C. Aubrey Hall's Blog, page 30

Saving the Dinosaur

A bezillion years ago, I stood in my hometown’s public library and made the decision to become a writer. From that point forward, I pursued all the necessary avenues:

1) Learn to write a complete story.

2) Learn to write a complete story that’s good.

3) Learn to type properly.

4) Save for a new typewriter.

5) Save for the best typewriter on the market.

6) Buy a personal computer.

By the time I achieved step five, I was an ace of typewriter technology. Since achieving step six, however, I have stumbled along the fringes of the techno-world. I ignore the pitying looks, the sidelong glances of my students when they catch me fumbling with which button to push.

Unlike me, they learned about computers in elementary school. They’ve never known a world where personal computers don’t exist. Some of them have heard of typewriters, but stare at them in antiques stores with little-to-no comprehension.

My world is different from theirs. It has spanned a broader, longer range of technology, some of it now obsolete. For example, I have known a world where VCRs did not exist, then they opened a new world within home entertainment, and now they have all but faded from cognizance.

(The violin should start playing now ….)

In high school–focused on my goal of preparing myself to be a professional writer–I chose typing class over honors American History, thereby sacrificing my chances to be class salutatorian. (The prospect of giving a speech at high school graduation versus a future as a prospective bestselling author? Puhleeze!)

In typing class, our first lesson was to learn how to fold the typewriter cover neatly and place it in the appropriate slot on our typing table. Although some people in this world may not know what carbon paper is, I know how to make an erasure on the top sheet without smudging the carbons beneath.

Yeah, no kidding. Big woo.

I also know a number of additional useless typewritery things, like how to count and divide spacing in order to center a heading on the page. You see, on typewriters there was no mouse to click on the “center” toolbar icon. Imagine! A writer having to learn rudimentary arithmetic skills in order to type.

My only official computer training consisted of two lessons at the IBM personal computer store, where the salesman perched on a stool next to me and showed me how to boot up a 64K floppy and how to save a file. The computer mouse didn’t exist then. Learning how to work that little gizmo came much later.

Now all this walking-to-school-in-the-snow posturing is just that. Posturing.

Uh, mostly.

I could have taken computer lessons any summer of my life since the darn things became affordable for ordinary consumers. I’ve never wanted to spare the time away from my real purpose: writing.

It’s like a car. I know how to drive so I can get where I need to go. I don’t know how the engine works. I cannot change a spark plug. I feel no need to learn these skills.

With computers, I know how to write books on them and a few other things. Beyond that, I never take the time.

I tend to change computers every decade or so, usually when the exponential zippety-zip-zip of technological advances means that I can no longer buy a printer that will speak to my elderly software.

Recently, I was faced with the danger of being left too far behind. My computer was coughing in the dust, gasping on the verge of no longer being able to keep newer technology in sight.

Good old XP could not upload my backlist book files to print-on-demand venues. Even writing this blog involved dealing with all sorts of bizarre error messages.

At some stage, you can no longer blame all your computer woes solely on the invention of Chrome.

It was time to either buy a new computer and be faced with the dreaded, to-be-avoided-at-all-costs Windows 8 or upgrade my operating system slightly.

I chose the latter option.

Now the reason I avoid changes for at least ten years isn’t because I’m a Luddite, or cantankerous, or a curmudgeon, or a miser, or simply lazy. I’m not opposed to new technology–as long as I can see clearly how it’s going to improve my standard of living or smooth my writing path.

The main reason I dodge technological change is because it means taking the computer down. I’m cut off. I cannot work. The book in progress is stalled and endangered while mysterious processes go on. So there I am, clutching my life’s blood in a flash drive, standing at the edge of the firelight while a witch doctor mumbles mysterious incantations over my PC tower.

Installing a new operating system this time involved these dreaded words: wiping everything.

With tech support dangling on the fiber-optic end of my phone line, I hastily saved critical files much like an individual running through a burning house. Get the book! Where’s the dog leash? Get the manuscript. Get the other manuscript. Is that the right draft? Where are my book notes?

And then we pushed the button. It was akin in some ways to the US president firing Nuke 1.

My computer was dead on the operating table … well, lying there on life support.

We began the awful process of resurrection and restoration. Now, those who can change the spark plugs on their cars or DO understand how computers actually work can sit back smugly and think, How sad. How feeble.

Yeah, it is. It also pushes me to that edge where panic is clawing in my throat. Almost always, there comes a moment when that reassuring little green light and graphic indicating installation is running smoothly is halted by a sudden and emphatic error message.

“INSTALLATION FAILED.”

It doesn’t help that installation fails on the last section of my new Windows program, a section that may or may not be critical to the entire operation. It doesn’t help that installation failure will only happen on the one night of the year when tech support’s due to go home and the new shift has decided not to show up.

(Imagine being halfway through your gallbladder operation and the surgeon goes home for the night, leaving you lying half-sutured on the table in the cold darkness of the operating theater.)

It doesn’t help that once that sleepless night is over and more tech support is found and installation is finally, mysteriously, somehow achieved by finessing our way around the glitch, the email remains down.

It doesn’t help that this is the precise moment my editor decides to email me the final proof of my manuscript-in-press and wants it back immediately. How do editors know to do this? They’re across the country and yet they can drop proofs on me at the worst possible moment. I liken this ability to the way my cat used to jump in my lap and put her fuzzy paw unerringly atop the very word I was reading.

It doesn’t help that my groggy invalid of a computer–now stitched back together in the awkward style of Frankenweenie–decides next to lock me out sans password, necessitating a furious disconnection of the tower and hauling it through pouring rain to the nearest tech/repair center.

It doesn’t help that although I can now play video on my improved computer, the audio card has died. And it doesn’t help that the repair guy–after annihilating the lock–shakes his head and mumbles that I really need to buy a new machine.

Let him be wrong.

My machine is off the operating table and working again. I have a new screen saver, I think. I have new icons. I have found my emails. I got the manuscript proofs checked over. I am writing again, and ongoing projects have resumed. The printer has been returned to its rightful status as the default beast in a strange hierarchy of places my file now can be sent. There’s still no sound, and something is funky with photograph uploading, but these are minor problems.

