Ruth Ann Nordin's Blog, page 53

M is for Motivation

Due to a power outage, I wasn’t able to post this yesterday.  I’ll do a post for the letter “N” tomorrow to catch up.

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Your character’s goal will motivate them to act.

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Your character is as unique as a fingerprint.  She won’t be like any other character you’ve ever written or will write.  She might have similar traits to other characters, but she is a specific and unique character in her own right.  This means the motivation is going to be unique to this character, too.  You also want this motivation to be compelling enough the reader will want to stick with the character through the entire book.  So when deciding what your character’s motivation is, think about the character’s personality and  background.

If you’re a panster (like me), you can know the character on a subconscious level. The panster becomes consciously aware of the character as they write.  This is why we end up surprised by a new twist we didn’t see coming.  When you write at the panster level, you have to trust that the character’s motivation is going to make the story all it can be.

Plotters will figure things out ahead of time, so they know (going in) what will happen and why the character is the way she is.  Depending on how heavy the author plots, they will know more (or less) going into the story.  I know some authors who do basic outlines and fill them in as they go along.  I’ve heard of others who have a detailed outline of everything before they start writing.

There is no right way to write the book.  The best thing is to go with the method that works best for you.  Like unique characters, authors are different, too.[image error]

Back to motivation…

Motivation is what will propel the character toward the goal.  It is the desire burning within the character.  Think of what makes you wake up in the morning.  When you open your eyes, is there something that you look forward to?  Is there some driving passion that excites you?  This is the kind of motivation your character will need to take the journey.  So think of that emotion when you’re trying to get across how much the character wants that goal.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

L is for Loose Ends

Loose ends are those things in the story that never get resolved.

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If you like loose ends:

Some stories use this technique to end the story, especially in the thriller/horror genres.  It’s a technique where the writer can let the reader decide what the real ending is.  It’s often the twist that leaves the reader hanging.

For example, in the movie Premonition with Sandra Bullock, the story ends with the heroine being pregnant with her  husband’s child (and her husband is dead, as far as we know).  She hears the shower running.  No one should be there, so she goes to check behind the curtain.  Then she gasps.  We never see what she saw.  That’s where it ends.  So you’re left wondering, “Who the heck is in the shower?” Given everything she’d been through in the movie, it could be her husband or someone else.  You just don’t know.

A loose end can also be a, “Was the story real?” question.  I can’t think of any story off the top of my head, but let’s say we go through the entire story and the character wakes up, thinking it was all a dream.  But then, he sees something in his real life that reminds him of the “dream” he just had.  And this leaves the reader wondering, “Was it really a dream, or did it really happen?”

If you don’t like loose ends:

Tying up loose ends can come in the book or later in the series, but somehow in someway, everything finds a satisfactory ending point so the reader isn’t left wondering, “What the heck?”

When I’m writing a story, I’ll spend time during the last couple of chapters figuring out where all of my unresolved plot points are.  These can range from minor issues (such as friends needing to have a heart-to-heart talk after a misunderstanding) to major ones (such as tracking down the identity of the killer).  Loose ends are anything you introduce in the story that need resolution in order for the story to feel complete.

In romance, it’s typical to tie up all loose ends.  There might be a hint to another character’s story, but overall, the story can act as a standalone novel in the series.  Often in fantasy series, there are loose ends up until the last book, though there can definitely be  fantasy series where each novel in the series can be a standalone novel.  (Pier Anthony is good in this area.)

If you decide to use a plot point (or two) that span the entire series, the trick is not making it such a huge loose end that the reader feels like she didn’t get a complete story.  I don’t know how it is in other genres, but romance readers hate cliffhangers, even if the story is in serial format. Regardless of genre, though, if you have a cliffhanger, I recommend having the next book out quickly (like in a month or less) so you don’t leave the reader hanging for too long.

To avoid upsetting readers with an ongoing loose end in the series, I recommend that you make each book in the series a complete story.  For example, Book 1 needs to have it’s major conflict resolved.  Book 2 will have a different major conflict that will, in turn, be resolved by the end of that book.  Same for Book 3, etc.   If you are running an underlying conflict (aka. loose end) that is spanning through the series, it should be minor enough not to leave the reader upset if you don’t resolve it right away.  But, the final book in the series needs to resolve this particular loose end.

