Business For Breakfast, Volume 4: The Intermediate Professional Storyteller

Leah Cutter

Never miss a release!

If you’d like to be notified of new releases, sign up for my newsletter.

I only send out newsletters once a quarter, will never spam you, or use your email for nefarious purposes. You can also unsubscribe at any time.

http://www.leahcutter.com/newsletter/

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, the purchaser or reader may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer or sell any information contained in this book without the express written permission of Leah Cutter or Knotted Road Press. Requests to use or quote this material for any purpose should be addressed to Knotted Road Press.

Disclaimer

This book is provided for general educational purposes. While the author has used her best efforts in preparing this book, Knotted Road Press makes no representation with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents, or about the suitability of the information contained herein for any purpose. All content is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind.

Forward by Blaze Ward

The first time around, Leah wanted to write a book for the aspiring writer (read: any creative) that translated business geek into creative nerd, which is not an easy thing to do, since the concepts are so orthogonal to one another. I know several people who have had lightbulb moments reading it, because things suddenly clicked.

The second time around, she was doing the same for the person who wants to make the jump beyond simply being an indie (read: self–published) author and establish themselves as a proper business. It is a useful adjunct, since we tend to have many friends who might have a single book in them and no more. (It’s only after they attack the issue that they realize how hard it is to actually write a novel, and most decide to go somewhere else.) That one book is not going to net them the sorts of money that makes the second and third steps worth pursuing, but you as a businessperson can add it to your stable and earn a few more nickels from it to go with the ones you have.

And that’s what this game is about. Nickels. As she and I remind each other: “Them nickels spend.”

You accumulate nickels by publishing more things. You build a fan base by publishing better things (better being a relative term that encompasses style, content, grammar, kerning, and covers, just off the top of my head).

Which brings up to the fourth time around. (I’m technically book three in this series, but I wrote something for the person just making the leap from creative to storyteller.) It’s not (quite) fair to say I blackmailed her into this book, but you’d be in the right neighborhood. I know most of what I know about the craft from her. (I’ve always been a storyteller, but she made me a writer.)

I wanted Leah to attack future topics in such a way that I could learn new things about how to write. How to build better stories. How to hang verbal wallpaper. What to look for in pacing. All those amazing little things a more advanced writer does, frequently unconsciously. (I say unconsciously because I’ve seen these people work at a level called “back–brain” where they stuff information in the ears and then let it filter out the fingers, to quote Dean Wesley Smith.)

I learn from listening to her talk, from asking questions, from probing. You don’t have that luxury, because I married her and I’m keeping her, but you can always learn new things about how you write from these words, how you stay in character, how you differentiate voice.

How you entertain people enough that they buy more of your books, which is at the end of the day why we are all here.

And there will be more B4B books. I look forward to even more new and interesting things to learn.

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

Introduction by Leah Cutter

The Intermediate Professional Storyteller

There are, at last count, at least 14 million books giving writing advice.

How is this one different?

1. It’s written by a writer. A writer with a lot of experience. An advanced writer, who admits that while she doesn’t know it all, she’s no longer a beginner. Or even intermediate. By the time this book is published, she will have written twenty (20) novels, with many more planned. In addition, she’s written more than seventy (70) publishable short stories (stories that are finished enough to send out) and many of those have been bought by major magazines or anthologies.

2. It isn’t something made up out of whole cloth, but an amalgamation of things that she’s learned, from many different sectors and teachers and mentors. And from writing. A lot. (For more sources, see the Appendix.)

3. This book is as much a guide as anything else. Every chapter has a section called “Clues”—questions that you can ask yourself about your writing to see if you need to work on this technique or not.

4. This isn’t a beginning writing book. Probably 13.9999 of those 14 million writing books mentioned above are for the beginning writer. (The Business for Breakfast series has two of those: The Beginning Professional Writer and The Beginning Professional Storyteller.) You’ll note, however, that the title of this is The Intermediate Professional Storyteller. There are many techniques (many!) that are more advanced and beyond the scope of this book. (That’s one of the many fun things about writing—there’s always more to learn. If you don’t like to learn, if you think you can “master” writing and will never have to learn anything again, walk away now.)

5. This book is written for the artist/writer in mind. Again, many of those existing writing books aren’t written for the artist. They’re written by someone who has more of an organized, accounting mind than the artist.

6. Don’t think there really is a sixth difference. Try this book. You may enjoy it. And you may learn something new.

TRUST ME

One of the things that I am asking you to do is to trust me.

If I say something that seems completely outlandish, trust me, it isn’t.

If I say that some writers, as part of their process, do X, trust me. I’ve met those writers and talked about their process. I’m not making it up.

Perhaps you, as a writer, don’t use that process. Or don’t think that way.

Other writers do.

As for any “rule” that I state, you (and I) will be able to point to half a dozen examples of where this rule is “broken.”

Those are the exceptions.

Learn the rules first. Then figure out how to break them without breaking your writing.

Trust me.

Readers

At the end of many of the sections, you’ll find a heading called, “Clues”. In those sections, I talk about things that readers may point out about your stories, trying to give you a diagnosis tool so you can figure out if you need to work on a particular technique or not.

Beginning writers go to critique groups. This is a good thing. Most writers need to learn some level of critical skills. A good critique group is difficult to find. They are also worth their weight in gold when you’re just starting out.

A good critique group will instinctively know, and possibly be able to articulate, that you are only going to critique the story, not the storyteller. (Or as I talk about it among my writing friends, as my original critique group expressed it, you’re there to talk about the chair, not the chair maker.)

However, chances are, as you advance as a writer, you’ll grow beyond your critique group. It is a very rare group indeed that can all go beyond the beginning level together.

So what do you do next? When you realize that perhaps your group has grown toxic, that those who aren’t writing as much are jealous and actively discouraging you from writing?

You need to find readers.

Think about it this way: at the end of the day, you are producing your story for readers. Not for other writers. Not for your critique group. But for the everyday Jamal who wants to be entertained while reading on his phone on the bus, or for the voracious reader Jagita who goes through a dozen books a month.

Readers are your audience. Readers read your writing. They are generally not writers themselves. (While it is possible to get a reader reaction from a writer, you’ll need to find writers who are in the intermediate to advanced stage, and who can divorce themselves from the writing process and just enjoy something as a reader, which again, is a more advanced skill that not all writers possess.)

How do you find a reader? That takes time. There are a lot of articles on the web about finding them, cultivating the relationship, caring for and feeding your readers, etc.

A good reader is worth their weight in gold. Keep them close to you, and keep them satisfied.

My assumption is that you’ve moved beyond critique (which, at the heart of it, is all about tearing things apart, looking for something that’s wrong) and moved onto first readers (who are all about telling you, “I got lost here” or “I didn’t believe this character” or “Wow was that great! Where’s the next book?”).

A truism that I believe Neil Gaiman originally coined:

When a reader tells you something is wrong, they are almost always right. When a writer tells you how to fix something, they are almost always wrong.

Trust your readers. Then trust your inner writer to get to the heart of the matter and fix what needs fixing.

This book isn’t telling you how to fix things. It’s giving you diagnosis tools to understand your first readers so that your inner writer can figure out how to fix things.

Stages of a Writer

Attributed to Dean Wesley Smith.

First Level: You’re only concerned with the words on the page. You may or may not care about the story. You’re focused on just what’s in front of you, on polishing every sentence until it’s perfect. You haven’t moved beyond the words. You may have some idea about being a writer, but it’s a dream, not a goal with concrete steps.

Second Level: You’re starting to gain some awareness of characters and plot. You’re starting to see bigger picture items, like storytelling, the seven–point–plot, etc. However, you’re still very concerned with grammar, word choice, sentence structure, and so on. You still haven’t gained an awareness beyond the page. You may or may not have success at this level. If you do sell things, it’s very spotty.

Third Level: You’ve moved beyond worrying about the sentence–by–sentence work. You’re starting to learn about pacing, overall structure, etc. You’re starting to care about what the reader thinks. Your awareness is spreading from the page to beyond. You’ve also started to learn about the business, and are aware that this is a business. You’ve moved beyond having dreams about ‘being a writer’ to coming up with a plan and concrete goals, steps you can take to move your career forward.

You can make a career at this level. But unless you continue to strive and learn, it won’t be a long–term thing. You’ll stop selling and you won’t know why.

