A Halloween Story in Miniature

October 25, 2007 — Pat Bertram

A drabble is a short story of exactly one hundred words with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I have been experimenting with this story form as a way of improving my writing, trying to get as strong an image as possible in just a few words. Here is a miniature story for Halloween:

       Cuddling her baby, Cassie went to answer the door.

       Anna, eyes bright beneath hooded lids, smiled at her. “I came to see my newest neighbor.” She bent forward and peered into the baby’s face. “Oooh, he’s so sweet I could just eat him up.” She held out her arms. “May I?”

       Pride welled up in Cassie’s chest. “Sure.”

       With a sudden sinuous motion, Anna took the baby, popped him in her mouth, and swallowed him whole.

       Unable even to scream, Cassie stared at the bulge in the woman’s midsection.

       “What?” Anna gave her a puzzled look. “You said I could.”        

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Coloring Your Way out of Writer’s Block

October 24, 2007 — Pat Bertram

How color vision actually works is still a mystery, but there is no mystery about the profound effect color has on human physiology. Red tends to raise blood pressure, increase pulse rate, and excite brain waves. Blue tends to have the reverse effect, and green tends to be neutral.

So, if you are having writer’s block, try a little color therapy. It can’t hurt; at the very least it will give you something besides your computer screen or those same old walls to stare at. And it has the benefit of being exceedingly simple. All you have to do is choose your color from the following list, wear it, hang it on the wall, find a knickknack or a bouquet of flowers that color to put on your desk, then focus on it.

Purple will boost your creativity, and help stimulate your intuitive abilities.

Yellow can help you feel optimistic if your blockage is making you anxious and depressed. It can also induce enlightenment, which is what you are looking for.

Dark blue encourages meditative thinking, so it’s especially helpful if are having difficulty focusing.

Green helps promote harmony if your inability to write is making you irritable.

Red will energize you if you’re too tired to think.

Even if the color therapy doesn’t bring about the effect you wish, playing around with all those colors will give your mind a rest from writing, and perhaps when you return to your keyboard, the problem will have resolved itself.

If not, do what I do: go for a walk.

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Cheat Your Way to a Colorful Character

October 23, 2007 — Pat Bertram

The Luscher color test for gaining accurate psychological information about a person has been around for six decades, and though it is not widely used in the United States, it is prevalent in Europe.

A few years ago, I bought the book, thinking to take the test, but I never could decide which of the colors I liked best; they all looked murky to me. Even if I did manage to arrange the color cards in order of preference, I would have had to go through all the equations to figure out what that order meant, and it seemed to be a lot of trouble for nothing. I set the book aside, promising to take the test some day, and that book has been sitting on the shelf taunting me. But no longer.

I found the test on-line today at colorquiz.com, and took it. Finally. In some respects it was surprisingly accurate. It said I felt restricted and prevented from progressing; that I was seeking a solution to remove these limitations. Which does describe my quest for publication. It also said that the fear of being prevented from achieving the things I want leads me into a relentless search for satisfaction in the pursuit of illusory or meaningless activities. Like this blog, perhaps?

The results were divided into six sections: the existing situation, stress sources, restrained characteristics, the desired objective, the actual problem, and the actual problem 2. Those sections seemed familiar, and then it occurred to me they were similar to the character profile I create when outlining a new novel.

So, here’s how to cheat your way to a colorful character: if you don’t want to go through the trouble of figuring out what your character wants, what stresses him, what his secondary problem is (the primary problem you already know; it’s the story problem) go to the color quiz website, imagine you are your character, and pick the colors your character would choose. Instant profile.

You still have to write the character, but at least you won’t have to worry about making him psychologically realistic.

I meant to be facetious by suggesting this, but now that I think about it, it’s not a bad idea. I might follow my own advice.

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The Most Important Writing Technique to Master in your Quest for Publication

October 22, 2007 — Pat Bertram

The most important thing you will write is your endorsement on the back of a royalty check, but that is not a technique you have to master. You have probably envisioned it a hundred times.

Then what technique is important? Well, for starters, you have to master the technique of storytelling, but that does you no good if the editor doesn’t read beyond the first five pages. So you have to master the art of creating interest and interesting characters in your first pages, but a busy editor might not give you that much of her time if you haven’t hooked her in the initial paragraph. Mastering the art of the hook, then, is crucially important, but it is not the most important technique to master.

