Dissecting the Opening of a Short Story

I am finally digging myself out of Covid-19 procrastination with a short story which is fast turning into a novelette, as much of my short fiction seems to do. It’s quite a while since I uploaded a how-to post, so I thought I’d share the beginning of my work-in-progress. Upfront I’ll say that I am more of a pantser than a plotter, so when I started I knew little more than what you’ll read.

What is needed for an opening? Many writers just write, then see what they have, re-write it, and edit that into shape. I can’t work that way. I need more than a character: I need to know his/her general backstory and, most important, find the tone necessary for the character to embark on his/her journey.  If these aren’t in place when my imagination makes the leap then the whole thing has a tendency to go awry. Have a read:


The Forever House
    There’s an old saying that you never truly know a house until you remove its wallpaper. It’s proved correct with every house we’ve owned, from our first Victorian two-up, two-down with its dicey electrics, to the oak wainscotting discovered behind a botched plasterboard job in the house at Rutherford.
    So when the damp wallpaper lifted to reveal the message pencilled on the plaster, I didn’t think, just smiled and turned to call over my shoulder, ‘There’s nine—’
    I recall the metal scraper ringing against the wall as the jolt seared through me, and somehow my shoulder coming to rest in the corner of the walls, the smell of old glue and powdery plaster in my nostrils.
   That’s the problem with doing something rhythmic, something mindless. You sort of slip into a parallel reality where a normal action still means what it’s supposed to. Nine lengths to door. In that reality Jason would have looked up and grinned. In this reality, my reality, he’s no longer here to respond. 

A double-blank line follows, which even for me is some going after only 170 words. However, due to what comes after, it fits. I have given the title because it isn’t just a title, it’s a recurring motif which impacts both on the house and the character’s evolving mindset. Even at this stage, when I had little idea of genre, subsidiary characters, and only a glimpse of a possible ending, my creativity was adding depth. As an aside, the title’s phrase was passed to me in conversation by a friend, and immediately lodged in my subconscious for future use. Occasionally it happens like that; most times I’d need to write the complete story and then mine it for a suitable title.

The story is a first person narration, chosen because there will be a lot of internalisation and it is easier to convey that on the page using first person viewpoint. During the writing, the hurdle I need to watch for is the number of uses of “I”. At a pinch the character could be construed as male, but it was always destined to be female. There is no name, or description of her, because at this point I don’t want to detract from the importance of The House, hence going into such detail in that first paragraph, even to naming a non-existent town.

The exception to this is in the use of contractions to give a sense of an ordinary person narrator. [You thought the use or not of contractions was ad hoc? LOL!] The tone I wanted was one of bittersweet reflection, hence beginning with There’s an old saying… rather than straight in with You never truly know… At the very start the bittersweet slant might be more in my mind than on the page, but it grows as the story progresses and the character starts to question not just the house but her perception of her life and those who lived in the house before her.

A word about characters in general: I hardly ever describe them. The picture I wish to conjure in a reader’s mind comes from what characters say, or do, or hold, and that picture will be different for every reader. Instead, I try to convey glimpses of the characters’ lived lives to act as scaffolding.

Here the narrator and partner – the we – have bought and renovated a series of properties, moving up the price ladder as they did so. As much as this emphasises a type of person with the traits necessary to bring such to fruition, it excludes others. This reading-between-the-lines is for the reader to assimilate as they progress, thus building and continually adjusting their own mental picture of the characters, and in this case the house: ...the smell of old glue and powdery plaster...

The section finishes with the information that the narrator is recently widowed, fighting denial while both grieving and rationalising, thus I start to put across the turmoil of her emotions which will become a mainstay of the story. I deliberately slam on the brakes in the final paragraph via the multiple use of commas and the word reality – I use it four times and may yet edit it to three – but its use is as much about the house as the narrator. It is also the only occasion in the entire story when I pull the reader into the moment by the use of second person you.

Did I plan this conclusion to the section? No, I was madly creating as I went. Does what follows continue the tone and the character’s internal thought processes? No, it is real-world exchanges, hence the need for a double-blank line.

Other facets you may be interested in – well, this sort of thing interests me – is that by the time I’d reached this point I knew the genre, subsidiary characters, the house and its previous occupants, and the ending. The initial seed? I was scraping wallpaper and uncovered a long-ago decorator’s note pencilled on the plaster. Immediately it pinged the gifted title-phrase lodged in my subconscious and I stood back, scraper in hand, with What if…? roiling through my mind.

If you have found this post of interest you may want to read Research 1 – Is It Necessary For Short Fiction? Or just scan down the titles of my Writing Tips page. I dissect entire stories in Reading A Writer’s Mind.

Image by Wokingham Libraries via Pixabay

#WritingTips Index Page

The sharp-eyed among my readers may have noticed a new page has appeared beneath the header of this blog - Writing & Editing Tips. I've been creating posts for many a year, and during that period have produced four series of how-to articles. This single-page index makes the individual posts easier to find and navigate.

The choice:

• Writing Prompts - a choice of 16, each with an explanatory note.
• Research - a choice of 3 posts, not so much where to look but why a writer needs to.
• Editing - a choice of 8 posts, discussing the different types of edit and what each entails.
• Don't Mess With The Reader - a choice of 5 posts on elements which should never have made it into print.

Have a delve. You never know what the posts might ignite in your own writing.

There are also links to two useful resources:

• an ebook, Internet Research for Fiction Writers by April Taylor (free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited)
• a sectioned list of blog posts, Stacks of Useful Articles for Writers! gathered by Terry Tyler

Happy Reading! 

