Writers in the Storm

Just a note first. I'm ready for more first page submissions!  If you've sent one in and I haven't used yours, there could be three reasons. 1. it's too good - people learn from mistakes!  2. It's not perfect, but there's not enough there to spend a whole blog addressing. 3. I've already addressed the problems in another blog, i.e. scene setting, POV, etc.  If you want personalized feedback, though, check out the end of the blog - I'm teaching a class on the first Five Pages! 

Thank you, brave soul, for trusting me with your work. I hope you find this helpful.

I chose this month's submission as a lesson in the finer points of POV. This is in third person, but we never really understand who the POV character is, and the scene reads more like we're watching a movie rather than experiencing it from inside of a person (well that sounded a little eeeewy). Pretty easy fix, and I love the humor in this piece!

Here we go:

My edits:

Black = original

Red = my thoughts/comments

Purple = text I added/altered

ORIGINAL:

“Just look at her,” Brenna said, nodding her head toward the librarian’s desk. “She considers her rack an investment, you know.” Start of the story - keep in mind, the reader doesn't know where they are, or who your character is. City library? Is this a teenager? And it's not really clear if Brenna is the POV character. Readers expect that the first person they meet to be the POV Character.

Does this give us more idea where we are?  

"Just look at her," I/she nodded to the Davis High librarian's desk. “She considers her rack an investment, you know.” 

“I wonder if they get any returns,” Hadley responded. We don't know who Hadley is, so we don't know what to make of her comment. Is she a teacher? A student? The principal?  See how hearing that comment from each of those people changes it? Also, since you made this a dialog line, we know she responded. You're missing an opportunity to tell us more - about setting, and who she is.

"I wonder if she gets any returns?" Hadley, my best friend and fellow teacher crossed her arms and tipped her head to study the issue from another angle. 

The implantee in question was Anise Blaine, a fellow English teacher who looked more like a mall-rat than an educator.

Hadley looked up at Anise, her yellow hair in stark contrast to the room’s dull interior. A few boys cocked their heads at desk-level as she bent over to retrieve a pen she had dropped.

Here's where it gets confusing.  Is it Anise's hair that is yellow? Grammatically, that is correct, but it's a bit unclear. We as readers are dying to know more about the setting, about these people. Hair color doesn't help us do that. I'd choose something more helpful. In the 'A few boys' sentence -- we read linearly; one word at a time. So it's confusing and a tiny irritation to a reader to read a reaction first, then the reason for it. It's not huge, but one of those things that, given enough little breaks like that - a reader will put down a book, not thinking it's bad, just that it's not engaging (learned this gem from the incredible Margie Lawson). Let me try to clear it up:

Anise's pen hit the floor, and though she tugged the too-short hem of her skirt before bending to retrieve it, the male heads in the room followed her down.

Hadley scanned the room and sighed. This was supposed to be a class full of college-bound students, she thought, but they still fell into the old ranks: the ones with the good-looking genes at one table, the geeks at another, and the outcasts on benches or in line for the restroom pass to smoke.

The reader assumes the first person they're introduced to is the POV character. That would be Brenna. But here, we see a thought of Hadley - which means she's the POV character. Or you're head-hopping.  It's disconcerting to learn this paragraphs into a story. You want the reader to settle in, right away, and trust the author.

Given the line above, I expected a thought about men in general. But instead, it goes to high school social strata. If she's a teacher, she understands this - so why the sigh? Does she wish it was different? That would be an opportunity for us to learn more about her, but you don't go there. 

Also, if there's no quotation marks, we know it's a thought; you're showing, and telling too. (hint: showing is almost always better).

“How many of them would guess we’re talking about Anise’s boobs and not English Lit?”

They're not talking where any students could overhear, right? That would be inappropriate! But we don't know, because there's very little scene setting.

Brenna stuck a No. 2 pencil in her jerrybuilt French twist. “Don’t flatter yourself. They don’t give a damn what we talk about.” She had been reading coeds as long as she’d been reading their essays.

I'd just move the last sentence before the dialogue line, so we have context for it. I think it's smoother. Love the 'jerrybuilt French twist' short succinct description that gives us a perfect picture.

Brenna stuck a No. 2 pencil in her jerrybuilt French twist. She had been reading coeds as long as she’d been reading their essays. “Don’t flatter yourself. They don’t give a damn what we talk about.”<

Don't take the volume of my comments to mean that I don't like it. This is a good scene, and I like your voice - but it could be great, with some scene-setting and POV clarification.

Do you have problems with POV? Scene setting? Any suggestions for us?