If you’ve read any books on how to get published, I’m sure you know by now where I’m headed. Not to the title, which is relatively unimportant; the publicity department will change it anyway. And not to the synopsis, though that is very important since it would be introducing your story.

All that’s left is the query letter, which is definitely the most important technique to master on your quest for publication. If you don’t create interest for your book in your letter, no one will read your synopsis, won’t read your initial paragraph, won’t read your first five pages, and won’t even look at the rest of your manuscript. And there will be no royalty check to sign.

Although I’d read over and over again about how important it was to master the art of writing a query letter, it didn’t strike home until several months ago when I was shredding all the rejection letters I’d received. I was feeling down, thinking my dream of getting published was never going to be realized, when it occurred to me that my manuscript had never been rejected. No one had even seen it. All that had been rejected was my query letter.

I can’t tell you how to write a winning query letter, because if I knew how, I would already be signing checks, but I do know there is only one way to master any technique. Practice. Practice. Practice.

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What do you call an unpublished writer?

October 20, 2007 — Pat Bertram

What do you call an unpublished writer? A writer, of course. All it takes to be a writer is to write, and going by the proliferation of blogs on the Internet, almost all of us are writers.

Being a novelist is something completely different. You need to be a writer, certainly, but you also need to know the elements of storytelling, how to create characters that come alive, how to describe a scene without losing the momentum of the story. And then you need to put it all together into a cohesive whole that engages the reader’s attention.

But most of all, you need to actually write the novel, to put your idea into words and get it down on paper or into your word processor. That takes discipline. So does rewriting the same novel perhaps a dozen times until you get it right. Because, as we all know, there are no great writers, only great rewriters.

You do all that, and then one day your novel is finished. You’re proud of yourself for having accomplished something many people only dream about, then the terrible truth comes crashing into you with all the force of a linebacker’s tackle: no one cares. Perhaps your family and friends will care, but even from them you will hear the same self-absorbed comments you get from strangers.

You know the ones I mean:

  1. I could have written a book, but . . .
  2. I always thought my life would make a good book . . .
  3. I wrote a book: My diary.
  4. I’ve written a book; it’s all up here in my head, I just have to get it down on paper.
  5. So? I’ve written a hundred books; they’re all packed away in my closet.

Taking their lack of support in stride, you send out your opus to find you’ve reached another level of indifference. On this level, you are not the only person who had the discipline, the ability, perhaps even the talent to have written a good novel; you are one of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. And the agents and editorial assistants who have to plow through those mountains of words don’t care; they haven’t the energy.

If you are lucky, one day your manuscript will be on the right desk at the right time, but until then all you can do is what you’ve always done. You write.

Because, even though no one else knows the truth, you do. You are a writer, and even more than that, you are a novelist.

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The Slang Game

October 19, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Well cut off my legs and call me shorty! That particular bit of slang came from the 1940s. Can you guess what decades the rest of these came from?

  1. Heave, meaning to vomit
  2. Bitch, meaning to gripe
  3. Having the hots for someone
  4. To finger someone
  5. To come clean
  6. Groovy
  7. Sore, meaning angry
  8. Babe, meaning an attractive female
  9. Broad, meaning a woman
  10. A scream, meaning something hilarious
  11. Teenager
  12. Dough, meaning money
  13. Beef, meaning complaint
  14. Baby, meaning one’s sweetheart
  15. Bull, meaning bull crap
  16. Joe, meaning coffee
  17. John, meaning bathroom
  18. Hip, meaning cool
  19. Double-cross
  20. Dick, meaning private detective
  21. “What’s eating you?”

Okey-doke. Don’t get in a lather. I’m a hep-cat and won’t take a powder before I give you the poop. 1-3 are from the 1940s. 4-11 all date back to the 1930s. 12-17 are from the 1920s. 18 dates back to 1915. and 19-21 were used as early as 1900.

Now I have to go see a man about a dog.

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An Image Fit Only for a Horror Movie

October 18, 2007 — Pat Bertram

My writing tends to be a little too matter-of-fact considering the complicated plots I prefer. I start out using plenty of similes and metaphors, but when I analyze them, they all sound trite or forced so I edit them out.

“The next minute the children were rolling around on the ground and pummeling each other like . . .” Like what? “Puppies” was too obvious, so I used “bear cubs” until I decided it sounded just as trite. But what else rolls around on the ground and pommels? Mud wrestlers? Thinking that’s not a proper image to use with children, I left off the simile.

