Let it all hang out? Uh, no! A Roundtable Discussion

I love April. Next to November, it’s my favorite month. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

I really enjoyed Debbie’s post on Wednesday, April 3. She talked about how we, as writers, need to trust our readers and not spell everything out for them in minute detail. She added a couple of great quotes. This from Hemingway: "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."

And this from Les Edgerton, author of Finding Your Voice: "The writer should provide the "bones" or skeleton of the story and the reader furnishes the flesh..."

Wonderful advice from both.

For the past 2 or 3 years I’ve enjoyed the privilege of judging writing contests, one which is sponsored for unpublished writers. The biggest mistake new writers make, in my opinion, is exactly what Hemingway and Edgerton were talking about: All too often, new writers in particular don’t trust the reader. They feel they must tell everything they know about the characters and their plight – often on the first page – rather than allowing the reader to DISCOVER. And isn’t that what reading is all about, discovery? They give huge information dumps, and if we’re at all invested in the story, we have to sift through all that superfluous stuff to find the valuable. But the big risk these writers take is that we won’t become invested. Not even a little. I find myself in a strange place these days where time is concerned. It feels more precious than ever to me, and what spare time I have for reading is going to be spent on jewels, not junk. Sorry if that's harsh.

Sharon, I too have judged contests (mainly poetry, but sometimes those of novels too.) I have found that the problem isn't too much backstory. I found that what kills the chances of most contest entrants fall into two categories:  1) It looks and sounds unprofessional -- usually because of non-standard formatting, or other amateurish marks like poor punctuation, spelling, and grammar;  and 2) It's not interesting.

Now, that may sound harsh, too. But the writer is taking a tremendous risk -- a risk that the reader will keep reading to try to find a gem inside their writing. Perhaps relatives will. Perhaps friends will. But an editor just won't. If after a page or two there is no spark, there is no further reading. After all, the editor or judge didn't invest in that book, and he or she can throw it away without a second thought.

 I'm more convinced than ever, from my own writing journey and from reading for contests at conferences, etc., that the first issue of new writers is rushing. Rushing to get to the end (e.g. posting: I wrote 8,000 words today! And then not going back and really editing those words for voice, timeline, plot, structure), rushing the story--hence the backstory download--and rushing to put that story into the hands of an agent. I've sat across from writers who I have had to tell, "You have some good ideas, but no plot." The writers who are writers, the ones who will make it, usually express that they understand and will let these ideas simmer longer and wait for the story to form. Others get upset with me. I once had a writer complain to conference organizers about me because when she plopped her 300 page memoir down I hadn't had the "decency" to read a few pages (while she sat there watching, inside of the 15 minute appointment she had booked with me), and then I had the "nerve" to tell her that memoirs require a plot, the same as fiction, and that they need to be about something specific, not simply snippets of life stories strung together by long, loose threads. I said all of this gently, but she said I had been rude. The truth is hard to swallow when you've got a "finished" manuscript that you've worked so hard on. I get that. But a writer shrugs at all those hours of work and says, I can do better.

She got me back, though. As she stood to leave our little table she told me she had an appointment with D___________ (insert name of important publisher) and she would prove everything I told her was wrong.

When I graduated with a degree in English Literature and Elementary Education, I skipped off to teach  a roomful of fourth-grade students, believing I was prepared to make that year the best learning year of their lives. I was almost right. It was a great year of learning, for me! And I kept on learning the art of teaching and still do. When I plunged into writing, I had a trophy case of As to prove some really smart people thought I could write. That wasn't enough either. And the books I read on fiction writing or a clinic or two I attended weren't the beginning and end of making me into a writer. It takes TONS of practice.

My biggest mistake--and I still struggle with this, although I'm getting better--was not giving my characters enough conflict, interior and exterior. This is the mistake I see in the contests I judge. The result is a story where nothing happens. Boring! We want to be nice to our characters and show them in their best light. Conflict doesn't develop at all, or it's resolved too quickly and easily.
We need to get real.

 The mistake I've seen most often, as Bonnie observed, is the rushing.  Rushing to put the proposal in the mail, rushing to pitch the story to an editor, rushing to find a shortcut to publishing.  I think it's destined to increase with the rush to self-publish.  An author who has already sold a book to a publisher and gone through the experience of edits, rewrites, and marketing has an education under her belt.  She knows the value of hiring an editor and not cutting corners that compromise the integrity of the work.  But even for a published author, self-publishing is uncharted territory.  That doesn't mean that you shouldn't self-publish, but don't rush the process.  Get a professional opinion.  There are many legitimate editorial services available. Read through it one more time, and if at any point - ANY - point in your manuscript you stumble over a word choice or have to stop and clarify something or you yawn, it's time to at least do some tweaking, and possibly a bigger rewrite..  Never accept 'good enough.'

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.

