The Most Powerful Tool at a Writer’s Command

April 1, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The most powerful tool at a writer’s command is not a computer or word processing program. It is not even a pen, though the pen is said to be mightier than the sword. (Frankly, though, I would prefer to go into a fight armed with a sword rather than a pen, but that could be a personal quirk.)

So what tool am I talking about? The power of three. Three is a mystical number that shows up repeatedly in mythology: three fates, three muses, three graces. Three is a prime component of fairy tales: three wishes, three little pigs, three bears. Three creates a series, a pattern of cause and effect. There are three stages of truth: first a concept is rejected, second it is violently opposed, third it is accepted as self-evident. Three is a basic structure of life: carbohydrates, protein, fat; electron, proton, neutron; past, present, future. And it is a basic structure of stories: beginning, middle, end.

The power of three is so pervasive that you can use it to plan a functional wardrobe. Before buying an article of clothing, think of three things to wear with it, three places to wear it, and three ways to accessorize it.

Three is a symmetrical number that satisfies something deep within our psyches, and if we use it in our writing, we can find a way into our reader’s minds, hearts, and souls.

To use the power of three in articles: Set up your premise, prove it, conclude it.

To use the power of three in a mystery: Give one clue to tantalize; two to suggest a direction of discovery; three to create a pattern.

To use the power of three in a story: Create tension, develop it, release it.

To use the power of three in description: Mention three attributes.

To use the power of three in devising a plot, following the storyline of The Three Bears. The first time Goldilocks tries to reach her goal, she fails but learns the risks. The second time she tries, she confirms that she’s doing things wrong, but she learns from her mistakes. The third time she tries, she gets it right.

To use the power of three in giving a speech: First, tell the audience what you’re going to tell them. Second, tell them. Third, tell them what you told them.

Because my work in progress has evolved into a story of a mythic journey, I have been paying particular attention to three. Instead of one mentor, my hero will have three, each of whom gives him a gift. He will meet three women; the third will be “the one.” He will have three chances to cross the threshold into a safe place. The story will be divided into three parts, like a play, and the hero will have three opportunities to accomplish a goal in each part.

Perhaps the power of three is formulaic, but life is a formula, and the power of three seems to work for it. So, when in doubt, I’ll think three.

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On Writing: The Mythic Journey and Answering the Call to Adventure

March 28, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I have reached the point in my work-in-progress where the hero Chip has chosen not to enter the place of safety, preferring freedom to security, and he won’t be succumbing to the lure of safety until the third time it is offered. (Three is a very mythical number if mythicism can be said to have degrees.) Now that Chip is mostly alone in the world, however, I’m not quite certain what to do with him. For him to become willing to give up his freedom, he has to undergo many ordeals, and the dangers need to escalate. I know I can create these situations, but they should have an underlying feeling of cohesiveness, otherwise they will appear as a series of unrelated incidents that go nowhere. After my last blog post and the realization that my work-in-progress is starting to follow the mythic journey template, I thought I’d check the template to see if it offers a solution.

The mythic journey begins in the ordinary world, which is the way my work-in-progress begins.

The second stage in the format is the call to adventure. I suppose the ending of the world qualifies; you can’t find anything more unsettling and disturbing than that. The choice to enter the place of safety is another call to adventure, for Chip doesn’t know what will await him, but it’s also the antithesis of the call to adventure in that he is being called to safety not danger.

The third stage is the refusal of the call. The refusal is supposed to show the hero’s fear, his need to be cajoled, the riskiness of the adventure. But if the call isn’t dangerous, does Chip’s refusal to enter the safety zone qualify for the third step? He is confronting the great unknown, so perhaps his choosing freedom and danger isn’t as noble as I think it is. Perhaps he is choosing the known over the unknown. Either way, he prefers to stay where he is.

Traditionally, the hero cannot achieve his or her full potential without accepting the call and the risks that come with it. Choosing to accept the call does not guarantee the hero’s success, for the road is long and treacherous. But for Chip, refusing the call is the long and treacherous time. Still, in the mythic world, opposites often lead in the same direction, so I will presume the lessons learned are the same.

