Am I the only one who goes through this grieving process? I seem to do it at the end of every great book I read - especially if it's the final in a series.
For what it's worth,
-Sonja
A. Introduce the main character so the reader can bond. SHOW the
character doing what he does and who he is, as opposed to an
information dump in a narrative paragraph. For example, if the
protagonist is a competent, neat-freak, high-powered business woman,
show a conservatively dressed woman march into the office, order the
staff around, and straighten a picture on the wall. The reader
understands her from her actions and her speech, and it whets the
reader's appetite for more.
B. Let the reader know what kind of story it is. If it's a murder,
begin with a body. If it's a comedy, begin with something funny.
C. Set the tone quickly and clearly. If the story is full of irony and
cynicism, those must be present in the first few paragraphs. If it's a
horror story, set the dark mood.
D. Establish the locale, both where and when. Nothing drives a reader
crazy like reading a story set in the Caribbean on a cruise ship, only
to find out six pages in that the story takes place in 1945 instead of
modern times.
E. Get to the conflict quickly. Doc offered five different ways to
accomplish this:
1) Show a strong descriptive passage, as in "Red Badge of Courage."
The description of the scene (the unfolding of a battle scene) sets an
ominous tone that leaves the reader feeling something spectacular is
about to occur.
2) Show tension through dialogue, as in "The Return of Tarzan," when
the old man's wife catches her first glimpse of the ape man and utters
her lustful reaction aloud. Her husband is clueless and demands a
reason for her reaction. She refuses to elaborate, with her eyes still
glued to Tarzan.
3) Start in the midst of the great tension, as in "The Moon is Down."
This Steinbeck novel shows enemy forces overrunning a small town
without any resistance.
4) Start right at the beginning of the action, as in "The Cask of
Amontillado." Montresor states that he will have his revenge against
Fortunato, then the tale is off and running, showing the reader
exactly how that revenge is achieved in the wine catacombs with bricks and mortar.
5) Suspenseful dramatic irony: the reader knows what's going on (what
the danger is), but the protagonist is clueless, as in "Jaws." The
reader knows the shark is coming; the swimming teenager does not. Her boyfriend begs her to leave the water, the shark closes in, she doesn't come out of the water, the boyfriend begs, the shark gets closer...
That's where my notes end. Class broke for lunch, and if Doc had
anything further to say on the matter, he didn't elaborate. In my next
post, I'll talk about Janet Lee Carey, a fantasy author who taught a
fabulous class on "How to revive a Failing Story."
-Sonja
In his keynote address, Doc Hensley said the English language contains over 616,000 words, and as authors, all we have to do is string them together in the proper order. "We are not creators of words," Doc said, "we are re-arrangers of words." He gave an animated reading of "The Jabberwocky" to illustrate is point that even nonsense words have the power to move the reader to great emotional heights. His amusing stories had the audience laughing so hard, it was difficult to take proper notes.
In his three-part class, Strategic Writing, Doc analyzed a short story
by Jack London ("War") to see how he used object symbolism, irony, and flashback. When I first read the story, I hated it (tragic endings aren't my thing), but after seeing Doc pick the story apart, I had to admit that it's a work of art and I learned a ton from the experience. We also discussed the symbolic meaning of colors, numbers, and names (my favorite example was Perry Mason, who "parries" all the prosecutors offensive attacks and them builds his case, just as a mason builds a wall), and the Nine Basic Plot Points.
In my next post, I'll share the five items Doc Hensley said should
come at the beginning of every story.
-Sonja
Something fabulous happened last week: I finished my fourth novel! I completed three fantasy novels in the past few years, but there's no market for them. So I set them aside and tried my hand at a murder mystery. My editor calls it a "cozy" but that doesn't seem quite right to me. It's in the same vein as the Jesse Stone novels: small town
cop, witty dialogue, tons of sarcasm, quirky townspeople, lots of fun (aside from the two dead women).
I found that the amount of research necessary for a murder is on par with the research for fantasies. Before, I had to research the "old" way of doing things: How do you make butter? How do you sharpen a sword? How do you make boots?
In a modern-day mystery, I had to research things like: What's learned in an autopsy? How long does it take the State Crime Lab to analyze tissue samples or ballistics? How many cops are are employed by a town of 20,000 people? How do you "book" someone? What kind of gun do cops carry, and do they carry all the time?
