Dale E. Lehman's Blog: Lehman's Terms, page 8

Writing on the Train

A couple of months ago, I started working in Washington, D.C.  I live in Baltimore, which is reasonably close to the nation’s capitol, but it’s still a fair commute, around 55 miles driving distance and well over an hour travel time.   That’s why I don’t drive.   I take the train.

Commuting by train doesn’t reduce the travel time, but it makes it a lot easier.  Instead of driving, I can read, write, stare out the window, or sleep.  Frequently, it’s some combination of the above.  With a book and my laptop in tow, I’m ready for anything.

At first, I wasn’t sure how well I could write on the train.  It’s not always a quiet environment, nor is it necessarily private.  I had visions of the person seated next to me reading my words as I wrote them, while people behind me chattered away to my intense distraction.  But it hasn’t turned out that way.   Commuters aren’t much interested in what the person next to them is doing, and once I start writing, I’m nearly oblivious to the noise.

Many of my fellow passengers, in fact, are plugged into their cell phones, listening to music.  Many others read, either from books or tablets or e-readers.  (Book readers like myself seem to be in the minority, but we are still a large minority.   Print isn’t dead yet–not by a long shot!)  Others close their eyes, possibly to sleep, possibly to shut out the world.

In this environment, I can get sufficiently lost in writing that the journey seems far shorter than it is.  Nor, it seems, am I the only one.  Just yesterday, a young fellow sitting next to me opened up his laptop and began writing.  Although I didn’t read over his shoulder, I couldn’t help but notice his fingers flying almost nonstop until just before we arrived at Penn Station in Baltimore, where he closed up shop and debarked.  Whether for work or school or a project of his own, he’d written an impressive quantity during the ride.

We both had discovered the same thing: writing is a great way to commute!

 

Setting: Harder Than You’d Think

Of the three main elements of fiction–plot, characterization, and setting–setting is arguably the most challenging.  You might think otherwise.  My Howard County mystery series is, for example, set in Howard County, Maryland.  Where else?  The plots of the novels can’t be stated so simply, and the characters are (I hope) sufficiently complex as to defy such brief description.  So what could possibly be so hard about the setting?

There are several ways to answer that question.  To start with, setting is not monolithic: it has a surprising number of components.  Different writers spell it out in somewhat different ways, but let’s start with three key aspects of setting: where, when, and who.

In broadest possible terms, where involves universe, galaxy, solar system, planet, land or sea, every level of geopolitical territory imaginable, building, and room.  A location is not just a specific place but an entire conglomeration of nested locations.  Knowing that a character is in a room is not enough.  A room in a pricey high-rise condo in Manhattan is hardly the same as a room on a derelict spaceship drifting without fuel through the emptiness of intergalactic space .
When can involve historical era, season or time of year, time of day, and elapsed time (how long something has been going on, how long it’s been since something happened, how far apart in time two scenes are, etc.).  One might include the weather in this category, since it changes over time.  Some aspects of when may be constant (a whole story may take place in 1865), but some are ever-changing (the story may take place over the course of a month).
The who part of setting is distinct from characterization, involving socio-political culture (itself a complex of history, religion, tradition, etc.), ancestral influences, and population density.  It’s the human background and surround against and through which the characters move.

Another way of understanding the complexity of setting is to think about its interplay with the scenes in a story.  Except in the case of single-location stories (e.g., “In The Butcher Shop”), action is spread over a sequence of scenes which take place in a variety of places, times, and conditions.  The first of my Howard County mysteries, The Fibonacci Murders is naturally set in Howard County, but each scene is located in a particular place within the county: any of several houses, a shopping mall, a state park, the county police department’s Northern District Headquarters, and so forth.  The story unfolds over the course of a couple of weeks, with scenes set at different times of day and in different weather.  Indeed, some of the action in my second novel, True Death, reaches beyond Howard County, even to the Rocky Mountains.  Except in the simplest cases, setting is always changing, just as the plot and the characters are.

The interplay of setting with plot and characterization is more complex still, because setting can influence and even control those elements.  Imagine, for example, that your character must get to the top of a mountain to find an artifact necessary to saving the world.  The location and shape of the mountain will play a vital role in determining how easy or hard it will be for her to succeed.  Indeed, the mountain may render success impossible or even kill her.  Moreover, conditions on the mountain may influence her state of mind and thus her actions, or the experience of climbing may ultimately change her in some way.

