Writers in the Storm

by Ellen Buikema

There are times I’m absolutely certain of the characters’ surroundings,
the shape of the scene crystalizes in my mind and I can write it all in one sitting. Don't you love those times? But there are moments when that just ain’t happenin'.

I see the setting as one of the story’s characters, and I need a clear vision of the locale to weave the dialog into the setting for a strong scene. When it "ain't happening," it’s time to set aside my introverted tendencies and make some calls.

Research Avenues

For my current book, The Hobo Code,I contacted business owners in locations where my protagonists traveled, historical societies, museum docents, read historical documents, library archives, student dissertations, and perused Pinterest and YouTube.

For example, at one point I needed some information on making a fishing pole and how to gut fish. Having never gutted a fish and no real desire to do so first hand, I found what I needed in a few different YouTube videos enabling me to put together a good, gross description to create a believable scene.

In the name of research, I've traveled on city trains, both subways and elevated. I’ve walked through old trains in Midwestern train museums, but I've never taken a long trip on a train nor ridden an older passenger train.

In The Hobo Code, my protagonists do a lot of train travel, primarily on freight trains but also on some passenger trains.

Dialogue from Setting

I already had a good feel for what they would say to each other and was confident of their individual levels of anxiety and relief, but wasn’t sure about the inside of the train. How would they react to each other within and due to the confines of the space? How might the interior of the train effect what my characters would do? Would there be any physical distractions or hazards to keep in mind?

Sitting down and chatting with local train enthusiasts was a real eye-opener. They gave me some suggestions for places to look online that they used to make historically accurate representations and also lent me some large hardbound books on trains of the late 1800s and early 1900s that had some interesting photos.

One particular scene in the story placed three children and their father sitting across the aisle from each other on a passenger train from Wausau, Wisconsin to Milwaukee. To assist with this scene I located several photographs on Pinterest.  I found the following photo helpful for the travel scene across the state of Wisconsin. It gave me a feel for clothing, hair styles, size of aisles, and seating. Those blocky structures over the seats are beds, so this particular train car is a sleeper.

These seats are fairly narrow. Since the father and eldest son in my story had the most trouble with each other I kept them separated. There seems to be enough room for their carpetbags to rest on the floor by their feet, and sufficient window space to peer out into the distance to ponder and observe.

Finding Local Experts

Gathering information from local experts requires a bit of digging but is well worth the effort. I contacted several museum docents along the route my characters traveled. I received a goldmine of information from Mark Shafer, the director of the Carnegie Museum in Fairfield, Iowa, one of the stops on their journey. We communicated primarily via cellphone texts. He sent a plethora of photos and was forthcoming with information about the history of the area and the local college, Parsons, which was in existence in the early 1900s.

The following photo, taken at Parsons College, was not used specifically to help set a scene. Instead it was used to develop a secondary character, an acting student whose parents believed she was studying something else more practical. Her personality sang out to me as vibrant, full of mischief and fun. This character sparked a desire to act in the sister of the main protagonist who goes on in the next story to become an actress in the early days of Hollywood.

I spent about an hour on the phone with the owner of a bar, now known as The Glass Hat, in Wausau, Wisconsin, where the father of my protagonists spent a good deal of time and money. In the early 1900s this same bar was named The Langsdorf Saloon. The owner, Gisela Marks, sent several photos. Our conversation helped me breathe life into the early chapters of the story.

For the first bar scene I wanted to have music and wasn’t sure if I should include a piano or have a patron bring in an accordion. The current owner found part of a piano case in the bar’s basement when she first acquired the building and so I could be certain to use the piano for that particular scene.

These two photos Gisela sent me helped make the exterior and interior scenes come alive.

For a while now I’ve followed an Australian author, acflory, who writes science fiction and does a lot of world building.

I expected her process would be very different from my own. I imagined she’d find a topic of interest, do the research, then scenes would form in her mind and she’d write them. When I asked about her process, this was her reply:

“It's probably a bit more circular than that because my stories are always about /people/ responding to tech. For example, I play online games so I'm very familiar with playing in a digital world. From there it wasn't a huge stretch to wonder what it would be like to actually live in a digital world. Why would someone want to? Perhaps because they were very sick? So then the internal world of the character had to go hand in hand with the tech that would make it possible, at least in theory. So then research about how you might make it happen. What would you need? And who would pay for it? Apart from the fear factor, would there be dangers?

“ For me, the stories literally grow, layer by layer. And of course, all the research and tech and thinking about the world /is/ world building.”

Andrea (acflory) also uses information gleaned from YouTube and includes the videos on her blog. Much of what she’s sent along is new and exciting technology.

