Reading Like a Writer

by Annette Lyon

We've mentioned it before many times here: writers should read a lot. And they should.

Even inferior stuff.

Awhile ago, I finished some less-than-stellar novels. I pushed myself to finish them, even though I was afraid of losing brain cells in the process, for one big reason: reading bad stuff even to the bitter (sometimes literally) end can be a powerful teaching tool.

Now, I don't recommend finishing every single book you don't like, but finishing some can be worth it purely for the education you get as a result.

By finishing an entire bad book, you get to see poor plots (and how they don't resolve well) firsthand. How to make flat character arcs (you can't tell that from a few chapters). How conflict can fizzle when it's supposed to be ramping up. How dead wood flattens a story. How telling instead of showing weakens the entire effect.

Any time I purposely read bad stuff, I make a point of analyzing it. Why is this bad? Specifically? What could the author have done to fix this part? That one? Why does the voice drive me crazy? Why can't I connect to this character? Why am I bored during what's supposed to be the climax?

If I ask those questions and try to find the answers, then the time I spent on the book isn't wasted. I can apply what I've learned to my work, avoiding problems I might have made if I hadn't seen close-up how this or that doesn't work.

A few gems from some recent reading:

• Make your hero/heroine ACTIVE participants. Having your MC react to everything and not take action is boring.
• On the flip side, don't make your MC act rashly. If you must get them into a dangerous situation, find a way to do it that doesn't make your reader think the character is a total blockhead.
• Assume your reader is at least as smart as your MC. Or smarter. Readers will get it. No need to spell things out. They'll also catch plot holes the size of Alaska. And even ones the size of Rhode Island. Remember, readers are smart.
• Keep the pace clipping along, especially if the story is supposed to be suspenseful. Nothing like your MC spending weeks or months (and wasted paper and words) on, well, nothing.
• BEWARE OF DEAD WOOD.
• Show. Show. Show. No, really. SHOW!
• Make conflicts big enough for the MC. That means not building it up to be something big and then having it resolved in one paragraph like magic.
• Make sure the MC's actions are properly motivated. Just because you need X to happen doesn't mean that readers will buy it when the MC does W to set the wheels in motion. (See the "man, that character is a blockhead" bullet above.)
• After the cool, intense, climactic part hits, don't spend another 80 or more pages wrapping things up and trying to throw in additional minor conflicts for the sake of tying up every little detail.
• Don't belabor points. We got it the first time. And the second. By the ninth time, I'm trying to find a hot poker for my eyes. (Remember that "readers are smart" bit?)
• Make each character unique. They must sound different, not all like versions you.

Anything you've learned from reading crappy stuff lately?

I Think the Best and Expect the Best

By Julie Wright

My father was once the president of the Optimist International Club. Yes, optimists have a club and yes, they’ve really gone international.

At the age of thirteen, I came home with a mountain of homework to do and plowed into it (this is because I was ugly and unpopular and didn’t really have anything else to do in my life EXCEPT homework). Halfway through the mountain, my dad called.

“I need you to write up a speech and be prepared to give that speech out loud in front of a panel of judges and several hundred other people who are part of my club. I’ll be picking you up in a little less than two hours. Oh, and Julie? You have to wear a dress.” (Okay, fine, he didn’t actually mention the hundreds of people. He left that part as a surprise.)

It seems many of my life altering moments involved being rushed into something before I could think it through well enough to protest, and me wearing a dress. So I wrote a five minute speech on this topic: “I think the best; I expect the best.”

I was thirteen (as I’ve already pointed out). Five minutes of positive thinking for any teenager is quite a stretch. It turns out, this little shin-dig Dad had me go to was a public speaking contest. Lots of kids were entered and most of them were tutored by drama and public speaking coaches. The only public speaking I’d ever done was yelling at my brother in the grocery store. Why my father felt compelled to throw me in the mix at the last minute, I couldn’t really say. Standing in front of all those adults scared me to knee-knocking death.

Of course, I didn’t win. And I actually had the gall to feel badly about not winning. I went with two hours preparation and a dress that didn’t fit (because I never wore dresses back then; my parents were hard pressed to get me to wear shoes), and I had the nerve to feel I should have placed higher than the people who went prepared.

And what might this little trip down memory lane mean?

It means that so often we go into something less than prepared and then get ticked off when it doesn’t turn out the way we think it should.

I meet writers who finish their first novels and immediately begin submitting. And while I congratulate them for the fact that they actually finished a novel, and further congratulate them for having the fortitude it takes to submit, I wonder if they aren’t going into a contest less prepared than their competition.

Did those writers send their manuscripts out to critique groups? Did they receive the right coaching? Did they study up on how to make themselves stand out in the slushpile? Do they know the mechanics of writing? Are they passionate about their manuscript? What are their credentials? Did they even run a spell check before sending in the manuscript?

