Five Ways to Use On-Line Lists

I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker for on-line quizzes. Love to take them! But even more fun are the lists. You know the ones. “10 ways to Tell He’s Lying” “8 Reasons Your BFF Isn’t” “5 Things to Ask Before Taking It to the Next Level”

Just yesterday, I saved to my electronic file, “What is Your Body Language Saying” from the Dec. 7^th issue of Real Simple Magazine. How to read faces, bodies, hands, and even, get this, how to read feet! You gotta love it!

I have a huge file of them I collected. Why, you might ask. No, I am not searching for love or trying to detect infidelity in my spouse. I am an author. These lists are all about human relationships. When I write my novels, I am trying really hard to develop characters my readers can relate to and know on some level.

Other than a weird sort of interest in these lists, what value can they have to an author? Let me share how I use material from some of my collected lists.

1) I have a character, a nervous type. So I say that. Big whoop! If I go to my lists, I find that I can have the character doing things to show nervousness. Like this:

Rita was nervous.

OR

Rita nibbled on her lower lip. Her body rocked forward and back, fingers picking at her broken cuticles.

Okay, so maybe you don’t want Rita to be quite so obvious in her nervous signs, but I think you can see the benefit of showing the nervousness over telling she’s nervous. As a place holder I can write “Rita was nervous” and put it in bold font to stand out. During revisions, I can find the bolded spots and describe her (and other characters) better.

2) Another way to use on-line lists of character traits and behaviors is to give them distinctive actions so you distinguish one character from another for your reader. Perhaps you want one character to be a fidgeter, so you describe how his toe is always tapping when he sits and that he must get up often to walk around, then sits back down and taps his right toe again. Or another character might be excitable, so you have her flailing her arms and blinking a lot.

3) One article I pasted in from Sheer Balance last January is “6 Personality Traits to Admire and Acquire.” When you are working on the beginning stages of your book, you make choices about the protagonist, supporting characters, and the antagonist. Knowing that you will create tension with opposites, if you want your protagonist to be selfless, then the antagonist might become selfish. So you read what selfless people do (give time to others, listen, demonstrate patience, give love, generous, make others feel loved and appreciated), and those are the behaviors you give your protagonist. As a foil, you make your antagonist: emotionally unavailable to others, impatient while listening, impatient in general, ignore others’ needs, brusque and self-absorbed.

4) On-line lists give suggestions for how to keep the romance going. For example, dating coach David Wygant posted “Dating Advice: 7 Ways to Keep the Fire in your Relationship Burning.” You have a couple of characters romantically involved. Have one of your characters leave surprise notes in her husband’s lunch bag. (And just imagine what could happen if her husband’s mistress found it!). Or do as Wygant suggests and show how the characters respond by carrying their kiss deeper and longer. Cosmopolitan.com’s article, “Master This Habit to Keep Your Relationship Healthy”, focuses on a single behavior: being supportive during good times may be more important than during the bad ones. You can have a character demonstrate aspects of supportive behavior by celebrating the good performance review, getting a new job, handling a touchy situation well and that recognition and support will strengthen the relationship.

5) Read the extras. Almost all of these on-line lists are linked to other lists. In the article on being supportive of good news happenings is a link to “5 Surprising Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Relationship.” Now that can be fun. Collect even more to expand your repertoire of traits and behaviors.

Keep collecting these lists, and pretty soon, you could set up an illegal counseling practice, you’ll know so much. Or not. Maybe instead you could demonstrate research-based behaviors in your novels so your characters ring true.

The Making of the OED

Have you read The Professor and the Madman (Simon Winchester)? What a fabulous book. That is, if you love words and dictionaries, as I do. It’s full title, just to hook you into reading this is: The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary.

When we were culling books prior to downsizing our home, I had hard choices to make. I kept The Professor and the Madman. I may read it again. I may not. But I want to hold onto it because I loved it so much. You know that feeling. Also, I see it as a set with my OED.

