Writers in the Storm

by Lisa Hall-Wilson

Ever figure out a solution to a problem, and then way over-use it? That’s what happens with rhetorical questions when we’re trying to avoid author intrusion!

Once you become aware of author intrusion, of what that looks like in either limited third person, first person, or deep POV, the easy workaround becomes a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is used to create dramatic effect or make a point rather than elicit an answer. Instead of telling the reader how the character feels or inserting information into the story, have the character wonder about the information instead.

Here’s a paragraph from a mss I’ve stuffed in a drawer.

Laurel slunk deeper into her seat. The two other reporters and the admin glanced at her, but mostly they stared at their notebooks. She straightened in her seat and hooked her hair behind her ears. Why was everyone acting so sullen?

There it is. The rhetorical question that’s slipped in to replace the bit of author intrusion I had there. Problem solved, right? Maybe. Except, when I do a search for question marks, there’s 22 rhetorical questions in eight pages. TWENTY-TWO?? Hmmm…

Maybe you’ve done this too?

Here’s a whole paragraph of rhetorical questions:

But could she do it? Could she go back to the farm—to him? Could they fix their marriage? Did she even want to?

I saw this trend of overusing rhetorical questions in my student’s work too and the question marks began jumping off the page at me. The problem is that the author intrusion or narrator voice we’re trying to avoid by using rhetorical questions, ends up being a crutch that prevents us from taking that next step to go deeper with our character.

So, I challenged myself to limit the rhetorical questions to one a chapter. One. And here are the benefits of stretching yourself in this way.

Rhetorical Questions Aren’t Wrong

Rhetorical questions have their place in internal dialogue, the goal shouldn’t be to completely eliminate them (mostly rhetorical questions are fair game in dialogue). They can offer great surprise for the reader.

Most of the time the character’s rhetorical questions are offering information the reader already knows the character is thinking about. I’m repeating information instead of moving the story ahead. You’ve just tied an anchor to the pace of your novel right there. Why am I wasting valuable space on the page repeating things the reader already knows?

Flip Flopping

Readers want characters that stand for something. They want characters who have decided to press on towards a particular goal no matter what the cost – there’s no turning back. To do this well, your character needs to plant a flag, draw a line in the sand, pick a path, choose a side.

While we hope rhetorical questions help us create tension and uncertainty in characters (and therefore readers), over-using them allows the character to waffle. This waffling or hesitation makes the character harder to cheer for, harder to relate to. Instead, force them to be decisive and live with the consequences. Take a rhetorical question in your mss, and have the character think of the answer to the question instead.

Could she trust him?

Could become: He’d betrayed her before and nothing stopped him from doing it again. But maybe he was her only chance at a relationship. The ache in her chest kicked up, a sharp penetrating throb over her sternum. No, she couldn’t trust him, but she didn’t trust herself to make a good decision either.

The rhetorical question is a shortcut that’s meant to increase tension, but many times the shortcut undermines the emotional potential in a scene. It’s a lost opportunity to go deeper. There’s more emotional depth to the answer than the rhetorical question offered.

Try Starting With The Rhetorical Question

Back to back rhetorical questions point to weak writing or undeveloped characters. I’m a pantser at heart, so my first drafts are riddled with rhetorical questions. Case in point:

But could she do it? Could she go back to the farm—to him? Could they fix their marriage? Did she even want to?

I have begun to see these paragraphs as fluorescent sticky tabs marking a place where I need to come back to and go deeper with the emotions.  

In revisions, get curious about how the character would answer those questions. Start with the rhetorical question as a launching point for going deeper. What are the implications of one or more possible answers?

In the paragraph above, the female character is trying to decide if she should give her marriage another chance. There’s so much depth to plumb there. If she goes back to him, what kind of person does that make her? Would her opinion of herself change if it doesn’t work out? Why is it so hard to decide – what’s at risk? What parts of herself are upset and why is she refusing to listen to them? What would a stronger person do? Why can’t she do that?

Are The Rhetorical Questions Always Coming From One Character?

This was a pretty humbling question to ask myself, because I saw a trend in my first drafts where there was always one POV character who overused rhetorical questions to an embarrassing level. The other POV characters would have a reasonable use of rhetorical questions, but there would be one with back to back paragraphs of rhetorical questions. *womp womp*

Has this happened to you too? It’s a signal to me that I don’t know my character well enough. I don’t know WHY they’re doing/thinking certain things, what’s motivating them, what emotions are involved or at risk, or even what they really want. The rhetorical questions allowed me to waffle and skim, to avoid the hard work of going deeper. I had to stop being a lazy writer and get curious about aspects of this character I didn’t have an answer for yet.