No longer am I debating each time I leave the house on whether to put that precious flash drive in my purse or secure it in a fire- and tornado-proof location.

The dust is settling, and I have almost recovered from several sleepless nights. Writing–which is the only reason I put up with computers at all–can go on.

For another decade perhaps on this creaky HP?

Ah … no, perhaps not.

Phoenix Time

If you want to be a novelist–and by that I mean you really want to write books on a regular, consistent basis and aren’t just toying with the notion of writing one book someday–then you need to be aware of the statistic floating around that claims the average novelist’s career ends after three books.

That’s a dismal statistic. I’m so glad I didn’t encounter it early in my career–much less BEFORE my career was launched.

So why am I laying it on you? Because my point is that–like so many statistics–it can be misapplied and misunderstood, thereby becoming deceptive. You need to understand what’s true about it and what’s misleading.

Long-term working writers reinvent themselves all the time. Unless and until a novelist strikes oil with a major, runaway bestseller or creates a series that becomes highly popular with readers, it’s necessary to adapt and change in order to keep pace with an ever-developing book market.

I have friends in the business who write in several genres under different pseudonyms. So you may see a trio of science fiction space adventures from author Wylie Writer, and maybe you’ve enjoyed them. But then Wylie vanishes, and you think, Oh, darn. He gave up writing.

Not necessarily. Wylie Writer simply found that revenue on the PRINCESS MONA MAMBOS ON MARS series was inadequate, or Wylie’s publisher declined to continue Princess Mona’s adventures. So Wylie is now working on a new paranormal romance project, ZOMBIE BABES, under the pseudonym Amanda Amorous.

The book business operates in a feast/famine cycle. You land a five-figure book deal. You treat your family to steak. Then you s-t-r-e-t-c-h that money over the next three years while you write your epic urban fantasy trilogy about the battle for New York between the organized werewolf clans–Canis Nostrum–and zombie invaders from New Jersey. “Yo, Fuzzy! Go down to the sewers and give Mr. Rotgut an offer he can’t refuse.”

Writing other projects on the side can help mitigate the famine aspect, if you have the focus and discipline to write more than one book at the same time. (Sometimes our day job gets in the way!)

But the first book in that trio may not sell terrifically. Book 2 is much better, but the publisher has already lost interest and doesn’t push it. Book 3 is slid onto store shelves without any fanfare at all. Writer does not land another deal with that publisher.

Again, if you’re in the business because you love to write and you can’t live without words and you intend to keep on writing despite everything, then you pitch your next project to another publisher. And maybe you do so under a different name.

The added complication–as if writers don’t already juggle enough of them–is the current publishing revolution. Traditional ink-on-paper publishing has been merged and blended into what’s now known as the “Big Six.” In a year or two, it will probably be the “Big Four.”

Vanity publishing–thanks to the advent of electronic books–has never been easier. A novelist can put up as many books as she can write. The drawback, however, remains the same hiccup that we’ve always had: getting the public to notice.

In the past, the hiccup was called “distribution.” Under the old-style of self-publishing, you paid a company to print your books then you drove around with a stack of two hundred copies in your car trunk and couldn’t get any brick-and-mortar bookstore to let you hold a book signing event. You ended up either storing the books in your mom’s garage, handing them out to your family as Christmas presents, or dumping them at a tag sale.

In the present, the hiccup is called “promotion.” The new venue of self-publishing gives you worldwide distribution online. Trouble is, you have to catch reader attention. Novelists are now spending time learning to design Web sites and constantly feed a stream of chatter into the various forms of social media in hopes of enticing someone to read their latest e-book.

Writers try new ideas all the time. They try new venues. They pitch their projects to literary agents and publishers, and maybe they’re shot down. They write the book dear to their heart anyway and publish it in Kindle format. No one reads it, and every online visit to the empty bank account (created just for e-book revenue) is a stab to the heart.

This is a business of dreams and disappointments, splurging and starving, trying something new and meeting rejection. It is a lifetime of persistence. A career novelist has to be able to endure the jerky uneven pace of this kind of existence, perhaps even thrive on it. Most importantly of all, a novelist doesn’t quit, doesn’t quit, doesn’t quit.

No matter how many reincarnations it takes to keep work going out there to be read by others, we don’t surrender. We don’t give up. We endure the dark tunnel of working on projects doomed by their publishers to fail. And now and then, we step out into the light of a new sales contract, a juicy advance, a book that’s selling, and good reviews. Like troglytes kept too long in the shadows, we blink in dazed amazement and smile. And when we descend back into the tunnel, the warmth of the good times we’ve enjoyed keeps us going.

Passion & Discipline

Here’s an admission for you: I love the TV show, AMERICAN PICKERS. Nowadays, if I’m not under the gun on a book deadline, I reserve Saturdays for browsing flea markets and antiques shops, searching for that bargain, that treasure, that find. It’s less about the item than the hunt, and I love looking up my purchases that evening to see what their current market value is. Have I scored? Or have I paid top retail price?

Recently, I discovered a new shop–not just new to me but new in business, a fledgling treasure trove, barely a month old since its doors first opened.

I found two items of interest: both were priced identically at $25. Both were vintage. I could choose only one because the wallet was running close to empty.

One choice I suspected would bring higher value, but it was large and bulky and wasn’t going to fit in my car that day. The other choice appealed to me personally for no discernible reason. It’s the one I bought.

That night, I got online and looked them up. The item I chose is worth no more than I paid for it, and in fact I paid top retail price. (Boo!)

The item I didn’t choose is worth $200. Had I sold it at that price, it would have meant a 75% return on my investment. (As the Chinese used to say, Woe, woe, woe!)

I moaned for a few minutes, and then I took stock because that’s what novelists do. (Fortunately or unfortunately, we carry constant self-awareness with us. No matter what we’re doing during the living of life, we’re also an observer, taking notes.)

So what if I flubbed my little pickers game? I got the item I liked best. I let my passion overrule my sense of discipline. The things we love cannot–and should not–be squelched for cold-blooded, hard-headed, analytical, heartless reasons.

