Tag: write

QUIZ: How should you start your novel?

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First, a Pop Quiz

I’m going to give you four openings of books, and you tell me how they hook the reader. Why does the reader keep reading?

1. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

2. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack.

3.  When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

4. When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special significance, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

Here are the sources for the openings:

  1. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
  2. Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
  3. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
  4. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Here are my answers of what might be going through a reader’s mind as s/he reads the openings:

  1. That’s an intriguing idea. I wonder what more the author has to say or show about it. (Answers)
  2. I want to know more about this guy; he seems interesting. (Character)
  3. Immediate: What’s the Reaping? By the end of the chapter: What happens next? (Answers, Time)
  4. Who’s Bilbo? Where’s Bag End? Eleventy-first birthday? A Party? Hobbiton? (World)

Earlier this week I posted about WATCH, a method of figuring out which of four elements your novel focuses on. Each novel has all four, but novels generally stress one over the others. When you know which element is your focus, you have a good idea of how to start and end your novel, giving it continuity. The four elements are World, Answers (or theme), Time (or events), and Character. Read about them on the previous post.

Tricky Beginnings and Endings

Beginning and ending your book with your focus element is a helpful tip. It isn’t a rule. To Kill A Mockingbird begins with a statement about Jem, Scout’s brother, then talks about events leading up to his injury, and then the book ends on theme.

Tuck Everlasting begins with a mystery and ends with a theme, but the epilogue ends with more events. All together, the story is a Time story—readers want to know what happens next.

The Outsiders starts by talking about the narrator and ends with him wanting to tell the world about his friends. The book’s themes and plot and world are important, but the story begins and ends with character.

A Study in Scarlet is a mystery, but the first chapter is about Dr. Watson introducing himself and then being told about Sherlock Holmes. But even the character of Holmes is its own mystery, which is why the reader doesn’t want to know how the characters grow so much as answer the question of who they are.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation begins with an “excerpt” from the Encyclopedia Galactica. It’s not difficult to guess that World is definitely a focus in his books.

A Note Regarding Prologues

Agents want to read and represent a book that hooks them from the first paragraph. That’s why plenty of agents despise prologues. But wait, you say, plenty of fantasy and sci-fi books start with prologues. If World is your focus, you’re more likely to get away with a prologue. If the focus is Character or Answers, then you likely should not have a prologue—backstory and answers should be revealed throughout the book. Don’t give your milk away for free if you’re trying to sell a cow.

If you are debating about including a prologue, first consider the following:

  • Is there any other way you can effectively incorporate this information without putting it at the beginning?
  • Is it really that necessary?
  • Do you care that many readers will skip over it?
  • Do you care that it might annoy potential agents or publishers?

If you absolutely must include a prologue, I suggest titling it Chapter One rather than Prologue. Include a date or time stamp there and on Chapter 2 to show a shift in time or place.

YOUR Beginning: Another Quiz!

When writing or revising your beginning, ask yourself what is important to you as a writer and as a reader.

Answer each question yes/no. Then rank your “Yes” answers in order of what matters most to you.

  1. Do you want to be thought of as poignant or thought-provoking?
  2. Do you want to be known as exciting?
  3. Do you want to be known for your imagination?
  4. Do you want to be known as an intimate person?
  5. Do you read books to escape?
  6. Do you put down a book if it’s boring?
  7. Do you enjoy books that make you think?
  8. Do you tend to forget about the plot in books you’ve read, but always remember the people?
  9. Do you want people to fall in love with your characters?
  10. Do you want people to enjoy your fictional universe as much as (or more than) you do?
  11. Do you want your book to be memorable for its themes?
  12. Do you want your book to be a page-turner?

What matters most from questions 1–4: ___ (1-A, 2-B, 3-D, 4-C)

What matters most from questions 5–8: ___ (5-D, 6-B, 7-C, 4-A)

What matters most from questions 9–12: ___ (9-C, 10-D, 11-A, 12-B)

If you answered mostly A’s (Answers)—Start your book with a theme and end it with the final statement on the theme. For the rest of the novel, be sure to illustrate (show) rather than explain (tell) so you don’t get preachy. These are the books that, when thematic and done right, change people’s lives and become their most beloved books. When structured as mysteries or capers, these are the most open to becoming series.

