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The Inner Struggle: How to Show a Character’s Repressed Emotions

Today’s guest post is by Angela Ackerman (@AngelaAckerman), co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression (Second Edition)

Crafting characters that readers will connect to is every writer’s goal and dozens (hundreds?) of methods exist to achieve it: deep backstory planning, character profile sheets, questionnaires, etc.

Regardless of the roadmap a writer uses, writing an authentic character boils down to one important action: intentionally drawing from the real world, and specifically, the human experience.

The human experience is powerful, an emotional tidal wave that holds us in thrall. We understand it, relate to it, and live it. This is why, even when a character faces a challenge, barrier, or struggle that readers have not experienced in the real world, they can imagine it and place themselves within the folds of the character’s viewpoint.

Portraying an accurate mirror of humanity in fiction means we must master emotions. Getting raw feelings on the page isn’t done solely through a character’s shrug or smile; instead, a marriage of internal and external elements should show readers what is being felt and why. Body language, behavior, dialogue, vocal cues, thoughts, and internal sensations weave together to draw readers into the character’s emotional landscape.

Showing a character’s emotions isn’t always easy, especially when powerful emotions are at work. Characters may feel exposed or unsafe and instinctively try to repress or disguise what they feel. This creates a big challenge for writers: how do we show readers what the character is feeling when they are trying so hard to hide it?

Thankfully again, the human experience comes to the rescue. If a character is repressing an emotion, real-world behaviors can show it. Readers will catch on because they’ll recognize their own attempts to hide their feelings. Here’s a few ideas.

Over- and Underreactions

When you’ve done the background work on a character, you know how they’ll react to ordinary stimuli and will be able to write reliable responses. Readers become familiar with the character’s emotional range and have an idea what to expect. So when the character responds to a situation in an unexpected way, it sends up an alert for readers that says, “Pay attention! This is important.”

A character may fly off the handle at something that seems benign or behave subdued in a situation that should have them upset. When this happens, these unusual responses signal that something more is going on, and the reader is hooked, wanting to uncover the why behind this unexpected behavior.

Tics and Tells

No matter how adept a character is at hiding their feelings, they all have their own tells— subtle and unintentional mannerisms that hint at deception. As the author, you should know your characters intimately. Take a close look at them and figure out what might happen with their body when they’re being dishonest. It could be a physical signal or behavior, such as covering the mouth, spinning a wedding ring, or hiding the hands from view. Maybe it’s a vocal cue like throat-clearing. It might be a true tic, like a muscle twitch or excessive blinking. Figure out what makes sense for your character, then employ that tell when they’re hiding something. Readers will pick up on it and realize that, when it’s in play, everything is not as it seems.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze Responses

In the most general sense, the fight-flight-freeze response is the body’s physiological reaction to a real or perceived threat. We see this in everyday interactions: when a person invades someone’s space, stops what they’re doing mid-action, or literally flees the scene. It also happens on a smaller scale in our conversations. Remember that every character has a purpose for engaging with others. When that purpose is threatened, or the character feels unsafe, the fight-flight-freeze reflex kicks in.

Fight responses are confrontational in nature and may include the character turning toward an opponent to face them directly, squaring up her body to make herself look bigger, or insulting the person to put them on the offensive.
Characters who lean toward flight will have reactions centering around escape: changing the subject, disengaging from a conversation, or fabricating a reason to leave.
If the character’s fear or anxiety is triggered, they may simply freeze up, losing their ability to process the situation or find the words they need until something external happens to free them.

Passive-Aggressive Reactions

Passive aggression is a covert way of expressing anger. If a character is angry but doesn’t feel comfortable showing it, they’ll often default to certain techniques that will allow them to get back at the person without revealing how they really feel. By employing sarcasm, framing insults as jokes, giving backhanding compliments, and not saying what they really mean (We’re good or I’ll get right on that), characters are able to express their feelings in an underhanded way that others may not recognize or know how to deal with. This can be a tricky technique to use, because, by definition, passive aggression masks the truth. But you can reveal it through a character’s thoughts, the physical signals they exhibit in private (particularly just after an interaction), and the cues they express when the other person isn’t looking.

Incongruencies

The most common way to show hidden feelings is to highlight the incongruency that occurs when the character tries to mask one emotion by adopting the behavior of another. Imagine a character saying “Come in, I’d love for us to visit” but their body betrays the untruth of these words, perhaps through a strained voice, by closing of the door an inch rather than pulling it open wider in welcome, or by the keyring in their fist with the largest key thrusting out between two knuckles like a weapon.

If the reader is in the character’s POV, thoughts can also counterweight behavior or to provide context if the character is hiding true emotions out of fear. Incongruencies work well because all people use them to maintain the status quo in a relationship or stabilize a situation.

Note from Jane: Want more help showing hidden emotion? Check out The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression (Second Edition) with description ideas for over 130 different emotions (view the complete list), including suppressed responses.

Also helpful: One Stop for Writers’ checklists on Showing Hidden Emotions, Expressing Emotions Through Body Language, and Show & Tell—free to download.

Building a Platform for Your Work When You’re Unpublished

Today’s guest post is by Michael Warner, author of A Lyle Saxon Reader.

After spending thirty years in other fields, I’ve recently embarked on a career as a writer. And what I’ve found is that great how-to advice—from sources like Jane Friedman, Writer’s Digest, and kboards—actually seems to work.

My first career spanned 1981–1997 as a research chemist, and from 1998 until today I’ve been an attorney. But in my spare time, I’ve worked on a biography, Palette and Pen: Charles Whitfield Richards and his Circle.

Richards was a journalist and artist active from the 1920s until his death in 1992. He made New Orleans, Louisiana, his base for much of his artistic career, and that’s where I met him in the 1980s. Over the course of several years, he told me about his interesting life and eventually I had nearly twenty hours of recorded conversations with him. Since then, I have spent a lot of time further researching and writing about his life and of those who knew him.

