Quick take: naming names

Choose names for characters with the care of first time parents who have been trying for a baby for years. Think about how Dickens and  JK Rowling collected unusual names now added to our vocabulary: Serverus Snape, Tiny Tim, Hogwarts, Scrooge, Pomona Sprout,  Pickwick, Albus Dumbledore, The Artful Dodger,  Voldemort. Names transport the reader more easily than most other device.  Names can brings thematic coherency and richness to a story. But don’t just gather a bunch of unusual names. Give them a connection to a place, time, culture, ethnicity, class to add creative depth to your story.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

October 

If you hear voice within you  that says 'I cannot paint', then by all means paint and that voice will  be silenced. VanGogh

Interview with Deborah Reed

(and Audrey Braun)
Tomorrow (Monday, October 1) I'll be interviewing Deborah Reed on All Women's Radio. I'm substituting as the host each Monday in October for Susan Rich on her Susan Rich Talks show. (I'll post the link to the podcast after the show.) You can listen in tomorrow here.

About Deborah/Audrey: Aspiring novelist Deborah Reed was one of publishing's success stories of 2011: unable to land a traditional publishing contract, she entered her literary debut Carry Yourself Back to Me into Amazon's Breakthrough Novel contest,while simultaneously self-publishing her thriller debut, A Small Fortune, under the pseudonym Audrey Braun. In a short time she became a Kindle bestseller, signed a book deal, received rave reviews writing under both names in two different genres, and was feature on National Public Radio as an expert on finding literary success outside of the publishing mainstream.

Now Reed (writing as Braun), whose debut novel Carry You Back to Me was deemed "a triumph" by Publisher's Weekly, returns with her widely-anticipated thriller follow-up to A Small Fortune, the first novel since her breakout year: FORTUNES DEADLY DESCENT. 

Listen in. I promise lively conversation and lots of seriously helpful advice about the writing life.

Bonus: We'll be giving away free copies of Fortune's Deadly Descent. Call in at 561-422-4365

Characters--the inside scoop

Has he/she ever been arrested?
In trouble with alcohol, drugs, food?
Ever been in therapy?
A leader or follower?
Introvert or extravert?
Greatest success?
Greatest failure?
How do they arrive at conclusions: analyze, intuit, feel?
Do they worry a lot or rarely?
How did his or her last relationship end?

Critique group opening.
I run small (as in 4-5 member) fiction critique groups in Portland.
A member just had to drop out for this semester because of a family emergency. So I have an opening. A few things: The group is not for beginning writers or the thin skinned or those with sour dispositions. We offer intensive, high-level feedback and lots of information. We like to laugh while accomplishing a lot. Contact me.

Quick Take: Naming

Like all parts of fiction sometimes writers go awry when naming characters. One problem is that they take this technique too far. Examples are naming a macho private eye Rod Magnum or Sam Blaster or naming a seductress Jezebel Flower.

Choose a character name that is age-appropriate and don’t make the mistake of choosing a name that is popular now for an adult character but wasn’t popular at the time of the character's birth. To research the etymology and history of first names go to www.behindthename.com. If you're writing historical fiction, it’s crucial that your names are historically accurate. Thus you wouldn’t name a 16^th century character Tiffany or Shawna. But Geoffrey, Humphrey, and Giles have an authentic ring as do Eleanor, Phillipa, and Thomasina. And while Hester Prynne works for moniker of the scarlet woman of seventeenth century, her name wouldn’t work for a contemporary woman. 

D

eep Fiction: The Anchor Scenes

    Taught by Jessica Morrell

October 20, 9-5

Manzanita, Oregon, The Center for Contemplative Arts

Cost: $80

The task of a novelist or memoirist is to tell a story so riveting that it will hold a reader’s attention for hundreds of pages. This requires intimate knowledge of characters, their inner lives, and central dilemma. It also requires an understanding of plot, the sequence of events that take readers from beginning to end.

These events won’t hang together without a compelling structure that underlies the whole—the essential scenes that every story needs to create drive, tension, conflict, climax, and resolution.  We’ll pay special attention to the architecture of scenes and the plot points and reversals that power stories forward.