I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that the compact version of the OED was my favorite Christmas present from DH. What kind of guy is that, you might ask, who gets his wife a dictionary? The same kind of guy she married when their favorite wedding present was a dictionary!

Maybe we’re weird.

Anyway, the compact OED (about 15” tall and 4” wide) has 9 pages of print on each page and comes with a magnifying glass. Friends, knowing how much I love the dictionary, gave me a fancy magnifying glass worthy of the OED. Love them both! The un-compact version, by the way, is a dictionary spanning 20 volumes.

The OED is remarkable in itself. The original dictionary defined 414,825 words. The intent was to show the development of vocabulary over time. 1,827,306 quotes were gleaned from literature by volunteers to show how the definition the words had developed over time with pejoration, amelioration, or simply multiple meanings. You can trace the etymology not just through language of origin, but the changing meanings over time. It is great fun to read!

What an accomplishment! Professor James Murray spent 40 years of his life on the project that was completed after his death. That factoid gives you a sense of the scope of this work.

The book on the making of the OED was two stories in one. Professor Murray sent out the call across England for volunteers to read literature from as far back as they could up to present day (late 19^th century) and write on slips of paper the word and a quote from a book using the word with a different definition than they had found before. All the little slips were sent to a warehouse at Oxford University where they had to be sorted and catalogued. THERE WERE NO COMPUTERS TO HELP WITH THIS! It was an astounding feat.

Just as a note of interest, do you know which English word has the largest number of definitions in the OED? “Set” has 464 definitions. Care to know the rest of the top ten? Run—396; go—368; take—343; stand—334; get—289; turn—288; put—268; fall—264; and, strike—250.

The story of the OED development was gripping enough, but we get a two-fer with the book. One of the volunteers, Dr. W.C. Minor, was especially prolific, so Murray wanted to meet him and involve him more. After being put off time and again by Minor, Murray finally showed up at his residence, an asylum for the criminally insane. With money, things could be different then as now. Minor had a suite of rooms with bookshelves everywhere loaded with rare volumes. Minor had been a surgeon during the American Civil War and that experience probably tipped the scale on sanity. He killed a man in England and was committed. But from that tragedy came the enormous help he provided on the massive OED project.

I could go on, but that would take time away from you finding this book or a copy of the OED and reading for yourself. This is a word lovers duo!

Words are the Bane of My Existence

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. Stephen King

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. C. S. Lewis

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. John Ruskin

Word choice. Which words do I choose and use? Why?

I’ve had mixed reviews from critique partners about vocabulary level in my various works. The range is from “I had to look up words. That interrupts the story. Lose the big words.” to “I love that you don’t insult my intelligence by talking down to me. Keep using vocabulary that challenges me.”

Truly, it is not that I am trying to demonstrate my facility with logo-gymnastics, but that’s the way I talk. The first word that comes to mind is what I type. I don’t sit with the thesaurus open and at the ready to insert an arcane word in place of a pedestrian one. Rather, why use a phrase when a single word would do?

Unless that language level is inconsistent with the character. Well, duh! That elusive characteristic of "voice" is, in part, signaled by word choice. Language identifies us.

When I have a character with education, why not have her use the language level she would use in real life? Oh, I know that if she sprinkles too many high-vocabulary words in, she will distract. But where is the line between voice illustrated through language level and interrupting the reader. I hate to think that readers’ vocabulary levels are so low they would avoid my great (!) books just because I have a character using less common words.

I would also hate to think that good vocabularies belong only to literary fiction. Genre fiction, commercial fiction—why can’t those characters be literate as well?

Okay. I do have a good vocabulary. I admit to being proud of that. But demonstrating language facility is not, should not be, tantamount to bragging or driving away readers. I remember the first time I read Sophie’s Choice (William Styron). Not only did the story fully engage me, but I had to look up a couple of words in the dictionary. Me! I loved it!

I am a word game nut. I read the dictionary for fun. My favorite all-time Christmas present from DH was the compact version of the Oxford English Dictionary. Etymologies make me swoon.