Don't Mess With The Reader: 5 Plagiarism

This is the final post in this short series. If you’ve come to it late, I’ve been catching up on my fiction reading which, unfortunately, led to an unexpected amount of eye-rolling. The problems I’m covering should never have made it to an editor, never mind to print. They should have been noticed by the author during the writing and corrected. It is the author’s name on the cover; it is the author’s responsibility.

If you need to read my full why rant, jump to 1 Openings, otherwise let’s cut to…

Plagiarism. Don’t do it.

You mean... I came across a plagiarised novel produced by a major publisher?!? Sort of.

The novel in question was passed to me because it was thought I’d like the storyline: a claustrophobic thriller conveyed in first person viewpoint. I did. Except... by page 20 I was thinking I’d already read it, yet it was published in 2018 so I couldn’t have. By page 50 the hairs were rigid on my neck. I knew this story; I knew these characters. I went hunting on the internet.

Of course I knew it; I’d grown up with its movie (released 1954). I even found the original literary work (which I’d never read) as a downloadable pdf, a short story, first published in 1942, by a prolific writer who died in 1968. The dates are significant.

There again, so is the storyline, so are the characters, so are the motifs. Not so much a “re-working” as a minor tweaking.

The dates are significant because US copyright laws were substantially updated in 1976. Does this mean the original story is in “the public domain”? The Americans are nothing if not litigious, and it seems as late as 1990 lawyers were arguing its copyright status in the Supreme Court. I bet that was costly.

A further court case was heard between 2008-2010 when a 2007 movie was said to have violated the copyright in the original story. I bet that case was even more costly. However, it also means that the original 1942 story remained in copyright as at 2010. Whether it has lapsed since I haven’t easily been able to ascertain.

As I mentioned above, I found the original short story on the internet as a pdf, but that proves nothing; it certainly didn’t carry what I would refer to as ‘corroborating citations’. And let’s face it, some of my novels, never mind short stories, are to be found on the internet as pirated pdf files in direct contravention of my copyright.

But back to the novel in my hand. It carries more author-cited publicity puffs than a three-masted sailing ship needs to cross an ocean. Did these authors not notice the similarities to what is an acclaimed movie from 1954? It is doubtful any read the script before lending their names to it, that’s the way publicity puffs work, despite so many citing the director of that movie.

But someone did notice, because the cover image uses part of the design of the movie poster. Fun, eh? The novel’s title-page states it is ...in development as a major motion picture... It could be there is more litigious fun to come. Never mind the copyright status of the original short story, the director of the original movie died in 1980. If his works are still in copyright within his estate, it could be they don’t enter the public domain until 2050.

So the moral of this tale is…?

Reading this book did not excite me, despite it being extremely well written. It made me angry, and it left me with a very sour taste in my mouth. I’ll never read this author again. I’ll never trust the publisher, and I’ll look at all other mainstream publishers through the lens of this experience.

But that’s me. If you’re a reader you probably don’t care a jot. If you are a writer you should seriously take note. Why? Because publishers’ contracts have warranty clauses, the aim of which is to indemnify the publisher against, among the list, the risk of libel, invasion of privacy, and copyright infringement.

Besides, if you can’t write anything decent without lifting it whole (or quartered) from another writer’s hand - dead or living - you should be doing something else.

UPDATE 07 February 2019

The digital ink is barely dry on my post when I'm sent a link to The New Yorker which, on 4th February, published a long "profile" of the author of this novel. It reads like an exposé, the duplicity I highlight the merest tip of a monstrous iceberg. I wonder how those big-name authors feel now, those who lent their names, and their reputations, to the publicity puffs. There again, the publishing industry doesn't come out smelling of roses. An archetypal case of The Emperor's New Clothes. 

As ever, the august movie director is named but the originating author is forgotten, so let me remember him here: the late Cornell Woolrich.

Grab a coffee. The New Yorker read is long:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/a-suspense-novelists-trail-of-deceptions/amp


This is the final post in this short series. If you wish to read the others:

1 Openings ¦ 2 A Sense of Place  ¦ 3 Characters  ¦ 4 Seeding Information

 

Starting out? Reading A Writer’s Mind… covers everything from plot elements to the use of alliteration, rhythm and subliminal detailing. Paperback or ebook. Gain an insider’s view:

Amazon  ¦ iBooks ¦ Nook ¦ Kobo ¦ All e-formats
Book Depository for worldwide free shipping of the paperback

Don't Mess With The Reader: 4 Seeding Information

For those coming late to this short series, I’ve been catching up on my fiction reading which, unfortunately, led to an unexpected amount of eye-rolling. The problems I’m covering should never have made it to an editor, never mind to print. They should have been noticed by the author during the writing and corrected. It is the author’s name on the cover; it is the author’s responsibility.

If you need to read my full why rant, jump to 1 Openings, otherwise let’s cut to...

Seeding information: the strategic sowing of teaser information into earlier parts of the storyline so that when a pertinent plot point later occurs it does not occur against the flow of established logic.

For instance:
    • A crack appears in the pavement; still liquid shivers in an open container; a whiff of rotten eggs emanates from a manhole cover >>> a seismic event occurs, natural or man-made depending on the storyline.
    • A young girl is taught the rudiments of boxing by her grandfather; she enjoys sports at school; she takes up karate as a teen >>> she lays out the street robber attempting to steal her bag.

So how does the reader feel when, say, on page 188 the main character is able to take the controls of a plane because ...he’d always wanted to be a pilot, and those lessons he’d had when he’d been younger…

What lessons? Since when had he wanted to become a pilot? More like since the author needed to plug a hole in the plot and couldn’t be bothered to backtrack in the storyline to set up a thread to sustain the character’s ability to take the controls of a plane.

Laughable? I’d like to say the above is an extreme example, but a couple I came across in my reading weren’t far behind.