Wading and Plunking

There's almost nothing I'd rather do than fish. No kidding. I love it. For me there's nothing like being out on a lake in a little fishing boat with my husband. I never go without him, because, you see, we have this agreement. He doesn't iron his own shirts, and I don't bait my own hook. It's a wonderful agreement. Except that I've done a lot more ironing than he's done baiting in the past couple of years. But he told me just the other day he's going to Montana in June for business, and that he's taking me with him so that after the business we can spend a couple of days fishing. There's almost nothing I'd rather do than fish in Montana. I can hardly wait.

So Bonnie's post on Monday about "hook" vs. "invite" made me chuckle, especially when I went to the TBR shelf of my bookcase and found that Hooked by Les Edgerton was the very next writer's book I planned to read. It was right there beside Truby's book, The Anatomy of Story, which I stuffed back on the shelf after wading my way through the first two chapters a few months ago, underlining everything in sight, while simultaneously scratching my head. Like Katy, I do plan to read it. Really. I do. And soon.

But back to Hooked. It's a nice little easy-to-read, easy-to-follow book on beginnings, and nothing but. Edgerton writes, "...a story is a movement from stability to instability to a new stability." I like that. It makes sense to me, like simple math. And then he says, "What is different about today's story structure is that the first part of the equation--stability--has been shortened considerably and, in many cases, completely omitted ... Many times that period of stability is only implied." Well, he's the expert, but personally, I'd rather wade into a story than be plunked into it, as though I'd been pushed off the dock way out there in the deep end of the lake. There are genres where implied stability is perfectly suited, but the type of fiction I write and mostly love to read has more of a wade-in feel than a plunked-in feel.

~

Here are some of my favorite examples of wading in:

~

"Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning." The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.

~

"Outside the airplane window the clouds are thick and rippled, unbroken as acres of land. They are suffused with peach-colored, early morning sun, gilded at the edges. Across the aisle, a man is taking a picture of them. Even the pilot couldn't keep still---'Folks,' he just said, 'we've got quite a sunrise out there. Might want to have a look.' I like it when pilots make such comments. It lets me know they're awake." What We Keep, Elizabeth Berg.

~

"Lying on her daughter's bed, Dottie Puckett heard sounds as if they were magnified a hundred times that day. She heard the usual things you'd expect to hear--an airplane, distant traffic, the air conditioning turning on and off. And she heard other things, too--a high-pitched motorized whine from somewhere nearby, the chatter of a squirrel outside the window, a tree branch brushing against the gutter, the coursing sound of water through a pipe, her own breathing. Sounds told you a lot. Today they told her that people and things were going about their normal business in spite of what had happened here at this house only three weeks ago. Though everybody thought she was mild-mannered and good-natured, Dottie knew that what she felt right now was closer to anger than anything else. Not that she was angry at the planes and cars and water pipes, for goodness' sake, but why is it, she thought, that I have to go on breathing in and out when Bonita is lying in a box a mile down the road?" By the Light of a Thousand Stars, Jamie Langston Turner.

~

"Likely it was only two dreams crisscrossing paths, one snagging on the other in passing, but somehow the face that walked by me this morning, not four feet away, got tangled up with one from my past. The way-back and way-faraway, all quiet and almost forgotten, got yanked up and placed alongside today, where two minutes before I'd have told you I was: in Boston. At the Public Garden. Not a stone's throw from Beacon Hill, where I live and work, and pay as much for my own private parking space as folks back home do for a decent slab ranch and enough acres for the dogs to tree themselves something other than city-soft squirrel ... And I swear time backstitched on itself, and at that very moment, I was barefoot--not with black pumps stowed under a park bench, but the right kind of barefoot. The kind of barefoot that went with the truck bed of a pickup. I was back with the wind standing my ponytail straight up over my head, the Blue Hole just around the next curve. And I was tracing my cheek where a kiss had just landed." Blue Hole Back Home, Joy Jordan Lake.

~

Contrast these with James Scott Bell's thrilling suspense novel, Try Dying: "On a wet Tuesday morning in December, Ernesto Bonilla, twenty-eight, shot his twenty-three-year-old wife, Alejandra, in the backyard of their West Forty-fifth Street home in South Los Angeles. As Alejandra lay bleeding to death, Ernesto proceeded to drive their Ford Explorer to the westbound Century Freeway connector ... Bonilla stepped around the back of the SUV ... placed the barrel of his .38 caliber pistol into his mouth, and fired." Plunked. Most definitely. With the former stability not even implied. And exactly how a fast-paced suspense novel should begin.

~

But back to fishing. I love to drop my line in the water and begin to entice; to wait as the bait lands, then sinks to just the right depth; to tug ever-so-slightly two or three times while the worm works its magic; to let it sink a bit more, then tug again. And then ... to feel the hit, to sink the hook, and reel in. I love it. Here is the writing equivalent to my fishing method from the opening to my WIP. "Grief, it is said, is a sea that ebbs and flows. Comes in waves that roll over the shore, then recede 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 drowning, 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. Eighty six hundred, forty hours; five hundred eighteen thousand, four hundred minutes; thirty one million, one hundred four thousand seconds of a smothering nightmare I can't wake up from. A long slow terror, like free-falling in the dark with no cord to pull. I don't plan to be here for the anniversary five days from now."

