Building Blocks of Story

cj Sez:  My latest novel, Choosing Carter, received a wonderful 4.5-star review from “InD’tale Magazine” that reads in part:  “The slow buildup of tension and the many twists and turns will have one racing through the pages . . . well-crafted and believable characters … If the reader is searching for an unputdownable read that will keep one up at night, look no further!”    (Isn’t that a great word…unputdownable?)

Today, I’m privileged to be able to reprint an article written by Carolyn Haines, a fantastic author- friend of mine. I think you’ll find this blog a worthwhile read (just like her stories).

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Publishing is a crazy business these days, and the “rules” of what publishers like vary from country to country and publisher to publisher. I teach my students at the University of South Alabama that publishing rules are sort of like fashion trends. They come and go. I think I’m accurate when I say that, but remember, my ideas are based on my experience. So what’s true for me may not be true for every writer. So here’s what I know:

In America today in almost all genre fiction, stories are told in immediate scene. This wasn’t always the case, and it certainly isn’t the case in the rest of the world.

Most—and this is a big generalization—mysteries, thrillers, romances, fantasy stories move like a train. Immediate scenes are hooked together by a strong coupling of narrative summary. The brilliant Sol Stein says that writers have three writing ways to tell a story: immediate scene, narrative summary, and description.

Description is self-evident, and I have added another category called exposition, which is just description to the 10th power. It’s description with thematic elements, description that works twice or three times as hard as just painting a picture. Often, this includes the writer’s individual style. But what of the other two?

What is immediate scene? It is merely showing what is happening rather than telling. Here’s an example. The ball crossed the plate at ninety-five miles an hour, and Johnny swung with all his might. “Crack!” Wood met leather and the ball pulled hard to third base. Johnny shot toward first base, cleats digging into sod. His hip ground into the dirt as he slid to safety. The reader lives the moment with Johnny.

In narrative summary, that same little incident could be summed up more quickly, but it would be told rather than shown. For example: Johnny swung hard at the ball and hit it squarely. He ran to first and slid to safety. There is a distance here between the reader and the action.

Both ways of writing a scene are useful to an author, and it is knowing when to give the full scene and when to use the summary that is important. Not every scene deserves the “full” treatment. But key scenes must be shown, not told.

Many of my students read a lot of 19th Century writers. These books were written when narrative summary and head hopping were in style. The author essentially narrates a great portion of the story. This famous opening—“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” is the narrator of the story telling us these things.  Much 19th Century fiction is narrative summary. It is not incorrect, but it is out of fashion now. Will it return? Maybe. But now reading audiences, for the most part, prefer immediate scene so that they can live the action. They want to draw their conclusions and not be told what or how to think.

There are exceptions to every rule. You can go in any bookstore and find newly published novels that have vast sections of narrative summary. Many are by authors who have long established careers. For writers hoping to crack the door of traditional publishing, it’s always best to understand what publishers are interested in buying.

I’m a firm believer that the author serves the story, which means that the demands of each story have to be met. If the story dictates narrative summary, author narration, intrusive narrator or any other technique, then the writer has no option except to serve the story. I do believe that all “rules” of publishing are meant to be broken. As long as they are broken with such expertise that the reader/editors sees immediately that the story could be told no other way.

Writing is a joy and a privilege. I view each idea that I’m given as a gift. I try not to let my ego get in the way of the telling of the story. I listen to the story, and then I do my very best for it. But it is helpful to understand the techniques that catch an editor’s eye or interest. You have to know the rules to break them.

Carolyn Haines is the author of eighteen novels, including the acclaimed Sarah Booth Delaney Mississippi Delta mystery series. Haines is the author of more than 70 books in a number of genres. She has been honored with the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence. She also writes gothic chillers as R.B. Chesterton. Haines teaches the graduate and undergraduate fiction writing classes at the University of South Alabama, where she is an assistant professor and Fiction Coordinator.

Thanks, Carolyn, for allowing Lyrical Pens to reprint your article. ‘Preciate it. To check out Carolyn’s website and sign up for her newsletter, zip on over to http://www.carolynhaines.com

Okay, that’s all for today. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

cjpetterson@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/CjPettersonAuthor

Choosing Carter  -- Kindle  /  Nook  /  Kobo   /  iTunes/iBook

Deadly Star --  Kindle  / Nook  / Kobo

Writerly miscellaney and BOOTY BONES

cj Sez:  First let me plug a friend's book, "BOOTY BONES."  Author Carolyn Haines is a prolific (and fantastic) author of more than seventy books, and this one is from the Sarah Booth Delaney (and Jitty the ghost) mystery series.The paperback version is arriving on Amazon  Feb. 15, and pre-orders are being taken now. Check it out and place your order at:  http://amzn.to/1L7hC4y 

So far, I’ve managed to "somewhat" keep my writerly resolution. I’ve written something almost* every day. I sat down at the computer and keyboarded clever dialogue and scenes (ha!) into my work-in-progress, even if it was only for thirty minutes. My next goal is to write a consistent hour. (*I missed a couple of days but made up for it by writing extra time the next day.).

