Balancing Foreshadowing

I've been thinking lately about foreshadowing, and how to strike the balance between giving the plot away and coming out of nowhere. The most recent October Daye book just came out, and the latest installment's greatest strength (perhaps) is the groundwork done in earlier books to build up to this point. Also, I was thinking about why a bit of obvious foreshadowing in Fuzzy Nation didn't make the book predictable or boring.

Incidentally, this is why most writing advice includes a strong recommendation to read a lot. Seeing what works or doesn't work lets you pull apart those elements to use them, yourself.

But I digress. Frequently.

I've also been doing a lot of editing. Now that I know how the books I'm typing up end, I keep adding in hints to later events. Or I keep feeling really proud of myself for having already put them there. So, foreshadowing is on my mind a lot these days.

The October Daye series handles foreshadowing in a couple of ways. There are hints sprinkled throughout that the unreliable narrator doesn't dwell on, but that turn out to be essential to the later plot. Or, she misinterpreted these hints. Foreshadowing-as-misdirection can work really well, especially in mysteries. The way foreshadowing is woven into these stories, an astute reader feels rewarded for paying attention to these clues, but there are still plenty of surprises.

In Fuzzy Nation, the narrator also fails to pick up on important hints. But, it turns out that what the narrator misses isn't the key to solving the problem. There's something else going on, too, and the plot hinges on that harder-to-anticipate element. The predictable one does come into play, which made me feel smarter than the narrator for picking up on it, but it didn't spoil the ending.

Are you recognizing a theme yet? In the most satisfying books, readers feel like they were engaged enough to use their brains, but the author didn't give everything away. Also, the more obvious foreshadowing works as its own kind of misdirection. There may well have been hints in the narrative about how the stories would end, but I was too busy examining the more obvious clues.

Good foreshadowing, then, doesn't give an ending away. It doesn't reveal everything until the last page ties it all together. If you've done it well, your reader will pick up on some of it, but not all. So, if you want to deliberately insert clues to your ending, make sure it's only to a contributing factor, not to the ultimate solution.

Now, off to take my own advice. Expect a progress post in a month or so.

Progress: The Plot Thickens

Here I thought I'd written three books in 4 months.

Now that I'm finished typing up book one of the fantasy trilogy, I've been working on book two. I already knew it was longer than the first book. As I typed, I looked for things I could cut.

Instead, I found myself adding to the story. When I write my first drafts, I'm often in a hurry just to get the story down before I forget, so my second drafts involve expanding and clarifying. This one is no exception. I realized, as I reached the 2/3rds point of what I'd written of book two, I could easily split them without losing anything. In fact, it gives me room to explore some of the aspects of the world I glossed over to wrap up the book. There were several distinct points where I made the decision to leave a plot seed alone because it would've made the book that much longer.

And so, the fantasy trilogy is now a tetralogy. Or a quartet. I like quartet better. People actually know what that means.

It takes a lot longer to write new material than it does to type up a draft that's already written. My progress has slowed to a crawl. My hands are grateful for the respite, but I'm impatient to get back to typing up what's in my little notebooks. There's a weird kind of thrill in pulling apart what I wrote to form it into something better. I'm rarely in a better mood than when I solve a plot puzzle I've written myself into.

Meanwhile, my crit partner is going through book two of the urban fantasy trilogy, and she has a lot of good feedback. I should be working on editing, but I just like the dragon books more.

In my little snatches of between-time, I'm writing book three of the urban fantasy trilogy. It has the opposite of the above problem. I feel like I've run out of plot, and it's only just past the halfway point. I have a few ideas, but I won't know until I write them if they feel like padding. It's not like I'm writing very fast. I have time to figure out how to fill those pages.

Progress: Milestone

I finished typing up the first draft of my dragon story. It took longer than I thought, because I reworked as I went. More tension here, less bickering there, shortened rambling conversations, those sort of fixes. I don't think my beta readers will believe me that I cut about half the sex from the original draft.

I also had to write a prologue and an epilogue. Well, I didn't have to. I could've thrown the reader in without preamble. But parts of it are really hard to depict without slipping out of my first-person narrator for a bit.

The first time I tried to write this, I tried to alternate interludes with the story, but it killed the pacing, and I ran out of things for the other characters to do.

The story is currently 123,915 words, which is a respectable length for the genre. I already know the next one is longer, but who knows how much of that can go?

I'm looking forward to typing up book two. I enjoy this story.

Progress: The Fun Part

I finished editing the first two books of the urban fantasy trilogy. The second book wound up needing a major rewrite to tighten up the plot and add tension and give some of my characters something to do. I'd meant to kill off a character, who survived in the previous draft. I fixed that.

