Writers in the Storm

James Preston

When I was growing up in El Segundo, I spent a lot of time in the library. If you are a Post-Internet Writer, you will struggle to understand what I say next: sometimes I ran out of things to read. No stack of books waiting to be read. No iBooks with a million free samples waiting. No Barnes & Noble, only a drug store with a paperback rack and the man behind the counter who told me, “Oh, you don’t want that” when I tried to buy a Donald Hamilton thriller called Murderer’s Row. Okay, it had a tacky cover.

That Was Then, This is Now

Times have changed, oh, boy have they changed, not just in terms of what’s available to read, but in another very important way that I’ll get to in a minute. 

The problem is a simple one: so many books so little time. So of course, you read the good ones, the ones you like, the ones that speak to you, the ones by writers you know. And there’s another rub: it is so easy to fill all your reading hours — and none of us have enough — with books by authors you know,  books in genres you read, and books and blogs about the art and craft of our calling. Who wants to take a chance? Don’t worry — I’m here to help.

So, you want to read, and you want to write, the clock is ticking, and I appreciate the time you are taking to read this. Thank you. I have prepared a list of titles that you may not have thought of, and in some cases I have picked works where all you need to read is the Preface or Introduction – the start. I know, I know. Time is fleeting, and madness will take its toll unless you exercise some sort of restraint. 

The Reading

Thomas Harris  Red Dragon.

Well, not exactly. Take a look at the iBook, and the new Introduction called, “Forward to a Fatal Interview,” where Harris talks about how he wrote the book and how he met Hannibal Lecter. Really, that Forward is what I’m putting on this list, but if you haven’t read the book, my guess is you’ll get sucked in.

Fair warning: this is a creepy one. You know The Scoville Scale for pepper hotness, with jalapeño at 1,000? Well, this one’s a Scotch Bonnet, eight to ten times hotter. I went back to the Forward preparing this essay, got pulled into the book, read it, had to read Silence of the Lambs, and now I’m halfway through Hannibal. The things I do for you people! Oh, wait, I loved them all. Never mind. The Introduction to the e-book is a brilliant treatise on the writer’s craft. And parts of it may keep you awake at night. Heh heh heh.

Janet Evanovich, One For The Money. 

That first line! “There are some men who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever.” This is an older part of the series that you might have missed. The series is amazing, if for no other reason than she’s kept it fresh for so long. (I know, I know, I want Stephanie to make up her mind about the men in her life.) But it’s worth it to pay attention to how she gets into the story. Look at the first two paragraphs of Four to Score.

Stephen King    Christine. 

One of his older works. This is the book that gave me the idea for this essay. I’d read it before, but when I went back to it all at once I appreciated just what an accomplishment it is. If you want to see a virtuoso playing with POV, read this book. First, third, back to first, and he makes it work. No, that’s not quite right, it works as naturally as one of our storytelling ancestors sitting around the campfire, and saying, “I went over the mountain and this is what happened.” It just flows.

If you missed it, for an excellent discussion on POV, see Ann Griffin’s “Cleaning Up Those POV Breaks,” in this blog last week.

E. B. Griffin. The Corps, book 1 for historical detail.

One of the knocks on Griffin is that he gets lost in the detail, loves it, and slows down the story. W-e-l-l, yeah, maybe sometimes. However, he makes it work. Personal note: the book is about U. S. Marines in China in the late 30’s. My father was stationed there at that time and he said, “Griffin got it right. That’s how it was.”

And, if you are doing police procedurals look at Book 1 of the Badge of Honorseries. The man does his homework. The man loves his homework. However, IMHO the early books in both series are much better.

Barbara Tuchman The Guns of August.

This one is also for the Forward describing the creation of this masterpiece. Look for how she worked, the number of rejection slips on her first book, and how much time she invested in the first paragraph, then read that paragraph. Oh, don’t miss the mention of Barbra Streisand and Jane Fonda.

