The online course of my writers' group for November is about writing your passion and getting published. We haven't gotten to the getting-published part, but the first assignment was to write about your passion for your "wip" (work in progress). I just posted this:
If I didn't love my story, I would have abandoned it a long time ago. Though I had created the characters and story idea many years before, I finished writing the story more than twenty years ago. I made a few half-hearted efforts to get it published, but it wasn't until recent years that I began a serious effort to upgrade it to today's styles and guidelines in Christian fiction.
So I've been learning and applying things like show-don't-tell, eschew was and -ing, no head hopping or butlers in the chandelier, goal-motivation-conflict, deep POV, hooks that grab and endings that don't let go--the list is endless. The more I practiced what I learned, the more I discovered I needed to learn. Then I had to discover how to apply those things without letting them kill my "voice"--in other words, making them my servant, not my master.
Doing that has taken more time than I ever imagined--so yes, it has taken passion. I believe in my story about a girl who "tosses aside love for a ride on a whirlwind," an action which soon lets her crash and subsequently sets her up to learn about forgiveness and second chances. It's a story about relationships and God's ability to unravel "tangled strands" and weave them into meaning and beauty despite human failures. I'm within sight of the end, but still wrestling with a few issues. It must be passion keeps me going. (End of assignment)
If you've been reading my blog very often, some of that will sound familiar. I hope so. I'm happy to report that I've finished what I called the "forward progress" on my big revision. Unfortunately, that is not synonymous with being perfectly "done." But as I said in my report to my local writers' group, I'm much closer to done than I've ever been before. Meanwhile, I keep digging deeper for that passion that is trying to keep me going.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
A Showing of Some “Show vs. Tell”
I know I am highly delinquent in keeping up with this blog, but I’m not going to apologize. I’ve been working very hard to make forward progress on the long, drawn-out revision of my novel. Rather than give you a tale of what that has involved, I here give you an example of what I’ve been doing.
I’ve said that a big feature of today’s style of fiction writing is to show the reader an action as it happens rather than simply narrating, or telling about, that action. Here’s what I’m talking about. The next paragraph is the original of a passage in my Tangled Strands story.
<< When word finally came that a bona fide marriage had indeed taken place in New York between Sharon Champlin and Anthony Casanetti, Agnes and Sharon laughed and cried and hugged each other like schoolgirls. But they sobered quickly because the message from Alec also requested a meeting in his office with Agnes and Sharon, Mollie and Chris. Unable to imagine why he needed to see all four of them, they arrived at the appointed time promptly—and soberly. >>
Following is how I rewrote it to show the actions as they happened:
Sharon was in the backyard filling the bird feeders when she heard Mrs. Baldwin hollering her name. Hollering? Mrs. Baldwin never hollered. Sharon dropped the container of seed on the bench and dashed into the house.
“What’s the matter?”
“Chris’s father called. Are you ready for this?”
Sharon’s knees went weak and she reached for the nearest chair.
“They found it! They found the marriage certificate.”
“You mean—mine and Tony’s?”
“A genuine marriage between Sharon Marie Champlin and Michael Anthony Casanetti III.”
“Are you sure?”
Sharon began jumping around, laughing and crying at the same time. The next moment she did a double take when Mrs. Baldwin grabbed her and began jumping with her.
Suddenly the older woman stopped, and the joy on her face shriveled.
“What?”
“There’s more. Mr. Thorne wants you, me, Chris and Mollie to meet him in his office at two o’clock this afternoon.”
Sharon’s mouth fell open. “Really?”
“Really.”
“But why? Why would he want to see all four of us?”
“I have no idea, Sharon. Let’s just make sure we arrive promptly.”
Fact is, the second version took more than twice the words the single paragraph did. That isn’t a problem unless a novel already comes in at 120,000 words (the author undoubtedly has two stories there). In my case, the original was about 87,500 words. It is now 91,300. Less than 4000 added? Not so fast. A year ago I moved the beginning of the novel forward six months, and that cut off 13,500 words. If I’ve crunched the numbers correctly, that means I’ve written some 17,000 new words in that last year.
And here everyone thought I was “just editing.” I hope it means I now have a better understanding of “Show, don’t tell.”
