Oh Baby, It's Hot Outside

In case you haven't heard, in some places here in the USA, it's hot outside. Real hot. Throughout the media, everyone is telling us that it's hot. Small-talk with strangers now starts off with, "Wow, it's really hot." Headlines can't avoid communicating this simple fact - hot. However, not many of these people take it much further than just saying it's hot outside. They just use that word over and over again - hot, hot, hot. We writers can do better.

Describing something like heat is usually a direct appeal to a person's sense of temperature. That's the easiest route, so we want to go to the word thermometer - warm, hot, real hot, scorching, broiling, unbearable. Descriptive, but in the long-run, boring. Once everyone uses these words, they lose meaning and impact. A writer needs to go beyond the thermometer.

One area to explore is the response to heat. Description can be cause-effect, and in the reader's mind, that is a two-way relationship. We can talk about what the temperature does without even mentioning heat, and the reader will feel the result:

"Tom left his building and braced himself as the oppressive, humid air met him outside the door. Sweat instantly beaded on his brow as his glasses, cold from the air conditioning inside, fogged up with condensation. His six-block walk to the train station would feel like a few miles on the treadmill, but without a refreshing cool-down in the shower afterward."

The temperature words here are in the cool range, but their reactivity brings out the heat of the moment without actually using that term. All the discussion appeals to how the character reacts, and readers can relate to that even more than just how hot it was.

Of course, sensory appeal works as well, particularly when we go beyond the obvious sense of touch. Think of looking down a country road on a summer's day, and how the fields on the horizon ripple and waver in the distance. It's a bit of a cliche, but it represents a sensory description that shows the heat without saying it. Let's go back to Tom walking to the train:

"The flow of rush-hour pedestrians had slowed to a crawl, the draining weight of the air pressing down shoulders, turning breathing into panting. Elegant ties were loosened, pressed sleeves rolled up, collars unbuttoned, the nicest wardrobes now sweat-soaked and rearranged into survival gear. People slowly walking past the fountain outside City Hall paused to watch children playing in the water's spray. It was the wild, free-spirited joy of youth, and adults found refreshment in the sight of people just enjoying the summer's freedoms."

No use of the word heat here. The image of the mass of melting commuters is all that is necessary. The blending of exhaustion and joy offers more dimension to the scene, allowing it to be a complex palette of emotions that doesn't maintain that one note of heat. However, if that one note is preferred, that fountain part could still describe the children, just focusing not on their joy but the quiet jealousy of the staggering commuters.

When we, as writers, encounter a familiar scene, we have a choice to make. We can go to our home-run swing and say, "It was hot. Damn hot. Really damn hot," and really just drive that point home. Our other option is to play upon some angle, some theme that brings out more from the scene.

Simple exercise: The next time you go out and have an opportunity to make some small talk - the gas station, an elevator, wherever - think about how to bring up the weather without hitting on the temperature. "When it's like this, it's tough to breathe." "Days like this make a cold one so much better." "Guess who's not mowing his lawn today?" Get a feel for the variety that is possible, and turn it toward your writing.

Oh - be careful too. It's real hot outside.

The Value of Wordiness

I knew there would be a little backlash after my last post. In "Writing, Construction and Legos," I talked about making description scenes important, and throwing out useless discussions of things that fill in the scene but otherwise don't carry much value. This is good advice, but the devil is in the details. As I discovered, a few people want to explore the details. Well, let's do that.

Some people told me that when they read anything, it always helps to have physical description to ground them, regardless of whether or not that image is valuable. No argument that details offer a stabilizing factor. However, the writer should consider how to use those descriptions to provide the most impact.

In the previous post, I used an example of a minivan. I demonstrated how the description of the minivan's color, shine, lines, etc., could be written very well, but the most memorable part would be the family stickers on the rear window with the father sticker scraped off with a butterknife. The latter provides more information than just looks; it helps establish story elements. However, if the writer finds it necessary to incorporate the minivan's appearance, then it can still contribute more than an image.

One route is contrast. A number of important character elements and plot pieces can be shown through contrast, as the difference becomes the focus. Look at our minivan: clean wax job, that candy-apple red paint job lighting up the road, every part reflecting the afternoon sun and showcasing the vehicle's razor-sharp lines and elegant curves of the aerodynamic body. Nice physical description because it suggests the owner's pride in the vehicle, although this may still not be important to the story. However, when we show how the father sticker is scraped off in such a crude manner;  the implication of a butterknife being used suggests a rash, angry action. Now we have the contrast - the passionately maintained minivan with the ugliness of the destroyed sticker. Something's clearly wrong, and the reader wants to know what. This is how pages turn.

