes we deviate from it because we are excited about a particular new detail or a new scene. When we revise, chances are, we'll pick up on this deviation. And, in the best of times, we'll fix the problem. But, sometimes, our logic and our powers of persuasion take advantage of us--Our brain is actually having a civil war. On one side, it wants to tell that perfect, focused story. On the other side, it wants to keep the cool scenes, even if they don't really fit. Or, it's too lazy to fix a problem it knows exist; it would rather just present a logical "what if" scenario to justify the bad writing.

And, chances are, that argument will be persuasive. We really will be able to convince ourselves that a bad scene is actually acceptable. And, if someone in a critique group should bring it up as a problem, we are well armed with the arguments to justify our decision.

Problem solved, right? Right?...Self?

At the heart of good writing is our ability to tell a compelling story. And often, the excitement of that story presents itself in the earliest drafts of our projects. When we revise, our goal should be to dig back to that initial inspiration, to sort out the precious material from all the useless dirt, to cut and polish that material until it shines like a tourmaline. And, part of that process involves being able to overhear your brain when it's plotting to convince you to do something you shouldn't really do. That involves paying attention to your internal rationalization as you're making editorial decisions so that you really understand why you're arguing with yourself in the first place.

Are you able to keep from convincing yourself that bad writing is good?

Author Interview: Alexandra MacKenzie

Tell us about yourself and about your forthcoming book, "Immortal Quest: The Trouble with Mages."

The novel is a serio-comic fantasy “buddy” adventure set in contemporary Britain. Detective Nick Watson is ordered to spy on a mysterious thief named Marlen who claims to be a 500-year-old mage – and who also believes Nick is his long-lost amnesiac best friend who will help him save the world from a power-crazed immortal. They’re all on the track of three ritual objects needed for a world-shattering spell. Hijinks ensue (the comic part). The more serious part is about memory, friendship, and the extent to which memories constitute personality.

"Immortal Quest" had a long road to publication and only found a publisher after you'd declared that you'd given up writing. Tell us the story of finding Edge (or of Edge finding you).

I’m always declaring that I’m giving up writing. I do it every six months or so. Writing is hard. On the other hand, I love having written. So I don’t give that up. I wrote the first draft 15 years ago after completing the Clarion West writing workshop, and sent it to Baen Books, who kept the MS for a year and a half. I got a call from an editor there who wanted it, but she couldn’t push it past the publisher. Huge disappointment (I gave up writing). I sent it to every other SF/Fantasy house in the U.S. for which you didn’t need an agent. Plus I queried agents. A number of editors sent personal rejection letters, which are always encouraging, and one at Tor suggested another house as a better fit, which was kind. Nearly always it sat for six months or more at a house before a decision would arrive. I moved on to other things. I gave up writing several times. Then a local press offered on it, which got me very excited, until I discovered that they wanted to produce books only on CD (the “wave of book publishing’s future” they said). After further investigation, I worried they didn’t know what they were doing, and after I asked them a number of pointed questions, they retracted the offer. They’re no longer in business. I gave up writing and got a Certificate in Scientific Illustration from the University of Washington and focused on art instead.

Then one day more recently I was idly surfing the Web for fantasy publishing places for a story I’d written, and ran across Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing based in Calgary. I liked the look of their books. I thought, “Huh, I’ve never tried Canadian houses. Why haven’t I done that?” Possibly not the best research technique in the world, but they liked the novel. And they bought it. Which was almost anticlimactic after all that time, as I’d moved on and had plenty of other things on my plate.

You don't have an agent, and queried publishers directly. That seems to be more common in SF/F than in other genres. Any plans to find an agent and try to sell “Seattle Sleuth”, your unpublished detective novel?

I doubt it. Truth to tell, I didn’t try hard enough to find an agent – I only got through the agent listings from A to L before giving up. I did query agents about the mystery novel – no dice. Genre does seem more open to “over the transom” submissions. My writing is difficult to pigeonhole, and even I have trouble figuring out how someone would market it. But you never know – the right person could be out there and we just haven’t met yet.

The most frustrating part of the whole game is making that perfect connection. It’s incredibly frustrating to get back rejections that make no sense – for the mystery novel, which is set in 1921 Seattle, I got one letter saying, “the language is too old-fashioned” and another letter which said, “the language is too modern.” What is a writer supposed to make of that? What I make of most such comments is not “Your writing sucks”, but rather, “You simply haven’t made the right connection with the person who understands what you’re doing.”

You just finished up a sort of "lightning-round" of revisions for your editor at Edge. How do you feel about that?