Many years ago, I bought my first puppy. At the time, I was ignorant of dogs and the dog world, and made several mistakes in that endeavor. Nonetheless, I finally chose a pup and took the tiny darling home. He was only six weeks old, much too young to be weaned and sold on the same day. (One of the mistakes I made.) He tried to eat the food sent along by the breeder, but his tummy couldn’t tolerate it. So he quit eating. In a panic, I called the woman and asked for advice in how to keep him going. Her response was, “If you want to bring him back and exchange him for another puppy, you can.”

I was horrified. Baby Dog wasn’t a pair of shoes that didn’t fit. In twenty-four hours, he’d already become a piece of my heart.

So I dug down and fed him toast, cooked oatmeal, and cottage cheese until I figured out what kind of dog food he could tolerate. Eventually I solved the riddle of his food allergies. And Baby Dog and I were a team for over 14 years.

In writing, crafting a book involves a lot of discipline. The craft, the technique, of writing is tough to learn, tough to master, and tough sometimes to apply. That’s okay. Knowing the writing craft has saved me countless times. It’s enabled me to complete books or meet deadlines when I thought I couldn’t bring it off.

But I will still choose passion over discipline every time. Passion for the love of words, for the shaping of a story, for the satisfaction of bringing characters to life trumps everything else. Passion for story brought me first to books as a reader, then as a writer.

Writing on discipline alone will not generate passion, but if there’s a strong enough passion for the story within you, you will harness discipline to help you through. In novelist Dorothy Sayers’s masterpiece, GAUDY NIGHT, the protagonist and her mentor are discussing how to know if you’ve found your main purpose in life, your life’s work. The answer from the mentor is (and I’m paraphrasing loosely) that you find it when everything else in your life falls before it, and it crushes all your other interests like a steamroller.

I have written without passion, and at such times it’s a slog through a valley of dust. Maybe I need the job to pay bills. Maybe I agreed to a project without realizing what I was getting into. Maybe something makes the project turn sour halfway through. All I know is that writing without passion is death. It’s a world of gray. It’s a flatness, a lack of dimension. It’s being color blind. You can limp along and do the work–hard work!–but you are working without joy.

In contrast, let me sink my teeth into a story I love and deal with characters I care about, and I will gladly walk barefooted over stones and push my way through briars in order to put such a book together.

Sparkle with a Rousing Good Finish

The ending of a story makes reading it worthwhile.

Ideally, you want the story to sparkle from start to finish, to offer a total entertainment package.

Writers can’t always deliver such perfection, however, especially when working on a long plot such as a novel. Sometimes, the book sags a bit or the storyline gets vague and has holes here and there. Writers are humans. They make mistakes or they forget details or they become so wound up in characters, viewpoints, and motivations that they simply don’t see that Chapter 11 is illogical.

My point is not to excuse such errors, but to acknowledge that they can happen despite the writer’s and editor’s combined best efforts.

I recommend that if your story’s going to wobble a bit, let it happen in the first half but never, never, never in the second.

If you can only achieve sparkle in one place, make it the finale. Because do you really want to open your story with a stunning hook and end it with a lame whimper?

I think not.

Granted, several of you are already thinking, but if the beginning of the story is lame, who will want to read it?

Agreed. A very good point.

My reply is this: if the story is lame at its conclusion, who will bother to read your next one?

So we always strive to achieve consistent sparkle in order to entice new readers, to keep them happy throughout, and to make them close the story with a smile or a sigh of satisfaction.

It’s common for a writer to tire in the final section of a book manuscript. You get so weary that you’re slogging from one chapter to the next. You just want it to end. Your stamina is exhausted. Your brain is on fire. Your eyeballs feel strained from hours and days and weeks of peering into a computer screen. And so, from sheer fatigue, you let the story climax slide. You tell yourself it’s okay, that it’s only a small lessening of standards, that the reader won’t notice if the ending comes a bit too easily or is contrived just a little so that everything can be tied up.

And I tell you that it’s not okay. Never lie to yourself as an artist.

Never let the ending be less than it should be. It is, after all, the culmination of the story. If you’ve entranced a reader into stepping into your story world and skipping along the yellow brick road and worrying about your characters, then you owe the reader a good finish.

That’s part of your job.

The climax of a story has a structure that writers have developed, honed, and refined across the centuries to deliver a catharsis of anticipation, confrontation, devastation, and elation.

But last of all and best of all, you should deliver poetic justice to each of your principal characters.

Poetic justice is simply whatever the character deserves, good or bad, based on what that individual has done in the story.

Poetic justice is about what’s fair and what ought to be. It isn’t connected to social or legal justice. Instead, it’s what we want as five-year-olds when our mean cousin Ginny has pinched us until we lose our temper and hit back—just as Granny comes to the window and sees the blow we struck … but not what provoked it.

And we take the punishment while our evil cousin gloats. We learn then, as we cry in rage and frustration, that life is not fair.

But in books, in stories, in the wondrous realm of make believe—at the end, life IS fair.

The murderer is caught, arrested, and arraigned for trial.

The rugged bachelor who’s evaded every female lure thrown at him for years meets THE ONE, the woman who’s his perfect mate and perfect match.

The evil time traveler out to destroy history is caught in a time loop he can never escape, so that he’s forced to live the same day over and over throughout infinity.

The town sheriff forced to confront the bad guys who are coming into town to kill him in a last showdown manages to face his fears, stand alone and outnumbered, and prevail through sheer courage and better shooting.

Cheesy?

It doesn’t have to be presented in some contrived and hokey way, but what’s wrong with getting to cheer the hero and boo the villain? Are you too sophisticated and jaded for that simple concept? I hope not, because it cuts you off from the affirmations that fiction can provide. Affirmations that readers still love and respond to.

SPARKLE: Dramatic Flair–Part II

When incorporating flair into your stories, here are a few suggestions:

1. Be willing to take risks. (Sounds like a repeat of a previous post, doesn’t it? You betcha! I repeat points when I think they matter.)

If you’re going to be a strip-tease dancer, you have to come out on stage and at least peel off a glove.

