Roz Morris's Blog, page 99

'Blues took me to the swamps of the Deep South, and the heart-rending misery Emily encounters' – The Undercover Soundtrack,Sanjida O'Connell

Blues, slave songs and the decadant glamour of the Deep South. My Undercover Soundtrack guest this week stirs up a heady mix for her novel about an Englishwoman in the 1850s who marries a charming American – and discovers he owns a plantation with 700 slaves. Sanjida O'Connell is at the red blog talking about the music that helped her write Sugar Island

'Blues took me to the swamps of the deep south, and the heart-rending misery Emily encounters' – The Undercover Soundtrack,Sanjida O'Connell

Blues, slave songs and the decadant glamour of the deep south. My Undercover Soundtrack guest this week stirs up a heady mix for her novel about an Englishwoman in the 1850s who marries a charming American – and discovers he owns a plantation with 700 slaves. Sanjida O'Connell is at the red blog talking about the music that helped her write Sugar Island

The midpoint – where your story gets personal

We were pootling along in the car the other day and Dave said 'where's the mid-point in Blade Runner?'

My memory does the very opposite of total recall, so I hazarded that it was where Roy finds Pris again and they discover they are the last replicants left alive. Or was it the scene where Rachael comes to Deckard's apartment, they have a heart-to heart about the fact she's a replicant and other things transpire. Or was it both – as each significant character should have their midpoint… and for a finale I swerved to avoid an oncoming tractor.

Back home, we checked. The Roy/Pris scene is way past the middle. The actual middle is the scene where Deckard's boss tells him he's going to have to kill Rachael, even though she's not one of the renegade bunch. We'd both forgotten the scene where Deckard kills Zhora and feels unexpectedly bad about it – another turning point. Or the scene where Deckard is nearly killed by Leon and is rescued by Rachael (who has previously made it clear she'd never visit the kind of scuzzy areas where Deckard hangs out). Midpoints galore, it seems.

Midpoint, schmidpoint

Backtrack for a moment. What's the midpoint anyway and why do we bother to identify it? It's a moment where the story significantly shifts gear. Readers (and moviegoers) seem to have an internal clock, and generally like it if this shift comes roughly half-way through the story.

What does a midpoint look like? Here are some typical forms a midpoint can take.

It can be a false victory – perhaps the main character has apparently got what they wanted and discovered it was a shallow goal or has got them in big trouble. (Deckard has after all just managed to shoot the first of the replicants he is hunting.)
It can look like the original quest went horribly wrong and now they have to sort out a much more involved mess.
It might be an echo of a scene from much earlier in the story, but done for different, more serious reasons.

Whichever it is, at the midpoint everything turns grave. It is a moment when the conflict and journey become internal as well as external. The character's need is deeper, truer. The consequences become more significant. The characters pass a point of no return.

Blade Runner again

The reason Dave and I were having trouble identifying the midpoint of Blade Runner - apart from fuzzy memories – is that there are significant shifts for the characters all the way through. The movie is a continuum of internal change. The characters are transforming inside all the time, discovering deeper needs, acting in the grip of impulses they have never faced before, getting into deeper trouble and discovering profounder joys – which increases what is at stake. Also, there are two protagonists. This is one of the reasons the story has such momentum and pace. It builds and builds, propelling the characters towards what will be the most significant moment of their lives.

If you build a story so that every scene commits the characters more deeply, drastically and personally to their path, it will be engrossing.

Thanks for the pic, Neeta Lind

Let's look at our favourite books or movies. What's at the midpoint – and was it hard to choose? Share in the comments!

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"He hummed Cole Porter – so anachronistic in those days of psychedelic rock'n'roll' – The Undercover Soundtrack, Anne R Allen

My guest this week is another writer who usually keeps music well away from her workspace. But when she unearthed a note written to her by an enigmatic friend from her college days, she found herself drawn to the music that reminded her of him – Ella Fitzgerald's legendary recording of the Cole Porter songbook on the Verve label. The novel that resulted is The Gatsby Game, and its author, Anne R Allen, talks about its undercover soundtrack today on the red blog.

Love writing? Love the tools of the language

Nothing unnatural except for an apostrophe

Here are some terms we must stop using. 'Grammar Nazi.' 'Punctuation police.' 'Spelling snob.'

When did we start forgiving sloppiness and sneering at correctness? If you have a genuine love of the writing craft, isn't it a point of pride to get these things right?

We are writers. Our prose is our instrument. These are not stuffy, irrelevant rules. They are essential technical skills for communication.

When we get them wrong, we trip up the reader. Or we mislead, or undermine ourselves (and here let me metaphorically wave a copy of Lynne Truss's Eats Shoots and Leaves).

Yes, the reader might be able to guess what we really mean, or mentally correct it for themselves. But we shouldn't do that to them. And for every reader who shrugs off a wrong apostrophe, there's another who sees it as slovenly ignorance. (That's me, by the way. Unnecessary apostrophes make me apoplectic.)

Forgive the missing 'c'...

But good grammar, spelling and punctuation go unnoticed. They aid invisibly and discreetly, like an exquisitely trained butler. They let your content speak and breathe for itself. They give your writing poise and control. Doesn't every writer want that?

I appreciate that if you don't know about it, it's daunting. But make it part of your job to find out. If schoolish tomes put you off, there are plenty of more palatable books. If you really struggle, find a beta reader who can salvage your language for you.

To turn to publishing, let's look at what happens when we don't take enough care. You may already have seen this post by British writer Anthony Horowitz in the books blog of the Guardian newspaper. Look at the comments. Look at the bile heaped on books with bad grammar, spelling and punctuation (and particularly how the commenters feel this defines self-published books). If you needed proof that writers are judged on these things, look no further.

So please – no more of the N word, the P word or the S word.

