The Literary Toolbox: Description as Emotion

March 29, 2012 By 2 Comments

One of the things we learn early on about description is not to “info dump.” In other words, don’t bore your readers to tears with pages of detailed description of the world of your novel. Drop it in slowly, as needed. But something we writers learn as we get further into the process is that every word in a novel should be multi-tasking.

Description is no exception, as we discussed in one of Kathryn Craft’s workshops. What your characters notice and how they interpret what they see says a lot about who they are and their state of mind. Description should add to the atmosphere and the emotion of the scene—and it can be a great way to show your character’s emotion without telling and without being cliché. For example, a character overhearing another character laughing can interpret that laughter as jovial or as somehow derisively directed at him, depending on if the character is happy or embarrassed.

But how do you choose which descriptive details to include in order to convey emotion? Very simply, you put yourself in your POV character’s head. What would your protagonist be most likely to notice about a scene in his situation, and what would be his emotional reaction to it?

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Just get inside your character’s head. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, at least for some of us. J. Thomas Ross did a wonderful post on Author As Actor that describes the process and problems of getting into character—or not.

I always think I’m inside my character’s head, but my crit partners constantly find tiny mistakes that show that I am not inside my character enough. This is likely one reason why my description tends to do only one thing—describe. That is not enough. Description, like every other facet of the story, must support the plot/conflict/tension of the book.

In conclusion: 1) It takes a surprisingly small amount of description to give a reader a good idea of the scene. 2) The reader will assume that anything you take time to describe is important to the story. 3) Anything you describe should be important or necessary to the protagonist. 4) How the protagonist interprets what he notices should reflect their current emotional state.

I’m going to work further on using description to effectively convey emotion. I know that it will bring a new level of depth and professionalism to my writing, and I am eager to get practicing!

Reading: Funk-buster Extraordinaire

March 22, 2012 By 3 Comments

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I was in something of a writing funk. I just couldn’t get up the energy to dive into my projects. I knew I should. I had time (if I worked to find it). I even knew the scene I wanted to write and what should happen in it. But I couldn’t do it.

I figured out the source of my funk. After all, I had a number of very productive months just prior to my funk. I was merrily juggling all the balls in the air and making progress on all fronts of my life.

Then the holidays hit.

The holidays are enough to knock anyone off their routine. We all know this. But this year something more hit me. I got sick. My daughter got sick—and stayed sick for more than a month. A cousin died. Two days after his funeral we drove 10 hours to my in-laws for Christmas week. We came home. My sick child was still not sleeping well—so neither was I.

Finally, February rolled around and things got back to normal. Except that I couldn’t write. My juggling act had fallen to the ground and I just couldn’t seem to find the coordination or energy to get all the balls back in the air. So I finally decided to just write my way out of the funk.

Except that’s not what happened.

I read my way out of it.

I need to read more in my genre. I need to read more, period (aside from toddler books!). But it was a constant battle between writing time vs. reading time—and reading usually lost. So I decided that since I wasn’t writing anyway, I would read.

I’ve read seven books and counting in the last 2 weeks.

And I am writing again.

Reading did two things for me. It gave me permission to not write, yet still feel I was doing something to work on my writing career. Therefore I didn’t have that panicked frustration of not writing. And it reminded me why I love to write. The books pulled me in and sparked my creative mind with their stories, letting my own story soak up their energy. (Check out what I read on Goodreads.)

Reading recharged my writing battery.

The funk is over.

(As an aside, this is my 100th post!)

When Should You Care About Your Audience?

March 15, 2012 By 2 Comments

I attended a workshop given by actor/author Keith Strunk. At one point, when describing how an actor decides what actions to use to convey his character appropriately, someone asked him, “Do you consider how your actions impact the audience at this point in the process?” Keith replied, “Absolutely not. To think about how you are impacting the audience at this stage would be death.”

This got me thinking about the writing process, and at which points the author should consider the audience. Because Keith is right—there are some points at which we cannot think about the impact we are having on the audience.

When we are writing the story, that first draft, caught up in the creative passion, bringing it to life, we cannot consider an outside influence like the audience. The story needs to speak for itself, we need to hear what it and the characters need to come alive. If we start considering the audience, we run a grave risk of forcing the story into directions it should not go, or creating puppet-characters that only do what we think they should do. We risk taking the vitality out of the story.

After that draft, when the revision starts, that is when the audience should enter our thoughts. Are the characters relatable to the audience we are targeting? Is the language and content appropriate for that audience? This is where how we impact the audience comes into play.

