Jen Black's Blog, page 94

Emotional Journeys

The Emotional Journey should have a beginning, middle and end, too. Remember the Action storyline is about what happens, and the Emotional Journey is how those actions affect your main characters. Well, we all knew that, didn't we? There isn't a lot to say about that without going into examples. But  I should remind myself that emotional journeys have rises and falls, highs and lows, in just the same way as the  Action Journey, and should be true to its own logic all the way from A-Z

We could think about emotional words instead. Adverbs come in for a lot of stick these days. They are the words that often modify the action a verb takes. They describe a character's feelings, or how a dialogue tag is delivered, and my critique partners put a red line through them almost every time I use one. 'You don't mean that,' he said sarcastically. 
I have a certain fondness for adverbs and often confuse them with adjectives. Adverbs are quick and easy and, well used, can add to a piece of writing. Used lazily, no one likes them. Too many of them, like the passive voice, keep readers on the surface of your story. Use the correct verb, keep the dialogue strong and forget the authorial summing-ups like happily, sad, sarcastically. Unless, of course, you are writing your story via
a narrator who happily sums up what is happening after every scene.

Words like beautiful, delicious are meaningless because they are so subjective. My beautiful is hardly likely to match your beautiful. Pick the right word, the exact word, every time.

For my interest rather than yours, I checked on the definition of an adjective and here's what the dictionary says: "a word or phrase naming an attribute, added to or grammatically related to a noun to modify or describe it." No wonder I misremember the two words - one works with verbs and the other with nouns. Simple - when you know! Perhaps now I have this to refer to, I shall never worry again.

Conflict in fiction

Act Two makes up the bulk of the story. This is the Action Story. It is here that the hero tries to solve the problem, save the maiden, complete his journey, whatever. The problem itself may shift or change as the story progresses. Little stays static in real life, and we can use that in fiction. Problems metamorphose into larger problems, or twist and become different problems.

This is where the tension must rise as the problem is faced and overcome in a series of mini climax up to the ultimate climax which resolves everything. It is in Act Two that the story events, even if they're changing, need to be linked to each other. Think cause and effect - there always has to be a link, even if we know random acts take place in real life. Good Fiction rarely depends on luck. There has to be internal logic and structure. Each plot-point must rise out of the previous point. After each climax there will be a small lull and then the tension begins to rise again.

Remember that if you have several story threads running through your novel - and I have! - then each thread needs its own internal logic, and the tension must rise there also, in the same way. Importantly all the threads need to link into a logical ending. Now this is where I think I have some of my threads rising jerkily. I wanted to show the two steps forward, one step back, sequence that so often happens in Real Life, but sometimes things got out of sequence as a consequence. This is something I must check.

Rising side by side with the Action Story is the Emotional Journey, and I'll write about that next time.
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Plot and Structure

Spent a most uncomfortable night with Tim after his surgery, (he was so comfortable he left little of the bed for me!) so did a fair bit of reading about plot and scene structure. This book said straight out that it is not enough to have great characters and a compelling problem. I also need a strong inner logic to my story - a step-by-step ordering of events that makes sense and feels satisfying to a reader.

I'm finding as I go through this last edit that my story is not always logical - at least, not as logical as I thought it was. It's hard for crit partners to detect this fault, for they read chapters at a time and rarely get to see the whole thing. But agents and editors spot it immediately, and there's many a near miss because of lack of structure.

So, there has to be a compelling story, well written and with engaging characters. Plot and structure have had the least attention with me - so far. perhaps now is the time to concentrate on that side of things. A basic plot structure begins with Act 1 - the beginning or set up. Here you introduce your main characters, your setting and what life is like for your characters. Readers need to connect right away with the characters. These things can be covered quite quickly, often in a few pages, certainly in the first chapter. Show who your main character is and what motivates him/her and hint at the troubles and problems to come.

At the end of the set-up comes the inciting  incident, or first plot point, whatever you want to call the event that jerks the main character out of his/her normal life into some of of journey or problem to be solved.

Then comes conflict......but at the moment I'm having conflict with Tim who has woken up,
is bored and wants to go OUT.

Eating Green Strawberries

We are having a running battle with our six month old puppy who, crafty and cunning as he is, persists in eating green strawberries. Apart from the fact that they will probably give him an upset tum, we want the strawberries to ripen so we can eat them with our breakfast cereal every day. As fast as we tell him No! he gobbles another one.

The funny thing is I don't remember anything like this with the Dalmatian bitch I owned many years ago. Perhaps males are just more trouble? He is due at the vet's for the big C op tomorrow, which may calm him down but I'm not banking on it. I'll feel guilty as hell afterwards when he looks at me as if to say What did I do that was so wrong?