Going deeper with the emotions in a scene is where the reader connects with the character.

Rhetorical questions can be a great starting point to diving deep into emotions, so don’t be discouraged if you find quite a few. Just nod. Maybe do a search and highlight what you find. This is a new starting point. OK, I know what that’s about now and I know how to fix it.

Try it yourself. Pick a random chapter in your WIP and search for question marks. How many rhetorical questions did you find? Have you ever used rhetorical questions as a launch pad to go deeper with emotions?

About Lisa

Lisa Hall-Wilson is a writing teacher and award-winning writer and author. She’s the author of Method Acting For Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layers. Her blog, Beyond Basics For Writers, explores all facets of the popular writing style deep point of view and offers practical tips for writers. 

She runs the free Facebook group Going Deeper With Emotions where she shares tips and videos on writing in deep point of view. 

by Jenny Hansen

Does anyone else here do that thing where they worry about their weaknesses too much? I've noticed a worrisome trend in the writing world, and sometimes in my own psyche. It's a disturbing phenomenon that occurs in creative types (especially writers). These creatives seem to think they have to be good at everything. Or that, because they have weak areas, they're not good enough at their jobs.

I have a question for you perfectionist writers out there:

Why is it acceptable for multiple attempts when learning to ride a bike, or dance the tango, or knit but it’s an “epic fail” to write a few books before you get good at it?

Lots of first novels remain unpublished for a reason. They were practice for the other books. 

I don’t get why it’s expected to take years to learn a musical instrument but it’s not acceptable to sit down at the writing page and have less-than-perfect prose fall from your fingertips. I don't get why that so often makes words like hack, imposter, what-the-hell-am-I-doing come to mind.

(If you're still in doubt about this, read Laura's Dust Bunny Books post, or watch my favorite pep talk video below.)

https://youtu.be/Nyhv80HDSj4

Let's Get To Those Strengths

Let me tell you a story about the best job I ever had. Before motherhood, I was a corporate software trainer for almost 20 years. The #1 requirement was the ability to be ON each day in the classroom.

It didn't matter whether I was up all night with a screaming baby or if my best friend and I had a fight. Nobody cares about those things when they come in for a day of training. Those students are focused on what they need to learn and it was my job to deliver.

There are personality types who would hate that type of work. They’d get tired by all that “on” business. I saw it a little differently. Every day that I walked into a classroom, I knew:

• All my problems would get checked at the door.
• I was going to provide a service.
• I'd meet new people.
• I’d have a fun day.
• I’d experience the utter joy of watching people learn, and light up over what they learned.

Do you see a trend with perks I listed above? It was me, me, I, I. Training was a vacation from my own busy head and a chance to focus on other people. It worked for me because it played on some of my innate strengths.

How do I know my strengths?

I went to a training conference several years ago that changed the way I see the world, especially the creative world. The keynote presentation -- “Building a Strengths-Based Organization” -- shined a bright light on another disturbing trend:

Society, starting with our schools and continuing through our workplace management teams, puts a mighty amount of focus on "improving our weaknesses." They use words like shore them up, compensate for them, overcome them.

After hearing some speakers at that conference, I started thinking crazy thoughts....

What might happen if those organizations put the same amount of energy in developing peoples’ strengths?

What kind of mountains could we move as writers if we applied our efforts toward being stellar at the things we’re good at, rather than focusing all our energy on our “faults?”

I’m not talking about turning into a bunch of narcissists who can do no wrong. I’m talking about making it a primary goal to discover your innate strengths and spend more time playing to them.

A Quick DIY Strengths Test

We did an exercise in the conference pre-session where we listed the things we were good at – we had 60 seconds to scribble them down. The first ones that came to mind - no deliberating. We were directed to find the skills we’d always been good at, for as long as we could remember.

Go ahead. Grab a piece of paper, set a timer for 60 seconds, and scribble yours down. We'll wait.

Don't think. Just start scribbling a list of the things that are easiest for you, whether they have anything to do with writing or not. You can do a writing-specific one later if you want.

Now stare at that list and be honest with yourself about how much focus you put on those talents.

It's interesting to me that most people don’t see their innate skills as anything nifty or unusual. In other words, they don’t see their own "specialness."

