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NOVELWRITING Starting Points 4
7
WHEN ART IMITATES LIFE
Character Development 36
Skillful use of backstory can bring your characters to life—and enrich your plot and story in the process. Here’s how to do it.
BY AUDREY STALLSMITH
BY RACHEL BALLON
ON WRITING FOR TEENS AND TWEENS
40
BY MARY KOLE
BY DAVID CORBETT
SHELVED BUT NOT FORGOTTEN A half-baked or set-aside manuscript doesn’t have to be forever doomed. Here’s why, when and how you might want to give an abandoned project a second chance.
44
NO MORE EXCUSES: WRITE THAT NOVEL!
USING CHARACTER TO ENRICH PLOT he best writers know how to make the most out of their characters. Start with these techniques. BY PAULA MUNIER
BY STUART HORWITZ 14
CONFLICT DRIVERS Master the machinery of desire—the conlicting wants, needs and motivations at the root of every character—and your story’s engine will run full throttle.
Approach your middle-grade and young adult iction with these tips in mind, and you’ll win the hearts of young readers.
12
BEGINNING WITH THE PAST
Your personal experiences can be a gold mine for your iction. Here are 8 ways to add authenticity to your writing.
49
TALKING POINTS Sometimes the best written dialogue doesn’t follow the “rules.” Here’s how and why you can break these 7 common conventions about character conversations.
Don’t let life get in the way of your writing dreams. Use these 8 tips to inspire you on your journey to a completed drat. BY AMY SUE NATHAN
BY STEVEN JAMES
Story Building 18
PLOTTING + PANTSING = PLANTSING You don’t have to choose between outlining your story and writing by the seat of your … imagination.
Momentum & Inspiration 53
TIPS FROM FIRST-TIME AUTHORS Ten new novelists share the stories behind their publishing debuts—and how you can break in to the industry, too.
BY JEFF SOMERS
BY CHUCK SAMBUCHINO 22
INTENTIONAL MISDIRECTION Skillful use of red herrings in your iction will thrill and captivate your readers. Here’s how to pull it of.
59
Journalist turned novelist John Sandford can drive “write what you know” across virtually any terrain—with more than 40 New York Times bestselling thrillers, a Pulitzer Prize, and even a young adult series.
BY JANE K. CLELAND 26
THE DEVIL’S IN THE (SETTING) DETAILS Pay attention to these characteristics of setting as you write your novel, and your story will be more nuanced and satisfying. BY MARY BUCKHAM
30
JOHN SANDFORD: TRUE GRIT
BY ADRIENNE CREZO 63
DAVID BALDACCI: STORY CHASER
Let the heart of your story shine through in all its elements and your novel will have meaning and depth.
More than 110 million books in print, a growing list of screenwriting credits, and a family literary foundation: Former lawyer David Baldacci owes his monumental success to his unerring commitment—and lifelong love of putting pen to paper.
BY JACK SMITH
BY JESSICA STRAWSER
THEME DEMYSTIFIED
2 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
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69
RAINBOW ROWELL: IN LIVING COLOR In writing fan favorites across genres, Rainbow Rowell has tapped the pulse of storytelling at its inest—and not surprisingly, it begins and ends with the heart. BY TYLER MOSS
The Final Draft 73
EDITORIAL INTERN Natalie Coleman
WRITER’S DIGEST STAFF EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Jessica Strawser MANAGING EDITOR Tyler Moss ASSISTANT EDITOR Baihley Grandison ART DIRECTOR Claudean Wheeler SENIOR ONLINE EDITOR Brian A. Klems VICE PRESIDENT / GROUP PUBLISHER Phil Sexton
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The Submission Process 88
HOW TO WIN (OVER) ASSISTANTS AND INFLUENCE AGENTS Sometimes your query will need the assistant’s approval before it’s even seen by an agent. Keep these 4 tips in mind as you pitch, and you’ll make it past the gatekeeper. BY ANN COLLETTE & RACHEL KINCAID
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Starting Points
WHEN ART IMITATES
Life Your personal experiences can be a gold mine for your fiction. Here are 8 ways to add authenticity to your writing by utilizing what you know. BY AUDREY STALLSMITH
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1. EMBARRASSING INCIDENTS Instead of trying to forget the blush-inspiring things that happen to you, try imagining that the consequences were more dire. Ask yourself: What character would be especially discombobulated by this experience? Or, In what scenario would that have been even worse? For instance, on our way to the front of the church at a funeral for the inal viewing, a few family members and I agreed we would slip out of a side door aterward 4 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
instead of staying to reminisce. As it turned out, the door was locked, and our frantic clicking of the latch was anything but discreet. Later, I refashioned that incident for a scene in my book Love and Other Lunacies, in which the heroine attempts to sneak in and out of the funeral of her ex-iance’s aunt without coming face-to-face with her former beau.
2. PHASES We all go through cycles in life, as the events that go on around us inluence how we feel, for better or worse. As I’m currently in a midlife what-if-I-am-never-successful phase, I tend to put characters in similar circumstances— because then even if their experiences are diferent from mine, I can connect with them. For instance, in one of my mystery novellas, two people get trapped on an isolated island: a middle-aged of-Broadway actress and a veteran who was forced into early retirement. Even though I’m no actress and have never served in the military, I can emotionally relate to their plights. When characterizing your own ictional players, take a step back and consider their outlook based on where they are
IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: ANNA PAFF
he tidy endings you ind in iction oten bear little resemblance to real life. Fortunately, even when reality doesn’t seem to have much of a cohesive plotline, it’s still illed with raw materials that can feed your iction. Everything you’ve ever seen, heard, read, thought or done is simmering away in your brain. Like the spellbrewing witches of Macbeth, you, too, can make a little magic from all that toil and trouble. To cook up something completely new using your stew of experiences as inspiration, consider adding the following ingredients— imbued, of course, with your own personal lavor.
in their lives. You’ll ind that it can deeply inluence their motivations—and the plot.
3. WEAKNESSES As a rule, we tend to identify with other people’s frailties more than with their strengths. Consider how the title character from the TV show “Monk” manages to be relatable despite his neuroses, or how Sherlock Holmes’s tendency to get obsessed with the task at hand impedes his social skills. Vulnerability can ground a character in reality. In my novel Rosemary for Remembrance, the resentment between the protagonist and her half-sisters is exacerbated by her passive aggression—a character quirk that may have been informed by my own tendency to avoid direct conlict. How might you plunder your own weaknesses for story fodder?
4. OTHERS’ EXPERIENCES he anecdotes you hear at a dinner party may hold currency beyond just idle chitchat. If properly masked, the stories and knowledge you absorb can be iled away to use in your narrative. What your friends and family do for work may be a beneit to you as well. hrough an acquaintance of my sister’s, I was able to spend time on the job with a wildlife rehabilitator in researching the protagonist of my novel Roses for Regret. What I learned went beyond the basics of how a wildlife rehabilitator might spend her day. She was frank about never having enough money— which inspired much of the conlict in the book.
5. OBSCURE NEWS Keep an eye out for those odd little stories that occasionally turn up as iller in your newspaper or on local TV stations, but don’t make the national newscasts. hey’re oten more plot-inspiring (and less familiar) than the overhyped headlines. A report about teenagers slaughtering pets at an animal shelter irst horriied me, and then suggested an equally horrifying ictional scene in which the wildlife rehabilitator’s animals are killed.
6. EMOTIONS For particularly diicult scenes, you may have to portray intense emotions you haven’t actually experienced—the terror of hiding from a home intruder, the despair of being stuck in an abusive relationship. In such instances, it can be beneicial to read the real-life stories of others and transpose what you learn into your novel. But in other
cases, you can opt to crank up the volume on your own milder experiences. For example, one day I found that a dozen baby turkeys I’d raised from incubation had been slaughtered by a tomcat that had broken into their pen. he experience made it easier to imagine how much more helpless and angry my character in Roses for Regret must have felt when her beloved animals were massacred by another person.
7. SENSATIONS You can depict emotions with more authenticity if the physical sensations that accompany them ring true. For instance, anyone who has ever received bad news in the middle of the night—the unexpected loss of a loved one, word of a terrible accident—can recall the burst of panic that burns in your chest when the phone buzzes at 2 a.m. Even more simple sensations can be useful. While I’ve never hid from a killer in a garden as my character does in Rosemary for Remembrance, I’ve been snared by a rosebush as she was in that scene. hus I could efectively describe the painful pricks and jabs that served to exacerbate her anxiety.
8. MYTHOLOGY Look to fables, fairy tales and classic literature, all of which contain themes that can tug at the hearts of your readers. I loosely based my hyme Will Tell mysteries on fairy tales: Rosemary for Remembrance on “Cinderella,” Marigolds for Mourning on “Sleeping Beauty” and Roses for Regret on “Beauty and the Beast.” I also employed a Shakespearean quote at the beginning of each chapter in the series to foreshadow ominous events. In Rosemary for Remembrance, the following, from Hamlet, both acknowledges a death that already has occurred and threatens another: No, no, he is dead: Go to thy deathbed: He never will come again.
In the end, when it comes to your writing, real-life experiences don’t have to be relegated to memoir. Use these experiences to fuel your iction, and you’ll add authenticity to your prose. NW
Audrey Stallsmith is the author of the Thyme Will Tell mysteries, The Body They May Kill and the e-book Love and Other Lunacies.
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On Writing FOR TEENS AND TWEENS Approach your middle-grade and young adult fiction with these tips in mind, and you’ll win the hearts of young readers. BY MARY KOLE
o write riveting iction for middle-grade or young adult readers, you must be willing to take a long, thoughtful hike in their shoes. What issues and plots will resonate with middle-graders? What themes and characters will keep teens glued to your pages? What genres are particularly popular, and what pitfalls should you avoid? To make your story authentic and relatable, you’ll need to igure out what makes your readers tick: what they think, how they feel and what they consider most important.
IMAGES © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: CORNFLOWER & BLUE67DESIGN
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INSIDE THE MIND OF YOUR MG READER When you’re a MG reader (age 8 to 12), you live in a world of contrasts: • You want to be loyal to your family, but you also start to crave independence from them. • You want to deine yourself as an individual, but you also want to it in with friends and social groups at school. • You feel that pull to go—grow up, make big choices, be unique—but also the pull to stay—be a kid, be
safe, have things decided for you when the going gets tough—all at once. When you’re this age, you’re inding a place in the world without straying too far from the comforts of childhood. hen puberty hits, and the boys and girls who used to have “cooties” in elementary school are suddenly alluring. Your body betrays you by growing up and changing. Not only are your emotions and hormones a mess, but everything else seems to slide into confusion, too. During this time, you start to make tough choices and wrong choices, and pay the consequences of your actions and decisions. Friendships that were forged over a mutual love of applesauce in kindergarten start to get complicated. Parents and heroes you’ve trusted unconditionally turn out to be imperfect. hings you thought about yourself, others and the world turn out to be diferent or untrue. Remember that tweens are focused on themselves, but they’re also thinking about how others perceive them. Gone is the innocent freedom of being a kid. In its place is the awkward feeling that they’re being watched and judged and doing everything wrong. WritersDigest.com I 7
Starting Points (Middle-graders also start giving their parents this kind of close scrutiny and become perpetually embarrassed.) But on the positive side, they’re discovering a lot of new aspects to life. Use this information, for example, by having your descriptions relect the freshness of tween-age existence. How does your character interact sensorially with the world? How does she smell, taste, touch and hear things? Come middle school, kids have a lot of new experiences for the irst time. How does this change your story’s voice? Checking for “Content“ hings get complex at this point in a child’s life, but MG is not nearly as edgy as YA, nor should you feel the pressure to make it edgy at all. here can be some edgy material (what I like to call “content”), though you should avoid strong language and sex. he edgier you make your MG, the more resistance you will meet, especially in more conservative households and school districts. An editor might warn you away from content, too, because he’s thinking about your overall sales potential and marketability. If you really want to explore a darker shade with your MG story, give the edgiest issue to a secondary character. For example, in a YA book, your main character might be an alcoholic or involved in a violent relationship. In MG, you can still cover these things, but you’ll usually use the lens of a secondary character, such as a distant mother or an abusive uncle. If a romance igures prominently in your story, it should be tender and innocent, such as the ones in Jenny Han’s Shug or Eva Ibbotson’s he Dragonly Pool. Romance is, at this point, becoming more of a preoccupation for your readers (it will almost completely overtake them by the time they reach young adulthood), but there is typically no room for something sexually graphic or gratuitous in MG. For examples of how crushes are handled in the MG realm, let’s look at a small excerpt from Newbery Medal– winning When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Here, Miranda’s crush, Colin, decides to kiss her: Colin stood there, holding his skateboard in front of him like a shield, looking not exactly like himself.
he kiss is mentioned ater this, but Stead does not go into detail. 8 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
In Danette Haworth’s Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning, Violet simply notices a neighborhood boy in a new way. here’s an awkward Truth or Dare kiss in another scene, but this is about the extent of the romance: His eyes burn with their full power. God Almighty, it’s like I never seen his eyes before.
While it’s important to acknowledge budding romantic feelings and urges in your MG audience, it’s best not to get too explicit. Using Your Insights Understanding the reader allows you to play with theme and give your stories larger resonance. In the examples we mentioned earlier, the authors incorporate ageappropriate concerns into their stories. hese characters’ experiences and emotional turning points directly speak to the MG experience. Such revelations, when incorporated organically and subtly into the manuscript, will really strike a chord. To go back to Haworth’s Violet from Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning, we see her contemplating old mementos in a quieter moment: Even when you outgrow your childish things, someone saves them for you. Someone who loves you does that so you don’t forget who you are.
his moment perfectly captures the in-between feeling of being a preteen, that time when childhood is still fresh and tangible in the mind. Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer is a gripping MG mystery. Calder, one of the three protagonists, is thinking about the importance of a priceless Vermeer painting that has gone missing: Art, for [Calder], was—something puzzling. Yes. Something that gave his mind a new idea to spin around. Something that gave him a fresh way of seeing things each time he looked at it.
his directly relects the newness of life for preteens. Finally, there’s a reason that the MG category is sometimes called “coming of age.” Nobody in my library captures that feeling more than Mississippi Beaumont (or Mibs, for short), the protagonist of Ingrid Law’s MG smash hit Savvy. he book is about a family of quirky characters,
each with a special magical power, or “savvy.” When she gets her savvy, Mibs considers the bigger picture: I realized that I had just turned into a teenager myself, and there were changes coming in my life that didn’t have anything to do with my savvy.
here’s also: Things in my life were changing faster than I could keep up with.
I love arming writers with these ideas about the MG mindset because, I hope, they will inspire you to create something thematically rich that speaks directly and urgently to your audience.
INSIDE THE MIND OF YOUR YA READER hat feeling of your heart welling so big it could explode. It used to happen for me when I was driving around my hometown, late at night, in my wizardpurple Ford Taurus (before the hip redesign, thank you very much) and the perfect song would come on the radio. Everything felt so big and so important in that moment, like all the parts of the universe had inally— yet leetingly—clicked into place. Remember the electricity of adolescence? You experience your irst love, your irst heartbreak, your irst truly selless act, your irst betrayal, your irst seriously bad decision, your irst moment of profound pride, the irst time you’re a hero. he milestones space out as we age, but when you’re a teenager, they all happen in very close proximity to one another. he decisions you’re making during young adulthood can seem as if they will have ramiications forever. You feel by turns invincible and vulnerable, inconsequential and permanent. All of these experiences are happening for the very irst time, and you’re packed into a group with hundreds of other teens who feel exactly the same way (though they hardly ever let on). So you’re also isolated and craving community, which is why you search for a book that feels like it’s written just for you. It’s, in a word, intense. I like to quote a YA-before-it-was-YA novel, he Perks of Being a Walllower by Stephen Chbosky, which was published in 1999 for the adult market (my, how times have changed). In one scene, his teen
characters go through a tunnel and emerge into a beautiful view of city lights. he narrator, Charlie, says: And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
Conveying Romance and Darkness Teens feel everything very intensely, and two things in particular: an interest in romance and an attraction to darkness. If you’ve been in the teen section of a bookstore recently, you’ll know what I mean. It seems as if every cover greets you with the same combination of a pouting girl, a brooding boy and the colors purple and black. he paranormal and dystopian genres are such forces in the marketplace that I’m dedicating this entire section to explaining them. First, the discouraging fact: hese genres are on the wane, so I wouldn’t dive into them right now if I were you. A lot of publishers are committed to paranormal and dystopian trilogies, and they’re not signing many new projects in these veins. A lot of readers and writers (and yes, editors and agents) are getting tired of these genres and wondering why they took of with such velocity in the irst place. When I think about the teen reader mindset, the reasons become clear. Romantic relationships are a huge obsession for teens. Most teens, however, lack real-life romantic experience. Teen boys inviting you over to play Xbox and teen girls texting through dinner dates at he Cheesecake Factory must leave a lot to be desired. Since there aren’t many dashing Edward Cullens willing to die on the fangs of vampires for today’s teen girls, these hungry readers turn to iction to lesh out their rich fantasy lives. Teens also don’t oten feel empowered. heir lives can seem like endless cycles of classes, test prep, sports and volunteer work, and the message they hear is: If you get of this track, fail the SATs or don’t get into the right college, then the rest of your life is in jeopardy. hey feel trapped and helpless. Most want control, so the kick-butt aspect of paranormal (vampire slaying, zombie battles, etc.) is attractive. Finally, teens are exploring the dark side of their personalities around the time they hit 14 or 15. hey get interested in suicide and serial killers and other darker shades of humanity. Death-related worlds and characters help them explore that through iction. One of the biggest hits of the last decade is Jay Asher’s hirteen Reasons Why, a book about one girl’s suicide and the reasons behind it. WritersDigest.com I 9
Starting Points Some teens start to see the darker underbelly of life during high school—a friend starts cutting herself, someone gets pregnant, a classmate dies—and they use iction to explore these issues in a safe way. he trend toward dystopian iction is an extension of this and a way of dealing with the anxieties of living in a world full of economic depression, war and social inequality. When you think about your teen readers, keep the above in mind. Whether or not your romance is paranormal, know that your (mostly female, in most genres) audience craves stories about crushes and relationships. Even if your story doesn’t have a darker shade to it, acknowledge that your readers are dealing with a complex world where everything isn’t always unicorns and rainbows.
Teens often feel as if their identities aren’t quite fixed yet, as if they could rip themselves up and start again. I would not counsel you to include stock paranormal elements in your manuscript—vampires, werewolves, fallen angels, demons, mermaids, Greek mythology, zombies—because of overcrowding on the shelves and general fatigue. If you simply have to do paranormal, ind a unique twist or uncover an underutilized mythology or creature. For example, Laini Taylor’s he Daughter of Smoke and Bone ofers a fantastic and fresh take on angels. If you can, do try to include some kind of love interest. You don’t have to write an all-out romance, but you’ll be missing a huge potential selling point if you don’t acknowledge this part of your readers’ lives. he romantic element in your story can range from an unrequited crush to falling deeply in love. Incorporating Themes and Big Ideas When you understand the teen experience and can place yourself in your target readers’ experience, you’re that much more likely to write a book that resonates with them on a deeper thematic level. Let’s go back to the shelves for a look at how YA writers have incorporated theme into their teen characters’ narratives. First up is McLean from blockbuster novelist 10 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Sarah Dessen’s What Happened to Goodbye. She moves around the country with her restaurant consultant father, trying on new names and personalities in each town. As she lands in a new spot, she contemplates her predicament: Sure, it was always jarring, up and leaving everything again. But it all came down to how you looked at it. Think earth-shattering, life-ruining change, and you’re done. But cast it as a do-over, a chance to reinvent and begin again, and it’s all good. We were in Lakeview. It was early January. I could be anyone from here.
Next up is master of the teen mindset John Green and his book Paper Towns. In it, an earnest teen boy, Quentin, (Q for short), falls for a hipster named Margo Roth Spiegelman, a teen so disillusioned with her suburban life that she runs away. Being a stand-up (lovesick) guy, Q spends the rest of the book trying to save Margo from herself. A lot of teens see the world or society and want to change it. Here, Margo speaks about her claustrophobic Florida town: All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paperthin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I’ve lived here for 18 years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.
And here’s Q trying to put himself into Margo’s Converse All Stars a little later in the story: And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn’t being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her.
hese teens see the world and interpret it intensely. hey feel deep longing and pain and love and searching. Understanding these qualities about adolescence will make your literature for these readers richer and deeper. NW
Excerpted from Writing Irresistible Kidlit © 2012 by Mary Kole, with permission from Writer’s Digest Books.
Eighteen months working with celebrated faculty and a small cohort to bring your novel to the page Instructors & Mentors: Instructors & Mentors: Bill Konigsberg Tom Leveen Amy K. Nichols Barry Lyga Martha Brockenbrough Varian Johnson Karen Harrington Sharon Flake Kimberley Griffiths Little Sheila O’Connor Beth Staples
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Starting Points
SHELVED BUT NOT
Forgotten A half-baked or set-aside manuscript doesn’t have to be forever doomed. Here’s why, when and how you might want to give an abandoned project a second chance. BY STUART HORWITZ
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IS IT TIME TO DIVE BACK IN? Writing is an intuitive business. It may be glib to say that good books write themselves, but there should at least be a push and a pull with your material. Strong concepts give you ideas for taking them further: I want to read this book for research, I can see this scene being set there, etc. Writers tend to fall into two camps: hose who renew their energies by having multiple irons in the ire, and those who can’t even do research on a second project while deep at work on the irst one. If you’re in the latter group (as I am), then you’re pretty much forced to suspend 12 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
work on every project idea you have aside from the one in front of you. For you, timing really is everything. Trust your gut. Look for signs. Walk into a bookstore and see what draws your attention. What is calling to you right now? You’ll need that call to make it to he End.
HOW DO I ASSESS WHERE I LEFT THINGS? In my case, as I weighed my options with those four previously abandoned projects, the one I decided to resurrect was a Franz Kaka–inspired play. I admit it was with a little trepidation that I went up to the attic to retrieve my notes. I’d started playing with the concept way back in 2001, in one of those periods of creative explosion where I just couldn’t get the thoughts down fast enough. Way back then, it felt like the right time for the outburst of characters, plot points, even snippets of dialogue—but then it was time to move, build a house, adopt a kid, write one book on writing and then a second one. … his is starting to sound like a cocktail party update for the friend you haven’t seen in a decade. hank goodness I never throw anything writingrelated away (and you shouldn’t either). In retrieving
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ave you considered that your next big book idea might be one you’ve already had? In fact, you might have had it years ago. here seems to be a negative attitude toward something that hasn’t fully manifested yet that I think is out of place. You can’t do everything all at once; time may be long but it is not all that wide. When I inished my last book, I went to my editor with four old projects in various stages of noncompletion—set aside, but not forgotten. And guess what? My editor deemed every one of them workable.
my collection of notes, I was happy to discover that I really had in my possession a irst drat of sorts. Some people might disagree, but I think there are really only three drats: FIRST DRAFT: Material generated during the initial period of conception, whether a 50,000-word NaNoWriMo drat or a 100-page outline. • SECOND DRAFT: he next iteration of the project, with a beginning, middle and end. • THIRD DRAFT: he revision when you prepare for the inal battle with your punch list in hand and resolve not to mess up anything that is already good.
•
Whether or not these distinctions work for you, I think they’re a useful diagnostic in turning back to a forgotten manuscript, because you need to meet your material where it is. If you ind yourself looking at it and thinking, Why aren’t you inished already?—you won’t end up having much fun.
WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE? As a book coach, I’ve worked with clients who’ve been intent on returning to an old work, and sometimes they worry: Will I still remember the ideas that were driving this project? his is a good question. Will its essence be as if cryogenically frozen inside? Only time will tell. But the fact that a project continues to gnaw at you long ater your initial experience of it has to be a good sign. Rather than be daunted by what you might be forgetting, let’s consider the advantages to putting something away and then reconnecting with it: You’ve grown. Being a writer is not like being an athlete where you might peak at an early age—and thank goodness for that. As writers, we’ll always have good days and bad days, but overall our skill will improve with more practice, more feedback and more study. And as people, if we’ve been paying attention to human nature, then whatever halfstep we may have lost in terms of forgetting a character’s motivation, for example, will be more than made up for by our enhanced understanding of what people like that character might do. Creativity coach Starla J. King describes the process behind her irst publication this way: “his book would be a mere shell of itself had I not waited four years to inish writing it. In those years, I lived deeply, read widely and wrote so consistently on my blog that the right version of the book took clearer shape and held my attention
to the very end. In those years away from the manuscript, I had expanded my beliefs.” Remember: he point is not to be done already; the point is to get started again. Keep your ears tuned for what resonates, keep looking for inspiration, and give your project room to surprise and challenge you. You may ind something in your resurrected project that is outdated or strikes a wrong note. his isn’t your cue to abandon your work again; it’s your cue to change it for the better. his is kind of the grown-up version of, Are we still having fun? Ask: What has to happen so I can reconnect with this?
Remember: The point is not to be done already; the point is to get started again. Keep your ears tuned for what resonates, keep looking for inspiration, and give your project room to surprise and challenge you. In moments when we lack conidence, we might ind any number of excuses for why we’re having trouble sitting down to write: We’re nervous about whether we chose the right direction, we’ll never be able to write our piece as well as we imagine it in our head, we’ll never be able to write something as moving and beautiful as (insert your favorite work here)— and we can throw “It’s too late!” onto the pile, too. It’s never too late for an idea from the past to help transport you into the future. here may be a writing project whose time never comes, and perhaps it was not a very good idea ater all—I’m thinking of one of my own right now. But you may also have a project that reannounces itself with the subtle yet unmistakable energy of an idea whose time has come. And that time might be now. NW Stuart Horwitz is the author of Book Architecture: How to Plot and Outline Without Using a Formula and the founder and principal of the editorial firm Book Architecture (bookarchitecture.com).
WritersDigest.com I 13
Starting Points
NO MORE EXCUSES:
Write That Novel! Don’t let life get in the way of your writing dreams. Use these 8 tips to inspire you on your journey to a completed draft. BY AMY SUE NATHAN
Y
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO GET GOING. Jump-start your journey by telling yourself (and meaning it) that it’s OK to go ater your book dream now—to remove your false starts from under the bed, to take 14 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
them out of the drawer, to dig out the lash drive. Or to start anew. Leave regrets in the dust. And then …
LOOK IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR. To decide where you’re going, you’ll need to acknowledge where you’ve been. Reread something—anything—you’ve written that you like, or that was well received by others. Toot your own horn! Each time I start writing a novel, I dig through old documents on my laptop and review my its and starts, my rambling tomes. I revisit some of my published stories and essays, and some of my (good) book reviews, just to boost my ego and remind my psyche: I can do this. In the meantime …
UNLOAD EXCESS BAGGAGE. his is tough. You need to admit why you stopped working on your book or why you haven’t started at all. Did life get in the way? How will you work around the same roadblocks if they pop up again? (Or how will you safeguard against different obstacles that will inevitably surface?) Will you
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ou’ve written blog posts, articles, stories, essays. You’ve polished a irst chapter or written half a novel—or a few pages of many novels. You’ve written an outline for a noniction book and have notes for more books. What you haven’t done is followed through and inished a full-length book manuscript. Maybe you are overwhelmed. Maybe you think it’s too late to start now. Still, deep down, you really want to type “he End.” he idea of starting—or starting again—is daunting and exhausting. Especially when your own bookshelves hold work by successful writers who are younger than you are now (whether you’re 30 or 60). But the thing is, every writer can point to another one who started of earlier and with (seemingly) more ease and more time. So, regardless of where you are now, no more excuses …
wake up earlier? Stay awake later? Give up poker? If your life just didn’t provide the emotional space you needed before, what about now? Has the situation changed, or can you handle it diferently? Be honest. Only you need to know the answers.
list handy, and add more questions (and answers) as they come. Getting those questions out of your head will make room for writing. And knowing what you don’t know— and what you need to ind out—will help make your publishing goals more attainable when the time comes.
Did you grow bored with your characters or topic? Don’t despair! Authors have misgivings about their stories all the time. How do your pages read ater the time away? Better? Worse? Are you still bored? Maybe a quick read from a writer friend can help you decide if the book has sturdy building blocks, is a masterpiece, or needs to be shoved back under the bed in favor of a new project. Maybe those pages will lead to a diferent, even better idea—the same character in a new situation or a new slant for an old topic. You can always ind inspiration, if not word count, in old pages.
Whether this is your first or 50th attempt at writing a book, you might find that trying a new approach inspires you. There is no right (or wrong) way to write a book.
Did someone discourage you? Was someone dismissive or patronizing? Someone rolled her eyes and smirked the irst few times I said I was writing a novel. So, I stopped talking about it. Even now, years later, I rarely mention my books. But if your naysayer isn’t normally negative, she may not understand that while many people have literary wanderlust, and few actually inish writing books, your story is going to difer. Did you discourage yourself? C’mon. You know who you are. But guess what? Every writer has doubts. he writers who inish their books are those who push their doubts aside (at least temporarily). I put mine in the kitchen drawer with the scissors, tape and broken cell phones. Now, so you don’t hesitate any further …
MAP YOUR ROUTE. Determine your publishing intentions as part of your motivation, not as an aterthought. Are you looking to be traditionally published? To self-publish? To simply leave a written legacy for your family and friends? No matter your answer, you’ll want to be informed in order to write the best book you can. Jot down all your questions speciic to your goals. Answer what you can. Where you don’t know the answers, list ideas for where you might ind them—other writers, websites, workshops, or books and magazines (such as this one). Keep your
You also need a plan for getting words on the page. Do you want to begin with an outline, or would you rather just start writing and see where the story takes you? Do you write long or short? I write short irst drats and increase my word count with my revisions. On the other hand, I know authors for whom rewriting and revising means cutting tens of thousands of words. Whether this is your irst or 50th attempt at writing a book, you might ind that trying a new approach inspires you (and yields better results). here is no right (or wrong) way to write a book. Know where you are headed—if not on the page, at least at the keyboard and in your wildest publishing dreams. Even with my irst drat of my irst novel, I found that keeping goals in mind gave my writing time and efort a sense of purpose. And purpose always spurs me toward “he End.” But even with a plan and a purpose …
EXPECT DETOURS. What happens when your work-in-progress isn’t what you thought it was? Change gears. In 2007, I was writing a memoir. I stammered along, discouraged and stilted. hen, midway through a memoirwriting workshop, the instructor encouraged me to try writing iction. What I started in that workshop became my irst novel. How about when you’re in the middle of your book and you realize your main character isn’t your main WritersDigest.com I 15
Starting Points character? Been there! Or your plot falls apart? Ouch! Or you have to kill one of your darlings? No! Do you panic at the thought of going back to Chapter 1? hen don’t. Continue writing from that point on, as if everything before it is the way you want it to be. You’ll continue with momentum as you move toward he End. You’ll be excited to keep writing with newfound insight and ideas. Once you reach the exciting conclusion, you can go back and rewrite and revise—which you were going to do anyway, right? I used that technique a few times with my second book, knowing it was more important for me to get to the end of that irst drat than to have it be perfect. And it worked. But you can’t inish what you don’t start. So …
PRESS DOWN ON THE GAS. To inish a book you have to get started. But what if you can’t? What if the idea of writing 70,000 or 100,000 words is what stops you in your tracks? Celebrate every milestone as something major. A scene, a chapter, a sentence. Every word moves you closer to he End. Reward systems work for kids, employees, volunteers—why not self-made writers? Acknowledge that writing a book is hard work. Don’t pretend writing a book is easy; if you do, reality will run you over. When you’re in the thick of it, you’re likely to ind that your brain is going a million miles an hour, probably 24/7. When you ind that you can no longer just relax sitting on the couch ater work, or you catch yourself at your desk at 4 a.m., embrace it as part of the process. his is how writers—including you!—make it to he End. Forgive yourself when you go off track. Pick up where you let of instead of packing it in. Set goals that work for you. Some people swear by daily or weekly word count goals, but I ind they paralyze me, so I set scene writing goals instead. I have other writer friends who opt for timed writing goals. Experiment and see what sticks—and, more important, what you can stick to. And to avoid crashing…
Most writers slow down or stop writing at times. I know I do. his week, you might not have time. Next week, you might waver for inspiration. You can still move toward he End even if you’re not increasing your word count. When I stop writing I watch reruns of “he Waltons” because they almost always make me teary. I then try to work those emotions into my novels. Figure out how you can make your non-writing time serve what writing you do accomplish, and you’ll be more successful at staying in it for the long haul.
