A couple of weeks ago on another blog someone wanted to know why people who weren’t young adults would be interested in writing YA. It struck me as a bit of an odd question, because I’ve never had the sense that writers were only propelled by their own demographic for their stories. But it is also a legitimate question in a broader sense, and it got me to thinking about why we write and where our stories come from.
My own theory is that our richest, most authentic stories come out of our own traumas and heartbreaks. Not necessarily in a direct correlation—I was beaten as a child therefore I will write about child abuse. But rather the core emotional issues, the wounds and scars that have shaped us, will also shape our stories. And the nature of those will in turn help determine what age group we write for.
Stories are the psychological equivalent of pearls, if you think about it. At some point in our lives, we receive this grain of sand—some horror or trauma or huge obstacle that becomes a permanent part of who we are. And then the magic begins to happen. Time passes, we move on, we begin to heal, scar tissue forms, we begin to grow again, only this time our growth encompasses those painful experiences. And if you are lucky enough to have a creative outlet, those painful experiences cannot help but shape what you create, much in the same way the shape of your hand determines the way you play the piano or the choice of medium affects what your artwork looks like.
My childhood and teen years were my most emotionally tumultuous, one great big stewing pot of dysfunctionality. It tapered off toward the ends of high school, but it was too late. The scars and wounds I’d received in childhood were so much a part of me that they radically affected every aspect of how I viewed the world and how I interacted with people, thus ensuring high school was hard and not the glowing ‘best time of your life’ that so many adults think of it.
So it is no surprise that when I write, that is where my stories come from. That place. And yes, even though I am well, (WELL!) past being a young adult, Not only was that the most fertile for me story-wise, but the thematic issues I am drawn to explore lend themselves best to that age.
Once I hit adulthood, I got lucky, found unconditional love, got married, and had kids. My life has been pretty great so far. Not exactly smooth sailing, raising kids is never smooth sailing, but there have been far fewer traumas and upheavals, and very little scar tissue and lots of lessons learned.
Which is why I write for kids and young adults.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Monday, September 13, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Juggling Act
A week or two ago, back in the throes of finishing up the current WIP and juggling the newly arrived copy edits for Theo Four, Mel asked for details on how I juggled these tasks, so I thought I’d talk about that a little bit.
There really isn’t a secret to it, and I suspect I used to be better at it when I was younger, but it’s pretty much just a matter of compartmentalizing your day and your brain. Luckily, both the left side and the right side of my brain are pretty active. (Random Fact Alert: I was tested on that once for a job. The guy thought I had cheated because I was split so evenly down the middle in terms of brain usage.)
Since early morning when I just get up is my prime writing time, that’s when I do any actual page producing type of writing. So working on the WIP was my priority then, I would sit down and write anywhere from six to ten pages or do a major revision of a scene or two, depending on how much revising they required.
After that, I take my morning walk, have breakfast (obviously a late breakfast!), take a shower, then work on business type things—email, blogs, website stuff—or research for the current project. However, if I have something I absolutely need to work on, like copy edits for a completely different book (and world) that requires I access a completely different mental landscape (and voice) what I do is take a nap.
I know that sounds a bit indulgent, and I guess it is, but it also resets my mental clock, like a brain’s version of the reset button, so that when I get up, I don’t have all the darky moody flotsam and jetsam of medieval France still filling up my brain while I try to work on a funny, Edwardian era caper. However, the key thing here—and the most difficult—is to not let the flotsam and jetsam of the morning’s project get buried too deep or shunted too far off to the side so that you lose that close connection with the work. To help with that, I also try to get my subconscious a story bone to chew on for the afternoon.
I am very lucky in that I rarely have to turn copy edits around in two days like I hear so much about. That would seriously suck for me, because I can only focus on a smallish chunk of copy edits at a time without wanting to pull my hair out.
My usual process is when I first get the package is to glance through them and see just how severe a copy edit it is. (And to my immense pride and satisfaction, they are getting less and less severe. Clearly I am learning to produce cleaner final drafts. Hooray!) Then I set my timeline, trying to give myself enough time at the end that I can send them back UPS 3rd day air and not spend a fortune on shipping. (Paper is heavy!) Then once I know I have five days to work on them, I divvy them up into five chunks and work on one chunk a day. For the Theo books, those chunks are 50 to 60 pages at a time. The Fludd books are much smaller, and I usually do them in only three days or so.
Now here’s the thing about copy edits: I am eternally and hugely grateful for every copy editor that has gone over my work with a finely sharpened colored pencil. BUT, they are not fun because someone is basically catching all your mistakes. I get pissed off when I make mistakes. Obviously I get pissed off at myself, but it is easier to grumble at the poor copy editor because she is not there and I am. Please note: This is a personal failing on my part and is by no means a reflection of how I actually feel about copy editors. I love them!
So I go through and accept or stet all the corrections. However, anything that I am not sure of or any places where I find myself reacting defensively, I simply flag to go back and look at again. That way I am able to move ahead at a good pace and don’t get bogged down. The cool thing about that is that usually when I go back to the flagged places, my defensiveness has cooled off, or I spend a few minutes consulting with grammar guides or reviewing my research materials before making/accepting the change.
Then, feeling virtuous, I put that day’s chunk aside and go do a bit of research or planning for the next morning’s draft pages. I will often try to do some light research reading just before I go to bed, again, trying to fill up my subconscious with raw material it might need for the next day’s work.
And that is probably more than you ever wanted to know about juggling projects, but there you go.
There really isn’t a secret to it, and I suspect I used to be better at it when I was younger, but it’s pretty much just a matter of compartmentalizing your day and your brain. Luckily, both the left side and the right side of my brain are pretty active. (Random Fact Alert: I was tested on that once for a job. The guy thought I had cheated because I was split so evenly down the middle in terms of brain usage.)
Since early morning when I just get up is my prime writing time, that’s when I do any actual page producing type of writing. So working on the WIP was my priority then, I would sit down and write anywhere from six to ten pages or do a major revision of a scene or two, depending on how much revising they required.
After that, I take my morning walk, have breakfast (obviously a late breakfast!), take a shower, then work on business type things—email, blogs, website stuff—or research for the current project. However, if I have something I absolutely need to work on, like copy edits for a completely different book (and world) that requires I access a completely different mental landscape (and voice) what I do is take a nap.
I know that sounds a bit indulgent, and I guess it is, but it also resets my mental clock, like a brain’s version of the reset button, so that when I get up, I don’t have all the darky moody flotsam and jetsam of medieval France still filling up my brain while I try to work on a funny, Edwardian era caper. However, the key thing here—and the most difficult—is to not let the flotsam and jetsam of the morning’s project get buried too deep or shunted too far off to the side so that you lose that close connection with the work. To help with that, I also try to get my subconscious a story bone to chew on for the afternoon.
I am very lucky in that I rarely have to turn copy edits around in two days like I hear so much about. That would seriously suck for me, because I can only focus on a smallish chunk of copy edits at a time without wanting to pull my hair out.
My usual process is when I first get the package is to glance through them and see just how severe a copy edit it is. (And to my immense pride and satisfaction, they are getting less and less severe. Clearly I am learning to produce cleaner final drafts. Hooray!) Then I set my timeline, trying to give myself enough time at the end that I can send them back UPS 3rd day air and not spend a fortune on shipping. (Paper is heavy!) Then once I know I have five days to work on them, I divvy them up into five chunks and work on one chunk a day. For the Theo books, those chunks are 50 to 60 pages at a time. The Fludd books are much smaller, and I usually do them in only three days or so.
Now here’s the thing about copy edits: I am eternally and hugely grateful for every copy editor that has gone over my work with a finely sharpened colored pencil. BUT, they are not fun because someone is basically catching all your mistakes. I get pissed off when I make mistakes. Obviously I get pissed off at myself, but it is easier to grumble at the poor copy editor because she is not there and I am. Please note: This is a personal failing on my part and is by no means a reflection of how I actually feel about copy editors. I love them!
So I go through and accept or stet all the corrections. However, anything that I am not sure of or any places where I find myself reacting defensively, I simply flag to go back and look at again. That way I am able to move ahead at a good pace and don’t get bogged down. The cool thing about that is that usually when I go back to the flagged places, my defensiveness has cooled off, or I spend a few minutes consulting with grammar guides or reviewing my research materials before making/accepting the change.
Then, feeling virtuous, I put that day’s chunk aside and go do a bit of research or planning for the next morning’s draft pages. I will often try to do some light research reading just before I go to bed, again, trying to fill up my subconscious with raw material it might need for the next day’s work.
And that is probably more than you ever wanted to know about juggling projects, but there you go.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Stewing Time
I got an email the other day from someone who had taken one of the workshops I gave at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference a couple of years ago. He had a great question that I thought I’d talk about here.
In the workshop, and repeatedly on this blog, I talk about the importance of setting your manuscript down for a couple of months to get the distance needed to be able to see its flaws. His question was, when do you take this break? Especially if, as you’re finishing up your first draft, you are already forming a long list of what you need to do in the revision.
My answer was that if you have a list of things you know would make the manuscript better, go ahead and make those changes before setting it aside. Essentially, you want to make the manuscript as good as you know how to make it before putting it in that drawer.
I think ideas improve from some of that fermenting/rising time, too. In fact, now that I think about it, my last three story ideas (Theodosia, Nathaniel Fludd, and the YA I’m working on right now) have all benefited from some seriously long fermentation time. I think that long slow formation of a story idea can really add to its depth and layers.
