C. Aubrey Hall's Blog, page 17

Fatal Summary

Controlling reader involvement is another necessary component of suspension of disbelief. Making readers care about your story is the first step. Thereafter, making them continue to care will encourage them to stick with your characters, willingly following the events in their imagination.

However, reader involvement can be discouraged, diminished, and even lost altogether when an author relies too heavily on narrative summary.

One of the five modes of discourse available to writers, narrative condenses story events or information into a summarized capsule that can boost story pacing, skim over trivial incidents, manage background or explanation, and transition quickly from one setting or time to another.

Narrative is extremely useful, but it carries a price in that it doesn’t lend itself to reader involvement.

Think of how you feel when a friend starts telling you about a terrific novel she’s just read. You’re interested at first, thinking you might want to read the book yourself, but when she launches into a lengthy summary of the entire plot, your interest flags, then you become bored, and finally you stop listening. Eager friend has spoiled it for you by skimming through the best parts, giving away the plot twists, and–worst of all–making it impossible for you to experience the novel in your imagination as it unfolds.

Therefore, when you write fiction, try not to fall into the trap of thinking you’re quickening pace by summarizing the dramatic action. Unless forced by length restrictions to shorten a story, you should never condense important scenes.

By their very purpose and construction, scenes are the most involving dramatic points a short story or novel can offer. Because of that, they are written in a way that immerses readers into the situation, the conflict, and every moment of the action and dialogue that transpires. But summarize a scene or important event, and you render it insignificant in a reader’s perception.

Suddenly, having set up reader expectation for exciting scene action, you drop kick your readers out of that vicarious experience.

It can be quite an unpleasant jolt when it happens. If readers enjoy the story otherwise, they’ll forgive such momentary turbulence and continue. But do this too often in the same tale, and you may well lose your audience completely.

For example, for the past week or so, I’ve been trying to read a mystery novel called PHOTO FINISH by Dame Ngaio Marsh. I’ve known about this author for years, but never acquainted myself with her work until a few months ago. She is considered one of the four original “queens of crime” from the golden age of mystery writing in the 1920s-1930s.

So far, I’ve read perhaps three or four of her books, all of them competent mysteries that I enjoyed. This one, however, I am struggling to finish. I’ve read another book since starting PHOTO FINISH, and I find myself doing other things instead of picking up the book. Worst of all, after several days, I have only reached the halfway mark.

(All fairly fatal signs, don’t you think?)

Now, in all fairness, PHOTO FINISH was published in 1980, two years before Dame Ngaio’s death. It was the next-to-last book she published, and I hope that I can do as well in my nineties after such a lengthy, distinguished, and successful career. The story is set in her native New Zealand, and her depictions of the scenery take me to a remarkable, most unusual backdrop.

Yet despite the flamboyant characters and exotic setting, despite the by-now familiar protagonist–Inspector Alleyn–and his wife Troy, the story just isn’t holding my attention.

The story premise is rock solid and exciting. The plot itself has a few hiccups, chiefly because at the halfway point there’s been no crime committed and as yet there’s still no mystery to solve. However, I realized that the primary reason I’m not engrossed is due to the author’s over-reliance on narrative.

The moment something exciting happens, Dame Ngaio pulls back the camera, so to speak, and relates the event in summary rather than letting the story action take place in moment-by-moment conflict. This unfortunate tactic, coupled with a lack of “real trouble” for the characters to handle, has created a slow, rather circular plot that’s stalled. And all the lovely scenery, vivid characters, and likeable protagonists are insufficient to hold my attention.

I’m going to finish reading PHOTO FINISH, even with gritted teeth and sheer determination, because I think it’s intriguing to see a notable author’s final works as well as her early efforts, but I am having to work much too hard to suspend disbelief in order to stay involved. Unfortunately, this particular story has become a curiosity for me rather than a novel that can carry me away.

Summarize too much of a story, and you end up with readers who just don’t care.

Dialogue Don’ts

Another misstep that can jolt readers from suspension of disbelief occurs when a character’s dialogue sounds phony, contrived, or inconsistent.

Developing an ear for dialogue takes practice. It’s helpful to read aloud a character’s lines to make sure they flow well and make sense. However, dialogue should also work visually by being quick and easy to read. Divide it into small paragraphs, breaking to a new paragraph each time a different character speaks.