It was not a fun change to make. I was morose for a whole day. I hope that helped me capture the fallout. We'll see. I have a crit partner reading it now. I realized after I'd sent it that I overwrote the ending, but I'll fix it.

Finishing that means I get to go back to the dragon story. I spent most of the holiday weekend typing the first book, and editing as I went. I got to know and understand the characters while writing all three books, so there are aspects I have to make sure I include from the start. I can also see holes where I neglect one or another of my ensemble cast, so I know I'll have to go back and give them something to do. I've slowed down the development of one plot point, cleaned up some of the redundancy and rambling, and spaced apart the reveals more.

Last night, I had to delete about five (double-spaced, rewritten) pages, because I was trying to resolve a conflict too soon. Characters needed space to ponder ramifications and illustrate their sincerity and make amends. Solving it too soon would let a character off the hook, and stunt development. The conflict wasn't even there in the first draft, but it became an essential turning point. I know it'll need more tweaking in later drafts, but I'm pleased with its addition.

I think that reflects my biggest writing weakness. I'm always in such a hurry to get to the good parts that I don't give enough narrative space to the buildup. An awful lot of my rewrites involve delaying plot points or leaving loose ends hanging a while longer. Maybe I can put a patch on my pantster ways by writing myself notes about scenes I'm excited to write or factoids I need to drop casually into the narrative. It's worth a shot.

When I wrapped up last night (okay, early this morning - I don't sleep well in summertime, so I might as well make my insomnia productive), I was at 64,250 words, with about half of my handwritten draft typed out. So, yup. It's an epic fantasy. Among other genres.

What I didn't expect was that I'm really enjoying what I've written. I'm looking at the words with a critical eye, but I keep running across turns of phrase that crack me up. My main character couldn't be more different from me, and has a quirky way of viewing the world. I hope the character's voice makes the series's concept easier to stomach. It's not fully revealed until the end of book one.

I'm actually excited at the idea of people reading this book. A little embarrassed about all the sex, but I've managed to pare it down to a less embarrassing degree. This is a story I could share with the people who've asked to read it without disclaimer.

Well, maybe not all of them. My co-workers may have to wait for it on store shelves. I don't want to know that people I know in a professional capacity have read it.

That's not all I'm working on. In my between times, I've been writing the third book of the urban fantasy trilogy. I've only ever written one draft of that book (as opposed to dozens of the first, and a handful of book two), and what I wrote isn't worth preserving. There's been a major thematic and world-building overhaul since I wrote it. Plus, it's tedious as hell. I feel a lot better about how this draft is turning out. In my typical fashion, I'm not completely sure how it'll pan out, but I have a lot of things to keep the characters occupied in the meantime.

Progress: Following the Path I've Set

I finished typing up the first draft of the second book in my urban fantasy trilogy. (I really need working titles for these, don't I?) As anticipated, I did some editing as I went. It's 83,064 words.

So that catches me up to . . . last November? I think? As in, I think I finished handwriting those pages in November 2013.

I didn't track my time to the minute, but I'd estimate I spent about 12 hours typing up the loose-leaf pages and one of my little notebooks. It was easier typing from the notebook, as I expected. But it does still take time.

I'm doing an editing pass for consistency on book one now, and then I'll edit book two for sending off to my crit partner(s). I was supposed to read something one of them sent a couple of months ago, and I really have no excuse about why I haven't. I can offer a few dozen transparent justifications, though.

I will get to it. I'll start tonight.

On a completely different note, yesterday I ran across someone offering writing advice. She suggested (rightly) that reading is important. But she said that audiobooks don't count as reading.

As you may know, I feel differently. I've been listening to audiobooks regularly for the last three years. In that time, I've seen a marked improvement in my flow and word choice. I don't think it's entirely explained by getting better with practice. I think audiobooks are training me to think about language differently.

It ties into the advice for reading aloud when you're editing. The auditory value of words on a page are important. I know I'm not the only reader who hears the words in her head as she's taking them in. Why, then, is it that much different if I hear them through my ears instead of my eyes?

I'm not going to go so far as to suggest every writer should listen to audiobooks. Some can't, and they get expensive if you don't have access to a good library system. But if you haven't tried it and your library has a digital collection, it might be worth trying some downloads. Audiobooks can make a lot of household chores less of a grind, and they certainly pass the time with all the driving I do for work. The worst that'll happen is that you'll find you can't concentrate on the book and something else. At best, you'll be able to read that many more books in the between times that take up so much of your day.

Progress: Catching My Breath

You remember the trilogy I was working on the last time I checked in? If you've been watching this space at all, you've probably noticed I'm not updating a whole lot. That's because I was writing. And writing. And writing.