I first thought of the Beastologist idea about five or six years ago. The see came to me in a flash; a story about a boy who discovers he is supposed to take care of the world’s mythical creatures. I loved the idea, but it was a pretty small seed of an idea to be sure. And for me, half the fun of writing stories is playing with and examining all the different directions they can take. So I thought about it for a few weeks, jotting a handful of ideas and possibilities down in a notebook, then ignored it for months while I worked on other projects. Every few months I’d pick that notebook up and add a few more ideas or layers. He would come from a long line of explorers and cartographers. Hm, he’d be sent to live with an obscure relative. What nature of mythical creatures existed in that world? What would the setting be? The time the story takes place? All those things were slowly layered in over months and months and years of playing with the idea.
Theodosia was the same way. I worked on that first book and building her world over a two to three year period. This current YA I’ve worked on sporadically for the last four (God, has it really been FOUR?) years.
Which is just a long way of saying that there are many junctures of a story’s life where it will benefit from some stewing time. In fact, that is why I like to have three or four story irons in the fire, so I can move from one to the other, layering a little in at a time, yet always making progress toward completion at some future date.
So if an idea feels green to you, consider allowing yourself to put it away for a few months and see how you hidden mind plays with it. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
In the workshop, and repeatedly on this blog, I talk about the importance of setting your manuscript down for a couple of months to get the distance needed to be able to see its flaws. His question was, when do you take this break? Especially if, as you’re finishing up your first draft, you are already forming a long list of what you need to do in the revision.
My answer was that if you have a list of things you know would make the manuscript better, go ahead and make those changes before setting it aside. Essentially, you want to make the manuscript as good as you know how to make it before putting it in that drawer.
I think ideas improve from some of that fermenting/rising time, too. In fact, now that I think about it, my last three story ideas (Theodosia, Nathaniel Fludd, and the YA I’m working on right now) have all benefited from some seriously long fermentation time. I think that long slow formation of a story idea can really add to its depth and layers.
I first thought of the Beastologist idea about five or six years ago. The see came to me in a flash; a story about a boy who discovers he is supposed to take care of the world’s mythical creatures. I loved the idea, but it was a pretty small seed of an idea to be sure. And for me, half the fun of writing stories is playing with and examining all the different directions they can take. So I thought about it for a few weeks, jotting a handful of ideas and possibilities down in a notebook, then ignored it for months while I worked on other projects. Every few months I’d pick that notebook up and add a few more ideas or layers. He would come from a long line of explorers and cartographers. Hm, he’d be sent to live with an obscure relative. What nature of mythical creatures existed in that world? What would the setting be? The time the story takes place? All those things were slowly layered in over months and months and years of playing with the idea.
Theodosia was the same way. I worked on that first book and building her world over a two to three year period. This current YA I’ve worked on sporadically for the last four (God, has it really been FOUR?) years.
Which is just a long way of saying that there are many junctures of a story’s life where it will benefit from some stewing time. In fact, that is why I like to have three or four story irons in the fire, so I can move from one to the other, layering a little in at a time, yet always making progress toward completion at some future date.
So if an idea feels green to you, consider allowing yourself to put it away for a few months and see how you hidden mind plays with it. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Coming to Terms With Fear
I am not generally one to experience fear when I write. Normally, I am too immersed in the story to hear the Internal Perfectionist or Cranky Editor when they hurl insults or doubts my way. The fact that am working on series probably also helps with that, as the concepts and generalities of what I am writing have some proven acceptance.
But I do find myself struggling with Fear as I write this story, and it is not a comfortable feeling. It does probably mean I’m writing the story I need to be writing right now, but it also means I have to learn to come to terms with Fear, either by ignoring it, succumbing to it, or staring it down.
I am afraid I am writing a fish with feathers (to appropriate a phrase Blythe used over on Shrinking Violets) and it will end up being neither fish nor fowl, a spectacular failure. I am afraid it has too much history for a YA, and focuses too much on the romance relationship. But now that I am writing it in first person, present tense, I also know that if it fails as YA, it will have no home in the historical romance market either, so I have pretty much built myself out over a precipice.
And yes, I know that I just have to write the book, but as a working writer, it is extremely hard to devote so very much time to what I fear may be unsellable.
It is also absolutely necessary so that I can grow creatively.
But it is not a comfortable place to be and as I said, I am having many negotiating sessions with Fear.
Now for a complete segue which, I promise, will come full circle in a minute.
I subscribe to the DailyOm and those puppies come in faster than I can contemplate them. I now have about 247 DailyOms sitting patiently in an email folder waiting for me to read them. (Yes, I am well aware of the irony of that, thankyouverymuch.) But every once in awhile, one of the titles catches my eye as being something extremely pertinent to what I am dealing with in life, and yesterday was one of those. The title of the DailyOm was, Underneath the Noise.
We all know that saying, if you want someone’s attention, just whisper. This DailyOm expounded on that somewhat but the sentence that really zapped me between the eyes was this one:
How many different ways do I love that? But of course. Bullies always shout the loudest. And they always shout because they are insecure or full of bluster. They are of questionable authority.
Boys and girls, our Internal Editors and Cranky Perfectionists are so damn loud because they know they’re wrong! That is why they are shouting at us; to make up for in volume what they lack in truth.
As I read that last night, those voices yelling at me to be afraid went silent; they shrugged sheepishly and slunk away.
At least for now. I am sure they will be back, but now that I have their secret, it will be even easier to stare them down the next time...
But I do find myself struggling with Fear as I write this story, and it is not a comfortable feeling. It does probably mean I’m writing the story I need to be writing right now, but it also means I have to learn to come to terms with Fear, either by ignoring it, succumbing to it, or staring it down.
I am afraid I am writing a fish with feathers (to appropriate a phrase Blythe used over on Shrinking Violets) and it will end up being neither fish nor fowl, a spectacular failure. I am afraid it has too much history for a YA, and focuses too much on the romance relationship. But now that I am writing it in first person, present tense, I also know that if it fails as YA, it will have no home in the historical romance market either, so I have pretty much built myself out over a precipice.
And yes, I know that I just have to write the book, but as a working writer, it is extremely hard to devote so very much time to what I fear may be unsellable.
It is also absolutely necessary so that I can grow creatively.
But it is not a comfortable place to be and as I said, I am having many negotiating sessions with Fear.
Now for a complete segue which, I promise, will come full circle in a minute.
I subscribe to the DailyOm and those puppies come in faster than I can contemplate them. I now have about 247 DailyOms sitting patiently in an email folder waiting for me to read them. (Yes, I am well aware of the irony of that, thankyouverymuch.) But every once in awhile, one of the titles catches my eye as being something extremely pertinent to what I am dealing with in life, and yesterday was one of those. The title of the DailyOm was, Underneath the Noise.
We all know that saying, if you want someone’s attention, just whisper. This DailyOm expounded on that somewhat but the sentence that really zapped me between the eyes was this one:
“It is generally true that the more insistent voices in our heads delivering messages that make us feel panicky or afraid are of questionable authority…Their urgency stems from their disconnectedness from the center of our being, and their urgency is what catches our attention.”
How many different ways do I love that? But of course. Bullies always shout the loudest. And they always shout because they are insecure or full of bluster. They are of questionable authority.
Boys and girls, our Internal Editors and Cranky Perfectionists are so damn loud because they know they’re wrong! That is why they are shouting at us; to make up for in volume what they lack in truth.
As I read that last night, those voices yelling at me to be afraid went silent; they shrugged sheepishly and slunk away.
At least for now. I am sure they will be back, but now that I have their secret, it will be even easier to stare them down the next time...
Monday, July 5, 2010
Spackle
I am moving right along on this major rewrite/revision thing that I’m doing right now and one of the things I find I am using a LOT is the literary equivalent of spackle.
Spackle when writing is just what it sounds like: a flimsy lick and a promise to get back to a spot and create something better. Stronger. Heftier. When I am in the zone and the story is unfolding before me, if I take too long in trying to capture the words, they’ll disappear before I can get them down. For me, always, the race is to get the story down while I’m in the heated flush of that writing zone. I can linger and dally over language all I want later, once the bones of the story are firmly in place.
Spackle often shows up as a set of brackets [like this] when I know I need a better word or simile but I don’t want to stop the writerly flow and search right then.
Something in his face made me [uneasy].
His eyes hardened like [sharp flat stones].
Sometimes though, spackle can be an entire action.
[Nate and Greasle find out figure out a way to catch the basilisk and not get poisoned in the process.]
As you can see, that’s no mere phrase or word choice, but an entire plot point that needs to be worked out. But again, if the big pieces of the story are flowing or the voice is really working or I've got a firm grip on the ending, I don’t let myself grope and flail when there are perfectly good words trying to bubble out.
This weekend, entire scenes and chunks of acts are falling away as I trim and shape this manuscript. I know I will need new scenes in there. Some of them are showing up, right on cue, and others aren’t. But I still need a placeholder in this new draft I’m building, something to help me capture the pacing and the rhythm of the scenes. In that case, I spackle entire scenes, which go something like this:
[They arrive at court. Hero leaves her to talk politics with duchess’s advisors. She pretends she’s bored and wanders away. Uses this as excuse to eavesdrop on other’s conversations. Learns Count Z has returned, sees Lord X and Lady Y in tete a tete, wonders what they’re up to. Protects one of the serving maids against an overbearing baron, accidentally runs into the French ambassador, then Francois finds her and invites her to dance.]
In that bit I list all the things from the various plot threads I’m juggling that I know have to happen then, in that scene. It also helps me capture in really broad strokes what the scene will encompass, while also giving my subconscious time to figure out more of the details and the nuance and even what the scene will actually be about. (Because clearly, from looking at that list, I do not have a clue. Yet.)
