Writers in the Storm

by Fae Rowen

On the plane home from Atlanta in July, I re-read my notes and handouts, highlighting tips that resonated with me as I prepared for a major edit on my WIP. When I participated in the UC Irvine Writing Project, I learned the technique of highlighting a few word in an article, an essay, or short story that were lessons for me and my writing. The instructors called these highlighted snippets "golden lines." This method is different from using up the ink of a yellow highlighter as if you're getting ready for a test. It's much more selective. Think of it as a "for immediate implementation" list.

Here are my Golden Lines (in no particular order) and how they've helped me step it up a level (or two) in my writing:

1. Be grounded in emotional reality. We 're human. We feel. I've run the gamut of writing characters who are off the chart emotionally--mean and angry without enough reason--to "pump up" the story. And I've written characters that are human but act like unfeeling robots. My critique partners cried foul (and rightly so) on both counts. If you missed them, last week Tiffany Lawson Inman wrote about Emotional Barriers: Part 1 and Part 2 and how to break through them to become better writers.

2. Secondary characters have their own lives. Especially in a series. I'm working on a New Adult series. This Golden Line helped me see my secondary characters as people rather than props. In my revision I'm adding their feelings and reactions to scenes. And guess what? They are becoming much more three dimensional. I think that's another hook to keep my readers turning the pages. And readers are going to want the stories of my secondary characters!

3. When your story is bogged down is a good time to have the character realize she's going after the wrong goal. I tend to have so much plot and action that "saggy middle" is not a big issue. But, pantster I may be, I think this is a great tool for those plot points/turning points that outliners and diagrammers have at the ready--and I rarely know when they should happen.

4. What would be the biggest shock to the reader now? This can be a hard one to figure out and even harder to implement in your writing. But think about your favorite books or movies. I'm a sci fi freak, so my example is from Star Wars. Do you remember how you felt when you found out that Darth Vader was Luke's father? Nooooooo.

I'd been thinking of adding a short scene at the beginning of my book to work in some necessary backstory between the heroine and her mother. Laura Drake suggested I write the scene between the heroine and her step-father. I wanted the reader to have a visceral response, so I got out the metaphorical wires and water and sent a little jolt through the reader at the end of the scene with a question the step-father asks the heroine.

5. Give the secret to the reader, but not the character. This accomplishes a multitude of possibilities for foreshadowing and creates curiosity in your reader to see how your character is going to deal with this secret. As you stack the deck against your character with details that revolve around the secret and possibly obscure the hidden information, your reader has a heightened awareness of danger, betrayal, or whatever plot-twist is in the works and will turn the pages to find the answers to their questions. Readers will want to know how the character finds out the secret and then how the story changes.

6. Hooks keep us on the edge of our seats. Hooks entice the reader to find out more. I used to make sure that I had a decent hook at the end of every chapter. I tend to write longer chapters with up to four scenes. Now I make sure that I have a hook at the end of every scene. If readers are emotionally involved in the story, they're hooked.

How about a hook from this year's Oscar winning movie, Argo? The body hanging from the crane as Ben Affleck drives through Tehran foreshadowed very bad things. Here are some other types of hooks:

• Small "bread crumbs"
• A discovery
• A new awareness of something
• A lure
• Something left unsaid
• A surprise or secret
• Reveal something that will create emotional fallout in the next scene
• Sexual tension--moments of denial, resistance, exploration and acceptance are all hooks (It's not about the sex.  It's about building the tension before the sex!)
• Something forbidden
• Anticipation

7. Emotion grows out of conflict. In our lives, and in our character's lives, when do we get most emotional? When the stakes are high. That conflict can be internal or external, but you have to show your readers the character's emotional reaction to what happens to them. Otherwise your characters are just chess pieces you're moving around your story board, and who cares when the rook falls? (Seriously, if you didn't read Tiffany's blogs, go read them now.)

Do you have some golden lines to share from a class or lecture? Or maybe a quote that keeps you writing?

First, for those of you who read and commented on one or both of Tiffany Lawson Inman's Emotional Barrier posts last week, Tiffany left a comment announcing the winner of a free slot in the Madness to Method class:  JUDY HUDSON. Congratulations, Judy.

Writers in the Storm is pleased to welcome Kathryn Craft as a monthly contributing guest. She'll be sharing inspiration, writing tips, and much more. Thank you for joining us, Kathryn.

by Kathryn Craft

If you book a trip and everything goes perfectly, you’ve had a vacation.

