Why Should I Read Your Novel? Why Should You Read Mine?

April 25, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Why should I read your novel? Why should anyone? Only you know the answer to that, and you tell us by the story you choose to tell, the characters you choose to create, the themes you choose to develop.

We read not so much to escape our lives but to add meaning, understanding, and depth to our days. If we find nothing but the same old stories told in the same old ways, we come away from the experience intellectually and emotionally unsatisfied. If the characters don’t change in a fundamental way, if they don’t struggle with an idea bigger than they are, we don’t change either.

Too often when I finish reading a book, I wonder why I bothered. The story is stale, the characters undeveloped, the stakes trivial, the theme banal. This is particularly true of books written by prolific authors. After three or four books, they plagiarize themselves, using the same basic characters and plots they did before. Perhaps their first book was fresh, with something new to say, but that something becomes stale with each succeeding book.

Not being a published writer myself, I don’t know how to keep that from happening, especially in today’s book market where an author is expected to churn out a clone every year. And new writers are being steered into that same pattern. We’re told to write in the genre we read because obviously we like the genre and because we are familiar with its conventions. But perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps we should write in a genre we don’t read so we don’t keep perpetuating clichés. We might unwittingly rehash old stories in the unfamiliar genre, but there is greater chance of saying something new.

My current work-in-progress is developing into an allegorical apocalyptic novel, which is bizarre because I don’t read that particular type of book; I don’t even know if that is a type. What isn’t bizarre, though, is all I am learning by writing in an unfamiliar genre. I may very well be writing a clichéd story — I have no way of knowing — but at least I am coming to it from my own unique viewpoint, not the distilled vision of all the authors who have gone before. And I am learning more about writing from this novel than any of my previous ones because I have to pull what comes next out of the creative ether, not from my memory of the stories I have previously read.

Without a mystery at its core as in my previous works, I have to search for other ways of adding tension to the story such as the inner conflicts that beset my hero. How much freedom is he willing to give up for security? How much security is he willing to give up for security? How much of freedom and security are illusory? And I am becoming cognizant of theme, symbols, and other mythic elements as ways of unifying disparate parts of the story.

So why should you read my book when it’s completed? Because, if I do it right, it will be an entertaining way for you come to terms with one of the major dilemmas facing us today, and it will take you into the life of a character whose conflicts and choices will help make sense of your own life.

At least, that’s the way story is supposed to work.

Posted in books, culture, fiction, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Stories, Cliches, and Finding the Truth

April 23, 2008 — Pat Bertram

We are steeped in story. From birth to death, story forms our lives. For some people — writers, quasi-hermits, employees of the publishing, movie, and television industries — story is their life. More stories are available to us in more media than ever before in history, including the stories we share with each other and ourselves. What is a daydream if not a story of the future we tell ourselves? And at night, while sleeping, our dreams tell us other stories. No wonder we have such a hard time finding a story that is not clichéd.

But they do exist. In fact, anyone can write a non-clichéd story if he or she does the work to find the truth of the story, but all too often writers with nothing to say look to books and movies for the truth and end up with rehashed forgeries.

Stories of pattern killers (serial killers by another name) became clichéd very quickly. How many times have we heard or read that same bit about the killer being a white male between the ages of . . . Never mind. You probably know it better than I do. Because so many writers borrowed their truths from previous stories about pattern killers, the only thing new they had to add was the grisly murder pattern, each one more gruesome than the last. The way to tell a non-clichéd serial killer story is to find the truth: in a bizarre sort of way, a pattern killer story is romance between the killer and the hunter. Their relationship forms the story, not the murders. And, on a deeper level, it is the story of the hunter finding the killer within himself. Thomas Harris portrayed this brilliantly in The Red Dragon, but when he wrote Hannibal, he chose grisliness over truth. You may not agree with me about the truth of the pattern killer story, but that is my truth. It is up to you to find your own truth.

So how do we do we find the truth for our stories, not just pattern killer stories? By going small, by knowing everything possible about our characters, the streets they walk, the way they think, the places and people that make up their world. David Morrell traveled to get the feel of his settings, and he took survival courses to find out what his characters would experience in wild, but not all of us have the time, money, or inclination to travel to distant places or to take physically taxing courses. Nor is it necessary. We can find the truth in our own neighborhoods. We can walk the streets and take note of everything we see. How do those streets differ from any other we have traveled? By being true to character and place, we find the small bits of action that tell the story’s truth. We are used to thinking of action scenes as car chases, fights, and other horrifying events, but an action scene can be as subtle as a look or a touch of a hand. That is where the truth lies, in the unexpected details.

A story, when set in a particular place with a particular character, will have a truth that no other story has. If we have the patience and skill to find the story’s truth, our truth, we can tell it without reducing it to cliché.