It doesn’t matter how the words get onto the page, just that they do. Experiment and see what sticks— and, more important, what you can stick to. During downtime, embrace stories, people and feelings that are important to your book (or to your motivation, or both). You’ll be writing again soon because you’re inspired (and perhaps well-rested), and you’ll likely have picked up momentum. Just don’t wait until you’re running on empty, and…
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD AHEAD. Now you’re following the path you set for yourself, and inishing your book is in sight. You’re doing it even though you’re busy, and even though you’re older than some of your writing pals, and by disregarding the cynics (including the one who’s all in your head). You’re doing it despite having tried a hundred times before. You’re doing it despite never having tried before now. You can see that last page, and those inal two words— which now feel like a given for the irst time. But not the last. NW
FILL YOUR TANK ALONG THE WAY. You’ve stopped writing this book (or another book) before, or avoided starting altogether. What if you’re losing steam again? 16 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Amy Sue Nathan is an author, writing instructor, freelance writer and founder of WomensFictionWriters.com. Her latest novel is The Good Neighbor.
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Story Building
PLOTTING + PANTSING =
Plantsing
You don’t have to choose between outlining your story and writing by the seat of your … imagination. Use this hybrid approach to put the best of both methods to work for you. BY JEFF SOMERS
A
18 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Wars of the Roses plus dragons” is a million words, two decades and a sturdy, exciting and well-constructed plot. As Martin once said in a Rolling Stone interview, “Ideas are cheap. I have more ideas now than I could ever write up. To my mind, it’s the execution that is all-important.”
ANIMAL INSTINCTS Any writer can stumble into a failed plot. In fact, you probably should. It’s part of the ongoing learning process that we writers engage in throughout our careers—you can oten learn more about the crat and process of writing from your failed manuscripts than from your successes. Stories or essays that pour painlessly from your ingers are exhilarating, sure, but that eerie sense that you’re just a conduit for a supernatural muse doesn’t necessarily instill conidence. It’s tough to replicate a trick you didn’t understand in the irst place. he most important aspect of a failed plot is the opportunity it ofers to rise above instinctive writing and perform a literary autopsy—to discover your “writer’s genetic code.”
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bout 15 years ago, I inally learned how to drive a stick shit. My whole life I’d wondered: Why would anyone choose to shit manually? It’s like pushing the car uphill by yourself, Flintstone-style. But I’m glad I know now, because in the event of a zombie apocalypse, I can hijack and operate any available vehicle to make my escape. Why are you reading about transmissions? Because they’re surprisingly similar to the two types of methods writers use to produce novels. Writing a novel is easy … said no writer ever. Sure, every year thousands of people write a rough drat of a short novel in 30 days during National Novel Writing Month, and plenty of literature’s classics make it look easy. (Both A Clockwork Orange and On the Road were written in less than a month’s time, for example.) But there are a plethora of ways a novel can go horribly, even hilariously awry—and the easiest hard thing to muck up is your plot. Ideas are a baby step, but plot is a long haul. he difference between George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series and an elevator pitch that boils down to “the
In many ways, writing is an instinctive act—which is to say our initial approach to style and plotting is “baked in.” All writers, if they take an honest look, are better at some components of storytelling than others: • Some writers can reel of big ideas for novels without efort, but have trouble translating those concepts into 80,000 words. • Some writers capture realistic-sounding dialogue without even trying, but have diiculty eiciently moving their stories along. • Some writers regularly crat gorgeous sentences, but then struggle to populate scenes with interesting characters. And all writers instinctively fall into one of two categories: You’re either a plotter or a pantser.
PLOTTING & PANTSING If you’re a plotter, your approach to writing a novel is similar to a military campaign: You set up the logistics and supply lines in advance, and by the time your ingers actually touch the keyboard, you have the entire battle mapped out, blow-by-blow. Pantsers, on the other hand, just start writing. hey strap on a pirate costume, shout, “Avast!” and swing into the story with wild abandon. Neither of these approaches is right or wrong. For a plotter, the idea of diving into a story without knowing where it leads is insanity. For a pantser, sitting down
ahead of time and iguring out all the twists and turns sounds excruciatingly boring. And while arguments abound online and at writing conferences about which approach is the “better” one, I’d contend that it doesn’t matter which approach you ind a natural it, really, because both have advantages and disadvantages. Plotting: Pros & Cons Plotters have one huge advantage: hey know the whole story before they begin writing. hey won’t experience moments of day-drinking panic, when the story hits a wall and they realize they’ve written themselves into a tiny corner and now have to perform the world’s most complex literary three-point turn to get out of it. On the other hand, those lightning moments of sudden inspiration are hard to come by, and it’s easy to ignore problems because your preplanned plot gives you a false sense of security. Sometimes plotting a novel ahead of time causes the resulting writing to feel mechanical, which can render scenes lifeless and make twists and turns feel like perfunctory stops along the way to the inevitable. Pantsing: Pros & Cons Pantsing a novel ofers the opportunity for your subconscious to suddenly toss creative bombs into your story. his approach can make a plot feel brisk and naturalistic; the answers to creative questions are sometimes just as surprising to the author as they are to everyone else.
QUICK TIPS:
Pantsing for Plotters The world of pure imagination is a scary place, and you prefer to have a plan. But plans can fail, and when they
• If you really can’t fathom pantsing your way through a manuscript, try pantsing in shorthand
do, every good planner has a fallback. Here’s how to
instead, as if you’re writing a synopsis. In other
painlessly make pantsing your backup.
words, don’t write 30,000 words—just summarize what they might be. This makes it a lot faster
• Know that it’s not uncommon to throw away most, if not all, of what you write when pantsing—the approach often reveals your next plot point even if the words aren’t usable. • Be open to reworking the parts of your novel you’ve already written; sometimes pantsing suggests changes
and easier to test-drive different approaches and plot shapes. • Pantsing isn’t magic. It’s a technique, just like plotting. Allow yourself ample time to experiment in order to get results. • The unknown can be intimidating. The key to pantsing
to plot points that you thought were locked in. Kill
is to not worry about how it will all hang together.
those darlings.
Just start writing.
WritersDigest.com I 19
Story Building Such freedom can make the act of writing as exhilarating as the act of reading. On the other hand, those moments of genius aren’t all that common—and if the “brilliant” twist you didn’t plan for blows up other aspects of the story, it’s not truly brilliant. Because most writers naturally gravitate toward one approach over the other, they have a tendency to chalk up broken plots as the cost of doing business. A better approach is to stop writing instinctually—or, at least, to stop writing entirely on instinct. his involves taking the best aspects of each approach—plotting and pantsing— and using them both efectively as needed. he result? A hybrid approach we’ll call plantsing.
THE HYBRID APPROACH Plantsing combines the best aspects of both pantsing and plotting, and is a much more efective writing strategy because it moves you away from instinct and makes your writing mechanics more thoughtful and purposeful.
Plotting for Pantsers You live for the moment and every day is an adventure. Here’s how to find your inner Hannibal Smith and learn to love when a plan comes together. • Plotting can be overwhelming, so start with this strategy: If you’re feeling stuck, simply make a list of events in your story. Leave blanks as needed, and then note any fixed points in time. • Once you know how to get from your stopping point to the next fixed point, feel free to quit plotting and dive back into pantsing. Repeat the cycle as needed. • Overplotting can be counterproductive for pantsers. Don’t try to list every single event and line of dialogue. Leave yourself some blank space to pants your way through. • When trying to figure out the next plot point, imagine you’re the protagonist, and ask yourself what you would do (unless the answer is “take a nap”). • If you know where the plot needs to go, ask yourself why your characters get to that point. Then keep repeating that question, working backward to the point where it all fell apart.
20 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
he cornerstone of plantsing is to always follow your instincts at irst. If you tend to meticulously plot out your novels before writing a word, go for it! If you normally experience a iery inspiration and then dive in and start writing immediately, do so. In fact, if your instinctual approach works and produces a completed novel with no serious problems, all the better. Plantsing comes into play when you start to struggle. Whether you have a completely plotted story that now feels a bit stilted and unwieldy, or a novel that began with the thrill of a great idea but has cooled of in a sluggish middle, the trick is to not give up, but rather to change tactics. Mapping the Pantsed Wilderness If you started pantsing your novel without a irm plan and you’ve suddenly lost the thread of your plot, stop grinding, go back to the beginning of your novel and break down the plot you’ve already written. In other words, retroactively plot the story. When you reach your current point of progress, keep writing: Plot the next few steps until you feel like you know where you’re going. hen switch back to pantsing mode. Repeat as necessary. Jolting the Plotter’s Muse On the other hand, if your carefully structured plot starts to feel a little uninspired or not as cohesive as it irst seemed, it’s time to introduce some hot pantsing action. Go back to the last moment in your story that felt exciting, and just make something up. Forget your notes, forget your plan—forget your plot—and just pants it for a while. Even if what you write isn’t great, it will lead you in directions that would have been hidden from view otherwise. When you feel like you can see where you’re going again, plot out your new vision and proceed from there. Plantsing is all about being lexible. he more tools and strategies you have when writing, the more likely it is you will end up with a pile of words that resembles a novel instead of, well, a pile of words.
PLANTSING IN REAL LIFE You may be wondering if plantsing is just some sort of theoretical concept for me, or if it’s an actual approach I take in my writing. It’s the latter: I’m an inveterate pantser (ironically, despite a dislike for actually wearing
pants), but my last few published novels have beneited from the plantsing approach. Case Study: Chum My novel Chum is a complex story of alcohol and murder. he story jumps around in time and revisits key moments from diferent perspectives, and each chapter is narrated by a diferent point-of-view character. Because I’m a pantser, I didn’t know any of this when I started writing the book; all I had was an opening scene and a few characters. By the time I igured out someone was going to die, the novel’s timeline was already a mess. I pantsed on, having a lot of fun, but when I inished the irst drat I realized I had a problem: I couldn’t decipher the order of events. And I was the author! So I went back to the beginning and started plotting. I created a list of the chapters and a sublist of the major events. hen I started putting those events in order, using what Doctor Who would call “ixed points in time”—events that had to happen in a certain order and thus couldn’t be moved—as anchors. his uncovered a wealth of inconsistencies and problems in the story. I had to delete scenes and even entire chapters—but I also found opportunities to replace them with much stronger material. In the end, I plantsed my way to a story that retained its air of mystery and the fun of revelation, but also hung together tightly, and my agent sold the novel to Tyrus Books in 2013. TAKEAWAYS:
• Plantsing can be applied at any stage—even after you’ve finished a draft. • Sometimes what you’re fixing isn’t a lack of plot points, but the coherency of those plot points. • The difference between a near-miss manuscript and a published novel can be razor thin, and you need every possible advantage.
Case Study: We Are Not Good People he original deal for this epic tale of griter wizards and a magical apocalypse was for two novels as a duology. hen my publisher reconsidered the marketing and decided to combine both books into one volume titled We Are Not Good People. I was excited, but as I worked I became aware of a problem: I knew what the
ending would be, but I couldn’t see how to get there. At about the three-fourths mark, the plot got blurry. So I got down to plantsing. I stopped trying to write my way through it (which wasn’t working) and broke down the story into a series of scenes. I penciled in the ending that I envisioned, and then wrote down the major events (ixed points) that had to be in place to get there. hen I illed in each blank space until I had a clear path forward—a path I followed by going back to pantsing.
The cornerstone of plantsing is to always follow your instincts. TAKEAWAYS:
• Life throws you curveballs. When a strategy isn’t working—even if it always worked before—you have to accept the fact and try something different. • Knowing the ending for a novel doesn’t guarantee you know the path there, and plantsing can help reveal that path. • With plantsing, you can switch back and forth between plotting and pantsing, following one approach when things are going smoothly, switching back when you run into trouble—and then switching again as the situation requires.
Ultimately, your approach to plotting, writing, revising and even selling a novel is wholly your own. You might be a natural-born pantser or you might be a plotter down to your core, but both approaches go sideways from time to time, and knowing how to shit gears like a pro from one to the other might be the diference between inishing that novel or adding it to your list of abandoned projects. Just like knowing how to drive a manual transmission may be the diference between surviving the zombie apocalypse and becoming zombie lunch. NW
Jeff Somers (jeffreysomers.com) has published nine novels, including the Avery Cates series, Chum and, most recently, We Are Not Good People. He lives in Hoboken, N.J., with his wife, The Duchess, and their cats. He considers pants to always be optional.
WritersDigest.com I 21
Story Building S
NTENTIONAL
isdirection
Skillful use of red herrings in your fiction will thrill and captivate your readers. Here’s how to pull it off.
he irst novel I wrote didn’t sell. I worked on it for three years, and it didn’t sell. hen I learned about red herrings, integrated them into my next novel and it sold in a week as part of a three-book deal. Red herrings—misdirection—lead to suspenseful moments, the pulse of storytelling. Without them, your story will
T
22 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
invariably be overly linear and pedestrian. With them, you’ll keep your readers on the edge of their seats. “You add the ground mustard at the end,” my mother told me as she poured in the milk. “After the vanilla.” I was 20 and trying to learn how to make crepes the way she did, light and rich and not too sweet.
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BY JANE K. CLELAND
“At the end? How come?” She nodded toward a yellowed index card that lay on the counter, far from my reach, guarded, sacred. “My mother was precise.” “What was Grandma like?” I asked. “I don’t remember her at all.” “She was a liar.”
If you’re like most people, you want to know more. What’s going on between this mother and daughter? Is the cooking lesson the point? Or is it a red herring? Red herrings are intentional misdirections that work to add real-world intricacy to narrative noniction, children’s literature, plays and all types of iction (not just mysteries). Writers use red herrings in much the same way thieves use diversions. If I can get you looking over here, you may not notice what I’m doing over there. For instance, if a woman yells, “Help! He stole my purse!” and points into a teeming crowd, anyone within earshot will follow her gaze and the line of her trembling arm. hey won’t notice her partner jimmying his way into the jewelry store behind them. When integrated seamlessly, red herrings are invisible. Readers believe the words on the page, whether those words include lies, or seemingly irrelevant facts that turn out to have import, or ostensibly important facts that turn out to be inconsequential, or what an expert tells them is true. Speciically, red herrings fall into three broad categories: 1. Characters’ motivations and habits 2. Characters’ capability and expertise 3. Empirical evidence.
spring the truth on them, they’ll experience a delicious moment of surprise. In Paula Hawkins’ 2015 breakout novel, he Girl on the Train, the protagonist, Rachel, is a falling-down drunk. She lost her job, is obsessed with her ex-husband, and can’t manage even the smallest, most mundane task without screwing up. With evidence of these character laws, it’s easy to impute other negative qualities to her, too—to assume she’s lazy or uncaring, maybe even capable of stalking or other criminal acts. hat’s the devil efect at work. “What did Grandma lie about?” I asked, halfconvinced I misheard. “Her husband.” “Your father?” She tilted the frying pan, swirling the butter to cover the bottom. The batter was resting. “Sam wasn’t my father.” I blinked, momentarily speechless. “I understand why she did it,” Ma added. “Back then, there was a stigma.” “Who’s your dad?” “I don’t know and I don’t care. Don’t trust anyone. That’s the lesson here.” “How did you find out?” “Sam needed a transfusion. They tested us. I just got the call.” “Grandma was trying to protect you. That isn’t a lie.” She placed the frying pan on a cool burner and walked out of the room.
his short memoir has become more complicated. What might be a red herring?
CHARACTERS’ MOTIVATIONS & HABITS Psychologist Edward L. horndike coined the term “halo efect” in the early 20th century. He observed that if you perceive someone as physically attractive, you are likely to assume he is also kind and pleasant, an overall good person. Likewise, if someone does something altruistic, such as volunteer at a pediatric ward in a hospital, readers will assume this person is good through and through. he “reverse-halo efect,” also known as the “devil efect,” says that readers assign evil attributes to a person if they are ugly or if they do one bad thing. Allowing your readers to be swept along with these preconceptions is an efective way to use red herrings. When you inally
CHARACTERS’ CAPABILITY & EXPERTISE Capability and expertise come up in my Josie Prescott Antiques mysteries all the time. Josie, an antiques appraiser, is an expert in a broad range of antiques and collectibles. She’s also as honest as they come—but not all experts are, and you can use that fact to distract your readers from the main event. Rex Stout, a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, applied this technique in multiple ways in his novella he Gun With Wings. In the story, genius detective Nero Wolfe investigates what appears to be the suicide of an eminent opera singer. he singer had seriously WritersDigest.com I 23
Story Building injured his larynx in a istight, and everyone assumes that he shot himself out of despair that he might not regain his voice. His doctor, a world-renowned surgeon, can’t understand it. he operation was a success, and the singer’s throat was healing nicely. When physical evidence proves that the singer’s death was a homicide, not a suicide, the chief suspects include the man who hit him, the singer’s wife and the man she’s fallen in love with … all your basic red herrings. But the killer turns out to be—wait for it—the doctor. He’d messed up the operation and couldn’t bear the thought that his mistakes would come to light. Now that’s a masterful use of a red herring! In Stout’s story, the doctor’s profession distracts us from suspicion. hink about it: When a doctor tells you to open wide and say, “Aaahh,” what do you do? You tilt your head back, open your mouth, stick out your tongue and stare at the ceiling. You expect to feel a bit of pressure as the doctor uses the tongue depressor to gain a better view. In he Gun With Wings, that opera singer believed that his doctor had his best interests at heart. He never saw the gun the doctor slid into his mouth. hink of all the experts in your life. If the people you’re writing about interact with doctors, lawyers, accountants, interior designers, scientists or anyone else with specialized expertise, you can use that to layer in complexity. Words to live by: Be careful whom you trust.
RED HERRINGS:
hen again, expertise—or lack of it—doesn’t have to be specialized. It can simply be unique to a certain situation. For example, in Newbery Medal–winner Avi’s Nothing but the Truth: A Documentary Novel, the narrator, Philip, lies to cover up his lack of capability. Philip becomes a cause célèbre in a national tug-of-war between proponents of free expression and those who value patriotism above all else. When Philip insists on humming (not singing) the national anthem, his teacher takes it as a sign of disrespect. he lap over free expression is a red herring; the truth is that Philip didn’t know the words, so he hummed.
EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE he array of details we see, hear, touch, taste and smell each day is astonishing. What your characters observe— or don’t—can be efective red herrings. German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus described the “serial position efect”: People are more likely to recall information that is recent and irst in a list. If I list items, the third of which is relevant to the story, on Page 1, but don’t refer to it again until Page 200, you are likely to have forgotten it. If I list ive objects, you’re much more likely to remember the irst one than the third. Consider this list of objects on a man’s desk: an airline ticket from his home city of Dallas to Belize City; a “Make it legal—do it with a lawyer” cofee mug; a giltframed photo of the man, a pretty auburn-haired woman and a teenage boy; a throwaway pen from Texas North
What’s in a Name?
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and MerriamWebster, among other sources, have consistently
scent instead, he was ready for action. The Oxford English Dictionary now disputes that
attributed the term “red herring” to a centuries-old
history, instead attributing the phrase to 19th-century
dog training technique. Hunting dogs need to be able
journalist William Cobbett. A piece he wrote in 1807 for
to follow an underlying scent. This is true whether the
England’s weekly Political Register detailed how, as a
dogs are hunting for foxes, criminals, cadavers or drugs.
boy, he’d used a red herring to distract hunting dogs
They must be able to keep their noses on the job and
from their jobs. The parable, evidently a fictional account,
avoid being distracted by tempting, but irrelevant, aro-
was intended to communicate Cobbett’s disdain toward
mas. By dragging a smoked fish—a red herring—across
members of the press for allowing themselves to be dis-
the track, the trainer could assess a dog’s readiness for
tracted from crucial domestic issues by the government’s
work. If the dog followed the strong—and wrong—scent
report that Napoleon had been defeated.
of a red herring, he wasn’t properly trained. If, however, he didn’t follow the false trail, pursuing the underlying
24 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Whichever is correct, the meaning of the term is unchanged: A red herring is an intentional misdirection.
Some things capture your attention because they stand out as unusual or unexpected; others you don’t notice at all because they’re so familiar you no longer register their presence, or they’re merely one element in a cluttered world. Community Bank squared up on a yellow legal pad; a laptop computer; a telephone; and a bank statement from Campbell Bank. When the man is accused of embezzlement, readers may recall the ticket to Belize and wonder if he may be stashing money in an ofshore account. he ticket, though, is a red herring. He’s going to Belize with his wife and son on a diving vacation. What your readers will probably forget, if they even noticed it in the irst place, is the pen from the community bank. If the man has an account at Campbell, why does he have a pen from another bank? here could be countless reasons, of course, including that one of his clients let it behind, but it also could be a clue—or a red herring. Perhaps he rented a safety deposit box at this out-of-the-way bank to hide the money he’s embezzled from his partner. Or maybe he rented that safety deposit box for an innocuous reason that will become apparent later in the book. For instance, maybe he plans on terminating his partnership to open his own practice. To that end, he’s building a relationship with a new bank. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 short story “Silver Blaze,” for instance, Sherlock Holmes solves a crime because a dog didn’t bark. Even the savviest of readers won’t know if a particular detail is a red herring or whether it’s central to the story. I found my mother in the den, at her desk, typing away. The rule was never to disturb her while she was writing. She was working on a romance novel, her second. “I don’t know what to do,” I said. She swiveled toward me. Her eyes were narrowed and cold, her lips pursed. I didn’t understand why she was mad. I didn’t know if she was mad at me or her father or her mother or Sam. “Should I put the batter in the fridge?” I asked. “Yes.” She spun back to her computer.
After I placed the bowl in the refrigerator, I picked up the yellowed recipe card from the counter, the first one of my grandmother’s I’d ever seen close up. My mother never shared recipes, not even with me. She stored the cards in a turquoise metal box in a locked drawer in her desk as if they were gold. I recognized Grandma’s spidery handwriting. Flour, salt, eggs, milk, butter. Four simple steps. Mix the flour, salt and eggs. Slowly add the milk and melted butter. Swirl ¼ cup batter around a lightly oiled frying pan and cook the crepe for two minutes a side over medium heat. Ground mustard? Vanilla? Butter in the pan? I understood now. This wasn’t about Sam or lies my grandmother told. This was about my mother, who, for some reason known only to her, wanted me to fail. I centered the bottle of vanilla extract and the small jar of ground mustard on top of the recipe card. It felt important—though even at 20, I knew it probably wasn’t—that my mother realize I wasn’t stupid, that she could dress up the truth in any guise she chose, and I’d still see that she was the only one among us who lied.
At the start of the story, did you notice that my mom said to add vanilla and ground mustard to the batter and that she was coating the pan with butter? Maybe it registered as a bit odd, but most people would have been so startled by my mother’s revelation about Sam they wouldn’t give it a second thought. Misdirection adds complexity every time. his kind of multifaceted plotting and characterization is at the heart of storytelling. Red herrings help create the kind of blazing suspense that readers can’t resist. hey burn to know what happens. hese are the stories that win reader loyalty. hese are the stories that sell. NW Jane K. Cleland (janecleland.com) is the award-winning author of the Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery series. Her book Mastering Suspense, Structure & Plot: How to Write Gripping Stories That Keep Readers on the Edge of Their Seats (WD Books) was released in April.
WritersDigest.com I 25
Story Building S
THE DEVIL’S IN THE
(Setting) DETAILS
Pay attention to these characteristics of setting as you write your novel, and your story will be more nuanced and satisfying. BY MARY BUCKHAM
D
26 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
or, “What books in this genre have you read in the last year?” Oten I hear, “Oh, I’m too busy to read.” Or worse, they mention that the only books they have read were published 10 or 20 years ago, and there was a very diferent pacing sensibility then. To understand what I mean, watch a TV show—even one from a series that you loved—from 10 or 20 years ago. I bet it’s not easy to sit through the whole hour without wanting the story to speed up!
UNDERSTAND WHY DETAILS MATTER To consider what efect setting can have on a story, let’s look at the following example from Marjorie M. Liu’s he Iron Hunt. A mile behind us, some local bar. Lonely way station. Out in the middle of nowhere, just a shed, neon lights shaped like a naked woman flickering on and off through the dirty tinted glass. Nipples winking. Pickup trucks in the narrow, shoveled, salted lot. Scents of fried food and burned engine oil in my nostrils.
Let’s examine this passage more closely to see how it’s working so hard. A mile behind us, [Telling the reader, but when used with showing, a writer can tell. In this example, the
IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: ASTUDIO
on’t think of setting as simply a way to show the reader location. Instead, think of it as a rich medium to use showing, not telling, to anchor the reader into the passage of time or change of place in your story; to act as its own character if the reader expects that; and, above all, to draw the reader deeper into your story. Depending on the genre you’re writing, the setting details can be minimal or everything to the story. Science-iction and fantasy writers are known for their world-building, creating universes populated with exotic new places and the people who inhabit them. In these genres, setting is pivotal. hink Hogwarts in the Harry Potter stories, Middle-earth in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or the world of the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Other novels can be streamlined. Harlan Coben’s stand-alone thrillers tend to be minimalistic in locations— his characters are someplace in New Jersey—but the settings have more to do with creating an environment of an ordinary man as opposed to the sense that these stories must happen in a particular location. he secret is to keep in mind your target audience when you’re writing and be aware of the intention of your setting. How do you igure this out? Reading in your genre is a good start. I’m always surprised when working with writers on their manuscripts and I ask them, “What types of books are you reading?”
reader is quickly oriented to the character’s location after she has left her disabled car, without shifting the focus off the action happening.] some local bar. Lonely way station. Out in the middle of nowhere, [Three different descriptions that paint a very clear image of isolation, loneliness and nondescript place—all of which add to the reader knowing of the breakdown of their car and that a mother and her daughter need help—ratchet up the conflict. This is clearly not the kind of place a mom would want to bring her daughter, but there are no other options around.] just a shed, [More specific visual of this bar. It’s not a small-town local hangout, or a jammed truck-stop bar; it’s almost like it’s not even there, being only a shed.] neon lights shaped like a naked woman flickering on and off through the dirty tinted glass. [Look at what the author is getting the reader to focus on—dirty windows, a naked woman sign. This is more conflict being layered in for a woman and child.] Nipples winking. Pickup trucks in the narrow, shoveled, salted lot. [Here the author could have stopped with pickup trucks in the lot but she didn’t. She wanted the reader to see this place, to be in this place—so she added three beats—narrow, shoveled, salted. The last word builds on what the reader already knows, that it’s wintertime and snowy. So these three words, if used differently, could shift the attention away from the bar itself, bringing home the point that this shed is in a very small footstep of land.] Scents of fried food and burned engine oil in my nostrils. [Here the sensory details build a strong image that again pulls the reader deeper into the setting.]
If the author had been lazy, or didn’t think to use this bar as anything but a building in which to place the next action of the story, she might have written her inal drat as something like this: ROUGH DRAFT: A mile behind us was a bar with neon signs and a few pickup trucks in the adjacent lot.
he tension the author creates by having two characters— a mother and her young daughter needing to ind help—would be lessened because the reader could easily see a friendly neighborhood bar, where locals might go to kick back and relax. Nothing threatening there. Instead, the author draws the reader in by using a few lines of description to pull him deeper into the story— almost like a series of quick snapshots. hat’s all that is needed and the author transitions the reader from one setting to another, makes that setting speciic, uses it to
increase tension, and powers up the passage with sensory details. Not bad for less than a paragraph. Note: In some stories the settings are meant to be relatively unimportant, but in other stories setting is vital to understanding everything else about the story.
MAKE THE PLACE YOUR OWN Be conscious of your story and its needs. Setting helps deine your character—proprietor of a yarn shop in a small town, law-enforcement oicer in the Florida Keys, horse groomer in rural Montana—so make sure the reader gets a strong sense of the core setting. If you are writing a series, make sure you do this in your irst book through all of the ways we’ve mentioned. hen, when you shape the setting in future books, use a few familiar “landmarks” to orient previous readers and ground new ones, but add a fresh take—such as change of season to give the point-of-view character a diferent sense of place. Or add a new setting detail to contrast with previous stories—a new boat in the marina gives an opportunity to remind readers what the marina usually looks like, or renovations to a nearby building could be used to show how the POV character deals with changes to her everyday world. Not writing a series? You still need to keep in mind where and when you want to deepen setting detail and when you want to keep to the bare minimum. Historical and science iction and fantasy writers must respond to their core readership who read for the time period as well as the story—many times they encourage more setting details.
AVOID SETTING PITFALLS In general, it’s best to assume less is more when it comes to concise descriptions. Avoid these common pitfalls when describing your setting, and you’ll ensure readers don’t get jolted out of the story. STRINGING DETAILS TOGETHER: Avoid stringing too many adjectives together. Separate the details. Not:
The plush red chair, pushed against the wide, polished wall panels. ...
But: Barbara sat stone frozen on the chair and picked at the red velvet nap until a thread unraveled. She then rolled it between her fingers and pushed it flat WritersDigest.com I 27
Story Building against the cushion. Wide oak panels gave the room an oppressive feel, everything polished to a shine and reeking of Pledge.
Or: Bracing her back against the blood-red chair, Matty hoped like hell the ancient relic didn’t shed against her white sweater. Brad would decorate in dead relative cast-offs. Aunt Lulu had owned the chair, Second Cousin Fran still ate off her retro-’50s tile table, and Grandmamma Mimi’s house had once boasted the oak wall panels, still polished within an inch of their arboreal past lives. Sheesh. The whole place needed to be torched. It’d do Brad a world of good to let go.
See how two very diferent setting descriptions create two very diferent stories? he irst gave sensory details and painted the emotional state of the character Barbara. he second example used the same “props” but created an impression of both Matty and Brad by how each responded to the props surrounding them. Don’t have a character walking away from a generically named Main Street and CONSISTENCY OF DIRECTION:
then arrive downtown, as Main Street in most cities is downtown. Also don’t assume your reader will know what you mean by down, near, close to, far away from, etc., unless you have given the reader some stronger indications— down the hilly road or near the center of town. PLACE NAMES: Particularly in the opening of your story, be careful not to introduce too many place names unless they matter to the story or are grouped to give a speciic image.
Also, don’t overload the reader’s focus with extraneous names. Intentionally use a speciic name, versus naming every building simply because you know the names. here’s a world of diference between a character passing Don’s Pharmacy—where she recalls a childhood memory from the whif of ice-cream malts served at the soda fountain in the rear of the store—and the character passing a laundry list of generic places. Do use speciic names: She passed Fred’s Appliances, Wilma’s Curl Up and Dye Salon and Sam Benton’s Chevy dealership.
Grouped together, the function of these names is to give a certain age to the businesses based on the names, or
EXERCISE:
Read With Setting in Mind The strongest writers make setting look so easy we
mind. Any reader who is familiar with the Southern
can forget how important it is for story to flow. Read
California setting is immediately pulled into the location
once for pleasure but then re-read to see how a
by the three plant names—common enough to be
specific author creates his world and moves the
familiar to a lot of readers, but specific enough to paint
character through space without ever confusing, or
a strong image of this area of the world. Look at what is
losing, the reader. Consider this scene from Robert
missing if you remove that one key line:
Crais’ The Watchman:
Pike moved quickly. He dropped into the condo
Pike moved quickly. He dropped into the condo
grounds behind a flat building that faced an
grounds behind a flat building that faced an
enormous communal swimming pool. A lush
enormous communal swimming pool. A lush
curtain of plants hid a sound wall baffling the
curtain of banana trees, birds-of-paradise, and
pool equipment, and continued around the pool
canna plants hid a sound wall baffling the pool
and walkways.
equipment, and continued around the pool and walkways.
Do you “see” the setting as well? Do you get the sense of warm humidity necessary to create a certain type of
By using very specific, very clear descriptions of the
sub-tropical foliage specific to Southern California, or
type of foliage the POV character encounters, the
do your eyes glaze over at the generic description of a
author steps away from generic to real in the reader’s
building, a pool and sidewalks?
28 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
the feel of a small town where these names might still exist. Here’s a not-so-good example: She passed Blade’s coffee shop, then turned the corner at the Laundromat, and walked farther down the street to St. John Vianny’s church until she reached Pat’s house.
hose details don’t add to the story by painting a strong image or informing the reader that these locations are important to retain. Instead, you’re confusing the reader by focusing them on details they don’t need. Note: Writing place names indicates that this building or business is going to recur later and be of some importance—so the reader subconsciously tries to ile the names away—unless you make it clear they are being given to paint a stronger setting image. OVERSHARING: In iction, we want to do as much as we can with as little as we can. his means not bombarding the reader with every bit of detail collected from research. hat information is for the writer to use sparingly.
