Radio Advice

I have to attend the funeral for my mother-in-law, Christina, on Saturday and in order to have a blog post ready for this Friday I knew I needed help—maybe even a miracle.

The radio came through with a miracle.

I don’t always make myself listen to WVIK every weekday morning to catch Garrison Keillor’s broadcast of The Writer’s Almanac. But on Thursday I tuned in late and only caught the tail end, the part where he recites a poem. I went online to read about what I had missed. Then, on a whim, I went to the previous day’s transcript, the day when my mother-in-law passed away after a nearly week long struggle. I was totally surprised to find writing advice that was very pertinent to my novel.

This is what I read:

                                        

It's the birthday of novelist P.G. Wodehouse (books by this author), born Pelham Grenville Wodehouse in Guildford, England (1881).

He said: "Always get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a great slab of prose at the start.

I think the success of every novel — if it's a novel of action — depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, 'Which are my big scenes?' and then get every drop of juice out of them.

The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through?

I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up to the mark is by examining each story quite coldly before he starts writing it and asking himself if it is all right as a story. I mean, once you go saying to yourself, 'This is a pretty weak plot as it stands, but I'm such a hell of a writer that my magic touch will make it okay,' you're sunk. If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them."

I do believe in signs and this one came as a wonderful surprise. I will try to make the most of it—in Christina’s memory.

The Writer's Almanac: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2014/10/15

Reviewing Rewrites by Word Count

First Draft: 50,365

Take 2: 50,628

Take 3: 30,125

The first draft of my novel came together for the 2010 National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo. As I’ve mentioned before, I reached the 50K word goal, but the work definitely failed to come together as a novel. I had bits and pieces of character development, some scenes worth salvaging, and two endings. The next two attempts at rewrites didn’t progress very far and I abandoned it for the most part.

Version 4.0: 5,832

Version 4.1: 18,718

Version 4.2: 42,515

The Version 4s started over and slowly progressed with renamed characters and a reworked plot. My biggest failings were still pretty much the same as before—revealing too much too soon and assuming the reader would know as much as I did about the life and times of the Bishop Hill of my imagination. Not so good by any count.

Version 5.0: 48,146

Version 5.1: 59,485

Version 5.2: 66,832

Version 5 and beyond were definite improvements thanks to loads and loads of the small rewrites and little tweaks I inserted whenever and wherever the mood struck. Better in a lot of respects, but I knew the end result wasn’t necessarily a smooth product.

Version 5.3: 68,503

Version 5.3 was produced during the 2013 NaNoWriMo marathon month of writing. I joined a writing group at Books-A-Million and sat in the coffee shop with a paper printout of V5.2 and totally retyped the whole thing. That had the advantage of finding many of the rough spots and as well as adding new material. I thought this version good enough to send out with agent query letters.

Version 5.5: 69,252 (ongoing)

Version 5.5 is what I’m working on now using some feedback from a potential agent. I was asked for “polish” and “immediacy.”

I think I know what “polish” means. It’s all the little technical things I wasn’t sure about and had glossed over because a copy editor would probably fix them for me. Sometime. Down the road. Well, this is down the road and I have to deal with them.

“Immediacy” will be a bit trickier. This seems to be more of a style and substance issue. This is improving my characters and their interactions. This is me improving the character arc for my protagonist. This is getting all my ducks in a row from subtle clues to the final denouement.

Fortunately for me, Version 5.3 was fun and less of the hard work of all the previous attempts. Version 5.5 is also shaping up to be much easier and more enjoyable. I hope this means I’m finally getting the hang of this novel writing thing. It would be nice because the next NaNoWriMo is coming up and my tentative title is: Book Two.

Humour (US humor) n. the quality of being amusing… [OED]

I didn’t let the fun stop with the old lady. Not me, the other one. The one I mentioned in last week’s blog post.

For better or worse, I tried to interject humor into my novel. I attempted some jokes, made some puns, and retold an unusual story.