~

I understand completely where Bonnie's coming from when she says, "But 'hook?' If I recall, it ends badly for the fish. I prefer 'invite.' Semantics, right?" Right. She'll be happy to know that, often, for the fish I catch it's not an unhappy ending, because I typically catch and release. Especially in Montana. And that's what I like to do with my readers. Catch and release--but hopefully not to swim completely away. I want them to stay in the pond with me, so the next time I cast in, I might draw them back.

~

And speaking of lines, I laughed and laughed over Dina Sleiman's comment on Katy's post Wednesday. "I got my nose pierced last year, and it's so freeing because no one expects me to be normal anymore." I love it. It would make a great opening line for a novel. And, Dina, for that line I'd like to send you one of my novels. Just email me with your address and tell me which one you'd prefer.
~

Everyone else, leave a comment telling me what you think the "anniversary" of my novel deals with and your name will go into a drawing for a copy of Lying on Sunday or Every Good & Perfect Gift, winner's choice. Be specific with your guess. And creative.

Hooked?

Just a reminder that a wonderful novel, Zora and Nicky by Claudia Mair Burney, is our May giveaway. To be eligible, make your first-ever comment to one of our blogs, mentioning this is your maiden voyage, so to speak. We'll send a copy of Claudia's book to you and to one of your friends. Instant book club! The drawing will be May 29th, so--ahem--speak up!

Back when Melville started his epic novel, Moby Dick, with "Call me Ishmael," his readers knew they were in for a ride. Most would have been familiar with the implications of such a name. Ishmael was an outcast, second rate, a bit of an embarrassment, and he was the chosen narrator. The reader was hooked.

How do you decide which book to read? I read the first sentence. If that tickles my imagination, I continue on through the first paragraph, and I may read through the first couple pages. That's when the smokin' credit card comes out.

It turns out that most people choose novels this way. That makes beginnings crucial. Beginnings must sell the story within the first sentence, a paragraph, or scene--first to an agent or editor and then to a reader.

Enter a whole book on writing the irresistible opening scene, Hooked by Les Edgerton, who identifies ten core components of an effective opening: (1) the inciting incident; (2) the story-worthy problem; (3) the initial surface problem; (4) the setup; (5) backstory; (6) a stellar opening sentence; (7) language; (8) character; (9) setting; and (10) foreshadowing. Edgerton claims the first four are the most important with the others vary by degree, depending on the story.

Egads! That's quite a balancing act!

Knowing the components of a strong beginning is one thing, constructing them artfully and effectively is another. So what gold nugget can I extract from Hooked for you today?

Beyond the components mentioned, Edgerton reveals the true need for a hook-through-the-lip beginning: Novel readers are following the same trend as the rest of society. Groan. Their attention spans have shrunk. It's up to the writer to jump into the story in such a way that the reader feels the story's current and surrenders to the ride. I'm not necessarily talking about Class V rapids, but the writer must respect the reader's intelligence, their ability to catch up to the characters and the story without tons of backstory. And by the way, no fair leaving your reader confused either. It's all a delicate dance, to be sure.

For our discussion today: Readers, what makes you commit to a novel? Writers, what components of a strong beginning shall we open for discussion and questions? Anyone, toss the title of a novel with a strong beginning out for us to snatch up.

Pardon me this indulgence. This is one of my favorite openings from The Things We Keep by Elizabeth Berg:

Outside the airplane window the clouds are thick and rippled, unbroken as acres of land. They are suffused with peach-colored, early morning sun, gilded at the edges. Across the aisle, a man is taking a picture of them. Even the pilot couldn't keep still--"Folks," he just said, "we've got quite a sunrise out there. Might want to have a look." I like it when pilots make such comments. It lets me know they're awake.

Whenever I see a sight like these clouds, I think maybe everyone is wrong; maybe you can walk on air. Maybe we should just try. Everything could have changed without our noticing. Laws of physics, I mean. Why not? I want it to be true that such miracles occur. I want to stop the plane, put the kickstand down, and have us all file out there, shrugging airline claustrophobia off our shoulders. I want us to be able to breathe easily this high up, to walk on clouds as if we were angels, to point out our houses to each other way, way, way down there; and there; and there. How proud we would suddenly feel about where we live, how tender toward everything that's ours--our Mixmasters, resting on kitchen counters; our children, wearing the socks we bought them and going about children's business; our mail lying on our desks; our gardens, tilled and expectant. It seems to me it would just come with the perspective, this rich appreciation.

I lean my forehead against the glass, sigh. I am forty-seven years old and these longings come to me with the same seriousness and frequency that they did when I was a child.

Shall we keep reading?