Fourth Level: You don’t care much about the words or the sentences on the page. That’s what your copyeditor is for. Instead, what you care about is how your words affect the reader. Your focus is on controlling the reader. Does the story work for the reader? You are doing your best to become a mind control artist. Your second focus is on the business, and how to have a long–term writing career. You care about learning and are always striving to improve.

Me? I’m somewhere between third and fourth level. I’m not a mind control expert, but I’m working on it. I write from deep inside a character’s point of view, and I’m aware of how my reader is reacting.

To give an example, consider the word barn.

Barn is a false detail.

What does a barn look like? Is it that dilapidated graying building with the roof caving in? Is it brand new, painted a pristine red, with a steep roof for cold Midwest winters and lots of snow? Or is the roof rounded like the old colonial barns, and has it been converted into a mother–in–law out on the back forty?

When I use a detail like barn, I’ve released the reader to come up with their own idea of what a barn looks like. Every reader has their own picture of a barn in their head.

As a mind control artist, I want them to think of the barn that I envision. Nothing else. (If it’s essential to the story, that is.)

Do you do this for every detail? No. But you must do this for the important ones.

Which are the important details?

Let your character tell you. What she notices is important. Nothing else.

Organization

In general, this book works with the structure of the seven–point plot. That is:

1. A character

2. In a setting

3. With a problem

4. Trying

5. Failing

6. Climax

7. Denouement

Note that the very first point is character.

This is one of those trust me points.

Readers read for character.

Yes, there are stories where the character takes a backseat to the idea. Possibly some of your favorite fiction is written that way.

But in modern (2016) stories, readers read for character. So you need a good one.

That might not be where you get your ideas. I rarely start with the character. How you generate your characters is also 100% up to you. Do you go to a coffee shop and build your character as an amalgamation of the people there—the barista’s horsy laugh, the studiousness of the student in the corner with her three textbooks and computer open, the limp of the old man with haunted eyes? Do you use character sheets, and roll up your characters as you would for a role playing game? Do they just wake you up in the middle of the night saying, “Write about me next, damn it!”?

Characters can be concocted. Given foibles and fears, likes and dislikes, accents and metaphor suites. That’s more of a beginning writer technique.

Actually writing from deep inside the point of view of a character is a more advanced technique.

So several of the chapters in this book will go into more depth on character. Not the generating of them—you can already do that. But writing from that place inside of them that makes them come alive on the page—that’s something I can help you with.

The second point of the seven–point plot is setting. Again, as a more beginning writer, you might generate a staged setting pretty well. Taking that setting to the next level, so your reader believes it, is a more advanced technique.

After going into character and setting, there are other, more technical, actual writing techniques I want to cover, such as layering in detail, cycling, and controlling your pacing through paragraphing.

You’ll notice that there are many, many other parts of the seven–point plot structure that I won’t be covering in more detail.

This book is designed to get you to the next level in your writing career. You can look at the other points as signposts, places you might want to go and explore next.

Because there’s always a next. Another hill. Hell, another mountain range beyond the one you just climbed.

Ready?

Leah Cutter

April 2016

Chapter One

Character, Part One: Point of View

In this section, I’m going to cover what entails a narrative point of view, some clues about selecting the correct point of view, as well as making your characters more active.

Who’s on First?

Though this is beginning writer information, I’m going to cover it briefly, just so that we’re all on the same page and using the same terminology.

First Person

The story is revealed from inside a character, from the point of view of “I”.

I can’t believe Trish just walked out on me like that! Some people’s kids, you know? I’d’ve thought she would’ve wanted to know that her husband Tony was a lying, cheating bastard.

That he’d been lying and cheating with me.

Issues with first person: as a writer, first person can feel very intimate.

As a reader, it can be very distancing.

Think of it this way—you have the “I” doing things. As the writer, you feel comfortable with that “I” doing things.

With the reader, if they’re not deeply involved in that character, when the character, the “I”, does something that they wouldn’t do, it bumps them. “I wouldn’t do that,” is what their unconscious says.

Second Person

The story is revealed by the character talking themselves through the situation, from the point of view of “you”.

Okay, you need to be careful here. Easy does it. Blue wire. Then green. You can do this. See? You got it.

You can finish decorating Imelda’s locker before first hour. You just got to stick to it.

Issues with second person: This point of view isn’t used very often, so it can be very off putting. It is occasionally used in thrillers, to make a reader feel off–balance when inside a killer’s head.

Third Person

The story is revealed by a character who describes things as they happened to him or her.

Claire stepped into the gloomy alley, trying to get out of the wind. Damned lighter still just clicked in her hand. She shivered and took another step, shaking the stupid disposable like it was some kind of Magic 8 Ball, ready to give her a good future if she just shook it hard enough.

“Need a light?” came a hollow voice from a few feet in front of her.

Issues with third person: Staying deep inside the head of that character and not merely narrating a scene, describing it like you would a movie, but instead, living it.

The other issue: Being so far inside the character’s head that the rest of the world has faded.

Omniscient

The story is revealed from a god–like character, divorced from the rest of the proceedings and merely reporting. The reporter knows what is going on inside the head of every other character, knows things that happened even far away, etc.

This is sometimes likened to the opening, establishing shot of a movie, that long pan across the setting to give the viewer the feeling of the film and where they’re going.

This technique is incredibly advanced and well beyond the scope of this book. It’s frequently used as a framing device for a story or chapter, giving the broad view before sliding down into a third person point of view. Then repeated, to end the story, drawing the reader out.

Some authors can do it really well, though. If this is a technique you’d like to learn, study them. Practice. And be prepared to fail the first few times.

Whose Story Is It?

You may have heard this before, in beginning fiction writing workshops and classes:

Tell the story from the point of view of the character who has the most to lose.

This is a good, general guideline. If you have multiple points of view in a novel and you’re having problems with a particular scene, you might ask yourself this question to make sure that you’re telling that particular scene from the right point of view.

Writers, in general, tend to be introspective. They spend a lot of time in their heads. It’s kind of the nature of the beast, you know?

As a beginning writer, your characters may tend to be similar to yourself. Introspective. Reactive, instead of active.

Clues

Your first readers like your book, but they love this other/minor/secondary character more than the primary character.

It might be that this secondary character is more active than the primary character. They’re going to go out and party, no matter that the world is ending, and keep trying to drag the primary character along with them.

Take a look at the actions of your primary character. How active are they?

Then look at their motivations. What do they want? What do they have to lose?

Another clue: People like your villains more than your heroes.

It might be because your villain wants something. And they are willing to destroy the entire moonbase to get it. While your hero has just been dragged along for the ride, and only reacts to your villain, instead of wanting something so desperately themselves.

Another clue is that you, the writer, feel as though your secondary characters come on the stage and take over. Again, this might be because it’s their story. The secondary character is active, wants things, and does things, while the main character is introspective, thoughtful, and slow to move.

Active/Reactive/Reluctant Hero

As mentioned above, your main character has to want something. And be thwarted. Constantly. (This also ties into the seven–point plot structure—a Character, in a Setting, with a Problem, Try, Fail. Repeat the last two as many times as the story requires.)

Readers like active characters. They don’t have to be breaking down doors and slaying assassins. They still have to be determined, actively trying something.

A reactive character is one who merely reacts to the awful things that the villain is doing. For a longer work, this can absolutely be some of the try–fail loops. But then the character must try something on their own. Must actively try to thwart the villain somehow. They’ll fail of course. If they succeed, they must be worse off than before they tried.

But what about the reluctant hero? The one who does not want to get involved in the werewolf–giant raven feud? Peacemakers always end up getting killed.

This character must actively want something else. Be seeking something. Not just trying to distance herself from the fights, but must do something to distance herself. Maybe she runs away. Goes to her aunt’s house to live. Joins the circus.

Some act that moves the reluctant hero closer to her destiny, whether she likes it or not.

Clues

Very similar to the above. Readers may not like your story, may get bored, or find that it drags at the beginning. Later on, when the story has gotten moving, your readers are more engaged.

David Mamet is credited with the following structure for generating a plot:

- Who wants what from whom?

- What happens if he (she) doesn’t get it?

- Why now?

Ask your reluctant hero what she wants, and from whom. It can’t be a general “I want peace”—it needs to be specific, and involving another person.

Your reluctant hero wants something. From someone else. And she doesn’t get it. What does she do next? And why now? Why is it important now? This fight has been going on for millennia. Why does it matter this year, instead of ten years ago, or twenty years from now?

In Conclusion

The things to remember about character and point of view:

- Choose to tell the story from the right point of view, the character with the most to lose.

- Make sure that character is active, right from the start.

