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on writing is the distillation of the hundreds of writing manuals I have read coupled with my own experience as an unpublished novelist — but reading the comments people left on my blog made me wonder where I really stand.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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What the Color of your Vehicle Says About You (Or the Character in Your Book)

March 23, 2008 — Pat Bertram

In my green article for St. Patrick’s Day, I wrote, “Owning a dark green vehicle supposedly means that you are traditional, trusty, and well balanced, but what it really means is that you are thrifty. Who makes dark green cars anymore? If you own one, it’s probably been a while since you bought a new vehicle.”

So for all you smug people who don’t own a green vehicle, I thought I’d tell you what the color of your car says about you.

Yes, your fiery orange-red sports car says exactly what you think it does: you’re sexy, speedy, high-energy, dynamic. Before you preen, go out and look at your red car. Most red cars on the road are more of a kidney bean color. Is yours? If so, it means you are dynamic and energetic but are losing your fire. You really want to be have that orange-red sports car personality, but you just can’t quite make it. You’re too busy, too old, or too tired. For all the good your red car does you, it might as well be brown.

A silver car supposedly says that you are cool and elegant. The only problem is that since silver was the most popular car color for several years, almost everyone owns one, like your neighbors who don’t mow their lawns and don’t put their garbage cans away after the garbage has been picked up. Real cool. Very elegant.

White supposedly means you are fastidious, but what it really means is that you wanted that fiery orange-red sports car, but you drive like a bat out of hell or like batman in his batmobile, (depending on your age group) and you were afraid that you’d get too many tickets so you chose the less conspicuous white. Good thinking. On average, while drivers in red cars do not get more tickets than anyone else, orange-red sports car drivers do, and let’s face it, they deserve them. Who drives the speed limit in a car like that?

A light blue vehicle supposedly means that you’re calm and quiet, but what it really means is that you went to the showroom to buy a sunshine yellow car to show how joyful and young-at-heart you are, but they only had marine blue, and since you really are a calm, quiet person who doesn’t like to make waves, you bought it.

A purple vehicle means you are creative, individualistic, original, and perhaps it does. It could also mean you’re too old to care what anyone thinks of you.

A black vehicle says you are empowered, not easily manipulated, love elegance, and you appreciate the classics. It’s also says that you are mysterious or that you have two sides to your personality; it’s the favored car of both clergy and gangsters.

A dark blue vehicle says you are credible, confident, dependable. And you drive too much because you always get stuck with the carpool.

A gray vehicle says you are sober, corporate, practical. Boring. But if that gray car is charcoal with sparkles, you still have flashes of brilliance and charisma.

An orange vehicle says you are fun loving, talkative, fickle, trendy. A yellow-green one says you are trendy, whimsical, lively. And you know it’s true. Only fun and whimsical cars come in these colors: Volkswagen bugs and little sportscars.

A tan vehicle means that you’re timeless, basic, simple, but it also means you have something to hide. Maybe bad driving habits? Or that you never wash your car?

A gold vehicle says is that you love comfort and will pay for it; it also says that you’re intelligent, and you must be — you were smart enough to come read my article!

And a brown vehicle supposedly means you’re down-to-earth but who are you trying to kid? If you really cared about the earth, you wouldn’t have bought that big old gas-guzzler.

So what color of car do I drive? I’m sorry, but I don’t know you well enough to answer such a personal question.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

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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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On Writing: A Character’s Emotions

March 19, 2008 — Pat Bertram

How would you react to the end of your world? In Groundhog Day, each morning was the same and only Phil Connors changed as he lived through the monotony of his new world. Interestingly enough, such monotony would make it easier for you to cope; you would know what each day would bring.

But what if the opposite were true? What if you woke up to a different world every day, where nothing was familiar and nothing made sense? You would learn to cope with the current day as best as you could, but the next day you would have to start coping all over again in an entirely different milieu. Even worse, everyone you know has disappeared. One day they were there, the next day . . . nothing.

In my current work in progress, my hero is struggling with this very problem, but it seems to me as if he’s being a bit too accepting of the situation. Dealing with his neurotic mother all his life could have trained him to be adaptable, which would make him accepting. He could be shell-shocked, which could explain his lack of emotion. He is dealing with the possibility that he’s gone crazy, which could further explain why he’s not emoting all over the place. And, to top it all off, he is in the denial stage regarding the deaths/deletion/disappearance of his mother and his friends.

But the question arises: are his the proper reactions for the situation? Could his restrained emotions be due to my lack of understanding of the human psyche, my inability to write emotional scenes, or perhaps simply my dislike of overly emotional characters?