I finished the trilogy on Sunday morning.

As in, I've written two books since I last checked in in late January. Books in excess of 100,000 words. Don't ask me by how much, because I'm still writing them by hand. That was, apparently, the right call. I've had an easier time avoiding distractions, and I've been able to write during every minute of down time throughout my day.

And in some ways, it was wrong one. I've written through the night more than once. I've neglected a lot of real world concerns.

But I just wrote three books in five months! I guess I really wanted to write that story.

I think there are more stories to be told in that world. I just need to figure out what those stories are. I'd hate to get repetitive. I think I need to use different characters, because those ones have been through enough. They learned and grew from their adventures, and now anything I throw at them would have to be ridiculously overpowered to pose any challenge.

Honestly, though, it would be a waste to leave the world alone. I drew up a map and everything!

Yeah, it's not much to look at. And I've changed it since I took this picture. But I kept losing track of where the characters were and how long it would take them to get from one point to another. Having a map made it a lot easier.

Next on my slate is typing up all my handwritten stuff, then editing it and sending it off to beta readers. A lot of people have expressed interest, but only a few get to read the early stages. No one but me will read the original handwritten form. Mostly because I'm the only one who can read my handwriting.

I have no idea how I did that while holding down a full-time job. I have no idea if I'll ever be able to do it again. But it's one of those things that made me remember why I wanted to be a writer.

Review: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was a gift from a college professor in 2001, the year I graduated. It's been on my to-read list a while, clearly. Hence its inclusion in my 2014 TBR Pile Challenge.

My professor warned me, as she handed it over, that it was far less useful for practical writing advice and more for inspiration. In that, she was absolutely correct. While there is some advice for how to get started and find one's voice as a writer, I found some of its advice counter intuitive, and sometimes contradictory of my process. The book is If You Want to Write, not If You Want to Be Published.

Brenda Ueland recommends an approach that ignores such words as "craft," "polish," and "honing." Her background is that of a teacher of nonwriters. She's drawn out the inner writer in her students, and the book's purpose is to do the same for its readers. She's interested in helping people find their voices as writers and finding what inspires them.

There are sections where she compares or contrasts pieces of writing, meant to illustrate her points about a looser, less critical approach to writing. At times, her point is well-made, when her students initially turn in stilted prose of the kind they feel they're supposed to write, and eventually write pieces that are flowing and natural. Other times, though, the "better" passages are purple, or just plain rambling. I understand at the time Ueland was writing, the longer, more descriptive passages were better valued, so some of my disconnect is a product of the shift in literary trends.

One of the major points in this book's favor is that it advocates pantstering, or discovery writing. It specifically recommends against outlining or planning out where the story will go. Ueland says, instead, to see where the story takes you. That's an approach I can get behind.

I wish I'd come across this book before I graduated high school. A lot of its lessons would've helped me in my early writing development. In this stage of my writing, though, it reads like a giant step backward. It tells me nothing about how to improve as a writer or how to edit what I've already written.

This book will not help you if you've already written a novel, or if you're ready to edit your pieces. Its main utility is giving a budding writer the confidence to find one's own voice. I'd recommend it to people considered NaNoWriMo; its lessons will help unclog you from the expectations holding back your word count.


View all my reviews

Progress: Fast Forward

I honestly didn't expect to make another progress post so soon. I'm still handwriting my stories, and I don't just pull the notebook out when I have a minute. I also scribble in it when I'm home and winding down for bed. Or just because I want to write.

I took a vacation from social media the week before last. For the entire week, I didn't log into Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook. I asked people to email me if it was terribly important, though the people I interact with most often don't even know most of the places I hang out online.

Mostly, I did it to see if I could. I was also trying to break some bad habits I'd developed around my morning ritual. Purging it seemed the appropriate step.

I didn't get a lot of chores done around the apartment, and I didn't reset my sleep schedule, as I'd hoped. Nor did I get much reading done. I did spend a lot of that time writing. I lost track of time writing. I stayed up into the wee hours writing. I'd forgotten that writing was the first thing that I stayed up until dawn for when I was younger.

I estimate my little notebooks fit about 22,000 words apiece. I started out the month with one filled. Here's what I ended my social media vacation with:

I was pretty proud of my little experiment. And now, a week later, I've filled one more notebook, bringing it to about 110,000 words in my rough draft. I have finished the epic fantasy parody I'd failed to write years ago. 

I'm already mentally mapping out book 2, and I have a rough sketch of book 3. It looks like it'll be a trilogy. I could probably pad it out more than that, if I really wanted to. I don't want to. I think these books will work best on a diet of high energy and good humor.

