Tag Archives: character development

Headache vs. Heartache

1 Reply

Headache. The name says it all. Tell a stranger you have a headache and he knows exactly what ails you. He might even have a good recommendation to cure it. Like, take a pill. Tell a stranger you have a heartache and he has no idea what to say next. There is no simple recommendation, no pill.

Headaches are always in your head; heartaches are never in your heart, not the organ, anyway. You have no control for the onset of a headache, but you can forestall heartaches with just strong will.

A headache creates a sharp pain that is impossible to ignore. It can be unbearable, but most headaches are short lived and you make a full recovery. The pain a heartache causes can’t be measured on such a simple scale as sharp or dull. Like the tide, heartaches ebb and flow over time, but the ocean is always present. The pill you take comes in the form of your next deep breath. Usher in a new thought wave.

Headaches are real. You can see the suffering all over a person’s face. Heartaches are real, too, but the suffering rarely shows itself to the world. With both aches, your world closes around you and life becomes impossibly small. It’s easy to understand the one ache, impossible to understand the other. And with both, you can only wait away the pain.

You never relive the same headache, each is stingingly different. You always relive the same haunting heartache.

Time heals all wounds they say, and that’s true enough. If we’re lucky, we outlive all of our headaches and our heartaches. It takes a while, but eventually we realize that neither ache leaves a scar.

These aching thoughts have been weighing heavily on me now that Knock Softly has come to a conclusion. There are a lot of aches at the end of my story; head, heart and otherwise. Correctly tying these internal pains together with their actors on the printed page is causing migraines in this author’s head.

And I have a heavy heart at this point in the story. I know I’m leaving now and I won’t be returning. This is the point the author has to say goodbye. Like good friends, I’ve become fond of my characters. Unlike good friends, I’ll never hear from these actors again. Like a heartache, this goodbye is final but never really over.

But I can’t let my own aches and pains get in the way. It’s only fair that the reader has a taste of these main characters’ futures. After a sumptuous main course, I can’t let a lousy dessert spoil the meal. I’m serving up Bittersweets for dessert in Knock Softly. Bon appetit!

Organizing Your Work

4 Replies

inspiration

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” – John Steinbeck

What should you do with the dozens of writing ideas you have acquired from reading blogs and books on writing? If you’re a typical writer, you keep notebooks, 3 X 5 cards, envelopes, napkins, and even sticky notes handy to jot down any ideas as they come to you.

Learning to handle those ideas isn’t easy. There may be apps that will help you stay organized, but I’m a pen-and-paper person. So an app suggestion would fall on my deaf ears – for now anyway. I’ve learned to handle my numerous notebooks and random pieces of paper in a more organized fashion using folders. For example I maintain separate folders for:

  1. Each of my short stories
  2. Character, business, and place names
  3. Descriptions of interesting locales, occupations, and hobbies
  4. How to write mysteries articles
  5. How to write romance articles
  6. How to develop characters information
  7. Plot ideas, titles, and dialogues
  8. And each of the novels I’m working on

In the past I simply dumped any writing not relevant to what I was working on at that time. Never again. I no longer dump ideas, which may not work in one story but could be used in a future manuscript. One phrase from my “Titles” folder with an idea from my “Romance” folder combined to create the beginning of the romance manuscript that I started some time ago. It’s still a work-in-progress. Of course, this story has its own folder.

What suggestions do you have for organizing your writing?

Imagining Fiction in the Electronic Age

3 Replies

I received a good response to last month’s apocalyptic post on pulp, mostly notes of reminiscences. I had no idea people time-stamped their best reads like they were best dates. Two folks thought enough to put fingers to keyboard and tell me just how wrong I was, and one good friend about chewed my ear off with the same message. But one woman wrote about following a person off a subway, up a flight of stairs and all the way to the crosswalk without that person ever looking up from their Kindle. She didn’t say if they were male or female, old or young, but earlier she had seen the same thing play out from subway to crosswalk, only this person was reading a paperback. What she noticed was how engrossed both readers were in their stories, not the format they were reading them on. To her, and to me, it proves that Content will always be King.

