Friday Speak Out!: Nurses and the Vietnam War: Stories with Intersecting Points of View

By Pam Webber

Novelists who write from multiple points of view (POV) amaze me. Having worked with a writing group for two years under the tutelage of a New York Times bestselling author, I know writing one story from multiple perspectives can be demanding creatively and organizationally. However, after reading several wonderful books by authors skilled in the use of multiple

POVs, I felt driven to try it. Consequently, after many starts, stops, oops, and revisions, my third book, Life Dust, was written using two points of view.

As a long-time nurse educator and family practitioner, I wanted to weave a story that included the good and bad elements of nursing as well as my husband’s funny and heart-breaking experiences in Vietnam. Consequently, for the two POVs, I chose Nettie, a student nurse who found herself in a heap of unearned trouble while interning in a busy emergency room, and Andy, a young Army lieutenant who is leading a jungle reconnaissance squad in Vietnam.

While crafting the story, I learned the devil does indeed live in the details. Keeping the relationship between the two characters progressing while advancing their individual and collective storylines required careful integration of numerous details. To help keep the scenes, events, and sequencing organized, I developed a color-coded, intersecting timeline for the POVs that resembled the double strands of DNA.

The timeline allowed me to visualize what was happening with each character at every point in the story. It also aided in the development of a good story arc. Of course, the timeline had to be adjusted every time I added or deleted a scene or event, but it still proved invaluable in helping to maintain interrelatedness and progression of the storylines. It also helped with the transitions from one POV to the other. In Life Dust, I used letters from Andy to mark time and help synchronize Nettie’s life as a nurse in the Emergency Room with Andy’s life in Vietnam.

When using a timeline to guide two POVs, I’d suggest the following:

• Identify the common beginning point and ending goal of both POVs, which is essential when planning the arc of the overall story.

•  Determine the arc for each character/POV. While character arcs do not have to match, they should be close enough to ensure stability of the arc for the overall story.

•  Decide which character provides the best platform for anchoring the story and lead with that character.

•  Decide if the characters/POVs will have their own chapters or separated scenes within chapters.

•  If you divide POVs by chapters, it is helpful to title the chapters. You can even use the characters’ names as titles, which eases the reader’s transition between POVs.

•  Keep your characters/POV intermittently connected in a progressive and meaningful way. In Life Dust, this was done with letters and phone calls. Since it took two weeks or longer for letters to travel to and from Vietnam, I could move the story forward faster. I also connected the POVs through the characters’ old habits, phrases, and activities. For example, my two characters grew up together and used to lie on a hill and watch the stars at night. In Vietnam, Andy could see the stars above the treetops, and in Northern Virginia, Nettie could see them after leaving work late at night. The phrase, “Meet me in the stars. I love you,” became the last sentence in each of their letters.

• When your manuscript is complete, check and recheck the sequencing and integration of the storylines against your timeline. Although I’d edited Life Dust dozens of times, I still found a sequencing error on my last readthrough. I was reading the manuscript aloud and heard the mistake instead seeing it.

Happy writing and best wishes!

* * *

Pam Webber is the Amazon bestselling author of a coming of age trilogy. Last month, She Writes Press published Pam’s most recent novel, Life Dust. Pam lives in Virginia near where her novels are set.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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5 comments Friday Speak Out!, intersecting POV, multiple POV, novel writing tips, nurses, Pam Webber, Vietnam War

Friday Speak Out!: WHEN YOUR SETTING IS A FAMOUS CITY THAT READERS THINK THEY KNOW (BUT THEY DON’T)

By Fran Hawthorne

For a number of plot-related reasons, my new novel I Meant to Tell You had to be set in and near Washington DC. But almost as soon as I began moving my characters around on the ground, I panicked.

Where would one character take her daughter for fun? Where would a couple go on a date? In the last year before the pandemic, Destination DC (the district’s official tourism Website) reported more than 24 million visitors. How could I possibly make such a popular venue seem fresh and interesting? No matter where I placed my characters, scores of readers would either pick out inaccurate details, or just be bored.