- If you have a reluctant hero, make sure they still act, not just react.

Chapter Two

Character, Part Two: Staying in Character

In this section, I’m going to give you some clues that you’ve left the character point of view, and some hints for how to get more deeply inside your character.

Stay on Target

So you have your character. And you’re cruising along. It kind of feels as though you’re merely taking dictation, the characters feel alive and vibrant in your head, leading the way.

Then you write something like this:

Joan wanted out of the house. Needed to flee. Disappear for a couple of days, at least. She had her backpack stuffed with necessities, like her curling iron, three days worth of clean underwear, her brass knuckles, and her six–inch–long pearl–handled stiletto, in case someone wanted to get up and personal with her.

She closed the door of her room, snuck down the hallway.

No one stirring. Her brother Thom dead to the world.

Good.

As she started down the stairs, a noise made her pause.

Who the hell was watching TV in the living room?

She crouched down, peering through the bannister.

The shape of the fat, bald head leaning against the back of the couch was unmistakable.

Her father.

Maybe she could go all casual on him?

“Hey Dad,” Joan said as she approached the couch, bag slung on one shoulder. “Whatcha doing up so late?”

“Replay of the game,” he replied, thinking, What is my daughter doing up so late?

“Thought you’d already seen it,” Joan said, edging toward the door. Could she get out without his asking anything more?

So what’s wrong with the above scene?

I’ve switched points of view.

I’ve gone from being deeply inside Joan’s head to being inside her father’s, just for a moment.

This is one of those times when I’m asking you to trust me. This can be jarring for your reader. They feel whiplash as you bounce from head to head.

Generally speaking, in genre fiction, you stay inside a single POV for an entire scene. Once you hit the scene break, or chapter break, switch to someone else. The father. The toaster. Whomever.

There are some genres where this head–hopping is more accepted: for example, romance and mystery. And literary fiction has its own rules.

Is it possible to do this sort of point of view switching and to do it well?

Absolutely. But this is an advanced technique. Not an intermediate one.

Chances are, you are not at the point where you can do it well.

Practice it if it’s a technique you’d like to learn. Read and study people who can do it well. If this is a rule that you’d like to break, don’t assume that just because you can do it, that you’re not bouncing your readers out.

Clues

The main, obvious one is that you’re no longer viewing the scene from the main character’s point of view. You’ve switched to another character’s point of view. You’re suddenly in their head, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel.

You can only know and see and feel what is in the primary character’s point of view. Period.

Another hint: Your main character knows the emotional state of a secondary character, without them explicitly stating it. (Not when you’re dealing with telepaths, I know, but that’s a whole other issue.)

Thinking

Does your character think to herself? For example:

If only I hadn’t stolen that ruby! she thought. All would be well again!

Do you ever, in your own head, with your own thoughts, think the words to yourself, “I thought”? Not unless you were reflecting.

No, you think your thoughts.

Just as your character thinks his or her thoughts.

The above sentence can be brought closer into the character’s head by merely removing the words, “she thought.”

If only I hadn’t stolen that ruby! All would be well again!

You indicate thoughts merely by making them italics.

If you look at the example at the start of this chapter, you’ll see how I did it. All her thoughts are there, as she’s thinking them. There’s no need for a tag.

Clues

Do a search through your manuscript for “she thought” or “he thought”. Purge them.

Then, the next time you’re writing a scene, realize that every time you type the words “he thought” or “she thought”, you are no longer deep inside the character. You’ve pulled up. You need to go deeper. You’re not just taking dictation. You need to live inside that character.

Maintaining Metaphors and Similes

Suppose in your latest grand fantasy, your main character comes from deep in the forest. They grew up in the trees, dappled sunlight their constant companion, cool dew sipped from leaves their favorite drink, raising songbirds to brighten her days.

Now, your character has stepped out of the woods and is looking at a village for the first time. The wooden shacks. The thatched roofs. The straight streets.

The shacks hugged the street, as regular as apple trees in an orchard.

This almost works as a simile. It might work if your character has actually seen an orchard or a field.

But she was raised in the woods, remember? Things aren’t necessarily orderly in her world.

The shacks hung off the sides of the street like berries off a vine, one after another.

This might work a bit better, but does she like the shacks? Or is she put off by the order she sees?

The shacks hung off the sides of the street like corpse berries off a vine, each ready to poison her as she passed, with nowhere to hide.

This gives not only a description that would be natural to her world, it gives the emotional context of your character. Those houses are spaced apart. Not all gathered together like the branches of a tree. She’s uncomfortable with the space, the openness, the regularity of the houses.

This is another way of saying: use language that’s native to your speaker.

As part of your character creation, you might consider creating simile and metaphor suites for that character, until you get the hang of this.

A woodsy character is not going to describe a town in terms of iron or steel. Likewise, a contemporary, urban character isn’t going to describe something using rural terms.

Clues

One of the things your readers might say, was that they just never got into the character. Another thing your readers might say is that they didn’t believe the character.

To master this technique, you need to practice your descriptions, making sure you’re using the right language for the character. (More of this will be covered in Chapters 4 & 5, Character and Setting.)

Another thing that might help: If you’re having problems with a scene, read it out loud. Your ear will catch things your eye misses. You may hear the change of language.

In Conclusion

The things to remember about staying in a single character’s point of view:

- While it’s possible to switch character POVs in a single paragraph, remember that is an advanced technique. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.

- Be wary of the words, “he thought” or “she thought”. These are clues that you’re no longer actually deep inside your main character’s head.

- Use language, metaphors and similes that your character would use.

Chapter Three

Character Part Three: Secondary Characters

This chapter covers dealing with characters who aren’t your main character. Building them, naming them, interacting with them, as well as having dialogue with them.

Superpowers

In Chapter One, Character Part One: Point of View, I talked a little about making sure that you have an active character, and that you’re telling the story from the correct point of view, that it’s actually that character’s story you’re telling.

Let’s assume you have an active, primary character.

Who does this character interact with?

One of the things that I’ve discovered is that once I bring additional characters into a chapter or scene, the book comes alive. Just having a solitary character can be challenging. If they’re solitary, they need to be aggressively solitary. It has to be something they seek, not just something that happens to them. (Again, this is part of the difference between passive and active characters.)

Some people plan out their secondary and tertiary characters, and build their character sheets for those characters before they start writing.

Me? I write into darkness. I have no idea who this other person is who’s demanding screen time. I just know that I have to give it to them.

Once I discover that I need this other character, one of the questions I ask myself is, what is this character’s superpower? Do they have an amazingly organized brain, so that while they might have the socks in their drawer sorted by color, they can look at a collection of books and pull out the single title that doesn’t belong? Are they the smart mouth, who always comes up with the most inventive curses?

It’s a quick shorthand that helps me keep track of every character.

In addition, this gives the main character an opinion about this other character.

I will cover additional information about character opinion later.

But if your main character has opinions about another character, about the world in general, this makes them more active.

Clues

Readers say that they can’t keep your characters straight. Or when they’re talking with you, are always mixing up the character names.

Introducing Characters

If this is not the first time two characters have met, one of the easiest ways to get across information about the secondary character is for the point of view character to have a memory of the other character. For example:

Joey gave a curt nod to his sister Alicia, without stepping any closer to her. She’d been the one who’d tied him up in his bedroom closet that summer he’d turned ten, with the ants and the open jar of honey.

This gives a quick overview of the new character, helps the reader keep track of them. And the point of view character has a strong opinion about them.

If two characters are meeting for the first time, the point of view character needs to have an opinion about the other character.

He looked like the kind of guy who’d be great to party with, as long as you kept ahold of your wallet.

She gave off that sour smell of second–hand clothes not properly washed.

His stormy expression kept everyone at a distance.

Again, this is all just shorthand for bringing more characters into a scene.

Clues

Same as above. Or it might be readers complaining about too many characters and they can’t keep track of them all.

Minor Characters

I am reluctant to call any of my characters ‘minor’ characters. Partly, this is because I try to be very careful about my language.

Minor implies lesser. And while that other character might not have as much screen time as the primary point of view character, that doesn’t make them less of a character. They still have wants, dreams, and things that wake them up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

You want all of your characters to be rich and full. To have independent lives. They are the heroes of their own story. Let them live on their own. Don’t throttle them just because they have very little screen time, or you never go into their point of view.

So I tend to call them secondary characters. Or possibly tertiary. That way, I’m still treating them like full characters. They’re still vibrant and alive. They may or may not get their SAG card as the result of this particular work, but if you write in series, they may get their own story someday.