I LOVE WORDS! That passion showed through in my work with kids over 39 years. What a legacy to pass on, that words are cool. Why can’t I do that in my writing as well. In my WiP, I have a character obsessed with words even though she is not educated.

So, Dear Reader, hang on for the ride. The vocabulary level in my works may be higher than some. But when I write, the right word comes to mind. I don’t go “dictionary diving” to find an obtuse way to say the same thing. If you might need a dictionary once or twice, enjoy the joy of words and the way they roll around on your tongue and mind.

In the Beginning . . .

Given the difficulties inherent in creating a great book opening, you can see how the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest draws out so many entrants each year.

The classic opening sentence Bulwer-Lytton used in his 1830 book, Paul Cifford, is the icon of bad openings. “It was a dark and stormy night . . .” is so endemic that it became the ridiculed opening of Snoopy’s opus---over and over and over. People who don’t know a thing about Bulwer-Lytton’s florid and over-wrought writing may well have heard the phrase. Aren’t Shakespeare, the Bible, or Ben Franklin the source for everything we quote anyway??? (Okay, I know there are a lot of contenders for this category. Write your own blog on it and invite me over to read.)

But, you know, I have some sympathy for the Bulwer-Lytton. In case you only know the opening of the opening, here it is in toto:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Whew! Does that sound at all familiar to you who have struggled, as have I, with the exigencies of creating, in the quest in which we seek agented representation, the perfect, engaging opening to a novel which may not countenance a grand entrance, but for which we nevertheless strive?

At writing conferences, they tell us to dump the first 50 pages if that’s where the action is, where the book really begins. Are you kidding me? If I knew how to open in the middle of the action rather than giving you all the nitty gritty you’re going to need to understand my book, I would have done that in the first place. That’s why I’m at your session (my 17^th session) on writing an engaging opening.

So here’s what I’ve done to build my awareness of openings, in media res, where the action is blah blah blah. I have deconstructed several book beginnings in the genre of my current WIP. I ask myself, “What question(s) does this raise? Do I want to know more? How does this propel the story forward?”

I also play the “First Lines” game (taught to me by my daughter-in-law and described in a blog last February). The game let’s me practice some first lines and compare them with the actual author’s first lines. An interesting intellectual task. Because of the distance, it’s easy. You don’t necessarily know the book characters or plot lines, so there is no pressure to “set up” the book. Distance is good for an academic exercise.

But being able to deconstruct or construct for someone else’s work doesn’t necessarily transfer to the original problem: my book. I can appreciate the beauty of a great opening in others’ works. I can see the problem soooo clearly in someone else’s work. Why not mine?

Or as is more often the case, I can tell easily that my opening isn’t up to snuff. But how can I make it better? I didn’t set out to write mediocre. Honest. I am open to comments here. Please write about your struggles. Share successes in writing great openings, and tell us all how you got there.

Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel

I love having a library of resources about writing. Sure, I could check them out of the library, but no library in my neighborhood is open when I get up at 3 a.m. When I need to understand a craft element, get a character interview form, jumpstart my engine with writing insights, I want to go right over to my bookshelf and find what I need. Besides all those books distract me, and I end up spending hours when I meant to spend a few minutes.

Sure I go on-line for help. Sure I get some books from the library. But, there is nothing like having a text in your hand you can mark up and put stickies on. How many how-to books do you own? See? We can’t help ourselves.

I ordered a book this summer that I am just getting around to reading. OMG! What took me so long to find this thing, and why didn’t I devour it the day it came in the mail???

Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel by Hallie Ephron is the most powerful book on how-to write I have ever read. I’m a pretty good skimmer, looking for the good stuff when I “read” a book on writing. Not this time. I am READING this book, every word, and some parts more than once.

What Ephron does so brilliantly is to break the book into four segments: Planning, Writing, Revising, and Selling. These are not equal parts. Planning takes up more than a third of her pages. An even larger segment is “Writing”. “Revising” and “Selling” are the smallest segments.

I know, that sounds just like all the others. But her planning section, for example, really does help you plan. It is not generic, plain vanilla. She is specific!