Just to give you an example, my innate strengths, in no particular order, were:

• Writing
• Teaching
• Motivating others
• Making friends
• Doing hair
• Learning software and languages

I felt extremely lucky when I looked at my list. Life pushed me early into a job I am uniquely suited for. Except for the “doing hair” part, my innate strengths describe the perfect software trainer. No wonder training always felt so easy…it draws on nearly all of my innate strengths!

Back to the conference...

The abilities people came up with in that session were amazing. There was tons of talent in that room. And you know what made me sad? The majority of it was not being used in the workplace, where everyone spent at least 50% of their waking hours. So many of those really cool and rewarding abilities were being relegated to the "someday I'll devote time to this hobby" side of the fence.

My Personal Epiphany

I did that hobby thing with my writing for years. Put it on the back burner...didn't make it a priority...downplayed my talent because words came easily to me. And I did that dumb thing I talked about up at the top of the post...I spent the majority of my time working on my weaknesses, both at work and on the page.

And then I went to that conference and those speakers turned my thoughts around enough for my personal epiphany to sneak in:

It doesn’t mean you’re a slacker just because you like to do the things that come naturally to you. 

In fact, I’m going to take this further and issue you a challenge: Pay attention to the things that are easy for you and try to do them more often. I personally think the easiest way to bring your “A” Game to your writing life is to play to your strengths.

The Need for Perfection

I'm going to use a baseball analogy for this next bit.

A quick primer for the the non-baseball peeps: US baseball has two different leagues - National League and American League. The two have slightly different rules, which we'll discuss below.

In American League Baseball, the rules allow for some weak spots. For example, pitchers are not expected to also be great hitters and they get a pinch hitter. Other players who can't hit the ball for whatever reason are also allowed to use a pinch hitter. They then have to leave for the rest of that game, but for a player who is tiring, this isn't a bad deal. Ditto for a slow poke or hurting player who uses a pinch runner.

Why can’t we do a little of that in our own writing groups? It's a smart strategy to mix up the talent so we have help when we get tired or slow. I've shared some examples of my friends who rock various talents below:

• Pinch World Builder (Fae Rowen)
• Pinch Steamy Scene Pro (Monica Corwin)
• Pinch Description Writer (Laura Drake)
• Pinch Grammar and Structure Queen (Julie Glover) - she is also a sassy dialogue pro
• Pinch Theme Builder (that would be me)

When you get a crew like that together, it doesn't matter so much if you have weak points. As I mentioned above, a strategic writer might build their critique groups or editing groups around a mix of strengths like the ones above. Most writers trade time or pages with each other. Other writers pay an editor. (I'll be interested to hear what our WITS readers do.)

Know Your Weaknesses

Just because you know your own weaknesses doesn't mean you have to dwell on them, even though a lot of us do. Mine drove me bonkers for years, until I went to that conference and got some perspective on my ridiculous need to be good at everything.

Laura Drake finally got through to me with her profound observation on writers: "No one gets it all."

My list of writing "weaknesses"

Here's my list, just to make you smile.

• Writing scene transitions. I've had it take me an entire page to get my characters from an elevator to the front door of a building. (Yeah, it's embarrassing.)
• I want to cover my eyes when my characters’ clothes come off.
• I can’t figure out how to build a space world.
• Fight scenes give me fits.
• The thought of writing a full-length novel makes me sweat. (See my solution in this post.)

Do these weak spots make me a crappy writer? No. It just means that my strengths lie elsewhere. Sometimes I have to go to my A-Team to get my “A” Game. And that’s OK.

I want to know when the Writing Police decided that we have to be great at every single aspect of our writing.

The older I get, the more that notion seems full of the hooey to me.

Do we need to keep learning and pushing ourselves to be better? Sure. But perhaps some of us perfection seekers can get an early start on next year's New Year's resolutions and stop beating ourselves up over not being stellar at every-darn-thing. Who's with me??

What are your innate strengths? I’m not talking about the things you’ve learned to be good at. What were you always good at? Share your uniqueness in the comments section below – we want to hear about it!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides LinkedIn coaching and copywriting for accountants and financial services firms. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20 years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

Top Photo by Ryan Wong on Unsplash

by Ellen Buikema

Good stories have a cast of characters who each play a specific role. Minor characters, although not indispensable to the plot, matter.

Minor characters are not afterthoughts to the protagonists.

These characters can make or break a story. In addition to advancing the plot, they add depth and dimension. These individuals usually have a small role and often appear for a few scenes. But even if they aren’t in the story for long, minor characters can have a significant impact.