Emotions are seldom pure and simple; they come mixed, like love and hate, fear and attraction. Sometimes they are inappropriate, such as laughter at funerals, anger at imagined slights. Some people have extreme emotional swings, and other people react unemotionally no matter what happens. And sometimes, the more outrageous the situation, the less emotion it garners.

With such wildly divergent possibilities, in the end, it comes down to what I can make the reader believe, and more importantly, what I can make myself believe. If I believe his reactions are the proper ones, I can write them properly. I like the idea that he is a stoic guy moving through his changing world until one insignificant problem arises to send him over the edge. But if he is that stoic, will he go over the edge? I think not.

And so it goes.

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On Writing: Embracing Playfulness

March 18, 2008 — Pat Bertram

My goal as a writer is to learn all I can and to be so accomplished and confident that I can write whatever and however I wish and be able to stand by it. Too many new writers think they don’t need to follow the rules, that they can set their own style, which is true up to a point, and that point is readability. What I want is confidence coupled with readability. Following the style others have set is not my way, but so far I haven’t found a distinct voice.

One way I am trying to find that voice is by embracing playfulness. When I’m trying to figure out where to go with a story or a scene, I brainstorm, stringing incongruities and absurdities together, the more ridiculous the better. Not only does it get my mental juices flowing, sometimes those ridiculous ideas are the perfect answer to the problem of what comes next.

Silliness has added some interesting twists to my books. My novel, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, is about a disease that wipes out most of the population of Colorado. About half way through the writing, I hit a wall. I tried brainstorming with a friend, and he had no interest whatsoever in my plight, so being silly, he said I should forget the book and write about zombies. I laughed at the suggestion, but the idea took hold. Since the disease was a rapidly mutating one, I had the disease go through a short spurt where the victims turned into zombies. Gave the book an interesting twist, mostly because even though the idea started out being silly, it ended up being spooky. Odd, that.

One thing I have not been able to silly my way out of is my habit of using too many pronouns. He did this. He did that. He went here. He went there. It’s the mark of an amateur, but more than that, I don’t like it. I should be able to come up with a better way of telling the story. And maybe someday I will.

Until then, all I can do is write, perfect the craft, and embrace playfulness.

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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Green and More

March 17, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The colors at the ROY end of the spectrum excite us, the BIV colors calm us down, but green is neutral in its effect.

Green is the largest color family discernible to the human eye. Darker tones are linked with durability, soft tones are perceived as restful, bluish greens can be calming, yellowish greens can be exciting. Yellowish greens also produce feelings of well-being and optimism, but too much yellow in the green induces negative responses and are associated with envy, illness, toxins, slime. (You with that bilious green sweater: now you know why your wife keeps throwing it out. Do her a favor and leave it in the trash.)

If green is your favorite color (and statistically it isn’t, most adults prefer blue and most children prefer red) you are probably stable, well balanced, and responsible. You are a good citizen, a concerned parent, a caring companion, a loyal friend. You are intelligent and inclined to do something new rather than follow the crowd. (What a conundrum! Everyone else is wearing green for St. Patrick’s Day, and it’s your favorite color so you’d like to do the same, but since it is your favorite color, you are the type who doesn’t do what everyone else is doing. How do you cope?)

Owning a dark green vehicle supposedly means that you are traditional, trusty, and well balanced, but what it really means is that you are thrifty. Who makes dark green cars anymore? If you own one, it’s probably been a while since you bought a new vehicle. (Off the subject of green, but on the subject of vehicle colors: men sometimes prefer trucks in blue because they love the way mud looks on the side of a blue truck. Hey, don’t look at me. I’m just reporting someone else’s research.)

Wear green if you are anxious, bitter, resentful, and you want to overcome these negative feelings. Wear green to ameliorate allergies, circulation or breathing problems, or upper back and shoulder pains.

Wear green for creative thinking. If you have writer’s block, wear a green hat, switch to green ink, go outside and contemplate the green grass and green leaves. But if detached, analytical thinking is required, stay away from green. Especially green beer. But then, it’s Saint Patrick’s Day, so who cares about detached, analytical thinking?

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Can the Setting Be a Character in the Story?

March 13, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The setting of a book should not be static, a mere backdrop for the story, but should have personality, emotions, strengths, weaknesses, scars, and moods. At least that’s what books on writing tell us.

In my previous novels, I tried to make the settings necessary to the stories, to show how they couldn’t have happened anywhere else in exactly the same way. Because my stories all take place in Colorado, by the very fact of geography, mountains play a part if only to shadow the humans living at their foot.