My pet hates – what are yours?

Its and it's are confused

Its means 'belonging to it'.

It's is short for 'it is'.

If you're still confused, ask yourself if you mean 'it is'. If you don't, it's probably the other one. See how easy it's?

There and their

If what you mean is 'where', the word you want is 'there'. You may also use it without any meaning of its own in a sentence such as 'if I see this mistake again there will be blood'.

If you mean 'belonging to them', you need 'their'.

So there.

Reigns and reins

A horse has reins.

A monarch reigns.

You can have a reign of terror, but on a daily basis I see: 'so-and-so took over the reigns of power'. This is wrong. They are speaking figuratively of leather straps that steer – and so the correct word is 'reins'.

I also see 'we had to reign in our spending'. That refers to an act of braking – which is done with a rein.

Nay, nay, nay.

Tell me yours in the comments! And recommend good books on the topic…Thanks for the pics Electricnerve and Jimmiehomeschoolmom

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'I'm almost not creating, but transcribing the feelings the music gives me' – KM Weiland, The Undercover Soundtrack

My guest on The Undercover Soundtrack this week claims not to be musical in the slightest, but 'endlessly fascinated by the power music has to tell perfect stories'. She is KM Weiland and she's talking about the aggressive, dreamy soundtrack that beat, thudded and swelled behind her medieval novel Behold the Dawn. Join me at the red blog

Drama comes from making us care

I just finished a novel I should have loved. As I read the climactic scenes I could see how they were supposed to work. A scene brought certain ends dramatically together. A character's action had poetic parallels. Certain lines of dialogue resonated with the themes and echoed a casual utterance early on. The twist should have been an exquisite emotional ambush. A character was symbolically repeating acts from earlier in the story.

Neat as it was, dramatic as it was – it left me cold.

Because I didn't care about the characters.

Drama isn't about intellectual parallels or puzzle solving. Drama works on the heart, not the head.

It's the same with beginnings. The usual advice to start a story with something attention grabbing can mistakenly be translated into a big bang for its own sake. A car crash, a bomb going off, a chase or a fight. They work much better if we know the people these events are happening to – if they matter to us.

Drama isn't a bang, it's a fright, a clench of anxiety. It's not the event, it's the feeling. And at the end of a book, the events, parallels, thematic repetitions are simply box-ticking if we're not bonded to the characters at a closer emotional level.

So I looked back at where I became so detached reading that book. It all hinged around the central romantic relationship.

I didn't see the relationship matter very much to the narrator. I didn't see him pin hopes on it, worry about it or indeed react to it in any strong way. I didn't see what life might be like if it went wrong.

It's easy for writers to take the reader's reaction to a relationship for granted. And of course, you don't want too much hand-wringing or moping, but you do need to remind us, with story sleight of hand, that it's important.

Also, it's easy to forget to intrigue us. If the narrator is intrigued by the other character, make us captivated by them too.

Anyway, I came away with a reminder to always ask myself this question. To make my ending work, what do I need the reader to care about?

Thanks for the pic epSOS.de on flickr

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And tell me in the comments if you've learned something from finishing a novel you weren't getting on well with

'Things are not what they seem, and I seek songs where melody and lyrics don't match' – Kim Wright, The Undercover Soundtrack

My Undercover Soundtrack guest this week has a penchant for songs that sound upbeat on the surface but hide a deep seam of darkness. Many of her favourites helped her to understand the main character in her debut  novel Love In Mid Air – a woman with the ideal life but a wounded inner voice. Come to the red blog and meet Kim Wright

Where do you write? Post at Authors Electric

I'm addicted to those pieces in Saturday newspapers where writers show us round their writing rooms. The walls for Post-Its, the arcane but essential talisman on the desk, the flop-and-read area…. even if we all know that half our work probably happens in snatched scribbles at the Tube station, or in our heads while half-watching a film. Anyway, today I'm at Authors Electric giving the guided tour of my study, for those who are as nosy as I am.

Where are your special writing places? Tell me, in the comments here or at AE – and if you've posted about it, share the links!

 

Go beyond the literal – make a story dance

My dance instructor is an editor in her more sensible hours, like me. She deals with precision, facts, boiling ideas down to their exactness. How things work and what they are. The world of the literal.

But when she wriggles inside a piece of music to choreograph a routine, she speaks a different language. One of moods, emotions and universal connection. Her style is jazz, a discipline that gathers moves from just about anywhere. Not just the formal steps of ballet, salsa, contemporary or hip-hop. It might be a woman in high heels walking across a room, a covetous glance with the head tilted just so. Simple moves, but when put with the music, they reveal more about it than you ever dreamed was there.

Writers have to do both these things. We construct the literal – who does what and when. What that leads to. Whether everything is logical and how many Tuesdays are in a month. We set up surprises.

Important as that is, the charm of a story lies beyond this.

It comes in two ways:

how well we snare the reader in the experience – the moment-by-moment writing
why it feels so much more important than 'just a story'

For the first point, so much comes down to how we use our prose. The break of every paragraph, the glint of every verb, the run of every sentence, the open eyes of a word's vowels or the quirky wink of a letter clash. Like the jazz choreographer, you don't have to be fancy or formal – walking across a room is just as effective as a formal metaphor, often more so. You can charm the reader with every mark on the page.

Of course every genre has different expectations of its prose, and every individual writer has different sensitivities too. But all stories have a degree of performance and need to put on the right kind of show. When you're doing a final polish, look beyond the steps and make the story dance.

Which leads me to the second way a story charms a reader. When they finish, the best stories somehow make sense as a metaphor in retrospect – for life, love, the human condition, whatever.

And here the dance comparison is of no use whatsoever.

Thanks for the pic of Momix Giandomenico Ricci

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What do you do to make a story dance? Share in the comments