Since scenes are those parts of your story where the excitement happens we’ll dissect the core ingredient of each scene: change. The anchor scenes we’ll cover are: Inciting Incident, First Plot Point, Mid-point Reversal, Dark night of the Soul, the Point of No Return, Climax, and Resolution.  We’ll discuss how the protagonist stars in these scenes, how they’re emotionally charged, and build the plot. By the end of the workshop participants will have outlined these crucial scenes and know where flashbacks should be placed to deliver the most potency. As part of the lecture we’ll be discussing the anchor scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird and the film Witness.   Story maps provided as part of the comprehensive handouts.

Contact me for information on registration

The Heart of Writing is over at my website here.

Because it all starts with reading.

Quick Take:

The shorter the story, the more important each word becomes.

I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.

Jeanette Winterson

In Case You Missed It

It's overcast here this morning which I appreciate since my office window faces east and I can look out at the stand of Douglas firs instead of squinting with the shade drawn. I've been rounding up some tidbits about the writing life again. Hope you find them inspiring or interesting as I did.

Who is really reading YA?  According to Bowker, adults. Find the article here.

The Hunger Games and countless others are engaging a loyal following among those old enough to vote, drink and hold a mortgage
New Providence, NJ - September 13, 2012 - More than half the consumers of books classified for young adults aren’t all that young. Fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 – nicknamed YA books -- are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44. Accounting for 28 percent of sales, these adults aren’t just purchasing for others -- when asked about the intended recipient, they report that 78 percent of the time they are purchasing books for their own reading. The insights are courtesy of Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age, an ongoing biannual study from Bowker Market Research that explores the changing nature of publishing for kids.

The Healthy Freelance Life. Women on Writing have tips for a balanced approach to writing and life.  The always-wise Kelly James Enger has weighed in on the topic.

Over at Hunger Mountain, an essay about the struggles to work at a 9-5 while wishing for a freer schedule to write called My Writing Life.

And from the irreplaceable Jane Friedman 5 FREE Services that help you build an author platform is here 

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

"I prefer to talk about the meaning in a story rather than the theme of a story. People talk about the theme of a story as if the theme were like the string that a sack of chicken feed is tied with. They think that if you can pick out the theme, the way you pick the right thread in the chicken-feed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens. But this is not the way meaning works in fiction.

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience that meaning more fully."~ Flannery O'Connor

Just for fun....
Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

Harper Voyager, HarperCollins’ science fiction and fantasy imprint, will accept complete and unagented manuscripts for two weeks.

From October 1 until October 14, authors from around the world can send their manuscripts through this submission portal. You can find all the submission details at this link. Here’s more from the publisher:

The manuscripts will then be read and those most suited to the global Harper Voyager list will be selected jointly by editors in the USA, UK and Australia.  Accepted submissions will benefit from the full publishing process: accepted manuscripts will be edited; and the finished titles will receive online marketing and sales support in World English markets. Voyager will be seeking an array of adult and young adult speculative fiction for digital publication, but particularly novels written in the epic fantasy, science fiction, urban fantasy, horror, dystopia and supernatural genres.

Bitter Truth # 5 is up at my website here.
The advice: don't pop that champagne too soon.
Sigh.

"If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another."
~ Donald Miller
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

"All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't." ~ William Faulkner

In any case, any narrative more than a few pages long is doomed to failure if it does not set up and satisfy plot expectations. Plotting, then--however childish and elementary it may seem in comparison with the work of surgeons, philosophers, or nuclear physicists--must be the first and foremost concern of the writer. He cannot work out his sequence of events without at least some notion of who the characters are to be or where the action is to take place, and in practice he will never design a plot without some notion of what its elements imply. To say that plot must be the writer's first concern is not to say that it is necessarily the first thing that dawns on him, setting off his project. ... But whatever the origin of the story idea, the writer has no story until he has figured out a plot that will efficiently and elegantly express it. Though character is the emotional core of great fiction, and though action with no meaning beyond its own brute existence can have no lasting appeal, plot is--or must sooner or later become--the focus of every good writer's plan. - The Art of Fiction by John Gardner

Question for writers:

Do you know your characters scene goal or mission in every scene?
In the scene you're writing today?

September

Writers Talking

I'm wondering if, like me, you love reading authors interviewed. I especially appreciate the history of the book they've written, hearing about obsessions and glimpses that started the story.