Another route is characterization. Again with our minivan, the actual appearance may not make a difference. However, is the owner detail-oriented? Obsessive about appearances or upkeep? Overcompensating due to being forced to drive a minivan rather than a powerful, gas-guzzling 970 GTO? We can show a lot about our character through the presentation of their items, and in turn emphasize the visual details that showcase the character. With the overcompensating owner, draw the reader to details like mag wheels or the hand-drawn racing stripes on the sides; maybe how the paint job was customized to match what that GTO should've been. Now our descriptions show the minivan but they also explain the character.

Mood is, of course, a pretty easy one to work with. If the reader is supposed to draw a sense of freedom from the scene, then the minivan is bright, clean, and ready to go anywhere. It's aerodynamic and won't meet any resistance as it heads toward a wide-open future, with the father figure behind it just like the scratched-off sticker. Something darker or more foreboding draws attention to the tinted windows, hiding the passengers from the world, the shiny body casting a glare to make people turn away, to look at anything but the vehicle. The owner drives away as if trying to escape its past, but like the scraped-off sticker on the back window, it's never totally gone and follows them everywhere.

Whatever you choose to write about, get as much use from it as possible. Simple things such as supporting characters, descriptions, and secondary locations can contribute far more than their value if we put them to as much use as possible. The easiest route to do that is to try to include the item with a focus on contrast, characterization, and mood.

Writing, Construction and Legos

Writing a story is similar to any other kind of manufacturing, but then come the weird parts. The initial process is know the abstract parts of the story - plot, characters, mood and motif, etc. - and fill in those in with a bunch of words shaped into sentences that fill in those spots. It's an arduous process of construction, but at the end, you have your story. Then it gets a little weird, because what you have is your first draft. As we know, first drafts can be considerably different than final drafts.

Intuitively, when we think about building something, we think about constantly making progress toward the final product. Overhauling it midway doesn't seem right. Would we build a house, then as the drywall is going up, say, "Actually, let's switch the master bathroom to the other side of the hallway, take out the dividing wall in the kitchen, and move the fireplace to the back room"? If your contractor has a sense of humor, you two will share a laugh. Maybe you'll just get laughed at. Whatever the case, that fireplace is staying right where they put it.

Our story, however, can change as much as we want. It has the constructive flexibility of a box full of Legos, and we should take advantage of that. We should change things, try things, write different scenes just to see how they work, and whatever else we feel might help. We just pour those Legos on the floor and sort through them to make whatever we want.

However, the difficult part is when we remove them.

Again - it's counter-intuitive. We wouldn't tell our contractor to remove a bedroom, and we feel the same way about our words; perhaps even more so. But some authors will tell you that 10-20% of a manuscript  is removed between the first and the final drafts. And all those thousands of words are ones you will have painstakingly created and placed into what felt like just the perfect place. They made sense. They were perfect. Why did they have to go?

This blog has discussed several categories of words that are useless. Those are easy to trim out. The tough ones are the good ones that just don't contribute. We all write great descriptions and entertaining narratives that make us smile on the inside, and it's heartbreaking to see them not make the final cut. This, however, is what we have to do, and it helps to have a guideline or two to tell us when it's time for something to go.

Write a one-paragraph description of something ordinary - say, a minivan. With a little passion, we can write about the shine, smooth lines, and the showiness that makes it stand out, and have a nice paragraph. However, in the context of the story, is it important? Does it contribute to the plot? Or maybe it hits the wrong points, placing all the emphasis on the high-gloss paint job, but ignoring the back-window stickers showing Mom, her two daughters, a dog, a cat, and a husband whose sticker is scraped off with a butterknife. The image of the minivan is pleasant reading, but the sticker section tells us so much more.

The first response might be to use them both. Give the reader a nice description and leave the sticker bit to contribute to the story. That's always an option that we have as writers, but sometimes it works against us. A very strong descriptive sentence will get lost mixed in with four others that don't have the same impact. If those other lines can't help carry the point, they threaten to bury the point. That's when we look at all that passionate description of the car body and say, "Nothing personal. You're good words, just not for this page."