     “Are you happy now?” she asked. “Will chocolate ice cream satisfy you for just this once?”

     “Okay. Guess so. Black walnut mocha is better.”

     She sighed, tired of his whims, and slammed down the bowl in front of him. “Just eat.”

     “Tyrant.”

By contrast, consider this mash-up:

     “Are you happy now?” she asked. “Will chocolate ice cream satisfy you for just this once?”  “Okay. Guess so. Black walnut mocha is better.”  She sighed, tired of his whims, and slammed down the bowl in front of him. “Just eat.”  “Tyrant.”

The separate paragraphs seem like such a small, obvious detail, and yet inexperienced or careless writers tend to overlook this element of readability flow. Certainly it makes following the conversation difficult for readers.

Phony Dialogue

When a character speaks in a stilted, unnatural way or delivers what is known as dialogue of information, it comes across as false and implausible.

For example, consider this:

     “Darling, darling, darling, I just LOVE your hair. It’s so brown today, catching all those delicious little highlights in the sunlight. And it curls so prettily. Do you wear colored contacts? I think you must because your eyes exactly match that pale streak of color at your temples. And never let anyone tell you to wear pastels, my dear, because they would wash out your skin tones. Leopard prints are what you need. Leopard and jewel tones, always.”

Gushing and flamboyant? Yes.

Over-the-top? Yes.

Dialogue of information? Unfortunately, yes.

Viable? Possibly, if the speaker is a gushing, insincere, middle-aged babbler.

However, sometimes dialogue seems phony because the cadence and vocabulary of the speaker just don’t match his or her design. Let’s say we have a character who is shy, reserved, highly educated, and cultured.

She’s probably not going to say lines such as these:

“So, uh, like I was there, but it was seriously lame. So I bounced, and I wasn’t at the club when the fight broke out.”

Or these:

     “Yeah, I saw the fight. What about it? I hated being a witness. I didn’t notice anything. So why don’t you go pester somebody else?”

Or these:

     “I most certainly did witness the altercation. Unfortunately I had just happened to stop briefly in that den of iniquity to say hello to my dearest friend, a sorority sister if you must know. However, I left promptly since I had no desire to be jostled by the hoi polloi or have cheap beer sloshed across my Armani skirt.”

What’s best is to let the character’s personality shine through without beating readers over the head with it. Therefore, a shy, reserved character would probably answer without mugging or embellishing. Her level of education would come through the use of correct, albeit casual, grammar and an absence of slang:

     “Yes, officer, I went there. I don’t normally go to clubs, but a friend urged me to go with her. I said I would for a short while. But I was needed at home, so I left after about twenty minutes. I didn’t see a fight.”

Contrived Dialogue

I am a fan of the classic THIN MAN series of films featuring Nick and Nora Charles, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy. But near the end of the third film, ANOTHER THIN MAN, [SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!] the murdered man’s adopted daughter Lois suddenly switches her dialogue and manner in a way that is jarring and entirely implausible. Up to this point in the movie, she has been cultured and refined, an entirely gracious and charming person. In the climax [SPOILER!!!!], her vocabulary and tone become harsh and lower-class.

It’s an extremely crude and awkward transformation that gets the director’s point across, but with such contrivance that I dislike the entire movie.

Inconsistent Dialogue

This can happen when a writer is using dialect, habitual phrases, or a distinct speech pattern to tag a character and make him or her stand out from the rest of the cast. At some point in the story, especially in a novel, said writer is prone to forget those speech tags and allow the character to start talking like some of the others. Somewhere in the swampy middle of a book, writer fatigue sets in. And if multiple viewpoints are being used, or if some of the secondary characters disappear for a while and return after the midpoint, it’s easy to lose track of their individual voices and speaking styles.

So, for example, let’s say that on pages 12-30, Ezra Honeycutt has been cutting a vivid swath across the storyline like this:

     “Now see here, son! I ain’t standing for no foolery when it comes to property lines. I know how much land I own, and that dratted skunk Jones can take me to court all day long and it won’t make no difference. What’s right is right, and I’m darned sure right!”

As you can see, Ezra is testy. He’s not too concerned with proper grammar, through his usage of “ain’t” and double negatives, yet although he’s angry he’s avoiding the curse word “damned.” These are little clues to his personality and upbringing, or even his personal code. He prefaces many of his remarks with “now see here.”