What do you use for inspiration to create scenes? Do you prefer to use three-dimensional objects, online images, take vacations near or at your story’s local? What is your process?

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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 Work In Progress, The Hobo Code, is YA historical fiction.

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

by Kris Maze

How does one become a superstar editor? Or even just a better self-editor? Take a class?  Get a coach? Getting an editor job takes years of study and experience, but if your goal is to strengthen your manuscript and to gain satisfaction from growing in your craft, there's a resource that may be a good starting point.

When I researched “empowering your inner editor”, the internet protested that this secret superpower (editing) was taboo. Pages of Google Search Titles portrayed the Inner Editor as badly as an addiction to a smarmy ex-boyfriend:

• How to Silence…
• Why You Need to Restrain…
• 9 Tips to Defeat...
• How to Shut Up Your…
• How to Turn Off...
• Four Ways to Control your…

INNER EDITOR.

Whoa, now. I have to disagree. The inner editor serves a vital purpose after the first draft, taking one’s writing from fluffy to fog-free. But it doesn't happen without practice and guidance.

When I finished my first novel THE TALENT, I was overwhelmed by the steep journey of editing.  I hired a professional editor but didn’t want them to waste their time working on errors I should be able to fix myself.

As I navigated the how-to of trimming the wordiness from my writing, a friend suggested Don McNair’s 21 Steps to Editor-Proof Your Writing.  Packed with examples and exercises, this book takes a writer from understanding to implementing with precise editing strategies in three parts:  

• Part 1: Putting Words In examines the developmental part of editing.  
• Part 2: Taking Words Out moves into specifics of what makes an editor cringe.
• Part 3: Sharing Your Words advises how to utilize critique partners, work with professional editors and find publishers and/or agents through querying.

Here is a raw scene from a short story in progress, which I'll use to show the before and after of McNair's lessons.

Draft #1

She played the bow across the string with a final dissolving note, while the dinner chatter rose. A man rattled ice in his cocktail glass, at a nearby pub table. “It was a fine performance, but not exquisite.” he commented to a woman checking her phone.

“Let’s call that a set.” her pianist declared, raising from the piano bench and disappearing to the bar as she slowly bobbed her head.

She wandered from the room to the adjoining study with towering windows flanked by thick curtains to keep out the winter chill.  The glass was visible and framed the star-dotted sky.

One paned glass door was open a crack, a bucket with half extinguished cigarette butts on the concrete enclosed patio. The chilled air bit into her bare arms and she pulled the sparkling gown training behind her up and around her feet. She welcomed the cold and invited them to snap her to her senses. Her performance was weak and she knew it.

McNair offers lengthy lists of sample words and phrases to search out to cut the fluffy parts from your writing. He provides brief exercises with answer keys to ensure you understand how to make your writing clearer.  The process of going through his book trains your writing brain to find the sticky parts common in first drafts (along with tools to fix them).

5 Steps to Self-Editing Stardom

1. Fix your verbs! Seriously, almost half of his list is dedicated to this powerful grammar motor.  Make the verb tense concise and select the most accurate words to carry your story.
2. Eliminate and Avoid Dead and Redundant Phrases.  See what I did there?  Don’t do that.  Get rid of the fog by picking just the important details. Only add visual elements that further your story.  Get rid of the fluffy words.
3. Deconstruct and Realign. Could you regroup your description to streamline the reader’s experience?  Could the order of the actions change to make the words flow better?  Pulling apart the scene can help a writer reorder the details in powerful ways.
4. Prepositional Phrases – Keep an eye out for these sneaky extras – phrases like “on top of” or “down below” are easy to cut out and replace with stronger expressions.
5. Dialogue – Do you need it?  How much?  Simplify to only what pushes the story onward.  Let actions evoke the mood and set the scene.  Less is more.

Draft #2 - in progress

Those edits paved the way for scene setting, improved sensory details and smoother dialogue.

Draft #3

She tugged the violin bow through a dissolving finale while dinner chatter rose.  A man rattled ice in his cocktail glass, “A fine performance, but not exquisite,” he said to a woman checking her phone. Evalyn set the bow in its case, feeling a flush form on her cheeks.

She couldn’t afford another mediocre review.

“Let’s call that a set, “her pianist said. He bolted from the bench to the bar before she could bob her head in agreement.

Evalyn wandered to the balcony entrance where brocade curtains insulated tall windows and framed the star-dotted sky.  A planter full of half-extinguished cigarette butts smoldered as she exited through the glass-paned door.

Her steps echoed across the concrete as her sequined gown flowed behind, cascading like a crystalline waterfall and exposing her well-scuffed heels. Goosebumps formed on her legs as she invited the cold to bite at her bare arms. Her breath formed clouds in the crisp air.