I’ve said that a big feature of today’s style of fiction writing is to show the reader an action as it happens rather than simply narrating, or telling about, that action. Here’s what I’m talking about. The next paragraph is the original of a passage in my Tangled Strands story.
<< When word finally came that a bona fide marriage had indeed taken place in New York between Sharon Champlin and Anthony Casanetti, Agnes and Sharon laughed and cried and hugged each other like schoolgirls. But they sobered quickly because the message from Alec also requested a meeting in his office with Agnes and Sharon, Mollie and Chris. Unable to imagine why he needed to see all four of them, they arrived at the appointed time promptly—and soberly. >>
Following is how I rewrote it to show the actions as they happened:
Sharon was in the backyard filling the bird feeders when she heard Mrs. Baldwin hollering her name. Hollering? Mrs. Baldwin never hollered. Sharon dropped the container of seed on the bench and dashed into the house.
“What’s the matter?”
“Chris’s father called. Are you ready for this?”
Sharon’s knees went weak and she reached for the nearest chair.
“They found it! They found the marriage certificate.”
“You mean—mine and Tony’s?”
“A genuine marriage between Sharon Marie Champlin and Michael Anthony Casanetti III.”
“Are you sure?”
Sharon began jumping around, laughing and crying at the same time. The next moment she did a double take when Mrs. Baldwin grabbed her and began jumping with her.
Suddenly the older woman stopped, and the joy on her face shriveled.
“What?”
“There’s more. Mr. Thorne wants you, me, Chris and Mollie to meet him in his office at two o’clock this afternoon.”
Sharon’s mouth fell open. “Really?”
“Really.”
“But why? Why would he want to see all four of us?”
“I have no idea, Sharon. Let’s just make sure we arrive promptly.”
Fact is, the second version took more than twice the words the single paragraph did. That isn’t a problem unless a novel already comes in at 120,000 words (the author undoubtedly has two stories there). In my case, the original was about 87,500 words. It is now 91,300. Less than 4000 added? Not so fast. A year ago I moved the beginning of the novel forward six months, and that cut off 13,500 words. If I’ve crunched the numbers correctly, that means I’ve written some 17,000 new words in that last year.
And here everyone thought I was “just editing.” I hope it means I now have a better understanding of “Show, don’t tell.”
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Kind of Book I Want to Write
I finished reading a book today. It’s the first book I’ve read in a long time where I found myself wondering what has happened to the family since the book was written. That’s natural and quite common when the story is from real life, but this one was fiction. My audible comment when I finished was, “Now there’s a writer who know how to make characters live!”
Now that is the kind of book I long to write. Whether I can or not remains to be seen. I won’t be able to do as good a job as this author did because I will never have the years of experience she’s had, but I’m going to do the best I can, and I guess that is what counts.
My husband enjoys mystery and suspense sagas by this same Christian author, but the story I read was an emotional family drama. Fred has been raving about how well she portrays character emotions, and now I know what he means. I may need to read it again as I put the finishing touches on Tangled Strands.
The book, by the way, was Never Again Good-bye by Terri Blackstock.
Now that is the kind of book I long to write. Whether I can or not remains to be seen. I won’t be able to do as good a job as this author did because I will never have the years of experience she’s had, but I’m going to do the best I can, and I guess that is what counts.
My husband enjoys mystery and suspense sagas by this same Christian author, but the story I read was an emotional family drama. Fred has been raving about how well she portrays character emotions, and now I know what he means. I may need to read it again as I put the finishing touches on Tangled Strands.
The book, by the way, was Never Again Good-bye by Terri Blackstock.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Taking the Harder Route
I had an interesting time working on my novel over this long weekend. I am now well beyond the beginning where I had to find new ways to cover what I had lost when I moved the beginning of the story forward by six months.
Now a lot of what I am doing is getting rid of speaker labels that are built with adverbs, such as “she said sadly” and replacing them with some form of action that shows how she feels instead of simply telling the reader she is sad (e.g., “she sniffed and wiped her eyes). Much of the dialog in those chapters was already quite satisfactory; I just have to polish up the “speaker attributions.”
