The Role of the Hero

In every traditionally-structured story, there is a hero who faces adversity and in the end, overcomes it. Depending on the genre, this may determine how the hero overcomes the antagonist - in action-adventure and thrillers, usually the bad guy is jailed or killed. In more cerebral stories, the enemy is overcome through a triumph of the spirit, by defeating the urge to yield to the temptations presented, or simply by living in a genuine way. Of course, in more nontraditional stories, the main character is defeated, or learns an unexpected lesson that changes their life path. Sometimes the bad guys win. However, to get to this conclusive point, we have to ask ourself what we want to say with the main character's final situation in the novel, and what the message to the reader should be. A little more tricky than expected.

I will offer this from my real life: I have a constant back-and-forth with a friend of mine - let's call him Steve - about a particular story and the hero's decision. The situation is that a man has the opportunity to defeat his tormentor (and what a tormentor he was), killing him outright in an act of revenge, or he can place his tormentor in the hands of justice. Now, after what our hero has been through with a villian who has killed some of his friends and made his life quite horrible, the go-to move would be to kill him and be done with it. Now, Steve believes that is the very natural, very human response to such an action that most of us would choose without hesitating, and on that part I believe him. However, this is our hero. We ask more of our heros because readers often need their heros ot be the kind of person the reader can't be. In this story, the hero hands the villian over to the hands of justice. Steve is infuriated at that choice, but I see it as the best way to communicate that our hero has seen so much horror but still believes in the value of life. As a writer, you need to know what your characters' decisions will say and communicate about them and about the story.

In a more grounded example, I offer the classic novel, George Orwell's 1984 (spoiler alert). Our protagonist, Winston Smith, is a man whose dislike of the maleovalent Big Brother leads him to investigate the potential for rebellion. He is caught, captured, tortured, and eventually broken, then allowed to return to some semblance of a life, but now he openly accepts that he loves Big Brother. This is a horrible ending for our hero, and his final words, "I love you, Big Brother" are painful to read because any trace of Winston's rebellious self vanish with that confession. However, that is exactly what the author wanted to say. This hero was crushed by the state, but the message of this book is clearly a warning call about the dangers of overarching authority when it finds its greatest interest is keeping itself in power.With that being the message at the end, it's inevitable that poor Winston never stood a chance and that his fate was sealed. 

There's nothing saying a hero has to win, has to live, or has to reach their goal. What they are obliged to do - in order to address the reader - is act in a way that matches the message of the story. Do they maintain the moral high ground? If your message is about the importance of such a thing, then the hero either does that or pays the price for failing to do so. If your message is about the satisfaction of revenge, well, the ending is probably more like an action movie. However, in every case the important part is that the message and actions are consistent.        

The Importance of A Good Read

I am in the process of reading one of the classics - a habit I picked up back during my career as an economist. Back then, I would pick one book that was well-regarded, pretty thick, and could be read in a bunch of small, half-hour bites. Past novels have included Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, and many others. The results have been mixed - a few now rank among my favorites, others were a challenging experience , and some were just kind of... meh. Right now I am in the midst of reading quite a whopper. It's a turn-of-the-20th-century book, well over 700 pages, and while I am a quarter-way into it, I am just not... into it, I guess. I will leave the name out for now, but let's just say I might not be Irish enough for such an endeavor.

Why am I mentioning this (the reading part, not the Irish part)? I am jumping into this subject matter because as a writer, it's always good to explore things and sources that can inspire creativity. Books are the natural touchstone for a writer's creativity, simply because they share the same medium but offer different approaches toward telling a story. Lewis's Liar's Poker, for example, was a book I read while I was exploring economics and trying to understand the behemoth that was the financial markets of the 1990s. The financial geek in me wanted graphs, numbers, and data, but the book actually appealed to the creative in me - showing me the world of high finance through the eyes of someone fresh off the boat and incredibly green. That's when I felt just how powerful a book could be in showing me the real world from another perspective. Yes, it was all about financial instruments and the build-up of amazing levels of greed, but I now understood it.

Angier's Natural Obsessions hit me a similar way. Microbiology was a hobby of mine as it were, and I studied it in college with a bunch of electives and side-projects (If not for a scheduling conflict, it would've become a minor degree). However, what really set me going was reading Natural obsessions along with Watson's The Double Helix, and pairing off their approach to scientific research. I also read The Eighth Day of Creation, but the author eludes me. These all showed me parts of the world that fascinated me (and still do), but through a different lens. Watson reminisced about being a 23-year-old grad student tossed into the race to discover the structure of DNA, while Angier looked at the molecular level war against cancer from the perspective of an investigative reporter. All these demonstrations of how to see the world from outside my own framework opened up my mind to a world that was something more than me on my own. I now wanted to expand myself to fill that space.

Lastly, a classic I still appreciate is Bellow's Humboldt's Gift. Nothing will get a writer more inspired than reading about another writer struggling to get along. More to the point, however, Bellow wrote about the areas of Chicago I knew very well - his protagonist lived in my college stomping ground of Ukrainian Village, for crying out loud. However, now I got to see it from the view of someone else's creativity, and indeed I learned a lot about myself. From that point forward I had a new appreciation for my Chicago life, thank to my golfing buddy Sual Bellow (inside joke).

So, to all the writers, poets, essayists, and creatives out there, I offer you this summer challenge: Read a book; one of the classics preferably. Find one that catches your eye or that has eternally drawn your curiosity, and read it during your lunch breaks this summer. And don't be afraid to let it open your mind a bit - you might be surprised.

Just watch out for those Irish authors. Some can be real... wordy.    

Writing the Adventure

I apologize in advance if the quality of this post is not up to the standards you expect from this blog. I am currently very distracted, as a rather obnoxious raccoon has taken residence in my attic, just above my office. This raccoon and I have never met, but I can already tell this will not be the start of some hilarious odd-couple mashup comedy. The rustling and scratching alone tells me this raccoon does not have any sense of personal boundaries, and I know myself well enough to know that while I do not suffer fools lightly, my tolerance for large creatures in my attic is basically zero.

However, to this soon-to-be-evicted past's credit, it did remind me about some of the key writing elements that make a story interesting, and that is the impending approach of the unknown. Most commonly seen in adventure stories, the unknown should be a key player as early as possible. If your story starts with a fight scene, don't let on too quickly that the main character is getting beat up by the school bully for having no lunch money to steal. Start with the character taking a punch and stumbling back, only to take another punch. All the reader knows is that this person is getting beaten - everything else is a question demanding answers, and the reader drives forward. 

Also, before revealing too much of the unknown, reveal the character's feelings toward it. Fear, hatred, animosity, or any other feeling one might have toward a person hitting them or toward a raccoon running roughshod in one's attic. Peel back the story from a personal perspective rather than an objective one. Don't tell the reader, "The 5th-rgade bully beat up everyone because of his frustration of have been in 5th grade for three years running." That creates too much information toward things like motive and personality. Instead, offer up the victim's thoughts about how they wanted to escape this cruelty but nobody in the school seemed to want to change things. That develops the important part - the main character's perspective - while leaving the antagonist bully as this unstoppable force making them miserable. 

Through all this, however, you as a writer need to know your bad guy as well, and know in your own way what drives them, what makes them tick, and how they see the world. You don't need to tell the reader this information immediately or in some cases, ever, but your writing should come from an informed place. If, say, your 5th-grade bully just beats kids up for their lunch money because he likes to fight, then you need to specifically portray that aspect of him. If he, however, has a tragic backstory and is acting out his anxieties against smaller kids because that's how he's been treated all his life, then play that out as well. The antagonist doesn't need to be a sympathetic character, but it definitely helps for the writer to know where they come from and how they want the reader to respond.