Characters that are shrinking violets lack flair. The safe, boring, plain, mousy character that never changes will lack what it takes to carry a story to its finish.

One reason I enjoy watching DANCING WITH THE STARS is waiting to see whether some of the celebrities with two left feet are ever going to get the hang of ballroom dancing. There’s technique and footwork to learn, choreography to master, posture to improve, trust in a partner to develop, stage fright to get over … and above and beyond all of that, delivering performance flair that makes the audience cheer.

Some of the celebrities have lovely technique, but they’re shy or wooden. They never manage to sparkle, and they don’t reach their audience.

They’ve taken the risk to put themselves in the competition, but they never make it over the threshold to self-expression and performance.

Others are all sparkle and can’t discipline themselves to master technique. So the audience loves how they shimmy, but the judges loathe what they do with their footwork or posture.

2. Whatever you come up with, EXAGGERATE it. If you’ve devised a competent starship captain that always manages to bring her cargo in on time … excuse me while I yawn.

All we have so far in this example is a foundation, a list of qualities: good at job, highly skilled, responsible, and reliable. (Snore …)

How, then, do we exaggerate competent? Well, this captain is soooo good that she’s Captain Kirk good. She’s the best captain in the commercial fleet of Galactic Starlines Shipping. She’s their highest-paid officer. Every manufacturing in the colony worlds is clamoring to hire her.

Every other captain in the fleet hates her guts and is out to beat her, either fairly or through sabotage.

Now, when you’re really good at something and you know it, you don’t have to swagger and posture. You just are. So Captain Kira has nothing to prove to anybody. That gives her a certain manner, a confidence, an assuredness that many people lack.

Let’s say, though, that she goes out armed because of her many rivals and competitors–and also to protect the cargo she’s hired to carry.

So when she lands in spaceport, she crosses the terminal in her uniform, with military bearing, and alert. She’s carrying a PPK pro-load plasma pistol on her hip. It’s a non-concealed weapon, and the fact that she’s allowed by security to wear it in a crowded, intergalactic space terminal means she’s licensed and knows how to use it.

See how I’m pulling her toward the flair end of the spectrum? Exaggerating isn’t a matter of dressing her up in a purple cape and having her snarl rudely at her minions. It’s building a character up from the inside out.

When you do that, readers understand instinctively that you should test this highly competent, take-no-prisoners captain. They’ll expect you to drop some major trouble on Captain Kira and see how she handles it.

3. Increase the plot’s conflict. However much trouble you’ve cooked up, it probably isn’t enough.

I don’t mean that you should scrape up a lot of incidental problems and pitfalls that aren’t connected to the story. Remember that we want flair, not random chaos.

Instead, look at the characters you’ve designed and exaggerated. What makes them tick? If you were in their situation, how would you react? What exactly would you do? Would you ever, in a thousand years, do or say what you’re assigning to them? Why or why not?

And whatever they’re involved in, how can the villain make things worse for them?

4. Try to inject some humor. One of the endearing aspects of the television character Rick Castle is his boyishness, his delight in little details of the case he’s working on, his enthusiasm, his imagination and creativity, and his willingness to play. Such qualities bring sparkle to the show to offset what would otherwise be very grim crimes.

The silly, delightful fairy tale film, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, is bristling with flair. There’s danger, exaggeration, swashbuckling, pathos, and a great deal of comedy deftly mixed together. In the scene where Wesley has to choose which chalice contains the poison, the situation itself is a serious one. The bad guy holds a knife at Buttercup’s throat. If Wesley refuses to participate, she will die. If he chooses the wrong chalice, he will swallow poison. Anticipation is built during the banter between Wesley and the bad guy. More anticipation is built with the absurd little tricks they play on each other in order to switch the cups. And even the twist is comedic.

5. Throw in the unexpected. Sure, you need to design your characters and plan your plot. You need to consider how best to construct plot twists for the key turning points of a novel. You should outline and consider how you can make the story better and stronger and more compelling.

But don’t be afraid to pitch something completely out of left field into the story now and then, just to keep it going.

I learned how to do this early on in my writing career, back before I had much skill at plotting. My outlining abilities were poor. I knew my protagonist’s goal. I knew enough to set up a villain in opposition to that goal. I knew how to write scenes of conflict. Beyond that … I was weak!

Often, in those early writing projects, I just cooked up some cliff-hanger on the spur of the moment–using anything that came to me as a hook so I could close the chapter and go eat dinner.

Then, if my wild turn of events actually worked, I would backtrack to an earlier portion of the manuscript and plant a few details to make the event plausible.

When I was writing the story that eventually became my first published book, I got stuck in the middle. I knew how the story would end, but I was bogged down and couldn’t seem to get there. I needed something to happen, but my hero and heroine were just going on a picnic. Nowadays, I recognize this as an obligatory element in romance fiction called “getting-to-know-you time.” Then, I felt like my plot had stalled, and I was fighting off impending panic.

While I was moaning about this, a friend said, “Why don’t you have the girl discover a dead rat in the picnic basket?”

In the abstract, what an absurd suggestion! It was so left-field it was crazy. Yet I was desperate enough to do it.

Yes, I had to scramble a lot to make the setup for that rat plausible. I was forced to really think through what possible motivation a character could have for doing such a nasty thing to my heroine.

That thinking and plotting was good for me. It forced me to be creative and grow as a young writer. In using a zany, unpredictable development, I was able to think beyond the box I’d wedged myself into. I improved my skills as a result.

It also gave my heroine a jolly good reason for wigging out and bursting into tears, which gave the hero the perfect opportunity to take her in his arms.

The

Plot

Advanced.

In going for flair, loosen up. Relax and set the wild and wacky notions in your imagination free once in a while. They might surprise you. Better still, they might surprise your readers.

Study the classic films made under the studio system and observe how the major movie stars dominated the screen or stole scenes from other actors on the set. Look at what they’re doing and how they were doing it in the days before method acting took over.

Borrow and adapt. See what you come up with.

SPARKLE: Using Dramatic Flair–Part I

When I was a young child, one of my favorite television cartoon characters was Snaggletooth. What I remember most about him was that when he departed a scene he always did so with a signature flourish, saying, “Exit, stage left” or “Exit, stage right.”