Posted in books, culture, fiction, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

A Reason For Now. A Reason For Later.

April 22, 2008 — Pat Bertram

During the past few months, I was privileged to read the first chapters of many unpublished novels and the critiques other readers left. One thing that interested me was how often readers would mention that a certain episode didn’t fit and should be taken out, and the writer would counter that it was necessary to the story. Can’t argue with that, I suppose, since only the writer knows what he or she intended. But it made me wonder why readers don’t see the same thing in published books. Do we just assume because it’s been published that everything fits? Do we have a different set of rules for published and non-published works?

Last night the answer came to me. It’s not so much that we’re looking for things to pick at in a work we’re critiquing. (Is that even a word? I’ve used it so much that I no longer know.) It’s that good authors know how make every episode in their novel do double duty. If has to be in there to set up a later episode or scene, it must also have a reason for being in there now. If a character places a gun in an unlocked desk drawer to make it available for a murder in a later scene, for example, the character must be a reason for putting the gun in the drawer and not locking it. Perhaps he’s a cop and was cleaning it. So what could have been so terrible that he would forget his training and toss it in an unlocked drawer? Maybe one of his kids is trying to drown the other in the bathtub. A skilled author can make the gun in the unlocked drawer seem so reasonable and natural that readers forget it’s there until someone finds it and shoots it. The reverse is also true. If there is a gun in an unlocked drawer at the beginning, someone must use it in the end.

So, to make your novel tight and keep from jarring your readers out of the story because something doesn’t fit, make certain that everything has two reasons for being there: a reason for now and a reason for later.

Posted in books, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

Follow the Rules or Don’t Follow the Rules

April 17, 2008 — Pat Bertram

In my quest for publication, I read books about writing, books about how to get published, books about staying out of the slush pile. I also read articles by agents and editors explaining what they are looking for. Although I have not yet reached my goal of getting published, my advice is good. It is based on a distillation of these books and articles combined with my experiences with agents and editors and writing.

One thing I have learned is that there are four groups of writers: the successful ones who make big money for their publishers. These authors can write however they wish. Their books sell millions of copies, but that does not mean they write well (though once they did write well enough to get published). Novice writers would be wise not to base their conception of good writing on these works.

The second group of writers is also published, whether by traditional publishers, POD publishers, and e-publishers — anyone who requires a submissions process. (There is a bit of gray area here that I don’t want to get into, but the point is still the same.) Some of these writers may achieve a modicum of success, some may never be able to quit their day jobs. Each succeeding book they write is open to review by publishers, and there is no guarantee they will continue to be published. These authors have a little bit of leeway when it comes to writing. They can break the rules, but only if they write well enough to make it work.

The third group of writers is the self-published. They can write however they wish, break whatever rules they wish. As long as they can sell a few books, most are content, but very few self-published writers ever make much money.

Then there are all the rest of us. We are the ones who need to follow the rules. Sure we can write however we wish, but if we wish to get published, we would do well to use those rules as a guideline for editing our work. As long as we are trying to get published, we need to attract a single reader: an agent or editor. That is who our target is, not our ideal reader. Our ideal reader may love the story, but until we hit the target, they will never see the published book.

I lied: there is a fifth group — those who are so talented or so lucky that they will attract an agent or an editor no matter what rules they break. Since I am not in this group, I have to try to follow the rules.

Unfortunately, I am not a very good rule follower — I want to do it my way — but if I heeded my own advice, I would greatly enhance my chances of getting published.

Posted in books, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

The Road to Rejection is Paved with Bad Beginnings

April 15, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The metaphor in the title of this article might be a cliché, but it is true. The number one reason for agents and editors to reject a manuscript is a poor beginning for the simple reason that if the beginning is bad, they read no further.

So what is a good beginning? I can tell you that it must be interesting; it must hook the reader; it should introduce the main character and the basic conflict; it must pertain to the story and not be tacked on simply to attract attention; it should not contain any adverbs; it should not contain any backstory; and it should be well written without being unintentionally funny, such as a character who thinks to himself — who else would he think to? But I can’t tell you how to write a good beginning, and after reading Hooked by Les Edgerton, I am even less equipped to tell you than before I read it. The problem is that I was not moved by even one of the first lines or first paragraphs that he held up as stellar examples of good beginnings. In fact, as constant a reader as I am, I was so unimpressed by every single one of them that I did not add any of the novels to my reading list. This does not mean I think they were bad beginnings, only that they didn’t move me.

Since I can’t tell you how to write a good beginning, I will tell you some of Edgerton’s red flags that keep agents and editors from reading further:

Opening with a dream. Understandable why they would hate that beginning; I do, and I’m sure you do too. Talk about a cliché! The only thing worse is having your character wake up at the end of the book and discovering the entire story was a dream. Makes me feel cheated.