Laura is teaching a two-week class at Lawson's Writer Academy Entitled: Your First Five Pages - Reader Glue! It's like a college course, only using YOUR work!  You can get details HERE.

Laura's next release, The Last True Cowboy, is available for preorder (you know preorders really help authors, right?) Just click on the meme to be taken to retailers.

Carly Beauchamp has loved cowboy Austin Davis since first grade. Ask anyone in their dusty, backwater New Mexico town of Unforgiven, and they’ll say, “Carly and Austin” the way some say, “big trucks and country boys.” But after years of waiting for a wedding ring, Carly’s done with being a rodeo widow. She dumps Austin (again), but after a month she’s a pressure cooker, ready to blow. She heads to Albuquerque, where she’s not half of the C&A franchise. No heartbroken, “poor Carly.” Just an anonymous chick in a generic country bar. There she meets a man with ice blue eyes in biker leathers. They have nothing in common—except heartbreak. They pour out their pain while pouring the booze.

Horror hits when Carly wakes alone, but vaguely remembers she didn’t go to sleep that way. She calls around, to find that her mystery man never existed. He lied. About his name, his job . . . everything. She takes a morning after pill and goes home, determined to put this huge mistake in the rear view mirror. And she manages—more or less—until the doctor confirms her pregnancy.

Austin never meant to put his career on the circuit before Carly. She’s always been his future, his one and only. But now that she’s moved on, he’s beginning to see where he went wrong, and he’ll do anything to win her back. The only thing is, Carly’s suddenly acting differently, and she’s definitely hiding a secret—one that will test the depth of their love and open up a whole new world of possibilities.

Gwen Hernandez

In a perfect world, you’d remember every detail about your manuscript, and have a thorough book or series bible to back you up. In reality—if you’re anything like me—you’ve rewritten some scenes so many times you can’t remember which version of it you kept (did I mention the sister or leave her out?), and you definitely forgot to make a note of which type of gun your heroine carries (was it a Sig or a Beretta?).

Luckily, Scrivener makes it easy to search your manuscript, whether you “lost” a scene while trying to move it, or just can’t remember the details. Here are three easy ways to find what you need in Scrivener 3.

Using Project Search

In Scrivener 3, there’s a new Search button on the toolbar that aggregates several search-related functions, including Project Search (formerly a text box in the toolbar), Document Search, Synopsis Search, Find by Formatting, and Project Replace.

 

Accessing Project Search

To quickly access Project Search, click the magnifying glass portion of the Search button and a search box opens at the top of the Binder.

Type the word(s) you want to search for in the text box. The Binder changes to a list of documents that match your search criteria. When you select one of the documents in the list, you can scroll through to see any matches highlighted in yellow.

To clear the results and view the normal Binder list, press ESC on your keyboard, or click the X in the project search text box.

Changing the Search Parameters

Did you notice how the match in the example above was not the word I typed, but a word that contained my word? Sometimes that’s great. Other times not so much. In this section, we’ll look at how to adjust the parameters to get exactly what you’re looking for.

The settings for Project Search can be adjusted by clicking on the magnifying glass in the project search text box to change what elements Scrivener searches (e.g. All, Title, Text, etc), what type of search it performs, and which files it looks in. You can even make your search case sensitive, which is handy if you have a name that is also a word, like Bob or Trace.

Notice that project search text box displays the most recent type of search in gray text so you know if you need to make changes.

Determining Which Parts to Search

The “Search In” section of the menu allows you to narrow the elements Scrivener searches. You can only choose one option for this section. So, if you want to only search the text of your documents—as opposed to titles, synopses, notes, keywords, etc—you can choose Text. If you’re looking for a synopsis with a specific word in it, choose Synopsis.

TIP: If you choose All, and you don’t see a match in the text of the selected document, check in the synopsis, label value, title, etc.

Choosing What to Match

The “Operator” section is where you decide how specific the match should be. You can only choose one of the following options.

• Any Word will return a match if one or more of the words—or parts of the words (e.g. form in formed)—are found in the document, in any order (not necessarily next to each other).
• All Words will only return a match if all the words you typed in the search box—or parts of the words—are present in the document, in any order. So if you typed “big gun” Scrivener would return a match for a document that contains “the gunman was big.”
• Exact Phrase returns a match only if all the words appear in a document in the exact order you typed them, but will still match partial words. So, “big gun” would return at match for “big gun” or “big gunman.”
• Whole Word lets you narrow your search to exactly the word(s) you typed. So, “gun” would return a match for “gun” but not “gunman.” Keep in mind that while this is useful for names and words that are part of other words, you can also get tripped up by possessives. For example, “Bob” would return a match for “Bob” but not “Bob’” If you need both, try a different option.
• RegEx allows you to use regular expressions. If you’re not familiar with them, don’t worry about it!