If everything goes wrong, you have a story.

This observation is from Janine Latus, author of the non-fiction memoir, If I am Missing or Dead. Do you see the truth in it?

Of course you do, you’re a storyteller. You know a good yarn isn’t worth a damn to your readers if your characters don’t confront obstacles.

Only extreme pressures can force a human to change. It’s why we are so addicted to story—we need reminding, again and again, that we humans are not alone in the ways we are challenged. And then when all seems lost, we want to be inspired by our hero’s courage as he throws his back to the wall to fight for change. This give us great hope.

So why is it we keep resisting the story of our own lives?

To understand we must confront the great paradox successful authors must embrace.

• Authors must be capable of complete control and complete surrender.

The tug-of-war between these dueling notions will occasionally drag us off-center. We must expect this, and cultivate the resources needed to help us regain balance. These resources must feed a deep spiritual reserve from which we can pull when the going gets rough.

•  If we are cognizant of the challenge, and accept it, we can come closer and closer to holding both control and surrender at the very same time.

I use the word “authors” advisedly, because I’m talking here about writers seeking publication and some measure of critical success. Writers who privately press pen to page can exert complete control, allowing their imaginations to manipulate the lives of their characters until they feel like minor gods. But at some point, those who seek publication—traditionally or self-published, and no matter how far down the path—must surrender control of their work.

That’s a tall order for someone who has devoted years to the full command of her craft. But you can’t control what is no longer yours. Once published, a story exists somewhere between you and the reader.

Let’s look at all the typical obstacles in the path of the growing traditionally published writer with this new lens. You know, the things that make us whine. An author can control none of these:

• number of years until completing the learning curve for the type of book she seeks to write

• number of submissions until she finds an agent that connects with her work

• number of agented submissions until a publisher decides the project meets his business needs

• fluctuations in market demand

• the national economy, news events, etc.

• similar releases by other authors

• reviews

• publishers going out of business

• your editor getting a new job

• a health crisis while writing your next book

…and I’m sure you could list a bunch more.

I was moved this past month by the self-written obituary of Seattle-based writer Jane Lotter. Yes, you read that right: dying slowly of endometrial cancer, Lotter had the time, courage, and presence of mind to summarize her own life. She wrote to her daughters:

“May you, every day, connect with the brilliancy of your own spirit. And may you always remember that obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path.”

Let me leave you with a story.

A writer works for a year, lucks into an agent on her first submission, then gets a six-figure deal at auction for her debut novel.

Hmm…leave you flat? Give me one more chance:

A single mother toils on a novel for a decade, writing by night while her children sleep and slogging through work by day to support them. She soldiers on, believing in her story. Never willing to relinquish hope, she has submitted all those years, racking up more than a hundred rejections. Yes, she’s disappointed at times, but she takes what advice is given, seeks support from other writers, soaks up new techniques from favorite library books, and continues to write. The story takes on such brilliance that one day an agent offers representation. Two years later, after another developmental edit and numerous rounds of submissions, things look bleak, and the author settles for publication with a small press who offers no advance. But something happens over the following year. Sales steadily increase—the book catches fire by word-of-mouth and lands on the New York Times best-seller list.

Any better?

Go live your obstacles. Make of your life a good story.

Anyone care to share some of the obstacles they’ve had to surmount on their road to publication?

Today Tiffany Lawson Inman is continuing the discussion of the emotional barrier in fiction. If you missed Part One on Wednesday, click here.

We're lucky not only to have Tiffany share her knowledge with us, but she's giving away a "seat" in her next online class at the Lawson Writers Academy on this very subject to a commenter from Part One or Part Two.  We'll announce the winner on Monday. Contest closes Sunday, September 29, at noon.

by Tiffany Lawson Inman

Welcome back!

We learned in Part One of this post, that the emotional barrier is VERY IMPORTANT, and very hard to break down without completely collapsing in on ourselves. We are all afraid of icky gooey stuff that seeps out when we are alone, and it takes skill to use the memories and gut-wrench that is on the other side, right?

Right.

And comedians like Louis C.K. have the ability to rip truths out of the air and make them tangible, right?

Right.

And you all are going to do whatever you can to:

• allow yourselves emotional release.
• learn how to cross your emotional barrier.
• learn how to use the emotions you can reach.
• be fearless and vulnerable when using your own emotions.
• realize that emotions are one of the most important factors in fiction.
• unplug from technology every so often to reconnect with yourself, people, and life.
• write truthful human emotions and create a strong connection between your readers and characters.