It was nonsense, but I loved the pizzazz of it. Whatever else he did, Snaggletooth had flair.

When writing, if we only emulate the most realistic mainstream novels or if we only view contemporary dramatic films, we lose out on the fun of “stagey” theatrics. Such antics aren’t appropriate in all story applications, but when they can be used they certainly add sparkle to our plots.

Audiences like the bling factors of flair, flourish, and sparkle. That’s why they gravitate to certain popular genres such as historical romance, paranormal romance, steampunk, horror, thrillers, comedies, and fantasy. These genres not only allow flair, they require it.

However, flair can be incorporated into more mainstream drama at certain key points. For example, there’s a superb Bette Davis film called THE LETTER. Directed expertly by William Wyler, this movie is based on a Somerset Maugham short story about a married woman in Malaysia who commits adultery and then murders her lover in a fit of jealousy. The film’s focus is on Davis’s lying to police and her husband in an effort to get away with her crime. It deals with serious issues of uneven relationships, infidelity, and ethics. Her attorney—a family friend—is taken into her confidence and told the truth. To defend her, he’s forced into concealing her guilt from her husband (his best friend), and he must himself commit a crime in order to buy and suppress evidence that would convict her if it surfaced.

Now all of this is heavy stuff—quite fascinating and compelling on its own. But Wyler understood that even serious drama can stand a little flair. The opening scene of the film shows a sleeping rubber plantation under the moonlight. Everything is peaceful until a shot rings out. The camera focuses on the veranda of the plantation bungalow. A man crashes through the doors, staggering and obviously wounded. Bette Davis follows him outside. She’s holding a revolver in one hand. Her expression is grim, intent, purposeful. She shoots him again, and again, and again, following him down the steps, until he’s finished.

Not only does this introduce the protagonist in masterful characteristic entry action that reveals her true nature, but it kickstarts the plot with a mighty big change in circumstances that can’t be ignored and hooks its audience firmly. This is not a point where anyone’s going to wander off to the refrigerator for a snack.

If you study just about any film made before the 1960s, you’ll see example after example of flair utilized. It shows up in the way actors enter and exit scenes. It’s used in some of the stunts and spectacles. Some of it is too obvious and hokey. Some of it is simply fun. (Now of course flair shows up in more recent films as well, but it’s so often downplayed.)

Please consider these examples:

Stewart Granger and James Mason in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA

William Powell and Myrna Loy in THE THIN MAN

Bob Hope in THE PRINCESS AND THE PIRATE

Gary Cooper in MEET JOHN DOE

Barbara Stanwyck in BALL OF FIRE

William Holden in SABRINA

Gloria Swanson in SUNSET BOULEVARD

Errol Flynn in THAT FORSYTE WOMAN (or CAPTAIN BLOOD or ROBIN HOOD)

Greer Garson in RANDOM HARVEST

Norma Shearer, and everyone else, in THE WOMEN

Marilyn Monroe in THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey in ADAM’S RIB

Cary Grant in THE BISHOP’S WIFE

Judy Garland in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS

Jimmy Stewart in THE LITTLE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER

Grace Kelly in REAR WINDOW

Bette Davis in NOW, VOYAGER (or JEZEBEL or THE LITTLE FOXES)

Humphrey Bogart in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (or KEY LARGO)

Tyrone Power in THE MARK OF ZORRO

Marlene Dietrich in WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

Claudette Colbert and John Barrymore in MIDNIGHT

Loretta Young, and everyone else, in THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER

Ethel Barrymore in PORTRAIT OF JENNIE

Lionel Barrymore and Freddie Bartholomew in CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS

Olivia de Havilland in THE HEIRESS

John Wayne in THE QUIET MAN

Gene Kelly, and everyone else, in SINGING IN THE RAIN

James Cagney in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY

Jack Lemon in SOME LIKE IT HOT

Rudolph Valentino in THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

Yul Brynner in THE KING AND I

Rex Harrison in MY FAIR LADY

Irene Dunne in THEODORA GOES WILD

Ingrid Bergman in GASLIGHT

Charles Boyer in ALGIERS

Fred Astaire in EASTER PARADE

Vivian Leigh in ANNA KARENINA (or GONE WITH THE WIND)

Laurence Olivier in HAMLET

Who have I overlooked? I’m sure you can name other films and actors that stand out in your mind because this is a very small list compared to the wealth that’s out there.

Shakespeare understood the need for flair in both his tragedies and his comedies. His best plays sparkle because of it, and he ain’t been forgot neither.

However, perhaps you aren’t into old classic movies. The sets and props may seem weird to you. Hairstyles are odd. You can’t relate to the grainy film quality or black and white. Dialogue can be too stagey. Mannerisms are beyond old-fashioned, etc. etc. etc.

Then consider the current hit television show, CASTLE. Lots of flair there, every week. DOWNTON ABBEY serves up classy fare with flair. Can we possibly even venture to guess that the hottie of “unscripted” TV—DUCK DYNASTY—throws in a little flair, albeit of the “I can’t believe he just did/said that!” variety?

So how do we get flair? How do we find it or create it? Where and how do we incorporate it into what we write?

My suggestions will follow in the next post.

Sparkle by Taking Risks

Over the years, I’ve observed the newbie writers who earnestly take notes, highlight key passages in their books on the writing craft, and ask questions of every working professional writer they meet. These individuals craft scenes and stories that follow the rules of writing technique, and they’re as devoid of life as a paint-by-numbers picture.

I’ve also encountered newbies who won’t be told a writing principle. They scoff at rules and bridle against changing one word they’ve written. They have what they think is a deep passion for writing, and they refuse to listen to anything an experienced, published writer might say. Such amateurs are often highly imaginative, but their stories are crazy, illogical, and always fall apart at the critical places.

Left-brained. Right-brained. The two extremes among people who have stories to share but can’t seem to get their ideas translated from their imaginations to the page.

The successful writer is someone who’s balanced between these polar opposites. A successful writer should know the principles of what makes stories work and what makes them appealing to readers. Above all, a successful writer needs the rules of the craft.

