Category: Fiction Writers’ Advice

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Fiction Writers' Advice

5 Reasons Your Writing Needs Humor

As seriously as you might take your writing, you probably agree that good writing usually requires a splash of well-written humor. Whether it’s witty banter between characters, quirky relatable situations, or outrageous misadventures, we always crave a little laughter at some point in a novel—and even in shorter works.

But still, somehow, we can forget that from time to time when we caught up in the actual adventure of writing. It’s easy to get distracted by the profound impact of our themes or the dramatic arcs of character-change. I often lose sight of other goals when I’m engrossed in building up to what I hope to be a brilliant plot-twist.

Maybe there are great works of fiction and prose out there with no humor at all, but why deny yourself the obvious advantages it gives to your fiction?

Reason #1

  • It gets the reader’s guard down. You really want to do whatever you can to get your reader warmed up to you. Nothing breaks the ice like a good joke. I know from observing my own reactions as a reader that humor momentarily turns off that raging hyper-critical part of my mind that tries to distract me from enjoying fiction at all.

Reason #2

  • It’s a chance for characterization. Plus, it’s a surefire way to amp up a given character’s likability and humanity. Most people have some kind of a sense of humor way down inside. Think of the people you know. Try to pinpoint the different flavors of humor you have encountered. (And remember, it’s always okay to steal directly from real like.) Take humor as another chance to make a character unique.

Reason #3

  • It connects with the reader. A character can make me laugh with (or at) them before they can get any other emotional reaction from me. I might never care about their sad predicament if they’ve never made me laugh. Everyone wants to laugh. When a writer can deliver humor that I appreciate, that establishes instant trust. This writer cares enough about me to give me what I want as an audience.

Reason #4

  • It breaks up monotonous mood. Some books are sad, some are suspenseful, some are sweet, and some are scary. But if every paragraph has the same mood, at least for me, the overall impression in the end is that it was boring. Humor has a great way of breaking emotional tension and putting a surprise spin on situations. This can really liven up a story for me.

Reason #5

  • It improves the reader’s overall perception of the writing. If a book made me laugh—even just a couple of times—chances are, I’m not going to put it down, and I’m not going to tear it up in a review. I know humor isn’t easy, and if a writer goes out of their way to add some in, they’ve got promise as far as I’m concerned. 

If you’ve convinced yourself your message is just too important to joke about, just remember that even Jesus used humor to get through. (Occasionally even sarcasm—just a little note for the sarcasm-hating crowd.) We’ve heard very serious pastors and Sunday-school teachers and Robert Powell repeat him so often in the most sanctimonious way possible that I don’t blame anybody for getting a little deaf to it. The point is, if you have something important to say—something you want people to remember—make them laugh!

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Fiction Writers' Advice My Books NaNoWriMo

Seven things I learned from NaNoWriMo

 

This year was my first attempting National Novel Writing Month’s great 50k words in 30 days challenge. I’ve been hanging around on the sidelines wondering if I have what it takes for several years now, and abruptly—here in the middle of my senior year of college—I decided it was my time.

  And I did it. I actually surpassed 52k on November 30th, claiming my official win plus. My odds actually hadn’t been that great. If I was like a lot of participants, attempting their first novel, I doubt that I could have done it. But even if I hadn’t been able to pull it off, I think it would have been well worth the try, because doing something that extreme teaches you things.

  So, without further ado, here’s what I learned on the front lines of NaNoWriMo.

1.    I learned how to save images I edited in Photoshop so that the internet would acknowledge their existence. Big revelation. I figured out how to do this when saving my cover image for my NaNo novel. You “save for the web.” Never would have thought of that. Ha. I’m so techno-savvy.  But I’m glad I got this figured out, so now I can edit title images for this blog, and stick them on Pinterest and stuff. Better late than never.

 

2.    Better late than never. That’s something else I learned. I was 10k words behind up until Thanksgiving break. I kept seeing people on the forums freaking out over being 2k behind, or so. I gritted my teeth and caught up suddenly in the home stretch. It was totally possible!

 

3.    Along the same lines, I discovered the hidden true moral of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” We were supposed to win NaNo by way of the tortoise’s strategy. Just one foot in front of the other, 1,667 words a day. But if you look at my chart of daily word count throughout the month, you see that’s not what I did at all. There were about ten days where I hit and exceeded the target word-count. I worked in hare-like sprints. Guys, the only reason the hare lost the race was because he fell asleep. Therefore, the true moral of the story was: no sleeping.