It was a good experience. She was kind and thoughtful and had clearly put a lot of work into her review of the MS. The revision suggestions were reasonable and she not only told me what she wanted, but why, and we had a lengthy phone call in which she took pains to ask what I thought about the major suggestions. Which thankfully were not that major – it was more about strengthening what was there rather than making big changes. I did have to write some new scenes but they were very short ones, and I worked on beefing up secondary characters. I felt rusty at first but once I got into it a bit and got the first few changes done, I began to feel more comfortable and things went more smoothly. It actually felt good to revisit old territory. I’m glad I had been “away” from the MS for a long time and could come at it fresh.

What sort of things did your editor talk to you about?

What I liked best about this editor’s approach was the concreteness of her suggested changes. She didn’t just say, “you need to build more tension between these two characters” but gave me specifics. “On page 116 in the dinner scene you could make the conversation between Nick and Marlen much more awkward.” At the end of our phone call I had four pages of handwritten notes with a lot of page numbers and scene references, and I was able to pretty much sit down and work my way through them one by one, checking them off as I went along. I’m a very methodical person by nature so this worked extremely well.

I did have one surprise during the phone call – the editor asked for an explanation for something in my world-building that had never occurred to me, and I didn’t know the answer. That gave me pause for a good 24 hours until the answer popped into my head in the middle of the night, as these things often do. Like most writers, I keep the requisite notepad and pen on the nightstand.

Did you learn anything from these revisions that you want to share?

What I learned: 1. No matter how much of the story you think you’ve told your readers, you are likely making assumptions in your head that don’t always get transferred to the page. 2. Be specific. 3. Build tension wherever you can. Tension stirs the reader’s interest. 4. Be willing to entertain new ideas. 5. Don’t make things too easy on your characters, even if it’s a comedy.

You're also an illustrator. Want to talk about "In My Nature?"

“In My Nature: A Birder’s Year at the Montlake Fill” by Constance Sidles is a book for which I produced 29 watercolor, pen-and-ink, and colored pencil illustrations (www.constancypress.com). The project was the result of sheer serendipity. Now, this is where my tale gets interesting. I’ve loved art and writing all of my life, bouncing between them, never focusing on one over the other, doing pretty decent work in both but nothing spectacular (or financially rewarding!). I always thought art and writing were my passions – as in those pop-psych career-finding books with titles like “Find your bliss and money will flow” of which I admit to reading a few. I just couldn’t figure out how to turn my passions into a career. Thus the day job, which supported my creative habits.

Then in May of 2008 I took up birding. I was looking for a new hobby which would also provide some low-key exercise to help with recovery from an accident. I liked birds, I liked being outside, so I took a class in Beginning Birding from Seattle Audubon, and then went on a field trip. And had an epiphanic experience of massive proportions. All those decades when I thought art and writing were passions, I was dead wrong. They were mere hobbies in comparison. Birding was my real passion, and man, do I wish I’d discovered it when I was a whole lot younger. I’ve never felt this way about anything (or anyone) ever. I had no idea something could have such a huge effect at my age (I’ll just say “very middle-aged”), but birding absolutely changed my life. At a low estimate, I’ve logged over 300 hours in the field since May 2008. I’ve seen over 200 species, traveled over 8,000 miles by train, car, and ship in pursuit of birds, taken dozens of classes and field trips, and read dozens of bird-related books, and discovered a whole new community of like-minded fanatics. It’s been amazing.

And just as those silly pop-psych books claimed, once I followed my true passion, things began happening and then some, which amuses me no end. I forgot all about writing. I forgot about art. All I cared about were the birds. Then in August 2008 I noticed there weren’t as many birds out and about. I’d found a “local patch” called the Montlake Fill and made friends with a woman named Connie Sidles who birded there nearly every day, and she said things often slowed down in summer. So on a whim, I brought my sketchbook next time, and she saw what I was doing, and liked what she saw. Turned out she was writing a book of nature essays about the place. The next thing you know, I was busy painting illustrations for her book. A little over a year later the book was published and I have an illustrator credit on the cover. Then in Summer of this year Edge SF accepted my fantasy novel, which is due out in Spring of 2010. The nice thing about all of this is that while I am genuinely pleased and excited by the projects, I am also feeling very relaxed, not just about these projects, but about any future ones that may crop up. If more things happen, fine. If they don’t, also fine. Because I will still have the birds, and that’s all that truly matters. Birds make me happy in a way that nothing else does.

What’s next for you?