Finally, setting can establish tone and mood, and may be used symbolically to reflect other aspects of a story.  I’m currently writing my third Howard County mystery, Ice on the Bay, which sprang from a detail of setting: last January as I drove over the Francis Scott Key bridge on my way to work, I saw to my surprise that the water was nearly frozen over.  (In twenty years here I had never seen that happen.)  Cold weather permeates the novel and mirrors the spiritual state of certain characters in the book.

As you can see, then, setting is neither simple nor easy to get right.  It should be treated as a dynamic element of a story, just as plot and characters are.  In reality, all elements of a story interact with each other, setting included.  Otherwise, you don’t really have a story at all.

Show and Tell

In fiction, exposition is the stuff a writer writes to explain things the reader needs to know but probably doesn’t.  Exposition is necessary in almost every story, but it comes at a price: it’s boring. Really boring.

Wait, let me rephrase that.  Handled badly, exposition is really boring.

Boring exposition is the bane of inexperienced writers, and we’re all inexperienced early in our writing careers.  Fortunately, boring exposition is easy to spot, even in your own writing.  Here are the warning signs:

You step into omniscient narrator mode to explain historical or technical background to the reader.
One of your characters stops what they’re doing to explain things you want the reader to know, even if the other characters already know all about it.

Another word for exposition is “telling.”  The best remedy for boring exposition is to follow this cardinal rule of writing: “Show, don’t tell.” The difference between showing and telling is basically the difference between action and stagnation.  Showing is active, telling is stagnant, and that’s why poorly-handled exposition is boring.  While you’re expounding, nothing is happening.

Simple example:

John was a selfish guy, and whiny, too.

That’s telling.  So’s this:

Mary thought that John was a selfish guy, and she hated how whiny he could be.

But this is showing:

“Those chocolates sure look good,” Mary said hopefully.

John clutched the bag to his chest.  “Forget it! These are mine!”

“Not even one?  Please?”

Shaking with anger, he snapped, “You always want what I have! Why can’t I ever have anything for myself?”

Or suppose you’re writing a science fiction novel in which a device known as a gurfragulator plays an important role.  The gurfragulator (as you’ve worked it out) is based on relativistic quantum feedback chaos (which you’ve also worked out).  You want to make sure the reader understands both the theory and the device before it’s used, so you lovingly detail it over the course of a page.

Stop.  Don’t.

Okay, instead of that, John and Mary find themselves on a disintegrating space ship.  Their only hope of escape lies with the gurfragulator.  John is about to throw the switch, but your readers don’t yet know what it does or how it works, so before he throws the switch, he prepares Mary for it by telling her everything about it.  She responds, “Yes, I know, just throw the switch!”

Please,  please stop.  Do it this way, instead:

John threw the switch, and immediately Mary felt like her body was being turned inside out.  Spacetime boiled around them.  Objects stretched in more dimensions than she could perceive, passed clear through each other, fragmented and reformed again and again.  She had no sense of time.  It could have been a moment or a century of burning pain, and then it was gone, leaving barely as much as a memory, and John and Mary were no longer on the derelict ship.  But God alone knew where they were.

That’s active, and now that we’ve seen the machine in action, we know fairly well what the gurfragulator does.  This is exposition insofar as it lets us know what the machine does, but it’s active exposition–we find out what the machine does because we watch it doing it.  It’s no longer boring.

It can take some creativity to make exposition active.  Long ago I wrote a scene set in a particular room in a particular house.  The scene opened with a description of the room and a character pacing back and forth in the room while pondering some problem.  It wasn’t a long description, but it didn’t work.  It was boring.  I rewrote it several times before hitting on a solution: I described the room by having the character’s shadow moving across walls and items in the room.

Action cures boredom.  Show, don’t tell, and exposition won’t be a problem.

How to Write

If you taught fiction writing, what would you tell your students about planning? Would you teach them to outline their plots? To determine who their characters are physically, psychologically, and historically? To lay out details of the setting? To only start writing once these preliminaries have been completed?

Or would you teach a more laid-back approach, allowing students to begin with an idea and develop plot, character, and setting in the course of writing?  Or would you employ a hybrid method?