 

4.    Stopwatches are better than timers.This is a crazy fact that I discovered, and it may quite possibly be only true for me. When I set a thirty-minute timer, I was lucky to get 500 words down in that time. I thought that was my limit. Then I set a stopwatch. When I hit 500 words, I stopped it–always between 15 and 12 minutes. Crazy.

 

5.    All dialogue should be argumentative underneath. This keeps it from getting boring and loosing connection with the plot. If there’s always some sort of conflict of interests underneath the conversation, it becomes a lot more logical, and easier to know what the character should say next. Even if the conflict is very small and petty, it’s going to help.

 

6.    Collapsing bridges and crashing helicopters are good things. I think this is self-explanatory. I mean, everybody knows this, right?

 

7.    And lastly, writing is not supposed to be as serious as we try to make it all the time. I wrote this novel to prove that to myself once and for all. We novelists spend so much time agonizing over unattainable perfection. I’m done trying to take myself so seriously. We have one of the most fun occupations in the world. It’s time to cut loose and enjoy it.

 

 

One more thing before I go. Here is the cover of my NaNo project. It’s never going to be published. I mean, it’s written from the perspective of my childhood imaginary enemy. I’m in it as a character and mentioned by name, and portrayed in a rather negative light, I must say. I needed to write a piece of literature with absolutely no pressure hanging over it, so that’s what I did.

  But now, back to reality. I’ve got to try to attain perfection with the draft of a dystopian novel I’ve got scheduled for release in February 2017.

  Serious business. 

 
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Avoiding Cliches Fiction Writers' Advice

Avoiding Cliches: Don’t Do The Prophesy

And don’t take my titles too literally, either. The prophecy is a very standard device in sci-fi and fantasy, particularly. It’s really not a bad thing in itself, and I used it in the Stardrift Trilogy and am using it in The Art of Lightplay, the fantasy I’m currently writing. Like practically all clichés, the prophecy can go from a predictable bore to a satisfying thrill with a little twisting.
  Authors have different ways of handling prophecies. Some write them, without context, in the beginning of their book, before chapter one. Some don’t bring them up until the plot is already moving. Some show the prophesy being told for the first time in the beginning of their story. The placement makes little difference. Do whatever you want.
  People get particularly lazy when it comes to the actual writing of the thing. Here’s where things get really predictable if you’re not careful. Things to watch out for:

·         Make sure you use natural-sounding language that matches the way people speak in your story. Please don’t use, or attempt to use Elizabethan English if you have no reason to.
·         Unless the prophesy was written by a poet—preferably one who had no idea they were writing a prophesy—please don’t rhyme it. Why would it rhyme?
·         Don’t use the term “Chosen One.” Think of something else.
·         Don’t have an old woman say it.

I could go on, but I would rather move on to talking about ingenious ways to twist it. I wouldn’t advocate throwing the whole prophecy device out of literature. People like prophesy, for some reason. And in a time when people are beginning to think history is just a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, I think it’s inspiring to know that the human spirit still wants there to be a greater destiny.
  So, ideas for manipulating the cliché to surprise people. First of all, let me say that the best model for prophesy in literature comes from the bible. The original “Chosen One” prophesy—the oldest in the world, originated there. If I wasn’t a Christian, the accuracy and detail of biblical prophesies would be one of the things that freaked me out.
  Great ideas inspired by biblical prophesy:

·         One of my favorites—the reoccurring fulfillment. The major prophesies in the bible are rarely fulfilled just once, on just one level. Some of the old testament prophets appeared to be referring to their own lifetimes—and later, Jesus Christ would fulfill them again—and in the future, some will occur yet again.
·         The blind prophet. Like I mentioned above, sometimes prophets may even seem to be referring to their own personal circumstances—but later, something cosmic happens that sheds new light on their words.
·         Occasionally, what people believed to be poetic wording turns out to be quite literal. Other times, what people expect to be literal actually implied something else
·         Sometimes, a prophesy is presented as a story. This happens constantly in the bible. The reader isn’t even told that the event—typically a true story—is going to have significance later on—then it does.