Note: Too much information is an especially dangerous pitfall for historical, steampunk, and fantasy and scienceiction writers. With regards to setting details, make sure what a reader focuses on matters in some strong way to the story. Write what you need in the irst drat, and then while revising look for ways to show what you’re telling or showing with fewer words. Expect this to be challenging at irst, because it forces you to think intentionally and not simply write whatever irst comes to mind. Remember, a reader ills in most of the details automatically, seeing the story play out in his head. he writer’s job is to provide just enough to get that process in motion and then get on with the narrative. Like every other component of iction writing, the setting must serve the story, and never the other way around.
MAKE YOUR SETTING ACTIVE Creating and describing a great setting can be an untapped asset in capturing the reader’s imagination— and that’s the primary goal of good iction. A great setting for a story is unique, evocative and memorable. If the setting is researched, understood and then described with skill, it will stay with the reader throughout the length of the story and beyond.
Using setting in an active way accomplishes double and triple duty. Why waste valuable words to accomplish only one story function? Always think in terms of combining functions. Add sensory detail, characterization and conlict with one passage; and backstory, characterization, action and orientation in another.
A reader fills in most of the details automatically, seeing the story play out in his head. The writer’s job is to provide just enough to get that process in motion and then get on with the narrative. hink of setting as you read the works of other writers— both those who employ setting well and those who leave you hungry for more. Study both approaches so you can create the kind of story that remains in a reader’s mind forever. Setting that is active never intrudes on the reader’s experience of the story. It should be seen in context of the purposes of the scene. If a piece of furniture acts to conlict with the scene goal, then by all means the reader needs to see that piece of furniture. But if that furniture is described simply to let the reader know there’s furniture in the room, reconsider your word allocation. You should no longer think of setting as simply describing a room, a building or the environment in which your characters play out the events of the story. It should be so much more than that. Lack of setting is like going to a special event half dressed. You can do it, and some folks get away with it, but by understanding and employing setting to its best efect in your prose, regardless of what you write, you have the opportunity to make the page come alive for your reader. NW Excerpted from A Writer’s Guide to Active Setting © 2015 by Mary Buckham, with permission from Writer’s Digest Books.
WritersDigest.com I 29
Story Building S
Demystified Let the heart of your story shine through in all its elements— from character and style to action and setting—and your novel will have nuance, meaning and depth. Here’s how. BY JACK SMITH
30 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: NATTLE
THEME
heme must emerge naturally, and the iction itself must be an experience for your reader, not just an abstract idea you hammer home in didactic fashion. If the theme of your novel is presented like the thesis of a noniction work, then the book will be secondrate. Keep in mind what a character says in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: “Art isn’t a matter of ‘what’ but of ‘how.’” his is advice every writer should heed. If your work has a clear theme, which ictional elements contribute to it? In a short story, because of its compression, every vein can be loaded with ore, especially when the style is heavily igurative—dense with metaphor and simile. In a novel, of course, you’ll look at the story with a broader scope. In either case, factors such as character, plot and style all contribute heavily to theme.
T
CHARACTER AND THEME What a character is, what a character says and does—all of these things can suggest central ideas of the work itself. A character’s general makeup can become thematic in diferent ways: Holden Caulield of he Catcher in the Rye may stand for all the disafected youth who want something real or genuine—not “phony.” Randle P. McMurphy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest represents the rebel igure who rages against societal authority and tyranny. Madame Bovary stands in for women who have succumbed to the pernicious inluence of sentimental, romantic trash. Or one might say, more generally, she stands for those who have been duped and are subject to the destructive nature of their romantic dreams. Flaubert was, ater all, a realist. Each of these characters is carefully individualized, though they have all become established types and symbols. Danger lies in making your characters types only—seeking thematic representation at the expense of individualized character. Take to heart this famous F. Scott Fitzgerald dictum from “he Rich Boy”: Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created—nothing.
Whether or not your character becomes symbolic of larger ideas, it’s absolutely essential to begin with “an individual,” as Fitzgerald states. He also says, “There are no types, no plurals,” and that’s because each character, if the character is real, is unique. And yet out of the wellspring of this uniqueness may flow a type if your character also partakes of the universal. Study your character closely. What universal qualities does she have? What might you add to the character to make her more universal?
Because characters are essential to fiction, it only makes sense that the theme embodied in a story will be deeply rooted in character. DIALOGUE Your characters can make statements that suggest a primary theme or principle. Such statements can be direct (literal) or indirect (metaphorical). If observed in context, they can contribute to the broader implications of the work as a whole. Direct statements from your characters can be quite efective in conveying theme as long as they don’t belabor the obvious. Take the following scene of dialogue from Cormac McCarthy’s he Road: “There are other good guys. You said so.” “Yes.” “So where are they?” “They’re hiding.” “Who are they hiding from?” “From each other.” “Are there lots of them?” “We don’t know.” “But some.”
WritersDigest.com I 31
Story Building “Some. Yes.” “Is that true?” “Yes. That’s true.” “But it might not be true.” “I think it’s true.” “Okay.” “You don’t believe me.” “I believe you.” “Okay.” “I always believe you.” “I don’t think so.” “Yes I do. I have to.”
As you can see, this conversation establishes the nature of McCarthy’s postapocalyptic world. here are some “good guys,” but they’re “hiding”—from “each other.” It’s not known how many so-called good guys are let in this world. But one thing is certain: You can’t trust anyone. You’re on your own. his may be a direct statement, but it doesn’t answer every question. How many are there? Where are they? And, perhaps most importantly, what are their intentions? Of course, thematic character statements can also be igurative. In Tom Bissell’s short story “A Bridge Under Water,” when the newlywed wife asks her husband what will happen if they can’t ight through what’s standing between them and their happiness together, the husband responds: “hen I guess it’s a bridge under water.” his line occurs early in the story, inciting the reader to wonder whether their marriage will manifest this image of a water-covered bridge. Metaphorical statements in dialogue are intriguing—as long as they’re not cliched— because they give us an image to associate with that character or relationship and then relect upon. hey concretize an idea.
ACTIONS In some cases, the actions of characters can become symbolic, suggesting key ideas. In the novella Daisy Miller by Henry James, when the title character catches malaria and dies ater going to the Roman Colosseum, we cannot help but see Daisy’s tragic end as symbolic retribution for breaking the restrictive social codes imposed upon women in the 19th century. hematically, her action represents American innocence, a freshness and naivete that James himself valued. Take a second to consider other symbolic actions from these classic characters: 32 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
HUCK FINN rips up the letter to Miss Watson that reveals Jim’s whereabouts. he action represents Huck’s recognition of Jim’s humanity and his rejection of slavery. • JAY GATSBY lamboyantly displays his ine shirts, symbolizing the shallowness of the American dream, which has come to be equated with wealth and extravagance. • HOLDEN CAULFIELD leaves school, and by doing so symbolically rejects society and all its phoniness.
•
Beware of symbol hunting. If in a short story, because of the compression of this form, a character wrestles to pick up a boulder, we’ll probably ind something thematic within his action, even if it occurs only once. If it’s the central action of the story, we can’t help but read the story on a symbolic or metaphorical level. In a novel, if it occurs once, it may be a simple plot element. But if it becomes a recurring image, it’s natural to attach signiicance. As you revise your manuscript, look closely for characters’ actions that suggest a universal idea or theme—actions that may be seen as more than how they literally appear. What are they suggesting?
PLOT AND THEME he theme of a work is one abstract level higher than the plot—the plot itself points to the theme. If you doubt the truth of that hierarchy, consider that stories with completely diferent plots can share the same overarching theme. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s he Scarlet Letter deals with the Puritan theocracy’s punishment of sin. One theme that arises is the question of mercy over justice— or legalism. A distinctly dissimilar novel that takes up this same theme is Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. As you look closely at your work-in-progress, be sure to consider the larger implications. What themes does the story suggest above the plot? What if the plot were tweaked to have a diferent causal relationship? Would it suggest ideas that might be worth developing? Beware of forcing thinking along these lines, as you may end up manipulating the plot so signiicantly that the story “says” something you want it to say, becoming blatant and obvious. But if you look for higher themes and ind that the new developments follow naturally, they may be well worth pursuing.
STYLE AND THEME here are two important connections between style and theme:
STYLE ITSELF CAN HELP DEVELOP THEME. If a short story is written in a heavily concrete style, descriptive passages of character and setting might serve a second function—to stand out in a way that brings the theme to the forefront. In a novel written in a style rich with simile and metaphor, themes may be more subtle and integrated with the other concepts at play in the story. STYLE WORKS IN TANDEM WITH THEME. If, for instance, you write a postapocalyptic novel intending it to be as grim in tone as he Road, would a formal, detailed style be congruent with your theme? Will it come of as grim? If it’s grim, it may be grim in a diferent way. Its formal property could suggest order in the midst of disorder. You might pay more attention to structure, thinking about whether this is the message you want to send.
SETTING AND THEME he environment you create for your characters can also play a fundamental role in forming theme. Consider setting as it relates to three stories dealing with the American dream. In Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron-Mills, we see irsthand the desolation of the urban environment in which the characters live. he novella calls into question the attainability of the American dream, in that some people are utterly disempowered and excluded. Notice these provocative setting details: The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, some on the dingy boats, on the yellow river—clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by ... Smoke everywhere!
Having presented this vivid description of the bleak industrialism of a 19th-century factory town, the author invites us to read the story of her protagonist, Hugh Wolfe, whose gripping poverty makes for an utterly futile existence. his authorial approach is stylistically representative of the mid-1800s, but nonetheless is able to illustrate how concrete details of setting can situate a character like Hugh Wolfe within a context of grim socioeconomic circumstances, and in this way point to the story’s theme.
In heodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, Chicago is portrayed as an immense urban environment, having the power to make or crush the individual. Note how Dreiser gives us a sense of the immensity and sheer power of this city setting: The entire metropolitan centre possessed a high and mighty air calculated to overawe and abash the common applicant, and to make the gulf between poverty and success seem both wide and deep. Into this important commercial region the timid Carrie went. She walked east along Van Buren Street through a region of lessening importance, until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties and coal-yards, and finally verged upon the river. She walked bravely forward, led by an honest desire to find employment and delayed at every step by the interest of the unfolding scene, and a sense of helplessness amid so much evidence of power and force which she did not understand.
hese setting details do much to advance Dreiser’s claim that the environment—in this case, Chicago—has the power to mold and shape the destiny of the individual.
Revising for Theme It’s often easier to fully assess the themes that run throughout your work once the first draft is completed. As you revise your story, keep these questions in mind: • In what ways does your plot suggest theme? • Which characters represent thematic ideas in your work? • Do you find character statements that point to themes or ideas? What kinds of statements are these—direct or indirect? • Do you make use of literary allusions? • Do you see places where characters’ actions suggest theme? • Do any man-made or natural occurrences point to theme? • How does your title function to suggest theme? • Is your style heavily metaphorical? Do you find that metaphors and similes often point to theme? • Is your style congruent with your theme? If it’s not, will you change style or rethink theme?
WritersDigest.com I 33
Story Building In Dreiser’s naturalistic, or deterministic, vision, there is little personal freedom to chart one’s own future, to enjoy the fruits of the American dream. One is a pawn—for good or ill—in the hands of larger social forces. Setting is tied to theme. In Fitzgerald’s he Great Gatsby, what is the meaning of the green light across the bay from West Egg to East Egg—the light Gatsby so passionately observes? What do the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, looking out over an ash pit, stand for? Together, green light and the ash pit point to the dual nature of the American dream: the green light suggesting the purity of the dream itself, while the sign with Eckleburg’s eyes represents the American dream spoiled—a veritable ash pit of desolation, materialism, sterility. his novel thus relies greatly on these two setting details in order to make a critical statement about American idealism. When linking setting to theme, be careful not to symbol hunt. Not every green light has deeper meaning, EXERCISE:
Exploring Thematic Implications 1. Write a scene of about 300 words that puts two characters into conflict with each other. Have either character make a statement that suggests an idea larger, or more general, than the specific conflict they are now embroiled in. (In other words, an abstract idea that many different story conflicts could, in some way, point to.) Rewrite, finding a more indirect way of suggesting the same idea. Which version do you prefer? 2. Begin the same way you did in Exercise 1—write a scene of about 300 words, putting two characters into conflict with each other. Next, find a way to make actions themselves symbolic of ideas larger than the literal. Then write a second version where you change some (or all) of the actions so that they suggest a different idea or theme than the first version. 3. Write a third 300-word piece including either a natural or man-made occurrence—or a disaster, if you prefer. Allow at least one character to respond to it. Make the character’s reaction signal
but in he Great Gatsby it certainly does—when Gatsby looks across the bay toward the light at night, he’s looking in the direction of Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby’s goal is to win her over—and in the culture of the 1920s, this means seducing her with his mass accumulation of wealth. “Her voice is full of money,” Gatsby says. In the novel, setting is inherently intertwined with the themes of money and privilege.
If you think of a story as a house built brick by brick, consider theme the mortar that holds those bricks in place. It’s the cohesive message that lingers with readers, the novel’s connective tissue. Setting can serve many thematic uses. An urban setting with a subdivision of cracker-box houses can suggest uniformity and sterility. A rural setting can imply either beauty or bleakness—or a mix of these two. An idyllic, imagined setting can suggest the longing of the human spirit for beauty and goodness. As you revise your workin-progress, which embryonic ideas do you ind to be embedded at this point? hink about what might come of these with further treatment. But if you ind that in your particular story setting does not play an important role, don’t force it. Perhaps character and conlict are more important. If so, give it the proportion of space that it’s due—and no more. If you think of a story as a house built brick by brick, consider theme the mortar that holds those bricks in place. It’s the cohesive message that lingers with readers, the novel’s connective tissue. hrough allowing character, plot and style to relect the same underlying ideas, your writing will become more uniied—and have a more profound impact. NW
a broader conflict, so that the reader can see she’s not only dealing with the literal event, but also with a more universal idea.
34 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Excerpted from Write and Revise for Publication © 2013 by Jack Smith, with permission from Writer’s Digest Books.
Winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Award Best Writing/ Publishing Book
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WritersDigest.com I 35
Character Development
Beginning WITH THE
Past
Skillful use of backstory can bring your characters to life—and enrich your plot and story in the process. Here’s how to do it. BY RACHEL BALLON
36 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Let’s take a closer look at the diferent ways you can introduce backstory.
DIALOGUE If two people are giving vital information about a character’s backstory in a factual conversation, it’s likely to be dull and uninteresting to the audience. However, if you show the same two characters having a heated discussion or argument, then the information is revealed through conlict, and it’s likely to be more exciting for readers. Let’s say, for example, that a couple is having a conversation in a restaurant. his is rather uninteresting, unless what they are discussing is highly secret. he situation becomes even more suspenseful if they’re unaware a man
IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: TOTALLYPIC
C
reating characters’ backstories before you start writing is crucial because you’ll want to determine each one’s past experiences and the repercussions these experiences will have on your story before you begin. All characters come to your story with a problematic past and unresolved personal conlicts, so you should have a full understanding of what these problems are right from the start—even if readers don’t see the connections until later. he most common methods you can use to give the audience this important background information include dialogue, narration, internal dialogue and lashbacks. Remember, too, that this information must be presented in a natural progression and as an integral part of the story; otherwise, it will seem forced and unnatural.
is listening to what they’re saying. he audience is aware of the intruder but the couple isn’t, and this creates tension.
By constantly making the stakes higher and the conflict greater, you’ll be able to reveal information and backstory while simultaneously building suspense and keeping the action moving. Tennessee Williams does an excellent job of providing backstory through dialogue in A Streetcar Named Desire. When Blanche DuBois comes to visit her sister, Stella, and Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski, at their rundown apartment, she comes with a suitcase full of secrets. Plus, Stanley hates Blanche because he knows she feels superior to him, and as a consequence, he lashes out at Blanche and Stella: “Who do you think you are? A pair of queens? Now just remember what Huey Long said—that every man’s a king—and I’m the king around here, and don’t you forget it!”
Again, Stanley wants to undermine Blanche to Stella when he reminds her of the good times the two had before Blanche arrived: “Listen, baby, when we first met—you and me—you thought I was common. Well, how right you was! I was common as dirt. You showed me a snapshot of the place with them columns, and I pulled you down off them columns, and you loved it, having them colored lights goin’! And wasn’t we happy together? Wasn’t it all OK? Till she showed up here. Hoity-toity, describin’ me like an ape.”
What colorful, rich dialogue Stanley uses to express his present conlict, while at the same time giving information about his happier past without Blanche.
NARRATION Although it’s not done much in modern plays, playwrights used to develop characters who walked directly out of the set or stood in front of the curtain to provide revealing information about the characters to the audience. In hornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town, the character of the Stage Manager functions as the narrator when he relates to the audience: This is the way we were in our growing-up and in our marrying and in our doctoring and in our living and in our dying.
INNER DIALOGUE houghts or interior dialogue can also be valuable tools for revealing a character’s backstory and psychology.
QUICK TIP:
Delve Into Method Writing Famous actors such as Robert De Niro and Al Pacino
This process is a great way for you to get deeper into
prepare for their roles through a process called method
your characters and create ones who are different
acting, originally taught by the highly respected acting
than you.
teacher Lee Strasberg. Method acting is a process that
To engage in method writing, you need to target a
requires actors to go inside themselves to recall their
sensory memory from the past in which you felt similar
feelings and essentially relive memories.
emotions that you want your fictional character to experi-
Similarly, good writers must also prepare themselves
ence. By tapping into your memory with all of your senses,
in advance for developing their fictional characters
you will retrieve emotions that are always with you, but
by going inside themselves. Enter method writing.
not available without relaxation and visualization.
WritersDigest.com I 37
Character Development Take a look at this example from Judith Guest’s novel Ordinary People. Here, we see the central character, Conrad Jarrett, interacting with his swim coach. Notice Conrad’s internal thoughts in italics, which ultimately provide readers with more insight into what the boy’s truly feeling and thinking: “Jarrett, you got to be kidding me. I don’t get it. I excuse you from practice twice a week so you can see some shrink. … What the hell more am I supposed to be doing for you?” “Nothing.” Shrink. Hate that word coarse ignorant just like the kind of word you’d expect from stupid bastard like Salan will not get mad control is all just someday come down here tell him what he can do with
thoughts or interior monologue, as in prose. he lashback gives information or an explanation about a speciic character or event that is important for the audience to know. Be careful, however, not to use a lashback if it has no relationship to the present scene; doing so will create confusion.
Flashbacks can often slow down a story or interrupt the flow, so you’ll want to make sure you weave them in smoothly.
his goddamn ignorant opinions.
FLASHBACKS When you interject a scene from the past into the present plot, you’re using lashback. Flashbacks are done either visually, as in ilm, or by using a character’s interior
QUICK TIP:
Employ Cause and Effect Causal writing connects the beginning of your story to the end, meaning that each scene and chapter you write builds naturally from the one before it and causes the scene or chapter that follows. Think of your writing as connected, one word to the next and one page after the other, just like a setup of dominos. When you hit the first domino, the entire structure falls right down to the very last piece because they are all perfectly aligned. You can’t motivate your characters if your writing is not causal. Their motivations, just like your writing, must cause the next action and then the next. One external action causes another action. Causal writing keeps the characters’ actions focused toward the climax of the story. After you’ve determined your main character’s primary external motivation, consider how it feeds into the rest of your story. Does it contribute in a clear way
Toward the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s he Great Gatsby, the narrator of the novel, Nick Carraway, relates through summary Gatsby’s last night with Daisy before Gatsby goes of to war: On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day, with fire in the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he changed his arm a little, and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The afternoon had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory for the long parting the next promised. They had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.
his lashback, one of many in the novel, not only provides readers with a glimpse of the relationship Gatsby and Daisy once shared, but also adds emphasis to angst now felt by Gatsby as he watches Daisy with her husband, Tom. Remember that you want a lashback to enhance your present story and allow the audience to learn secrets from the past, so they’ll understand what’s happening. But don’t rely on lashbacks to structure your story, and make sure you use them sparingly. NW
to additional motivating factors? If not, you’ll need to work on your character’s external motivation until it drives his actions directly toward his goal.
38 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Excerpted from Breathing Life Into Your Characters © 2009 by Rachel Ballon. For information on writing consultations or coaching, visit rachelballon.com or call (310) 475-1010.
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Character Development
CONFLICT
Drivers Master the machinery of desire—the conflicting wants, needs and motivations at the root of every character—and your story’s engine will run full throttle. BY DAVID CORBETT
T
40 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
•
likened the perfect soul to a winged creature hoping to soar upward toward Truth. But the imperfect soul loses its wings and descends to earth, where indulgence, treachery and mere opinion reign. A total devotion to the purity of Truth can restore the fallen soul’s wings. • AUGUSTINE argued that Man, eternally contaminated by the sin of Adam, nonetheless retains a desire to return to the beatiic vision he knew in the Garden, a return possible only by gaining God’s grace. PLATO
IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: POM152
he role of desire in iction—and life—is so central I’ve come to call it the Tyranny of Motive. he person who wants nothing exists only in the realm of bad writing. But that doesn’t mean simply giving your characters something to desire will solve the problem of making them interesting. Our lives are framed by competing drives, something virtually every moral system devised by man has recognized throughout history.
•
BUDDHISTS believe that the human soul experiences a state of lack because it tries to anchor consciousness in the material world—pursuing solidity in vain through wealth and power and physical pleasure. Instead we must strive for pure consciousness in a state of No-Self. • FREUD taught that people are driven by two equal, conlicting instincts: the avoidance of pain, and the desire for health and wholeness. Only by lancing old wounds and dealing with that pain can we transcend our past and overcome our neuroses.
Each of these ways of viewing the human condition points to a yearning—for some deeper truth within us, a condition of spiritual and bodily health, a sense of purpose or meaning, or an abiding love. Even if you believe these deeper truths are an illusion, you can’t escape the simple fact that the desire for them is not. Each view also recognizes a battle within our hearts between these nobler strivings and the less honest, brave or wholesome inclinations we settle for. But how do we unbundle that mad, conlicting tangle of impulses? How do we create a story from it?
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR DESIRE As I begin to explore my characters, I focus on four crucial, interrelated elements: 1. Lack 2. Yearning 3. Weakness/wound/limitation/law 4. Desire he machinery works like this: 1. he story begins with the character in a state of lack he may or may not recognize: a state of unfulilled promise, malaise, boredom, existential angst, even dread. 2. he lack is created, at least in part, by an unfulilled yearning that may be equally vague or undeined, at least at the story’s start. 3. he reason that the yearning is unfulilled is because the character possesses a trait or traits that make the yearning feel foolish, impossible, terrifying, futile—out of the question: • a weakness (laziness, cowardice, stubbornness, despair) • a wound (some loss or injury that has crippled her ability to love, heal or act decisively)
• a limitation (youth, inexperience, illness, class, status) • a law (dishonesty, cynicism, envy, vanity, rage). he weakness, wound, limitation or law can act on its own or in concert with others. A law is oten the consequence of a weakness or wound—e.g., Rick Blaine’s broken heart creates his bitterness and cynicism in Casablanca—and is oten not only psychological or emotional but moral in nature, with the character harming not merely himself but others. Whether your character has one problem or several combined, the result inhibits her ability to face herself honestly. It is in a very real sense “ruining her life,” even if she doesn’t recognize that fact. 4. hen something happens—the loved one appears, a body is found, the expedition is launched, the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere—and that triggers the desire to respond or to act. It is the desire to act that is oten easiest and simplest to identify and deine: win the loved one, catch the killer, complete the expedition, walk to the next town and ind help. he simplicity of the outer goal works precisely because it allows the story to move beyond the dark slippery quagmire of inner yearning. It gives the character something to do.
USING YEARNING TO RAISE THE STAKES In pursuit of his desire, the character encounters resistance in the form of obstacles, opponents, competitors: conlict. he intensifying struggle to continue despite the mounting diiculties creates a constant state of reassessment in which the character is forced to ask himself: Why continue? Why not surrender, compromise, turn back? he answer lies in the yearning. hrough struggling to gratify the desire, through facing the prospect of failure and even ruin, the character becomes aware of the deeper need, the core longing, the yearning she has imperfectly grasped before. Or, if she has been aware of it previously, she now at last realizes the inescapable intensity of it, the necessity of it. his awakens her to the stakes. A character’s yearning speaks to what he believes his life is truly about: the way of life he wants to live, the kind of person he wants to be. If he turns his back on WritersDigest.com I 41
Character Development that, he’s basically giving up on his life. Whatever outer goal or ambition the character pursues in the story must somehow speak to this deeper, implacable, lifedeining need or yearning. his is how to create stakes that are truly profound. Consider one of the most high-stakes stories in classic literature: Dante Alighieri’s he Divine Comedy. In it, Dante confesses that what saved him during his darkest hours was the rediscovery of his love for his soul mate, Beatrice, long dead. He realized that their love was the greatest source of joy and truth in his life, and if he did anything that might shame or degrade himself before her eyes, he would consider that a terrible sin. Beatrice became not just a conscience igure, but the bright sky toward which his soul hoped to ascend. Her memory embodied his yearning, and failing to honor that would risk his very soul. Can the yearning of your character be summed up in a single phrase? To come home. To be free. To ind true love. Identifying the yearning so succinctly can frequently feel inadequate. he yearning oten deies deinition, and yet must be at least in part recognized and gratiied in the story.
To conjure what it means for your character to yearn to be a particular kind of person dreaming of a speciic way of life, you oten need something more organic, complex and inefable than a pat phrase or slogan. You need an intuitive, imagistic understanding of the character’s deepest hopes and aspirations. hat understanding emerges from discovering those events in the character’s past that have shaped her— moments of extreme terror, courage, shame, pride, guilt, forgiveness, hate, love—moments you must explore while plumbing your character’s backstory to fully understand not just the magnitude of, but the many facets of, what’s at stake in her life. hat exploration will reveal not only what the character longs for, but what has held her back from recognizing it, accepting it, pursuing it with all her heart. he person your character wants to be, the life he hopes to live—both are shaped indelibly by the life he’s known so far, and will be shaped further by the events that transpire in your story. hat past and those events will lend a particular meaning to ideas such as Home, Freedom, Love, etc.
Worth 1,000 Words of Yearning Because of the slippery, elusive, amorphous aspect of
such as “Filthy/Gorgeous” by the Scissor Sisters, or by a
yearning, I often urge my writing students to try to imagine
picture like the one of stormy waters shown below (left).
it not merely through words but also through an image, a
An undisciplined, reckless person whose life seems
work of art or a piece of music. (Remember: The yearning is
to be constantly careening on the brink of disaster may
in contrast to the way of life and type of person that defines
secretly yearn for something more tranquil, stable and
the character’s current circumstances. You’re looking for
serene, which could be visualized as the alternate photo
what is absent from the character’s life, not a theme song or
at below right.
portrait of who he considers himself to be.) In writing my novel The Mercy of the Night, I used Ralph
This kind of symbolic, imagistic conceptualization of the yearning allows for a deeper, more intuitive,
Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” to symbolize a
less logical or reductionist understanding of the
17-year-old runaway’s desire for something more profound,
character. It takes you beneath the clamor of words to
courageous and beautiful in her life. The piece itself is never
the character’s essence.
named in the text—I doubt the character would even know of it. The music was a cue for me, not for her. And I returned remind me of the nameless state of grace she truly, deeply yearned for. A shy, prim, unassuming person may yearn for a life that’s more intense and passionate, a life evoked by a song
42 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
PHOTOS © DAVID CORBETT
to it in crafting or revising every scene involving that girl, to
hese desires speak to our fundamental natures for a reason. Don’t rely on them singularly, but use them to determine the complexity of your characters, the stakes of your story and the struggles ahead. Readers will instinctively and deeply relate.
LETTING DESIRE DRIVE THE STORY he nature of the yearning is a slippery one: It has to be open-ended, given its vast, insatiable nature, and yet precise, given the speciic nature of the wants and needs of the character in your story. As your plot moves toward its climax, the story needs in some material way to gratify at least part of the yearning, with the understanding that this soul-deep longing will never truly vanish. he story dramatizes a crucial step in a lifelong pursuit. •
in your story may be deined by a particular place, but it will certainly speak to a larger sense of belonging, rootedness and acceptance that will shape all life to come. • FINDING LOVE in your story will center on one person (or family), with the understanding that this is a crucial but not inal step in living a life deined by a deeper connection to others. • FREEDOM will be achieved by escape from a particular state of bondage, with the understanding that this freedom opens the door to an entirely new way of life. REACHING HOME
As your story progresses, if you stick too closely to the slogan you’ve pinned on your character’s yearning, you’re probably doing an injustice to the depth and dimension your character deserves. And the likely result will be a “plot puppet” in service to a story both simplistic and predictable in its trajectory. Readers shouldn’t be vexed by a character’s behavior, but they should never feel entirely comfortable, either, or they’ll be several steps ahead of the story at every turn. Remember: As illustrated by the weighty examples at the start of this article, desires can (and do) conlict. Whatever the character does, the reader needs to feel her actions arise from the whole of her personality— her contradictions and secrets and wounds, her attachment to friends and family, her fear of her enemies, her schooling and sense of home, her loves and hatreds, her shame and pride and guilt and sense of joy.
As important as a character’s yearning is, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, nor can it be teased out and separated from everything else about her. (hat is why our earlier step of plumbing a character’s backstory to ind the true roots of that yearning is so important.) Of course, as we look ahead to the resolution of our stories, we must acknowledge that a character never truly gratiies this deeper yearning. Life isn’t like that. he yearning is elusive, unquenchable. Still, that can’t be used as an excuse for being vague. Your story requires some sense of closure and completion—even if the yearning remains unfulilled. Identify what the interim destination within the story will be; deine how, due to the events of the story, she’s become at least a little more aware and capable of being the person she secretly wants to be, living the life she knows she should live. I always ask how, by the end of the story, characters have become at least a little braver, more honest and more loving—or not. And if not, why? he courage may be wobbly, the honesty bitter, the love rocky, but those virtues are the milestones I mark on the character’s journey to a life they believe is more worthy and honorable than the one they were living on Page 1. Your character’s yearning for the sake of the story may be as simply stated as the need to get home (in all the richness the word Home conveys); to be free (in the distinct way your character has come to understand Freedom through the events of the story); or to ind true love (with the deeper, humbler sense of worth such Love provides). But don’t forget that this endpoint is temporary on a lifelong journey toward the inefable thing beckoning the character toward her better self, a nobler way of life. Overcoming the conlict that naturally arises in pursuit of desire will automatically force a character to recognize his deepest yearning, and thus face and overcome the weakness, wound, limitation or law that has kept him from fulilling it up to now. It is in inding the bond between the character’s outer goal in the story and the deep-seated longing it speaks to that will make your characters—and the stories they populate—both compelling and complex. NW David Corbett (davidcorbett.com) is the award-winning author of The Art of Character (called “a writer’s bible” by Elizabeth Brundage) and five novels, including 2015’s The Mercy of the Night.
WritersDigest.com I 43
Character Development
USING
Character
TO ENRICH PLOT The best writers know how to make the most out of their characters. Start with these techniques. BY PAULA MUNIER
44 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
n the words of Daisy Buchanan, the woman for whom Fitzgerald’s great Gatsby reinvents himself, “What’ll we do with ourselves this aternoon … and the day ater that, and the next 30 years?” his is the question that all writers face as we plot our stories: What’ll we do with our own Gatsbys and Caulields and Eyres? What obstacles will we place in their paths, what hoops will we make them jump through—and to what end? What motivations will we give them; what will propel them to act and cause them to react? Why will they act in certain ways—and how can you make that clear to readers? If action is character, then we need to make our characters do something. Your protagonist embodies the theme of your story and drives the main plot; secondary characters serve as mirrors to the protagonist, embodying the variations on theme and driving the subplots. Here, you’ll learn how to enrich your plot and subplots by developing characters who relect your theme and variations on themes.