However, Ezra is a minor character. He vanishes from the story for a while, and when he returns on, say, pages 96-117, he speaks this way:

     “Now see here, you! I thought I made myself clear when I took Mr. Jones to court last month, but it would appear that I need to explain this property squabble once more.”

Although one of his phrases remains, the rest of his speaking pattern–the rhythm of it, if you will–has changed. He is no longer consistent. He has become less vivid. He doesn’t appear to be quite the same as he was before. Depending on how remarkable, feisty, and bold he was the previous times he appeared, he may not break the bubble of suspension of disbelief, but he’ll affect it.

If needed, take the trouble to create a speech tag chart for each of your characters and keep it near your computer–or even in a computer file–for a handy reference.

Grammar Time: antecedent agreement

Once upon a time there existed the grammatical convention of using the pronoun “he” as a common reference.

Therefore, sentences such as Each student knows he is responsible for filing his assignment as soon as it is written were based on this standardized rule. Noun-pronoun agreement was simple. One student equated to the singular “he” pronoun.

Anyone violating noun-pronoun agreement in writing something such as Each student knows they are responsible for filing their assignment as soon as it is written created a glaring grammatical error.

Correcting such an error was also simple:

Acceptable option 1:  Each student knows he is responsible for filing his assignment ….

Acceptable option 2:  Students know they are responsible for filing their assignments ….

Twentieth-century feminist activists campaigned for equal rights and pay for women and argued against using “he” as the default pronoun.

Writers wishing to be sensitive and PC incorporated the awkward construction of “he or she.”

As we all know, that approach grows cumbersome quickly in formal writing. For example, When a student is left to make his or her choice between salad and chocolate cake, he or she will probably select a sweet.

However clumsy it seems, such a sentence construction is grammatically correct. Yet it has created two less-than-fortunate results.

The first is that the concept of “he or she” has generated a mental image of multiple people. The phrase is singular, referring to either a man or a woman (or a girl or a boy), but to the most casual American imagination it conveys plurality. Why should that matter? Because “he or she” incorrectly becomes an antecedent to “they.”

Incorrect example:  When he or she understand they are responsible for filing their assignments on time, they will be more efficient.

Correct example:  When he or she understands he or she is responsible for filing his or her assignments on time, he or she will be more efficient.

Ghastly, isn’t it? Correct or incorrect, this is not good writing.

The other unfortunate result I want to address is that the concept of plurality has spread, like mustard-algae taking over an improperly maintained swimming pool, to other types of noun-pronoun agreement. In other words, agreement itself is in danger of becoming extinct.

Incorrect example:  When the reader sees viewpoint handled well, they enjoy a story more.

In this horrid sentence, the antecedent “the reader” is singular. Yet because PC training has hammered the concept of “he or she” into people’s heads, the plural misconstruction comes into play and as a result the pronoun used in the second part of the sentence is plural. That violates the grammatical rule of noun-pronoun agreement. If a noun is singular, the pronoun must be singular.

We have two correct ways of dealing with this error.

Correct example 1:  When readers see viewpoint handled well, they enjoy a story more.

In this solution, if you’re thinking plural then go all the way.

Correct example 2a:   When the reader sees viewpoint handled well, he enjoys a story more.

Correct example 2b:  When the reader sees viewpoint handled well, she enjoys a story more.

My preference in writing is to alternate between “he” in making some of my points and “she” for others. That way, the grammatical standard hasn’t been butchered, both genders have been given equal attention, and the sentences remain clear and easy to follow.

However, there has arisen another issue among certain individuals who wish to avoid any gender label whatsoever. Their activists dislike being referred to as either “he” or “she.” They advocate that a person be referred to in the plural, which is grammatically incorrect and inaccurate. By conveying erroneous information, it generates confusion.

A single person standing on a street corner cannot be referred to as “they” because a lone individual is not more than one person. If a police officer needs to issue a report, that officer cannot say, The perpetrator picked up their stolen clothes off the floor and fled the store with three coats and a pair of shoes.

Such a report would confuse other officers trying to make an arrest because would they be searching for one thief or several?