And worse, those writers (me included back before I knew better) whine when they don’t walk home with a contract in hand. The speech I wrote back then still resonates with me.

I think the best; I expect the best. And something more to take away the prize: I gave my best.

Common Dead Wood

by Annette Lyon

We tell clients (and writers at workshops) to cut dead wood from their work. Some pros go as far as to say you should always cut 10% of your final version, because that's how much dead wood you've likely got.

I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to list a specific percentage (some writers might be fine with 5%, while others should cut 20%), but dead wood is so easy to slip in and sometimes hard to find.

For the sake of illustrating what dead wood can look like, here are some examples. This is in no way an exhaustive list, because dead wood is like dust bunnies, hiding where you least expect it.

Stating the Obvious

A grin spread across her face.

He blinked his eyes.

She nodded her head.

Unless you're writing speculative fiction and your characters have mouths in a locations not on their faces, they can blink something besides their eyes, or they can nod a body part that isn't their head, don't add the body part. These aren't the only variations of this type of dead wood. ("John shrugged his shoulders" also comes to mind as freaking everywhere.)

Repetitive Words and Phrases

Dave drove to Maple Street, drove into the parking garage, and parked his car. He walked up to the street and walked over to Oak Street, three streets over, where he saw a red convertible parked by the curb.

You might not notice how many times you repeat certain words close together unless you read your work aloud and hear them.

Be sure your characters aren't repeating words in dialogue, either. Having Darlene use "quaint" could be a character quirk. Having four other characters use the same word in the same chapter is plain sloppy.

Same goes for actions and other descriptors. Make sure your characters aren't all constantly raising their eyebrows, feeling their hearts race, running fingers through their hair, or doing some other gesture. Change things up.

Lazy Verbs

90% of the time, plain old past tense is most effective. Adding a helping to be verb and -ing weakens the statement.

He was running as fast as he could before the bomb went off.

He ran as fast as he could before the bomb went off.

Unless you have a compelling reason to point out that two things are happening simultaneously (He was hiding the gun in the drawer as she walked in), don't use the helping-verb form. Keep it plain past tense. You might be able to find a stronger verb anyway.

(Instead of he was walking, how about he sauntered?)

Meaningless Words

This list could be huge. It contains words we add to sentences without adding punch or significant meaning. They include words like very, just, and really, which usually water down and tell instead of show.

For example, if she's very beautiful, SHOW her beauty to us. Or just say she's beautiful, because that single word will be more effective than a weak attempt at emphasizing it with very or really.

Another often-unneeded word is that. Yes, sometimes we need that to clarify which person or thing we're talking about, but often it's an extra piece of dead wood.

He called to tell her that their brother was in the hospital.

He called to tell her their brother was in the hospital.

Then there's the easily overlooked yet obvious (once it's pointed out): needless to say, umm, sure, and as far as I can tell.

A phrase to watch out for: THERE IS/ARE/WERE.

Again, no rule is in stone, but 90% of the time, if your sentence starts with THERE ARE or some variation, you've got a weak line and could make it stronger. Find what the real subject and verb are and start with them:

There were a lot of students disrupting class yesterday.

Lots of students disrupted class yesterday.

(Note that THERE IS and its cousins tend to use helping verbs, which by themselves are weak.)

Redundancy

Repeating yourself is surprisingly easy. I've seen things like true fact and famous celebrity. Don't laugh too hard; you might have done something similar without thinking! (I know I have.) Proof carefully.

Point of View Intrusion

This one's a personal peeve of mine: when we're clearly in a character's head, but instead of the author showing what the character sees, experiences, feels, hears, smells, thinks, or realizes, we're told that they do.

She realized the situation was hopeless.

The situation was hopeless.

He heard the phone ring.

The phone rang.

Now what, he thought.

Now what?

(For thoughts, if they're set aside as thoughts, we don't need to be told that's what they are.)

I'm sure you can find more types of dead wood. (Add them to the comments!)

As an exercise, try to cut each sentence in one of your scenes by one word, minimum. You might be surprised at how much stronger the final result is, and how many great new images and verbs you come up with.

Losing My Grip on Reality

by Annette Lyon

Note #1: The staff of Precision Editing Group will be teaching an all-day workshop this Friday, September 17, at the League of Utah Writers Roundup conference. I think you can still register.

Note #2: This post is from my personal blog archives, originally published May 2, 2007. I'm posting it here with the assumption that I'm not the only slightly crazy writer out there!

***

It's happened every time. You'd think I'd get used to it.

But somehow I get the same weak-knee, punched-in-the gut, light-headed feeling every time.

I stare. I almost cry. And then I have to stop myself from looking around just in case one of my characters happens to be lurking around in spirit form. Sometimes I'm tempted to grab someone near me, point, and say, "Did you know that right over there, so-and-so stood and did such-and such?"