Taking this approach - honing and refining our descriptions and narratives to make the point stand out - makes our stories vivid and appealing, and showcases our storytelling as well as our writing. By the proper reduction, we actually end up with more story.

Just What is Smut?

I get the occasional inquiry about my Writing Workshop - is it appropriate for adults-only writers? I explain the details: We try to keep it for people 18+, allow for free expression, and a common understanding that some writers may work on themes that do not have universal appeal. However, after a little investigation, I find out their real intention: After reading E. L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey, they started writing something similar and now want to find a venue to discuss their writing. Fine by me.

But that's when another question comes up - where should a writer draw the line for that genre? What is the difference between romance, erotica, and plain old smut? Believe it or not, people think about this a lot; particularly publishers. So, without going into the NSFW realm, it's time for some explanation about how the different genres are perceived, approached, and discussed within the literary community.

On one end of this spectrum is romantic love. This is, above all else, the journey of one person trying to find their perfect pairing (or their journeys to find each other). While the term "romance novel" usually elicits thoughts of a 250-page paperback with an intensely formulaic story, predictable ending, and a half-naked couple on the cover in a windswept embrace, the romance genre is more nuanced. In the strictest terms, it is an emotional journey. It is about discovery and connection, it is where the hero's growth brings them closer to that special someone. The intensity of the story is in the mind and the heart; other body parts are not required.

Of course, on the other end is smut. We all know what this end is about, so let's keep it simple. While the definition of smut is something sexually vulgar or obscene, a writer should think about the description that says, "...something having no artistic or socially redeeming qualities." In short, obscenity for obscenity's sake. Smut exists for one purpose only and it's not the narrative. This should not concern us as writers if that's not our thing, but knowing the definition is important when a writer decides on what parts of a story to discuss.

Case in point: One person at a workshop was writing a romance novel, and would bring a chapter to every meeting. They usually ran ten pages, maybe 2,200 words, each moving the story along, adding to the narrative, building the suspense; generally a well-written, first-draft copy.

Then came the chapter where the hero hooked up with someone.

That chapter focusing on that hook-up - with only a secondary character - was 22 pages, 4,754 words, no dialogue, describing their time together with forensic accuracy and an obsessive attention to every detail possible. Every detail.

Let's calm down and think about this chapter as writers. What happens to the pacing of the story? Each chapter goes block by block, then one piece is this huge block of writing, focusing on one specific element - the hook-up. Does that become distracting? Does it pull the reader away from the story? Is there enough character development created during that scene to justify twenty-plus pages on one event? Or is something off here?

The vast prairie of territory between romance and smut is filled with chapters like the above, and as writers, we have to go back to our basic toolkit for storytelling. We need to ask ourselves how much is necessary? Is there such a thing as too much in one scene? Are we using twenty pages to say what five pages could just as easily explain? Does our writing remain focused on our intended purpose? How this writer uses that hook-up chapter will help determine just where the story lands in the realm between romance and smut.

As a final note, as writers, we should let ourselves write what we want to write and see what happens when we put words to the page. However, after that initial joy of creation, we need to take a critical look at what we've made, and decide what we want it to become. Romance is a wonderful realm to explore this idea, but in any genre, we need to learn how to pare down our work to make sure we retain focus.

Guess what the next post will be about...

Pre-Writing: The Story Before the Words

When people ask me about what it took for me to write my first novel, The Book of Cain, I actually hear two questions. Obviously there's the curiosity about writing 75,000+ words full of characters, plots and events. However, I also hear a part of them asking how I came up with a lengthy story that was worth writing in full. That's the more interesting process, in my opinion. That part of the process is called pre-writing, and goes in a lot of directions.

We all know someone (possibly including yourself) who says, "I have a story all put together; I just need to write it." That's so adorable - as if writing is just like putting on the paint after building a house. Nope. Someone who has the idea all in their head is in the first part of pre-writing: Forming ideas. There are a lot of different steps and stages for pre-writing, and everyone uses some version that works for them. This post lays out the bare bones, and the very core of that skeleton is forming an idea.

