Tip of the Iceberg

I felt myself being absorbed by this beautiful artwork displayed on the wall near our booth in Mimi's Cafe recently.  It is Philip Craig's Lavender Fields. I put my fork down to study it.

I love his choice of color and the peace this scene exudes. You can almost smell the lavender breath, see the bees flying their dance. I want to follow that row straight into the villa in the distance, find a chair and watch the people go by.  The muted, indistinct edges of color invite me to connect the dots in my own way, drawing me in, like I was participating in the painting of it, interpreting it for myself.  It's not work - but discovery.

I think this is why I like reading the style of writing that Hemingway termed in his iceberg theory.  (at least, a variation of it)  He said, "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.  The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only the one-eighth of it being above water."

Okay, that's saying a mouthful.  So we don't take the reader by the hand and explain everything. We trust readers to get what we're saying. I like what Les Edgerton adds about the iceberg theory in his book, Finding Your Voice. "The writer should provide the "bones" or skeleton of the story and the reader furnishes the flesh..."  To do otherwise dumbs down the writing and makes for boring, passive reading. In other words, it makes lazy readers of us.

I like something in between the minimalist Hemingway style and the style of writing that doesn't quite trust the reader. I like a wee bit of flesh on the bones, as in this passage from David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars. This scene comes at the end of the first chapter, so we haven't had time to learn about the characters. (I've shortened it for brevity) The local reporter has been sent to cover a murder trial in their small coastal community:

At ten minutes before nine that morning, Ishmael has spoken with the accused man's wife on the second floor of the Island County courthouse..."Are you all right?" he'd said to her, but she'd responded by turning away from him.  "Please," he'd said.  "Please Hatsue."...

 "Go away," she'd said in a whisper, and then for a moment she'd glared..."Go away," repeated Hatsue Miyamoto.  Then she'd turned her eyes, once again, from his.  

"Don't be like this," said Ishmael.

"Go away," she'd answered.

That's how their scene ends. We deduce that Ishmael and Hatsue have known each other but we don't know what their relationship has been. We know her husband's life may be at stake. They speak with a veiled intimacy that is implied rather than explained. It's the tip of the iceberg, and we discover what lies beneath as the story unfolds.

I think this is why I dread the unavoidable information dump that happens with a book series.  The writer must bring the new reader up to speed in some fashion, and I guess there's no graceful way around rocking the iceberg.

How about you?  How much flesh do you want on story bones?  Is it work or pleasure? We'd love to hear.

Telegraphing Versus Foreshadowing

I've mentioned before that the compelling first line of one of Mary Higgins Clark's novels, a line which contained foreshadowing, made me want to write novels. I didn't think about the fact that the author's off-handed remark--about a coming disaster buried in a sea of other details--was foreshadowing. I just knew that it made me want to keep reading.

Authors have been giving readers hints about forthcoming events since the beginning of writing. Even God did this. As Priscilla, author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, shows us in chapters 8 and 9, all those previous temple furnishings and ceremonies pointed to another, greater reality that is only revealed long after the first veils and curtains disintegrated into dust.

Up until a hundred years ago in English-based literature, sometimes the hints were very overt. "Dear reader, something is about to happen in my story which will shock you," was the general sentiment if not nearly the very words.  Today we would not call that foreshadowing, but rather telegraphing -- stopping the course of narration of a story to make sure that the reader knows that  something will happen. 

Some of the greatest novels of our time have used more subtle foreshadowing. Consider the opening lines of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms:

The leaves fell early that year. 

We may not know what will happen, but we have a sense of foreboding when we read those words. Similarly, Harper Lee gets our attention in To Kill a Mockingbird:

The night was still. I could hear his breath coming easily beside me. Occasionally there was a sudden breeze that hit my bare legs, but it was all that remained of a promised windy night. This was the stillness before a thunderstorm.

(I have a friend, now deceased, who loved To Kill A Mockingbird so much, and read it until the pages fell apart, that her daughter framed the book for her. This is now one of my treasured possessions.)

The challenge for a writer who wants to share a hint of something forthcoming is subtlety. How to know the difference between foreshadowing and telegraphing? Hallie Ephron gave the perfect definition, in my opinion, in Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: How to Knock ‘Em Dead with Style (Writers Digest Books, 2005):

When you insert a hint of what's to come, look at it critically and decide whether it's something the reader will glide right by but remember later with an Aha! That's foreshadowing.

