Writers in the Storm

A Big Writers in the Storm Welcome for Our Guest Blogger today, Tiffany Lawson Inman (also known as NakedEditor). 

Mark your calendars because Tiffany will be sharing her knowledge with us the last Friday of every month, starting TODAY!  Yeah!

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            Writers are always told to show, show, show!

            SHOW emotion.

            SHOW visceral reactions.

            SHOW emotive body language.

But we aren’t always taught when or how much. This is almost MORE important than the showing itself.

Have you ever read a book where the characters are too quick to tears? Or they are too quick moving from decision to decision. Was it believable? More importantly, did it keep you interested?  Readers need to marvel at the character’s ability to stay strong. And readers need reasons to root for their character. Who is going to root for the crying-at-every-challenge character in the corner?

Nobody!

Can you imagine if Scarlet cried buckets after every obstacle thrown in her way in Gone With The Wind?  In Hunger Games, what if Katniss made the decision to save her sister and then proceeded to cry when anyone mentions her home, family, or sisters.  If we wrote our characters like this, readers wouldn’t have characters to root for.  Let alone, a plot worth its dramatic weight in publication gold.

It’s a thin line to walk when thinking about your characters. So many of life’s elements test our strength and push vulnerabilities.

• Frustration
• Love
• Loss
• Guilt
• Hate
• Death
• Happiness
• Panic
• Jealousy
• Fear
• Embarrassment
• AND THE LIST COULD GO ON!

These are the very tools we use to create drama.  And yet if we let them rule, our go-to reaction is usually to cry.  So, when is the right moment to let the flood gates open?

When your character has done everything BUT cry.  Of course it is different with each character, plot, and genre – especially YA,  yadda yadda.  I am saying for you to let us see the struggles, up hills, smacks in the face, and bombs.  And let us watch your character flounder a bit before the first tear rolls down that cheek.

In the theatre, actors are told that the more a character fights the tears back, the further in your audience will be drawn. Actors are told that if they allow their characters to burst into tears during a dramatic scene the audience won’t be crying or emoting as much as when they get to watch the character battle the obstacle and finally be broken by it.  My director would say he didn’t want to see me cry, he wanted to see me try not to cry, it was more interesting.

And, turns out, he was right (of course he was right, he’s being nominated for Tony’s!)

Theatre and literature are very similar. 

Actors, writers, directors are pushing characters to the breaking point, page after page. Scene after scene. We can’t afford for them to be boohooing when they rip their trousers at the school dance, or at the sight of their dead brother when a killer is on the loose.

Can we?

No – we need them to act! What we don’t need is to see every single thought or feeling that goes through their head.

How much emotion should we show? Depends on where you are in the characters' struggles. Depends on where you are in the plot. One variable that is always the same: your readers want to have an experience.  So let the reader put the puzzle pieces together. Show your characters emotions through their actions, reactions, body language, and vocal cues. No spoon feeding allowed.  You can show sorrow without putting a whole heart on the table.

I’m a big list person when it comes to plotting, editing, characterizations, setting, etc.  Usually these lists start out with questions and end up with fleshed out details to plunk into your drafts.   It’s no different with emotional timing.

First. List your all of your characters obstacles from big to small. Or list them like the Thai place labels their curry  *wink wink*

• Lost keys = timid
• Lost job = mild to medium
• Lost love and betrayal = medium to hot (depending on the extent of betrayal and who it was with)
• Loss of loved one = medium to hot (depends on how death occurred)
• Lost security: kidnapping, torture, battle between good and evil = hot to sweaty forehead hot
• Loss of humanity: bombs, apocalypse, war = sweaty forehead hot to loss of sensation in tongue hot

Second. Look at your plot line.  Place the obstacle on the plot line. Now start asking yourself questions.  You might get an answer that makes you challenge where the obstacle is in the plot, or what it is.

• How strong or how vulnerable is your character after each obstacle?
• Where in the plot is it feasible that your character would have a breaking point?
• Do you think it will deepen characterization and intrigue if your character is shown to become stronger after one of those obstacles?
• Do you need to teach your character a lesson early in the plot so that they are better prepared to handle the obstacle towards the end?
• Does what you are showing from the character strengthening the reader’s connection with that character?  Does the event invite sympathy? Or does it throw up a wall?
• Are your characters reactions consistent with their character and each situation? (keep in mind with YA, this is a whole different ball of wax…)

I bet some of you are rethinking those tears in your third chapter, am I right?  Well, my intention was not for you to rewrite your WIP, but if these questions prod you to create a more realistic emotional timeline that gets you closer to publication, then I have succeeded!