Then add to that list all the readers who have zero interest in politics. Assuming that my book must be a political thriller, they might well ignore it. (While my novel centers on a kidnapping, there are no conspiracies to kill the president, stage a coup, or even mastermind an election. Sorry.)

I settled on three strategies to maintain readers’ attention:

First, I asked friends who’ve lived in the area in recent years for suggestions about little-known spots where they might take out-of-towners – the kind you don’t find in most guidebooks. I was deluged with intriguing ideas. They ranged from the tiny (the weird Temperance Fountain, once called “the city’s ugliest statue,” which used to spout ice water for both people and horses from its intertwined dolphins) to the opulent (a tour of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms in the State Department, jam-packed with porcelain platters and silver tea sets, oil portraits and landscapes, upholstered sofas and mahogany desks…)

Next, I asked those same friends about ordinary life. Do the buses stop running in a severe snowstorm? Where’s the up-and-coming bar scene? What types of ethnic restaurants were popular in the early 2000s? In what neighborhood would penny-counting newlyweds typically find an apartment? How about a middle-class family, or a yuppie couple? These are the details that make any setting come alive, famous or not.

Finally, I decided to embrace some of the “tourist traps” and make them a part of the book. After all, how can you place a novel in Washington DC and ignore the Lincoln Memorial or the Smithsonian? Thus, for instance, two important characters “meet cute” at the display of the Wright Brothers’ Flyer at the National Air and Space Museum. In addition to providing a nice change from the usual Starbucks encounter, the location also offered insight into the two characters. A person who chooses to visit a historic airplane on her lunch break is very different from someone who spends that time working out in the gym.

I don’t know if these unsung details will bring more tourists rushing to visit Washington DC. But I hope they will make non-DC readers feel a little bit like they’ve actually been there.

* * *

Fran Hawthorne has been writing novels since she was four years old, although she was sidetracked for a few decades by journalism. Her eight nonfiction books -- mainly about consumer activism, the drug industry, and the financial world -- include Ethical Chic (Beacon Press), named one of the best business books of 2012 by Library Journal, and Pension Dumping (Bloomberg Press), a Foreword magazine 2008 Book of the Year. She's also been an editor or regular contributor for The New York Times, Business Week, Fortune, and many other publications. But Fran never abandoned her true love: Her debut novel The Heirs was published in 2018, and now I Meant to Tell You will be published in November 2022 by Stephen F. Austin State University Press.

Follow her on Twitter @hawthornewriter
And Instagram @hawthornewriter
Check out her Website. www.hawthornewriter.com

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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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3 comments Fran Hawthorne, Friday Speak Out!, novel setting, novel writing tips, setting

Why You Should Show Rather Than Tell

By Madeline Dyer

Almost every writer at one point in their career has been asked by an editor to show rather than tell. Telling the story rather than showing it is a mistake that nearly all writers make early on in their career, and manuscripts and submissions will be returned with requests for more showing. But what exactly is showing, why is it important, and how do you achieve it?

What is showing vs telling?

In short, showing encourages the reader to experience something with the character, rather than simply being told that something has happened. Showing is about conveying information through imagery and emotion, whereas telling uses exposition.

Showing something gives more meaning and often more details.

For example, ‘it was a hot day’ simply tells readers it was a hot day. But ‘With the back of her hand, Anna wiped the sweat from her forehead as she squinted against the bright rays of the sun’ is better writing because it shows that it is hot through Anna’s body language and actions.

While ‘hot’ itself can be subjective in ‘it was a hot day,’ from the longer description, we know now that it is hot enough for Anna to sweat and have enough sweat that it needs wiping away. So we’ve now got a character involved in this description, and we can infer that she is outside. Not only is it hot, but it’s sunny and bright too (whereas ‘it was a hot day’ could mean it’s a muggy, cloudy hot day—there’s no sense of light or the effects on the human body). And we also know how Anna’s body reacts to hot weather (by sweating).

Why is showing important?