Clues

Readers complain that your secondary characters are stiff, unbelievable, or seem like cardboard cutouts. Readers also won’t care about these characters.

Names

There’s power in names. Just ask Rumpelstiltskin. Even if you’re writing science fiction set twelve thousand years in the future where all existing earth cultures have mixed and merged in new and interesting ways, there is still power in names.

Paying attention to all of the names of your characters will create better, more believable characters.

The main thing to remember is that character names are reflective of their culture.

In many cultures, parents name their kids after their grandparents, their uncles and aunts. So names repeat and have resonance both within a family as well as with long–time friends of the family. People who remember Grandpa Joe, and what an asshole he was, and who always are surprised when your character (who is named after him) is nicer than he was.

Some cultures make up names based on time of year, birth order, things like that. Again, these sorts of names would have resonance with other people from the culture, while being totally alien to people from other cultures.

In other cultures, parents make up names for their kids, and though the name may be pronounced the same as a more traditional name, the spelling is unique. Again, this is part of their culture.

I have a friend who has nine names. She feels sorry for those limited to just two or three. It’s part of her heritage. She had terrible fights with her husband about naming their kids, and eventually compromised on merely five names per kid.

Names are cultural, and place your character in a wider setting. They can also be class–based. There are many considerations for naming characters.

Whether your character accepts his birth name or not is part of building your character.

If you use a site that generates character names, I recommend ones that allow you to choose based on culture. Names within a culture tend to sound similar.

However, very few cultures exist in solitude. There will be trade with other cultures, foreigners coming in and marrying and co–mingling. It might be perfectly natural for your world for the first name to be Bengali with a last name that’s Icelandic—Nafizul Magnusson.

Beginning writers learn to not give characters names that all start with the same letter. Generally they also know that if it’s a major character, to make the name mostly pronounceable so that readers will remember them.

Clues

Readers confuse your characters because their names are too similar. Or they might complain that the character doesn’t really seem to be part of the world. It’s part of taking your world “out to the horizon” so the reader believes it’s a full, complete world, not a set that ends just past the trees.

Dialogue

Said is the most ignored word in the English language.

Trust me on this one.

When you have dialogue, don’t be afraid to use the word said. You can throw in the occasional admitted, shouted, exclaimed, etc. But you should mostly use said.

If you have only two characters in a conversation, you can get away with dropping the tags sometimes. The reader will still be able to follow the conversation. Particularly if the conversation gets heated and the characters are arguing.

When you have three people or more in a conversation, you must always use a dialogue tag. Tell the reader who’s speaking.

Do not use character tags, such as “the burly detective” or “the emaciated blonde”. Too many of those, particularly in dialogue, confuses the reader. Use the name of the character. This goes for description of the character as well. Use the character’s name. Don’t use their military rank in one paragraph, their pilot call signal in the next, and their name in the third. Your reader will assume that you’re talking about three different characters.

If a character has a nickname, introduce them with the full name once, then use the nickname. Only use the full name when it’s important. Like when your mom used your full name when you were in trouble.

Make sure that your characters sound unique. What do they bring to a conversation that the other character doesn’t have? Is it an accent, the way they structure a sentence, their word choice? It doesn’t have to obvious. You don’t have to beat the reader over the head with the differences between the characters. There should be enough subtle difference, though, to distinguish them.

In Conclusion

Here are the things to remember about additional characters:

- There are no minor characters, just characters who don’t get as much screen time as the point of view character.

- Your point of view character should have either a memory of the other character when introduced, or an opinion about them.

- Don’t be afraid of the word said.

Chapter Four

Character and Setting, Part One

This chapter begins by exploring the interaction between character and setting, and then delves into grounding the character at the start of every section and chapter.

Setting as Character Voice

No matter what narrative form you’ve chosen, first or third person, present tense, future, or past tense, you are telling at least that part of the story (section or chapter or entire thing) from the point of view of a character.

This means that everything is from the point of view of that character.

Everything.

Now, think about the setting. The description of the location that your character lives in.

Where is that information coming from?

Not from some disembodied voice off in the distance. (Again, if you’re doing omniscient POV and doing it well, best of luck to you—you’re far beyond the concepts talked about in this book.)

Not from some authorial voice.

But from the character.

All description of setting comes from the point of view of a character.

That means the description must be in the voice of the character. It must be imbued with the opinion of the character. It means that you can only describe what the character sees/feels/senses.

Setting is character voice.

As simple and as difficult as that.

If you are writing from deep inside the head of a character, this comes naturally. Easily. Your view of the world is already tempered by what the character is seeing, feeling, thinking, expressing.

Compare these two paragraphs:

Only half the tables at the coffee shop held customers. The two baristas talked with each other behind the counter instead of waiting on Freddie. Loud music played. The place smelled of recently cooked coffee beans. The counter was sticky under Freddie’s fingers.

Only half the tables at the coffee shop held customers, the other tables stood dissolute, strewn across the empty space. Freddie walked up to the counter where the two heavily tattooed–and–pierced male (?) baristas talked together. However, neither of them deigned to look up. Loud, dissonant emo music played, the kind guaranteed to make Freddie want to kill himself after listening to it for too long. The smell of burnt coffee, old and sour, made Freddie’s nose twitch. He considered calling the health department and turning them in when he felt how sticky the counter was.

Yes, the second is much longer than the first.

It’s also told from the point of view of Freddie.

You know how Freddie feels about the coffee shop. You have a feeling for the space itself. You hear the music, smell (taste) the burnt beans, feel the sticky counter.

Setting is character voice.

This has many different implications. For example, consider writing a scene from the point of view of a five–year–old girl. She is going to have a different opinion, as well as different vocabulary, for a candy shop, than her hectic mother who’s only gone into the shop as a bribe for her demanding daughter.

Characters have opinions. They react to everything around them. This includes bristling at the detective questioning them as well as trying to hide their disgust at standing in the alley next to the “fragrant” dumpster and shivering in the cold.

Make sure that your characters are reacting as well as acting, as opinionated as that aunt everyone in your family talks about and hates but who you secretly admire because she always speaks the truth and is frequently funny.

Clues

Readers are confused about where a character is. Or they have difficulty finishing a piece. Or they don’t believe a character (because the voice of the character differs so much from the description).

Practice writing setting as a character voice. Take a setting and describe it from the point of view of more than one character, perhaps by one character who loves the old church, one who despises it, and a third who’s only there because his friend asked him to be and he’s pretty neutral about the location and the event.

Grounding the Reader

This is one of those trust me sections.

At the start of every scene, the start of every chapter, you need to ground the reader again.

What does that mean?

If you are writing from deep inside the point of view of a character, your reader has followed you down into the depths. They’re wincing from the stitch in their side from running so hard, shivering with fear while they’re crouched down behind the rock with you, searching frantically for that way out.

An unexpected bomb goes off behind them, blinding them.

Then there’s a scene break.

Scene breaks are necessary. The white space gives the reader the chance to catch their breath. (If you don’t have enough scene breaks, readers feel tired after reading for too long, and will put the book down even though they’re really enjoying it. However, they’re just too tired to keep reading. I’ve always heard that somewhere around 2400 words is the longest any scene should be. After that, even if a reader is very interested, they’ll start to forget things.)

But with every white space, with every chapter break, you’ve given the reader the chance to escape. You’ve let them up for air. They could get away from you, put the book down, walk away, and never come back.

The way you hold them is to make sure that immediately following that white space, you bring the reader way back down into the character again.

How do you do that?

You need to tell the reader where they are. You must do that in the character’s unique voice. And ideally, there’s yet another problem that’s arisen.

In the paragraph above, Freddie has lots of problems: he wants to get some coffee, but he can’t get the baristas’ attention, the coffee shop itself is a mess, the music is driving him away, etc.

These may, or may not, be related to The Big Problem that Freddie must solve over the course of the story. (If only Freddie would loosen up a bit, he’d find his true love. Or he may have to save the world. Or both.)

Clues

Readers walk away from your book halfway through. They’ll tell you that they liked the character but the book just didn’t hold them.

Readers complain about cardboard characters that they didn’t believe in. This might be because your setting descriptions weren’t from the voice of the character.

When you finish writing a piece, let it sit, then go back and look at the start of every scene, every chapter.

Is there a character?

Are they in a setting that is being described by the character?

Do they (still) have a problem?

In Conclusion

In this section about Character and Setting, you need to pay attention to the following:

- All setting is told from the point of view of a character.