I also think that we need to consider our audience in the initial idea phase. If you primarily write middle grade and you come up with an idea, you need to consider 1) would/could this idea make an appropriate MG story? and if not 2) do I want to write a story for a new audience and try and break into a new market? I do not think at this point you should try an shoehorn a non-MG idea into an MG idea, since then you end up with the problems mentioned above. But I do think you need to know before you start who your audience would be for this book. That way, if you do not want to break into a new market, you don’t waste your time on a book that you can’t sell to the market where you are already established.

To write your absolute best story, you need to listen to the story—not worry about your audience. So when you sit down to write, just write the story as it needs to be told. Listen to your characters. Be bold and explore.

Chances are, if you do that, your story will be so good that any audience will devour it.

When do you think about your audience?

TMI: The More I Learn about Craft, the Less I Know

March 8, 2012 By 11 Comments

I’m sure I’m not the only writer in the world to get overwhelmed by the millions of little things we have to think about in every single sentence in our novel. Every time I feel like I’m getting a handle on this writing stuff, I learn something new and that gets added to the list of things to check for in my manuscript.

Don’t get me wrong—most of the time this constant learning curve is what I love about the writing craft. You never do stop learning, and most of the time I love that. I also usually love the challenge of trying to get to that next level with your writing, or making this novel better than the last. Most of the time I can’t wait to dive in and get started.

Most of the time.

Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit defeated by the whole thing. Perhaps it’s midwinter blues, or just the exhaustion that comes with being a 40-something mom-of-a-toddler who hasn’t had eight hours of sleep at night in about three years. Whatever it is, I have felt less like a mountain climber and more like one who has been caught in an avalanche.

I will bet every writer has felt this way at some point in their career. In fact, I found this eloquent and encouraging post by Stephen Parolini that addresses this very feeling.

I have been taking workshops, and what I have been learning has been fascinating. So many nuanced techniques to use in my writing, the mechanics of which I am still learning. So many details to track while I write. There are times lately where I feel like I will have to revise my manuscript a hundred times just so I can make sure all those details are in order. Which in turn makes me feel like I will never finish said manuscript. Which is a little depressing.

Overwhelming.

So much to do, so much I WANT to do with my manuscript, and so little time. Part of my feeling of eternal revision is that my writing time is incredibly limited due to my toddler’s demands on my time. So all these millions (okay, thousands) of things I want to track and check and try with my manuscript seem to stretch before me in a stream with no end.

It’s enough to paralyze me.

But, as whenever I get overwhelmed in other areas of life, I know that the only way to the end is through. In theory, giving up is an option, of course. But not in my world. Some would say I am stubborn, but I prefer to consider myself persistent.

So to get through this funk, I will work on one thing at a time. And if that means doing a hundred passes on my manuscript so I can give everything the attention I need, I will do it. I know, too, that the more I work on these skills, the more ingrained they will become. As they become second nature, they will show up in my manuscripts without my having to think so hard or revise so much.

In a word, my plan to get through this funk is to write. How do you get through your funks?

Curtain Closed: Goodbye to Davy Jones of the Monkees

March 1, 2012 By 22 Comments

My favorite photo of Davy

When I heard the news of Davy’s death, I was stunned. A weight settled in my chest, and the world turned surreal. I had trouble concentrating on my work, but luckily a toddler and a deadline are great motivators. And while I will shed a few tears for Davy tonight, my thoughts are with those whose grief is deep and searing—his wife and his four daughters, Talia, Sarah, Jessica, and Annabel.

I never thought Davy would be the first to go. He was the youngest Monkee, and always seemed the most fit. His off-stage life with his horses kept him athletic and strong. A heart attack makes no sense, but then death rarely does.

Much of the public never considered the Monkees a “serious” band, even though they were astronomically popular. Many people who only knew Davy as a Monkee wave him off with a snort. They don’t know that he had serious bona fides—he was a rising Broadway star before the Monkees got him. Davy was nominated for a Tony award for his role as the Artful Dodger in Oliver! He was on The Ed Sullivan Show the same day the Beatles were. You don’t get to those places without having something special.

Davy was my favorite Monkee. When my friends and I were in high school and college, we followed the Monkees as they toured. Whenever they came near, we were there—from New York to Virginia, from the wilds of New Jersey to the environs of Philadelphia. We called ourselves the Monkettes, made two halfway decent parody albums, and two completely cringeworthy videos. So, yes, we were groupies.

I got to be Davy because I was short and could do a passable English accent.