Another thing I’ve been working on is getting more “deep point of view” (POV) into the story. Here again it is usually a matter of showing rather than telling. Instead of saying “she wondered if he would come again,” you simply write, “Would he come again?” Deep POV takes the reader more inside the mind and heart of the character, which is good. It took me a some time to catch on to how deep POV worked, but I’m getting the hang of it, and it can be fun to do.
So I was tootling along making progress when I came upon a block of chapters that stopped me in my tracks. Four of the nine of them need to be almost completely rewritten. I had known a couple of those chapters were coming because I remembered them well, but I hadn’t known how many.
Why do they need so much rewriting? Once again it is the issue of showing vs. telling. Those chapters were written in the old style of a narrator telling the story to the reader rather than showing the story happening. In some ways, it is a lazy way to write. It is harder to show things happening and to bring your reader into the heart of your characters as they are living out a scene than it is to simply tell the reader what happened.
Most of these chapters were summaries of action-type things—friends helping someone move, cleaning up the house, then planning a work marathon over Labor Day weekend (really—I didn’t make it up for this weekend; it was written many years ago like the rest of it). Most of those will not be difficult to turn into “showing” accounts, except that I don’t want to blow them out of proportion to how important they are to the story.
One of them, however, is not action based. It was life reflections of an important but minor character who is not and should not be a “point of view” person. (A point of view person is someone in the story through whose eyes you let the reader experience the story—I’ve talked about that before.) I already have a max of POV characters, so I couldn’t make him into one even if his part had been actions rather than reflections. Because it is reflection, that one has been a real challenge to my creative thinking ability, but I now have a plan sketched out that I believe will help me win eventually. How?
You’ll have to read Tangled Strands someday and find out.
Now a lot of what I am doing is getting rid of speaker labels that are built with adverbs, such as “she said sadly” and replacing them with some form of action that shows how she feels instead of simply telling the reader she is sad (e.g., “she sniffed and wiped her eyes). Much of the dialog in those chapters was already quite satisfactory; I just have to polish up the “speaker attributions.”
Another thing I’ve been working on is getting more “deep point of view” (POV) into the story. Here again it is usually a matter of showing rather than telling. Instead of saying “she wondered if he would come again,” you simply write, “Would he come again?” Deep POV takes the reader more inside the mind and heart of the character, which is good. It took me a some time to catch on to how deep POV worked, but I’m getting the hang of it, and it can be fun to do.
So I was tootling along making progress when I came upon a block of chapters that stopped me in my tracks. Four of the nine of them need to be almost completely rewritten. I had known a couple of those chapters were coming because I remembered them well, but I hadn’t known how many.
Why do they need so much rewriting? Once again it is the issue of showing vs. telling. Those chapters were written in the old style of a narrator telling the story to the reader rather than showing the story happening. In some ways, it is a lazy way to write. It is harder to show things happening and to bring your reader into the heart of your characters as they are living out a scene than it is to simply tell the reader what happened.
Most of these chapters were summaries of action-type things—friends helping someone move, cleaning up the house, then planning a work marathon over Labor Day weekend (really—I didn’t make it up for this weekend; it was written many years ago like the rest of it). Most of those will not be difficult to turn into “showing” accounts, except that I don’t want to blow them out of proportion to how important they are to the story.
One of them, however, is not action based. It was life reflections of an important but minor character who is not and should not be a “point of view” person. (A point of view person is someone in the story through whose eyes you let the reader experience the story—I’ve talked about that before.) I already have a max of POV characters, so I couldn’t make him into one even if his part had been actions rather than reflections. Because it is reflection, that one has been a real challenge to my creative thinking ability, but I now have a plan sketched out that I believe will help me win eventually. How?
You’ll have to read Tangled Strands someday and find out
Friday, September 4, 2009
A Writer's Platform
I was referred to two articles today on writing and getting published. It’s nice they come at the beginning of a long weekend when I expect to be able to focus on my writing while my husband revels in the return of football. Of course, I may join him for a few interludes since I enjoy football too.
Though both articles have good advice, they have different focuses. One is on keeping up one’s confidence as a writer, while the other is about the importance of having a “platform.” A platform? In publishing terms and as I understand it, a platform relates to how many people you know and therefore how many might be interested in buying a book you get it published. An extensive platform lowers the risk to a publisher of putting out a product no one buys because they never heard of the author.