(If this post was confusing, please let me know.  I struggled with how to best explain this one.)

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

K is for Kill (Killing Things That Don’t Belong in the Story)

It can be hard to let things go, but if someone or something in your story doesn’t do anything for the plot, throw it out.

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One of the worst things you can do in your story is ramble on about things that slow the story down.  You might know some awesome tidbit from the research you did for the story, or there might be some clever line or scene that you love, or there might be a secondary character you adore.  But (and I know this is hard), you have to get rid of anything that doesn’t add to the plot.

Yes, you don’t want to rush anything.  But you also don’t want to do anything that slows down the story.  Pacing is important.  The balance is a delicate one.  But in this post, I’m talking about avoiding things that will bore the reader.  Anything that bores the reader needs to be thrown out.

The test, of course, is what to toss out.  How do you decide such a thing?

An easy way to figure out if you need a scene is to remove it and see if the plot is still the same.  If it is, kill the scene.

If you have a character that only seems to get in the way and doesn’t add anything to the story, toss him out.  You might have had a plan for the character early on, but the story just didn’t go the way you planned and this character is no longer needed.  If this is the case, get rid of him.  Now if you have very minor character who adds some comic relief or some interesting little bit that doesn’t overwhelm the scene, then go ahead and keep him. It’s okay to have something small from a minor character inserted as long as it doesn’t detract from the plot.

If you’re info dumping about something you learned while researching on a topic for the book and this info dump does nothing to advance the plot, toss the info dump out.

If your characters are talking, and one says something that is a lot of fun or poetic, but this doesn’t lead into the rest of the conversation, you’ll have to kill it.

One thing you can do with these deleted parts is put them on your blog, add them as special scenes for those on your email lists, or add them to the end of the book (as you would a deleted scene in a DVD).  So you don’t necessarily have to say good-bye to them completely.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

J is for Journey

The journey is the character’s story, and the way the journey progresses depends on the choices the character will make.

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The journey, in a nutshell, is the plot.  But I’m not the kind of writer who thinks the plot directs the characters. I believe the characters should direct the plot.

What do I mean by this?  Well, to put it simply, the character comes before the plot.  Every character is as unique as a fingerprint.  No two can be alike.  They might have similarities, but they will be distinct from one another.  Because of this, each character has his own way of trying to obtain his goal.  That is why the journey he takes will evolve from him.

It’s like a domino effect.  You start the story with the character in his normal day to day life.  Things are going along as they have always been.  From there, the character needs to want something, which is the goal.  Everything the character says and does will impact the journey.  And with each new development that pops up to stop him from getting his goal (aka. conflict), he will need to adapt and say or do something else to continue on his way to the goal.

So the basic format for the journey is simply this: introduce character’s world, give character a goal, bring in a conflict that will hinder this particular character from getting the goal, have him react in a way that makes sense for him (given his personality traits), introduce another conflict (should one be necessary), etc.  That’s really all there is to the journey.

The journey ends when either the character gets his goal (happy ending) or realizes he’ll never get it (sad ending).  Either way, there has to be a resolution to the journey.

So when you think of what kind of plot to build around your main character, take into consideration the conflict that will have the biggest impact on the character.  What can you do to the character that will bring about the most angst?   The bigger the angst, the more powerful the story.

But the angst has to be something that makes sense given his personality.  For example, putting a secure character in a socially awkward situation is not sufficient angst to resonate with the reader.  But, if you put an insecure character in the socially awkward situation, it has a lot more impact.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

I is for Intimacy

When I say “intimacy”, I mean the author needs to have an intimate knowledge of his point-of-view characters.

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In real life, there is a part of us no one truly knows, no matter how close they get to us.  Sure, people around us will have varying degrees of intimacy with us.  Our spouse will know us better than our friend, and our friend will know us better than an acquaintance.  But the only one who truly knows us is us.

The same should be true if we are to write the emotionally engaging character.  We should know their backgrounds, their darkest secrets (even those that never show up in the story), and we should know their futures.

