If You're Real, I Won't Kill You

A popular post from December 2009

by Annette Lyon

Due to the fact that it's holiday season and none of us are particularly active (or, let's face it, over our eggnog comas and even awake), this post is something from the archives of my personal blog.

It, however, writing-related: a writing first for me, and quite possibly an obsession.

Since that post first made its appearance back when I had oh, about a dozen people regularly reading my blog, I'm guessing that

1) most Writing on the Wall readers haven't seen it and

2) quite a few might relate to it.

(Happy New Year!)

**********

I think I was fourteen at the time. I’d gone with my mother to the local university bookstore, where she agreed to buy me a binder for my writing. It was a rosy pink. The binder still sits on a shelf in my office.

Once home, I eagerly filled it with notebook paper, then plopped onto the living room couch and began scribbling.

I had no concrete story idea; I was just in the mood to write. I began with an image and went with it: a little girl walking through a meadow where her imaginary friends lived. I’m sure the idea was a direct result of the fact that at the time, I constantly poured over the work of L.M. Montgomery, of Anne of Green Gables fame.

In the brief story, the girl greets fairies and other mythical creatures and bemoans how she has no other friends. The other children mock and tease her. She feels welcome only there with her magical companions. As I wrote, I discovered that the girl also has a serious illness and rarely gets to go out to her meadow.

She lies on the ground, hidden from sight by the flowers above and around her. Then she closes her eyes and whispers, “My dears, I’ve come to join you.”

And dies.

It was a perfectly melodramatic story for a teen to write. But overdone as the two-page ditty was, the ending hit me with a bolt of lightning. I closed the binder and stared at it, feeling not a little shaky.

A little girl was dead, and I had killed her.

It didn’t matter that she was fictional, that she hadn’t ever really inhabited this world, experienced life, or had a family to mourn her passing. (I worried about her poor mother—would she be able find her daughter under all those flowers?) In those few minutes I’d lived with her on the page, she had been real to me.

The sensation was odd—a creative rush combined with the sensation of intense guilt almost nauseating in its strength. The little dead girl seemed to haunt me for days afterward.

I’m sorry, I wanted to say. I didn’t mean to kill you. I didn’t know you’d die. It took a week or two to get over the guilt.

Then I had my first dip into research. I had to figure out what she’d died from, so I cracked open one of my mother’s many reference books and read up on various fatal illnesses that could strike children. For reasons I don’t recall, I settled on aplastic anemia, a disease I knew nothing about save for a brief description written in tiny text. The fact that a child minutes away from death wouldn’t be in a position to frolic in a meadow was pretty much irrelevant.

Since then, I’ve killed many fictional people, but I’ve reached the point where I no longer take responsibility for their deaths. I grieve when they die; they’re my friends, in a way. But it’s not my fault. Sometimes characters, just like people, die.

After reading At the Journey’s End, a man in my neighborhood came to me and said, “What is your problem with death?”

Confused, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“By the end of the first chapter, three people are dead.”

At first I was taken aback. THREE? No way. But then I thought through the opening of my book. One person dies in the prologue. One in the first chapter. Oh, wait. Two. Yep. That makes three. But both deaths in chapter one were real historical figures. I didn’t kill them. They actually died on that day in history; I just told about it.

As if that made it so much better.

So I thought back to my other books. My first one has a mother already dead before the book begins, which is pretty much what the plot revolves around. Plus a little girl’s kitten dies. Oh, and a man dies in the girl's presence. Almost forgot that one. My second book features two deaths. And House on the Hill? Several pretty major deaths. Plus a dog.
Wow, I thought. I do have some kind of fascination with killing people off.
The best response I could come up with for my neighbor was, “Rest assured, no one dies in my next book.” I paused to double-check, thinking through Spires of Stone just to be sure—did anyone—or anything—die in it? Even a cat or dog? A mouse? Nope. No one dies. Phew.

However . . . I can’t say the same for Tower of Strength. Sorry. It does have two deaths. Wait. Three. My obsession with the end of life is apparently quite healthy.