We all have ideas for stories, but often they are little more than core ideas, and don't have that added part that makes it eligible to be a story. Here's a simple list of ideas:

• The emergence of the first superhero
• A pediatrician fighting an opioid addiction
• Extraterrestrials arrive on Earth
• Someone realizes their past was a lie

These are all interesting ideas, but not enough for a story on their own. When we pre-write, we try to take this to the next step. Those ideas are momentary snapshots - forming the idea means adding something that puts the idea into motion. Look at the first idea. We need to throw some clauses at the end to give them motion, such as:

• ...and facing resistance from people that consider him a threat
• ...with powers that start to bring out his more selfish desires
• ...and how he learns the responsibilities that come with such power

Now we're getting somewhere. The idea goes into motion. When we pre-write, we should jot down an idea and then write ten different directions it can go as it becomes a story. At that point, we need to pick one or two that really inspire us, and start to build it out.

Building it out puts all the other bones on the skeleton. We ask ourselves a series of questions about the basic story structure: What puts the character into action? What is their journey/goal? What will the obstacles be? Are they external, internal, or both? Does their goal change during the story? What does the character learn during this story and how do they change between the first page and the last? Before we write a story, we should answer these questions. They can change during the creation process, but if a story does not address these questions, it will have an emptiness that the reader will feel.

One part of the build-out process that will make a story really resonate with readers is an underlying message. A well-written story is always enjoyable, but think of that one story where it was the message that stuck with you the most. With those books, the author knew that message before they wrote the first word. When you understand the message you want the reader to walk away with, you know how to present every scene, every conflict.

The last part worth mentioning is focus. When we flesh out the skeleton, we want to isolate on a few points that work well together. Many of the people I talk to who have the story "all written in my head" can tell me about all these ideas but there's no focus. They don't have one story, they have pieces of ten stories. That, however, does not add up to one story. Once that person focuses on the one thing they want to discuss, the one plot thread to explore, then the story shows up. A sub-plot can handle another arc, but a story without focus is a story not many people will want to read.

So when people ask me about writing my first book, I tell them about the pre-writing process. I explain why the character intrigued me, what I wanted the message to be and how the character would come to this realization. I tell them about how certain characters were needed to challenge the protagonist, to aid him, and to present opinions that guide the reader along.

Then I tell them that once I did all this stuff and understood the story, writing it was the easy part.

Watching the Language

We all know the protocol for language at the workplace. More importantly, we hopefully know the official rules and the unofficial rules - we know who we can be flexible with, who requires us to step carefully, and how other people treat the rules when they are around us. We also know that what works in our workplace might not fly in other places. For that matter, what works in our accounting department might not work with the boss, the admins, or any other department. Good employees learn these rules, and pack a different set of expectations for wherever they go.

How do we do this with a story? We know the ground rules for Not Suitable For Work (NSFW), but how does that apply to a reading audience? Reading markets are fickle, and can judge a title quickly depending on the language. And the demands of different genres can be in complete opposition. Unless we are willing to write several versions of a story, each modified to a target audience, we have to find some sense of compromise.

The last area of compromise a writer should consider is with their own story. If a writer feels that a story demands swearing and profanity, or situations some people might consider obscene, then the writer needs to go with that. Plenty of narratives, especially non-fiction stories, can get pretty salty, and it is integral to how the story works. The writer's main obligation is to examine the quality, quantity, and effectiveness of what they want to communicate, and consider the best route to do so. The details of doing this are pretty intricate, but here are some broad categories to work with.

Genre. I know plenty of parents who swear around their kids; that's the real world. However, books for children should be scrubbed clean - restrictions of genre demand that. That is an obvious case, but let's expand this out. Young Adult writing can have swearing, but it tends to be rare, exclamatory rather than descriptive, and characters who swear are usually crude, boorish antagonists. Stories with adult themes incorporate profanity in a more descriptive vein, but the better stories use it with purpose - defining how a character stands out from others with their language. Action and thrillers often use language to heighten tensions and emotion - during a high-speed chase, the protagonist rarely expresses surprise with "Yikes!" or "Darn!" because stronger words create a stronger emotion to the scene. Once we hit the horror genre, language takes the story to a very serious, adult, "We're not in Kansas anymore" mood. However, sci-fi goes the opposite way, with intellect virtually erasing profanity. (The trend in future-fantasy is to make up a new milieu of swear words and throw them around everywhere.)

Characterization. A general principle is that the more someone swears, the less they have to say. Think of people you know who use swear words as their adjective or adverb of choice. Does it make them stand out in a good way? If that's how you want a character to stand out, well, that's fine. That character becomes identified by their language, but other characters should stand apart from that one because they don't swear. Then there's contrast, and readers notice it. As the saying goes, "When everyone talks, nobody is heard." If everyone swears, it loses effectiveness. Which brings us to...