Clark did it by burying the foreshadowing in things the reader would want to rush through. 

I'm aiming for more subtlety.

I think of it as the sound of the snapping of one's bones- a sound that would be drowned out by pain, but a sound nonetheless.

Do you have any favorite examples of effective foreshadowing? Have you consciously used it in any of your writing?

Carpe Annum - Seize the Year

On Monday, Bonnie gave us this great advice: "2013 is your year."  We at Novel Matters are so happy to partner with you on this journey, that we’ve declared our theme for the next twelve months to be Carpe Annum – Seize the Year.  The six of us are busy brainstorming ways to make this a reality for readers and writers alike, and we are excited! 

In 2013 we plan to feature interviews with authors and other industry professionals exploring what it means to own your career, to write what you were created for and to think outside the genre box.  Author interviews will be announced in advance to allow time for you to become familiar with their writing style before you hear what they have to say about the process.  And a challenging new contest is in the works (more info to come)!

We will be celebrating several new book releases this year by Novel Matters authors, published both traditionally and through self-publishing.  Discover what it takes to get books into print and how to tap into the market to get them into the hands of readers. 

Above all, we will encourage you to take yourselves seriously as writers and to make steady progress toward your goals. Whether you write best by the seat of your pants or by carefully outlining, sharpen your pencils.  Organize your chaos or toss a grenade into your well-ordered system.  Reach out to other writers for community and critique, to fresh sources for ideas and into your souls to make your characters sing. 

Hemingway said, “Write the truest sentence that you know.” Now would be the time.

Seize 2013.  Carpe Annum.

Distance and Lists in the Editing Process

Teeth and Bones Editing Contest:

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How to enter: Comment on the Novel Matters blog anytime between Monday, September 6th, and Friday September 17th. At the bottom of your comment type TABEC (short for Teeth and Bones Editing Contest). Only comments with these letters at the bottom will be eligible to win (we understand that not all our readers are interested in this level of editing, but would still want to be free to comment and discuss editing - that's the reason we require interested people to please use the TABEC letters at the bottom of their comments). You many enter as many times as you like over the two weeks. Each comment counts as an entry (but don't forget to type TABEC at the bottom of each comment).

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Winner: One winner will be announced on Friday, September 17th at 5:00 PM pacific time.

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The prize: A teeth and bones edit of your first chapter and synopsis by Bonnie Grove. The edit will be on the substantive level (the overall concepts, characters, and themes, etc. of the novel). It will be Bonnie's teeth on the bones of your manuscript.
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The winner will work one on one with Bonnie Grove via e-mail. The winner will consent to having the first paragraph of the work posted on Novel Matters in a before and after comparison. This means the winner will agree to have the first paragraph of your WIP appear on the blog, first as it was originally written, then in its edited form.

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Hemingway once said in an interview that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was satisfied. Asked what the problem was, he said, "Getting the words right."

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Editing is all about getting the words right, but it's one of the more difficult aspects of being a writer. Our words mean a lot to us. After all, we put a good deal of thought into our word choices, as well as the meaning that lies behind them. As we write we can carry on our love affair with all those words. But after the writing comes the reality, where we give the most objective look we can to the work itself, free of the emotion that goes into the creation. That's where distance can be our strongest ally. By the time I finished writing Every Good & Perfect Gift I was saturated with the story, and wondered who in their right mind would want to read it. Because, as I wrote the book, instead of starting my writing session close to where I left off, I would read much of what I'd written the day, or week, before, as though I needed a running jump to get back in the story. It was one step forward, five steps back.

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It's unlikely you'll write a novel without looking back to some degree, but the way I was doing it was overkill. Before I could begin the editing process I needed some distance between myself and the manuscript. I had the luxury of time (code for "not under contract"), so I put it aside and went to work on my next project. Later, when I was ready to revise, I started with a fresh eye.

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Sol Stein (Stein on Writing) says, "The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting. The writer ... looks forward to the opportunity of excising words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters that do not work and to improving those that do." Well, I'd say looks forward to is a stretch, but I do know that editing is a vital part of the process. Jim Scott Bell, in his own inimitable style, says, "Rewriting is what separates the real pros from the wannabes. I don't wannabe a wannabe. I wannabe a pro" (Plot & Structure). And so I pick up my red pen and go to work.