Born in 1906, Richards was raised in the Mississippi Delta until his family moved to Memphis. But soon, a wanderlust caused him to drop out of school, and he began a series of adventures as he worked for a circus, studied art in Jazz Age Paris, and served as a merchant seaman. Later, Richards reported for newspapers in New Orleans, Houston, and New York, for which he illustrated his stories with wry sketches of his subjects.

Despite his itinerant lifestyle, Richards made New Orleans his base. In 1945, anxiety attacks and deadline pressures forced Richards to give up journalism and turn to fine art full time. During his career, he was close to figures important to Southern history, including Morris Henry Hobbs, Noel Rockmore, Larry Borenstein, Jeanne deLavigne, Gov. Sam Houston Jones, Enrique Alferez, Eugene Loving, and others.

The first draft of Palette and Pen came together about a year ago and I then studied how to get it published. Websites advised: platform, platform, platform. But I thought that I had little background relevant to the biography.

To address this, I decided to publish another book first, and use it as a loss leader. In marketing, a loss leader is any product that is sold below its cost, with the goal of stimulating customer interest in other products or services. But I needed a topic for this other book.

Another name from 1920s–1940s New Orleans is author Lyle Saxon, nicknamed the historian-laureate of the city. He published several books that are important as home-grown New Orleans literature, and he still has a broad fan base. But his earliest works as a features reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper have just now come off copyright and few of them have ever been re-published.

So I put together a 55,000-word anthology from these public domain stories: A Lyle Saxon Reader: Lost Stories of the French Quarter and Buried Treasure.

It took about six months to find and edit the stories—sifting through endless old newspapers online and at the public library—and to research Saxon’s life and write an introduction. Through the magic of modern databases, a couple of new tidbits surfaced that his biographers could not have accessed. Then I made a half-hearted attempt to find a traditional publisher, but I really wanted to experience publishing it myself. I decided to learn how.

My day job is general counsel for a startup biotech in the San Francisco area, so I am aware of federal tax rules. The Internal Revenue Service is most likely to take a venture seriously if it is organized as a corporation or a limited liability company (an LLC). If income and losses from a book are just accrued under the author’s name, the IRS may consider it a mere hobby and disallow tax deductions and other benefits.  So I created Cultured Oak Press LLC to publish A Lyle Saxon Reader. An LLC is often easier for a small company to manage than is a corporation, because it permits flow-through accounting and simplified operations. (Note to readers: this is not legal advice because I’m just telling you what my experience was. Your situation may differ and you should seek the advice of your attorney.)

Over the next three months, I learned how to use Vellum and other software for interior and cover design, to get feedback from beta readers, to publish it through IngramSpark, and to figure out some rudimentary marketing. I found an art major who gave guidance on the dust jacket for free—which she can now put on her resume. In June, I launched a website for which email sign-ups have been gradually snowballing. Still small and nothing to brag about, but growing, and there’s more interest every time I send out a tweet.

The book launched on September 28, 2018, and received a fair amount of press—all of it good. Sales have been moderate, but it is a niche history market in a single metropolitan area. And that wasn’t the point. I’ll never make back the money that I invested in it; this book’s purpose is to build platform. The anthology is not self-published; after all, I’m not the author. Some old guy who’s been dead since 1946 is the author. But I am the editor and wrote the introduction, so I hoped this would get me some credit.

To my surprise, the strategy is working. I found the book in each of three New Orleans independent bookstores that I visited recently. One reviewer called me a historian (!). Shoofly Magazine, a news and features blog prominent on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, just ran a story about Cultured Oak, and the owner of that blog has suggested a content share between our sites. An online magazine that will launch in New Orleans next May (the French Quarter Journal) has asked me to be a regular columnist. I have feelers out for other, living authors to publish books with Cultured Oak Press.

Now that I have at least a tiny speck of a platform, I feel more comfortable submitting my Richards biography to publishers. It’s still a niche market, of course, but it’s broader than for A Lyle Saxon Reader. Hopefully, I will find a traditional publisher. For the next step, I’ve started writing a novel based in 1920s New Orleans that may have more than niche appeal. All that in one year!

Will I become a rich, famous author? The Magic 8-Ball says, “Cannot predict now.” But my goal is more modest: one hundred years from now, will my work still be seen as interesting and relevant? I’ll never know the answer, but I’ll enjoy setting it up.

What Is Public Domain? (And Why 2019 Is a Big Year)

Photo credit: aestheticsofcrisis on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Today’s guest post is by intellectual property lawyer and novelist Brad Frazer (@bfrazjd).

The “public domain” is not a place. It is a term used to describe works of authorship (books, movies, poetry, artwork) that either due to their age or their legal status under U.S. copyright law, the ability of the putative copyright owner to enforce its rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 106 is extinguished.

Boy, that’s a mouthful of lawyer-speak, right?

To explain: when a sufficiently creative idea is reduced to a tangible medium, a copyright is created. The tangible thing in which the copyright resides (the photo, the movie, the book) is called the “work.” The owner of that copyright is the only person who may lawfully make copies of, distribute, make derivative works from, publicly perform or publicly display the work. These exclusive rights granted to a copyright owner are found in a U.S. law called 17 U.S.C. Section 106, which is part of the Copyright Act.

But these exclusive rights are not perpetual. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution, at Article I Section 8 Clause 8, states: “The Congress shall have power…to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors…the exclusive right to their respective writings…”

Originally, the life of a copyright in the United States was limited to 28 years, although it could be renewed for an additional term. But over time, Congress passed legislation lengthening the duration of a copyright, so that today, for works created after January 1, 1978, a copyright lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years, with no renewals. So if I wrote a book in 1978 and I live to be 90, the copyright in that book will not expire until the year 2138! (This is why authors and artists should consider copyrights when doing their estate planning.)