This lack of cause to enact the effect stems from a scarcity of detail in the outline of both the character and the storyline. I write organically so have never been a fan of planning a novel down to scene level before starting on Chapter One, but there needs to be a skeleton of a storyline from which to pick the plot elements, and that is built from the characters, particularly the protagonist. Bulking out of flesh, either before starting or during the writing, comes from brainstorming the characters and the storyline simultaneously.

An infodump, no matter a page or single sentence in length, won’t plug a hole in the storyline or cover up cracks in characterisation because it takes no account of the importance of pacing in a novel. I used three information teasers in the examples at the top of this post; in a novel there would be many more and they would be seeded with subtlety. The reader should hardly notice a backstory being built, but when the conveyed information becomes pertinent to the unfolding storyline, it’s a natural fit due to cause and effect. You can’t harvest what you haven’t seeded.

Next time: 5 Plagiarism 

The series so far: 1 Openings ¦ 2 A Sense of Place  ¦ 3 Characters

 

Starting out? Reading A Writer’s Mind… covers everything from plot elements to the use of alliteration, rhythm and subliminal detailing. Paperback or ebook. Gain an insider’s view:

Amazon  ¦ iBooks ¦ Nook ¦ Kobo ¦ All e-formats
Book Depository for worldwide free shipping of the paperback

Don't Mess With The Reader: 3 Characters

For those coming to this short series here, I’ve been catching up on my fiction reading which, unfortunately, led to an unexpected amount of eye-rolling. The problems I’m covering should never have made it to the publisher’s editor. They should have been noticed by the author during the writing and corrected. It is the author’s name on the cover; it is the author’s responsibility. 

If you need to read my full why rant, jump to 1 Openings, otherwise let’s cut to the chase.

Characters come in three categories: mains, subsidiaries, and walk-ons.

Mains are the novel’s lead characters: the protagonist, the antagonist, and their close buddies or sounding boards. They are named. The reader will learn something about their backgrounds and their motivations. They are part of the on-going action; one or all will have sections written from their viewpoint.

Subsidiaries are lesser characters who help support the real world environments, and/or the theme/s, and/or the subplots. They may be named, or they may only be delineated on the page by their job descriptions. They often walk onto the page early in the story and keep popping back throughout the story, but the reader learns very little about their backgrounds or their motivations. This information isn’t necessary, though it could be relevant, to the on-going action, or more likely the theme.

Walk-ons are just that, they walk on, or in to the story to provide a specific service within the real world environment – to sell the protagonist a sandwich and/or comment on... the weather, the protagonist’s demeanour, whatever... thus giving the protagonist a “breather” moment in which to take stock within the unfolding storyline. The specific service the walk-on provides might be very specific – a talkative taxi driver asking if the protagonist has “heard the news” and, in ignorance of its significance, conveys sparse details which are pertinent to the unfolding storyline. Walk-ons tend to walk-on just the once and are very rarely named.

The more subtle the writing, the more there will be levels of importance within each set. These character sets are not ring-fenced, either, and a walk-on might rise in importance to become a subsidiary, but the writer is treading a fine line and there may need to be earlier seeding so this doesn’t come as an unintentional surprise to the reader.

A subsidiary, on the other hand, rarely promotes him/herself to main character status; it’s just too much of a leap, and having this new main character explain, in a paragraph, how it reached this stage is simply bullshit exposition by a lazy writer. It also has a habit of dragging the reader out of the fictional reality to stare at the page and utter What?! The suspension of disbelief, which the reader so willingly entered into on opening the book, has been fractured and the reading experience never regains the same intensity. Basically, the reader no longer trusts the writer.

Creating a novel is an organic enterprise, even when a detailed outline and synopsis are used. Storylines and character motivations can and do change in the writing. Fine, accept it as a gift from whichever muse you happen to cherish. It does not, however, mean that these changes should be bolted on as an extra. They need to be seeded beforehand, their intention dripped into the forward momentum before they become, or attempt to become, a pertinent reality.

Next time: 4 Seeding Information

The series so far: 1 Openings ¦ 2 A Sense of Place

Starting out? Reading A Writer’s Mind… covers everything from plot elements to the use of alliteration, rhythm and subliminal detailing. Paperback or ebook. Gain an insider’s view:

Amazon  ¦ iBooks ¦ Nook ¦ Kobo ¦ All e-formats
Book Depository for worldwide free shipping of the paperback

Don't Mess With The Reader: 2 A Sense of Place

The festive break saw me catching up on my fiction reading, which led to an unexpected amount of eye-rolling and some muttering beneath my breath. The titles were a mix of mainstream, small press and indie, but it was the mainstream which made me stare. Were these novels signed off while the editors were on leave?

The problems I focus on in this short series should never have made it as far as a publisher’s editor; they should have been picked up by the agent lauded in the Acknowledgements, better still the author’s beta reader/s before it reached the agent’s desk.

The bottom line is, though, they should have been noticed by the author during the writing and corrected. It is the author’s name on the cover; it is the author’s responsibility.

Last week I started with Openings, this time it is A Sense of Place.

He trudged up the road and crossed the canal.
Trudged is good, it gives a sense of the character’s mindset: he’s reluctantly going to a destination. Or he’s tired and making himself find the energy to continue. Or… The reason he’s trudging will be contained within the preceding paragraphs. One set of words imbues a sub-text on another set, if they are chosen with care. Think of the difference had the line been... He walked up the road and crossed the canal. As is the original, it is an authorial statement, but its tone is flat; it give nothing away. There is no subtext.

Except… except the novel in question is a Historical set in the late 1920s.