This can be a sad thing.  I write romance, which is a happy genre.  You always have a happy ending.  But I know things about some of my characters that have made me cry, even though these things have never shown up in the book.   I don’t write this stuff down.  It’s just stuff that comes to me when I’m in bed or taking a shower or going for a walk.  I can’t shut this off.  I just “know” this stuff about the character I’m currently writing.

Usually, this is backstory stuff I had to take out during the edits.  For example, there was a lot more to one of my character’s story that I never touched on in a book already charged with a depressing backstory.  None of it belonged in the story, so it was never added, but it did add layers to this character’s life that made me understand her intimately.

But sometimes, this is something I know will occur in the future (long after I type “the end”).  For example, I know one of my couples will lose one of their children to an illness.  I’ve been asked to write more of their story, but I will never do it because I don’t want to make them “go through” that pain.  As long as I don’t ever write it, they’ll be suspended in their happy ending.  Believe me, the reader does not want to know more about this couple.  It would ruin the book for them.

Our main character should be as complex as we are.  I like to think the reader should be at the level of spouse/best friend with the character.  But, the author is the only one who can look into the soul of the main character and see what’s really there.

The key, of course, is how much you reveal in the story.  My suggestion is to only put in what you need in order to make the story the best it can be.  Any revelation you give should advance the plot.  If it doesn’t advance the plot, it doesn’t belong there.

So don’t be afraid to explore all aspects (good and bad) about your main character.  You don’t have to include everything you learn.  Just the parts that matters to the story.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

H is for Humor

Humor in fiction can take on many forms, but it’s always the character’s point of view that  directs the reader to the humor.

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I’m only going to touch on a couple types of humor.  To do them all would be too exhausting.

Dark humor – this touches on something morbid or offensive in a funny way.  Dark humor tackles the hot button topics most of us are afraid to touch in case someone gets offended by it.  For example, if you’re writing a story where a man is so stupid he doesn’t realize he’s having sex with a dead woman and he thinks she’s just not into it (so he tries harder to please her), this could be dark humor.  The tricky thing with dark humor is that is has to be done just right to resonate with the target audience.

Slapstick humor – this is physical in nature, and it’s usually exaggerated.  Remember ever seeing someone slip on a banana?  Or remember seeing a fight where people are throwing pies at each at each other?  This is slapstick humor.  The Three Stooges (if anyone remembers them) were notorious for this.  The problem with this is that you can’t rely on this to carry humor out for long.  After a while, this can get monotonous.  So the best thing to do is spread it out and keep it short.

Satire – this is humor that makes fun of something or someone.  Often these are situations or people most people are familiar with.  For example, it could be poking fun at people in political offices.  I saw some episodes where a night show host was making fun of everyone running for the current presidential nomination.  The entertainer picks out some trait in the person and exaggerates it so it’s funny.  Another example could be calling a customer service representative about a problem you’re having with your cable bill.  You could have the character on hold, talk to someone who directs them to another number, gets put on hold again, gets another number to call, etc.  The reason satire is funny is because most people can relate to it.

Misunderstandings – this is the kind of humor I like most when writing fiction.  It requires the reader’s knowledge of the character’s point of view to get the humor. In my opinion, this is psychological humor because it stems strictly from the character’s thoughts and requires the reader to get the subtle nuances.  For example, in one story, I wrote about a hero who was falling in love with his wife, and a group of men kept flirting with her.  The wife, however, had no idea  they were flirting.  So when I was in the hero’s point of view, I would have one of the men come up to his wife and say things that were obvious pick-up lines.  The hero was panicking the whole time, but the wife (still unaware of what was really happening) misunderstood why the men were coming up to talk to her.  It’s a subtle humor, but humor all the same, and it’s only something the reader, who knows what is really happening, can truly appreciate because neither the hero nor his wife were laughing.

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The conclusion to all of this is that you consider your point of view character’s personality when you do different types of humor in your story.  What will be funny with one character won’t be funny if you do another one.

G is for Grace

Today, I’m going to talk about you, the author, and why it’s important to go easy on yourself.   Writing is the easy part.  It’s everything that comes after writing the story that can cause a lot of stress.

