WHEN LIFE IMITATES ART

I have had one of the weirdest weekends of my life. So much so that people have said, "This sounds like something out of a book."

In fact, it does sound an awful lot like the book I just finished, U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton. Her PI, Kinsey Millhone, first encountered her estranged family a few books back. She always considered herself a loner since her Aunt Gin died, and now she's being invited to a family gathering to meet the grandmother she thought had rejected her.

This morning I received an email from a total stranger. A stranger, except that we shared the same maiden name. She said she had received my information from my half-brother who had been "very excited" to locate me at last. She was my father's first cousin. She included enough information to make her statement believable.

Jolt. My father died 11 years ago. Jolt. My half-brother and step sister, whom I thought weren't concerned about me, and hunted me down. Jolt. My cousin introduced me to 38 more cousins on Facebook. Jolt. My stepsister invited me to come and visit.

I feel like I'm Kinsey in my own personal novel.

Will any of this show up in a book some day? Probably. I don't know how I feel about it all yet.

What part of your writing stems from personal experience? Do you know of any true life stories that are weirder than fiction? As any editor will tell you, it's not enough to say "but it really happened that way." The author has to make it believable.

Feel free to share some of those strange, humorous, eventful circumstances that have threaded your life.

FYI: Check out http://apenforyourthoughts.blogspot.com/ for an interview and giveaway of my latest release, Prodigal Patriot.

How Well Do You Know Your Characters?

Have you ever read a book and come across a character that doesn’t act or react the way you thought they should? I have and at times I’ve even found myself arguing with the book. “That’s ridiculous. She’d never do that!” Usually when this happens it means that the author hasn’t portrayed the character accurately.

Let me give you an example. The writer may have set up the main character as shy and retiring and then has a scene where she’s up on stage and comfortable. This is an obvious flaw, but I’ve actually seen writers make this mistake. So how do you avoid this? You must spend time prewriting—evaluating who your character is and what your character’s motivations are.

These are the things you must determine.

First, what is your character’s greatest fear? Knowing this can set up your book’s climax by forcing your character to face her fear.

Second, what does your character want most in life? This will allow you to give your character believable motivation.

Third, how does your character see herself? Is she a rescuer or maybe a peacemaker? This will help you keep your character true to herself.

Fourth, why does your character see herself in this role? Is there a defining event in her life that led her to this determination?

Fifth, how does your character need to grow? What does she need to learn?

You should answer these questions for all POV (point of view) characters. This will help you write well rounded characters, as well as give you a wealth of possibilities for plot points and subplots.

There are several writing books on this topic that I highly recommend.
Getting into Character
By Brandilyn Collins

From the Inside Out
By Susan May Warren & Rachel Hauck

Let’s play with characterization. DON’T mention the book, but share an example you’ve found where a character didn’t act right.
Based on Darlene's comment, let's also talk about books that did characterization well!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

After our pastor’s sermon on the faulty thinking of the “save the planet” slogan (only Christ can save the planet, after all), I debated about the wisdom of this title! But it still captures what I want to say today.

Over the years, writers tend to pile story/article ideas, partially finished manuscripts, rejected manuscripts ... we need more and more space (whether digital or physical) to keep track of our writing family.

What can we do with the growing junk pile? Recycle it.

The “reduce” rule would make an excellent topic for a post on writing tight ... I’ll save that for another day.

But ... reuse and recycle. Those both apply to our “leftovers.”

Reuse I think of in terms of research. Some people have made a career out of writing about the same setting (time, place, and/or culture). Beverly Lewis and Wanda Brunstetter and their Amish books come to mind, although both women have written books in other genres as well. I belong to a marketing group that started among writers committed to American history 1860-1876, Civil War through Reconstruction.

The same time period is the setting for two of my published books as well as a third that an editor has expressed interest in. I keep reusing my understanding of the Year of No Summer in new ways. (Beacon of Love and Bridge to Love)

Researched a story about storm chasers that didn’t sell as a romance? How about reworking it as suspense? A contemporary novella I proposed about a fire in Mesa Verde National Park has morphed into a historical novel about a film producer filming the Anasazi ruins at Mesa Verde.