[If you were about to have a cavity filled, would you want a dentist who blew off her "Techniques of Drilling Tooth Enamel" class because she didn't think it was important? Just wait until her drill hits that nerve!]

A successful writer must be willing to master the craft and then–only then–take risks with it. Taking risks is a key component to instilling verve in your copy.

During the last two weeks, I’ve been busy plotting a novel. Day after day, writing session after writing session, I’ve been carefully, methodically listing my story events in logical order from beginning to end.

With that in place, I’m now mentally laying the careful outline aside and taking down the safety chain. This morning, as I was lugging groceries from the garage into the utility room and pantry, I was thinking, Why not move Scene X forward to be the book’s opening? It’ll be a dark night, maybe raining, and the hero will come running from the shadows–half-naked–to collide with the heroine.

Immediately the old left hemisphere starts waving my outline. “Ahem!” it barks. “According to the plan, you should begin the book with the guy in anguish aboard the yacht.”

Right hemisphere screams in protest. “No, no, no! That’s so dull. The yacht incident is all internalization. It’s not exciting enough. He’s drinking Scotch and indulging in a pity party. Boring. Bad. Dull. Think instead of the night and all its mysteries; think of this man, running barefoot and bare-chested; think of the woman’s shock as she sees him partially clothed. (Shock mingled perhaps with feminine interest.) Soooo much better!”

“But the logical order of the story will be lost. You’ll have to write a flashback.”

Guess which section of my brain is going to win this argument?

You betcha! Right hemisphere takes the prize.

But only because the outline has been hammered out and I know how to pull it off without losing my story’s logic. Left hemisphere is already busily seeking a plausible motivation for the woman to be walking alone down a dangerous street at that hour.

Your imagination is going to feed you notions and glimmers and glimpses and rainbow bursts of what-ifs. Never shut it off, but learn instead how to judge these pinpoints of light sparkling in the dim mists of your brain. Evaluate which have merit and which won’t help your story read better.

Apply yourself to the mastery of your writing craft so that your imaginative leaps don’t drop you into a plot hole. Channel your creativity to make it useful.

And never be afraid to do something new. You may be slapped down. Your editor may not understand what you’re doing in a particular passage, but at least you will have tried. Or, your editor may say, “I love this section where the elephants dance under the jungle starlight. Let’s open Chapter Six with that.”

Risk taking for writers also includes a willingness to write an entire first novel on speculation, not knowing whether it will ever find a publisher. It also means a willingness to write an entire 45th novel on speculation after your literary agent has nixed it–just because you must.

Risk taking for writers means daring to reach deeper inside yourself and write to your truth, without looking over your shoulder in fear of what your granny or mom might say.

Risk taking for writers means crafting a fast, unpredictable plot. Or creating a slower novel with deeper characterization. It could mean changing your style to try a new setting or genre.

Risking taking for writers means trusting your story sense. First you have to learn to listen for it, to hear its small voice, and then you have to learn to listen to it.

Always, always do what it tells you to do.

Without question. Without fear. Without hesitation.

Even if everyone else in your writing critique group says otherwise.

Listen.

Prepare yourself.

Leap.

Sparkle: Boo Those Villains!

It’s been said that the villain makes or breaks a thriller novel.

I think that could be said about any fictional story. Antagonism makes plot work. Just as a body builder uses a gradual increase in weights to create the resistance that strengthens muscle, so does a story hero need an opponent in order to change, grow, meet and surpass challenges, and ultimately win.

Often in class, I utilize the term antagonist or opponent to get students thinking about the principle of opposition. I want them to understand that a scene antagonist doesn’t have to be the story villain. Friends, for example, can disagree about how to achieve a common objective.

But for this post, I want to discuss villains and villainy. In the current era of often-sappy political correctness, we may find ourselves squirming, uncomfortable with the perjorative term of villain.

Fiddlesticks! Get over your civilized squeamishness and face it squarely for what it is.

VILLAIN!

This person is bad. This person does bad things to others. This person has embraced evil and likes it.

Or . . . this person has embraced evil and feels guilty about it, but not enough to stop.

Writers can play all day long with the motivations for evil. They can design lengthy, psychologically intricate profiles and back story for such characters. They can decide whether they want to side with “nature or nurture” as a reason for such bad behavior.

I was talking with thriller writer Eileen Dryer several years ago at a writer’s conference in Denver, and she defined evil as “banal.”

Meaning, in other words, that evil is the stupid, trite, ill-planned, impulsive behavior that harms others.

That’s certainly a form of it, one that’s so distressing and hard to deal with in real life. An example would be the half-drunk boyfriend who shakes his girlfriend’s baby too hard to stop it from crying. In the subsequent trial, the man may weep and mumble, “I didn’t mean to do it.” And we feel disgust and anger at the careless waste of an innocent life.

Certainly banal evil can play a useful role in fiction, but I think it’s most effective in combination with planned, intentional villainy.

The hit television drama DOWNTON ABBEY turns heavily on the machinations of two bad servants: Thomas Barrow and Miss O’Brien. Their evil-doing is often banal, and their villainy mild: thieving from the house to supply a wartime black market business, sabotaguing a new footman from motives of petty jealousy, hiding the earl’s dinner shirts so that his valet looks like a fool, abducting the earl’s beloved dog in order to pretend to find her and perhaps gain promotion from a grateful employer … most of these actions are designed around gaining a promotion or getting a work rival fired. That’s serious enough: in the 1920s, being fired without an employer’s reference meant no chance of a job elsewhere and subsequent ruin or starvation.

We laugh at their pranks, yet these characters are capable at any time of crossing stronger lines, of doing real harm with shattering consequences. SPOILER ALERT!!!!! O’Brien causes the miscarriage of a baby, and her guilt over that is something she has to live with. She also wages a long, clever campaign of trickery with the intention of putting Barrow in prison.

We can’t feel sorry for O’Brien with her sour outlook on life and her restless resentment of her privileged employers. If she’s ever pushed too far, just how ruthless might she become? Writer/creator Julian Fellowes nimbly skips back and forth over the line of what is a prank and what might become villainy, keeping his audience tuned in every week.