Thanks to all who commented.

 

Tomorrow’s bestselling fiction authors need to wade through new and exciting waters if they want readers to enjoy their digital content. The future fiction story has to be engaging on every page. Good news! Authors can now use more than just words to engage their readers!

Meaningful graphics strategically placed in the body of the works is soon to be the new norm. Children’s fiction has always been picture book format, so it will just be business as usual for that age group. Adult fiction authors, however, strive to paint just enough of a character or a scene, yet still leave something for the reader’s own imagination. We want to draw characters that remind readers of someone they’ve known: the bitchy boss, the nearsighted neighbor, the real estate lady who knows no quit.

Authors run great risks in the future if they use the wrong graphics. This becomes a fault, graphically speaking, when authors use a well-known person as a metaphor. For example, one of my references to Elizabeth, a main character in my upcoming novel, Knock Softly (working title), says she looks like Little Orphan Annie in one childhood photograph. The reader already knows that Elizabeth is a redhead so that is all I say. I leave all her other attributes to the reader’s imagination; young Elizabeth’s height, voice, dimples or not. Adult fiction readers can color in all the “known” minutiae much faster, and clearer, than the author can. In this case, any companion image of a young Elizabeth would spoil the reader’s own imagination.

Other trip-ups include using well known locations, like Disneyland or the Grand Canyon for example. You don’t want to alter whatever image your reader already has; you want them to recall it. Authors can only do that with words that metaphorically develop their characters against such landmarks. The great e-novel of the future will illuminate the text with images that only the author can bring to life.

Color, not black and white, will adorn future e-pages. Without ink, there is no cost consideration for digitally printing in color, so descriptive hues, shades and shadows will matter as never before. For that reason, future authors need to be just as considerate for what they choose to leave out as what they choose to spell out. Even the very colors that illustrators use have to complement the scene’s mood and drama, otherwise the visuals will wind up competing with the words. It’s a subliminal thing, but ad agencies have been refining the use of color for decades to convey stature, sensuality and attitude. This is nothing new, it’s just found a new home. Black and white will only be used to depict dark and dreary scenes, or to shadow horror too repulsive for vivid interpretation.

Here’s the rub: e-novel readers cannot see how “heavy” a tome is before they buy it. There is no page count. Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken weighs as much as James Joyce’s Ulysses in e-book format. Instead, there is an indicator at the bottom of each page showing what percentage you’ve completed. It feels like a journey, not a read. Authors need to be aware of this from their first draft onwards. That indicator is like the kids in the backseat of your mind asking, Are we there yet? There is less time for a story to “breathe” in the future e-novel, where pictures purpose the pauses. Each page has to be reason enough for the reader to carry on. Authors are going to have to make the journey just as entertaining as the destination if they want to shut up the brats in the backseat of their reader’s mind. The percentage indicator is neither good nor bad; it’s just a new way of telling time in a novel. We’ll all get used to it. By next Thursday.

E-novels will probably be 75,000 to 100,000 words with a dozen-odd illustrations to richen up the read. Last chapters will be written like soap opera; effectively, lead-ins for tomorrow’s adventure in a continuing series. Authors who create quirky characters that readers want to follow from adventure to adventure will do well.

Plot, Plot, Plotting Along

3 Replies

An architect needs a solid plot of land to build his house. Only a plot can render a view. All of the detailed plans and beautiful drawings are just pretty pictures without it. The same can be said about all fiction. No matter how well rounded and sympathetic – or just plain pathetic – the characters are, if the story isn’t built on solid ground, it won’t stand upright when finished.

Any story can carry tension, from a school girl’s pimple on a first date to a megalomaniac’s rise to infamy. What makes any fiction interesting is how events unfold, how the heroes conquer any obstacle thrown in their way. That’s called a Plot. Let’s build a simple suspense plot that anyone can relate to.

