Characters Loom Large Behind a Veil of Smoke
August 24, 2010
Last week, my husband and I drove through the interior of British Columbia. There were over two hundred forest fires raging in my home province and we traveled awfully close to a lot of them. Along a fairly deserted highway, we saw thick smoke ahead. What was around the bend? I felt alarm, forgetting for a moment that this highway would be closed (surely?) if it was dangerous. I soon got used to the murk and for the next eight hours, as visibility ranged from one to five kilometers, I amused myself from the passenger seat by taking pictures of smoky landscapes. And it occurred to me, as we passed through one familiar valley, that I’d never given such close attention to the wooded mountains across the river or to the horses in the pastures. Not being able to see something clearly made me focus intensely on it.
I was reminded of that smoky journey when I read a post on Writer Unboxed by literary agent Donald Maass. Maass writes about the power of what’s not there. He’s speaking of characters who aren’t present (as opposed to clouded mountains and horses) and the point of his post is to give writers tips on how to conjure an unmet character, one of them being to show the reader evidence of that character’s existence. One thing Maass doesn’t mention is that the “presence” of a character can be more powerful because they aren’t there.
Just as I was far more aware of the surrounding country because much of it was hidden, a reader may attend more to a character when that character is not wholly in view. The trick, I think, is to make sure there’s just enough revealed to capture the imagination. If, for example, I had been unable to make out the outlines and muted colors of horses and mountains, there would not now be a hundred pictures of that drive through the Cariboo in my digital camera.
The same principle can be applied to writing. I’ve got a character who’s missing (ie., dead) at the beginning of my story, and I’ve decided that if I give the reader a hint of her “color” and the general shape of her character, she will be increasingly intriguing. Well, that’s the plan. Sometimes writing can seem like heading out on a long journey with limited visibility and you gotta keep goin’ even when the smoke gets in your eyes…
Okay, enough with the smoke metaphor. But as I sit, red-eyed, at my computer, there’s a winding, gauzy highway in my mind.
Donald Maass on Writer Unboxed and more on B.C fires
What Keeps Me Up at Night
July 12, 2010
Ever read deep into the night even though your alarm was due to go off at 6 AM? No doubt several literary techniques kept you turning pages, but I’ll bet it was mostly due to conflict. Conflict is a broad concept, however; in a riveting scene, it’s more likely confrontation that keeps you turning pages. Confrontation can be between characters (two people in an argument or potentially fatal struggle), between a character and the environment (our heroine tries to outrun a mudslide), or between a character and himself (a “reformed” alcoholic passes a bar after a hellish day).
Confrontation is more dramatic when we see it building. Escalate, escalate, advises one of the writing books on my shelf. Skilled writers don’t start a scene with the worst thing that could happen. (After all, where do you go from there?) Good writers make readers apprehensive, then ratchet up the tension. For example, our salivating, alcoholic friend almost makes it past the bar—but then his boss appears in the doorway and insists on buying him a drink. And then he has “just one.”
In Elaine Beale’s novel, Another Life Altogether, a scene involving teenagers at a school dance turns into a nail-biter. The kids are in a cloakroom, away from the eyes of adults, when an older boy begins to taunt a younger one. The older boy threatens to burn the face of the younger one with the end of the cigarette and though he doesn’t—in fact, I’d argue that because he doesn’t (our expectation of violence has been raised but not “satisfied”)—things are all the more tense when a major character, an effeminate boy our narrator cares about, enters the room. Tension amplifies when a bloodthirsty girl eggs her bully-boyfriend on and the kids pass around a bottle of whiskey. Beale knows how to escalate. I couldn’t stop turning those pages.
Conflict, Action & Suspense, by William Noble
Another Life Altogether, by Elaine Beale
Writer’s Block 102: Go to the Beach
June 1, 2010
When writers get together and talk about writer’s block, suggestions for remedies are almost endless. In fact, for people claiming to suffer from a creativity deficit, it’s amazing how many ideas writers contemplating writer’s block can come up with. There are wholesome routes to more words—working out, long walks, listening to music, maybe playing with the dog/cat. Reading someone else’s great writing can work. These are all what I call WB 101 strategies. When these fail, try WB 102 tactics–hands-on research.