- All description must be in a character’s voice, their unique dialect, word choice, similes and metaphors.

- You must ground the reader at the start of every section and chapter.

Chapter Five

Character and Setting, Part Two

This chapter is going to talk about character attitude, when you go too far into the character point of view, transitional elements, and talking while doing.

What Am I Wearing?

In the previous chapter we met Freddie who (one could assume from the description) was fairly fastidious.

Does this fit his character?

“$4.95.”

Freddie opened his mouth then shut it again. Of course, the shop didn’t have anything as simple as a list of drinks with prices. He reached into the front pocket of his filthy jeans and extracted a crumpled five dollar bill.

These people didn’t deserve any tip.

Unless there’s a very good reason for Freddie to be wearing filthy jeans and to not be carrying the softest brown–leather designer wallet, this description of what he’s wearing doesn’t fit the character we’ve met so far.

That could be part of his greater problem. Or it could be a misstep on the part of the writer.

The short hand for this is:

Clothes are character’s attitude.

What a goth chick wears on the first day of tenth grade is going to be very different than the band nerd girl. Though they might have the same bag—a dead penguin with Xs for eyes—the goth chick may have added safety pins to the penguin’s nose, while the band nerd’s version might have a tiny pin of a flute in its hair.

Clothes must also be appropriate to the setting. You need to figure out what’s the general uniform for the emo teen, then how is your character conforming to the rule, as well as breaking it?

What is their attitude?

A fantasy trope to be aware of: a character often changes clothes when he or she goes from the mundane world into the fantasy world. The clothing change also indicates a change of character attitude. Often, the clothes are used as metaphor for the character’s transformation.

Clues

Readers don’t believe your characters, think they don’t work. They keep getting jarred out of the story and they can’t figure out why. Readers think your characters are cardboard and not fully fleshed out. Or a more astute reader may comment that they don’t feel the character fits the world.

Getting In Too Deep

Throughout this, I’ve been giving you techniques for getting deeper inside of a character, telling the entire story, including all the description, from the point of view of a character, and so on.

There is a chance, however, that you might go too deep. I’m frequently guilty of this.

This is more difficult to diagnose, because your readers are down there with you. If you’re a good enough writer, you can write them past the issues.

The primary clue that you’re in too deep is that your world building starts to suffer. You’ll start skimming on world details. The character might be fantastic when she’s looking down at the yarn she’s spinning, actively talking with another character, arguing about the latest edict from the emperor.

However, when the character looks up, there is no room. The world has faded.

The shorthand we’ve come up with is, “Wallpaper.”

What is the color of the wallpaper on the walls?

This forces a lot of world building. Is this a place that would have wallpaper? Is that too advanced? Or is it too simplistic, and your character would have a constantly changing light show, displaying different colors and patterns on the walls?

And again, this is much more difficult to diagnose. Your readers might say things like, “The world doesn’t go to the horizon” or “The world isn’t complete.” Or that the world was thinly painted in. Or that they couldn’t see it. Mostly, however, if you’re a good enough writer, readers will be fooled. However, you won’t have the success as a writer that you desire, because there’s just something off that no one can put a finger on.

Transitional Elements

One of the ways to make your world and your settings come more alive is by adding a transitional element.

Suppose you’re standing on the beach. You can feel the strong wind blowing against you, trying to knock you over. You can see the brilliant blue skies and the clouds far out on the horizon, shading the corners of the world. You hear the crash of the waves, taste the salt in the air, catch the faint whiff of decaying fish when the wind blows just right.

Then a small crab pops up out of a hole near your feet, scuttles across the sand, and pops back down.

This transitional element—something that wouldn’t be evident in a photograph of the scene—brings the scene even more to life, the setting unusual and distinct. Makes it more than just a picture.

This isn’t a problem with your writing, just a technique you may want to start including in your settings, in order to make them more real to your readers.

Talking and Doing

One of the problems beginning writers have is two people, merely talking, in a white room.

As mentioned before, you need to ground the characters in a setting, place them firmly in their location, whether it’s a seedy dive with a cigar–smoking armadillo on the bar, or a cozy window seat over looking a formal garden with a roaring fire nearby.

However, if you have two characters who are just talking and nothing else, you’ll lose your reader. No matter how fantastic your dialogue is, the reader feels disconnected.

You need to intersperse the dialogue with the characters doing something. It might just be them reacting to what the other is saying, having an opinion about everything going on.

A more advanced technique is to have your characters talking while doing something else. This can build the setting, the world, move the plot along, as well as make your dialogue more interesting. Plus, this happens all the time in the real world.

They might be putting the finishing touches on that superhero costume, or lovingly rubbing oil into the rosewood stock of that rifle, or even chopping up carrots.

Something else to consider, a truism:

Women bond face to face. Men bond shoulder to shoulder.

So instead of a lot of talking, your “dialogue” could contain very few words. However, it’s still two or more people interacting, doing the same task, shoulder to shoulder. Bonding. Lots of “non–verbal” communication that your characters are saying to one another.

In Conclusion

The things to remember about setting and character are:

- Clothes are character attitude and help set your character more firmly in the world.

- If you are light on setting, it might be because you’ve gone too deeply inside a character.

- Try adding transitional elements to a scene to make it come further alive.

- Also try having your characters talk while doing something else to help build the world further.

Chapter Six

Pacing

This chapter talks about the importance of pacing, gives tips for how to pace, and aggressive paragraphing.

About Pacing

You’ve heard people talk about pacing in a written work.

What is it, exactly?

One of the best descriptions of pacing that I’ve ever heard, at least in terms of writing, is the following:

Pacing is controlling where and how the reader breathes.

Remember, you are mind control experts, or at least working on it.

Pacing is an advanced technique. As a beginning or intermediate writer, you probably have some idea about pacing. This chapter is going to go into some of the more technical aspects. However, trust me on this one, there’s a lot more to learn about pacing beyond what I give you here.

Form and Function

Do you have any old textbooks lying around? Or maybe a very serious, very important literary book? How about some reference books, written by academics?

Go and get one of the above if you have it. If you have more than one of the above list, go and get those.

Crack it, or them, open.

Now, look at the formatting of the paragraphs.

One of the things you’ll notice is that the paragraphs all tend to be the exact same size. They all tend to be big and blocky. Lots of sentences per paragraph.

Now, if you have one, go look at a modern thriller.

The formatting of the paragraphs is opposite to the above.

There are one sentence paragraphs.

The text is choppy.

Different.

Exciting.

Form follows function.

Those big solid paragraphs have a function. They are there to tell the reader to slow down. They are weighty. They convey to the reader that the following is important information.

They are not easy to read.

A thriller, on the other hand, is all about drawing the reader into the story and making them flow through the text as fast as they can go.

Remember what I said about controlling the reader’s breathing?

As you’ve been taught at some point or another, a period is a full stop.

That’s where the reader takes a breath, whether physically or unconsciously.

A page full of one word sentences?

Makes the reader feel as though they’re panting.

Out of breath.

That is the function of those short sentences. To get the reader to speed up.

A thriller is like a roller coaster ride. They may have that long, slow build up, with some things happening to build tension. At some point, though, there’s that first slope where the reader takes off.

An advanced writer knows when to have the ups and downs and thrills, and how to intersperse those with slower sections so the reader can catch their breath.

Aggressive Paragraphing

Every writer I’ve ever met or worked with needs to learn how to paragraph.

Trust me on this one.

Paragraphing is an advanced skill.

You may think you know how to paragraph. You learned that in first grade.

Possibly you do.

Chances are, unless you wrote a lot of poetry, you don’t know how. You are unaware of how to break information up on a page.

Go and look at one of your manuscripts.

What do the paragraphs look like?

Do they all look the same? Are they all consistent blocks of information? Or are they broken up, with a block here, a few separate lines of dialogue, a shorter description, another one–sentence paragraph, some longer description, etc.?

Don’t read the words. Just look at the form.

An editor is a super reader.

If you are writing short fiction and are sending it out, and nothing ever sells, it may be because you’re just unlucky. It’s a great story but the editor just bought a similar zombie–robot story, or the protagonist in your story reminded her too much of her ex–boyfriend for her to buy your story, or the story just doesn’t fit the specs well enough.

You’ll get nice rejections letters from editors if you’re just unlucky.

If, however, you’re being rejected with no personalized letters or email, even though you know that you’re telling good stories, it might be because of the paragraphing.

An editor is aware enough that they’ll be able to tell you if they’re going to buy a story or not just by looking at the first page and how the paragraphs are formed.