Firstly, showing something is more immersive for the reader and the act of showing rather than telling quite often brings in other literary and narrative devices, thereby improving the writing craft in more ways than one.

Showing rather than telling brings in more details that readers can relate to. We’ve all been outside on a bright day where it’s hard to see or we’ve all wiped sweat from our foreheads. These are moments we now share with this character, and so showing what it means for it to be a hot day provides a point of connection between reader and character—and connections are what we want.

So, how do we achieve more showing and less telling?

1. Involve your characters in the descriptions. As in the above example, show what something means specifically for your character. And remember, it could mean different things for different characters.

2. Avoid naming emotions. Whenever you name an emotion, you’re telling the reader how someone feels. Instead, show the emotion through your character’s actions and word choice. ‘He was happy’ becomes ‘A light smile spread across his face as he heard the song.’ This tells us what has made him happy, and also shows the reader body language that they associate with happiness.

3. Have your characters exhibit non-verbal communication. Something like 70% of communication is non-verbal in real life, so make sure this is also present in your writing. We rarely have to ask people how they’re feeling moment to moment because we pick up on non-verbal cues (especially applicable with those we know well). Have your narrator notice other characters’ body language, facial expressions, actions, and posture—together, these all build up a picture of what these characters are thinking and feeling. And you can totally have a character saying one thing in dialogue but their body language implies something different—because this happens in real life so often.

4. Pay attention to imagery. Imagery is your friend when you’re looking to show more and tell less. Think about the connotations of certain images and the things they can symbolise. Do these images and meanings link to a certain emotion you’re trying to convey? Then great!

5. Use all the senses in your writing. This will immediately help you to show more to your reader and immerse them into your story.

6. Be careful of word choice. Avoid adverbs when you can, as these tell the reader how a verb is performed. Instead, use a stronger verb. ‘He ran quickly’ becomes ‘He sprinted,’ which captures more urgency. In a similar vein, adjectives should be avoided or used sparingly.

7. Be as specific as you can. The more details you give, the better. Details avoid general telling sentences while also deepening characterisation. Introducing details often means you’re using more sensory language and imagery too.

But don’t show everything!

Every time you show something, you’re often spending more time on it. This sometimes has the effect of pausing a moment. If you’re showing absolutely everything, the pacing overall can be too slow. So you want to show the important moments, plus a few others. If your main character is travelling by bus, but nothing really happens on the bus and the action is focused on what happens before and after the journey, then don’t describe the whole bus journey in great detail. It’s fine then to say ‘He caught the bus to the next town’ rather than showing him waiting for the bus, then buying his ticket, then picking his seat, etc, when the bus journey itself isn’t significant to the overall plot.

When you’re showing something, you’re telling the reader it’s important because you’re spending more time and attention on it. So make sure that these make sense for your story. It’s all about getting the balance right.

***

Madeline Dyer lives on a farm in the southwest of England, where she hangs out with her Shetland ponies and writes dark and twisty young adult books.

Madeline has a strong love for anything dystopian or ghostly, and she can frequently be found exploring wild places. At least one notebook is known to follow her wherever she goes. Her books include the Untamed series, the Dangerous Ones series, and Captive: A Poetry Collection on OCD, Psychosis, and Brain Inflammation.

Untamed won the 2017 SIBA award for Best Dystopian Novel and has been a #1 bestseller in its Amazon category in five countries. Madeline’s second novel Fragmented was also a runner-up for Best Young Adult novel at the 2017 SIBAs. Her memoir, Captive and her ace romance novel, My Heart to Find (written as Elin Annalise) have both been nominated for 2021 Reader’s Choice Awards from TCK publishing, for Best Memoir and Best Romance respectively.

She is represented by Erin Clyburn at Howland Literary. Madeline is also a staff editor at Bolide Books, a publisher based in Scotland, specializing in speculative fiction. Visit her website at www.MadelineDyer.co.uk

--Madeline is also a WOW! Women on Writing instructor. Her class, AN INTRODUCTION TO STORYTELLING FORMS: Flash Fiction, Short Stories, Novels, Poetry, Screenplays, Personal Essays, and Memoir (Including Portfolio Creation), starts on July 19th! 