Some might argue that language needs to change with the times and that adhering to old grammatical rules is ridiculous. However, I believe that the adaptability of language comes not through abandoning standards, rules, accuracy, and coherence but in creating new terms that accurately and precisely convey meanings for new concepts. (Of course, English has a pronoun already in place that will stand for anyone entirely gender-neutral, but most people reject being referred to as “it.”)

The English language is complicated, quirky, challenging, and wonderful. Work with it, and it will support you through any ideas you wish to write about. Work against it, and it quickly transforms into a stilted, awkward beast that refuses to cooperate.

The rules serve us well, if we let them.

The Implausibility Factor

Another way–besides gotchas and inconsistent characterization–an unwary writer can break a reader’s suspension of disbelief is through plot events that are simply unbelievable.

Sometimes I deal with students that defend their highly improbable storyline by saying, “But it really happened!”

While real-life events or news stories can spark ideas in a writer’s mind, that doesn’t mean you can chronicle them exactly as they occurred.

The old adage of truth being stranger than fiction means that fiction is a conservative art medium. It brings more order and organization and purpose to a dramatized event than a real event will have. That’s because it must fit into a story. It must serve to advance a plot that’s focused on the protagonist’s goal and is actually helping move the protagonist toward a climax and resolution.

Real life doesn’t necessarily work that way. And therefore real events have to be reshaped and reconfigured in order to be dramatized.

Sometimes, a writer will be too heavily influenced by the spate of what thriller writer David Morrell calls “idiot plots” that have dominated major motion pictures in Hollywood since the 1980s. While action-packed, fast-paced, stunt-laden movies can be exciting to watch, a novelist trying to emulate them can push a high-concept storyline into absurdity.

Granted, no one expects a James Bond film, for example, to be realistic, much less offer character depth or development. Audiences go to Bond flicks expecting a high degree of implausibility. As long as the people running the Bond franchise can keep topping themselves, the exotic locales, hot babes, and wild stunts will continue to make audiences say, “Wow.”

However, an over-the-top movie that spits rapid-fire visual eye-candy at its audience should not be a template for a novelist trying to plot a story. In prose, we have our words, not cinematography or CGI. We can aim for a fast-paced story, of course, but it will never move as rapidly as a film. Therefore, our readers have more time to think, Wait a minute. Wasn’t there a hunch-backed dwarf following the heroine down that Paris street? Where did he go? Why did he stop tracking her? Wasn’t there a reason for that? If he’s not going to show up again, why was he mentioned in the first place? Also, movies keep going so even if someone in the cinema thinks, hold on, an action stunt or locale change onscreen will distract or obscure audience doubt. However, in a book a dubious reader can stop and flip back a few pages to check some authorial misstep.

Oops.

It takes a lot more effort and disgust for an audience to walk out of a film than it does for a disgruntled reader to toss a story aside.

Staying plausible involves keeping up with your hooks, threats, plants, questions, and details. Playing fair with readers means you must not mention or include or feature anything that isn’t in the story for a valid dramatic reason.

Declaring, “Oh, I just thought I’d describe that girl in the clown costume, holding a red parasol while trying to flag a taxi because I wanted some vivid imagery. She doesn’t have any bearing on what’s happening between Gertrude and her mother,” is akin to announcing you plan to go sky-diving for the first time at noon but don’t expect your family to take any notice of it because you’ll be home in time for dinner.

Implausibility can also occur when you fail to plot through your protagonist’s sequels. In other words, if you simply push your character from one event or scene to the next as you would check off items on your errands list, the character’s actions resemble those of a contrived puppet.

Instead, follow up each scene with its immediate sequel–or the aftermath where your protagonist processes what just went wrong, reacts to it, analyzes it, weighs options for what to do next, and chooses a new course of action.

Inexperienced writers can be impatient with sequels, but these dramatic building blocks make an enormous difference in your story’s logic and your protagonist’s motivations. Sequels are key components to a believable plot no matter whether it’s a family drama set in a Virginia suburb or a military thriller set in the Adriatic Sea.

And, finally, your story can become implausible if you neglect the consequences of your characters’ actions. Your story people aren’t confronting each other, arguing with each other, betraying each other, or pursuing each other without result. Every character action worth depicting in a scene should create a later effect on someone or something in the story. If you overlook this, your plot becomes a random montage of character actions that lack an evident purpose and don’t seem to connect.