Use topics you researched in depth for publicity. Offer yourself as a speaker on that topic. Blog about it. Write articles. I wrote an article on witnessing to Buddhists which involved a lot of research. I used and expanded that research to write a second article on a biblical view of reincarnation. (Both articles sold.)

• Your assignment: Find a story you have written and/or sold. How can you use the same information you accumulated during writing that book in a new and different way

Recycle:
Reprints. If you write articles and short stories, keep looking for places to sell reprint rights. My short story The Ultimate Survivor has appeared in three separate places.

Rewrite. Write on the same topic with a slightly different slant. I wrote three articles on using “the arts” in children, one for a parenting magazine and two for teaching magazines.

Prolong. If you’ve written a stand alone, and a publisher wants a series, find a character (or characters) that demand their own story. That’s what I did with my first book, Romanian Rhapsody: Carrie’s best friend Michelle will have her own romance in Plainsong.

• Your assignment: Think of a character from one of your books who could be the center of another story; or research ways to resell or rewrite articles you’ve already sold once.

Reminder: For an opportunity to win one of my books (as well as books by Susan Page Davis and Karen Witemeyer), please leave one or more comments on my blog darlenefranklinwrites.blogspot.com during the month of June.

It's Time For Show and Tell!

One of the things I see most often in the manuscripts I edit is a writing style that tells the story instead of showing the action. Even if you've heard it all before - we all need to constantly be on guard against telling our story. Today I'll share some examples of how to connect with your reader through active verbs and specific nouns.

Example #1

The scent was fresh and new like a flower after the rain.
Verb choice - was
Noun choice – flower
This sentence isn’t bad, but it could be great. The writer in this example is telling instead of showing.

Example #2

The fresh scent hung in the air like a late blooming rose after the rain.
Verb choice – hung
Noun choice – rose (specifically a late blooming rose)
This sentence is great because it doesn’t tell us about the smell. Instead, the writer invites us to remember a smell. This is showing. It draws the read in and invites them to experience what’s happening.

Let’s look at two more examples

Example #3

Susan felt restless.
Verb choice – felt
Noun choice – Susan
Again, the writer is telling us how Susan felt

Example #4

Susan paced across the floor, wearing a pattern in the dust.
Verb choice – paced, wearing
Noun – Susan, floor, dust
Can you see the difference? The writer is again pulling us in with word pictures, showing us the action.

Special Note: There are times when telling is better than showing. You want to use telling when the action isn’t important or when it’s a common action that doesn’t need emphasis. For example, you don't have to say, "Susan bent her knees and lowered herself into the chair." Unless, you're trying to emphasize the WAY she's sitting to let us know her emotion. If she just sat, say, "Susan sat in the chair."

There are some words to watch for - words that can let you know you're telling instead of showing.
Felt
Remembered
Knew
Watched
Saw
Looked
Was
words that end in ing
words that end in ly

Okay, now it's your turn. Take one of the following sentences and make it great.
The morning was foggy.
Jacob was so mad he couldn't speak.
The smell made Penny sick.

Getting Ready to Write: Advice for Beginners

Please welcome Sandy Tritt and her first post with us on the Book Doctor Blog. This lady is not only a wonderful editor, she's a kind, helpful person and goes above and beyond to help writers improve their craft. You can find Sandy, not to mention her entire staff, at Inspiration for Writers.

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So you wanna be a writer when you grow up, huh? My first word of advice is don’t. Don’t become a writer. Not for money. Not for glory. Not for any reason other than that you have a passion in your gut that is so strong that nothing can prevent you from writing. Unless you have stories in you that you must tell, and writing them is as important to you as eating and sleeping and breathing. And sometimes more important.

With that out of the way, I assume you have passion. So, what do you do with this life of yours to pave your way to the writing world? Read. Observe. Write. Live. Those are the four main ingredients to preparing yourself to write.

Read everything you can get your hands on. Read classic literature, read literary fiction, read commercial fiction. Read books on the craft of writing. Read books on writers. Read dictionaries. Read cereal boxes. Just read.

Observe. If there is one attribute a writer must have (other than his passion to write), it is the ability to notice details. What is it about the way she walks that captures your attention? Is it her clothes? Her figure? Her wiggle? What words could you use to describe the preacher’s snorts between shouts? What do his eyes look like when he says “Hell”? What keeps his hair from falling into his eyes (or onto the floor)?