While the three Monkees who toured together (Mike Nesmith declined) treated their fans well, Davy always went the extra mile. He would stand outside the stage door until every fan got an autograph or picture, and never once look at his watch. In spite of the mass of fans around us, he had the talent of giving you his full attention for those few minutes he was with you. One time, my friends and I went to the hotel where the Monkees were staying after their concert. It had poured rain at the outdoor concert, and we were all soaked. When Davy noticed two particularly drenched girls shivering and shaking in the lobby, he had hot tea sent down to them.

A consummate performer, Davy never cancelled a show to my knowledge. One time, my friend Donna H. and I went to Long Island’s Jones Beach to see him do an open-air solo concert. He got about six songs in when a huge thunderstorm blew in from the ocean and caused a literal sandstorm before the deluge. To this day I firmly believe he would have stood there singing through it all if his band members hadn’t all disappeared when the lightning started.

When I was in college, my friend Donna L. and I went to WHYY studios to watch Davy tape the Don Kirschner Rock Awards infomercial. The filming dragged on and on and on. The audience wilted with fatigue. But Davy kept going. He joked with the audience during the down times, he stepped up whenever the cameras turned on, and he never wavered throughout that arduous filming session. He was a professional through and through, even though he had to be as exhausted as we all were.

Don Kirschner Rock Awards - May 22, 1990

Davy lived to be onstage. The audience jazzed him up, always, and he clearly gave us everything he had every time I saw him—which was too many times to count. He loved to interact with the audience, both onstage and off. He gloried in the spotlight.

Some people might have called this ego, or hubris. I never saw it that way. Davy Jones was supremely confident in who he was and what he did. Onstage he was magnetic and full of fun. Offstage he was warm and personable. Often irreverent, occasionally bawdy, he wore who he was right out there for all to see because he was secure in himself. He might have been only 5’4”, but he stood far taller than that in person.

Davy lived his life without apology and without regret. He made his living doing the things he loved most, and most people don’t get to do that. He was one of the lucky ones, and he knew it. I believe that was why he loved the stage so much, loved his fans so much. Because he understood that they were the reason he had risen from apprentice jockey to Monkee superstar.

Davy at Great Adventure 9-7-1987

Davy Jones didn’t need to be a daydream believer—he made all of his come true.

Curtains closed, Davy.

I hope you can hear the standing ovation.

Inspiration: The Paths Taken

February 23, 2012 By 11 Comments

Two roads diverged in a wood…
–Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken


I find paths winding through the wood irresistible. Not that I go charging down every one I see on a whim, mind you, but the image of that path stays with me for a long time. They call to me with the voice of the past, luring me away from the loud, crowded, connected present to the quiet, expansive solitude of a time long gone.

Paths like this appeal to my sense of adventure. (My husband is now snorting water out his nose as he reads this, because I am, shall we say, less than adventurous in my travels.) But the adventure of wooded paths is one of the imagination, not just geography. As my feet follow the pathway, I wonder about those who have gone before. Who were they? Why were they here? What were their lives like? What trials did they face? What triumphs did they celebrate? What were their stories?

Paths like this inspire me; they fire my imagination. They bring me a welcome release from the hectic pace of the normal world. They allow me to breathe, to be quiet, to think—to feel. Where they lead me to physically is almost irrelevant. But most times, I get the added gift of vistas like these: 

How can I pass up a path when it leads to a reward like that? And how can I as a writer help but get new ideas when a path leads to a house like this:

What’s it like to live in a house only accessible via water? It must cut down on unwanted visitors, that’s for certain!

The other day I drove past a wooded area. At one point two pillars stood. Once a gate—I picture wrought iron—had stood between them, but now one pillar lay half-toppled and a large branch blocked the way between them. Beyond the pillars stretched a path between the trees. Yellow and orange leaves lay thick on it, covering it and reclaiming it for the woods that surrounded it.

It called to me, but I could not follow it…that day.

I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

–Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

The Literary Toolbox: Writing Simultaneous Action

February 16, 2012 By 6 Comments

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of going to a workshop run by editor Kathryn Craft. This workshop was a focused one, dealing with a single element of writing for two hours. Last week’s topic was writing simultaneous action.

Normally, when writers want to show action happening at the same time in two different locations, we write the events as two separate scenes. We may quickly cut back and forth between scenes, but each action happens as its own discrete event.

Not so with writing simultaneous action. The events are woven together within the same paragraph, the sentences jumping back and forth between events with no segues. A good example of this from the movies is the baptism montage from The Godfather. The example Kathryn gave us from literature was from Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.

We practiced this mind-bending technique by writing one scene based on a prompt, then writing a second based on a different prompt (we had numerous prompts to choose from). When writing the second scene, we were supposed to try NOT to think about the first scene, to just write as if it wasn’t going to be integrated with the first. Of course, our subconscious knew it, so it did some pretty remarkable things with this exercise!

