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Ten
Things a Novelist Learned By Jacqueline Diamond Note: A rewritten version of this article is included in How to Write a Novel in One (Not-so-easy) Lesson
Padding barefoot across the room, her heart thundered in her
chest she could hardly breathe. The woman was short with long blonde hair.
Eagerly, she cast her eyes out the window and swept them across the view. John hurried toward the structure. Unable to believe he was here at last. Two years ago, when he first met Mary, he smiled and said, “Nice to meet you. My name is John.” As a frequent contest judge and the published author of more than 80 novels, I can identify numerous errors – some rather painful -- in this passage. Yet now that I’ve become a teacher, I can also see through the awkwardness to the potential underneath. That’s one of many things I’ve discovered while teaching. Before and after selling my first book 25 years ago, I’ve honed my craft through classes, a critique group and feedback from agents and editors. Although I’ve conducted workshops and seminars, I didn’t begin teaching on a regular basis until two years ago through a distance-learning institute. I work with less-experienced students in a class called Breaking Into Print and with advanced writers in a novel-writing course. Students submit lessons either by mail or e-mail; I edit each piece and write a letter of critique and encouragement. In many ways, being an instructor is like becoming a detective, searching for clues to help a writer whose strengths and weaknesses may be very different from my own. Working one-on-one this way has taught me a lot about the process of writing. Among the points that stand out are some that may seem obvious, and others that may surprise you. 1) Action begets reaction, which begets pace. A story is terrible thing to waste, but inexperienced writers do it all the time. The promising elements of a tale lie limp on the page. Why? Because, as in real life, the characters simply decide to do things for no clear reason. Example: The heroine, Jane, is sitting in her living room when she decides to go visit an old boyfriend. During the visit, she finds Bill happily married and realizes she’s been unduly mistrusting of relationships. She goes home and decides to call the man’s brother, whom she always found appealing. End of story. Did things happen? Yes. Did Jane change? Yes. Was this interesting? I’m sorry; I’ll answer that when I finish yawning. Try this instead: Jane is sitting in her living room watching a romantic movie and wondering why real men are such rats, when the phone rings. The man at the other end claims to have a wrong number, but she believes the voice belongs to Bill, an ex-boyfriend she kind of regrets breaking up with. So she goes to visit and finds him happily married, but what about that phone call? She keeps debating whether to confront him. Finally, when his wife is out of the room, she does, but he denies everything. Hurt, mistrusting and cynical that even this blissful union is probably a sham, the heroine returns home to find a recorded message from Bill’s shy brother, who sounds just like him. Not only is her faith restored, but she realizes she really liked the brother better all along. With renewed hope, she dials his number. The second scenario might not win any awards, but you see how one action leads to another, creating story tension along the way. 2) To create a memorable character, you have to step outside your comfort zone. While teaching, I’ve seen characters so nice they don’t have room to grow, scenes filled with chitchat that lacks conflict, and success that arrives with few obstacles. Since I identify with my heroines, naturally I don’t want them to make embarrassing mistakes or lose their tempers or their money. But you wouldn’t want to read a book about me, because I’m boring. My heroines have to be bold where I’m timid, impulsive where I’m cautious, and disaster-prone where I’m merely clumsy. We all want happy endings, but we have to make our characters earn them. Really earn them. 3) If you don’t feel the emotions, your reader won’t, either. Most of us grew up learning to guard our feelings. Writers, like actors, have to unlearn that. We back away from spilling our guts by telling rather than showing (“He hurt her feelings”) and retreating into passive verb tenses (“She was surprised by his anger”) as opposed to making ourselves, and our heroines, vulnerable (“Her stomach tightened. She’d never imagined he hated her so much”). The key to conveying emotions is getting deeply into a character’s point of view. This means filtering events through his or her personality and attitudes. Some beginning novelists write as if they’re screening a movie, with characters who talk and move but don’t let us inside their thoughts. Yes, screenwriters are skilled at revealing information through external actions, such as having the hero thrust a framed photo of the heroine into a drawer to indicate his hurt or anger. But they can also count on the actors, the director and the cinematographer to bring out the emotions implicit in their scripts.
In books, we need the viewpoint character’s reaction to what’s
happening, usually through interior monologue. Example: “He thrust the
photo into the drawer and slammed it shut. He might not be able to bring
her back, but he didn’t have to torture himself by looking at her every
day.” There’s the action, and then there’s the hero’s feelings
about it. 4) Another point-of-view challenge for the unwary is head hopping. Look at the paragraphs that start this article. The hero and heroine both experience emotions, but it’s hard to get involved because we’re ping-ponging between them. The passage actually presents three points of view. First, the heroine’s. Then, in the second sentence, we pop into an external, third-person POV in which we see what she looks like as if we were standing in front of her. Then we travel outside with her gymnastic eyeballs and suddenly, like the hapless scientist in Quantum Leap, we land inside John’s consciousness.