How are all y’all (I read somewhere that "all y’all" is the plural of "y’all") guys doing with your writing so far this year? 

I know Mahala’s post recommended that writers not make resolutions, but I tend to think the opposite. I may not keep the resolution, but I feel guilty when I don’t . . . especially after I’ve told “the world” that I would do something. Feeling guilty makes me write more often than I would had I not made the resolution. (Does that make sense?)

This afternoon, I spent an hour or so finding definitions to some of the verbiage in Charles Krauthammer’s book, Things that Matter.  I absolutely love learning new vocabulary. His collection of published columns is chock full of new information for me. Most of the words I understand within the context of the sentence, but I still want to know what the word means, exactly. Such searches have been a favorite pastime for as long as I can remember. My prize for winning the 6th grade spelling bee was a Webster’s dictionary with my name engraved in gold on its blue cover. I wore the thing out. (For all you twenty-somethings out there, Dictionary and its cousins, Encyclopedia and Library Card Catalogue, are the generic ancestors of Google and its second cousin, twice removed, Wikipedia.)

Okay, time to quit and get to the task of reviewing the manuscripts of my fellow critique-group members. We meet tomorrow afternoon.

To inspire you to look at your own WIP, I’ll leave you with one of Elmore (Dutch) Leonard’s famous first lines: 

Chris Mankowski's last day on the job, two in the afternoon, two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb."—Freaky Deaky (1988)

You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

 

cj

Do you critique?

cj Sez: I written about some of these things before, but they bear repeating because critiques are a must for serious writers. We’re way too close to our manuscripts to be subjective. Despite our best intentions, we can’t judge/proofread/edit our own words, at least not thoroughly or objectively. We read past things . . . because we “thought” them. Obviously the reader will know what we mean, even if the words aren’t on the page or are wrong. Objective critique partners are able to find missing words, poorly constructed sentences, punctuation errors, missing story threads, plot holes, and all those other etceteras that the subjective writer misses.

Finding compatible critique partners is hard, sometimes very hard. Shared likability and a mutual respect for expertise are required by/for/from each other. But the manuscript deserves/needs critiques, so connecting with a critique group is definitely worth the effort.

It’s important to note that members of critique groups generally have different strengths and areas of expertise. One might be a whiz at line editing. Another might offer insights into story structure. Still another may be great at recognizing any plot weaknesses. Or character flaws. Or the dreaded middle-of-the-book sag.

There is yet another type of critiquer that can be incredibly helpful. That’s the one who perhaps isn’t so technical, but who points out the things that elicit their visceral reactions. What they laughed at, what they got scared of for the character, where they cried, got lost, what they did or didn’t “get” or where they were tempted to skim over paragraphs or pages. That kind of emotional information is invaluable. These are the comments that point the writer to where s/he’s succeeding or where s/he’s failing to communicate the desired story. These comments can represent the reaction of the writer’s intended audience.

A caveat: Writers should consider all critique comments as if they were values on a bell curve. The comments that are similar (and bunch up like a hump in the middle) could need another look. The outliers on either end of the curve (the one or two strange or obviously subjective comments) can probably be disregarded.

Whether your work is critiqued in chunks (as I like to do) or you wait until your manuscript is complete, find some fellow writers to read it over. Trade yours for theirs. And the more eyes on the manuscript, the better. I formally belong to two critique groups and occasionally also trade whole manuscript critiques with other members of the Guppies…a subset group of the Sisters in Crime organization.

Something to remember, though, is that there really are rules for critiquing. The most important one is: Be kind. Second: Find a way to start your critique with something positive. (Writers have fragile, creative egos, but you already know that.) But also be truthful. It won’t help any writer if you praise something that is poorly written. I truly understand that no one likes to hear their baby manuscript is ugly, but speaking from experience, if we’re going to be successful writers, we have to develop a rhino hide to deflect unwarranted or warranted criticism and agent rejections.

The step after getting critiques—before you send it to an agent or consider self-publishing—is to send it to an editor, but that’s a post I’ll leave for Mahala, the Lyrical Pens editor-in-residence.

I’ll leave You with an offer:  I’ll be happy to provide a brief/written critique to the first ten writers who eMail me the first three (3) pages and the last three (3) pages of Chapter One of their work-in-progress.     Rules:  Copy and paste the pages within the eMail (no attachment). The formatting might be lost so use asterisks or extra line spacing to separate the first three pages from the last three. It'll be a long eMail, but that's okay.

In the meantime, you-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same

cj . 

P.S. Congratulations to Carolyn Haines on the release (in May) of the latest must-read book in her Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery series. BOOTY BONES is now available in hardcover or eBook at Amazon.com and  BarnesandNoble.com.

P.P.S. Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there, and to those fathers who can't be home because they are serving our country in far-off places, my prayers go up for your safe return to your families.