Many influences come into play to get the hero to answer the call, such as a change in circumstance and offenses against the natural order of things. These Chip will have, and they will help him redefine his objectives. Readers also like to see the hero’s reluctance overcome, and the stiffer the reluctance, the more they enjoy seeing it worn down. Perhaps that’s my answer. Maybe I need to have readers hoping Chip will opt for safety, make them an accomplice in his choice so they will have a stake during the other nine stages of the journey. To do this, I will need a character that stands in for the reader, which means Chip can’t go it alone.

This brings us to the next stage of the mythic journey: the meeting with the mentor. A mentor helps prepare the hero for the coming adventure, giving him advice and gifts. A mentor would certainly give this part the cohesiveness it lacks, and it would also give life to what would otherwise be simply a string of ordeals.

So there it is, the solution to my problem: a mentor.

A nice irony: in my mythic journey as a writer, I always hoped to find a mentor, one who would help me overcome the problems I encounter. Who would have thought I’d find this mentor in my own blog?

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On Writing: Flashing Back to Flashbacks

March 25, 2008 — Pat Bertram

In my post on finding a beginning to a novel, I mentioned as an aside that if you have many flashbacks in your book, you should move the story backward in order present those scenes as they happened chronologically. It’s good advice — my advice on writing is the distillation of the hundreds of writing manuals I have read coupled with my own experience as an unpublished novelist — but reading the comments people left on my blog made me wonder where I really stand.

I do think that ideally a story should begin at the beginning and go to the end with few backtracks. Telling it chronologically gives the story impetus, making us want to read further in order to find out what is going to happen. But the ideal way of telling a story is not always the most practical way.

If I have any reservations about my novel More Deaths Than One, they come from its five long flashbacks. Two flashbacks are told as stories. Scheherazade-like, the hero seduces the heroine with the stories so, as in all elements of a good novel, they do double duty. Two other flashbacks introduce the hero when he was younger and introduce a friend who is murdered. The fifth, I’m embarrassed to admit, is there simply because I like the story it told, though it did introduce a minor character. (And the heroine asked for a story. What can I say? She was insatiable.)

Originally I wrote the book in three parts: present, past, then present again. That didn’t work — the past was so boring it slowed the pace, even though much of it was important. Then I tried using a prologue. That didn’t work either; it seemed as if it were there merely as a hook and not an integral part of the story. So I began the novel in the present and added flashbacks as needed. I don’t know if it works, but right now it’s the only way I know to tell the story.

In my other books, I let the characters tell each other their life stories. It’s a cheat, really, a means of making the past seem more immediate, but at least the characters get to know each other at the same time the reader does. The flashbacks in my work-in-progress are true flashbacks, momentary musings by the hero. I do not plan to write any scenes in the past. I want this one to have as much forward movement as possible to mask its real character — an allegory. (I mean, really, an allegory? Who reads allegories?)

As a reader, I prefer anything that keeps my attention. Often, flashbacks disturb the flow of the story, making me aware of the construct. In the minutes it takes for me to get into the flow of the back-story, I lose interest. But I admit, I have become something of a philistine and no longer admire writing solely for its artistic and intellectual achievements.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

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Finding a Beginning to a Novel

March 20, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The search engine terms that bring most visitors to my blog are “the origin of the grim reaper” and “the moving finger writes,” but occasionally people come looking for something specific about writing. Lately, it seems, people are wondering how to find the beginning of a novel.

A character’s life, like any life, starts with either a gleam in the parents’ eyes or a birth, depending on your religious and political beliefs. And all stories, taken to their logical conclusion, end in death. Somewhere in that spectrum is the story you want to tell, and since all stories are about change, the novel should begin as close to the moment of change as possible.