If all the paragraphs on that first page are roughly the same size, they’ll reject it out of hand. No matter how good the story is. You may think that’s stupid. However, it’s also a fact of the slush pile.

You can’t start just adding paragraphs willy–nilly.

Form follows function

The following are general guidelines. As I said before, there are exceptions to these. However, you need to learn the rules first before you figure out how to break them.

Dialogue all needs to begin on a separate line. Every time someone begins to speak, you need to start a new line. This is particularly true when it isn’t the point of view character talking.

Frequently, dialogue is on lines all by itself, while description of what the person is doing is on a separate line.

During action scenes, where there is a lot of action, every action is on a separate line.

Similarly, during action scenes, every reaction is on a separate line.

The start of a new action, even when it isn’t an action scene is frequently a new line.

The introduction of a new thought is on its own line.

Burying Information

Sounds like a lot of paragraphing, right?

It is. It is also what you need to be doing in order to improve the readability of your work.

What you’ll find is that while your stories may be the exact same number of words, the number of pages increases. Sometimes significantly.

But blocks of paragraphs do have a place.

A good mystery writer knows this. They will deliberately bury information.

Remember, that block of text is an unconscious cue to the reader to slow down, because the contents will be important information.

Because of reading textbooks as a kid, readers tend to skim big blocks of text.

Which is why in a mystery, a block of text is a good place to hide information from the reader. It’s there, out in plain sight. But the reader might miss it.

Same with a list. Most lists are done as three items. Readers remember three items.

If you have more than three items, a reader won’t remember.

A mystery writer will hide a clue in a list. And have more than three items in that list. Possibly in every list, so that the reader can never tell which list to pay attention to.

In addition, after a car chase or running for their lives, you want to give the reader a break. They need to be able to breathe. So you need to learn when a good chunk of text is necessary, that the reader can just fall into. This way, the reader doesn’t get too tired while they’re reading and put down the book without being able to say exactly why.

As I said before, paragraphing is an advanced skill. There’s lots to learn about it. I’ve only covered some of the basic techniques here.

In Conclusion

The things to remember about pacing:

- Pacing is controlling where and how the reader breathes.

- A single aspect of pacing is the length of your paragraphs. But it’s one of the most important ones that all writers need to learn.

- Aggressively paragraph until your fingers learn how to hit that return key.

Chapter Seven

Trust the Process

This chapter talks about the difference between creative and critical voice, as well as rewriting and cycling.

Critical Voice Versus Creative Voice

You’ve probably heard people talking about critical voice and creative voice. But what the heck do those terms mean?

Critical voice is the voice of your parent who was trying to keep you safe and teach you social norms. It’s the mom shouting at you to put your clothes back on, it’s the dad yelling at you for running out into the street.

Or it’s your aunt telling you that your family doesn’t talk about those things. Or that good girls don’t use such language.

That voice continues to gain timber and force once you go to school, and your English teacher tells you that every sentence must contain a subject, verb, and object. Or your friends laughing at your purple dinosaur story. Or the smart, cute boy in your physics class who tells you that girls can’t understand upper math and should never try to write science fiction.

The critical voice is there to keep you safe. It’s also there to make sure you conform.

Yuck.

As an artist, your creative voice is that two year old who still wants to take off all her clothes and go dance naked in the patch of sunlight beaming through the window.

It’s the soul who wants to take risks.

It’s the voice that flows out when you show yourself, your whole, true, real self.

Again, you started to hear that critical voice when you were very small, and it was generally there to keep you safe.

When you expose yourself, as you will when you commit art, your critical voice will often pipe up. “No one wants to read girl’s science fiction,” or “Humor is hard, you shouldn’t try it,” or even, “People will make fun of you if you write that.”

Writing is done from creative voice. From that wild place inside you. It may not feel that way—perhaps you conquered your critical voice a long while ago and have no idea what I’m talking about—but for the rest of us, writing using creative voice is freeing.

Writing with creative voice feels like play.

Writing from critical voice feels like work.

You’ll need to learn your own techniques for silencing your critical voice. Things that you can do to free your creative voice.

How to tell the difference?

Critical voice is loud and immediate. It says, “All of this is bad.” It tends to be disparaging. Doubting.

Creative voice is quiet, and often takes a few days to speak up. “You know that section? Right there? Yeah, do this instead.” Creative voice often shows up with a solution, not just objecting. Creative voice, for me at any rate, is often stubborn, much more stubborn than my critical voice.

I’ve learned that I can argue with the critical voice. She’ll back down.

I shouldn’t even bother objecting to what my creative, inner writer has proposed. She always wins.

That’s really what the title of this chapter implies.

Trust the process.

Trust your creative voice.

Rewriting

I used to be a firm believer in rewriting, that all good writing was rewriting.

I have changed my mind. I hope that this section helps you change your mind as well. Or at least to see the argument in a different light.

The way it was explained to me, by Dean Wesley Smith, is thus:

You’ve been listening to stories all your life. Possibly since before you were born—your parents may have started reading to you and telling you stories while you were in the womb. You tell stories all the time—when you talk with your friends, when you call your parents at the end of the week, or when you tell your spouse about the day at work. You absorb stories through ads on your phone, through movies, through TV, through commercials, even through reading.

You are constantly experiencing story.

In contrast, you weren’t introduced to story critique until you were in school. Perhaps third or fourth grade. You do not practice story critique every day. You’ve learned how to take apart a story, and as a beginning writer, you’ve practiced critique.

However, your critiquing abilities are nowhere near as practiced as your storytelling abilities.

When you rewrite a story, you bring the quality of the story down, because your critiquing ability does not match your storytelling ability. And it never can. Your storytelling ability has years, decades more experience.

Here’s a graphic, showing this.

I’m not asking that you trust me.

Trust your storytelling voice. Trust that you know how to tell a story. Get out of your own way, stop listening to your critical voice, let your creative voice wander where it will.

Tell your story. Not the story your critique group tells you that you should write, not the story that your second grade English teacher wanted you to write, not the story that your readers think you should write.

Trust your storytelling. Tell your story.

But…

I know. But you know your story isn’t complete after the first draft. You need to add more. Change things around. That first draft is broken.

I used to do that as well. I would write very broken first drafts. Then I would have to go back and fix them.

I hated having to do that work. I think it was because I was working in critical voice versus creative voice. It was very difficult for me to get back to that original inspirational rush and energy of the first white–hot draft.

There are techniques that I’ve learned for writing so that I don’t end up with such a broken first draft, so that my final drafts are cleaner, that satisfy my inner writer as well, so she still feels as though she gets to play.

Cycling

No, that doesn’t mean writing while sitting on a stationary bicycle (though that would be an awesome character, one who didn’t write while standing up, or while at a treadmill desk—that’s far too mundane. No, she writes while on a stationary bicycle.)

Anyway.

Before I start writing for the day, I go back up and look at the previous scene. Or perhaps I go back into the previous chapter.

I do not start at the beginning of the novel. If I’m cycling back that far, I’ll never make forward progress.

But I read through what I’ve written previously. I get back into the character’s head. I dive back into the world. In creative voice, I go back and make changes, so that when I get to the next section, I can start making serious progress again.

When I run into a section and I find myself stalled out, it’s generally because I’ve screwed something up earlier in the story. Instead of pushing forward, I’ll take a walk or something so that I can figure out what’s bothering my inner writer.

Then I go and fix that section, so I can move forward.

By cycling, I finish with a much cleaner first draft. I still end up going back and doing a final pass. I generally let the piece sit for a week (or a month) before I go back to it.

Critical voice will tell me “No! This is horrible! All of it! Don’t do this!”

And all of that will be immediate and loud.

Writer voice takes its time to tell me things. And it’s generally much more quiet. But a couple days after I write a scene, a little voice tells me, “You know, she shouldn’t have said X. She would say Y instead.”

And it will make sense.

When a scene is really bothering you, give it a rest. Give your writer voice time to figure out what’s wrong.

Trust your storytelling voice.

In Conclusion

The things to remember about trusting the process are:

- Free yourself. Free your writing. Write from creative voice, not from critical voice.

- Don’t rewrite. Free yourself from that drudgery. Write better first drafts instead.

- One of the techniques for writing better first drafts is cycling.

Chapter Eight

Writing Techniques

This chapter covers different writing techniques, such as how often to use sensory description, layering, and redrafting.