Another example: Bobby is a teenage football star of his high school, caught up in the jealous angst of his first relationship going sour. He catches some dweeb with “his” girl at a party. Outside, the boys argue. Bobby loses his temper and knocks the other boy down. The boy lands awkwardly, hitting his head on the curb, and dies.

Up to this point, Bobby Banal is just acting on his emotions. He’s committed a wrong, but it wasn’t intentional–at least not to the extreme of manslaughter.

Now, Bobby has a choice. Is he going to run into the house and get others to help him? Is he going to whip out his phone and dial 9-1-1?

Or is he going to hide the body in his car trunk, mop up the blood, and drive away to stage an “accident?”

The line where Bobby crosses the boundary into villainy is very clear here, isn’t it? Do you also see how Bobby Badguy just became more interesting?

We don’t like him. We don’t want him to get away with this. Yet we can’t help but feel an illicit thrill of curiosity. How far will he get before he’s caught? No, no, Bobby! Don’t do this!

A fiction writer will then put the squeeze on Bobby (to use old hardboiled detective parlance).

Because Bobby Badguy didn’t quite get away with hiding the body. He thought it happened in the dark where no one saw and no one heard over the music and noise of the party, but what if the girlfriend was watching?

Now what choice will Bobby make? Does he fold, start crying, apologize to Mindy, and let her call the cops?

Or does he coerce her into keeping his secret? What hold might he have over her? What might he do to create such leverage?

And so Bobby can continue to devolve as a human being into a villain. Until he becomes a hunted, cornered, pathetic, broken individual who’s either arrested or shot down by the police.

One of the best devolvements (is this even a word?) in storytelling that I’ve ever come across is the character trajectory of Michael Corleone as depicted in Mario Puzo’s novel and the masterful Francis Ford Coppola films.

Michael begins the story looking fairly clean. He knows what his father and brothers do, but he’s been kept out of the business. He’s above all that. He’s a war hero. He has other plans for his life. His father wants him to be a senator, and you see him making the first tentative steps in that direction by his wooing the beautiful WASP girl who has the right looks and background for a politician’s wife.

When you’re watching the film you may be distracted by his good looks and the persuasive way he expresses himself to the girl he’s interested in. You may believe what he’s saying.

Once you look at him more closely, however, you realize his introduction is that of a man who’s lying, who’s living in denial. He’s pretending that he’s untouched by the criminal activity, yet he knows about it and has never acted against it. That’s the first false step.

As soon as Don Corleone is ambushed at the street market and seriously injured, Michael’s true nature is revealed: one of an intense, determined, ruthless killer out for revenge.

And by the end of the second film, Michael has ordered his brother’s execution. He’s far more ruthless than his father, a far more dangerous villain, and now someone capable of fratricide. There have been many choices he could have made to truly change himself for the better, but Michael put himself on this path. He wasn’t ever forced into it, no matter what he might claim.

A book sparkles when it has a well-designed villain, someone who wants to do bad things to the sympathetic characters. You don’t have to write about Mafia dons or some Hannibal Lecter clone. You can stay at a much milder end of the spectrum if you choose.

Let’s examine the character Sara Crewe, protagonist of the children’s classic, A LITTLE PRINCESS by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Sara’s nemesis is the strict, regimented Miss Minchin, proprietess of the girls’ school that Sara attends.

As long as Sara’s bills are paid, Miss Minchin pours on the phoney charm. She has a business to run. Wealthy pupils like Sara are cultivated and catered to in order to keep child and parents happy. Happy parents will recommend her establishment to others. Every business owner understands the need for good PR.

But as soon as Sara’s father dies and word comes that Sara has no inheritance at all, Miss Minchin is furious. Not because she hates Sara, but because she chose to purchase many luxuries for the child on credit, expecting Sara’s father to pay for them. Now, Miss Minchin must return the items or swallow the loss. It’s a blow she doesn’t expect, and she blames the child.

In the Victorian world, sentiment, sweetness, and compassion toward children extended only so far, only if they could be afforded. Miss Minchin turns Sara into an unpaid servant, using her labor as the means by which Sara can repay the debt her father owed to Miss Minchin. And in fact, Miss Minchin believes that she’s been kind by not throwing Sara out into the street to starve.

Where Miss Minchin becomes a villain is through her angry blame of Sara for the problem, her unkindness in telling Sara of the father’s death in a harsh way, her casting Sara into a belowstairs world of poverty and neglect. There are any number of ways in which she could handle the situation with more understanding and compassion. If she treated her servants fairly, they wouldn’t be so stressed and cruel to Sara in turn.

It’s important to remember that wickedness puts verve into a story. Don’t be timid in making your antagonists into villains. Let them see the line and cross it.

Sparkle: Characters to Cheer For

Do you think it’s just chance if readers like your characters?

Not at all!

Do you think your material is more compelling if you write bleak, depressed, passive, unhappy, apathetic characters?

Not at all!

Do you think your material is cheesy and unsophisticated if you create active, upbeat, heroic characters?

It probably is!

Is that a problem?

Only if you’re opposed to creating saleable fiction.

Let’s keep this piece of advice simple:

Readers want a protagonist they can identify with, sympathize with, like a lot, and cheer for.

That protagonist may be as snarky in attitude as Harry Dresden in Jim Butcher’s bestselling series about a wizard PI in Chicago. But underneath his jaded exterior, Dresden really cares about people and he really wants to be helpful as he fights Evil.

Robert Crais’s popular tough guy, Joe Pike, is stoic, taciturn, and hard to know. He’s also brave, loyal, extremely competent, cool in a crisis, and a person that’s going to save your backside if bad guys come after you.

The late Betty Neels wrote Harlequin romance novels in a career that reached from the late 1960s into the 21st century. Her heroes are arrogant, rich, autocratic, and less than likely to give a plain, perhaps plump, heroine a second glance. yet the Neels hero is a supremely competent surgeon/doctor, generous, intensely protective of those he loves, willing to rescue and adopt the most pathetic mixed-breed stray dog or cat on the planet, and someone rich, handsome, and successful who will give the plain nobody of a heroine both the moon and the stars.