Such errors and omissions result in readers pushing the story away in disbelief, no longer willing to pretend with you.

THE FANTASY FICTION FORMULA update

Progress is inching forward on the fantasy writing guide. It is now available for preorder on amazon.com.

http://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Fiction-Formula-Deborah-Chester/dp/0719097061/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441127776&sr=1-1&keywords=The+fantasy+fiction+formula

Today I also received a catalog from Manchester University Press, announcing its new titles for Autumn/Winter 2015-2016, and THE FANTASY FICTION FORMULA is featured on page 2.

Exciting stuff that I had to share.

Gotcha of the Day

Remember those little irksome writer errors that we all encounter from time to time while engrossed in reading a novel or short story? Those little details that jar us, or factual mistakes that we catch?

Here’s the latest gotcha to irk me:  petty-point.

Really?

I know I tend to stay too deep in my writing cave most of the time, and perhaps someone out there has modernized this term from needlework. I didn’t find this new spelling in Webster’s, but a  newfangled dictionary out there may have altered it to conform with how it’s pronounced.

Or do dictionaries even exist now when we can look up words on the Internet or have our phone spell them for us? (But I digress.)

The correct spelling is petit-point, a French term for needlepoint embroidery that is very fine and detailed. In old needlepoint (aka Berlin work), a figure’s clothing and body might be stitched in needlepoint or gros-point, while the hands and face were done in petit-point to better depict the features.

When I read “petty-point” in a recently published novel last week, it was like waking up to find a gigantic, green, hairy wart sprouting on my chin.

What kind of hash to the language will come next? Did the author not know better? Evidently not. Did the copy-editor not catch this? Who thought it acceptable? The English language is weird, complex, difficult, illogical, idiosyncratic, and filled with adopted terms such as petit-point, which, while old-fashioned, is hardly archaic.

Why does America sit complacently, content to be dumbed down again and again, oblivious to the rich variety our language puts at our disposal?

Petty and petit … same pronunciation. Same meaning — literally, small. And yet, worlds apart.

And if I’m wrong about this, if petty is indeed an acceptable variant for petit in the context of stitchery, then someone please correct me.

After all, I don’t want to foam at the mouth and rant without justification.

THE FANTASY FICTION FORMULA continued

Since I signed the contract with Manchester University Press for my book on fantasy writing, the prospect of having to write an index has been haunting me.

At first, with publication far away and the entire manuscript to write, I could shove the index to the back of my mind.

When the manuscript was completed and submitted for editorial review, a dark smudge appeared on my horizon. But I still could ignore it.

When revision instructions came back, the smudge became a cloud. Dread, uncertainty, reluctance all had to be faced.

A deadline for the index was handed down. Procrastination was not an option.

Faced with the actual task, with no way out, I took on the challenge of flexing my writing muscles in a new direction and tackling something I’d never done before.

Like so many fears in writing that we finally face, the index has proven to be no big deal thanks to the miracle of computers and a great deal of patience. Is it the most comprehensive or superb index ever written? Nope. Neither. I believe it will be adequate to the task, however, and that’s all I ask of it.

I’m not a fan of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but I love his famous quote, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

How true that is. How often do we let doubt and uncertainty keep us from writing the story in our hearts, the story we believe we can’t do? How often do we write a manuscript and leave it locked in our computer, never sent to market or uploaded to Kindle and Nook? We have to face our fears and keep trying, always.

And now, like the person skydiving for the first time, who lands safely and feels the thrill so keenly she wants to do it again, am I ready to tackle another nonfiction book with index?

Well, not right away.

As for THE FANTASY FICTION FORMULA, the page proofs have been checked, and the index prepared. To my knowledge, all systems remain “Go” for January 2016 release.

Wobbly Characters

A few weeks ago, I launched the first of an intended series of posts about breaking the reader’s suspension of disbelief. Then a deadline happened.

With apologies for the one or two of you who might possibly have been waiting on the edge of your seats for the next installment, I am now, at last, continuing.

Although one of the most prevalent reasons readers are bumped from the story are writer errors, inconsistent characters can wreak havoc with suspension of disbelief, too.

Readers come to your story, willing to play, anxious to accept your plotline, eager to enter your story world, and ready to meet your characters.