Apparently, anything and everything. I’ve rarely been interested in short stories, but I managed to write a few back in the late 1980s/early 1990s that were bought by VERY small mags (SF market), and then wrote one in 2008 which was bought by online SF market Abyss & Apex (“Walking Across the Bomb”). The editor there has expressed interest in another story (which is related to birding!) but I’d first need to whack it in half. It’s currently 9,000 words – did I mention I don’t like to write short?

Connie is working on a sequel to “In My Nature” and would like more illustrations, so I’ll be working on that. The paintings for the first book took about eight months (I’m still burdened with my 40-hour/week day job). I’m sure the Edge editor will be back soon with more revisions (hopefully slighter ones at this point). I’ve been doing “In My Nature” book launch events. I have an idea and notes for a sequel to “Immortal Quest”, despite having given up writing. Truth to tell, the whole “giving up” ploy is a psychological trick to take the pressure off. Some authors are compelled to write. I’m not. Some authors are born story-tellers who can’t imagine doing anything else. Not me. It’s a hobby. I put as exactly as much effort into it as I want to and no more. So I haven’t really “quit” writing – I’ve merely reassigned it to a different section of my brain than it once resided. It once lived, mostly during my 20s and 30s, in a section marked VERY IMPORTANT! MUST WORK HARD AT THIS! MUST SUCCEED! EGO IS AT STAKE HERE!

Now it lives in a quiet cul-de-sac with a wee sign on an open wooden gate reading “hey, come on in, stay as long as you like, leave whenever you want.” And I do.

I am very impressed by writers who can do the hard work, the ones for whom writing is indeed their primary passion. People who write every day, authors who struggle to make a living without a day job, folks who are born story-tellers. I admire them greatly, I consider them to be the real writers, and have simply come to recognize that I am not one of them. They deserve all the success they can get, and I am happy to have my one novel in 15 years!

Though of course, you never know what might happen next. The gate is always open.

Alexandra MacKenzie's book "Immortal Quest: The Trouble With Mages" is due from Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing in Spring of 2010.

Your Character is Wrong

Andrew Rosenberg is an aspiring author hailing from the Sasquatch-infested woods of the Great Northwest. He is currently working on his latest WIP, a Steampunk novel known as Steam Palace, in which his main character uncovers her family's deep dark secret and realizes she has been terribly wrong about her life and her ideals.