Copyright term chart by Tom W. Bell

The periodic legislative extension of the duration of copyright in the United States is a source of tension between artists who wish to exploit the underlying works and make new screenplays or stage plays or novelizations or sequels or T-shirts, on the one hand, and those who make money off of the underlying works (think Hollywood studios), on the other. The latter group typically wishes to control—by licensing—how the works are used, by whom and for how much money.

The last such extension, called “The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act,” was passed in 1998. It was the law that put in place the current copyright terms, e.g., life of the author plus 70 years. It also did not go unnoticed by many pundits that the Disney Company may have had something to do with the enactment of the legislation, for without it, Mickey Mouse would have entered the public domain! This is why The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was also derisively referred to at the time of its passage as “The Mickey Mouse Copyright Protection Act.”

Thus, it is kind of a big deal that on January 1, 2019, the copyrights of many works originally “copyrighted” in 1923 entered the public domain—meaning, that the copyright owners’ ability to enforce their Section 106 exclusive rights has expired. (The actual math of copyright registration and renewal is arcane, but here is additional reading.) Some of these works that are now in the public domain in the United States include Cecil B. DeMille’s film The Ten Commandments, Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet, and Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” So, if I wanted to produce T-shirts emblazoned with Frost’s famous couplet—

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

—and sell them on Etsy, Robert Frost’s estate’s ability to sue me for copyright infringement and win the lawsuit has been reduced, for all practical purposes, to zero.

Since this much ballyhooed “Public Domain Day” on January 1, 2019, the internet has bloomed with lists of the works that became free of the Section 106 strictures, but I find the list promulgated by Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain to be the most authoritative.

The societal benefits that arise when a work enters the public domain are illustrated by Frank Capra’s iconic film, It’s a Wonderful Life. That work entered the public domain in 1975 because the copyright was not correctly renewed, and now television stations are free to broadcast the film royalty-free. While Capra’s estate may be deprived of licensing revenue as to that film, whole generations of people who might not be exposed to his works now know Frank Capra and will likely seek out and pay for rights to use his other works that are still under copyright. And we are free to make and sell T-shirts on Etsy that read: “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.”

So as you are looking for inspiration for your next book or film, peruse these lists of public domain works and see if perhaps you feel directed to, e.g., write a sequel to Virginia Woolf’s 1922 novel Jacob’s Room. If so, know that Public Domain Day in 2019 permits you the copyright freedoms to do so.

The Tricky Issue of POV in Memoir

Today’s guest post is by freelance editor Sarah Chauncey (@SarahChauncey).

Every story is about transformation. The main character’s journey changes them in some way; that arc, in turn, affects the character’s perception of the world around them.

In memoir, you are that main character. While fiction writers can invent entire worlds and determine how much of that world is revealed to the narrator, memoir is expected to be first-person (most of the time) and to reflect the author’s truth (all the time).

While fiction writers can play with unreliable narrators (narrators who are either lying or don’t have the self-awareness to realize that their perceptions are inaccurate), memoir readers expect that the narrator is being honest in each moment; this provides a sense of internal coherence and enables the reader to trust the narrator. If you break the reader’s trust, you’ve lost not only that reader, but also their recommendation of your memoir to others.

Memoir Is About a Shift in Perspective

In memoir, you’re using the events from a period in your life to articulate a shift in perspective on a universal theme—identity, family, overcoming odds, death, love, aging, etc.

Memoir is about inner transformation. The outer events of a memoir, no matter how dramatic, are scaffolding for the author’s emotional journey. That emotional journey (by definition) means that your perspective changed on certain themes from the beginning to the end—from seeing your family through a child’s eyes to an adult understanding (The Glass Castle), arrogance toward Mt. Everest to humility (Into Thin Air), identity as a daughter to an independent self (Wild). Memoir reveals the inner transformation that changed the way you perceived the world around you—yet in each scene, you are limited to what you thought, felt, sensed and experienced at the time.

Exercise: Create a timeline of the period covered in your memoir. In the early scenes and chapters, and in flashbacks if you use them, identify scenes that emphasize how you were before this inner transformation—such as arrogant, fearful, innocent, conforming to an expected identity, or whatever your starting point was.

Author and Narrator POV Are Different (Usually)

Author POV creates the story; Narrator POV tells the story. Sometimes the two are close together; at other times (more often) the two are separated by a period of years or decades.

Out of the facts of a given situation or time period, there are an infinite number of stories that can be told. (For more on this, read Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story.) Even if your memoir covers an earlier part of your life, your current perspective (Author POV) informs the story you choose to tell, the scenes you select to bring that story to life, and the tone with which you tell it.

However, within the story, your character—past-you—is the narrator. Your Narrator POV is limited to what you knew and experienced at the time of each scene.

While it’s possible to write memoir from your Author POV (relative omniscience, because you know more today than you did then), the most engaging memoirs are ones in which the author sticks to their POV at the moment of events.

It’s okay to occasionally insert a comment that reflects your awareness today (for example, “Later, I would learn…”), but only if necessary, and don’t do it in the middle of a scene. Stick to the facts, describe events as evocatively as possible, and let the reader draw their own conclusion. If the writing is strong, the reader will feel what you felt.

Narrator POV Is Both Fixed and Fluid

First-person POV is fixed, in that it’s limited to what you knew and experienced at the time of a given scene. However, the fact that your perspective changed over time is what makes memoir a story. Our perspective is fluid and ever-changing, based on our life experiences. You are not exactly the same person today that you were yesterday, or ten years ago. The way you saw your spouse, for example, and interpreted their behavior, was not the same on the day you met as on the day you filed for divorce.

In each scene and each chapter, then, your POV on your theme is ever-so-slightly different. Not about everything, necessarily—you’re still you, and you may still have the same political views, or the same love of nature. But your attitude in relation to the memoir’s theme will evolve. We need to see how you got from there to here. Don’t tell us what shifted; show us the shift through the way you-as-narrator perceives the events that unfold. For a master class in this, read Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle.