Effectiveness. The first time I heard swearing on network television, my eyes popped open. It was unexpected. Wrong. Harsh. People weren't supposed to say that, and there it was. I still remember that moment. Since then, times have changed (of George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words You'll Never Hear on Television (NSFW) piece, I've since heard three on main networks). The point is, when the word was used so rarely, it was that much more effective. It stood out. Scarcity made swearing powerful.

Alternatives. While swearing and profanity hold their place, a writer should consider obscenity as a creative alternative. Obscene things only have to create a sense of the taboo but do not have to use swearing or bad language. For writers who want to explore this, practice explaining something full of swear words without using the words. Imply things. Make veiled references. One of my favorite comeback lines starts with, "Well, your mother...". The best lines have no swearing and are often very obscene. That is the pinnacle of adult language - well thought out but technically not swearing.

There are plenty of finer points to study, but working with the basics can cover a lot of ground. Plus, those detailed discussions are definitely NSFW.

The Payoff

If I gave you the opportunity to read a story about my dinner last night, what would you want from the story? Information about my diet and why I go with chicken when I cook at home? Sure - that could be interesting. How I match vegetables with my main course? That might be in there, but I don't really obsess about that. The secret to my Szechwan sauce? No - that dies with me. There are a lot of things you would expect in a story about dinner, the one thing you would demand as a reader is the payoff.

Simply put, the payoff is the big reveal that makes the story stick after the reader is done. It's the insight that goes beyond a simple listing of events. Yes, a story doesn't have to be anything more than a narrative about one or more things or events. Along that line, dinner doesn't have to be anything more than a meal that provides nourishment. However, when I make dinner that I want to discuss, it's not just nourishment, it's sauteed baby vegetables, a spiced brown rice, and Szechwan chicken where I add just a touch of... actually, not this time. And when I write a story, it needs a payoff.

Stories have a wide variety of options for that big payoff, but they all center around change. In the simplest of stories, we read about someone who has an experience that changes their world. A common, effective story is someone writing about their pet. The pet shows up and changes them. They fall in love with it, they are amazed with all the cute things it does, or just how it becomes a part of their life. The payoff is seeing how that person is changed by the pet. The greater the change during the story, the greater the payoff. With the pet story, well, when that pet dies, the change is that much stronger. It's not a happy event, but it's a powerful shift and a bigger payoff.

In short stories, we usually focus on one facet of the character's story, and how the world changes in that one regard. The two most common story drivers are the world changing the character, and the character changing the world. These can actually be the same event, just written from one perspective or the other. Take the pet example - the story about how a pet changes someone's life is "world changes person," while the other version can focus on the person deciding to adopt a pet. Same story, different perspective, but they both require change in the payoff.

As stories grow in size, the payoff can become more elaborate, the journey far more intricate. We expand from that simple focus and turn it into an adventure. We still demand a payoff at the end, but we can now venture into plenty of new frontiers on our way to that moment. This also provides the opportunity to move the story further away from the expected payoff, so when everything comes back to that moment, the change is greater, the payoff that much bigger.

In my little story about dinner, it could be expanded to show how the preparation wasn't going well, threatening the entire meal situation. The vegetables are kind of weak. Every time I turn my head, the cat is going after the chicken. What is that floating in my olive oil? As I prepare my Szechwan sauce, I can't find the... nope. Problems and obstacles are getting in the way at every turn, and I am tempted to just call it all off and grab the take-out menu. World affects character format, adventure leads away from payoff, so when it all comes together and I am enjoying my dinner, the reader is pleased.

Same story, but character affects world, could have me in my kitchen, years ago, with a goal in mind: homemade Szechwan chicken. My skills are minimal, my talent in the kitchen limited to instant oatmeal. Mistakes are abundant, along with plenty of wok fires and singed eyebrows. The goal seems farther away after every disaster, the will weakening. But then I find a copy of Cooking Basics For Dummies, and everything changes. I realize my mistakes and find the inspiration I need. I grow as a cook, I reach my goal, and the reader gets the payoff.

The payoff is always up to the writer, and it can be happy, sad, surprising, informative, or just plain old honesty, but it has to be there. At that point, the reader tucks that story into their memory and saves it for later. Without it, the story just fades.

And as for the payoff of this post, the secret ingredient to my Szechwan Chicken is... oops, that's my word count.