Here's an interview at Kirkus Reviews with Claudio Magris and Jessa Crispin of Bookslut. The link is here.  "When now you try not to discuss the political problem but to tell the story of how a man had lived in his or her experience of this problem, you must plunge in this abyss of disorder where the rational thread is already lost. Trying to find it without any coquetry with the disorder but remain with the disorder of the life. This great Italian writer La Capria has written the greatest novels of the 20th century are failed novels. He doesn’t mean that as a negative, but novels that must assume within themselves the necessity of shipwreck, the impossibility of representing a harmonious relationship between the individual and the disaster of the disorder of the world."

And here's a fascinating behind-the-scenes peep into the writing process of  Louise Penny, author of  A Beautiful Mystery at Jungle Red Writers   Penny is talking about music and writing and how she uses music as she plans her stories. Brilliant. Her mystery is set in a monastery where the monks take a vow of silence.
She says:  "Music seems to open a channel to come creative place I can’t normally get to.  At the same time, a piece of music can transport us to another place and time, and not just evoke that memory, but the emotion.  It can inspire great courage, and reduce us to tears.  I was fascinated by it – and all this led me to look into the very first western music – plain chant.  If music is a drug, then plain chant is uncut heroin for many."

Quick Take:

Villains are the chess masters of the fiction world.

"Most people read fiction not so much for plot as for company.” – Josip Novakovich

Quick Take: Scenes
Scenes are the building blocks of storytelling, the places where readers participate as if in real time. We write in scenes because readers lean in to listen and worry.  Scenes always introduce change. Scenes begin with the protagonist's (antagonist's) goal and end with a goal. In between is the obstacle to that goal. Scenes begin with a certain emotional tone and end on another emotion that is the reverse of  the beginning emotion. That's it.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

Thought for the day:

"Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules; rebellious, unschooled writers break rules; an artist masters the form. " ~ Robert McKee

Quick Take:  Write for Potency

A problem that I notice most often when editing is that writers  fail to write for potency. The symptoms are weak or colorless verbs, cliches and trite expressions we've all heard before, and language that never soars. Good writing is visceral. One of the simplest cures is onomatopoeia --words with potency and  meaning in their sound. Think Good Night Moon and the old lady whispering hush.  Examples are: thrash, hammer, shush, kerplunk, simmer, plop, roar, whoosh, shimmer, clatter,  glimmer, moan, ramble, sizzle, gush, chime, toll, groan, simper,clank,  mush, droop, sprinkle, trill, chatter, babble, soothing, babble, blurt......

Here is a handy list for you. Sound creates meaning and emotion in the reader.

And in case you missed it, wordmeister Constance Hale talks about The Sound Of A Sentence   here.
Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

Thought for the day:

"The fact is that we are living in a time when the decision to be an artist, to continue to create in spite of everything that's happening around us, IS a radical political act. This is, I feel, quite a dark time, potentially destructive to the best and most noble aspects of the human spirit. And that's precisely why it is terribly important for artists in all disciplines to continue to create, even when it feels like there's little market and little appreciation for our work. Just doing it, and making the difficult decision to continue to do it - to live creative lives that celebrate what life is and can be - is both defiant and affirming, and it's crucially important. People need to know that someone they know - a neighbor, a friend, a cousin - is committed to the arts. Young people particularly need to know this." ~ Beth Adams
 

First grafs

Blessedly cooler air from the Pacific has swooshed into Portland. Not a moment too soon.
Your story --no matter what type--lives and dies on your first paragraph. Here's a resource via Media Bistro where you can hear and submit first paragraphs.

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.” ~ Anais Nin

Bruce Holland Rogers interview

at Summer in Words 2012

In Case You Missed It.....

Portland is in the middle of a heart wave. Which explains why I'm up in the middle of the night, wondering how much it might cost to install central air conditioning. Meanwhile, here is information gathered from around the Internet.

From Writer's Digest the 21 key traits of best-selling fiction excerpted from The Writer’s Little Helper by James V. Smith, Jr.can be found here.