In fact, they want desperately to like your protagonist. This character is going to become their new bestie — even if for a short duration — and it’s up to you the writer to supply them with a character that’s appealing, likable, pro-active, clever, resourceful, admirable, and capable of heroism.

That seems straightforward enough, doesn’t it?

But I think writers hit trouble with characters for two primary reasons:

1) they try to create complexity the wrong way

2) they aren’t paying attention to their own story people

Let’s deal with #2 first.

How, you may be wondering, can a writer lose track of his character? Isn’t the character his creation? His baby?

But a sloppily designed character–one that’s thinly constructed with next-to-no background, few if any physical attributes, no tags other than a name chosen at random, and entirely lacking in motivation for whatever its writer intends for it to do–is quite easy to forget.

What happens when you can’t choose the right name for your character? You realize the importance of connotation in names, but you just can’t find it. Nothing seems right. Nothing really fits. So, with the pressure of a looming deadline upon you–or possibly just impatience to get started–you slap a temporary moniker on the character and proceed.

BOO! Wrong idea.

Sticking a temporary name on your elf is like trying to use one of those modern, stretchy-fabric Band-Aids that are supposed to be ouchless, but instead just fall off.

You call the elf Bob, promising yourself that you’ll find the right name later. But because Bob doesn’t work as the character’s name, you will probably forget it in the heat of writing your battle scene between the elves and the swamp lizards. So somewhere amidst the flying arrows and slashing swords, Bob becomes George. Or Jerry. Or Bill. Or XX.

Yeah, you know. You intend to fix it. But once the battle scene is over, you may be struggling with its problems that distract you away from your nameless elf, who isn’t really working as a character anyway.

If you can’t find the right name, you haven’t met your character properly. You don’t know him. And until you do, you can’t possibly write his dialogue or story actions with any degree of plausibility.

Not knowing your character means you will be hesitant when it comes to what he says and does. This tentative effect weakens the character. It’s easy to forget how he reacted in Scene 1 so that in Scene 7–when Nameless Elf needs to respond in a similar manner to whatever’s happening–you can’t remember what he did before, or you can’t remember his position, stance, or opinion–so you write his reaction differently.

Result? An inconsistent character that no reader will believe in.

Take your character and determine exactly what he looks like. Write a description that’s specific, not vague. Overflowing the sleek Porsche’s back seat, a drooling St. Bernard gusted hot breath on the nape of Joan’s neck is much more vivid than The big brown dog sat panting in the car behind Joan.

When you know what your character looks like–how tall is your elf? Are his pointed ears delicate and small, or huge like Dobby’s in the Harry Potter books? Are his eyes large and protruding? Does he have warts? Is his skin green or as pale as milk?–then you can think about what makes him tick.

If he lived with you, for example, in the here and now, who would he favor in the next presidential election? What’s his favorite food–snail eggs or chocolate chip cookies?

What’s his personality? Is he meek and mild-tempered? Is he rash and impetuous? Does he blurt out comments before he thinks? Is he incapable of lying? Or is he incapable of honesty? What are his best traits? What are his flaws?

Why is he in your story? Maybe you only intend him to appear in two scenes, complaining about your housecat’s forays into his garden, but however minor his role he should be vividly portrayed and matter to the story.

What is his goal? Why does he want that goal? If he fails to achieve his desire, what effect will that failure have on him?

By the time you answer all these questions, you will know that his name is Delfwin, for example. He has come alive to you. You now know him well.

And whether he’s important or minor to the story, your elf will be consistent and plausible each time he appears on the page.

As for reason #1 why story people fail to work, this occurs through a writer’s efforts to deepen character.

Perhaps a writing coach has told you that your character is too one-dimensional and needs to have more depth and complexity.

So you think, aha! I’ll come up with a more elaborate backstory for my shy, orphaned girl that’s backward for her age.

Accordingly, you weave a larger and more convoluted past for the character, making her an orphan raised by wolves from the age of one until she was five, at which time a forest ranger found her and brought her home for his wife to housebreak. Since learning to speak and eat cooked foods, Sheila Wolfbane has grown up wary of people, inclined to snap and lose her temper. But because her biological parents were concert musicians who died tragically in a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness, Sheila has considerable talent and plays the piano, violin, clarinet, and harmonica adeptly. She plans to attend Harvard and study environmental law.

