Writers in the Storm

By Shannon Donnelly Everyone knows there’s a story arc—story goes up in tension, reaches a peak, and falls down. And there are character arcs, too, since story is character and character is story. But what about your scene arcs? That’s right—every scene needs an arc. Jack M. Bickham (a student of Dwight Swain, whose book Techniques of a Selling Writer I highly recommend) describes a scene as: “...a segment of story action, written moment-by-moment, without summary, presented onstage in the story ‘now.’” (From Scene & Structure, How to Construct Fiction with Scene-by-scene Flow, Logic and Readability) This means the scene starts, it has middle, and the scene ends. Wandering or pointless scenes need to be cut. But how do you make a weak scene better so you don’t have to cut it? 1—Make sure every scene has one focal character that comes into the scene wanting one thing (or in one state) and comes out changed. This is just as the character is changed during the entire story in a character arc. For example, a scene could be your main character wanting to ask her husband to fund a charity. The scene starts with the characters sitting down to dinner. As the scene progresses, the character may be diverted off her goal—perhaps her husband is called away on an emergency. That scene now ends with main character frustrated (she started optimistic, so she has changed state).

NOTE: Having one focal character does not mean you have to limit the viewpoint to one character. You can switch viewpoints. However, if you do, make sure you know if this gives you better tension and emotion. Otherwise, that viewpoint shift is a place where you risk losing your reader. In general, you want to use the viewpoint of the character with the most (emotionally) at stake. And change viewpoint only if the emotional stakes change, too.

2—In every scene, make sure every character wants something. And set up conflict so your main character doesn’t get what he or she wants too easily. In our above example, the husband may just want to eat his dinner. Or perhaps he’s thinking about business problems. Or maybe he’d rather slip into bed with his wife and money is the last thing on his mind. Checking in with your characters for what they want in every scene will help you avoid the dreaded “chit chat” when the dialogue is flat, or even worse, when the dialogue turns into stiff plot exposition. 3—Set the reader into the scene. Tell the reader when and where we are. Scenes need to start some place and be set in a world. If you throw the reader into the deep end without vivid details that “set” the setting, the reader’s interest will not be as strong as if you make the reader “see” and “feel” everything. 4—Make sure you introduce all characters. This is very important for a character the reader has never met before. Weave in a few details. You don’t have to dump information onto the reader, but a few brush strokes of description will make your scene better come to life. 5—Move the story forward. What this means is you must beware of flashbacks—they take the story backwards (or stop it dead). You want all your best scenes to be happening now. If the best story happened in the past, you need to look at telling that story. 6—Reveal and develop your characters in your scene. This is where the “show, don’t tell” advice comes in. Within a scene, you want to show your characters in action so the reader gets to know that person better (actions reveal character). If you were filming a scene, would you want your actors to just stand there and talk? Or would you want them doing things so the visuals are interesting? That last option sounds better for a movie, right? Well, it’s better for a novel as well. As you develop characters, do not think this means dump in a lot of backstory. Look at this word – back and story. Literally, you are taking your story BACKWARDS. This means you have stopped the forward momentum of your story to fit in background information. You’ve killed your pacing. Now, all stories need some background—readers need to know setups and character history in order to care about the events and the people. However, too much backstory and your pacing drags to a halt. Weave in backstory with a sentence or three, not big chunks of paragraphs. 7—If you need to tell the reader some bit of information avoid the temptation to have characters talking about things everyone already should know. Plot exposition coming out of a character’s mouth is almost always awkward and stilted. You do not want to turn your characters into Mr. Exposition (from the Austin Powers movies). A line or two of exposition will not kill your pacing and may help keep the story clear. 8—Do not resolve the focal character’s issues without introducing two more. These can be small things or big, but you want to keep making everyone’s lives more difficult. If we go back to our example of the woman who wants her husband to donate money to a charity, we want to look at the options and come up with the one that makes things worse for her. So the option of the husband leaving is not going to give us as much as the one where the husband tells her his businesses aren’t doing well—now she has both her charity in trouble as well as her personal life. 9—Make sure your characters act “in character”. If your scene has you manipulating your characters or contriving situations to “make” a certain event happen, the reader is likely to find that scene implausible, or will just feel the characters are flat. You must always go back to asking, “What would I do if I were this person?” Set up the situations, the problems, but let your characters deal with those issues. Let the characters come through the scene in ways that make the scene fresh because the characters are fresh, too. Now, how long is any scene? A scene can be a few sentences...or it can be twenty pages, or it can be the entire story (yes, it's been done, but usually only in literary fiction). A scene is as long as it needs to be to take the focal character through the arc of that scene. However, in general, it takes most readers about three pages to get into a scene. If you look at your favorite books, I think you’ll find they all do the same thing—longer scenes in the opening to get the reader into the story and the world, and shorter scenes as the pace of the story picks up, and when there is less need to  develop the setting and characters because they have already been established. When a scene ends, you can transition to the next scene with a reaction to what happened, which is where sequels to scenes come into play, and more on that later.   Shannon Donnelly’s writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the "Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer" contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA's Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: "simply superb"..."wonderfully uplifting"....and "beautifully written." She is the author of the Urban Fantasy “Demons & Warder” series, with Burn Baby Burn and Riding in on a Burning Tire, as well as Regency Historical romances. Her books can be found n print or as ebooks on all formats, and her Regency Historical, Paths of Desire, is currently on sale at Amazon.com at a special price of 99 cents in October. 