He trudged up the road and crossed the canal.
Was he totally alone, or did he share the road with motor vehicles, horse-drawn carters, cyclists? Or was there a separate pavement? Was the road’s surface smooth or cobbled; did it carry tram-lines? What noises did he hear? What smells drifted his way? Was the road fronted by houses: rundown tenement or cared-for single-family homes? Was the road fronted by shops: were the windows crammed with goods, or were goods hanging outside, or stacked in boxes for show? Was the upper storey covered in painted advertisements? Did anyone step aside for him, speak to him, try to tempt him inside a shop or give him a desultory look? How did he cross the canal: metal bridge, humped stone bridge, or the narrow, boarded walkway above lock-gates spilling water? Was there a narrowboat: coal-filthy or brightly painted proclaiming its cargo of china? Was it engine-driven or horse-drawn? Were children playing on the towpath? Was the…? You get the idea.

No reader wants an ultra-detailed description, it slows the story and can easily wander into infodump territory, but readers do want snippets, teasers from which to build their own mental pictures so the glimpsed setting can be enhanced into a 3D experience. Far too often all I got from my reading were named voices moving from one whiteout vacuum to another. It was as if the writers had little idea of what constituted the setting in which their characters lived and how it was impinging on them.

A Sense of Place is needed for every genre and time period. It often comes from the five senses of the viewpoint character: sight, hearing, smell, taste, feel. Be it a busy office, a space station, an empty prairie or the inside of a car, there needs to be A Sense of Place for the reader to believe in the characters and their dilemmas. And think what subtext lies waiting there.

Next time: 3 Characters

 

Starting out? Reading A Writer’s Mind… covers everything from plot elements to the use of alliteration, rhythm and subliminal detailing. Paperback or ebook. Gain an insider’s view:

Amazon  ¦ iBooks ¦ Nook ¦ Kobo ¦ All e-formats
Book Depository for worldwide free shipping of the paperback

Don't Mess With The Reader: 1 Openings

Oh, Horror! And for all the wrong reasons.

The turn of any year sees me catching up on my reading. Usually I am deep into researching a new project, therefore the content tends to be factual. This year, however, I’ve been reading fiction. Against expectations, this has led to an unreasonable amount of eye-rolling and a fair bit of muttering beneath my breath.

Has my reading been indie fiction? Normally it's my biggest percentage, but this bunch was a mix of mainstream, small press, and indie, and it was the mainstream which made me stare. Were these novels signed off while the editors were on sick leave?

The point, of course, is that the problems I shall focus on in the coming weeks should never have made it as far as a publisher’s editor; they should have been picked up by the agent lauded in the Acknowledgements, better still the author’s beta reader/s before it reached the agent’s desk.

The bottom line is that these problems should have been noticed by the author during the writing, and corrected. It is the author’s name on the cover; it is the author’s responsibility.

To kick off, let’s start at the very beginning, with openings.

The normal system of choosing a novel by a writer unknown to the reader is:
– to be enticed by the cover
– to be intrigued by the back blurb on a paperback or the product description on an ebook
– to decide if the conveying of the fiction suits, to read a few pages

It’s those few pages which make or break a sale. The decision isn’t so much dependent on price, as on the amount of time to be invested reading and whether the reading experience is going to be worth it.

An opening has to achieve four main aims, and near enough in this order:
– set the time
– set the place
– introduce the lead character
– indicate a problem pertinent to the lead character

The first two are about releasing readers from their normal reality and re-anchoring them in the fictional reality. Usually the cover image, and nearly always the blurb, have already pointed the way. How often have you seen an SF novel with a spaceship and planets on the cover? A Historical with people wearing period clothing and using horses for transport?

The lead character might be introduced alone or in a group, in an ambience of calm or of threat, but the writing has to mark him/her/it as the lead. Often this is by making the lead the point of view character, meaning readers are party to the lead’s internal thoughts and no one else’s. 

Make it easy. The reader is settling in to a new reality, picking up from the words used and the structure of the sentences the tone of the story, the atmosphere of the scene, whether the conveyance of the entire novel is going to be told to them and from what distance or shown so as to become an immersive experience. An occasional mismatch can be glossed over later in the book, but not during the opening when the reader can unintentionally be sent in a wrong direction.

So when I read that the named character looks out of a window and sees a car in a street I expect that character to be in my time looking at a modern vehicle in a modern street. Why? Because I’ve not been advised otherwise and it’s what I’m expecting from the cover image. My anchors are in place and I’m investing emotionally in the story. I do not expect to be cast adrift twelve pages later when I find that the time is the 1950s, and the character a mid-teen and not the adult I’d envisaged from the language used. It made me re-scan the opening to find where I’d miss-stepped. When I realised I hadn’t…

Novels have been dumped for less.  As it was, I wished I had dumped it. Certainly, I’ll not be reading another by the author. Make sure that author isn’t you.

 

Next time: 2 - A Sense of Place

Starting out? Reading A Writer’s Mind… covers everything from plot elements to the use of alliteration, rhythm and subliminal detailing. Paperback or ebook. Gain an insider’s view:

Amazon  ¦ iBooks ¦ Nook ¦ Kobo ¦ All e-formats
Book Depository for worldwide free shipping of the paperback

Reading and Writing Historicals - Faction

I’ve recently read two ‘faction’ works, and I enjoyed both.  The first was a novella, All The Freshness Of The Morning by David Black, the second full-length, The Secret Life Of The Elephant Man, by Milford Grove.

All The Freshness Of The Morning is a dramatisation of the time spent in the Pacific during WW2 of a young Lieutenant Jack Kennedy – later known to history as the United States President John F Kennedy. It is written in an accessible, chatty style, conveyed by a fictitious narrator years later remembering his time aboard the same PT boat.