Since we were constrained to a short time period, we meshed the two scenes together rather willy-nilly. All of us were amazed at how well they meshed! Unintentional reinforcements of words or themes or metaphors or symbols layered deeper meaning into the story. We did find that confusion as to what was happening where did occur (although sometimes that added unexpected texture to the piece), but since this was a rough exercise that was expected. One trick that helped alleviate the confusion was using the present tense in one event and the past tense in the other event. That may sound contradictory, since both events are happening simultaneously, but it worked well, especially when the two events were present action and a flashback occurring during the present action.

Writing simultaneous action kind of made my head hurt, in that time-travel-paradox kind of way, but even the short exercise we did showed how powerful a tool it could be if used in the right place. In fact, I thought of a particular story I am writing where this would be perfect for a certain scene.

I’m going to share my writing exercise below so you can see what I mean by writing simultaneous action.

Scene 1: Driving in the rain is awful. Driving in the rain in the dark is horrific. Kaleidoscopic light refracts through the rain from oncoming cars, water slashes across the windshield so hard the wipers might as well be turned off, the tires just barely grab the road, the lines on the road all but invisible. Exit 47. How much farther? A flick to turn on the overhead light, a glance at the paper with the tear-stained directions. A nearly fatal glance, as the tires rumble on the strip at the road’s edge. The wheel fights me, the tires slip, but the car keeps to the road. Five more miles. Five miles takes about 15 minutes in this weather. 15 minutes could be too long. The end was near, they’d said. Only 15 minutes more to reach her bedside—and I still might be too late.

Scene 2: A crack shattered the night, the sound made visible by a blinding sulphurous light. The tree, steaming in the rain, stands for a moment as if in shock—the half of it falls away, splintering the trunk as it smashes to the ground. The tree tears down wires, pulverizes two cars, and lays across the road with the finality of death. Among the crushed limbs and shredded glass, the wires spark like disheartened fireworks, the only light left in the neighborhood.

Combined: Driving in the rain is awful. Driving in the rain in the dark is horrific. A crack shattered the night, the sound made visible by a blinding sulphurous light. Kaleidoscopic light refracts through the rain from oncoming cars, water slashes across the windshield so hard the wipers might as well be turned off, the tires just barely grab the road, the lines on the road all but invisible. The tree, steaming in the rain, stands for a moment as if in shock—then half of it falls away, splintering the trunk as it smashes to the ground. Exit 47. How much farther? A flick to turn on the overhead light, a glance at the paper with the tear-stained directions. A nearly fatal glance, as the tires rumble on the strip at the road’s edge. The wheel fights me, the tires slip, but the car keeps to the road. The tree tears down wires, pulverizes two cars, and lays across the road with the finality of death. Five more miles. Five miles takes about 15 minutes in this weather. 15 minutes could be too long. The end was near, they’d said. Among the crushed limbs and shredded glass, the wires spark like disheartened fireworks, the only light left in the neighborhood. Only 15 minutes more to reach her bedside—and I still might be too late.

So there’s a rough example of how it works (or doesn’t). Add this to your literary toolbox and use it to amp up some of the action in your story!

Undervaluing the Art of Writing

February 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

I’ve read a bunch of blogs lately that wonder why we writers are often reluctant to tell other (non-writing) people that we are writers. The answer always seems to come down to this: Other people do not value what we writers do.

Certainly if we are able to say that we have sold a bunch of books, or written for prestigious magazines, people do not react the same way as when we admit that we’ve been querying since the Jurassic era and still haven’t sold anything. They find little or no value in the hours and weeks and years of work and sweat and money we have put into improving our craft and writing book after book without any tangible return on our investment.

There was a time in history when art of all sorts was valued more than it is now. Many artists had patrons who supported them so they could focus on their art. The patrons got the prestige of having beautiful art made just for them, and the artist got to work with relative peace of mind. Paintings, sculptures, and, yes, even books were commissioned and paid for by avid supporters. Books were written and copied by hand, and owning a book was a privilege.

Not so anymore. Ever since Gutenberg, technology has contributed to the devaluation trend. We started being able to print out thousands of these things called books, and suddenly it wasn’t special to have a book—anyone could get one. Books stopped being art and became a commodity—units to be sold. Familiarity bred contempt.

Technology has also contributed to the proliferation of writers. The word processor has made it easy for people to write and revise. And with technology like laptops and tablets and smartphones, people can write anything, from virtually anywhere. Enter the ease of self-publishing these days, and a tsunami of writers has swamped the world. As always with when supply outstrips demand, less intrinsic value is placed on that item.