And of course, the adventure part should always involve reluctance by the main character, at least at first, in order to reflect how important this choice to pursue change really is. Whether it's the kid finally standing up to the bully or the writer going into his attic to bag a raccoon, it should take some effort in order to make for a good story. Otherwise, it's not as much an adventure as it is a person going out and doing stuff.

Once the adventure starts, questions can be answered, information offered, and a full perspective can be presented. But at least in the beginning, it should be an exploration of unknowns, with a slow-burn reveal of the key elements. And on that note, I am going to grab my welding gloves, an old tarp, and a baseball bat and have a little adventure of my own in the attic. Wish me luck!   

Writing vs. Journalism

Every now and then I feel obliged to point out a few little points about what writing is and isn't - and by "writing," I mean of the primarily creative sort. Most every type of quality writing requires some degree of creativity, but I think we can all agree that the different areas of writing - research/academia, analytical, explanatory, etc. - each have different amounts of latitude compared to fiction or poetry, where creativity is the primary focus. And then, of course, there's one area that some creatives tend to avoid, and that it the art of journalism. But not so fast, I would warn you. The hard rules of fact-based journalism have a lot to teach even us creatives and poets.

Let's look at some basic journalism rules. First, your primary objective is to convey the five W's of any situation - Who, What, Where, When, and Why. This is the mandatory conveyance of information necessary for any good news story, and good fiction writers have to recognize these as well in their storytelling. However, writers have the right to be biased, so they can, in turn, determined which W they want to prioritize, minimize, or leave as the big question. If I am writing some fiction-fantasy, I really need to look at Where first, recognizing how different my world is from the reader's reality. Mysteries and legal thrillers usually focus on the Who and/or Why, while historical novels (fiction or otherwise) target the When of it all. And all of them need to have an eye toward What - the actual purpose of the piece being written.

Now, another part of journalism is regarding questions. A good journalistic piece provides answers to the five W's, but the better writing knows how to present the deeper questions in a way that asks the reader these questions before addressing them. A story might present a situation and highlight particular aspects of the story in order to make the reader say, "What?" or "Why?" then immediately address those issues. Creative writing does the same thing - it gets the reader thinking about the characters, motives, scene changes, and plot wrinkles just before offering the answers. The result for both writing schools is the same - the reader gets their answer from a special "a-ha!" moment, and there's some satisfaction in the accomplishment... so they read further.

Unfortunately, I do not know where the common space is between journalism and poetry. If those two circles on the Venn diagram overlapp, that intersection is smaller than anything I can perceive. If any poets or journalists wish to chime in on this, please do. Otherwise, I will just leave it by saying I have never seen a serious news story rhyme.

    

The Law of Writing

I am guessing that today, everyone is taking some time off of work to commemorate the holiday. I am guessing many citizens are gathering around in parks (weather allowing) or in public areas to chime in this very important holiday that has been recognized since before I was born. It actually became an official day in 1958, and has been a part of our country's culture ever since. Now to be clear, I am not talking about May Day - your confusion is understandable. No, I am talking about Law Day, the day commemorated by President Eisenhower to recognize the importance of the legal framework of our country or of any functioning governed body.

Upon further reflection, I am guessing all the hype today is actually about May Day and not Law Day. After all, working is quite popular in this country, but following the law comes with a lot of squishiness. Just one drive down I-294 will demonstrate with terrifying clarity how people disregard certain laws if it gets in the way of their preferred NASCAR-like habits. We still do have laws in this country, and a number of them sometimes get enforced (I actually once saw someone on I-294 receiving a ticket). The thing about those laws, however, is that plenty of them look good in theory but don't translate to the real world.

Moving this to writing, you've probably heard that you are not supposed to end a sentence with a pronoun. It's a rule, right? Well, regardless of whether it is or isn't, like most people, it's something I don't put up with (because if I did, that sentence would read, "...it's something I don't up with put."). There are plenty of rules that get neglected just as much as Law Day, but this is a part of the writing process. First, we learn the rules. Second, we discover their purpose and intention. Third, we look at what can happen if we bend or break those rules. Lastly, we put those results to use. In the case of the symbolic speed limit on I-294, I know what it is, I recognize it's there as a traffic regulator and as a means to reduce the severity of accidents, I know that if I bend it a bit, I get to my destination a few minutes earlier, and so I respond by keeping up with the flow of traffic zooming along at about mach 3.

If you know your rules of writing, then play with them and find out how they bend. Technically, rules of grammar are less flexible and more confusing when they are twisted about, but as a stylistic measure it can be effective - you just have to brace yourself for the consequences. If you opt to consistently use pronouns for representing characters, you should expect there the be some confusion during crowded sequences. If what you want is to give the reader a sense of confusion and disorientation, well, mission accomplished. Just be prepared for some people to set aside the book entirely. Just like if you're driving 80 down I-294 -  there is a chance you end up with a ticket for your efforts or an epic accident that will likely make the local news.

During this holiday - whether it's Law Day or May Day or Worker's Day or the Feast of Julian of Bale (a real thing), I hope you get to put in a little time for writing, and maybe even get a chance to break a rule or two. Just not on I-294.    

A Writer's Warning

If my calendar is correct (and it usually has a better accuracy rate than I do), my next post will be in May, and National Poetry Month will be over. Of course, this will be a bittersweet moment for me, mostly because April gives me a formal reason to lobby for poetry - for reading, for writing, for thinking about, and for exploring the many different poetic forms. Now, I do not claim to be a poet in the deeper sense. I have written poems but I don't feel I have built up those skills enough to deserve the title - yet. However, I have written enough verse to offer fair warning about something I think is a big threat to poetry, and that is AI.

To be clear, I am no Luddite. I use AI for various functions. I let different AIs examine my writing, search for themes in my longer works, and map out plot arcs when I feel they might be wandering. However, some people fall into the habit of letting some bot take the next step and start creating things, and poetry is, unfortunately, the easiest target. Since many forms of poetry work within a format and structure, they become easy prey for people to create through even simple AI use. And having seen a number of specimens of AI-generated poetry, they have the look, shape, and even a surface feel of a legitimate poem. However, don't be fooled. Poetry is something more than just finning in the blanks of some formula. It's not a Mad-Lib, it's an art form.

I am reluctant to suggest this, but it might get the point across. Go to the AI platform of your choice and ask it to write a sonnet about unrequited love. Within seconds, you will likely get a 14-line poem, probably in iambic pentameter, discussing that very subject. The rhyme scheme will work, the words will flow nicely - mission accomplished. You will, in fact, have a sonnet. However, dig into it. Search for the underlying heart of the poetic AI slop you just created, and see if you feel a pulse. Do you see the subject the poem discusses? Do you connect to the underlying meaning? Or do you just find some words triggering emotions, like a verbal ink-blot test where you see what you want to? That's where the difference lies. Ten people can read an AI sonnet and come to the same conclusion about it. A human-generated sonnet will get a variety of reactions, and often disagreement. There's a pulse with the handwritten poem. The AI piece is lifeless.

So, if and when you write a poem - sonnet or otherwise - remember that you are performing a very human task, and your humanity is a part of your creation. Pour in whatever it is that makes you a human being, and let that do the speaking. Make mistakes, have fun with it, and remember you are creating something very personal that some AI cannot match with depth of feeling.

On that note, I close with this untitled piece of freeverse:

Words.
Building blocks of communication.
Description.
Capturing what we perceive with those words.
Narrative.
Explaining the world to each other.
Stories.
The events of our world, as we see them.
Writing.
A tool for filling the space between us.