I'm afraid I might burn myself out if I write out the second one at the same rate. On the other hand, I don't want to lose my momentum. One of the great things about being a pantster is that enthusiasm for a story tends to grow as you write and discover. One of the awful things is that, if you don't write it fast enough, you'll forget that cool scene you've already written in your head. It's that second thought that had me writing at the speed I was, and the first that bolstered me for the last month and a half. I had a lot of fun finding ways to throw my character off-balance.

I could type up all my handwritten pages, I suppose. I still have book 2 of my urban fantasy trilogy I haven't typed up, and now all this. I tend to edit as I go, too, so I wind up with a more polished typed first draft. Especially now that I know what the ending is and where all those plot threads and characterizations are going.

What do you think? Keep going on the fantasy trio? Edit the UF? Focus on reading? 

What would you do?

Progress: Checking In

I don't even know when I wrote my last progress post on here. Hmm . . . June? Really? Wow. So, I'm way

overdue.

Most of that is because my productivity slowed to a trickle. I was getting some writing done, but in fits and starts, and most of it handwritten. I've actually taken to carrying around a notebook small enough to fit in my purse so I can scribble out some lines whenever I have down time.

Some of that I blame on picking up a new hobby. Turns out, you can't knit and write. I can watch TV, listen to podcasts, or just zone out while I'm knitting, but it uses both my hands. There's very little I can do at the same time as I'm writing, actually. Usually I just listen to music. Knitting is so tempting, though, because it produces an immediate thing that doesn't need fixing up before I can share it with others, and my progress is obvious. Word count just isn't the same as a pair of wrist warmers.

Nonetheless, despite my setbacks, I did manage to finish book two. It snuck up on me, too; one minute I'm happily writing out a narrow escape, the next I'm realizing that was the cue for book three.

I have only the thinnest of ideas about what happens in book three at this time, as is common for those with my writing style. But I need a few more plot hooks to hang the story on, so I've put it on the back burner until after I've done an editing pass at books one and two.

Whew. Is that enough mixed metaphors for you?

What I'm currently working on is a story I've been pondering for years. Once upon a time, I ran a game using Hero System. It was a fantasy setting with a twist. It deliberately played into a lot of clichés, contained logical inconsistencies, and had backgrounds that required mental gymnastics to justify. The players had a lot of fun in it, and I thought it would be a fun setting to reuse for a novel, or perhaps a series of them. My perspective character is a dragon, hiding her true nature.

I tried to write the story several years ago, but it fizzled. The pace was plodding, and the dragon's curiosity only brought her so far into the plot. I made it something like 50 pages without introducing the main plot, and gave up.

This time, though, I've tapped into the character's voice. Cyl is snarky, egotistical, hedonistic, and has no problem rolling her eyes and wandering away from the plot when it seems tedious to her. Just because it's epic fantasy doesn't mean I have to relate every mile trekked in loving detail. The whole point of the story is to subvert some of the tropes, and this version of Cyl is letting me do that quite nicely. It's also great fun coming up with things that'll challenge and change her.

I'm having so much fun writing the story, when I needed to stay awake on a long car trip, I pulled over at a rest stop to write.

Other than that, I also have handwritten pages to type up, and I've given myself the goal of cataloging the books I own on Goodreads so they're all on my to-read list. Thanks to a snow day last week, I'm a good way through that project, and my to-read list is now 701 items long. Yikes.

Progress: Easing Back In

I'm still taking baby steps, as far as getting back into writing is going. There are moments when I feel highly

motivated to do it. There are others when I have a sudden fascination with polishing my silverware, and must get that done before I can do anything else. It's symptomatic of what I'm dealing with.

It doesn't help that my writing group dissolved in all the chaos last fall. They had helped keep me on track and inspired. I haven't had it in me to try to scrape together enough interested members to try again.

I signed up to be matched up with a crit partner through the Authoress's blog (current submissions are closed, but she writes there will be another such event), and found not one, but two interested parties. Both of them had very similar feedback, and I bounced some ideas off them, and they were very helpful. I've been working on returning the favor, but it's going slowly. Not because of poor writing; I've been blessed with two gifted writers having found me. My motivation is just all over the place.

I had thought the feedback would lead me to work on book one, which is what I submitted to my crit partners. Instead, it got me thinking about book two, and I've been tapping away at that. Right now, I have 9960 words, and another five handwritten pages, waiting to be transcribed.

It's a bizarre way of approaching it, but, whatever can get me back to writing on a regular basis, I'll take.

Hopefully this time next month, I'll have tens of thousands of words more.