Another time I tried to describe a character as one who seemed like a mental lightweight but had hidden depths. I didn’t want to use the trite “like an iceberg,” so I used “like the proverbial iceberg.” All that said is that I know I’m using a cliché, (wink, wink) but since I know it, it’s okay. It’s not okay, so I left it out and was left with another unadorned sentence.

But at least I don’t make mistakes like this one I found in a book by an author who should have known better. “Her eyes swept across the room like a broom.” Her gaze might sweep like a broom, but her eyes? Only in a horror movie, but still . . .ick! That’s almost as hideous an image as “their eyes locked.” How exactly do eyes lock? Like braces sometimes do when teenagers kiss?

Nor did I make this mistake: “The room was so crowded it was literally filled to the rafters.” Literally filled? Does he mean the people were stacked one on top of the other? Or standing on each other’s shoulders? Again, an image fit only for a horror movie.

In the end, I guess I’d rather have a prosaic writing style than one that gives people unintentional nightmares.

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The Power of Three

October 17, 2007 — Pat Bertram

 Three is a powerful number that satisfies our need for symmetry. Think how many times it shows up in mythology, fairy tales, and popular culture. A few obvious threes:

Three wishes. Three bears. Three little pigs. Three fates. Three furies. Three graces. Three muses. Three outs. Best two out of three. Three Faces of Eve. Three Days of the Condor. Third time lucky. Love triangle.

So, to make your stories more powerful, harness the power of three.

1. When describing a character or scene, mention three attributes. Also, if a particular attribute needs to be fixed in the reader’s mind, mention it three times (and only three times) during the course of the book, and it will stick.

2. When devising a plot, follow the storyline of The Three Bears. The first time the hero 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.

3. Look for patterns in your story. If your character has made love under the stars and perhaps gone to a concert under the stars, mention stars once more to solidify the pattern.

I could give you more ways to make your stories more powerful, but since I’ve given you three suggestions, that should satisfy you.

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Colorizing our Characters

October 16, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Because colors have meaning, a character’s favorite color can tell us a lot about him or her. Red for an ambitious extrovert. Pink for an affectionate, compassionate person. Yellow for an optimistic artist. Green for a benevolent humanist. Blue for a cool, confident conservative. Purple for an intuitive, spiritually oriented person. Brown for a down-to-earth type.

I am looking for new ways to add color to my novels besides the obvious such as “She wore a low-cut red dress,” or “He loved the way the mud looked against the blue of his pickup.” I’d like to be able to give the feeling of a person by using color, perhaps by showing what he or she sees. This might be an interesting way of giving point-of-view characters their own voices. The extrovert would see the red tulips, the humanist would admire the grass, and the conservative would notice the sky.

Overdone, it would probably seem to be merely a listing of colors, but used with a gentle touch, perhaps the reader would feel more connected to the characters, seeing them in living color instead of indistinct black and white images.

I would like to think so anyway. I did the research on the meaning of colors for another novel, and the material is just sitting there waiting to be used.

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Reading the Beats

October 15, 2007 — Pat Bertram

I’ve mentioned before that I’m reading the entire oeuvre of a bestselling author, trying to figure out the reason for her popularity, and it just dawned on me why I am having such a hard time slogging through her words. It’s not simply that I find romance novels unappealing, it’s that she does not use beats. Beats, as you know, are interesting bits of action used as dialog tags:

“No!” Mary rushed to grab the paring knife from her two-year-old son.

Beats make the book; in many cases, they are the book. I first noticed this when I read an Iris Johansen thriller. I got bored with her series character and, for a change of pace, started reading only her beats. To my surprise, the entire story was there. The character’s fear, lessening of fear, relief, escalating fear, despair, desire, lust, all reaching to a crescendo of utter terror, and then finally peace and acceptance.

From that, I’ve learned to cultivate beats. When I’m looking at a movie that doesn’t capture my full attention, I watch the actors and try to put what I see into words. The other day I saw a character shoot a finger at a friend and smile as if he were agreeing with him, then the smile faded and he shook his head no. Not only did it have an element of humor (doing the opposite of what’s expected) it was a brilliant beat, perfectly timed.

Obviously, not using beats has not hurt the bestselling romance writer any, but for the rest of us, the beat goes on.

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