Surrounding this galaxy of words lies the interstellar force of poetry and everything it encompasses.
Poetry is the language of the soul, the quantum forces explaining life beyond just living.
We describe things outside the tactile, capturing feelings, concepts, states of being.
Poetry bridges the gaps between our worlds, connecting you and me, making us.

The abstract becomes concrete, the breeze captured, the sunlight embraced.
Writing shares our worlds, poetry unites us into something greater than our little selves.
For all of the things writing can accomplish, poetry alone makes us whole; makes us complete.
With poetry, we are one. 

(No AI here)

The Wide World of Poems

As the end of National Poetry Month fast approaches, I wanted to throw one last piece about poetry to my many readers. As my regular readers know all too well, I am an advocate of writing poetry as one of the many exercises people should perform to be a better writer. This does not mean you will be an awesome poet - no guarantees in life - but the art of poetry helps us distill our thoughts and feelings into more concise ideas. We lose a lot of the wandering thoughts and bothersome distractions that make writing feel flabby and loose, and instead sharpen our focus on a simple thought or theme.

With that in mind, I felt the best way to get the poetry inspiration going was to offer a wide variety of poem styles and formats, and give you, the writer, the opportunity to try them out and see what fits best. Poems come in many shapes and sizes, so I won't go into the little details like writing in meter and so forth (although it is worth knowing). Rather, I will just lay out some options and you can choose your own.

• Monostich: As I discussed in my last post, this is a one-line poem, without commas or pauses, to convey one idea
• Haiku: a three-line poem where the first and third lines are five syllables long, with the middle line being seven syllabes. Often these are about nature and the last line sums up the other two, but that's optional
• Tanka: Similar to a Haiku, but instead of the 5-7-5 syllable structure, it closes with two extra seven-syllable lines
• Limerick: A five-line poem where the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme with each other, and the third and fourth lines rhyme (known as the AABBA structure)
• Triolet: An eight-line poem where the first line is repeated and in the fourth and seventh lines
• Pirouette: A ten-line poem made up of two five-line stanzas, where the last line of the first stanza is the first like of the second stanza
• Trimeric: A four stanza poem, with the first stanza being four lines and the subsequent three being three lines. In this format, the second, third, and fourth lines of the first stanza become the lead lines of the second, third, and fourth stanza, respectively
• Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem with a matching rhyme scheme (AABBCC...). The traditional sonnet presents a question in the first six lines, a realization in the seventh and eighth lines, and the last six lines present a resolution
• Villanelle: A 19-line poem composed of five three-line stanzas, followed by a closing quatrain. These usually have two recurring ideas that are repeated intermittenyly throughout the work.

Okay, that shouls give you plenty to work with. However, if none of them appeal to you, I offer one last form that can offer some artistic freedom: Freestyle. Also known as Free Verse, this is just expression in its pure form. It can be anything - it is open style. If you've never seen this style, hunt down the various clips from "Louder than a Bomb" on YouTube. It's not that hard.

Happy Naional Poetry Month!

    

One-Liners

"Nature serves as the eternal artist of life's portraits lost to time."
- An actual poem

I haven't done a poetry post in a while, and since this is National Poetry Month, well, here it is. However, because so many people are uncomfortable with the concept of writing poetry and the many demands that come with it, I am playing this one a little fast and loose. It will be a shorter post, and it will be about one of the shortest forms of poetry around: Monostich.

I wish I could say I was an expert on the monostich poem, but I can't make that statement. Rather, I was introduced to this form by a fellow writer in the Wednesday workshop I attend. He brought up the subject as a question of, "What's that term for a poem that's only one line?" Sarcastically, I responded, "Slogan." Well, after he took a quick trip to the internet, it turns out that it was, in fact, the monostich - a one-line poem, preferably without pauses, additional clauses or phrases, or diversions. This form is the epitome of the short, sharp usae of words to explain some concept or quickly make a statement about the world. It is usually painfully brief and to the point, boiling out all but the significant bits.

Now, you might think to yourself, "This sounds like a sideways approach to a haiku but without the syllable rules." In some ways you would be correct. Any number of haiku are actually just one idea spread across three lines with a syllable pattern. In fact, if you reread the poem above, you can rewrite it as such:

"Nature serves as the
eternal artist of life's
portraits lost to time."

Voila! It's a haiku (sort of)! Put it back into one continuous line and you are back to a monostich. Same message, same words, different categorization all because of line breaks. It's a simple way to write a poem, with the only real challenge being the demand of distilling it down to the core meaning, without any distractions.

So, my request on this day as a commemoration to National Poetry Month, write one profound sentence. Let it be something that interprets the world in some special way - writing "I am hungry" might be true, but it's not as profound as you might think, even if you are profoundly hungry. Give it a shot, see what happens, and if you are feeling particularly bold, leave it in the comments section (anonymously if you prefer).

Happy National Poetry Month!  

The Personal Experience

There's a common hurdle writers will come across, time and again, where they have the temptation to get themselves immersed head-to-toe in a scene, poring through the details, describing every feature, and really giving the reader the full and complete experience they deserve. Any scene with a magnitude of intensity - action scenes, love scenes, death scenes - present the writer with this opportunity, but it's a temptation that comes at a price. Getting too far into a scene can actually weaken it as an experience if the writer leaves out one key part - the character's participation in the event.

Sometimes, in life, we experience things so intense that our memories of the event overwhelm our capacity to process everything that happens. In particularly extreme cases we detach ourselves from the experience - disassociation takes over, and while we might still remember the event, we disconnect our own place within it, sometimes not even fully realizing we were a part of the experience we remember. This occurs in writing as well, but at least we, as authors, have control of how we discuss the character's participation.

Action sequences are very easy to lose the characters. Let's look at a car chase - not as fun in writing as it is in the movies, but for now let's overlook that. One car is being chased by several others through the city streets, dodging traffic, swerving around pedestrians while the horn honks away trying to clear a path. There might even be gunfire - bullets fly around the lead car, shattering the windows, ricocheting off the trunk - all during a 100-mile-per-hour chase down a one-way road. This can be several pages worth of action, but I can guarantee you it will get boring, or at the very least it misses a great opportunity to actually be interesting, because it lacks any reference to the characters involved.

It was no coincidence that in the brief example above, I made no mention of the characters. The action was the cars, the guns, the bullets, but no actual people. This is where scenes lose their punch - the cars drive through the scene, but it's just action, not tension. Now, what if you describe that car chase from the personal space of one of the drivers - pursuer or the pursued, your choice. If they are being chased, how are they deciding where to go? When the light up ahead turns red and crossing traffic fills the intersection, how does that character respond? We get very used to the movies where the car just magically flies through the crowded intersection with precision timing, but in writing, that's our opportunity to show how the driver responds. Does the driver see an opening that just might work and rushes toward it, or just lean on the horn and pray for daylight? Do they have a deathwish and no concern for the drivers ahead? Is their desperation so extreme that they will do anything to evade the cars behind them?

Of course, this doesn't mean the story has to be a cerebral exploration of a character's driving habits. However, it should be going on with a critical awareness that the character's actions and decisions are a part of the scene, and how it unfolds needs to fit the character. A driver who holds every life to be sacred might have a real problem taking a detour through a public park, but this can be a great source of tension for the character if they are just that desperate to escape.

Writing is a great form of escapism from the real world, which can frankly be very boring at times. However, good writing brings the real world into that space just enough to make anything interesting and make everything personal.   

