Novel Matters

Story World Matters: Part III

2012-01-27T02:00:00.000-08:00

To begin, I would like a show of hands: How many people would like to join me on a teaching conference call to discuss story world further? I would set up a time, you call in online, you will be able to see only me, but we would all be able to talk. I would need at least 15 people or so to make it work. If you would be interested, leave me a short comment.
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When it comes to story world you can’t escape the word organic. All the elements of our novels need to connect structurally in non-forced ways. Organic means the story is honest, and that the parts have grown naturally, one idea feeding the next until we have a cast of characters living in a believable world and acting truthfully. Whenever we try to push a concept through a cookie cutter template we end up with a generic formula story that lacks vitality and depth. It’s just like every other story. In Part two of this series, we discussed how to ensure connectivity by story world being a physical representation of the conflict between characters.

The second type of conflict that story world demonstrates is the internal conflict of your hero. When you create a character web, you examine in detail how the various characters oppose one another. The only way to do that is to fully grasp what it is the hero wants, and then how the other characters try to prevent the hero (and each other) from getting his or her desire fulfilled.

In the best stories, the hero has a strong desire at the beginning, which changes (is altered) over the course of the novel. The lessons learned through the course of the novel temper the desire in some way (strengthen it, weaken it only to reveal to the hero the stronger desire he/she was suppressing, etc.). For example, the hero of a murder mystery wants to find the killer, but by the end of the story he discovers his greatest desire was to prove to himself that he doesn’t possess the mind and instincts of a killer himself. The story world helps the reader to see the hero’s internal conflict—the war inside.

There are two things to hold in balance while you craft a story world that physically demonstrates your hero’s struggle for what he desires.

First, ensure your story world properly reflects the kind or type of journey your hero partakes of in the novel. This is a question of story structure. You can read more about this in part one of the series. Secondly, focus on building a story world that reflects the hero’s weakness, and need, as well as desire.

For the first part, we are concerned about the overall arch of the hero’s journey, the structure of the novel that takes the hero from the place he or she lives at the beginning of the novel, and moves him to a new moral, ethical, emotional, and sometimes geographic location by the end. In broadest terms, there are two states a hero can live in: freedom or slavery. Your novel is the story of how your hero moves between these two states of being.

There are pits stops along the way, places that appear to be freedom, but are actually deeper slavery, and places that appear to be defeat (or a visit to death), that lead the hero toward freedom. This journey is organically built into every aspect of your story including the story world. The places and things your character encounters are every bit the hero’s journey as are the dialogue, character interaction, backstory, and plot. John Truby says it this way, “The connection between hero and world extends from the hero’s slavery throughout his character arc. In most stories, because the hero and the world are expressions of each other, the world and the hero develop together.”

The second part requires us to consider our hero’s weakness, desire, and need. Story world demonstrates the hero’s weakness in physical ways. Need is personified inside of place. Desire for freedom is sketched out in the landscape of places, and the systems that are in place. It’s Luke Skywalkers home planet Tatoonine, a dessert place where a living must be coaxed from the sand. It’s Harry’s room under the stairs. In Gilead, it is the box on top of the bookcase that John Ames cannot manage to take down by himself. Often our stories begin with the hero living in slavery (to an idea, a system, an unloving family, a haunting mystery, an old hurt, etc.), and has specific weaknesses. The story world, then begins as a place that highlights and exploits that weakness. As the hero fights for the goal, the story world changes to reflect the small success and larger failures along the way, until, finally, the hero reaches the goal (or fails to reach it) and the story world is changed because it.

It’s a dance where the world and the hero are in step, mirroring one another. The reader understands the movement of the novel because it pulses all around.

The take home is that story world is a physical manifestation of the hero’s inner conflict, weakness, need, and desire that changes over the course of the novel.

It’s been a great week on Novel Matters. We’ve gone deep into story world, yet there is much more we could have talked about. My biggest difficulty in crafting this series was all the material I had to leave out of the discussion for the sake of articles that didn't run several thousand words long.

If you would be interested in a live conference call, leave a comment and let me know. If the numbers work out, I’ll schedule the call and we can meet up and talk more.

Meanwhile, what has been the take away for you this week? What have you come across in your reading that touches on story world? Do you have questions?
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Debbie Fuller Thomas is on She Reads today talking characters and writing what you know. A great article! Check it out.

Story World Matters: Part II

2012-01-25T02:00:00.000-08:00

The takeaway from Part 1 of this series was that the world your characters live in is a manifestation of those characters. So, if we create a story world that reveals our characters, does that mean it should rain every time the hero is upset?

Please no.

Characters are complex—meaning they are layered, sometimes contrary, and able to hide truth from themselves. Story world personifies the complexity of your characters over the course of the novel. It’s the ground they stand on, and the wind up their kilt. It’s the dark alley of oppression, and warm house of acceptance. The buildings, weather, land mass, and even the technology inside the story world is organically linked to the characters in such a way that it reveals meaning, themes, and plot.

For example, in my completed manuscript A Girl Named Fish, my hero, Joan, lives on a fictional dystopian island. The story structure is fairy tale, so that means the island is Joan’s kingdom. I emphasize this point by giving Joan and her husband, Leif, an apartment above the chandlery shop they own. This serves as Joan’s ‘high tower’, the place in which she eavesdrops on the world without fully engaging. I crafted a scene near the beginning of the novel in which Joan stands in front of her open window and overhears two women on the street below talking about her. Later, when a girl calling herself Fish enters this rarified space, it is altered. Near the end of the novel, there is another scene where Joan overhears two women talking about her, but the high tower has been transformed.

My island in A Girl Named Fish is fictional, but novels often borrow a real location as their setting. The difference is, when you borrow a real place, let’s say Las Vegas, you make it into your Las Vegas. You craft it’s places and give meaning to it’s buildings, attractions, and streets. It’s motels are as corrupt and gritty as your undercover cop hero, or casinos as glamorous and sparkling as your beauty pageant character, or its neighborhoods as cloistered and manicured as your falsely perfect characters who allow themselves to be blinded by the high fences around their houses that keep truth out.

You take the real place and mold it into a familiar, yet utterly unique place that pulses, shifts, and changes with your characters. You create a world that is a revelation. The city itself reveals a moral truth of humanity. And yes, you do this even with historical fiction. Every place in history has a few nooks and crannies you can realistically use, bend, invent to create the exact story world you need to tell the story.

How?

Remember the adage Fiction is conflict? That isn’t just plot advice. It’s important to crafting all aspects of fiction, including story world. Your story world expresses the conflicts between characters in physical ways.

This means that in order to create an organic story world, you need to understand the web of conflict between characters. In simple stories like romance novels, there is a hero (the POV character) and an opponent (the person the POV character falls in love with), with the rest of the cast of characters there to make tea when the POV character cries. More complex stories are ones that have multiple characters in opposition to the hero and to each other. Every character is a reflection a different way of understanding the hero’s moral issue. Your story world will reflect the conflict.

For example, in The Great Gatsby, there is an initial conflict between the open spaces of the Midwest, and the elegant closed-ness of the city, including its mansions. There is the East Egg (established wealth), and the West Egg (new money). Gatsby is newly rich by illegal means, and his home is gaudy and ill appointed compared to the homes of the less recently rich. Later, the mansions add layers of conflict by introducing the gas station where we find Tom’s mistress. And New York City, by the end, has morphed into a beast, a monster, green and vile. All of these aspects of story world combine to support and diagram the deeper conflict found in the novel. The conflict between people, ideas, systems, and ideologies are all manifest in the story world.

Notice how the physical world in The Great Gatsby not only reflects conflict between characters, but also conflict of values. The values held by your hero (more about that in part 3), and how they are in opposition to the values held by other characters and the systems that entrap each one. Your story world supports and manifests the various conflicts of values found in the story.

In Alice Hoffman’s epic novel The Dovekeepers, the story world is Masada, King Herod’s abandoned desert fortress where 960 Jews chose to die by their own hands rather than be taken hostage by Rome. The novel is a study in conflict. Three women come to Masada from different places (open spaces) and work together in the dovecotes (closed spaces). Masada is a fortress against the gathering Roman army on the desert floor below, and inside Masada there are opulent rooms where leaders reside, and cramped, dark stables where poor families live. And there are hidden places deep within the mountain where magic spells are pronounced and women give birth to illegitimate children in secret. Each space inside Masada highlights the conflict between characters (the cave on the side of the mountain where the Essenes hide away from the “unclean” Jews above, the cistern that runs nearly dry, the dovecotes where a woman and a captured slave are thrown together. All these aspects combine to highlight the shifting alliances and increasingly dangerous conflicts.

The spaces in The Dovekeepers reflect the conflict of values found among diverse yet devout people. They highlight the religious, economic, class, and ideological conflicts, and hold them in tension with the terrible deeds that take place in the open (the desert) in the name of survival.

The general rule is the greater the conflict between characters, the smaller the space should be that contains the conflict. Great stories always have their great, final battle take place inside the smallest spaces in the story. This works best when the entire story before the final battle has made structural use of story world to help tell the story. (Don’t be confused by the term “battle” this refers to whatever form major conflict takes, it doesn’t refer exclusively to combat or fighting.)

The take home is that your story world is the physical manifestation of your character’s conflicts.

Thoughts? Also, feel free to ask any questions or for clarification. I’ll do my best to engage with your ideas and ponderings and together, we might come up with something helpful.

Story World Matters: Part 1

2012-01-23T02:00:00.000-08:00

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It's story world week on Novel Matters. Three articles examining three aspects of creating an organic story world for fiction that feels like real life.

I'm taking over the week and teaching some of the basics. I hope this will touch off a series of questions, discussions, and contributions from each one of us. I offer these articles as starting points, things to consider and fiddle with as we write. I don't pretend to have all the answers or suggest that this is the only way to create story world. I know it works for me, and I offer these ideas up to you for your consideration.

Like all elements of fiction writing, story world is multifarious. Meaning, it isn’t one thing, but a composite of techniques, perspectives, and aspects of the writing craft, which are also multifaceted.

Story world is exactly what it says it is: the world in which your characters live, breathe, and have their meaning. It includes the setting, but is much larger and complex than setting alone. It is the world you create in order to express your characters. Story world “shows” (demonstrates) your hero’s personal growth as it morphs and changes throughout the story.

In this way, writing fiction is the opposite of real life. John Truby puts it this way, “In good stories, the characters come first, and the writer designs the world to be an infinitely detailed manifestation of those characters.”

The key here is “manifestation of those characters.” Story world isn’t separate from your characters. It isn’t a rigid space that existed before your characters came into existence. The space your story takes place in (a house, a town, a city, a jungle) represents your characters. And it changes as your characters change.

Where do you begin building your story world for your characters? It starts by knowing exactly what kind of story you are writing. I’m not referring to genre. I’m talking about story structure, the bones of the kind or type of story you want to tell and how you want to tell it.

This is a difficult step that will take a great deal of time to work out. I’m against formulas in fiction writing as a rule, but I will offer you this “formula” for puzzling out how to decide story structure because it is an organic one rather than paint by numbers.

Story structure is: Story process + original execution.

Story process refers to the type of story you are telling (love story, fairy tale, coming of age, dystopian, journey, fish out of water, myth, masterpiece, etc). Original execution refers to the unique way you will tell the story.

Here are some examples of this formula:

The Time Traveler’s Wife: A time traveler learns to love his wife and leave a legacy for his child knowing he will die at age 43. (Story process: love story. Original execution: he is a time traveler, plus the ticking clock of his approaching death)

The fact that The Time Traveler’s Wife is a love story means that the story world is largely made up of man-made, indoor spaces where people are thrown together in intimate ways. Apartment, house, crowded bars, even the library where he worked. He moves from man-made space to man-made space and each move is more claustrophobic than the last. Only the sprawling meadow (a natural arena that juxtaposes the man-made arenas in the rest of the book) by Clair’s childhood home provides a utopia for Henry. There, he falls in love and becomes a man. This made it all the more poignant when Henry meets his demise in the meadow.

Notice the amount of detail that went into creating this shifting, intimate, and yet menacing world? The story world expressed Henry, not the other way around.

Let the Great World Spin: A single moment in history is the catalyst for tragedy and hope, expressing humanity’s irrevocable connectedness. (Story process: Allegory/myth hybrid. Original execution: bringing diverse and seemingly unconnected characters together inside a defining moment in history.)

Story world: New York City, beginning in the heart of Manhattan, and spidering out into the various boroughs.

The story world in this novel is overly familiar: New York City. McCann takes the city and creates a series of enclosed spaces where the characters live out their disconnection (a hovel apartment in a dangerous neighborhood, a space under a bridge, a sweeping Central Park apartment, cabin, an institutional home for the physically impaired), crowned by the space below, and around the World Trade Center buildings.

Here’s and example from John Truby’s book The Anatomy of Story:

It’s a Wonderful Life: Express the power of the individual by showing what a town, and a nation, would be like if one man had never been born. (Story process: dystopia to utopia= fairy tale. Original execution: An angel shows George two versions of his small town.)

Story world: Two different versions of the same small town in America.

Because the structure of It’s a Wonderful Life is a fairy tale, it requires a kingdom in which the characters live and our hero rules over (in this case a small town). And, because the original execution is two towns, every element of the first kingdom had to have a contrasting element in the second version (which also had a different “king”, the banker Mr. Potter). No detail could be missed, from the buildings, to the town’s name, to the weather, to the moon overhead.

Your story world is no less detailed.

Detailed and limited. You need to erect boundaries around your story world. The drama of your novel will take place inside of these “walls” (even if there are no walls at all—State of Wonder, Ann Patchett’s latest release takes place in outdoor spaces, first the streets of a city, then the jungle). When you think of your novel, you need to think in terms of contained space. Where are the boundaries of your story? Is it a town, a city, an island, a house, a boat, a shoreline, a hut, a jungle, etc.? Then, within those boundaries, you will create secondary spaces (rooms with in a house, a house within a city, a campsite within a forest, etc).

If your story structure requires multiple worlds (for example: Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Pleasantville, etc.) you must connect the worlds in some fashion. My newly completed manuscript takes place on an island off the East coast, but I have a man-made space on the mainland that I need to include in my story world (it symbolizes futile attempts to attain wellbeing outside of the character’s organic story world); therefore I used the system of ferry service as a bridge between the two worlds. That meant that I needed scenes on the ferry, and that the ferry itself be organically part of the larger story world.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, a brief introduction to the topic of story world. There is a great deal more to consider based on the specific story structure you will use, and the original execution you will employ. We’ll explore further in part two, coming on Wednesday.

For now, the key take away is that the world your characters live in is a manifestation of those characters.

Thoughts? Also, feel free to ask any questions or for clarification. I’ll do my best to engage with your ideas and ponderings and together, we might come up with something helpful.

Lessons on Truth from Novel X

2012-01-20T03:00:00.000-08:00

What a great start to the year--a guest post by Ariel on Monday that reflected what we intuitively know about a great book but she put into words: "Character and Plot and Setting and Theme slip away with time. But I can pull any book from that shelf [of keepers], dust off the cover, flip to a favorite passage and tell you exactly how it made me feel. And really, that’s all that matters in the end." If you missed Ariel's post, backpedal a few days to enjoy her passion for a good read. And then, there's Katy's post on Wednesday that left us gob-smacked as she gave voice to her astonishment, the true calling of the novelist, according to Annie Dillard. Thanks, Katy.

At the end of Katy's post, she said, "Truth is what happens underneath, and how it resonates like a great voice through a vast impossible mouth." And that's our job as fiction writers, to tell the truth.

I gave this a lot of thought. I know excellent fiction is truer than life, but what goes wrong when it isn't?

It just so happens I finished reading a novel for my book club a few days ago, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why it left me flat. I'm not going to tell you the title or author. The Novel Matters writers are looking forward to reviewing novels in the coming months, novels that matter for their craft and for "the way it made [us] feel." This novel (Novel X) was a worthwhile read, to be sure, but not one that gob-smacked me, so I'm only using my reading of the novel as a jumping off point for our discussion.

I must say that the author did an amazing job of plunking me into a landscape and culture of intense contrasts and unequaled beauty--the mountains of Kentucky--with exceptional skill, so much so that his words set my heart longing for a place I'd never been. And his descriptions--oh my.

But the read was dissatisfying, despite the plethora of 5-starred reviews the book received. (The novel read more like a memoir, which should read more like a novel, but that's a topic for another day.) I think my dissatisfaction came down to the question of truth. John Truby says in his book The Anatomy of Story: "...You must give the hero desire. Desire is what your hero wants in the story, his particular goal...Desire is the driving force in the story, the line from which everything else hangs."

In Novel X, the hero wants what she already has, and that would be a fine desire to structure a story around, if the author had created obstacles to the hero keeping her family and home, but there weren't, not really. And that's not truthful. We are all driven by desire, and we all fight against an army of obstacles to obtain those desires. This is the very reason we read novels. We want to see the hero struggle toward their desires, just as we do, sometimes failing, perhaps being betrayed, always being sidetracked, and frequently a bit misguided.

What I'm suggesting is that a big part of "the truth that happens underneath," as Katy said, is desire, and the stronger the desire the stronger the obstacles and the more satisfying the story when that desire is met, or traded in for something higher, more noble, or holy.

Perhaps Novel X's hero's lack of desire hit me because I'm guilty of this flaw. Not that I lack desires. I'm a zoo of desires! But it's scary to embue my hero with a desire that will take him or her places that make my skin itch, or toward a thicket of obstacles with no discernable path. It's a process, for sure. Here's a recent conversation I had with my latest hero-in-the-making to demonstrate my point:

Me: So, Reece, what do you really, really desire?

Reece: For the last year to go away.

Me: That's not going to happen. I wish it could, for your sake, but then we wouldn't have a story to tell. Think about it. What do you desire? What are you willing to die for?

Reece: I want my family back.

Me: Your ex-husband is married to another woman. Maybe you should desire something else.

Reece: You asked me what I would die for.

Me: So I did. What's your first move?

Reece: Isn't that your job? I could use some direction here.

Me: Well...uh...you probably shouldn't have had the affair.

Reece: Are you sure you're qualified to write this story?

Me: This isn't getting us anywhere. Tell me about your parents. Why are you back home?

Reece: My mother's crazy, always has been, and she's finally driven my father away. She can't live alone, just can't.

Me: Let's see, you're a divorced adultress who wants her married husband back, and you're trying to save your parents' marriage. I suppose there are kids involved. This is getting messy.

Reece: You're the one who asked about desire.

Me: So I did. Let me get back to you.

As you can see, Reece and I have some work to do. This piece of the story--the hero's desire--is so very important that I'm willing to revisit it many, many times. Without a strong desire and plenty of obstacles, I don't see how we can say our fiction is truthful. This is where our heros find their motivations, after all.

What about you? How important is desire when conceptualizing your hero and his/her story? Are there other story elements more important to establishing truth in a novel? If you've read a Novel X--let's be nice and not name it--what was missing?

Astonishment

2012-01-18T00:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday on my morning walk around Greenhorn lake, now half frozen over, I heard a sound so astonishing, even the explanation demanded disbelief, and Einstein-like analysis, and in the end ... astonishment.

What the sound was, was two otters (I think it was two) swimming, and barking, in the water beneath the ice. My friends and I reasoned that the ice created a big echo chamber, and the otters were perhaps barking for the same reason we yell, "Hello!" in a canyon.

What it sounded like was something akin to sonar mixed with the bellowing of a seal. But that doesn't begin to cover it, because the sound was ... so big. It sounded like the lake was an enormous mouth, talking.

Just when I thought this place couldn't astonish me further.

I've seen an eagle lift into flight not twenty feet away, and felt the wind from his wings. I've heard the call of ruddy ducks, not quacking, but sweet and plaintive. I've seen a mole - a dead one, but perfectly formed with soft gray fur, tiny hands and a small fleshy flower on the tip of his nose.

I've heard the sound of ice cracking down the length of the lake, another amazing noise, like gun-shot and thunder.

Annie Dillard says this is a clue to the meaning of my life: "You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment."

I can live with that. Sometimes I think I read novels, and write them, simply because I want, in the largest possible sense, to get it. I remember something I heard once in La Jolla, California, a favorite vacation spot for my family when I was young. (Younger. I meant younger.) Speaking to a girl my age who lived there, I gushed, "You are so lucky. You see this amazing, immense, crashing ocean every day." With whales in the distance, and dolphins, and tide pools filled with mysterious creatures, and surf so loud you can't think, you can only feel. Her reply was, "After a while, you don't notice."

It seemed wrong - a shame, certainly, but less like something to be regretted, and more like something to be repented. It was an insult to something holy. To Someone holy.

But there are things I don't notice. Maybe a little less than there might be, because I am a writer, and I'm always thinking how to describe things. Still, if I really understood what lay before me every day, if I had eyes to see and ears to hear, wouldn't I go around gob-smacked all the time?

One day, I'll get it.

Meanwhile, I'm going to need a lot of stories. I'm going to need Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, and Walter Wangerin's In The Days of Angels. I'm going to need the novels of Bonnie Grove, and Patti Hill, and Latayne Scott, and Sharon Souza and Debbie Fuller Thomas. I'm going to need a lot of authors who at least get it a little bit, to give voice to their astonishment so that in their light I can see the beauty before my eyes.

Without these writers, I am at the mercy of the marketers who tell me what is beautiful based on what they manufacture that they want me to buy. With that kind of propaganda, I might look at an ailing old woman without her teeth, and be repelled or amused, but fail to be amazed at the beauty Wangerin sees:

"Odessa Williams was frowning—frowning and nodding, frowning with her eyes squeezed shut, frowning, you see, with fierce pleasure, as though she were chewing a delicious piece of meat." (From In the Days of Angels.)

When I see you, or you see me, we might notice things the magazines have trained us to see, like hair and complexion and style. If we're very spiritual, we might see goodness or shame, and miss the deeper truth that one loving man finds, in Gilead:

"When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the “I” whose predicate can be “love” or “fear” or “want,” and whose object can be “someone” or “nothing” and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around “I” like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else. But quick, and avid, and resourceful."