Exercise: To create the most powerful story, use your perspective today to identify scenes that were aha moments, where your perspective on your theme changed. The moment when you faced a fear directly. The moment you escaped someone else’s expectations. The moment you realized you were in love with the wrong person. If you focus first on the inner journey, you’ll find the best scenes to bring that transformation to life.

Memoir Includes Multiple POVs

We’ve already established that you have an Author POV and a Narrator POV. You also have all the Narrator POVs that take place within your story—which are different in each scene, and particularly different in each flashback. In general, the older you are, and the more time periods covered in your memoir (including flashbacks), the more POVs you will be wrangling.

In Wild, Cheryl Strayed (the author, who was significantly older than her narrator-self) had Hiker Cheryl (“present day” in the book) who transformed along her journey; there were Younger Cheryls (childhood, student, and then caring for her mother); and there was post-Mom, pre-hike Cheryl (who had her own arc with grief and drugs). Because Strayed was 27 on the Pacific Crest Trail, and her mother had only died five years earlier, the author was dealing with a relatively brief time frame. If you’re in your fifties, and your memoir includes multiple flashbacks, you might have a dozen or more POVs within the overall story.

Limit POV Appropriately

Your task is to bring the reader into your body, so they can see what you saw, feel what you felt, each step of the way. Imagine yourself as a virtual reality camera: In each scene, including flashbacks, you’re limited to what information came into that camera, and how you experienced and interpreted it at the time.

The period of your life covered by your memoir makes sense to you because you lived it (though often people write memoir to make sense of what’s changed in them). The reader, too, needs to make sense of the changes you undergo during the period covered by your story. Your task is to not to tell them what happened; it’s to bring them along on the journey so they can experience it for themselves.

This is particularly tricky if you’re using flashbacks. Nearly every memoir manuscript I’ve edited has included flashbacks in which the author refers to something in their childhood world from their adult perspective—for example, “my tiny hands.” As a child, it’s unlikely you would call your own hands “tiny” because your frame of reference for the world is your own body. It’s more likely you might see an adult’s hands as gigantic.

Use Dialogue to Flesh Out Blind Spots

Most of us live our lives in the context of other people, each of whom has their own perspective at any given moment. Think of conversations you had, things that people said to you that might have made you angry at the time, or given you pause. Or maybe you didn’t think twice about it at the time, but now it’s bubbling up. You can use dialogue (as long as it actually happened) to show, rather than tell, how others saw you—even if you didn’t have the self-awareness at the time to see it.

I worked with a client whose memoir covered three and a half months he spent alone in the wilderness after his dream business failed. He saw himself as a spiritual seeker, yet when his girlfriend at the time came to visit him after a month, she said, “My god, Greg, if people didn’t know you, they’d think you were some kind of anarchist.” This one line was in stark contrast to how he had been portraying himself, and it gave the scene—and him as a character—a depth that his self-description alone couldn’t.

Where possible, flesh out conversations by checking with the other person or people involved. This author later reached out to the woman to see if they could re-construct some of the conversations they’d had during that time period—30 years prior.

Parting advice

Storytelling is a misnomer. You’re not telling a story to friends over beers; you’re bringing the reader into your body so they can see what you saw, feel what you felt. To do that effectively, you need to understand your POV and remain true to it in each scene. Maintaining a cohesive POV throughout will keep the reader engaged and allow them to take your journey with you.

Balancing Your Submission Budget for Literary Journals

Today’s guest post is by John Sibley Williams (@JohnSibleyWill1).

In my role as a small press literary agent and marketing coach, an issue I discuss with almost every author is how much they are spending on submissions or how to make the most of a (usually scant) submission budget.

Although the world of submissions can be complex and expensive, balancing your submission budget doesn’t have to be. Here are some tips to help you minimize expenditures, maximize profit, and identify a strategy that works for you.

1. Expect and manage submission fees.

From website hosting to submission managers to marketing to printing and mailing contributor copies, it costs money to keep a journal going. And few journals generate enough sales to keep them in business. Few editors even receive payment for their work. So (first things first) expect to pay minimal fees for your submissions. These fees ($2-3) often correspond with the cost of one postal envelope.

However, most writers are on a budget, and you must balance the submission fees with your desire to be published in that journal. Does the journal have a wide readership and strong reputation? Is there a good chance of acceptance? Is it worth spending $30 to submit to Narrative? Is a smaller journal worth $3? The answers to these questions are personal. Just remember that submission fees are appropriate, common, and must be budgeted for.

Most literary databases allow you to filter your search by “free submissions,” so if your budget is limited you can focus on these, leaving fee-based submissions for better economic days.

2. Use PayPal as your submission “bank account.”

As the majority of journals use submission managers that accept PayPal, you can use PayPal for most fees and payments. Having nearly all monies moving into and out of a single online account allows for simple budgetary tracking. Although PayPal can pull directly from your bank account, I suggest maintaining a balance on the site to more accurately judge your budget at a moment’s glance.

Start by transferring from your bank account enough money to cover your expected costs for the first month. Pull from this balance all submission fees. As bank transfers take 3-5 business days, always retain some monies for last-minute submissions. Each month, transfer your budgeted amount into your PayPal account for the next month’s submissions. Now you will know exactly how much you spend and can budget for the future with ease.

To increase your balance, and help cover future submissions without cash infusions from your bank account, deposit all writer-related income into your PayPal account. These could be contributor payments from magazines, contest winnings, book sales, workshop revenues, or other monies you receive from your writing. Your PayPal goal is to eventually earn as much (or more) than you spend on submissions.

3. Consider digital vs. mailed submissions.

Although the costs are comparable, tracking mailed submissions adds a layer of accounting to your process. I suggest keeping a budgetary spreadsheet that details the date, journal name, and cost of each mailed submission. Then reduce your monthly bank transfers to PayPal to compensate for these postal charges. If maintaining a spreadsheet seems a burden, either refrain from submitting via mail or accept that those costs won’t be included in your projected budget.