Oftentimes, I’ll figure out major epiphanies for that scene in subsequent scenes—scenes I never would have written if I’d let myself get totally stuck and stymied in one spot and not allowed myself to use spackle.
So if you aren’t currently using spackle, you might see if there’s a place for it in your writer’s toolbox.
Spackle when writing is just what it sounds like: a flimsy lick and a promise to get back to a spot and create something better. Stronger. Heftier. When I am in the zone and the story is unfolding before me, if I take too long in trying to capture the words, they’ll disappear before I can get them down. For me, always, the race is to get the story down while I’m in the heated flush of that writing zone. I can linger and dally over language all I want later, once the bones of the story are firmly in place.
Spackle often shows up as a set of brackets [like this] when I know I need a better word or simile but I don’t want to stop the writerly flow and search right then.
Something in his face made me [uneasy].
His eyes hardened like [sharp flat stones].
Sometimes though, spackle can be an entire action.
[Nate and Greasle find out figure out a way to catch the basilisk and not get poisoned in the process.]
As you can see, that’s no mere phrase or word choice, but an entire plot point that needs to be worked out. But again, if the big pieces of the story are flowing or the voice is really working or I've got a firm grip on the ending, I don’t let myself grope and flail when there are perfectly good words trying to bubble out.
This weekend, entire scenes and chunks of acts are falling away as I trim and shape this manuscript. I know I will need new scenes in there. Some of them are showing up, right on cue, and others aren’t. But I still need a placeholder in this new draft I’m building, something to help me capture the pacing and the rhythm of the scenes. In that case, I spackle entire scenes, which go something like this:
[They arrive at court. Hero leaves her to talk politics with duchess’s advisors. She pretends she’s bored and wanders away. Uses this as excuse to eavesdrop on other’s conversations. Learns Count Z has returned, sees Lord X and Lady Y in tete a tete, wonders what they’re up to. Protects one of the serving maids against an overbearing baron, accidentally runs into the French ambassador, then Francois finds her and invites her to dance.]
In that bit I list all the things from the various plot threads I’m juggling that I know have to happen then, in that scene. It also helps me capture in really broad strokes what the scene will encompass, while also giving my subconscious time to figure out more of the details and the nuance and even what the scene will actually be about. (Because clearly, from looking at that list, I do not have a clue. Yet.)
Oftentimes, I’ll figure out major epiphanies for that scene in subsequent scenes—scenes I never would have written if I’d let myself get totally stuck and stymied in one spot and not allowed myself to use spackle.
So if you aren’t currently using spackle, you might see if there’s a place for it in your writer’s toolbox.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Miscellany
Okay so maybe I won't be reporting on MADE TO STICK. No sooner did I announce that than I stopped reading the book. Felt too much like a book report. :-) Suffice it to say, it has a lot of good stuff in it. Stuff like: We can't demand attention, we have to attract it, which pretty much sums up how I feel about first scenes.
Last night I was browsing at my local indie and came upon this most excellent book that I simply had to have. Renaissance Secrets: Recipes and Formulas. Just looking at it made my little heart go pitter patter, so now I own it. V&A really puts out some amazing books. I could happily own every one in their collection.
I also spent the morning cleaning up and putting away all the research materials and writing notebooks and general project clutter for the Theo and Nate books I've just finished up. This is such a treasured part of my process, putting away old projects then feeling the amazing whoosh as new ideas come zooming into all that freed up space!
Between my new book and all that free desk space, my muse is very excited.
Last night I was browsing at my local indie and came upon this most excellent book that I simply had to have. Renaissance Secrets: Recipes and Formulas. Just looking at it made my little heart go pitter patter, so now I own it. V&A really puts out some amazing books. I could happily own every one in their collection.
I also spent the morning cleaning up and putting away all the research materials and writing notebooks and general project clutter for the Theo and Nate books I've just finished up. This is such a treasured part of my process, putting away old projects then feeling the amazing whoosh as new ideas come zooming into all that freed up space!
Between my new book and all that free desk space, my muse is very excited.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Writing Sticky Fiction
So one of the things that fascinated the authors was how vitally important information that had great impact on our lives could be so easily forgotten or ignored, while at the same time demonstrably false stories and urban legends lingered for decades. What made some ideas so darn . . . sticky?
It seems as if some of the six components they talk about apply more to writing than others, and yet I am finding a lot of useful information in all of them. This week as I read the book, I thought I’d talk about these components and how they might apply to writing fiction.
Take the first concept: Simple. Sticky ideas must be simple. So, okay, that doesn’t really work for a one hundred page story, let alone a four hundred page story. However, some of the principles of simplicity do offer some insight into writing fiction.
One of the things the authors talk about regarding simple is that the simple must reflect our core message. They also talk about feature creep—the phenomenon of adding more and more useless features to a device until it becomes so complex it is unusable. As I was reading this chapter, it struck me that this felt like a good description of the downside to overwriting. ☺
When we are close to a project and mired in our own story world and characters—as we must be when we are creating them!—it is easy to lose sight of what is truly relevant to the story we are trying to tell. The instinct is to put it all in, in the hopes that it will make the story feel richly detailed and complex, is nearly overwhelming.
The problem is, though, that the overload of information actually ends up obscuring our core story and we—as well as the reader—lose sight of what the story is supposed to be about. That is why the selective detail is so important, each detail should be chosen to reinforce our core, our theme, and to help reveal the story we’re tying to tell.
The authors also talk about proverbs as being the quintessential sticky ideas—short, pithy, and memorable. Often for centuries. The reason is because in addition to being short, pithy, and memorable, proverbs pack a big wallop in terms of insight or wisdom. And as I read that, I was struck by how much that DID pertain to writing. From the books we remember vs. the ones we quickly forget, to the difference between stereotypes and archetypes, clichés and resonance.
In order to be memorable, a story, character, or theme must contain an essential wallop of human insight or knowledge. But not just any insight, it needs to be an insight unique to the particular author and their worldview. That is what infuses what would otherwise simply be a cliché or stereotype into something memorable.
And lastly, the book holds the best explanation of high concept ideas I’ve ever heard: high concept simply means extracting complexity from a seemingly simple message.
Doing this relies on something called schema, which is basically a word for all of the associations and definitions we assign to a given thing or concept. So instead of listing all the associations and connotations for a new thing or concept, we liken it to something we’re sure everyone knows, and create a short cut to their existing knowledge/schema.
So basically high concept is simply an effective analogy. That’s it. It is simply a complex message that can be conveyed in simple, universal terms. Usually using schema. The trick is to have those simple terms be evocative and able to elicit an emotional response/reaction in nearly everyone who hears it.
Okay, so maybe I was the only one who didn't get that last part about high concept pitches. But now that I know what they are supposed to do, what mechanism they are relying on, I have a much better idea how to put one together.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Older Middle Grade
First of all, my profuse apologies that I never made it back here last week. In addition to all my work related tasks, there were a few family dramas and projects that sucked up all the remaining oxygen. So sorry!
Now, where were we? Ah yes. Dave brought up the fuzzy line between the parameters of YA and Middle Grade, especially where longer works of fantasy were involved, pointing out that many of these longer books had complex plots and darker themes than was typically considered MG, so why aren’t they YA?
The truth is, a lot of fantasy falls into this older middle grade category. It can end up in that older category by virtue of length, themes, issues, or the narrative structure/format. And even with all of those being more sophisticated, it still doesn’t quite achieve YA. Why is that?
Kids mature at all different levels, some 11 year olds dying to begin wearing makeup and practice their booty shakes in the mirror, while some 13 year olds are clinging grimly to childhood with both hands. So there is a rather huge gray area that could go either way. But there are a few clues to look for.
One key indicator is the age of the protagonist. It is rare that teens will read books about kids younger than themselves. But even more, I think, at its core, it’s the nature of the issues the protagonist is grappling with. If the protagonist is still moving through their world as a kid, then it falls into an older middle grade category. If the protagonist is struggling with the issues of coming into their adulthood or some darker issues that simply aren’t appropriate for most 8-12 year olds, then it will probably be a YA.
Another factor is that fantasy worlds tend to be more complex than our world, and in a good fantasy, that world intersects intimately with the plot—meaning it cannot be separated out. So most of that world building will need to be there. And when you’ve created an intricate, detailed world for a book, it’s a richer reading experience if the plot connects with several layers of that world. Mythical or magical races, elaborate magical systems, Other societal structures and customs—all of those tend to require a bigger story in order to fully flesh out those elements.
So on one level, that older middle grade designation indicates more sophisticated story telling techniques and structures. A more complex, multi-layered reading experience for those kids who have the skills.
But is also encompasses slightly darker themes as well. Older middle grade can have a lot of things that YA has; violence, horror, complex interpersonal relationships, problems or issues. What it pretty much never has is anything of a sexual nature, except perhaps a very chaste first kiss—but a lust-less one. It can touch on the changes of puberty an 11 or 12 yo might be experiencing, but not the repercussions of those changes—lust, sex, etc. Once you get into those areas, you’re in YA territory.
Another area that I think is saved solely for YA are the deeply damaged, dark psyche issues. Cutting, anorexia, self destructive behaviors, child abuse, etc., are most often dealt with in YA. There will always be exception to every guideline out there, but in general, this seems to be the case.
There is a lot of crossover, however, because not all 12, 13, , and even 14 year olds want to read books that deal with YA-centric issues. They might just want a rich, complex story that doesn’t touch on “coming of age” issues.
The Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney that Dave mentions is a great example. It doesn’t deal with any of the issues that immediately cast it as YA. However, it is a scary, dark story, not one that the average 8 or 9 year old reader would be ready for, and one that any number of 13 year olds (or adults!) might enjoy. (Scariest witch EVER!)
Fly by Night, on the other hand, doesn’t have anything too scary (if memory serves) but the world of the story is fairly complex socially and politically, and the reader needs to be old enough to understand those concepts.
And then you have The Graveyard Book, which is very clearly a MG by virtue of the story and the length, and yets open with a serial killer and explodes every preconception we have. :-)
I think Theodosia is pretty firmly older middle grade and doesn’t really have anything that would put her in a YA category, other than length. If she were crushing on Sticky Will, or antsy for her first ball or wondering when she was going to have her coming out or debut, she would be young YA. Or Tween, maybe. I also broke a cardinal rule in the Theodosia books, by having her only be 11. As I said above, you most often want to set the age of the protagonist at the upper end of the age level of your anticipated readers. However, a large part of Theodosia was her precociousness, and what is precocious at 11, is not even remotely so at 13, so she really needed to be younger. Luckily, my saint of an editor let me keep it that way.
I see a lot less of a line between some of the YA and adult fantasy books, especially since the coming of age hero is such a convention in a lot of adult fantasy. Again, what makes that determination is the scope of the story, what issues it focuses on; global, social, or inter-personal. Whether the protagonist is telling the story with the benefit of hindsight or distance, or whether they are fully in the moment. The truth is, a number of books can go either way and someone, the writer, his agent, or the editor, ends up making a call. Sometimes the book will be marketed to both audiences with different covers and shelved in two different places!
But if you are struggling with what your story is, I would look closely at the following:
How old is the protagonist?
Do others in the story treat her/him as an adult or a child?
What are the core issues the protagonist deals with? Do any of those put it automatically into the YA category?
Hope that helps!
Now, where were we? Ah yes. Dave brought up the fuzzy line between the parameters of YA and Middle Grade, especially where longer works of fantasy were involved, pointing out that many of these longer books had complex plots and darker themes than was typically considered MG, so why aren’t they YA?
The truth is, a lot of fantasy falls into this older middle grade category. It can end up in that older category by virtue of length, themes, issues, or the narrative structure/format. And even with all of those being more sophisticated, it still doesn’t quite achieve YA. Why is that?
Kids mature at all different levels, some 11 year olds dying to begin wearing makeup and practice their booty shakes in the mirror, while some 13 year olds are clinging grimly to childhood with both hands. So there is a rather huge gray area that could go either way. But there are a few clues to look for.
One key indicator is the age of the protagonist. It is rare that teens will read books about kids younger than themselves. But even more, I think, at its core, it’s the nature of the issues the protagonist is grappling with. If the protagonist is still moving through their world as a kid, then it falls into an older middle grade category. If the protagonist is struggling with the issues of coming into their adulthood or some darker issues that simply aren’t appropriate for most 8-12 year olds, then it will probably be a YA.
Another factor is that fantasy worlds tend to be more complex than our world, and in a good fantasy, that world intersects intimately with the plot—meaning it cannot be separated out. So most of that world building will need to be there. And when you’ve created an intricate, detailed world for a book, it’s a richer reading experience if the plot connects with several layers of that world. Mythical or magical races, elaborate magical systems, Other societal structures and customs—all of those tend to require a bigger story in order to fully flesh out those elements.
So on one level, that older middle grade designation indicates more sophisticated story telling techniques and structures. A more complex, multi-layered reading experience for those kids who have the skills.
But is also encompasses slightly darker themes as well. Older middle grade can have a lot of things that YA has; violence, horror, complex interpersonal relationships, problems or issues. What it pretty much never has is anything of a sexual nature, except perhaps a very chaste first kiss—but a lust-less one. It can touch on the changes of puberty an 11 or 12 yo might be experiencing, but not the repercussions of those changes—lust, sex, etc. Once you get into those areas, you’re in YA territory.
Another area that I think is saved solely for YA are the deeply damaged, dark psyche issues. Cutting, anorexia, self destructive behaviors, child abuse, etc., are most often dealt with in YA. There will always be exception to every guideline out there, but in general, this seems to be the case.
There is a lot of crossover, however, because not all 12, 13, , and even 14 year olds want to read books that deal with YA-centric issues. They might just want a rich, complex story that doesn’t touch on “coming of age” issues.
The Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney that Dave mentions is a great example. It doesn’t deal with any of the issues that immediately cast it as YA. However, it is a scary, dark story, not one that the average 8 or 9 year old reader would be ready for, and one that any number of 13 year olds (or adults!) might enjoy. (Scariest witch EVER!)
Fly by Night, on the other hand, doesn’t have anything too scary (if memory serves) but the world of the story is fairly complex socially and politically, and the reader needs to be old enough to understand those concepts.
And then you have The Graveyard Book, which is very clearly a MG by virtue of the story and the length, and yets open with a serial killer and explodes every preconception we have. :-)
I think Theodosia is pretty firmly older middle grade and doesn’t really have anything that would put her in a YA category, other than length. If she were crushing on Sticky Will, or antsy for her first ball or wondering when she was going to have her coming out or debut, she would be young YA. Or Tween, maybe. I also broke a cardinal rule in the Theodosia books, by having her only be 11. As I said above, you most often want to set the age of the protagonist at the upper end of the age level of your anticipated readers. However, a large part of Theodosia was her precociousness, and what is precocious at 11, is not even remotely so at 13, so she really needed to be younger. Luckily, my saint of an editor let me keep it that way.
I see a lot less of a line between some of the YA and adult fantasy books, especially since the coming of age hero is such a convention in a lot of adult fantasy. Again, what makes that determination is the scope of the story, what issues it focuses on; global, social, or inter-personal. Whether the protagonist is telling the story with the benefit of hindsight or distance, or whether they are fully in the moment. The truth is, a number of books can go either way and someone, the writer, his agent, or the editor, ends up making a call. Sometimes the book will be marketed to both audiences with different covers and shelved in two different places!
But if you are struggling with what your story is, I would look closely at the following:
How old is the protagonist?
Do others in the story treat her/him as an adult or a child?
What are the core issues the protagonist deals with? Do any of those put it automatically into the YA category?
Hope that helps!
Friday, September 4, 2009
Writing YA
I was explaining some of the delineations in writing YA versus MG versus adult books on a list I'm on and thought it might be helpful to post here as well.
Middle grade are emphatically kids books, ones written for kids about kid-like experiences. They can touch on tough things and sad things, but once it touches on anything very dark, it automatically becomes YA. There is a very strong protective bubble around middle grade stories.
Because middle grade books are short 20,000-45,000 words, their scope is much narrower and often the internal and external struggle are very strongly linked or intertwined. Books can be about trying to find a friend or simply objecting to a new move or school. For one, these books are so short, but two, those are the issues kids are dealing with. The range and scope of the actions a kid protagonist can take are greatly limited when compared to those of an adult, and kids need to see themselves reflected in the choices and actions of the main character. Even so, the best of middle grade is still multi-layered, even though subplots are kept to a minimum and interact even more firmly with the main plot than in adult novels.
One way I think that kids books can be different than adult books is that many of middle grade and YA books start with the protagonist NOT wanting something because for this age group, so many of their choices are made for them. Often part of their journey is learning how to make the best to those choices, or learning to live with them, or altering their perspective, or coming to understand how it was actually a good thing.
From a writing mechanics standpoint, MG is almost always told in a single POV.
All the elements of writing good fiction apply to both categories. As I mentioned in the last post, in YA, all literary devices and approaches are available to an author. There really are no limitations.
A lot of the single focus present in MG in terms of plot lines and subplot still exist in YA, but they can be broader if the story demands and supports it.
In YA books, a lot of the protagonists are often still having choices made for them, but they are in the act of claiming some of that power for themselves in a big way. The ways in which a 16 yo can take action are much different and more pronounced than the ways in which a 10 yo can take action, and the books reflect that. They are often about that moment when a teen recognizes they can seize the reins of their own life.
Teens are standing on the cusp of having to make all their own choices, often after years of having choices made for them, so seeing an active—or even a passive—protagonist learn to make choices and then suffer through the consequences of those choices, wherever they might lead, is a key component.
YA books, for many teens, are really safe places to experience a wide variety of things without any actual risk. Kids this age are overwhelmed by their emotions and want to see how others deal with this emotional tsunami that is adolescence, and books are a great place to do that. Which is why it is so ironic and irritating that so many clueless adults are afraid some of these books will give kids “ideas”, when in fact, they act as more of a safety valve. Or serve as a warning.
Teens want to feel emotions in a safe environment, and books allow them to do that.
The funny thing is, while the trappings of being a teen change radically from decade to decade, the core emotions and experiences remain surprisingly constant: friends, fitting in, first love, sexual experiences, defining oneself, coming into personal power, dealing with the mess parents have left behind, the scariness of impending adulthood—all the same stuff we dealt with in our own adolescence. So an ability to access one own’s inner teen is hugely helpful here.
My own opinion is that those core emotions serve as the wide portal for the stories, the big welcome mat that allow teens to connect with so many different types of stories, stories that the adult market considers entirely different genres.
I also think because teens are so fascinated by their own emotional world and sort of define narcissistic, more introspected and inner journey oriented books can do really well for this reader. Readers at this age really want to experience that angst along with the characters; they want to dwell in an emotional landscape.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
It's All About Relationships...