Prophesies are good ways to keep a reader guessing. They serve as foreshadows, and riddles. If the wording is more abstract, or symbolic, the reader really doesn’t get it until they look back on events. That won’t keep them from trying. And just like in real prophesy, the trying is half the fun.
  So, enjoy writing prophesies. But remember, they take mental effort. Writing a story about prophesy being fulfilled is almost as strategic as writing a murder mystery. Give it the time and thought it needs to be epic.
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Fiction Writers' Advice

Creating Atmosphere

One of the greatest absences I sense in modern novels, poems, and short-stories is atmosphere. When did we lose it? Where did it go? And…why??? I don’t know that I could answer any of these questions. All I know is it’s gone, and I want it back.

   So, what exactly is this lost element, atmosphere? Atmosphere is the underlying mood or tone of a piece of art. It’s what flavors and colors a scene, or a moment, making it more than the sum of its parts. In film, the soundtrack, lighting, set, and movement of the characters are powerful contributors to atmosphere. In paintings, the composition, palette, and focus play parts. In music, the instruments, dynamics, articulation, and tempo make all the difference.

  Atmosphere really exists independently of subject-matter. A good author can take a scene in which the same characters are present, doing the same things, but make the reader feel any number of ways about it. The magic is in well-chosen details.

  The atmosphere of a scene is a combination of physical and emotional elements. Look at the scene through the eyes of your characters in reference to what their currently going through. If your main character is walking down a beach, whether they are waiting for a boat that they are confident will arrive soon, or one that they’ve heard rumors may have gone down earlier that day.

  Supposing it’s the exact same beach, the exact same time of day, and under the exact same weather conditions in both scenarios, what makes the difference? The main character’s focus, and the narrator’s descriptions set the atmosphere in this situation. Here’s the narrative for the more positive scenario:  

  He kicked along the shore, bouncing pebbles into the springy, flashing wavelets. For a few minutes he watched the minnows scatter, vaguely aware of the jeering laughter of the gulls as they took off with each other’s fish bones and trash. When the rumble of a boat faded in, he looked up, shading his eyes against the blazing sunshine. That wasn’t them, but that one scudding in off the hazy horizon could be.

And the more worrisome scene:

  A few paces from the docks, he stopped and scanned through the tethered boats. Gulls screamed through the heavy air as one by one, all the boats in the bay docked. The sun glared on the agitated water, but the horizon was dark and the incoming craft seemed to emerge from behind a dark blue curtain. Another boat droned in. His eyes snapped to it. No. That still wasn’t them.

  Some of the details are the same. Some differ. The things that stayed in both scenes were described differently. In the first scene, he idly kicked stones and noticed minnows—in the second, he got right to the point, searching for the boat. The “springy, flashing wavelets” of the first scene became “agitated water” in the second.  First, the horizon was merely hazy. Second, it was a mysterious barrio between him and those he waited for.

  Try writing some scenes like this. Try writing the same scene—possibly even one with the same dialogue—and putting it in a different context. Use the atmosphere to convey the feelings of the scenes differently.
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Fiction Writers' Advice Plotting

What Are Readers Looking For?

Something occurred to me recently. I was thinking about novels—successful novels, unsuccessful novels, classic novels nobody reads, cheap paperbacks everybody reads—and I was wondering…why do people like certain novels more than others? When a reader picks up a book with the intention of reading it, what are their expectations? What do they want?

Well, I’m sure it’s a little different for each reader and each novel—but not a lot different. When it all boils down, the reader wants a story. In the end, they don’t care a lot about your grammar, or your descriptive power, or your atmospheric development. They just care about you story—and maybe your characters.

  What they really want is an emotional attachment, and ability to sympathize with the characters. Once you have those bonds established, you proceed to take those characters–your reader’s new–friends and comrades—through a labyrinth of fear, pain, sorrow, confusion, joy, thrill, love, and victory. If you do that—and don’t overuse dashes (or parentheses, like some people)—you will write a novel people will hunt down in bookstores, and search for on Amazon.

  People want to be moved, above all, when it comes to art. The same is true for all art, really. With music, it’s the same. A pianist of great skill, with fluid artistry, and technical perfection, could play some monstrously complex Bach composition on a top-of-the-line instrument and everyone would know it was great. But a very mediocre singer singing some ridiculously easy folk song a little bit flat will get everyone to listen—if only they can bring out the audience’s emotions with their own raw intensity. This is what really matters to people.