Sensory Description

In the book Perfume by Patrick S&uoml;skind, the main character experiences almost everything by scent. The world comes alive through his sense of smell. And perhaps you’re writing a book about a shape shifting bat who has exceptional hearing and so everything is filtered through what she hears.

But those are the exceptions.

You’ll often hear the advice to use sensory description, such as taste, smell, touch, and sound, when writing. Beginning writers often forget all senses beyond sight.

As an intermediate writer, you need to be using more sensory description.

How often?

To start, go through an old manuscript and try to make sure that you have a sound every third page, a scent every fifth page, a touch every eighth page and a taste every tenth.

These are arbitrary numbers, however.

Trying to write a story with every sense on every page is a challenge, but may not make for a good story, unless you’re writing something that needs that sort of rich detail.

Using sensory description beyond sight is a good way to ground the reader at the start of every chapter and scene.

You’ll notice in many of the examples I’ve used so far in this book that I use all the senses when I’m describing a setting. These are all done from the character point of view as well, what that character, sees, feels, smells, touches and tastes. If you look back in chapter four, Character and Setting, Part One, with Freddie and the coffee shop all the senses are there.

Note, that all the senses are done as the opinion of the character.

Only half the tables at the coffee shop held customers, the other tables stood dissolute, strewn across the empty space. Freddie walked up to the counter where the two heavily tattooed–and–pierced male (?) baristas talked together. However, neither of them deigned to look up. Loud, dissonant emo music played, the kind guaranteed to make Freddie want to kill himself after listening to it for too long. The smell of burnt coffee, old and sour, made Freddie’s nose twitch. He considered calling the health department and turning them in when he felt how sticky the counter was.

You might call hijinks and say that I don’t have a taste in that description. However, smell and taste can frequently be combined as one, so I can claim that all the senses are there, because burnt coffee works as both a taste as well as a smell.

If you’re really clever, you can work taste into sight as well, with the walls of the bedroom painted a deep, raspberry sherbet, the beatup old junker with lime green bumpers, etc.

Another exercise you could try is to describe a setting one paragraph at a time. The first paragraph is sight, then the second is touch, followed by one paragraph each of sound, taste, and smell. Then try to build a sixth paragraph just using a sentence from each of the other paragraphs.

Clues

Readers don’t feel as though the world is real. Readers skim past your descriptions because they aren’t evocative, don’t involve all the senses. Readers also get bored with your descriptions because they’re just sight–based. They might also talk about getting tired after reading a bit because again, you’re overusing one sense.

Layering

In Chapter 7, Trust the Process, I talked about not rewriting, but cycling.

Cycling is a good way to add sensory detail.

Another way to think about it, and one of the techniques that I use, is to layer in details. I generally write light first drafts, and end up adding more and more as I cycle through them.

I’ll go back through a section that I’ve already written and I start adding taste, or touch, or smell.

This may sound like rewriting to you.

The difference is that I’m not concerned with the words. I’m not taking words out. I’m not fiddling with this word or that word. I’m possibly not even concerned with sentences. I’ve shut off that critical voice that makes me afraid of language (“good girls don’t use those terms”) or sentence structure (“That sentence isn’t proper! Don’t write in fragments!”).

Instead, I’ve gone down, deep inside of the character, and I focus on what she detects. What can she smell in this room? What does that sour smell remind her of? How well do her clothes fit? Is she wearing them like armor, or to tantalize?

The other difference between cycling and rewriting is that my inner writer, my creative voice, is eager to do it. She doesn’t feel as though this is a chore or work. This is more play. This is exploring the world using something other than sight. This is fun.

If you write thin first drafts, consider layering in details to flesh out your stories, adding more meat to the bones.

Redrafting

Sometimes you’ll write something that’s truly broken.

It might just be a scene. It might be a chapter. Sometimes it’s an entire story. Or even a complete novel.

(The latter is heartbreaking, but it happens.)

Your inner writer is unhappy. Creative voice keeps coming up with suggestions for how to fix things, but none of them actually feel right.

You keep trying and thinking but nothing seems to work.

Sometimes you need to put what you’ve written to the side. Rename it, put it in a different folder. Pull out a new notebook. Start a new file.

And begin again. Start that scene, section, story or novel from scratch. Do not use anything that you had from the first draft.

I can hear the complaints from here.

But all those words! They’re all wasted!

No, they’re not.

No writing is ever wasted.

Every time you put words to paper, however you do that, you are practicing.

Do you know of any musician who doesn’t run scales? Any painter who doesn’t sketch out concepts? Any comedian who doesn’t polish his routine, running over the jokes again and again?

Why would you think that writing was any different?

Practice is not a dirty word.

Sometimes it happens when you don’t plan it.

Those words are not wasted. You learned something writing them. They might only live as a bad example—not doing that again—but there is something you learned there.

It might be just that you don’t have the technique to tell that story yet. Or it might be a failure of the imagination, that you need to go bigger, deeper, broader.

Weirder.

You have learned from writing those words.

Trust me on this one.

Don’t be afraid to put them to the side, walk away from them, and start again.

Redraft.

Don’t rewrite. You’ll never fix those words, that concept, that horrifically flawed character, or come up with a solution for that plot hole.

Instead, learn, and move on.

Sometimes, that’s the only way to finish what you’re working on.

In Conclusion

In this chapter, remember the following writing techniques:

- Add sensory details to your work, beyond sight.

- Layer in details if you don’t add them the first time. Make sure that you’re working in creative voice when you do so.

- Redraft if something is really broken. Rewriting will just make your creative voice crabby and not want to play.

Chapter Nine

Reader Expectations

This chapter deals with additional aspects of reader expectations, the prescriptive nature of genre, surprising your reader versus ‘writing on rails.’

Reader Contract

As a beginning writer, you’ve heard about the reader contract; that is, the explicit trust that the reader places in you, the writer, after reading the first paragraph or so of a story.

If the story has started off with a young girl, all alone, lost in a scary, dark forest with something chasing her, your reader expects a story that will follow through with this premise. The story is supposed to be exciting, haunting, scary. That’s what you’ve promised.

If about three pages in, the story suddenly turns into a romantic comedy that isn’t scary at all, many readers are going to be angry with you. You’ve broken the reader contract and haven’t met their expectations.

(This is a “trust me” section. It’s pretty easy to write a bad story where the above happens. Beginning writers do it all the time. While it’s possible to write a good story where the above happens, it takes a very advanced writer to manipulate the reader into trusting and liking that story. You must drop enough clues early on so that the reader can go back and realize, “Oh. You did tell me” and therefore not feel cheated.)

In addition, a story is rarely read in isolation. Even with an ebook, the reader can still go back and look at the cover (which should also accurately set reader expectations of genre and story, but that’s a different book). If the cover looks scary and suddenly the book turns romantic, again, you’ve broken the reader contract.

Prescriptive Endings

If you’re writing genre fiction, chances are, the ending of your story has been dictated to you, based on the genre.

For example, suppose you’re writing a mystery story. Mysteries start with a crime being committed. If you don’t have a crime of some sort, there’s generally no mystery.

At the end of the mystery, the crime has been resolved (not necessarily solved). Mystery is all about moving from chaos into order. Even in noir, you still have order at the end. Your character may not like the order, and may be worse off because of the new order, but it still occurs.

(If you do not understand genre and what each individual genre entails, go and take a genre workshop.)

Romance is also heavily prescriptive, not just at the start and end, but in the middle as well. A romance has very specific points that need to be met. If you don’t meet them, you have a story with romantic elements, and not a romance (and probably angry readers as well).

So you need to understand that not only do you have reader expectations based on the first page of the story, you have additional expectations based on the genre.

Surprising Your Reader

On the one hand, you have all these expectations. The harder you hit your genre expectations, the more chances you’ll have for success. If you are coloring outside the boundaries of your genre, don’t be surprised if you don’t sell as much as other writers.

However, if you only stay perfectly inside your genre, and you never challenge the reader to think, you’ll lose your readers after a while. Your readers will know exactly the type of story you’re going to tell, and they’ll get bored.

As an intermediate writer, you need to learn how to surprise your reader, without breaking reader expectations. How to delight them with the new while still delivering the old.

I will not hide from you that this is a complicated dance. Because in addition to these considerations, you have your creative voice, your inner writer, who might not ever want to color inside the lines.

Considerations:

How well do you know your genre’s requirements? How widely read are you in your chosen genre? How much current material in your genre do you read?

If the answer to all of the above is basically, not much, it may be more difficult for you to hit genre expectations (because your inner writer has no idea what they are).