The great thing writers must do, even in fiction, is to tell the truth. You might think the real goal would be to create an exciting plot. Truth can be boring, after all. Check out the millions of truths driving the highways on Monday mornings, and you'll see how boring truth can be.

This is where great writers earn the big bucks. (That was a joke.) They never settle for easy facts and call them truth. They know that Monday morning traffic is only the ice on the surface of the lake. Truth is what happens underneath, and how it resonates like a great voice through a vast impossible mouth.

How it Feels: Guest Post by Ariel Allison Lawhon of She Reads

2012-01-16T02:00:00.000-08:00

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“…in the end we will only just remember how it feels…”

– Rob Thomas, Little Wonders

There is a bookcase at one end of my living room. I refer to as my “keeper shelf” and were you to visit me (I hope you do!) you would find a motley assortment of novels. I keep my Harry Potter collection beside The Chronicles of Narnia. They’re not so different after all, full of magic and wonder and whimsy. I have Ann Patchett and L.M. Montgomery and Neil Gaiman. Kate DiCamillo. Marilyn Robinson. Leif Enger. Somehow The Book Thief and The Glass Castle ended up on the same shelf as a five-book collection by P.G. Wodehouse (bought, I might add, at a rambling bookstore owned by Larry McMurtry). A dusty and tattered edition of The Princess and the Goblin is held together by a rubber band and sits on the shelf farthest away from my curious toddler. It’s the copy my mother read to me as a child and I’d sooner give birth to a hippo than part with it. The Thirteenth Tale. Water for Elephants. The Night Circus. The Kite Runner. The Hunger Games. The Help. Watership Down. I own almost every novel written by Dick Francis and George MacDonald.

*sigh*

This collection of stories evokes something in me that I find difficult to express. It’s not uncommon for me to pass my bookshelf, run my fingers along the spines, and close my eyes. I summon the emotions I felt the first time I read them. Sometimes I even pull one from its spot and read a passage. I did this yesterday with The Time Travelers Wife:

“The curve of her shoulders, the stiffness in her posture say here is someone who is very tired, and I am very tired, myself. I shift my weight from one foot to the other and the floor creaks; the woman turns and sees me and her face is remade into joy; I am suddenly amazed; this is Clare, Clare old! And she is coming to me, so slowly, and I take her into my arms.”

Three years later and I don’t remember much of the plot, but I do remember how I wept my way through the last 50 pages. Audrey Niffenegger broke my heart and then patched it together with that last scene. My devotion for her novel is irrational.
For me, redemption is synonymous with The Kite Runner. I was quiet when I finished Khaled Hosseini’s stunning debut. I sat, book laid open in my lap, and felt something akin to worship—not for the author, but for the pure joy of seeing that kite lift into the air, and for what it meant:

“It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight. But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.”

Every book on that shelf moved me. Sometimes to laughter. Sometimes to tears. I have felt rage and empathy and grief. I’ve even fallen in love a time or two. Yet I’d be hard pressed to synopsize any of my favorite novels. Character and Plot and Setting and Theme slip away with time. But I can pull any book from that shelf, dust off the cover, flip to a favorite passage and tell you exactly how it made me feel. And really, that’s all that matters in the end.

Question for you: what is it that you hope your reader’s feel when they’ve finished your novel? Can you describe, in a word, what the last novel you read made you feel?

Want Ad: MWF Seeks Self Assured Novel for Long Term Relationship

2012-01-13T02:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wish finding a great novel was as easy as placing an ad in the classifieds. Wanted: Hunky page-turner for trips to the beach and possible late night trysts.

Recently, I tried my hand at writing a want ad for the kind of novel I am looking for. It was a hopeless mess. But one phrase kept coming to mind:Self-assured. I need that.

I have a hard time making sense of the world. I struggle with what other people seem to grasp so well, so quickly. Small talk is nearly impossible for me. When someone asks me a question like, “How have you been?” I over answer. Worse, I tend to ask questions that make people screw up their faces and shrug their shoulders at me. My mother tells me that I’ve never seen the world the way most people do. She says this in a proud and delighted way, which makes me feel better about it.

Imagine my delight upon opening a novel and discovering within mere paragraphs a mind and imagination I could relate to. I was a kid of maybe 9 or 10, and Judy Blume had done me the favor of writing a novel called Otherwise Known as Shelia the Great. A story about a girl who over invents herself (lies) in order to be noticed and liked. I don’t remember the story as much as I remember the thought I had when reading it, “Finally, someone who speaks my language.”

It wasn’t Sheila the Great talking my language, it was Judy Blume. And without knowing it, I had fallen in love with the introspective novel—those titles we refer to collectively as literary. I searched them out. And, having found them, I searched for myself in their pages. I didn’t approach novels in order to get lost in them. I was hoping to be found.

That’s what it’s all about in a way, isn’t it? Looking for bits of ourselves that had been somehow scattered to the four literary corners of the world. Not that we knew that, not for the longest time, but when we discovered this fact, didn’t we shudder feeling exposed and excited? It was a bit like being spied on. And it was beautiful. And ugly. Or at least as ugly as we believed ourselves to be at the time. Now that we’ve read more, we know better than to call ourselves ugly. Warty, maybe. Flawed. Sometimes broken. But literature won’t leave us self-loathing. It teaches us that self-loathing is merely one of a million options for how we can choose to live.

The novel of self-discovery is one that offers neither the rose-colored glasses nor the fog of despair, but the adjustable lens of a telescope. Through it we can bring a distant moment into sharp focus and see it for what it is. The reality of the thing. But the grace of it is we can blur the lens too. Take in small frames of truth, only as much as our eyes can hold at one time. The novel will wait for us. We will go back to it, thumb its pages, reread that bit near the middle. It’s not asking us to judge, only to look, and in looking, see, and in seeing, understand.

Understanding is where grace shines. It pries into the cracks forming on the surface of our doubt. It whispers words so softly we can only guess at their meaning. It rolls us over so we can see things from another angle. And it never once tells us what to think. It only asks that we do think.

How could I condense these thoughts into a want ad, 20 words or less, seeking my perfect novel? What would your want ad read?

A Hope and a Prayer

2012-01-11T02:00:00.000-08:00

In keeping with our theme for the year: Why the Novel Matters, for my first post of 2012 I'd like to share a story about how a novel contributed to the journey of faith of a young U.S. Marine.

In April 1971, my fiance Rick and I were 18 and crazy in love. He was a Marine; I was a recovering hippie. It was with many tears I sent him off to the Philippines for a 15-month tour of duty. He'd had orders to Viet Nam, which were canceled at the last minute when President Nixon began a major troop reduction. So it could have been worse, though it didn't feel like it.

Life in the Philippines was a different world for Rick, particularly off base. But even on base, drug use was rampant, and Rick began to see many of his friends turning to hard drugs. While he was a heavy drinker, even at 18, he had no interest in drugs, but the peer pressure was intense. One night while on guard duty in the jungle Rick prayed his first-ever spontaneous prayer. He promised God that he wouldn't go into town on liberty again, where every kind of temptation and trouble could be found, if God would get him back home. One week later, early in the morning, he and 7 other Marines were headed down a windy mountain road on their way to the shooting range when the truck they were in lost its brakes and steering. Both lines had been cut by rebel guerillas known as Huks. The truck rolled and very nearly went off the mountain. All 8 Marines were injured. Rick suffered a broken back, and was eventually medi-vacced home -- the only one in the accident who was. He ultimately received a medical discharge from the Marine Corps as a result of his injuries. Rick believed then, and now, that through those circumstances God answered his first genuine prayer.

But while he was in the hospital in the Philippines, a Red Cross volunteer came to his room one day with a cart of books. Rick selected The Robe, written in 1942 by Lloyd C. Douglas, from the stack of books because he remembered seeing the movie when he was a kid. As he read that novel, the Gospel became real to him for the first time in his life. Even now, more than 40 years later, he still gets emotional when he talks about the impact that novel had on him, because it's really what began his journey of faith.

We were married soon after he returned to California. He and I had very different backgrounds and upbringings, very different religious experiences that shaped us, and they were worlds apart. But the impact that novel had on him put us both on a path that ultimately brought us together in our commitment to Christ. Within a few years of our marriage, Rick became an ordained minister within our denomination. Since the mid-80s, he has traveled the world building churches, Bible schools, orphanages, and helping ministries reach their full potential. But he credits a novel about the garment for which Roman soldiers gambled while Christ hung on the cross, for starting him on a journey he never could have imagined.

Why the Novel Matters

2012-01-09T04:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to Novel Matters! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are excited about the possibilities of 2012. We have missed you and the stimulating conversations we have come to enjoy so much. We've been busy bees while you were gone. Here's a taste of what's coming in the new year:

Drumroll please...announcing our theme for this year - why the novel matters. Everything we do in 2012 will circle back to this question, and we'll be looking for your input, so put those thinking caps on.

Soon we'll announce the particulars of a "Why the Novel Matters" essay contest. The essay can address novels in general or one in particular and the grand prize will be a Kindle! Lucky finalists will not go away empty-handed, as we have some delightful parting gifts, so stay tuned.

We've lined up interviews with fabulous authors whose books help us answer our theme question. They'll give us a peek into their methods and madness and maybe even their struggles with publication. Look for these interviews to begin in February and continue on the fourth Monday of each month through November.

We'd love to have a picture of you reading one of our books in an exotic locale (or just around town, but be creative). We'll post your photo on our blog and give you a shout-out on our new Facebook page.

Yes, Novel Matters is now on Facebook, and we'd love for you to 'like' us here. Now it's even easier to stay in touch and keep the conversation going. We'll also post photos of the writer's life and try to make it look more glamorous than it actually is (no pictures in our jammies, we promise).

We've sharpened our Ticonderoga #2 pencils and are tapping into our creative juices to bring some short stories to the blog. Who knows, a story could grow into a living, breathing novel and you will be here at its conception. At the very least, we'll have fun trying.

We'll continue partnering with our sister blog, She Reads, exchanging posts monthly and supporting each others' endeavors to spread the positive message of a loving Creator.

Last, the six of us will post reviews of books we love in the coming months. And of course, we'll explore the question, "Why does this novel matter?" for each one. We'll need your feedback on this, too.

By the end of 2012, we hope to have a pretty good handle on why what we do matters. Is this an important question for you? We'd love to hear.

See You Monday!

2012-01-05T11:27:00.000-08:00

We're back Monday, January 9th.

oh. One more thing.

It's going to be amazing.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2011-12-21T02:00:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe we've reached the end of another year. We hope our time together has meant as much to you as it has to us. We so appreciate your presence on this blog. You add much to the dialogue. We look forward to a new year. You can expect a few changes to our format, which we hope you'll enjoy as much as we do. Please join us in wishing Patti Hill a very happy birthday tomorrow. And from all of us to all of you, have a blessed Christmas season, and a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year. God bless you all.

Roundtable: Contest Excerpts Discussed

2011-12-19T02:00:00.000-08:00

To close off our contest, we wanted to spend a bit of time talking about the excerpts we posted the past two weeks. We have gained an appreciation for how difficult it is to hear the voice of an author in only a short piece, and I know that I (Bonnie) have grown to appreciate even more deeply the gifts and talents of the five women I am honored to called friends and colleagues.

My contribution was from Crossing the Breakheart which I am currently working on. I wrote this section about the protagonist tossing her manuscript from the Breakheart Bridge without really knowing why she wanted to get rid of it in the first place. I'd had a dream that she was standing on the bridge in her old age and knew that the manuscript was more or less a confession but didn't know what she was confessing. It was one of those times that I allowed the character to lead me until I found the bones of her story and she indicated that she needed help applying skin and muscle. I have to say that I wish I could have saved her from the consequences of her choices, but I could only help her find the good that God could bring from them.

I wrote my passage because I wanted to create an expectation in the reader. I wanted him or her to wonder about why someone would be out picking up bodies, and why she would continue doing that in spite of danger. But I also wanted to give a sense of the narrator, as a sensitive yet determined person who has the conviction that what she is doing has both earthly and eternal importance. She describes what she sees because she can't help but describe, which I hope gives the reader confidence that what they will read will be satisfying in its descriptions and explanations.

The lithopedia that I depicted in the first lines is a symbol of the dilemma of the narrator as well. As the author of

the epistle to the Hebrews, she carries a secret that may never come to light and life until her own life ends.

This scene is born from my protagonist Bristol's frustration at having her intensely personal and adamant intentions foiled by the three well-meaning women in her life: her sister, best friend, and crazy step-mother. Bristol has suffered incredible loss and can't bear to face the upcoming one-year anniversary, which is certain to be accompanied with renewed media presence. And so, she's gone away with the intent to take her life at the exact hour of the anniversary. But her trio of "keepers," unaware of her plans, conspire to keep her from being alone throughout the long weekend of the anniversary. It's their presence that lends the humorous relief that keeps Color of Sorrow from becoming an albatross around the neck of the reader.

My story, Goodness and Mercy, is about an orphaned sixteen-year-old girl who will do anything to keep her brother and sister from being adopted away from her. The story was born out of my family’s story. My mother was abandoned by her parents with six younger brothers and sisters to take care of when she was sixteen. The state stepped in to find homes for all of the children but her, because she was deemed old enough to take care of herself. All of these years later—she’s nearly 82—we are still a family, mostly because my mom didn’t let a little thing like adoption un-sister or un-brother her siblings. I love that about my mom. And I wanted to catch that fierce loyalty in my hero.
This excerpt is Lucy’s (my hero’s) ordinary world, a world where she is in charge but still nearly a child herself. She’s visiting her mother’s bedroom as if it is a shrine, hoping to gain the courage to do what she must do.

The excerpt from A Girl Named Fish takes place in the first third of the novel, after we've gotten to know the main character, Joan, and the world she lives in. The novel is written in third person, with only the journal entries written in first person. The novel is deeply personal to me, my past, and my present. While the plot and characters are utterly original to the novel, Joan's journey is part of my emotional biography. The journal serves as a miniature of the entire novel, which allows the reader to understand Joan's entire life in brief. Miniatures can be important elements of storytelling, where the writer can revisit the larger questions asked in the novel in condensed and simplified form.

This excerpt is actually a discard from The Wonders of America, a story about a single mom trying to learn the meaning of family in time to save her daughter from a life as lonely as her own. And who are her teachers? Her daughter's father's family, as united (or not) and dysfunctional as the nation it lives in.

So why is this excerpt discarded? Because I am learning from these wise and wonderful authors, and understanding better what the story is about, and how it must be told, and where it wants to go.

I might keep the line about the Antichrist, though.

Name That Author Contest--Winners!

2011-12-17T08:04:00.000-08:00

It's been an interesting and challenging contest on Novel Matters. Thanks to everyone who participated! We had fun. We had to hold our tongues. It was difficult not to blurt out the answers as the contest went on. But enough blabbing! One with the winners and the answers to who wrote what:

Our grand prize winner of a $50.00 gift certificate for George Popa Sculptures is: Karen Schravemade!! Karen, email us at novelmatters@gmail.com to claim your prize!

Our second and third place winners who will receive a copy of Novel Matters on Rice (and they are sooooooo pretty!) are: Henrietta Frankensee, and Cynthia Ruchti!!

Ladies, please email us to claim your prizes.

One last winner to announce. We are soft hearted women at Novel Matters, and were so

impressed by one woman who guessed the correct writer most of the time. We have to send out

a copy of Novel Matter on Rice to the lovely (and very correct) Megan Sayer! Email us!

Congratulations to all the winners, and a big thank you to all who played along.

Now for the reveal of who wrote what!

Day one. We began with this excerpt:

My keepers won’t let me out of their sight. If they think I’m going to fill my pockets with seashells like a wannabe Virginia Woolf and walk into the Pacific as if it were the River Ouse, they needn’t worry. That isn’t how I have it planned. Though they’ve pretty much crashed my site when it comes to the logistics of just how I’m going to pull this off now.

This gorgeous bit of writing was produced by Sharon Souza. It's from her completed novel The Color of Sorrow Isn't Blue.

Day two. The excerpt began with this paragraph:

I carry the wrapped child in front of me, in the crook of my aching arm, his head above his curled feet, as if he were alive. As if he had ever been born, or named, or
drew breath, or saw his dying mother’s eyes. As if she had ever seen his.

This is the haunting beginning to Latayne Scott's completed manuscript A Conspiracy of Breath.

Day Three. The excerpt began:

After Mother’s funeral I sat on her bed, fingered the peaks and valleys of her chenille spread and plumped her pillow to lean against the headboard. This was her world. A globe. A jelly glass of sharpened pencils. Bottles and bottles of pills. A tattered tower of crossword puzzles and a dictionary with a broken spine. A tub of
Ponds Beauty Cream. Three library books, one with a bookmark only pages from the end. A picture of Papa, me, and the twins. And a Bible swollen with use.

The rich and dreamy excerpt belongs in Patti Hill's completed novel titled Goodness and Mercy.

Day four. The excerpt began:

“Miz Branch?” a voice called. “It’s Eric Russo. There’s something I think you need to see.”
I opened the door and said hello to him through the screen. Eric was one of those polite boys with the acne and hair that needed washing and shoulders rounded like he was shielding himself from a blow. He held a paper in his hand.

This writing started an interesting conversation about voice and how a writer sounds like the place she comes from. Debbie Fuller Thomas is the author of this engaging writing, it is from her work-in-process, Crossing the Breakheart.

Day five. The excerpt read:

These are words of my lost hope. Lost or taken, I can’t be certain, although I once was sure about the order of my life, of the people who came and went, what things occurred and what did not. Does it seem strange to speak about the things that did not happen? As if absence can be marked by the fact of it. How can a person catalogue the life that did not take place?

This writing comes from Bonnie Grove's completed novel, A Girl Named Fish.

Day six. The excerpt began:

Christina tried to warn me about my boss.
"He's not the antichrist - I'm not saying that. Because everybody's going tolove the antichrist, and nobody likes Chuck. It's his one saving grace. But you watch him."

This last but not least excerpt belongs, of course, to the wonderful Kathleen Popa from her work-in-progress The Wonders of America.

We hope you enjoyed our Christmas contest as much as we did. On Monday, we will post a roundtable discussion about these novels, and explain the context of the excerpts. We invite you to join us on Monday to share your writing and reading insights and ideas.

For now: Did you guess correctly? Is there any author reveals that surprised you?

Name That Author Contest--Day Six!

2011-12-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

This is it, the last chance to win a $50 gift certificate toward a George Popa sculpture. It's proving a bit more challenging to tell our writing apart than we thought, but we're thrilled that each of us has been mistaken for the other. Such a compliment!

You'll find an unpublished excerpt from one of our six Novel Matters authors below. Consider this sneak peak a Christmas present for your faithful following. We worry all the time that you are giving us so much more than we can hope to offer. We treasure your friendship and pray that the presence of Christ is staggering in your celebration of Christmas. And after you've read the excerpt, guess which one of us wrote it in the comments section.

Here are the rules, again:

1. One guess per post day. (You may play all six days. That's six chances to win a sculpture!)

2. Guesses will be accepted until 9:00 PM Pacific Time the day of the post.

3. Each correct guess wins you one chance in the drawing.

4. The winner will be announced on December 17, 2011.

There are second and third prizes, too, hard copies of our cookbook, Novel Matters on Rice: What to Cook When You'd Rather Be Writing. They're beautiful and full of easy recipes for writers and others, plus quotes about writing and faith from each of us.

And here's our--ta-dah!--final reading:

Christina tried to warn me about my boss.
"He's not the antichrist - I'm not saying that. Because everybody's going to love the antichrist, and nobody likes Chuck. It's his one saving grace. But you watch him."

I don’t pretend to understand much of what she said, but I knew Chuck, and I did watch him.

Just not near close enough.

The day it began was pleasant, at first - just that. The birds were singing their usual amount. The sky was blue, with a haze on the edges from a recent forest fire someplace to the south.

My friends had dropped by for coffee before I left for work. I called them “the Eena's,” Christina Alvarez and Serena Ortega, sisters who raised their families in adjoining halves of a duplex across the street.

I stood at the kitchen counter, browsing through the stuff my daughter had brought home from school.

The paper I held in my hand informed me that Claire Danes was my great-grandmother. Well - not Claire, but Yvaine, the fallen star she played in Stardust.

Her mother - my great-great-grandmother - was Pocahontas, and her mother was Cleopatra. On the other side of the family tree, a bit further back, was Mary Poppins.

"She got a 'D.' Minus." Christina pointed. "So stop smirking. It's not funny."

"Her teacher's got no sense of heritage."

"No, you know who doesn't have a sense of heritage? You! You have no sense of heritage. No sense of family. Lily, you have no family."

"Ouch."

"Did you even offer to help with her homework?" She punched a finger to the inkjet paper Sierra had been given as a history assignment.

I held my hands up. "What could I do? She never even told me about this."

"And why didn't she tell you? She didn't know she could."

"Not listening." I covered my ears. "You can't make me feel guilty for working and supporting my - "

"I work. And my kids know their family."

Of course they did. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, Easter and Memorial Day the street was lined with the cars of the Ortegas and Alvarezes.

"That's because you have a family,” I said. “You said yourself - "

"Sierra has a family. And so do you."
Wonderful, isn't it? Give it your best shot. Leave your guess in the comments section. Return on Monday for our Christmas Roundtable. The conversation continues!

Name That Author Contest--Day Five!

2011-12-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome back for day five of the Name That Author Contest. Do the days go by faster in December? Of course, they do! Take this moment to breathe deeply and do yourself a favor. Our contest is a way to treat yourself this Christmas. Read the excerpt below from one of our six authors. This is from her work in progress, never published, never seen by the public. What a treat! If you think you have a guess, go to comments and leave your guess.

We have a wonderful, beautiful, marvelous prize for our contest--a $50 gift certificate toward a George Popa sculpture. Second and third places will win a hard copy of our cookbook, Novel Tips on Rice: What to Cook When You'd Rather be Writing. The recipes are grand and the graphic artwork is done by our own Katy Popa, an artist in her own right.