  Is this a bad thing? Not really. It’s a very natural thing, and for many people, it should be very encouraging. Readers couldn’t really care less if you’re perfect. They just want a story that they can grasp and feel. But as for me, I’m a perfectionist. I feel like I really do have to be perfect when it comes to creating art. And that’s okay too, just as long as you don’t forget the essence of it. You need to move your reader. That’s what they were looking for when they opened your book. 

      
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Fiction Writers' Advice Plotting

Can You Keep a Secret?

Nothing keeps me reading like secrets. In fact, I might even venture to say that nothing is more important to a good plot than the ability to keep a secret. The delicate art of hiding, hinting at, and revealing secrets is not only the essence of a good mystery or suspense story. It’s also the driving force behind novels of all kinds, all genera—the thing that keeps your reader’s eyes open.

Secrets come in many forms. Commonly, characters harbor secrets: secrets of identity, origin, motives, past conflicts, etc. It’s the author who has the secret of their future, their purpose, their final decision. Settings have secrets: what is this place? What happened here?

  You have to decide how much you want to hint at a secret. Sometimes it’s fun to startle a reader by bringing out a secret suddenly that was never suggested, or even appears to contradict evidence that you’ve arranged to cover it. It makes a brilliant plot twist if you can skew information so that it seems to suggest something else, and then later reveal what was really going on.

  Hinting, however, is the language of suspense. Some twists and blind curves can be used to surprise your readers out of the blue, but those hints that almost can be pieced together—but not quite—are what gives them a reason to keep perusing the story. Be conscious of how much evidence you put forward, and how often. How frequently you hint at some hidden element depends on how soon you intend to reveal it. If you’ve got a secret you don’t want to reveal until the climax of a novel, don’t bring it up in every chapter. Let your readers forget about it for a chapter or two now and then, and take that time to develop some other subplot. If you keep obsessing over a bit of information you’re not going to reveal until much later, your reader will very likely become impatient with the whole thing. You want your reader motivated and intrigued—not impatient.

  Also, don’t give hints that are too obvious. It drives people crazy if an author pretends to know less about something than the reader already found out about. Don’t keep hinting about a secret that’s already pretty much out of the bag.

 Sometimes, when you finally do let a secret out, you still don’t have to be obvious. Never over-explain anything. At least, as far as I’m concerned, I like to be able to read a book a second time and marvel at the author’s subtlety. If there’s something I didn’t fully catch onto, I’ll probably go back and figure it out. It’s more fun for a reader to feel like they’ve gotten in on a secret, than it is to feel like they’ve had it all explained to them.
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Fiction Writers' Advice

Talking about the Weather

I keep hearing people say that yet another detail you should never include in your fiction-writing is reference to the weather. Nobody wants to hear about it, they say. Just get straight to the action, don’t bother setting the scene, nobody has the patience for that, just go, go, go.

  And most importantly, never ever open a scene, or (flinching) a book with weather.

  Again, I could be completely weird, but I personally am not all that offended when an author takes note of the atmospheric conditions. People, especially the kind who write cash-fiction, seem to have lost all regard for the idea of mood in writing anymore. Also, unless your story is set in a ridiculously temperate climate, it’s very likely that weather will actually affect the plot. Even if you are the kind of writer that only writes down what happened in the story, and nothing else, remember that blizzards, droughts, ice-storms, and hurricanes also happen.

  I like meteorology, I’ll admit that. I also love richly atmospheric writing. Mood in writing isn’t just a disembodied emotional or mental feeling, it can be intensified and symbolized by the physical world. Weather is a very natural and artistic way to do that. Wind blows restlessly down the empty streets as the sky darkens, the heat intensifies in the afternoon and purple haze stifles the distant trees, the hero wakes up from a bizarre nightmare to the sound of thunder, and lightning blazes over the snow-covered world. Please!!! We can’t stand reading about this. Edit that out, you’re losing your readers!!!!!

  Really?