Wow! Isn’t she now an amazing character? In draft one, Sheila was just an ordinary backwoods girl, but now … look at her!

I’d rather not, thanks.

Sheila isn’t any more complex in version two than she was in version one. The writer has invented a plethora of extra details about her, but that’s just more sequins glued to her shirt.

She won’t become complex until she has inner conflict. Let’s say that she acts meek and demure, avoiding eye contact and pretending to be shy, when in fact she hates Ranger Rick and Mrs. Rick for taking her away from her true family, her pack, and she’s planning to murder the Ricks so she can run back to the woods where she belongs.

Now when she snarls and snaps, she immediately shuts down her temper and apologizes, but inside she isn’t sorry. She wishes she could bite them and tear out their soft throats.

She’s psychotic, but she’s also more complex than before.

Too far out for your taste? Then perhaps Sheila survived the plane crash in the woods and lived on her own for several weeks until she was found. Trauma has rendered her mute. As she grows to young womanhood, she yearns to speak, wonders what the world is like beyond the forest, but is afraid to leave her home with the Ricks despite the fact that Ranger Rick is getting old and must retire soon. Sheila is terrified of change, yet curious of what she might see and learn. The young, handsome ranger taking Rick’s position is attracted to her. Sheila could live with him, and remain in the woods that are her refuge, yet a part of her wonders if she really loves this man or is just using him as a way to avoid facing her fears.

If a writer doesn’t understand how complexity is achieved, the piling on of more and more detail will at some point become implausible, even silly, and readers can no longer comfortably remain with the story.

Bubble Bursting

When readers settle down to enter your story world and meet your characters and become caught up in your plot, those readers are making an effort to suspend disbelief in the whole thing. They are trying to believe in what you’ve written. They want to make believe with you. They have come willingly to play with you.

It’s a writer’s job then to help readers continue to suspend that disbelief from start to finish.

Various things, however, can bump that fragile suspension. Writer errors, inconsistent characterization, implausible plot events, jarring dialogue, slow pacing due to too much description and explanation, weak scenes, and shoddy viewpoint management are all factors that can jar readers right back to the real world. Jar them too often, and they may give up on the story with impatience, frustration, or a sigh.

After all, they’ve paid good money for the entertainment your book or short story promised them. And that money will be seen as wasted.

So let’s consider these problems one at a time and see how they can be avoided or remedied.

Writer Errors

Sometimes known in the business as “gotchas,” these are factual errors or anachronisms that readers catch. Although writers make valiant efforts to research settings, procedures, history, skills, situations, clothing or gear, etc., mistakes can and do happen.

Years ago, I was listening to best-selling thriller novelist Ridley Pearson talk at a writers conference about how he had researched the city of Seattle as a setting for some of his crime novels. He pored over maps. He consulted with Seattle law enforcement. He tracked down every detail he could think of, and then discovered–after his book was published–that he’d gotten the tides wrong and the victim’s body wouldn’t have washed ashore in the way he described. How did he discover it? Readers–maybe even readers from the Seattle sheriff’s department–let him know.

Ouch! Years after his book’s publication, Ridley was still wincing. Because he cared.

Some gotchas are fatal to a book. Others are not.

The fatal ones occur when the storyline is implausible because it’s heavily based on serious writer ignorance. For example, a writer wipes out a plane’s pilot mid-flight and then has a passenger flying the plane to a successful landing … incorrectly. So incorrectly that the plane would crack up if someone actually did what the character executes. Such extreme error occurs when writers fail to research at all, hoping lazily that no one will catch it.

Another form of fatality is to write a string of implausible character actions that leave even lay readers saying, What? Why doesn’t she just …  Wouldn’t they do …  Shouldn’t it be different than this?

A nonfatal gotcha can often appear as a goof in the setting detail, such as a character threading his car through afternoon rush hour traffic, with the author unaware that the street in that city at that time of day is one-way only. Locals would know it, but the majority of readers probably would not catch it.

A few months ago, I introduced a student to Jim Butcher’s first novel, Storm Front. She really enjoyed the story events, but his minor errors with the Chicago setting bugged her terribly, as she claimed to be very familiar with the locale. So she read the story because I assigned it, but itching and twitching all the way.