Just so we're clear, here are the rules again:

1. One guess per post day. (You may play all six days. That's six chances to win a sculpture!)

2. Guesses will be accepted until 9:00 PM Pacific Time the day of the post.

3. Each correct guess wins you one chance in the drawing.

4. The winner will be announced on December 17, 2011.

And here's excerpt #5:

These are words of my lost hope. Lost or taken, I can’t be certain, although I once was sure about the order of my life, of the people who came and went, what things occurred and what did not. Does it seem strange to speak about the things that did not happen? As if absence can be marked by the fact of it. How can a person catalogue the life that did not take place? The cancelled meeting, the person who did not come, the blister that never raised on my foot. I can do this because everything is always happening, all at once inside each of us. I carry in me the same primordial instinct as did my ancestors and the ancestors before them. The footprint of time is stamped deeply into my DNA and my body tells me of the things that never happened to it, but could have. Should have. And in another time, did.

I’m not crazy. I don’t need to be told what is real. These are the days I live with my eyes closed. The days of absence.

This place within these pages is the only place where no one can touch us. No one can approach, encroach, or rip away. We are safe here in the pages of this book. My journal of the other life I lead. This is the journal of my fondest hope, the place where I have found my truest feeling, my deepest emotion, my most real self. The true life I found lying within the husk of an empty future.

I’m not crazy. None of this is real. Yet it is more real than my hands, which write it.

Now it begins.

A life takes up residence so deep within me its existence can’t be detected on earth.

A secret that is buried weightless inside of my flesh. A heart not yet beating, yet it complies with steady contractions of my own heart. In time, it will take on flesh that is forged by will—constructed—life that is sprung from God’s imagination.

From the beginning, the two of us together extend and contract, one begins and one ends, each contained by the other. My body’s darkness possesses his body, and inside of his forming body he possesses our now shared soul.

It is a boy. I know this in the way women know things. He has a name, it’s the one that has dwelt in the back of my mind from the time I was old enough to have my thoughts turn to such things. A name I don’t speak or allow myself to think. Not yet.

They say you should wait until after the first three months—the first trimester—that it’s within this fragile time so many babies slip from the womb. But he is solidly inside of me. I know this, too in that same female knowing way. He is a stone set in the sediment of a tranquil river. A resident, and not just a stranger passing through. The certainty of him seeps in. But still, I wait to speak his name. I know he doesn’t blame me.

I lie in my bed, and together he and I rest in our shared secret knowledge of one another. I sing him songs that until now I didn’t know I knew the words to. As if his presence has brought the memory of music back to me. This sits right and good. Like another miracle being dragged. That is what this is: a cluster of miracles one following on the other’s heels.

You want to read more, don't you? I know, it's wonderful. Which one of us is this? Make your guess in comments.

Name That Author Contest--Day Four!

2011-12-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

It's another week of Name That Author here at Novel Matters, our way of partying with you this Christmas holiday. We're glad you're here to play along. Read the passage from one of our works in progress below and guess which of us wrote it in a comment. If you guess correctly, your name will be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift certificate toward a George Popa sculpture. They're beautiful! And just so you know, the gift certificate will cover the cost of one of his sculptures. Amazing. Second and third places will win a hard copy of our cookbook, Novel Tips on Rice: What to Cook When You'd Rather be Writing.

Here are the contest rules:

1. One guess per post day. (You may play all six days. That's six chances to win a sculpture!)

2. Guesses will be accepted until 9:00 PM Pacific Time the day of the post.

3. Each correct guess wins you one chance in the drawing.

4. The winner will be announced on December 17, 2011.

Here is excerpt #4:

“Miz Branch?” a voice called. “It’s Eric Russo. There’s something I think you need to see.”
I opened the door and said hello to him through the screen. Eric was one of those polite boys with the acne and hair that needed washing and shoulders rounded like he was shielding himself from a blow. He held a paper in his hand.
“I think this might be yours.”
He briefly met my eyes and looked away, rubbing the back of his neck with his other hand. I unlocked the screen and took the paper from him.
…and Sophie was not the type of woman to ‘go gentle into that good night’ without raging…
My name rested at the top left corner.
The page wasn’t even wet.
My voice came out pinched and accusing. “Just where did you get this, young man?”
He cleared his throat. “On the riverbank. There’s more, too. Thought you’d wanna know.”
“On the riverbank?” I asked, not comprehending.
“Yes, ma’am. All up and down both sides. I saw it on my way home from delivering the paper to the Jolleys.”
More pages. Not in the river. On the riverbank. On…The growing roar in my ears made it difficult to hear what he was saying, and it alarmed me when he opened the screen and reached out, but in the end he kept me from hitting the floor by carefully lowering me onto the rug where I sat with my head between my knees.

Hey, wait a minute! I want to read more! I'm sure you do, too. Okay, make your best guess and come back on Wednesday for another chance to guess and enter.

Name That Author Contest--Day Three!

2011-12-09T04:00:00.000-08:00

As the time to celebrate Immanuel draws closer, we pray your hearts of full of wondrous anticipation. God is with us!

We are very, very grateful for all you add to the Novel Matters blog. The conversations we've had here have deepened our faith and set our resolves to craft beautiful fiction. It's time to celebrate that relationship with a contest.

If you've been with us since Monday, you know how this works. If not, read on. You still have plenty of chances to add your name to the drawings. All you need to know about contest rules, prizes, and that excerpt you've been waiting for can be found here:

All six of us have works in progress no one has read, except for a select few and certainly our mothers. You've been reading our posts for three years now, so we figure you must be getting familiar with our voices. How about our fictional voices?

Here's how the contest works: On our regular post days (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) for the next two weeks, we'll be posting a short excerpt from a work in progress, anonymously. That's right, your job is to guess which one of us wrote the passage, just from the sound of our voices. Give us your guess in the comments section. If you guess correctly, your name will be added to the prize drawing.

And what is the wonderful prize? Katy's husband, George, is a gifted sculptor. He has donated a $50 gift certificate toward one of his sculptures. You can see his work here. We can't promise the sculpture will be at your house for Christmas. That would have required much more forethought than six artist types could muster, but we can promise that you'll love George's work. Second and third places will win a hard copy of our cookbook, Novel Tips on Rice: What to Cook When You'd Rather be Writing.

Here are the rules:

1. One guess per post day. (You may play all six days. That's six chances to win a sculpture!)

2. Guesses will be accepted until 9:00 PM Pacific Time the day of the post.

3. Each correct guess wins you one chance in the drawing.

4. The winner will be announced on December 17, 2011.

Here is the third excerpt:

After Mother’s funeral I sat on her bed, fingered the peaks and valleys of her chenille spread and plumped her pillow to lean against the headboard. This was her world. A globe. A jelly glass of sharpened pencils. Bottles and bottles of pills. A tattered tower of crossword puzzles and a dictionary with a broken spine. A tub of Ponds Beauty Cream. Three library books, one with a bookmark only pages from the end. A picture of Papa, me, and the twins. And a Bible swollen with use.
I touched all of these things—balanced a pencil on my finger, smeared cream over my face, spun the globe to run my finger along its worn equator. The Bible crinkled when I picked it up. I fanned the pages to release the smell of ink and old leather. A photograph fell into my lap.
And there she was, my mother, a teenager standing self-consciously in front of an old car. One hand covered her mouth to hide the gap in her teeth, something she’d done even as an adult, but her eyes were smiling. She wasn’t alone in the picture. A small girl, much younger and as fair as butter, hugged Mother’s waist. The little girl’s head tilted back as she laughed. They were salt and pepper, light and dark.
Who is she?
Who is she, indeed? The author, I mean. Who is she? Give your guess in the comments section for a chance to win $50 toward one of George Popa's beautiful sculptures or a cookbook.

Name That Author Contest--Day Two!

2011-12-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to day two of our Name That Author contest. This is our way of expressing appreciation for all you share with us through the year. We learn so much from you about writing and so much more. Here's the lowdown on the contest:

Here are the rules:

1. One guess per post day. (You may play all six days. That's six chances to win a sculpture!)

2. Guesses will be accepted until 9:00 PM Pacific Time the day of the post.

3. Each correct guess wins you one chance in the drawing.

4. The winner will be announced on December 17, 2011.

Here is the second excerpt:

I carry the wrapped child in front of me, in the crook of my aching arm, his head above his curled feet, as if he were alive. As if he had ever been born, or named, or drew breath, or saw his dying mother’s eyes. As if she had ever seen his.

This is night work, and the mule beside me stumbles in the uneven, now unseen streets that only reveal shadow and character in the light of a doorway, here and there. All around our feet are what people throw away after a spectacle – torn banners, scraps of food, dropped, lost mementos.

Behind me on the creaking wagon are the remains, what I gather after the spectacle: torn things, fallen, saved, remembered.

When I first began this job, I could do it in the daylight. It was a curiosity to those who saw me, a woman who wore the robes of aristocracy and did the work of a ghoul. Most of those who knew me would not meet my eyes, or if they did, it was with a mixture of disgust and wonder. And later, some of them, with triumph; from behind secure windows, around impassable gates.

The first time I gained permission to bring the bodies back from the killing places, Cordelia began to strategize how to borrow a cart and donkey. Many of our friends still lived and had animals then, and she still had a bit of her father’s money left.

“We’ll need a big wagon,” she calculated, counting without knowing it on her crooked knuckles, imagining that the aftereffects of imperial entertainment would necessitate strong beasts of burden, perhaps several trips with several wagons.

She wasn’t thinking straight, I should have seen that. There is little left when wild lions are finished with a human being.

I lined the wagon with pieces of old goat-hair tents. People bring me the ripped flaps, snagged beckets, unsalvageable vestibules. When my needle cannot resurrect them, they leave the raveling remnants with me.

It's time to guess which of us wrote this passage in the comments section. Good luck!

Name That Author Contest Starts Today!

2011-12-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

Oh my, Christmas nearly caught us by surprise! And we so want to express our appreciation--and have a little fun--with our readers for another great year of writer talk at Novel Matters. You've all become very dear to us and taught us so much about life, faith, and writing. It's definitely time for a contest.

Here are the rules:

1. One guess per post day. (You may play all six days. That's six chances to win a sculpture!)

2. Guesses will be accepted until 9:00 PM Pacific Time the day of the post.

3. Each correct guess wins you one chance in the drawing.

4. The winner will be announced on December 17, 2011.

Here is the first excerpt:

My keepers won’t let me out of their sight. If they think I’m going to fill my pockets with seashells like a wannabe Virginia Woolf and walk into the Pacific as if it were the River Ouse, they needn’t worry. That isn’t how I have it planned. Though they’ve pretty much crashed my site when it comes to the logistics of just how I’m going to pull this off now.

I hate women who meddle.

Okay, that’s a strong statement even for me. I just wish I’d forgone the request to borrow the beach house and come without anyone knowing. Broken in or something, a stealth trespasser. But I wanted them to know where to find me, when this is over, and I’m paying the price for it now.

I cast a glance at my red-polka-dotted stepmother, who stops every few feet to shake the sand off her flip flops, not caring how ungraceful she looks. A sand crane she’s not. But she is the organizer in all of this meddling, I’d bet my life on it. Ha. Not much of a bet. I bark out a laugh at my secret joke, and I swear I hear a seal bark back a reply.

Sissy turns her face my direction, and covers her eyes with a cupped hand against a sun that’s dipped past its zenith. "What’s that, Bristol love?"

I pretend her words get lost in the wind, like a kite sailing off without a string. Oops, there they go... As a diversionary tactic I reach down, pick up the remains of a starfish and hurl it Frisbee-like into the waves. My efforts are as lame as everything else in my life, as the very next breaker brings it back to my feet. I bend down and pick it up again, my boomerang starfish. And I’m pounded with the thought, where is my boomerang baby? Oh, God, where?

Name the author in the comments section for chance to win a beautiful sculpture!

Swift, Muddy Waters

2011-12-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

Readers say they want reality. Publishers say too much reality is a downer and downers don’t sell. They say people who are in the midst of debt, depression, bankruptcy and loss don’t want to read heavy topics. Readers need something distracting and uplifting and the sales numbers bear it out. So we try to tell our stories in positive, uplifting ways but if the story subject is heavy to begin with, how do you even market the book? How do your write back cover copy that conveys both realism and hope – something that will make readers want to take a chance?

How much reality do people really want?

During the 30s, Hollywood produced movies like Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Snow White, Captains Courageous, and Stagecoach to distract the public from the problems of the Great Depression. Escapism. These stories couched realism in fancy. A woman survives the Civil War, a girl learns she has power over her situations and another runs from her dysfunctional family. A boy learns what it takes to be a man, and a man becomes a hero. Let’s face it, these are great stories, regardless of the financial climate.

Latayne and Patti led us into some great discussions on authentic writing this week, and many of you shared from deep places in your lives. So much potential for great storytelling! And while there are wonderful, authentic stories in the Christian market that require us to wade with the protagonist through swift, muddy waters to the shores of spiritual growth, there are others that simply distract us from our problems for awhile. A bit of escapism is okay, too.

For those of us who prefer the swift, muddy waters, it is quite possible that we are not the target audience of Christian fiction. If so, where does that leave us as readers and writers? Tell us what you think.

Writing Authentically from This Thing Called Life

2011-11-30T04:00:00.000-08:00

I thoroughly enjoyed Latayne's post on Monday about what makes fiction authentic. Our readers added their wisdom and craft to the conversation:

Megan found that a contrived character with a designated "job" killed the authenticity of a story she was reading. Marian blamed "whitewashed and superficial characters." Vonda wants to see characters that "grow and struggle and learn and fail in their faith." Henrietta mentioned pacing in relationship to a character's arc of change.

See a pattern here? We want to meet real people in our stories. I know that's a contradiction, but it's true. Latayne traveled thousands of miles--many of them on foot!--on her adventure where she encountered the power of authenticity. I'm going through quite a different journey, one that demonstrates what it means to allow characters to live and change and walk through turbulent waters.

My mother has cancer for the 7th time, the third diagnosis this year. One week earlier, her oncologist had wished her well. Now, she has brain cancer, a two-inch tumor just above her right eye. This thing is more than a lesion, it's changing the way my mom thinks and acts, pressing against brain tissue and causing swelling. Thinking back, she's manifested personality symptoms for over a year, but the changes were gradual, and who sees their aging mother's personality bloom and thinks tumor? I wasn't supposed to, was I? And then, just over a week ago, she couldn't speak when she experienced the least amount of emotion. Nothing. Nada. No words. Her speech has improved with steroids to reduce the swelling, but she still gets her words mixed up. She called me a fallen angel at the doctor today. I sure hope..

Anyway, this is all very disconcerting. My mom was the first measure of consistency in my life--the thump, thump, thump of her heart as I squirmed in her womb. Later, in her daffodil-yellow kitchen, I put my ear to her heart each morning, drank in the scent of her sleep, coffee, and cigarettes--believing this was my normal, my eternity, my heaven of comfort and goodness. I could also count on her not to like my storytelling. For that, I tasted soap, lots of it, less as I got better at turning a tale.

From grade school to college, I woke each morning to find a partially completed dress hanging in the doorway to Mom's bedroom. She'd been up since four--pinning, cutting, stitching. The thrum of her sewing machine was my waking-up music. The work of her hands, pure magic. As an adult, I saw my mom more realistically. Good grief, did she have to be the center of attention, always? Could she, please, let one thought go unsaid? But always the willingness to jump in and help, always approval and pride at my accomplishments, always love, love, love.

Now, she looks at me with palms upturned, unable to tell me that she's enjoying her salad. Now, she has shrunken back to the border of our family. Now, she is very afraid, because she's hearing over and over for the first time that she has a brain tumor that needs to be excised.

Life is hard. We live in a fallen place that only echoes the Father's pleasure, but it's only an echo. This is a theological truth that's gotten very personal with my mom's illnesses. I'm doing what Vonda likes to see characters do in books--I'm struggling, learning, and failing in my faith, only to be buoyed by the Word, my faith family, and the Spirit, and then I fall on my face again. I am wrestling with God! It's dramatic, sweaty stuff. It's deep living and unexpected grace. What's up isn't so clearly up and down has its hidden delights. To portray life any other way in my stories would be disingenuous.

Will this journey change my writing?

I sure hope so.

Will my readers recognize themselves in the struggles of my characters?

Why else would I write?

Will my readers leave my story world with a sense of hope and redemption?

Call me a Naugahyde writer if they don't.

If we're going to walk in the shadow of death (debt, depression, betrayal, disease, loss), let's come back from the experience with a deeper understanding of redemption and grace...and use this knowledge in our writing. It can be scary, but we can do it.

How has your real life changed the way you write?

Authenticity

2011-11-28T02:44:00.000-08:00

I just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Israel and Jordan. It was not your typical tour of the Holy Land because the emphasis was on history and archaeology. The forty-two of us on the tour tromped around the major excavations including Hazor, Tell Dan, and Tell El Hammam (the newly-discovered site of Sodom.)

One day in Jerusalem we went to the site that people traditionally identify with the tomb of Jesus. Now, I’m staking my eternal soul on the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, emerged from some tomb outside Jerusalem. But from an archaeologist’s point of view, the tomb I visited is in the right place but probably several hundred years off on the dating of it. I suppose for that reason I felt reverent there, but not emotional at all.

Where did I become emotional? At the synagogue in Capernaum, first excavated early last century. When I realized that it was built by one of my personal heroes (the centurion of “astonishing” great faith in Matthew 8:5-13), and that Jesus had taught in the very synagogue this Roman man built for his Jewish neighbors, I trembled. I took a picture of the actual floor tiles where Jesus once stood to teach. I had someone take my photograph standing right next to where Jesus did.

I let myself yield to emotion there because I knew my feelings could rest securely on an authentic foundation. I could enter that story. In fact, I knew I must enter that story as I stood there.

I wondered about why some Christian fiction rings true, and is helpful and nourishing—and why other books that may mention religious things leave us feeling uneasy and dissatisfied. Could it be because we don’t feel we have a reason to believe the story? Like me respectfully standing before an open tomb and thinking, “This cave is like where Jesus was laid, but almost certainly is not the actual place,” I wonder if sometimes readers think similarly:

“This is like real life, and the characters are very close to authentic, but I’m not buying into their situations because both author and reader know it’s just a story.”

Now, a good book doesn’t have to re-tell a Bible account to be true. But if there were a formula for writing authentic Christian literature, it would be a priceless commodity indeed. And yet we know it when we see it, the story that has a foundation as solid as two-thousand-year old stone pavement.

What are some of the characteristics of such authenticity? Can you share with me any books you’ve read recently that were authentic in just the way I’ve described?

Storyworld: An Introduction

2011-11-25T02:00:00.000-08:00

Like all elements of fiction writing, storyworld is multifarious. It isn’t a stand alone concept but is a composite of components that are, in and of themselves multifaceted.

Storyworld is exactly what it says it is: the world in which your characters live, breathe, and have their meaning. It goes beyond setting. It is the expression of your characters. Storyworld “shows” your hero’s personal growth as it morphs and changes throughout the story.

In this way, writing fiction is the opposite of real life. John Truby puts it this way, “In good stories, the characters come first, and the writer designs the world to be an infinitely detailed manifestation of those characters.”

The key here is “manifestation of those characters.” Storyworld isn’t separate from your characters. It isn’t a rigid space that existed before your characters came into existence. The space your story takes place in (a house, a town, a city, a jungle) represents your characters. And it changes as your characters change.

Where do you begin building your storyworld for your characters? It starts by knowing exactly what kind of story you are writing. I’m not referring to genre. I’m talking about story structure, the bones of the kind or type of story you want to tell and how you want to tell it.

This is a difficult step that will take a great deal of time to work out. I’m against formulas in fiction writing as a rule, but I will offer you this “formula” for puzzling out how to decide story structure because it is an organic one rather than paint by numbers.

Story process + original execution = Story structure

Here are some examples of this formula:

The Time Traveler’s Wife: A time traveler learns to love his wife and leave a legacy for his child knowing he will die at age 43. (Story process: love story. Original execution: he is a time traveler, plus the ticking clock of his approaching death)

The fact that The Time Traveler’s Wife is a love story means that the storyworld is largely made up of man-made, indoor spaces where people are thrown together in intimate ways. Apartment, house, crowded bars, even the library where he worked. He moves from man-made space to man-made space and each move is more claustrophobic than the last. Only the sprawling meadow (a natural arena that juxtaposes the man-made arenas in the rest of the book) by Clair’s childhood home provides a utopia for Henry. There, he falls in love and becomes a man. This made it all the more poignant when Henry meets his demise in the meadow.

Notice the amount of detail that went into creating this shifting, intimate, and yet menacing world? The storyworld expressed Henry, not the other way around.

Here’s and example from John Truby’s book The Anatomy of Story:

It’s a Wonderful Life: Express the power of the individual by showing what a town, and a nation, would be like if one man had never been born. (Story process: dystopia to utopia = fairy tale. Original execution: An angel shows George two versions of his small town.)

Storyworld: Two different versions of the same small town in America.

Because the structure of It’s a Wonderful Life is a fairy tale, it requires a kingdom in which the characters live and our hero rules over (in this case a small town). And, because the original execution is two towns, every element of the first kingdom had to have a contrasting element in the second version (which also had a different “king” the banker, Mr. Potter). No detail could be missed from the buildings, to the town’s name, to the weather, to the moon overhead.

Your storyworld is no less detailed.

The good news is, your storyworld has set boundaries which you erect around it. The drama of your novel will take place inside of these walls. When you think of your novel, you need to think in terms of contained space. Where are the boundaries of your story? Is it a town, a city, an island, a house, a boat, a shoreline, a hut, a jungle, etc.?

If your story structure requires multiple worlds (for example: Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Pleasantville, etc.) you must connect the worlds in some fashion. My newly completed manuscript takes place on an island off the East coast, but I have a man-made space on the mainland that I need to include in my storyworld (it symbolizes futile attempts to attain wellbeing outside of the character’s organic storyworld); therefore I used the system of ferry service as a bridge between the two worlds. That meant that I needed scenes on the ferry, and that the ferry itself be organically part of the larger storyworld.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, a brief introduction to the topic of storyworld. There is a great deal more to consider based on the specific story structure you will use, and the original execution you will employ.