  The Stardrift Trilogy opens quite unabashedly with weather, as does the Rhapsody Threnody series. I honestly don’t see why that would be such a drawback for anyone. Don’t omit details if they can be used to make your writing strong. Ever. Details don’t have to be boring or irrelevant. Try manipulating them to see if they can work for you before throwing them out.
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Creating Characters Fiction Writers' Advice

On Children and Families

Here’s something to know: if you can’t write about children, don’t. Children are extremely complex creatures. Though everyone has been one, some have them, some work with them, and others are barely not them, they’re still some of the most difficult people to portray realistically.

  I see it all the time, even in ‘real’ novels by ‘real’ authors. Children, especially when in groups tend to be sort of…wrong. Sometimes it can be hard to put your finger on, other times you know exactly what the author did wrong.

  Let’s talk about some common issues that I can often spot. Here’s a big one to start off with: Children don’t always say the right things at the right time. That should be pretty obvious. In fact, who does? But what I’m actually referring to is a different kind of “right thing” than you might be thinking of.

  Authors do this all the time. I can’t stand it. You’ve got you’re couple standing there talking along until Mr. White Smile-Nice Hair says something unrealistic to Miss Love Interest. About this point Adorable Child with Bouncing Curls says “Why is your face all red, Miss Lovey?”

  Mwaaaa!!! (Do you like that expression of disgust?) Have you ever known a kid to notice when somebody was blushing? They don’t do it. No, I’m not saying kids don’t notice details or recognize shifts of emotions, they certainly do. But why would a kid ask such a silly question, even if, for some reason, they were carefully watching the color-saturation of Miss Lovey’s face?

  Oh, and that’s another thing, unless they’re under three years old, and really can’t pronounce somebody’s name, children don’t make up nicknames for people. The only reason a kid would call somebody a nickname is if they heard other people calling them that. Got it?

  Children don’t try to be cute. They just are. This is a place where age comes in to play a lot, though. This rule isn’t very strict, but if you have a moment where a kid is trying to be cute, keep it fairly isolated. In spite of what we my think, the motives behind children’s actions are not often to be cute.

  Children will do all kinds of things to get attention. Being cute is just one of them, small ones go up and hang on adults and say things over and over. Often start making mischief or showing off when there’s company in the house.

  Keep in mind that an awful lot can change from year to year in a child’s life in reference to their behavior. Be familiar with the age group you’re writing about. Also, aside from being a child, children are also individuals. Don’t forget to map out their character just as much as you would any other. Think about where they’ve been and where they’re going in their development into a grown person. Don’t make them into little adults, but think about their hopes and fears at the present time in reference to how those will manifest themselves in the future.

  One final note, if you must write a story about a large family, don’t be lazy. Every sibling is going to be unique. Don’t let them blur together. Don’t make their relationships fake or stereotypical. Invent based on experience. Build off of your own experiences growing up, or watching other children close to you grow up. Every family is different. Some have problems with sibling rivalry, some don’t. Some are very demonstratively affectionate, some aren’t. Some definitely split into “the boys” and “the girls” others mix and match in their choices of playmates. Make your fictional family different and entertaining, but keep them relatable. It’s great when someone accomplishes this in a book. Shoot for it.  

 
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Fiction Writers' Advice

A Word on Editing

First of all, happy Halloween.

So. I’m in the process of publishing my first trilogy, as you know. Since I was going to be putting a lot of time (it won’t be available until March of ’15) and money (I’m subsidy publishing, so I’m out $2,000) into the project, I thought it would be in my best interest to produce the best possible product in the end. I decided I would look into purchasing line-editing from my publishers.

  Then, I found out that to line-edit my whole trilogy would cost me $8,000. In a words “no”. The company admits that is pretty over-priced. A standard line-editing job costs about $2.50 a page, which, for my rather large manuscript comes to around $1,500. That’s a lot, but it isn’t $8,000. If the manuscript wasn’t a whole trilogy even my publishing company’s price might not kill anybody, but when it comes to line editing, here’s a hint.

  You know somebody who can do it.

  I’ve handed the job over to my parents and siblings. All you have to do to catch typos, misspellings, and obvious grammatical errors is read the manuscript. If you’re not incredibly knit-picky about the subtleties of English grammar, you won’t even need to hire a retired English teacher, (though that’s much easier to do than you think.) The company gave me some valuable information about my books: there’s nothing wrong with the plot structure. Score. All I really needed was line-editing.