Look at your surroundings as though you’re showing them to someone who’s never been to your area. Notice the sounds you would hear if you listened. Notice the smells, the colors, the textures, everything you normally take for granted. Think of new ways to describe old things.
Write every day. It doesn’t matter if it’s a dozen words or a dozen pages, write. And don’t limit your writing to your passion—try writing poetry, fiction, journal entries, essays. Keep a journal or notebook with you at all times and jot your thoughts as you think them.


Live. Can you write about New York City if you’ve never been there? Probably—if you’ve seen enough movies and read enough descriptions, you could write with integrity about a city you’ve never seen. However, you would not be able to add new insight. For me, a small town girl, it was the vastness of the big city that took my breath away. And that most of the thousands of people all scurrying to some place would gladly pause a moment to give directions or advice.


Visit as many places as you possibly can, but also consider actually living in as many different types of places as you can. Yes, you can get superficial impressions of cultures during a seven-day vacation, but to truly understand a culture, you need to experience it more deeply. I’ve lived in small towns, large cities, suburbs, villages and deep in the country. I’ve lived in apartments, houses, complexes, dormitories, alone, with friends, with family. I’ve lived in Appalachia, the Midwest and the Deep South. And each of these has left an imprint (as well as an accent!).


Experience as many aspects of life as you can. Can you really understand the pain of heartbreak if you’ve never been loved and left? Can you understand the intensity of a mother’s (or father’s) love if you’ve never experienced it? Can you understand the thrill of surviving the bunny slope on down hill skis if you’ve never put your life at stake?


This isn’t to say you must become an alcoholic to understand alcoholism (although it does help :-)) or a bank robber to understand a thief. What it does mean is that writers need to take more chances than the average Joe, need to experience more of life in order to write more knowledgeably. It also means that writers must have empathy to understand people and situations beyond their personal experience.


What kind of job should you hold while waiting to publish? Well, many successful writers have had successful careers in business, law, medicine, education or any area you can think of before becoming published. So it doesn’t matter a lot what your “day” job is, just don’t go into debt. Live humbly and within your means, because once you sign that car loan, you are obligated to your 8-5 job.


Of course, some jobs will give you more “material” to incorporate into your writing than others. If you are just passing time, here are some suggestions:


• Work with people from diverse backgrounds, such as you can meet in airports, resorts, hotels and restaurants. These give you plenty of characters to draw from.
• Work physically. Manual work doesn’t occupy your mind. I do some of my best creative thinking while washing dishes by hand and mopping floors.
• Work where you have free time to write, such as night desk clerk, night guard at a business, bowling alley clerk (on the slow shift), car lot attendant, and so on.

I am fond of saying that there are two aspects to writing—the craft and the art. The craft is that which can be learned—grammar, using active voice, the basics of dialogue and so forth. The art is the God-given talent that a writer is either blessed with or isn’t. It is the ability to “see” the details in a setting and relay that in interesting, unique words to make the reader feel the location. It is the ability to understand human nature and empathize with even the most dastardly villain. If you have that talent, and if you have that passion to write no matter what the odds, you are a writer. And nobody can take that away from you.

Overcoming Disappointment: Contests

• Sunday night I watched the season finale for Celebrity Apprentice. Sixteen proven celebrities, from the very well known to the lesser lights, competed for the opportunity to win money for charity. Fifteen proven winners turned into "losers" over the course of several weeks. In the end, Donald Trump chose Brett Michael as the winner.
  
  Any time we enter a contest, numbers predict we will lose. Yet it's always hard.
  
  One of the big contests for Christian writers, the Genesis contest for unpublished novelists sponsored by American Christian Fiction Writers, announced finalists a few weeks ago. My local ACFW chapter had finalists last year and this; it makes me proud to be a part of such a great team!
  
  (And speaking of finalists, Sandi Rog of Book Doctor was a finalist last year!)
  
  But five finalists per genre leaves scores of people who received no satisfaction from the contest beyond a score sheet with comments from judges. It hurts not to win.
  It's excruciating to receive comments that suggest you made a mistake to try.
  
  So that's the question I'm addressing today: What can you do with the not-so-good and downright-awful comments you received?
  
  Here are some tried-and-true ways I've discovered for turning disappointments into positives.
  