In contrast, The Secret Life Of The Elephant Man takes the progressively deforming Joseph Merrick from his birth in Leicester to his death in the London Hospital in 1890. Although Merrick is the focus, and the story is conveyed from his viewpoint and that of his contemporaries, the book explores Victorian attitudes to the vulnerable, therefore deftly mirroring attitudes prevalent today.

‘Faction’ is the art of fictionalising recorded facts about real people, usually now dead, to give an insight into their life and times, written in such a way as to challenge the reader to discern the fact from the fiction. This is why it’s a genre I’ve shied away from. No matter the amount of research undertaken, no writer is ever going to get the detail correct. As if to underline this, both works mentioned above state that they are a work of fiction based on historical fact. They have, however, made me muse on the way I do write history.

For Hostage of the Heart the big picture, the events of the latter part of 1066, were researched, as was the life of ordinary people – the primary pull of history for me – yet no character existed in history. Does this make it less of a story, less of a truth?

For Beneath The Shining Mountains I also concentrated on the life of the Apsaroke people of the American northern plains. Its pre-European expansion backdrop I knew a great deal about as for many years I’d been a re-enactor giving talks to schools and community groups. Did these people live and breathe? Yes, but not under the names or settings depicted.

Each novel in the supernatural Torc of Moonlight trilogy has a different historical thread which resonates with the main contemporary timeline. Binding the two are the real-life settings which were researched down to the colour of the paint on a door.

In all, anachronisms were scrubbed spotless, yet in each the depth of history portrayed varied. Do I still believe I made a decent fist of writing the history? Yes. So why am I now musing on the different forms of conveying it?

This year I discovered information about my grandmother’s life at the close of WW1, a piece of jigsaw that has unexpectedly connected family hearsay. I want to portray her story in fiction, yet I have little more than a few black and white photographs of her in later years and a couple of bald census pages. I could certainly conjure a historical novel, though it would deviate from her day-to-day trials. Could I write faction? I’m not sure I have enough to make a choice. Maybe when I start researching the period and the places, she’ll tell me.

Musings on...Where To Start A Novel

Your characters are nailed, your setting researched, your time period decided. You’ve brainstormed The Big Problem plus a few smaller ones to scatter, and you’ve chosen who’ll carry the story. So where to start? If you’ve written some sort of plan, even a feeble outline, how can where to start be a problem? As always, the Devil is in the detail.

Received wisdom points to a moment of conflict, something to hook the reader. But conflict arises in many forms: conflict with self, conflict with an outside agency, conflict with the environment… And how can the reader be hooked into the story when there hasn’t been page-time enough to learn about the lead character so as to be able to make an emotional investment in him, her, it, or them?

One of my earlier novels, reincarnated as Beneath The Shining Mountains, is set among the native Apsaroke people on the cusp of American-European encroachment on their land. My publisher’s editor at the time dismissed it out of hand as “a Western”.

I could see her point of view; well, I couldn’t at the time and made my position felt, but I can now. Television was full of “Westerns” where the original peoples of the North American continent received a very bad billing. I was a historical re-enactor who gave talks and whose collection of books, recordings and anthropological papers outshone those of the local university. My problem, an insurmountable one according to my editor, was divorcing popular assumptions from the novel’s reality.

This is what readers do; I do; we all do. It’s an easy way of releasing our hold on our own reality and sliding into the reality offered by a novel. We read the signs and make assumptions:  flawed detective suffocating under a never-ending caseload being handed a shitty job because there’s more stress in the station than there is on the street... sort of thing. It might not state that in the opening, but from the tone of the cover, the back-blurb and the first couple of paragraphs, that is what the reader extrapolates. Over the next three or four chapters the reader constantly adjusts that expectation, realigning it to something akin to what the writer had in mind.

For my “non-Western”, I needed to plant a new set of expectations in readers’ minds. Having no control over the cover or the back-blurb, I chose to do it from the first page via an overview of Apsaroke village life, narrowing down to my lead character and her ally subsidiary. The opening was thrown back at me. “Pretty pictures” didn’t mean anything to a reader; people did. Readers wanted a character they could immediately identify with, ie connect with on an emotional level. The “pretty pictures”, if used at all, should be threaded in between.

So I gave the editor what she wanted. The story opens with two women having an argument about the male lead, therefore heralding him for the reader. A few “pretty pictures” are, indeed, threaded in between, but so is something more fundamental for the novel: a sense of personal history about to repeat, of a stalking catastrophe for more than just the main characters. Once written, I mirrored the same tone further in the chapter when portraying a snapshot of the life of the male lead.

The new beginning, about four pages worth, can be read by clicking the Preview option beneath the cover image in the right-hand column. Pick out the Big Problem, the “pretty pictures”, the elements that make up the sense of foreboding. Preceding the opening is a Historical Note to help slip the reader from their reality to the fictional reality, reluctantly allowed by the editor “as long as it’s no longer than 100 words”. So I ensured that it wasn’t.

These musings on where to start a novel came about due to the current work-in-progress, a true “Western” which will appear under my pseudonym Tyler Brentmore sometime over the summer. The story dates from 2014, so my notes tell me, when I’d written the first two chapters before the novel stalled. Returning to it, I could tell exactly why it had stalled: I’d started at a moment of major conflict. There’d been no page-time to learn about the lead character so as to be able to make an emotional investment in him.

This moment of major conflict still stands, but in the rewrite it erupts four chapters in. The preceding 9,500 words contain a few “pretty pictures”, but more to the point they contain a series of smaller, escalating conflicts: with self, with the past, with a hoped-for future, with outside agencies. The initial moment of major conflict has morphed into the novel’s Inciting Incident.