I've caught up on book reviews, for the time being, but I keep falling behind, in addition to my weekly blog posts. If you have an idea for a guest post, or if you have a request for a concept you'd like me to dig deeper into, please feel free to drop me an email or a comment.

Always feel free to drop me a comment. Yes, I do screen comments, in addition to putting it behind word verification. If you had any idea the flood of spam I was stemming before I added those steps, you'd know it's worth never getting another legitimate comment again.

But, I would like to hear from you. How are your projects? What are you working on now?

Pet Peeve: Everyone Knows It's the Main Character

I has posted that I was going to continue my pet peeves, because I had a new batch to share. Today's pet peeve is when everyone in a story knows they're dealing with a main character, and treats him or her accordingly.

Basically, this occurs when there's a standard, with a set of consequences for not meeting that standard. The main character is immune to those consequences, because to hold him or her to the same standard would ruin the plot or the character.

I'm not talking about Mary Sues, because that's a whole other can of worms. I think the term is overused to describe a character someone doesn't like, and that it's okay for the plot and other characters to revolve around one central character.

What I'm talking about is when the main character is held to a different standard. For instance, a male character might lose his temper and act out violently toward the female love interest. If she forgives him, I need to have seen some past behavior that shows she forgives easily. If she left her last boyfriend because he put a hole in the wall, I'm going to be skeptical.

What made this pet peeve really stand out for me was when villains kill minor characters for being less of a thorn in their side than the main characters. One minor character crosses the bad guy's path, and finds himself turned to pink mist. But then the main character actively gets in the villain's way, and the villain chuckles at the main character's audacity and asks the main character to join him in his bid to take over the world. Unless that bad guy has been established as respecting courage, I'm going to raise an eyebrow at his change of heart.

What bothers me about this is that it's lazy writing. The hero could be held to the same standard as minor characters. He or she could shine by getting out of a tight spot, showing resourcefulness and courage. Instead, that character is handed a solution by a writer or writers who would rather make an inconsistent villain, or selectively enforce the rules of the world.

The way you avoid this, as a writer, is to closely look at your conflicts within your book. Are they challenging? Has another character in the book experienced something similar? How did it end for that other character? If it's different for your hero, is it because of your hero's resources, or because you made it easier for your main character?

Don't be afraid to challenge characters. It's why readers love a good hero: because he or she overcomes.

Editing Drunk

Photo of empty bottles found here

There's a piece of writing advice, commonly attributed to Ernest Hemingway, that goes: "Write drunk; edit sober." In other words, do what you can to get your words down, but go about polishing and perfecting them in an orderly and serious way.

It's not terrible advice, but I realized recently that I was going against it. Not because I was editing drunk, or writing sober (though there were a few times when I'd hit the wine a little harder than others). I was getting the bulk of my editing done when I was almost too tired to keep my eyes open. A couple of times, I fell asleep in the middle of editing, and woke up with evidence the cat had taken a stroll across my keyboard while I napped.

Tiredness isn't quite the same thing as being drunk, though apparently it's just as dangerous behind the wheel.  It does lead to a change in perspective, though. For me, it slows my thoughts down, makes me more suggestible, confuses me more easily, and my attention wanders.

In other words, it turns me into a low-comprehension reader who's unfamiliar with my story. Had I been polishing the story on a sentence level or checking for grammar errors, I would've made a greater effort to edit when I felt better. But, because I was looking for overall readability and whether I could understand the story, it was the next best thing to crawling into a stranger's head to read his or her mind while he or she read my story. Passages I hadn't connected stood out as needing better transitions. Character motivations I hadn't spelled out confused me, and so I had to stop and give more insight in the text. Weak metaphors didn't make as much sense as when I'd written them, and those sentences that made perfect sense when I put them down were ripe for deletion.

Had I waited to feel better before I worked on edits, I wouldn't have finished them until far more recently. I'm glad I didn't wait. I learned something. There are edit passes that require a certain level of sobriety. But sometimes, there's an advantage in reading something you've written while you're not at your best. It's not the same as reading it with fresh eyes, but it'll certainly lend a new perspective.

Pet Peeves, Resurrected (Deus Ex Machina)

I had a series of posts about pet peeves in writing, grammar, storytelling, et cetera. I thought they'd run their course, but then I started watching more TV.

My first knitting project. Everyone has to start somewhere.

You see, a friend taught me how to knit* in December, and I've been practicing while catching up on shows I'd been meaning to watch. It makes me feel like I've spent my time productively, even if the show is mindless drivel. It also makes me process the show in a different, slightly detached way.

I'd been noting about one show I was working my way through that the writing had gotten sloppy within the last dozen or so episodes. As it hit more pet peeves I hadn't written about yet, I started making note of them as things to avoid in my own writing.

