Take a risk and go long.

  • In the January 2014 issue of Writer’s Digest magazine, Elizabeth Sims writes about “Miscalculations and Missteps.”  One is, “take a risk and go long.”

    “The value of a relatively long description is that it draws your readers deeper into the scene. The worry is that you’ll bore them. But if you do a good job you’ll engross them. Really getting into a description is one of the most fun things you can do as an author. Here’s the trick: Get going on a description with the attitude of discovering, not informing. In this zone, you’re not writing to tell readers stuff you already know—rather, you are writing to discover and experience the scene right alongside them.”

    Sims continues with “Go below the surface.”

    “A gateway to describing a person, place or thing in depth is to assign mood or emotion to him/her/it.  . . . The Bay Bridge was somber today, its gray girders melding with the fog.”

    Alla Crone expertly illustrates what Sims is talking about in her historical novel, Winds Over Manchuria.

    Here’s an excerpt from Alla’s book:

    “On the cold Sunday of January 9, 1905, the pallid sun hung over the rooftops of St. Petersburg trying to burn its way through a thin layer of clouds. By two o’clock in the afternoon the dull light had done little to warm the thousands of people milling the streets.”

    More about Alla Crone-Hayden and her book’s journey in Chris Smith‘s January 21 article in The Press Democrat.

    Your turn.  Make a list of inanimate objects, perhaps landmarks in your town. Write a few sentences, giving them moods and emotions.  Or, use weather to describe and mirror your characters’ emotions.  Write a scene and, as Sims says, “take a risk and go long.”

    Note:  Check back here for Sunday’s book review of Alla Crone’s riveting novel, Captive of Silence.

  • POV – choosing a point of view is one of the first things to decide when writing your story. In “Fiction in Focus,” January 2014 issue of Writer’s Digest magazine, Tanya Egan Gibson compares pov with how photographers frame their subjects.  She writes, “frame your story, focusing readers’ attention and leading them through the storytelling picture you’ve created, scene by scene.”

    Gibson writes that using pov as a lens allows you to you to go deep in describing your characters and their actions, making your manuscript stronger.  For example, “the way a character sees the world tells the reader a great deal about them. If your protagonist sees rainbows, puppies and waterfalls as gloomy, menacing and boring, your reader will come to the conclusion that the character is  depressed, without you having to come out and say so. This follows the old adage of showing, rather than telling.”

    You have probably heard what Gibson says about scene, “Every scene in your novel needs to be moving the story forward. Characterization and description can take you only so far before your reader will grow restless, it’s how your character’s observations and interactions cause her to act that will propel the reader through your scenes.”

    Here’s a part of the article I especially like, “. . . your character should be doing more than reacting. . . once your protagonist has stumbled onto the coven of vampires in her basement, we want to see her scanning the room and figuring out what to do next instead of just idly thinking about how sparkly their capes are.”

    Gibson’s article ends with, “Using pov as a lens through which to craft your scenes makes your resulting novel draft tight, coherent and engaging. . . . the sensory details in a scene function as far more than decoration. Your readers will be engaged because they will assume, correctly, that every component of your literary ‘photo’ has been included in the frame for a reason.”

    Tanya Egan Gibson is the author of How to Buy a Love of Reading.  Visit Tanya’s interactive website, and discover how reading has inspired folks to write their “reading love stories.” You can send Tanya your response to the question, “How has reading saved you?”

    Your turn:  Write  a scene in first person point of view. Something simple like a picnic in the park.  Then step back, frame the picture with a wider lens. Write the same scene from a third person point of view.

  • Gift from the sea

    Excerpt from Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

    I began these pages for myself in order to think out my own particular pattern of living, my own individual balance of life, work and human relationships. And since I think best with a pencil in my hand, I started naturally to write. I had the feeling, when the thoughts first clarified on paper, that my experience was very different from other people’s. (Are we all under this illusion?) My situation had, in certain ways, more freedom than that of most people, and in certain other ways, much less. . . .

    And so gradually, these chapters, fed by conversations, arguments and revelations from men and women of all groups, became more than my individual story, until I decided in the end to give them back to the people who had shared and stimulated many of these thoughts. Here, then, with my warm feelings of gratitude and companionship for those working along the same lines, I return my gift from the sea.

    Your turn . . . write snippets of your story. Just write!

  • You can build a career as an author by playing to your strengths, following your true passion, going at your own pace and never shying away from your unique voice. — David Sedaris    Writers Digest Magazine, October 2013

     

  • One way to learn  how to write is to get a book in the genre you want to write in and use it like a text book.  With different colored highlighters, highlight dialogue in one color,  narration in another color, scenic descriptions in a third color. Notice how much dialogue there is compared to narration.  Write notes in the margins. Use sticky notes to show where one character’s story intersects with another character leading to the hookup later in the story. Note foreshadowing. Learn how successful authors craft their novels. And some day, someone learning to write might use your book as a textbook on how to write.