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Leave a Comment fiction writing, Madeline Dyer, novel writing tips, show vs tell, WOW Classes, WOW instructor

Friday Speak Out!: A Novel and a Skirt

by June Trop

What’s the difference between a novel and a skirt? Not as much as you might think. Both are subject to the fads and fancies of the marketplace. If you’ve recently picked up a classic novel—I picked up Middlemarch by George Eliot—you might find that although it’s been touted as a masterpiece of English literature, its underlying themes, pace, and tone are dated.

In today’s market, the author competes with various entertainment options for readers who typically have little time. Did you know the average person today decides whether to read a book within just a few minutes of opening it? To hook your reader, some event has to topple your protagonist’s stable world quickly, within the first scene. Likewise, the first sentence has to plunge your protagonist into the story, arouse curiosity, and promise trouble. For example, I started my first novel, The Deadliest Lie (Bell Bridge Books, 2013), with this sentence: “I wondered what lie I’d tell as I approached the great mahogany doors of my father, Isaac ben Asher’s study.”

The story has to move quickly. Today’s successful authors trust their readers to be able to jump from one scene to the next without a lengthy transition. They use dialog and short paragraphs (lots of white spaces) to make their readers’ eyes fly down the page. Remember dialog is also action.

And rather than long expository passages, which tend to bore readers, authors keep their descriptions brief, with just a few telling words incorporated into an action. Yes, I’m talking about that old saying again: Show don’t tell. Instead of telling how fastidious a character is about his appearance, show his manicured hand brushing an imaginary speck of lint off his shoulder.

So, launch your story with both a provocative first sentence and an action-filled scene and fold your descriptions into your action statements. Then, unlike this poodle skirt, you'll be current with today's fads and fancies.

* * *

June Trop is the author of the Miriam bat Isaac Mystery Series set in first-century CE Roman-occupied Alexandria. Her books have been cited for excellence at the New York Book Festival, by Wiki Ezvid, the Historical Novel Society, and as a 5-star Readers’ Favorite. Kirkus praised The Deadliest Thief for its “vibrant imagery and an entertaining plot ending with a most unexpected twist.”

As an award-winning middle school science teacher, June used storytelling to capture her students’ imagination and interest in scientific concepts. Years later as a professor of teacher education, she focused her research on the practical knowledge teachers construct and communicate through storytelling.

June, an active member of the Mystery Writers of America, lives with her husband Paul Zuckerman in New Paltz, NY where she is breathlessly recording her plucky heroine's next life-or-death exploit.

Connect with June on her website www.JuneTrop.com or her Facebook page: June Trop Author.

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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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1 comment Friday Speak Out, hook your readers, June Trop, novel writing, novel writing tips

NaNoWriMo: Are We Done Yet?

So we’re close to the midpoint of November and that means—for those of you participating in NaNoWriMo—that you’re about halfway along in your journey, assuming you haven’t pulled out your hair and run screaming from your laptops. But I feel like I need to lay a little truth on you: if you’re reading this, I suspect you might already be in the weeds.

Because the diligent-and-on-track NaNoWriMo participant doesn’t have time for reading blog posts or much of any other shenanigans…like eating or sleeping. The writer who’s got around 25,000 words is rather smugly humming along and we kind of despise her (or him).

But it’s not too late for you to become smug and detestable yourself. I’ve got a few tips to get you back on track and though you may not finish with the Great American Novel ready for submission, you WILL finish with…well, something. (Your lost hair is on you.)

Tip One: Make a Plan

Yes, I know, you’re a pantser. You don’t plan, you just write, write, write and it’s all whiskers on kittens and kisses on mittens or whatever. Until it’s mid-November and suddenly it’s Nightmare on NaNo Street because you have pantsed your way to 5,347 words.