Conflict and Story Openings

After doing a little review of my last post, I did a little more thinking about the importance of the opening line and just what it needs to bring to the table. My thesis in Friday's entry was that it was the hook that brings in the reader, and I will stick by that one. However, I think it's only fair to discuss what a good hook really is. Yes, it should provide a great mix between information and presentation of the unknown. It should also be worded quickly and sharply to bring that point to the fore. However, there's one problem to address with all these routes, and that is... the problem.

Courtesy of Battlefield 2

What do I mean by a problem? Well, let's put it this way: Presenting a question in your opening line or paragraph creates a natural urge for the reader to seek an answer - that part is great. However, a technique that can be even stronger is bringing up not just a question, but a conflict. Not necessarily a fight or an argument, but a clear, discernible issue that is creating some sort of friction with our main character. They can be in whatever starting pose you want, but bringing out the problem they face in the immediate first sentence or so creates a tension. It's no longer a question about what's happening, but whether or not the character can overcome it. 

This about this opening: The story begins with a sniper lining up his target in the crosshairs, his trigger finger trembling as he hesitates to take the shot. This creates questions immediately - is our main character the sniper or the target? Is the sniper a good or bad character? What is the situation around shooting someone? Good questions to put out there for the reader to ponder. However, we create a larger issue with the sniper hesitant to take the shot. After all, that's what snipers do, right? They shoot people from a distance. So why the trembling hand, the reluctance? This is a question, but it is conflict - the situation is going against the character's intended action, and needs to be overcome. At this point, the stakes are higher for the sniper, not just to take out the target but to overcome some personal resistance to this particular mission. The interest builds.

At this point, the writer now has a game to play, which is offering a little bit of information to suggest possible reasons for the inaction, but still leaving some ambiguity as to what the best answer is. We can inform the reader that the target is a friend of the sniper, making the conflict even sharper. We can also point out that the friend is a double-agent, now creating a conflict between duty to the mission and believing the friend is somehow innocent. We build the conflict without resolving it, merely giving it more shape and texture without giving the reader an easy out. If we establish this early, we can carry this conflict throughout the story, piling layer upon layer of challenging beliefs onto the poor main character, giving the reader so much to think about that it might cause an argument at the book club. (The goal of any author should be to cause arguments at book clubs.)

As a last note, don't throw too much conflict on the reader at once. If, in our sniper scenario, we introduce the sniper with the shaking hand, the target, then point out the target is the sniper's friend, then challenge the friend's loyalty, and oh-by-the-way the friend is married to the sniper's sister, and the sniper's hands are shaking from a progressive nerve disorder, and taking out the target could save thousands of lives, but it might be the wrong person... well, there's such a thing as too much information at once. The slow build of our sniper's situation should be savored by the author because the reader will enjoy it that much more.     

Happy Anniversary!

It has been a long adventure, but here I am, celebrating the eight-year anniversary of this blog. Yes, before COVID, before so much chaos, this was starting off as a thing I was trying out as a way to talk with the writing community. And now, over 600 posts and countless thousands of hits later, I think I am getting the hang of it. More importantly, working through this post has really helped me flex my writing chops. So, to celebrate this anniversary, I wanted to discuss one of the subjects I have learned the most about: The opening line.

No matter what you write, it will all remain unread unless someone else is inspired enough to read it. And, unless the person is assigned to read all of your words, they need to be drawn into your work by something within those grand sentences. This is where the opening line comes into play - it is the hook that draws in the attention of the reader. It doesn't have to be a dramatic moment, explosive action, or even a brilliantly clever play on words. It just needs to contain an element that brings the reader a little closer to the subject, a spark that draws them to read the next sentence. And the next. And the next. And so on. Consider this opening sentence to a story:

My only memory of my father is the image of him spread out on the living room floor, eyes staring into open space. 

It creates an image, but does it tell a lot? Does it make the reader want to go forward? To some, yes - there is a little taste of the unknown in that line, leaving the reader wondering why the father character is in such a pose. But if we drop another hint, the sentence really takes off:

My only memory of my father is the image of him spread out on the living room floor, eyes staring into open space, gun still in his hand. 

Okay, things just got real. With those five extra words, the stakes have been raised and the reader's interest in continuing is pushing toward a need to continue. Those extra words open up a lot of unknowns in the story, and it is the unknowns that make people want to go further. When you make your writing a combination of grounded, sensible information and wildly interesting unknown features, readers go to the next sentence. And the next...

A great writing exercise is to write great opening lines. Maybe they will be so good that they inspire you to write the rest of the story, but for now, try this. Write an opening sentence for a story. Then give it a few extra words that make it exponentially more interesting. This is what will ultimately grab your readers. This is the art of the opening line. 

And it only took me 600+ posts to learn this.

    

The Compound Sentence

I made a promise in my last post, a promise to do a deeper dive into the work of art called the compound sentence, but I understood well in advance that such an exploration could get carried away in such a manner that any type of message in such a post would get lost within the lengthy explanation required to demonstrate just what a compound sentence is, therefore while I will still discuss the art behind creating such a work of grammatical perfection, I will not push too hard in suggesting whether it should be the preferred tool of choice as you go on your writing journey and develop the kind of process that best expresses your thoughts and desires.

That previous sentence is a bit of a grammatical nightmare, weighing in at a robust 120 words and likely to set off an alarm in the minds of editors. However, it is not what one would call a run-on sentence, but rather it is a compound sentence. The difference is, of course, that a run-on sentence wanders away from the subject and goes in tangential or even unrelated directions. A compound sentence, however, sticks to a central message or discussion point, with each phrase building upon the last one. It may sound like a modest distinction, but that's the important part, and I will explain why.

I was going to reprint the opening sentence from a draft of Newton Berry's The Hanged Man, but I can't seem to find my copy. If you find one, great, but allow me to explain. The book opens with a river raging through a limestone crag, with a man dangling upside-down from the edge of a cliff above, his foot caught in a gnarled root. Now, one could start the book off by focusing upon the man and his struggle to get back up the cliff. However, the author starts with a 234-word sentence describing the river's furious churning through this narrow crag. What does this do? It takes the reader immediately into a force of nature that is the river rapids, and holds them there as the scene builds from the cold water to the churning foam to the hard, relentless limestone cliff walls, then ascends the heights to the man dangling two-hundred feet above this violent situation. In that one compound sentence, the reader is immersed in the scene, not allowed to come up for air until that first period emerges just as the man hanging off the cliff is mentioned. And the reader is hooked.

Now, there are other forms of compound sentences that also pass editorial muster, but they are done in a different manner. In my mission to read James Joyce's Ulysses, there is a 4,391-word soliloquy at the end, taken from the spoken word of one of the characters. Now it's not exactly fair to call such a thing a compound sentence since it is written as a manner of speech, and in speech we can ramble on with stunningly imperfect grammar for hours and hours without stopping if our audience lets us. However, it is written word and done in a way to attract the reader to its message, so it counts and it's rather fascinating to read from the eyes of a writer. (In Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club, there is supposedly a sentence registering just shy of 14,000 words in length, but I cannot attest to having read it. It is, however, on my bucket list.)

In short, the compound sentence, when taken to extremes, can give the author an extra tool when it comes to finding ways to draw in the reader - either into a scene, a character, or an emotion. When done right, they are extraordinarily immersive and quite memorable. Just as long as one does not ramble on and on and on and on and...    

Schoolhouse Rock Revisited

I will be the first to admit I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole this weekend. After my Friday post, Object versus Subject, I hopped on YouTube to awaen some nostalgic feelings and revisit some of those great Schoolhouse Rock videos (never mind that they are actually more jazz-oriented than rock and roll). Anyway, I think I went through most every one of them - some twice - just reliving the good memories and the absolute brilliance of these three-minute clips as teaching tools. I can't tell you how many times they've rolled through my head at one point or another during my adult life, but I can tell you a built quite an educational foundation upon those little songs. So now I would like to discuss the most important ones again - but as lessons for a writer and not just someone learning grammar. (Don't worry - I will neither sing nor rewrite any lyrics.)