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Let's assume we've completed our substantive edits--so we're not polishing poop, as Bonnie so eloquently said--and now we're onto more specific edits. This is where we cut and/or replace. Following is a partial list of editing points I follow as I revise:

• Cut superfluous words, phrases, sentences--things that get in the way of the story. Use a machete.
• Replace words, phrases, sentences with the right words, phrases, sentences (ala Hemingway).
• No cliches! And there are way more than you think.
• Get rid of italics, even for internal dialogue in many cases. Get. Rid. Of. Them.
• Look for repetitious words and make one of them leave. For good.
• Passive voice should be gotten rid of.
• Any word or phrase I trip over is likely a word or phrase my reader will trip over. And that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
• Know the rules before you break the rules. Okay, that one's just dumb. But you can look very bad if you break rules by accident. Break rules on purpose and you'll come across like Jodi Picoult. Not that she breaks rules, but wouldn't you like to be compared to her? Well now you can.
• Eliminate adjectives and adverbs that modify nouns and verbs that aren't doing their jobs--the adj's and adv's are merely crutches. Mark Twain said, "If you find an adjective, kill it!" And if they're on crutches it should be a piece of cake. Really, though, I don't want to get in trouble with the law or anything; just wanna write really good books.
• Look for "ing" phrases that I all too often begin sentences with (i.e., following my list, I eliminate "ing" phrases because I don't wannabe a wannabe).
• "Eliminate dialogue tags where possible," she said.
• She tapped her red pen on her chin. "Replace with action tags."
• Get out my list of qualifiers and intensifiers, then Search and Destroy the following (think Hunt for Red October): a bit, a little, absolutely, actually, basically, completely, extremely, just, kind of, mostly, naturally, often, ordinarily, particularly, perfectly, pretty (as an adverb), probably, quite, rather, really, so, some, somehow, somewhat, too, totally, truly, usually, very (not an exhaustive list--it just feels like it).
• When you come across an exclamation point, whack off the top. Make the writing strong enough to stand on the remaining dot.
• Find and replace "have got" in any form. No exceptions!
• Redline the redundant. The list in the Appendix of Write Tight is absolutely essential to this.

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These are some of the things I look for when I revise. (And I've had some fun sharing them with you.) They're not hard and fast rules, but guidelines. For example, I don't automatically, in every situation, delete an exclamation point as I'm editing, but I do stop to see if it's there because of weak writing. Same with some of the words in my qualifiers and intensifiers list. They may have a purpose, may help define a character for example. But again, when I come across one of those words in a search, I evaluate its purpose for being there. What editing points can you add to the list? Which points of mine would you eliminate?

Non-Heroic Main Characters

Sharon's post on Wednesday was wonderful. A week or so ago in a post I said I'd like to discuss unlikeable/amoral/immoral central characters, including those who seem to triumph. We’re not talking here about pointless novels, but those in which the central character is not a hero in the ethical/moral sense, at least through most of the novel.

In the following points, I realize that my descriptions for the sake of brevity are simplistic and inadequate, so please bear with me for the sake of a basis of discussion. Here are some examples of the type of main character I’d like to discuss.

1) I know I gush about a lot about the quality of the writing in The Great Gatsby, but its central character, Jay Gatsby, is someone whose yearnings for the unattainable Daisy make you forget that he probably is a criminal who has made his money just to impress her and to convince her to commit adultery with him. His love is all-encompassing but one-dimensional, yet when he dies, it is devastating.

2) Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a novella I re-read last week for the first time since college. In it, a narrator describes a man he admires who died with the words, “The horror!” The narrator, who is fascinated by this man’s exploits and god-like colonialist power, feels treacherous in lying to the depraved man’s fiancée by telling her that his dying words were her name.

I also read "The Snows of Kilmanjaro" by Ernest Hemingway. What a tour de force description of a man who has used people (specifically women) his whole life to finance his writing career, which he realizes as he is dying, was focused on unworthy subjects when he could have written about the really interesting people of his life, such as the poor. But the real cheat of Hemingway (from the Christian point of view) is that this man doesn’t really regret (as 2 Corinthians 7:10 defines regret) or repent of these things. In fact, he would go back and do his self-focused deeds just the same if he’d been given the chance. He even scorns and patronizes the dogged love of his wife – yet dies peacefully believing he is going to the place of the gods.