Uh-oh. MAKE A PLAN. Take a look at the number of days you have left (18) and consider realistically the number of days you will write. That means, friends, that if you haven’t written on Saturday yet, don’t count Saturdays, okay? Next, assign a goal to each day you will write. But you cannot give yourself two days off in a row. And that’s not because I’m being a meany-pants; I have a very good reason for this part of the plan.

I know this requires a bit of math and figuring so I’ll give you a few minutes to make a plan. And no, you cannot wait till tomorrow.

Tip Two: Do Not Backtrack

When I am working on a manuscript, even a first draft, I will write, write, write. And then the next time that I go to the manuscript, I will go back and read what I wrote, wrote, wrote. Sometimes, I’ll dump it all and start fresh. Sometimes, I should have dumped it all but I edit, trying to make it nice. The point is, I edit as I go.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, going back over what you’ve written is the kiss of manuscript death. There is no time for editing or finding your voice; there’s not even time to fix some egregious grammar mistake (and seriously, I shuddered just writing that last bit). Just plow ahead with writing no matter what. But—and here’s a big but—that’s easier to do if you write every day.

Writing every day, even if it’s just 500 words, keeps your mind entrenched in the manuscript as well as your butt in the chair. And once there, you’ll probably write more because you’re doing off-to-the-races writing! So if you want to revise that plan you made (the one where you skipped writing on Saturdays), I’ll wait.

Tip Three: Accept Imperfection

Now you have a plan that may or may not mean you have to write 2, 471 words per day for the next 18 days. You have vowed that when you sit down to write, you will not, under penalty of manuscript death, look at any words you have written before but will have at it, mid-sentence if need be. But come November 30th, you must face that what you have written—and really, with no editing what can you expect?--could be a pile of steaming word mush (to put it politely). But that’s okay. Because you’ll be done with NaNoWriMo and you’ll have a 50,000-ish word manuscript-ish.

We shall talk about revision tips on January 1st.

~Cathy C. Hall

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6 comments Cathy C. Hall, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, novel writing tips, writing challenge

Friday Speak Out!: The Art of Novel Writing

by Tara Lynn Marta

Whenever anyone asks why I chose to be a writer, I answer: “I didn’t. Writing chose me.” A typical response from someone who lives a Bohemian existence. Yes, I said it, Bohemian. Now that I have your attention you’re probably mumbling “Get a real job!”

For now, my full-time job revolves around being a graduate student in a Creative Writing program, where I have recently completed my thesis – a novel.

Prior to graduate school I’d only written short stories, no more than ten pages each. So imagine my surprise when I learned that in order to graduate with an M.A. in Creative Writing, I would have to write a manuscript of 120 pages. Say what?

As a novice novel writer, I hadn’t a clue where to begin. My strategy for writing had always been to sit at my computer and begin emptying my mind. But flying by the seat of one’s pants does not work in grad school. Within two semesters I learned what it meant to have discipline as a writer, to engage in a daily diet of writing and rewriting.

My first task involved writing a summary of my book. Then, I carefully mapped out a biographical sketch of the protagonist so that I could become familiar with her. I kept a notebook containing information prevalent to the development of each main and minor character. Finally, I began drafting the story. Take one.

In the midst of writing I also read voraciously, familiarizing myself with myriad authors and their techniques, because, believe it or not, stories do not just come together. They’re carefully executed.

The number one rule when writing a novel: treat your characters as if they’re real. If you don’t care about them, your reader won’t, either. I came to know each of my characters on a personal level, and before long, I could not even sleep at night without interruptions from these imaginary beings.

Pay attention to the voices when they speak. No, it doesn’t mean you’re crazy. Characters will haunt you until you listen and write down what they, not you, have to say. It’s called mind control, and they’re at the helm.

During my second draft, I took to my notebook and wrote a “cause and effect” for each chapter: the cause of whatever conflict the characters were going through, and the effect it had on them.

Four drafts and 175 pages later, I learned a great deal about novel writing. Each sentence must flow easily. Read your story aloud. If you stumble through a sentence, rewrite it. Each paragraph must transition easily to the next. Each chapter must be able to stand alone.