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BRING THEME TO LIFE he most obvious example of a brilliant writer whose themes are as rich as his language is one whose works have endured longer than those of most any other writer in the English language: William Shakespeare. His git for language is topped only by his git for drama—from swordplay to suicide, love to lunacy, murder to mayhem, Shakespeare’s plays are plotted to perfection. What’s more, his plays always tap into something critical to the human experience, which is why his themes still resonate with readers 400 years later. Most important, Shakespeare created wonderful characters to embody his themes and enact his plots. Shakespeare’s characters embody the themes of their stories even as they drive the action of their respective plots. Perhaps the most telling example is the enigmatic and melancholy Hamlet, whose notorious indecision does not slow the plot (as it might have in the hands
of lesser authors), but rather propels the story. Shakespeare puts Hamlet through the wringer in this dark existential tragedy: Hamlet sees ghosts, vows to avenge his father’s death, breaks a girl’s heart, hires a troupe of actors to reenact his father’s murder at the hands of his uncle, berates his mother, kills an innocent man, gets banished by the king, evades assassins, is attacked by pirates, engages in deadly swordplay, watches his mother drink poison meant for him, stabs his opponent, kills a king and then dies, only to be lauded as a fallen soldier. hat’s a lot of action for an indecisive, guilt-ridden protagonist who believes that “conscience does make cowards of us all,” and deliberates endlessly on “what a piece of work is man!” And yet, Shakespeare makes it work. We fall in love with this tortured, suicidal young man who speaks so eloquently of the bewildering mess that is his life—and ours.
We human beings are all walking contradictions—it’s what makes us human. Hamlet personiies “action is character,” even as his complex and contradictory nature allows him to maintain a measure of mystery that bemuses critics to this day. Creating such well-rounded characters to drive the stories we tell is every writer’s challenge. But as we’ll see, using theme and variations on theme can help us do just that. Hamlet is not only a complex character, he’s the best of all complex characters: He’s a walking contradiction. We human beings are all walking contradictions—it’s what makes us human. We are kind and cruel, happy and sad, gracious and gross, sweet and sour. We have WritersDigest.com I 45
Character Development our good days and our bad days, our strengths and our weaknesses, our virtues and our vices. Shakespeare knew this, which is why Hamlet is who he is—and why we still love him all these years later.
GIVE YOUR PROTAGONIST LAYERS When you develop your characters, start with your protagonist. his is the character who will embody your theme and drive your plot. Most important, this is the character your readers will identify with—and fall in love with. He’s the hero they’ll root for from the irst page to the last—and all the pages in between. She’s the heroine they’ll follow to hell and back—and all the purgatories you produce along the way. Fail to create a strong protagonist, and you shoot your story in the foot before the race has even begun. As a storyteller you have a lot riding on this character. So you need to bring your protagonist to life as fully as possible. Make him real. Make her 3-D. Make them walking contradictions. To aid in this, try creating a bubble chart for your protagonist. List the contradictory aspects of your hero or heroine’s personality and psyche. Go for broke—the more qualities, quirks, traits and tendencies you can come up with, the better.
We are kind and cruel, happy and sad, gracious and gross, sweet and sour. We have our good days and our bad days, our strengths and our weaknesses, our virtues and our vices.
theme include “Once burned, twice shy” and “’Tis better to have loved and lost. …” Alice’s list of contradictions might look something like this: • She’s heartbroken, but she still believes in love. • She’s attractive, but she’s lost whatever conidence she had in her looks. • She’s brave about getting on with her life, but she’s scared to fall in love again. • She’s bold in her work, but she’s shy in her dealings with men. • She’s a romantic, but she’s cynical about men, especially actors. • She loves her father, but she hates him for his philandering. • She loves her mother, but she hates her for her bitterness. hese pairs of opposites suggest a number of themes and plots, variations on theme and subplots, some of which you’ve considered, and some of which you have not. Let’s imagine some scenarios together. SHE’S HEARTBROKEN, BUT SHE STILL BELIEVES IN LOVE.
his suggests Alice’s backstory, which includes being let at the altar by an actor. It also suggests that she is a romantic who believes in love and who eventually will risk loving again, provided that she—and here’s where more potential plotting comes in—learns to tell the good guys from the bad guys (subplot with another Mr. Wrong), meets the right guy (main plot with Mr. Right) and listens to her clear-eyed best friend (subplot built around her BFF’s secure and happy love life). Or she doesn’t listen to her cynical best friend (subplot built around her friend’s lack of a love life due to her mistrust of men). You choose. SHE’S ATTRACTIVE, BUT SHE’S LOST WHATEVER
Once you’ve listed several pairs of opposites, think about how they might relate to your main theme and plot, as well as your variations on theme and subplots. And consider how you can play to those opposing forces when you plot your story. For example, say you’re writing a love story about a girl named Alice. Your heroine is a 32-year-old sculptor in Venice Beach whose actor iance let her at the altar. Your theme is “Love conquers all,” and your variations on 46 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
CONFIDENCE SHE HAD IN HER LOOKS. his contradiction conjures up visions of our heroine hard at work in her studio, dressed in paint-splattered dungarees, her hands covered in dust as she works the clay. She avoids all contact with eligible men and neglects her hair, makeup and wardrobe. And here’s a possible subplot: Her big sister (now she has a sister!) is a Melrose Avenue fashionista who deplores her little sister’s neglectful ways and is dying to make her over.
SHE’S BRAVE ABOUT GETTING ON WITH HER LIFE,
Being let at the altar prompts Alice to focus on her work life rather than her love life—and that opens up all manner of possibilities. How about this: She’s ofered a part-time gig teaching sculpture classes to adults, which leads her to hire artist models, most of whom are out-of-work actors—just like the guy who let her at the altar. hat’s just one way we could build a subplot around this contradiction in Alice’s character. BUT SHE’S SCARED OF FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN.
SHE’S BOLD IN HER WORK, BUT SHE’S SHY IN HER DEALINGS
How might this manifest itself in our plot? Maybe Alice sublimates her sex drive now by creating a new body of work, one that is inspired by the male nude form—bold! But when she inds herself attracted to one of her sculpture students, she holds back, hiding behind her role as a teacher, even though it’s obvious that the attraction is mutual. WITH MEN.
SHE’S A ROMANTIC, BUT SHE’S CYNICAL ABOUT MEN, ESPECIALLY ACTORS. Alice may still believe in love, but she no longer believes in actors. And yet … when one of those out-of-work actors shows up to model for her sculpture classes, she dismisses him when he lirts with her. But guess who her next nude male sculpture clearly resembles? SHE LOVES HER FATHER, BUT SHE HATES HIM FOR HIS PHILANDERING. A philandering father can contribute to any story’s plot and subplots, themes and variations on theme in myriad ways. Alice’s backstory can include when her father let her mother (and her) when she was little, and you can force her to reexamine that past event when he shows up to see her 20 years later. Or he can be an active part of Alice’s life—and camp out in her studio when wife No. 4 kicks him out of the house. You get the idea. SHE LOVES HER MOTHER, BUT SHE HATES HER FOR HER BITTERNESS. Psychologists like to say that there are six people in every couple’s bed: him, her and both sets of parents. (hat’s why parents and in-laws make such great secondary characters—they’re great mirrors for our heroes and heroines!) Like Alice’s father, her mother is a gold mine of plotting ideas. Maybe Mom is as rich as she is bitter—and Alice learns that she hired a private detective to check out her iance and then used what she found out to blackmail him into leaving town, breaking her daughter’s heart but sparing her a life with a loser. Or
maybe her mom married again right away and is always preaching that boring is better when it comes to husbands— even if it’s obvious that she still loves Alice’s dad. Again, the possibilities are endless here. his simple brainstorming exercise with Alice demonstrates how useful it can be to list contradictions for your character, which can then be used to build your plot, subplots, theme and variations on theme. What’s more, you can also see how thinking of your protagonist as a walking contradiction can help you populate your story with secondary characters who serve as mirrors for your hero or heroine and help drive the subplots of your story as well.
ADD A WORTHY ADVERSARY Your protagonist deserves a worthy antagonist. Too many writers give their antagonists short shrit—and their stories sufer as a result. he best way to ensure that your hero has a foil clever and challenging enough to bring out the best—and worst—in him is to spend as much time developing your villian as you do your hero. he most satisfying antagonists are those we love to hate, such as Hannibal Lecter (from homas Harris’ Red Dragon), Claudius (from Shakespeare’s Hamlet), or Voldemort (from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series). hese antagonists really put their respective protagonists through their paces. hey’re clever and cruel, ruthless and resourceful, strong and spiteful. hey give our heroes and our heroines hell and force them to bring their “A game” to every encounter. It’s a ight to the inish every step of the way. his makes for great conlict, and great drama.
The best way to ensure that your hero has a foil clever and challenging enough to bring out the best—and worst—in him is to spend as much time developing your villain as you do your hero. he best antagonists are walking contradictions, just as the best protagonists are. Oten villains are drawn in WritersDigest.com I 47
Character Development black and white—completely dark and evil, without the slightest hint of redeeming qualities—and therefore they become caricatures rather than wellrounded characters. Making a bubble chart can help you develop wellrounded villains who will earn the reader’s respect even as they rile up your heroes and heroines. Remember: Your hero is only as good as his foil.
GIVE THEM SECRETS & BELIEFS Now that you’ve outlined the contradictions of your protagonist(s) and antagonist(s) and you have considered how these contradictions might inluence your plot and subplots and relect your theme and variations on theme, it’s time to go deep. Going deep means knowing as much as you can about your characters—everything
What’s Your Type? You may find that creating characters from scratch is difficult for you. This may especially be true if you consider yourself good with plot but lousy with character development. But even if you consider character development your strength, you need to make sure that your characters are compelling enough to engage readers for the duration of your story—and beyond. One of the most common complaints editors make about stories is “I just didn’t fall in love with the characters.” One way to avoid this pitfall is to explore personality typologies. Explore the different personality typologies that exist to determine which resonates with you as a storyteller. Are you a fan of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment? Then designate your lively heroine an ENFP and your strong, laconic hero an INTJ, and plot accordingly. If you’re a student of the Enneagram, you may see your poetic heroine as a 4 (the Individualist), and your politician villain as a 3 (the Achiever). Or maybe you’re into astrology, and you see your fiery heroine as an Aries and her stalwart steady as a Taurus. You can think of your career woman heroine as a classic Type A and her laid-back musician Mr. Right as a Type
from their hair color and body type to their favorite movies and their darkest secrets. he best way to learn about your characters is to create a proile for each of them. What do they look like? Where were they born? What do they fear? What is their relationship with their parents? he character proile is a common means of developing characters, and—just as important—keeping track of them as you begin to write your story. But these proiles are far more than simple tracking devices. hey can be used to shape characters with enough depth to capture the hearts of readers everywhere. he trick here is to go beyond the supericial when creating these proiles. You can add material to them as you discover—and uncover—it. Your characters will reveal more and more of themselves as your story unfolds. For instance, what does your protagonist believe— and how will that belief be challenged in your story? What code does he live by, and can he stay the course no matter what happens? How does her personal mantra inform her relationships—and inluence her behavior? We all have a preferred way of being in the world, a sometimes subconscious motivation that deines our deepest desires and governs our decisions. • • • • • • •
I just want to be happy. I just want to be loved. I just want to be in charge. I just want to be let alone. I just want to create. I just want to explore. I just want to help.
Who does your hero just want to be? What does your heroine just want to do? How do these desires conlict with those of your antagonist and your secondary characters? How might these motivations drive the plot and subplots? here are many ways in which you can think of your characters; use whatever works for you. But whatever you do, do your due diligence. Your characters will thank you for it—and so will your readers. NW
B. Or model your hero after one of the classic Greek heroes, complete with the hamartia (tragic flaw) that may spell his doom.
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Excerpted from Plot Perfect: Building Unforgettable Stories Scene by Scene © 2014 by Paula Munier, with permission from Writer’s Digest Books.
TALKING
Points Sometimes the best written dialogue doesn’t follow the “rules.” Here’s how and why you can break these 7 common conventions about character conversations. BY STEVEN JAMES
ost of us have heard the typical advice about writing dialogue—make sure your characters don’t all sound the same, include only what’s essential, opt for the word said over other dialogue tags, and so on. While these blanket suggestions can get you headed in the right direction, they don’t take into account the subtleties of subtext, characterization, digressions, placement of speaker attributions, and the potentially detrimental efect of “proper” punctuation. So, let’s delve into the well-intentioned advice you’ll most commonly hear, and what you need to know instead.
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1. “DIALOGUE SHOULD STAY ON TOPIC.” In real life we talk in spurts, in jumbles, in bursts and wipeouts and mumbles and murmurs and grunts as we try to formulate our thoughts. We stumble and correct ourselves. We pause and relect. We backtrack. We wander into tangents, and then get back to the point.
It’s oten said that on the page, good dialogue doesn’t do the same thing. But I disagree. Tangents reveal character traits and priorities. If dialogue is too focused and direct, it’ll become predictable. Readers want to see the motivations, the quirks, the uniqueness of each character. he prudent use of digressions can add texture to a story. People don’t always respond to what was said or to the questions they’re asked. hey interrupt, change the subject, and attempt to stay on their pre-determined course even ater the conversation has taken a turn in a diferent direction. “How come it’s so hot out here?” “It’s supposed to hit 90 today. Hey, listen, do you want some lemonade?” “Ninety? Man, I hate this. Remind me why we left Maine in the first place.” “Ninety’s not so bad. So, lemonade?”
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Character Development Even in this brief exchange, multiple conversations are taking place. hey overlap, reveal the character’s attitudes and add verisimilitude to what’s being said. At times you’ll want your dialogue to pool of into tributaries. his doesn’t mean it’s unfocused or random, but rather that it’s layered with meaning to show the goals of the characters, the social context of the conversation and the subtext that’s present in the scene. In fact, sometimes you’ll want your characters to discuss trivial things. Subtext brings depth to triviality. In Hollywood there’s a saying: “he scene is not about what the scene is about.” In essence, this means that what the readers (or viewers) are witnessing on the surface is not what lies at the heart of that scene. Scenes that are primarily about romantic tension will oten have dialogue in which the characters banter or engage in small talk. But in those instances, it’s what’s going on beneath the surface that matters most. Identify the core tension of the scene, then plumb subtext and use apparent triviality to your advantage in dialogue. (Caveat: his, like many literary techniques, should be used in moderation. here’s no need to show subtext in every scene, nor should you. Chase scenes, for instance, are best approached as what you see is what you get. An attempt to layer in subtext will only become a distraction.) Don’t be afraid of digressions. Use them to insert red herrings, foreshadow important events, reveal clues about what motivates your characters, or add new dramatic elements to the story line.
Tell It Like It Is Say more by saying less. Use dialogue to reveal traits, bring out subtext and escalate conflict. “We could get in big trouble for this.” “Why? We haven’t broken any laws.” In this two-line exchange, not only have we introduced underlying tension, but we’ve told readers a lot about each character. The first speaker is hesitant, apprehensive, a rule-keeper. The second is more brash, adventurous, more of a risk-taker. Look for ways to evoke and reveal. HINT:
Disagreement can be much more revelatory
than agreement.
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2. “USE DIALOGUE AS YOU WOULD ACTUAL SPEECH.” Although in real life people speak primarily to impart information, in iction a conversation is not simply a way for something to be expressed—it’s a way for something to be overcome. As you’re writing, rather than asking yourself, “What does this character need to say?” ask, “What does this character need to accomplish?” • A woman wants to confront her husband about his overspending; he wants to watch the game. • he cops are questioning a suspect; she’s being evasive. In both of these instances, the mutually exclusive goals of the characters create tension that afects how the conversation will play out. When determining your character’s response to stimuli, remember that his agenda toward the other person will trump the topic of conversation. “There’s this crazy thing they invented called the Internet. You can look stuff up on it. You should check it out sometime.” “Ah. Now, that was sarcasm, right?” “Um. No.” “But that was?” “What do you think?” “Wait—was that?” She looked at me disparagingly.
Words can be barbs. hey can be sabers. hey can be jewels. Don’t let them be marshmallows that are just passed back and forth. Give each character a goal. he speaker might be trying to impress the other person, or entertain her or seduce her or punish her. Whatever it is, the agenda— whether stated explicitly or not—will shape everything that’s said. “You’re not going to tell him about us, are you?” “He’ll find out eventually. I should be the one to—” “No. Listen, we have something special here. Do you really want to lose it?” “It’s not just that. I have the kids to think about. What’s best for them.”
Here, neither question is answered directly. Oten you can move the story forward more efectively by having the characters respond in a way that implies an answer,
showing that they’re reading between the lines of what was said or have questions of their own.
3. “OPT FOR THE SPEAKER ATTRIBUTION SAID OVER ALL OTHERS.” It’s true that you’ll want to avoid cluttering your story with obtrusive speaker attributions. Having a character consistently chortle, exclaim, retort, chip in, quip and question rather than simply say anything will become a distraction. Readers will stop being present in the story and will start searching for your next synonym for said. hey get it. hey know you own a thesaurus. Just tell the story. On the other hand, the use of said can become tiresome when it appears repeatedly on the same page. And, when used improperly, it can also be a giveaway that you’re an inexperienced writer. “Bob said” does not equal “said Bob.” To hear how your dialogue reads, try inserting the pronoun instead of the character’s name. For example: “That’s an awesome car,” Bob said. “That’s an awesome car,” he said.
Both of those statements make sense. But look at what happens when you write it the other way: “That’s an awesome car,” said Bob. “That’s an awesome car,” said he.
If you wouldn’t write “said he” then don’t write “said Bob.” Stick with placing the speaker’s name before the verb unless there’s an overwhelming contextual reason not to. Don’t use attributions simply to indicate who’s speaking. Use them to create pauses relected in actual speech, to characterize, and even to orchestrate the pace and movement of the scene. “She was strangled.” “So,” he muttered. “Another one.”
hat snippet of dialogue reads much diferently from: “She was strangled.” “So, another one,” he muttered.
Additionally, speaker attributions can be used to maintain or diminish status. Compare the two following sentences. “Come here,” he said. “Now.” “Come here now,” he said.
See how the placement of the speaker attribution in the irst example creates a pause that emphasizes the last word while also raising the dominance of the speaker?
4. “AVOID LONG SPEECHES.” Sometimes allowing a character to have her say reveals more about her than forcing her to speak in sound bites ever could. In this excerpt from my novel he Pawn, a teenage girl is speaking with her stepfather ater her mother’s death in New York City. “Why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to move to Denver?” “What do you mean?” “After Mom died. We just picked up and moved. Why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to move?” “Well, I just thought it might be best for both of us to get some space and—” “For both of us?” “Yes.” “And how did you come to know what would be best for me?” “Tessa, I—” “We’re supposed to be a family. Families make choices together about what’s best for everyone, not just for the one in charge.” “Listen, I—” “You took me away from all my friends. My mom dies, and you make me leave everyone I know and move across the country, and all I ever wanted was a family like Cherise has—a mom and a dad—and when Mom met you, I thought maybe it would happen, just maybe I’d finally have someone to teach me the things dads are supposed to teach their daughters— I don’t know, like about life or guys or whatever and maybe come to my volleyball games and make me do my homework when I don’t want to and tell me I’m pretty sometimes and give me a hard time about my boyfriends and take a picture of me in my prom dress and then stand by my side one day when I get married …” “I never knew—” “You never asked!”
he girl’s run-on response does more to show her attitude and personality than a back-and-forth exchange would. It also reveals characterization, expresses desire and provides escalation. WritersDigest.com I 51
Character Development (Incidentally, notice how the dashes are used when a character is cut of, and ellipses when the girl’s thoughts trail of. Dashes and ellipses are not interchangeable.) When deciding whether to let a character launch into a diatribe, consider if she’s trying to get her say in before anyone else can interrupt. Also, take into account the buildup of tension that precedes the speech. Like a garden hose, the more pressure, the more dramatic the release.
5. “BE GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT.” Always be willing to break conventions when it’s in the service of the story and the reader. Kyle spoke before Daniel could: “So you told your dad? I mean, about the visions and everything?”
Although some editors might want to replace the colon in this example with a period, the primary issue should be how the punctuation afects the low rather than how closely it follows a stylebook. Because the urgency of the scene has Kyle speaking quickly before Daniel has a chance to reply, a full stop would undermine that. A colon serves to better convey the scene’s uninterrupted pace. Notice also in the above example that question marks indicate an upward inlection at the end of a sentence, not necessarily a question. So your primary concern isn’t always “Is this a question?” but “Do I want this to sound like a question?” In dialogue, sentence fragments sound more realistic to readers than complete sentences do. Cut semicolons from dialogue. If you ind them, it’s usually because you’re trying to include complex sentences that wouldn’t sound natural if they were spoken aloud. Choose commas and periods instead.
6. “SHOW WHAT THE CHARACTERS ARE DOING WHILE THEY’RE TALKING.” Too oten this results in on-the-nose writing and an overemphasis on the minutia of body language. If you ind your character brushing his nose or repositioning his chair or crossing his legs and so forth for no other reason than to provide a respite from the dialogue, recast the scene. Just as dialogue should reveal the intention of the characters, so should the actions that they take while they’re speaking. When we read that a character folded 52 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
his arms, we’ll naturally wonder why he’s doing that. What is it meant to convey about his attitude or emotional response to what’s happening? Don’t confuse your readers by inserting needless movement. Rather, include action only as long as it adds to the scene or enriches it. If the action doesn’t convey anything essential, drop it.
7. “KEEP CHARACTERS’ SPEECH CONSISTENT.” I used to agree with this until one day I overheard a man in his late 20s talking on his cell phone in a hotel lobby. Ater a moment or two it became clear that he was a lawyer and was speaking with a client. He was articulate, spoke in complex sentences and sounded well versed in legal terminology. A few moments later he received a call that was obviously from an old college buddy. Suddenly, his entire demeanor changed. He was joking around and talking more like a frat brother than a law school grad. If those two conversations appeared in a book they would sound as if they came from two entirely diferent characters. hat man’s history with those people afected his tone, word choice, grammar, sentence structure, use of idioms, everything. Even his posture changed. Dialogue needs to be honest for each character in that situation. Don’t try to make your characters consistent in the sense of always sounding the same, but rather allow them to remain in character within each unique social context. So, if a character is highly educated and every time she speaks she’s using impressive words, it’ll get old. She’ll seem one-dimensional. Or if she’s from the South and you have her saying “y’all” all the time she’ll become cliched. Few people are always blunt, always angry, always helpful. We speak diferently in diferent situations. Mood, goals, state of mind luctuate. his ties in with character believability. Remember: status, context, intention. Give characters a goal, a history and an attitude toward the other people in the conversation. And always strive for honest, believable responses rather than canned ones. NW
Steven James is the award-winning, bestselling author of 12 novels. He enjoys dark roast coffee and teaching storytelling around the world. His latest book on the craft of writing is Story Trumps Structure (WD Books).
Tips
FROM FIRST-TIME AUTHORS IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: OLA TARAKANOVA
Ten new novelists share the stories behind their publishing debuts—and how you can break in to the industry, too. BY CHUCK SAMBUCHINO
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Momentum & Inspiration
BETH HAHN
M.E. PARKER
The Singing Bone (literary mystery,
Jonesbridge: Echoes of Hinterland
killer’s imminent parole forces a woman to confront [a] nightmarish past.”
New Castle, N.Y. PRE-BONE: I was writing a journal and had no plans to publish. Ater I inished my Master of Fine Arts in 2000, I wrote a novel but couldn’t ind representation. I felt discouraged, so I took a break. I began working on he Singing Bone in 2012. TIME FRAME: It took six months or so to write the irst drat, then another three to polish it and begin sending it of to agents. I spent a lot of time writing my query letter, too, and looking at books agents liked. ENTER THE AGENT: My agent is Jessica Papin of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. I used online databases to research agents. I read articles on the Writer’s Digest website and elsewhere that were helpful in pinpointing what agents liked and were looking for. WHAT I LEARNED: Initially, it was hard to give up control of my book. A writer gets very close to a novel, but ultimately, if the book is going to be in the world, control must be ceded, so inding a trusted agent and editor is best. WHAT I DID RIGHT: When getting a lot of rejections, I began to see that some [of them] had a lot of good advice about making the book better. he decision to listen instead of react made all the diference. ADVICE FOR WRITERS: Take the time to research agents, and remember that inding an agent and a publisher is a long process. Be kind to yourself. WEBSITE: beth-hahn.com. NEXT UP: A horror novel. WRITES FROM:
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(speculative fiction, Diversion Books, July 2015) “In a fight for resources to fuel a war,
a secretive complex enslaves a young dreamer whose escape plans are threatened when he falls for a pregnant railwalker on the salvage line.” WRITES FROM: McKinney, Texas. PRE-JONESBRIDGE: I published numerous short stories in literary journals and gathered some awards along the way. I also served as the editor-in-chief of the Camera Obscura Journal of Literature & Photography from 2009 to 2014. TIME FRAME: A short story of mine appeared in a literary journal in 2009 and intrigued a literary agent who read it. his agent reached out to me and asked if I had a novel of a similar vein. Literary agents are hard to come by, so my response was that I would have one very soon. Even though she’d solicited me out of the blue, this agent declined the hurried project, so I began the long process of revision before sending it anywhere else. ENTER THE AGENT: I sent [the revised manuscript] to Kimberley Cameron & Associates, where agent Elizabeth Kracht ished it out of the slush pile. WHAT I LEARNED: When to revise versus when to start over. Sometimes it’s faster to take it from the top. PLATFORM: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+. It’s important for writers to know that if you’re just now showing up on social media when it’s time to tout your work, that is probably too late. WEBSITE: meparker.com. NEXT UP: Jonesbridge is the irst of three books in the series, so I am hard at work on the other two.
PARKER PHOTO © KATE PARKER PHOTOGRAPHY
Regan Arts, March 2016) “A convicted
MELISSA LENHARDT
MICHAEL RANSOM
Stillwater (mystery, Skyhorse Publishing,
The Ripper Gene (thriller, Tor-Forge Books,
October 2015) “A city-boy outsider takes over as Stillwater Chief of Police from a longtenured local and, through investigating two murders 50 years apart, uncovers corruption and long-buried secrets that rattle the small town to its core.”
August 2015) “An FBI agent discovers a
pattern in the DNA of the world’s most notorious serial killers, and must confront his painful past when a psychopathic killer emerges in the dark and twisted Mississippi landscapes of his youth.”
WRITES FROM: Texas. PRE-STILLWATER: In 2012, I queried agents with a historical novel set in Texas and didn’t make much progress. I decided a traditional mystery might be easier to pitch. TIME FRAME: I wrote the irst drat during NaNoWriMo one year, but I knew the story wasn’t completely working. It all came together when my mother told me about a recurring dream she had that my father had buried a body in our woods. ENTER THE AGENT: I met my agent, Alice Speilburg [of Speilburg Literary Agency], at the 2013 DFW Writers Conference. We talked through lunch [one day] and hit it of. I sent her my novel aterward, and she ofered. WHAT I LEARNED: Patience. You, the writer, are focused on one thing (your book), but your agent and editor have dozens of projects in the air—including yours. WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENT: Nothing. I wrote for over 10 years before I tried to get an agent. I needed all those years to build my conidence and hone my crat. PLATFORM: All the main social media sites, a blog and, more recently, a newsletter. BEST ADVICE FOR WRITERS: Finish. Don’t keep tinkering with the same book for years. Put it aside and start another one. You won’t improve as a writer by writing the same book over and over. WEBSITE: melissalenhardt. com. NEXT UP: I am working on the sequel to Stillwater.
WRITES FROM: Kinnelon, N.J. PRE-RIPPER: I’m a cancer researcher and my ield of expertise is pharmacogenetics— the way DNA inluences human responses to medicines. he sequencing of the human genome was a very substantial event for me, and opened up many more questions than it answered. Some of those questions are controversial, and this was the basis for the scientiic premise of he Ripper Gene. TIME FRAME: I wrote the irst drat in about 12 months, and spent another 10 years revising it whenever I could ind time. ENTER THE AGENT: I met Susan Gleason [of the Susan Gleason Literary Agency] through a referral. She has been my agent since 2009. BIGGEST SURPRISE: How much better the editorial staf at Tor-Forge would make my novel. I’d spent a decade trying to perfect that story, and yet they still found several substantive edits that were necessary to make the novel the best it could be. WHAT I DID RIGHT: I listened to people with more experience than me all along the way: poets, writers, agents, editors, teachers and friends. WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENT: I would have spent more time writing and organizing a writers’ group, and less time trying to publish a novel before it was ready. WEBSITE: michaelransombooks.com. NEXT UP: A literary mystery as well as a biomedical thriller.
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JESSAMYN HOPE
ELIZA KENNEDY
Safekeeping (literary fiction, Fig Tree
I Take You (women’s fiction, Crown, May
Books, June 2015) “Over the summer of
2015) “The story of Lily Wilder, a bride who
changed forever on a kibbutz in Israel.”
is profoundly conflicted about getting married because she can’t stop sleeping with other people.”
New York City. PRE-SAFEKEEPING: In 2004, my irst novel found an agent but not a publisher, which was really tough. It then took much longer than I would have liked before I had a second novel to send out. In between, I had short iction and memoir pieces published in literary magazines. TIME FRAME: It took me eight years to complete Safekeeping, mostly because I’m a slow writer. Painfully slow. And the day jobs didn’t help. ENTER THE AGENT: I had three agents ofer representation: One I met at a conference, and two had my work recommended to them by their clients. I signed with one of the latter: Mitchell Waters at Curtis Brown. his demonstrates the importance of participating in a supportive writing community. WHAT I DID RIGHT: he most important thing I did was keep writing. WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENT: I would have studied the crat of story sooner—read books like E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and Robert McKee’s Story. ADVICE FOR WRITERS: Hone your crat—and try to enjoy yourself while doing it. WEBSITE: jessamynhope.com. NEXT UP: I’m playing with an idea for a new novel. I’m really excited about it, but haven’t fully committed. When a project might take eight years, you have to be sure about it.
WRITES FROM: New York City. PRE-YOU: Like my narrator, I used to be a lawyer at a big irm in New York City. I got burned out, as lawyers do, and my family moved to the country. Ater a few years of raising a child and some chickens, a return to paid employment loomed. I gave myself a year to write a book. If I failed, it was back to law for me. TIME FRAME: In 2008, I tried writing a novel about a wedding set in Key West. I eventually gave up. Five years later, I found myself thinking about that old idea. hen a voice popped into my head—funny, profane, libidinous. It was my narrator, Lily. I wrote the irst chapter that aternoon and inished the book 10 months later. ENTER THE AGENT: I queried a few dozen agents directly. I also reached out to an acquaintance at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment who doesn’t work on this type of book, but who ofered to pass it on to an agent who did. To my great good fortune, he handed it to co-agent Suzanne Gluck, who signed me. WHAT I DID RIGHT: I didn’t worry about what type of book I was writing, or whether it would ind an audience. I wrote the book I wanted to write. ADVICE FOR WRITERS: Choose enthusiasm. If you are lucky enough to have more than one agent or editor interested in your work, don’t automatically choose the bigger name or even the most money. Go with the person who loves your book and is dying to work with you. WEBSITE: lilywilder.com. NEXT UP: Another novel. I work on it every day.
1994, six damaged lives are entangled and WRITES FROM:
56 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
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Momentum & Inspiration
STACIE RAMEY
ANDRIA WILLIAMS
The Sister Pact (young adult, Sourcebooks,
The Longest Night (historical fiction,
November 2015) “16-year-old Allie Blackmore
struggles to put her life back together after her sister’s suicide, only to discover a disturbing truth behind her sister’s death.”
Wellington, Fla. PRE-PACT: My writing education involved strong critique opportunities and working with writing coaches. I started writing a YA novel that I didn’t inish. hen the idea for he Sister Pact came to me. TIME FRAME: I wrote it over the span of a year and a half. ENTER THE AGENT: Nicole Resciniti of he Seymour Agency plucked me out of the slush pile. I queried her on a Friday. She requested the full the next day, and signed me that Monday. Once I made a few tweaks, Nicole sold it to Sourcebooks two and a half weeks later. BIGGEST SURPRISE: How many people work on your book. Aside from my acquiring editor, there were three editors who worked on copy edits and continuity. here was a team who worked on the cover, and my fabulous publicity and marketing team. WHAT I DID RIGHT: I worked on my crat relentlessly. PLATFORM: I started a critique group, and am a board member of he Cream Literary Alliance, an organization that promotes literature and learning in West Palm Beach. WEBSITE : stacieramey.com. BEST ADVICE FOR WRITERS: Embrace the authors in your life. [hey] keep you from giving up. Buy them cofee or cookies. NEXT UP: he sequel, On Impact (working title), is due out November 2016. WRITES FROM:
Random House, January 2016) “A young Army specialist and his wife have their lives intersect with the U.S.’s first and only fatal nuclear accident, which took place in Idaho, 1961.”