We'd like to thank Andrew for this guest post today. It's worth reading! You can visit him at his blog, The Write Runner.

~~~~~

Let me paint a picture. We’ll discuss it, then I’ll show you how your character is wrong.

You wake up in the morning. What do you do? Brush your teeth? Take a shower? Make breakfast?

Why not brush your dog? Take a nap? Make dinner?

Sounds silly at first, but what happens is that you make choices. You decide what is important to you at every moment, weigh the alternatives, and make a choice. At every moment of life, we have an infinite number of choices. We think we know what the consequences are of each choice. If we brush our teeth, then we have clean breath and an unkempt dog. But if we brush the dog, then we have a nice puppy but bad breath. Choices.

Some choices are not so obvious, especially when emotions are involved. These are the decisions that people spend a lot of energy thinking about. Whom do we ask out and how? When do we break up or quit our job? Which college is the right one? Should I enlist? People agonize over these choices because the consequences of a bad choice can be painful if not outright deadly.

I read a snippet of someone’s WIP the other day. It included a line something to the effect of “She hated the way he made her feel.”

Here’s the thing. There are no wires attached to your brain and no strings attached to your arms and legs. Nobody is controlling your emotions through some external means. You have eyes, ears, a nose, a tongue, and skin. All these organs generate electro-chemical impulses that are fairly indistinguishable from each other. These signals enter your brain which then decides what those impulses mean. A bunch of neurons fire in your ear, which activates your brain, which interprets those impulses into words, which (according to your X years of life on Earth) you decide means someone is saying something, and that something is hurtful. You’ve wired your own brain to decide what something means. No one can make you feel anything. You’ve chosen the meaning based on your experience and your beliefs about that person and the words that are said.

Here’s the next thing. You decide how your brain is wired (mostly). Your brain is not a computer with X number of transistors. You decide how to decode external stimuli. You make choices based on these stimuli. At some point, you may suddenly make a new choice, given the same external input. How does this happen? You choose to interpret things differently. The process in which you choose new interpretations is called learning. It’s the process in which people change and grow. Inside your brain, the neurons are always changing, creating new connections and severing old ones. You decide which connections are important, and which ones you choose to drop.

This is the key to successful story writing. Your character starts out with a certain world view. They make the same choices given the same external stimuli. This view does not serve them, given an unbiased external analysis, and especially as the story moves forward and they face greater and greater obstacles. Characters are locked into their world view because it’s all they’ve known, and they’ve rejected anything outside this view. They fight to protect this world view, because what does the alternative mean? What would it mean to find out that their belief system is incomplete or flawed? What would they discover if those same hurtful words they hear became helpful or even a revelation?

It would mean that they were wrong. Nobody wants to admit they are wrong, or ignorant, or mistaken. More than that, they would have to see that they were wrong about their interpretation of the most important event of their lives, whether this event happens in the backstory or in the first act. Their conclusions were wrong, and every choice they made based on this conclusion was probably based on faulty logic. The best episode on the TV series “Happy Days” is when The Fonz(Henry Winkler) has to apologize to Richie Cunningham(Ron Howard). He’s established his entire world view on being “cool”, or being tough and unrepentant. He must learn that even the great Arthur Fonzarelli makes mistakes. He finally explains, “Cool is knowing the difference between right and wrong and doing what is right with guts.” He has a new interpretation of the word “cool”. He was wrong, and once he realizes this, his whole life changes and he now has the power to conquer his foes.

A good story should rip apart the character’s world view. But characters shouldn’t go down without a fight. The biggest and most important battle a character fights is not with the antagonist. The villain is simply there to point out the character’s weaknesses, to show them where they’ve been wrong. In fact, there’s no way to defeat the villain while clinging to their old world view. The villain uses this knowledge to their advantage. It’s not until the character learns a new interpretation of their defining event and beliefs that they can defeat the villain, and the old demons in their head. It’s the moment where they say, “I’m not this weak/boring/unlovable/unworthy/untalented/indecisive/fearful person. I’m a mighty/fascinating/cherished/deserving/inspired/assertive/brave man/woman and I’m kicking ass!”

So here are the questions you should ask yourself when reviewing your story:

1. What critical event occurred in your character’s life (usually in childhood) and what decision did they make about themselves based on that event?

2. How does it affect their world view?How does this negatively impact them in the present (the start of the novel)? How does it hold them back?

3. How does this world view impact their ability to work through the central crisis of the novel?

4. What do they learn about this critical event in their past? What new interpretation do they have? How does this affect their choices moving forward?

5. How does this help them confront the antagonist and prevail in the end?

The Readership of One

Some of you who have been following Lit Lab for awhile will know that I often weigh the pros and cons of self-publishing versus publication house publishing. Well, as we are approaching the holiday season, I've found myself dipping more than my toe into the self-publication pool. See, I've been working for the past few weeks on a 20K-word novella that I plan to self-publish. This novella will have a readership of about one.

My nephew Dylan is six going on seven, and for his Christmas gift, I am attempting to write him a personalized book starring him and his family. It's currently called Dylan and the Monster, mostly because I haven't taken the time to come up with a better title yet.