Our protagonists, Auggie and Clair Knight, have been filing taxes on time and more-or-less correctly all 15 years of their marriage. Our story is about the Knight’s audit.

We’ll use Gustav Freytag’s Narrative Structure and his five parts to a plot to construct our story. They are:

Exposition
Rising Action
Climax
Falling Action
Denouement

In the Exposition, we draw out the motivations and goals of our protagonists. We learn the Knights are just barely getting by on Auggie’s day job as a security guard at the marina. We get a sense of what might happen if he lost his steady income, or the home’s septic system backed up again. Exposition rounds out the main characters and gives rise to the inciting incident, that one event in the story that throws down the challenge.

In our story, the Rising Action begins when the Knights get an audit notice in the mail. Tension is introduced when Auggie can’t find some of the receipts the IRS has asked him to produce. More tension comes when Clair, an accounting grad who’s done their taxes all these years, reminds him that they’ve never reported his moonlighting income from helping friends sell boats on eBay. Some years, that amounted to $4,000 of extra, undeclared income.

The length of your piece gets determined right here. If you want a longer story, you could, for example, introduce an antagonist. Say, one of Auggie’s boat buddies or an old college pal of Clair’s. But we’ll keep this story short. You – the writer – continue to pull the threads tighter and tighter as Rising Action builds towards the day of the IRS audit. Let’s say you paint the protagonists in the beginning as mostly likeable characters. Their only real flaw is a little cheating on their income taxes. Auggie and Clair trod along, blissfully hoping the IRS doesn’t know about the boat sale commissions. The closer they get to that date, the more the Knights learn of the dire consequences they’d face – huge fines, penalties, possibly jail time and certainly a federal criminal record – if they got busted. None of which they can afford, and Auggie reminds her that he can’t hold his security job with a federal record. The Knights try to stay calm on the surface, but they worry and act nervous. Their tension increasingly rubs off on their relationship with each other, with their kids and the rest of your characters.

Freytag’s third element of plot is Climax. In our story, that would be the IRS audit. The Climax should be confrontational, a spell-binding scene that is both drawn out and shattered into sharp shards of action. This is not the end of your story, and far from the end of the action, but it should be your most realistic, best drawn scene in the story so far.

Then the author introduces the twist. Say, a slip of the tongue by Clair about how easy it is to sell stuff on eBay. This raises the IRS reviewer’s eyebrows, and both Auggie and the reader see it.

The Knights are only too glad to pay $124.50 for the few receipts they can’t produce and get out of there as fast as they can. Clair and Auggie high-five in the car and start to think they’ve dodged the bullet. They start laughing about it and bragging to each other how easy that had been. The reader feels for them, one way or the other.

What follows the Climax is called the Falling Action, and this where your story can take several twists and turns with the events you first brought out in the Exposition. Falling Action can take any direction the author likes so long as it advances the story forward.

This is the real fun stuff to dream up. Say, our heroes celebrate that night in a fancy restaurant and then get all lovey-dovey after the kids go to bed. Three days later Auggie comes home and tells Clair he’s just had the best day ever at work. Clair tells him that the septic’s just backed up into the kid’s sandbox again. Oh, and they got another IRS audit letter. This one for unreported income. Later that night, Auggie freaks out when he finds himself locked out of his eBay account. The Falling Action is the back-and-forth between winning and losing battles with all of these elements, with the ever-present IRS always looming. Our heroes fight on through the Falling Action to eventually claim victory over some, if not all, obstacles. Or they get their due comeuppance on every turn of the page, or Auggie gets very foggy and Clair becomes very clear, depending on which way you want to say goodnight to your readers.

Caution: don’t let any of your subplots take over your story. Resolve all of them, but always stay focused on the main event.

The last part of Freytag’s structure is called Denouement, or the finale. This is where all of the accomplishments of the story are summarized. If the author has done his job right, in suspense anyway, Denouement is reduced to a page or a paragraph. Why? Because all of the accomplishments will have already been shown in the Falling Action scenes. There’s no tension left, just afterglow. In our story, that would be Auggie and Clair sitting on the pier toasting warm beer under a starry night and saying it could have been worse. Period.