The main thing to remember when writing a novel is that you must never give up, no matter how tedious the process. Write, rewrite, and then rewrite again. But if per chance you wish to throw in your pen and leave the Bohemian lifestyle, you can always get a real job!

* * *

Tara Lynn Marta is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has been published by Aaduna, Inc., The Humor Times, PoetrySoup, The Gorge, and Heartache to Healing. She is also a book reviewer for At the Inkwell as well as a contributing blogger for the American Writers Museum.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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5 comments creative writing, Friday Speak Out, graduate student, M.A. in Creative Writing, novel writing, novel writing tips, Tara Lynn Marta

Friday Speak Out!: Bending the Facts in Historical Fiction

by Elizabeth Maggio

Fiction, says one Webster definition, is “literature that tells stories which are imagined by the writer.” But what if your novel is based on real events or people or places? What do you do about the facts that just don’t fit into your storyline?

I’m writing an archaeological novel set near a small town in the hills outside of Rome. The story relies heavily on what’s left of an ancient sanctuary, its complex history, and its captivating deity. I can’t resist the real story. I am so enamored of the facts that I have a hard time allowing my creativity some freedom in bending them, just a little, to make my fiction work. The result is that my first novel has taken ages to write, but I’m getting better and my story is moving ahead faster.

Here are a couple of examples:

Fact: A small train line runs from downtown Rome into the hills and stops at several towns. I am familiar with the stop at one town, its tiny train station, and the fact that getting from the station to the town means walking up the hillside over a few switchbacks to get to the main piazza. Great visual for my novel; the only problem is that this train stop is not at the town I’m writing about.

Fiction: I thought of moving the setting of my novel to the town with the train station, but that wouldn’t work. So I relocated the train stop.

Fact: Early excavations, mostly by artifact hunters, uncovered ruins of several structures in this monumental complex that were then reburied. A few reports exist saying what was found, but no one has had the time or financial support to excavate the site completely and properly and recreate what exactly was there.

Fiction: Taking advantage of the incomplete knowledge about this site, I reorganized its layout to fit my plot.

The changes I’m making don’t alter the core facts--the site and its history will be recognizable to the archaeological community and to nearby residents. I feel however that my changes need to be acknowledged in my novel, and I will do that in an Author’s Note at the beginning.

* * *

Elizabeth Maggio is a retired science writer who is transitioning to fiction. She was a third place winner of the WOW! Women on Writing Fall 2012 Flash Fiction Contest. You can read her winning entry “Extant, Not Extinct” at http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/54-FE1-Fall12Contest.html
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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2 comments elizabeth maggio, Friday Speak Out, historical fiction, novel writing tips

Foreshadowing

by Sally Apokedak 

The first time I wrote a novel I wandered around for seventeen chapters, having no idea where I was going, before I fizzled and gave in to writers’ block for six months. I finally had to take the book all the way back to chapter four and rewrite it all.

Even so, that book never worked. There was no pay-off. The ending fell flat.

Why? Because I didn’t know the end from the beginning, so I couldn’t foreshadow the end. I couldn’t build reader anticipation. I couldn’t hint early on that there was only one way to solve the character’s dilemma.

This is not to say that seat-of-the-pantsers can’t write books with stellar endings that wrap things up in a satisfying way. They can. As long as they go back to their beginnings and do a lot of revising to add in the foreshadowing.

This is a necessary step.

And yet, so many writers seem to want to skip this.

When you skip the foreshadowing, it shows in the big things—the surprise ending works as well as pudding coming from the kitchen faucet. Sure it’s funny and unexpected, but it doesn’t really work. You turned the faucet on because you wanted water, not pudding. For an ending to work, a surprise ending or any other kind of ending, the reader has to be properly prepared. He has to say, “Of course. Why didn’t I see that? It was there all along. This is exactly the way the story went and this is exactly where it was supposed to end up.”

Leaving out the foreshadowing shows in smaller ways, too. Little actions that characters take that we don’t expect, jar us. So do things about the world that surprise us—they have a purple sun? I’m halfway through the book and I’m just now learning this?