The key is to remember that the world your characters live in is a manifestation of those characters.

Thoughts? Also, feel free to ask any questions or for clarification. I’ll do my best to engage with your ideas and ponderings and together, we might come up with something helpful.

Mitigating Circumstances

2011-11-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

mitigating circumstances:
n. in criminal law, conditions or happenings which do not excuse or justify criminal conduct, but are considered out of mercy or fairness in deciding the degree of the offense the prosecutor charges or influencing reduction of the penalty upon conviction. Example: a young man shoots his father after years of being beaten, belittled, sworn at and treated without love. "Heat of passion" or "diminished capacity" are forms of such mitigating circumstances.
See also: diminished capacity heat of passion Twinkie defense ~from Law.com

I once worked at an incarceration facility for juveniles. More recently, I sat on the jury for a criminal trial that was major enough to make headlines in my small county. From these experiences and so many more, I've come to the opinion that there are always mitigating circumstances.

That's not to say that criminals should be excused - the needs of real and potential victims must be considered first. I'm saying that people have reasons for the things they do, that those reasons come to them from the world in which they've been placed, and when we understand that world, their actions can be utterly, and sometimes tragically logical.

To state it from a writer's perspective: Story emerges from character, but character emerges from a world.

Two novels have left me muttering "story world" in my sleep of late: One is Bonnie's new, as-yet unpublished manuscript. (I know, I'm so blessed!) I want this story to be bound into a beautiful cover and delivered to your eager hands, so I can't reveal much about it. But Bonnie has done a masterful job of showing the reader something more than a setting - not just a context or environment designed to serve the story, but a community which is part of - effected by and in return, effecting - a larger world.

Okay, that's all I'm going to tell you, for Bonnie's sake, and for yours. I'll talk instead about another remarkable novel I listened to this week: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See.

In the first few paragraphs, the narrator, Lily, gives us our first clues about the societal influences we must understand if her story is to make sense to us:

For my entire life I longed for love. I knew it was not right for me—as a girl and later as a woman—to want or expect it, but I did, and this unjustified desire has been at the root of every problem I have experienced in my life.

Many people you and I know feel themselves to be unloved, and their experiences are echoed in countless characters in countless novels. What sets Lily apart is the assumption that her need for love is unjustified - because she is a girl.

Hoping they would show me even the most simple kindness, I tried to fulfill their expectations for me—to attain the smallest bound feet in the county—so I let my bones be broken and molded into a better shape.

I listened for even five minutes, and already I hurt for a child born into such a culture, and wondered what would become of her. As I learned the answer, I also learned more about the culture that produced the woman Lily became, and about the greater world that produced the culture.

I learned about the political and economic events that formed and later changed my character's assumptions, and the way those changes within her would help to form a new world that would change other characters.

I also learned to see my own culture through new eyes. Values parents taught their children in Snow Flower that were so appallingly foreign at first (a little girl's feet must be forcedly broken and stunted to resemble a chili pepper in shape and size ...) became disturbingly familiar at the last (... so that she will appear delicate and beautiful and attractive to men).

Because both novels, Bonnie's new manuscript and Lisa See's Snow Flower revealed such rich story worlds, their characters were painted more vividly, their stories made richer, more haunting and full of meaning.

How about you? Read any stories lately that showed you something more than setting, that showed you a world? Please tell us all about it. We love to read what you have to say.

The whole truth, and nothing but the truth

2011-11-21T02:00:00.000-08:00

It's Thanksgiving. Hard to believe! Christmas is only five weeks away! And I haven't even begun my shopping . . . except for the copies of Novel Tips on Rice I purchased for some special friends. Consider giving a copy of this fun and useful compilation of some of our favorite recipes to that hard-to-shop-for friend or colleague on your shopping list. The graphics are amazing, and the quality is excellent. But, trust me, you'll want one for yourself as well.

I proofread for a friend who is a court reporter. It's an interesting job most of the time. But since the court proceedings take place in a state I don't live in, and I wouldn't be in the courtroom in any case, I'm a completely objective reader. I have nothing but words to go on. No physical attributes, no endearing or exasperating expressions or behavior. No first impressions as far as looks, clothing, jewelry, hair style, nothing to pull them into favor or disfavor. The result is that at times I'm unsympathetic to a particular person when my friend the court reporter is inclined to be otherwise -- because all I have to go on are the words out of the mouth of the witness, attorney, judge, etc. Nothing but their words.

That got me thinking that a reader who picks up one of my novels -- or yours -- is in the exact position that I am as a proofreader of court transcripts. They know nothing about these people or their stories until they hear them speak. It's my job as a writer to make my characters come alive, and the best and most important way is through the words I put in their mouths. I can pile on the description and attributes, and to a certain extent that's important, but that won't make my characters or story resonate with the reader. So what will?

My daughter Deanne would tell you character affiliation begins with the name. If the name doesn't fit or otherwise isn't right, it jars her out of the story before she even gets into it. I completely agree. I spend a good deal of time selecting names for my characters when I begin writing a novel. I find that I can't get the momentum going if I don't have the names right. I may give a character a name at the start of my WIP, but it will pester me and interfere with the writing if the name is wrong. So I try to get it right from the start. And I always know when it's right. And when it's wrong. One major regret I have is that I allowed my agent and editor to talk me into changing the name of my protagonist in Every Good & Perfect Gift. The name I first gave her was the right name, and I wish I had stuck with it. But it is what it is.

Here's an example I ran into a couple of years ago of a name that just didn't work. A young female writer I knew, early 20s, very attractive, was writing a supernatural suspense novel, kind of a cross between Peretti and Dekker. I knew nothing about the story she was writing as she began to read from a chapter, but it drew me in immediately with its tone and action until I realized the protagonist, who I perceived was a young woman much like the author, was named Mabel. Mabel. For a 20-something, cutting-edge protagonist in a supernatural suspense novel.

Time. Out.

I talked to her about it on several occasions. I told her the name jarred me out of the story. I had visions of a woman my grandmother's age the moment I heard it, and I was confused. Wait, Mabel? Then who's the protag, because I thought . . . ? I said it was completely wrong for the character she had created, particularly given the genre, but for some reason she was married to the name. I told her about the prejudice of my daughter, who would put the book right back on the shelf and that would be that. To no avail.

A more important element that will cause our characters to resonate with readers is the depth with which we write them. Superficial doesn't cut it. Neither does white hat/black hat. By that I mean, good guys are not all good, all the time; and bad guys are not all bad, all the time. Characters and stories written with a white hat/black hat mentality fall into the category of melodrama. It's our job to plumb the depths of the characters we create, and present them to our readers as fully formed and three-dimensional as possible. They have foibles and failings and we have to let them show. We have to know them as well as we know ourselves. We must know what they'd say or do in any given situation, and why they'd say or do it. They can surprise us in many ways, but they must stay true to the nature we've given them.

And the most important element of all is dialogue. Words and how they're spoken mean everything. I can forgive less-than-stellar elements in the novels I read, but if the dialogue is forced, shallow, unnatural, uncharacteristic of the speaker, or doesn't measure up in any number of ways, that's usually what will cause me to give up on a novel. And believe me, it takes a lot for me to put down a book that I've begun.

Let's try an exercise. I'm going to write a scene using nothing but dialogue. No dialogue tags, no speaker attributes, no description, no setting, nothing but dialogue. Can I draw you into the scene? Can I cause you to be sympathetic to one party or the other, and the right party at that? Let's see.

"I said I don't want to go."
"That's what you said, but I know what you meant."
"No. That's what I meant. I don't want to go."
"I can change your mind, you know."
"I wouldn't count on it."
"He'll be there."
"I, I don't know who you mean."
"Really? Just how many guys do you know who'd subject themselves to that kind of torture, all in the hopes of seeing you, even from a distance? Besides me, of course."
"You're twisted, you know that?"
"Yeah, I'm twisted. Right around your finger."

Now it's your turn. Write a brief scene using nothing but dialogue.

The Keepers

2011-11-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

The weekend before Thanksgiving may be one of the worst times to hold a garage sale, but that's what we're doing on Saturday. We spent the last weekend digging and sorting and piling stuff into boxes. It's amazing the things we kept for years 'just because.' I emptied a five shelf unit that was piled with books two rows deep and plugged in all catty-whompas to make them fit. Now there are three boxes of great books that will hopefully get snatched up and treasured.

Of course, I kept several shelves of favorites which contain a mixture of both CBA (Christian) and ABA (mainstream) trade paperbacks. In light of our great discussions this week, I considered why I chose these particular ABA books and whether they demonstrated elements of hopefulness and transformation, which the CBA books did naturally.

Here is a selection of the ABA books I kept:
Peace Like a River, Shadow of the Wind, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Time Traveler's Wife, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Seabiscuit, Snow Falling on Cedars, Gilead, Pride and Prejudice, Water for Elephants, Jewel, The Miracles of Santo Fico, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Cold Sassy Tree

In these books I found characters who persevered, who revealed characteristics of God, who gave sacrificially, who gained new perspectives, who developed tolerance for others, who believed in a dream, whose faith was restored, who kept their word when it hurt, who didn't back down from a righteous fight, who protected what was good, who found the best in others, who never stopped loving.

Did I love each and every one of the characters? No, but they either redeemed themselves in some way or got their comeuppance. No unsatisfying, ambiguous endings here. In contrast, there are many books that I've begun and put down again. While I believe we should give a book a chance once we've started reading, we need to fine tune our discernment. I'm not referring to violence, language or sexuality, I mean when the book impacts your outlook on life in a negative way, it's time to listen to that inner voice saying 'enough!' Step away from the book.

BTW, right now I'm just getting into Marilyn Robinson's Home which takes place in the same town as Gilead during the same time period. I'm just now acquainted with the elderly pastor, his spinster daughter and her blacksheep brother. Their relationships are complicated, and I have a good feeling that they will come to an understanding and find closure in the end. They are the kind of folks I enjoy acquainting myself with. And one of them is vaguely familiar...

We know that CBA books include elements of hopefulness and transformation, but what ABA book has made an impact on you in this way? We'd love to hear!

Thinking Out Loud About What is and isn't Christian Fiction

2011-11-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

I have two hours until 16 dinner guests arrive for a pre-Thanksgiving potluck. I spent too much time playing Martha Stewart. Truthfully, the last week's posts have truly challenged me to rethink the whole Christian fiction thing, and some of my thoughts aren't very comfortable or clear. So here I am in a swirl of thought. If you're willing, here's one little idea that keeps rising to the surface. I would love to hear what you think.

As a part-time librarian, I regularly come home with an armful of new fiction (my assigned section to weed and read). I read, almost exclusively, mainstream fiction. Within the last few months, I've happened upon several books that don't offer the sense of transformation that Bonnie talked about. And the reading wasn't very satisfying. Oh, the prose is poetic, the images strong and visceral, and the characters wildly conflicted, but they never lift their heads to find meaning in what happens to them. Ugh.

A question: Could they be Christian novels?

"What?" you say. "I thought these were mainstream novels and unsatisfying."

Yes, but can a story that shows what life is like without God, and does so accurately, be Christian in its portrayal of a fallen world?

Consider the Bible. Which of the Old or New Testament writers pooh-poohed rebellion and sin? Which of them shrank away from showing what life was like for the rebellious? How many times did Israel get carried away into captivity after forgetting their God? Did God mock the "righteous" by finding a faithful harlot at Jericho and then placing her in the lineage of our Redeemer? Yes! And why are there prophets? Because God's people kept forgetting about him and getting caught up in horrendous idolatry--asherah poles and child sacrifices, for instance. What about Lot's daughters? They slept with their father when their own marital futures were dashed. Eew! But the story shows what depravity comes from a viewpoint that is void of God. The Bible tells all! Man away from God is a bleak picture, one that has the power to make us run home to the Father. Counter examples of what a God-honoring life looks like abound in Scripture. If God's inspired writers aren't afraid of showing life without God in real terms, should I be afraid to do so?

Just so you know, I have no plans to write a novel that brings the reader to a point of hopelessness. I pray that I can write something with Bonnie's element of transformation. I do NOT want to write a novel that is cobbled together and considered readable by Christians because a few Scripture verses are thrown into the plotline. I AM saying that our definition of what is Christian may be too narrow. God is really, really big and able to redeem anything. Anything.

Thanks for letting me think aloud. So, am I completely off my rocker? Have you read anything lately that qualifies as truly hopeless? What have you read lately, while not being overtly Christian, left you with a sense of redemption?

Tell the Truth: Guest Post by Ariel Allison of She Reads

2011-11-14T02:00:00.000-08:00

During the last few weeks I’ve been privy to several robust conversations concerning the role of Christian storytellers. At the heart of these debates is always the question of what we allow our characters to experience, and the responsibility writers of faith have in redeeming them.

Last Wednesday, Bonnie wrote in her post Transformation and Redemption in Story, “…redemption isn’t what we think it is. It’s better than that. It is a state of being that allows us to experience our fully aliveness. People don’t want to transform into churchgoers, they want to transform into wholly alive human beings with the courage to face difficult, even impossible odds…”

How often do we rush to redeem our characters? To make them into “churchgoers” as Bonnie phrased it. As authors (and readers) I wonder if we are so obsessed with seeing good come from bad that we sacrifice the terrifying and honest process that creates redemption.

Frederick Buechner gives a glimpse of that transformation in his book Wishful Thinking:

“Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

I wonder what that would look like if applied to a character? What courage a writer must show to allow their Hero to savor his anger! And how deliciously uncomfortable for the reader to witness that self-cannibalism. Oh but what a revelation for every person who touches a novel like that!

So what about that responsibility of the Christian writer? Must we connect each dot and hold the hand of our reader as we lead them toward that redemptive revelation? Explain it with flow charts and the four spiritual laws? Isn’t that what “religious fiction” is supposed to do?

Frederick Buechner didn’t think so and neither do I. This from a lecture he gave to a Book of the Month Club:

"Maybe it's all utterly meaningless. Maybe it's all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we're in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us. Any fiction that helps us pay attention to that is religious fiction. The unexpected sound of your name on somebody's lips. The good dream. The strange coincidence. The moment that brings tears to your eyes. The person who brings life to your life. Even the smallest events hold the greatest clues." (emphasis mine)

That, I believe, is the responsibility of a novelist. Not to guarantee redemption, but to tell the truth. To show what it means to be “truly human.” Consequences and all.

Question for you: as writers do you find yourself tempted to redeem all of your characters? Or are you willing to let them fall for the greater good?

Those Essential First Lines

2011-11-11T02:47:00.000-08:00

Recently I had the privilege of sitting in an excellent workshop at the Breathe Conference in Grand Rapids Michigan where Cynthia Beach, author and professor at Cornerstone University, gave some practical tips on “Creating the Best First Line.”

Here are four of her suggestions:

1) Attend to Grammar. Using subject-verb-direct object structure creates a fast pace and expectations, whereas an introductory phrase-main subject structure sets the tone for a slower pace. Use of the words were, was, and are set the tone for boredom. You don’t want that.

2) Attend to Length. An opening sentence of fewer than 17 words sets a face pace, research shows. Anything longer than that will be processed by the brain as more complex or difficult. Of course a literary or thought-provoking work doesn’t usually introduce itself with mini-sentences, right?

3) Attend to Specifics. The more specific the words you use, the more likely they will create in the reader’s mind a mental image with impact. You want impact, don’t you?

4) Attend to Theme. Many very famous books capture their themes in their first sentences, such as Out of Africa: “I had a farm in Africa. . .” We understand the weight of the past tense. We feel the exotic story coming.

Take the first line of your WIP. Put it through the Beach grinder. What do you end up with? (And we've invited Professor Beach to respond to you, here on the blog. You'll love her!)

Transformation and Redemption in Story

2011-11-09T02:00:00.000-08:00

Back in the day, I took an English course at the University of Alberta. The professor was young, passionate about literature, and a wholly likeable guy. He was also passionate about preaching the dictums of postmodernism. He told us that postmodernism is the way of the future.
I wasn’t convinced.
One day he raised a finger to the ceiling and declared that most popular of postmodern edicts: “There is no ultimate truth!”
I cleared the earwax out of my ear and said, “Come again?”
He passionately re-exclaimed, “There is no ultimate truth!”
I liked the guy so I refrained from rolling my eyes. “Except,” I said. “That by proclaiming that there is no ultimate truth, you are in fact proclaiming an ultimate truth.”
He reddened.
I said, “Don’t you really mean to say that there is no ultimate truth except this one, that there is no ultimate truth?”
He stuttered.
“Except,” I went on, “If you believed that, then you would be soundly in the camp of the religious who would declare that they too hold to one ultimate truth. And in doing so, does that not unmask the whole thing as simply looking for another way to redeem ourselves?”
His surprising answer was that he began to cry.
In that moment I understood two things: 1) I was so going to fail this course, and 2) I had grown weary of the cultural meat grinder of postmodern deconstructionism.

On Monday, Katy pointed us to a video called The Arc of Storytelling by Bobette Buster. The whole video is interesting, but I’m focusing on the content from around the nine-minute mark to the end, which is where she talks about story as the vehicle by which we understand by “seeing” that transformation is possible, and redemption is attainable.

Every one of us has come through that meat grinder of postmodern thought. We’ve focused our questions and attention on deconstructing the notions of what it means to be human, and of pretty much everything we see, touch, think, hope for, and believe. But what I have noticed is that entire generations of people are weary, frightened, and hopeless. And these deconstructed people are looking for stories that show them they are more than the sum of their parts.

Transformation and redemption

Bobette Buster focused on transformation as the key story element that captures audience (reader) imagination and elevates that story to the position of “success” or “worth keeping”. I like how she phrases this by pointing out the transformation brings the character fully alive. It’s more than proving we are capable of change, it’s the hope that we can (will) become people who meet life head on with gusto, verve, purpose, and passion. Yes, purpose. Not mindlessly wandering from home to work to the TV set, to bed, and then start all over again the next day. But to know what it is we’re here to do, and then have the guts to go out and do it. Fully alive.

Buster ties the concept of transformation to redemption, which she means not in the theological sense per se, but in a more general sense. Still, redemption is more than the second chance; it’s a state of being in which transformed, fully alive live. The place where we understand that regardless of circumstances we are supported by someone or something greater than our self.

The generations who grew up inside of postmodern deconstructionism are still looking for the redemption story their guts tells them is out there. Even after been weened on the notion that such a thing doesn't exist. Stumbling, getting lost, losing hope, finding it again, they are searching.

For these people, ultimate truth is an answer they must be left to discover on their own (hence their distain for preachy stories with an agenda), but they are looking to story to remind them they are more than the sum of their parts, they have purpose, and a hopeful future. That they can be the heroes of their own lives.

Writers who are people of faith need to keep two things in mind: transformation is a journey that cannot and should not be summed up in a single prayer. It is a journey, and that fact must be respected in our story. Secondly, redemption isn’t what we think it is. It’s better than that. It is a state of being that allows us to experience our fully aliveness. People don’t want to transform into churchgoers, they want to transform into wholly alive human beings with the courage to face difficult, even impossible odds, with courage, knowing there is “an inexorable force in the universe there to support you if you keep going, you will discover the faith, the courage to move on.”

Until we can approach the concepts of transformation and redemption sensitively, and understand the journey that they entail, rather than racing to the finish line, we will be stuck in the postmodern meat grinder, proclaiming that our ultimate truth is better than that guy’s ultimate truth.

To put it another way, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”

Scary

2011-11-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's a bit late for scary stories, but we're not quite to Thanksgiving yet. We're still only days past Halloween, the time for cobwebs, costumes and creepy stories.

I'll spill a secret: I love creepy stories. I was the kid who watched every B-level vampire film that came around - back when all vampire films were B-level, full of delightful cliches like hungry glances toward bared throats, women running through foggy moors, and spot-lit tooth reveals.

What was better than B-level was Rasputin the Mad Monk, with Christopher Lee. That one really scared me, and I haven't gotten over it yet.

But I do draw lines. I don't like on-screen violence. I don't like blood-spattered camera lenses. And especially, I don't like exorcist movies. I like to be scared by mythologies, by suggestion and atmosphere. I'm not fond of genuine, unfiltered evil.

So it came as a surprise one recent (Sunday!) afternoon, when I opened my latest envelope from Netflix, and found an exorcist film titled The Rite. I'd forgotten it was in my queue, and I couldn't remember why I'd put it there.

A quick read of the description provided the explanation: Anthony Hopkins had a starring role. Enough said.

So I slipped it in the player, and told my husband we could turn it off if things got too bad.

To my surprise, they didn't. In fact, when the film was over, I walked with a lighter step, and praised my Lord with a truer voice.

I don't go around watching these things, so I can't explain when or how I became so jaded to all the cliches: There's the sweet young thing talking in a male voice while twisting herself in two. Ah, of course, she's coughing up nails. No surprises here.

What saved it, of course (apart from much in the story that was not cliched), was Anthony Hopkins. I'm amazed the same man can play someone deeply good one moment and deeply evil the next, but in so doing he manages to expose the dirty devices of the devil for the weak things they are, and reveals that their chief strength lies in deceiving us to think that everything depends on us.

We are weak, you see, but Jesus is strong.

I recently discovered a short talk titled The Arc of Storytelling by Bobette Buster, and in that film she brings up a book, The Uses of Enchantment by Holocaust survivor and leading child therapist, Bruno Bettelheim.

Ms. Buster paraphrases the seeds for Bettelheim's thought as follows:

"Children who had been in the death camps, who had been read the true Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, these children had been taught that someday you may be thrown into an oven; someday a wolf may come to the door. But guess what? There is an inexorable force in the universe there to support you. If you will keep going, you will discover the faith, the courage to move on."

Put differently, there's no use hiding from your fears. Much that you fear will come your way. But there is more, much more. There is an inexorable force in the universe. We are weak, but he is strong.

How about you? Have scary stories ever been a source for truth for you in the way Ms. Buster put it?

Please do chime in. We love to read what you have to say.