On the one hand, this is just a little, insignificant project. It was actually inspired by my wonderful blogging friend Robyn and her son. I actually started writing a fairy tale for her son before I realized he was probably much too old to care about fairy tales. Instead, I decided to try again with my nephew.

But, more than just having a fun side project to work on, I realize that the concept of making this specialized type of book is transforming my views on the publication process. Let's face it, when we think about publication, it's mostly a numbers game. Most of the writers who try to publish through a publishing house do so because they want to reach as many people as they can. They want to be popular. And, often, to be popular, they have to compromise their own personal preferences. The downsides of self-publishing--because there are plenty of upsides--is that readers will rarely be able to find out that the book exists in the first place.

With Dylan and the Monster, my self-published book is going exactly to my intended audience (okay, and Michelle, who kindly volunteered to read it as well). That means, not only do I have complete control over my art form through self-publishing. But, I also reach everyone in my target audience. It's 100% successful. And, even though only a handful of people are ever going to read this thing, I'm finding it deeply satisfying.

I'm not yet sure what this means for me in the future. It may convince me to self-publish every novel I write, or it might not. But, for now, it's really making me think.

Any thoughts on this folks? As you can see, my own thoughts aren't exactly focused yet. Can someone explain why I'm liking this experience so much? And, do you think this is an inherently different thing from writing a "typical" novel?

Update: I'm currently writing the section where the character based on me is going to die! Good times! :P

Classic Plot Structure (3-Act Structure)

One of the cool things about the software we use to track visitor statistics for the Literary Lab is the ability to see what search terms were used to lead visitors here. A lot of people find us by entering "classic plot structure" into Google or whatever search engine. While Davin has written a post about the classic plot structure that you should by all means go read, it's more a commentary than a definition, so I'd like to take a few minutes and talk about the basics of the classic plot structure, which I'll henceforth refer to as the Three-Act Structure.

In brief, the Three-Act Structure is a framework to arrange story elements into a narrative, with pacing and major plot points as goals, a template into which you can pour your characters and events to give it shape. Narratives are constructed in three consecutive sections, or acts. The author has a distinct job to do in each of the three acts. The basic formula is:

Act One
Exposition, set-up, inciting incident. Hero is given a goal.

Act Two
The middle. The hero tries and fails to achieve goal.

Act Three
The climax and resolution. Hero makes last attempt to achieve goal and succeeds at last or fails forever.

(These are really sweeping generalizations, I know. But I didn't invent the classic plot structure, I just report on it.)

More detail:

In Act One, we see the hero (a word I use because it's shorter than "protagonist" and I'm less likely to misspell it) in his daily life, whatever and wherever that is. The hero has some internal need, usually, that can't be met in his daily life. Then, something happens to knock the hero off the rails of his daily life. He's been given a problem or a quest. Act One ends when the hero decides to solve the problem or take up the quest. The author's job in Act One is to establish the crisis in the hero's life that the hero must solve. There are lots of tasks involved in doing this job.

In Act Two, the hero struggles to solve the problem or complete the quest. He appears to be having success, though it doesn't come easy. The antagonist/villain fights against him indirectly. At the end of Act Two, the hero, who has been successful all this time, suffers a major defeat at the hands of the antagonist. Usually this defeat is caused by the hero's internal need which he has yet to deal with. This is the hero's lowest point, morally/physically/spiritually. All seems lost.

Lots of times, Act Two actually consists of the hero solving the problem that came up at the end of Act One, only to discover that it wasn't his real problem at all, and that he's got bigger fish to fry, which frying takes place in Act Three at the climax. The author's job in Act Two is to keep the action and the conflict rising toward the climax, and to show the hero attempting to re-establish equilibrium in his world (that is, achieve his goal). Lots of tasks involved in this job, too.

In Act Three, the hero bucks up and decides that he can go on, usually with greater resolve because yes, he's solved his inner problem that was holding him back. Or, he's realized he has this inner problem and is going to confront that. Either way, off he goes to fight the big fight at the Climax, after which there is a short denoument. The fight, of course, can be internal or metaphorical. Or fought with laser cannons; it's up to you. Your job, as author, is to resolve the crisis one way or another (or show how it cannot be resolved) in a manner that is believable within the rules of the story. The climax must seem both surprising and inevitable (except for those stories where you see it coming the whole time and hope the hero will avoid it). Again, lots of tasks are necessary to do this job.

So you have rising action, rising conflict, the possibility of total defeat and then even more action and conflict and then climax. Sometimes the hero dies or is otherwise defeated at the climax. Anyway, that's your classic Three-Act Structure in a nutshell. It gets more complicated as you layer on subplots and themes and other story elements, but you get the idea.

Another way of thinking about the Three-Act Structure is in terms of Action/Reaction/Results. Or perhaps as Problem/False Solution/True Solution. Or Crisis/Loss of Identity/Rebirth. Or At Home/This Is Not My Beautiful House/This Is My New House. Really, the different stories you can tell in this three-part structure are endless.