Platform is one area in which I can feel at least a measure of confidence. I have more relationships than I can keep up with, and I appreciate them all. I’ve enjoyed a rich and varied life on three continents. I am blessed with multiple circles of friends from different eras of my life, including:
• My growing up in Africa—and now through Facebook a whole new generation of those who grew up there after I was gone.
• The boarding school and college I attended
• Forty years with our mission large organization, including dozens of former students and even more coworkers
• Those who have been interested in our work over those forty years, many who have invested financially at one time or another, including those in fifteen states on our current statement of gifts received today
• Folks in seven churches in five states who have invested in varying degrees in our ministry during those years.
I didn’t mention family, but of course they count big time, and some of them are my greatest pillars of support. I don’t have a large family, but they all have friends, too. As I said, I am blessed.
Now if I can just keep those relationships going until I find a publisher . . . They don’t all know about my writing dreams, but a good many do. In fact, recently when I felt the need for concentrated prayer for my efforts, I got positive responses from eleven wonderful friends in nine states.
That must count something for the beginning of a platform.
Though both articles have good advice, they have different focuses. One is on keeping up one’s confidence as a writer, while the other is about the importance of having a “platform.” A platform? In publishing terms and as I understand it, a platform relates to how many people you know and therefore how many might be interested in buying a book you get it published. An extensive platform lowers the risk to a publisher of putting out a product no one buys because they never heard of the author.
Platform is one area in which I can feel at least a measure of confidence. I have more relationships than I can keep up with, and I appreciate them all. I’ve enjoyed a rich and varied life on three continents. I am blessed with multiple circles of friends from different eras of my life, including:
• My growing up in Africa—and now through Facebook a whole new generation of those who grew up there after I was gone.
• The boarding school and college I attended
• Forty years with our mission large organization, including dozens of former students and even more coworkers
• Those who have been interested in our work over those forty years, many who have invested financially at one time or another, including those in fifteen states on our current statement of gifts received today
• Folks in seven churches in five states who have invested in varying degrees in our ministry during those years.
I didn’t mention family, but of course they count big time, and some of them are my greatest pillars of support. I don’t have a large family, but they all have friends, too. As I said, I am blessed.
Now if I can just keep those relationships going until I find a publisher . . . They don’t all know about my writing dreams, but a good many do. In fact, recently when I felt the need for concentrated prayer for my efforts, I got positive responses from eleven wonderful friends in nine states.
That must count something for the beginning of a platform.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Giving God Permission - Part Two
I should have already understood about giving God permission because He had taught me that same lesson seven years earlier when terrorists killed one of our coworkers when we were in South America. That experience hit close to home for our family because my husband Fred was one of the twelve adults present when they took our friend captive. Fred spent an hour and a half face down in his pajamas on the cold floor with his hands tied to his feet behind his back.
Seven weeks later, they executed our coworker and swore they were coming for the rest of us—-and our house at the mission center was way out on the edge of things. I’ve never forgotten the night when I was afraid to take off my clothes and go to bed because I was sure someone was going to come pounding on that front door in the middle of the night.
Now I had known most of my life that nothing could touch me unless it was within God’s will. However, that head knowledge alone did not give me peace in the midst of that situation. That head knowledge had to get down into my heart so that I was able to say, “Okay, God, if it is your will for harm to come to me at the hand of those terrorists, then that’s okay with me.” When I could say that…and thus give God permission…I was able to sleep in peace.
Somehow I didn’t remember that lesson until after Daddy died. Since then, God has brought me other opportunities to test whether I trusted Him enough to “give Him permission.” Not surprisingly, on some occasions I’ve remembered early on and been able to do that, yet in others it has taken the a long time (in one case, years) to make peace with something He sent my way. I have an idea that is simply our human condition. We learn, and we forget. We trust God, and yet we worry again.
I’ve recently started thinking about this “giving God permission” in relation to my Tangled Strands story. One of these days I should write about the things God has done that make me believe I have His blessing to be working on it. I can do that because I'm talking about hind site—what I have seen Him do. But to claim assurance about what He is going to do in the future strikes me as presumption, and I can’t pretend to know what God’s plans are.