4. Research magazines that pay.

Most print journals pay in contributor copies, so to help ensure you have enough money for future submissions, prioritize, if you can, journals that pay. A surprising number do! From a token $5 payment to upwards of $100-200 per page, every cent earned on your writing is to be celebrated and put to good use.

There’s no such thing as too small a payment. Receiving $10 for a poem or story equates to three or four future journal submissions at the standard $2-3 rate. And if you’re able to land a major paying market, your submission fees (and maybe more) will be covered for months.

Parting advice

Remember that earning income from your work takes energy, patience, and persistence. It took me over a decade to make enough from my writing to compensate for my submission costs. But now my writing is self-sustaining.

Knowing exactly how much you spend and where these costs are going is the first step. Keep your strategy simple and predictable with an emphasis on minimizing expenditures. In time, balancing your monthly budget will only take minutes.

Visit John’s website or Facebook page.

Feeling Envious of Other Writers? Here’s a Solution.

One of my favorite books is Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton. He takes a tour through history to discuss how humans can deal with feeling inferior to one another. I find it of particular relevance to writers, since so much of what constitutes success is about appearances (e.g., which publisher is more prestigious, who’s getting the “right” reviews or awards, who gets invited to speak).

So I especially enjoyed Melissa Yancy’s essay for the latest Glimmer Train bulletin, where she discusses the irresistible urge to look up:

Writer Anthony Doerr once told me something his father told him, and I’ll paraphrase it poorly here: You’re going to get your neck sunburned looking up all the time. I don’t think he was just speaking of ambition and envy, but focus—about where your eyes actually go. And if you’re focused on the literary lottery, you’re looking off in the distance, spending that unearned fortune.

She goes on to discuss how your story is where “the hidden owl is perched”—and that’s where you should try looking. Read Playing the Odds.

Also in this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin:

Dialogue: Something to Talk About by Gregory Wolos

Questions to Consider When Plotting a Scene

Photo credit: Chris Devers on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Today’s guest post is by novelist C.S. Lakin (@cslakin), author of The 12 Key Pillars of Novel Construction.

Some writers can sit at their computers, come up with an idea for a scene, and start writing. If they’re experienced novelists, they might write a pretty good scene out the gate.

It’s likely, though, they’ll end up rewriting the scene multiple times until it starts to gel. Or they’ll throw the scene out and chalk up the hour or two spent as part of the process.

And that’s not a bad process necessarily. It might be just the process a certain writer needs to end up with a terrific scene. But it’s not the best process for the beginning writer. Or for the writer who doesn’t want to needlessly waste a lot of time and effort.

Anyone who says writing a scene is easy probably hasn’t written one (or, at least, written one worth reading). There are so many elements that make up a great scene, and so many things to juggle as you write.

And then there are all the preparatory issues to be considered before you begin. Questions that must be answered:

Who will the POV character be for this scene? What mind-set do they need to have?
What is the high moment I need to build to, and what will happen and be revealed in that high moment?
Where and when will this scene take place?
Why and how is this scene essential to my plot?
What is the central conflict in this scene (inner and outer)?
How will my character change by the end of the scene (because she should, in a significant way, at the end of every scene)?
What key bits of backstory do I need to include, and how will I insert them without info-dumping?
How will I create micro-tension on every page by hints, secrets, innuendo?
What other characters should be in this scene and why?
What is the tone or mood I need to set in this scene?
What take-away feeling do I want to leave with the reader when they finish reading the scene?

These are only some of the many questions to consider when plotting out a scene. (You can grab this First-Page Checklist, my Scene Structure Checklist, and my 8 Steps to a Perfect Scene, for starters, to help you with this).

Types of Scenes

Before you write a scene, you need to determine what type of scene it’s going to be.

Will it be a narrative scene in which the POV character is telling a story?
Will it be a high-action scene?
A low-energy dialogue scene?

How many novelists first look at the bigger picture of the string of scenes they are crafting for their novel? If you’ve just had a big-action scene, you might follow it with a contemplative processing scene. If you put too many high-action scenes in a row, you can start to tire out (read: bore) your reader.

There are more than a dozen basic scene types, some of which are transition scenes, epiphany scenes, twist scenes, escape scenes, recommitment scenes, and resolution scenes.

You can see how having so many choices might paralyze you, especially if you don’t have a strong handle on novel structure. When you know, for instance, what the ten foundational scenes are, it makes it easier to choose your scene type. A climax scene will have high action, and, of course, the resolution of your novel would require a resolution scene.

Your genre comes into play as well. The type and number of high- and low-energy scenes are going to vary based on genre. A thriller is going to have a lot more high-energy scenes than a slow-paced thoughtful women’s fiction or romance.

Want to know the best way to figure out what scenes should go where? Study bestsellers in your genre, novels that are as close in plot and style as yours. Tear them apart. Make a list of scene summaries and note what type of scene each one is. That should give you a good idea.

The Action-Reaction Principle

Another thing that will help you determine what type of scene to write is to always keep in mind the natural cycle of action-reaction. This is also something that will vary by genre.

The natural behavior cycle of humans that our characters should also convey is this: action-reaction-process-decision-new action.

A scene might be solely a processing scene. A detective, in the prior scene, just discovered some important clues. Now, in this scene, she is mulling over what she’s learned, maybe discussing it with her partner, to determine the next course of action (decision).

Or you might have an action scene that ends with a reaction. That detective might be chasing down a lead (action), only to find a gang of vampires waiting for her in a dark alley. The last paragraph might show the detective swearing under her breath, wishing she had listened to her partner about going it alone (reaction).

Or you could make that scene all action, ending it with her running into the vampires, leaving the reaction to the next scene.

Sometimes that cycle of action-reaction repeats dozens of times within one scene. Your detective chases the bad guy, who vanishes around the next corner (action). Now she has to process that and make a decision. Should she continue her search or give up and get a latte? She might go to get coffee (new action), only to spot the bad guy flirting with the barista. She then reacts, processes (Should I confront him here or wait till he gets her phone number?), then makes a decision.