Adverbs: We learned that adverbs are simply modifiers of verbs or sometimes adjectives. However, in writing, there is a lot of controversy about whether they are needed. Some people avoid them entirely because they are too easy to abuse, while others definitely believe they enrich descriptions of action. I make a special note to use my adverbs to offer extra punch, but only when the punch comes from a direction not expected - a sucker-punch, if you will. Like we learned, "quickly" is an adverb we can use to show how someone runs - but that's adverb abuse. If someone runs, we assume it's quickly, so just leave it out. If, however, they run trudgingly, clumsily, or drunkenly, well, those become some high-value adverbs. In short, only modify things where there isn't already an assumption in play.

Adjectives: Now, these are more important parts of description. Do not get them confused with their adverb cousins - use your descriptive words to fill in the blanks of our environment. However, like I mentioned with adverbs, use the descriptors that offer the most bang for their buck. The greenness of a tree, a blue sky, or blue water, these things are givens that really need to pop if you are going to push for describing the water's color. Murky, brackish, crystalline, iridescent with a shimmer of oily residue - now those bring out details that otherwise aren't assumed.

Noun: A noun is a person, place, or thing. Nothing new for writers here - I just needed to replay that song again as I wrote.

Conjunctions: These are toxic little friends of any writer because they attach thoughts and phrases. However, to follow up on the railroad metaphor used in Schoolhouse Rock, if we connect too many ideas and thoughts together it acts like a train with too many connected cars - it drags, weighs down the activity, and ultimately goes nowhere. As writers, we like bringing very complex ideas to life. However, we can get carried away with our ideas and create run-on concepts. In the case of complex sentences, unless you want to go for the compound sentence presentation (to be discussed in the next post), try to limit your sentence length to at best 30-40 words. Long sentences are often more for the author's ego than the presentation of an idea.

For the rest of them, well, go to YouTube and check them out.     

Object Versus Subject

If there's one thing I struggled with in high school, it was grammar. My language usage was just fine when I spoke (though a little slurred), but when it came down to the academic parts of breaking down a sentence, that was it - I tapped out. My identification of the parts of a sentence was exclusively informed by Schoolhouse Rock (check YouTube if you aren't familiar), so I knew that "a noun is a person, place, or thing" and interjections were for excitement, for emotion, etc., and verbs did things. Other than that, I was fairly lost. I actually learned more about grammar from my German class, where prepositions were all-important and you always capitalized your nouns. However, I digress.

I am not bringing this up as a preface to a big writer's grammar lesson, but rather to set the stage that I am not one who dives deeply into grammar when it comes to writing. As an editor, if the verb and subject don't agree, I make the correction but I don't elaborate on the explanation. I don't go head-first into discussing split infinitives or dangling participles - I just point out the problem. And one thing I definitely don't want to get caught doing is preaching about when something is an object or a subject. I am, however, going to plant a little seed here about how you should consider these things in your writing.

We all know what an object is - a table, a dog, a chicken. We know how to describe objects - the sturdy table was made of thick oak and polished regularly to a bright shine. However, how does this help us in our writing when it comes to object versus the more enigmatic concept of a subject. Well, glad you asked. Per my earlier discussion, I am not going to go into the details of how things get defined and classified, and lay down a bunch of rules that most people don't know anyway. Instead, I will offer a way to think about things that should help differentiate between the two as far as your writing is concerned.

Too many times, we write about our characters as if they were objects. We give them a calculating description, going over them to bring out the details and provide an image that a good sketch artist could work with. However, when it comes to writing about a person, place or event as a subject, write about it not in clinical detail, but like you care about it; like you want to know it personally. If I want to identify a person at a bar, give me a description of them as an object. If I want to get to know someone better, tell me about their interesting features, their qualities that make them worth investigating.

If I am describing, say, a farm dog as an object, he might be a 100-pound sheepdog, his long fur patched black and white, with his big head hanging down below his shoulders. Now I can see that dog. As a subject, however, I would talk about how that big lug would chase the chickens that got out of the pen, barking and howling but never running fast enough to catch one, just putting a little fear into the ones trying to make a break for it. Now that dog has personality, even for a dog.

Sure, plenty of people might complain that I didn't discuss the object/subject rules. That wasn't my intention, so mission accomplished. However, treating your various characters like subjects versus objects brings them into the story as opposed to them being just set decorations. The writing is always better for it.      

Games Writers Play

We all know the basics of writing - either fiction or fact, the objective is to communicate a message to a larger audience. With storytelling, we want to give the reader the most valuable parts of the events and parties involved, along with anything that carries an emotional theme. With poetry, conveying the sentiment is paramount as opposed to description. And of course, our choice of dialogue is all about the spoken words. However, writers get to reach into a bag of tricks and play some little games with the reader if they so choose, along with the actual technical writing. These are some of the things that make a simple story very complex, or create a compelling narrative.

One of my favorite writer tricks is The Unreliable Narrator. The writer gets to tell a story from someone's perspective, but maybe doesn't tell the reader that this character might play fast and loose with the details. Maybe the narrator doesn't remember everything and leaves out critical details, maybe they have an altered sense of reality, or maybe they are trying to convince you of their innocence when they are, in fact, guilty. The Unreliable Narrator is broad in scope, and can cover a lot of different areas, but it has to be done with a purpose other than just to say, "Gotcha!" to the reader. It's the difference between a trick and a prank - the former being an impressive turn of events while the latter is just annoying. 

Another grand game to play is the Multiple Perspectives Narrator - giving the reader several characters' first-person perspectives, and letting the unreliability be sorted out by things such as deduction. We see this in mystery novels through the interrogation of various suspects, but when it is done from the perspective of those suspects, the reader gets to view the story from many different, perhaps conflicting angles. Epic storytelling often does this, leaving the reader to get a true-to-life feeling for the story because they have to fill in details.

Oh - regarding details, there are a lot of games writers can play with details. Everyone understands the basics of description and fleshing out scenes and characters. One great game is for the writer to describe characters without throwing in all these sensory cues but rather through metaphor, simile, and conneciton to ideas. The character's looks are never revealed but the reader should get a keen visual of what the character feels like. If I describe a shady senator, I can use terms like a lopsided smile, a sinister expression, shifty eyes, etc. and those physical traits will come through. However, what if I take their appearance and fill it in through character traits? Maybe I go with, "The senator stood at the podium with a smile made wide by dozens of broken promises, adjusting a tailored suit made entirely out of bribes and kickbacks." No two people would be able to sketch the same vision of the character, but the reader would have an unquestionable image of who that politician was, what he looked like to them, and what he was all about.

These games are all fun as long as they are done with a purpose. As long as the shady senator doesn't need to have a distinguishing physical trait, go ahead and describe him through his faults. If a narrator is unreliable because he is actually the bad guy, make sure his narrative is crafted to broadcast his innocence even in the face of evidence against him. And if there are several characters offering conflicting stories, make sure that you - the author - know the real story, and why everyone else's is just a little different.      

Smalltown - Last Stop

I'm actually a little surprised about some of the IMs people have dropped me about the past few worldbuilding posts and our hypothetical little place of Smalltown. Having a nice discussion about everything from people to dialects to characterization of this little locale have, of course, made me think a lot about it too, and I like to think my writing has benefitted. However, of all the things popping through my mind, there's one final little comment I want to throw out there about creating a town that takes on its own character. It's a simple question: Why?