For instance, I had fun with one particular name by using it—a lot.

Again, it started early on when I got bogged down with creating Swedish names for my characters. I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes—name wise, but trying to invent clever new ones was taking up too much time. It was NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I had to get my daily quota of 1667 words. So, instead of going with the unusual or the rare, I went with the maximum common. I swear that at one time I was told there were three main families at some point in the early days of Bishop Hill. In a stroke that combined inspiration and desperation, I turned them all into Anderson’s. If you check out a Quad City telephone book, an antiquated paper one, you’ll find page after page of Andersons. I opted for safety in numbers and maybe a little tribute to The Matrix. So far I’ve kept most of those Andersons alive and well.

Then I decided to continue the fun for one Anderson in particular. I was inspired by someone who, at one time, made a creative change to his name. I used that idea to turn a character’s middle name into a running gag. I just took the letter “J” and came up with as many substitutions as I could. Of the many possibilities, here are just a few: jerk, jinx, jealous, jovial, jolly, jester, juvenile, justice, and journey. I made three or four jokes before I had to give the poor guy a break, apologize, and promise to stop.

At another point in the book, I have a scene with vigilantes hiding in the shadows. Something similar to that really happened, not like I have written it, but in the ball park, so to speak. I heard about it well after it happened, so by that time it seemed humorous to me. I’d like to think that using it in the book lets me remember a couple of guys who went out of their way to help us all out.

These are the main points where I tried to add a humorous twist to the story and some color through conflict for a few characters. They do say that humor is subjective: What is funny for one person is not funny at all for another. I imagine some of my attempts at humor will come across better than others—or maybe not at all.

All I can say is, “I had to try.”

What About Age

Last month, I quizzed my Galva Beta reader about age. I showed her a newspaper clipping about a 101-year-old man who still went in to work a few days every week.

She had seen it.

I mentioned the centenarian I saw on a late night TV show. The lady was thin, frail looking, but was cracking jokes and holding her own.

She hadn’t seen that.

She also hadn’t heard of the Delany sisters. Bessie Delany lived to 104 and her sister Sadie to 109. Their book, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, was a best seller in the 90s.

She did know of a Galva woman who made it 103 and about the other lady who escaped from a Galva senior center. It wasn’t much of an escape; she wanted lunch in Bishop Hill, so she got into a car and drove away. Not sure whose car it was, but it certainly shocked the staff and some relatives. She got her lunch and a chauffeured ride back to Galva.

My point: out there in the mass of humanity are folks called super agers. They are oldsters who have lively brains for their age. They are mobile, intelligent, and interesting.

I have to believe in them, because I used one to get my story going. I named her Pearl Mabel after my grandmother.

Originally, I dreamed up this character in desperation. I was barely into the first couple of chapters of my book when I started to get too tired and too confused with trying to describe how someone’s great-great-great-grandfather interacted with someone else’s great-great-great-grandfather. I probably could have found other ways of coping with this problem, other writers certainly had, but I settled on my super ager to span the gap in time and never looked back.

I’m not a bit sorry. She’s been fun. 

The Dreaded Synopsis

Making mistakes. Fixing those mistakes. Definitely not the most fun thing in the world to have to do. But sometimes that is the reality.

I’m not talking about grammar here. Or plot. Or style. My most recent lapse in judgment involves thinking that I could write a synopsis without looking up some examples.

What I’ve learned so far:

·        Don’t produce a laundry of characters. It isn’t necessary. Introduce the main characters and limit the number to five or six. Put each name in capitals when first mentioned.

·        Do show the protagonist’s progression through the three acts of the story.

·        Make sure there are at least three acts. And yes, this includes a conclusion. No teasers. No coy hints or allusions to the ending. No cheating.

·        Create a narrative written in present tense, third person. Each paragraph needs to flow logically into the next. If switching ideas, build a transition to connect the paragraphs. Use the same writing style as the book itself.