Deciding Where to Look and More

The “Options” Section lets you further narrow or expand your search. You can choose more than one option for this section.

There are a lot of handy choices here, like narrowing your search to only your Draft/Manuscript folder, excluding files that are in the Trash folder, making your search case sensitive (great for names of people or locations), and ignoring diacritics (accents and other marks used in some languages to change the pronunciation of a letter).

Search “Included” Documents refers to those documents that are marked to include in Compile. “Excluded” documents are those not marked for inclusion in Compile. You’ll find the Include in Compile option at the bottom right of the Editor pane, or in the Compile window.

Invert Results displays the opposite of your search request (e.g. if your search is set up to find all documents with the word “phenomenal” in them, choosing Invert Results will display all documents that do not contain that word).

Creating a Collection from a Project Search

There’s an option at the bottom of the project search menu to “Save Search as a Collection.” Choosing this option creates a collection based on the current search criteria. Anytime you view the collection, it will run the search and display the results. Handy for finding documents labeled as “To Do,” those written in a specific POV, articles written for a specific blog site, or anything else you might want to view regularly.

To view your collections, click the View button and choose Show Collections (or go to View>Show Collections).

Searching in Context with the Quick Search Toolbar

For a quick search that displays the results in context, use Scrivener’s new Quick Search feature. I often find it more useful than a project search because it displays the surrounding text, making it easier to determine which result is the one I want.

Unlike project search, though, you can’t adjust the settings for Quick Search. It only looks for the exact phrase you type.

The Quick Search is located in the center of the toolbar. When not being used to search, it displays the title of the document you’re currently working on.

Here’s how to use it.

1. Click in the text box and type a word or phrase to get a list of files containing those characters, organized by where they were found (e.g. Titles, Text, Synopsis).
2. Click on a listed item to view the document in the Editor, or choose Full Project Search to access the Project Search feature.

Searching by Formatting

Have you ever wanted to find all of your italicized words? Or maybe you’re a fan of annotations like I am and you want to go through them one by one during revisions. Find by Formatting is your friend. Here’s how it works.

1. Go to Edit>Find>Find by Formatting.
2. In the Find dropdown menu, choose the type of formatting you want to search for. In the example below, I want to find italicized text, so I chose Character Format, then clicked the I button for italics (and deselected anything else). [IMAGE: 8WITS-FindByFormatting]
3. If you’re looking for a specific word in your italics or annotations, type it in the Containing Text text box. TIP: I use this to search for annotations containing the word “excerpt,” which I use to mark passages of my book I may want to use in marketing materials.
4. Click Next to find the first instance, and repeat as needed until you find what you’re looking for.

There are other search options in Scrivener, but these are the ones I use most. What questions do you have for me about searching, or anything else, in Scrivener?

 *     *     *     *     *

ABOUT GWEN

Gwen Hernandezis the author of Scrivener For Dummies and helps authors all over the world find the joy in Scrivener through her online courses, in-person workshops, and private training. She also writes romantic suspense (Men of Steele series).

 

In her spare time she likes to travel, read, jog, flail on a yoga mat, and explore southern California, where she currently lives with her husband and a lazy golden retriever.

Lori Freeland

Last time I visited Writers in the Storm, we talked about dialogue—what characters say out loud to themselves or to other characters. If you missed that blog, you can find it here at Dive Deep into Dialogue.

This time, I want to shift to internal dialogue—what your characters don’t say out loud to themselves or to other characters.   

There are two things to remember before we start. The first is Point of View (POV). When I wrote the sentence above, I should’ve added what your Point of View (POV) characters don’t say out loud to themselves or to other characters.

Why?

Because only the POV character can have internal thought. Think of it this way. The POV character is the person telling the story in a particular scene. And he calls it the way he sees it.

That means, as a reader, we only get to know what the POV character sees, hears, smells, feels,and thinks. Watch out for characters reading each other’s thoughts unless that’s part of your storyline. This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many accidental “psychic moments” sneak into manuscripts.   

The second thing to remember is punctuation. The question is—to italic or not italic? The answer is—it depends on how much of a connection you want between your reader and your character.

