Impatient writer to impatient readers

HALLIE EPHRON: It's What We're Writing Week again, and once again I'm going to talk ABOUT writing...

In my experience, writers are either under- or over-writers when they're working on a first draft. 

Some seem to just open a vein (or throw up, pick your metaphor) and let the words and ideas flow onto the page. Write, fast and furious. For them, editing is an act of cutting and shaping. 

I'm one of those people who prefer a jig to a waltz, a stride to a stroll, and like to punch a thought home rather than peel it like an onion. When I'm in the groove, I write in quick brush strokes. I lay down the words and sentences that I like to think are like my hands -- short and stubby, capable of getting work done without a lot of fuss and bother. 

So when I think I’ve outlined most of a 300-page novel, why am I invariably surprised when I run out of plot, writing page 150. Editing, for me, is adding. Reading the manuscript out loud to myself makes it easier to spot the boring, redundant parts, and helps me find where, in my haste to get to THE END I've shortchanged characterization. 

As impatient as I am as a writer, I’m moreso as a reader. I get annoyed with storytellers who double back on themselves, who repeat themselves as I am doing now (saying the same thing twice... make that three times in the same sentence!) I want to whack them upside the head and say, All right already, we get the point.

I remember, years ago I interviewed a bestselling mystery writer for a magazine profile I was writing. I so admired her work, and I was sure that she had some magic formula to share with me for getting it right the first time.

Then she told me about the manuscript she’d finally finished (she'd had to check herself into a hotel for a week to get the final chapters written) and shown to her agent. 

Back from the agent came this directive: “Ditch the first sixty pages.” The agent felt the first sixty pages were all back story, and made for a sluggish beginning. Ditch them, she advised, and feather in whatever the reader needed to know, when the reader needed to know it.

Great advice. And I often give something similar to that to the aspiring writers whose work I am privileged to read. Especially when they’re writing for mystery readers who are notoriously impatient.

The best advice I can give to aspiring writers is: just get the darned thing written. Then worry about making it sing.

So are you an impatient reader, or do you slog on, reading even when the writer insists on telling you stuff you've already surmised or perhaps don’t need to know yet? And does how much you’ll tolerate differ when you’re listening to versus silently reading a book?

What we're writing: Hallie on characters and their back stories

The winner of the clear puzzle from yesterday's post is Riley!!! Email Jenn and jennmck at yahoo dot com and she'll mail your prize! Congrats!

HALLIE EPHRON: Something I learned early on (from feedback to a rejected manuscript) was the importance of the main character’s back story. I’m fond of quoting the editor who offered this sage advice:

“I need to care about what happened to the character before the book started and what’s going to happen after the book ends.”

Of course this comes on top of apparently conflicting advice from writing instructors: DO NOT load the front of the novel with back story. Or as I tell my students, "avoid the back story dump.”

To reconcile the two caveats, I’m constantly thinking about my character’s back story… even when I’m not revealing it to the reader. It's the key to understanding why a character reacts in surprising ways -- past experiences cast a potent shadow. 

In a novel it often works best to wait until the reader is invested enough in the characters to care about their past. Then to reveal that back story gradually and strategically.

I'm struggling with that now.

A character I’m writing is based on a real person. She was a writer (call her Suzanne) whose husband died of cancer shortly before she gave birth to their second child (a daughter, call her Thea).

Soon after Thea’s birth, Suzanne was at home and a friend dropped by. Suzanne invited her in and offered her some tea and cookies. Suzanne seemed fine until the friend asked if she could take a peek at the baby.

Suzanne gave her a blank look. What baby?

Fortunately, the friend heard baby Thea crying. It turned out she was one the floor in the attic, swaddled in a blanket. Who knew how long she’d been there.

Somehow, Suzanne’s friend got help for Suzaqnne and baby Thea. 

By the time I knew Thea, she was in high school. Living with her mother and older brother and her grandparents. I don’t know how she knew about that early abandonment, but she did. I can only imagine how it must have hovered over her relationship with her mother.

So the story I have in mind has a fictional Thea as the main character. 

Though I was never abandoned, her experience speaks to me because I had a complicated relationship with my mother. My mother never physically tucked me in the attic and tried to forget about me, but still I can relate to the scars that would leave. It's something I'm interested in exploring through my writing.

I think that as fiction writers, we often work our own past traumas and experiences into the back stories of our characters. Even my villains have parts of me, experiences that echo my own, that shape who they are. Experiences that (I hope) make them believable.

Isn’t that the essence of, WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW?

Today’s question: When you read a novel, do you sometimes wonder what experiences the author may have had that fed the development of a character?