The one exception to this rule is that if your story will need flashbacks, you should move the beginning further back on the spectrum in order to show these scenes as they are happening. Flashbacks, no matter how interesting, stop the flow of a story; because they are in the past, readers have no stake in their outcome. Making your flashbacks part of the present gives them an immediacy they would not otherwise have.

Most new writers (and many professionals who should know better) begin with a weather report, long passages of description to set the scene, or even the character’s ancestry. If you feel comfortable starting one of these ways, do so, but keep in mind it is only a temporary construct until you figure out where you are going with your story. As you write, you will find ways of inserting the necessary information elsewhere in the book, and will be able to delete it from the beginning of your novel. Despite what you might think, readers do not need to know who your character is before you begin the tale. They need to be thrust into the story so that they can find out for themselves who your character is.

So, start your novel with something happening, with a moment of potential drama, with a conversation. Many books begin with violence, which is a sure way of catching readers’ interest. At the very least, they will find it more exciting than a weather report or a description of your extraterrestrial world. And so will you. The more excited you are about the story you are writing, the easier it will be for you to write. Because, as you will find out, beginning a novel is simple; finishing it is an entirely different matter.

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Filling the Needs of the Story

March 11, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Almost all novels tell the same basic story: a character wants something and someone or something prevents that character from achieving his goal. While telling the story, many authors throw in incident after incident to fill out the book. After a while, these incidents seem incidental, as if they are simply filling space and not filling the needs of the story.

Writing instructors and how-to-get-published books remind authors to hook readers with a great beginning. The hook should be captivating, but that’s not the end of it; the rest of the book needs to be rewarding, too. If the author fills the book with insignificant incidents, readers feel as if they are wasting their time.

I am concerned that my current work in progress is becoming a series of incidents that go nowhere. My hero keeps reacting to the world changing around him, but he isn’t proactive. He wants to be left alone, to be free, but that is a passive goal. I keep thinking he should be acting, planning, taking charge, but what can he do when each day, each hour the world is different?

Eventually, of course, he will take charge of his destiny when he escapes the human zoo, but first I have to get him there. His world needs to become so threatening that he will give up freedom for safety, but it hasn’t reached that point yet. And the only way I know to reach that point is for him to continue reacting to the changes around him. And to do that, I need to keep adding incidents. Round and round it goes.

These incidents serve the needs of the theme, they serve the needs of the story, and they serve my needs as a writer by allowing me to stretch my imagination, but I don’t know if they are significant enough to offset the hero’s lack of resolve to do something. I would hate to have future readers finish the book simply because they don’t want to waste the time they invested.

In the end, I suppose, I need to concentrate on the flow. If the story flows smoothly, then everything else will fall into place, seeming as right and as inexorable as the sun rising in the east. And if by chance an incident disrupts the flow, I can edit it out later. Or perhaps I can have the sun rising in the west. Hmm. Could be interesting. I wonder how my hero would react to that?

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Humor Metamorphosing into Horror Metamorphosing into Allegory

February 29, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Of all the books I’ve written, my current work-in-progress is by far the most fun. Part of it, I am sure, is due to the past months of reviewing and being reviewed. I am more confident of myself as a writer, more accepting of my style, and even though the words still come slowly (I average about a page of keepers a night; the rest ends up in the trash) they are coming easier. They don’t fight me as much as they did in the past. I don’t spend as much time agonizing over the perfect speaker attribute or trying to come up with an original metaphor, which I would end up getting rid of anyway, because they always sound trite to me.

Another part of the fun comes from knowing where I am going. Because of the blogs I did on creating the character, I know who is his, what he wants, what his internal and external conflicts are, which in my previous works didn’t show up until after I’d written about fifty pages.

But the most fun is how the mood of the story keeps changing. It started out as a whimsically ironic apocalyptic novel, metamorphosed into horror, and now it has become something completely different: an allegory. A biblical allegory, which is itself ironic because . . . well, just because.

Chip, my hero, and the torments that beset him are reminiscent of the book of Job, or so it seems. It’s been many years since I’ve even looked at a bible, so I can’t give you specifics. But the overall feeling is the same.