One of the comments on Guns of August is she makes it a fascinating subject even when everybody knows how it ends. It’s true, and it’s because of a lot of hard work.

Winston Churchill    The Gathering Storm.

Churchill was big news last year with the release of “The Darkest Hour” and that’s what made me think of this book. Just for the language. This guy didn’t win a Nobel Prize for nothing.

The parts about the rising tide of anger, the waves coming in, receding, but not going back as far. I almost left this one off because his prose is so good that reading it makes me want to close Microsoft Word and devote myself to my new game — American Truck Simulator. Take heart — he’s no longer living. 

Side note and a personal one: if you read the whole book, and if you have seen “The Darkest Hour” note how kind Churchill is to politicians who were knifing him.

For more on reading, see Orly König-Lopez’ Essay in this blog, “The Best Exercise for Writers is . . . Reading.”

As The Beach Boys say on their concert album. “All right, before we all get kicked out of here, we’re gonna do one more for you.”

 Robert A. Heinlein     Have Space Suit — Will Travel   

All right, I know. You’ve never heard of it. It’s old, it’s not well-known, it’s a juvie. Hey, who’s writing this essay, anyway? Perhaps my single favorite book, HSSWT is one of Robert A. Heinlein’s later juvies (Today they would be called “young adult” novels.)

Listen to how it starts: “You see, I had this space suit. How it happened was like this.”

Bam! The storyteller is inviting you to sit down and listen; he’s got something to say. 

This one is worth looking at for a couple of reasons. First, the opening. Okay, I gave some of it away. Second, the female lead is smarter, tougher, and just as brave as Kip, the hero. And this was written in 1958. I said one of the goals of this exercise was to stretch your reading, point you in new directions and this one is it. C’mon, take a look. It’s short, it’s readable. 

To Return to Our First Observation

So, how else have times changed? Easy. Writers in the Storm exists. We have somebody to talk to. We’re all in this together, and now it’s your turn. Think about a title, or an essay, that’s important to you, that might help another writer, and that is not on standard “So you want to write” reading lists. Share it. One more time: we’re all in this together. 

Writers in the Storm is about writing (and, hence, about nothing less than life itself but that’s a subject for another day), but it’s more than that. It’s more than that because it’s two-way. If I were a betting man, and I am, I’d wager that every reader of this essay thought, “Well, that doesn’t belong on the list, but this does.”

So cough up. Reading is important to us; stretching that reading is also important. So, what would you suggest? Something that is off the radar for most genre writers, a title that readers will look at and think, “Never heard of it. Maybe I’ll take a look.”

 

“You’ll still be studying the day you retire.”

Robert A. Heinlein, Space Cadet 

“I’ll never stop.”

      -- The Rolling Stones

About James

James R. Preston is the author of the award-winning Surf City
Mysteries. Last year he branched out and launched two novellas, Crashpad and Buzzkill. These short thrillers are set on a college campus in the turbulent sixties. He can be reached at www.jamesrpreston.com, on Facebook, Twitter, and at james@jamesrpreston.com. His next release will be Remains To Be Seen, the sixth Surf City Mystery.

 

Tasha Seegmiller

 

If you took a brief glimpse at my life, you would see that I’m the kind of person who wears many hats. In fact, when I describe all the facets to my day job, I usually just end up calling myself a bridge, because I cross over into several different areas. I usually have an audiobook I’m listening to, a hard copy book I’m reading, and a digital book I’m reading (they are never similar in story though).

Yet, for some reason I thought I could only write one thing at a time. And that project I’ve been working on has been a beast. Life hasn’t helped, but it has taken me longer to draft this novel than anything I’ve written before. I keep trying, I’ll get 500 words one week, maybe that the next, but really, the thought of writing it feels too big. I have told myself, of course, that this means it’s the story I’m supposed to write, but it got to the point where writing at all was daunting.

Dear writer? That’s not a good place to be.