One of the benefits of having worked on this manuscript for so %$@#$ long is that I really know what needs to happen in terms of events and the physical movement of the story; they need to journey to Guerande, they need to stop for dinner at Baron Geffoy’s chateaux, they run into so and so at the tavern. I’ve finally got all that stuff firmly nailed down.
So now with all that out of the way, in this draft I am able to really focus on the relationships between these characters. Their interactions are really sparking and growing, but without my dragging them, kicking and screaming, through the motions. For the first time, these relationships feel absolutely real to me, not part of a story I’m writing. It’s the dictation stage, where I just plop myself down as an observer and watch the characters interact and write down what they do and say. They are their own people now.
Relationships are the heart of story for me. Sure we need a good plot, some event or series of events. But that is mostly so we have a vehicle for getting everyone together, for getting them to interact with each other. The plot is the crucible we use to apply pressure to our characters to see how they act and react and interact when stressed. That's when true character emerges.
I love this stage, it is like watching a fire ignite after puffing and blowing on the kindling for ages.
(And I’d like that metaphor a whole lot better if it weren’t 90 degrees and fires raging in Los Angeles… ☹ )
So now with all that out of the way, in this draft I am able to really focus on the relationships between these characters. Their interactions are really sparking and growing, but without my dragging them, kicking and screaming, through the motions. For the first time, these relationships feel absolutely real to me, not part of a story I’m writing. It’s the dictation stage, where I just plop myself down as an observer and watch the characters interact and write down what they do and say. They are their own people now.
Relationships are the heart of story for me. Sure we need a good plot, some event or series of events. But that is mostly so we have a vehicle for getting everyone together, for getting them to interact with each other. The plot is the crucible we use to apply pressure to our characters to see how they act and react and interact when stressed. That's when true character emerges.
I love this stage, it is like watching a fire ignite after puffing and blowing on the kindling for ages.
(And I’d like that metaphor a whole lot better if it weren’t 90 degrees and fires raging in Los Angeles… ☹ )
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Writing Shorter Books
So, I’ve emailed Theodosia and the Knights of Horus off to my editor. I’m giving myself a 48 hour break, then I have to dive into my next project, Beastologist 2, which is due to said editor on January 15. Luckily, I’ve already done a lot of work on this project. I have a pretty solid outline, a bunch of research notes, and the first fifteen pages already done.
One of the things that’s really difficult for me is resetting my internal clock from a 300 page manuscript with six subplots to a 70 page manuscript with maybe one tiny subplot. I imagine it’s like moving from a four bedroom ranch house in the suburbs to a studio apartment in the city. There’s no room for all the things you’re used to having!
A critical step that helps me with this resetting is structure. In order to help me make this transition, I have a structure template that I use. The one that I’m currently using for these shorter books is adapted from a template Blake Snyder features in his enormously helpful book SAVE THE CAT. (Which I highly recommend you add to your collection of plotting tools.)
So once I have a general idea what the elements of the story are going to be, I start plugging them into the template. That way, I know I have seven pages for a setup and that by page 9 the inciting incident needs to happen and that around page 18 I better be breaking into the second act. By focusing on what limited space I’m working with, it really helps both my conscious and subconscious mind focus on what the critical elements of the story and characters are. I don’t get distracted by extraneous details or unplanned side trips and cull the story down to its essence.
It’s kind of like taking a piece of 8 x 11 paper out to draw on versus a 24 x 36. I now understand where the edges are, what the limitations of space look like, and I can proceed accordingly.
One of the things that’s really difficult for me is resetting my internal clock from a 300 page manuscript with six subplots to a 70 page manuscript with maybe one tiny subplot. I imagine it’s like moving from a four bedroom ranch house in the suburbs to a studio apartment in the city. There’s no room for all the things you’re used to having!
A critical step that helps me with this resetting is structure. In order to help me make this transition, I have a structure template that I use. The one that I’m currently using for these shorter books is adapted from a template Blake Snyder features in his enormously helpful book SAVE THE CAT. (Which I highly recommend you add to your collection of plotting tools.)
So once I have a general idea what the elements of the story are going to be, I start plugging them into the template. That way, I know I have seven pages for a setup and that by page 9 the inciting incident needs to happen and that around page 18 I better be breaking into the second act. By focusing on what limited space I’m working with, it really helps both my conscious and subconscious mind focus on what the critical elements of the story and characters are. I don’t get distracted by extraneous details or unplanned side trips and cull the story down to its essence.
It’s kind of like taking a piece of 8 x 11 paper out to draw on versus a 24 x 36. I now understand where the edges are, what the limitations of space look like, and I can proceed accordingly.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
What Color Is Your Revision?
I’ve discovered a enormously helpful new revision tool. It’s probably something everyone else has known about for eons, but I’ve just stumbled upon it and it’s keeping me from feeling scattered to the four corners of the universe.
I’ve taken to printing different versions of the mss out on different colors of paper. So the rough draft was printed in white, the second draft was printed on yellow, and the third that I’m currently working on is on blue paper. The final version will be on buff colored paper. (Yes, I really am the queen of multiple drafts. I can NEVER get it in one.)
Such a simple, simple thing, and yet, it frees up just a little bit more of my mental hard drive so I don’t have to stop and think, okay, which is the newest version? I know some people print their version numbers as a footer on the mss, but I always forget about that, and this color thing just makes it so clear.
Plus, seeing the mss on a different colored paper is almost as effective as using a new font for making old typos easier to spot.
It is especially helpful when I’m weaving in bits from older drafts.
Not to mention that it’s pretty. It makes my desk look like a rainbow has exploded on it.
I’ve taken to printing different versions of the mss out on different colors of paper. So the rough draft was printed in white, the second draft was printed on yellow, and the third that I’m currently working on is on blue paper. The final version will be on buff colored paper. (Yes, I really am the queen of multiple drafts. I can NEVER get it in one.)
Such a simple, simple thing, and yet, it frees up just a little bit more of my mental hard drive so I don’t have to stop and think, okay, which is the newest version? I know some people print their version numbers as a footer on the mss, but I always forget about that, and this color thing just makes it so clear.
Plus, seeing the mss on a different colored paper is almost as effective as using a new font for making old typos easier to spot.
It is especially helpful when I’m weaving in bits from older drafts.
Not to mention that it’s pretty. It makes my desk look like a rainbow has exploded on it.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Scratching My Head
Every once and a while, it feels like I’ve completely forgotten how to write a novel. I can’t figure out where to start, or how to plow forward. So what do these people do, I whine to myself. What gets the plot moving, or worse, what is the frickin’ plot? That’s when the digging begins.
And for digging, I find the most useful tool is a large, 11x 17 or 17 x 21 sheet of graph paper. I take that big piece of paper and write the protagonist’s name and any other major players, along with any plot goals I may know of, for example, a quest for the emerald tablet. Then I just do that whole brainstorming thing where I try to fill in the following sentences:
Theodosia wants
Wigmere wants
Sticky Will wants
Stilton wants
Fagenbush wants
Awi Bubu wants
Somehow, seeing it visually helps my brain forge the connections and possibilities that merely listing them or thinking about them doesn’t.
Then once I have some vague goals for people, I begin fleshing out why they want it. Because I’ll have to show that in order for their goals to makes sense, so that gives me some great scene material.
Next, I find out what is in the way of their goals. If my muse is on top of her game, I find that many of the characters are standing in each others way, which means I have a nice big connected tangle of goals and conflict that all tie in to the major plot. Usually there are one or two dangling, like Will’s. Will wants to provide for his brothers and keep and earn Wigmere’s respect. However, in my current plot, that’s not really threatened or in any kind of danger. So now I have to brainstorm some action, plot thread, or layer that pulls that goal into the main story.
Plotting. Not for the faint-hearted.
And for digging, I find the most useful tool is a large, 11x 17 or 17 x 21 sheet of graph paper. I take that big piece of paper and write the protagonist’s name and any other major players, along with any plot goals I may know of, for example, a quest for the emerald tablet. Then I just do that whole brainstorming thing where I try to fill in the following sentences:
Theodosia wants
Wigmere wants
Sticky Will wants
Stilton wants
Fagenbush wants
Awi Bubu wants
Somehow, seeing it visually helps my brain forge the connections and possibilities that merely listing them or thinking about them doesn’t.
Then once I have some vague goals for people, I begin fleshing out why they want it. Because I’ll have to show that in order for their goals to makes sense, so that gives me some great scene material.
Next, I find out what is in the way of their goals. If my muse is on top of her game, I find that many of the characters are standing in each others way, which means I have a nice big connected tangle of goals and conflict that all tie in to the major plot. Usually there are one or two dangling, like Will’s. Will wants to provide for his brothers and keep and earn Wigmere’s respect. However, in my current plot, that’s not really threatened or in any kind of danger. So now I have to brainstorm some action, plot thread, or layer that pulls that goal into the main story.
Plotting. Not for the faint-hearted.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Of Bridge Conflicts and Withdrawn Protagonists
Well, I lied about the tomorrow part. Sorry about that. It’s been a busy week. And hot! Yowa. 92 degrees in the shade. And anything over 78 melts my brain.
Anywho….
Sometimes it can seem impossible to build a strong enough emotional connection between the character and the reader AND start the book when the trouble starts. Of course, in an ideal world, you could do both, but since many of us are not perfect writers, we have to find other ways to accomplish this end. For me, my own personal philosophy is, when in doubt to err on the side of connecting with the reader emotionally. What I sometimes use to do this is called a bridge conflict. Which simply means that in the beginning of the story, the protagonist is in conflict with something, but that something happens not to be the main plot element.