The Benefits of Partnerships

2011-11-04T02:00:00.000-07:00

I joined my first critique group a number of years ago as a fairly new writer. There were six or seven other writers, all much more seasoned than I was, and several who were published. I was scared to death to read my work out loud to the group. But by the 2nd or 3rd meeting, they had bolstered my confidence and convinced me I might actually have some talent. I stayed with The Write Bunch for three years, and learned some invaluable things about writing. I'm still in touch with the woman who led the group. She acted like a proud mama when I gave her copies of my published novels three years ago.

I wasn't in another critique group for 18 years or so. That's when I joined a group headed by my agent, who lived just an hour away from me. Her group was composed of writers who were very good at their craft, and I very much enjoyed the time I was with them. I was always reminded of the Scripture, "iron sharpens iron" whenever we met.

Here are a couple of important suggestions to help you manage a successful critique group. When you start a group, be sure to establish the rules and stick to them. Whether you submit your work to each other in advance, or read aloud at each meeting, it's important that everyone participates. It's equally important that everyone has equal opportunity to be critiqued. That means it's important to keep the group to a manageable number. I recommend no more than eight, and even that number would necessitate a lengthy meeting. So make sure the membership is commensurate to the time you are able to allot to the meeting.

While I benefitted from the groups I participated in, what has been most beneficial to me as a writer has been having Katy Popa as a critique partner for the past seven years. We met at a writers' conference and were drawn to each other initially by our work. Our writing styles were similar, as was our level of ability. That united us professionally, but getting to know each other and discovering the similarities we share on many levels united us personally. I haven't written anything these past seven years that Katy hasn't critiqued, and vice versa. We are critique partners in the truest sense, but more than that, we are close, close friends. And it all came about because of our writing.

The same type of relationship -- professional and personal -- is now enjoyed by the six of us who co-write this blog. We're separated by states, and even countries, but that hasn't hampered the deep friendship that's developed amongst us. We're all available as critique partners to one another; and we have the privilege of being "first readers" of each other's work. Believe me, that is a thrill. We're also prayer partners, and we continually encourage one another.

You may find yourself without a writing friend who lives next door, down the street, or across town, but that should never keep you from finding a kindred soul who shares your passion, who writes at a similar level as you, and who desires the kind of relationship I've described in this post. If you are able to, attend a writers' conference, if for no other reason than to put yourself in a position to find a critique partner/writing friend. It's worth the price of the conference. If you're unable to do that, or don't want to wait for the next conference, reach out to someone in the Novel Matters writing community, or another writing blog you may follow. We've seen relationships build between our followers and it delights us to no end. Take a risk and take advantage of this community. It's a win/win for everyone.

BK, I understand your reticence to join or create an online critique group, but a critique partner is a bit different. A one-on-one partnership is harder to flake on, and easier to maintain.

Megan, I hear your frustration. I truly hope you find a writing partner within this community like I found with Katy.

Please share your experiences with either a critique group or a critique partner. How have you benefitted? What has worked, and what hasn't?

Recipe for the Perfect Writers Group

2011-11-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

Patti started a great discussion about the importance of critique groups, or writing groups, and I have to admit that the only writing group I am in at this time is Novel Matters. I have been in three different critique groups in the past 20 years, and they all deteriorated into social gatherings or dwindled in numbers. The reasons:

No one had time to read the manuscripts ahead of time
No one had time to write in general
Members dropped out because it wasn't a priority
Members dropped out because they were highly sensitive & wanted to hear that their writing was perfect
The writing levels were at different ends of the spectrum
Personalities got in the way

I met a wonderful lady on the plane trip back from a family reunion this weekend in Tennessee. She commented on my current read, How To Be An American Wife, and showed me her Nook. The conversation branched off into a discussion of her book club and she gave me some great suggestions for the new book club just starting at our church. She mentioned, as with a writers group, that her book club had become an extended family - providing dinners for her when she went through chemo and providing support when she had to find a care home for her husband with Alzheimer's. I began to put together my own recipe for my idea of a perfect writer's group:

Start with really good coffee. Add dark chocolate.
Gather the freshest ingredients of time, sensitivity and skill for each member to do a proper manuscript critique
Stir gently so feelings will never be hurt nor their hopes fall after processing
Fold members in to provide support for each other, even outside of writing
Stick to the recipe so that the group will stay focused on the purpose for meeting and not digress
Do not omit any ingredients. Each member should contribute and not become spectators or feel intimidated by the quality of writing of others in the group
Treat this unique recipe as a treasured family secret: What happens in the group, stays in the group
Research new recipes: Each member would read and report on a book on writing OR the group would read a book on writing together and discuss it
Follow the proper baking time, making adjustments for success: Consider the needs of the whole group in setting and date. Every member should respect the time and date of the meetings and be faithful in attendance.

What would you add to this description of the perfect writing group? What negatives or positives have you experienced? If you're not in a group at the present, what would make you set aside time for it? We would love to hear!

Growing a Bigger Heart: Writers Groups

2011-10-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

Writing groups? According to Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird: "At worst, they will suggest that you have no visible talent whatsoever and should not bother writing anything ever again, even your name." At the best, you grow a bigger heart.

About ten years ago I was desperate for someone who wasn't my husband or my mother to read my early pages to see if I shouldn't beg for my job back or commit myself. After all, who believes they can actually write a novel? I needed a dose of reality.

So I attended a one-day romance writing seminar organized by a local writers group. I had no intention of writing romances, especially after outlining a story on a half-sheet chart as the teacher had suggested, but I'd gone to the seminar with quite another purpose in mind--to find a critique group to call my own.

At the end of the seminar, one of the organizers asked for writer news, like Grand Junction is the hotseat for all that's literary in North America. I stood up, swallowed hard, and asked for anyone interested in starting a critique group to talk to me afterward. It turns out I'd been sitting with the only three women at the seminar interested in starting a critique group. It was a divine seating arrangement.

We've been together for twelve years. Imagine that.

Anne writes about changes she saw in four of her students after they'd become a group: "...helping each other has made their hearts get bigger. A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide. It stands out, like a baby's fontenel, where you can see the soul pulse through. You can see this pulse in them."

A critique group, which may sound too editorial for you, or a writers group, which may sound a little ambiguous, is an absolute necessity for a writer. (Actually, I think all Christians should be in a writers group.) This is where I learned to see the best in what others offered and to speak the truth in love about their homely "children" without eviscerating them. It's also where I learned to hear the truth spoken in love...and to listen. In other words, my heart got bigger. And my writing improved.

Our critique group's motto is something like this: We love each other enough to tell the truth about our writing and believe we are capable of choosing what to listen to and what to do with what has been said, even if that means totally ignoring everything.

Here's a typical conversation when my work is being critiqued. I'm the quiet one:

"I wasn't quite clear on what you were trying to say here, Patti. Did anyone else have a problem?"

"I was totally confused. Is the girl trying to scale a wall or emote on the history of bricklaying?"

"I loved it. I cried my eyes out. Although, you may consider taking everything out about the wall. You have twenty-three metaphors and two similies in this passage alone. Maybe limit yourself to one a chapter."

"I'm a little confused about the relationship between the baker and the rapper."

"I found the premise of their relationship flakey." Lots of laughing. "Sorry, no, really. Perhaps the rapper's brother knows the baker, maybe they served in the war together."

"That's brilliant! That way the whole motivation for what happens between the rapper kid and the girl makes sense. You should use that."

"Did you mean to use the word "emigrate" here or did you mean "immigrate?" According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "emigrate" is when someone leaves a country to live somewhere else and "immigrate" means to come to a certain country. But then, this is another one of your extended metaphors. You could delete that whole page without losing any meaning."

"Are you bummed about the metaphors?" She holds up a page from my manuscript. "Check out all the smiley faces. I loved the way you developed these characters. However, you are a little heavy-handed with the clever descriptions, and check out how many prepositional phrases you have in this one sentence. But, overall, this is your best writing yet. This is a New York Times best seller in the making. If anyone can get this passage to work, you can. I love what you're doing here."

"Me too."

"All it needs is a bit of tweaking, kiddo."

I may not feel loved at just that moment, but I do after I've gone home in a funk, tossed and turned in bed for hours, and finally gotten up to read my critique group's margin notes. Clearly, they looked at my manuscript with the intensity of surgeons. If my literary slip is showing after I've revised, it's nobody's fault but mine.

Are you in a writers/critique/blood-letting group? Online or in person? What is the greatest benefit of a writers group? Pitfalls? How did you find your group? Do you have a bigger heart?

Five Keys to Getting Information You Need from Those “With Skin On”

2011-10-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve had three non-fiction books published in which I was working with other people’s stories, and I’m in the middle of a fourth right now. In addition, I’ve had at least a thousand articles and other short pieces published. In almost all of them, I wrote about things outside my own personal experience, and had to ask for quotes and information from others.

That’s been the case, too, with most of my fiction. The Internet’s bottomless well of information sometimes can’t supply what you need.

You, like the scared little boy at bedtime whose mother assured him that angels would guard him, may need someone “with skin on.”

Here is some of what I have learned about asking people questions for my writing:

1) The more famous the source, the longer lead time you need to give them. I’ve interviewed Rosa Parks, Ruth Bell Graham, Frank Abagnale, and other luminaries. If they’re famous, they’re busy. For a project I'm working on right now, I waited almost two months for Gary Sinese’s interview.

2) Be completely upfront (and humble) about what you intend to do with their comments and information. If you’re writing something on speculation (in other words, without a contract), say so when you are asking to speak to them.

3) Let the person decide the format – telephone conversation, in person (when and where) or email.

4) Ask permission before you record any interview, and get their permission on tape.

5) This is the best way to get interesting content: After you have asked the questions that get at the information you think you need (facts and figures, etc.), then ask what I call “quirky questions.” They include words like “surprising,” “unusual,” “frightening,” and other cues. Here are some (generic, to be personalized to your person):

What was the most surprising thing you learned from your experience?

Were you frightened? When?

What was the most unusual thing that happened?

What do you think that my readers would want to know, if you could give them a personal message?

If you could go back and give yourself advice at the age of your incident, what would you tell you?

What disappointed you?

What do you know about this situation that no one else knows?

Anything bizarre about this situation?

You get the idea! Now put your skin on and go gettum!

What is the most important aspect of fiction?

2011-10-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

There are 6 billion things to know and learn about writing fiction. I've counted. Stayed up all night once counting and counting.

Inevitably, the question arises: What is the most important aspect of fiction? What is the essences of what makes fiction necessary? It's a question I've been thinking about for a long time. And I'm going to share my answer with you.

Yes, I have an answer.

Really. I do.

Stop smiling, I'm serious.

In order for me to tell you my answer, I must tell you a story.

Once upon a time, I sat at a kitchen table reading part of a manuscript. The author sat across from me and watched me read. She fidgeted, picking at her nails, crossing and uncrossing her legs, noisily tried to be quiet. Her squirming made me squirm too. She wanted my opinion regarding the quality of her writing and what I thought of her work in general. That’s what I thought she wanted. But I was wrong. I read on, and as I did, a strong emotion rose in me: boredom. Uh oh.

When I finished reading the scene, I pushed the pages toward her, across the table. She pulled her hands back, as if the papers might be poisoned. She wouldn't touch them. "Should I keep writing?" she asked. "Am I good enough? Or should I just forget it?" She didn’t want my thoughts on her work, she wanted something very different. Impossible.

I pulled the pages back and glanced through them again. I’m not sure why I did this. Perhaps I hoped the answer was written somewhere between the neatly typed lines. But I understood what she was asking. It’s the question that keeps most writers awake some nights.

I read through the first several lines again.

She had skills. Technically, her writing was nearly perfect. Her transitions were smooth, her characters well defined. She had nice, clean descriptive, and enviable grammar.

But.

Hmmm. Something was missing. What was it? Plot? No, she had a plot all plotted out with plot points and pointed plotting. Better go over my handy-dandy fiction must-have checklist:

Writing skill ............... Check!

Clean manuscript ......... Check!

Good plot ................... Check!

Believable characters...........Check!

Yet, the thing just laid there like a dead mackerel, staring up at me with its one good eye.

Then it hit me! (the answer, not the dead mackerel)

It was missing one thing. The MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL.

I had to answer her. We were in a small kitchen and she was blocking the only exit. I said, "You’re the only one who knows if you should keep writing. My advice is to stop writing so hard and start telling stories."

She was technically flawless, and nothing more.

Readers want a great story told in an interesting way. They want to be engaged, have fun, get lost, fall in love, feel something new, and forget time and place.

But doesn't great writing help all of that to happen? Yes, but good writing is seamless--so good it disappears in the background and the reader can focus on the story.

What's the most important aspect of writing? Storytelling.

Writing is only the means. The story is what matters.

Writers are far better off mucking around in storytelling than we are perfecting our grammar, or mastering punctuation, or detailing endlessly boring events in an attempt to “show not tell”. Story barrels down the hillside and sweeps us along with it. It roars, and whispers, and demands attention. It is bigger than its writer and readers combined. An untamed thing. Telling it takes everything we have: our skill, our action, our guts.

Have you got the swagger of a storyteller? Are you willing to abandon safe places for the sake of story? Have you done so? Share!

October Roundtable: The Virtual Costume Party

2011-10-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

October is my favorite month of the year. In my part of the world, this is when heaters and sweaters and flannel bed sheets come out, when maple leaves turn gold and those other trees down the street turn red, and the sunlight that filters into my home is so golden you can feel it with your eyes closed.

And this is the month when I met my husband, and the month when both of my boys were born.

But it's that last day that got me excited as a child. I always dressed as a gypsy for Halloween, because that meant I got to wear all my mother's jewelry and her reddest lipstick.

These days I dress as the nice lady at the door with the candy. But today we're holding a virtual costume party here at Novel Matters. There's one rule: you have to come as an author, and since it's only virtual, you must tell us who you are and what you are virtually wearing. Have you come as Jane Austin, in pearls and an empire dress? Or as Edgar Allan Poe sporting a raven on your shoulder?

We ladies at Novel Matters will break the ice - but that means we get first dibs on the costumes.

And I get first first dibs: I have come to the party as Barbara Cartland. I'm wearing a formal dress hand beaded top to toe, and a Marie Antoinette wig with the bottom ringlets clipped off. And best of all, I've got on all my mother's jewelry, and her reddest lipstick, natch!

I'm at the party dressed in a stola, indigo in color. It is a long shift, and draped over my shoulders and arm I am wearing a shawl-like palla. My palla is red, dyed with the cheapest tint available. My clothing is rough-woven, because I no longer have the wealth into which I was born in Roman society. Because I am a Gentile woman living among Jews and Gentiles who have become Christians, I keep my head covered. I am Priscilla, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

I'm wearing a white shirt and a burgundy cravat with a matching brocade vest. My pants are tapered grey made of the finest wool, as is my frock coat. My tweed skimmer isn't just for show; it keeps my head warm against the London fog. My Vandyke is trimmed and brushed in an effort to put my best face forward. My shoes are well worn and comfortable for walking the city as I am wont to do, as I observe my fellow Londoners, all the while making notes on whatever scraps of paper I can find as I work on my latest installment of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which is sure to be my finest novel yet.

My hair is swept into a loose but tidy bun. Three strings of pearls lay at my throat, of course! My outfit is tailored, but clearly I've lost some weight in my later years. And oh the life I've lived. My parents were raised during the Civil War and we left the states for China before the modern world had much of an influence on me. And I like it that way. I wrote for the voiceless women of China and earned both the Nobel and Pulitzer for my efforts, but you won't see my work--and I was prolific--included in modern anthologies of women writers. Perhaps I was considered too conventional for all that. Anyway, when I show up at the party, please have plenty of fortune cookies and bittersweet chocolate. You may call me Pearl.

The Ultimate Interview

2011-10-21T02:00:00.000-07:00

Another reminder: It's October and the holidays are just around the corner! A bound version of Novel Tips on Rice might be just the thing for that gift exchange at work, for your book club, as a hostess gift, or for that hard-to-buy-for friend. It's not only filled with some of our favorite recipes, but there are quotable quotes from the 6 of us, and the graphics in this little book are amazing. Consider giving yourself one as well. Contact us for more information.

Patti and Debbie gave us great advice and insight this week regarding the interview process, as well as sharing their own personal experiences. Expectations are a huge component of the process, especially on the part of the interviewee. One thing to note is that interviews of experts who can help in your WIP aren't just for authors who write non-fiction. Novelists also need the help and guidance of those who know more than they do about any given topic that pertains to their WIP. For example, I hope to schedule an interview with a weaver for the novel I plan to write next.

Since we're on the topic of interviews, I have a question for you. If you could interview anyone at all, famous or not, living or not, who would you choose? And what would your top two questions be for your subject? I know, narrowing it to one person seems nearly impossible. I'm sure we could all fill pages and pages with names of people we'd love to have a one-on-one conversation with. But for the sake of this exercise let's keep it to one person. I'll begin.
My interview would be with Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. She has fascinated me for many years. These would be my questions:

What drove you into seclusion after writing one of the most beloved and influential novels of all time?

I've heard it said you chose not to write -- or at least publish -- another novel after To Kill a Mockingbird because you feared you'd never equal the success you attained with that incredible novel. But what is the real story? What did it ultimately cost you to write your novel?

Now it's your turn. Who would you interview, and what would you ask?

Get Your Story Straight

2011-10-19T04:00:00.000-07:00

Patti started a great discussion with her last post, because whether you write fiction or nonfiction, you will have to interview people at some point. Asking people for interviews can be intimidating and it can be downright difficult to find the right person to begin with. But your interviewees can also be goldmines of information providing nuggets of new story ideas and directions for development. Here are some of my observations from interviewing people:

If the book or article for which you are doing the interview doesn't get published, you can feel like you've let the interviewee down. They've probably already told their friends the exciting news that an author interviewed them. Some may even expect to be on The View once the book comes out. I once interviewed two fantastic young people who rode endurance (horses) and they were so excited that their stories might end up in a magazine article. I was careful to say that I was writing it on speculation and didn't know if it would ever sell. It never did, but I was fortunate to spend that time with them hearing about their passion for endurance riding.
It can be challenging to find the person who can help you without feeling like a stalker. It's unsettling to feel the distrust of others. "I'm really a nice person," you want to say. If you can get a referral or an introduction from someone who knows the person, so much the better. I was incredibly fortunate to find a Family Law Court judge in Los Angeles who allowed me to interview him by phone at his home during the Superbowl. That would never have happened if I hadn't known an attorney who was his close friend. I didn't know the connection, but I asked and hit the jackpot. The judge's advice in regard to family rights and kids switched at birth was incredibly valuable. I spent several sleepless nights worrying over the accuracy of my research until he confirmed that the story was legally correct.
People have expectations that are hard to get around sometimes. No matter how often you reiterate that you are not telling their stories, some just won't get it. They will contact you after reading the complimentary copy of the book to tell you that you got it wrong. They might be angry or disappointed because they thought that finally their tragedy, their experience, would have meaning. This happened to me and there was nothing I could do about it except to feel very bad and question whether I wasn't clear or could have done the interview better. Thankfully, I was contacted by the person later and her outlook was so different. She was finally okay with it and loved the book. Phew!
Do your research before you conduct the interview so that you can ask pertinent, intelligent questions. The interviewee will appreciate that you are not wasting his or her time and recognize that you are serious about your craft, perhaps being more willing to allow follow up interviews or take a look at some sections during the rewrite process.
When you do so much research, you need to be sure you've processed it correctly. I have passed along sections of my manuscript to the interviewee to make sure my facts and understanding of our conversation were correct. For example, I interviewed a veterinarian and later sent her the pages that I wanted checked for authenticity during the rewrite stage. She graciously looked them over and crossed out the sentence where the main character buys hair color at the store. This was a young woman, but again, NOT about her. Whatever. I also interviewed a new mom who had a baby late in life through in vitro fertilization. She compared her experience to what I had gleaned from the tons of new information I'd gathered, and cleared up a few misconceptions.
Be sensitive to your interviewee's frame of mind, especially if he or she is visiting dark or painful memories. Offer the option of cutting the interview short and starting again at some prearranged time. Perhaps they would be more comfortable writing down their answers and emailing them, which is not ideal for the writer but could be in their best interest.

Do you have any tidbits to share about interviewing people for your writing?

Every Writer's Magic Key: The Interview

2011-10-17T04:00:00.000-07:00

Writing books come and go. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird seems to be on everyone's must-read, must-underline heavily, must-dog ear list. It's about time we talked about it. So that's what we're doing. Today, we're discussing her chapter, "Calling Around." You don't have to read the chapter to share in the discussion.

There are an enormous number of people out there with invaluable information to share with you, and all you have to do is pick up the phone. --Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I didn't believe Anne, not the first time I read this. Was she crazy? I'd done plenty of interviews over the phone as a quasi-journalist. The people on the other end of the line kept asking, "Who is this again? Why are you calling me?"

But she is right.

When I call people, tell them I'm a writer, they invite me over to meet the family and fill out adoption papers. Well, that might be an exaggeration, almost.

Meeting people who are passionate about their hobbies, histories, families, occupations, travels is like finding bonus nuts in your brownies. Very enriching. Even if you don't end up using one bit of the interview material.

In the muling days of my last manuscript, I thought I needed to know more about the 10th Mountain Division, an elite Army division that trained in Colorado. A nice local touch for my historical fiction set during WWII. As it turned out, the 10th Mountain Division would have cluttered my story. That doesn't mean I'll ever forget the time I spent with Sgt. Herbert Wright, 95.

It was soon apparent that Herbert didn't hear well enough to do a telephone interview, so I scheduled an interview at his home, which turned out to be less than a mile away. Herbert led me through the livingroom to the kitchen. He trailed a tube from his oxygen compressor. Boxes of frozen dinners cluttered the counters.

"Would you like something to drink?" he asked.

Dead flies mummified on the window sill. "No thanks."

Herbert sat across from me, the effort of walking from the front door had taken its toll. He shook his head. "I don't know what I can tell you. I'm not as sharp as I used to be."

"I don't need dates or facts, just what you remember, mostly about training and how things went once you got to Europe."

He smoothed back his impossibly thin hair. "You want to know about the guys?"

"I especially want to know about the guys."

Herbert looked up. A veil lifted. His eyes cleared. He was back at Camp Hale, reliving the cammaraderie of his buddies. "I sure loved those guys."