Various writers approach their craft in all of these ways. None of us get by on zero planning, but some jump in without much sense of where we’re going. Others start with broad outlines, and still others lay detailed plans before writing a single word.

I’ve heard of writers spending many months planning novels and then writing them in a very short period of time.  I heard one novelist express annoyance at her editor’s insistence on outlines, saying, “I asked my editor, ‘Have I ever followed any outline I’ve given you?’ She said no. I said, ‘So why don’t I give you the outline from my last novel and just get on with writing this one?'”

I tend to be more like the latter than the former. When stuck I plan enough to get through the immediate issue, but I typically start with very little idea where I’m going or who my characters are.  I must see my characters in action before I have a good sense of them, and until I have a good sense of them the plot won’t come together.  Like the aforementioned author, I’m not much good at following detailed outlines.

But that’s just me. Every writer operates differently. I can’t advise you to work my way unless my way actually works for you. What I can advise is that likely your way will be some mix of planning and making it up as you go along. By experimenting to see what works, you’ll find your ideal approach.

Return to Planet Baha’i

In 1999, I was recruited by About.com to provide content on the Baha’i Faith.  My work appeared there starting in January 2000, but in late September 2001 financial problems led to the removal of about one third of their subject sites, including mine.  Shortly thereafter, I created a website call Planet Baha’i to house the articles I had written and continue the work.

Planet Baha’i had a great run, lasting until 2010 when my wife and I founded our publishing company, One Voice Press.  Because we didn’t have time for both projects, Planet Baha’i went into semi-retirement, remaining online as an archive of articles and other materials.

Earlier this year, we suffered a mishap that resulted in the loss of all of our Planet Baha’i content.  Since that time, all I’ve had online is a simple page linking to our Planet Baha’i ebooks (which contain a selection of our best articles).

This week, I decided to recreate the site as a WordPress blog.  You’ll find it at www.planetbaha.org.  It will be a far less ambitious project than its previous incarnation.  I will simply be posting  thoughts and meditations from a Baha’i perspective as they occur to me and as I have time.  But I hope that over time it will grow into a useful and interesting resource for people of all faiths.

Stop by when you have a chance.  Thanks!

 

Me on Reddit

I’m going to host an AMA (ask me anything)  on Reddit for 10/20/2015 from about 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT.  See you there!

A New Short Story

I haven’t written any short stories for a very long time, but recently one imposed itself on me, so I wrote it.   I thought I’d post it here as a free sample of my writing for you.  It’s called “In the Butcher Shop.”  I hope you like it.  Feel free to post comments.  (You’ll need to create an account first.  Sorry, but it’s necessary to control spam.)

Stylistically, “In the Butcher Shop” is a bit different from my novels, The Fibonacci Murders and the forthcoming sequel, True Death.  While writing it, I had the curious sense of channeling Ray Bradbury, although admittedly I’m nowhere as good as he is.  Bradbury is, however, one of the big influences on my writing, so maybe there is something to that feeling.  I guess you can be the judge of that when you read the story.

Enjoy!

“True Death” Kickstarter Launched

I’ve launched a Kickstarter project for my forthcoming Howard County Mystery novel, True Death.  If successful, funds from the Kickstarter will be used to cover production costs, including printing.  Please have a look and consider becoming a backer.  I’d also appreciate help in spreading the word about the project.  Thank you!

Suddenly, the Swan!

I’ve had very little time and energy for my astronomy hobby for the past two years or so.  It used to be that I’d take the telescope out at least two or three times a week, weather permitting.  I logged my observations, worked my way through the Messier catalog, reported my observations of variable stars to the AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers), and tried to observe occultations of stars by asteroids for IOTA (the International Occultation Timing Association).  I was never the most accomplished of observers, but I was out there doing things.

Life gets in the way, though, and I’m a bit older than I used to be.  So time and energy are not what they once were.  Enthusiasm has taken a bit of a hit, too, for several reasons.  For one thing, I only have modest astronomical equipment, which limits what I can see.  For another, I live eight miles from downtown Baltimore, and the light pollution is horrible.  That’s an even worse limitation on what I can see.  I also have less interest in going out on cold winter nights than I used to, but that’s at least a seasonal problem.  What I can, or rather can’t, see is the main issue.