If you answered mostly B’s (Time)—Start your book immediately with the inciting incident, and end each chapter with a change of events. Finish the book with a final change of events (which might be a cliff-hanger if this is part of a series). These books are the ones that people can’t put down and recommend to their friends because it’s such a thrilling read.

If you answered mostly C’s (Characters)—Start and end your book with interesting details about the character. Voice is everything. So is making the character sympathetic by using rooting interests. These are the books that people fall in love with, that generate the most fan fiction.

If you answered mostly D’s (World)—Fascinate them with the world you create. Start with a regular day, if it’s really amazing. Otherwise begin with the most interesting places or event in your world, and end once the world finds a new normal. These are the books that people immerse themselves in—the ones that generate the most cosplays and fan art. They have a very high potential for spin-offs. (They are also the ones that have the highest costuming and CGI budgets when transferred to film!)

Choosing the best kind of beginning for your book

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WATCH, or: Where to Start and End your Novel

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This post explains the acronym WATCH, asks what kind of novel you’re writing, and then teaches you where/how to begin and end your novel. Short fiction writers—don’t fret. You can learn about beginning and ending your stories effectively, too.

I’ve been reading Characters and Viewpoints by Orson Scott Card* and learning so much about point of view and types of novels that I’ve not read anywhere else. So of course I’m going to share what I’m learning with all of you!

[*EDIT: When I read the book and wrote this post, I was unaware that Orson Scott Card is homophobic. As such I do not recommend his book. I still learned something from it though, and I’ve shared that below.]

My main takeaway was his idea of a “MICE Quotient.” He says there are four types of stories. Each story has all four elements, but stories will emphasize one more than the others. M.I.C.E. stands for Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event.

I think his use of “Idea” is a bit misleading, and I’d probably have to look up “milieu” again every time I saw it in the future. So I created my own mnemonic device that works well in the context of my time-traveling historical fantasy.

W.A.T.CH.: Which will you focus on in your writing?

WATCH

  1. World
  2. Answer
  3. Time
  4. CHaracter

Okay, I know the H in “character” is silent. Nobody’s perfect.

World

This is Card’s “Milieu,” but “world” is far less pretentious and more memorable, in my humble opinion. You’ve probably heard of “world building” if you are familiar with Sci-Fi and fantasy, or the broader term “universe.” World concerns itself with setting, place, time, culture, customs, manners, and the like. Every novel has some degree of its own world. In some stories, though, the world-building is so central to the book, it almost becomes a character itself.

Westerns, epic fantasy, and historical fiction tend to focus on World.

Answer

This is what Card refers to as “idea,” but I think “Idea” has connotations of “theme” and not much else. An Answer story poses a question or a problem that needs to be answered or solved by the end. The question could be obvious—”Who murdered Mr. Boddy?”—or it could be figurative. If it’s figurative, the answer might very well be the theme of the story. Take The Great Gatsby, for example. While the World (1920s), Time (events), and Characters (Gatsby, Carraway, Tom, Daisy, etc.) are all important and well-developed, they are all used to illustrate the themes (money, power, time, etc.). An allegorical story like Pilgrim’s Progress has universal, and thereby flat, characters, but it can get away with it, because the story is about finding answers. What is Christian’s purpose? To get to the Celestial City.

Mysteries, capers, allegory, and some sci-fi and classical fiction focus on Answers or theme.

Examples: Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Ocean’s Eleven, Pilgrim’s Progress, The Great Gatsby

Time

Time deals with events. Cause and effect. The plot. What happens. If you’re trying to get a writing degree at a respectable university, they will tell you that Character must always trump plot. And while that’s true for literary fiction, it’s not true for all fiction. Anne Lamott, whom many of us regard as one of the finest writing instructors alive, urges writers to think about characters and their motivations, hang the plot. But in Bird by Bird, she confesses that she had to rewrite one of her novels countless times, because the plot made no sense, and her editor kept telling her it didn’t work. So she learned how to do a plot treatment, and she fixed it. Plot gets thrown under the bus by some respectable writers, but it’s definitely important.

I really enjoy character-driven short fiction, but if I pick up a novel in which nothing actually happens, I’ll throw it across the room and rage about it to my poor, unsuspecting husband. Popular fiction, the kind that is nearly impossible to put down, focuses on Time and what happens in the book. Hopefully the characters will change by the end of the book, but that isn’t always the case. Katniss Everdeen isn’t the deepest character on the shelf, but she sure does a lot.

