Writers in the Storm

by Fae Rowen

Last week I was writing a character study for my WIP. The character is persistent, never giving up, even when the cause seems lost. At times she's like a small child who keeps asking "Why?" and driving the adults around her crazy. I had more than a half dozen adjectives in my list, but something seemed lacking. I added perseverance.

On my trail walk, I thought about persistence versus perseverance. If I were in a hurry, I would have stopped at persistence. But as I mentally detailed the difference between the two words, persistence took on a more negative flavor. At home, I used the thesaurus and found these words for persistent: perseverance, tenacious, determined, obstinate, stubborn, pushy, relentless, insistent, continuing. The words for perseverance included: determination, insistence, stubbornness, doggedness, diligence, resolve, drive, purpose, tenacity, dedication, devotion, tirelessness, pushiness.

When you compare the two lists, the words are very close in meaning. But the diligence, resolve, drive, dedication, devotion and purpose in the perseverance column, convinced me that I made the right choice in labeling my character as exhibiting perseverance.

As writers, taking the time to drill down to the finer meaning of the words we choose can help us better define characters, their goals and motivation, and our stories. Think of this exercise like an artist painting a color wheel. The primary colors are placed within the wheel, then the artist must mix the paints to move from red to red-orange to orange to orange-yellow, and finally yellow. All the gradations between red and yellow are shown in the small space on the wheel.

If we became adept painters with our word choices, we can convey more depth to our readers without having to resort to telling them what we want them to know.

Let's look at another word pairing. Do you want to humble an arrogant character or do you want to humiliate him? When someone is humbled, their pride or rank is lowered. But when you humiliate a character you shame him, usually in public. That character loses self-respect and the respect of others. Again, as writers the careful choice words we use to describe the humbling or the humiliation can help us convey the feeling we want the reader to experience. There's a big difference between calling a lover a "boy toy" or a "friend" or a "sweetheart" or a "partner."

I've been guilty of using my thesaurus to find a synonym quickly. A good thesaurus can do much more than that, if we're aware of the gradations of meaning as we look for a "better" or "fresher" word. A partnership can be an association, a connection, a collaboration, or an alliance. By choosing a more descriptive word, we can subtlely convey more meaning without having to spend precious word count to explain what we're trying to say.

You don't need to be tied to a dictionary or thesaurus to be mindful of your word choices. And you don't need to do this for every word in your story. But the important words, the words that describe your characters' emotions, their character traits, the turning points, deserve extra time and thought. 

Taking time and care with critical words is like using the right tool for the job. When you have the best word to describe a situation, that word does your work better than a paragraph of explanation ever could. The pace of your story isn't slowed with exposition or back story. The reader builds and fills in details that enrich their experience and make that experience unique to each reader.

Take a few moments to think about how you could describe a plain Jane character on the first page, using one word to convey much more than the cliched plain Jane. Don't turn to a thesaurus. Picture the character. Watch her. Make up a backstory for her. Then sift through words until you find the best one to describe what you want a reader to know about this character.

You'll find this gets easier, and it will help you hone in on your characters' important traits. And an added side benefit: you'll find yourself writing fresher descriptions, combinations of words you haven't seen before.

 

Do you have an example of a refined word choice that you'd like to share?

Why did you choose one word over the other?

 

ABOUT FAE:

Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a science fiction freak. Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes that she can live anywhere but the present. As a mathematician, she knows life’s a lot more fun when you get to define your world and its rules.

P.R.I.S.M., Fae's debut book, a young adult science fiction romance story of survival, betrayal, resolve, deceit, and love is now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

 

 

by Donna Galanti

We all must let go eventually.

Sometimes it’s letting go of a friendship. A husband. A career. A child. A parent.

The toxic friend who suffocates you and puts you down. The husband who can’t commit. The career that stresses you out. The child who needs to learn from his own mistakes. The parent who dies.

Or letting go of the parts of your book you’re writing that work–until they don’t work anymore.

Some people call it “killing your darlings” like William Faulkner noted. He said, “in writing, you must kill all your darlings.” He also said, “a writer needs three things: experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”

Your imagination lets your words fly free. Your experience enables you to harness them. Your observation arms you with the weapon to indeed kill those darlings. I like to call it “letting go” (I enjoy doing enough killing in my fiction).

At a writer’s retreat lakeside in Northern New York long ago (led by editor, author, and friend Kathryn Craft) I read from one novel-in-progress. A strong theme of the novel was about finding peace in life through balance, emotional vs. physical. My fellow retreaters pointed out that several of my characters had disabilities.