And then he told me the most amazing story.

The 10th Mountain Division arrived late to the war, not until 1945. The Germans had bunkered along the ridges of the Apennine Mountains of Italy and had no plans of leaving, though many had tried to hurry them back to Germany. Along with the usual infantry and tank support, the 10th Mountain Division consisted of skiers and mountain climbers. They came to the war late, but they incurred one of the highest casualties rates and conducted one of the fastest advances into enemy territory. These men were risk-takers not accustomed to failure.

Early in the fighting, Herbert's platoon had to crawl over a small rise of earth, nothing more than a bump, to continue their ascent. Herbert led the way, but he was shot in the pelvis only yards from his objective. His seargant crawled over the rise to bring Herbert back to the safety. As Sgt. Scott bent over Herbert, a sniper's bullet severed Sgt. Scott's jugular. He collapsed on Herbert and bled out. Herbert's chances didn't look good. They looked even worse when a U.S. tank started backing toward him. He thought, "Swell, I survived getting shot by the Nazis. Now, I'm going to be crushed by one of my own."

As it turned out, the tank provided cover for the men of Herbert's platoon to remove the body of their sargeant and evacuate Herbert. His voice caught as he talked about Sgt. Scott. Herbert considered him a first-rate hero for taking such a chance on his behalf.

Herbert was sent stateside to recuperate and rebuild his life. When he felt up to a journey, he drove the 600 miles to northern Idaho to visit the widow of Sgt. Scott and the young son he'd left behind. Herbert felt responsible for putting the sargeant in harm's way. He'd traveled to Idaho to apologize and to tell of Sgt. Scott's heroism. He did that. And then he fell in love with the widow Scott and loved her the rest of her life. He also stepped up to be a father to the boy. Herbert was quite proud that his son had two fathers who served in the 10th Mountain Division.

I didn't use what I learned from Herbert that day, not in the traditional sense. But his story rekindled something in me, maybe hope. I never looked at an elderly man quite the same. The stories they hold...

What's your take? Is Anne telling the truth? Are the words "I'm a writer" an magic key that opens doors to people's lives and passions? Have you conducted an interview that changed the course of a story? Provided a friend for life?

A conference Insider

2011-10-14T01:25:00.000-07:00

As you are reading, I am in Grand Rapids, Michigan, preparing to speak at the Breathe writing conference.

I am honored by the invitation. I'd like to extend to you a request that you pray for me as I speak on the subjects of the spiritual life of a writer, and how to write and market magazine articles.

I speak quite a bit on writing subjects. Rather than posting a column today, I've got a video of the end of a session I presented in Salt Lake City to an ex-Mormon group (most of whom are not Christians but who wanted to know how to get published.)

If you are interested, you can see the previous seven segments on YouTube as well.

Editing your novel: Notes from the frontline

2011-10-12T02:00:00.000-07:00

Please excuse my uncombed hair, how my teeth match my fuzzy socks, the way I seem to be winking when my indirect gaze falls near you—it’s just a twitch—the spaghetti sauce stain on my shirt. You see I’m editing my novel.

These sharp teeth of mine, the ones that have stricken some of you with sickish, curious fear, have been doing their work on my own thin bones. Cannibalistic as that sounds, it’s all for the best. I can inflict my furious red pen on others, but it’s all spitting into the wind if I can’t turn that same pen toward myself.

I am reddened, my friends.

Let me stagger closer, collapse in the nearest chair, and begin by asking a question, and then tossing my experience into the fray. Here is the question: What is editing?

My experience: Editing is letting go of the childish notion that excellence in any way resembles good enough.

Says who?

In my case, ‘who’ is my agent. An astute reader, who, I am sure, dons a cape each morning and flies above the streets of New York City performing feats of pure heroics for the benefit of writers like me. But not only writers. A good agent works for writers, a great one also works on behalf of readers. She analyzes a manuscript looking for the best possible reading experience. And then she talks to the writer about how certain changes in the manuscript can fulfill it’s reading potential. My agent, Claudia, is one of these.

She said, “Bonnie, I think we’re 90% there.” (There is that sweet spot, the giddy good place that makes publishers take notice.) “But, with some changes, I believe we can get closer to 98%.” She had my attention. 90% is good enough. Which we know isn’t good enough.

She pointed out two changes. Two. Such a small number. But this is a novel, and even one change is connected to a hundred others. Two becomes two hundred. I listened closely, and as she spoke it became clear: she is right. Brilliantly, utterly, maddeningly right. I must make the changes. One is an addition. The second is a subtraction. In all, I suspect the changes will mean writing another 15,000 words (give or take), while editing out an existing 300.

How will I accomplish this edit? Here’s my checklist:

1) Listen to people who are smarter than I am (in my case that means my agent, and my brilliant friend Sharon Souza who also read the manuscript. When I finished talking to my agent, I arranged to talk to Sharon via Skype to check her experience against Claudia’s. They matched perfectly).

2) Ask focused, germane questions. As Claudia and Sharon each shared their reading experience with me, I asked questions about theme and plot. I didn’t ask if they liked my writing, or if they noticed this or that clever twist. I centered my questions on their impressions and experience, not what I had hoped they noticed.

3) Make detailed notes. I took notes throughout both conversations, capturing Claudia’s and Sharon’s thoughts, and adding my own ideas to the mix here and there. Both of them sent me follow up emails with their thoughts reiterated. Very helpful.

4) Create a game plan before jumping into edits. I took months to plan the novel before I started to write, and I need to take some time (not months!) to plan how to work the edits organically. In my case, it is made easier because I have detailed plans of how the story is structured, therefore I can start tinkering within a day or so.

5) Read the manuscript again before writing new scenes or drastically editing others. In my case, because the majority of edits is happening in the last half of the novel, I’ve printed out and read those chapters for a couple of reasons: a) rereading will ensure my edits maintain and heighten the voice of the novel, b) I’ll be sure to pick up any dropped threads of character, plot, or theme that aren’t addressed in my notes, but need to be to keep the edits organic.

6) Be kind. Writing is re-writing. I need to be ruthless about the changes, not with myself. So, I turn my furious red pen to my writing, but buy myself some flowers.

Now, please excuse me as I go in search of my notes. And a toothbrush.

Got a story from the frontline? Stagger over and share!

She Reads Guest Post: Book Club Blogger Melissa Hambrick onNever Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

2011-10-10T02:00:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how it is where you are, but here in Tennessee we are just on the fringes between summer and fall. The days are warm and pleasant, and in the evenings it is time to slip on a jacket. Just perfect for our book club to gather on the screened porch and feel the soft early fall air, sit with our feet tucked beneath us and talk books.

This month’s book was one of those books—you either loved it or you hated it. It was a little slow to get into, and the story was very internal. But the prose was beautiful and the concept was thought-provoking. And being one of those books—we had quite a lengthy and involved discussion. Those are always the books that get us going!

Never Let Me Go is a dystopian novel by Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro, who also wrote The Remains of the Day. It released in 2005 and was incredibly well received—in fact TIME magazine named it the best novel of the year—and it was made into a film (starring everyone’s favorite pirate girl Kiera Knightley) in 2010. We were going to watch the movie as well, but since Redbox only has new releases...you know sometimes you don’t realize how much you miss a good old corner video store.

Although this novel fits into the science fiction genre because of its plot, the setting is actually quite pastoral, taking place in East Sussex, England. Hailsham is a boarding school there, and as we come to realize, its students are quite unusual: they are clones.

At some point in what we understand to be recent history, it has become permissible and nearly an industry unto itself to breed human clones. These clones are raised separately from natural humans by Guardians (teachers), and are raised to an age (around 18) when they either become Donors, who may donate various organs potentially more than four times, or become Carers, who literally care for these donors during the process. Carers will also eventually become donors themselves. Once they donate as many times as possible, they die, which is referred to as Completion.

Ishiguro’s novel takes us into the mind of Kathy, a clone who has been a Carer for 12 years—a remarkable span of time for this duty. Written entirely from her perspective, it jumps about a bit, just as it would if she were talking with you and telling you the story. To me, it was like a fictional memoir—very personal, internal, and with many assumptions about other characters which came only from her perspective. Although she refers to hear early childhood occasionally, she primarily narrates her teenage years through to her time as a Carer, which takes the reader into a lot of complex emotions and relationships with her fellow students as they are educated at Hailsham, through a strange existence surrounded by questions. The students themselves fill in a lot of blanks with their imaginations, creating rumors that are accepted as fact because they’ve been passed about for so long.

A great deal of time is spent on the art they are encouraged to create—paintings, sketches, poetry. They don’t completely know why, but to them it is a great honor to have your work chosen by one of the Guardians for The Gallery. And, they don’t really know what The Gallery is either—they just know they want to have their work in it. Ultimately we find out that The Gallery is a way for the Guardians to try and convince others that these clones do, in fact, have souls. Think about that—what would it mean if you had to create art, in its most commonly accepted forms, to prove that you had a soul, as if it is somehow a reflection of your being?

Caring, Donation, Completion—they are all simply what these students have been created for, and they seem to accept their fate, perhaps the way many oppressed cultures still do today. It isn’t only history; as Ishiguro writes, unfortunately oppression is still part of our future. We thought of women in male dominated societies, where tradition or religion keep them in submissive roles. Escape is not really a concept, although they dream of having their destiny deferred so that they can do things like be in love, or work in an office. Not so far off from some headlines you may have read recently? It reminded me of A Dream Deferred, a poem by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (see below). Although they are kept away from society, told they are created for one purpose alone and for the most part, accept that purpose—perhaps it is their dreams, not their art, that reveal them as fully and deeply part of the human experience.

There are moments in which I connected with the characters in Never Let Me Go, thinking of what it is like to be a parent. We do our best to give our children purpose, to teach them—but we, like the Guardians, sometimes only show them part of the world. We skew their vision with our own, and sometimes we keep the truth from them for their own good. Yet we see ourselves in them as well. And like the students, we are created as parents to give ourselves away to our children. We give them little bits of ourselves—our love, our hearts, our passions, perhaps sometimes our frustrations, or even our paychecks. And we know—we accept—that this is our duty, until completion. Sometimes the arrival of our children defers our dreams; other times, our children are the fulfillment of them.

I have a feeling that this male, Japanese author probably didn’t have this in mind when he wrote it. But then again, I maintain that we all find bits and pieces to relate to in literature, and find things that are deeply personal and meaningful and that reflect the human journey, no matter what the story. You might think dystopian science fiction isn’t for you, but you might need to think again—because you never know what will move you.

A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

The Blatant Use of Mud-Luscious Words

2011-10-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

It's started to happen. I'm beginning to prefer e-books, and the second biggest reason - second only to portability - is that little feature Sharon mentioned on Wednesday: the embedded dictionary. In fact, when I read an analog book I often find myself tapping a word on the page, hoping the definition will pop up. It never does.

I love it that so many people have book readers on their cell phones and tablets. I'm delighted beyond words to know that Kindles fly off the shelves like rockets, when - at least until November - all they are good for is reading books. To me, that's pure sunshine.

But there is darker news, and I'm not sure how to reconcile it with the sunshine. My country (and maybe the world?) is forgetting how to read and write. I'd felt this to be true before I wrote this post, because I've met people whose job it is to teach college students to read. But conscience demands that I back my claim with data, so I looked it up: The SAT college-entrance exam scores for the 2011 high-school graduating class have revealed the lowest reading and writing levels they ever recorded. Ever recorded. Here's the picture:

I agree with Sharon when she says that we should write in language that is accessible to our readers.* That's an old rule. My teacher in high school journalism taught that we should write at an eighth grade level, since that is the level most find easy to follow without explanation.

But when I see this graph, I wonder if we will have to write at the fifth grade level next year, and the third grade level after that, until finally we are all writing "Pat the Bunny" and sending it off to editors.

When I see the graph, I want to sit astraddle the yellow line and rest a foot on the red one, before another human being slides off into inarticulate hell. I want to stack all those people single file on the up-slope, and I want - I want so much - to read to them:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Hardly a word in the poem Lewis Carroll didn't make up, so at least at the time he wrote it, the dictionary wouldn't have helped.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

There's so much more to language than definition. There is rhythm (just like music) and texture and plain, pure fun.

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

You can see them, can't you? The manxome foe, the Tumtum tree? Meaning needn't be serious. It comes out best when we play.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

"Uffish" and "Tulgey," such wonderful words. Like mud-luscious, a word coined by e.e. cummings.

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

You might be surprised how many words have been coined by writers. Did you know that Shakespeare invented "eyeballs?" Not the things themselves, but the word. Edward Spenser coined "blatant" in his poem “The Faerie Queene.” The list goes on and on.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

I'll bet you thought "chortled" was one word Lewis Carroll didn't make up. But it did indeed make its first appearance in this poem. To those stacking up on the red line, I'd like to urge them to use language like a sculptor uses clay. Squish your fingers into them, feel the mud-luscious drip down your arms. Write with beautiful words, and horrid words and repulsive words, and if your reader needs to look them up once in a while, let him tap the page.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Read any uffish words lately, any beamish turns of phrase? Please share them with us. We love to read what frabjous things you have to say.

* And I agree without reservation that we should spare the reader the language common only to Evangelical church-goers. Christianese is jargon, and it's rude to talk jargon in public.

Would you explain that, please?

2011-10-05T02:00:00.000-07:00

It's October, and the holidays are just around the corner! A bound version of Novel Tips on Rice might be just the thing for that gift exchange at work, or for that hard-to-buy-for friend. It's not only filled with some of our favorite recipes, but there are quotable quotes from the 6 of us, and the graphics in this little book are amazing. Consider giving yourself one as well. Contact us for more information.

Let me say first that in California it's soda. Not pop. Not coke (generically speaking). And never, ever soda pop. Just soda.

I thought it was interesting that Debbie's post came immediately after Bonnie finished reading/editing on of my manuscripts. Bonnie. From Canada. I was amazed to discover the differences that exist in language between my small place in the world, and hers, even though our countries are next-door neighbors on this planet. At times I laughed at the references she didn't understand or wasn't familiar with; other times I was just plain surprised. For example: I laughed when she questioned my use of the phrase "crazy bone" instead of "funny bone." She'd never heard "crazy bone" before. So I wondered, is this just a family thing for me, that I use crazy bone instead of funny bone because that's what I grew up hearing? But I checked the dictionary and sure enough they're interchangeable. And when I made reference to AARP, Bonnie said, "I don't know what this is, but I'm Canadian ..." That really made me laugh.

I also had to laugh at Henrietta's "knock me up" comment. She'd have gotten a double-take from me, for sure. It reminded me that in America when we say, "I'm stuffed," we mean that we're full from a hearty meal. But in South Africa, it's a crude sexual term. Who knew?

Bonnie's comments to my manuscript combined with Debbie's post were reminders that how we present our message matters. It's important that we not lose our readers with our jargon. Sure, there are times when jargon adds to the characterization of a cast member of your novel. And usually the reader can discern the meaning of unfamiliar words/terms by the context in which it's used. But since the purpose of writing is to communicate, it behooves the writer to keep jargon to a minimum. This is one area where an editor can help point out language that might be too narrow in its scope.

Another way to lose or frustrate readers is to pepper your prose with words most people don't know the meaning of. I enjoy coming across a new word every now and then as I read fiction, but who wants to read for pleasure with a novel in one hand and a dictionary in the other? I realize most e-readers will define any word the cursor stops on. But having to use that feature repeatedly would certainly take the pleasure out of reading. And if, like me, you prefer to hold a real book in your hands when you read, you either look up the words you don't know or skip over them.

Which leads me to my main point. As Christian authors we continually run the risk of speaking a language not everyone understands. Even within Christian circles terms can mean different things to different denominations. To those unfamiliar with Christianese we might as well be speaking Greek. It's a sure way of alienating a reader. We who write faith-based fiction should strive to write it as though we're speaking to people who don't understand the language of the church.

I love the quote by by author Elmore Leonard, who said of his writing: "I try to leave out the parts that people skip." I'm one of those readers who never skips a word. Not one. I don't skim over description, and if I come to a word I don't know the definition of I look it up. I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority in that regard. What about you? What kind of reader are you?

Speaking the Language

2011-10-03T04:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon shopping at our local Ikea. We bought a samla, a tokig, a nackten and some adorable yrsni. Translation: storage container, salad spinner, bathmat, Christmas ornaments. Earlier in the year, I picked up some items for work and when I submitted the receipt to our finance office, it was returned to me with a note: “What in the world did you purchase? I can’t read this receipt.” I've noticed that Ikea now provides an abbreviated form of English beside the Swedish name on the receipts for easier identification.

It’s a good idea to speak your customer’s language.

It reminds me of some explaining I had to do once on a passage of a manuscript during the editing stage. The scene was a crowded aquarium where the characters were “dodging baby strollers and munchkins.” I was referring to the babies as ‘munchkins,’ but apparently Munchkins are also doughnut holes from Dunkin Donuts (which I did not know) and I sent the wrong message. I can see the visual I created: babies with a messy floor beneath their strollers. It made sense. Dunkin Donuts was relatively unknown on the West Coast at the time, and I was clueless. They allowed me to leave it in anyway.

It is difficult to write from our own experiences and perspectives and remain aware of the universality of the words we choose. Word choices differ between social groups, age groups, regions, cultures and countries. As readers, we generally figure them out. We've seen enough James Bond to know the boot of the car in Britain is the trunk in America, and the bonnet is the hood. The same goes for Australia, as I understand it. Consider carbonated beverages. Depending on where you're from in the United States, you may refer to them as soda, pop or Coke (which is used generically for every brand). Canada calls it pop, also (Bonnie, correct me if I'm wrong). In America, you may have a 'pot luck' whereas in Britain you may call it 'Dutch treat' or in Australia say 'bring a plate.' My sister's new neighbor came over to borrow a round of wool which my sister came to realize meant a spool of thread.

As I said, as readers we generally figure out the meaning or we gloss over the words that aren't crucial to the story. At least, we hope they're not crucial. But it's the writer's job to keep that 'hitch' from happening or at least minimize the downtime before the reader is sailing along again.

The writer of historicals will necessarily use the jargon of the times but sometimes a bit of explanation is helpful. For example, you wouldn't write, "She placed the coins in her reticule which is like a purse" but you might say, "She dropped the coins into her beaded reticule and pulled the drawstring tight." Likewise, if you're writing about a particular locale, you need to include some dialect for authenticity, but not so much that it slows down the pace of the story or muddies the understanding of a critical point.

It is imperative to have trusted readers give us honest feedback before we submit our manuscripts, to ensure that we are speaking the language of our readers wherever possible.

Have you been stumped by a word or phrase that prevented your understanding of a story? Does it enhance or detract when you find a word or phrase that requires that you deduce the meaning from the story?

Is There an App for That? Index Cards

2011-09-29T04:00:00.001-07:00

My lovely co-writers at NovelMatters have touched on elevated and challenging topics this week. Me? I’m writing about index cards, sort of. This is a continuing conversation—jump on in!—of Anne Lamott’s writing-craft classic, Bird by Bird.

I happen to adore index cards. They don’t ask much of the writer, just a few words, an idea, a recipe. That’s all. Honestly, I get a little nervous if my stockpile wanes.

I have a long history with index cards. I used them to make flash cards and flip books in elementary school. When marriage seemed like a reachable goal, I wrote out recipes like prayers, learned all the abbreviations, practiced my best printing.

Index cards have always been my choice for to-do lists. If I can fit my list on an index card—and I write really big—I can get it all done in one day, guaranteed!

In college, I made my first planner by stapling seven index cards together and labeling them Monday through Sunday. Crossing out completed tasks made my heart beat a little faster. Yep, I invented the planner. I also invented Jazzercize about this time, but I forgot to tell people about that, too.

I went through pallets of index cards in college--both times--for all the usual uses. I carried them in a special holder. It was yellow.

My most fiendish use of index cards came as a fifth-grade teacher. I tired of reading 12-page summaries of my student’s reading. My eager students—despite repeated lessons on main ideas—included every detail of even the most modest story twist. The index card came to the rescue.

I gave each student a 5X7 index card for their book report. At first, they tried writing 12 pages of summary, only with much, much smaller printing. When I reminded them about main events and sent them back to their seats, their frustration grew. Fifth graders are large by the end of the year, and I started feared for my life, until one of them—God bless ‘em!— finally succeeded. I was beginning to think I’d asked too much. (Note: This was long before texting…and they all progressed to 6^th grade knowing how to write concise summaries.)

As a writer, I’ve used index cards to record scene ideas and then shuffled them into a sense of plot. I have 163 index cards for one book. My husband made a special holder, so I could page through the cards. (Note: If you do this, be sure to number the index cards once you have them in order. Learned this the hard way.)

Although this chapter is titled “Index Cards,” it’s not really about lined pieces of cardstock. No, this is a chapter about collecting what we see in the world, recording it for use in our novels, and then remembering where that stinkin’ card went.

I used to think that if something was important enough, I’d remember it until I got home, where I could simply write it down in my notebook like some normal functioning member of society…But then I wouldn’t.

Anne uses index cards as portable journals. The quickest way to stop a conversation is to whip out a fat journal and start taking notes. A black curtain of silence falls over the room. Index cards are small, firm, and easy to stow—perfect for clandestine note-taking. Simply jot a few words or several lines of dialogue. As Anne mentions, they fit in a pocket and won’t make your bum look lumpy. See, there are no excuses for letting a great idea evaporate.

… unbidden, seemingly out of nowhere, a thought or image arrives. Some will float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright orange, and weightless, and you follow them like a child looking at an aquarium that was thought to be without fish.

These ideas come to us so vividly, so precisely, and oh so cleverly that we are tempted to believe they cannot be forgotten, but that is fairy dust, my dear writing friend. A Pulitzer Prize-winning idea will flit into your head and right back out again...unless you write it down. That’s what index cards are for.

My index-card life is not efficient or well organized.

Hey howdy! My question while reading this chapter was this: Anne, how in the world do you find that one brilliant idea when you need it? Who’s to say it hasn’t stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe and gone on its own adventure or slipped into the fifth dimension via the portal under the couch?