·        Give a clear idea of what it’s all about. Define conflicts and convey what’s at stake for the characters. What will be won or lost.

·        Do have an opening hook to capture interest. Avoid grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes.

In short, make an effort to find out what’s acceptable to the industry and don’t try to wing it—it will save time and aggravation.

For more information: http://www.fictionwriters.com/tips-synopsis.html

And check out Writer’s Digest for well-written examples by Chuck Sambuchino.

Scalzi on Writing

John Scalzi said it was good to be back at the Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City. It had been seven years, seven eventful years, since he’d been there. Best selling books, awards, and hinted at television deals gave him an overflow audience on a cool, rainy evening.

My goal was to see the well-known author, hear about the new book, buy a copy, and hopefully get back to Davenport without getting too wet or running into any wildlife. I came away with a bit more.

I particularly liked Scalzi’s explanation of how he used “the new normal” for building the reality for Lock In, his new book. In setting the scene for his reading, he explained how “the new normal” meant the ensuing acceptance of unusual situations after the passage of time. It’s a function of human adaptability. For this book, it meant years after the survivors of a viral plague, who’d been locked inside physically useless bodies, had become, by virtue of technology, normal parts of society. So normal that, in chapter five, finding a new apartment was an inconvenience and not an insurmountable big deal for remotely controlled androids.

The phrase really hit home for me. I spent over a year going to grief recovery meetings where it was used a lot, but in relation to adjusting to life without a loved one. I hadn’t thought about how important it would be for crafting a fictional setting in a make-believe world.

I appreciated the fact that he didn’t use outlines. Redshirts took five weeks to write. He said he went with the flow and cleaned it up later; making it look like that’s how it was meant to be all along. I know the process, but never at that speed or with those results.

I also liked his comments about how hard he worked to get the teenage girl’s voice for Zoe’s Tale. A lot of feminine feedback led to a lot of rewrites and eventually to some major honors.

It was a rare opportunity for me to see and listen to John Scalzi. The rain slowed the trip home down to a crawl in some places, but it didn’t dampen my enthusiasm.

Beta Readers

What I needed from my Beta readers:

·        They couldn’t be overly nice. Writing has to develop and grow—“It’s all great,” won’t make that happen.

·        They had to point out the weaknesses, the things that dropped them out of the narrative.

·        They had to tell me the truth. Will the parts make up a greater whole?

What I’ve gotten back from them so far—the gamut between great, insightful responses and…nothing.

My husband has been my first reader ever since I became brave enough to let someone else in on my writing.

He started out his college career as an English literature major before the sciences won him over.  He has always been an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy, as well as history and economics, to name a few of his interests. I trust his experience and expertise. He’ll always be my first reader, but I needed more variety.

Since I’ve waited a few years to get to this point with my first novel, I figured I had to count my adult sons among my Beta readers. It would be a stretch; they spent their teen years playing video games and reading science fiction and fantasy novels like their dad. What I’ve written wouldn’t be their cup of tea, but I would especially value remarks related to dialogue and current technological aspects. They were good sports and agreed to give it a go.

I chose two other readers who have roots in the Bishop Hill/Galva area. Both of these people are knowledgeable readers with writing experience. I wanted them to let me know if the tone and themes rang true, or if I went too far off base to be believable.

My husband got back to me first with corrections and suggestions. He probably felt a little pressure, but it worked out for me. I used his feedback right away.

My kids got started, but didn’t finish. I need to find out how far they’d gotten before their work and travel got in the way.

Another reader got part way through, but couldn’t finish because of a variety of things that included having a body part replaced. Ouch! She still gave me some good stuff.

The last reader is MIA. To be fair, she warned me. But it’s in my nature to be ever hopeful.

I spent a lot of time over these choices for Beta readers and I will make due with the feedback I receive. I know I will owe them a lot for their time and care.