I want my reader to feel like she’s stepped into my character’s body and is experiencing the world through her eyes. There’s something about italics that adds a little speedbump. And if you’re writing in first person, everything your character thinks, describes, and narrates is her direct thought so you don’t really need italics at all. Check out the direct thought that follows the dialogue below.

Example:

“You would know.” Outside, I’m cucumber cool. Inside, I’m an off-the-rails rollercoaster.

Third person is a little trickier. If you’re writing in third person and have first-person thoughts or if you’re writing in past tense and have present-tense thoughts, you’ll need italics. Otherwise it’ll look like you made a mistake.

Example:

She fanned herself. I just want to cry.

We went from third person (she) and past tense (fanned) to first person (I) and present tense (want).    

Or, to stay in deep POV and stay away from the italics speedbump, you can modify the sentence and remove the first-person thoughts and present tense.

Example:

She fanned herself, desperate to cry. (Change the wording)

She fanned herself. Don’t cry. (Make it a more direct thought) (This is the deepest POV connection)

Now we’re ready to move on to the INS and OUTS of internal thought.

THE INS OF INTERNAL THOUGHT

INTERNAL THOUGHT CAN:

AMPLIFY DIALOGUE by supporting, expanding, or contradicting dialogue.

Examples:

Support Dialogue

“That’s not possible.” It’s an excuse he’ll believe.

 Expand Dialogue

“You can’t just call him.” It’s like unwritten law or something.

 Contradict Dialogue and Add Tension

“It’s fine.” It’s so not fine. But Dad doesn’t do labor intensive.

LET US KNOW WHO’S SPEAKING. Rather than using a dialogue tag (said) or an action (he sipped his coffee), you can use internal thought to show the reader who’s talking in a conversation.

Examples:

“Top one’s veggie for Claire.” Alek slid the first pizza box off the second.

“Mine now. She went AWOL with Josh after sixth period.” After she promised she’d hang with me tonight.

HELP CHOOSE POV when you have multiple points of view in a story.

Do you have more than one character telling your story? One of the ways to choose which character gets to tell the story (be the POV) in a scene is to consider the reader’s need to have access to a certain character’s internal thought.

Example:

Alek frowned and moved in to put his arm around me. “Did I do something?”

He hadn’t done anything. But that didn’t stop a chill from breaking over my skin or me from backing out of reach. My newly-acquired auto-flinch didn’t care that Alek had touched me a thousand times before. It overrode every single time we’d squeezed into a crowded booth in a restaurant, shared a cushion on the couch, and fallen asleep against each other movie-marathoning in the game room.

If this isn’t in this character’s POV, we don’t see her thoughts, and we think she’s afraid of Alek when her reaction is really about someone else.

SHOW HOW YOUR POV CHARACTER FEELS without having her tell us.  

Example:

Trace startles me enough that I jump. He might be two inches shorter than Cade, but he makes up for it in ego.

The character’s telling us she doesn’t like Trace without saying she doesn’t like Trace.

SET A MOOD. How your POV perceives people, places, or situations influences how the reader feels about them too.

Example:

It didn’t help that I was alone in a house that was more “modern mausoleum” than “contemporary living.”

WEAVE IN BACKSTORY OR CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS without a major information dump.

Example:

Dad’s already rounding the corner into the great room. “You’re not driving in Dallas traffic.”

Normally, he wouldn’t notice if I played in traffic.

That one line of internal thought gives us a lot about our POV character’s relationship with her dad.

BUILD TENSION

Example:

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Cleaning up.” Don’s eyes darted to my face, his expression changing from bored to lethal. “I’ve had a very messy day.”

I glanced down.

Blood splattered on his jeans. Blood that hadn’t been there an hour ago.

The color had to have drained from my face. I felt it go—all the way to my feet. Don killed Lisa. And now we were alone.

MAKE AN POTENTIALLY UNLIKEABLE CHARACTER LIKEABLE or create a villain who has the possibility of being redeemed. Knowing a person’s motivation for an action can change the way we feel about that person.

Example:

“Didn’t ask for your help. Don’t want it.” I shut him down with a quick cut of my voice the way I always did. Only this time, when he hung his head and shuffled away, I was the one who bled.

THE OUTS OF INTERNAL THOUGHT

WATCH OUT FOR:

GIVING YOUR CHARACTERS THE SAME INTERNAL VOICE. A teen’s thoughts shouldn’t sound like his mother’s thoughts. Teens are more reactive than adults. Men and women have very different internal thoughts. Generally, women tend to think everything out. Men have shorter responses.

If you don’t give your characters their own unique internal voices, they’ll get jumbled together. Voice sets each character apart. Not only what they say but how they think, react, and process what’s going on around them.