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What are some sources of stress?

Two of the greatest sources I’ve noticed is a lack of confidence in the ability to tell a good story.  First, a reader can find a typo or two, and suddenly, we see it as a huge mountain instead of the molehill it really is.  Second, we see a drop in sales and figure that people are voting with their wallets on the quality of our work, and the drop means we suck.

That’s why I think it’s important to keep grace in mind.

We are human.  We will make mistakes.  Typos happen.  We can’t catch everything, and the same is true for editors and beta readers.  Think of the traditionally published books you’ve read.  Have you ever read one that had a typo?  I read one where the heroine’s hair color changed in the same chapter, and I caught typos.  Even the big publishers miss stuff.

As much as I wish sales were steady (aka. predictable), they aren’t.  And changes made to the algorithms at the retailer can have an impact on sales.  We can do everything right on our end.  We can write a great story, get a great cover, and have a great editing team.  We can even use our mailing list, create a successful launch campaign, add more books to the series, price it competitively, and even run ads on it.  The problem is, we can’t control how it sells.  We tend to blame ourselves for doing something wrong.  The truth might be we aren’t doing anything wrong.  For whatever reason, the book just isn’t selling.  And yes, it makes us feel like crap.

The only thing we can do is be aware that we have done everything we can possibly do.  Beating ourselves up over whatever is causing us stress isn’t going to change anything.  Yes, give yourself time to grieve.  Listen to depressing music.  Have a good cry.  Take a break.  Do whatever you need to do to get through the low point.  I think the only way out of the funk is by allowing yourself to experience it.  We can’t be 100% happy 100% of the time.

And getting back to a reader not liking our book…  Well, we can’t please everyone.  It’s impossible.  The best thing you can do is realize taste is subjective.  Talk to an author friend about how sucky you feel.  (I’ve found non-writers don’t properly understand why it hurts when someone hates our work.  Other writers, however, get it.)  It’s okay to feel angry or sad about it.  That’s normal.  But don’t stay in that frame of mind.

Be realistic about it.  Even authors you love to read get bad reviews.  Check them out.  You thought the author’s book was awesome, but someone else didn’t.  Treat yourself to something special.  Make time to be good to yourself.  Take note of the readers who loved your work.  And ultimately, if you enjoyed the story you wrote, it was worth writing.

So give yourself lots of grace.  It does the author soul a lot of good.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

F is for Friendship

I know.  This isn’t one of the topics you expected me to write about when it comes to writing, but one important aspect that’s worth exploring is the friendships your characters have.

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Friendship has a way of revealing things about the main character that few other things can.  I don’t know about you, but in my life, different aspects of my personality come out depending on the friend I happen to be with at the moment.  Personalities end up balancing each other out.  With one friend, I tend to be the comic relief.  With the other, I’m a lot more serious.   It’s because one friend has a tendency to take things too seriously (in my opinion) so I’ll find ways to show her the brighter side of the equation.  The second friend tends to be more rational, which brings out the more logical part of me (and the logical part isn’t a comedian).

So there are many aspects in our personalities that tend to come out when we’re around certain people.  The same is going to be true for your main character.  Your main character will be the focus of your story.  When you introduce other characters, their personalities have to bring out something in the main character that helps to advance the plot of the story.

For example, in one story I wrote, the main character was very antagonistic toward a marriage she was trapped into.  This character needed a friend who would help her lighten up and give the new husband a chance.

When writing your story, think of possible personality traits that might aid the main character along in her journey.  What kind of friendships would benefit the main character the most?  Think of balance.  Think of how the friends you introduce to the main character can help her grow.

And make the friendship feel authentic.  Let the characters have moments where they laugh, cry, get angry, and do other things friends do in real life.  The friendship should feel as natural to you as your own friendships in real life.  Next time you’re with your friends, think about how you feel around them.  Do the words you use change from one friend to another?  Like with one friend, you might talk politics.  With another, you might talk about traveling.  Why is it that talking to your best friend is a lot easier than talking to someone you’re not as close to?  There’s a varying degree of comfort and vulnerability depending on the friend you’re talking to.  The same should be true of your main character.