Writing Fiction: Seeing Ideas

So this person comes up and says, I have an idea for you which will make a wonderful book...

I doubt it. Or maybe it could, but not via my hand. Why? Because I haven’t seen it. 

I don’t mean as in photographically seen. I mean in the sense of the imaginary lines that join the dots of stars in the sky to create named constellations: Cassiopeia, Pegasus, Andromeda, Ursa Major.

The lines don’t exist; the stars aren’t close together, they just look that way from where we’re standing. That’s if you’re standing with me in the northern hemisphere. And some fella who may have been Greek, or an Arab, or... decided to see them that way, and everyone after him shrugged and went along with his vision. Call him a fiction writer, then. Of sorts.

So what’s this got to do with an image of a British parish church? I was in Louth a couple of days ago visiting friends and we explored Saint James’ Church with the help of a volunteer. Not only is it a bit grand for a parish church, it is has the tallest steeple of any parish church  in the country.

 

It also has this – one of two remaining medieval wooden angels which stood high in the roof and now adorn a wall in an old chantry chapel once funded by one of the town’s medieval guilds.

                                                       It also has this blue plaque.

 

Do you see the lines?

If you do, great. But I bet they aren’t the same lines I see.

Food for thought. In fact there's enough meals for a starry night of what-ifs for a writer of fiction.

#Editing 5: *How long* to do a Line Edit??

Pilgrims of the Pool is finished. Except it's not.

I wrote that opener, partly in jest, back on 10 March. Such things have a habit of returning to haunt us. This was part of my original plan:

•    Structural edit
•    Content edit
•    Line edit
•    Continuity edit beyond books 1 & 2
•    Combined structural/content/line edit
•    Transfer to e-reader for eagle-eyed read-through
•    Beta readers... and the rest

I have just completed the Line Edit. Notes made during the Structural and Content edits have been addressed and decisions taken. I now know I need to shuffle the Structure - again. Three different storylines move forwards, the two contemporaries within the same time zones, except that one is slightly adrift. Correcting the time sequence will mean the main storyline is pushed out of the spotlight for too many chapters. I believe the response I’m looking for is argh!!

Plan A: write a supplementary chapter for the main storyline - 1,000+ words should do it – except this smacks of padding. If it doesn’t need to be there what else can it be called? For it not to be padding I need to invent a further complication, or even a further thread, go back along the chapters to seed it throughout the novel so that it doesn’t burst onto the page unannounced, have the main character resolve the complication further along the run of chapters – there will be no ...with one mighty bound – and allow the ripples to touch further chapters, probably unbalancing the pacing, especially as it's so close to the end.

Plan B: colour-code all chapters in and either side of the run according to viewpoint character and play jigsaw with the offenders.

No gold stars for guessing which I’m trying first.

See also:  

Editing-1: What does editing actually mean?
Editing-2: The Structural Edit

Editing-3: The Content Edit

Editing-4: The Line Edit
Editing-5: Line Edit Update

Writing: Back to Basics - Outlining

Novel 25% lists: 11, 12, 13...14 chapters?

It’s near enough a month since I wrote my first Back to Basics post acknowledging that the Structure of my work-in-progress had become a horrific tangle. Since then I’ve identified the principle knot – my Hero had stopped acting Heroic – I’ve injected the required drive, and tweaked all the following chapters back into flowing order.

This leaves the novel at the 75% mark with, for me, around 25k words to The End. The climax, the denouement and the aftermath are already written in note form, and have been for months. My need now is to bridge the gap.

Considering this problem was caused by my steering the novel by the reach of its headlights, I decided to ape the ending and write a bridging chapter-by-chapter outline.

Hmm. Old habits die hard. Just as I undertake structure via gut-feeling, so my outlining capacity is similarly led. I work too close in, seeing the gravel of the tarmac road in all its shades and texture, rather than take an aerial view where the road is no more than a faint grey line traversing a landscape spread with blocks of muted colour.

Time for a rethink. I researched outlining on the Net, and even read a few. Invariably they are sparse enough to be meaningless to all but the author. 24: J&C attack bank; 25: J&C escape cops. To my thinking half a novel could be hidden between those two. Where’s the tone? The emotional baggage? The subsidiary characters?

My novel has the weight of 75% pushing from behind. This should not be difficult. It’s just a matter of giving the momentum its head, perhaps taking a different route. So that's what I did. Instead of working with fingers and keyboard I left the office with pad and pen and ended up with the same sort of precis that I usually write after a chapter is completed.

Has it worked? Sort of. I reckon 14 chapters will see it through, but averaging 2k a shot at this point in the novel that equates to 28k words. A bit of an overrun. Any bets my next Back to Basics will be Editing? Maybe that won’t be a bad thing.

Free Images and Manipulation Software

free images and manipulation software

It goes with the territory these days that writers of words need images, if not to enhance the text directly, then to draw a casually browsing reader to do more than casually browse.

I’m using an image with this post so that the reader will understand intuitively which subject the post will cover. In effect, it bolsters the post title. And when I Tweet or Facebook this post, that is all casually browsing readers of those media will see. If the pairing doesn’t engage a need, the associated link won’t be clicked.

This is even more important for book covers – the cover image has to convey the genre category and tone of the novel, leaving the title text to tease at the storyline content.

Most images online are copyrighted to their owners/creators, which means that even if they are referred to as royalty-free a charge is made for their use, just not each time they are used. See agency portals such as Shutterstock, Getty Images, etc.