RIGHT!

If you need a reminder, or didn’t get to read Part One, head on back to Wednesday’s post, Part One: Emotional Barrier in Fiction. Why is it so important for you to learn how to cross it? and we will see you back here in a sec.

Moving on to the meat.

Let’s assume that you have all either gone to a psychotherapist or have taken my class, From MADNESS to Method: Using acting techniques to invigorate your story and make each moment Oscar worthy! and can cross the emotional barrier with ease. *wink wink* And what you have found on the other side is absolutely amazing and totally usable for your fiction and you are raring to jump to the BIG emotional scenes in your novel and write write write!

No. I won’t let you. Not yet.

Awww…come on!

First, we have to make sure your characters have a solid emotional base to jump off of, emotions to fly by, emotional places to visit, and an emotional crash pad. Donald Maass calls this an emotional landscape in Chapter Three of Writing 21^st Century Fiction:

“To foster reader involvement it is first critical to map an emotional landscape which readers will travel. Readers must feel that they are on a journey, one with felt significance and a destination that we can sum up as change.”

Yes, your character has to start somewhere emotionally in order to have a journey. You can’t just plop them on the page and start writing events, plot points, outer conflict, and black moments without having an inner conflict jumping off point.  Starting with action is fun. Starting with dialogue, also fun.  But watch out, if the reader doesn’t know where your character is emotionally in the first few pages, their need to read on wanes. And if you, the writer doesn’t start out by mapping this emotional landscape, then you might end up writing the wrong level and wrong angle of emotion in those BIG scenes.

Let’s see how Lisa Unger starts her emotional landscape in Darkness, My Old Friend:

Prologue

Failure wasn’t a feeling; it was a taste in his mouth, an ache at the base of his neck. It was a frantic hum in his head. The reflection of failure resided in his wife’s tight, fake smile when he came home at the end of the day. He felt the creeping grip of it in her cold embrace. She didn’t even know the worst of it. No one did. But they could all smell it, couldn’t they? It was like booze on his breath.

****

Wow, this guy is in a really good place in his life right now… . Sorry, couldn’t resist the sarcasm because it is painfully obvious he is on the wrong side of the happy-go-round.

Lisa Unger gives us one heck of an emotional base for this character:

• Failure that leaves a taste in your mouth. That’s not a little failure, this, is a lot.
• He can physically feel this emotion in his neck and head.
• His wife fakes a smile at him.
• Cold embrace means there is a lack of love and affection between them.
• He tells us that all of this isn’t the worst of it, which means, this man has a BIG BAD secret.

All of this in the very first paragraph of the novel.

Unger used emotive words like:

• Failure
• Ache
• Frantic
• Tight
• Fake
• Creeping
• Grip
• Cold
• Worst
• Smell
• Booze

We don’t have to hear the sirens to know the lights are flashing in this character’s future meltdown.  We know this character is bad news and we want to see how bad it gets. How many other characters can he take down with him? Or, will there be a surprise? Reader interest is definitely sparked and it’s because she started with emotion.

What if she had written:

Kevin felt like a failure. It made his neck tense and his head hurt. When he went home to his wife, she pretended she was happy he was home. They didn’t have much sex anymore. Probably for the best because he had a secret he hadn’t told anyone and it would probably affect their relationship.

Blah blah blah! My version opened the door for an emotional base, but it didn’t really let the reader in. Not a good way to start a book.

Okay okay, some of you think I cheated by showing the prologue, am I right? Because the prologue is supposed to be thick with emotion?  I agree. But I couldn’t not show you that, because I just think it’s a tasty start to a story.

Unger brings the emotional jack-hammer in Chapter One as well. Here you go:

Chapter One

Jones Cooper feared death. The dread of it woke him at night, sat him bolt upright and drew all the breath from his lungs, narrowed his esophagus, had him rasping in the dark. It turned all the normal shadows of the bedroom that he shared with his wife into a legion of ghouls and intruders waiting with silent and malicious intent. When? How? Heart attack. Cancer. Freak accident. Would it come for him quickly? Would it slowly waste and dehumanize him?  What, if anything, would await him?

****

See! Told you. Lisa Unger rocks at setting up the emotional landscape.  I have NO doubt that she is a frequent traveler across her own emotional barrier.