[Update: my upcoming Band of Sisters doesn't escape death either. It has at least two. Crimeny!]

But I’m innocent! I swear, I didn’t kill anyone. It’s not my fault, and I won’t feel guilty over it.

Okay, I still cried writing them.

Goodness, we writers are certainly an odd lot . . .

Anachronisms & Other Ways to Make Readers Snicker

A popular post from November 2009

by Annette Lyon

Anachronisms are hysterical in fiction . . . and usually not in the way the author of a piece intended.

An anachronism is something stuck in a place where it doesn't fit in time. A really, really bad one would be giving a caveman a car. That's a bit too obvious, something no writer would ever accidentally do, but writers put in anachronisms all the time in more subtle ways.

While this is relevant to me as a historical writer, the overall concept is crucial for all writers to keep in mind, particularly in the revision stage, so read on.

For me, I constantly have to research bits and pieces to make sure that certain vocabulary, hair styles, household items, and so on were in use when I place them into a story.

Could Joe use a match to light a fire in this year? Can Sally eat a "cookie" in that year? Would David have access to envelopes in this location at this time? When did diamond rings become common symbols of engagements?

Those are the kinds of things writers pay attention to in their research. Where writers often lose focus is inadvertently throwing in common expressions that don't work for the time period of the book.

For example, a bad anachronism would be for a character from Shakespeare's time to say, "We're really off track."

The problem? "Off track" came from railroads. And yeah . . . railroads didn't exist in Shakespeare's time, so someone from that period wouldn't know what the phrase means.

So why is this important if you don't write historical fiction? Because this is one more way you can mess things up by imposing your mindset onto your characters.

The writer must always remember how the CHARACTER would really think and feel and relate to his or her world.

Luke Skywalker would never say he's "shell-shocked," even if what he's feeling would apply to our definition of that term. He'd use some other way to describe the feeling, because "shell-shocked" is World War II lingo.

When Lizzy from Pride and Prejudice discovers Darcy's involvement in saving her family's name, she'd never have said that he "stepped up to the plate." That's an American baseball term from the 20th century, for starters, one that didn't exist when the book was written. So granted, Jane Austen couldn't have used it, but someone trying to write a P&P sequel today could, and would really mess it up.

Another phrase I came across in a historical novel recently was, "We should give it a shot." I don't know for sure when that phrase came about, but the novel was set a long time ago, so the sentence jumped out as not belonging. It sounded way too modern for the context. I stopped believing the writer. These kinds of things just don't work.

Another warning: too much colloquial phrasing will date a contemporary book too; avoid anything too dated, even if it's dated as now.

In one book, the characters were from the early 1800s, and one referred to his mother as "pushing his buttons."

Um . . . which buttons would those be? The ones on his shirt? Because, yeah, well, hate to say this, but see, computers and other things with buttons that can be pushed . . . weren't invented when this guy supposedly lived.

What this writer needed was an idiom, term, or phrase from the early 1800s that would give the reader the same feel as "pushing my buttons" does today, but that came from the right period. They also needed something matching the character's personality. Instead, what we got was the writer's voice intruding on the story, the writer's point of view.

Sadly, it was hard to get immersed in the book when the author kept poking their nose into the story. I was painfully aware that they weren't fully into the characters' minds and hearts, let alone fully into the time period.

One of my favorite stories of this kind of revision (for the better!) is in Michele Paige Holmes's newest book, All the Stars in Heaven. She's used this example in a workshop herself when teaching how to get into characters' heads.

She originally wrote a scene where Jay, her hero, listens to the heroine, Sarah, sing a choir solo for the first time. He is blown away by her voice and says it's one of the most amazing things he's ever heard.

The rough draft had him compare her voice to an angel's. But then Michele realized that Jay wouldn't say that kind of thing. He's manly and tough. He wouldn't think in terms of angelic choirs. He loves and plays rock music.

Her final version says that Sarah's performance was the most amazing thing he'd ever heard with the possible exception of Hendrix playing "The Star Spangled Banner."