Time novels start with something amiss that needs to be fixed. They right a wrong; they “save” women from spinsterhood. Or at least they try to fix the problem. They primarily try to change what happens, though the people in the story are usually changed, too.

Because they deal with problems, the line between Time stories and Answer stories can be a blurry one. The difference is that in an Answer story, something is learned or realized, resulting in an understood truth. But in a Time story, something happens, resulting in a shift in circumstance. Answer stories have an intellectual conclusion, whereas Time stories have a physical one.

Dystopian, disaster, justice/revenge, thriller, horror, sci-fi and romance are generally Time- or event-focused.

Examples: The Hunger Games, Jurassic Park, The Count of Monte Christo, The Da Vinci Code, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Doctor Who, Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Character

A character-driven novel is one in which the most important factor isn’t what happens, when and where it happens, or the author’s intent. The important thing in a character-driven story is personal growth. The character should change for the better or for the worse. If the character doesn’t change, the reader grows in understanding of why that character will never change.

Contemporary literary fiction concerns itself primarily with character: who characters are and why they act the way the way they do. Motivation, motivation, motivation.

General fiction, literary fiction, and the bildungsroman (a coming-of-age story) depend primarily on character.

Examples: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Things They Carried, Huckleberry Finn

How to begin and end the story

Bilbos-Birthday-Party

World

When the world in your story is the focus, you begin by introducing the world. “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Tolkien created a gigantic universe that is Middle Earth. His stories begin by showing what life is like. Then things begin to shake that world up a bit. Orson Scott Card gave the example of The Lord of the Rings. Why does the story not end when the One Ring is destroyed? Because the story isn’t just about Frodo Baggins and his Fellowship; it’s about how Middle-Earth completely changed. So the story ends not at Mount Doom, or at Aragorn’s coronation, or after the scouring of the Shire. It ends when the last of the elves leave Middle Earth. The world has changed. It’s changed for Frodo, too, so he leaves with the elves.

Grey Havens

Where are my tissues?

Answer

If you’ve read or watched many mysteries, you know they all start the same. They might have a couple of lines or minutes introducing the protagonist as a person capable of solving a mystery, but they really start when someone’s been murdered or another crime has been committed. They start with a mystery or a question. Why do you think some people call mysteries “Whodunits”? The story ends when you find out who did it.

study-in-pink

In theme stories, the story begins with theme and ends with theme. The Great Gatsby begins with advice (given in the past) about considering someone else’s history against your own, and how those histories have affected your presents:

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.'”

It ends with the message that even though we make effort to change our futures, we will always be pulled back to our past:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

You end the story once the characters or the reader has a new understanding.

In a series of Answers stories, they might end on a new question. Readers read the next book to have the new question answered. That’s usually how seasons of Castle end. And if you watch Sherlock, you really know what I mean about ending on a question!

Time

Time stories begin by showing you what’s wrong. There might be a quick introduction of characters, but then we see what sort of circumstance the characters are in, and they realize they’ve got to do something about it. Or they reject it but end up doing something anyway.

Lizzie Bennet Diaries

My mom gave me this shirt.

The Hunger Games begins with the Reaping. Pride and Prejudice begins with a woman who, according to her mother, needs a husband (preferably a rich one). Doctor Who episodes usually begin with the discovery of aliens bent on the destruction of the universe.

Time stories end when circumstances change. The woman gets married; the world is saved. Justice is had; someone is avenged. They basically end when there’s nothing else to tell—nothing else happens to change the circumstance of the world or of the protagonist. At least not until the sequel. If a time story is part of a series, one story might end when the circumstances change in order to create a new story. The Hunger Games ends after circumstances change for Katniss and Peeta. They’ve hit a new normal. But Haymitch assures them that more change is to come. Catching Fire is notorious for its cliffhanger ending.

Pride & Prejudice wedding

The story ends here when it’s one about finding romance. Achievement unlocked.

Character

Character stories begin with the character living a normal life.

500 Days of Summer Todd Hanson

Everything that happens in the story affects the character somehow, and by the end of the story, the character has grown. Character stories end with the change or growth in character. A new life for the character has begun.

(500) Days of Summer is not a love story, it’s a character story. It doesn’t end with a relationship, it ends when Tom finally gets a life. (I adore this movie.)