Colorado. PRE-NIGHT : his is the irst thing I’ve published. I’d gone to graduate school for creative writing, but then my husband went into the military and we had three children. I had this novel in my head for years, and decided if I ever wanted to write it I just needed to make time. TIME FRAME: he irst drat took a year of setting my alarm at 4 a.m. and writing for two hours before my kids woke up. Revising took another year. Ater that, it sold in a day. ENTER THE AGENT: I found Sylvie Greenberg [of Fletcher & Company] by browsing the Guide to Literary Agents (WD Books). WHAT I LEARNED: Locate newer agents at agencies you’re interested in. [hey] tend to be building their client lists, and there’s a greater chance they’ll take you on. WHAT I DID RIGHT: Sylvie wrote a critique of my manuscript and ofered to reread [it] if I made changes. So I buckled down and did everything she suggested. When I sent [it] back, she was happy with how it read. My willingness to make her suggested edits showed I was serious and got her attention. IF I COULD DO IT AGAIN: I would go back in time and give myself the conidence to have started writing sooner. PLATFORM: I maintain a blog called he Military Spouse Book Review (militaryspousebookreview.com), where I proile and promote writers from the military community. ADVICE FOR WRITERS: Do. Not. Give. Up. WEBSITE: andriawilliams. com. NEXT UP: Another literary historical novel. WRITES FROM:
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Momentum & Inspiration
Bull Mountain (crime/noir, Putnam, July 2015 ) “A story about the power someone’s
family has over them, and how it can cause people to commit the most heinous acts just to preserve it.”
Eastern Georgia. PRE-BULL: Until Bull Mountain, I’d never had anything published in the traditional sense. he writing group I’d become involved with was self-publishing short anthologies of our own work [just] as a way to workshop our skills. We’d pick a genre out of a hat—horror, sci-i, Wild West, etc.—and run with it. TIME FRAME: his novel took me exactly one year. Six months on the irst drat and another six months’ worth of revisions to polish it up enough to feel good about it. ENTER THE AGENT: My agent, Nat Sobel [of Sobel Weber], found me. He read a pair of short stories I’d published online that were nominated for a small bragging-rights award by an indie crime iction magazine. WHAT I DID RIGHT: I found the places I wanted my stories to appear, not because I thought it was a way to be discovered, or just to see my name in print, but because of the quality of the other authors’ work. I wanted my name listed next to all these amazing authors I was reading and learning from. As it turns out, agents in New York like to read those guys as well. ADVICE FOR WRITERS: Only three things are going to help you produce art for a living: producing art, letting people see it, and doing both of those things with fearless tenacity. WEBSITE: brianpanowich.com. NEXT UP: I’m currently wrapping up a sequel to Bull Mountain, the second book in the McFalls County series. WRITES FROM:
58 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
BILL BEVERLY Dodgers (literary crime, Crown, April 2016) “When East, a shrewd young watchman for a Los Angeles drug house, finds himself out of a job, he takes the one opportunity he’s given—[and finds himself on] a bloody mission across the country.”
Hyattsville, Md. PRE-DODGERS: I studied writing at the University of Florida, then stayed on for the Ph.D. in American lit. Several of my short stories saw publication. TIME FRAME: I talked through the story [with] my wife in 2003. She said, “You should write that.” She is wise about things, my wife. ENTER THE AGENT: I met Amy Williams—a partner at McCormick Literary—at a writers conference in 2013. … Amy passed the novel on to her co-agent, Alia Hanna Habib, who signed me soon ater. BIGGEST SURPRISE: How much I like the people I’ve met and worked with. I don’t know why this would surprise me: hey’re people who love books. hey do this because they love to read. WHAT I DID RIGHT: I managed to carve the whole story out of one tree. And at the right moment, I took it to people who could help me. IF I COULD DO IT AGAIN: I would have developed a daily writing routine [sooner]. I was skeptical that writing every day would help me. But it did. NEXT UP: I am hard at work on a book that maybe readers of Dodgers will like. Every morning. WRITES FROM:
Chuck Sambuchino is the author of Create Your Writer Platform and Get a Literary Agent (both Writer’s Digest Books).
PANOWICH PHOTO © DAVID KERAGHAN; BEVERLY PHOTO © OLIVE BEVERLY
BRIAN PANOWICH
JOHN SANDFORD:
True Grit Journalist turned novelist John Sandford can drive “write what you know” across virtually any terrain—with more than 40 New York Times bestselling thrillers, a Pulitzer Prize, and even a young adult series. BY ADRIENNE CREZO
ew journalists ind the level of success that earns a Pulitzer Prize, and few authors can brag that every novel they’ve written has landed on he New York Times bestseller list. Even fewer writers can claim both—but John Sandford can. Before he began a decades-long career at the top of the thriller charts, the writer born John Roswell Camp was a successful journalist. His career included stints at Southeast Missourian and the Miami Herald, a place on the Pulitzer shortlist in 1980, and the Distinguished Writing Award of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1985. In 1986, Camp was awarded a Pulitzer for Non-Deadline Feature Writing for his St. Paul Pioneer Press article series chronicling the life and work of a Minnesota farm family (johnsandford.org/farm. html). Around that time, he tried his hand at long-form noniction with two books, one about the paintings of John Stuart Ingle and another about plastic surgery. “Neither,” he says, “will ever be a bestseller.” In 1989, he wrote and published his irst two novels— Rules of Prey and he Fool’s Run. Each would spawn a successful series: Prey, featuring his iconic Lucas Davenport character, a loner detective with a womanizing streak; and the Kidd series, which follows a computer genius who doesn’t mind taking sketchy hacking jobs— as long as the money is good. In 2007, he launched yet
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Momentum & Inspiration another wildly popular series, Virgil Flowers, about a rough-around-the-edges cop who only does “the hard stuf.” To date, Sandford has sold more than 10 million copies of nearly 40 bestselling crime thrillers. In 2015 alone, Sandford released three titles: the 25th Davenport book, Gathering Prey; stand-alone Saturn Run; and young adult thriller Outrage, the second book in he Singular Menace series co-authored with his wife, fellow journalistturned-author Michele Cook. his April, he released his latest Davenport installment, Extreme Prey. When I lead John to our reserved meeting room, he tells me he’s tired. “Just beat up,” he says as he runs his hands over his face. And it’s understandable; this stop in New York for hrillerFest falls in the midst of a book tour. In one week, he and Cook have been to an event in Houston, held a signing at a New York bookstore, hosted MasterCrat classes at hrillerFest, and are on their way to another series of events in St. Louis. His career is one of strict writing schedules (he averages two books per year), aggressive book tours, and the dogged pursuit of far-lung hobbies in between: He is the primary inancial supporter of the Beth-Shean Valley Archaeological Project in Israel and he writes songs “as a kind of side hobby.” So it’s not surprising at all that he feels a bit weathered. Despite this, Sandford is funny, well-spoken and smart. And fortunately, he wasn’t too worn out to talk at length about how he works, why he writes mostly iction now, and why his work is still “a struggle all the way through.” You’ve had two distinct and successful careers in writing, first as a journalist and now as a thriller author. Is your nonfiction background helpful in writing your novels? he major beneit of working in journalism is the stuf you get to see. I think a lot of writers—young writers— don’t know enough. It’s simply that they haven’t been around long enough. hey just don’t have enough references in their head yet. One thing that journalism does is it gives you all that stuf in a hurry, so that if you’re a general assignment reporter like I was for most of my career ... you’ll see crime scenes, you’ll do feature stories on all kinds of things. I must have done several dozen stories on medicine and surgeries. I spent a month in a prison interviewing killers once. I spent a lot of time doing stories with farmers. You pack all this stuf into your head. 60 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
So it really does come down to writing what you know. Are most aspects of your books based on your experience or research? I tend not to want to write about things I don’t [already] know about. But some things I have done [additional] research on. I actually have a pretty extensive knowledge of guns because I grew up in the countryside in Iowa and I irst shot a gun when I was probably 4 or 5 years old. But I bought a bunch of pistols speciically to do research with. And that’s why my characters always use Berettas or Colts or Smith & Wessons. I have one of each of those weapons. I can take them out and look at them. I’ve ired them all. I know how to take them apart and put them back together. So I do that kind of research, and I will also do location research, like people do for movies, because I want the locations to be correct. What you want is a speciic kind of location because all places have idiosyncrasies, and putting the idiosyncrasies in the book makes the scene more tactile and real. So I do that kind of research, too. … he characters are not based on anybody that I know. here are no cops like Lucas Davenport. He’s a cross between a cop and a movie star. ... Lucas [and his wife] have this real relationship in which she doesn’t like some of the things he does, and she’ll give him a hard time about them but is basically supportive, and he basically supports her. It’s a wonderful thing. he reason I don’t really base it on real people is that real people are much more inlected than that, and you don’t have time really in a thriller—especially in a thriller in which the velocity is seriously important—to deal with all that stuf, so you have ways of indicating it. ... he events hardly ever resemble anything I covered [as a journalist] because real events are oten too ugly. As ugly as some of my books have been, I’ve backed away from things I’ve actually seen because what you actually see is oten too ugly, and also too pedestrian. Most awful crimes are committed by really stupid people, and really stupid people are not much of a challenge for your character. So you’ve got to have a smart person who is committing really ugly crimes. You have to depart from the reality that I experienced as a reporter. ... I might look at some kind of killer, the BTK killer or someone like that, and then put it in the book in a diferent fashion. I imagine you’ve researched so many murderers now that the crimes all sort of run together.
[he Minnesota prison system] had a system where [inmates] were allowed to start a company in the prison. Most of the money from the companies went to victims’ funds and families. ... So they had one company that did computer work, and it was the most boring kind of programming in the world, the kind that nobody wanted to do. hey [trained] lifers to work the company because they were in there long enough to learn how to program. I talked to all these killers who were smart enough to learn programming and it really gave me a lot of information about how their brains worked. I had long, intimate conversations with these guys—and not about their crimes, but about the way they thought about things. And virtually none of them took any responsibility for the murders whatsoever, even when they admitted doing it. hat was enormously useful.
“It takes awhile to become established, and so you can’t be discouraged if just one or two books don’t sell.” Do other imprisoned killers ever reach out to you, unsolicited, to talk about their crimes? It’s happened three or four times. And every once in awhile my website will get a letter from a guy in prison
who’s killed somebody and he’ll say he really enjoyed my books. What do you say to that? You’re not secretive about your pseudonym. Why did you choose to write as John Sandford instead of publishing under your real name, John Camp? he pseudonym is an accident, actually. I was publishing two diferent books with two diferent companies at the same time. And Putnam, which was paying me much more money, said, You know, you’re publishing a series of books for [another publisher], and we really don’t want them riding on our publicity. Can you use a pseudonym? And that’s why I use a pseudonym. ... [But] I prefer anonymity. I really do. I don’t like people looking at me because I like to look at people. ... I was a newspaper columnist for a while and I had my picture at the top of the column and people would talk to me in the street and it just always scared the hell out of me. Someone says, Hey, John! and you realize you don’t know this person and it startles you. You were awarded a Pulitzer—that’s a career pinnacle for most journalists. Did you move to fiction hoping to achieve a similar kind of success? What happened was this: I wrote the series and I won the Pulitzer, and the [editor] called me into the oice and they gave me a $50 a week raise. And I went home and I sat down, and I realized that with this raise—working WritersDigest.com I 61
Momentum & Inspiration for a metropolitan newspaper, in Minnesota, big circulation and all that—I [still] couldn’t aford to send my kids to the state college. And that sort of changed my attitude toward writing. I realized that, to some extent, I wanted the money. his is the one life I’ve got, and journalism wasn’t giving me the kind of range I wanted. I can’t do much on 50 bucks a week. ... If I hadn’t become a bestselling writer, I was going to stop. So the first book was a bestseller? I thought that I would get to be a bestseller. ... he thing is that it took awhile. It takes awhile to become established, and so you can’t be discouraged if just one or two books don’t sell. But if I had written, say, 10 books, and they didn’t sell well ... I would’ve done something else entirely. Do you keep a strict schedule? I write virtually every day. Every day when I’m not traveling. And when I am traveling, I take a computer with me and I will oten write. I would like to be able to write 3,000 words tonight. ... I suspect I probably work 350 days a year. he last time I went [on vacation] to Paris I probably wrote 10,000 words while I was there— I was working every day. ... I think a lot of people do that. You write almost compulsively. I think many people would balk at working 350 days per year. That’s very strenuous. Stephen King has written more than I have, he writes more than I do, and so I think he must work every day. I publish twice a year, and he publishes as oten as I do and his books are twice as big. ... And Stephen King is not exactly a hero of mine, but he’s a guy I pay attention to because he’s really smart and he knows what he’s doing. And his writing book, On Writing, is the best writing book I’ve ever encountered. ... One of the things he says early on in the book is that you’ve got to know grammar. I think that most good writers really know grammar. hey may not know the formal structural grammar, but they know when to use bad grammar and when to use good grammar, they know how words it together and they listen to people talk. He uses all kinds of diferent structures and all kinds of diferent language and he’s able to do that because he understands the basics. Do you write many drafts or do you edit as you go? 62 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
I will write a chapter, and because I don’t outline, I won’t necessarily know what’s coming up. So I write a chapter, and then I write the next chapter, and then to make the irst chapter it with the second chapter, I’ll go back and re-edit the irst chapter. ... So ater that, I just kind of struggle through it until I get to about 80,000 words. I then will oten outline to the end because I want the end to be extremely fast. I want people not to be able to stop reading it. So everything then comes bang bang bang bang bang, it comes in a very fast, hard sequence. ... By the time I get to the end of the book, I may have looked at the irst page 10 or 15 times. hen I go back and spend probably a month working over the book. Working really hard. I can read [a chapter] in about 10 minutes, but I will spend several hours working over each one, trying to untangle sentences and get the right word in the right place. Which I am not always successful with, but you know, I try. And then ater I do that basic rewrite, I go back and look at the irst and last chapters especially to make sure that they’re really smooth. Some writers say they can’t start until they know the ending. Is that true for you, being that you don’t outline? hat may be true in the details, but if you’re writing a thriller book like mine, they have an arc to the novel. You know that there’s going to be a crime to set things of, because there has to be—I’m writing about a cop. And so then the cop gets involved, and at the end of the novel the cop is going to either win or tie. He’s not going to lose. By “tie” I mean that the bad guy’s going to get away with it, but he’s going to pay some kind of price. ... And [recognizing that arc] is important, because then you know what the general shape of the book is going to be in the back of your head very solidly before you start. Does having that “general shape” make it easier? It’s not easy. It’s a struggle all the way through. Actually, the hardest parts are the ideas and the scenes. he writing process itself, if you tell me what the scene is going to be, I can write it. I have no problem writing very smooth, idiosyncratic, nicely curved scenes, but I’ve got to know what the idea is, and that’s the hard part. NW
Adrienne Crezo is the former managing editor of Writer’s Digest.
DAVID BALDACCI:
Story Chaser More than 110 million books in print, a growing list of screenwriting credits, and a family literary foundation: Former lawyer David Baldacci owes his monumental success to his unerring commitment—and lifelong love of putting pen to paper. BY JESSICA STRAWSER
hile many authors struggle to ind time to write, for David Baldacci it’s more of a struggle to ind time to do something other than write—and an unwelcome one at that, as there’s clearly nothing he’d rather be doing. Since splashing onto the scene with the 1996 Presidential thriller Absolute Power (switly snatched up by Hollywood for a feature ilm starring Clint Eastwood), he’s written 32 novels for adults and ive for young readers. Although he’s primarily known for his action-packed suspense, including six bestselling character-driven series—featuring secret agent Shaw, D.C. conspirators he Camel Club, Secret Service-turned-PIs King and Maxwell, Army special agent John Puller, government assassin Will Robie, and his latest, Amos Decker, a man with total recall of his life who debuted in last year’s Memory Man—he’s also penned a wide range of wellreceived stand-alones, among them the family drama One Summer, the Appalachian historical Wish You Well (the indie ilm adaptation, which Baldacci wrote and coproduced, was released last summer) and the holiday tale he Christmas Train. As for his latest departure, the Vega Jane middle-grade fantasy trilogy, Book 1, he Finisher, was already in development with Sony Columbia even as Book 2, he Keeper, hit shelves last September.
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Screenwriting notwithstanding (he’s also at work on an original TV series, as well as one based on John Puller and another on his police thriller True Blue), the November release of his fourth Will Robie title, he Guilty, marked 36 books in 19 years—and over 110 million copies in print. A former lawyer, Baldacci still attacks his writing career as if preparing for a high-stakes defense. His typical day currently involves a few hours of work on his next Decker thriller, another few hours drating more adventures of Vega Jane, and another few hours on a screenplay. “During the course of the day I might work on three or four different projects, but only when I run out of gas on one do I move on to another,” Baldacci says. “I write until my tank is empty each day. I don’t count words or pages or whatever—that seems like an artiicial goal for me.” Clearly it’s a big tank, powering an energy-eicient engine with a lot of horsepower. And while he now has an oice staf helping with the day-to-day admin that comes with such success (maintaining his website and responding to the hundreds of reader letters he gets every week), he still rolls up his shirtsleeves for causes he believes in, serving on the Mark Twain House & Museum board of trustees (where he is the benefactor of the $25,000 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award), cofounding, with his wife, Michelle, the Wish You Well Foundation to foster and promote family literacy, and advocating on behalf of authors during the much-publicized dispute between Amazon and his publisher Hachette in 2014. Baldacci made time in the midst of all this for an hour in discussion with Writer’s Digest—unhurried, down to earth, insightful and inspiring. 64 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Memory Man is a huge hit—4.5 stars on Amazon with some 6,000 reviews. Where did the idea for Decker come from? Is his videographic memory a real condition you researched, or is it of your own devising? Hyperthymesia is a very real [but very rare] condition. Most people are born with it—the most famous example is the actress Marilu Henner, who starred in “Taxi.” It’s very easy for her to memorize her lines! [Laughs.] I’ve been fascinated by the brain for a long time. he brain is our most critical part of what we are and also controls our personality. So to delve into that, I wanted to take it to the extreme and have this guy who had been a normal person and had sufered a debilitating injury and came out of it as someone else. I wanted to create a character who had some baggage that I could explore dramatically in the course of the novel, and also give him this unique attribute that would work very well for him as a police oicer and a detective—but there are lots of things in his life that he’d prefer to forget, and for him time doesn’t heal wounds. Putting him into a mystery that challenged his strengths and his baggage at the same time was an interesting challenge. Usually I write about characters who are in an agency, or a police oice, or the federal government— hard-charging, ambitious, it. He was the exact opposite, and I just wanted to get out of my comfort zone and chase something that would make me stretch and do something diferent. How do you keep an emotional distance when writing a character like Decker? A lot of stuff in this book—losing a child, a school shooting—
falls into the “worst nightmare” category. Yet to write this I’d imagine you’d have to put yourself in Amos’s shoes, and for a lot of the story, they’re an awful place to be. Absolutely. You want to try to keep a bit of a distance just because you’re sane, but I had to sort of personally live that horror through Decker. You have the choice—you don’t have to write about these types of subjects. But if you do, it’s almost like being an actor playing a role—you just have to immerse yourself and go for it. I needed to feel what he was feeling and project my emotions through him onto the page, because it had to be a big thing to move Decker in the way that I needed him to move. It’s uncomfortable, but if you take it on, you have to jump in with both feet.
of it is this interior monologue of how he sees things in that school walking those corridors. … It was like a Hitchcockian ilm set and you’re trying to igure out where the parts are. So for me it was very much in those little details that are really hard to assemble properly. You want to show everybody everything but you don’t want them to say, “Oh, I know where that’s going,” and then go on Amazon and say, “Predictable. One star!” [Laughs.]
And Decker will be another series character for you? Yeah, I always intended him to come back. here’s just a lot let to him. He was one of the few characters that I knew sitting down with the irst book that he was going to be part of a series. Some of the others, like he Camel Club and even King and Maxwell, I wasn’t really sure until I got to the end of the book that I was going to bring them back. But with Decker I was pretty certain.
While laying the groundwork and foreshadowing and trying to be fair, I try to do something else, almost like a magician—I’m showing you what you need to see, but with my other hand, I’m doing a trick and drawing your attention away. So while Amos Decker is lumbering through the school, piling up deductions and inductions and conclusions, other bits of action are laring all over the place. People interrupt him; something else happens … not just to distract and delect, but to keep the action moving forward and keep the readers on their toes, going, I thought I knew where this was going, but all of a sudden there’s something else totally different, so I need to pay attention.
When The New York Times asked you about the key to a great thriller, you said a “contortionist writer at the helm who manages to stay a step ahead of even the most astute/ cynical story-gobblers. You make it look easy and seamless, when actually it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life and the whole thing seems held together by fraying duct tape and spit.” What are your favorite contortionist techniques? If you can take a little slice of the world and a little piece of dirt and really focus on details, you can drive large, seemingly spectacular movements. Memory Man was a great example. It was a very small stage that I created. It was this teeny town, and Decker lives in this Residence Inn, and most of the action takes place in a school. So the contortionist in Memory Man was, OK, I’ve got this very intimate stage, and I’ve got a very few number of characters, and mostly you’re going to see this big lumbering fat guy walking around, and a lot
“No one on earth is going to care more about your career than you.”
You’ve said you do a lot of writing in your head without doing strict outlines in advance. How can writers with similar approaches fill their toolkits with the right “duct tape and spit” to pull these kinds of plots together? You have to retain a sense of childlike wonder. You know, there’s nothing wrong with outlines. I do many outlines as I’m working through the book, but I don’t plot everything from A to Z. When I irst started writing Decker, how could I outline the guy? I had no idea who he was. I had to get on the page and kind of feel around and talk to him and see what he could do. here is sort of some type of structure even though you’re lying by the seat of your pants with duct tape and spit. I always have an idea of where I’d like the story to go, where I think I might end up, though that could change. It depends on you exercising your full WritersDigest.com I 65
Momentum & Inspiration imagination. Daydreaming a lot. Sensing what possibilities are out there. Not being afraid to change your mind on something. And that’s why I think sometimes these full-book outlines are counterintuitive and even destructive. Even if it doesn’t feel right as you’re writing it on the page, you feel like, I spent four months writing this outline, I’m sticking to the damn thing. But as a writer, it’s like you’re a ighter in the ring. You have to bob and weave and juke and move and change direction and tactics all the time based on what your instincts are telling you about what’s happening on the page, and I can’t emphasize greater how important that is. hat is going to determine whether the story turns out well. There’s a perception that sometimes when writers get to a certain level they start kind of phoning it in. You’re obviously not—the phrase “hardest working guy in showbiz” comes to mind. Why work quite so hard? Certainly inancially I don’t have to do this anymore. I spent 15 years of my life writing short stories, because I love short stories—and trust me, I’m sure you well know this, you’re never going to make a living selling short stories. hat’s one reason I went to law school. I never thought writing was going to be my occupation—it was going to be my curious sort of hobby, and I wrote because I couldn’t not write. To this day, people ask me, “Don’t you ever take a break?” and I’m like, “My whole life is a break!” [Laughs.] Because I get to do exactly what I want to do every day, and I actually get paid to do it. As a lawyer I spent enormous amounts of my life billing my time out in increments of 30 minutes—and I didn’t dislike being a lawyer, I think it gave me a lot of good skills and discipline, but it wasn’t how I wanted to spend my life—so I had a very big dose of, Gee, I’m going to spend my life doing something I really don’t love. Now the fact that I am a storyteller and I’ve always been a storyteller and I did it for free for a long chunk of my life, and now I get to do it every day—it’s amazing. I work hard because I just love what I’m doing. And once it’s not a job, then it just doesn’t seem like you’re working anymore. I know there are some writers who get to a certain level and then they start turning out a lot of books and they have other people’s names on them too. People ask: “Would you ever write with someone else?” and my standard response, and it’s true, is that I do not play well with others. [Laughs.] For me to have somebody 66 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
come in and I give them an idea and they write the story—that takes all the fun out of it. I want to be the one seeing it through. You’ve avoided being pigeonholed as a thriller author. Yet you wrote your first fantasy while hitting all your thriller deadlines and without even mentioning it to your agent until you were finished. Here’s how I approached he Finisher: My wife gave me this blank journal on Christmas Day in 2008—and I tell people, “Never give a writer blank paper on a major holiday, because you will never see them again for the rest of the day!” So of I went to my little cubby and I started writing Vega Jane. hat took ive years: 4 ½ of sweat equity, trying to igure out what the story was, and then six months of just enormous spurts of writing. But I didn’t want people to publish it [just] because it was me. So I sent it out to lots of diferent publishers under a pseudonym, Janus Pope—Janus is the Roman two-faced god. And Scholastic was the publisher that seemed so excited about the book. I showed up at their headquarters to meet them—and I’d written years ago a book for them in the 39 Clues series—and they were like, “Oh, why are you here?” and I said, “Well, you just bought my book.” And, “What book is that?” “he Finisher.” And they were like, “Holy shit! What? Where’s Janus Pope? We thought he was a Brit!” [Laughs.] So that was really more of a challenge to yourself? Absolutely. I had no interest in going to Hachette and saying, “I want to write a fantasy, and I’ll have it to you soon, and you’re going to publish it.” I wanted people who really knew fantasy to look at this book, think it was by an unknown person, and render their judgment. And if nobody had bought it, then it would have been ive years of my life gone, but that’s OK, because I’ve had lots of ups and downs in the writing business. You know, early on, where you get thousands of rejections and everybody’s telling you [that] you should do something else because you’re never going to be a writer—so I was kind of bulletproof on that stuf. But I wanted [to know], “Hey, is this good, or not good?” How do you think you’ve grown as a writer? I think I’ve gotten better at understanding the story. I always do a lot of research—I think in my earlier books
I kept too much of it in. hese days a month of research might end up being two sentences in the beginning, a paragraph in the middle and a sentence at the end. I think I’m better at moving the narrative of the story forward at a good clip. I go back and reread some of my earlier stuf and go, I could’ve said that entire page in a sentence and a half. You get a lot more economical. My plots are sharper. Earlier on I had too much going on. My agent would lament [when] I’d turn in a book, “his is a fantastic book. You know, it could be three books …” [Laughs.] Do you ever have to scrap a project that’s just not working, or have you moved beyond that now? Earlier on, yes, I’ve had to scrap projects. hese days, I really have crystallized it enough where it’s gotten to the level of development in my head where I know it’s a go. It’s like when pilots are going down the runway, approaching takeof speed, and then the copilot will tell the pilot, “V1!” V1 means you’re going up, whether you want to or not. We’re at the point of no return; you can’t abort the takeof anymore. So I’ve gotten better at waiting until I’m at V1 and I know I’m going up before I sit down and I start to spend enormous amounts of time on a particular project. But even given that, it’s that latitude where you might have written a lot of it, but if it’s not working, you’ve just got to say, “You know what, it’s not working. And I’m pissed! And I’m going to go have a drink. [Laughs.] But I’m going to come back, and I’m going to cut the hell out of this, because I have to.” You can’t take so much pride in ownership of something that you are unwilling to do what’s right for the story. You just have to be brutal. You spoke out during the Amazon/Hachette dispute, and have expressed concern about trends in digital publishing damaging authors’ profits. What do you think newer authors should be most wary of in today’s publishing climate? And what’s your best advice? he irst thing is that no one on earth is going to care more about your career than you. Not your agent, not your publisher, not friends in the industry. At the end of the day, you need to take responsibility for your career. And I know it’s hard when you’ve got your irst book and
you’re so excited that you’re like, “I’ll let other people take care of the royalties and all that—I’m just so excited, there’s my book on the shelf!” But at the end of the day, everything matters.
“As a writer, it’s like you’re a fighter in the ring. You have to bob and weave and juke and move and change direction and tactics all the time based on what your instincts are telling you about what’s happening on the page.” As a lawyer I never wanted to see people taken advantage of. You need to be your best advocate. You need to understand the inancial side of the business, because if you don’t, then you by default are going to be taken advantage of by people who do pay attention to those details. I’ve always maintained that no publisher should make more money of of a book than the writer does. hey publish thousands of books a year—but this is the only one (or two) I’m going to do. his also applies to the Amazons of the world. We the writers should be king of the hill because we provide the content. Kindles, Nooks, e-readers are great devices—if you have something to read on them. So writers need to lead from a position of strength that we are a special commodity, and people need to be fair to us. But just because people should be fair to you does not mean that people will. We got a good dose of that, even veteran writers, with this thing with Hachette and Amazon [a couple years ago]. And the industry really can’t survive too many more of those episodes I don’t think. On the plus side, there are opportunities for selfpublishing now in a way that gives you a platform that was never available before—but the caveat is, if it looks too good to be true, it oten is. So put on your business hat and your writing hat. You have to have both these days. WritersDigest.com I 67
Momentum & Inspiration You’re on the board that helps protect Mark Twain’s legacy. What do you hope your legacy will be? I’ll tell you this story. In the early ‘90s, before my irst book sold, I had this hot script, kind of like Die Hard in the White House, and I had an agent in L.A., and it was going to make it around to the studios. Everybody was like, “his is going to be huge, Warner Bros. and Paramount are all over this, could be a bidding war, blah blah blah.” I was up in New York—I was practicing law and our client was buying a bunch of banks, and I’d been sent up there to review leases. So I spent all day reading stuf that would make you want to slit your wrists ater 10 minutes. And I went back to my hotel that night, and because it was L.A. time versus East Coast time, around 11:00 I get a call from my agent. And he goes, “Well, Warner Bros. passed on it, and because they passed all the other studios thought there must be something wrong with it, so everybody passed. I’m sorry.” I remember looking out the window and thinking, OK, I’ve been doing this for 17 years—trying to get stuff sold and published—and I just spent three days of my life reviewing
bank ground leases, and maybe this is going to be it. I’m going to have my little hobby, and I’ll write for me only. But, I went back to D.C., and I had an idea for a book. I remember thinking, I’m going to be the only one who ever reads it, because obviously the breaks are just not going to happen for me. But the drive, there it was. I spent the next three years writing Absolute Power because it was a story that I wanted to tell. So I guess my legacy is, I’m a guy who’s always had a story that he’s wanted to tell. And that’s all I ever think about. And trust me, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that Absolute Power was going to take of. When I sent Absolute Power out to a bunch of agents, I had already started writing my second novel, because I igured, I’m not going to hear back from these guys, I’ll just write another novel and have some fun with it. hat’s me—just a guy who’s always chasing the next story. NW Jessica Strawser (jessicastrawser.com) is the editorial director of Writer’s Digest. Her debut novel, Almost Missed You, is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.
EDITOR ON TAP · Critique & advice on plot / character / structure · Full editing / extensive polishing as needed · Fiction / Fictionalized Fact / Memoirs
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RAINBOW ROWELL:
In Living Color In writing fan favorites across genres, Rainbow Rowell has tapped the pulse of storytelling at its finest—and not surprisingly, it begins and ends with the heart. BY TYLER MOSS
ainbow Rowell believes every story “is driven by relationships—whether we tell it that way or not.” his will come as no surprise to readers of her ive novels, as Rowell’s ability to depict deep, genuine connections between diverse characters is her hallmark. Her irst novel, Attachments (about an Internet security oicer who falls in love with an employee through monitoring her email), was dubbed one of Kirkus’ “Outstanding Debuts of 2011.” But it was in early 2013 that Rowell was vaulted into the literary spotlight, as her runaway crossover Eleanor & Park took its place among such hits as he Fault in Our Stars and he Perks of Being a Walllower as a title equally recognizable in high school halls and adult book club meetings. A tale of irst love between teens with disparate backgrounds at an Omaha high school in the 1980s, what makes the story stand out is the viscerally real—and, at times, heartbreaking—portrayal of youthful romance between the two title characters. It’s Romeo and Juliet with less melodrama and more comic books. In addition to being a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, Eleanor & Park won the Michael L. Printz Honor for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, and was named one of the best books of 2013 by Publishers Weekly, NPR and he New York Times Book Review.