She wished for the cold to wake her muse and make it heed her summons. 

Final thought

Self-editing can be a satisfying part of the writing process but I hear mixed reviews from writers. It's a joy to some and a tedious chore to others. I recommend Don McNair’s book for anyone who needs clear direction to navigate the foggy parts of writing.  His thorough process was the perfect guide to a stronger manuscript worth submitting.

What favorite resource made a difference to your newbie writer self? Please share the editing resource that helped you refine your writing in the comments below.

About Kris:

A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, playing violin and piano, and spending time outdoors with her fur babies and family. She also ponders the wisdom of Bob Ross.

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by Tiffany Yates Martin

Imagine you’ve been given a fabulous vacation—a trip to Bali, a luxury cruise of the Nordic countries, an adventure vacation across Asia, an African safari. The only catch is that you have to go with a pre-selected travel companion, and you have to stay with that person the whole time. Oh—and she’s whiny. Or he’s completely passive and just wants to hang around in the hotel room and write in his journal. Or smug, or abrasive, or grandiosely self-absorbed, or always feeling victimized, or just plain dull. How much fun does that trip sound like now?

Authors sometimes assume that if they have an interesting enough setup and plot, readers will automatically be invested in their story. But no matter how spectacular the journey you promise them, readers don’t deeply care what’s happening unless they care who it’s happening to.

Barbara Linn Probst's Friday post about likeability and relatability showed why these traits matter in hooking your reader, and how incorporating the gray areas in both can create faceted, layered characters. Let's build on her insightful thoughts and talk about some specifics for creating characters that hook readers from the very beginning of your story.

That doesn’t mean your heroes have to be likable—although that’s one excellent way to make us want to take that journey. But they do need to be engaging and relatable enough from the very beginning of your story that we want to spend hours of our busy lives traveling with them, and there are a variety of ways to accomplish that.

#1 - Likability

This is definitely one of the most common ways to draw a reader into your protagonist, but making protagonists likable doesn’t mean making them uniformly good—that’s dull and results in flat characters who don’t feel real. It means there’s something inherently appealing to us about who they are—for instance:

• Humor
• Kindness, goodness
• Genuineness, sincerity
• Great passion for something, loyalty, love
• Great talent or skill at something
• Great effort or dedication to something
• Someone who is a plucky underdog

Story consultant Michael Hauge offers a perfect example from the movie Wedding Crashers—a story about two potentially repugnant characters: womanizers who invade strangers’ weddings. This film brilliantly uses almost all of the above techniques in its opening ten or fifteen minutes to make sure we like these two enough to invest in them.

Within the first few scenes we see them ingeniously brokering a peaceful divorce settlement between an exceptionally antagonistic couple (competence/skill) by reminding them what they once loved about each other (goodness/sweetness), and being completely hilarious while they do it (humor).

Then we see them excitedly preparing for wedding season (passion/effort), along with demonstrating their strong friendship (loyalty/love) with a sweet (and probably true) story of Vince Vaughn’s character's caretaking of Owen Wilson's as kids (kindness). After that we’d forgive these guys almost any outrageous behavior (and we do!) because it’s impossible not to like them.

And a great example of a plucky underdog? Frodo.

Traits that alienate readers

Conversely some traits may distance a reader too much to invest in a character, even if you have created other sympathetic or likable qualities in him—and even if overcoming these flaws is part of the protag’s journey:

• Casual thoughtlessness or cruelty (especially to those weaker or in a “punch down” position: animals, children, servers, clerks); abuse
• Extreme narcissism, self-focus, obliviousness of others’ feelings and desires
• Self-indulgence and self-pity—for instance, a character who milks a tragedy or sorrow or simply collapses or wallows. A protag who’s at least trying to be strong and persevere or fighting tears is infinitely more affecting and invests the reader more deeply than a character who sobs and wails his pain.
• Weakness or victimization without any effort or at least desire to be strong. Weakness in and of itself isn’t a negative—in fact it can make a character greatly sympathetic. But we have to see her fighting, trying—or at least aware of her inability to be strong at that moment for some reason, like depression or oppression (or handcuffs).

Making non-likeable characters engaging.

But, as the enduring popularity of stories like Lolita, American Psycho, or Catcher in the Rye shows (or shows like Breaking Bad and The Americans), protagonists don’t have to be likable to engage us as readers. You can create antiheroes or just reprehensible protagonists and still invest the reader in them using other techniques as well.

2. The hope of redemption

This plays on the common human urge to rescue and rehabilitate. The movie Leaving Las Vegas was built around this idea.