And of course, if I really did that, I'd sound like a total crazy person, because "so-and-so" never did exist, and never did "such-and-such."

What happened?

I was at the Garden Restaurant at the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City. It has the most marvelous view of the top of the Salt Lake Temple.

I knew this. I've been there before. But the last time was a good decade or so ago.

BEFORE I wrote a book about the temple. With an epilogue that takes place on the day of the capstone celebration. The end of the epilogue is at the top of the spires, exactly what I was looking out at.

During that time, while the scaffolding was still in place, they sold tickets to the public to climb up and view the city from the top of the the temple. (Can you imagine what a sight that would have been?)

That night in 1892, after the capstone celebration, shortly after Angel Moroni was set into place, I have my characters at the top of the temple. (I'm not going to tell you who they are or what had transpired; you'll just have to read the story. Let's just say that I'm already getting a bit emotional telling you this much. Man, I love my characters . . .)

So there I was at the restaurant staring out at the spires. I nearly snagged a lady standing next to me. "Over there, see?" I wanted to say. "That's exactly where they were standing with their families, looking out over the valley."

Instead, I gazed out, felt a fluttery feeling in my stomach, blinked back tears, and tried to get a grip on reality.

They're not real, I reminded myself.

But the same thing happened the first time I drove into Logan after House on the Hill was released (I swear I nearly saw Abe and Lizzy running across Main Street toward the Tabernacle) and again when I visited the St. George Temple after At the Journey's End came out (I almost pointed out to my daughter where Clara and Miriam were dropped off on the wagon and she first walked into the temple).

What is my problem?!

I guess what it boils down to is that I love the landmarks I write about. I feel immersed in the history. And I completely fall in love with my characters. They feel real to me.

And when all is said and done, I hope they become as vividly real to my readers, too.

I am a Writer

By Julie Wright

I watched a movie the other day—Eat Pray Love with Julia Roberts. It wasn’t a great movie, but aside from the slow pacing and lack of real plot or character growth—there was a line in there that completely bugged me. To be fair, there were a lot of great lines, but this one has overshadowed all the others. It was a scene where Julia’s character was at a dinner table with a bunch of other people and she was asked to share something about herself. She said, “I’m a writer . . .”
And the guy interrupted her and said, “That’s what you do—not who you are.”

Are you kidding me?

What real writer could have written that little nugget of untruth? I cannot agree with that statement—at least not for myself. And I pity the writer for whom this statement is true. I am a writer. Yes, it is what I do, but it is also very much who I am. It defines me in a lot of ways.

And I’m not talking about publishing and book contracts—those things are awesome and life changing, but they are merely a natural result of me being who I am.

I’m talking about being a writer. That is who I am. My life entirely revolves around words. I write in my personal journal, in the secret journals I keep for my children, letters to people I love, rants when I’m angry, poems when I feel sappy, novels when I feel creative, songs when I feel sad. I’m a writer. It is something I can’t NOT do. My life is wrapped up in the little moments that make up stories and I can’t help but see it that way.

In a class I had in high school, one of my writing teachers plopped a boot up onto her desk and said, "There's a poem in there somewhere."

And there was. There is. Every time. There's a poem in everything, a story in a glance, words wound up tight in every step I take in life.

Being a writer, I have a secret fear. I am terrified I’m going to die and have nothing but lame and embarrassing rough drafts on my computer. I’m terrified that someone will actually go looking through this stuff, and read my absurd drivel, and then think that all that garbage they find on my hard drive defines the person I am. I’m afraid they’ll judge me on the actual content instead of realizing that the fact that everything is there--written down is what defines me. It defines me as a writer.

I would like to say that I avoid the problem of what they'll find on my computer by only writing brilliant things. My prose will reduce you to tears, my metaphors are profound, my adverbs are scarce. And if I said all that, I would be lying.

Everyone has train wreck writing on their hard drives. The point is not what's in it, but that it's there.

Do we always succeed as writers? Will we all get the contracts, the big book deals, the New York Times best seller badge? No.

But we do get the relief of expelling all the jumbled messes weighing heavy on our brains onto paper. We give ourselves permission to create something from nothing. We get the joy of expression.

We try for the other stuff--the badges, accolades, and awards, even when the little green jedi master tells us we don’t get the luxury of trying.

In my kitchen there hangs a plaque that I got from Josi Kilpack. It reads: I will not live the life of a normal person. I am a writer.

It's not just what I do. It's who I am.

What's Your Book Called?

by Annette Lyon

This is probably the most common question I get from readers about whatever my current work in progress is.

I never have an answer for it. I used to, when the stack of rejection letters was growing. But I no longer name my books as I write them, and I haven't for many years.

Why? For starters, authors rarely get to have any say in their titles.