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Momentum & Inspiration Rowell’s follow-ups, the adult novel Landline (in which a 30-something Los Angeles TV writer attempts to mend her marriage through a magical telephone) and YA smash Fangirl did not disappoint. In the acclaimed Fangirl, college writing student Cath attempts to ind her narrative voice by composing fan iction about her favorite books—a series of children’s adventure stories starring a gited wizard named Simon Snow. As Cath struggles to adjust to life on campus, her story is interspersed with passages of her fan ic—a device that took on a life of its own, prompting Rowell to undertake a Simon Snow novel from her own perspective. he result, the October 2015 release Carry On, takes metaiction to a whole new level. Rowell’s play on the “Chosen One” paradigm—a la Harry Potter or he Lord of the Rings—Carry On was named one of the best books of the year by TIME magazine, School Library Journal, NPR and he Millions. It quickly joined Fangirl on he New York Times bestseller list, where both books sat together for 14 weeks. he plot revolves around supernaturally-gited Simon and his group of friends in their last year at a British boarding school for witches, wizards and the occasional pixie. While it’s quickly clear that a magical war is afoot, the real core of the narrative is the budding “will they/ won’t they” romantic tension between Simon and his nemesis, Baz. hink Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy slash iction—a genre of fan iction in which admirers imagine mutual attraction between characters of the same sex. Which brings us back to where we started: “If you’re building relationships,” Rowell says, “and those relationships make sense to people, that’ll take you most of the way.” Always one to challenge herself creatively, Rowell is now taking a crack at writing graphic novels, as well as translating Eleanor & Park into a screenplay for DreamWorks. She took a breather to chat with Writer’s Digest. What appeals to you about tackling an archetype like the “Chosen One” and making it your own? I’d had a steady diet of those stories since I was aware of myself, even before I was reading. I’m drawn to the certainty of them. I like it when a character’s path is pretty clear, that this is who they are: hey’re going to save the world. When you’re the “Chosen One,” there’s not a lot of choosing [let] for you. You do what you have to do. I’ve always been drawn to that clarity, and I’ve always been 70 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
drawn to the idea of having a mission or a calling— which is also about clarity. You know exactly why you’re on Earth. Which is something I don’t know about myself, and I don’t oten feel. It was probably inevitable that some of that was going to come out of me someday, because I’ve taken in so much of it.
“Every real thing that happens in our lives, even if it’s a war, is driven by the relationships of the people involved—where they are in their lives.” For a novel about a magical war, Carry On is fundamentally about relationships. How did the dynamic of the love story drive the plot forward? It isn’t as if war is this external force that is visited upon us from another galaxy. War comes out of us. Our problems come out of where we are and who we are. For the people at the heart of the war, their personalities and relationships are a huge part of this event. It seems to me like a very realistic way to tell stories—to talk about the relationships of the people involved. Did you approach the relationship between Simon and Baz—two male wizards—any differently than you approached love in your prior novels? At the beginning, I was more thoughtful. heir experience is not my experience—[though] you can say that for any book, any time you cross into someone else’s identity. I asked myself if it should afect how I write them. I was very conscious of it not being written in a way that fetishized their relationship, or turned them into props. I didn’t want the focus to be on their sexuality, because I think sometimes we, as a culture, see gay people as hypersexualized—we see their identity as their sex. I didn’t want that. When you’re writing a love story, you want it to be really rare and magical and special. I thought, What’s the difference between that and something that would fetishize them? So I was thoughtful at the beginning, then realized I should write them like I write my other
characters—which is just to disappear into them. hey don’t fall in love diferently than a straight couple. hey’re human beings and this is their love story. Carry On is your first pure fantasy novel. What’s the key to building a believable magical world? Follow your own rules. Readers want to believe—we want to suspend our disbelief. If you love fantasy, you don’t walk into a fantasy book cynical and critical. You really just accept. he author has to screw it up for you. You want to be taken on a trip. Readers want to go there with you—you just don’t want to shock them out of it. More important is writing with a consistent tone. I think relationships are probably more important than world-building. I mean, I buy into some really silly worlds. When I’m watching “Star Wars,” I’m not thinking about, Why are there human beings here and not there? I’m not taking apart the world-building. I’m more like, Oh, these characters are wonderful, and I’m feeling swept away by them. I deinitely felt that with [“Bufy the Vampire Slayer”]: I still have no idea what the Hellmouth is, who is running it or why—I’ve never gotten it and I’ve never cared—you don’t feel like the needle is being ripped of the record every few chapters. Your books include diverse characters without making their diversity a defining characteristic. Do you think that attitudes about diversity in publishing have shifted, or that the industry still has a ways to go? I’m not actually inside publishing, so from where I am and where I work, I can’t say, “Here’s my read now versus publishing 10 years ago”—I don’t know. I would say there’s probably still a long way to go, because I still think that our books are dominated by white authors writing white characters. Even from my distant perspective, I would say, clearly, there’s a long way to go.
I [do] think perspectives have changed a lot. People are more aware. Before, white people especially weren’t even thinking about it. My perspective in writing my own books is that I’m writing about the real world. he world I live in is not all white. I do live in Omaha, so it’s whiter than most places, but even then, that becomes part of the book. In Eleanor & Park, you get Park talking about being one of the only Asian people in a white school. In Fangirl, you get Cath moving from the least white part of the state to the university, which is very white. Race is a part of our lives, and diversity is just a part of our lives. So it feels like a very realistic way to write, to me. I’d feel so ashamed of myself if my books were less diverse than my life.
“If you’re building relationships, and those relationships make sense to people, that’ll take you most of the way, [as long as] the tone is consistent.” What was your experience like selling your first novel, Attachments? I just had really no idea what was happening. And I didn’t know to what extent it would change my life. I worked on Attachments for many years—I set it aside for two years at one point—and would come back to it. It took somewhere between ive to seven years. I did most of the writing in a year and half at the end. hen I thought, OK, maybe I’m done. Maybe I just needed to write it, and now I’m just going to set it aside and do something else. I think I was afraid of rejection. I’ve always been afraid to try anything big—my fear has WritersDigest.com I 71
Momentum & Inspiration always been greater than my ambition in that way. So the idea of querying an agent or penetrating the world of publishing seemed unlikely or impossible. But my husband was like, “Well you wrote this thing. Why wouldn’t you try? You have nothing to lose.” When I started pitching agents, that was incredibly dificult for me. Everyone wants something diferent, or has a diferent opinion about what sells or what works. I found it so confusing. So I did it very slowly—I’d pitch one or two agents at a time and wait for them to get back to me. It took me 13 months to get an agent. When the book sold, it sold at auction. And I didn’t know what to expect. During that publishing process, I didn’t know, “Are they doing a good job? Is this a good publisher?” I didn’t trust my instincts necessarily, because I’d always think, I’m the person here who doesn’t know anything, so I should just listen. So you put aside Attachments for two years. What’s your advice for aspiring writers who are constantly shuffling their priorities? I got pregnant and my husband opened a business—it was a laser tag business—and I would work there every day ater work. So I was a newspaper columnist [at the Omaha World-Herald], and would go work at the laser tag business at night and on the weekends, and I was pregnant. And honestly, being pregnant at that point kind of felt like … the book was not a goal for me, if that makes sense. It was more of a hobby. It was something I’d do to spend time with my friends—we’d write together. It was something I did to distance my brain from my day job. My day job at that point … it was time for me to quit, but I didn’t know how. It was an escape, writing Attachments. I got pregnant and I thought, Maybe this is my new thing. I’ll escape into this—take my extra energy and think about having a baby. Going into my son’s birth and his irst few months, I didn’t write. I was feeling depressed. My sister said, “Weren’t you writing a book? I want to see it.” So I showed her what I had. She thought it was really funny. hat was what I needed to get back into it, because I hadn’t let anyone see it, but the irst person who read it really liked it. She let little notes in the margins—“Funny! Funny!” Setting is such an important part of your books, from specific time periods (the 1980s in Eleanor & Park) to Nebraska itself (Attachments, E&P, 72 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Fangirl). What role do place and time play in shaping your stories? With Attachments and Eleanor & Park, I really wanted to capture how Omaha felt at those times. How it felt to be in that neighborhood. Because I can. I can maybe write about what it was like to live in East Omaha in 1986 better than anyone else currently writing. I was there and I saw it and know what it smells like. So part of it is just trying to capture that. It’s a question I get asked a lot, and I ind it’s diicult for me—because I’m trying to capture something, but I’m not doing it in a journalistic way. It’s not for a time capsule or for history. I’m more trying to make it feel very speciic, so you can get a speciic feeling from it. I’ve ventured outside of it in the last two books. When I started, I think I felt very safe writing about Omaha and Nebraska, because it’s where I’m from, and these are the people I know best. I wonder if the fact that I’ve traveled so much in the past two years is the reason I felt conident enough to [set] Landline and Carry On somewhere else. By the time I’d written Carry On, I’d been to the U.K. three times. hat doesn’t make me an expert or anything, but I felt like I could hear the rhythms a little bit better. You’ve said Eleanor & Park was a very personal story for you, and in Fangirl, Cath’s professor tells her that strong writing is derived from personal experience. How do you translate that onto the page? It’s mostly subconscious, I think. I do it without realizing it. It’s like all of the things that I’ve experienced or witnessed or heard are inside of me. And sometimes I can’t access them any other way. Sometimes I couldn’t recall a memory if you asked me to, but then if I’m writing, it comes out of me. With Eleanor & Park, I intentionally set that book in the time and place that was the most turbulent in my life. It was that neighborhood, that time, that situation. he characters then went on and had their own things happen. So all of those memories sort of rose up. It’s like you’re turning on a tap—you’re writing and all this stuf is coming out. You’re not actively seeking or digging, but you’ve turned on the tap, so lots of things are moving inside of you. You’ve introduced movement into your brain and your heart. NW Tyler Moss is the managing editor of Writer’s Digest.
IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: ART MARI
FINISHING
Strong
What makes final chapters truly memorable? Here’s how you can drive your own stories to a satisfying ending, every time. BY JACQUELYN MITCHARD
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he Final Draft his could be the beginning of the end. No kidding. Take it seriously. Anyone can snap out a great irst paragraph (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness …”). A great last line is harder to summon. When the roll call of memorable endings is read, the same lines invariably surface: he Great Gatsby’s “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” comes to mind, as does Scout Finch’s grateful dawning of recognition, “Hey, Boo.” Modern literature seems to favor more gauzy, inconclusive endings. Truly symphonic endings, the kind that draw together the threads of a story (though not necessarily wrapping every one up in a tidy bow) are increasingly hard to ind outside of straight genre novels (mysteries, police procedurals, romances). But does this trend in what writers want to write really relect what readers want to read?
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One real constant pertains: A great ending resonates. It’s unforgettable for a reader—though for a writer, getting there can feel like trying to ski uphill. Literary iction has long eschewed the encompassing ending as not only disingenuous, but discordant with the efort to efect a frank portrayal of life writ large— the hallmark of the best iction. Such ambiguity may be a viable post-millennial trend, as the late David Foster Wallace suggested when he admitted that his masterwork, Ininite Jest, simply “stopped” rather than truly ending. And yet others are of the opinion that the end of real endings is a serious problem on today’s bookshelves. “[here is too much] emphasis on how the story is told over the actual story being told,” says B.A. Shapiro, bestselling author of he Art Forger and he Muralist. “But these are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, both are absolute necessities.” 74 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Book clubs, discussions forums and writing conference panels are increasingly illed with readers who’ve begun to complain about books that seemingly run out of steam. he well-regarded organizer of a long-running book club recently tweeted, “I couldn’t tell it ended. I honestly thought there was a misprint and some pages were missing.” Is a renaissance of the great narrative ending on the horizon? Certainly, not even half the attention accorded to the art of the great irst line is paid to the crat of the inal curtain. For every dozen how-to features leading writers across the desert of the blank page to the big, bad beginning of a narrative, there are scarcely any about how to end them. But don’t despair. You’re reading one now.
THE EVOLUTION OF ENDINGS Why have endings changed dramatically over time? Of course, not only endings have changed: Trends in the way stories are written change as oten as fashion does. It is interesting to note, however, that the socalled “lorid” style of an earlier time, as illustrated in the work of Charles Dickens, may not be so profoundly diferent from the efusions of supposedly spare contemporary writers such as Cormac McCarthy. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote, lest anyone be confused, at great length: Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
More than a hundred years later, the laconic McCarthy is no slouch at busting out the turgid images: He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings.
Still, there’s no denying that the character of endings can be a reliable index to dating a piece of writing. Why?
Is it the urgency, or the importance, of a great ending that has changed with time? Or has the art been forgotten? Has the big, declarative ending of the 19th century (Jane Eyre’s “Reader, I married him”) or the philosophical coda of the 20th (Norman Maclean’s “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it”) become unfashionable? Do more writers today decline to crat such a conclusion because it seems hokey or dated? Or do they simply not know how? An acknowledged maestro of the ending, Chris Bohjalian (bestselling author of 18 novels, including Midwives and his latest, he Guest Room) says, “We live in a meta world. We live in a digital world. Yes, endings have changed. Certainly readers are more tolerant of endings that are messy and vague, and I applaud that.” Bohjalian admits, though, that some of his favorite endings are “a master class in how to pull the rug out from under the reader.” He cites the great gotcha of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, and the much-praised conclusion of Atonement, in which Ian McEwan performs a stylistic ictional feat of double reverse that leaves the reader gasping with equal parts vexation and admiration. So what, then, do terriic writers think goes into a terriic ending?
THE MAKINGS OF A PHOTO FINISH It goes without saying that a conclusion must, to some degree, conclude or resolve the plot of a novel or, to a lesser degree, a short story. Oten, the protagonist experiences an epiphany that leaves him knowing something that wasn’t clear before. (hough not always. At the end of Edith Wharton’s classic he House of Mirth, Lily Bart has not at all progressed in understanding, hence the nature of her tragedy.) here are other important ingredients. A certain element of surprise, as Bohjalian noted earlier, is essential: Not only does it add to the frisson of the inal movement of the composition, it afords the reader a sense of smarts, of inclusion, a reward for the challenges of the reading odyssey. Beyond surprise, there must be a certain satisfaction for the reader, a sense of “rightness.” If a story is a promise made, the ending is the promise kept, in ways as various as the stories themselves. “he best endings are both surprising and not surprising,” Shapiro says. “I’m always hoping the reader will respond, ‘Of course, this makes so much sense! I should’ve known, but I didn’t see it coming.’ I try to
maintain the balance between dangling the many possibilities before the reader, drawing her into and through the novel, and giving enough hints of the ultimate end that she won’t feel blindsided [as by a deus ex machina] but also doesn’t igure it out too soon.”
A certain element of surprise is essential: Not only does it add to the frisson of the final movement of the composition, it affords the reader a sense of smarts, of inclusion, a reward for the challenges of the reading odyssey. Some of the best endings also ind a way of lending meaning to what has transpired, and of looking ahead. Bohjalian points to two of his favorite inales—the curtain of Anna Karenina and the aforementioned ending of To Kill a Mockingbird. Diferent as they are, each is, in its own way, a forward-looking statement of basic human hope. he quiet events of Harper Lee’s gentle, restorative and meditative conclusion are essentially the airmation of a circle of safety in a hostile world: He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.
And Tolstoy’s compassionate, involved omniscient narrator who tells of the death of frivolous, beautiful Anna also airms the importance of human goodness: I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was
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The Final Draft before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.
Lisa Genova, best known for her novel of early-onset Alzheimer’s, Still Alice, is a Harvard-trained brain scientist as well as a writer who faces the challenge of inding redemption in her stories of characters who are literally doomed. Her most recent ofering, Inside the O’Briens, follows Boston cop Joe O’Brien, diagnosed in his 40s with deadly Huntington’s disease. “here is no cure for Alzheimer’s or Huntington’s disease, and so I can’t save my characters from their illnesses,” Genova says. “Yet there can be profound healing—acceptance, forgiveness, understanding, love. I wouldn’t say that my endings are romantic or triumphant, but there are deeply human lessons hard-earned, ways of reframing hopeless situations that are intended to leave readers feeling inspired and connected. hese characters are ultimately about living in the face of dying.” Bohjalian also says that he strives for endings that are authentically moving—not necessarily “happy” ones, but endings that deliver on the covenant he makes with his reader. “hat’s really important to me because so much of my work is about, by design, dread. In my opinion, nothing keeps us turning the pages like dread. And so when they reach the end, I want there to be a payof that is poignant and powerful and, most important, real.” But is that planned? If the reader doesn’t know what the ending is going to be, does the writer?
EYE ON THE PRIZE he very whif of “planning” a story seems, for some, to be the antithesis of serendipity and discovery, the essence of creation—but even so, many writers of renown have some idea of the destination in mind. Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World and Disobedience, has said that she knows, in essence, what the inal sentence of a story will be, and the rest of the book is writing her way to that sentence. Genova, however, compares writing a book to climbing a mountain, and says that until she’s at least two-thirds of the way into the drat—at the apex of the mountain— she doesn’t really know what the ending will be. Bohjalian, too, says his endings begin to materialize from the forward het of each novel, well past the halfway point. Shapiro, whose own favorite ending is that of Patricia Highsmith’s he Talented Mr. Ripley, is of two minds. “I very much disagree with the idea that planning is a bad 76 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
thing, that discipline by necessity extinguishes creativity. here is nothing that annoys me more than to read a well-written novel with fascinating characters, cool settings and provocative themes that then drits of into nothing at the end. I believe these books are written by authors who have been told that thinking ahead will stile their imagination. To me, it’s a huge risk to begin what will be a multiyear journey without knowing where you want to end up. Some writers may be able to pull this of, but unfortunately, far too many can’t.” One important consideration is what kind of ending you will write. Even if the actual words themselves aren’t manifest, mull the nature of the ending: Will it take the form of an epilogue, a quiet restatement of established themes, a forward look at the future, a inal twist, a clifhanger setting up a sequel, a conclusion that embodies an unresolved mystery, a big revelation before a summative denouement, a tragic but philosophical ending, a traditional happy ending, or the happy-sad ending?
A book is a journey, a substantial investment of time and faith for a reader. When readers say that they didn’t want the story to end, but that they couldn’t wait to find out what happened, writers know that they’ve navigated that passage with grace. Whatever you aim for, most important is that the integrity of the story is preserved. A tense novel of psychological suspense doesn’t usually end with a jump scare; a book about manners and marriages in suburbia may begin with a murder, but doesn’t usually end with one—except when it does. As all good writers know, conventions hold true only until someone igures out an intriguing way to slip out of one, and then all bets are of. Generally, what follows the close of the action is low tension, since the ending is really the beginning—the
beginning of the reader’s resumption of life in the real world. he passage through that vestibule should be accomplished rather quickly and easily; the reader will have little emotional tolerance for a lengthy explanation. Still, only one real constant pertains: A great ending resonates. It’s unforgettable for a reader—though for a writer, getting there can feel like trying to ski uphill. Shapiro says she has come to accept that her irst ending may be her worst ending. “I struggle,” she says. “Always, always, always. I pride myself on my endings, and I work to make them the absolute best they can be. his oten means revising and/or rejecting many of my early ideas and writing up to 10 full drats, as I did with both he Muralist and he Art Forger, to get it right. his isn’t easy and it can take an inordinately long time, but I believe it’s worth it.” For Genova, once she looks down from the mountain and sees that ending, she is unwavering in her commitment to it. With Inside the O’Briens, she knew that the ending would be “controversial for some readers, but it wasn’t for me. It was exactly where the characters needed to go.”
One thing about which few writers would disagree is the relative importance of endings. A book is a journey, a substantial investment of time and faith for a reader. When readers say that they didn’t want the story to end, but that they couldn’t wait to ind out what happened, writers know that they’ve navigated that passage with grace. “hey say that the irst page of your book sells that book, and the last page of your book sells the next,” Shapiro says. “I couldn’t agree more.” Bohjalian advises fellow writers to be patient with their attempts, and to have faith that they’ll get there eventually. He adds that no time spent writing a great ending is time wasted. “First impressions may be what count in real life,” he says, “but I think it’s the last impressions that matter most in iction.” And that’s the end of that. NW Jacquelyn Mitchard is the bestselling author of 12 novels, among them The Deep End of the Ocean and her newest, Two If by Sea. She is editor-in-chief of young adult imprint Merit Press, and a professor of fiction and creative nonfiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
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he Final Draft
Audience
ASK THE
You may have nailed all the basic elements of your story, but if readers still aren’t truly engaged, your novel will fall flat. Revise with these strategies in mind, and you’ll hook them to the finish.
ecently, when I asked an editor what sort of projects she’s interested in, she said, “What I’m really looking for is a manuscript where the words just fall away from the page and I forget I’m reading. I want to be completely lost in a ictional world.” hat got me thinking. As a literary agent, that’s exactly what I’m hunting for, too. But I oten ind that even well-plotted and cleanly written novels just don’t quite feel real to me. Why not? Well, essentially, you need to turn your reader into your story’s co-author. As you prepare to get your novel submission-ready, do you have a sense that your story might still be missing this
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crucial element? hen it’s time to give your manuscript a reality check.
A GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE Remember how real your ictional world felt to you as you were penning your irst drat? In his book he Art of Fiction, John Gardner talked about this phenomenon, saying, “In the writing state—the state of inspiration— the ictive dream springs up fully alive: he writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms.” his experience is pretty similar to when, as a child, you played make-believe. With the power of pretend, a
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BY MARIE LAMBA
simple rock became a spaceship; old clothes became a queen’s wardrobe. It all felt real. hat’s because it all happened within your own head. Nothing is richer than our imagination. It follows, then, that if you can engage your audience’s imagination, you’ll suck them deep into your world. Radio shows of old capitalized on this. Listeners heard simple sound efects and limited descriptions, then illed in the details in their minds. Suddenly they were no longer sitting in front of a radio—they were there. Overwriting is one of the surest ways to kill a reader’s engagement. If, for example, your scenery is too elaborately described, you could be shutting your reader out of the co-creating process. But carefully pare down your descriptions, and you’ll ind the reader’s imagination kicking into high gear, with vivid results. It’s an important trick that can really bring settings to life. Readers have in their minds a seemingly endless library of common images and related sensory memories. hat means whenever you mention a setting—whether it be a forest, a classroom, a barn or a beach—familiar images and experiences come to mind. Test this out by asking a few people to quickly describe a seedy bar. You’ll ind folks saying pretty much the same things: It’s dark, sour-smelling, and has sticky loors, ripped barstools and some shady characters sitting in the shadows. Common images and impressions should be an important part of your writer’s toolkit. Look at a scene in your own novel. What elements are already swirling in someone’s brain when you merely mention the setting? Take that information as a given and then trim your description, leaving room for those common images to fully materialize in the reader’s imagination. You can insert some establishing details, and point out something atypical if needed, but otherwise keep things lean. Now, suddenly, the reader inds himself helping to form the scene. He’ll be fully immersed and—ta-da!—feel like he’s really there. I have a ine art background, and I’ve come to learn that as a result, my irst drats tend to be loaded with overwritten images and settings. When it comes time to revise, trimming these descriptions is always irst on my list. In the original manuscript of my young adult novel Drawn, for example, I’d waxed poetic about the castle’s dungeon, detailing its layout, materials, the mood it created, etc. On revision, I thought about what most people would imagine when they heard the word dungeon. hen I cut things way back, focusing instead on what my claustrophobic heroine
would notice most, and leaving plenty of space on the page for readers to inish the picture in their own minds. Here’s how it reads in the published book: The stairs turn and I suck in big gulping breaths, convinced I’m suffocating. A few more steps and the dungeon opens before me. But it’s small. Too small. One high window crisscrossed with black bars and draped with cobweb provides the only glimpse of freedom.
I used this technique throughout the novel, and reviewers praised my spectacular settings. But really, they should have given at least partial credit for this to the readers. What if your setting is in a world no one has ever seen? You might be surprised to ind that there are still plenty of common images to pull from. In the opening of his fantasy novel Shadowbridge, my client Gregory Frost readily draws from familiar images as he brings this unfamiliar world of interconnecting bridges to life: Leodora climbed up the outside of the western pylon, going up the rungs hand over hand. To either side of her, statues of avatars and demons, monsters and heroes hung out from the corners to stare at one another, so that the climber between them could not help sensing the painted eyes that seemed to watch her hooded figure as it ascended.
He then writes that the two moons of Saphon and Gyjio rise like “two furtive eyes,” again linking the unfamiliar with something we can all picture.
A writer can do only so much alone. For a story to truly come alive and feel believable, a writer must use the reader. ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING Just as we all have a huge library of images in our brains, we also have a vast emotional vocabulary to draw from. Starting at birth, we have learned to “read” a person’s mood by the tone of her voice, her gestures and expressions, and reactions. No one needs to go around whispering in our WritersDigest.com I 79
The Final Draft ear, “She’s really angry,” or, “She’s feeling lonely.” In your novel, are you constantly spelling out how a character feels? When you fall into this trap, your words are getting in the way of a reader becoming more deeply involved. Instead, try to imply emotions and let your readers draw on their own emotional smarts. Here’s a moment from my client M.P. Barker’s YA historical novel Mending Horses. Billy, a runaway girl disguised as a boy, returns with her friend Daniel to discover the fate of her siblings: “Where you been off to all this time, that you don’t know what’s become of them?” Billy twisted her cap into a ropy mess, her teeth gnawing her lower lip. “Working,” Daniel said. “Got himself a job as a peddler’s assistant, making decent wages, he has. And now he’s come back to help the rest of ’em out.” “Well, you’re too late, aren’t you then, lad?” said Mrs. Carney. “They’re all of them dead. Dead of the fever.” Billy hissed in a sharp breath, recoiling as if she’d been struck.
Barker didn’t have to say how Billy was feeling. We, the readers, interpreted it. And that set us irmly inside the scene. It also helped us empathize with the character in a way that being told “she was shocked” never could.
Less Is More • Scan your novel for huge blocks of prose. Are you overloading the reader with details in these sections? Find areas where you can pare back your description, and invite the reader to complete the image in his own mind. • Search your manuscript for the words feel and felt, and for words describing emotions that might occur in your novel, such as hate, angry or embarrassed. Have you stated an obvious emotion and gotten in the way of your reader figuring those feelings out? Can you reveal these emotions instead? • Pay special attention to the end of every chapter. Are you spelling out the next step for your characters? Is it needed? Can you cut back or rephrase in a way that can instead lead the reader to anticipate what might come next?
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But what about a novel told in the irst-person point of view? How do you avoid telling the narrator’s feelings? I see lots of these manuscripts in my submissions inbox laden with statements such as, “I was so angry!” or, “I’d never felt so hurt in my entire life.” But even when writing in irst person, you can trust your readers to interpret emotions. Here’s an example of how I handled this in my own YA novel What I Meant... . In this scene, teen Sang Jumnal is dealing with her overbearing aunt: “You must tell me every word this person is saying,” my aunt says. She is scowling now. As if I am hiding the answer to her problems. As if the entire universe is out to get her. I smile at this.
No need for Sang to tell you how she feels. In your own novel, ind spots where you can allow the readers to more deeply interpret emotions, and you’ll be helping them feel more present alongside the characters in the story.
FOREGONE CONCLUSIONS As a reader gets to know your protagonist, turning the pages through your chapters should be a bit like hanging out with a close friend or a family member. You all share a history now, and you, the author, should be putting this to good use. Which means not overstating your character’s thoughts and plans. Here’s a before-and-ater example of how your reader’s insider knowledge can be employed in late-novel dialogue. First, let’s take a look at an overwritten version: “Listen, Nick, I didn’t mean to call you a loser when you got laid off yesterday.” “Scarlett, you don’t have to talk about this. I know you were worried about your aunt, and that she’s been leaning on you for money. You were depending on me.” “No, really, I have to tell you how sorry I am.” “No need to say all that. I have an aunt just like yours who has been drowning in gambling debt, remember?”
Now, here’s that same dialogue with the reader being treated as an insider: “Listen, Nick, I didn’t—” “Forget about it.” “No, I really have to tell—” “Scarlett, you don’t.” He takes her hand. “I have an aunt, too, remember?”
his demands more of your reader, and sets him not only in the scene, but inside your characters’ heads. While this shorthand between characters (and your reader) likely isn’t a it for your opening pages, the further the reader is into your story, the more she can jump to conclusions not just with dialogue, but with thoughts and plotting. Ask yourself: Can I let the reader in on secrets shared between characters? Are there ways to add inside jokes that only some of the characters (and the reader) will get? Going back to our earlier example, imagine that as the scene begins, Scarlett and her aunt (and the reader) already know that Nick lost his job. Nick enters the room, and the aunt says, “So, how’s the job coming along?” When Nick says, “Great! Never better,” the aunt and Scarlett need only to share a look for the reader to understand what’s going through their minds. In stories told in irst-person POV, it’s common for writers to state not only the narrator’s every emotion, but also her every thought. If this is something you do, use your word processor to search your manuscript for the words thought and think, and see if you can rephrase those passages in ways that invite the reader in. As you reread, look for moments when the character is scheming about what to do next. Can your character instead hint at her next action? For example, if you ind her thinking this: She wants to play rough? Well, then, I’m going to start a rumor that will make her sorry she ever messed with me. I’ll put it on Facebook and I’ll tag the biggest gossip in the school.
Try something like this: She wants to play rough, huh? OK, fine. I open my laptop and get busy.
Now your reader is leaping ahead with your character, and scheming right along with her. Writing a mystery? hen you deinitely don’t want all of your detective’s cards on the table. Look at how his thoughts and conclusions are revealed. If the reader is told what every clue means as it’s discovered, what’s the fun in that? In successful suspense stories, a detective might say something like, “So she ordered the oyster stew? But didn’t inish it?” and then raise his eyebrows and say, “Let’s go!” he reader knows that the dialogue brought on an aha moment, but is let combing through the clues herself to
igure out the truth. Now the reader becomes the detective! hat’s exactly the thrill readers of suspense are ater. In any genre, you can similarly heighten suspense by looking for moments that can hint at what the next action will be instead of having it all there in black and white. Ends of chapters are great moments of transition. But take care not to always spell out where things are headed next. Which do you think would be more intriguing as a chapter end? his: Henry looked at her, and she knew she would follow him out the door and to the train station. She knew he only had to ask, and she would obey just like she always had.
Or this: Henry looked at her. “Coming?” he asked.
If you’ve done a good enough job of crating your character, readers will guess what the answer may be. Note that sometimes you may want them to guess incorrectly. Sometimes your character will change, or there will be a twist. And sometimes your narrator will be unreliable. hen you’ll really have your reader busy speculating and second-guessing as patterns emerge. Either way, your audience will be fully engaged. And when readers are thinking for your character, they feel they are your character. You can’t get much more real than that!
THE REAL WORLD Whatever type of novel you’re writing, you always want your reader right there with you, completing your story by illing in images, interpreting emotions and guessing at your characters’ thoughts and next actions. Once you get to this level of involvement, you won’t be the only one writing your story—your reader will truly become your co-author. And as you look over your manuscript for ways to partner with readers, keep in mind that agents and editors are readers, too. Get them to be your co-authors, and they’ll be walking in the shoes of your characters, living within your imaginary world, and wanting your novel to touch others in that very same way. Now that’s a reality we’d all like to see. NW Marie Lamba (marielamba.com) is the author of the YA novels What I Meant …, Over My Head and Drawn, and of the upcoming picture book Green, Green. She’s also an associate literary agent at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency (jdlit.com).