  So, I’m saving myself anywhere from $1,500 to $8,000 and having my family help out. I think they can get it pretty clean. Check out the Stardrift Trilogy in March to see how this worked out!  

   

 

 

 
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Fiction Writers' Advice

“Realistic” Dialogue

For me, one of the hardest things to master has been the art of writing dialogue. This comes up all the time in discussions of writing. Despite the fact that we hear and engage in dialogue every day, when it comes to putting it down on paper, we tend to give up on writing and set to drawing something called a blank instead.

  Readers often complain that dialogue that is poorly written in a novel sounds unrealistic. That is often the case. Try reading a bad section of dialogue aloud. If you can even get the inflection right, it’s not too far gone. Some dialogue is so unnatural that you can’t even tell what’s supposed to be coming across. Dialogue is a terrible thing to botch.

  So, what makes dialogue sound right? There isn’t a definite set of dos and don’ts here, a lot of it depends. Check out my previous post on character voices for further discussion on this. There are a few things, however that should be avoided in conversational dialogue.

  Be careful with sentence-structure variation.  Varying sentence-structure is a good thing in the narrative text, but how often do you hear somebody start a sentence with an adjective in conversation? Do people usually say “Happily, I took the goldfish home,” or “I happily took the goldfish home,?” There are exceptions, of course. People start sentences more comfortably with the adjective “finally”. Also double-check when you start a sentence with a prepositional phrase. You might say “Under my bed, there is an egg-beater” if you wanted to emphasize the location of the egg-beater.  But would you say “Beside ourselves with excitement, we forgot what we were doing”? Well, you might, but not every day.

  While we’re talking grammar, don’t worry so much about grammatical correctness in dialogue. Real dialogue is full of fragments. People leave out words and don’t finish sentences. That’s a good thing in dialogue, it’s often much more efficient.

  At the same time as I’m telling you all this, let me mention something that you may or may not have ever thought about: Good dialogue, while natural-sounding, is not actually that realistic. And readers and critics are just fine with that. 

  So, what does this mean? Think about it. If you sit and listen to people having a casual conversation, what do you notice? Generally, people are very ineloquent and, without context, almost impossible to understand. On top of unfinished sentences (which are not the same and fragments), randomly mispronounced, misused, or skipped words, people interrupt themselves, use sound effects, expressions, gestures, and forget what they were saying for no reason. There are probably avant-garde authors who write their dialogue like that, but it might be a pain in the neck to read, and would probably hinder the flow of the plot, at least in the readers’ minds.

  The trick is to sound natural. Dialogue has to be effective above all, not true-to-life.

  I’m excited to bring up the subject of profanity. You know why? Because there’s a lot of discussion among authors about the use of it, and I tend to disagree. Let me tell you something right now, You do not have to use profanity to write good dialogue!  There. I said it. I said what commercial authors are all afraid to say. If you don’t believe in saturating your writing or even your speech in four-letter words, rock on, tiger. Like I said, just because that’s how people talk in real life, doesn’t mean you must reproduce it in your dialogue. If you go out among people who swear in every other sentence, something should strike you eventually. Profanity is more often than not used because they couldn’t think of a stronger word. As funny as that sounds, if you think about it, the way people use profanity today is extremely empty. The words mean nothing. What are authors instructed to do with empty words? Don’t do anything with them.

  One word of caution only here: If you don’t use profanity, don’t use euphemisms in place of it. That is the only time it would be considered awkward dialogue not to swear. If somebody’s really murderously angry, don’t let them say “darn it.” People will laugh.

  Some authors have argued that not using profanity will hurt your ability to sell your work. That’s stupid. Can you imagine getting a rejection slip from a publisher saying “Hated it. There was no profanity.” That would be their problem, not yours. No one will even care if there aren’t any four-letter words, and some might not even notice if you heed the previous paragraph. People who insist upon profanity in literature are either (1) snobs who think they’re so sophisticated with their overuse of empty words and phrases, or (2) they have a slight issue with being addicted to reading dirty words. Either way, it’s not your problem, you don’t need their money that much anyway, and you can jolly well find another publisher. Their loss.

  So, remember, realistic isn’t actually the goal. Effectiveness, the ability to relay action and portray character. It’s not about just sounding like what we hear every day. We all know talk is boring.

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