That can come as a surprise to aspiring writers who spend hours concocting the perfect title and imagine it emblazoned on a stack of books at their favorite bookstore.

But the reality is that the marketing department gets to pick the title, and an author is extremely lucky to have any say at all. Just about every book I've submitted has hit shelves with a different title than I gave it.

I got close with book #3: the title I suggested had the word "house" in it. The final title was House on the Hill. To my utter shock, my 7th book kept the title I submitted it with, Band of Sisters. But I can't take credit for the title, because I'm terrible at coming up with them; my husband invented that one, and it worked.

I think most authors will be honest by admitting that there's a part of us that hates having so little control over the title. It's my baby; why can't I have a say in what it's called?

But then you have to remember the one and only purpose for a title: to get potential readers to take an interest and pick up the book. If the title does that, it's a good title, no matter how well it ties in.

We write stories; that's our specialty. We aren't nearly so good at selling them. On the other hand, the marketing department specializes in selling books and knowing what kind of title grabs interest. They have entire meetings devoted to picking titles.

Since the publisher is the one footing the bills for editing, design, marketing, printing, shipping, and other costs associated with my book, it's only fair that they get to pick the title that will give the book its best shot. They have a vested interest in seeing the book do well, so they'll pick a title they think will get the final product off the shelf and out the bookstore doors.

That said, I still dislike the title of my first book. When my editor informed me that it would be called Lost Without You (now available in e-reader format on Kindle and Smashwords!), I sent her an email in hopes she could clarify what in the world the title had to do with my story.

Basically: nothing. It's just a romantic-sounding title.

Since it didn't even almost fit the story or my characters, I added a line of dialogue in the final scene so the title would both make some sense as well as reflect what I felt was the entire point of the book. (Which, by the way, wasn't the romance.)

Side note: I've had many readers tell me they had no clue why it was called that until they reached the added line. Glad I made that change!

Aside from the fact that I know whatever title I pick won't be used, there is another reason I no longer use working titles for my projects: It's emotionally and mentally tough to rename your baby.

With Lost Without You it took me a good year to be able to refer to the book by name. For months it was just, "my book." (That worked at the time, since it was my only one so far.) Since my stories always become such a part of me, it feels like an appendage gets cut off when they're renamed.

Instead of giving them working titles, I refer to my books by a significant element in them, like a character (House on the Hill was my "Lizzy" book), part of the setting (At the Journey's End was my "Honeymoon Trail" book), or the topic (Band of Sisters was my "military wives" book.)

The good news is that my publisher now asks for at least five title suggestions, along with lists of significant locations, objects, ideas, words, etc. so the marketing folks can have a better idea of what's inside the pages, and then attach a more-fitting title.

I love that it gives me some input in the process, and I must admit that all of my other titles rock; they fit the books and are catchy enough to grasp a reader's attention.

Even better, with each one, I haven't had to call them my second, third, fourth, and so on, while getting used to them. Without batting an eye, I've been able to call my babies by their final titles even before they're in print.

Next up: my cookbook, which the marketing department brilliantly titled Chocolate Never Faileth.

I never in a million years would have come up with that, but readers are clamoring for the book weeks before it's on shelves.

See? Those marketing people really do know what they're doing.

Take Two Tylenol and Call Me In the Morning

By Julie Wright

I was reading in Scientific American last night and found an article that just might revolutionize the writing industry. Apparently, an inch behind your forehead lies the place in your brain that deals with physical pain.

And apparently, lumped into that same space is where we deal with mental or emotional pain as well. You hit your thumb with a hammer, fail a test you wanted to pass, or get rejected by your one true love, the hurt registers to your brain in the same place and in the same manner. So they did a test study where half the participants were given placebos, and the others were given two regular-strength Tylenol. Then they put them in situations where they could measure the stress and strain of rejection and failure.

Overwhelmingly, the people with the Tylenol felt better than the people with the placebo.

How does this revolutionize the writing industry?

Maybe those critiques we get from our critique groups and editors won't hurt as much if we take a couple of aspirin. Maybe, because it didn't hurt as much, we'll take the feedback objectively, rework manuscripts, become better writers, and find the courage to submit.

Once we submit, maybe those rejection letters won't hurt as much if we take a Tylenol and wait a half hour before we open them? If it doesn't hurt as much, maybe we'll submit more. If we submit more, we'll probably get a few more rejection letters, but we won't give up, because it won't hurt too much. Because we don't give up, we keep submitting, and ultimately sell books.

Maybe.

It's interesting to think about how many things we don't do--that we REALLY, REALLY want to to do, because it might hurt a little.

It's interesting to think how much more NOT doing those things will ultimately hurt, than the little rejections along the way. The little rejections are temporary--like slivers. Not going after what you really really want?
Now that hurts.