But, only spend time with the friends the main character needs in order to fulfill her journey.  Don’t get sidetracked by meaningless conversations that do nothing to advance the plot.  Every scene needs to have a point.

Also, friendships aren’t limited to human characters.  They can also be between a main character and an animal.  For example, it can be a boy and a dog.  Friendship can take many forms, and the form it takes depends on the type of story you’re writing.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

 

E is for Epiphany

An epiphany is the moment when everything suddenly makes sense to the character.  In short, it is the character’s revelation.

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Have you ever been struggling with something for a long time and suddenly (one day, out of the blue, when you least expect it), the answer comes to you?  This is the kind of moment I’m talking about giving your character.

For example, in the book (and movie) Gone With the Wind, Scarlett spent the entire time trying to get the perfect man.  She believed this man to be Ashley.  What she realizes, at the very end, is that the perfect man was really Rhett, and he’d been there all along.  That was her epiphany.  I’ve seen the movie and the book, and they end the same.  (Hint: if you’re a die-hard romance reader who loves a happy ending-skip this one.)

The epiphany is the “a-ha” moment when everything finally makes sense to the point of view character.  It’s the moment when all the pieces of the puzzle have finally fallen into place.  The character now knows how things are either working for, or against, her.  In return, she will have to take appropriate action because of it.

The epiphany usually happens around the climax of the story, but it can happen earlier.  If it happens earlier, the character will then have to take steps in light of this new information that will lead to the climax where things can be resolved.

For example, your character might find out he has a terminal illness.  He realizes he’s wasted his entire life on worthless pursuits.  Let’s say this epiphany happens at the beginning.  As a result, the character decides he is going to make each moment count, and might, along the way, bring joy to other people who are in need.  At the end of the book, the character will feel complete in knowing he made his life count.

Or, if you want to put an epiphany at the end using the same plot idea, the character will find out he has the terminal illness, BUT he’ll struggle with finding meaning to his life before he dies.  He spends the book coming across all sorts of different people.  However, it’s not until he’s on his death bed that he realizes he has impacted the lives of those people.  When all the people are gathered around him, his epiphany could be at the moment he realizes his life had meaning after all.

So the epiphany is something that’s flexible and can easily work its way into the story at any point in the story.  The key is to put it where it has the biggest impact for your character.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

D is for Dark

Dare to go dark.

When I say that, what I mean is, dare to go into the darkest parts of the human soul.  Dig up the hard to deal with topics.  Let the character experience their darkest moment.

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What do I mean by letting the character have a dark moment?  A dark moment is the point where the character hits rock bottom.  It is when the crap hits the fan, and the character has nothing else to lose.

Now, I don’t use this technique in every book I write.  Some books are lighter reads than others.  So I wouldn’t say this applies to every story.  But there are probably going to be some stories you’ll write that will lend themselves to exploring the darker side of the human experience.

We’ve all been to the point at some time in our lives where we are down in the pit of despair.  Nothing seems to go right.  We feel as if everyone and everything is against us.  We feel as if we’re all alone.  No matter how much we try to explain our pain to others, they really don’t get it.  Worse, it feels as if they don’t care.  If you’ve ever felt this way, then this is the feeling you need to tap into when you give your character their dark moment.

Letting your character go through this can be a painful experience.  (It’s hard to watch our creation suffer.)  But sometimes it’s exactly what the book needs. I fought a certain plot point for years because it was so dark.  I hated putting my character through it.  I tried to write the book in other ways to spare my character the level of that much pain.  But each time I did it, the book fell flat.  I hit a wall where I couldn’t go further into the story.  No amount of forcing things to go my way was going to work.  Finally, I gave up and gave the character the dark moment.  And it worked.  All at once, the story fell into place, and I was able to finish it.

Sometimes you just have to go through the deep valley with your character.  So instead of fighting it, embrace it.  Let the worst case scenario happen and see how things evolve from there.  The results just might surprise you, as it did me.  I honestly think the book I mentioned above is one of my best works.

And remember, just because you have a dark moment in your book, it doesn’t mean there can’t be a happy ending.  Sometimes the ending is that much better after the character overcomes the darkness.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.