This book isn’t under contract. I don’t have a deadline for it. If I did, I’d probably push through because I hate letting people down.

I tried imposing my own deadlines, but that didn’t help. And a backhanded slap from my mental health during all of this did me absolutely no favors.

So, instead, I started researching, you know, on Pinterest. Because I like to dabble in a little bit of magical realism, I glanced through lores and myths, through the meaning and healings of different times of days, of crystals, of various herbs. I let myself imagine a story with something like that in them, saved some ideas to my secret research board, where ideas are safe to marinate without expectation or judgment.

One idea in particular kept visiting, inspired by a place I visited in Europe last year. There was finally enough that I wanted to put pen to paper, to see if I had a character or a setting, which are the two elements that usually come first in stories for me. And soon enough, I had a paragraph. Then two. Then an epiphany of where the story could really start, and where it could maybe go.

This is my new treehouse story. 

You see, when I was younger, I would climb trees during my free time, always taking a little snack and a book with me. In that tree, I could forget about the real world and get lost in a story. I never had a proper treehouse (I still covet the one in Swiss Family Robinson), but that idea of a place where I can go to get lost in a story allows me to get the body and the brain writing again.

This is a lot like how I warmed up for practicing the piano – there were the pieces that got the fingers loosened up, that signaled to the mind that it was time to make music. Having a side project that is fun and developmental lets the fingers and brain transition into writer mode, and, for a while, the fun that was started when I was playing with my treehouse story trickles into the one I need to finish. This kind of exercise is quite a bit like visual artists who carry a sketch pad everywhere – it’s a low cost way to nurture their creativity. Playing with our art allows us to better tap into our art.

Obviously, I do NOT recommend developing a treehouse story to the point where it’s at the same hard to write part as the other story. That’s a dangerous practice (and another article all of its own).

 

Have you ever played with a treehouse story?

Other suggestions for when the writing just doesn’t want to come?

ABOUT TASHA

Tasha Seegmiller believes in the magic of love and hope, which she weaves into every story she creates. She is passionate about helping women nourish their creativity, is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association,and trusts in the power of Diet Coke. The former high school English teacher now assists in managing the award-winning project-based learning program (EDGE) at Southern Utah University. Tasha married a guy she’s known since she was seven and is the mom of three teens. She is represented by Annelise Robey of Jane Rotrosen Agency.

 

Ann Griffin

As an indie author, I’ve been reading quite a few indie books lately. I have discovered a lot of fun reads and some great stories. However, I keep tripping over one particular writing error: breaking POV (Point of View.)

You seasoned writers with agents and editors who comb through your manuscripts looking for every tiny flaw, may not want to read this. But unpublished and indie published writers, this is for you.

A Quick Refresher

Point of View refers to who is narrating the story.

Ominscient/third person: The omniscient narrator can see into the heart and soul of every character, or any character the writer chooses. Popular in early novels, it is rarely used today in fiction, but is common in non-fiction. (He/she/it/them)

Limited/third person: The narrator is seeing the story through the eyes of one character, or maybe more, but never more than one in a single scene. This is the most common POV. (He/she/it.)

Close/first person: The narrator, who may or may not be the main character, tells the story. (I/Me)

There are more POVs possible, but they are uncommon, and I won’t discuss them here.

The character from whose point of view we write the story cannot know what others are thinking or feeling, or what is happening outside his or her presence.

Most Common Mistakes

Changing POV in a first person story

Example:

I gave Karen the envelope. “You’ve been served.”

She grabbed it and turned away, furious.

Did you catch it? The “I” doing the narrating cannot know how Karen feels.

How to correct the problem:

I gave Karen the envelope. “You’ve been served.”

She grabbed it, glowered at me, and stormed away.

Now the unnamed narrator describes Karen’s behavior. From this, we infer that Karen is angry, and we remain comfortably in the narrator’s point of view. Not only that, we have shown rather than told Karen’s emotions.