She breaks planning into manageable bits, explains the bit, shows examples of the bit, has you practice the bit, and then you transfer that bit-ness to your own novel and commit to paper that bit in your book. It is superb teaching without ever meeting us. Each section allows ample opportunities to grasp the concepts presented because she comes at each from more than one angle.

She writes in a practical, workshop kind of way without being demeaning or condescending. Her tone is one of helpful, insightful, supportive guide. She makes you think you can do this thing called mystery writing; it’s just of matter of stringing the bits together. Of course, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, but I am talking about the attitude here.

Maybe it is because I dumped my almost-done mystery and am trying to figure out how to start it all over again. That book is percolating in my mind, waiting to be poured onto the page when it is dark and strong enough. Maybe that is why I am so taken with the book.

I am seeing so clearly why the dumped book failed. I understand everything Ephron is explaining, modeling, and demonstrating. I am even encouraged by her to believe that I can write a mystery.

But understanding is still such the long way from actualization. I know what good writing is when I read it. The challenge, as always, is not just in understanding but in translating that understanding to an engaging and challenging mystery of my own. Hallie is doing her part. Now it’s my turn to step up to the plate.

Gift-Getting/Giving Occasions

I create lists for my family of gift ideas for gift-giving occasions. And while I like the surprise of receiving something I didn’t even know I wanted or needed until the moment of the reveal (as they say on home decorating TV shows), DH likes a list. He doesn’t like to leave it to chance. So I oblige. And the earrings are always different, never seen before, and even wearable, some more than others.

Books are a big deal in our family. One year when our youngest son was still a little guy, he posted his Christmas list on the refrigerator. I looked it over and said, “What? No books?”

He replied, “Duh, Mama. I always get books. I don’t have to write that I want them.” That was meant to be a compliment, btw, not a snarky comment.

So, what writing-related gifts would I like this year (since I already got my MacBook Pro, and I don’t think the new desk will fit under the tree)?

Here is some of what’s on my list (with prices from Amazon). Can you tell where my interests lie in the immediate future?

Playwrighting:

Scriptwriting software like Final Draft Version 8 ($170.99) or

Movie Magic Screenwriter Version 6 ($125.99)

Art and Craft of Playwriting, Jeffrey Hatcher, $10.19

How to Read a Play, Ronald Hayman, $11.05

The Art of the Playwright, William Packard, $13.95

The Playwright’s Workbook, Jean-Claude Van Italie. $12.89

Mystery Writing:

The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery. Robert J. Ray

and Jack Remick, $10.55

The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit,

William Tapply, $11.53

The Crime Writer’s Reference Guide: 1001 Tips for Writing the

Perfect Murder, $14.25

Police Procedure and Investigation: A Guide for Writers, Lee

Lofland, $13.59

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, Patricia Highsmith, $10.19

Marketing and Social Networking:

Get Known Before the Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths to

Grow an Author Platform, Christina Katz, $11.55

Off the Wall Marketing Ideas: Jumpstart Your Sales without

Busting Your Budget, Nancy Michaels and Debbi J.

Karpowicz, $8.76

Plug Your Book: Online Book Marketing for Authors, Steve Weber,

$18.95

Leave a comment today for others to see what you’re requesting from Santa to support your writing?

Blogging Annie Weissman

Give a warm welcome to Annie Weissman. You can follow her at www.annieweissman.com and be sure to catch her blog, “The Single Senior” (theseniorsingle.wordpress.com). It is by turns funny, heartwarming, and reflective.

Sharon: Annie, you are a well-published woman! How many books do you have in print right now?

Annie: A is for Almanac: Complete Lessons to Teach Library Reference Sours Grades K-6, Transforming Storytimes Into Reading and Writing Lessons, and Do Tell! Storytelling for You and Your Students are all aimed at teachers and librarians and published by traditional publishers. As One Door Closes: A Memoir about the Plane Crash of Northwest Flight #255 is available from both Amazon and the POD publisher XLibris. Amazing Animals is available from Blurb, another POD publisher.

