EXERCISE: Six Scruples?

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Original posting Aug. 3, 2013

What the heck, it's a long hot weekend. So... pick a number from one to six? Roll the die, or however you prefer to pick a random number. And...

Here's what you have chosen:

1. Preoccupied, you leave a large restaurant without paying your $3.50 bill for breakfast. You discover this three blocks later. You aren't pressed for time. Do you return and pay?
2. You witness a car accident in which one party is clearly to blame. Do you come forward to testify?
3. A fellow nurse is neglecting her work and endangering the patients. Do you speak to a superior if it may jeopardize your colleague's career?
4. You phone a friend at 1 AM and dial another friend by mistake. When the sleepy voice answers, do you identify yourself?
5. The people who discover your beloved cat injured in a ditch pay $150 for veterinary care and adopt it. You discover what happened three months later. Do you let them keep the cat?
6. Tidying up, you find your teenager's diary. Do you read it?

In each of these, feel free to develop the characters, modify the problem or dilemma, and expand on what led up to this and what happens as a result.

The main point, of course, is to write. Whether you take this as a seed crystal for a session of free writing or just something to play with in developing an outline or a scene, let the words come!

TECH: Give Life (a moldy oldie technique of the month!)

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Original Posting Aug. 9, 2013

Back in September 1994, pages 33 to 35 of Writer's Digest had an article by Dave King with the title "Give Life." It's marked as the Technique of the Month. The subtitle says "Make your characters more than mere stage props -- give them a life beyond the pages of your book."

Dave starts by pointing out that stage play set designers often make the on-stage room seem more real by putting a door or a window in the back wall facing the audience. When the door opens, the audience glimpses a little bit of wallpaper, perhaps a light fixture, just a few more details that help to give the impression that there is a hallway and an entire house and world "out there." Similarly, you want to make your fictional world and characters have more to them than is in your story.

"How do you create the sense that there are details just out of sight around the corner, details you haven't mentioned? ... How do you give your stories texture?"

First, make your settings solid. You need settings that are specific and individual, places that your reader is sure they could go. They need to feel real. You don't do this with a million details. Trust your readers to use their imagination to fill in missing details. But still include meaningful details. You need unique details, one or two that make your setting stand out. Practice by describing real places that you go every day. Pick out two items that make that setting what it is, using all five senses.

Second, go ahead and write out offstage details. How-to books for authors often suggest detailed biographies. You may not want to go that far, but go ahead and write out some of the history, the background, the offstage stuff about your characters. This can give depth.

Third, move some of the action offstage. Go ahead and let your characters do things offstage, that get reflected in the onstage action and dialogue. Make sure that the offstage action is consistent.

Fourth, add in some subplots. In real life, there are often several things going on at once. When all of the characters are involved in one self-contained plot with no loose ends, it feels artificial. Go ahead and add in subplots. Think about how much to include and what to leave out. Try to use subplots that enrich your main plot.

Fifth, expand the story. When you start the story with the action already going on, it gives the sense that the story is bigger than what is written here. You can do this with a subplot, too. You probably don't want your main plot running off at the end, since we do want to resolve stories. But again, you can certainly have a subplot that isn't finished at the end of the book.

Finally, make sure that every element of your story performs several functions at once. Plot and subplot, texture, characters -- if you have a scene that establishes a character trait, make sure that it also advances the plot and provides setting. You want every part of your story to be rich.

"If you create scenes that advance your plot while bringing a deeper understanding of your characters, while showing more of your settings, while giving hints of back story, while resonating with other scenes in ways you may not even be consciously aware -- in short, if you can create scenes that feel as messy and exuberant as real-life but still are part of a plot -- then you'll be creating a story with texture."

There you go. Take a look at your story. Is the setting solid and unique? Do you hint at offstage details about your characters? Is some of the action offstage? Do you have subplots? Do the edges of the story, the plot and subplots, run over the beginning and ending of the written story? Do the various parts of your story do several things at once?

Does your story feel real?

As Jean-Luc Picard would say, "Make it so."

TECH: Creating Tension (another moldy oldie!)

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Original Posting Aug. 18, 2013

The December 1997 issue of Writer's Digest on pages 7, 8, 10 had an article by Nancy Kress with the title "I just couldn't put it down!" The subtitle says, "Tension is the best way to hold your readers. But there's no need to get tense creating it."