It may sound odd, asking why should one make a location that is full and rich and vibrant. The why seems obvious - to make the writing and the story more compelling. The short response would be, "Yes, it will do that." However, the longer answer would start asking why is it so important for the town to be compelling when you already have characters, a plot, and various obstacles and challenges to throw in the way of the hero's journey? Does a full, rich town setting actually add more to the experience? Well, to answer this, we need to ask ourselves if Smalltown brings in the one thing that makes all features of our writing more interesting: tension.

Now, this form of tension is not what it might sound like. The down does not need to be fraught with its own conflicts, no ribalries, political intrigue, class warfare, etc. (although if there's room for it, why not?). Rather, the consideration of tension means highlighting the aspects of the town that relate directly to the characters, and maybe conflict with their goals in life. This is something that Smalltown, USA is very capable of, since it can have any feature you want in it. Even the most innocuous place can grate on a character's nerves or challenge their beliefs if you let it.

In my father's later years, he moved to his own little Smalltown in Indiana; a place so far out of the way I won't bother mentioning its name. After life in and around Chicago, he wanted to escape from anything and everything that reminded him of the Windy City - for years he was downright phobic about crossing back into Illinois. However, he realized in time that even his little Smalltown was a challenge to live in. People there never discussed or debated things, they just accepted what they were told and moved on. My father thrived on discussing subjects at length and defending an opinion, but no, not in Smalltown. He also loved the diversity life has to offer (especially in Chicago), but this vanished once he moved. Everyone had the same pickup truck, the same haircut, they were all Notre Dame fans and had the same toppings on their pizza - sausage and onion; anything else was too risky and could possibly lead to radical things like dancing.

My father's biggest challenges in Smalltown involved the simple battles of life: being a non-comformist when everyone expects obedience. The tension there involved simple conflict: a church of a different denomination, finding a place that sold national newspapers, or hoping someone else in town heard the story he heard on NPR. Yes, it was a tense little place you've likely never heard of.

When you make up your Smalltown, give a lean toward how your characters might find life there challenging. Are they residents who have always wanted to escape and see the world but local norms say to stay put? Are they a red family in a blue town or vice versa? Are they new to the place - perhaps big-city transplants who are now stranded among the country mice? These always foster healthy areas for tension, and since you know the main plot already, you can customize the challenges so that Smalltown finds the exact nerve to grate on. This engages our readers every time, and keeps them fully aware of the situation, the plot, the conflict, and the obstacles presented by this little place called Smalltown.    

More About Smalltown - People

I thought this little discussion about worldbuilding would be one simple post, but the discussion around making the world that is Smalltown, USA, has drawn some interest and now demands further discussion. Therefore, today will be some comments about the good (or bad) people of our little town, and how to forge both individuals and the town's public identity.

First, a disclaimer. To be fair, everyone has their idea of what a small, little town should be like and how its people behave. Whether it's a peaceful rural town deep in red-state territory where everyone has pickup trucks and distinct opinions, or its an eclectic mish-mosh of different people from different places, all putting together some awkwardly-designed, Frankenstein's-monster collection of an identity, the important part is that it's yours, and your job is to make it come alive. If someone says, "People aren't like that in the places I go to," well, they have never been to Smalltown. Your responsibility is to decide whether they are projecting their opinions onto your ideas, or possibly you're not communicating your locale as clearly as your vision demands.

Now with that out of the way, think about what the average citizen is like in your little town, and I mean this in the most boring way possible. Are the people there generally older than the average town, are there more kids than usual, is it mostly families, retirees. empty-nesters? None of your characters have to represent that exact demographic, but as you communicate the feeling of the town's people, you establish a baseline for the reader to work with. In a quiet little Midwest town you might envision mostly middle-aged folk, most people familiar with each others' faces, everyone walking when they run their errands - the simple life. That's your baseline, and the background characters meet those criteria.

Once you have that in place (and you can probably see where this is going), the introduction of a character who doesn't fit the mold now just leaps off the page. The character doesn't have to be a brash city kid with a loud Dodge Challenger zooming down the streets to stand out - they just need that one little difference. If they are the new face in town and everyone looks at this unfamiliar person, this becomes a chance to show the character's response to this attention. Do they want to fit in, do they care, or do they feel uncomfortable? How do they respond when a cashier wants to see their ID - and it's out-of-state? The character's every action is now very much on display center stage because their differences have been highlighted. 

The importance of knowing your townspeople and identifying who they are viewed as a whole may sound cliché, but there's a reason it has lasted so long. In a crowd of people in expensive suits, silk ties, and expensive watches, the one person without a jacket is the one who gets noticed. This is exactly who you want your character to be..     

Smalltown follow-up - Flavor

When I decided to write a few pieces about the finer points of world-building, I knew I was opening up a real can of worms. For writers, especially those in the fantasy genre, there is a lot of world to build, so this part of the process alone can be epic. That being said, I thought it would be best to start from talking about the smallest part of the world - the locale - and build out. However, I think I overlooked a few things about creating the typical Smalltown, USA, so I would really like to focus on one particular aspect: flavor.

While technically I was born in Chicago and therefore the city is my origin, the fact of the matter is that before I was three I was living in a little suburb outside of Chicago and its county boundaries. This suburb used to be a little collection of houses in the space between two older villages. Then in 1969 a developer who shall remain nameless built out his dream of creating a huge, diverse, integrated community with all the latest amenities that would become a little boomtown of 50,000 within a generation and double yet again in the next generation. Well, nice try...

This little village (not quite 8,000 people as of the last census) might sound like a failed success story, and depending on what angle you looked at it from, it was. However, the flavor of the neighborhood was something entirely different, and indeed quite fascinating, even in the spaces where it failed. As a writer, we could write about the town that tried to be a success but fell way short of its dreams, but that's not a description as much as an epitaph. When worldbuilding, it's the writer's responsibility to give the reader the view from inside that world, from the street-level view of whatever might be interesting, then build the information around those items.

One of my favorite traits of my little town happened to be the many abandoned grain silos dotting the periphery of the incorporated area. From a historical point of view, these were the remnants of the many farms that were bought out to build the golf course, industrial park, and housing developments. Those things never fully materialized, but the land stood vacant, the properties going to seed. That's the history lesson - the flavor of it comes from the characters and how they see these massive, derelict grain silos standing out on the horizon, surrounding the town like so many failed dreams or hulking tombstones to an overambitious ideal. Old, abandoned farm houses and barns dating to before the Great Depression are now playgrounds for the young trespassers, massive hills of dug-out earth for basements of properties never built now stand like so many monuments for children to ride their bikes down with reckless abandon. Those landmarks - testimonies to failure - become the flavor of the town, and make it more realized than just rattling off a history lesson. 

I still go back to my hometown now and then, just to look at how some things never changed. Many of the grand buildings from the 1970s are long gone, replaced by dollar stores and car washes, the great expansion now frozen in time. Those grain silos, however, are still there, and seeing them and all their historical meaning tells me all I need to know about that little town. 

Worldbuilding and Smalltown, USA

There's a town fairly close to where I live, and I use it for the basis of a lot of my writing. I won't name it specifically because, well, laws and stuff, so for this piece I will call it Smalltown. The quaint little village of Smalltown is within range of Chicago, but it outside the main area of Cook County and doesn't carry a lot of the burdens that come with all things Chicago. There are cornfields and old, abandoned barn silos dotting the landscape, the attitudes are very different from "the Big City" (which is what people in Smalltown call Chicago), and people very much have their own ways of doing things. So how does one translate Smalltown to their writing?