Everything is fiction posted by Keith Ridgeway at The New Yorker Page-Turner column. His post is here. He writes:"I know how to wait until the last minute before putting anything on paper. I mean the last minute before the thought leaves me forever. I know how to leave out anything that looks to me—after a while—forced, deliberate, or fake. I know that I need to put myself in the story. I don’t mean literally. I mean emotionally. I need to care about what I’m writing—whether about the characters, or about what they’re getting up to, or about the way they feel or experience their world. I know that my job is to create a perspective. And to impose it on the reader. And I know that in order to do that with any success at all I must in some mysterious way risk everything. If I don’t break my own heart in the writing of a book then I know I’ve done it wrong. I’m not entirely sure what that means. But I know what it feels like."

A dialogue between a writer and copy editor can be found in two parts at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Bottom line: copy editing is about consistency.

The always-wise Jane Friedman is at it again with her usual discerning advice on Build a Better Author Bio for twitter. It includes examples of what not to do....so helpful.

And my favorite of this roundup from Sarah Callender at Writer Unboxed is here about the need to shop at indie book stores. Take the pledge. All of us. All the time. I'm serious as a heart attack.

Quick Take: Act it out.

Recently I was teaching at a conference and interacting with the people attending my workshop. Which was when a writer mentioned her ending to her novel. In it, the protagonist tosses a feather-weight object at the villain. The villain is supposedly momentarily distracted by the object and the protagonist runs away to safety. The villain had a gun, the action takes place out doors and it all pretty much sounded improbable. If one of your readers or your own instincts whispers that an action that you're creating sounds implausible, act it out. Engage a friend or two, stage your scene in a setting similar to your story, using props if needed.

Another suggestion, when writing complicated action scenes, sketch them, complete with sight lines. In some manuscripts I read, it's difficult to tell where the players are in relation to each other.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

Diary of a Literary Debutante, part 1

From salon.com, find the first part of the series here
"In ways. But here’s what no one tells you about getting a book contract, or at least what no one told me, or what I wouldn’t have believed if they had: the elation you think you’ll feel, the sense that everything difficult is behind you, is, in most cases, blotted out by a thousand other, competing emotions. This is because the march toward publication is at once lengthy and alarmingly fast, very lonely and worrisomely exposing. It is guaranteed to turn even the least self-absorbed person into a gigantic bore. It practically encourages narcissism. Your friends will come to hate you (your enemies will hate you, too, although presumably it’ll be a shorter trip for them). However, you will be so sick of yourself (and, simultaneously, so consumed by yourself), that you won’t be able to blame them."

"Art is fire plus algebra.” –Jorge Luis Borges

In Case you Missed it

Whereby I collect wisdom and tidbits from the digital world.

The future of publishing and reading. All you need to know (and then some.)

And from fellow mentor Lee Lofland 10 Great Hangouts for Book Nerds.

Which versus that. This article will school you.

10 Lessons for directing and life from Terry Gilliam. I especially appreciate this one:
5. All you’ve really got in life is story.
I think the important thing is stay true to what you believe. I mean it’s much more important to make your mistakes than somebody else’s mistakes. Like too many other filmmakers have compromised because somebody advised them [that] if you change this, the film will be more successful commercially. And then the film isn’t successful commercially, and these people get so depressed and destroyed because they didn’t ever finish making their film the way they intended it. You’ve got to believe in what you’re doing. And you’ve got to be willing to take the consequences of whatever it is. If you succeed, fantastic. If you fail, you might have to get a proper job.

From the  Farnam Street blog: 22 Rules Pixar Uses To Create Appealing Stories can be found here.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

A few notes...

I wanted to thank the organizers of the Willamette Writers Conference for another great conference. Thanks to everyone who said hello and the writers who attended my workshops. I'm signing off for the next few days, so remember: keep dreaming, keep writing, have heart. 

"The act of writing bears something in common with the act of love. The writer, at his most productive moments, just flows. He gives of that which is uniquely himself. He makes himself naked, recording his nakedness in the written word. Herein lies some of the terror which frequently freezes a writer, preventing him from producing. Herein, too, lies some of the courage that must be entailed in letting others learn how one has experienced or is experiencing the world." ~ Sidney Jourard

"If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down." ~ Ray Bradbury

"Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.
. . . Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself."
~ Susan Sontag

"I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe."  Madeleine L'Engle

"Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow - whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don't show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward." ~Kurt Vonnegut

Quick Take:

In a good story, the events of the storyline are ballasted by deeper, universal concerns and ideas. These underlying layers are the themes and they hold the greater vision of the story. They whisper beneath the storyline and are what the story is thinking about.

August