How did this happen?

Details. Although I know the story and my character, I don’t necessarily know the day-to-day minutiae until I write them, and the story is in the details. Each action, no matter how small, has a reaction. Each reaction is motivated. How does Chip react to what is happening to him, and why? Why are the things happening in the first place? By such little steps – the hows and the whys — the story builds. And deepens. And metamorphoses.

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Blogging is Morning, Writing is Evening

February 19, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I was afraid that when I got involved with writing my new novel I would have to stop blogging, but here I am. I discovered that blogging and writing are two entirely different types of composition, using different parts of my brain, so one does not supersede the other.

Blogging is my morning writing, which I do on the computer. It is linear, logical, and entire of itself. The beginning and ending not only bracket the body; they reflect each other like sunrise and sunset or birth and burial. Because I keep it short, knowing how difficult it is for some people to read online, I can see the article all at once, which makes reblogging easy. (If good writing comes from rewriting, why shouldn’t good blogging come from reblogging?)

Writing is my evening composition. It is linear and logical in that every reaction I write is preceded by an action and every action is motivated, but the process of writing is anything but logical. A hand/mind connection comes into play at night when I sit in a cocoon of light, pen in hand, paper before me, that doesn’t seem to apply during the day or when I am at the computer. That is the time when magical things happen on the page, when subconscious ideas come to fruition. Sometimes the ideas come slowly and the words come hard, in which case I go to bed early. Other times my hand can’t form the words fast enough, and I lose the idea. Those nights I go to bed early, too. But sometimes, oh sometimes, the ideas come, the words flow, and the night goes on forever.

Of course, when morning comes, my linear mind takes over, and I chuck some of that immortal prose into the trash. But I do keep a few of the pages, rewrite others, and the story grows.

I write for myself, more so now that the possibility of never getting published is finally sinking in, but who do I blog for? Myself, too. This journal is a message from the blogging part of my brain to the writing part and if it pays attention, my writing should improve. At the very least, I am developing a database of writing hints for when I (or you) need help.

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Another Boring Blog by a Make-Believe Author

February 12, 2008 — Pat Bertram

When writing my previous novels, I didn’t bother with the underpinnings. I had an idea of where the story began and where it ended, but other than that, I wrote the story as I thought of it. I didn’t pay attention to the timeline; the days flowed one into the other without regard for weekends, holidays, or phases of the moon. (If I needed a full moon, I simply wrote one in, even if it was astronomically or lunarly impossible.) Invariably, though, in the second half of the book, I would get confused as to where I was and how everything fit together, and I’d have to stop writing while I figured out the timeline. Light Bringer was the worst because I had several characters whose activities needed to be coordinated, and I couldn’t hold everything in my head or even on a written chart. I finally set up a bulletin board, wrote a brief description of each scene on a card, then arranged and rearranged them like a puzzle until I got it worked out.

To keep that from happening with my current work in progress, to be able to track the story from the first scene, last night I set up a calendar for the hypothetical year of my story — the year the world ends. Even though I will not name the year in the book (at least I don’t plan to) I decided it takes place in 2012. That gives me a year to write the book, a year to rewrite it, a year to sell it, a year for the publisher to get it ready (I can have my dreams!) and still have it take place in the near future.

Perhaps it isn’t necessary to use the calendar of an actual year, but so much of reading occurs in the subconscious. Readers register details that don’t impinge on their conscious minds; they hear echoes of duplicated words and phrases; they get an uncomfortable if they feel that events couldn’t have happened as portrayed. So, it’s best for us writers to stick with reality when possible, especially when writing fantasy. (And, in the end, aren’t all novels fantasy?)

This morning I Googled phases of the moon for 2012, wanting to make certain my moon won’t be full or new at inappropriate times. I found the chart I was looking for. I found something else, too, something I had forgotten. The Mayans believe that the world will be end in 2012. Life imitating Art? Art imitating Life? My muse (or my memory) playing tricks on me again?