I love that change. It's true-blue Jay, precisely how he'd think. It's okay that Michele's rough draft had the angelic bit. We all have rough drafts that aren't perfect (that's why they're called rough). And frankly, the original wasn't bad. But the final version was perfect: just how Jay would think and express himself. Michele stepped aside as the author and let him speak.

Be sure that when you do those later passes over your manuscript for revision that you read each scene with an eye out for when you're really in your characters' heads. Is this really how they'd see each situation? Or is it your lens that we're looking through?

Ask yourself: Is there anything that I, as the writer, am putting in that doesn't belong?

Would your character really say it this way, think this particular thought?

Are you expressing your opinion or your characters'? Your world view or theirs?

Worse, did you inadvertently throw in an anachronism?

Another gem I caught recently: "No, way."

In context, it sounded just like a Valley Girl from 1988. The problem? The story was set during the time of pirates.

I closed the book, tempted to walk around the house, flipping my hair, snapping gum, and going, "Like, totally argh, Matey."

Dear Author . . .

A popular post from October 2011

By Julie Wright

“I spent a bit of time perusing the Dear Author for the romance category boards over on Amazon. It was hilarious . . . until it wasn't.

I'm in the process of editing one of my earlier manuscripts that I've received my rights back from the publisher. I knew the writing was rough because I was young when I wrote the book and inexperienced as a writer. I had no idea how bad it truly was until I got two sentences into the edit.

Sad that it only took two sentences for me to start rolling my eyes. I actually would have been eye-rolling at the first four words except I was too shocked to be capable of the eye-roll.

I made a lot of mistakes in those first books, mistakes that would instigate the words, "Dear author . . . Please don't . . ."

It's important to remember your audience and to read enough in the genre in which you're writing so you understand the cliche's and sand-traps of that genre. Basically, what I'm saying is . . . learn your craft.

I was so glad to have been published with those first couple of books, so excited to be an "author," that I jumped in before I was ready. Was it a mistake? Maybe. Maybe I never would have published and worked to get better if I hadn't had those first books come out the way they did. Or maybe I would have kept writing until I grew in my craft and had a first book release that would have stunned the world. Who knows? Twelve novels later, I am a much different writer today than I was ten years ago. I hope to keep improving and growing and BECOMING.  For now, I am editing and eye-rolling. And paying close attention to notes like, "dear author . . ."

Feel free to peruse the Dear Author board on Amazon for yourself:

Dear Author . . .

And do you have any memos you wish you could say to authors in general? Things you wish they'd stop doing or do more of?                   

You Might be a Writer if . . .

By Josi S. Kilpack

You find using abbreviations when text messaging an offense to your sensibilities.

You sometimes interrupt friends and family during conversation to teach them the correct usage of lay/lie.

You wake up in the morning only to suggest revisions to your subconscious mind for the dream you had during the night.

You accidentally put the name of your current protagonist as a reference on an application--it's the phone number that trips you up.

You have EVER finished a book and thought "I could do better."

Words like characterization, exposition, story arc, resolution and dramatic effect are frequently used even in non-writing conversation.

Your spouse trusts sending you to the mall with a credit card so long as there isn't a bookstore in said mall.

Instead of saving up for a vacation to Disneyland, you have a fund in place so that one day you too might own the Oxford English Dictionary--hard copy and CD.

You ponder the meaning of words like loquacious and rudimentary--how have their definitions changed between the early nineteenth century and today? What is their root language? When was the first usage of such words in modern literature? Can you use them in your current WIP without sounding like a pontificating intellectual?

You have ever read the someones name tag and noted it would be the perfect name for a character. You then asked them to pronounce it for you, pretending you were just curious.

Friends and family hesitate to confide in you for fear a new and improved version of their tragedy or triumph might show up in your current work in progress.

You have an inspiring quote in your house at this very instant by Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thorough or Steven King.

Instead of saying "We'll laugh about this later" you often comfort yourself with "This will make a great scene in a book one day."


AND, last but not least, while reading this, you thought of another one :-) Do share.