Some owners assign their copyright to Creative Commons Licensing (CC0), offering those images free for personal and/or commercial usage. See agency portals such as Pixabay, MorgueFile, Wikimedia Commons. Some agency portals offer a small size free but larger sizes for a fee - see FreeDigitalPhotos. It always pays to read the accompanying information. However, don’t ignore museums. The New York Metropolitan recently announced that images of 375,000 items in its care, from paintings to suits of armour, are now offered “open access” for non-commercial and commercial use.

You have an image. Now what? If you are intending to do more than simply crop it to a required size, you’ll need image manipulation software. The most well known is Adobe’s ‘Photoshop’, in all its many guises. But it isn’t cheap and would you use most of its features? How about something like Serif’s Affinity coming in at just under £50?

No? Back to the free. If you want something more sophisticated than that bundled with your PC/Mac, how about the open source GIMP? Also, don’t ignore Adobe’s older versions or “lite” versions of Photoshop, some of which are free. Techradar lists and evaluates other possibilities, including Photoscape and Paint.NET.

If you don’t know how to crop an image or add a coloured framing edge, hit YouTube. A bit of research goes a long way. There’s no such thing as can’t do.

Which image sources do you use? List them in the Comments to help other readers.

Image: courtesy of the writer and Pixabay.com

Writing: Back to Basics - Is Your Hero or Heroine Heroic?

The term Hero or Heroine is hardly used these days. It smacks too much of melodrama where the good are very, very good and the bad and just damned rotten. Main Character has been the term for as long as I’ve been writing, because readers expect characters in shades of grey [not those Shades of Grey].

Main characters have foibles and fears, wants and needs. They lie to themselves; they are in denial. They are, in a phrase, just like you and me. And herein lies the problem.

Ordinary people go with the flow. Few are so driven or ambitious as to start with a penny in their pocket and after 40 years of hard graft stand as CEO of a global empire. Ordinary people work for people like that; they don’t set out to become one.

Yet in fiction, they do; they must.

In my work-in-progress I have found myself in a structural taffle – read about it HERE – and I’ve been following back the threads to undo the knots. It seems that my main character, that ‘ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances’, has been so fascinated by the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ that instead of being proactive he’s been marking time. Slap across the wrist for both of us.

Rather than thinking of him as the Main Character from next door, perhaps I should think of him as the Hero, or at least the Hero Who Fails. That way, at least, he’ll be trying.

How proactive is your main character? Proactive enough? Or is there too much going with the flow?

Image by JanBaby via Pixabay CC0 Public Domain

Writing: Back to Basics – Structure

A right taffle

There’s nothing like getting into a taffle while writing a novel. It’s easy to misstep, I’ll grant, even to take a wrong turn, but a true taffle is something I never thought I’d encounter, because in all the short stories and novels I've published it’s not previously occurred. 

I knew something was amiss, but as with that other type of yarn, pictured, I just kept pulling to free the length until it became impossible to pull any longer. That’s when I went back to release the knot, to be faced with a true WTF taffle.

Of course, other writers reading this blog will be rolling their eyes and muttering less pantsing and more planning. And I agree, which is why these past days I’ve been going back to basics: how best to structure a novel?

I know of novelists who brood over a story for months, then hide away hitting 12-14 hour days as they write the entire novel in note form. They sort out the outstanding niggles, then do the research, then calmly start writing the novel with only the barest nod to their previously written skeleton.

I know of novelists who write the plot and the dialogue in omniscient-cum-authorial viewpoint, leave it to fester, then go back in to choose dedicated viewpoints, add in description and tone, and the 101 other technical details that make up a fully-functioning novel, before going through it again with an eye to bolstering an identified theme.

And there’ll be a score or more other systems all serving their authors well. How it is worked matters little. It’s how it works for the individual author – in this case me – that matters. And my chosen method of knowing my destination and driving within the length of my headlights has, on this occasion, failed me.

At its most basic, a story is fuelled by conflict, and the momentum of that conflict can be separated into a structure of five major elements:

• inciting incident
• complication
• crisis
• climax
• resolution

This basic structure alone may serve a short story, but for a novel-length project the structure will need interlacing by clones of itself, several clones, with individual elements not necessarily in that order. Each sub-plot will be carried on multiple clones of this basic structure, echoing or reflecting facets of the lead character’s or characters’ joys and woes, all deftly meshing into the main structure as well as into each other.

And this is my taffle. So I am following the cable of my multi-strand novel back to each of its structural elements to discover which has, or have, a mismatched clone that’s not reflecting in the direction it should. Wish me luck.

Next time I may opt for more planning and less pantsing. Once bitten, and all that.

[image courtesy of Vickisdesigns, Pixabay.com]

Are You Still #Writing?

Chapters of  'Pilgrims of the Pool' in precis

That question has been asked of me three times this week. Considering that in the Torc of Moonlight trilogy I maintain the Celtic belief in the ‘power of three’, and one of my main characters adamantly refuses to believe in coincidence, perhaps it is time to show that the long-overdue final novel, Pilgrims of the Pool, is still breathing.

So here you have it, the proof>>>

This is my ‘chapters completed’ list, each precis fixed with Blu-tack to my office door for an at-a-glance structural flow. That’s why each is topped with a colour, signifying one of the three storyline viewpoints [you can’t say I didn’t mention the trilogy’s thing about threes]. 

I also use it to ensure Time has some sort of wavy leading edge: X has to happen before Y mentions it, sort of thing. The two lonesome chapters at the bottom of column three show where I have written ahead of this.

When the first novel was released, a Goodreads' subscriber soundly lambasted me, and other writers, for not waiting until all novels in a series were finished before releasing them. At the time I was astounded, but now I smile wryly and don’t bite. It merely portrays the gulf that still remains between readers and how a book is written.