For example, in Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos*, the inciting incident for the main plot is when Mum brings the majorly cursed Heart of Egypt home with her. The problem I ran in to was, if I started the book there, I’d have to shoehorn in too much backstory in order to make the reader understand about what Theo’s “normal” life looked like, because it was very, very different than the average normal life, either then or now. Plus if the reader had a chance to understand how on her own Theo was, her emotional isolation as she dealt with this major problem would be more vividly understood. Or that was my thinking at the time. (I do find that writing theories evolve over time, so who knows what I’ll think in five years!)
So the book opens with Theo in conflict with a cursed artifact that her mother has sent home ahead of the rest. This does a couple of things. Shows Theo’s Ordinary World. Gives clear parameters of what the magical rules are in the story world. Establishes Theo’s emotional isolation, as well as her plucky resourcefulness at dealing with it all. And shows how she ends up taking care of the adults around her. All in all, a nice micro encapsulation of the themes Theo will be struggling with on a grander scale throughout the course of the book. I was also able to get one of the bad guys in there in that first scene, although deeply hidden.
So Theo’s conflict with the Bastet statue was a bridge to the main conflict, giving the reader enough time to settle into the complex world of the story AND bond with Theo, so when this big bad nightmare of a problem fell in her lap, they would see how it was testing her beyond her normal coping strategies.
I think one of the things that determines whether or not bridge conflicts works is whether or not the story has enough plot layers. Which is really the subject of another post, but essentially plot layers are all the different areas of the protagonist’s life that the main plot impacts. The bridge conflict can’t be about something that never comes up again in the book. It needs to tie into the overall cohesive elements that form the various plot elements or lays the foundation.
Creating an emotional connection with a withdrawn or reserved protagonist.
Well, this was the problem I was whining about that started this whole series of posts. In my most recent book NATHANIEL FLUDD, BEASTOLOGIST, The book opens with Nate sitting in a lawyers office, receiving the bad news that his parents have been lost at sea. The scene ends with the lawyer hustling him off to the train station, where poor Nate departs for parts unknown, specifically his last remaining relative.
The good news was, I had indeed started the story when the trouble starts: finding out your parents are dead and being shipped off to the unknown is Trouble.
The bad news, Nate was unbelievably passive. As a child in an adult situation, all he could do was sit and take in information. Kiss of death, interest wise. Clearly he would be easy to sympathize with, him. But my challenge was to show HIS emotional scars and wounds so that the reader would care about him specifically and not just, oh, ho hum another orphan in children’s literature…
The emotional set up for his character was that Nate had been emotionally and physically abandoned by his parents into the care of his governess/nanny. And while she appeared very loving and to have his best interests at heart, she also managed to quash him in many ways; curiosity, any desire for adventure, etc. But how to show that or allude to that in the first scene without just telling a lot of backstory?
What I finally ended up doing was having him sit there, instructed by Miss Lumpton to draw while she talked with the lawyer, essentially to be seen and not heard. Then he hears the lawyer mention his parents and he stops drawing to listen, and Miss Lumpton exhorts him to keep drawing. But suddenly he has a goal, even if a very tiny goal. To understand what’s happened to his parents and by extension what will happen to him. This is also a nice way to get some dramatic action in what was a very physically static scene. The action of Nate’s drawing or stopping or fiddling with his pencil gave me some nice vehicles for showing his emotional state rather than telling.
Plus it is just the sort of thing that stupid adults say to kids, as if they can sit there and turn off their ears!! And by that one command, I (hopefully) was able to convey how much Miss Lumpton squelched his curiosity, his intelligence, and his place in the world, until he became merely an extension of her desires. Okay, maybe it doesn’t convey all that, but that’s what I wanted to convey and if it touches on some of that, I’ll be happy.
Which is a long way of trying to illustrate that even the most withdrawn protagonists who are afraid to react in their world, if you dig deep enough and long enough you can usually find some way to establish unique, empathetic characteristics as well as tiny little goals.
And now I simply must go finish up my lesson plans for the SBWC then get ready for work. If you have questions or need further clarification or examples, say so in the comments and I’ll address them next week!
* I’m not trying to be all about me by using examples from my own books, they are just the ones I understand the best.
Anywho….
Sometimes it can seem impossible to build a strong enough emotional connection between the character and the reader AND start the book when the trouble starts. Of course, in an ideal world, you could do both, but since many of us are not perfect writers, we have to find other ways to accomplish this end. For me, my own personal philosophy is, when in doubt to err on the side of connecting with the reader emotionally. What I sometimes use to do this is called a bridge conflict. Which simply means that in the beginning of the story, the protagonist is in conflict with something, but that something happens not to be the main plot element.
For example, in Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos*, the inciting incident for the main plot is when Mum brings the majorly cursed Heart of Egypt home with her. The problem I ran in to was, if I started the book there, I’d have to shoehorn in too much backstory in order to make the reader understand about what Theo’s “normal” life looked like, because it was very, very different than the average normal life, either then or now. Plus if the reader had a chance to understand how on her own Theo was, her emotional isolation as she dealt with this major problem would be more vividly understood. Or that was my thinking at the time. (I do find that writing theories evolve over time, so who knows what I’ll think in five years!)
So the book opens with Theo in conflict with a cursed artifact that her mother has sent home ahead of the rest. This does a couple of things. Shows Theo’s Ordinary World. Gives clear parameters of what the magical rules are in the story world. Establishes Theo’s emotional isolation, as well as her plucky resourcefulness at dealing with it all. And shows how she ends up taking care of the adults around her. All in all, a nice micro encapsulation of the themes Theo will be struggling with on a grander scale throughout the course of the book. I was also able to get one of the bad guys in there in that first scene, although deeply hidden.
So Theo’s conflict with the Bastet statue was a bridge to the main conflict, giving the reader enough time to settle into the complex world of the story AND bond with Theo, so when this big bad nightmare of a problem fell in her lap, they would see how it was testing her beyond her normal coping strategies.
I think one of the things that determines whether or not bridge conflicts works is whether or not the story has enough plot layers. Which is really the subject of another post, but essentially plot layers are all the different areas of the protagonist’s life that the main plot impacts. The bridge conflict can’t be about something that never comes up again in the book. It needs to tie into the overall cohesive elements that form the various plot elements or lays the foundation.
Creating an emotional connection with a withdrawn or reserved protagonist.
Well, this was the problem I was whining about that started this whole series of posts. In my most recent book NATHANIEL FLUDD, BEASTOLOGIST, The book opens with Nate sitting in a lawyers office, receiving the bad news that his parents have been lost at sea. The scene ends with the lawyer hustling him off to the train station, where poor Nate departs for parts unknown, specifically his last remaining relative.
The good news was, I had indeed started the story when the trouble starts: finding out your parents are dead and being shipped off to the unknown is Trouble.
The bad news, Nate was unbelievably passive. As a child in an adult situation, all he could do was sit and take in information. Kiss of death, interest wise. Clearly he would be easy to sympathize with, him. But my challenge was to show HIS emotional scars and wounds so that the reader would care about him specifically and not just, oh, ho hum another orphan in children’s literature…
The emotional set up for his character was that Nate had been emotionally and physically abandoned by his parents into the care of his governess/nanny. And while she appeared very loving and to have his best interests at heart, she also managed to quash him in many ways; curiosity, any desire for adventure, etc. But how to show that or allude to that in the first scene without just telling a lot of backstory?
What I finally ended up doing was having him sit there, instructed by Miss Lumpton to draw while she talked with the lawyer, essentially to be seen and not heard. Then he hears the lawyer mention his parents and he stops drawing to listen, and Miss Lumpton exhorts him to keep drawing. But suddenly he has a goal, even if a very tiny goal. To understand what’s happened to his parents and by extension what will happen to him. This is also a nice way to get some dramatic action in what was a very physically static scene. The action of Nate’s drawing or stopping or fiddling with his pencil gave me some nice vehicles for showing his emotional state rather than telling.
Plus it is just the sort of thing that stupid adults say to kids, as if they can sit there and turn off their ears!! And by that one command, I (hopefully) was able to convey how much Miss Lumpton squelched his curiosity, his intelligence, and his place in the world, until he became merely an extension of her desires. Okay, maybe it doesn’t convey all that, but that’s what I wanted to convey and if it touches on some of that, I’ll be happy.
Which is a long way of trying to illustrate that even the most withdrawn protagonists who are afraid to react in their world, if you dig deep enough and long enough you can usually find some way to establish unique, empathetic characteristics as well as tiny little goals.
And now I simply must go finish up my lesson plans for the SBWC then get ready for work. If you have questions or need further clarification or examples, say so in the comments and I’ll address them next week!
* I’m not trying to be all about me by using examples from my own books, they are just the ones I understand the best.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Pulling the Reader In – Part Deux
One caveat before I continue talking about story beginnings. We all have different reading tastes and will have different opinions on what makes a good story. Therefore, take my ramblings with a grain of salt. If you are someone who reads for plot, you may (quite validly) disagree with me. If you are all about the subtle character studies, my suggestions may seem too heavy-handed for you. And that’s fine. For me, as a reader and writer, I find myself drawn to stories where the plot and character are intertwined, with the plot being the physical vehicle through which the character effects meaningful personal growth or change. Your mileage may vary.
In fact, a really good exercise is to pull 10 of your favorite books off the shelf and read the first scene. What about that scene grabs you? At what point did you feel you were in the hands of a skilled, competent storyteller and decide you wanted to go along for the ride? That can be a good guide as you try to construct your own first scenes. Now, onward...