One of the most important parts of creating your own personal Smalltown is the art of distilling what makes it unique on its own basis. It doesn't help much to identify this little place by how it is so different than Chicago - that requires the reader to know about Chicago as well as this little place of your own making. What are five things about the town that identify it - they don't have to be unique to that town alone, but they have to be points the reader can connect with. Was it a manufactured town that just sprang up in the late 1960s, or did it start off as a whistle stop along one of the first north-south train lines through the area back before the Civil War? Do people stay there for generations, or do families migrate through there without setting down stakes? Are there a lot of parks? Cemeteries? A main road with all the businesses where everyone goes on a Friday night? Do they depend on a Pizza Hut for their pizza, or does everyone just order their sausage & onion special at some place called Spunky's?

Next stop - what kind of character does Smalltown have? Is it a friendly place where everyone says hello as they pass strangers along the street, or are outsiders viewed with suspicion? Are there school rivalries? Is there town spirit, or a nature of honoring tradition? Do they have parades for everything, or just keep to themselves? A town has to have some form of identity in this regard, for better or worse, for it to seem real. In well-written stories involving some residential setting, that town can be a character unto itself, and even an antagonist if it represents everything the main character is against. But to do so, that town needs to seem real and multi-faceted, otherwise it is just a lost opportunity.

And, of course there's the local dialect. This is often a lost art, but it can really make a town stand out. Do locals call Coca-Cola pop, soda, or Coke? Do they have grocery bags or grocery sacks? Do you go to Spunky's and order a pizza or do you call it a pie? Pancakes or flapjacks? Bringing out little details like this - especially when a character is introduced from the outside - makes this place believable and appreciated.

One word of warning: If you are creating your own imaginary Smalltown where its exact geography isn't really important, don't feel obliged to follow the exact model of some place you've visited or the way you've heard some town are. Your job is to create your own little town out of whole cloth, without worrying that you'll get responses like, "I don't know people who talk like that." This is your town, your world, your responsibility. Just make sure you are consistent with it, that you know the importance of any features you bring up, and you immerse the reader in this new culture.

Welcome to Smalltown!   

Reviewing your Writing Voice

I've been having a little fun lately with a review of some of the old literary masters. Dickens, Tolstoy, the ones who you read to really get a feel for the writing of the times. However, what is making this fun is not the act of reading their works, but of exploring the text and analyzing their voice, structure and vocabulary. This may have just removed the excitement for a lot of people, but it's an interesting little tool for reviewing just how your writing voice comes across, and perhaps ways you can brush it up.

What I did is downloaded a bunch of classic works off of Project Gutenberg - a wonderful resource for acquiring classics that are now public domain. I downloaded simple text copies, dumped them into Word, and let the games begin. By doing simple word searches and word highlighting, it's possible to "count" how many times a word is used, and see if maybe the style stands out in some way. For example, I took Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop and counted the number of times he used the word, "said." In a work of over 221,000 words, he used "said" a whopping 1,425 times. Bleak House, a monolith of a work at 358,000+ words, used "said" 1,749 times. My first novel, The Book of Cain, at a mere 74,000+ words, used "said" only 34 times. Clearly I am no Dickens... for better or worse.

Word frequency and word choice are some of the defining characters of our writing voice. Whether we use "said" frequently (Elmore Leonard insisted that this was the only word to be used to show dialogue) or use it sparingly, it speaks to how we write. Doing word counts to find out how often a word like "said" or "the" shows our specific tone without placing judgment on our writing. Personally, I prefer not using the word "said" if there's either a word that gets more energy into the discussion, or I leave it out if the dialogue doesn't need a tag. Writing of the 19th century frequently tagged its dialogue, though authors used a wild variety of words to add some oomph to how people spoke. Letting word frequency show you a mental thumbnail sketch of just how you do things.

As a corrective tool, the word tagging feature is very useful in ferreting out usage of the passive voice. As any writer will be told constantly, avoid using versions of the verb, "to be," when denoting action. "He was running..." should be "He ran...," "There was a sound echoing..." should be "A sound echoed..." and so on. Descriptions of places and inanimate features get some freedom in using the passive voice, but in general, don't have the scene move passively. How do you check for this? Count your usage of "was" and "were" for starts, and if the number seems high, look at the sentences where you use it. (Bleak House used "was" over 3,400 times; The Book of Cain only had 254 uses. I regret nothing.)

Lastly, always give a check for words like "seemed," "almost," and "kind of" just because they represent weak phrasing and your voice is stronger the less they are used.

This type of forensic editing can give you a hint or two about the strengths and weakness of your voice, but more importantly, you can see the big picture of an author's writing without going through the entirety of Bleak House (I could never make it past the bit about the Smallweed family).   

The Writing Hammock

Most anyone who knows me will say that I treat two particular days with the importance of a national holiday: Super Bowl Sunday, and that very special day when pitchers and catchers report to spring training. The first is the final culmination of a grueling football season, the second being the birth of my other favorite time - baseball season. However, in between those two dates is a terrible gap, a veritable sports hammock hanging between the two grand times of sports. This leaves me with very little nourishment from my favorite sports, but it gives me a chance to relax for a little bit... or maybe for too long. And believe it or not, the same thing happens with writing.

Usually, we fall into the writing hammock when we wrap up some big project or something we've been focused on for an extended period of time. Depending on your schedule, this can be an essay, a poem, a novel, a character sketch, a collection of short stories - it doesn't really matter. The only important part is that you've finished your first draft of this thing and you feel great. Exhausted, but great. Then comes the hammock part. You might have a bunch of ideas for another project - a sequel, another collection, something completely different - but you need just a little time to collect yourself, so you stretch out on the writing hammock. That's where the trouble begins.

Referring to an actual hammock, it is a very relaxing place to be, but it's kind of difficult to get up from. You're very comfortable, relaxed, and maybe nervous about trying to get out of it and falling over or getting tangled in its bindings. It's easier to just take a deep breath, swing gently, and let the time go by. Hammocks are cursed things in that regard, as they can sap us of our energy to do those things we enjoy, and we just drift off to sleep. Writers find themselves taking a break from writing, letting their momentum die down as they rest in the glory of their recent accomplishment. Be very careful at this point.

Now, I always insist that once I finish a big project, I step away from it for a bit - a week or maybe more, depending on its size. I give myself the right to enjoy the hammock, but not to its full extent. Even after I have finished a 400-page novel, I still write something every day just to keep myself from sinking too deep into the writing hammock. Whatever write doesn't have to be great, it doesn't have to be the first draft of my next book, it doesn't even have to be good. The only thing it has to be is a product of me writing on a regular basis. That way I keep my old habits intact, I continue to learn about my process and develop my voice, and I continue to think like a creative type. I also give myself the freedom to set a date for when I will dig out that first draft and start the editing process, and until then, I don't need to jump into a major project. I just need to keep on writing.

Fortunately, the sports hammock is different in that the gap between the end of the Super Bowl and the start of spring training is literally sixty hours, so I have some time to watch the Olympics, figure out the rules of curling, get my sports nourishment, and prepare for the beginning of the baseball season and those wonderful, magical words:

"Play ball!"   

Surprise!

Since my last post was about the importance of maintaining suspense throughout a story, I decided that this time I would go the opposite direction and talk about surprise. Yes, writing about surprises is much easier than the slow burn of a building dilemma, but that does not mean it's simple. More importantly, there can be wrong ways of introducing surprise that actually cheat the reader of a potentially enjoyable shock. 