Sure, there are writers who can produce a full-length novel in 4-6 weeks, others who can fall out of bed at 5am and have 3,000 words on-screen before waking their children for a cooked breakfast and taking them to school on their way to a stressful day-job. I’m not one of them. I need equilibrium and head-space. When I tried to plough on without those two ingredients I unwittingly took a left turn and subsequently found myself in a universe running at a tangent to that envisaged at the outset of writing the novel.

Does it matter? I didn’t think it did at the point of realisation – there are a lot of good things in this at-a-tangent universe – but as the novel has progressed it has become clear that some of those good things are mere charades, and the gulf between the two universes is widening. Tone has changed; character motivation has fallen down a hole or splintered into contradictions; the mirrored surface of each storyline has dulled so is unable to produce reflections. 

Readers might not even notice in the run of the three books, but I want it not only to be right, but to be the very best I can produce. My reputation depends on it. And there is no worse critic for a writer than Self.

Writer's Reveal

I’m pleased to be part of a blog-hop centring on four questions that reveal part of my writing life. Thanks to Toni V Sweeney for the plaudits and hand-on.  

What are you working on?

I’m launching the paperback of The Bull At The Gate, Book 2 in the Torc of Moonlight trilogy of supernatural thrillers, so at the moment it is more admin and promotion than creative writing. At the same time I’m oiling the ol’ creaking brain cogs for its follow-up, so on my immediate To Do list is

a) gentle brainstorming for Book 3 which leads to...

b) collecting initial research information for said book;

c) turf out my disgusting office to...

d) find the notes I scribbled while writing Book 2.

What is happening around you while you write?

What should be happening is peace and tranquillity. I am both lucky enough not have to go out to earn a living and I have office space with a door that can be shut on the household, but it rarely works that way. I’m either on call too much or too easily distracted.

As an illustration I’ve just returned to my office after remembering the laundry needed checking in the drier [shakes head...]

Which comes first plot strand, character, or.....?

...problem, solution..? Initially it’s a gaseous mass of all these. If/when two ignite they either illuminate another element or burn it to cinders. This is where the gentle brainstorming comes in; it’s akin to poking at a smouldering fire. Once the elements begin to take on a smoky form, it is then that the characters take precedence. Each book of the trilogy has three intertwining storylines – one historical, two contemporary – and once the main characters in each are identified I will write their mission statements, their back-stories, and start a timeline of how they view the unfolding novel. It's my way of gaining a handle on them as true people.

Explain your research routine

There’s a lot of non-fiction reading involved, both book and internet, which goes on at the same time as the gaseous mass is coagulating. This shows up both probable dead-ends and possible incendiary material useful to the novel. Characters’ mission statements, back-stories, and viewpoints start to turn into the novel’s Bible – an ever-growing Word document navigated by internal hyperlinks. In the Bible is listed every character and their mores, and links to all internet research, as well as the main outline of the novel, which eventually takes on the form of a working synopsis. Somewhere along the line I will have made a start on the novel itself, as it is in the writing that the beast comes truly to life.

Thanks for taking the time to read my Writer’s Reveal. If you have any comments or questions go ahead and ask them below. Or if you've enjoyed the post, please give it a Tweet below; it would be most appreciated.

If you’d like to read the openings of any of my books, click the covers in the columns to be taken to its relevant Amazon page and use the Look Inside facility.

For purchases other than Amazon: B&N Nook ¦ Apple iBooks ¦ All Formats

Catch up with me on: Facebook ¦  Twitter @LindaAcaster

Next Friday, 09 May, I am handing on to two very different Fantasy writers: 

Stuart Aken is a pantster, writing books that blur the boundaries between genres. For him, story chooses genre and characters drive plot. He’s written thriller, romance, erotica, scifi, horror and, in his most recent release, epic fantasy of a type that appeals to both genders and all readers over 15. Joinings; A Seared Sky, was released in print and digital formats by Fantastic Books Publishing on 30 March. 

V.M. Jaskiernia writes dark fantasy romance in her world of Noctuina. She is influenced by mythology, fairy tales, modern fantasy, horror, and history. Her first series, 'The Courting of Life of Death' (Clandestina), follows the duc of Piques, Pierre Salvador, as he consorts with the Lady of Death while also courting the Lady Elizabeth Anne. 

Enjoy both!

NaNoWriMo - and those who [don’t] can’t

For reasons I won’t go into – it’s a lengthy list – I’ve been nearly three weeks away from applying a keystroke to The Bull At The Gate. This is not good. Especially as I am well within its last quarter.

Not only have I lost the emotional surge of the main character that went with cranking up the ante, but the quiet tapping from the shaky structure of one of the three intersecting storylines has changed into a bass echo from the abyss.

So today I have spent a good amount of time updating the written chapter outline – when, where & with whom; harvested seeds sown and sown seeds for harvesting later; conflict & motivation; atmosphere; mental tone of the viewpoint character; and all the rest of the small fry that most readers glance over but together become Big Fry. I wanted this detailed overview to see if I was worrying unduly (unfortunately, no) and to help put together a plan to SORT IT.

Into this, like the timely Irish fairy that she is, came into my Inbox a blogpost from Catherine, Caffeinated on the length of time it takes her to write, punctuated by what passes for a certain amount of gnashing of teeth. Apart from soothing my own fevered brow – writers always think they are alone when these sinkholes appear – she asked for readers’ solutions in the Comments.

Oooh, some of them are very instructive. Do go look. If you’ve ever found youself in a bind, it may well prove a writing-process-changing moment.

[Note: for those who’ve never heard of NaNoWriMo, it’s the (Inter)National Novel Writing Month of November organisation where plucky individuals sign themselves up to write 50,000 words of a dirty draft in 30 days. No pondering allowed. As I intimated at the top, not much point me signing up then.]