Live to Ride – Write to Live

By Laura Drake

Most of you know me on some level - I am not an ‘old soul.’ Seriously. My method is to make every mistake possible until I finally bumble across the way that works for me. I was the one who hung back for decades, stuck in fear and my own opinions of myself.

What helped change that for me, was a motorcycle.

I rode 100,000 miles behind my husband on his motorcycle. Every vacation and three weekends out of four, we spent on two wheels. In the boring stretches, I’d prop a paperback on his back and read. Got some weird looks, but I loved it. I was content.

Then the Universe intervened. On our way home from a ten day vacation, at dusk outside Kingman Arizona, a dog ran in front of our bike. A big dog. I still remember the sound, the shock, the pain, when my knee hit the pavement and both the bike and my husband fell on top of me. He got aches and bruises; I got surgery and 6 months of rehab. The dog trotted away.

When I was able to bend my knee enough to throw it over the bike again, I discovered that had a bigger problem. I was terrified. The cars seemed much bigger, much faster, and much closer. I spent panicked hours, my sphincter holding me to the seat. This would not do. This is what Alpha Dog and I did together. This could have marital repercussions.

So a friend suggested that I take a class to learn to ride (read; the front seat.) I was horrified – who was I to think I could ride a motorcycle? But her logic made sense. If I knew how to ride, maybe I’d relax on the back.  So I took the class. I loved it.

Don't get me wrong; I was white-knuckle terrified every second. But I felt like I’d grabbed hold and taken charge of my own fate for the first time in my life.  More than that, I was proud. I had done something I’d hadn’t believed I could. I began challenging my opinions of myself for the first time in my life. If I could do this, what else could I do that I’d thought impossible?

Writing a novel.  I even had an idea floating around for over a year and wouldn’t go away. Emboldened by my motorcycling success, I wrote. I sucked. But I wrote. I joined RWA. I took classes. I read. I learned. I sucked less.

Fast forward, 15 years, and 413 rejections. I know that’s right, because I just added them up. I SOLD!!!!

Why did I keep writing through all those years, through all those rejections?

Because my first goal wasn’t to be published. It was to experience the thrill I found behind the handlebars of my motorcycle – the thrill of finding out I could do something I didn’t think I was capable of.

I have now logged 100,000 miles on my OWN motorcycle. My debut year, I’ll have three books released, and I’ve been contracted for a total of seven books.

So I challenge you:

What could you do, if you didn’t believe you couldn’t?

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?