Anyone who has watched a horror movie knows the fun of a good scare. The frightened main character  hears something out on the porch. The person approaches, opens the front door and sees nobody on the porch, breathes a sign of relief, then closes the only to reveal the menacing villain, Hawthorne, right behind it. Then there's the jump-scare - the same scene, but when the door closes it suddenly reveals... another character who we did not expect but not our villain Hawthorne. The jump-scare is the cheap scare that serves no purpose in driving the story but primes the audience for future surprises. We learn these tricks in writing for the same reason - one is to jump the story's action forward, the other keeps the reader on edge. However, there are good ways to do this, then there are cheap ways to do this.

Let's say we are now writing a story about the character with the front-door situation. We can engage the reader by focusing the descriptions of the door, the shadows, the rustling wind outside - all the senses of the character tuned in on that one element of the noise on the porch. We narrow the reader's attention so their focus is tunneled to that one event - what is on the porch? Then we offer the sudden opening of the door and the reveal that nothing is there. We let the reader experience one beat of relief with the main character, decompress the scene with them shutting the door, then have them turn around and see the cold eyes of Hawthorne as our bad guy takes over the scene. Fairly simple, straight-forward, and effective, but with the potential to be cheapened by the wrong words.

As writers get into their story, there is always the temptation to install a false sense of urgency or surprise with things like, "Suddenly," or "Without warning," to start a surprising scene. Effective writing creates the sudden change without actually using the word "sudden" because the writing shifts gears in a way that is jarring to the reader without telling the reader the scene is, in fact, jarring. Consider our scene above, that could be presented two ways:

"Dale breathed a sigh of relief, releasing his stress as he shut the door. Suddenly, from behind the door, Hawthorne stepped forward..."

"Dale breathed a sigh of relief, releasing his stress as he shut the door. Ready to go back to bed, he turned to meet the eyes of Hawthorne..."

The second example does not warn the reader of what is approaching with "suddenly" but instead makes the bad guy appear in exactly that manner. The sudden change is assumed, written in, and the reader gets a good start. Throwing any word to preempt that action basically warns the reader that something is coming, and takes the energy away from the event itself. It cheapens the scene and actually takes away some of the characterization of Hawthorne because he no longer created the surprise - "suddenly" did.

Surprise is an effective tool in writing if it's managed well. The best way to tell if you are creating a surprise moment is when you don't need to tell the reader they are going to surprise them - you just go off and do it.    

    

Sometimes We Don't Tell the Whole Story

Like every good and true resident of Chicagoland, I maintain a healthy respect for that wonderful weather anomaly called the Lake Effect (capital letters because it's just that important). The Lake Effect is fairly simple - sometimes, when weather comes blowing off Lake Michigan (or any other Great Lake), it can cause massive snowfall bursts in isolated areas, and the people at the weather desk have a terrible time predicting just what piece of real estate will be hit. Just the difference of a few miles can be the difference between flurries and a foot of snow coming out of nowhere. I am currently in one of those situations where they are expecting a big hit of Lake Effect snow - they just don't quite know where, when, or how much. And so, we wait. We see a flake fall and wonder if this is the beginning, or if it's just snow falling from a high branch. Patiently, we wait.

This is the art of suspense.

As writers, we are always told to inform the reader about the surroundings, the descriptions, the environment, and the challenges facing our heroes. However, sometimes it benefits the story when we leave out certain details, and just let the reader wonder when an event is going to happen. If our hero is searching through the villain's home one night, the amount of information we include can either contribute or delete the suspense factor, which is what engages the reader the most.

So, our hero is rummaging through the bad guy's home in search of something incriminating - a simple premise. There's a lingering sense of danger since this is an illegal act and getting caught doing it could lead to all kinds of problems. However, this is low-grade suspense, because there is no imminent threat. Now, let's upgrade the suspense. Perhaps the hero is doing this searching because he knows the bad guy is always out at the club at this time, but the hero's friend calls and says the bad guy never showed up at the club, or left the club early. Now there's an unknown - a sense of risk that danger could be close. Or maybe we include a scene where the bad guy is shown turning the car around to go home - the risk is even more severe because we know the bad guy is on a collision course with our hero. Now the reader is engaged.

Suspense comes in several forms, but they basically break down into two categories. First there is the maybe - the potential for something bad to happen. That's the Lake Effect factor; it might dump a pile of snow on me, it might not, but I have no way of knowing until it's over. This becomes a constant, slow-burn suspense because at any point things could change. The other form is the time-bomb factor; something bad will definitely happen, it's just a question of whether the hero can get out of the way before things blow up. The time-bomb factor is an easy rope-in because it is definite. It is 3... 2... 1... action, and the reader will mark time for the event to happen. Slow-burn suspense, however, can be drawn out indefinitely. A suspense novel often relies on 300+ pages of slow burn because the deadline is uncertain, or depends on conditions. In either case, however, suspense is what keeps readers engaged in stories, particularly those actions stories, when there is a lull between car chases.

Watch any suspense movie and diagnose how they play out the drama. The time-bomb factor or the slow-burn factor will create a different kind of story, and seeing how each one moves the viewer should give an excellent idea of which kind you should include in your stories.      

Young Adult and Romance Genres

There's a pretty big discussion awaiting anyone who challenges the popularity of the Young Adult (YA) or romance genres. There's also a monstrous number of aspects that could be discussed about why these particular story themes are so relevant. For now, however, I want to talk about the important elements needed to write them, other than the key ingredient that comes with their name. In many ways these genres are similar, but split in one very important sense.

The YA craze has actually been around for a long time, but only really exploded once certain people realized how it could be readily exploited to turn that prime demographic - kids - into raging consumers. We have been seeing it for decades starting with the mass-marketing that hit with the original Star Wars movie and just spread to every other movie and TV franchise that could be sold, but books took a little longer. Then here comes bespectacled, wide-eyed and forehead-scarred Harry Potter, and it was on. A book spawned a series of books, movies, plays, theme-park rides and adventures, LEGO sets, and anything else that could be sold. From there, the real YA adventure was born.

The magic of this genre is that it should embody all the elements of growing up, but manifest those elements as characters and challenges. Every teenager goes through the phase where adults do not understand them and mostly get in the way of what the kid really wants, so that appears in the YA novels as obstructive or ignorant parents, angry teachers, clueless older friends, etc. And what better way to describe life's biological changes than through a dip into fantasy where a new, much more exciting world opens up for these youngsters? YA novels are, at their core, examples of kids that teens can relate to, taking on the plights and perils of life through metaphor-filled adventures where they are the vindicated heroes who show the world they were right all along. Tell me what 12-year-old wouldn't absolutely love winning an argument about life with their parents? A good YA novel will leave that pre-teen feeling like they did just that.

In this regard, romance is a very similar creature. The quest for love is universal, so no surprise that it has been turned into an industry - and a lucrative one at that. However, let's see what steps beyond the standard romance novel, which is basically a series of exotic locations, various short-term hook-ups, and at long last the connection that made it all worthwhile. Romance is about searching, about the quest for love, but the really good ones are about becoming, and this is why they fit in with YA nicely. In a standout romance novel, our main character does more than find love, they discover themselves in full. They find what truly brings them the joy and contentment that their life lacked before the book started. In YA romance, this often means immersing them in a world they might not be familiar with but somehow they find out this brings out a part of them they never knew existed. They become the true hero, the character finally victorious in the most difficult game of all - life. The Twilight saga gives us this in a four-book package, appealing to romantics and YA fans alike (though fantasy writers will often tell you their opinion about glimmering vampires). 

There are more aspects to discuss, but these two genres encapsulate the hero's challenge in a simple manner. In YA, the challenge should parallel growing up. In romance, the real adventure is the development of the character into someone truly deserving of love. How tough can that be?