Naturally, some gotchas are dependent on the level of reader tolerance. Some readers will find mistakes but shrug them off. Others are bothered, or distracted, or annoyed, or offended. And some readers are themselves wrongly informed about your topic or setting and are too stubborn to believe you’re right.

Recently I read a historical romance set in the French Revolution. The plot was quick and engaging. The characters were likable. The historical period is a favorite of mine. It was evident that the author had done a considerable amount of research on her setting and period details. Since I used to write books in this time frame and have researched it, I was glad to be able to enjoy the book without gotchas.

Until the hero came into his room at a roadside tavern in 1792 France and “set a mug of coffee on the dresser.” It was so anachronistic, so wrong for the period and time, that it jolted me out of the story. I liked the plot and characters enough that I kept reading. But every time they drank coffee on the road or in a house or wherever, I remembered that phrase. Worst of all, I found it progressively harder to suspend disbelief.

You might be thinking, over a tiny detail like coffee? Lighten up!

Yeah, I do try. But you see, in the 1790s, coffee was expensive and hard to come by. It wasn’t available at modest roadside inns and most people couldn’t afford it. And people didn’t have dressers either. They used other types of furniture, but not dressers which came along in the 19th century. Worst of all, the phrase was just too modern. It was perfect for a story set in the 21st century, but not for a story set in the late 18th.

A lot of readers wouldn’t catch this and most might not care. But for me–for this reader–it was a distraction. I read books set in historical times for the flavor of the setting. A modern phrase destroys that ambiance, and it disappoints me. It also made me doubt other details the author was using. It made me doubt the story. I became wary, and my antenna went on alert for more errors that might be lurking in those pages.

Too much doubt, and readers will dump the book. I didn’t stop reading the historical because its author was pretty sound on everything else. But had I caught another glaring anachronism or error, I would have tossed the book aside.

Are you thinking, why didn’t the editor catch it?

Because editors these days are overworked and rely on writers to get things right. This particular author is successful and popular with her readers, so evidently the majority of them aren’t bothered by mugs of coffee on dressers in an era when people drank coffee rarely, went to coffee houses to partake of the beverage, didn’t use mugs unless they were peasants–and even then they were called tankards instead of mugs–and didn’t have dressers because they used wash stands, dressing tables that we would call vanities today, chests of drawers, and wardrobes instead.

Nitpicking? You bet! In all fairness to the author, she was just having the guy bring his lady love some breakfast. But I would have been happier had he whisked a tray from the hands of the chambermaid and put it on the bed so his lady could partake of a dish of tea and a morsel of ham. The lady was English and I don’t think she swallowed tea in the entire novel. And while I’m no tea drinker myself, I do know that it was the beverage of choice in that time period. If the character disliked tea, then the author should have said so and I would have loved her for it.

As a writer, you can’t be 100% perfect, but you should always strive to be as accurate as you possibly can, because you never know who’s reading your fiction or how it’s being interpreted. When you do get things right, readers notice and they are incredibly appreciative that you cared enough about their area of expertise or knowledge to check and double-check.

Updates and Announcements

THE FANTASY FICTION FORMULA is still in production and almost ready for the next phase of wending its way to publication. I will be receiving page proofs mid-July, which means yet more proofreading. Ack! This seems to be the year of proofing, with thirteen of my backlist titles published digitally in February and number 14 just up on Kindle. FFF will be the 15th book I’m combing through for mistakes since January. Who knew the new eyes were going to get such a thorough workout?

As for my declaration of reading 100 novels during the summer, I have to admit I’ve spent more time at my computer trying to write a novel than planted in my armchair reading them. Still, I make no excuses. I can report only seventeen read thus far. I find this disappointing; however, the summer isn’t over yet so I will not yet surrender my goal.

(Am I allowed to count the ones I’m proofing? Nope! Am I allowed to count magazines? Nope! Am I allowed to count owners’ manuals for techie toys? Nope!)

Currently I’m reading an autobiographical account of an American woman who was a Japanese prisoner of war in Borneo during World War II. Entitled THREE CAME HOME, technically it’s not a novel, but I will count it anyway. A movie was made from it, starring Claudette Colbert. This is not a quick read, but who cares? The point is to fill the well.

Harlan Coben is up next.

What are each of you reading this summer?