At any point, the scene may end in the middle of that cycle on one of the five stages. It all depends on what your high moment is, what key reveal you are building to, how the character will change and why, what is that lasting feeling you want to leave with your readers …

You see how all these pieces intertwine?

Your scene also needs an opening and ending hook. It needs a balance of narrative, dialogue, internal thoughts, and action. How do you know how much of each you should have?

No, scene writing is not easy. It’s a daunting task every time a writer sits down to write.

Note from Jane: If you’d like to master scene writing, C.S. Lakin runs Scene Mastery Boot Camps in Northern California, where you’ll learn with a dozen other writers in an intimate setting. For more information, visit Writing for Life Workshops.

Your No. 1 Secret Weapon: Writing Communities

Photo credit: Eden Project Communities on Foter.com / CC BY

Today’s guest post is from Katrin Schumann (@katrinschumann) author of The Forgotten Hours and numerous nonfiction titles.

I’ve always found people who make movies to be awe-inspiring—in order to evoke a world and a story on screen, they need to work together with dozens of other professionals, from front-end people like actors and directors, to back-end people like sound editors. For introverted writers like me, this seems challenging and complex, and I’m grateful that during the creative process I’m the one in charge as I sit alone in front of my computer.

And yet, you really can’t do this writing thing alone.

With my debut novel coming out, I know that getting attention for my story is a little easier because I’ve already spent years learning to get more comfortable with reaching out and making connections. This doesn’t happen overnight. What’s even more valuable to me is that because of the various writing communities I’m part of, my creative life is far richer and more interesting (and fun) than it would otherwise be.

But I won’t lie, building community was often hard.

Many a night I sat alone in my car, half blind while navigating slick roads, driving to some far-off book event. Many an afternoon, I lingered at the edge of room full of chattering professionals at a book festival, unsure of where to go or whom to talk to. And many a morning, I stood in front of a classroom full of eager writers looking to me for answers I wasn’t confident I had. I even went into prisons, heart pounding, hair scraped back, unsure if I could help inmates find their voices but determined to try.

You may be the lucky writer who excels at making connections and has no problem asking for favors or pitching your work. But lots of writers struggle with being articulate and gracious in person—after all, most of us are in this field because writing is how we best wrestle with the perplexing ideas that obsess us. Social media allows us to interact at arm’s length and to respond in our own time, using our writing skills; it’s not challenging in the same way that in-real-life communities can be.

Many of us find it hard to be put on the spot or to be the center of attention. Becoming part of a broad variety of writing communities helps with this. Here are the six of the communities I’ve tapped into over the years—all of which have supported me in significant ways on the road to publication.

Critique Groups

This is by far the most obvious one; these groups help you stay accountable and sustain you through the hard times. They can provide you with valuable feedback and help you avoid veering off track in terms of plot or character development on a long project. They can be casual or well-organized.

Nicole Bross, author of Past Presence, says of her group, “We started off doing a self-directed writing intensive, critiquing each other’s work and now we’ve moved into more of a mastermind format to brainstorm each other’s challenges and goals. The most invaluable part for me has been accountability; on the days I don’t think I can meet my goals, knowing that they’re counting on me gives me that extra push.”

Many in-person or online writing groups start after people take a class together, through social media or by searching sites like this.

I don’t think a writer’s group is enough, though, especially if it’s not a face-to-face proposition. Over time, these groups can become too supportive and comfortable, when what you really need is something that both gets you out of the house and takes you out of your comfort zone.

Professional Programs

A more organized (and costly) approach than a critique group, MFAs or innovative programs like GrubStreet’s novel incubator are mostly about prioritizing time to write and being guided by a professional.

“[S]hared experience and having an invested instructor is a huge difference between a program and an informal writing group,” explains Susan Bernhard, author of Winter Loon. Also, the sense of immersion is key. Louise Baker, author of The Late Bloomer’s Club, says, “It’s a powerful thing to give yourself a year to devote to your creative self.” And if you eventually want to supplement your income by teaching, it helps to have this credential.

After getting a graduate degree in journalism, I earned money by doing collaborative nonfiction writing and teaching, while working on novels on the side. To this day I’m still learning from and leaning on the far-flung friends I made, and vice versa. If you have the time, money, and opportunity, do some deep research and go for it. For many, it’s the turning point that allows them to begin thinking of themselves as real writers.

“Seeing one’s self as a professional artist is an achievement that compares to entering other elite status groups,” say sociologists studying the question: who is an artist? (One caveat: consider your finances carefully since a graduate degree doesn’t guarantee finding a job in the arts that pays a living wage.) 

Writers Residencies

In the thick of parenting chaos about ten years ago, I thought: Why the hell not? I can make this work! and I started applying for writing residencies, retreats and fellowships. Each time I went off to a new spot for weeks of intense time working away from home, I learned something truly invaluable about myself.

Spending extended time with other creatives can help you figure out the values you want to embody professionally. By meeting some appallingly snobby, self-involved authors, I discovered the kind of writer I wanted to become: rigorous, generous and open. This principle has since guided all of my interactions. I also learned to accept my doubts and stop hiding behind being busy. This led to many small moments that had long-lasting impact: for example, two miserably blocked writers commiserating over a flickering bonfire in Vermont has, years later, lead to an upcoming interview on First Draft, Aspen Public Radio. (And I encourage you to tune into Mitzi Rapkin’s interviews—you’ll learn so much about writing and publishing.)

There’s lots of information online about retreats and fellowships (like here and here), including ones that are free. There’s also considerable cachet to attending certain residencies or being awarded certain fellowships; it never hurts to show you’re a striver.

Community Events

I didn’t have much time to hang with other writers and it was a Herculean effort to make myself head into the city to attend readings and events. But I did it enough to learn some important things about marketing, bookstores, and what makes for a fun book-related gathering. Now I’m trying to put that into play with the launch of my novel, The Forgotten Hours.