There’s basic research, such as reading about the topic you’re writing about and interviewing experts in the field. But there’s also another—easier—kind of research writers often don’t think of, and it’s what I call Walk on the Beach.
Awhile back, I was drafting a story and got to a scene where two main characters meet at a beach, a beach I have been to about a thousand times, and they have a conversation that (hopefully) moves the plot forward. One character is concealing information from the other, and during their conversation, the other’s suspicions are aroused. The problem was, the whole scene—no matter how much I worked at it—was dull, dull, dull.
In terms of physical action, my characters were doing little. In fact, they weren’t doing much more than sitting on a log. I tweaked. One character picked up a stone and threw it into the water. Yawn. The other commented on a passerby. Yawn. The scene could as easily have taken place in a parked car.
So, I went to the beach.
And when I actually went to this beach I’d been to a thousand times before, I meandered along listening to the surf, smelling the salty air—and then I slid and fell. This beach is not flat, and in places walking along it is like traversing the side of a steep hill, and I saw, in a flash, my characters strolling side by side and then one sliding into the other, a collision that resulted in the thing one character wanted to conceal literally falling into the open. And that may not sound like much, but that one idea led to almost a thousand new words. Now we, my characters and I, were getting somewhere.
It won’t always be the case that your characters are frolicking (or not) on a beach/street/park that happens, in real life, to be a five-minute drive from your home. But if they are, for example, stir-frying shrimp, you, too, can haul out the wok. You may have cooked the recipe a thousand times before, but now you’re doing it through the eyes of your character(s). Your fictional cook may just come up with something new to feed your story.
If this doesn’t cure your writer’s block, at least you’ve got yourself some exercise, and maybe a shrimp stir-fry to enjoy.
Some things you should only do once…
March 24, 2010
One of the hats I wear is Writing Coach. I coach MBA students and I love the work. One recent student was a professional musician. She wrote of her love for the arts, and as we read her essay aloud parts of it flowed like music…but then other sections just kind of trailed off…
This student was overly fond of the ellipsis. She had one in the title and three in the body of her essay. I told her to choose one. She argued. I stood my ground: One ellipsis only. It’s an unofficial rule of writing.
The ellipsis is not an everyday punctuation mark. When we see it, we notice it. And if we see another one a paragraph or two later, we are pulled out of the writing to make a mental note of it. The third one becomes irritating and if there are any others…well, let’s just say the writer who overuses the ellipsis could be giving her readers a reason to put the writing aside…
It’s not just ellipses. Exclamation points should be used with care, as well! Too many, and you risk looking like you’ve had a few javas too many! And don’t use two together or you’ll look like a teenage girl!!
I pointed out to this student that in two instances, she could just as easily—and in fact, more correctly—use a dash. (No, I didn’t use the term em dash. I’ve never met anyone who’s ever actually used an en dash, so why differentiate?) Okay—I admit it—the dash can be overused, as well. And I suppose—though no editor has called me on this lately—that I overuse it in my own writing now and then. But for me, the dash is almost an everyday punctuation mark. I say, dash away. But then go over your writing and ask yourself about every single dash: could a comma or semi-colon or period be used here instead? And if so, use one of the latter. Save that lovely dash for something more important.
But the ellipsis: one per essay, article or short story. In a book-length work, maybe two.
I’m not and never have been an editor (note my two incomplete sentences above) but here’s what I tell students about punctuation marks:
• Period. The everyday workhorse;
• Comma, the pause that refreshes, and be careful, not to use it when you don’t, need a pause;
• Parentheses (when you want the written equivalent of an aside);
• Dash—for when you want to set something off with panache (couldn’t help myself);
• Semicolon; I’ve seen writers and editors get downright heated discussing its use and some want to ban it outright but I say, sometimes the semi-colon is the best mark for the job and people should just chill;
• Colon: the semi-colon’s big brother and use it only when you want to give something emphasis or to start a list;
• Exclamation point! You know you shouldn’t always be using this!
• …Ellipses…
And while we’re on the subject, be careful of using unusual, attention-getting words more than once in any piece of writing. But that’s for another post.