I have reading stacking up on me at the moment. I completed Goddard's excellent Out of the Sun late last night, and have Write a Blockbuster and Book Proposals awaiting my attention. I don't suppose they'll say anything startling and new, but I live in hope, and refreshing the memory on all the salient points can never be a bad thing. I have the sneaky feeling that Facebook and Twitter are losing out to something else now, but I don't know what/where that something else is. I don't find the snippets as interesting as I used to, and the links to interesting articles seem to have dwindled to nothing. Indie Book Promoter has single-handedly taken over Twitter - maybe I'll have to look for some new people to follow.

Red eyes and sneezing

I know I've been waxing lyrical about the abundance of wild flowers this year, but now I'm beginning to think it's all too much.  Took a delightful walk in good company yesterday by the river bank in Corbridge and began sneezing on the way back. Sneezed all the way home in the car, and got a fright when I looked in the mirror and saw the whites of my eyes had swelled up around the iris and turned a sort of bloodshot yellow.

Last night was not comfortable at all, even with the introduction of a glass of red wine. This morning most of the swelling has gone but my right eye is still red and itchy. I took Tim for his early morning gallop on the field behind the house clutching a big white hanky to my nose, much to the amusement of kids going by to get to school.

So, today will be an indoor day, with much work on the re-editing. DH has gone up the street to buy me some face masks from the hardware store! I suggested that a trip to the chemist to ask if there is a preparation I can take that won't interfere with the pills I take everyday. The biggest pity is that the weather looks wonderful - cloudy blue sky and a brisk breeze waving the trees in the sunshine. At least I'll be able to watch Wimbledon though I have faint hopes for Murray.

High concept indeed - Les Revenants

High concept seems to be the name of the game these days, but it is so difficult to think of something that has not been done before. I've finally caught up with a couple of episodes of The Returned, or Les Revenants, a series running on Channel Four at the moment. Talk about odd? This is odd. For a start it is all in French with subtitles in English, but I quite like that because then I can read and follow the story. So many modern productions have "real" soundtracks that make following conversations difficult. So the story concerns a young girl, Camille, who was killed in a coach crash. The story opens with her neatly climbing over the dam wall four years later and walking down the road. She's going home.

She's very noisy for a ghost. Her footfalls and heavy breathing echo on the lonely mountain road, and when she gets home, she walks straight into the kitchen and raids the fridge. Her mother, torn between horror and wonder, can barely speak. How about that for a story opening? I have only watched two episodes but may have to watch right to the end just to see the explanation - if there is one.

Writers of fantasy and science fiction are at liberty to delve into this sort of thing. I'm not so sure I can get away with it in historical fiction. But the theme of Les Revenants kept coming back to me - how would I feel if someone re-appeared when I knew they had died? The mere though makes my back hair tingle, and I don't have an answer. I suspect I would be like Lena, Camille's twin sister but now four years older than Camille  - freaked out. These things should not happen. If all the laws of life and death are tossed aside, where would that leave us? It's a terrible thought, but definitely high concept.

Creative Writing courses

A friend of mine has recently signed up for a creative writing course, and shared her book list, which I plan to work through if I can get hold of the books. Half of me thinks these courses are A Good Thing, and the other half sniffs and asks How Can Good Writing Be Taught? (It might be because the course are darned expensive, which gives me an excuse not to partake.)
However, I see on Twitter this morning that a debut author has been snapped up with lots of zero numbers trailing the important one. The author is a lecturer on  - you've guessed it - a Creative Writing course.

"The Fire Sermon is set in a world without technology. 400 years in the future after a nuclear apocalypse. All humans now have a twin, with one, the Alpha, being physically perfect and the other, the Omega, having a mutation. A state of division exists between the two, with rebellious Omegas forced to live on blighted land, but although they live apart, when one dies, the other dies, too. The book follows Cass, an Omega with an invisible defect, the ability to see the future, and sees what happens when her power is discovered and her twin Zach casts her out.
Coode said: "I was completely hooked by the concept and her narrative skill was evident from the first few pages. The Fire Sermon is a wonderful adventure layered with high drama and provocative world building, with strong, appealing heroine at its heart."

Author Haig is a senior lecturer at the University of Chester, where she is programme leader in creative writing. Voyager plans to publish the book in hardback in spring 2015. (Joshua Farrington in the Bookseller today.)"

So there we are. That tells me what I should be doing, doesn't it? I should be skipping off to offer my money to the nearest creative writing course. It is interesting to note what appealed -
high concept, narrative skill in the first few pages, drama and a strong, appealing heroine. All those things agents keep banging on about. I've wondered lately if I'm bucking the trend by writing of a male protagonist in the first few pages of my story. If I  swapped Meg for Matho, would it make a difference? A few weeks ago I felt it did and I've brought her story forward to share the first chapter with Matho. I think I'm pleased with the result.