A one-legged girl. A bald-headed lady. A young man with a club foot. A young woman with lopsided breasts. I was told that unless this was a novel about circus freaks, it was too much.

Uh, yeah. ?

I had to laugh. They were right. I needed to decide what would stay and what to let go that no longer served the purpose of the story. I had to find the one select physical character issue and let that shine throughout the story arc. And I realized that a character’s imbalance need not be physical, it could be on the inside–a flawed internal imbalance that he has to face.

I was comforted also by the fact my fellow retreaters told me that letting go of what doesn’t serve your story is the sign of maturity in a writer.

And this is what writing a first novel draft is about. Writing it all in, and then letting go. What we start out with is not what we end up with, and it can’t stay the same if it’s going to work. Like life. We must let go of what no longer serves us.

And in the creating of that which we may let go, we develop the skills needed as a writer–and we absorb these skills along our journey, often without knowing it. We’re building a bridge that may get disassembled and moved to another location, but we would never get to that final location without the first bridge. We let that first bridge go, in order to gain.

In my novel, A Human Element, my publisher sent back edits on the villain, X-10. She said it was enough that he was a murderer. He didn’t also need to rape and be incestuous toward his sister. Having him be all three didn’t strengthen the story. It was overkill and took away from the complexity of his character and derailed the emotional scene at the end. I agreed and–I let go. And it worked. Many readers tell me that that X-10 is their favorite character and they feel sympathetic toward him, even with all the vile deeds he does.

In Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit she notes that what all successful artists have in common is that “they have mastered the underlying skills of their creative domain, and built their creativity on the solid foundation of those skills.”

Tharp also writes that “skill is how you close the gap between what you see in your mind’s eye and what you can produce.” And that is what letting go in writing is, closing the gap between a new idea and a refined one.

I remember the first time I let go of my son’s hand years ago and let him run out in the wide open spaces. He jogged crookedly across a vast field. His toddler legs carried him wildly as he headed into the great unknown. I knew it was time to let him go for a bit. I could still see him and that would have to be enough. But anxiety gripped my heart until his small hand was back in mine, warm and gripping.

My son in later years at 10 started biking to school by himself. His friends were all doing it. It’s only half a mile. Down the path. Over the bridge and through the woods. Across the road. I could see his route. We had walked it so many times. And I signed the school form giving him permission and I waved goodbye as he left for school. A letting go that hurts. But I know now that these letting go’s won’t always hurt. My son doesn’t need saving from all the scary things in the world, he needs encouragement to embrace his freedom. He can be his own hero. I hope I can too in the wide open spaces of my writing.

What we start out with is not what we end up with. And it can’t stay the same if we want to move on. In writing. In life.

I let go of my mother in past years. I held her hand. I said my goodbyes. I cherished the time. She drifted away. And then I let go.

No regret.
Just peace.

The blessing in letting go is to let go with no regret. It makes the experience all worthwhile. An experience that shapes you. Changes you. Matures you. Makes you a better person. Makes you a better writer.

What have you let go of recently, in writing or in life?

Did you do it without regret? What did you learn from it?

About Donna:
Donna Galanti is the author of the bestselling paranormal suspense Element Trilogy and the children’s fantasy adventure, Joshua and The Lightning Road series. Donna is a contributing editor for International Thriller Writers The Big Thrill magazine and regularly presents as a guest author at schools. She’s lived from England as a child, to Hawaii as a U.S. Navy photographer. Donna has long been a leader in the Mid-Atlantic writing scene as a workshop presenter and is a writing contest judge at nycmidnight.com. Visit her author website at donnagalanti.com.

 

Harrison Demchick

In my years as a book editor, I’ve had the opportunity to work with all sorts of different authors in all sorts of different contexts, whether it’s directly through book editing or more broadly in lectures given at writer’s conferences and conventions. But nothing has been more rewarding to me than working with young writers.

I’m talking teenagers. High school students. Kids who are already well on their way to publication. Each year I return to my high school, a magnet school for the arts, to discuss fiction and publishing with the seniors and sophomores. I mentor one of the seniors in a year-long fiction project. I’ve also run a course for young writers at a conference, and it might surprise you to learn that several of my paying clients over the last couple years have been teens (and their very supportive parents).

Most of them haven’t published anything yet. But then again, neither have most of my first-time clients. And one of the most important things I’ve learned in the course of working with these talented young writers is that all of us—anyone pursuing writing—has a lot to learn from them.

Lesson #1: Make the Time to Write

One of the greatest obstacles to writing is time. We know that. We have jobs and obligations. We have family and friends. We have meetings and bills.