All I know is that, for today, I have reason to believe He wants me working on it. I even believe it is a story He could use to accomplish something spiritual in someone’s life if it gets published. At the same time, I have to keep my heart open to giving Him permission to do whatever He plans as far as its getting published.
Seven weeks later, they executed our coworker and swore they were coming for the rest of us—-and our house at the mission center was way out on the edge of things. I’ve never forgotten the night when I was afraid to take off my clothes and go to bed because I was sure someone was going to come pounding on that front door in the middle of the night.
Now I had known most of my life that nothing could touch me unless it was within God’s will. However, that head knowledge alone did not give me peace in the midst of that situation. That head knowledge had to get down into my heart so that I was able to say, “Okay, God, if it is your will for harm to come to me at the hand of those terrorists, then that’s okay with me.” When I could say that…and thus give God permission…I was able to sleep in peace.
Somehow I didn’t remember that lesson until after Daddy died. Since then, God has brought me other opportunities to test whether I trusted Him enough to “give Him permission.” Not surprisingly, on some occasions I’ve remembered early on and been able to do that, yet in others it has taken the a long time (in one case, years) to make peace with something He sent my way. I have an idea that is simply our human condition. We learn, and we forget. We trust God, and yet we worry again.
I’ve recently started thinking about this “giving God permission” in relation to my Tangled Strands story. One of these days I should write about the things God has done that make me believe I have His blessing to be working on it. I can do that because I'm talking about hind site—what I have seen Him do. But to claim assurance about what He is going to do in the future strikes me as presumption, and I can’t pretend to know what God’s plans are.
All I know is that, for today, I have reason to believe He wants me working on it. I even believe it is a story He could use to accomplish something spiritual in someone’s life if it gets published. At the same time, I have to keep my heart open to giving Him permission to do whatever He plans as far as its getting published.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Giving God Permission, Part One
My father was dying.
And I was not ready to lose him.
When we brought him to our home here in Dallas for what turned out to be the last fifteen days of his life, I did a little memory inventory. I found only two times—-one in my childhood and one in adulthood—-when my daddy and I were really upset with each other. It is always hard to part with a loved one, and I assure you it is especially hard to give up a relationship like that.
My being upset with God did not mean I was crying my eyes out during those fifteen days. In fact, I didn’t even cry when Daddy died, and I didn’t cry at the funeral. It was three weeks later before I finally broke down—-and then I cried so hard and so long that it took the chiropractor months to get my neck back the way it should be. And it was nine loooong months before I was able to say to God, “It’s okay that you took Daddy away.”
Obviously, God did not need my permission to take my father, and He clearly did not wait for any permission from me. So what’s the big deal about giving God permission? The big deal is what happened in my heart when I finally granted that permission. That was when healing of my pain could finally begin.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The above is the beginning of an oral devotional talk I have given in connection with my work of training missionaries. So what is it doing here? Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the first time God taught me this lesson about permission, and then I’ll tell you how it relates to my Tangled Strands novel.
And I was not ready to lose him.
When we brought him to our home here in Dallas for what turned out to be the last fifteen days of his life, I did a little memory inventory. I found only two times—-one in my childhood and one in adulthood—-when my daddy and I were really upset with each other. It is always hard to part with a loved one, and I assure you it is especially hard to give up a relationship like that.
My being upset with God did not mean I was crying my eyes out during those fifteen days. In fact, I didn’t even cry when Daddy died, and I didn’t cry at the funeral. It was three weeks later before I finally broke down—-and then I cried so hard and so long that it took the chiropractor months to get my neck back the way it should be. And it was nine loooong months before I was able to say to God, “It’s okay that you took Daddy away.”
Obviously, God did not need my permission to take my father, and He clearly did not wait for any permission from me. So what’s the big deal about giving God permission? The big deal is what happened in my heart when I finally granted that permission. That was when healing of my pain could finally begin.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The above is the beginning of an oral devotional talk I have given in connection with my work of training missionaries. So what is it doing here? Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the first time God taught me this lesson about permission, and then I’ll tell you how it relates to my Tangled Strands novel.
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