For today's post, I wanted to discuss the deus ex machina. Literally, "god in the machine," it goes back to Greek stage plays, when a god would show up to fix everything in the end. Nowadays, it's used as a negative, as something that comes along out of nowhere to fix the story, rescue the protagonist, save the day, or wrap everything up nicely.

As a pantster, I've written myself into more than a few corners. I can understand the allure of throwing in, "Rocks fall; everyone dies" when the story arc isn't going the way you planned. I completely sympathize with realizing halfway through that you're writing a completely different story than you thought. It's fine. In an initial draft, your ending can come out of nowhere. In your first draft, you can have all the randomness you want.

That's what rewriting is for. Once you know where you're going, you can go back and put in the ground work. You can hint at the big reveal, or drop hints about what inner resource will pull your hero out of the fire. Foreshadowing is best placed once you can see the big picture.

Just don't leave it that your hero's saving grace comes out of nowhere, with no way to anticipate it. That's how you lose your reader. Life is random and unpredictable, which is why fiction has to have some predictability, even if it's only in retrospect.


*On a completely unrelated note, has anyone else noticed that writers tend to be creative in other ways, as well? The people I've been talking to about knitting are other writers, and the ones who don't knit draw or design or crochet, or have some other creative talent I envy.

Writing as Therapy

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about writing about traumatic events. The more real something feels for you, the more real it's going to feel to the reader, generally, and so upsetting things can be good to tap into.

I wanted to set down the line between doing so to your benefit and your detriment, though. While writing from an emotionally raw place can be liberating, it can also lead to characters growing one-note, or your books feeling repetitive.

Image taken from Wikimedia Commons

The difference is in whether you're working through it. An upsetting past can be excellent fodder for fiction, but it can't be one's only inspiration. At some point, you have to move on.

To give a concrete example, maybe your school years were stunted by years of bullying. So, you write a book about a kid who's the only one who can see that bullies are possessed by demons. The kid teams up with a spunky sidekick, they exorcise their school, save the day, and all is well.

Maybe your book languishes as a trunk novel. Maybe it becomes the next bestseller. In either case, what's your next book about?

If your answer is, more evil bullies, it's time to take a step back. Your first book may have helped you deal with your issues, and maybe the second one is your way of trying to spark that feeling of freedom again. It won't work. And, if you didn't actually deal with it in the writing of the first book, you're just malingering.

It is possible to write about the same subject that upset you in more than one book. You can even have your issues emerge as themes in more than one novel. But, if you're always writing about the same thing, and never moving forward, you're stagnating. Readers will be able to smell that a mile off.

As with writing from trauma, the solution is to know yourself. When you're revising a manuscript, look for common threads that appear in other books, or things that particularly resonate with you. If there are a few that crop up every single time, cut them, and find something new to explore. If you find yourself drawing a blank, it may be time to speak to a therapist to work through the unresolved issue.

Captain Awkward has a guest post on finding low-cost mental health solutions in the US and Canada, if it's cost and lack of health insurance that's stopped you so far. Give it a try. It's worlds better than turning your potential readers into unpaid therapists.

Writing from Trauma

I've been reading a lot of advice about using one's own personal experiences and trauma to make for a better story. I can see the wisdom in it, but I always thought I was incapable of it.

Photo used from Free Stock Photos.biz

Characters do need motivation. They need painful consequences for the wrong decisions. The stakes need to be high. What better way to show that than with something you, yourself, have lived? I've read a lot of excellent books that came out of an author's personal pain. My favorite romance novel I read last year was one of the ways of the author dealing with a death in the family.

I thought I've never been able to do it, though. I was just diagnosed with PTSD, so maybe that's part of it. The distancing nature of the disease keeps me from embracing any memories that make me feel vulnerable. Even things that happened 30 years ago, I shy away from remembering in detail.

In the immediate aftermath, I do find some comfort in writing about something, but that's always nonfiction, and often private. I push things outside myself until they're less raw.

Does that make me a less effective writer? I should hope not, though it's part of why my new project fizzled out. I couldn't keep myself in the mind set of being in the house that frightened me so badly. I couldn't keep putting myself through that.

But an interesting thing happened when I was reading up on my diagnosis. The psychologist diagnosing me had noted that I'd had it for a long time, and so I wanted to see how it had been affecting my life. And, as the symptoms unfolded before me, I realized that I had been writing about it.

In the trilogy I've been working on, in fact, I've been writing characters I relate to, and each of them show signs of being marked by trauma. They all handle it differently, of course, but the supernatural element is tied strongly to symptoms of PTSD.

So it would seem that, even if you don't mean to write about your scars, you will, anyway. I'm not going to explicitly use the things that left marks on me in my writing, if I can help it. But my response to it will always be there.