Now, is the Three-Act Structure of any use to a writer? I think very loosely in these terms when I do my outlining before I've begun actually writing. I also have begun lately thinking in terms of the Action/Reaction/Results 3-part structure when writing chapters and scenes, which gives a nice feeling of controlled flow to the writing. But I do think it's easy to fall into the trap of writing to a formula, which generally results in stories that are predictable, melodramatic, and otherwise suck.

The idea of the Three-Act Structure grew out of Aristotle's basic structure (which interested parties can read about in his Poetics):

Beginning, Middle, End

But Greek plays had only one act and don't divide nicely into the Three-Act template. Roman plays had five acts (as did the plays of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans), but that was to allow for intermissions and snack breaks. Ancient plays were longer than our two-hour movies so there were practical matters to which playwrights and theaters had to attend.

What I think is as useful for a story template as the Three-Act Structure is to divide the story into two types of action: the action that creates the problem, and the action that resolves the problem. This is how real conflict works in real life. You might try writing down the action that creates the problem and then the action that resolves it, and then break those actions down into scenes and see what you've got.

So while the Three-Act Structure might be a helpful organizing tool, I caution anyone against tying themselves too tightly to it. Stories are about who we are and how we solve problems, and I suggest we think in those terms and not so much in terms of "I haven't raised the stakes for my protagonist" or "I need to use my antagonist's minions in this act."

Beginning, middle and end. Start with the end, if you know enough about your story to know who your characters are. Who is he at the end of the story? Then tell us how and why he got there. That is what you are telling us. That is a story.

Gateway Books: Your First One's Free

With Christmas coming, I think about giving books as gifts to my friends and family. I want to support the art form that is so important to me, and I always have secret hopes of getting the world more excited about reading again. But, as I've mentioned before, a lot of my friends don't read that much. Sometimes, giving them a book is equivalent to giving them a brick.

I've gotten better at the whole process though. When I first started doing it, my approach was wrong. If I loved a book, I'd buy multiple copies of it and give it to my friends. As a result, a lot of people got Anna Karenina--and I lot of people got bored by Anna Karenina.

I realized that if I wanted people to read, I had to give them what they wanted in a book. I had to be in tune with their needs.

One of the ways of doing this is to rely on what I call "gateway" books. Like a gateway drug, (and a gateway drug dealer) I try to use books I already know people like to get them hooked on new things. Like Twilight? Try Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. Like Joy Luck Club? Try Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, or Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. In this way, I try to let people know that there are other books out there besides the three that they see in the center of every display window.

I also look at their lives. My brother isn't a big reader. He brags about how he got through high school without actually finishing a single novel. In my mind, it was a waste to buy him a book. But, when he had his son, I decided to buy him a copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, since it describes a journey of father and son..and it's short. Not only did he finish it, but he read most of it with his son in his arms and wrote me to tell me how moved he was when he finished.

So here are some of my tips when I buy someone a book:

1. Find out about their usual reading habits. Do they read at all? If so, what?

2a. If they don't read at all, find out what types of movies they like. If they do read, find out what they read.

3. Ask them WHY they like the stories they like. Is it the romance of Twilight or the humor? Do they like only vampire stories, or any type of fantasy? A few of my friends mentioned loving the movie No Country For Old Men...up until the end. That's important to know because the end basically establishes that the story is a literary work, rather than an action adventure.

4. Research. If we want to be able to recommend books, it means we have to be familiar with a broad range of them ourselves. I can't spend my life reading Tolstoy--I have to know what else is out there. I have to make my way through books I wouldn't normally read to understand what about them is so engaging.

5. Give them the book and tell them why you think they'll like it. If there are weak parts to the book, maybe tell them about it before hand so that they don't give up too early. Basically, give them a little bit of instruction. But, only a little!

6. Find out how you did. Did they like the book or hate it? If they liked it, tell them about other books they might like. Try your best to broaden their horizons. If they hated it, find out why they hated it. Recommend a different type of book that might fit their personalities better.

For me, the ultimate goal is to get people to be more open-minded about what's out there. With the current model of marketing, many books get so little coverage that they don't reach their appropriate audience. I think if we help them out, it will eventually help give us more chances to publish what we want to write.

So, tell me about your success stories! Have you recommended books to people that they loved? Do you go out of your way to get more people to read?

The Fictional Dream

Writer and teacher John Gardner had a concept he called the fictional dream, which was the idea that fiction does its job by creating a dream state for the reader, and as long as the writer is doing a good job of maintaining that dream state, the reader won't "wake up" from it and will continue to read and believe in the fictional world the writer has created. Gardner argues that this fictional dream first happens in the writer's head, and the writer's job is to write it down for the reader:

“In the writing state—the state of inspiration—the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols. The dream is as alive and compelling as one’s dreams at night, and when the writer writes down on paper what he has imagined, the words, however inadequate, do not distract his mind from the fictive dream but provide him with a fix on it, so that when the dream flags he can reread what he’s written and find the dream starting up again. This and nothing else is the desperately sought and tragically fragile writer’s process: in his imagination, he sees made-up people doing things—sees them clearly—and in the act of wondering what they will do next he sees what they will do next, and all this he writes down in the best, most accurate words he can find, understanding even as he writes that he may have to find better words later, and that a change in the words may mean a sharpening or deepening of the vision, the fictive dream or vision becoming more and more lucid, until reality, by comparison, seems cold, tedious, and dead.”

For me, at least, this is a pretty accurate description of what writing is like, at least some of the time. As I work my way through the second act of "Cocke & Bull" I am finding that even though I've got a couple of outlines written for the book and I'm accumulating notes to myself about what the second act is all about, the tool upon which I am leaning the most to get the writing done is my imagination. Last night I was trying to write a simple scene in which three people camp out for the night in a pine forest, and when I imagined the scene I found myself imagining all sorts of surprising action and then I found myself describing this action in all sorts of surprising ways. I read back over what I wrote and at one point had to ask myself where a certain symbolic image came from; I didn't remember writing it at all but there it was on the page and it was perfect.

All of which should give me confidence as I move forward through the middle section of the book, but still I feel like I'm taking a white-knuckle ride through the story, because even though I know certain things that have to happen by the end of the second act, in some ways I have no idea at all what's going to happen during the course of this act and I'm still feeling my way blindly through the story even with my pages of notes and outlines and maps and charts (yes, charts). I breathe a sigh of relief at the completion of each chapter, as if I've survived some harrowing experience. Which, you know, I have.

Genre Wars Contest Ending Thoughts

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in our Genre Wars contest, either by entering your work, by spreading the word, or simply by not calling us names when you heard about it.

We closed our submissions late Tuesday night, ending with far more entries than we had anticipated. (I was personally hoping for 50 pieces, and we got a lot more than 50.) Michelle, Scott, and I are now in the process of reading and reviewing each story. All three of us have our own ranking scales, and--though we agree on some great stories--there are plenty that we will have to debate and discuss when we're done. I think we're all excited about that and hope that we don't resort to cannibalism as a way of making our case.

As you all know, the submissions process was kept anonymous to the three of us. All emails sent to our joined address was only opened by our very dedicated and selfless helper, Becca Brown--thank you so much, Becca! Occasionally she forwarded some non-contest-related messages to us, but everything else was kept secret. Only after our decision process is over will we allow ourselves to see the names of the authors, and we're still not sure if we will look at writers of the stories we don't accept.

Do you all have opinions on that?

Next, we're going to finish all of our work and put together the anthology. Winners from each genre will be announced on January 7th, and the "best of show" winner will be announced as well. Each of these stories will be in the anthology, and we'll also post them up on our blog, along with interviews of the writers. Additionally, several other stories will be selected for the anthology. And, of course our little prizes.

When we sell the anthology (as a POD publication) all of the proceeds will be donated to one of the charity groups we feature here--we're not done with that part of things yet. The charity group will be voted on by readers.

And, since the three of us have been debating on what to do about the cover of the anthology, we thought we'd invite anyone who is interested to submit a cover idea. So, spread the word to your artist friends! We'll also be coming up with some ideas of our own, hopefully. That's right, it's a contest for a contest. But a far less organized one.

Send your entries as a .jpg attachment to LiteraryLab (at) gmail (dot) com by December 21st 12:00 p.m. PST. All artwork must be original and you must be the copyright holder in order for us to use your cover art!

Don't Try To Be The Fattest Giraffe

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Someone might be great at dialog and not so great at description. Or, someone might be great at description and not so great at structure. The obvious approach as we try to become better writers is to strengthen our weaknesses. I, for example, didn't like how I was handling structure, so I've been researching standard structures, mainly from reading screenwriting books. But, then, I started thinking about voice and what makes voice unique. What if part of what made my voice unique was the fact that my story structures were odd?

A giraffe is a cool animal, not because it is skinnier than an elephant. A giraffe is cool because it's got a super-long neck and an amazing heart that allows it to pump blood up that neck. If I were to be impressed by a giraffe, it would be because it was really tall, not really fat. In fact, I'd probably be less impressed by a fat giraffe. An elephant, on the other hand, is cool partly because it is so fat. That's why we're impressed when it can stand up on its hind legs, or balance on a ball. In other words, each of these animals is cool because of its unique characteristics, and if all animals developed features that made them equally good at everything, they would end up being less interesting as a whole, some featureless brown blob like a cardboard box with fangs.

Though I'm NOT saying that we should wallow in our weaknesses, I think a valid approach to creating unique work is to exploit our strengths to compensate for our weaknesses. Someone who is bad at dialog could write a brilliant book that contains no dialog. Someone who is bad at description could write "Hills Like White Elephants." (Yes, that's a joke.)

With this mindset, a good book can be represented by a pie chart. Some good books will have very even pie slices, where each slice represents a component of writing such as description, character, dialog, pacing, transitions, emotion, intensity etc. Other good books might have only three really big slices--character, emotion, and intensity. That doesn't necessarily mean that it is a less impressive book. It just means it has the potential to be unique.