My current work in progress is different in that the world changes constantly. The mountains are always there giving my hero a reference point, but cities change to plains and plains change to seas. My hero has to try to come to terms with his constantly changing environment, which creates most of the conflict for the first part of the story. Because of this, I’m wondering if I can turn the environment into a character. It would certainly make the first part stronger because during much of it the hero is alone. It would give the book an entirely new dimension. And it would be a challenge for me.

Despite its changeability, though, the environment doesn’t want anything, so I’m not certain it can be a character. Doesn’t a character have to be dynamic with its own wants and needs? Even if it is possible for an environment to be a character, can I create one that has wants and needs without my anthropomorphizing it? Maybe the environment, like my hero, wants to be left alone. Maybe, the environment, also like my hero, stoically endures what is happening to it. But how would I show this from only my hero’s point of view?

I remember discussions in literature classes about those very things, and I didn’t get it. No matter how dramatic a setting was and how much it influenced the characters, it still always seemed to me to be static. Yet here I am, trying to put something more into my setting than perhaps needs to be there.

The only thing to do, I suppose, is keep all this in the back of my mind as I am writing, and if I can make the setting more alive, do so. If not, leave well enough alone. The story is already developing too many depths for what was supposed to be a silly little tale.

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Describing a Character the Easy Way

March 12, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The tendency today is for authors to keep character descriptions in a novel short and focused by using brand names, and some books on writing recommend doing so. Obviously, a character who wears named designer suits or dresses is different from one who wears discount store clothing. And a character who eats a certain boxed cereal is different from one who eats plain old oatmeal. (Another recommendation is to describe characters by comparing them to celebrities, which, in a way, is the same thing — a celebrity is a name brand person.)

Most readers, perhaps, can more easily identify with a character who uses the same brands they do, and such descriptions give the book immediacy, but it seems to me like blatant advertising. Brand names have so encroached on our lives that we no longer realize we’ve become walking billboards. Even worse, we pay for the privilege of donating our personal space to the major corporations for free advertising.

But that doesn’t mean I have to embrace the trend in my writing. Sometimes there is no getting around a brand name. Saying a character put a Band-Aid on a cut has a completely different connotation than saying the character put a bandage on the cut. (For me, bandage summons a vision of gauze wrapped around an arm with the ends tied in a knot.) And I once used the phrase “Popsicle colors” to describe northern Wisconsin in the autumn. (If you’ve ever been there when the leaves are changing color, you will know how apt that description is.) Outside of that, I don’t think I’ve ever used brand names.

So, like writers of fantasy, science fiction and historical novels, I have to fall back on the old-fashioned way of describing and defining a character — by the colors they prefer, the style of clothing they wear and, most importantly, their actions. In the end, these descriptions are more enduring than brand names. Brand names, however entrenched, do become defunct, which would make our books passé, and us along with it. This perhaps defeats the purpose of writing. After all, don’t we all harbor the unrealistic dream of future generations reading our immortal works?

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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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Words Yipping at My Heels

March 9, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I just finished taking a look at two thrillers, both big, slick, well-touted works. Although they had interesting plots, there were so many point-of-view characters and so many incidents that the stories never seemed to go anywhere. I finally got tired of the words yip-yip-yipping at me and closed the books.

Ahh. Silence.

Three-hundred-page manuscripts used to be common, but the size of books grew along with the influence of corporate booksellers. Not only did large books make people think they were getting more for their money, they were well suited for mass displays. As with other merchandise, perception of worth apparently supersedes true value.

Big books are divided into short chapters and those chapters divided into smaller and smaller segments that make the book easy to put down and pick up at odd intervals for attention-challenged readers, but those small segments make it hard for a reader who wishes to identify with a character and be pulled into another reality.

Some books don’t lose anything by being big and thick. Although toward the end I did get a trifle tired of Stephen King’s Duma Key, he managed to keep my attention all the way through. No mean feat. But most big books today can do with some serious editing to better focus the plot and give some depth to the characters and stop that incessant yipping.

One of the more enjoyable books I read recently was a mere two hundred and sixty pages, but it didn’t seem like a short book. The character’s plight engaged my interest, and I didn’t keep flipping pages in an effort to finish the book quickly.

I used to feel guilty that my own books were only about three hundred pages long; obviously something is wrong with me if other writers can churn out words by the hundreds of thousands. But I want my words to signify something, to be worth the time it takes to dig them out of my psyche. And I want my characters to be more than mere types. I don’t know if I will ever become the writer I wish to be, but I know one thing: I won’t be creating overblown, yippy works; the words come too hard. Besides, I would rather readers complain that my books are too short than slam them shut to get a bit of silence.

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