There’s one plot line, start to finish. Just flavor with mouth-watering prose, give it a tasty title and a satisfying ending. Let it stew in suspense for a few thousand words and you’ll have it.

Freytag’s formula is not parsed equally. In all my writing, Exposition is painted with a wide brush and is never more than 10% of the story’s length. The details of these broad strokes come out in the Rising Action, which is about 40-50% of what needs to be said. The Climax is about 2%. Falling Action is usually another 40-50% because all the Exposition and conflicts created during the earlier parts now need to be resolved. Anything not resolved by this point is Denouement.

Think of our architect friend presenting the keys to this great house when finished, after every detail has been polished. If the plot is beautifully landscaped, then what more could he possibly say?

Next Month, Minutiae. ‘Nuff said.

Note: from August 1st through August 7th, Amazon.com is promoting a sale on my two novels in their Kindle bookstore. This is a great opportunity for those who likes to e-read fiction to save a couple of bucks. Both Seoul Legacy, The Orphan’s Flu and The Freya Project will be available that week for just $0.99. (67% off Retail of $2.99) So, please tell two friends to tell two friends to tell two friends. You can read the synopsis (Amazon’s “Book Description”) by following the links above. Please note this sale is on e-books only. First edition print books are also available through Amazon. Since all print versions come from BirchwoodBooks.com, I’ll be happy to sign or personally inscribe any orders for print. Enjoy! –Phil

Print books:
Seoul Legacy, The Orphan’s Flu (trade paperback)
The Freya Project (hardcover, trade paperback, ltd. ed.)

Read, Read, Read

4 Replies

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

~Stephen King

I met a young man in a critique group who had an excellent premise for his novel. I asked him if he read anything in that genre. His unflinching reply, “Oh, I don’t read books.”

Unbelievable!

Good writers read and write a lot. Inspiration can come from various sources, not just their own genre. As a memoir and fiction writer, I’ve read a number of books that have helped me improve my creative skills. Some books I’ve kept in my do-not-lend collection.

The Cry and the Covenant, the historical fiction by Morton Thompson, chronicles a doctor’s efforts in preventing women from dying of childbed fever. As a teaching physician at a hospital, he insisted that his students and colleagues wash their hands after working on a cadaver and before helping a woman deliver her baby. This was before widespread acceptance of germ theory and his colleagues resisted his efforts. Women continued to die. Thompson’s description of the ignorance of the medical staff and the doctor’s frustration was powerful.

I reread Lynn S. Hightower’s Flashpoint to study her writing style and because I enjoyed the fact that a female serial killer was quite intriguing and believable. Hightower is excellent in this genre.

Charles Pellegrino’s Dust is a terrifying tale of a worldwide biological chain of events that threatens the survival of mankind. Since reading that book, I haven’t met a dust bunny I didn’t try to kill.

Phantom by Susan Kay is a powerful prequel to The Phantom of the Opera. Each chapter is told from the point of view of the person with whom the phantom comes in contact, beginning with his mother who recoiled at the sight of her disfigured newborn. This book demonstrates strong character development.

The World’s Love Poetry, edited by Michael Rheta Martin, contains more than 500 poems – lyrical, bawdy, tragic, beautiful, and moving – from centuries ago to modern times.

The Stovepipe by Bonnie E. Virag is an emotionally moving memoir of a young girl’s struggle and survival after she and her many siblings were taken from their home and put in foster care. The book ends with “After Thoughts,” a touching recap of her family members’ whereabouts.

I’ve enjoyed rereading the adventures and viewing the awesome pictures of the travels of Kwang and Kook-Wha Koh in their book, Hopping Seven Continents, Maybe one day I can go to some of the places they’ve been.

The young man I mentioned did self-publish his book, but the story wasn’t fully developed or well-written. No surprise there. He should have read more books.

What are you reading?