Tap into your nearest city’s creative community. There’s always some event going on locally—in the last few years I’ve seen Patti Smith read from The M Train (and sing), heard Ghanaian drummers play ecstatically, watched improv comedy, and on and on. It’s inspiring. These experiences enrich my imagination and keep me connected with the real world in ways that affect my writing. Sign up for the local arts newsletter, keep an eye out for visiting writers, attend book launches, go to museums—support other creative efforts. Which brings me to…

Volunteering

For the past seven years I’ve been writing a monthly blog for GrubStreet, and I sometimes wondered why. I labored over these posts for far too long (unremunerated) and had no idea if anyone was even reading them. All that work, for what? Yet eventually, I realized that strangers were acting like they knew me, and I was getting more and more writing consultation requests. I was connecting. Not in some crazy, viral way but incrementally. I was helping people, and living out my principle of trying to be a generous writer.

Many of these writerly pursuits are labors of love—tutoring, teaching in retirement communities/prisons/hospitals, volunteering at festivals, running literary magazines, writing for free—all with the goal of contributing positively to the literary community.

Henriette Lazaridis, author of The Clover House, founded the literary magazine The Drum. “Sure, I don’t make a dime off all the hours I spend,” she says. “But I do believe that collaboration around and with and through writing helps my own work. There’s an energy that comes at an angle sometimes, sideways to the work you’re actually doing. And that energy helps me in my own writing and in my teaching, too.”

An occasionally, something super sweet can happen when you volunteer: I got my current job as Program Coordinator for a literary organization this way. Give back, it feels good. 

Writers Conferences

This is my top recommendation: attend writers festivals and conferences. Meet your favorite authors, watch how emerging writers engage, pitch your book to strangers, learn to navigate the hordes.

For me, this was tough—I disliked the crowds, and the glad-handing and palpable desperation (mainly mine) made me anxious. Interacting was so awkward!

“It was intimidating to introduce myself to strangers at first,” says Marjan Kamali, author of Together Tea, who has been attending the Muse and the Marketplace in Boston for years. “But the most rewarding aspect of attending these conferences for me has ended up being building friendships and relationships with fellow writers.”

As for me, I listened and learned, and eventually I chilled out and started enjoying myself. After a few years, I was able to participate more actively by running a session or two, being on a panel, and volunteering to help out, and I developed a comforting sense of purpose other than hawking my own wares. Now I honestly love these events, and I find myself reaching out surprisingly often to writers, agents, and editors I’ve met in this way.

Whether you’re developing your craft, building your platform, pitching agents, asking for endorsements, seeking publicity, or simply getting quotes for a blogpost on communities, you’ll find yourself returning again and again to the deep well of these kinds of connections. If you want to find readers—and who doesn’t?—you’ll eventually have to learn to sell yourself and your work. Spending years reaching out in various ways will make this easier. You’ll learn to be more professional, while also staying personable and authentic. Your confidence and voice will grow, while at the same time you’ll develop an accurate sense of what you can offer in the existing marketplace.

Building a supportive network takes time and courage. It’s worth starting to cultivate community early on, even if your instinct or your preference is to work alone. Eventually, you’ll find these experiences will help you become more fully rounded, and give you a place in the writing world where you feel comfortable and can be yourself. Good luck!

Story Planning Books: 3 Approaches to Consider

Today’s guest post is by writer Katrina Byrd (@ovenhot).

A few years ago, I sat in a dining room surrounded by friends as Reggie Robertson explained the business model for Robertson’s Metals and Recycling, a business he and his family own in Dickinson, North Dakota. “We have a fair markup.” He explained their process of market research and other requirements of the business. “We maintain our equipment.”

This was the first time I thought of my writing as a business. As a writer, I stay up to date on literary trends. The equipment I maintain is my computer and software. My inventory is my writing (short stories, plays, films). Creating works in line with industry standards requires developing ideas, understanding industry standards and studying plot and structure; recently I read three books on novel planning:

The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks

The Plot Whisperer by Martha Alderson

“But I Don’t Like Writing According to a Formula!”

Some writers consider themselves what Larry Brooks calls an “intuitive” writer: people who rarely want to work according to a blueprint and cringe at the thought of following a “formula.” But, Brooks says, “If you don’t know what you’re shooting for, if you just make stuff up as you go without much if any forethought, it probably won’t work.”

Moreover, plot and structure books aren’t necessarily calling for adherence to a formula—in fact, they warn against it. Coyne discusses, for instance, the amateur writer: “Despite all of their desire to live by their own lone wolf ways, ironically what amateur writers really want is a recipe.” Amateur writers want to emulate writers on the bestseller list with no consideration for the various ways one can get on that list. They put money ahead of the story, and this makes them their own worst enemy.

One of the values of all three books (and their methods) is that they provide a means of testing whether a story works on a professional level, at any stage of the process.

Plot Whisperer offers a plot planner, which consists of seven plotting questions, as well as a character emotion profile. Alderson recommends crafting a character emotional profile on the protagonist at the beginning of a story then again at the end. This information is used to create the universal story, which is placed on a line graph.
In Story Engineering , Brooks’ fundamental concept to story planning is the six core competencies. A writer may start with a great story idea and great characters, but without considering fundamental elements like backstory, stakes, and inner landscape, the story may fall flat, or run into other challenges such as bad pacing and lack of a compelling character arc.

Story Grid is a tool to aid in becoming your own editor. Labeled with critical information about the global story, the spreadsheet identifies what is working and what isn’t. “It is like a CT scan that takes a photo of the global story,” Coyne writes.

But Do Formulas Work for Literary Novels?

Broadly speaking, there are two literary cultures: literary and commercial. An author needs clarity on what she’s writing to understand how to successfully structure her story. Alderson, Brooks, and Coyne all agree a review of the story’s scenes is a crucial factor in determining the appropriate literary culture.

In The Plot Whisperer, Alderson says stories tend to be action driven or character driven. Scenes at the beginning and at the end of her plot planner help determine story type. High action and a dramatic climax close to the end typically indicates an action-driven story. When a character uses new skills to conquer her greatest antagonist, then the story may be character driven. “If the characters show transformational behavior during a high-action climax, likely your story is a balance of the two plot structures,” Alderson says.