Head-Hopping

Example:

Bob and Phil lugged the cooler toward the blanket and thumped it down between Sara’s umbrella and the picnic table a few of the guys had dragged over. Sara wondered if Phil would want to hang out with her again as he had last week.

Phil gazed at Sara. Man, she was cute! He risked a smile. She smiled back.

Bob, tired of their endless flirting, groaned. “C’mon man, let’s go swimming.”

Extreme? I don’t think so. The book I finished last night was full of this kind of head-hopping into the brain of any character on the page. It left me confused, wondering who the story was about.

How to correct the problem:

First, identify the main character. For this example, I’m going to choose Phil, but you could re-write the section with any one of them as the main character. In fact, that could be a fun exercise. Try it!

Bob and Phil lugged the cooler toward the blanket and thumped it down between Sara’s umbrella and the picnic table. Sara sat on the blanket, fiddling with her earphone wires. She glanced at Phil.

Phil gazed at Sara. Man, she was cute! He wondered if she’d like to hang out with him today as she had last week. He risked a smile. She smiled back. His heart boomed.

Bob groaned and shoved Phil in the shoulder. “C’mon, man, let’s go swimming.”

In this version, we know what Phil is thinking about Sara. We think Sara might be thinking about him too because she smiles back. Is she embarrassed or nervous? Phil doesn’t know, so how could we? Bob’s behavior and comment imply he’s not interested in Phil and Sara’s little drama.

Too much Tell, Not Enough Show

This can happen anywhere, but it is a particular risk of first person or limited third person POV. Because you, the writer, know all the thoughts of your character, it is tempting to have your MC narrate a long section of endless backstory, before we get to any action. A book I read recently went on for thirteen pages before there was any interaction with another character. I nearly gave up.

On the other hand, a master writer like Michael Ondaatje begins his new book, Warlight, with the lengthy narration of a teenaged boy, the MC, that draws the reader into the half-lit, bizarre world of two teens abandoned by their parents and left in the care of spies and criminals, in post-war England. So it is possible to “show” while narrating, but it requires a lot of skill.

Changing POV Intentionally – in the wrong place

While it is acceptable practice to change POV in a new chapter or scene, most writers stick to three or fewer POV characters per book for the sake of simplicity. A brilliant example of use of different POVs and “person” is in House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III. This tightly-written drama is written from the POVs of a woman down on her luck and an immigrant man desperate to make it in America. Both characters are written in first person, alternating by chapter. Later in the book, a third character, a detective of dubious ethics, becomes a main character, but his chapters are told in third person, distancing him slightly from the main conflict between the other two.

Marcia Fine’s Hidden Ones, a Veil of Memories,names each chapter after the character who narrates it, both in first person. One is a much-loved grandmother, and the other is her granddaughter. Since the grandmother spends much of the book in prison, unaware of what is going on in the family, the author had to create at least two points of view to move the story along. It’s a beautiful book.

J.K. Rowling breaks almost every POV rule in her Harry Potter series, but does it with such breathtaking talent that the reader doesn’t care. If you are not she, stick to the least number of character POVs that you can manage, to tell your story.

Never change POV in the middle of a scene, a paragraph, or a sentence. Unless you are J.K.

Your Turn

What have been your challenges and issues with POV?

Have you discovered any tricks to help you avoid mistakes?

 

BIO:

Ann Griffin is an indie published author of Another Ocean to Cross,historical fiction set in WWII. She has also published articles for the British Home Child Advocacy and Research Association. Her next book will be a follow-up to her first, but she is not running short of writing material and has a third book underway. She is a member of the Historical Authors Association, Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Toronto Writers’ Cooperative, and the Arizona Historical Authors Group. Ann divides her time between Mesa, Arizona and Toronto, Canada. Her website is http://www.anngriffinwriter.com, and she can be reached at info@anngriffinwriter.com