If you want to give a minor character more depth and dimension, you can give them their own story arc with something as simple as emotional or physical change.

Minor characters have many forms.

They can fill out the population of your world.

“The other townsfolk—rubes, as Uncle Al called them—had already made their way through the menagerie tent and into the big top, which pulsed with frenetic music.” Like Water for Elephants

Minor characters are great for providing information, which is a good way for the protagonist to overhear or see what’s happening.

In the Dead Until Dark: Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery #1 by Charlaine Harris,The main protagonist “listens in” telepathically to the thoughts of other characters to gather information. A gift that is both blessing and a curse.

They can set the tone of a scene.

Dean R. Koontz’s Lightning features a pair of foster parents that Laura, our protagonist, is afraid to love for fear of loss.  Her foster mom speaks.

‘“I owned an interior design firm, but I had to give it up eight years ago. Health reasons. Too stressful. I wasn’t used to sitting at home like a lump, so I did all the things I dreamed of as a businesswoman with no spare time. Like learning magic.”

“Health reasons?” Laura said.

“Security was a treacherous rug that people kept pulling out from under her, and now someone was getting ready to jerk the rug again.”’

These characters may be helpful in small plots. They might cause a problem and then leave or assist another character briefly.

Hugo, the drinking buddy of the protagonist’s father, drags the father home after a night on the town, warns the protagonist of trouble with the father in the morning, and then leaves, never to be found in the story again. (From a work in progress.)

The following tips can help to create great secondary characters.

1. Give them a reason for being

Minor characters without a clear purpose have the potential to unnecessarily complicate and disrupt the flow of your story.

Giving minor characters a reason for being doesn’t mean that each has to change the course of the storyline. A character’s purpose could be to support the protagonist, witness events, or point the main characters in a particular direction.

• In The Hunger Games, minor characters play a role in aiding, guiding, or hindering Katniss along her journey through the games.
• For a romantic comedy or family drama, the purpose of the minor characters can be to convey relationship history.
• A minor character in conflict with the main character helps create tension and keeps the readers turning the pages. No conflict—no story.

In each case, characters may have brief appearances. Having a defined purpose, they become an essential part of the story instead of window dressing.

2. Give them clearly defined traits

Whether on the physical or mental level, well-crafted features let even the most minor characters stand out from the crowd.

• Clearly defining an individual’s characteristics paints a vivid picture, fixing them in readers’ memories.
• A character’s defining trait could be their lack of tact. This person may own a closet filled with the same outfit, have an unusual physical attribute, or gesture wildly with their hands.
• Plainly defined traits help distinguish critical minor characters in your story.

3.   Have them impact the story

Consider their impact. Positive, negative, or neutral, this impact affects the reader’s perception and memory of a character.

• Even if a character only appears for a short time, their impact lives on, encouraging interest.
• Impact can be indirect or direct. A minor character can set events in motion that catch up to the protagonists, or they can directly interact with the protagonist.
• Whether wild and crazy or subtle and subdued, imbuing each character with their unique impact will cause the most minor of players to stand out.

4. Consider their relationship to the protagonist

Unless you plan to write a story using one character, your protagonist(s) will interact with many characters and represent all kinds of relationships: family, friends, lovers, colleagues, acquaintances, and strangers.

• Tying a minor character’s relationship to the main character reinforces their worth in the story, giving them meaning and adding to the tale.
• Once the relationship between a minor and major character is established, the reader becomes more invested in minor character.

5. Give them a personal dialogue style

As a fundamental element of character development, dialogue can help define and distinguish one character from the next.

Giving a minor character distinctive dialogue patterns distinguishes them from the others, making them memorable no matter how small their role is.

The way they speak provides insight into our character.

• Formal or informal
• Use of more than one language
• Slang
• Lively or mellow – how each character speaks adds depth to your story.

Think about the unique interests, traits, and background of each character. How old are they? Where are they from? What happened in their lives to develop their personalities?

Also, consider their voice and speech patterns.

One character may speak a mile a minute while another may speak with great care due to a stutter. One may blab on incessantly, while another may be a person of few words.

The next time you consider your cast of characters, see if any of the above tips helps in writing minor characters that matter.

What types of roles do your secondary characters have? How do you differentiate your characters? Do you have a favorite secondary character?

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents and a series of chapter books for children with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works In Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and Crystal Memories, YA paranormal fantasy.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image by Sam Williams from Pixabay