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he Final Draft
REVISION IN THE
eal World
The road to publica paved with rewrites. An award-winning novelist shares before-and-afters from her drafts, alongside tips for your own works-in-progress. BY ELIZABETH SIMS
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In the spirit of showing as well as telling, I’ve taken excerpts from my own published novels, before and ater self-editing, to illustrate how revision looks in real life. Each one focuses on elements of iction that are likely on your own checklist for improving your work-in-progress. EX AMPLE 1:
VOICE, SETTING, EXPOSITION We know openings are crucial. Let’s look at a before-andater of the irst lines of what became Damn Straight, the award-winning Book 2 of my Lillian Byrd Crime Series. Early draft: The power came back up for about ten seconds—not much time—then went down again. I had quivered a little at that moaning, primeval sound. It was March, it was cold and dark, it was blowing, and the freezing rain was dragging down electrical lines all over the place. I like winter, have always liked winter, but this one had been a long and sorry one, and spring was supposed to be coming. It was nowhere in sight, though. Most people think February the worst month of winter, but they forget all about March. You’re starting to think about spring, you remember warm balmy March thaws, and your
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ears ago when I took lessons in symphonic percussion, my teacher would watch me play études. For some time I strained to make my snare drum rolls smooth and even. He suggested changes in my grip and technique, but still I struggled. At last I handed him my sticks and said, “Please.” He illed the studio with rolls loud and sot, coarse and ine, and at once I got it: how to combine lively power with delicacy. I saw how each fast, quick move lowed into the next. Observing irsthand has always helped me, whether learning music or golf, sewing or swimming. Where theory and instruction fall short, examples can give you the gestalt of the thing; they can switch on that magic lightbulb that makes you think, Oh! I see how I can apply that to my own work! When I do manuscript development and editing, I almost always take the opportunity to rewrite a sentence or passage here and there, or even provide bits of new material, to illustrate my comments. Leaving the original wording in place, I write “JAS” (“Just a suggestion”) in my margin notes. Because we’ve all been in the same boat: You have a story completed, and you know it’s good, but you also feel it’s not as good as it ought to be. How do you evaluate? How do you correct things?
reservoir of strength and cheer against cold and trouble is low. You long to be restored by the sight of a crocus, just one, but it doesn’t come.
his scene-setting is necessary; there’s not much wrong with it, but there’s also not much verve. Just about anyone could be speaking here, don’t you agree? Especially in opening scenes (and even more so in series novels), it’s essential for your narrator to have a distinctive voice. Revised, published version: The power struggled back up for about ten seconds— ten brown little seconds—then failed again. I shivered at the moaning, primeval sound it made and tugged down the cuffs of my sweater. It was March, it was darker than a stack of black cats, and wind-lashed sleet was dragging down utility lines from Monroe to Saginaw. This winter had been a long and sorry one, and spring was supposed to be coming. Most people vent their winter rage on February, but how easy it is to forget treacherous March until it rolls around. You’re anticipating spring, you’re remembering a bygone balmy March thaw, and your reservoir of strength and cheer against cold and trouble is low. You long to be restored by the sight of a crocus poking its brave yellow petals through a patch of snow—just one goddamn crocus is all you ask—but it doesn’t come.
he voice is more active now, with more speciics— tugging the sweater cufs shows (rather than telling) that it’s cold; city names start to establish location. “Windlashed sleet” is stronger than “freezing rain,” and “poking its brave yellow petals through a patch of snow” evokes a better visual than just “crocus.” Although profanity isn’t for everyone, it adds another stroke to this narrator’s personality. As you revise your own early chapters, watch for opportunities to describe something in a voice unique to your narrator. EX AMPLE 2:
COMPOUND ACTION, TENSION, PACE At the opening of each of my Rita Farmer novels, I put Rita, a professional actress, in a situation that seems real but is soon revealed to involve acting (audition, ilm shoot, etc.). he trick is to portray the action, then pull back to reveal what’s really going on, while providing entertainment and intrigue. In this opening of On
Location, Rita and her actor friend Daniel are doing an outdoor walk-through of a very cheesy movie script in front of the director, Kenner. Early draft: “It’s getting dark,” noted Daniel, puffing on a twig that was standing in for a meerschaum pipe. “Yes,” I agreed. “Wait—when you say ‘It’s getting dark,’ you should be looking up at the sky,” interrupted Kenner. Daniel sighed. “Seems a bit unnecessary, but—” and he spoke the line again, this time flipping his eyes skyward ironically as if to say, Tell me I’m not the only one to notice this.
It was a good piece of acting, an extra layer of meaning, inviting me (and the audience) to be amused. Kenner, to his credit, bought it. “I’d better light a fire.” “What makes you think I couldn’t light a fire?” I grabbed an imaginary box of matches. “I’m only trying to help, Melanie!” Kenner called, “Noise in the woods! Right behind you, Melanie!” I whirled, dropping the imaginary box. “What was that, Raleigh, oh, what was that?”
his drat shows how lame the script is, and establishes that acting is going on. But I’d let the lame script become a lame opening scene! A petty quarrel is not only uninteresting, it slows the pace. I got my priorities straight: Grab the reader; reveal the scripted situation; begin character development. Revised, published version: A hairy forearm mashed my face. I gurgled, “No!” but couldn’t scream. I scuffled, keeping my footing, trying to find some leverage, my hiking boots scraping the dry earth. If I don’t break his grip soon, I’m dead. But he held me tight from behind, now thrusting his hip into the small of my back, forcing me further off-balance. I smelled his astringent aftershave as well as the Altoid he had popped just before he came at me. Why, why, why?
And that’s what he wanted to know, as he suddenly released me and asked, “Am I supposed to be trying to kill her or what?” He wiped his face with WritersDigest.com I 83
The Final Draft the crook of his sleeve and looked toward a patch of shadows beneath a tree. I picked up my script where I’d dropped it.
he irst sentence establishes a dire, realistic situation, and at the same time is slightly comical in its bluntness. he action intensiies until the abrupt pullback. I clued in the reader quickly with the Altoid and reference to the script. When revising a complex, layered opening, step back and break down what you’re trying to do. hen prioritize. Given that the reader must grasp so much at once—what’s going on, who’s involved, where—opt for vivid brevity. EX AMPLE 3:
PLAUSIBILITY, DETAIL, SUSPENSE A common criticism of mystery iction especially is implausibility. In he Extra, Rita has a key conversation with her on-again, of-again boyfriend, George Rowe (a private eye). hey’ve igured out that something ominous is going on at an urban mission for the needy. George, having explored the mission’s basement, reports to Rita. Early draft: “It’s not a nice place. Something happened down there. I found evidence of what might have been a homicide, or else one hell of an assault. A broken rum bottle with dried blood on the shards, blood for sure. More disturbing than that, I found a rag that was knotted up, then cut with a knife. Little indentations on this balled knot in the rag.” “Uh?” “Tooth marks. As if it’d been used as a gag.” “Oh, my God.” “So now I’ve told you. I’m beginning to wonder if Vargas came up against somebody even more vicious than him: Amaryllis. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
My agent told me she felt the passage was weak: “he evidence seems sort of laughable and over the top to me. Blood and tooth marks? Who wouldn’t have cleaned that up? Better if Rowe found something suggesting that there’s a smarter, more careful criminal at work.” I agreed.
“Well, what’s in it?” “Nothing. They used two-by-fours to create an air space between the drywall and the concrete block wall. Walls and ceiling. There’s a heavy rug on the floor.” “Yeah?” “And there’s a steel ring bolted into one wall.” “Explain it to me in baby talk.” “The room is totally soundproof. You could scream until your throat burst.” “Oh, my God.” “It’s brand-new.” “How do you know?” “Because the walls are perfectly clean. Not a stain, not a smudge.” “Oh, God.” “Yet.” “God, God.” “So now I’ve told you. They’ve got plans. I’m beginning to wonder if Vargas came up against somebody even more vicious than him: Amaryllis. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
Although the rewritten scene is longer, my agent agreed that it delivered. he key here was deciding to portray impending violence, rather than past violence. I wanted the reader to feel not the chill of, Oh, something bad happened, but the more thrilling, Oh, something bad is going to happen. he empty torture chamber is presented in enough detail that Rita—and the reader—can see it, and realize that the only missing element is a victim. When revising, develop the habit of looking beyond the problem at hand; challenge yourself to come up with solutions that feed your story down the line. Dread trumps revulsion. he chase trumps the capture. he ight trumps the conquest. EX AMPLE 4:
PLOT, CONFLICT, MYSTERY Sometimes, you need to revise a scene not because the original writing is weak, but because you need to accommodate a plot shit. his was the case in a heart-clutching moment for Lillian Byrd in Holy Hell:
Revised, published version: “It’s not a nice place. There’s a little room-withina-room made of gypsum board down there.” He paused, expecting me to get it, I guess. 84 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Early draft: I stopped at the doorway to the bedroom, seeing already the inconceivable, impossible, horrible reality.
Minerva LeBlanc lay just as I had left her, facedown in my bed, the back of her head the only exposed part of her. No one could have doubted, seeing her, that she was dead. There was so very much blood. I thought she must have been stabbed through the heart and lungs many times. Her head appeared intact. It is impossible for me to describe how much blood there was. It had soaked through the futon, the carpet and the flooring, which I knew to be old and cracked. On second look I could see well-defined slits in the sopping bloody blanket. Someone had stabbed her as she slept. The air in the room was heavy with the warm-sharp blood smell women know so well. It was heavy with blood, yes, and with terror and with Minerva’s last breath.
Not bad, right? But my editor said, “Oh, no! You can’t kill Minerva LeBlanc! She and Lillian have to solve crimes together in future books. Can’t you put her into a coma or something?” I felt I could do that without compromising my vision for the story, so I called up a friend who was a brain doctor and got some info on how I could work up a life-threatening but survivable head injury. Revised, published version: I stopped at the doorway to the bedroom, seeing already the inconceivable, impossible, horrible reality. Minerva LeBlanc lay just as I had left her, facedown in my bed, the back of her head the only exposed part of her. There was so very much blood. She’d been bludgeoned. A flap of her scalp hung off to one side, the right side of her head; I saw mashed tissue there, bone and brains, oozing blood. I’m not up to the task of describing how much blood there was. It had soaked through the futon, the carpet, and the flooring, which I knew to be old and cracked. The air in the room was heavy with that warm-sharp smell that women know so well. She was surely dead, I thought, but in the next second I heard a ragged sound and realized she was still breathing. I dived to her side, my mind racing. Mr. McVittie had followed me upstairs and was frozen in the doorway as I had been. “Call an ambulance!” I shouted, “and the police! 9-1-1, Mr. McVittie! Oh, God, keep breathing.”
I needed the Minerva character to be out of commission for the rest of the book, and I needed Lillian to be suspected of attacking her, and thus in deep trouble. Changing the crime to attempted murder—with the possibility that the victim might not survive—ills the bill. Whether a new plot point is your own idea or your agent or editor’s, resist the urge to dismiss it outright as too much work or out of line with your original picture of how the story should unfold. With careful thought and maybe a little research, sometimes what seems like a major shit can be achieved with a minor revision. EX AMPLE 5:
DIALOGUE, CHARACTER, EXPLICATION In my view, dialogue is the unsung workhorse of iction. Although a story is foremost action (stuf that happens), you can achieve almost everything else with dialogue. his scene from he Actress shows a confrontational conversation between three people, two of whom speak mainly Portuguese. But it’s always a delicate job portraying dialogue in foreign tongues or in broken or accented English. Early draft: She knew something about Richard Tenaway, “But,” Raimundo said, “she wants a lot of money.” Through Raimundo, she told George, “I know what you want. You will find nothing here. If you threaten me, you will not get what you want.” Rowe asked, “What do you want from us?” She spoke and, laughing, Raimundo translated. “I want to go to film school in U.S. I want to make films about how people really are, in their hearts.” Raimundo’s laughter angered the girl and she spoke for a long time, and Raimundo, chastened, told Rowe, “She wants to get out of the black market. She is smarter than her father. She does not want to live like this, working in secret. The money she makes from her clients is very good, but it is very dangerous work. She has some money in the bank she wants to give to her mother, who has been good to her and her brothers. She wants to go to America with ten thousand new dollars. Hahaha! She thinks you will simply give her ten thousand new American dollars!” The girl spoke again. “I am learning English. Not good yet.” WritersDigest.com I 85
The Final Draft “Oh,” said Rowe. “Well, we can do that.” “I have papers,” said Maria Helena. “I bet you do,” said Rowe, glancing at her factory. “Film school’s going to cost more than ten thousand dollars.” “I will get work once in U.S., no problem.” “Your English is better than you think,” Rowe told her.
Although I had studied Portuguese speech patterns, I felt Raimundo’s lines still didn’t ring quite right for an uneducated guy who doesn’t know English all that well— among other things, they were too long. Also, I felt I should’ve given more information earlier in the scene about both Maria Helena as a person and her techniques as a forger. Revised, published version: “Ask her what she wants.” He did, and as she spoke, Raimundo burst out laughing. “She wants to go to the film school in United States!” Rowe did not smile. “She wants to make film. Films,” he corrected himself. “About the way people really are, deep in the heart!” The girl spoke at angry length, swinging one sandal-clad foot in a short arc. Raimundo, chastened, told Rowe, “She wants to get away from the black market. She is more smart, I see, than her father. She does not want to live like this, work in secret. Good pay, but dangerous. She has some money in the bank she wants to give to her mother. Then she wants to go to America with ten thousand new dollars. From you! Ha! Ten thousand dollars. My friend, you must not—” The girl spoke again. “I am learning English. Not good yet.” “Oh,” said Rowe. “I have travel papers,” said Maria Helena. “I bet you do,” said Rowe, glancing around her factory. “How come you use old photography— not digital?” Slowly, she said, “Old ... ? Ah! Because I can use thick paper. More thicker than for digital. Better for making emboss in passport.” Lifting her head proudly, she added, “I do by hand, under microscope.” “I have to tell you, film school’s going to cost more than ten thousand dollars.”
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She said, “I get to America, I get work. No problem.” She gestured to one of her photographs of the revelers. “The world is in that eye. That mouth. That foot. I want to find it. All of time is in one thing.” “Your English is better than you think,” Rowe told her.
I think Raimundo’s lines here read more convincingly. Also, Maria Helena’s spunk and poetic spirit come through more. (he “photographs of the revelers” reference is to an earlier description of pictures hanging on the drying racks in her underground studio.) If you think about it, dialogue is largely negotiation: Characters constantly negotiate for what they want, whether it’s plot-signiicant (as shown here), or more incremental (think a subordinate sucking up to his boss). When looking over your work, simply ask: What’s being negotiated in this scene? hat will help you see things more clearly. EX AMPLE 6:
MOOD, ATMOSPHERE, REVELATION Sometimes, as we pursue action and conlict, we neglect subtler opportunities to draw in readers. his passage from late in Lucky Stiff, one of my more atmospheric novels, shows the key revelation of the book (spoiler alert). My main character, Lillian Byrd, has, ater an exciting investigation, uncovered who was responsible for the long-ago deaths of her mother and father. In this scene, on a small ishing boat in the Detroit River, she has just delivered the information to her uncle. Early draft: “Uncle Guff,” I said, “I need to find Bill Sechrist. I’m going to find him. I imagine, after hearing what I’ve told you, you’ll want the bastard found as much as I do. Minerva LeBlanc—you remember who she is—is going to help me find him. I invite you to join in. If we got together and pooled our resources, I bet we could find him and get … and get … resolution. Daddy and Mom would want us to do this. I have some specific ideas on how to do it. I realize … I could let this go. It’s been so long. But something’s happened to me, Uncle Guff. I guess I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m not so worried about … what will become of me in life. I don’t have any concern for myself at all. I want to devote my life
to … truth. There are lots of ways to get at truth, I see this now more than ever. “Anyway, my objective from now on is to get ahold of Sechrist. I know he’s out there. I owe this … to Daddy and Mom.” Uncle Guff shifted on the bench seat of the little open boat. Watching his posture, I saw that I’d gotten through to him. His back was straight, his head, crowned by his white pith helmet, was erect. Yet he wasn’t stiff, he was holding himself easy. His expression was calm, but I saw something else. There was a look of relief about him, as if he’d just made one of the most important decisions of his life. Something was coming, and I tried to prepare myself for it. “Lillian,” he said. “Yes, Uncle Guff.” “I killed Bill Sechrist.” I felt suddenly disoriented. The breeze shifted. I searched the nearest shoreline—which island had we anchored next to? I said, “I need to know everything.”
I identiied three laws in this passage: (1) he paragraph of Lillian talking was too monolithic; (2) I hadn’t brought the setting and mood to life; (3) I didn’t like how Uncle Guf just blurted out his truth. he scene is heavily emotional, but I thought I could do better by giving more details of the setting, and by making my protagonist notice and respond to them—or even by having the setting act on her. Revised, published version: The air took on its mossy evening smell. A cabin cruiser probably on its way to a dockside restaurant churned past us, politely keeping its wake low. A woman’s laugh carried over the water. I was just able to tell that the skipper had put his running lights on. I said, “I need to find Bill Sechrist. I’m going to find him. I imagine, after hearing what I’ve told you, you’ll want the bastard found as much as I do. Minerva LeBlanc is going to help me. I invite you to join in. If we got together and pooled our resources, I bet we could find him and get … and get … resolution. I have some very specific ideas on how to do it.” My uncle said nothing. I went on, “Of course I could let this thing go. It’s been so long. But something’s happened to me,
Uncle Guff. I guess I don’t know if … The thing is, I’m no longer worried about what will become of me in life. I don’t have very much concern for my own comfort anymore. There are lots of ways to get at truth, I see this now more than ever. You know?” “Mm-hmm.” His eyes moved along his line as it left his rod and descended into the water. “Anyway, I know Sechrist is out there. I feel I owe that much to Daddy and Mom.” He shifted on the bench seat of our little boat. Watching his posture, I saw I’d gotten through to him. His back was straight, his head, crowned by the white dome of his helmet, was erect. Yet he wasn’t stiff. His expression was steady, and I saw something else too. There was a look of relief about him. As if he’d just come to a decision. He cleared his throat. “Lillian.” “Yes, Uncle Guff.” The sun had set, and the last of the day’s light was blue and soft. “You won’t find that man.” The water darkened. “What?” I said. “He won’t be found.” Suddenly I felt disoriented. The breeze shifted. I searched the nearest shoreline—which island was it? But the world was receding into darkness. The red and white lights of the channel buoys emerged from the gloom, as the buoys themselves disappeared. Houses on either riverbank became pricks of light floating above the black water. The summer sky sent its deep blueness down onto everything, and everything was shadows. I said, “Tell me.”
Sometimes you just have to slow down and show more. Make your characters more sensitive to their environment— and give some character to the environment itself, too. I hope these examples help give you ideas for assessing and elevating your own work. Revision isn’t an exact science, and I suppose my best parting advice is not to overthink it. As my percussion teacher said, upon handing my sticks back to me ater demonstrating those snare drum rolls, “Just relax and make it sound good.” NW
Elizabeth Sims (elizabethsims.com) is an author, writing coach and symphonic percussionist whose instructional title You’ve Got a Book in You (WD Books) has fired up thousands of writers.
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he Submission Process
How to Win (Over) ASSISTANTS AND INFLUENCE AGENTS Sometimes your query will need the assistant’s approval before it’s even seen by an agent. Keep these 4 tips in mind as you pitch, and you’ll make it past the gatekeeper.
very morning at Helen Rees Literary Agency, my workday began with the same question: “What do you have for me today, Rachel?” My invaluable former literary assistant, Rachel Kincaid, irst appeared on my doorstep nine years into my agenting career. I was overwhelmed with submissions, and a friend of mine, iction writer Steven McCauley, author of Insigniicant Others, recommended one of his promising creative writing students as an intern. Rachel and I found ourselves working together so well that within a year, not only had I promoted her to my full-time assistant, but we’d developed a fail-safe system for her initial screening of queries to
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ensure that I saw only the strongest of each day’s 30 or so submissions. his gatekeeper process was so eicient—and so indicative of what we agents are really looking for when we delve into our slush piles—that we realized there were valuable lessons writers could glean simply by understanding the vetting process their submissions undergo. So we decided to share our methods here with you. Not only will you learn Rachel’s perspective on what you can do to make sure your query makes it through the irst round and on to an agent, but you’ll also get my own insights on how your work can really stand out.
IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: OKSANKA007 & ANI WHITE
BY ANN COLLETTE & RACHEL KINCAID
KINCAID: As a creative writing major at Brandeis, I was looking to get a better sense of what the publishing industry is really like, so I jumped at the chance to work with Ann. At irst, being a literary agent’s assistant was intimidating; I was terriied that I wouldn’t know a good query when I saw one and might throw out a pitch from the next Sara Gruen. But working with Ann taught me a few things— namely, how to pick out a good query from the inlux of mediocre ones, and that while publishing is a tough business, the best talent will always shine through. COLLETTE: Although I don’t expect a new intern to know my taste in books right of the bat (and personal taste does play a role, inevitably, when you submit your work to any agent), there are a couple of standards every query must meet before it can be taken seriously, whether you’re sending it to me or to any other agent you’d like to represent you.
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE BASICS KINCAID: If someone spelled Ann’s name wrong or addressed a query “Dear Sir,” “Dear Agent” or simply “Hi,” I tended not to take the query seriously. If you didn’t take the time to verify how Ann’s name is spelled, how can we trust that you got the facts of the Battle of Gettysburg right in your historical novel? Beyond the obvious, there are a number of other common misguided approaches that ensure a query never made it as far as Ann’s desk. Telling Ann that you know she’s the perfect agent for you when you also note that your query is a multiple submission is disingenuous. Writing to Ann as if she’s your friend when you’ve never spoken to her before, or labeling a sample as “requested material” when it isn’t, made us instantly dismiss you when we realized you’re a stranger. Underhanded tactics like these tend to backire. Better to write a straightforward pitch for your work than to try to invent connections you think will get you noticed. COLLETTE: What hooks me is a query letter with a succinct yet vivid description of the proposed book. I do also want to know something about your professional background as a writer, and perhaps a little something about your personal life, but I want to see that at the end of the query. Include any publishing credits, as long as they’re relevant; tell me if your work has appeared in small literary magazines or online, but I don’t need the details on every publication. If you have a Master of Fine
Arts, have attended writing workshops or have worked with a writer whose name I would know, those things are appropriate to include, as well. KINCAID: he irst thing the person reading your query notices is your attitude—if you’re respectful of the agent and her time, and keep your query well written, polite and to the point, I’d take notice. I wouldn’t pay attention if your snail mail query was handwritten on bunny stationery, or the envelope was taped up so heavily it’s like trying to break into Fort Knox. When submitting to any agent, it’s also important to follow her guidelines, whatever they may be. In our case, that means I wouldn’t risk getting a computer virus by opening e-mail attachments from people Ann didn’t know, so it’s essential that you include your query in the body of the e-mail. It also means you should include a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope) if you’d like a response to your snail mail query. he bottom line is that you should never ask an agent to do more work than she has to. hat’s why we have submission guidelines in the irst place. COLLETTE: If I sign you as a client, I’ll work as hard as I can for you, but there’s no way I’m running in circles just to read your query. Submissions that simply follow our guidelines (which state that, for a novel, you should include the synopsis and irst chapter with your query; for a noniction book, you should send a query only, and I’ll request your full proposal if I’m interested) will automatically graduate from the slush pile into the “contenders” pile, where Rachel would give your query her full attention in deciding whether it might be a good it for me. In other words, if you follow instructions, you’ll already be ahead of the pack. Trust me, you’d be amazed at how many people don’t.
USE THE KISS TECHNIQUE KINCAID: When Ann irst told me to KISS every query before I gave it to her, I had no idea what she meant. COLLETTE:
KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
KINCAID: I’ve learned that it’s amazing how much you don’t have to do in your query. You don’t have to give us your life story, you don’t have to include a 20-page synopsis, and you don’t have to list every publication you’ve ever had since your school newspaper in the 10th grade. Instead, start with a terse summary of your book and its genre (just one, not fantasy/thriller/paranormal/
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The Submission Process suspense/romance/chick lit). Next, briely touch on your literary background, as Ann noted earlier. If you have previous book publications, list the publisher and the publication date. We don’t like to see letters where writers note they’ve had “several books published” but neglect to mention they were self-published. COLLETTE: In my experience, if your pitch is overwritten, then your manuscript probably is, too. Keep in mind that this is the irst impression I’ll get of your writing— well, actually, it’s the irst impression I won’t get, because Rachel would have already have put it in the recycling bin. KINCAID: When you write your query, try to see it through the eyes of the person who will be reading it. Assume that by the time I get to your letter, I’ve already read 25 queries in just that one sitting. his means I’m looking for something concise and to the point that I can read quickly and easily—two or three paragraphs, short and sweet. If you ind yourself piling on the adjectives and adverbs, stop—you don’t need them, and it feels artiicial. When something begins with, “What would you do if you came home from work one day to ind all of your children turned into frogs? Find out in my edgeof-your-seat, laugh-a-minute satirical humor novel!” I’m inclined to write it of. Far from piquing my interest, such queries lead me to assume there’s no real substance to the book, so the author has tried to hype it up with an overwritten pitch. All you need to do is tell me about your book—then, let me decide whether or not it’s a nail-biting thriller. COLLETTE: I’m always on the lookout for a well-written pitch that ofers a fresh take on a familiar subject.
PUT YOUR BEST FIRST KINCAID: When guidelines stipulate to include a chapter of your work, we want to see the irst chapter. Don’t send Chapter 13 and tell us, “his is where the story really gets going”—if your book doesn’t get interesting until that far in, you have some revision to do before you’re ready to submit. he irst few paragraphs of your book are the biggest factor in whether or not I would pass it along to Ann— with the volume of writing samples I read every day, if yours can grab me enough that I want to keep reading, that really means something. It’s key that the opening
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drew me in right away, especially because Ann represents mostly genre iction—thriller, suspense, horror, mystery. But while it’s important to have an engaging opening scene, you don’t want to overdo it, either: An all-toocommon turnof is an opening featuring graphic, detailed violence against a character. I think writers who do this are trying to grab the reader by the throat, but generally I’m just disgusted. Remember that at the beginning of the story, we haven’t yet gotten to know who this character (or the killer) is, and so we’re not yet invested in what’s happening to her. With this in mind, a better approach is to begin with the characters, and let them lead us into the story.
“I want to see queries where the authors’ passion for their subject matter and characters jumps off the page at me, so their enthusiasm is irresistible.” —Collette COLLETTE: Snappy dialogue engages me immediately. A book that opens with a punchy yet revealing conversation between the protagonist and another character tells me a lot; if I like the way your character talks, chances are I’m going to like other things about him, too. An atmospheric beginning also is a plus—plunge readers into a vividly realized world that’s new to them, and they’ll be hooked. KINCAID: Two other cliched openings that instantly bored me because I saw them so regularly are descriptions of the weather and scenes from a character’s dream. Unfortunately, I’ve found that the lack of imagination in openings like these is oten relective of the entire book. here’s a reason “It was a dark and stormy night …” is a cliche, and sentences like, “It was a hot day, and the sun beat down on the sidewalk …” are just variations. Setting the scene requires just as much originality as anything else in the book. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that the quality of writing later on will make up for a bad opening, because if the beginning is bad, we won’t keep reading. COLLETTE: Another thing to keep in mind is that a good novel needs imagination as much as it needs some sort of
basis in reality. Ater years of agenting, I know a thinly disguised autobiography when I see one. It’s not that I’m against it, but I’m not as interested in what you’ve done with your life as I am in what you can create with your art. KINCAID: Originality catches my eye right away—I saw so many of the same kinds of stories that if someone came up with a genuine twist on an established genre, it really stood out. Ater all, there really aren’t any new ideas; the only thing that’s new is how you as an individual present them.
Ultimately, though, it all comes down to the quality of your prose—clear, clean, tight language makes me want to keep reading. Crisp dialogue delights me, especially because so much of the category iction I enjoy is oten dialogue-driven. he majority of the rejections I write cite prose as the reason I’m not interested, but the good news is that prose is something you can work on and improve. Make sure that you’re sending out your absolute best work—Rachel might have gone easy on you, but I’m harder to satisfy! COLLETTE:
One thing I know about Ann is that she needs the pace of a book to move like the wind. I can’t tell you how many times I’d shown her something only to have her complain, “I’m on Page 2 and nothing has happened yet. What else do you have?” KINCAID:
One sure way to catch and hold my attention is to have something constantly happening and to avoid deadweight, such as overly detailed descriptions. Leisurely lunches are great in real life, but in a novel I want to know what a character ate and drank as concisely as possible. At the same time, though, I need to care about your characters—ind small but telling details that develop them without sacriicing lots of time or space on the page. If you wonder how an agent and her assistant can determine all this in just one chapter, know that not only is it possible, but we do it dozens of times a day. What’s more, editors at big publishing houses don’t even need a chapter—they see so many submissions, you might get their attention for only a few paragraphs. here’s so much competition that you’re going to get only one chance, so bring your A game. COLLETTE:
COLLETTE: Sometimes Rachel would pass on a query to me that’s promising, but wasn’t quite there yet. I’m willing to invest a certain amount of time and energy in a writer with potential, and there are a few signs that tell me if a writer is worth it. If I send you suggestions for a rewrite, and you take them with a good attitude and then take a month or two to really work hard on the changes we spoke about, I’ll know you’re serious. If I extended myself enough to give you free advice, but things still didn’t work out between us, thank me and move on. Please don’t ask me for a referral (if I had one, I would have given it to you) or write back to tell me how of base I am and that your book is going to be the next bestseller. Maybe it is, but there’s no such thing as a sure thing in this business. he only thing you can be sure of is that I’m never going to work with you if you end our exchange on an unprofessional note. KINCAID: Although all this may sound discouraging, the truth is that when I came across something I loved, I made sure Ann paid attention. When I came across Clay and Susan Griith’s Vampire Empire trilogy (published by Pyr), I couldn’t put it down. COLLETTE: I was initially skeptical, but when Rachel pointed out the steampunk elements in that neoVictorian vampire saga, I knew she was onto something. Her enthusiasm, combined with my professional savvy, turned this slush-pile query into a sale we were both proud of. We loved working together, and no matter how many mediocre and uninspiring queries we saw, we were always optimistic that the next one was going to be the one that reminded us how rewarding our jobs can be. here’s nothing as exciting as discovering new talent and knowing you were the one who picked this author out of a towering slush pile, helping her take the irst step toward realizing a dream. And if you keep in mind our advice, you could be the one picking up the phone to hear an agent say, “I’d like to talk to you about representation.” NW
BE READY TO WORK
Ann Collette (anncollette.com) has been an agent with the Helen Rees Literary Agency for more than 15 years.
KINCAID: I passed on only a small percentage of the queries I read for Ann to look at, and even out of those, only a small portion ended up getting signed.
Rachel Kincaid (rachel-kincaid.com), a graduate of Brandeis University with highest honors, was Collette’s assistant for two years. She’s currently the managing editor at Autostraddle.com.
WritersDigest.com I 91
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Agent
ASK AN
Five industry pros reveal their query pet peeves, what they’re looking for in a novel pitch, and how to get your manuscript noticed.
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BY KARA GEBHART UHL
WritersDigest.com I 93
he Submission Process
Rebecca Sherman WRITERS HOUSE orthwestern University alum Rebecca Sherman did brief stints interning at Playbill magazine and writing obituaries for a dot-com before joining
Writers House as an assistant in 2001. Now a senior literary agent at the powerhouse firm, she represents authors and illustrators of picture books, middle-grade and young adult fiction, and YA nonfiction. Find her online at writershouse.com and publishersmarketplace.com/ members/rebeccasherman, and on Twitter @RebeccAgent. “I got a shout-out on the Season 2 finale of ‘Gossip Girl.’ The line was, ‘Rebecca Sherman? No, her head’s always in a book.’”
“I’ve been a vegetarian since high school.”
“My dream project is a trendsetter. Something wholly original—like Wimpy Kid or The Invention of Hugo Cabret or Harry Potter—that breaks the mold and sets children’s books on a whole new course.”
Grace Lin, author/ Daniel Salmieri, illustrator of the illustrator of Newbery Honor– The New York winner Where Times bestthe Mountain seller Dragons Meets the Moon Love Tacos (Dial (Little, Brown Books for Young Books for Young Readers, 2012) Readers, 2009)
REPRESENTS
QUIRKS
SEEKING
DREAM PROJECT
DEAD AUTHOR:
LIVING AUTHOR:
E.B. White and Roald Dahl (Bonus: Dead illustrator: James Marshall)
Jacqueline Woodson and Kate DiCamillo
FAVORITE
“Focus on describing the manuscript/work itself. Everything else is icing on the cake.”
“French 75: gin, champagne, lemon juice and a bit of sugar”
QUERY PET PEEVES
WRITING TIPS
“Read, read, read.” WHY SHE DOES WHAT SHE DOES
QUOTE: “Let the wild rumpus start!” —Maurice Sendak
94 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
“Contemporary MG fiction that honestly depicts friendships at that age. Highly illustrated MG or YA. Timeless MG or YA that could become instant classics. [Stories]— picture books through YA—that are filled with humor. Picture books by author/illustrators that hold up to readings night after night.”
PITCH TIPS
DRINK:
BLOG: “‘Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast’— so much beautiful art in one place, expertly curated”
Nicholas Gannon, author of The Doldrums (Greenwillow Books, 2015)
PLACE: “In a theater in New York City. Luckily, I get to be in my favorite place about once a week.”
“I love books. I love words, art and storytelling. What could be better than being the advocate for people who create the things I love?”
“Querying via social media is a big no-no; respect your work and agents enough to devote more than 140 characters to your query.”