A character waking up to an alarm clock or a radio announcement of a major event. This tells the agent or editor that your book will be filled with tedious details. If your book is filled with the tedious details of day-to-day living, it would be a good idea to get rid of them. If it isn’t filled with such details, it would be a good idea to write an opening that better reflects your writing.

Too little dialogue. If there is no dialogue on the first page, editors and agents will generally pass because it is a sign of densely written prose, which no longer sells well.

Opening with dialogue. The only time this is acceptable is if the speakers are immediately identified. If we don’t know who the people are, why would anyone care what they are saying? I know I don’t. This goes double for rumination. Nothing is more boring than a character who sits around “thinking to himself.”

Other than that, you will have to find your own way to a good beginning, as will I, and hope that whatever beginning we write will be so great it cannot be ignored.

 

Posted in books, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 5 Comments »

The Most Wasted Day of All is That on Which We Have Not Laughed

April 13, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The first half of a novel comes slowly for me. Some writers can sit down and let the story whoosh out of them, but I have to think of everything, to create everything, to draw in words the images I want readers to see. I castigate myself at times for writing so slowly, but if I finished the book quickly, I’d simply be adding one more unpublished novel to the world. And do we really need that?

So many books seem to be written as a way for writers and then later their readers to kill time. (Odd, how time such an ambiguous villain that we try to kill it while wishing we had more of it.) Perhaps books were always a way of wasting time. I came across this quote the other day: “Most of today’s books have an air of having been written in one day from books read the night before.” I can see you nodding your head in agreement. The interesting thing about this comment is that Nicolas-Sebastien Chamfort wrote it in the eighteenth century. (I don’t know who he is, either, other than that during the French revolution, he was an outspoken writer who botched his suicide. He died in 1794; his last words were, “And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead.”)

I try to write most days, but life tends to get in the way. Is it better to write or is it better to watch a movie with a friend? The friend, of course. And I know Chamfort would agree. He also said, “The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.”

But I am never far from my work-in-progress. As I watched the movie, Krippendorf’s Tribe, I found myself taking notes on all the things I would have to include in my apocalyptic novel to make my new society believable: rituals, games, dancing, stories. So I covered all the bases: I was with my friend, I laughed, I worked. Not bad for a night spent not writing.

Other nights when I can’t write, I edit. I know we’re told not to edit before we’ve written the entire novel, but if the first pages aren’t quite right, they niggle at me and keep me from continuing. But the words do add up, and by the second half of the novel, I know the characters, I have the story firmly entrenched in my mind, and sometimes, just sometimes . . . whoosh!

Posted in books, life, writing. Tags: , , , . 2 Comments »

How Do You Create Characters That Readers Will Fall In Love With?

April 7, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The main reason editors give for rejecting my work (when they give a reason) is that they didn’t fall in love with my characters as they had hoped. This puzzles me because I have never fallen in love with any character I have read. I’ve liked some, found some interesting, but love? No.

I know what makes good characters — their strengths, their vulnerabilities, their flaws — but are these the things that make us love them? All I know is that I don’t like characters that have purposely been given flaws; they seem contrived and clichéd, like the boozing cop or the mother who can’t communicate with her teen-ager. Such purposeful flaws remind me of the Persian flaw. Supposedly, the Persian carpet makers put a flaw in every carpet because only God can be perfect; what that says to me is that they thought they were so perfect that they had to try to be imperfect, but such arrogance in itself is a flaw so they weren’t perfect after all.

I always wondered about that flaw in the carpet. I think the flaw come first and the rationale second. Can’t you just see the carpet maker in his stall at the bazaar telling an aggressive haggler, “No, ma’am, I can’t bring the price down any further. A flaw? What flaw? Oh, that. It’s not a flaw, it was put there on purpose because . . . because . . .only God is perfect. Yes, that’s it.”

But I digress.

I do know that interesting characters make interesting stories, not the other way around. And how you make characters interesting is to make them come alive by giving them traits that are a bit more exaggerated than real life. Who wants to read about a character who sits around watching television all the time, or who repeatedly has the same tiresome argument with their child, or who can’t resolve their problems? We deal with that every day. We don’t need to read about it. On the other hand, if the traits are too idealized, characters come across as comic book silly.

So how do you create characters that readers will fall in love with? I don’t know. Sometimes while writing this blog I can figure out the answer to a question that’s troubling me, but not today. Sorry. I’ll let you know when I do figure it out.

add to del.icio.us : Add to Blinkslist : add to furl : Digg it : add to ma.gnolia : Stumble It! : add to simpy : seed the vine : : : TailRank : post to facebook

Posted in blogging, books, culture, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 5 Comments »

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?

Posted in blogging, books, culture, fiction, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

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.

Posted in blogging, books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

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.

Posted in blogging, books, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , . 5 Comments »
« Older posts
Newer posts »