Part of Cooper’s inner conflict that we can see right away:

• Will he live the rest of his life being afraid, allowing it to affect every day until a coffin surrounds his body?
• Will he surpass his fear and surprise us at every turn?

What if she had written:

Jones Cooper woke up most nights with an extreme fear of death.

My version doesn’t have the same rhythm, cadence, intensity, or emotional resonance does it?

LOL, nope.

*Ah, before I go on, if you didn’t know already, if you have a Kindle, or a Kindle app, you can download a sample of most books on Amazon. It’s usually the first two chapters. This is a great way to see (and afford to see) all of your favorite authors and how they emotionally hook you in those two chapters. Unfortunately when a writer is as good as Lisa Unger, there is really no point in just reading the first two chapters, you simply must read the whole book. So head on over and read the rest (after you are finished reading this blog, of course). The prologue alone is worth its weight in gold.

Up next, Markus Sakey and the first few paragraphs of The Two Deaths Of Daniel Hayes:

                  He was naked and cold, stiff with it, his veins ice and frost. Muscles carved hard, skin rippled with goose bumps, tendons drawn tight, body scraped and shivering. Something rolled over his legs, velvet soft and shocking. He gasped and pulled seawater in to his lungs, the salt scouring his throat. Gagging, he pushed forward, scrabbling at dark stones. The ocean tugged, but he fought the last ragged feat crawling like a child.

                  As the wave receded it drew pebbles rattling across one another like bones, like dice, like static. A seagull shrieked its loneliness.

                  His lungs burned, and he leaned on his elbows and retched, liquid pouring in ropes from his open mouth, salt water and stomach acid. A lot, and then less, and finally he could spit the last drops, suck in quick shallow lungfuls of air that smelled of rotting fish.

                  In. Cough it out. There. There.

                  His hands weren’t his. Paler than milk and trembling with panicky violence. He couldn’t make them stop. He’d never been so cold.

                  What was he doing here?

****

From a quick first glance it seems as though these are all physical issues Sakey is giving his character. But if you take your pulse before you started reading this and after, you would most definitely have a difference in tempo.  This character is half dead and struggling to survive. He gives us some great images and metaphors to show emotion here.

• Crawling like a child.
• Pebbles rattling like bones.
• Seagull shrieking its loneliness.
• Trembling with panicky violence
• “Cough it out. There. There.” As if he’s consoling a child, or his mother is there consoling him.

Not to mention ALL of the power words he uses. I’m pretty sure you can point them out. Too many to list!

Part of this character’s initial inner conflict:

• Will he struggle to crawl out of the ocean to face whatever put him there in the first place?
• Will he give up and die?

Hmmm… . I keep talking about inner conflict, Donald Maass defines it as follows:

“…don’t confuse inner conflict with inner turmoil, a messy indecision, waffling, and weakness  that turns readers off. Inner conflict is dilemma. A debate that can’t be won, an unavoidable fork in a road that leads to two equally feared or desired destinations. It’s a predicament that’s powerfully human.”

I love that. “…powerfully human.” Lisa Unger and Markus Sakey have done a brilliant job of showing a well defined inner conflict, and they have both done it on the first page!

Do you have to show a defined inner conflict on the first page?

No.

But if you are starting with deep POV, the emotion had better be there and inner conflict better be right around the corner (like on one of the next three pages.) If you are starting off with action and dialogue, then we should have a sense of your character’s beginning emotional state. Here’s a good example. I am currently reading Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher.

Chapter One

                  “Sir?” she repeats. “How soon do you want it to get there?”

                  I rub two fingers, hard, over my left eyebrow. The throbbing has become intense. “It doesn’t matter,” I say.

                  The clerk takes the package. The same shoebox that sat on my porch less than twenty-four hours ago; rewrapped in a brown paper bag, sealed with clear packing tape, exactly as I had received it. But now addressed with a new name. The next name on Hannah Baker’s list.

                   “Baker’s dozen,” I mumble. Then I feel disgusted for even noticing it.

                  “Excuse me?”

                   I shake my head. “How much is it?”

                  She places the box on a rubber pad, then punches a sequence on her keypad.

                  I set my cup of gas-station coffee on the counter and glance at the screen. I pull a few bills from my wallet, dig some coins out of pocket, and place my money on the counter.

                  “I don’t think the coffee’s kicked in yet,” she says. “You’re missing a dollar.”

                  I hand over the extra dollar, then rub the sleep from my eyes. The coffee’s lukewarm when I take a sip, making it harder to gulp down. But I need to wake up somehow.