THEATER © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: NAGEL PHOTOGRAPHY; FRENCH 75 © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: MAXSOL
N
Jud Laghi THE JUD LAGHI AGENCY
G
rowing up in Brooklyn and attending a science- and math-oriented high school of 5,000 students didn’t exactly spell out a likely literary
career for Jud Laghi—“We learned how to weld, use a rivet gun and sand-cast engine parts in a steel foundry,” he says. But when he moved on to a small liberal arts college in Connecticut, he found himself gravitating toward creative writing and English. In 2001, Laghi got a job in the
Ken Jennings, author of Maphead (Scribner, 2011)
training program at renowned talent and literary agency ICM Partners, starting in the mailroom and working his way up to agent status. In 2005
Davy Rothbart, author of My Heart Is an Idiot (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012)
he joined LJK Literary Management as a senior agent, and four years later
Carrie Brownstein, author of Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl (Riverhead Books, 2015)
started his own agency. REPRESENTS
Laghi says his favorite projects are the ones that make him forget that he’s working while reading them. “[It’s] where I really move away from a critical state of mind, stop noticing the potential edits and lose track of time,”
“I’m a lifelong [New York] Mets fan. They have been almost perversely difficult to root for since they last won the World Series, in ‘86. But it will be worth it when they win it again next year.”
he says. “A dream client is someone who can write a couple of those.” Find him online at laghiagency.com and on Twitter @JudLaghiAgency. “Keep it short.”
“I grill a damn good steak.”
PITCH TIPS “Make it interesting.”
QUIRKS Acadia National Park, Maine
BOURBON PHOTO © FOTOLIA.COM: IGOR NORMANN; ACADIA NATIONAL PARK PHOTO © FOTOLIA.COM: JOHN NADERSON
PLACE:
“Don’t compare it to a movie.”
“Cascando” by Samuel Beckett
WHY HE DOES WHAT HE DOES
POEM:
MOST PROUD OF
SEEKING
DRINK:
Bourbon FAVORITE
“Smart narrative nonfiction, history, memoir and literary fiction”
“My wife, Amber, and my 6-year-old daughter, Juliet” QUERY PET PEEVES “Typos”
QUOTE:
Gerard Cosloy’s “Can’t Stop The Bleeding” BLOG:
“Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.” —Norman Mailer
“Working as a literary agent offers a unique mix of challenges and rewards; you’re always learning something new, you work with some of the smartest people in the world and, if you’re lucky, you get to pick and choose the kind of authors and books that you want to represent. I got hooked on that mix early in my career.”
LIVING AUTHOR:
Jonathan Franzen DEAD AUTHOR:
Terry Southern
“Impersonal submission letters”
“Saying how many years it took you to write your novel”
WritersDigest.com I 95
The Submission Process
Kate McKean HOWARD MORHAIM LITERARY AGENCY INC.
K
ate McKean, vice president and literary agent at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency Inc., knows what it’s like to
take risks: After graduating early with a master’s degree in
fiction writing, she sold all her belongings on The University of Southern Mississippi campus and drove to New York City without a job, landing a position as an assistant to a group of agents sharing office space. “It was easily the hardest job
Madeleine Roux, bestselling YA author of the Asylum series (HarperTeen)
Mallory Ortberg, bestselling humor author of Texts From Jane Eyre (Henry Holt)
I ever had,” McKean says. “But that taught me I could do
Brittany Gibbons, bestselling author of Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love and Being Comfortable in Your Skin … Every Inch of It (Dey Street)
anything, [if] I wanted [it] badly enough, and it’s proven true REPRESENTS
McKean began working at Howard Morhaim in 2006 and has been an adjunct professor at New York University since 2011. Find her online at morhaimliterary.com, katemckean. com and on Twitter @kate_mckean. “I, too, have a novel in a drawer that will never see the light of day.” “I just started birdwatching with my husband, and I love it.”
QUIRKS
“I’m a big competitive cheerleading fan.”
QUERY PET PEEVE “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” —Annie Dillard QUOTE:
“Seltzer with a splash of grapefruit juice” DRINK:
FAVORITE
The-toast.net— “a wonderful mix of fiction and nonfiction, humor and heart and consistent awesomeness” POEM: “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop BLOG:
LIVING AUTHOR:
Jhumpa Lahiri, Nicole Krauss, M.T. Anderson, E. Lockhart
96 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
William Faulkner, Raymond Carver, Mary McCarthy, Rona Jaffe
DEAD AUTHOR:
SEEKING
“I am actively looking for contemporary young adult and middle grade, adult literary fiction and commercial DREAM women’s fiction, PROJECT memoir, humor and illustrated books “My dream project is by authors with a a book that you want significant online to clutch to your chest platform.” after you turn the last page—one that I can send to editors and say, ‘You’re going to love this,’ and they “Research the fall deeply, madly in agents you send love with it.” to. It’s hard work, but so was writing. It’s worth it.” WRITING TIP PITCH TIP
“Queries that talk more about how or why a book was written, and not about the book itself”
PLACE: St. Augustine, Fla.—“the oldest city in the U.S. and the site of my family vacation for decades before I was even born”
“Learn the difference between your gut instinct and the voice of self-doubt. Your gut will tell you Chapter 3 is kinda slow. Self-doubt says you suck. Ignore self-doubt.”
MCKEAN PHOTO © BILL WADMAN; BIRD PHOTO © FOTOLIA.COM: MEISTERDRAGON; ST. AUGUSTINE PHOTO © FOTOLIA.COM: SEANPAVONEPHOTO
time and again.”
Emma Patterson BRANDT & HOCHMAN
T
he daughter of literary agent Lynn Seligman, Emma Patterson grew up an avid reader. From college, she jumped right in as an assistant-cum-agent at
the Wendy Weil Agency, home to such luminaries as Alice Walker, Fannie Flagg and Rita Mae Brown. She worked there for nine years until Weil’s death, after which she joined Brandt & Hochman in 2013.
Mark Helprin, Adrienne Celt, author of author of Winter’s Tale The Daughters (Mariner Books, (Liveright, June 2005) August 2015)
Hannah Gersen, author of Home Field (William Morrow, July 2016)
In literature, Patterson appreciates anything funny, strange or idiosyncratic. “I’m drawn to stories not only set domestically, but also ones in completely far-flung settings (while remaining on Earth) that are original and transporting,” she says. “Most of all, I gravitate towards fresh and lyrical writing, suspenseful
REPRESENTS SEEKING
plots, emotional narratives and unforgettable characters.” Find her online at brandthochman.com and on Twitter at @EmPat222. “I’m allergic to peaches.”
“My hands are always cold.”
“Fiction ranging from dark, voicedriven literary novels to upmarket women’s and historical fiction; narrative nonfiction, including memoir, investigative journalism and popular history; contemporary, reality-based young adult novels that take risks, either in the writing or the story. Also: projects that speak to the cultural moment or explore racial issues, multiculturalism, mental illness, or are stories by women for women.”
“I have a twin brother.”
QUIRKS
“My mother, who has always been the most supporting, loving and wise force in my life.”
ROLE MODEL
DREAM PROJECT MOST PROUD OF
BLOG:
QUERY PET PEEVES
PATTERSON PHOTO © CHRIS MARTIN; SANTORINI PHOTO © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: NEIRFY
Smitten Kitchen
FAVORITE PLACE:
Santorini, Greece
DRINK:
Coffee LIVING AUTHOR:
“Besides my own QUOTE: authors? Nicole Krauss” “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”—Anne Frank
“When a writer is trying too hard to catch my attention. Well-written, simple queries that describe an intriguing story or viewpoint and also mention the writer’s credentials— those queries speak for themselves and don’t need bells and whistles.”
“Learning how to happily survive 12 years of living in New York City.”
TIPS
“Join a writing group or writing community, preferably with people whose work you admire or feel akin to.”
“One that immediately surprises and grabs me—something fresh, funny, beautiful, or something that opens a window into a world I never knew existed or cared about.”
“Try not to let rejection or bad reviews upset your creative headspace.”
“Be concise, but not at the expense of telling me [your] story line.”
DEAD AUTHOR:
Jane Austen
WritersDigest.com I 97
The Submission Process
Jessica Alvarez BOOKENDS LITERARY
A
fter graduating from New York University in 2001, Jessica Alvarez got a job as an editorial assistant at
Harlequin—a position she expected to be temporary. “I
thought it might be a brief layover until I could apply to law
Minerva Koenig, author of Nine Days (Minotaur Books, 2014)
school, but I stayed there for seven years,” she says. Law school forgotten, Alvarez left Harlequin in 2008 to work as a freelance editor. “In 2011, I begged Jessica Faust [at BookEnds] to take me on as an agent, and I’ve been doing
Stacey Kennedy, author of Commanded (Loveswept, 2015)
Lorrie Thomson, author of A Measure of Happiness (Kensington, 2015)
that ever since.” Her focus remains on romance and other genres of women’s fiction. Find her online at bookendsliterary.com (where the agency blog offers generous doses of advice for writers) and on
SEEKING REPRESENTS
“I love reading medical examiner memoirs.” “I find it hard to resist cookbooks of exotic cuisines.”
QUIRKS
“Make sure you show the reader what’s different about your book. Why is your sports romance different than all the others out there?”
“If I were stranded on a desert island, I’d want a huge stash of Harlequin Presents to tide me over.”
QUERY PET PEEVE
“My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water.” —Mark Twain QUOTE:
DRINK:
Vodka Gimlet FAVORITE
WRITING TIP PITCH TIP
“Having someone else send your query—your daughter, editor, lawyer, etc.”
“John Donne’s ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed.’ I can’t resist Donne’s bawdiness.” POEM:
DEAD AUTHOR: LIVING AUTHOR:
“I plead the Fifth.”
“Charlotte Brontë. Is that too much of a cliche for a romance agent?”
PLACE:
“Realize that not every rejection means the agent or editor is saying they don’t think your work is good. Often, the project just isn’t right for them for whatever reason.”
Florence, Italy
Kara Gebhart Uhl (pleiadesbee.com) writes and edits from Fort Thomas, Ky.
98 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
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“Most genres of romance (no YA or paranormal), women’s fiction, erotica, femalefocused mysteries and thrillers (though no cozies).”
Twitter @AgentJessicaA.
MEET THE
Press
Looking for a publisher? These 5 standout markets publish across all genres, earn consistent literary recognition, and boast an impressive line of strong sellers. BY CRIS FREESE
Leapfrog Press MISSION:
“Leapfrog Press was created to search out, publish and aggressively
market books that tell a strong story. … Some of our best writers have trouble placing their books with the conglomerate-owned publishing houses because their books are not perceived as bestseller material. We see ourselves as a home
IMAGES © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: OLA TARAKANOVA
to new works by accomplished writers and works by those just starting out.” FOUNDED: 1993. PUBLISHES: 5–10 titles per year. PRINT RUN: 2,000 for irst books; 3,000 on average. ADVANCE: Negotiable. ROYALTIES: Pays 10 percent on net receipts. HOW TO SUBMIT: Send a query letter via email, with a short sample in the body of the message, during the reading period of June 1–Sept. 30. DETAILED GUIDELINES: leapfrogpress. com/submissions.htm. WHAT STANDS OUT & WHY: Leapfrog’s list is eclectic, featuring iction (including middle-grade and young adult), poetry and noniction. Its website touts an interest in books that larger publishing houses consider to
be “midlist” but that its own editors regard as the “heart and soul of literature.” Leapfrog Press titles that have garnered recognition include Lone Wolves by John Smelcer (2014 Housatonic Book Awards Finalist in Writing for Middle Grades and YA), And Yet hey Were Happy by Helen Phillips (2012 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Semiinalist), Berlin by Michael Mirolla (2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist for General Fiction/Novel) and he Love Song of Monkey by Michael S.A. Graziano (2009 Eric Hofer Book Award Honorable Mention).
WritersDigest.com I 99
Starting Points
Polis Books THE INSIDE STORY FROM: MISSION:
Jason Pinter, founder and publisher.
Polis Books combines the professionalism of a major trade publisher
with the forward-thinking approach commensurate with the digital age. The press aims to shepherd talented new voices while also finding new readerships for veteran writers.
WHAT STANDS OUT & WHY: While Polis Books is relatively new to the game, founder and publisher Jason Pinter is a veteran of the industry, having worked in trade publishing at several major houses (Random House, St. Martin’s Press and Warner Books) and published six novels of his own. Such experience shines through in a stable of talented writers who’ve garnered Polis Books signiicant accolades, including the Anthony Award, the Shamus Award, the Derringer Award and an Edgar Award nomination.
100 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
FOUNDED: 2013. PUBLISHES: 40 books per year. FOCUS: Publishes crime (mystery/thriller), romance, science iction, commercial literary iction, young adult and middlegrade—in hardcover, trade paperback and e-book formats. PRINT RUN: 2,000–5,000 copies. ADVANCES: $1,000–5,000. KEY TO SUCCESSFUL SUBMISSIONS: Queries should be one page and read like great dustjacket copy. he manuscript itself should be polished and edited. WHAT MAKES US UNIQUE: We consider authors our partners throughout every step of the process: editorial, design, marketing and publication. [Authors] have input into every part. We move fast and aggressive if we like a project, and are never bound by red tape or groupthink. PAST NOTABLE AUTHORS: Jason Starr, J.D. Rhoades, Patricia Abbott, Rob Hart, Mary T. McCarthy, Gregg Olsen and Kristina Riggle. HOW TO SUBMIT: Send three polished chapters, plus a query letter, to
[email protected]. Responds only to queries we’re interested in. DETAILED GUIDELINES: polisbooks.com/submissions.
What makes a submission stand out from the rest?
Strong writing and a great story. What topics/subjects are you seeking to publish?
Diverse characters and viewpoints in the genres we acquire. (Diversity includes race, gender, sexual identity and more.) What are some common mistakes you see in the querying process?
Authors submitting books [in a genre] that the house doesn’t acquire, authors submitting standalone short stories or novellas, [and] query letters that are not proofed. What kind of publicity and support are you able to give your authors?
We look at your genre—the communities who read your work—and put together marketing campaigns. [In doing so], we support our authors in a myriad of ways, including, but not limited to: advertising (print and online), setting up author tours and appearances, interviews, op-ed pieces and articles in print and online venues, advance galley and inished book media/review mailings, [and] social media promotion.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers ABOUT:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers publishes hardcover
and trade paperback originals. It focuses primarily on high-quality literature for children and young adults, which includes adventure, historical, humor, mystery, suspense and YA fiction. Nonfiction subjects include animals, art, architecture, history, music, science, sports and more.
1800. PUBLISHES: 100 titles per year. PRINT RUN: Varies. ADVANCE: Competitive. Varies based on category. ROYALTIES: 5 to 10 percent on retail price. HOW TO SUBMIT: Manuscripts should be typed and submitted via mail. For picture books and novels, send the entire manuscript. For noniction, submit a synopsis and sample chapters. Mail to: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children/Submissions, FOUNDED:
222 Berkeley St., Boston, MA 02116. DETAILED GUIDELINES: hmhco. com/popular-reading/authors/ manuscript-submissions. WHAT STANDS OUT & WHY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers is one of the larger imprints open to unagented work. About 60 percent of its books come from unagented writers, and 10 percent from irst-time authors. Competition is ierce, but writers who break in will
ind themselves in good company: he press has among its bestselling authors Chris Van Allsburg, Karen Cushman, Scott O’Dell, Margaret and H.A. Rey, Linda Sue Park and Joyce Sidman. Recent titles have been recognized with the John Newbery Medal, Caldecott Medal, Coretta Scott King Book Award, Schneider Family Book Award and more.
Tor Books ABOUT:
“Tor Books is the most successful science fiction and fantasy publisher in
the world. … [It] regularly puts books [such as] Robert Jordan’s Knife of Dreams and Terry Goodkind’s Chainfire atop national bestseller lists. And Tor’s Orb imprint offers trade paperback editions of outstanding, award-winning science fiction and fantasy backlist titles.”
1980. PUBLISHES: 10–20 titles per year. PRINT RUN: Varies. ROYALTIES: Varies. HOW TO SUBMIT: Submit the irst three chapters of your manuscript, a synopsis (3–10 pages), a dated cover letter with your contact info, and an SASE to Tom Doherty Associates LLC, 175 Fith Ave., New York, NY 10010. DETAILED GUIDELINES: us.macmillan.com/torforge/ about/faq. FOUNDED:
WHAT STANDS OUT & WHY:
Tor Books, part of parent company Macmillan, has been awarded the Locus Award for best science-iction publisher 20 years in a row. Unlike other leading publishers, Tor maintains an open submissions policy, welcoming unagented work. As such, they receive thousands of manuscript submissions every year, so competition is ierce—but they provide detailed guidelines to help you give
them what they’re looking for. Breaking in with Tor means you’d be published alongside Orson Scott Card, Philip K. Dick, Jonathan Carroll, Terry Goodkind and other giants of the genre. WritersDigest.com I 101
The Submission Process
Kensington Publishing Corp. THE INSIDE STORY FROM: MISSION:
John Scognamiglio, editor-in-chief.
“Kensington Publishing is a full-service publishing house that is family
owned. We publish across all genres, including romance (historical/contemporary/ paranormal), mystery (cozy/historical), women’s fiction, suspense and Westerns. Our formats include hardcover, trade paperback and mass-market.”
FOUNDED: 1974. PUBLISHES: 500 books per year. FOCUS: Kensington is actively seeking commercial iction. We publish the types of books people love to read. PRINT RUNS: For hardcover, 5,000 copies and up. For mass-market, 10,000 copies and up. ADVANCES: $2,000 and up. ROYALTIES: Mass-market: 8 percent; Trade paperback: 7.5 percent; Hardcover: 10 percent on the irst 5,000 copies sold, 12 percent on the next 5,000 copies sold, and 15 percent on all copies sold thereater. KEY TO SUCCESSFUL SUBMISSIONS:
Include a little bit about the novel you’re working on and your target audience. Visit our website for information about each of our editors and what they are seeking, then address your query accordingly. WHAT MAKES US UNIQUE: We are a family-owned business, so we don’t have many layers of “corporate” management to deal with. If an editor has a project they’re excited about, they can walk right into the oice of our president and tell him about it. HOW TO SUBMIT: Queries can be emailed directly to the editors. We are not interested in books that
have been previously published. Due to the volume of submissions, editors may respond only to projects they wish to consider further. DETAILED GUIDELINES: kensingtonbooks.com/page. aspx/submissions. What makes a submission stand out? A query letter that is short
and to the point—no more than one page. [If we request a full], your manuscript should be proofread and complete; we’re not interested in partial projects. What topics/subjects are you seeking? We’re actively looking for
historical mysteries, cozy mysteries and dark suspense (think Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, he Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins or Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll). What else should writers know about your selection process?
If we’ve asked to see your manuscript, it means there’s a good chance we may want to publish it. Please respect the time period [needed to review your submission]: If we say it will be 12 weeks, it will be 12 weeks.
WHAT STANDS OUT & WHY: As one of the foremost independent publishers in the U.S., Kensington Publishing Corp. has been in business for more than 40 years and has a robust backlist of more than 3,000 titles—including works by he New York Times bestselling authors Fern Michaels, Lisa Jackson, Joanne Fluke and William W. Johnstone. Its acceptance of unagented submissions makes Kensington a viable market for writers who have not yet secured representation. And the publisher has repeatedly brought home nominations and wins in the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Awards, Western Writers of America’s Spur Awards, and Lambda Literary Awards. NW
Cris Freese is an associate editor of Writer’s Digest Books.
102 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
THINK LIKE AN
Agent An author-turned-agent gives the inside scoop on making the most of your author-agent relationship.
IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK.COM: JOZSEF BAGOTA
BY MARIE LAMBA
WritersDigest.com I 103
The Submission Process ears ago, I didn’t know much about agents, but what I did know, I really liked. hey represented the most talented writers. hey got new writers’ work in front of the right editors at the top publishing houses. hey negotiated strong book deals and took care of those complex publishing contracts. Hey, that’s all I really needed to know, right? Wrong. When I actually got “the call,” it came from Jennifer De Chiara of he Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency, who encouraged me to ask her any questions I might have. hat’s when it hit me: I hadn’t a clue of what to ask. I really didn’t know a thing about what to expect next. More than ten years and several books later, I’m still represented by Jennifer—and I’m also working as a literary agent at her agency, representing children’s and adult iction, and memoirs. I’ve deinitely learned a lot about what happens on both the author’s and the agent’s side of things. Here’s some stuf I wish I’d known right from the start.
As you interact, you’ll get a sense of your agent’s style. Some agents are chatty, and you instantly feel comfortable talking with them. You’ll quickly build a rapport, and over time you may even grow close. But no matter how friendly you become, remember that it’s a professional relationship, so always check your personal drama at the door. Other agents are more no-nonsense. heir phone calls will be short with little room for chitchat, their emails brief and to the point. If you know this, you’ll know not to take it personally. And remember, sometimes even a chatty agent is just too busy to chat. Early in my relationship with my own agent, she emailed me a one-word reply. It did answer my question, but I still wondered if I had made her mad. Was she going to drop me? We writers are all too capable of imagining all sorts of meanings between the lines. But if I’d had a better understanding of everything an agent does and how busy she really could be, that one-word reply wouldn’t have fazed me.
OPENING UP COMMUNICATION
As writers, we essentially have one main job: Perfect our manuscript and send it to our agent. Ater that, we wait for him to read and respond to it. We check our email incessantly. Oh, we try to keep our mind of of it, but still we obsess. Does the agent like it? Does it still need work? Can it be sent to editors now? A week passes. hen another. hen a month. We start to seriously freak out. What is taking so long? Don’t we matter to our agent? Let’s look at the lip side. Say you’re my client, and your novel pings into my agency inbox. I acknowledge its receipt with a return email (always conirm that your agent receives it). I log the novel into my queue, behind several others I’ve recently received from other clients. hen I head of to meetings with editors. Next I pitch another client’s book, which can take several days. hen I dash of to a four-day conference where I meet with editors, do presentations, take author pitches, and then return to ind my inbox illed with submissions from conference attendees—plus, a manuscript from another client. I inally block out some reading time and begin to review a client manuscript I received two weeks prior to yours. It’s 400 pages long. I get interrupted by an ofer from an editor on another project. Negotiating that deal involves contacting a number of other editors, plus the author, and preparing counterofers. In between, I continue to read through that client manuscript, editing and inserting comments as I go …
Y
UNDERSTANDING “AGENT TIME” Online message boards are looded with posts from writers who think they might have a problem with their agent. It’s not because the world is looded with terrible agents. It’s because writers are oten too afraid to tell their own agents when they have questions or concerns. Hey, I totally get that. As nice as my agent is (and she is extremely nice and helpful), at the beginning of our journey together I wouldn’t dare question anything she was doing or ask for any sort of change in our dealings with each other. I’d worked hard to land this agent. I didn’t want to screw things up! Instead I just worried and stewed. Finally, though, I “put on my big-girl panties” and started having direct conversations with my agent whenever I felt the need. As a result, our working relationship has only gotten stronger. Be sure to start your own author-agent relationship on the right foot by developing great communication from the beginning. One of the very irst things you should ask is how to get in touch. It’s likely he’ll prefer email for most communications. But what if you need to talk on the phone at some point? I share my cell number with my clients but ask that, unless it’s urgent, they shoot me an email irst so we can schedule a phone appointment. If your agent shares his cell number with you, be respectful: Don’t ever, unless it’s extremely critical, call him outside of regular workday hours. 104 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
You get the idea. Your agent is likely doing her best to get to your work as quickly as possible, all while taking care of the day-to-day business involved in repping numerous authors. If she has a Twitter feed or an appearance schedule posted online, you can get a glimpse of what’s on her plate. Mind you, it’s OK to check in ater a few weeks for an update—something along the lines of, “Just checking to see whether you’d had a chance to give this a look yet, and wondering if you have an idea of when I might expect comments.” (Good communication, right?) But don’t continuously pester her with follow-up emails. She already knows your work is in the queue. Still, waiting is never easy. Get busy writing your next manuscript—it’ll help pass that time, plus advance your career. Do touch base with your agent, though, about at what stage she’d like to weigh in on your newest project. She’ll likely want to ofer a market and career perspective about it, and maybe even give you feedback on initial pages. What if several months go by and you still haven’t heard from your agent about that full manuscript? If you never get an answer to your inquiry, or your work remains unread for many months without a solid reason and no communication, then it’s time to schedule a phone call and ind out if there’s anything going on that you should know about. You may discover there’s an illness in the family or some other legit cause for the delay. What if there is no real reason? hen you need to have a frank discussion about what you can expect moving forward, and decide if this agent is the right it for you. Do keep in mind that if you are showering your agent with multiple completed projects, it’s likely she’ll work on only one of them at a time. Your other projects will then remain in the queue until she is able to circle back to them. She has many clients and must advance all of their careers.
SURVIVING SUBMISSION Your manuscript will oten need changes before it goes out on submission. Don’t be discouraged or take it too personally. Editors now expect manuscripts to come to them as close to perfect as possible, and your agent is there to tell it to you straight. If your agent is “highly editorial,” expect plenty of comments and tracked edits to be sent your way. If not, then he’ll probably let you know whether or not he deems your project ready for submission, but ofer only a few comments as to why. Feel free to clarify any comments
you don’t quite understand, but then it’s up to you to get the manuscript up to snuf on your own. Roll up your sleeves and do the best revision you possibly can before your agent sees it again.
Be sure to start your own authoragent relationship on the right foot by developing great communication from the beginning. Once a manuscript is ready for submission, I work with my client to shape the strongest synopsis and author bio possible, and then I take it from there. Your agent may do things slightly diferently, but here’s what I do: Using info I’ve put together through years of research and talking with editors, I create a list of editors to contact—ones who I know are looking for just this sort of project. I spend a lot of time perfecting my pitch, which succinctly captures the essence of the book. hen I get on the phone, calling each editor and delivering this pitch in a way that piques interest. Editors tell me they’d love to see it, and I email the manuscript to them, along with the synopsis and bio. I record where it was sent and when, and let my client know that the book has been submitted and who has it. I always check back with each editor to make sure he received the manuscript. hen I wait. Ater a few weeks go by, if I haven’t heard anything, I’ll call these editors to see if they’ve had a chance to read it yet. hat, in essence, is the process. Before your manuscript goes out to editors, ask your agent what info he’ll be sharing with you about submissions. Some agents provide details only if you ask. Otherwise they’ll just let you know if anything signiicant happens—like an ofer. So if you’d like to see every rejection and all comments from editors, let him know. If, however, you don’t handle those well, tell him what level of info is right for you.
BUILDING TRUST One important thing to remember at this stage is that you, the writer, must trust your agent. Don’t demand to see her pitch and ix it for her. If you have truly informed suggestions about which editors you think would like WritersDigest.com I 105
The Submission Process your book, feel free to share them, but trust your agent to make the ultimate decision about who she contacts—this is her area of expertise. Trust is also a big part of what you hope will be the next stage of this process—negotiating a book contract. his, too, is the agent’s area of expertise. Trust that he’s negotiating the very best deal he can on your behalf. I should warn you, though—authors may feel really out of the loop during this stage. If a deal comes in, your agent will tell you about the initial basic deal points: which publisher is making the ofer, and what advance and/or royalty rates have been ofered. But ater that the author shouldn’t expect much more info until ater the deal points are fully negotiated. It’s just not practical timewise to be included in all the back-and-forth, and is not needed until things are irmed up.
One important thing to remember at this stage is that you, the writer, must trust your agent. Don’t demand to see her pitch and fix it for her. When negotiations are complete, you’ll see the inal contract. If you have any questions about it, ask your agent, but understand that the time for haggling is over. Unless there is a huge deal breaker set in front of you, it’s time to sign and celebrate.
KNOWING WHAT’S “NORMAL” You can see how knowing what goes on behind the scenes can help you shape realistic expectations, and how good communication can help dispel insecurities and clear up misunderstandings. But what if you still have worries? One common concern I’ve heard from writers is that their agent never sold their novel, even ater submitting to a wide range of editors. hese writers ask me if this means they have a bad agent. he answer is: Probably not. Sadly, having an agent doesn’t guarantee that your book will sell. Every agent reps wonderful manuscripts that for whatever reason (or no real reason) never get sold. Sometimes the market isn’t strong enough to support your type of book, or a recent deal on a similar book makes the timing bad. 106 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
Publishing is subjective and not an exact science. All your agent can do is make a solid efort to shop your book. I’d be more worried if she’d barely sent it out before giving up completely (unless editor comments were particularly negative). hat could signal someone who only wants a quick sale. You want someone fully invested in your success—and for not just that one book, but your whole career—and willing to work for you. Another common concern? Writers worry that editors are taking a long time responding to their agent’s submissions, and some editors don’t answer at all. Does this mean they have a bad agent? A top agent doesn’t guarantee a top response time, though a red-hot project with, say, a celebrity or A-list author might. Since the recession, there have been many cutbacks at publishing houses, which means editors don’t have the support staf they need. Responses can take a day, a week, a month or several months, and some editors never respond at all. I think this oten says more about the editor than the agent. Now here’s a situation I sometimes hear of that you deinitely do need to worry about: when an agent doesn’t like anything you send him, then stops answering your emails or returning calls. Unfortunately, in those cases the writer doesn’t have an agent at all. An agent is someone who works with you and for you. If that’s not happening, then it’s time to look for new representation. he author-agent relationship is a true partnership— a two-way street. So when you think you might spot signs of trouble, don’t forget to irst ask yourself whether you’re being a good client. A good client is professional, personable, talented, proliic, has realistic expectations, and is positive and hard-working. And a bad client? Someone who is diicult, overly needy, reticent when it comes to revisions, never trusts the agent, and is otherwise unprofessional. You worked hard to become agented, so always make sure you are doing all you can to be someone your agent joyfully represents. here are truly many components to an author-agent relationship, but I think what you need to remember most are those two important elements: communication and trust. Start of with these, and you’ll build a strong partnership that will last for many years to come. NW
Marie Lamba (marielamba.com) is author of the YA novels What I Meant …, Over My Head and Drawn, and of the upcoming picture book Green, Green. She’s also an associate literary agent at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency (jdlit.com).
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Last Word
YES
You Can! hroughout elementary and middle school, I was all about sports: baseball, football, basketball, tennis. For many years, I fell asleep to Vin Scully calling Dodger games on the radio. I had batting averages memorized, could recite the entire rosters of several NFL teams. Summers were structured around Wimbledon at the outset and the U.S. Open at the end. I guess I was a jock, but I didn’t think of myself that way. I just liked sports a lot. But in high school that was changing. he skills and abilities of my classmates began to surpass my own; I wasn’t as good, and I knew it. Perhaps even more important, though, I was no longer as dedicated, lacking the drive, inding the monomaniacal energy and intensity and regimentation to be too much. A basketball coach required players to get their hair cut short (“a businessman’s haircut,” he called it, a phrase I’ll never forget). My interests were also evolving. I got into music, eventually convincing my parents to pay for guitar lessons and buy me an electric guitar for Christmas. A sophomore English class was a revelation, awakening my love of books. We read short stories and novels: the mysterious Jay Gatsby, the humanity of To Kill a Mockingbird, the soul-wounded expatriates of he Sun Also Rises. Other students complained about the reading assignments and quizzes and boring characters. But not me. Devouring these works helped spur a conclusion that I was slowly coming to: here was more to life than my fairly circumscribed, suburban Southern California existence; there was, in fact, a world elsewhere. My senior year, with that sense of things both beginning and ending, I joined the school newspaper, he Freelancer, starting out writing stories and quickly
T
112 I NOVELWRITING I 2016
becoming editor of the Features page. Shaping stories, I discovered, was something I was fairly good at—and something that I really enjoyed doing, too. I came up with introductions, angles, hooks. Tried to create a pulse, a rhythm with my words. I did the pasteup work for the Features page, iguring out which stories should be paired with which. It was like a blooming: his was something I hadn’t known I could do, and now I was doing it. It wasn’t he Sun Also Rises or he Great Gatsby, but it seemed like a turning, a beginning. Language was a kind of transcendence. One day Mr. Cochran, the paper’s adviser, pulled me aside. He’d been reviewing some of my work, and he was pleased. “Where were you the last three years?” he said. It wasn’t a full-blown compliment, but I knew what he meant and what he was getting at, and it stuck with me—both at the time and now, many years later. You’ve got something here. You can maybe do this. his could be a thing for you to pursue, a possibility, a path. And yes, where were you the last three years? It was an encouragement, a validation, a “this is what you should be doing.” And I would carry it with me as I tried to be a writer in the years ahead. Someone said yes. Little did I know how oten a writer hears no instead. But that irst yes has, in part, fueled a life’s work. NW
Andrew Roe (andrewroeauthor.com) is the author of The Miracle Girl. His fiction has appeared in Tin House, One Story, Glimmer Train and other publications. He lives in Oceanside, Calif., with his wife and three children.
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