• Do nothing for as long as it takes to gain perspective. When I first receive a response from an editor, I zero in on one statement, good or bad; I rarely get the true gist of their comments upon first reading. So, let it set before you take it out again.
• Congratulate yourself for entering! You took a leap of faith.
• Consider that contest entry fee as a paid critique.
• Now go back to the comments.
• What was your score? Anything over 50% says you got more right than you did wrong. As agent Terry Burns told our OCFW group on Saturday, "A lot of people write good books. You need to write an excellent book." You may be (probably are) in the good-but-not-yet-excellent category.
• Don't let negative comments outweigh the positive. Put the positive comments in a "warm fuzzies" file. "She said I wrote natural-sounding dialogue." Breathe it in. Accept it. Give yourself peptalks: I can write great dialogue!
• As for the comments, if all of the judges make the same comment or give you the same low score, there's a problem.
• If only one judge makes a comment, take it or leave it.
• If 2 judges agree? Something about it isn't working. Look, then look again.
• The judges' comments may suggest they don't understand what you were trying to say. The problem isn't their understanding--the problem is with your communication. Is it a regional expression? Can the character's words or gestures be interpreted more than one way?
• Dig into your resources to develop your weak areas.

Above all--need I say it?--keep on writing!

Put Your Reader to Sleep

Yes, you read the title correctly. Put your reader to sleep. Okay, maybe not completely to sleep, but at least allow them to dream. What does dreaming have to do with writing? Everything. The dream I’m referring to is the fictional dream. If you’ve never heard the term before, don’t worry. I guarantee you know what I’m talking about. I think author, John Gardner says it best. “What counts in conventional fiction must be the vividness and continuity of the fictional dream the words set off in the reader’s mind.”

A fictional dream occurs when the world in the story you’re reading becomes more real than the physical world around you. We’ve all be there at one time or another—transported into another time or another place by an author’s well crafted words.

This experience is one that we try to create for our readers. And it’s one of the biggest differences between a good book and a great one. So how do we create this dream world? We do it by paying attention. Notice where you are right now. Are there sounds? Smells? Even if you’re not overwhelmed by your setting I bet you’re aware of it. The same thing is true for our characters. If we neglect those details, we deny our readers the chance to be transported.

Even more important than what we do to put our readers to sleep is what we DON’T do. I think writers are far more often guilty of waking a reader up. We, as the author, have an obligation to not jolt our readers out of their dream world. So what are some things we do that interrupt pleasant dreams?

• Bad Grammar—I’m not talking about a missed comma or two. I’m referring to sentence structure that’s difficult to read, modifiers that modify the wrong thing or even complicated punctuation. All of these things can cause a reader to stop and ponder what you’re trying to say. Once they stop you’ve lost them, they’re awake.
• Confusing Dialogue—This can include things like long sections of dialogue with no speaker tags or beats. If the reader has to go back and figure out who’s speaking it means you’ve either not put in enough tags or your characters don’t have unique enough voices to be identified. One word of caution, overuse of ‘said’ instead of interspersing with speaker beats can be just as jarring.
• Creative Speaker Tags—Anytime you use a speaker tag other than said or maybe asked you run the risk of making your reader stop. The word said is so common place in literature that it’s almost invisible. The reader skims lightly over it, uninterrupted. If, on the other hand, you pull out your thesaurus and try to find other words to use in its place you end up with jarring prose that tells the story through speaker tags instead of dialogue.
• Characters who don’t act right—I’m not referring to moral actions. We’ve all read stories where a character does something and we find ourselves shaking our heads. Know your characters well enough to keep them from acting out of character.
• Overwriting a dialect—I’m not against allowing your character to speak with an accent or in a dialect, but be careful how you do it. When the character is first introduced you can use a heavier hand with the spellings that denote dialect, such as learnin’ instead of learning. But after the reader gets to know the character they can hear the character speaking in their head and you don’t have to use spelling to convey their voice. In fact, if the reader has to work too hard to decipher your intent they will never even make it into the fictional dream.
• Head Hopping—This is when you switch POV (point of view) from one character to another without a good reason. The rule of thumb is that each scene should have a single POV character and that should be the character with the most at stake.

The storyteller who can invite the reader into his world and make him believe it's real has captured the essence of what it means to be a great writer.