How do you approach writing a series? Is it one continuing story, getting together with friends that you know and love? Or do you work at making every story different?

For me, the latter advice was key for me to figure out how to write a series in the first place. Each book must be different from the last, otherwise my inner writer is bored (been there, done that already). For some readers, every story being different is crucial. Or at least, different enough, so that they don’t feel as though they’re reading the same story over and over again.

Writing On Rails

An editor, as I mentioned before, is a super reader. They’ve read the starts of more stories than you have. They have an intuitive understanding of story.

They can read that first paragraph and predict the ending.

Some editors, if they read that first paragraph, and there is something in the writing that catches them, will sometimes flip to the end of a manuscript and see if the story ends where they think it will.

If it does, they’ll reject it, because you haven’t surprised them. You’re telling a story that they can predict. You’ve bored the reader.

You are writing on rails.

As I mentioned above, it’s a tricky dance setting reader expectations, then meeting reader expectations; while at the same time, telling a unique, different, interesting story that no one else has ever told before.

One of the pieces of advice that I’ve received, though I don’t always follow, is to think of an idea.

Throw it away.

Think of another idea.

Throw it away, too.

Do this one more time.

Yup. Toss it.

By your fourth idea, you will have come up with something unique, something interesting, something totally unlike what other people have thought of.

If you don’t know what already exists in your genre, one of the things to look at is the Turkey City Lexicon. This will spell out some of the more common plots, so you can avoid them. Same with TV tropes.

Writing on rails means your story has turned mundane. Boring. It’s the same as what anyone else would write. That story has been told exactly the same way, more than once.

You still need to hit your genre. You still need to hit expectations.

You still need to tell your story, your way.

Who said writing was easy?

In Conclusion

The things you need to remember about expectations:

- You set reader expectations in the first page. Honor them.

- Your genre has specific expectations. Honor them.

- You still need to tell a unique, different story, that isn’t on rails, despite the above.

In Conclusion

There may seem to be a lot to learn when it comes to writing.

There is.

But I want to emphasize again that these “rules” are just for you to learn.

As an artist, you’ll break them.

As an intermediate writer, you need to learn how and when to break them so that you don’t break the story or the reader’s enjoyment of the story.

What is your next step? Besides, you know, writing. And more writing. And practice. And writing.

I suggest putting a reminder in your calendar to pick this book up again in a year.

What I’ve always found in writing books is that I pick up different things when I go through them a second time. Things I glossed over (or just plain missed) the first time. Things I wasn’t ready for, that didn’t make sense to me because I wasn’t “there” yet.

Things that I can now add to, because I’ve had a year practicing.

Hopefully, in a year’s time, you’ll realize that you don’t need any of the information in this book because you’ve moved well beyond what I’ve listed here.

In which case, yay!

Or you might need a refresher. A reminder that, oh, yeah, I need more sensory detail. Or I should try this doing and talking thing at the same time—I don’t do that. Or possibly you’ll start adding those transitory elements.

Just keep learning. Just keep reaching for that next mountain top.

The good writers never stop.

Sometimes, sure, that’s daunting. I want to be finished, damn it!

Then I take a deep breath, get over myself, and remind myself that it’s the journey, not the end.

And I’ve seen some amazing vistas in between climbs.

I hope you’ll keep climbing with me.

Seattle, WA

2016

Appendix

Additional Resources

As I said in the introduction to this book, the material presented here is an amalgamation of a bunch of other sources.

Turkey City Lexicon is a good introduction to the tropes and some terms that many people will be familiar with, so you can learn the jargon—http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey–city–lexicon–a–primer–for–sf–workshops/

TV Tropes: http://tvtropes.org/ (Fair warning, this is a huge time sink. You can lose days here.)

This is a good introduction to fantasy tropes, so you can easily learn what to break: Jones, Diana Wynne, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, Firebird, 2006

For a good introduction to science fiction tropes, see The Tough Guide to the Known Galaxy: http://rocketpunk–observatory.com/spaceguide.htm

Pretty much any craft class taught by Dean and Kris. I’d recommend the Character, Voice and Setting workshop, the Depths workshop, the Dialog workshops, the genre workshop, etc. http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/online–workshops/

Also by Leah Cutter

The Shadow Wars Trilogy

The Raven and the Dancing Tiger

The Guardian Hound

War Among the Crocodiles

The Clockwork Fairy Kingdom

The Clockwork Fairy Kingdom

The Maker, the Teacher, and the Monster

Seattle Trolls

The Changeling Troll

The Princess Troll

Contemporary Fantasy

Siren’s Call

The Immortals’ War

Zydeco Queen and the Creole Fairy Courts

The Cassie Stories

Poisoned Pearls

Tainted Waters

Spoiled Harvest

The Chronicles of Franklin

The Popcorn Thief

The Soul Thief

Find all of Leah Cutter’s work at at Knotted Road Press.

Also be sure to get the other books in the Business For Breakfast series:

Volume 1: The Beginning Professional Writer

Volume 2: The Beginning Professional Publisher

Volume 3: The Beginning Professional Storyteller

Volume 5: Business Planning for the Professional Publisher

Available at your favorite retailers.

About the Author

Leah Cutter sold her first short story back in 1997, and continues to write and sell her fiction. She currently runs three business in Seattle: her fiction writing business, a small press, and a vacation rental. She’s also lived all over the world and held the requisite odd writer jobs, such as doing archeology work in England, teaching English in Taiwan, and bartending in Thailand.

Her fiction includes literary, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. She has a number of novels in print, plus she’s been published in major magazines and anthologies.

Read more work by Leah Cutter at Knotted Road Press.

Follow her blog at LeahCutter.com.

Never miss a release!

If you’d like to be notified of new releases, sign up for my newsletter.

I only send out newsletters once a quarter, will never spam you, or use your email for nefarious purposes. You can also unsubscribe at any time.

http://www.leahcutter.com/newsletter/

Reviews

It’s true. Reviews help me sell more books. If you’ve enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review of it on your favorite site.

About Knotted Road Press

Knotted Road Press fiction specializes in dynamic writing set in mysterious, exotic locations.

Knotted Road Press non–fiction publishes autobiographies, business books, cookbooks, and how–to books with unique voices.

Knotted Road Press creates DRM–free ebooks as well as high–quality print books for readers around the world.

With authors in a variety of genres including literary, poetry, mystery, fantasy, and science fiction, Knotted Road Press has something for everyone.

Knotted Road Press

www.KnottedRoadPress.com

Copyrights

Copyright © 2016 Leah Cutter

All rights reserved

Published by Knotted Road Press

www.KnottedRoadPress.com

Cover Art

Copyright © 3drenderings | Dreamstime.com – 3d Render Of Bowl With Milk Photo

Copyright © Didenko | Dreamstime.com – Funny Numerals From Cereal Products Photo

Copyright © Didenko | Dreamstime.com – Latin Alphabet Cereal Products Photo

Copyright © Pichayasri | Dreamstime.com – Bowl Of Cereal Photo

Cover design copyright © 2016 Knotted Road Press

Table of Contents

Forward by Blaze Ward

Introduction by Leah Cutter

TRUST ME

Readers

Stages of a Writer

Organization

Chapter One

Character, Part One: Point of View

Who’s on First?

Whose Story Is It?

Active/Reactive/Reluctant Hero

In Conclusion

Chapter Two

Character, Part Two: Staying in Character

Stay on Target

Thinking

Maintaining Metaphors and Similes

In Conclusion

Chapter Three

Character Part Three: Secondary Characters

Superpowers

Introducing Characters

Minor Characters

Names

Dialogue

In Conclusion

Chapter Four

Character and Setting, Part One

Setting as Character Voice

Grounding the Reader

In Conclusion

Chapter Five

Character and Setting, Part Two

What Am I Wearing?

Getting In Too Deep

Transitional Elements

Talking and Doing

In Conclusion

Chapter Six

Pacing

About Pacing

Form and Function

Aggressive Paragraphing

Burying Information

In Conclusion

Chapter Seven

Trust the Process

Critical Voice Versus Creative Voice

Rewriting

But…

Cycling

In Conclusion

Chapter Eight

Writing Techniques

Sensory Description

Layering

Redrafting

In Conclusion

Chapter Nine

Reader Expectations

Reader Contract

Prescriptive Endings

Surprising Your Reader

Writing On Rails

In Conclusion

In Conclusion

Appendix

Additional Resources

Also by Leah Cutter

About the Author

About Knotted Road Press

Copyrights