In order to show the emotional scar or wound in the first scenes of a book, that means you, the writer have to know quite a few things in order to pull that off.
You have to have a fairly firm grasp of both the internal and external character/plot arcs in your novel. If you don’t understand what is emotionally driving your characters’ actions, then you can’t show it to the reader. See, the thing is, people don’t set off to join the cheerleading squad, be the star of the soccer team, find out what’s inside that spooky house at the end of the street, or become queen bee of 4th grade just because. While those are excellent external plots—lots of pro-active actions a protagonist can take towards those goals—there are usually internal reasons that propel a person to pursue those goals, and that’s what I think can be missing in so many books, and more specifically, in so many openings.
We need to know why THIS scenario is so meaningful for THIS kid, above and beyond other kids who have found themselves in similar situations. Without seeing a glimpse of the emotional impetus that drives them—or at least seeing evidence that something is driving them emotionally, then even the most physically suspenseful, action-packed opening can feel flat and lifeless.
Think of all those women out there who aren’t big sports fans, would never spend a minute watching any sporting event on TV, yet if you put THEIR kid on the field, their emotional involvement is suddenly way up and they are rabidly involved in the game. You want your readers to have that same emotional connection with the characters in your story so that they care deeply about what happens to them
So one of the most helpful tools in getting all these elements on the page is the ol’ goal, motivation, and conflict trio. You should know both the internal and external GMC for your main character, and find ways to make sure you get it on the pate. You don’t need to have all those elements in the first scene—in fact that would be TMI. You want to seduce the reader along, raising questions, creating empathy, and making them curious enough that they keep turning the page.
Then try to couple that with compelling situations, such as…
Have the character be in undeserved trouble
Have the character do something nice
Have them be funny
Put the character in physical or emotional jeopardy
Show them as skilled or intelligent or plucky
Show them in conflict with someone or their surroundings
Some examples:
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos
Her goal in that first scene is to keep her father safe from whatever curses might be on the Bastet statue. This is a solid encapsulation of her larger goal of keeping her family safe in general. Her external motivation is also made clear, that she is the only one who can see these curses, therefore she is the only one who can deal with them. It also, hopefully, hints at her emotional scar or wound—she is left having to take care of the adults around her in very dangerous circumstances because no one would be inclined to believe her should she dare to explain about the curses. The scene (hopefully) also hints at her emotional abandonment by illustrating just how much she’s left on her own both physically and in a coping sense. Also, she’s in conflict with both her surroundings (curses) the adults around her, she’s in undeserved trouble for trying to protect her father from the curses, and she’s plucky and intelligent.
In Harry Potter, his initial goal is just to endure the Dursleys. Instead of seeing the emotional scars, we actually witness the actions that cause these scars, which is equally, if not more effective, but it can be very hard to do in a way that doesn’t load the opening of the book with backstory. So Harry’s grim circumstance is the motivation for his first goal, to find out what is in that mysterious letter that shows up and opens a whole new world to Harry, one the Dursleys don’t want him to explore. This is also where conflict is introduced. Harry defies the Dursleys and tries to get at the letter to discover this mystery about himself. Harry is shown in lots of undeserved trouble, he’s plucky, he’s in conflict with everyone in his family, he tries to do something nice for the snake at the zoo (commiserate) and clearly he’s in emotional jeopardy by living with these horrible people.
In My Big Sister is so Bossy She Says You Can’t Read This Book, Effie is shown in a wildly unfair power balance with her sister. Like Rowling, Herhsey does a good job of showing us the actions that cause Effie’s scar tissue, right in that first scene with her sister (motivation for the subsequent events). Even if Effie can’t articulate her goal, the reader can sense she needs to get out from under her sister’s thumb and get some justice. In fact, that whole first scene nicely sets up her internal goal: Get out from under Maxey’s overbearing ways, Motivation: because she’s steamrolling over Effie all the time, Conflict: Maxey’s got such a strong personality, and Effie doesn’t have the personal strength or fortitude—yet—to get her to back off. But Effie is funny, she’s in undeserved trouble with both her mother and her big sister, she’s waaaay plucky, plus there’s that big secret/lie thing she mentions, right up front.
Tomorrow – what to do if you can’t get the main external plot elements to start in that first scene, and how to make a quiet, mousy, withdrawn protagonist likeable, or at least empathetic.
In fact, a really good exercise is to pull 10 of your favorite books off the shelf and read the first scene. What about that scene grabs you? At what point did you feel you were in the hands of a skilled, competent storyteller and decide you wanted to go along for the ride? That can be a good guide as you try to construct your own first scenes. Now, onward...
In order to show the emotional scar or wound in the first scenes of a book, that means you, the writer have to know quite a few things in order to pull that off.
You have to have a fairly firm grasp of both the internal and external character/plot arcs in your novel. If you don’t understand what is emotionally driving your characters’ actions, then you can’t show it to the reader. See, the thing is, people don’t set off to join the cheerleading squad, be the star of the soccer team, find out what’s inside that spooky house at the end of the street, or become queen bee of 4th grade just because. While those are excellent external plots—lots of pro-active actions a protagonist can take towards those goals—there are usually internal reasons that propel a person to pursue those goals, and that’s what I think can be missing in so many books, and more specifically, in so many openings.
We need to know why THIS scenario is so meaningful for THIS kid, above and beyond other kids who have found themselves in similar situations. Without seeing a glimpse of the emotional impetus that drives them—or at least seeing evidence that something is driving them emotionally, then even the most physically suspenseful, action-packed opening can feel flat and lifeless.
Think of all those women out there who aren’t big sports fans, would never spend a minute watching any sporting event on TV, yet if you put THEIR kid on the field, their emotional involvement is suddenly way up and they are rabidly involved in the game. You want your readers to have that same emotional connection with the characters in your story so that they care deeply about what happens to them
So one of the most helpful tools in getting all these elements on the page is the ol’ goal, motivation, and conflict trio. You should know both the internal and external GMC for your main character, and find ways to make sure you get it on the pate. You don’t need to have all those elements in the first scene—in fact that would be TMI. You want to seduce the reader along, raising questions, creating empathy, and making them curious enough that they keep turning the page.
Then try to couple that with compelling situations, such as…
Have the character be in undeserved trouble
Have the character do something nice
Have them be funny
Put the character in physical or emotional jeopardy
Show them as skilled or intelligent or plucky
Show them in conflict with someone or their surroundings
Some examples:
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos
Her goal in that first scene is to keep her father safe from whatever curses might be on the Bastet statue. This is a solid encapsulation of her larger goal of keeping her family safe in general. Her external motivation is also made clear, that she is the only one who can see these curses, therefore she is the only one who can deal with them. It also, hopefully, hints at her emotional scar or wound—she is left having to take care of the adults around her in very dangerous circumstances because no one would be inclined to believe her should she dare to explain about the curses. The scene (hopefully) also hints at her emotional abandonment by illustrating just how much she’s left on her own both physically and in a coping sense. Also, she’s in conflict with both her surroundings (curses) the adults around her, she’s in undeserved trouble for trying to protect her father from the curses, and she’s plucky and intelligent.
In Harry Potter, his initial goal is just to endure the Dursleys. Instead of seeing the emotional scars, we actually witness the actions that cause these scars, which is equally, if not more effective, but it can be very hard to do in a way that doesn’t load the opening of the book with backstory. So Harry’s grim circumstance is the motivation for his first goal, to find out what is in that mysterious letter that shows up and opens a whole new world to Harry, one the Dursleys don’t want him to explore. This is also where conflict is introduced. Harry defies the Dursleys and tries to get at the letter to discover this mystery about himself. Harry is shown in lots of undeserved trouble, he’s plucky, he’s in conflict with everyone in his family, he tries to do something nice for the snake at the zoo (commiserate) and clearly he’s in emotional jeopardy by living with these horrible people.
In My Big Sister is so Bossy She Says You Can’t Read This Book, Effie is shown in a wildly unfair power balance with her sister. Like Rowling, Herhsey does a good job of showing us the actions that cause Effie’s scar tissue, right in that first scene with her sister (motivation for the subsequent events). Even if Effie can’t articulate her goal, the reader can sense she needs to get out from under her sister’s thumb and get some justice. In fact, that whole first scene nicely sets up her internal goal: Get out from under Maxey’s overbearing ways, Motivation: because she’s steamrolling over Effie all the time, Conflict: Maxey’s got such a strong personality, and Effie doesn’t have the personal strength or fortitude—yet—to get her to back off. But Effie is funny, she’s in undeserved trouble with both her mother and her big sister, she’s waaaay plucky, plus there’s that big secret/lie thing she mentions, right up front.
Tomorrow – what to do if you can’t get the main external plot elements to start in that first scene, and how to make a quiet, mousy, withdrawn protagonist likeable, or at least empathetic.
Friday, June 13, 2008
By Request: Letting the Reader In
In the comments, Agent E said: I seem to encounter themes with writers now and then--lots of people struggling with similar issues--and right now it's a question of "how do you let the reader in without getting into too much navel-gazing?"
So I’m going to talk about that. Plus, since I’m gearing up for my teaching stint at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, I can use it there, too. Two birds, one stone, etc.
The short answer to Agent E’s question: In the very first scene, you show a glimpse (and just a glimpse, mind you) of the emotional hole the main character is trying to fill.
But you show it in such an off-hand way that it’s clear the character themselves are unaware of that emotional lack and how it affects them or drives their behavior. (And really, aren’t most of us unaware of the scars that drive us? That burgeoning awareness of our own behavior is part of the journey.)