You can’t introduce a completely new element into the middle of book. Let’s say you’ve decided that the main character needs a ladder so he can climb into a window. He’s outside a warehouse in the middle of the night. If he’s never been to that warehouse before, and you let him stumble upon the ladder left behind by the painter, I'm going to ask, "How did he know the ladder would there? How as he planning to get into the building? This makes no sense."

This kind of thing never works.

If you want him to have that ladder there, it can't be a convenience. He has to have seen the painters earlier and he has to have a reasonable expectation that they will leave their ladders behind.

This is what you want to do for your reader: You want to make him believe the story you’re telling is true. It really happened. You’re not just making it up as you go along.

But what if you fly by the seat of your pants? What if you are just making it up as you go along? Now you need a ladder so you decide that earlier in the day painters left a ladder there. Now you need a dog bite so you mention that the character has a dog, even though we’ve didn’t see the dog the last eight times we were in the house. Now you need an evil doctor so suddenly the character becomes clumsy and breaks a leg.

That’s fine as long as you go back later and add in the foreshadowing. Put the painters in well before you need the ladder, show the dog the first time we enter the apartment, and have the character trip five times before he finally breaks his leg.

Books that are made up of a series of convenient coincidences aren’t satisfying. They feel false. We can’t get into the dream. We can’t get lost in the story world and feel like we’re visiting a real place and reading about real people.

So whether you’re a plotter and planner or a seat-of-the-pantser, take the time to foreshadow. Your readers will thank you.

***

Sally Apokedak (Sally-Apokedak.com) is an associate agent with the Leslie H. Stobbe Literary Agency. She’s been studying, reviewing, and marketing children’s books, as well as giving writing instruction for a dozen years. As the manager of the Kidz Book Buzz blog tour she was privileged to work with best-selling and award-winning authors such as Jeanne DuPrau, Ingrid Law, and Shannon Hale. She is a frequent and popular instructor at general market and Christian Writers’ conferences across the country.
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Join Sally Apokedak's upcoming online class, 

First Four Chapter Essentials for Novels. 

Visit our classroom page  for details and enrollment.

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2 comments fiction writing, foreshadowing, novel writing tips, online class, plotter or pantser, Sally Apokedak, WOW class, WOW instructor

The Trouble with From Our Head to the Paper

by Guudmorning! (flickr.com)

Why do we writers have so much trouble getting the words and story from our heads to the paper? Wait, you're not sure if you have this problem? Well, read this scenario and see if this has ever happened to you!

Esmerelda, a published author of short stories and essays, is working on her first novel, and she takes it to her critique group for the first time. She is very excited to receive their feedback, and they give positive comments about the concept, the opening page, and maybe even the dreamy hero. But there are also a lot of questions. Why did the heroine react in a certain way? What happened after the lights went out? Where did the dog come from?

At first, Esmerelda thinks that something has happened to her critique group. They must have lost their minds or barely read her work. The heroine grew angry because her sister continues to take advantage of her good nature. That is right on page 3 at the top. And when the lights went out? She heard a noise coming from the kitchen, which scared her to go on the balcony and see the hero for the first time. It's right there on page 12. The dog? That cutie came from the Humane Society where she volunteers on Sunday mornings--see page 15.

Her critique group members are smiling at her, and the bravest of the bunch says: "Um, Esme, none of those facts are actually on the page."

Esmerelda snatches her manuscript from the grasp of her critique group member and scans the pages, turning red from embarrassment. "Well, I THOUGHT I put those things in there. I mean, they were in my head."

I bet now you're nodding along with Esmerelda. How does this happen to us? How does this happen EVEN after we've had success with previously published work? I bet if we could interview J. K. Rowling, she would admit that it happens to her, too.

As writers, we see our story world in our heads so clearly and know exactly how our characters would react in a situation. But we have to create that picture for our readers, too. They don't have our story world in their heads. They need to be shown the world and our characters, so they understand the plot and motivation of the characters.