Sharon: When did you publish your first book? What was it about? Why did you write it?

Annie: My first book, The Castle of Chuchurumbel, el Castillo de Chuchurumbel, a bilingual picture book was published by Hispanic Books Distribultors in 1987. I was a school librarian and storyteller and had many bilingual manuscripts “in the drawer.” I had sent some retellings of folk tales to publishers, but this is the only one that was published. I did NOT do the illustrations. That isn’t my forte.

Sharon: What is your most recently completed work? What’s next?

Annie: I have just completed a novel, Our Mother’s Keeper. It’s the story of an eighty-year old woman whose dementia must be dealt with by her and her three daughters. It’s currently out with an editor and an agent and I have high hopes it will be accepted.

I’m completing a play for senior community theaters about a forty year high school reunion.

And lastly, I’m in the germination stage of a new novel about mothers and children.

Sharon: People always ask authors this: where do you get your ideas?

Annie: My nonfiction books were all based on my experience. The books for teachers and librarians are the culmination of a long career as a librarian and a principal. I wrote my memoir first as fiction in 1994 but it didn’t seem to work. In 2000 I changed it back to real life and it worked much better. The events were so painful I had wait until I could think about them in depth.

Some ideas for fiction come from my imagination with no basis in my life, like the play I’m writing. I went to my twentieth and twenty-fifth high school reunions, so I have an idea how they go, but this one is totally fabricated.

Some of my ideas for fiction come from life stories that other people tell me. That gives me the germ of an idea and I embroider it.

Some of my ideas for fiction are from my life experience. This is tricky. If it’s the truth, then it’s memoir. My latest novel is “true” in that my mother with dementia came to live with me so I had the experience to write about it. But many of the characters and incidents are from my imagination.

Sharon: When you are starting a new piece, how do you go about it? Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Annie: I am definitely a plotter. I have an analytic nature. I decide on plot points and make a time line of events and approximate pages for each section. However my characters take on a life of their own and I see my original timeline as a suggestion, not a strait jacket.

Sharon: It is difficult for an author to keep a character real, show the flaws as well as the positive traits for the heroine. How do you go about making your characters multi-dimensional?

Annie: I find it quite difficult to give flaws to my main character because I usually admire her so much. That’s where the critique group is a critical part of the writing process. My writing partners remind me to make the characters more flawed.

Sharon: How do you learn more about the craft of writing?

Annie: I’ve gone to the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival twice and taken full week classes on writing the novel and on writing for children. I’ve taken a class at Phoenix College on writing for children. I’ve taken courses on writing fiction from the Y that used to have a very active writing program. I‘ve taken novel writing at Scottsdale Community College.

I also attend writing conferences. The workshops there offer help on specific topics, such as Point of View, Setting, etc.

Sharon: What is the best writing advice you’ve learned?

Annie:

1. Join a writing critique group.

2. Read dialogue aloud to see if it sounds natural.

Sharon: From your critique group experiences, what is the number one writing rule you see authors breaking?

Annie: Point of view. It’s so important to decide through whose eyes the story will be told and to stick with that point of view.

Sharon: I know you are in writing critique groups (which is how I know you). What role do you see critique groups playing in your own writing?

Annie: The weekly critique group is invaluable as a catalyst to make sure I keep writing regularly. The advice I get from my fellow writers helps me see what I’m too close to the work to see. The other members are bright, imaginative people who offer terrific suggestions.

Sharon: If you could sit down, one-on-one with a reader of this blog, what would you say to him/her?

Annie: There is no substitute for your time “in the chair.” No matter how good your idea is, or how brilliant the writing, if you don’t finish it, it won’t be read or appreciated.

Sharon: Anything else before we close up shop for the day?

Annie: Although it is difficult to get fiction published by the traditional system, today there are many other outlets: on line and print-on-demand. I would caution people to go through the traditional system first to see if your project needs improvement before rushing to publishing it yourself. There’s a lot of very bad writing being published by people who think no one should tell them how to write.

Taking a break for a few days. Come back next Monday to catch more blogging on the writing life.