Chris Oatley has a great post on “How to Write Great Character Introductions” [archived] over at Paper Wings Podcast. If you’re writing a character-driven story (and even if you aren’t), be sure to read it.

—-

Take some time and think about your favorite books and movies. What kinds of stories are they? Where do they begin? How do they end?

Be sure to check out WATCH Part Two—a quiz on where you should begin and end YOUR novel.

Once I get through my notes and finish Characters and Viewpoint, I’ll be starting a new series on Point of View. Subscribe or follow me on Facebook to stay in the loop!

beginning & ending your novel: a lesson in genre

Mother Writers

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reading

Well, in a week I’ll be finished with my last design project for a while. This won’t be a complete sabbatical, since I’ll design some stuff for my Etsy shop, I’m sure, but it is a break from commissioned work, which is rewarding, but also very, very time- and brain-consuming.

I’m also giving birth in the next month(ish), so that will take up quite a bit of time and brain power. However, I would like to take this opportunity to get back to writing, even if it’s slow going.

How & when do mothers write?

That’s something I’m trying to figure out. Apparently there’s a book on the subject? (If you’ve got tips, please share.) The more I read about writers, the more I see a pattern—if they are women, they aren’t publishing while raising very small children. But I think they are still writing and reading, and I should be writing and reading, too, even with a toddler, puppy, and soon-to-be howling, hungry infant.

The baby steps are these:

  1. Read one literary novel each month
  2. Read short fiction and poetry once a week
  3. Create and execute one writing assignment biweekly or weekly
  4. Finish one poem or flash fiction piece per month

Eventually, the idea is I’ll get up to writing 1,000 words per day (excluding blogging and status updates), and then work my way up to 2,000 words per day.

That last one could take about ten years, or until the last of our brood is of school-age. We are well on our way to becoming brunette, American Weasleys over here.

Read one literary novel per month

I’ve got a book club going, and we are working through the Newbery (US) and Carnegie (UK) Medal Winners for juvenile fiction. They are short, simple reads that are deemed literary by librarians. Good place to start.

Read short fiction and poetry each week

The idea is to get as many contemporary voices into my head as possible. The Newbery and Carnegie medals are awarded each year, so 90% of the winners aren’t contemporary writers. I probably won’t blog on these a bunch, because that will soak up my writing time, but I’ll post recommended readings (what I liked) to my Facebook page. Feel free to share your own recommended readings for short fiction and poetry there, too! I’ll also post recommended readings on my blog under the Reading and Poetry tabs. (I just added one there this morning—check out Amy McCann’s “Human Climate” via Revolver)

Writing assignments and finishing poems

In an attempt to write more poetry and short fiction, I’ll be posting weekly or biweekly writing assignments here on the blog and then completing them for myself. The idea is that by the end of the month, I’ll have at least one I can turn into something more polished. I’m calling these short assignments “Fifteen Blinks,” the idea being that, whether the piece yields poetry or prose, you could read it in about 3 minutes.

If you want to join me on these assignments, please let me know! If I know other people are participating, I’m much more likely to stick to it and keep generating writing exercises. It’s an accountability thing.

I honestly have no idea what day of the week I’ll be posting Fifteen Blinks. Mondays I’m going to try to devote to motivational works and Author Chats. It’s going to be irregular at best, so your best bet is to subscribe to WriteLaraWrite via email (see right column for sign up) or follow me on Facebook.

Letters from Anne Lamott

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Motivation

No, I have not written correspondance with Anne Lamott, and I don’t have copies of any of her epistles. I do, however, have a copy of Bird by Bird, which I reread cover to cover today.

Two things that resonated with me particularly during this read had to do with letters, namely the first five of the alphabet.

Alice Adams’ ABDCE

In her chapter on Plot, Lamott reference’s Alice Adam’s formula for writing short stories. It goes like this:

  1. Action—This is how you start, how you get the reader reading.
  2. Backstory—This is how you set up for that action, after the fact, when the reader is already hooked and curious about your characters.
  3. Development—This is when you develop the characters based on their personalities and what’s at stake. If you know your characters, the plot will flow naturally.
  4. Climax—Everything comes together for the characters during the climax. Lamott says the climax needs to include a killing, a healing, or a domination. These could be literal or metaphorical. Either way, the characters are not the same after the climax.
  5. Ending—After the climax, the ending needs to make sense. “What is our sense of who these people are now, what are they left with, what happened, and what did it mean?” (page 62)

Plotters and Pantsers

There are two basic types of writers: the plotter and the pantser. I’ll use extremes to illustrate my point, and hopefully you’ll find yourself somewhere in the middle.