Harsh reality

"In 1206 Walter fitz Gilbert died leaving a widow, Emma and two daughters, Alina and Alesia. Herbert de Penewurth offered two hundred marks and two palfreys for the marriage of the widow, but at the price of two marks and one palfrey she obtained leave to marry whom she would, subject to the king's assent.
In 1207 she married Peter de Vaux, who paid the king five palfreys."

Such little snippets found in old manuscripts amaze and horrify women today. The thought of not being able to choose the man you married, and having to bribe the king in order to have any choice at all, is deeply upsetting. I don't know how men feel about it, but authors ought to take note of such transactions and include them in their storylines. Tales of feisty heroines running off into the countryside and meeting a handsome young knight who feels impelled to protect, love and marry them are just so much the stuff of dreams.

The reality is more likely a man of mature years seeking a second wife because his first has died in childbirth. His first priority may well be to ask what she brings with her in terms of land or property, and the size of her dowry. Her looks were probably immaterial, or at best a lucky bonus if she was passably handsome. He may well have battle scars, missing teeth and several children as old as the bride, but who wants to write, or read, of such marriages? But it doesn't hurt to inject a little reality into historical romances. Not every girl got to marry the equivalent of Mel Gibson.

Modern tv

 Have you ever watched a newscast and muttered rude comments about the presenter, the guest and whatever it is they are discussing? It has become commonplace in our house. "Rubbish," I hear my dh say when someone spouts forth with some new plan for educational reform. "We tried that forty years ago. Stop re-inventing the wheel."
I get incensed when I hear someone say volunteers can run a library as well as paid staff. "Rubbish," I hiss.
We're old fashioned enough to dislike the news that a huge section of children are growing up without the influence of a father, to wonder why young women, often inappropriately dressed, are walking home alone at three in the morning through darkened streets, why film soundtracks are now so deafeningly loud, why people over forty still cling on to the gigs and pop music of their youth, why the media consistently attacks the NHS, why people buy so much pre-packed rubbish from supermarkets, why there has to be so much packaging - all brightly coloured and appealing to the eye when the goods inside are so much the opposite - and above all why people throw away so much food.

Another thing - why are presenters and interviewers so rude these days? When they interrupt people trying to give an explanation, cut across them in mid-sentence, talk over them to the point that the viewer cannot hear either person clearly - what are they teaching young people? That it is cool and clever to be rude? Another annoyance is the presence of so-called music running behind the person speaking to camera. This is particularly annoying when it's a documentary and the information you tuned in for is being drowned out by some mad drummer in a basement. If he was a neighbour, people would be hammering on the front door and asking for him to desist. The other irritating thing is the camera drooling over presenters from every possible angle including the revolting up-the-nose shot from around knee height while ignoring the rock formation (Ian Stewart) and the historical artefact (Too many presenters to mention) the landscape (Neil Oliver) and I am so tried of watching the screen with growing nervous tension  as the presenter drives along a motorway while talking and gazing at the camera. (Julian Richards and Bettany Hughes) Even Liz Bonnin and Chris Packham, to the detriment of the snow tigers and the creatures on Springwatch.

Bah humbug! Feel pleased to have got that off my chest, and hope someone from the BBC is reading.

Editing and other groans

 First day of Wimbledon, and my favourite tennis player is out. I suppose, seeking for the bright side, it means I'll be watching the box a lot less than I expected, which in turn means I'll be writing (or rather editing) a lot more. I may even get to do my blog posts on the correct day! But how sad for Rafa to be in such pain that he can't play his "normal" game. and how unfeeling of the Wimbledon crowd, who cheered and clapped for the unknown player rated 135th in the world. Maybe he was playing the match of his life, but did they have no sympathy for Rafa? It was plain to see he was limping, and pulling up when he tried to run. People are so fickle.

Tomorrow is earmarked for grocery shopping, and we'll do that early in the morning. Then it's a relax into writing day except for walkies with Tim. I'm up to Chapter Fourteen and spotting a need to sharpen up the motivation for certain characters. All the time I'm seeking better verbs, a more appropriate adjective and combining sentences still. It's an interesting exercise, especially since I thought I had finished with this story months ago. Unhappily, I've come to a halt with the critique groups to which I belong. I need to really concentrate and not muddle my mind by writing or critiquing other stories. Probably they won't miss me, may even be glad to see the back of me, as I suspect I'm far to honest with my comments. But you know, they don't have to agree with me. They can always stick to their version of their story. On the other hand, sometimes, I'm  blunter than I should be. My excuse is that I'm usually doing these comments quickly and don't stop to make my comments sweeter.

But hey - writers need to be thick skinned when it comes to receiving rejections and comments that don't say how terrific every word is - and don't alter a thing. No first draft is that perfect. Not even my sixth - groan!