I'm okay with that.

The best advice I have for you, then, is to know yourself. Elements of yourself are going to keep showing up in your writing, whether you want them to or not. Turning it into a deliberate act will allow you to do so purposely and in a way that positively affects the narrative. Keeping it all subconscious could get messy.

Progress Post: Writing Again

I think the last time I wrote a progress post was back in August, or maybe July. It's been a while, for various reasons.

When I resumed my blog, I mentioned I had some handwritten stuff to type up in the haunted house story I'd been working on. I'm not done with that. I've set that project aside, because I'm not in the head space to work on it. The story is, in part, about putting one's life back together and learning to trust people, and that is so not something I can wrap my head around.

What I am in the head space for is the trilogy I keep poking at, much to my former writing group's frustration. That's about betrayal and lies and the damage done when you leave out the whole story, which is much closer to my current mind set. Also, I've been working on it so long, the characters are like old friends. Even the homicidal ones. Especially the homicidal ones.

I've rewritten several scenes, and brought it up to modern day. Characters have cellphones now, and some communication is dealt with much faster. I also had to give my main character a reason to turn hers off, which made for a better story. I'm near the end now (page 239 of 293), and I keep wanting to start off each section with my characters swearing a blue streak, because of the situations I've dropped them into. I've been holding off, because, while entertaining, it wouldn't help the narrative.

It's also leading better into the second book, which may have to be rewritten from scratch. I'll read through what I have, and see if any of it's worth saving.

So, I'm writing again. That obstacle is past me. Now, if I could just get some discipline about it, I'd be content. This is not a good time for my willpower, though. I'll take what I can get.

The Stories You Don't Tell

Last week, I wrote about leaving out prose in strategic ways in your story. This week, I wanted to discuss writing stories you don't intend to show to the world.

Picture of underground waterfall in
Ruby Falls Cavern obtained here

One could argue everything I've written falls under this category, though I have gotten braver. I've shared pieces with my writing group, and I'm entertaining the notion of submitting something when things are less chaotic.

There are most certainly things I'll never show anyone, though. That writing I did when I was in middle and high school, typing away at all hours of the night with my parents a room away? I've read it. It's so bad, it's not even worth trying to polish it. There may well be something salvageable in that mess, but it's too painful to read. We're talking about some amateur attempts.

The notion of writing uselessly doesn't frustrate me, though. I wouldn't be the writer I am without that practice. Everyone has to start somewhere. It's because I made mistakes and recognized the imperfections that I was able to change them and do better.

Ask published authors how many books they wrote before they submitted for publication. Ask how many tries they made before getting an offer from a publisher. Ask how long they'd been writing before they were able to finish a book they were proud of.

There's no shame in writing just for yourself. You learn how to write by making mistakes, by trying new techniques, by stumbling into what works for you. Sometimes, that means doing a writing exercise that may turn into a full novel or a short story at some point, but is useless as-is.

It's not a waste, so long as you learned something.

Now, if you've been doing this for years and you feel like nothing you write is worthy of seeing the light of day, you may have a problem. You'll need a reality check. If you're truly awful and not improving, you'll want to take some writing workshops or read some books on writing for new approaches. Or, you may want to show what you've written to someone who can critique you, so you know where you're going wrong.

And, who knows? Maybe your only problem is that you lack confidence.

What You Don't Say

During my hiatus, I ran across one concept several times. In a discussion on poetry, an author mentioned that a poem is about what isn't written. I ran across it on twitter in a couple of forms, and something I edited informally suffered from a need to have this lesson drilled in.

Optical illusion pic obtained here

When you're writing, what you don't say can be just as important as what you do, if not more. If you want a theme to emerge, constantly using the word or having characters say it may be the worst way to approach it. If, on the other hand, you can present a concept without ever explicitly addressing it, you've shown some level of skill. The narrative shapes itself around what isn't there.

The story I'm working on now is about a haunted house. Not that anyone calls it that. It's creepy, it's scary, locals have stories about daring each other to go near it, but it's never "the haunted house." My main character, who witnesses a number of impossible events, specifically doesn't tell her housemate, out of fear she'll scare her away and then have to be in that house all alone.

In dialogue, a character's refusal to address something, or a refusal to say something aloud, can create tension. People rarely spout their life stories and all their secrets at first meeting. There are things all of us avoid talking about, sometimes because it's too personal, sometimes because we don't know enough about it, and sometimes because it involves a secret. Get two characters talking, one of whom is keeping something from the other, and the conversation becomes a dance, as one pushes conversational boundaries and either confronts the one avoiding the subject, or accepts that the other person doesn't want to talk about it.