I discovered that I LIKE doing this type of research. Granted, I ran into a few things I couldn't find on-line and couldn't find an expert who could help me, so I had to make a few things up. But I found nearly everything I needed, including two unlikely sources: the pharmacist at my local grocery store was pleased to tell me all about the prescription drugs in my novel, and the public information officer at the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab volunteered quite a bit of information on tissue/ballistics analysis and timelines.
I also found a series of books from Writer's Digest called the Howdunit Series. They go in-depth on all the topics you'd need for a mystery: writer's guides to missing persons, private eyes, ballistics
and weapons, crime scenes, body trauma, poisons, homicides, etc. I found a plethora of information in these books that were crucial to
the success of my novel.
Granted, I ran into several walls. Originally, I called my family
physician to ask about pharmaceuticals. She didn't have time in her schedule to chat with me about these things, so I had to find an alternative (hence the pharmacist). The web is bursting with information about pharmaceuticals, but finding the answer to a single question (like how many milligrams of liquid fit in an epi-pen?) is daunting and proved to be too sophisticated for my meager surfing skills.
The bottom line is that research is a necessary evil for writers of any genre, and I discovered that people get really excited when used as a resource. My local pharmacist now waves to me every time I come into the grocery store and asks when he'll see my book at the bookstand. He'll be even more excited when he sees I've put his name
on the "thank you" page.
For what it's worth,
-Sonja
6,500 words.
Yep. I fell short (that's "way too low"). For those of you who aren't
math whizzes, that's more than 40,000 words short of my goal--a mere
thirteen percent. Now, thirteen percent is excellent, if you're
talking profit margins, but it's worse than fake dog doody in your
Christmas stocking if you're talking about rate of completion. Even
with all the articles and conjunctions (how many of you just sang the
"Conjunction Junction" song in your head?), my word count came up so short, I pulled my calendar to make sure I was actually in town and
conscious during the month of November.
I was. What really happened was that I came up with 6,500 really
great words, but no more. November was a tough month for writing--and I'm not pulling the old "holidays" excuse, either. I'm pulling the
old "most of my words were drivel so I deleted them," coupled with
the old "I didn't sit and write every day" excuse. It's the last one
that really did me in. Having ten thousand poorly chosen words is a
far cry better than zero excellent words, and when I sit in front of
my computer playing Sid Meier's Civilization instead of writing, it's
no wonder that my word count was so abysmal. Curse you, Sid Meier,
for creating such an addictive computer game when I've got a life to
live and a novel to complete!
So. Now that the contest is over, and the bitter taste of defeat
cloaks my taste buds like a jet fuel/antifreeze mix, it's time to
strap in, put the tray table up, and prepare for take off. December's
GOT to be better, in terms of word count. Maybe if I delete the
Civilization shortcut off my desktop, I'll be unable to find the game
on my hard drive. Or maybe I'll just dust of my self-discipline and
put it back into play. Whatever works.
-Sonja
My word count for November: zero.
I certainly hope my fellow contestants are making more progress
toward their 50,000 word goal!
-Sonja
If you don't know anything about NaNoWriMo, visit their website at
nanowrimo.org. If you don't want to mess with all that, I'll outline
it here. Basically, November is National Novel Writing Month. By
midnight, Nov 30, you're supposed to write 50,000 words (50,000 being
a difficult but doable goal) and submit your manuscript to win the
prize. The prize, of course, is to be a winner in the 2008 NaNoWriMo
contest! The kicker is that, to enter, you have to start from
scratch on a brand new story, as opposed to taking out an old one and
tacking on 50,000 words. You can begin with outlines and plot notes,
but starting with previously written prose is "punishable by
death." (Their words, not mine.)
The basic idea is that by giving someone a goal and
a deadline, novels will get written. Check out the FAQ section on the
website to see if your favorite best-selling author has been a
NaNoWriMo winner in the past.
You don't HAVE to sign up and submit your manuscript in order to
participate. It's a great time to finally set up a daily writing
schedule. All the books on writing advise you to set aside a certain
amount of time each day to write or set a goal of so many words per
day. I'm horrible at writing daily. I sleep in, I home-school the
kids, I run errands... and then the day is shot and I haven't
squeezed in any time for writing. Lately, I've been fortunate to open
my manuscript once a week, and I must admit that sometimes WEEKS pass before I do any writing. So I'm going to take the NaNoWriMo challenge, and see if I can't get myself into a daily writing habit. If I hit the 50,000 word goal, that'll just be an added bonus. For
what it's worth.
-Sonja