Another book I read recently was Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much is True. Its protagonist is a suffering person but a rapist and someone who has unfairly treated and judged many people in his life. The reader cringes at how he relates to others through almost the entire book. When he does act morally it’s often because he feels guilty or wants to accomplish something. However, he comes to realize how to forgive and how to achieve wholeness, or “roundness,” as the book puts it. I was glad I stuck with this man’s story, someone who was often paralyzed by ambivalence and his own victimization.

So the point of all this is not a series of book reports. This is a blog about writing.

We saw last week that we were unable as a group (NovelMatters ladies and those who commented) to cite an example of a Christian book in which the protagonist/ending allowed for the triumph of evil or injustice. And yet we have to assume that those *“non-Christian” books such as I listed put the burden on the reader to step back and say, “No, these characters are not people I’d like to live in the same house with, but my distance from them and my own moral compass tell me to assess them and see that they are a lesson in how not to live my own life.”

My question is this: What are the benefits and risks for a Christian writer who wants to tackle the daunting task of creating a non-heroic main character?

*I realize that Wally Lamb is a Christian writer whose writing is superlative. However, as I recall, I Know This Much is True (the only book I have read by Lamb) mentions Christianity only peripherally (one character decides to return to church, there is talk of Catholicism as a cultural issue) and -– even more significant -- some of the protagonist’s final understandings come through insights he derives from Native American Religion and Hinduism. The protagonist does achieve catharsis through forgiveness, but that quality is not exclusively a Christian trait; nor does the novel tie forgiveness to Christianity. (If you’ve read the book and want to argue my conclusions, I’m all ears. But first answer the other question, please.)

Ever lost it?

Congratulations to Patti and Debbie on the release of their latest novels, Seeing Things and Raising Rain, which were released yesterday. Woo hoo, girls!

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We're so thankful that Debbie's home is safe from the fires burning in northern California, but our hearts go out to those who have suffered such devastating loss throughout the state.

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Debbie's post on Monday got me thinking about all that can be lost in disasters of any kind, but especially fire. Years ago, a fire claimed a U-Haul trailer-load of my family's possessions, which included my high school yearbooks, photos of the Beatles concert I attended at the Hollywood Bowl, and many of the drawings I'd done throughout my high school years. I can't imagine losing everything, as many are experiencing once again here in California due to the fires burning up and down the state.

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What about our work as authors? Ever "lost" part or all of a manuscript due to computer glitches, not saving correctly, or consumption by the demon that possesses your computer? I have. That moment you realize a day's work, or worse, has been irretrievably launched into cyberspace feels like stepping "off a cliff where the falling seem(s) never to stop" (to quote Elizabeth Berg) -- a huge sinking sensation at best.

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The story is told that Hemingway was traveling with his wife Hadley -- love the name! -- from Paris to Bavaria for vacation. Too late they discovered a valise holding a substantial portion of his unpublished writing was left on the train. It was never recovered. Apparently among the material lost was the manuscript for The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first major novel. He went on to rewrite it, even stronger than before, it's said. But talk about a sense of falling off a cliff! Okay, first of all that valise would have been handcuffed to my wrist, and secondly, it would have been handcuffed to my other wrist.

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I love the inspiration that comes as I write. Which is why I hate editing. It's like I'm suddenly straight-jacketed, with much of my creativity stifled. And I've never been able to recreate lost material. Hemingway may have done a bang up job, but not me. I try, but the magic is gone. Because of that, I'm that much more careful not to lose it in the first place! I have a flash drive that I save my work to (those days I actually remember to do it), but I never take it with me when I leave the house. My "back up" would be destroyed right along with my computer files should the unthinkable ever happen. But since meeting several years ago Katy and I have critiqued each other's work, sending chapters via email as they're completed. That gives us a safety net, knowing that if we lose a chapter, or our hard drive crashes, someone else has a copy of our work. In my case, I'd lose the notes I add to the end of my manuscript document -- the ideas I jot down in the middle of the night when my creativity likes best to frolic -- but that's nothing compared to losing the actual work.

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So what about you? Have you ever lost a significant portion of a manuscript? If so, how well are you at recreating a scene or a chapter? And how do you safeguard your work?

What Would You Take?