Some best-selling authors manage to pull off head hopping, but for
most of us, it’s far more effective to draw the reader into our story
and make her care by limiting POV to one character per scene. 5) Dialogue is a land mine. I never realized how hard this is to pull off until I started teaching. First, get the basics right. Start a new paragraph each time you change speakers. Buy a grammar book and learn when to capitalize and where to put those annoying quote marks. Don’t irritate the reader by constantly inserting dialogue tags (“I love you,” he said. “I love you too,” she whispered. “Are you sure?” he queried). I also learned how hard it is for writers to grasp that chitchat has no place in fiction. Look at the opening passage. Sure, when John first met Mary, he probably did say hello and introduce himself, but what does that tell you about either of them, their feelings or the circumstances?
Dialogue should crackle with personality and attitude. Study an
exchange of dialogue in a favorite novel or film and you’ll see what I
mean. 6) Finding your voice requires forgetting what you learned in English class. Some of my most educated students have the greatest difficulty identifying their natural rhythm and tone. The academic voice they mastered for papers relies heavily on passive verb constructions and a detached style that’s deadly to fiction. At other times, they strain for such an elevated level of imagery that the reader can’t tell what’s happening in the story.
Ironically, these same students write me letters that are
straightforward, entertaining and frank. I often suggest that they study
the way they write their own letters. 7) Where the heck are these people? As writers, we sometimes forget that the reader needs clear information about the setting and time period. Take another look at the opening passage. Is Mary padding across the stone floor of a castle, the packed dirt of a hut or the hardwood floor of a Malibu beach house? Is John zooming toward her in his personal spacecraft, urging his horse along a bramble-strewn path or shifting gears in his Ferrari?
Readers also need to be grounded whenever the story makes a
transition from one scene to another. And don’t overlook the power of
sensory details to conjure the essence of a setting: the stale odor of
unwashed sheets in a bedroom, or the tinkle of wind chimes hung amid a
profusion of plants on a patio. 8) Don’t bog down your tale with exposition. Start with action and stay with it, weaving in the back story on a need-to-know basis. With rare exceptions, a student’s first story will start with background information about the characters. Occasionally a more sophisticated writer begins with a vivid action paragraph or two, then stops the story cold with a page or more about what led up to this situation. It’s great that the writer has developed the heroine’s childhood angst, but that should be held back until (and unless) it’s essential. Important information such as setting and character description may be necessary to avoid confusing the reader, but it shouldn’t plop onto the page like an old-fashioned inkblot. In my opening paragraphs, for example, the writer could skip the descriptive sentence and show the heroine tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and standing on tiptoe, which implies that she’s short. Equally troublesome are flashbacks in which the author shows an incident from the character’s history in scenes complete with dialogue. These may be needed deep inside the book to reveal key events, but if they occur too early, they distract the reader and dissipate the momentum.
There is an exception: Sometimes a writer frames a novel or story
by starting in the present with a cliffhanger situation, then picks up in
the past and gradually returns to resolve the suspense. But it takes a lot
of sophistication to pull this off, and the inciting incident has to be a
true turning point, not merely a gimmick. 9) “Plot” is not a four-letter word. Well, actually, it is, but you know what I mean. Many elements go into creating a strong plot, from the action-reaction issue to the need for the hero and/or heroine to change in a meaningful way. But even with all these elements, many stories conclude with a dull thud instead of soaring into a moment of revelation. What’s missing is a plot twist that opens a new vista for the reader. This is as true in a romance or character-based literary tale as in a thriller. That twist may spring from the writer playing with the reader’s expectations, or from a vital bit of back story. I often review a student’s story seeking unanswered questions or unused potential angles. Remember Jane and Bill? The second version includes a twist, but it shouldn’t arrive totally out of the blue or the reader will feel manipulated. Earlier, Jane might reflect that she broke up with Bill because he seemed to enjoy spending time with his brother more than he did with her. For Pete’s sake, he let the guy tag along on half their dates. See how this information pays off in the end? 10) Talent isn’t always immediately obvious. A few authors shine from page one, but other gifted writers lumber about like newborn foals struggling to walk. I’ve seen talent emerge gradually through hard work and dedication, while some of the more obviously promising students, creators of vivid characters and memorable metaphors, drift away. They may lack commitment, or let self-doubt overwhelm them, or become frustrated by the challenges of plotting. Consider the opening passage one more time. It’s packed with technical mistakes. Opening with a misplaced modifier (did her heart really pad barefoot across the room?), it encompasses clichés, a run-on sentence, a sentence fragment and a mistake in verb tense. Yet it bristles with energy and emotion. This writer cares about her characters, and I suspect that, with a few more lessons and rewrites under her keyboard, she’ll make the reader care about them, too. ¨ ¨ ¨ Published October, 2009, in "The Romance Writer's Report" of Romance Writers of America Copyright 2009, Jackie Hyman |