This is hard! We all know what happens if we overdo it in this department. We get complaints that our pacing is slow or that we are talking down to our reader. This is the importance of a good critique group or trusted beta readers. You can be the most careful writer, in my opinion, and STILL suffer from the "I thought it was on the page" syndrome. It's okay. It's natural. It's part of the job, but find some readers--whether you are going to be self-publishing or seeking traditional publication--to make sure that you fix this problem the best you can before your book is on the shelf.

Margo L. Dill, a published author of books for kids and teens, teaches novel writing for WOW! Her next class, Writing a Children's or Young Adult Novel starts April 15. Check out her other classes on our classroom page: http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/WOWclasses.html 

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3 comments beta readers, critique groups, Margo L. Dill, novel writing tips, writing problems

Friday Speak Out!: You Oughtta Write a Book! (Part 1— Discover Your Style of Writing)

by Heather Heyford

If you want to write a book, it’s essential to understand where your natural style falls within the wider realm of literature. “What genre do you write in?” is one of the first questions asked when writers, editors and agents convene.

There’s a practical reason for being familiar with your style, too. You have to know which publishing houses and editors to target. It won’t do you much good to send your mystery manuscript to a romance publisher!

Literary fiction is character driven. It’s been described as distant, serious, often dark. It is slower paced, concerned with beautiful writing, and intellectual. Focused more on broad themes, such as human suffering, than on plot. Literary style encompasses the 3Rs: reflection, remembering, and reaction. Examples of literary fiction and its sweeping themes are:

The Great Gatsby — the quest for wealth, the American dream
Romeo and Juliet — star-crossed love leads to tragedy
Catcher in the Rye — alienation as a form of self-protection, the phoniness of the adult world, it’s painful to grow up.

In contrast, commercial fiction is considered to be plot-driven. It is pro-active, fast-paced, emotional, and personal. Usually broken down into genre (romance, thrillers, etc.). Examples of commercial fiction are:

Gone Girl — the wife in what appears to be the perfect couple disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary
The DaVinci Code — an ingenious code is thought to exist in the works of Leonardo DaVinci
Outlander — a WWII combat nurse falls into a standing stone and lands in 1743 Scotland

Mainstream fiction falls somewhere in the middle of literary and commercial. To go a step further, the type of contemporary, emotional, universally appealing, mainstream fiction that occasionally becomes a blockbuster is often referred to as high concept. High concept novels and films can be explained in a quick elevator pitch. For example, here’s a pitch for the high concept movie, Jurassic Park: What if we could build dinosaurs?

In preparation for bumping into a potential editor at a national writer’s conference, I pared my current 4-book series down to this: “The Napa Wine Heiresses is a series about the lives and loves of the daughters of the most notorious vintner in the Napa Valley.” I feel sure this exercise helped me get multiple offers from publishers.

Sometimes the entire premise of a high concept story is evident in the title:

Snakes on a Plane

Try distilling your idea into 1-3 sentences. Even if you have more of a literary bent, boiling your book down to its essence is a great exercise in clarifying what it is you are trying to say.

Whatever your style, good story transcends genre. To paraphrase literary agent and writing coach Donald Maass, the reason fiction exists is to use a stranger in strange circumstances to surprise us with ourselves. Personally, I aim for both powerful story and beautiful writing.

[In Part 2 of You Oughtta Write a Book, I’ll explain the myriad methods—print, digital, indie, and so on—by which you can consider publishing your book. And be sure to stay tuned for Part 3 — The Importance of Social Media in Helping Your Book Get “Found”.]

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Heather Heyford is the author of Wine Heiresses Series: A Taste of Chardonnay,  A Taste of Merlot, A Taste of Sauvignon, and A Taste of Sake, from Kensington Publishing. She is represented by The Nancy Yost Literary Agency. Visit her at HeatherHeyford.com, https://www.facebook.com/heatherheyford1 and http://www.pinterest.com/Romance_Writer/.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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2 comments commercial fiction, Friday Speak Out, genre writing, genres, Heather Heyford, high concept novel, literary fiction, novel writing tips