Anne doesn’t say, but she basically comes down to using index cards as a mnemonic device. For most of us, our visual memory is the most enduring, especially for converting short-term memory to long-term memory. That’s why so many of us take notes during lectures or sermons. Taking notes is turning auditory information into visual information. And if we're younger than 30 and very, very lucky, we won't have to look at that card again.

Still, the idea of hefting around a bale of index cards in my purse and then relying on my aging brain to remember what a few obscure words might mean, doesn’t fill me with confidence. I throw notes like that away every day.

We talked about journaling earlier in the year to capture ideas that alight on our overtaxed minds. Maybe the most ideal way to hold ideas is a marriage of index cards and a journal that is divided into categories: description, dialogue, titles, story ideas, in the news, etc. And then taping the cards in place, like a hinge so you can read both sides, in the journal.

Is it too late in this post to ask if index cards are passé? Is there an index card app? There should be. Did I just invent an app? At least I’m telling you about it.

I have some practical questions for you: How do you capture ideas at inconvenient moments? A recorder? Journal? Camera? The tried-and-true index card? How do you organize what you’ve plucked from an orchard of ideas?

Linking Readers to the Eternal

2011-09-28T02:58:00.000-07:00

Our congratulations to Melissa Hambrick! You are the winner of the Teeth and Bones contest. Contact Bonnie Grrrrrrove. (Smile.)

My cousin had a remarkable experience this week as her elderly mother was dying. She left the room for a moment, and the hospice workers came running to get her.

“You have to see this,” they said, and led her back into the hospital room. There my frail aunt lay, her arms up in the air. “She’s reaching up to heaven,” one of them said.

My sister in law recounts a sudden “great big grin” on the face of her elderly mother as she passed from life to eternity.

And my best friend witnessed the sudden passing of a good friend in college, who fell prey to a virulent infection. Just before the young man passed, he sat upright in the bed in the presence of several people, pointed to the sky and said, “Look! I see the Lord!”

These are stories told to me by people I know well, and trust. I think they illustrate the permeability of the thin veil between the seen and the unseen, between the temporal and the eternal. For just those moments, people on the cusp of eternity straddled two worlds.

Although these stories are true, the telling of them reminds me of good fiction. When Bonnie posted on Monday about beginnings of novels, and invited you to enter your opening paragraphs, I believe she was asking you how you introduce someone’s mind to the eternal, to ideas beyond themselves, to concepts that will tie them to their God.

We are the lifting of arms to heaven, so people can see that we are sure of an eternal reward. Through our writing, we are that great big grin of recognition of the One we love the most.

And we say it, either with words or with stories, “Look! I see the Lord!”

Grand Openings

2011-09-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

There are as many ways to begin a story as there are stories to begin. But they are tricky things. Where to begin? Where best to focus the reader's attention? What needs to be accomplished? Today's Novel Matters Roundtable is about opening paragraphs. What do we each look for in an opening, and we will each share the openings from our books.
The bonus of this roundtable is that we are holding a mini-contest! In the comments section, post the opening paragraph from ONE of your novels. All six of us will read the comments and offer our thoughts as we are able. One winner will be chosen to receive a Teeth and Bones edit of their first chapter. The winner will be drawn randomly from the comments section. Please ensure you post ONLY the opening PARAGRAPH of your novel.

For me, there are three things I look for in a beginning (things that capture my attention), 1) Story world--you could call this setting. But it's the way the writer was able to plant my feet

inside the place and time where the story takes place. 2) Narrator--Who is telling this story and why does it need to be told now? and 3) Movement and/or promise of plot--I like to see a little something up front that tells me this story is going somewhere, it has movement. I don't read much genre fiction, so I don't need my plot served hot in the first lines, but I do like some inkling of plot near the beginning.

Here are openings from two of my works:

1) Talking to the Dead:

Kevin was dead and the people in my house wouldn't go home. They mingled after the funeral, eating sandwiches, drinking tea, and spoke in muffled tones. I didn't feel grateful for their presence. I felt exactly nothing.

2) A Girl Named Fish (the novel I completed a week ago):

The population of Picture Island, Maine is arranged in a horseshoe configuration around the open grave, one in back of the other four or five deep. It’s raining hard and they’re frozen to the bone under the black awning of umbrellas. Why does it always rain at funerals? It’s spring but the rain is as cold as if the clouds had scooped the freezing ocean waters and dumped it down their backs. The wind howls up the cliffs to where they are gathered—a cemetery on a high cliff overlooking the sea. The rain slants so it drives sideways into their faces. People try to look reverently miserable, as if it’s mortality they’re contemplating and not their warm houses and maybe some buttered toast with tea and the weekly paper by the fireplace.

If you find it striking that both these novels open with a funeral, well, so do I. My approach is to create miniatu

res inside the scenes and paragraphs of the novel, so that each piece tells part of the whole, and also tells a mini-story of it's own that explores a theme found in other places in the novel.

Let's hear from the others:

What I look for in an opening paragraph is A) Voice -- which tells me right off the bat how I'm going to feel about the character. I want to feel an affinity with either the words or thoughts of the speaker; B) Promise -- what the story holds in store for me. I'll invest several hours in reading the book, so I want to know it will be worth my while; and C) Tone -- is this a serious read or will there be some humor weaved in. I love a touch of humor, even in a serious novel.

Here is the opening from my novel, Unraveled, which I hope will be released in November:

I lost my faith at twenty-four. Well, that isn't true. I didn't lose it, I left it. On a mission field in Moldova, amidst the sunflowers. Just took it off like a vesture discarded. Not outgrown. Discarded. It left me feeling exposed, I'll admit, but I figure if God isn't capable of protecting the weakest among us, well I'd just reather work for someone else. Oh sure, he makes it plain as day that pure and undefiled religion is caring for the widows and orphans, as if it's my job and not his. and that was the thing, he let us down in the worst way. So, I tipped my hat and shook the dust off my feet.

And this is from my most recently completed novel, The Color of Sorrow Isn't Blue:

Grief, it is said, is a sea that ebbs and flows. Comes in waves that roll over the shore, then recedes in a dizzying, lose-your-footing-in-the-sand sensation, leaving you unsettled but standing. Well. Whoever said that never felt the tsunami effect, the drowing, sucking, tidal wave of grief. I know, because I haven't come up for air in five days short

of a year. A suffocating, black hole of a year, each day collapsing in on itself like sand too long unwatered.

As per my usual, I'm going to cheat. Stylistically, I usually start my novels with a one-sentence paragraph, a grabber. L

ike the others, I'm looking to establish voice and a tone. Here's my first paragraph+ for Like a Watered Garden:

I received a box of flowers from my dead husband.

That's a stretch. They weren't flowers at all but a dozen montbretia bulbs. They looked like

hazelnuts with ponytails. Blooms wouldn't show up until July, I figured, if they showed up at all. The UPS man had hidden the box under the welcome mat. His clumsy attempt at security amused me until I remembered I hadn’t ordered anything from a seed catalog last fall. Far from it. Within a heartbeat, I knew the flowers—because that was what he had intended them to be—were from Scott.

Here's an example of a very different voice from my novel, Seeing Things:

You’re talking to the queen of skepticism right here.

I roll my eyes over newspaper stories where teary-eyed folks report they’ve seen Jesus in a potato chip. That sort of hogwash sends me straight to the comics for a dose of reality. You don’t have to worry about me. I know Alley Oop doesn’t slide through time, but the inhabitants of Moo remind me of my friends in Ouray with their common sense and heave-ho attitudes, something sorely missing among the potato chip crowd. Honestly, someone isn’t rowing

with both oars in the water.

I look for deliciousness - a hard to define quality of voice or mood that tells me I'm going to lovespending time inthe three hundred pages or so to come. Here's my two:

The woman stood atop the cinnamon bluff, her arms stretched to the horizons, her face dry as sandstone, her silver hair blowing like the grass at her feet. "She thinks she's Moses," muttered Data, peering through a gap between drawn blinds.- From To Dance In the Desert

They're just decorations, these candles. You don't need anything to pray. Truly, it is best to come with nothing-only yourself. Just one of the things I've learned.
- From The Feast of Saint Bertie

When I open to the first chapter of a book, I hope to find something fresh - some indication that the story is different than others I've read. I also look for the tone in the first paragraph and for some indication of the plot. But, truthfully, what strikes me as promising can change with how I'm feeling when I pick up a book, whether I'm in the mood for a light, entertaining read or a more engrossing story.

Here is the first paragraph from Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon:
"We weren't strangers to this courtroom. The first time we came, it was to petition to have Ginger's hospital birth records opened. When you lose a child to a genetic disease that doesn't haunt your family, you want to know why."

Here is the first paragraph of an untitled WIP I'm toying around with right now:
"Grover is an ink blot on a Google map - a Rorschach's splatter of asphalt and advertising tucked into a fold of brown hills. At least, from May through September, between the rains. Otherwise, the hills are fuzzy and green as moldy bread."

Maybe because I love mysteries, I want an opening paragraph to create a big question mark in my mind, one that forces me to keep reading.

I've attempted to do that in the following opening to my first attempt at a type of Biblical speculative fiction:
Last night I dreamed the dream again, and for the only time I dreamed it, of all the times I dreamed it, it brought me the least fear last night.

Now it's your turn: All comments are allowed, of course. If you want to enter the Teeth and Bones contest for a chance to have your first chapter read and commented on by one of us, then enter your opening paragraph in the comments section. Otherwise: What kinds of things capture your attention in an opening? Have you flipped open a novel, read the first bit and felt, ahhh THIS is what I'm looking for! Tell us!

At the Bottom of the Stair

2011-09-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

First, I must wish a happy birthday to two of my favorite literary characters: Frodo and Bilbo Baggins. So convenient that it's also the first day of autumn. It's only fitting to celebrate with a chocolate hazelnut cupcake from Esther's Cupcakes (voted Best of Sacramento). That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

What a great discussion this week! Katy was knocked flat with the idea, then got up, brushed herself off and wrote about it. And Sharon's post reminded me of my favorite go-to book, Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. In it, Mr. Bradbury tells about the fear he had as a child having to go upstairs to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Things waited up there in the dark for him. Fears he'd collected throughout childhood. Wild imaginings from his fertile mind. And he issues a challenge: "I leave you now at the bottom of your own stair, at half after midnight, with a pad, a pen and a list to be made." What fears are waiting for us, and can we dispel their power over us with a pen?

His fears were common everyday childhood anxieties and terrors that paraded as skeletons, martians and carnival oddities. From those, he conjured a deathly chase on All Hallows Eve, familiar faces plotting evil deception and a man's tattoos that illustrated impending death. What a rich imagination! Our fears may be different, but they can still keep us doing the wiggle dance at the bottom of the stair, glancing at them through the side of our eye, unable to look them squarely in the face.

It could be something we did or didn't do when we knew the right course of action. Or maybe it's the thing we figured out too late to do anything about. Is it still our fault? We never intended bad to happen, but our lack of intuition made us slow on the uptake and we live with regrets. Sometimes, bad regrets. We wouldn't clothe them in skeletons or fantastical creatures, but in more everyday attire that makes our fears even more insidious because they can hide in our natural responses and we're left to wonder, "Where did that come from? What was the origin of that?"

We may feel we don't have fears, but if we have regrets, we usually fear exposure. We imagine, perhaps wrongly, that others will finger point. We worry (fear) our children will turn out differently than us, or that they will become just like us. We feel anxiety (fear) that others will know we've experienced bankruptcy, or were abandoned by the ones who knew us best and found us unlovable or that we couldn't keep ourselves or our loved ones from substance abuse. Sometimes, it's a sense of unworthiness or insecurity about whether God loves us. We read that He does, but do we believe it when we experience failure or that old dread lifts its head and gives us the evil eye?

There are many books written today that expose the character's (author's) desires and fears, which result in messed-up situations that escalate until there seems to be no way out. Someone is pushed out onto the ledge and they don't find a way back. I recently read about halfway through The House of Sand and Fog and I'm glad I only paid $1 for it. The writing is excellent and the characterization is insightful, but the story leaves me cold. I can't root for either character to 'win.' Neither deserves the house, and perhaps that's the point. But even if Oprah liked it, I'm sticking the book in my upcoming garage sale.

From the bottom of the stair, we call down our fears one by one and look them full in the face. We have at our disposal the hope of genuine redemption, not a Pollyanna resolution but a drawing of swords with our shadowy adversaries and keeping them at bay, if not completely dispatching them. Readers need to hear the truth about the stuff at the top of our stairs, that we wrestle with it daily and that we know there will eventually be resolution, even if it's not found within the pages of the book.

I won't ask you to name your fears. Save them for your list. Instead, I will ask if you know of stories with satisfying, realistic resolutions even if they have no complete sense of closure. And have a cupcake to celebrate.

Writing from the Attic: Therapy or Lunacy?

2011-09-21T02:00:00.000-07:00

Katy's excellent post on Monday about things in the attic -- like her humming yellow jackets and naughty 'possum -- reminded me of an incident that happened last November when my husband was on one of his frequent missions trips. It's funny now, but it sure wasn't then. I wrote about it in my 11/15/10 NM post, A Week in the Life of . . . This is what I said in part:

Where is a man when you need one? Mine could be anywhere in the world, but I can pretty much guarantee if something's going to go wrong, it will go wrong when he's out of the country ... (This particular time he was in Cuba.) A week ago Sunday night I was in my bedroom watching TV and addressing Christmas cards when a racket shattered the relative quiet -- and it came from right above my head. Startled, I jumped up and tried to assess the what and the where as I speed dialed my daughter, because, as we all know, misery loves company. I had no idea what was going on, I just knew it was LOUD. It sounded like a whole family of something had moved into our attic space. With my daughter on the phone, I went outside, hoping against hope that whatever it was was on the roof, and not somewhere INSIDE my house. Alas, it was not to be. I declined my daughter's invitation to spend the night/week on her sofa, and listened in fear and trembling as this thing moved around upstairs above my head till after 3:00 a.m. At one point it sounded like it was dragging something across the floor up there. I kid you not.

I called Clark Exterminators first thing Monday morning. A young man -- who was my new favorite hero -- came within the hour, but alas yet again, he could open the access to the attic space, but he couldn't actually go in and do anything about what might be up there. It seems they have rules, and that, in my opinion, was the stupidest. What he could do was set a mega-mouse trap just inside the attic space, which he could reach while standing on the very top of my 6-foot ladder, without actually being in the space. Well fine. But let me tell you, A: this was no mouse, mega or otherwise! And B: out of 3,100 square feet of living space, the 16 x 20 inch opening in the ceiling that goes into the attic space happens to be right above the chair I sit in at my computer. So now not only was I afraid of whatever had moved in, I was terrified I'd hear a SNAP! while sitting here trying to write.

So this ... whatever it is ... had me on edge all week. I'd hear its nocturnal wanderings after the sun went down, and was jerked awake at 2:00 in the morning Wednesday, while it carried on above my head till after 4:00. Elizabeth Berg, bless her heart, kept me company.

Well, wouldn't you know there hasn't been a peep from the attic, lo, these many months? But in a few weeks Rick goes back to Cuba. I'm willing to bet something will go amiss.

There are things in my "other" attic that are nearly as difficult and troublesome to identify, and when it comes right down to it, who wants to?!? Like Katy said, the attic can be a wild place. But it truly is chock full of material for a writer willing to go there. It's probably true that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, but I pull on the rope that lets down those hidden stairs, climb up, and root around in that dark and creepy place every time I get ready to start a new novel. I've been somewhat surprised at the themes that have emerged in my writing over the past number of years, all issuing from what I've stored up there in the attic. For example, each of my novels -- published and unpublished -- have dealt with extreme loss of one type or another. And most explore that most complex of all relationships: mothers and daughters. I have a very close relationship with my daughters, and I had a close relationship with my mom, but it was definitely difficult at times. I'm sorry to say the problem was mostly with me -- because of things I had a hard time letting go of. I've said more than once that Mom is the first person I want to see when I get to Heaven; I have some apologies to make. A lot of apologies, in fact. I don't mean to make this my confessional; I'm just keepin' it real.

I'm getting ready to start a new novel, rubbing my hands together and eager to begin. I love discovering new characters and delving into their stories. I'm looking right now at the faces I've compiled on my Character sheet for this new work, and I can tell just by looking at them that my themes will hold true. At least this time around, the loss will be less intense, and to that I say, "Whew!" But I reiterate the profound conclusion Katy came to in her post on Monday: "If we want to write stories that mean something to people with attics of their own, we have to climb to that shadowy place in our heads full of strange noises and wild animals. If you're a storyteller, you must go there."

What about you? How willing are you to climb through that trap door, and if you do, what themes emerge for you?

Attic Stories and Parlor Stories

2011-09-19T04:00:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed: the things that get said on this blog continue to speak to you long after you've left the computer.

So it was that after reading Ariel's post last week, I went on a country drive with my husband, and found myself thinking of attics and parlors.

I live in a good place for a country drive, because I am surrounded by beautiful places, and the wilderness is never more than a five minute drive in any direction.

But once upon a time I lived in California's Silicon Valley, in a mature housing development surrounded by strip-malls, fast-food restaurants, and other mature housing developments.

So it seems strange that it was in this place that nature invaded the attic - repeatedly - but that's the truth.

We had a nest of yellow jackets - in the wall, but they got in through the vent in the attic. (I read the first page of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, and know exactly the static radio sound she describes, though it didn't make me think of honey.)

After the yellow jackets were gone, my husband lifted the trap door one night to investigate a strange noise, and found himself nose to nose with a raccoon.

But the varmint we referred to as "the neighbor upstairs" was a female possum who took up residence, and stayed for quite some time, because we feared to repair and lock the broken vent, lest we inadvertantly trap her inside. We didn't wish to deal with a frightened, cornered animal with sharp teeth, nor did we want to fetch a dead one out. So for the several months it took us to devise a clever plan, she stayed.

The ceiling was thin plywood. We knew she slept directly above our heads when we were in bed, because she snored, and we could hear her loud and clear. We also heard - everything - when she brought her boyfriends home...

All to establish that an attic can be a wild place. And the critters are just the beginning. It's us humans after all, who stuff them with boxes and boxes of things we don't want to see but can't throw away: old love letters from people we didn't marry, journals filled with melodramatic ramblings of our youth, photographs and momentos that remind us of things that cause us sorrow or shame.

Stuff writers refer to as material.

Which brings me to the parlor.

It's a different sort of place. We try to keep it tidy, and more than any other room, we decorate this one. We read the magazines, tour the model homes, compare fabrics and paint chips, and spend money and time to make it nice. Brocade and mirrors? Leather and paisley? We bring our company to the parlor, after all, so we take control of the story it tells, to reflect the life we want to believe we are living, the life we want others to see.

Some writers get their material here.

I'll bet you can see the mistake, but it's an easy one to make - especially for Christians. Other writers may project an image, but that image is for their benefit alone, and the one they wish us to see may even be enhanced by the darker, grittier material found in the attic.

We Christians are unique in that we consider the image of Christ we present, even more than our own. Who else in the world worries that something they say or do may knock another's doctrine askew, and lead to serious eternal consequences? Wow man, that's heavy.

And laudable.

But please, listen to me:

That prettied up, surface part of our mind is a terrible place from which to draw a story. People's parlors tend to look the same as other people's parlors (we all read the same magazines), and the stories that come from there all read the same.

If we want to write stories that mean something to people with attics of their own, we have to climb to that shadowy place in our heads full of strange noises and wild animals. If you're a storyteller, you must go there.

Ever notice how little faith you need in the parlor? David didn't write, "though I walk through the valley of gingham and stripes." It's the valley of the shadow of death that forces us to reach for God.

But we fear ourselves. We are human and fallible. Experience has taught us our viewpoints and even our doctrines will change as we study and pray and listen and grow over time, so how can we open our mouths about the things we will find up there? What if we say the wrong thing?

I'd like to submit that you can say the wrong thing in the parlor. It may be pretty, but it will still be wrong.

Even more, I'd like to submit that there is Someone in the attic besides the possum and her boyfriends. He is wise and good, and He can handle you. He filled His Bible with stories. At night He fills your head not with graphs and facts but with stories from the attic. He cherishes those photographs and love letters and journals, and He works all things together for good. Even - especially - inside of you.

You can trust him.

Okay?

For Writers Only: Is Jealousy Rotting Your Bones?

2011-09-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

What a perfect week to talk about jealousy. Ariel's brilliantly constructed post on Monday about fear of fiction and Latayne's heartbreakingly beautiful poetry on Wednesday set this topic up perfectly. I'm so jealous! What amazing writers! I totally understand how Anne Lamott feels when she talks about jealousy in the writing world. And why are we talking about jealousy? Because we're still chatting up Bird by Bird, and today's chapter is creatively titled "Jealousy."

Jealousy is one of the occupational hazards of being a writer, and most degrading. And I, who have been the Leona Helmsley of jealousy, have come to believe that the only things that hlp ease or transform it are (a) getting older, (b) talking about it until the fever breaks, and (c) using it as material. Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

Jealousy has only gotten worse in the seventeen years since Bird by Bird was published. After all, we have the Internet now. With our smart phones, we can compare numbers of Facebook fans wherever we go, be alerted when our agents announce a yowza contract for another client, know who our publisher is taking to a conference, get weekly updates on the top ten bestsellers, know how many followers a certain author has on his or her blog, click into a storm of congratulations when someone else wins an award.

But then, Cain and Abel didn't have the Internet, and, well, that story didn't end well either.

A heart at peace gives life to the body,
but envy rots the bones. Proverbs 14:30

As someone who deals with rotting bones from time to time (don't ask how often, please), I have to disagree with Anne's advice in this chapter. Getting older may help some writers put things in perspective, but I'm not willing to wait until my death bed to see just how old is older. For me, talking about jealousy only seems to empower it. And as for using it as material? Perhaps, but this can simply be an excuse to give jealousy a place to grow in the dark until it's needed. And it will grow.