  • From December 2013 issue of The Writer magazine. “In the Classroom” with Kelly Caldwell.

    1. Don’t worry about What is My Larger Subject? in your first draft. Just get out of your own way, write the story and let the universal themes of the essay reveal themselves.

    2. When you’ve got that first draft, ask yourself, “So what?” and write down the answer.

    3. When you reach a point in the essay where you want to make things up because they would be more interesting or more satisfying or just prettier, don’t. This is creative NONfiction, after all, and yes, that matters. Also, those are usually places where you need to dig deeper, because that’s where the richer, more meaningful material usually lies.

     

     

     

  • Kevin Nance’s interview of August Kleinzahler in the Nov/Dec 2013 issue of Poets & Writers shows how to describe character and setting.

    “One bright afternoon in San Francisco, Kleinzahler joins me for a spot of lunch at his favorite Chinese restaurant in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, once a hippie haven and now well into the process of gentrification, full of trendy shops and high-end hipsters. He cuts a fine figure in sunglasses, a banded hat, and a jaunty scarf tied haphazardly around his neck.

    He is, in some ways, a Californian now, a San Franciscan. ‘It agreed with me instantly,’ he says of the city he first encountered more than three decades ago. ‘The look of it, the feel of it, the bookstores, the bars, the Chinese food—all good for me.’ On the other hand, ‘It’s not home,’ he says, ‘The people don’t talk right here, they don’t walk right, their body language is wrong.’”

  • I enjoy books that take me away, where I can escape into other worlds, like Cedar Cove, the fictional town Debbie Macomber created for her cast of characters.  A Costco Connection article about Macomber invites readers into her real world.

    “When I first started out, the rejections came so fast they hit me in the back of the head.”  November 2013, The Costco Connection. 

    The article continues, “Macomber describes her desire to write as a ‘dream that pounded inside of me.’”  She overcame dyslexia and taught herself the art of writing by dissecting Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Wolf and the Dove. “Whatever was inside that story that made me want to go back and read them again and again, I wanted in my own story.”

    From Debbie Macomber’s website:

    “. . . I wanted to become a writer because I had stories to tell. And I was always interested in people—in what happens to them and what they choose to do or not do and why—which is the basis of story. I knew from the time I was in grade school that I wanted to write books, but it was a dream I kept close to my heart for fear someone would laugh or tell me I’d never be published.”

    How about you? Let’s nurture your dream. . . start writing. Use any of the prompts on this blog to spark your flame to write. Write now! Just write!

  • I love it when writers describe characters in a way that I can really see them, beyond eye and hair color. The trick is how to describe a character that gets into the essential details of the person.

    Elizabeth Berg demystifies how to describe characters, using interesting details, in “Escaping into the Open,” The Art of Writing True, page 91:

    Whether you’re writing fiction or  nonfiction, you can greatly help define a character by sharing not only what he says and does, but also how he looks. Again, details matter. don’t tell the reader that someone is old; show it by describing the dime-size age spots, the sag of the cheeks, the see-through hair, the spiderlike spread of veins at the back of the knees. Are nylons falling down? Are belts too big? Are there greasy thumbprints on the lenses of bifocals? Is the posture stopped or stubbornly erect? Is there a periodic squeal from a hearing aid? What does he eat for breakfast? How does she speak on the phone? Do medication bottles rattle in his front pocket? Does she keep nitro-glycerin in a silver monogrammed case?

    Your Turn:  Write a character sketch. Write so that readers can hear, see, smell, feel your character.

  • In her book, “The True Secret of Writing” Natalie Goldberg writes:

    Writing is for everyone, like eating and sleeping. Buddha said sleep is the greatest pleasure. We don’t often think of sleep like that. It seems so ordinary. But those who have sleepless nights know the deep satisfaction of sleep. The same is true of writing. We think of it as no big deal, we who are lucky to be literate. Slaves were forbidden to learn to read or write. Slave Owners were afraid to think of these people as human. To read and to write is to be empowered. No shackle can ultimately hold you.

    To write is to continue the human lineage. For my grandfather, coming from Russia at seventeen, it was enough to learn the language. Today, it’s our responsibility to further the immigrant dream. To write, to pass on the dream and tell its truth. Get to work. Nothing fancy. Begin with the ordinary. Buddha probably knew, but forgot to mention, that along with sleep, writing can be the greatest pleasure.