Tell us a few of your life or character obstacles and how you chose to show the emotions to your readers.  Did some of the reactions catch you off guard? Or, just say hi!

Comment below and your name will be in the hat to win a free spot in one of my online classes offered through Lawson Writer’s Academy.

77 Secrets To Writing YA Fiction That Sells!  OR  From Madness To Method

Thank you so much for popping over to WITS today!  It’s an honor to be here.  In fact, I’m going to be honored to be here the last Friday of Every Month on WITS!  So, come back!  MUCH more to learn!

About Tiffany:

Tiffany Lawson Inman (NakedEditor) claimed a higher education at Columbia College Chicago. Here, she learned to use body and mind together for action scenes, character emotion, and dramatic story development. She teaches for Lawson Writer’s Academy and presents hands-on-action workshops. As a freelance editor, she provides story analysis and editing services.

For more writing/editing  tips n’ tricks: http://tiffanylawsoninmanisnakededitor.com/

by Fae Rowen

When Laura Drake originally suggested this topic months ago  I knew I would be on the "don't know" end of the throwdown.  Everyone else at Writers in the Storm writes about what they know.  With Sharla Rae's historicals, she researches and researches until she has notebooks filled with information.  Jenny Hansen writes about people and things she knows, changing names to protect the innocent.  Laura writes about women going through life's trauma and coming out the other side, which she's done.  Very well.

Me?  I write about anything that interests me.  I write about unknown planets, alien species, space battles, and future societies.  Hmmmm.  Never been to any of those places and I don't have a time machine.  And I have no military flying experience where I've fired on other planes--or space ships.  Yep, I write what I don't know.

That's not what writing teachers tell their classes.  I can't tell you how many times I've been told to write what I know, that writing anything else is dangerous.  Yes, I never learned that lesson.

Let me tell you why I write science fiction.

•  If I wrote a contemporary, I'd have to have everything correct.  Fashions, cars, restaurants.  What if I had my characters eating poppers before they were invented?  Every reader would let me know.  As a mathematician I have this thing about being right not wrong.  Because in my "other" professional world if you're not right, you're wrong.  All wrong.  There is no gray.

•  If I wrote historicals, I would have to do research.  Now, I'm good at research.  Even extensive research.  But it's not my favorite thing to do.  For instance, I think the absolute best hero in a romance book is a Regency hero.  Give me a titled rake, or even a non-duke, and I can turn starry eyed and fall in love.  But would I ever try to write a regency.  Ha!

Regency readers know what houses were on what streets in Mayfair and every other part of London and the entire English countryside.  They know what dishes were served for every course of casual and fancy party meals.  I think they even know how to play whist.  They know their social history and if a writer transgresses on details, it's pistols at dawn.

• I've been through my share of life's travails.  It's not cathartic for me to rehash the journey.  I'm not good with tears, but I'm very good at forgetting how bad something was, so I just can't capture my angst and emotion on the page.

I write what I don't know.  I imagine a world and a couple of characters.  I imagine what the society on the world would be like.  Who can tell me I'm wrong, as long as the "rules" of the society are coherent and work for that setting and people?  Well, maybe someone.  Let me digress for a quick story.

When I was speaking at a conference about an activity from a textbook I co-authored, I talked about how I developed the lesson.  A man in the back of the packed banquet hall  jumped up and interrupted me.  "You stole that lesson from the textbook I use.  You're lying.  You didn't make it up."

After the audible inhale of the audience I asked him what textbook he used.  He waved it high above his head.  It was my book.  I told him I was one of the co-authors and thanked him for using the book and understanding my lesson so well.  After the session he sheepishly brought the book to the podium and asked if I'd autograph it.

I've never been part of a society made entirely of convicts.  I personally know only one white-collar felon.  But I'm writing a trilogy on their world.  How can I do this?

Well, I do understand what people need to survive.  And I can imagine what I would do when faced with having to fight for my sustenance.  Alliances, betrayals, codes of conduct, rituals, discoveries are all open territory for exploration.  As long as I can thread logic through the backstory that produced such a social climate, I can build a world that my reader can connect with and believe.  That means there are rules--physical and societal--which can't be broken, even if that might make my job as a writer easier.