 TELLING EMOTIONS IN PLACE OF SHOWING THEM.

Telling Example:

“What are we going to do about it?” Bill leaned over the table, his gut barely clearing the top. “We’re going to let it go.”

Bill’s words made John mad. Let it go? No chance.

Using the emotion word “mad” and the internal thought that he wasn’t going to let it go evokes zero emotion in the reader.

Showing Example:

“What are we going to do about it?” Bill leaned over the table, his gut barely clearing the top. “We’re going to let it go.”

Heat fused the collar of John’s shirt to his neck. Tightening his fingers around the glass, he stood so fast the metal chair toppled behind him and hurled the bottle across the room.  

In this case, taking out the internal thought and the emotion word and adding in John’s action lets us feel his anger.

TOO MUCH SPACE BETWEEN US. One of the biggest ways to break tension in a scene is by interrupting dialogue with long paragraphs of internal thought.

Have you ever read a scene where one character asks an important question or makes a startling statement but by the time you get to the other character’s response, you forgot the original revelation and had to skim back to find it?

Too Much Internal Thought Example:

The drawer slammed, breaking my hesitation.

Uncle Johnny shouldn’t be in my sister’s room. He shouldn’t be touching her stuff. Why would he be in here? Claire’s funeral was only an hour ago, and he hadn’t even shown. Where had he been? Getting drunk in some bar?

I moved out of the doorway. “Why are you going through Claire’s room?” Claire’s room was off-limits. No one should be upstairs. How dare he come up here and rummage through her stuff when he should be downstairs, head hung, pretending to mourn her like everybody else.

He didn’t bother to glance up. “Because I already searched yours.”

The Right Amount of Internal Thought Example:

The drawer slammed, breaking my hesitation.

Uncle Johnny shouldn’t be in my sister’s room. He shouldn’t be touching her stuff.

I moved out of the doorway. “Why are you going through Claire’s room?”

He didn’t bother to glance up. “Because I already searched yours.”

In the first example, do you see how I buried my power punch? “Because I already searched yours,” gets lost under all that thinking and by the time we get to it, it’s barely a tap.

LACK OF CREDIBLE REACTION

Unrealistic Reaction (too much thinking) Example:

Linda washed the tomato sauce off her fingers and checked the clock. Ten after five. And no Jay. In ten years of marriage, he’d never been late. Never missed dinner.

The screen door slammed behind her.

She wiped her hands on a towel and glanced at her husband as he walked into the kitchen.

He passed her without his usual hug and slumped onto the kitchen barstool. “There’s no good way to say this.” His gaze stuck to the granite countertop. “I’m going to prison.” 

Linda’s mother went to prison. Her father went to prison. Her brother went to prison. Prison had destroyed her family. Eaten their souls. Wasted them into horrible human beings. She hadn’t seen any of her family since. Even as each of them had been paroled. She’d left that life. Those memories. But now they came rushing back. What would she tell her kids? Her friends? Their neighbors? 

Realistic Reaction Example:

Linda washed the tomato sauce off her fingers and checked the clock. Ten after five. And no Jay. In ten years of marriage, he’d never been late. Never missed dinner.

The screen door slammed behind her.

She wiped her hands on a towel and glanced at her husband as he walked into the kitchen.

He passed her without his usual hug and slumped onto the kitchen barstool. “There’s no good way to say this.” His gaze stuck to the granite countertop. “I’m going to prison.” 

The towel fell from her hands and her world fell from under her feet. “What?”

Internal thought can be a powerful writing tool to deepen characters, increase tension, and enhance your story. It can also sink your manuscript. How do you know if you’re using too much or just enough? I always suggest reading your final edits on a chapter out loud. Or better yet, have someone else read them to you. The ear picks up what the eye misses.

If you or your “someone else” struggle with a sentence or a paragraph and internal thought keeps going on and on, find places to cut. If your characters seem robotic and your scene seems stale, find places to add. Good luck and happy writing!

Do you struggle with internal dialogue?

Are you willing to share an example from your current WIP?

ABOUT LORI:

Lori Freeland, author, editor, and writing coach holds a BA in psychology from the University of Wisconsin and currently lives in the Dallas area. She’s written numerous blogs for writers and presented at multiple writing workshops. When she’s not snuggled up with her husband or worrying about her kids, she spends her days dreaming up romance and messing with the lives of imaginary people. You can find her Young Adult and Contemporary Romance at lorifreeland.com and her inspirational blog at lafreeland.com.