                  Or maybe not. Maybe it’s best to get through the day half-asleep. Maybe that’s the only way to get through today.

****

While we don’t know exactly what his inner conflict is yet, we have a ton of emotional hits and can get a pretty clear idea of what his emotional state is on the first page.

• Asher starts the character in the middle of…something, and the character isn’t even paying attention. His mind is obviously elsewhere.
• He’s rubbing his brow. Hard. A sign of emotion when coupled with the fact that he is having a hard time paying attention.
• Throbbing in the brain is never a sign of something good.
• Character says he doesn’t care.
• Character mumbling to self, disgusted at self.
• Not paying attention again when he shortchanges her.
• Rubbing sleep from eyes. Normal action when you are getting out of bed, but this guy is already at the store with coffee in hand. Sign that sleep didn’t come easy if at all the night before.
• Thinking that the only way to get through this day is to do it half asleep. Another clue that something crappy is going on in his life and it occupying his thoughts.

Have you noticed that even though these aren’t the BIG emotional scenes (that I won’t let you write yet without supervision) they are still stuffed with emotion?  ALL of that work that you did to cross the emotional barrier and everything you brought back with you WILL BE USED. Some of it in slivers here and there to help guide the reader on the emotional journey, and some of it in the BIG scenes.

But you can’t afford to save the whole bundle for that one BIG turning point, it won’t matter to the reader how much is in that scene, if they don’t know where the emotional journey started.

In the online course I teach, I work with writers to infuse emotion into their little moments as well as the big ones. Because so much can be shown in a “simple” scene between husband and wife over breakfast,  getting dressed for the day,  a phone conversation with your best friend, getting into a taxi, giving someone a gift, etc. These little emotional hops, skips, and dips might seem tedious to the emotional beginner, or be viewed as mushy gushy bits of language that could slow pace or veer your scene into a ditch, but as you can see from the above examples, pacing is not dropped and there aren’t any ditches.

Their writing is active.

And it is good!

****

I want to thank you and Writers In The Storm for letting me hog two spots this week.  Don’t worry, next month I will only write one (unless of course these lovely ladies invite me to do another!)

Ya know, a few weeks ago we had fun with writing a character infused action, wiping the nose, and you guys seemed to have fun with it. So I’m going to give you all another teeny-tiny-dust-spec of an assignment.  Are you game?

Absolutely!

Take the situation from the last example, a character at a counter paying for something, and use your character, his/her emotional base and write an interaction between them and the clerk.

Oh, wait, this is Friday…I’m tired of working!

This isn’t work, it is writing! It is ART! Okay okay, if you don’t want to “work,” toss me a comment and just say “hi.”  But if you want to practice your art, I’ll be super excited!

I will be drawing a name from the comments on Sunday evening to gift a free slot in my online course, From MADNESS to Method: Using acting techniques to invigorate your story and make each moment Oscar worthy! to a lucky writer!  **Yup, you guessed it, this is the class where I teach you how to cross that pesky emotional barrier and how to apply what’s on the other side.**

From Madness to Method uses the father of all acting techniques, The Method. Writers will learn how to create the most real of real moments. Course exercises push writers to enhance their emotional repertoire. 

If we held an Academy Awards for fiction, would yours be a highly acclaimed nominee? Polish those shoes and spray on a tan.  After this workshop every moment in every scene will be worthy of actors like Meryl Streep and your characters will be hitting the red carpet!

From Madness to Method includes lectures, mental and physical exercises, assignments and examples from multiple genres. There will be hands-on interaction between you, your writing, and the instructor.

• Access your sense memories to fuel character emotion on the page
• Turn reality into fiction by awakening your innermost observational skills
• Thrust your story forward by using every facet of character
• Increase your character’s emotional authenticity
• Create memorable moments readers will remember for years
• Write with your scars

Sound like fun? Drop me a comment and your name will be in the drawing to get a free slot in this course!

Tiffany Lawson Inman (@NakedEditor) claimed a higher education at Columbia College Chicago. There, she learned to use body and mind together for action scenes, character emotion, and dramatic story development.

She teaches Action, Choreography, Physicality, Violence, and Dialogue for Lawson Writer’s Academy, presents hands-on-action workshops, and will be offering webinars in 2014. As a freelance editor, she provides deep story analysis and dramatic fiction editing services. Stay tuned to writersinthestorm.com to see Tiffany’s upcoming guest blogs, contests, and lecture packets.