Building those worlds and defining those rules--that's the fun part.  Want an alien native to your world?  Want it to be bigger than humans?  No problem.  Look at the other alien life on the planet and the plants and make a picture in your mind.  Make sure your creature has a food source and a habitat, possibly with one or both in conflict with the human population if you want another layer of tension in your story.

How did the people get there?  Why do they stay?  What is the level of their technology?  Oh, you can have fun with this one and make up all those cool tech items you wish you had right now.

As a kid I had to walk everywhere.  Long stretches of sidewalk.  I developed a whole moving sidewalk society before I ever read a science fiction book, just because I got tired of walking an hour to my piano lesson every week.

Do I know all the science behind any of my "inventions"?  Nope.  Not my job.  That's a fun project for the engineers. I like to think that writing about what I don't know allows my readers to use their imaginations to explore the "unknown" setting and society.  And to say, "That's cool.  I wish we had that now,"  as the story unfolds.

In my despair at being on what I perceive as the losing end of this throwdown from the get-go, I googled "writing what you don't know."  Surprise, a screenwriter has written a book on the topic.  Julian Hoxter’s book, Write What You Don’t Know,
is internationally popular and has been translated into Chinese.  Makes sense, though.  You may not have lived through the world's worst divorce, but you can imagine the emotions and possible situations, decide whether you want to go the dramatic route or the comedy route, and write what you don't know.  I could see that really working for comedy.

Screenwriters can't have lived through all the things they dream up for movies nowadays.  But they can imagine, and imagination is the bottom line for writing what you don't know.  "Imagination is the ability to form a mental image of something that is not perceived through the senses. It is the ability of the mind to build mental scenes, objects or events that do not exist, are not present or have happened in the past,"says Remez Sasson.  We've all got an imagination.  Think you don't?  Just spend an afternoon playing with a child.  You'll see.

Bret Anthony Johnston is the Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University.  Here's a link to a piece he wrote in The Atlantic magazine on "why fiction’s narrative and emotional integrity will always transcend the literal truth."  He makes an eloquent case for stepping outside the bounds of what you know when you write.

Yes, I write what I don't know.  And that can be scary and difficult at times.  There are no definitive roadsigns marking the territory.  But no one else knows it either, until I write about it.  And that's the real beauty of writing what I don't know.

Where do you fall in this throwdown?  Do you write what you know or do you write what you don't know?  Or a little of both?

On Friday we welcome debut author Ruthie Knox, who will share tips on writing and selling your first book.

By Laura Drake

I’m probably the poster child for the "Write what you know" side of the throwdown.

Why?  I’ll out myself at the end of this post. Let me answer the easy one first.

How?

For the last ten years I’ve had an obsession (yeah, another one.) Pro Bull Riding. I never miss it on TV, and when it’s not televised, I’ve been known to sit on Twitter for hours, waiting for people at the event to Tweet the rider’s scores. I’ve attended all local events, and been to the finals in Vegas twice -- once in a cast and a wheelchair because I broke my leg.

No way I was going to miss it.

Everyone knows I’m a bull riding geek. My boss even bought me a poster of Chris Shivers for my office.

I’ve written and sold three books, all set in the world of Pro Bull Riding. Did I do it because I knew it, or because I love it? Probably both.

I also ride motorcycles. I rode behind my husband on his for 100,000 miles. Then I learned to ride.

I now own two and have logged 100,000 miles of my own.

I wrote a novel about a girl who rides across the country on her motorcycle.

Okay, now the embarrassing part -- Why do I write what I know?

The same reason I could never be a teacher. And why the mere thought of writing Historical novels makes me break out in a sweat.  I have this secret fear that someone is going to discover that I don't know what I'm talking about. They're going to point at me, out me as a poser, and prove that I'm a fraud.

If I teach a class, you can be sure I know a LOT about the subject, because I live in fear of someone raising their hand and asking a question I can't answer. I know it's dumb. I don't expect a teacher to know everything. I don't expect any expert to know everything.

Only me.

I don't get it ether, but there it is.

So, here's where it gets fun -- we love to see which side of the throwdown you're on, and why. Do tell!