If nothing else, it tells me I did the right thing by setting up the underpinnings for my story this early. If I hadn’t, I would never have made the connection, and it might add an interesting dimension to the story, consciously or unconsciously.

As to the title: I must be a make-believe author if I couldn’t couldn’t come up with a more interesting title than that. Hope I do a better job writing my book!

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Mafia Cat Rejects Hilter. Hitler Breaks Off German-Italian Alliance. War Ends.

January 18, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I once read that certain topics were guaranteed attention getters. The only four from that list I remember are Hitler, the Mafia, war, and cats, to which I would add rejection. My post “A Rejection So Pleasant It Was Almost an Acceptance” attracted more attention than the last four combined. The title of this post is a 12-word short story based on those five attention getters (it got you here, didn’t it?) but the one I will be focusing on is rejection.

Rejection is hard to deal with because we feel so . . . rejected. Writers aspiring to be published, however, need to learn how to deal with it. There are hundreds of thousands of books written each year by unpublished novelists, and only a couple of hundred will be accepted by major publishers. Rejection, then, is part of the game.

A fellow writer pointed out that my great rejection letter scored high on the etiquette scale, but it was very likely a form letter. He could be right. I once got a rejection letter from an agent that was printed out on a computer and addressed to me personally. The letter spoke of my writing ability, mentioned the name of my book and how they had considered taking it on but had to pass because the subject matter was not quite right for their agency. Pleased with the personal touch and believing I was close to finding representation, I checked to see which of my novels would be a better fit, shot off another query, and received the same basic rejection letter in return. Definitely a case of a form letter that scored high on the etiquette scale.

If it is possible to write rejection letters that make the recipient feel good, why do agents and editors send letters that are cold, almost cruel? Because, despite what they say, they do not want to be queried. They get thousands of queries a year, and each of those queries mean unpaid work.

My advice? Briefly glance at any letter you receive to make sure it is a rejection, then shred it. Get it out of your sight. Send out more queries; to a certain extent, the more you are rejected, the more you become inured to it. Also, learn to see rejection letters for what they are: an attempt at keeping you from bothering that agent or editor again.

And hope that one day you will become so well known that those agents will seek you out, and then you can send them rejection letters.

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Cook’s Cutting-Edge Plots and Cookie-Cutter Characters

January 5, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I read a Robin Cook book the other day. Doesn’t matter which one — they are all similar with their cutting-edge plots and cookie-cutter characters. After more than three decades of writing, he should have learned a bit about characterization, but apparently he doesn’t need to. He is a bestselling author.

That’s right: an author. Not the practicing physician he seems to want us to think he is, but an author. Wearing the accoutrements of a physician, he smirks at us from his book jackets, which announce that he is on leave from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Can you imagine his poor patients? After thirty-five years of hanging around his waiting room, they are getting blinder and deafer as the nurse says for the ten-thousandth time, “He’s on leave. Just be patient and he’ll get to you when he can.”

One point in Cook’s favor is that, ignoring what his picture says about him and concentrating on his books, he is an unpretentious author. He doesn’t expect us to believe he is a literary genius. He is what he wanted to be: a bestselling author.

When he embarked on a writing career, he read one hundred bestsellers and dissected them, then began writing his own. He is good at being a bestselling author, but he is terrible at characterization. Not one of his characters has ever leapt off the page into my imagination. They are simply types fulfilling specific roles.

I want more than that for my books. I may never be a bestselling author. I may never even be a published author, but by gum, I can learn how to write characters that people will love or love to hate. (And so could Robin Cook, if he wanted to.)

I am starting to write a new novel, one that has languished in the back of my mind for the past year, and I need to create a hero. A reader of this blog commented, “Why not blog a character? It will help you with thinking about personality, motivation, history, yet you won’t have to worry about where the story is going, and it won’t have the pressure of having to write a whole book.”

I’m not sure I know what “blogging a character” is, but I can certainly begin creating one here.

I’ll start tomorrow.

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