(page 9 had a full-page ad from NRI School of Writing, mostly talking about a 75 MHz multimedia computer featured in their courses! 16 MB of memory, Windows 95, a super VGA color monitor, and so forth. "Today's writers can enjoy the glory and forget the mess." Wow!)

Nancy starts out by reminding us that we want to enthrall people. We talk about readers being captured, hooked, held. Now your stories may tie them up, catch them on hooks, or even reach out and grab them, but most of us have to just do it with words. So what quality is it that keeps readers reading?

Tension.

Nancy recommends three qualities for tense stories: uncertainty, emotion, and reader involvement.

"Readers read to find out what will happen next." They're trying to reduce the uncertainty. Your job is to create uncertainty in the beginning so that they want to find out the answers. But be careful. You don't want uncertainty about what's going on. "The story that begins with vague characters in an unidentified place discussing something unnamed or doing something unexplained -- that story does not create tension. It creates confusion." Don't be mysterious about what's going on. Also, cosmic uncertainty, long-term struggles between good and evil, are not really good starting places. You want immediate, concrete, close-up tension.

Nancy analyzes four openings from various works of fiction. Each and every one of them creates uncertainty with the simple question, "How will this unfold?" The first two paragraphs of Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer. A mystery by Scott Turow. The House at Pooh Corner by AA Milne. Where is Piglet? And a book called Home by Jayne Anne Phillips.

The creation of uncertainty is fast in these excerpts. And fairly quickly, each story answers those uncertainties but raises other uncertainties. "Tension depends heavily on creating a steady flow of itchy uncertainties."

I've sometimes suggested that you plant the hook, raising a question for the reader, and then plant a second one before you let go of the first one. Question, question, answer to first question -- but now the second question is burning in the reader's mind! Keep those hooks pulling the reader along.

"Questions alone, however, will make readers read on." Nancy recommends that your characters, or at least the protagonist, has to care about the answers. Give the characters motives for caring about the answers. Relationships, unusual circumstances, potential gain or loss, reasons for the characters to want to know what is going on.

The third point of the triad that Nancy is making is that the readers need to care about how the characters and the uncertainties interact. So your story needs to pose uncertainties, show us that the characters are deeply involved with finding the answers, and then make sure that the readers are interested too! Nancy says that this is where tension gets tied up with all the other problems of writing fiction: "Memorable characters, original voice, compelling plot, human significance, interesting setting, etc." These are always to get readers involved in the story. Vivid stories that feel real to the readers are going to make them involved, so that they want to know what happens next.

All right? Three ingredients for tense stories. First, set up uncertainties. Second, show us how and why the characters want to know the answers. Third, make the story feel real, so that your readers are waiting to find out what happens next, too.

Practice? All right, take a story that you're working on. Look at the beginning. What uncertainties does it raise for the characters? What uncertainties does it raise for the readers? Why do the characters want to know what happens next? Why do the readers want to know what happens next? If there aren't enough uncertainties, what could you add? How can you make the beginning very clear, and still raise enough questions that the characters and the readers want to know what happened?

There you go. Write!

EXERCISE: A beginning?

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Original Posting Aug. 19, 2013

On the morning drama this morning, the end of the episode caught my attention. (this is a daily 15 minute drama done by the Japanese public television, six days a week, for a six month run. I think we're getting near the end of this one, but I'm not sure).

The ending was pretty simple. Grandmother collapsed in the last episode, and was taken to the hospital. Mother and friends have gathered in the hospital waiting room. They start to sing, and then... a doctor walks around the corner. He has one of those closeup eye gadgets on his head, a surgical gown, and a mask tied across his face. Everyone falls silent. He reaches up and unties the mask.

To be continued...

So, there's your beginning. Put a group of people in a waiting room. Pick someone to be in surgery. Go ahead and sketch that briefly. But get to the hook as fast as you can.

What hook?

The surgeon came around the corner. He looked at them. Then he reached up and untied his mask.

What happened next?

Heck, if you want to, start with that three line beginning, then fill in the rest of the scene. I'll bet people will wait while you add in a bit, wondering just what the surgeon is going to say.