In my own dialogue, nothing makes me prouder than to have a character give an answer that's factually correct, but that doesn't answer the intent of the question. My dishonest characters are masters of lies by omission, rather than outright and blatant untruths. It amuses me to have my protagonists teased with something so near the truth, yet so widely misleading.

Bear in mind, this is a tricky skill to develop. You can't assume that your readers all have the same cultural context as you, and therefore that they'll fill in your gaps with the same things. Nor can you assume they'll have the reading comprehension to understand you've deliberately left something out. You'll want to call attention to it, either through repetition, by subtle cues that something's missing, or by having a character make note of the omission.

Remember, you're writing in your own world, with its own rules. If you leave something out, a reader doesn't know if you've left it out because it doesn't exist, or if it's on purpose to highlight a theme.

But, if you know how to use this skill, it's an excellent way to avoid bashing your reader over the head with telling. It's going to take some practice, but it makes for much more elegant writing, in the long run.

Back from Hiatus

October just isn't a good month for this blog. Last year, I only updated with reviews for the entire month. I had such plans of staying on track this year, and then I found my life thrown into chaos.

Picture of stormy skies obtained here

I'm not going to discuss what happened in this space, because it's all there on my Twitter feed. Suffice it to say that extreme uncertainty about my future, both immediate and long-term, fails to inspire me to write. I had to move to a new apartment, with all the cleaning and packing that entails. Reading nearly fell off entirely, and writing was so low on my priority list that I still have handwritten pages from August I haven't typed up yet.

I do find myself entertaining notions about my stories and characters more and more, which I thought made this a good time to start writing again. Or, at least, holding myself accountable for failing to write. The one short story I wrote that I don't intend on anyone ever seeing doesn't count. It's a laughably thin allegory, and it was pure catharsis.

In the meantime, I have built up some observations, through books and movies and reviews and blog posts and conversations with other writers about the writing process and craft. So I have some fresh material.

I'm still going easy on myself, so I don't anticipate writing more than one post per week, plus reviews as I finish reading books. It's still helping me to analyze what worked and what didn't. If I have an idea I have to share right away, I'll post it, but don't hold your breath. Committing to anything is still difficult for me, and I'm already fretting I'll forget. If there's going to be a blog post on a given week, it'll be up by Monday evening, at the latest.

I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo this month, but I'm here to offer encouragement to anyone who is. If you're struggling with your word count, feel free to drop me a comment, and I'll try to help.

My goal right now is to type up what's been waiting for over two months for me to type up. Maybe I'll do more, but I'm approaching one problem at a time, for now.

Back to Writing Basics: Empathy

Image of boy and girl hugging found here

While I'm posting about tools and building blocks, I thought it might be a good idea to discuss other skills a beginning writer should cultivate and develop. I was discussing books I was reading the other day when I hit upon a crucial skill of character development. The ability to empathize, or even sympathize, was never taught to me as a skill set I would need, but developing it has served me well.

A writer can certainly write without any empathy, but I think the lack of it is where I often feel whacked over the head with a Message. This is where straw men and thin characterizations come from. Not understanding why people would feel any other way than the Message you're trying to get across is going to lead to a weak argument, easily overcome by the moral message you're trying to impart.

When I was much younger, I wrote stories about a sympathetic serial killer. Rather, I thought he was sympathetic. I know now that his anger was only justifiable for that level of violence if the people he killed were less than human. In the stories I wrote, they were, because they were mere cardboard cutouts. If I gave the victims lives and personalities, their sins were no longer egregious enough to justify snuffing them out for the slights they'd committed. At least, not to anyone who wasn't the killer.

Like most writing skills, you cultivate empathy through practice. I spend a lot of time in my own head, and about a tenth of that time is mulling over things I don't agree with. It's not to change my mind, though sometimes that's a side effect. All I want to know is, why would someone think differently? If I lack the cultural awareness or history, I look it up, or read a book on the subject. I find authors from different backgrounds than mine, and read up on the context of books whose perspectives were jarring to me.

 Empathy will also lead to a greater variety of characterization, as you'll be able to better write characters who don't agree with your personal beliefs. I mentioned in my post on throwing out the rules that I read PostSecret and the related comments, and one of the reasons is empathy. I'm interested in how people are different than me, what makes them think or act that way, and what other people's opinions are on those thoughts and behaviors.

While very little of what I find out about how other people think ends up explicitly in what I'm writing, the overall understanding I gain is quite valuable. I'm learning to slip into several different perspectives, because I understand how very different characters might feel.

Sometimes it can be a challenge to remember which perspective I'm supposed to be in, but, I'm learning.