And because it appears so easy to write, writing doesn’t seem like work to people. It seems like play. Like…dare I say it…a hobby. And unfortunately, until you get an agent, until you get a book contract, most people will not consider what we do “real work”—because we are writing for no money. And in this day and age, that means there is no value to what we do.

But there is value in what we do, tremendous value. Personally, it gives us great joy, in spite of the sweating blood moments. Even more so, when we write something that touches someone, we have accomplished a minor miracle. Contemporary fiction might reach a person who felt that they were all alone and give them hope. Fantasy or science fiction might reach someone who needs an escape—or fire someone’s imagination. Every book that touches a reader takes them to someplace they have never been, into someone else’s life, and leaves the reader seeing their own world in a different way.

We inspire hope, compassion, understanding, courage, and dreams.

If that’s not value, what is?

So go ahead and say it – I AM A WRITER!

A Writer in a World Without Written Language

February 2, 2012 By 3 Comments

Last week, I asked fellow writers what they would do if they weren’t writers. Which got me wondering what I would do if I wasn’t a writer—if that wasn’t an option in our world.

All other things being the same, I think my dream job would be as a genealogist. I love digging around in the past so much, that I get as excited when I help other people do their family lines as when I do mine! So I think that would be my job: professional genealogist. I have no idea how you get to be a professional, but I certainly have logged thousands of “in the field” hours doing my own research!

But, since I am a writer, I took my mental musings a bit farther. What if I lived in a world with no written language? Then what? Genealogy research is based on documentation, which of course would not exist with no written language.

I don’t think I could be an oral storyteller, mostly because I dislike being the center of attention. And I would love to be the keeper of a family history, but my brain turned to mush at age 40 and I would have had to pass it on to the next generation already. So what to do in my retirement?

Keep in mind that a society without a written language does not necessarily have to be a backwards, primitive society. I expect that we would have evolved a different method of preserving and passing on information—likely a visual medium. So our stories would be long, elaborate films or series instead of books. Our non-fiction would be preserved in pictures and videos of lectures and speeches and documentaries. Music would have more weight, as songs would likely convey information instead of simply being “pop culture.”

In a world like that, what would I be? I would still be what I am, a storyteller, only I would have to use the visual medium of the day to tell my stories. I would have to learn to interweave the visual and the aural and the symbolism into a work of art on the screen. Which shouldn’t be too hard—many authors are visual thinkers anyway and many use music to set the mood as they write.

So I would be a visual storyteller. Which is kind of ironic, because in a previous life—before full-time writer, before Mommy—I was an award-winning video editor.

Funny how you can never escape what you really are.

The Mystery of Learning to Read

January 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

How many of you remember learning to read? If you’re like me, you have no recollection of the moment you understood how to read. It just happened one day when you were very young.

My two year old is very interested in words right now. She’s known her letters forever, and now insists I spell things for her. Or if we are reading, she will ask me, “What does that spell?” and motion to the whole sentence. I have taped sight words all over the house, so she can see the words all the time.

She knows about a dozen words when I spell them out loud for her, and about half as many by sight. While she understands the basics of phonics (she knows what sound all the letters make), she doesn’t yet understand the concept of using those sounds to “sound out” a word she doesn’t know by sight.

I am amazed at all the knowledge she is compiling in her head, and I am very interested in watching how all these various ways of learning about words and letters and sounds coalesce into her actually reading. One day, something inside will snap all these components into place and she will read.

I have a feeling, though, that no matter how closely I watch, no matter how hard I pay attention for “the moment” when it all comes together, how someone learns to read will still be a mystery.

As mysterious as it is, learning to read does seem hardwired into us as a species. Virtually everyone does learn how to read. There are people with problems that learn later than most, but almost everyone gets there in the end—some in multiple languages. Why do we have such a natural affinity for the act of reading? Why are our brains so well adapted to interpreting symbols and creating meaning from them? Did we create writing because we already had this ability, or did we develop the ability in response to the need to write things down to preserve survival information? Another mystery we will likely never solve.

Reading has been a staple in my life for as long as I can remember. I hope my daughter also learns to love reading as much as her father and I do, whether it’s reading a real book or an e-book or some other kind of book that hasn’t been developed yet. For all the joy reading has brought to my life, I am profoundly grateful to those long-ago ancestors who invented writing.

Which brings me to one last mystery: If there was no writing, what would all of us writers be doing instead?

So how about it? In a world without the written word, what would you be doing?

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