The extreme plotter plans before writing and risks writing something plot-driven rather than character-driven (I talk about that here). These are the people that write 28 trashy novels per year and somehow end up on the best-seller list. Their films generate a buzz and sell a lot of popcorn, but end up in the discount DVD bin five months after release. The extreme pantser writes by the seat of his or her pants, letting the story develop naturally and organically, and risks having an artfully written convolution that is unpublishable. These are the people who write fine literature that nobody particularly understands. Their movies are discussed primarily in film classes.

Sometimes you plan out a 4-foot-by-4-foot garden plot. You plant the seeds in even little rows, pushing them inches down into the Ph-balanced soil. But then you have a number of cold days, or not enough rain, and the spinach wilts and the corn grows and casts an eternal shadow over the unsuspecting peonies. Before you know it, the tomatoes are creating their own political party of radicals, hatching a plan to overthrow the oligarchy that is your authorship. Then you have to wonder if your garden needs a serious thrashing, if you should just plow it up and turn the whole thing into a compost pile, or if you should start a new, nonfiction book entitled “1001 Uses for Tomatoes.”

Sometimes you wander, barefooted, into a patch of wildflowers and lie gazing up at the clouds and enjoying the smells and sounds of the rustling, absorbing them into memory. You come back, day after day, while the Earth spins around and the seasons change, observing and absorbing, until you have a collection of lovely vignettes. But your editor just doesn’t see a story there. So you go back to your wildflower patch with a shovel, find a spot with a nice view, and you dig yourself a grave there and bury yourself up to your waist in dirt, and call a friend to come finish the job for you, because you can’t cover yourself completely without leaving some arm waving around pathetically.

Whether you are a plotter or a pantser, whether you’ve got a messy draft or are in the middle of a draft with no foreseeable future, you might want to consider a plot treatment.

Plot Treatment

A plot treatment addresses what happens and why. It tells you “who the people [are] and what the story [is],” (page 91).

Here’s how Lamott did it:

“I sat down every day and wrote five hundred to a thousand words describing what was going on in each chapter. I discussed who the characters were turning out to be, where they’d been, what they were up to, and why. [And] I figured out, over and over, point A, where the chapter began, and point B, where it ended, and what needed to happen to get my people from A to B. And then how the B of the last chapter would lead organically into point A of the next chapter. The book moved along like the alphabet, like a vivid and continuous dream.” (92-3)

Sound familiar? It’s a lot like Suzanne Johnson’s Relationship Arcs. Try my twist of a plot treatment with my Chapter Outlining Like a Pantser technique.

Don’t be afraid to plot. Plotting helps make your story a story. It gives you that beginning, middle, and end. Without it, you might have some nice images, but so does the Alzheimer’s patient down at Happy Acres. They might be real, truthful, and beautiful, but if you don’t link together the cat with three legs, your great aunt’s penchance for covering furniture with doilies, and the lingering smell of buttercream frosting together in a logical order, no one is going to have any idea what you are talking about, or why those things are important.

 

I’m a plotter, and I have an outline, but that plan has grown from my knowledge of my characters. They still surprise me from time to time, so if my outline changes, it changes. I don’t change my characters to fit the story, I change the story to fit them, but I have a pretty good idea of what decisions they’ll make for themselves based on their character.

I’ve spent half a decade with my characters, virtually taking them out to eat. Gareth and I always get cheeseburgers or waffles at indecent hours, constantly wiping our mouths of the ketchup or blueberry syrup as we talk about movies. Isolde and I get frozen ice cream topped generously with fruit and white chocolate or coconut, unless we are having a self-conscious day, when we’ll chat over salads between sips of lemon water. Robin is less predictable, wanting salmon one day and Wisconsin cheese baked macaroni another. I gaze at the menu in indecision while he talks about his latest wedding gig.

If you know your characters, the story will develop while they develop. If you don’t know your characters, take them out for coffee and let them order whatever they want. Listen to their story, and then go home and write it down.

I recommend borrowing Bird by Bird from the library, at least. If you are a habitual highlighter or underliner like myself, however, you can buy the book on Amazon here: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life