This weekend, my husband and I had the unsettling experience of coming home from a weekend in the Bay Area to find a huge grass fire in our brittle, dry foothill community and that an evacuation was in effect. We were grateful that our home was not affected and that the evacuation had been cancelled for our section of town, but I naturally began to take stock of what I would pile into the car in such an evacuation, if I had the time. Pets (need another cat carrier!), baby books & photos, important papers, heirlooms, computer, flashdrive, WIP...the list goes on.

If I had only a smidgen of room left in our vehicle, what three writing books would I take? What are the three books I couldn't do without (not including favorite fiction)? There were many that I would hate to lose, but I finally narrowed it down to these three:

1. 100,000 Baby Names by Bruce Lansky. Most useful to me is the listing of popular names by decade, but it has many other listings and, well, 100,000 names to chose from for my characters.

2. The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale. It is extemely comprehensive, written in a dictionary style, and the thesaurus that always delivers. When asked what stumped him in the rewrite of A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway answered, "Getting the words right." I wonder what thesaurus he used? Hm...

3. Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle. "And for each one of us there is a special gift, the way in which we may best serve and please the Lord whose love is so overflowing." (page 70). Her insights inspire and refresh me in times of discouragement by reminding me that my art is a gift from God and that He will equip me to use it.

So, now that the fire planes are just a hum in the distance, I think I will keep these three books stacked beside my desk within easy reach, just in case - at least until fire season is over.

What are the three most helpful books that you would stack by the door in the event of a quick getaway?

What Do You Want On Your Tombstone?

Just after my son’s wedding this week, I picked up A Writer’s Commonplace Book, by Rosemary Friedman. When you’ve hosted a large rehearsal dinner and a much larger wedding reception on two consecutive evenings, you have just enough umph left to read a couple of quotes in a nice little book, and this was one of them:

“A writer’s obituary should read: He wrote books then he died.” ~William Faulkner

Gosh, really? I’d hoped mine would say a bit more, something perhaps about sucking the marrow from the bones of life (that’s Thoreau). Or perhaps simply that I loved my family and friends even more than my books.

Curious, I looked Faulkner up on Wikipedia, to see if he’d gotten much done besides writing, and the answer was yes, he had. He’d won two National Book Awards, two Pulitzers, and The Nobel Prize in Literature. Of course, you could argue that his awards only meant that he had written very good books, so his record was safe from clutter. Earlier in life, he’d joined first the Canadian and then the British Royal Air Force (too short for the US military), but had not seen any action. Ah, but then, once he’d won his awards, he’d gone and donated part of the prize money to establish scholarships for African-American education majors as well as the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction. A writer who wants his obituary to span no more than six words should be more careful. After all, if you run a print preview of his entry on Wikipedia, you get nine pages of material.

Ernest Hemingway would have pointed out that the military experience - paltry though it was, compared with his own - would come in handy for a writer penning war novels. He himself had won the Silver Medal of Honor during WWI, the Bronze Star during WWII, and two medals for bull-fighting! Oh, and he’d won an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pulitzer and The Nobel Prize in Literature as well.

Know how many pages you could print out about him on Wikipedia? Nineteen, more than double that of the modest Faulkner.

He had his own take on the life and death question:

“Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” ~Ernest Hemingway

For myself, I think I could gladly leave off the bull fights from my life story. And I’m sure I’d make a terrible soldier. In fact, if I had to live Hemingway’s life to be an author, I might be tempted to give up writing and take up cross-stitch.

Perhaps the author who best exemplifies Faulkner’s ideal would be Emily Dickenson. She spent most of her adult life voluntarily confined to her home, caring for her parents while they lived, writing poems she never meant to publish, lowering gingerbread to children on the street by means of a rope and a basket. She wrote poems - that were later put into books - and she died.

No Nobel Prizes. No Pulitzers. But in the hundred and some years since her death, people have described this poet with her basketful of cookies as “daring,” “sophisticated,” “pre-modernist.” William Dean Howells once wrote that "If nothing else had come out of our life but this strange poetry, we should feel that in the work of Emily Dickinson, America, or New England rather, had made a distinctive addition to the literature of the world, and could not be left out of any record of it."

Sixteen pages on Wikipedia. This woman who asked that her poems be burned when she died. What was her answer to Faulkner and Hemingway?

“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” ~Emily Dickenson

What’s your answer? How ought a writer live her life?

We’d love to read your thoughts.