Ms. Neels remains in print constantly, unlike the majority of her colleagues.

One of the most popular novels in thriller author Dean Koontz’s impressive oeuvre is a book called WATCHERS. The human characters Travis and Nora are likeable, but it’s the dog Einstein who steals the show. Einstein is a genetically modified, highly intelligent golden retriever who loves Mickey Mouse cartoons, is able to read, and communicates with humans by spelling sentences with Scrabble tiles. If you can’t adore this character by the time you finish reading his story, then I worry about you.

What is that special quality that makes a star?

Different people have differing definitions of it. Figure out how you identify it and give it to your protagonist.

Don’t be afraid of sophisticated literati out there jeering at your hero/heroine. (They only read each other’s stream-of-consciousness passages anyway.)

Don’t be afraid of exposing your heart a little to readers. (It’s the only way to truly touch their hearts.)

Don’t be afraid to let your protagonist care about others. (The empathy within your character creates sympathy within readers.)

So go ahead and let your good guys take a stance, stand up for the little guy, defy the odds, dare to try, speak up when others won’t, express their values, shoulder responsiblities, and help little old ladies cross the road.

In Tom Clancy’s novel, PATRIOT GAMES, ex-Marine Jack Ryan is just a tourist in London’s Hyde Park when Irish terrorists attack members of the royal family. It’s a moment to duck and take cover, keeping your head low until the shooting’s over.

Instead, Ryan makes sure his wife and child are safe before he sprints across the park and single-handedly fights off the terrorists, killing one, assisting in the capture of another, and being seriously wounded himself. All to help people he doesn’t know.

Later, a friend asks Ryan why he took such a wild risk. Ryan shrugs and then opens up: “I saw what was happening. It made me mad.”

Boo-yah!

John Wayne was a savvy actor who played heroic roles. He didn’t try to be sophisticated and nuanced. His characters stood for what was right, regardless of what the law or authority might say. John Wayne delivered poetic justice in film after film.

Result? Other than Marilyn Monroe, are there many other actors besides Wayne with their pictures hanging in American living rooms?

People of the 21st century may wear ennui like a jacket, but if they were suddenly standing on the TITANIC they would want 1) access to a lifeboat; and 2) a leader who could help them get it.

Sparkle: Make That Plot Zippy!

When I’m reading a novel, there’s nothing more disappointing when–after a promising chapter one–the story slows and dulls down.

This week, I’ve been wading through excessive explanation, dialogue without conflict, and banal incidents strung together. It’s a second book from a new author whose debut last year was a real sparkler. Second novels are notoriously difficult to write. Alas, this one has all the zing of a wet sponge.

Do not let this happen to your story!

What do you do to avoid it?

Make sure you keep the plot strong by utilizing three techniques: hooks, conflict, and twists.

Hooks: You probably know there are myriad hooks of all shapes and effects. We’re not going to count them here. What’s essential to understand about them is that any hook you use should result in–unpredictability.

That means you open your story with a hook. You start your chapters with hooks. You end your scenes with hooks. You introduce your characters with hooks.

Grab your reader’s attention without stalling, without hesitating, without timidity. Think about the opening line to Sidney Sheldon’s IF TOMORROW COMES: “She undressed slowly, dreamily … and put on a red negligee so the blood wouldn’t show.”

I refer to this example often because it never fails to deliver zing. Sheldon leads your imagination in one direction (the feint) and then socks you with surprise (the upper cut). Is it subtle? Not at all. Hooks are not about subtlety. They’re about giving the reader entertainment.

Conflict: What makes a story boring faster than any other cause? Lack of sufficient conflict. If your protagonist isn’t in trouble, facing trouble, wading into trouble, or fleeing from trouble, YOUR BOOK IS IN TROUBLE.

It’s that simple. So what, exactly, is conflict?

Conflict is goals in opposition.

That’s a pat and quippy definition. What does goals in opposition mean?

Simply that as soon as your protagonist wants something specific, tangible, and obtainable, the antagonist will seek immediately to thwart the attainment of that objective.

Example: Polly Protagonist wants to buy a horse.

I’ll warn you right now that the above goal statement looks specific but is in fact vague. Push Polly to do better.

Polly Protagonist wants to buy her neighbor’s horse, a bay gelding named Artemis.

Why? (What’s her motivation?)

Polly Protagonist wants to buy her neighbor’s horse, a bay gelding named Artemis, because she’s dreamed about owning a horse of her own since she was a child. Every day, she drives home past the pasture where Artemis is grazing. She sees the sun glinting on his reddish coat. The wind tosses his dark mane and tail. She knows he’s a gentle animal from the times she’s sneaked over to the fence and lured him to her with apples and carrot chunks. She’s fallen in love with him, and she wants to take him home.

Now for the conflict. Remember that it’s goals in opposition. So we need Andy Antagonist to step in and thwart Polly. Andy can be the owner of Artemis, and he doesn’t want to sell. Or he can be a guy who wants to buy Artemis because he’s also fallen in love with the horse.

Again, in either scenario, you have to know why Andy is taking action. It needs to matter, so let’s push the scenario a bit and say that Andy has an autistic daughter and Artemis is the only creature the little girl has responded to. So he’s desperate to obtain this horse in order to help his child.

Now we have conflict between two people with valid reasons for being in opposition. Each wants to buy the horse. One wants the horse because of a lifelong dream. The other wants the horse for his daughter’s health.

Only one of them can buy the animal. Who will win? Which of them will persuade the owner to sell first? Who deserves to succeed over the other?

Weak conflict equals weak story.

No conflict equals dull story.

Strong conflict equals a story that has spark, life, and movement.

Twists: These are unexpected developments that turn the story in a new direction. A twist can appear as a plot point, a piece of information, an attack against the protagonist or someone the protagonist cares about, or a threat.

As with hooks, the effect that a twist should create is unpredictability. You may have only one twist in a short story. In a novel you need at least three, strategically placed so that a twist lands in each story act.

Keep your readers guessing. Keep your readers intrigued. Achieve this by doing anything but what’s expected, and motivate those surprising character actions through conflict and strong goals.