Brooks suggests that in literary fiction, scenes are character driven, while in commercial fiction, scenes are action driven. “Writing literature vs. commercial fiction is a choice a writer can make,” Brooks says. According to him, the key to mastering either style is a solid understanding in the mission of each scene.

According to Coyne in The Story Grid, the commercial culture consists of genres which, in themselves, bring about “obligatory” scenes. For example, if your story is a romance, there are specific scenes it must possess to fit into this category. Coyne uses the story grid approach to help writers identify these scenes before the story is written. Then, once a story is complete, the story grid serves as an editing tool.

According to Coyne, a desire for the “glamorous aspects of literary trade” hinders some novice and seasoned writers from seeing the value of the story grid. According to Coyne, many writers embrace “the thrill of dashing off chapter after chapter in a white heat of inspiration, etc—and they undervalue the blue collar aspects of story construction and inspection.” Coyne designed the grid as a tool to bridge the gap between “commercial necessity and literary ambition.”

Personally, I recommend The Story Grid to authors interested in a guide for long-form narratives. Coyne offers information on structure, editing, and the publishing world. As a recent MFA graduate from Mississippi University for Women, I have a 260-page novel in need of some revision. By putting my global story on the spreadsheet, I got a deeper understanding of how an editor would view my novel. While my novel has a clear inciting incident; strong characters; dramatic action; and a clear beginning, middle and end; my plot points were slightly off the mark. A few of my scenes were obtuse, and in some back-to-back scenes, there was little variation in how the scenes turned or shifted. In four back-to-back scenes, I used dialogue at the turning point.

But the story grid tool is also invaluable at the beginning stages of crafting a novel, and knowing the literary culture in which your work aligns puts you ahead of the game.

What story planning methods do you use? Share with us in the comments.

Lit Mag Resources You Can’t Do Without

Today’s guest post is by Jenn Scheck-Kahn, founder of Journal of the Month.

Literary magazines, also called literary journals or lit mags, are devoted to short-form creative writing. What distinguishes them is what they publish (a single genre or a mix of genres), how often they publish (annually, biannually, quarterly, monthly), and their medium of publication (print only, online only, combination of print and online).

Some magazines are affiliated with universities, giving them the security of funding and editorial or production staff culled from professors or students. Others are independently funded by individuals or grants. But what they have in common is their mission: publish the best writing of today. They are a labor of love, intending to gather our cultural milieu in the forms of prose, pictures and poetry with little concern for financial or commercial payback. Competitive as they are to get into, they represent a publishing milestone for literary writers in particular.

With over 600 literary journals in print and countless more online, how do you find the good ones? How do you know when to submit to them and once you have, how do you track your submissions and interpret the responses you receive? Here is a list of resources that will guide your process. Many of the resources below could fall in several of the groupings I’ve provided, but I’ve placed them in the section based on what they do best or their most unique service.

Identifying the Best Lit Mags for Your Writing

Affinity is a two-way street: The magazines most open to your writing are the magazines that publish writing that’s similar to yours and writing that you admire. How do you find what you like? Start with a service that curates writing from the best publications. That way, you begin with a known quantity of quality:

Journal of the Month is a subscription service that sends an assortment of esteemed, current, print literary magazines on a regular basis to your mailbox.

Literary Hub is a free culture website that aggregates essays, stories, and poems available through online literary and mainstream magazines alongside the writing they host.

Once you’ve found a set of magazines you like, learn more about them by reading reviews:

The Review Review is a free site that reviews literary magazines as well as publishes articles on current literary happenings and trends, editors interviews, and classifieds. Sign up for their free newsletter to stay up-to-date with lit mag news.

New Pages is a free comprehensive resource that includes descriptions, reviews, and submissions calls for literary magazines, and other small publications.

Finding Magazines Open for Submissions

At the same time you’re familiarizing yourself with the little magazine scene and homing in on new favorites, put yourself in the path of blasts that will inform you about open submission markets:

Literistic sends a monthly newsletter tailored to your writing with contest, general submission, and fellowship deadlines. A free version is also available.

CRWROPPS-P is a twitter hashtag as well as a Yahoo group that sends information about open submission periods as well as teaching jobs and conference pitches.

Visit these websites with listings of literary magazines that include submission guidelines and deadlines:

Poets & Writers Magazine, in addition to publishing, bimonthly, the print magazine of record about industry and craft trends, provides a free website that includes a database of literary magazines.
A literary magazine called Entropy assembles a free list of target markets on a seasonal basis.

Tracking Submissions

When you launch yourself into the business of submitting to magazines, tracking where you’ve sent your writing and the responses you receive can feel like a daunting task. Keep organized by using a spreadsheet of your making or consider these options:

Duotrope is a data warehouse of literary magazine information where writers can track their own submissions and compare their statistics to others to see, for example, how long a given magazine tends to respond to submissions they ultimately accept. Know that because the data is provided by other writers, not the magazines directly, it’s not comprehensive and unlikely to be precise.
Similar to Duotrope, The Grinder is a site for the data junkie that shares writer-provided submission statistics, but it’s free and includes graphs. Currently it pulls from a smaller data set than Duotrope.

Evaluating Responses

Not all magazine responses mean the same thing, especially when they aren’t accepting your writing. A tiered system of rejections communicates how far along your manuscript traveled in the process, which lets you know

how much it was appreciated by the staff and whether that staff is actively welcoming more of your writing in the future. The tricky part is deciphering the tiers of responses, especially given that there’s no standard language or format across magazines. Rejection wiki decodes the tiers for you by magazine.

Note from Jane: Currently Journal of the Month and Poets & Writers magazine are teaming up for the holidays: a subscription to Journal of the Month qualifies you for up to 75% off a Poets & Writers subscription. See Journal of the Month for details.