For me, jealousy is a God-Patti relationship issue. When I forget God's sovereignty, His perfect love, that He must become greater and I become less, the green-eyed monster gains momentum. Here are some of the ways I've battled and will battle jealousy as a writer:

Keep my relationship with Jesus vital and intimate. For me, that means almost daily (daily IS my goal) personal bible study and an ongoing conversation with him. Nothing else convinces me of his love and sovereignty, the source of peace.
Be part of a writing community that promotes love over publishing, like Novel Matters. Don't get me wrong, we all want to be published, to bring our art out into the light, but being published is not the measure of God's goodness to us. His Son is that.
Look for ways to bless others who are living the writer's life. Those we envy experience good days and bad, tiramisu and hardtack, tsunamis of inspiration and a cold, white computer screens of doubt. Pray for them. Encourage them. They probably have hemorrhoids.
Celebrate the "success" of others.
Set my heart on what God wants for me, not on what God wants for others.
Be grateful, for heaven's sake. God is using my writing. He is good in all things. The writing life is amazing.
Use the Internet to build relationships, not as a tool for self promotion. Give your "friends" and readers a gift with your wit and wisdom.

Am I the only one who spurs the green-eyed monster into a gallop? Please say no. How do you deal with jealousy? Have you noticed times when you are more vulnerable to jealousy?

Poems for Lovers

2011-09-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

I loved Ariel's post on Monday, about risks and dangers. Is it possible to pry into subjects "forbidden" in Christian publishing?

I think so. And I believe that sometimes the less said, the more intriguing.

With that in mind, I offer you what are in my mind four of the most sensuous poems I have ever written.

NILE

Its source:

The hidden trees, the lost lakes

Shrouded in perpetual snows;

Remotest peaks unseen by human eyes

Swathed in cirrus and cumulus

(The distant roar of

A thousand, thousand cataracts)

And as it rushes toward an infinite sea

Just its overflow is gift,

Is life

And am I not

Your Egypt,

The numberless humming chants

Of incense-wreathed priests

The shake of the sistrum, the breath of

Papyrus bloom;

The still-heard echo of those

Thousand, thousand years?

LAST NIGHT THE HORSES

Last night again I saw the horses

Outlined gray against a charcoal sky,

Their manes flying behind them,

Their hooves spark-stricken on black rocks.

When they slowed to drink

At a spring of shimmering water

Their sides heaved and glistened.

I can't say I caught them unawares.

From the corners of their eyes they saw me approach.

But the water was so cool and satisfying

That they drank, and drank, and drank.

Now they are refreshed, and I--

I ride close to them

Bent against the velocity

On a collision course with forever.

JOURNEY

Though I have traveled away from,

My heart turns toward

There remains no name in my soul's lexicon

For this ache;

A hurting that is dulled only by

The constant mining of the

Riches of memory.

The baring of myself continues

And reproduces itself like mindless amoeba.

It cannot exist without

Its own confession of itself

To you, the object of all,

The point of my nakedness.

What I have traveled away from,

My heart turns toward;

I am breaking all the rules of

My childhood's dearly-held autonomy;

Giving you that which could not be

Bought or beaten from me before.

In anguish, I traveled away from.

Now, my heart turns toward

You:

Your eyes, my mecca,

Your touch, my home.

LOVER

You are the mellow-muted sounds

Of a deep-throated clarinet

Playing alone

In a resonant hall

My young-girl ears heard the melody

So long ago

I dared not believe in

The coming crescendo

Because the music was so distant

And I,

So unworthy.

And yet

When I heard it again

I knew it

As if time had never passed:

You alone are the concert

That satisfies my soul

Fear of Fiction? A guest post by She Reads co-creator Ariel Allison

2011-09-11T20:29:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been thinking about fear as it relates to fiction: both the writing and the reading. A

note showed up in my inbox two weeks ago from a

woman who wanted to know how She Reads could recommend a novel that wasn’t published in the Christian marketplace (this month’s selection, THE VIOLETS OF MARCH by Sarah Jio). She was appalled that the author (a Christian) chose to take

her work to the general market, appalled that there is mild language in the story, appalled that it has steamy content. It bothered this woman to no end that we would put our stamp of approval on a book that depicted the ugliness of human behavior. How could we encourage readers to “be entertained by sin?" She ended her note by saying that she would not read this novel, that she would encourage every Christian she knows to avoid it, and she prays that God will forgive us for what we have done. First I laughed. Then I groaned. Then I closed my e-mail and wandered away. I eventually responded (a post for another day) as graciously as I could. The truth is this woman has never read the book. She does not understand the power of story. She is afraid. I get that. What I don't understand is why we as believers nurture this kind of fear

in ourselves and in our readers. Why we seek out only those books that are safe. Or, in many cases, why we write them. (All the while, I might add, touting the merits of Lewis and his unsafe Lion)

About twenty years ago my father handed me a novel by an old Scottish storyteller named George MacDonald. In the years since I've collected many of his books. He reminds me of my father (the blue eyes and the wild beard and the high Scottish nose), now dead eight years. MacDonald posed a question in his novel that has stayed with me since that first reading:

"Do you love your faith so little that you have never battled a single fear lest your faith should not be true?"

Do we love our faith so little? As readers? As writers?

"Where there are no doubts, no questions, no perplexities, there can be no growth into the regions where he would have us walk," MacDonald goes on to say. Fear is not unique to readers it seems, but writers as well - particularly those of faith. Fear that if we tell our stories with unflinching courage they won’t get published. Fear that if we use strong language we will offend a reader. Fear of telling the truth. Fear of asking hard questions that we can’t answer.

Better to play it safe, right? Take the easy route? Slap a bonnet on it?

Writing honest fiction is a messy job. Flannery O’Conner says in her classic, Mystery and Manners:

“The fact is that the materials of the fiction writer are the humblest. Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn’t try to write fiction. It’s not a grand enough job for you.”

I wonder what would happen if every writer of faith battled her “doubts, questions, and perplexities” right there on the page? Would we not produce fiction that is brave and true and terrifying? Flannery O’Conner did this very thing on her deathbed, as she wrote PARKER’S BACK, the story of a man tattooed on every part of his body except his back. In reality it is her story of questioning God’s sovereignty as she died of lupus. We see her surrender in the character of Parker, a man who first stands barefoot before a burning tree profaning the name of God (hello symbolism!) to a man who has a picture of Jesus tattooed on his back. Painful,

dirty, human stuff right there. Terribly unsafe.

The world needs us to take our fear by the horns and wrestle it to the ground. Take Sarah Jio for example. She had the courage to tell her story in the wild and unsafe way it deserved. And because she did not pull her punches she later got an email from a reader who ended an emotional affair with an old boyfriend after finishing THE VIOLETS OF MARCH. This woman didn’t want to live with the same regrets and heartbreak as one of the characters in the novel. Would she have felt so compelled had she not witnessed that “ugliness of human behavior” on the page in front of her? I doubt it very much

My question for you today: as writers of faith what are you afraid of? And will you have the courage to battle that fear in story form? We very much need you to.

Beauty in Exile

2011-09-09T02:00:00.000-07:00

Sharon and Katy have set a graceful stage this week. And the discussion has been empowering. I’ve read every comment with interest and I’m impressed by the energy and verve behind each one. Clearly writing is an art of passion for each one of you.

Many of you know, I like to dig around behind ideas and the thoughts that generate them (I bet you do too), and so the Friday wrap up of the topics of sweet spots, literary writing, and beauty will focus on some thoughts about the kind of knowledge, understanding, and chutzpah a writer might need to dive headfirst into beauty.

Katy referred to the terrifying state of ‘noble exile’, and while this sounds romantic on paper, in reality it looks a great deal like loneliness. Like your work being passed over while another writer excels. It might look like you ranting in your underwear at a computer screen because you haven’t got an agent to rant at. But lets hope it doesn’t come to that. Before you pitch the fit of the underappreciated in your under-roos, consider the benefit of this exile: the time and freedom to find out who you truly are. A truism: Writer know thyself.

The literary writer is the one who understands just enough about his or her own nature to be leery. They don’t trust easy answers because they can’t find any inside themselves. And they’ve looked. Everywhere. Beautiful writers don’t spin gold; they dance with dross until the gold shakes out. Exile gives you the time and perspective to learn the steps.

Exile gives you time to discover your true inspirations. Everyone can get behind a sure winner, that bestseller that’s just been made into a movie, that book everyone is buying. But given enough time and honesty (see above), a writer can begin to develop his or her taste. Alone with your thoughts, you can examine books that inspire you to experience beauty and why. The goal? It’s not to emulate the writers you admire; rather it is to strive to be as fully impacting as they are.

One of the comments left on Katy’s post: “I’m among you wrestling this angel.” Exile teaches you how to throw a solid right hook. Through experience, it teaches you the power of the struggle. Of why you struggle and don’t give up. Or, it teaches you that this struggle isn’t for you—that you were made for other things. Because sooner or later, the writer who strives for beauty comes to understand that the struggle never ends. And somehow makes peace with it.

Noble exile means you take the time (we’re talking years here) to learn how to ask the right questions. The ones everyone else wishes they could ask aloud. It gives you courage to stand up and say, “Excuse me, is any one as afraid as I am?”

There is courage inside that questioning fear. The courage to giggle when people talk about “branding” themselves as an author. They tinker with a catch phrase while you, the exiled one, understand what branding truly is: having a clear vision of who you are and what you care about enough to write about.

Exile is difficult. Many throw on their sun hats and run back to sweet civilization. Those who remain watch the trails of dust kicked up on the road and envy the comfort that awaits that writer. But, if they stay in exile long enough, they begin to hear the rhythmic beat, the music of beauty. Until one day it sings: Be fearless in your writing, in your vision, and when you have done all else, stand. Don’t back down. Don’t listen to the voices that come against the deep knowing you have about your vision as an artist. No market for your writing? So what. Write anyway. And let your feet begin to dance.

What about you? How's your dancing coming? Or does it look more like a wrestling match? We'd love to hear from you.

The Still Point

2011-09-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

Shelly Troup come on down! We promised to send a copy of Novel Tips on Rice to our 300th follower, and Ms. Troup, that would be you. Please send your snail mail address to novelmatters at gmail dot com, would you? We're delighted you're here, and very pleased to give you this gift!
___

I think I've learned the cause of all (or most) of my neuroses. In reading Beauty Will Save the World by Gregory Wolfe, I found this:

The believing writer in America has always faced the same dilemma: how to find a way to heal the divisions running throughout the national psyche, including the community of faith itself.

Gosh. I feel sort of tired just reading that - you? Do you want to spring to your computer and ask Mr. Wolfe, Isn't it enough to just write a nice story, without having to change the world?

Don't bother. The disturbing truth is, no, it's not enough for me, and if you are a writer and you read this blog, it's probably not enough for you either. The reason we seek, as Sharon said on Monday, to find that sweet spot between the literary fiction we love and the commercial fiction that gets read, is that literary fiction is not just beautiful writing. It is writing that works through beauty to change the way we see. Other authors can write great stories. We want to do that, and so much more.

The trouble is that few within our churches will get the point. We have the Ten Commandments and the Epistles, the sensible books of the Bible tucked between those strange and troubling stories. Give us sermons with four logical points or give us stories to entertain, but don't lets get artsy, please.

So we find ourselves in an awkward position. Wolfe continues the passage:

Nathaniel Hawthorne may have had an anguished relationship with Christianity but that was in part because his imagination hungered for a deeper faith than was available in his time. He confronted many of the same divisions that plague us today. To his right were the descendants of his Puritan ancestors, whose lack of imagination pushed them in the direction of philistinism and fundamentalism; to his left were Ralph Waldo Emerson and his followers, whose religious commitments had evaporated into a pantheistic liberalism.

This middle position reminds me of stories my step-father used to tell of growing up half Irish and half Cherokee in a racially devided Oklahoma: if you wanted friends, you had to pretend to be one or the other.

But go that route, and you'll end up writing something other than the story you've been given. I hesitate to romanticize your position and sound the call to a noble exile, but I do think that as a writer of faith you must accept a level of friendlessness: many may love you, but few will really get your vibe.

You know?

But vibe you must. Whatever hunger you have for a deeper faith must be leaned into. What keeps you separate must be cherished for the gift that it is. There is a voice calling through that separateness, and you're meant to follow till you find what T.S. Elliot sought, that "still point of the turning world."

And meantime, those friends you have who share your dilemma must be honored and looked after and, most of all, prayed for.

As we pray for you.

Now it's your turn. Wrap your paisley sash around your hips and tell us (as much as you can on the internet in front of everybody) your tales of artistic exile and wonder.

We love to read what you have to say. And we will pray for your pilgrim souls.

The Sweet Spot

2011-09-05T02:00:00.000-07:00

We're keeping a sharp eye out for that person who becomes our 300th follower. If that's you, you'll win our delightful recipe book: Novel Tips on Rice: What to cook when you'd rather be writing. And vice versa. We appreciate all of you who follow Novel Matters and especially those of you who comment on our posts. This would be a dull place without you!

Seth Godin is a guru. He, of course, is the author of a dozen international bestselling non-fiction books, from Tribes to The Dip. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. There are blogs -- dozens of them -- devoted to "memorable quotes by Seth Godin." Who knew? My confession is that until a few weeks ago if given a quiz where I had to link the name of the author with the title of one of his books, unless I'd come up with a very good guess I'd have failed the quiz. I obviously haven't read Seth Godin, though I probably should.

This all came up because a writer I know recently mentioned that one of the key elements of one of Seth's books (I don't even know which) is this: if you don't identify and write to your niche, it may mean that you satisfy no one. That in itself is an intriguing concept, but on that very same day our own Karen Shravemade wrote the following comment to my post, What is True and Right:

"What I'm most interested in ... is the "sweet spot" between literary and
commercial. You know -- books that are beautifully written, but have such a big
premise and/or gripping plot that they hit a note with a broad audience.

I wonder, though, if in trying to find some middle ground between
literary and commercial, I'll end up hitting neither. That I'll write a book
nobody knows what to do with."

The coincidence was too large to ignore. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about boxes, because it seems to me both Seth and Karen are alluding to firm boundaries that we should keep in the forefront as we write. To maintain those boundaries, does that mean we must always create the same type of protagonist? Always write in first person or third, and in the same tense? Must our plot points be comparable? Is there no room for experimentation?

You hear a lot about branding at writers' conferences these days, which is sort of a new term for an old concept. It just means that you should be very identifiable as an author. For example, if I say John Grisham, you think legal suspense. If I say Elizabeth Berg, you think women's fiction that includes subtle humor and an in-depth look at relationships that are vital to women. Jamie Langston Turner has a unique style of writing that includes lots and lots of narrative. Though her novels are short on that all-important "white space," she is one of my favorite authors. We could talk all day about writers who have done an exceptional job of branding themselves. But I'd like to focus on Karen's comment.

As I read the first part, I found myself asking, "Is Karen saying that literary fiction is the "beautifully written" novel, while the commercial one has the plot and appeal that literary fiction doesn't have? Is it that well defined, or is it possible to blend the lines between the two? Can literary fiction have a dynamic plot, or commercial fiction be thought of as beautiful? Does anyone do that, and do it well? With all my heart, I hope the answer is yes.

As I read the second part of Karen's comment, I asked myself, are those of us who are trying to blend the two wasting our time? Are we writing books that, indeed, no one knows what to do with? Funny, but I just pulled a Jodi Picoult novel off my shelf -- Handle with Care -- and this is what a reviewer from Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Picoult is a rare writer who delivers book after book, a winning combination of the literary and the commercial." I could have searched a month for a suitable quote and not found one, but there this was, right at my fingertips, when I wasn't even looking. So the answer is yes, the two can be blended -- and perhaps that in itself defines Jodi Picoult's brand. But as the reviewer said, it's the rare writer who can pull it off.

Now please understand, I'm not comparing myself, or anyone else, to Jodi Picoult. She truly is an exceptional writer. What I am saying is that it's not only possible to find that "middle ground" that Karen talked about, but there's a huge audience for it. Ms. Picoult, Elizabeth Berg, Anne Tyler, Charles Martin and others have bridged the gap, and done so very convincingly. So those of us pursuing literary ficton can take hope in that. But we must hone our skills until we're the best we can be; and we must find our own unique place within the industry. I don't believe in luck; I do believe that God guides us with a steady hand. If we follow what we consider to be the call He's placed on our lives, then we'll fulfill the purposes He has for us. The results are His. Always His. And that's the bottom line for those who call themselves Christians.

What is your opinion of literary fiction, either as a writer or a reader? Who else would you add to the list of authors who have successfully bridged the gulf between literary and commercial fiction, whether in CBA or ABA?

The Book Club Phenomenon

2011-09-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night is bargain night at our local Regal Cinema. For just five dollars you can see first-run movies, so our book club decided we would read The Help and go to see the movie the following week. Other book clubs had the same idea, apparently. A friend told me that her book club read the book and arrived at the movie theater to find that the showing was sold out. We quickly spread the word to "purchase your tickets early."

That night, I arrived thirty minutes before the 7:05 showing and saw whole groups being turned away. I sneaked past them, glad I'd stopped by that afternoon for my ticket. Inside was pandemonium. A friend flagged me down and I sank into a seat beside her. There were coats and sweaters draped over rows of seats, reserving them for friends, people calling and motioning to friends who entered and stood bewildered at the happy chaos. Our book club was scattered all over the stadium seating. There were single seats here and there, but it didn't really matter whether or not you sat with your book club because you were sitting near somebody in a book club that night.

What an incredible phenomenon book clubs are! Twenty or thirty years ago, who would have thought that people would be excited to get together and discuss what they'd read? Since our club is new, I thought you might share suggestions about what works and what doesn't, and things to watch out for to ensure a healthy, long association. Here are a few suggestions of my own:

1. If possible, serve snacks that go along with the story. On the evening we discussed The Help, our hostess served pecan pie and peach cobbler. Southern desserts. Minnie would 've been proud. Just make sure it's not a hardship on the host/hostess and that the responsibility doesn't fall to the same people every time.

2. Remember that you're a book club first, and a group of friends second. Stay focused or the group will eventually lose direction and just become a social gathering. People who are serious about reading will drop away. Have plenty of fun, but make sure you read the book and come prepared to share your insights and opinions.

3. Most books include discussion questions. Use them. If the book you're reading is general fiction include the question, "What spiritual insights, if any, do you see. Do you think the author intended it?" Is there redemption, self-sacrifice or unconditional love? It is my humble opinion that the Creator of all talents, art and skills uses different forms of art to speak to people, whether or not the author/painter/sculptor/etc. realizes it. He's God and He can choose how to reveal Himself to us, and I have been touched by books and art that are not overtly spiritual.

4. Choose a variety of books. Broadening our horizons is good for us and you may be pleasantly surprised by a book in a genre you don't normally read.

5. If your group is too large break into smaller discussion groups and come back together at the close. With a larger group, you will get many differing opinions. In any event, the facilitators must be open and accepting, and able to keep the discussion on track.

6. Contact the author. Send a friendly letter or email (if it's a more approachable author) to introduce your group and say that you look forward to reading the author's book. Would they be willing and available to Skype a book club meeting, even if it is only for an introduction, or to be on speakerphone? It doesn't hurt to ask. If you feel comfortable, ask if the author would be willing to send bookmarks or a signed book for a giveaway or for your church library. Don't take it personally if they say no. They may receive many such requests.

7. Agree that if you didn't read the book, you remain silent during discussions. It's self-explanatory. Stay on topic.

8. Consider donating your books (as a whole) to a women's shelter or other group that otherwise could not afford them but would benefit greatly from the gesture.

9. Connect with an online group that specializes in book clubs such as www.shereads.org. or www.readinggroupchoices.com for interesting suggestions and great recommendations.

10. Post positive feedback on social sites but if you don't like a book, don't be critical. Keep it to yourself. Remember, it's somebody's baby.

These are only suggestions, and they will shift and change over the life of our book club. What suggestions do you have? What works for your club? What should a book club avoid or include? We'd love to hear from you!

Quieting Opposing Voices

2011-08-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

Be our 300th follower and win our cookbook, Novel Matters on Rice: What to Cook When You Would Rather Be Writing (or Vise Versa). Yes, you can download it for free, but this is a hard copy. Such a treasure! For the other 299 members, we love you to death, too!

Grab a cup of coffee and let's sit for a spell. I'm so proud of myself for finally recording a vlog for you. Oh, the angst of it all! Well, here it is. A bit long. Make that a tall cup of coffee. I promise to be less verbose in the future, but I was so relieved to get the thing done, well, I hope you don't mind.

We're continuing our discussion of Anne Lamott's book, Bird by Bird. I look forward to your comments. So, on with "Radio Station KFKD."

Learning to Hate Novels

2011-08-29T02:00:00.000-07:00

We are approaching our 300th follower! Sharon Souza is watching for that person -- who will win a copy of our NovelMatters cookbook, Novel Tips On Rice: What to Cook when You'd Rather Be Writing (and Vice Versa) So sign up!

Wall Street Journal book reviewer Joseph Epstein in a recent article, "What Killed American Lit." absolutely scours the editors and authors of recently-published The Cambridge History of the American Novel.

Most notably, Epstein says that those who composed and compiled this 1,244-page book abuse the English language itself by such confusing and trendy language that no one can understand them:

". . .through the magic of dull and faulty prose, the contributors to "The Cambridge History of the American Novel" have been able to make these presumably worldly subjects seem parochial in the extreme—of concern only to one another, which is certainly one derogatory definition of the academic. These scholars may teach English, but they do not always write it, at least not quite. A novelist, we are told, "tasks himself" with this or that; things tend to get "problematized"; the adjectives "global" and "post"-this-or-that receive a good workout; "alterity" and "intertexuality" pop up their homely heads; the "poetics of ineffability" come into play; and "agency" is used in ways one hadn't hitherto noticed, so that "readers in groups demonstrate agency." About the term "non-heteronormativity" let us not speak.These dopey words and others like them are inserted into stiffly mechanical sentences of dubious meaning.

The book itself, says Epstein, is a symbol of all the reasons why people who started out loving novels had all such love drummed out of them by narcissistic and cliquish teachers.

Tell me, what book did you once love, then grow to hate, because of a teacher?

Or, what novel did you once hate when studying it in school, then rediscovered it later and now love it?