Is this crazy? Am I wrong? Do you have weaknesses that might actually allow you to write a more unique book?

AND, we wanted to mention that writer Roz Morris is giving away FREE copies of the pdf of her book, Nail Your Novel. We checked it out and think it's a solid resource for beginning writers. Check it out!

DOUBLE AND, Tess Hilmo sold her novel, With A Name Like Love!!!!!!!

Transitions

Fia left this in our 'Have a Question?' box: A few years ago my tutor said my writing read too like a script. I decided to 'tell' more. Now I have the poor protagonist not only waking up but going to the bathroom, brushing her hair, getting in the car...help!

If I understand Fia properly (given that she gave her question the title "Transitions"), the problem she's having is with moving from one scene to another and spanning the time between those scenes without filling in the "story time" with meaningless action. I would first like to point back to this post I did in July about time passing in novels, and then (without bothering myself to read that old post) prolix on a bit here about transitions. I may contradict something I said back in July, in which case, what I say now is right. Unless it's not. Onward:

How do you go from one scene to the next? How much "real-time" activity of a character can you skip?

The first thing you need to know in order to work this out, is which of your scenes are actually necessary. Every scene should move the story (which means either plot or character development) forward. If you have scenes that don't do this, I suggest very strongly that you cut them. No matter what your writing coach might say.

Once your story is made of only necessary scenes (and passages of necessary exposition and narrative summary), you have to come up with the connective tissue that holds them together. But before we work on our transitions, let's put in mind a couple of good rules for effective scenes:

1. "In late, out early": This is an idea used often by screen writers, and it means that you begin your scenes only when something important is about to happen. You don't waste a lot of time setting up the scene or building up to the action. And, once whatever important event has taken place, you don't hang around afterwards as the staff clears off the tables. You get out and move on.

This doesn't mean that scenes should be short, all action and the pace of the novel rushed. This doesn't mean that you can't use the "scene and sequel" technique where after something important happens, your characters think about what that event means to them as people. What it means is that you don't waste your reader's time and that the story never reaches stall speed; you keep moving forward at all times.

2. Scenes are self-contained: This means that the work of setting the scene, describing the surroundings, etc, is all done in the scene itself, and is not done using expository passages that seem to go nowhere. This is a separate set of subjects all unto themselves, so I won't dwell on it here.

Once you have your scenes in well-written form, there are a couple of ways to connect them:

1. Just do it(tm): Jump directly from one scene to another, possibly at a scene break or chapter break.

2. Cut back-and-forth: Switch between characters/locales/events, and each time you return to a character, you've moved the timeline forward or changed the location of the character. You sort of leap-frog your separate storylines (you do have more than one storyline, don't you?).

3. Find the connecting idea: If your story is solidly-built, there is something (an object or an idea or an emotion) that is carried forward from one scene to the next. The reason you have the following scenes, in other words. Think about that reason and how it connects the two scenes, and use it as your transition. I know that I talked about this in the post back in June.

4. "Two hours later...": Just tell your reader that you've moved on with the story, skipping unimportant stuff. Anyone who's read more than, say, two novels will be used to this narrative device, and there's nothing wrong with it. Most of the time, the simplist way to do something is the most effective, least obtrusive, and therefore bestest of all possible ways to do it. The more you try to be fancy, the higher the risk that you'll fail. Do please take risks with your writing, but be prepared to fall on your face some of the time and resort to Plain Old Writing That Works.

The main thing to keep in mind here is that, whenever you find your characters doing things that have nothing to do with the story, you should just cut that stuff. If you can't find a clever or beautiful way of moving the storyline forward to the next scene, try doing it in the most simple and direct manner possible (either a scene break, a chapter break, or declaring to the reader that you've jumped ahead in time).

One of my favorite transitional passages in my work-in-progress is this little bit, that bridges two similar scenes that are set in different places and entail different characters; there is nothing to immediately connect these scenes, so I just pick the reader up and carry them from the first scene to the second:

About six miles south of Abigail’s farm, on a hill that rose above the town of Joppa, Clockshott sat alone in his parlor, waiting for Bull. It was not yet eight o’clock and Clockshott’s hands busied themselves buttoning and unbuttoning the green waistcoat he wore. He was not confident that his guest would come at all.

What I like about this transition is that it's not really a passage between scenes; it is in fact the start of the next scene. Which leads me to one final thought about transitions: don't make them a place of rest, a spot where the story slows down. Think of transitions as the start of something new, not the end of what just happened or a space between things. Always consider how you can maintain forward momentum.

As usual, the best way to learn how this stuff is done well is to read your favorite authors and pay attention to the way they handle these things. Every writer develops favorite techniques for solving these narrative problems, and while we seem to be forced into coming up with solutions individually, there are really only a few ways to do this.

IMPORTANT NOTICE! The Genre Wars short story contest (details here) ends TONIGHT at 11:59 PM PST! There is still time to submit your 2,000-word (or fewer words, if you like) story! Don't delay! Ignore your boss and polish up that prose!