And in case anyone is looking for more (hopefully not contradictory) advice for their own writing… I’ll be teaching a week-long, 2-hour morning class in Key West: HOW TO CREATE A COMPELLING PROTAGONIST. REGISTER, class size is limited. C’mon down! https://tskw.org/create-a-compelling-protagonist-with-hallie-ephron/

Reds Writing Rules: Our Hooptedoodle

HALLIE EPHRON: A few weeks ago I had the great pleasure of teaching a writing workshop at 30th annual Antioch Writers Summer Workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I got to work with an incredibly talented group of up-and-coming writers and listen to experts offer up their wisdom on how to. (I also got to hang out with frequent Jungle Red commenter Cyndi Pauwels whose first published novel FORTY & OUT comes out in September and she'll be back then to talk about it!)

Even I don't have an MFA so I don't know the right lingo, most of what I heard was familiar. But I had a genuine Aha! moment when Tara Ison (author of "Rockaway," "The List," and "A Child Out of Alcatraz") wrote a quote on the white board. My memory of it is only approximate, and I can't even remember who said it, but here's the gist: 

Plot is about what a character needs and what he's willing to do to get it.

So simple.

Now for years I've taught that plot (aka story) is about what a character WANTS, and that conflict growing out of characters with competing goals. But somehow changing that "wants" to "needs" and combining it with: and what he's willing to do to get it, set lights flashing in my head.

So a character may WANT to win a contest, get the guy, find the treasure, destroy the broomstick on the wicked witch... but driving the want is a need. And if that character is going to risk life and limb, then the need has to be profound and personal.

After hours over glasses of wine, we talked about various 'rules' that are useful but should not be taken as gospel. Like don't start a novel with a dream or weather. Because lots of terrific novels start with nightmares and storms. (A Wrinkle in Time begins with "It was a dark and stormy night," just for instance.)

But this idea that story has to be driven by what a character needs does not seem to be to be one that can be ignored.

So have you found any rules that are sacrosanct (or at useful to follow); and are there others happily you break with impunity?

RHYS BOWEN:  It depends on the rules. There are some that are sacrosanct to me like playing fair with the reader, not switching point of view within a scene. Showing not telling. Not bombarding the reader with backstory or information. Not having two characters with similar names. Not introducing us to too many characters at once.

But there are many supposed rules for mystery novels that I break all the time. I don't mind starting a book with weather, with a dream, with conversation if I feel they are needed. I don't always have a body for a hundred pages or more.

I never manipulate character to fit the plot.

It comes down to whatever works for me.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I'm looking out the window, staring at the sailboats on the Charles, and wondering if there's a "rule" I would never break.

Huh, okay. I would never change point of view in the midst of a scene.  I often start a scene with one line of dialogue, but rarely two, because I am always careful to make sure the reader knows where the scene is taking place. 

I would never have a stupid secret, like missing twin, or sex change operation.

I won't have a phone call where someone says: I can't tell you on the phone, but meet me later. (You KNOW what's about to happen then, right?) (Although it's fine, and pretty funny, if the meeting goes as planned.)

I guess--I always ask myself: Is this believable, original and interesting? Do I care? And if I can say yes, I pretty much do whatever works.

Oh, that's what Rhys just said.

LUCY BURDETTE: Okay, just thinking off the top of my head, without any wine...I really really try not to insert a plot twist or clue just because I love the idea. If it doesn't work with the story and even more importantly, the characters, I try to deep-six that little bit of brilliance.

Second, also hard, is try not to have the heroine trot into dangerous situations without a damn good reason. Hayley Snow is a food critic not a police officer, so I try to keep that in mind.

Oh and one more little thing--try to make sure SOMETHING  HAPPENS in each scene, that it advances the plot or shows something critical about the characters.

My hub asked me yesterday: "So what's happening with your plot?"

Me: "They're eating bad Japanese food. That's it." Sigh, back to work...

DEBORAH CROMBIE: What Rhys, Hank, and Lucy said:-)

Interesting that we are all obsessive about changing viewpoint within a scene. I HATE that!! It will make me put down a book.

And I am VERY big on Play Fair in crime novels. I don't like unreliable narrators, and I think the readers must be given all the information available to the sleuths, be they amateur or professional.

Like Rhys, I've started books with weather, and with dreams, and often there isn't a murder until a good way into the book. So who makes up these silly rules, anyway???

I guess (without a glass of wine or two) that my big unbreakable rule is Everything Must Advance the Plot. And sometimes that mean throwing out things I really like. And not putting in things (and characters) I really like.

HALLIE: And there you have it! The Reds have spoken. But really, every writer has his or her own rules that they write by and rules they ignore.  

So what "rule" might a writer break that will make you put down a book?