But think about it: Are we really busier as adults than we were as teens? Teenage writers have hours of school every day, and then hours of homework at night. They have essays and extracurricular activities. Often they have jobs too. Yet somehow, in spite of all of that, a select few—those seriously dedicated writers I’m fortunate enough to meet—somehow make their way toward finished short stories, publishable poems, and even complete novels. How do they have the time?

The answer is: They make it. And we should all do the same. Time for writing doesn’t just happen, and there will always be a million reasons not to do it. It’s crucial to carve out the time, every week, to knuckle down and write. It needs to be a priority. The only way a writer can balance high school and a completed manuscript is through sheer force of will.

Lesson #2: Writing is Learning

As a book editor, it’s my job not only to make your novel stronger, but also to teach you how to be a better writer. One of the great things about working with younger writers is that they, too, see editing as a form of teaching. When you’re in school, learning is an expectation, and accordingly young writers are driven to absorb the lessons of the editing process. They want to understand the connection between characterization and conflict. They want to grasp the importance of causation in narrative structure. They want to utilize specific detail in their descriptions.

The truth of the matter is that we all have room to grow as writers, whether we’re eighteen or eighty. Moreover, we all need to grow as writers. Our manuscripts improve only if we’re willing to acknowledge our weaknesses and work to overcome them. We need to see ourselves as students, because students embrace the fact that they will know more tomorrow than they know today.

Lesson #3: Revise Aggressively

When you edit a novel, sometimes you’re put in the unfortunate position of having to tell a writer that their manuscript is going to need what basically amounts to a total rewrite. It doesn’t mean that the draft lacks promise, or that the author isn’t talented—simply that the problems require wholesale revision. Still it’s an arduous undertaking, and few things impress me more as a book editor than a second draft that improves upon the first in inventive ways well beyond my own expectations.

I’ve seen seriously impressive revisions from writers of all ages, but writers in high school (and also, for one memorable project, college) seem uniquely adept at it. Because they’re driven, and because they embrace writing as a learning experience, young writers are more natural, I think, at applying agility to their revisions. You need to be willing to do whatever you have to do to strengthen the story, even if it’s a good deal more difficult and more intimidating than clarifying a plot point here and reorganizing a sentence there.

One of my best clients turned an imaginative but seriously problematic first draft—deep, endemic issues with characterization and logic, even before considering struggles emerging from English being her second language—into an engaging and exciting supernatural YA debut. That is revising with aggression, and whatever college accepts her will be enormously fortunate to do so.

Lesson #4: Get Your Writing Out There

Let’s be realistic here: It’s not as if all teens are as talented and motivated as the ones I’ve worked with. Not every high school student is enthusiastic about learning. Not every aspiring writer makes the time for writing.

But the ones I do work with have made significant choices to make this possible. The students who attend my high school made the choice, as teens, to devote at least the next four years to pursuing the craft of writing. The students who attend writer’s conferences chose to put themselves in an environment where they could learn more and hone their craft. And the students who actually hire me as an editor? Sometimes they have a very supportive parent, and sometimes they’ve saved up themselves, but either way they’ve chosen to devote their typically limited resources toward achieving their dream.

It’s no coincidence that these same young writers tend to be ahead of the game when it comes to developing query letters or finding cover art. They take these steps because their goal is not just a finished novel. They’re pursuing publication, and pursuing it with passion.

That takes not only determination, but courage. And no matter where you are in the writing process—a first-time author of any age, or the writer of multiple novels ready once again to launch into marketing—those are the traits you need.

We may see those young writers who already have a completed manuscript to their name as ahead of the game, and they are. But maybe we’re a little behind too. If we take the same steps these young writers have—if we make the time, and learn, and revise, and send our writing out into the world—then we can all grow and improve on our way to publication.

And if you’re the parent of one of these young writers, then, well, you don’t need me to tell you that your kid is something special. If you give them the opportunity to pursue their goals, there is no limit to what they’ll accomplish.

What do you think? Can we adults learn from the kids?

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Harrison Demchick came up as a book editor in the world of small press publishing, working along the way on more than seventy published novels and memoirs, several of which have been optioned for film. An expert in manuscripts as diverse as women’s fiction, literary fiction, mystery, young adult, science-fiction, fantasy, memoir, and everything in-between, Harrison is known for quite possibly the most detailed and informative editorial letters in the industry—if not the entire universe.

Harrison is also an award-winning screenwriter whose first feature film, Ape Canyon, is currently in post-production. He’s the author of literary horror novel The Listeners (Bancroft Press, 2012), and his newest short story, “Magicland,” will appear in the October 2018 edition of Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism. He’s currently accepting new clients for book editing in fiction and memoir at the Writer’s Ally (http://thewritersally.com).