Basically, you show the emotional scar tissue without explaining the wound.
What this does is three things:
For example, think of the first Harry potter book. Would we care as much about Harry if we met him for the first time at Hogwarts? Probably not. It was his unrelentingly grim home life that first bonded us to Harry, not his magical skills. We felt emotionally for that kid who was stuck living under the stairs and made to be a slave to the highly distasteful Dursleys. And yet the plot of that book, the philospher’s stone, isn’t really introduced until Hagrid takes the mysterious packet out of the vault at Gringotts. But our emotional connection to Harry and compelling dramatic questions occur much earlier than that and capture our interest.
In the Black Book of Secrets, E. F. Higgens creates enormous empathy for a rather unsympathetic character—a pickpocket. Yet when we see his own parents trying to capture him so they can have his teeth pulled to pay for their gin, we suddenly understand him a little better, and have immediate empathy. Again, his subsequent journey wouldn’t be as meaningful if we didn’t see what sort of wretched beginnings he’d come from.
My Big Sister is So Bossy She Says You Can’t Read This Book by Mary Hershey uses humor and a grossly unfair power balance between Effie and her big sister to bond us immediately to Effie. She also shows us a dash of Effie's deeply buried yet still alive rebellious nature, so we don't have to worry that she's a total wet noodle. There's still some fight left in her.
Winn Dixie has heroine doing something nice—bringing home the dog. But it is also emotionally risky—her dad’s not much of one for reaching out or connecting emotionally, so we also see the big hole in her life left by both her father’s distance and her mother’s absence. It is instantly far more than just a stray dog that is at stake here.
Then the second thing you need to do is use the situation in which you introduce the character to raise dramatic questions about the plot or the world the character inhabits. The above openings do double duty and also raise dramatic questions.
Winn Dixie does it through dropping hints about the backstory; What did happen to India’s mother? Why is her dad like a turtle?
My Big Sister does this by making us wonder what lies were told and also by putting Effie in a hugely unfair situation with her big sister. Hershey also does a fabulous job of hinting at Effie’s true nature by showing she’s got ways of her own of fighting back.
Rowling, of course, does this with the world she creates. There are so many amazing things going on, letters insisting on being delivered, huge giants showing up on deserted islands, Diagon alley, all those tells us we have just entered a world of untold surprises and delights. That combined with our emotional connection with Harry fully suck us into the story.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But how do we do all that? In the first few pages, no less?
Tomorrow (hopefuly) I’ll talk more about the actual tools and techniques we can use for doing just that.
So I’m going to talk about that. Plus, since I’m gearing up for my teaching stint at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, I can use it there, too. Two birds, one stone, etc.
The short answer to Agent E’s question: In the very first scene, you show a glimpse (and just a glimpse, mind you) of the emotional hole the main character is trying to fill.
But you show it in such an off-hand way that it’s clear the character themselves are unaware of that emotional lack and how it affects them or drives their behavior. (And really, aren’t most of us unaware of the scars that drive us? That burgeoning awareness of our own behavior is part of the journey.)
Basically, you show the emotional scar tissue without explaining the wound.
What this does is three things:
- It creates empathy with the protagonist. Even an unsavory protagonist can be compelling if we get a hint of what emotional wounds are driving him.
- It raises our curiosity as to how those scars got there.
- It assures us that we are about to embark on an internal journey as well as an external journey; that this journey will have some emotional depth to it.
For example, think of the first Harry potter book. Would we care as much about Harry if we met him for the first time at Hogwarts? Probably not. It was his unrelentingly grim home life that first bonded us to Harry, not his magical skills. We felt emotionally for that kid who was stuck living under the stairs and made to be a slave to the highly distasteful Dursleys. And yet the plot of that book, the philospher’s stone, isn’t really introduced until Hagrid takes the mysterious packet out of the vault at Gringotts. But our emotional connection to Harry and compelling dramatic questions occur much earlier than that and capture our interest.
In the Black Book of Secrets, E. F. Higgens creates enormous empathy for a rather unsympathetic character—a pickpocket. Yet when we see his own parents trying to capture him so they can have his teeth pulled to pay for their gin, we suddenly understand him a little better, and have immediate empathy. Again, his subsequent journey wouldn’t be as meaningful if we didn’t see what sort of wretched beginnings he’d come from.
My Big Sister is So Bossy She Says You Can’t Read This Book by Mary Hershey uses humor and a grossly unfair power balance between Effie and her big sister to bond us immediately to Effie. She also shows us a dash of Effie's deeply buried yet still alive rebellious nature, so we don't have to worry that she's a total wet noodle. There's still some fight left in her.
Winn Dixie has heroine doing something nice—bringing home the dog. But it is also emotionally risky—her dad’s not much of one for reaching out or connecting emotionally, so we also see the big hole in her life left by both her father’s distance and her mother’s absence. It is instantly far more than just a stray dog that is at stake here.
Then the second thing you need to do is use the situation in which you introduce the character to raise dramatic questions about the plot or the world the character inhabits. The above openings do double duty and also raise dramatic questions.
Winn Dixie does it through dropping hints about the backstory; What did happen to India’s mother? Why is her dad like a turtle?
My Big Sister does this by making us wonder what lies were told and also by putting Effie in a hugely unfair situation with her big sister. Hershey also does a fabulous job of hinting at Effie’s true nature by showing she’s got ways of her own of fighting back.
Rowling, of course, does this with the world she creates. There are so many amazing things going on, letters insisting on being delivered, huge giants showing up on deserted islands, Diagon alley, all those tells us we have just entered a world of untold surprises and delights. That combined with our emotional connection with Harry fully suck us into the story.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But how do we do all that? In the first few pages, no less?
Tomorrow (hopefuly) I’ll talk more about the actual tools and techniques we can use for doing just that.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Bumps in the Path
Okay, so now that I warned you all that I'd be disappearing, I've become all chatty. How contrarian of me!
I wanted to talk about a couple of problems I ran into with my recent project, BEASTOLOGIST. For one, it was a chapter book, which is shorter than standard middle grade, coming in at around 15,000 words rather than the 25,000 to 45,000 of standard middle grade (not to mention the whopping 80,000 words the Theo books weigh in at.)
Writing short is hard ::she whined:: I think that’s one of the reasons the scope of chapter book stories tends to be smaller: a contest, a rivalry, a small conflict within the family. But I wanted to write a fantasy-adventure involving a complicated backstory. Not to mention needing to accomplish the basics; dimensional characters, plot layers, etc. Phew. Every word had to carry triple duty. If you think about it, not a bad exercise in seeing just how much you can cut down to the story bones and still have a (hopefully!) compelling tale.
Another issue I bumped into was that of The Withdrawn Protagonist, which is actually something I bump up against fairly often. I am attracted to quiet, reserved, sometimes even withdrawn protagonists. I like to explore the series of conditions and situations that force them out of their shell; that give them the courage to step out of their voluntary shelter and engage with life and begin recognizing their own personal power.
But in order to show this journey, I have to introduce the character while they are still withdrawn and somewhat timid and cautious.
Which also bumps into one of the endless craft questions: how much do we need to know and understand of the character before the main plot really takes off. Some people (with whom I argue much) say the physical action of the main plot needs to start immediately. As in that very first scene. However as a reader, I have found that I like to bond with a character first, to better understand their flaws and strengths and problems in their lives before bounding off on this big adventure.
If I’ve had a chance to bond with the character, I care more about what happens to him (or her.) Otherwise it’s extraordinarily easy for me to put the book down, even with a rollicking plot, because I simply don’t care enough or can’t feel the depth I need for a satisfying story.
As a writer, to overcome this, I find myself using bridge conflicts a lot. Which I’ll have to talk about in my next post because I have to go make dinner...
I wanted to talk about a couple of problems I ran into with my recent project, BEASTOLOGIST. For one, it was a chapter book, which is shorter than standard middle grade, coming in at around 15,000 words rather than the 25,000 to 45,000 of standard middle grade (not to mention the whopping 80,000 words the Theo books weigh in at.)
Writing short is hard ::she whined:: I think that’s one of the reasons the scope of chapter book stories tends to be smaller: a contest, a rivalry, a small conflict within the family. But I wanted to write a fantasy-adventure involving a complicated backstory. Not to mention needing to accomplish the basics; dimensional characters, plot layers, etc. Phew. Every word had to carry triple duty. If you think about it, not a bad exercise in seeing just how much you can cut down to the story bones and still have a (hopefully!) compelling tale.
Another issue I bumped into was that of The Withdrawn Protagonist, which is actually something I bump up against fairly often. I am attracted to quiet, reserved, sometimes even withdrawn protagonists. I like to explore the series of conditions and situations that force them out of their shell; that give them the courage to step out of their voluntary shelter and engage with life and begin recognizing their own personal power.
But in order to show this journey, I have to introduce the character while they are still withdrawn and somewhat timid and cautious.
Which also bumps into one of the endless craft questions: how much do we need to know and understand of the character before the main plot really takes off. Some people (with whom I argue much) say the physical action of the main plot needs to start immediately. As in that very first scene. However as a reader, I have found that I like to bond with a character first, to better understand their flaws and strengths and problems in their lives before bounding off on this big adventure.
If I’ve had a chance to bond with the character, I care more about what happens to him (or her.) Otherwise it’s extraordinarily easy for me to put the book down, even with a rollicking plot, because I simply don’t care enough or can’t feel the depth I need for a satisfying story.
As a writer, to overcome this, I find myself using bridge conflicts a lot. Which I’ll have to talk about in my next post because I have to go make dinner...
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