Which brings me back the Messier catalog, one hundred and ten objects forming a list that began life as a collection of objects not to look at if you happened to be hunting for comets.  Today, that list is a key focus for many amateur astronomers.  Hunting for and finding Messier objects is one of the first things most amateur astronomers undertake.  For some, drawing these objects at the eyepiece occupies many hours of observation, while others photograph them.  There is even an activity known as the Messier Marathon in which an amateur astronomer attempts to locate all one hundred ten objects in a single (looooong) night of observing.

I’ve never tried the marathon myself, but I have revisited these objects time and again.  The problem is, I can’t see them all.  Some are too faint or diffuse to see using my equipment from my location, and I don’t typically get to travel to darker locations.  I have tried time and again to spot these elusive objects, hoping against hope that with growing experience and maybe the luck of just the right conditions, I’ll be able to catch one.  But that has never happened.

Until last night.

Last night I took the telescope out for the first time in a long time.  I happened to be out when Saggitarius was hanging in the sky at the end of my driveway.  It’s a fairly bright constellation, and it also boasts a special position in Earth’s sky: the center of our galaxy lies in that direction, so the band of the Milky Way is thickest and brightest as it runs through Saggitarius.

But from my house, not so much.  From where I stand with my telescope, that direction happens to be roughly the direction of downtown Baltimore, so the skyglow is brightest there.  Worse, there’s a streetlight in my face, glaring at me from across the street.  The Milky Way is invisible here, and I can’t even see the stars of Saggitarius without blocking the streetlight with my hand.

As you might guess, if I point the telescope at anything in that direction, it’s generally a disappointment.  An object in that part of the sky must be fairly bright for me to see it, so most of the Messier objects in that region are difficult or impossible for me to observe.

That doesn’t mean I won’t try.  I looked for several of them last night, moving from Saggitarius gradually upward from the horizon until I came to M17, a nebula known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula (and one or two other names, depending upon who’s doing the talking).  There are very few nebulae I can see.  Because they are spread out over the sky, their light is diffuse and their surface brightnesses fairly low.  They have to compete with the human-created skyglow, even in a telescope.   There are only a handful of nebulae I can see without using a filter designed to block the wavelengths of light most typically associated with light pollution.

I have two such filters, one a relatively recent purchase.  Last night, I installed that filter, pointed the telescope at M17, and looked.  Amazingly, there was a smear of light, long and thin, across the view.  At first I thought it was a reflection off the lens from the streetlight.  I moved the telescope a bit.  The smear moved with the stars!  It was real!

After years of not seeing the Swan Nebula, there it was before me.  I tried the older filter and discovered that I could indeed see the nebula with its aid, but it was much fainter.  Had I not known exactly where to look, it’s possible I would have missed it, or at least wouldn’t have been entirely certain that I’d seen it.  Returning to the newer filter, I reveled in the view for some time before moving on to other targets.

What you see at the eyepiece is never what you see in a photograph.  For many people, the smudge of light that greeted my eyes last night would probably have elicited an underwhelmed response.  But for me, after years of not seeing it, suddenly discovering the Swan was a real treat.

“True Death” Back Cover Text

True Death, the sequel to The Fibonacci Murders, is in editing and should be released late 2015 or early 2016.  To give you a sense of the novel, I though I’d share the back cover text with you, at least as it stands right now:

Seven years ago, Lieutenant Detective Rick Peller lost his wife Sandra to an unsolved hit-and-run. Now, while Peller visits his son’s family half a continent away, a botched robbery reveals a previously-unknown criminal organization. As fellow detectives Corina Montufar and Eric Dumas close in on the ringleader, Sandra Peller’s death looks less and less like an accident. Ferreting out the truth will tax Peller’s mental powers, and its revelation could well shatter him.

Praise for The Fibonacci Murders:

“It is always a pleasure for the mystery/suspense enthusiast to include a new author in the genre who has a total mastery of the storytelling arts including character development and superbly plotted story lines with all manner of twists, turns, and surprises. Such is the case with Dale E. Lehman and his novel The Fibonacci Murders.  A genuine ‘page turner’ from beginning to end, The Fibonacci Murders is very highly recommended for personal reading lists and community library collections.”

– The Midwest Book Review

We’ve been pondering cover art, too, and have a few possibilities at the moment.  More on that later.