3. Righteousness

If a character’s motivation appeals to the almost universal human sense of justice or fairness, readers will be drawn into his cause even if he’s not a likable character, as with Tom Hanks’s ruthless mob enforcer who is seeking to avenge the vicious murders of his family in Road to Perdition.

4. The hope for comeuppance

This also plays on our craving for justice. Lady Macbeth taps into this desire in us, and Gillian Flynn created a riveting cat-and-mouse of it with both her unlikable protagonists in Gone Girl.

5. Lesser of evils

The book series (and TV show) Dexter is built on this premise: that the protagonist is bad, but those he’s working against (or who are working against him) are worse. (Dexter is also redeemed partly by his loyalty to his sister.)

6. Outcome trumps means

If the “bad guys” are fighting for good, for whatever reason, we root for them—as in the movie Suicide Squad (though notice that in this DC Comics movie each character is also given a sympathetic backstory to explain their “badness”).

7. Vicarious thrill/power

Humans are complicated, and even when we strive to be good there is a fascination with the dark side. Art allows us to indulge that. It can be exhilarating to see characters exercising freedom of bad behavior we feel strictures against. The TV show House of Cards traded on this guilty pleasure, as do The Godfather and The Sopranos.

8. Sheer charisma

If an antihero has enough élan, readers/audiences can’t help but be drawn in (this can actually play powerfully into the theme of the seductive, destructive lure of evil). Hannibal Lecter is a delicious example of a fascinating bad guy we may find ourselves drawn to. Sherlock Holmes is a moody, drug-addicted narcissist—but his uncanny genius for solving crimes makes him larger than life.

9. Sympathy/empathy/relatability/universal truth

These are powerful ways to invest readers in a protagonist, whether or not we like her. If we can relate to a character’s situation, struggle, challenges, pain, we will follow her journey.

Paula Hawkins took advantage of this in The Girl on the Train with her unpleasant alcoholic heroine in whom we nonetheless invest as she tries to seek justice, solve a mystery, right a wrong, all common human urges we can relate to.

In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, protagonist Amir can be entitled, cruel, dismissive, and resentful of Hassan, the disadvantaged son of his family’s caretaker who is raised almost as a brother with the privileged Amir and offers Amir nothing but unconditional love and support—and Amir commits an appalling betrayal of Hassan. Yet we can sympathize (perhaps empathize) with the lack of love Amir feels from the father he idolizes, his feeling that his father loves Hassan more, his inadequacy and pain, and we stay invested in his journey.

Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces is irascible, lazy, judgmental, and full of resentment for the world and its treatment of him—and yet many readers can sympathize or empathize with his grudges, even if we don’t let that worldview take us over, as Ignatius has. (We may also sympathize with author John Kennedy Toole’s story—falling into depression and alcoholism, he committed suicide at 31 and never saw his novels succeed, yet they were published after his death and Dunces won a Pulitzer. Though I don’t recommend this as a writing strategy.…)

10. Effort/striving/sacrifice

Even a “bad” character may invest us if we see him fighting his dark side or demons. For instance, spoiled, self-centered Darcy spends a lot of time in Emily Giffin’s Something Blue ranting about her former best friend who stole her fiancé, but also realizes her own part in her broken relationships and tries to do better. Kristin Bell’s character in the TV show The Good Place begins as a morally reprehensible soul mistakenly sent to heaven, but comes to genuinely want to learn to be a good person.

You can also show your character craving or fighting for something better for herself or others, like Katniss working for a better life for her family and to save her sister Prim in Hunger Games, or the father in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road who will do any terrible thing and make any sacrifice—including his soul—for his son.

Finally, you can hook readers by showing a character willing to give up or actually sacrificing a selfish goal for someone or something else, or for the greater good: like Gandalf falling to the Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring to allow Frodo to escape with the One True Ring, or Cyrano de Bergerac sacrificing his own happiness for his love Roxanne’s, or Oskar Schindler risking his freedom and his life to save persecuted Jewish people.

Reader engagement hinges on character investment. The author’s job is to find reasons for us to buy in.

What techniques do you use to invest readers in your protagonists? What unlikeable protagonists do you love?

I’m excited to share that my book for authors to learn to self-edit their writing, Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing, releases May 5! You can learn more and preorder here.

Summary: Whether you’re writing fiction, narrative nonfiction, or memoir; whether this your first story or your fiftieth, Intuitive Editing will give you the tools you need to edit and revise your own writing with inspiration, motivation, and confidence.

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About Tiffany

Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and bestselling authors as well as newer writers. She's led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers' groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers' sites and publications.

Top photo: Image by StockSnap from Pixabay