To Prologue or Not to Prologue

November 12, 2007 — Pat Bertram

I am not a fan of prologues.  Some writers have the appalling habit of augmenting a poor beginning with a prologue that is not really a prologue but a more of an interlogue, a section taken from the middle of the book. While this might create suspense and keep us reading through a less than stellar beginning, it is not really necessary to the story since the material is a duplication, and we feel duped when we reread it during the course of the book.

I don’t even have much use for true prologues, which present events that happen before the story begins. If the material is important, it should be included in the body of the work.  

Despite that, I used a prologue in Light Bringer.

In a previous post, I spoke of my comma usage in the work. I suppose I could go through and rethink all the commas, but in the end I’m not sure it’s worth it; a publisher who also has a prejudice against prologues might want me to get rid of the entire piece. It is a true prologue in that the events take place thirty-five years before the present day action, but it has a major fault: I introduce a character who does not appear again in person, only as the subject of conversation. Since I do the same thing in the first chapter, I could be creating confusion about whose story this is.

While rewriting the book, I considered getting rid of the prologue but I kept it for three reasons: I wanted readers to experience for themselves the events that precipitated the story,  it was the way I originally conceived it, and I loved the image of tiny footprints in the snow. The prologue might seem like a darling, a word used by William Faulkner to describe the parts we love but that have no real function in the story, and maybe it is. But Light Bringer is my work, my creation, and until I find a publisher, I can do whatever I want with it.

And right now, I want the prologue.

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You Might Be a Writer . . . If You Agonize Over Commas

November 10, 2007 — Pat Bertram

A fellow writer took exception to my comma usage in Light Bringer.  I reviewed the first page or two of the book but didn’t change anything. If ever I were to sell the book, I will do what my copy editor suggests; until then, the commas remain where they are. I know I used a lot of them, but each one was painfully earned. While writing and rewriting the novel, I would take them out, agonize over them, then put them put them back. The next day I would repeat the process all over again.

There are many rules for comma usage, the main ones being to use a comma between all terms in a series, before the conjunction when joining independent clauses, and to set off parenthetical remarks. I do not need to give you examples; you probably know more about commas than I do. But despite all the rules that have been formulated for commas, there is one overriding rule: use a comma to prevent confusion.

In other words, follow the rules until you can’t follow the rules. Clarity is more important than any punctuation rule.

Beyond clarity, the commas in Light Bringer were used for pacing. I could have used short sentences at the beginning, but short sentences evoke action, and someone driving at night on snowy, unplowed, unlit roads would not be moving quickly. I could have used run-on sentences, but they have a breathless quality, and also seem to evoke speed. Again, not what I wanted. So what I was left with was commas.

A lot of commas. Maybe I really should take some out.

Or not.

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Conflict: Desire Thwarted

November 8, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Someone googled “How do you determine the conflict in a story” and ended up at my blog. Although I have written about conflict before, I had not addressed that particular issue; I wasn’t even sure I could come up with a simple answer if I had to. Then I realized that to determine the conflict, first we have to know what conflict is. In a story, conflict is desire meeting resistance.

Many authors, professional and amateur, confuse bickering with conflict, but unless there is an element of desire, such as one of the characters wanting information that the other doesn’t want to give, then there is no conflict, merely disagreement. I made that mistake in Light Bringer. I had a lot of historical information I needed to impart, so I had a group of people arguing about it in the hope that it would seem more immediate, but since there was no desire, except the relative low tension one of the characters wanting to be heard, it came across as bickering. I kept the section because it was a more interesting way of presenting the material than a lecture, and it did show the personalities of the characters, but there was not the immediacy conflict would have brought to the piece.

In a novel, there are many conflicts.  Characters can be in conflict with each other, they can be in conflict with the environment, they can be in conflict with themselves. As disparate as these conflicts seem, in essence they are the same. Characters wants something and someone or something is preventing them from getting it. The greater the forces keeping the characters from fulfilling their desires, the greater the conflict, and hence the greater the tension. Time constraints add urgency to a conflict, and become a source for conflict themselves, as when one character needs (desires) to rescue another before a bomb goes off.

So, to determine the conflict, figure out what the characters want and who or what is keeping them from getting it. It’s as simple as that.

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What Kind of Book is This?

November 7, 2007 — Pat Bertram

 In 1977, Elmore Leonard wrote Touch, a story about a stigmatic healer. Even though he’d already developed a name for himself, he received more than a dozen rejection letters. His publishers finally accepted the book in 1978, but were not very enthusiastic about it and kept postponing publication. In 1982 Leonard took back his rights, and five years later he found another publisher for the work.

In the introduction to the book, Leonard wrote: “If the author isn’t well known, or if the publisher isn’t able to label the book, place it in a recognized genre, he’s got a marketing problem, or so they tell me. It seemed easier in the past to try to sell me as some distinguished though deceased writer’s second coming rather than simply as me. But Touch refused even to be categorized.”

Many of us trying to be published have the same problem: we simply wrote our books as they demanded to be written, and they do not fit into a recognized category. As one editor wrote me when rejecting Light Bringer: “It is a very original concept and the writing is good, but I’m not sure where on the shelves this story would appear. Is it science fiction? Thriller? What?”

I thought I had answered that question when I called it a psychological thriller. It’s not really thrilling since there are no chases, no fights, no violence, but it is psychological in that the story is about a search for identity.

I suppose the alien baby and the bug man make it seem like science fiction, but no science fiction fan would recognize it as such. It takes place is today’s world, and if it weren’t for those two little oddities, the work would be considered a psychological thriller, or a mystery, or perhaps historical fiction if one accepts as true the Sumerian’s belief in a twelfth major heavenly body in our solar system.

Although I do understand that it’s important to know where on a bookstore’s shelves a book would fit, I do not see it as a reason not to publish it. Listed in blog categories is one called “uncategorized.” Why can’t there be a similar noncategory for books?

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On Writing: Telling and Showing

November 6, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Like many new writers, I have a hard time with “show, don’t tell,” but today I came across a graphic example of the difference between the two.

I was reading an article in a sports magazine about a baseball player who was an all around good guy. He was honest, had integrity, was kind, was raised right by his parents. This “telling” of his virtues continued for page after page without once “showing” us an example of his honesty, integrity, etc.

At the very end of the article, though, the writer finally showed us who the athlete really is. After receiving a $400,000 signing bonus, this very fine, honest, upright athlete went to Wal-Mart and bought the furnishings for his apartment. He kept the receipts (taped them to the merchandise so he wouldn’t lose them) and returned the used products in ninety days.

If the article had been about screwing Wal-Mart (or rather the Wal-Mart customers who would have bought the used merchandise thinking it was new) then this example would have fit. If the article had been about the athlete’s frugal ways, then the example would also have fit. But in a story about a person of integrity? No.

One of the lessons I gleaned from this is that if I am going to tell, don’t show. What I might think is a good example, readers might not, and I run the risk of alienating them.

The other lesson I learned is that I shouldn’t try to foist my feelings for a character’s action on readers by telling about the action. I need to simply show the action and let the readers decide how it makes them feel about the character.

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Describing a Scene in an Interesting Way

November 5, 2007 — Pat Bertram

One of the search engine terms somebody used to find my blog was “Describe a Scene in an Interesting Way,” and I thought it would be a great subject for today’s post.

The trap even the most successful writers fall into when describing a scene is to simply list the objects in a room or landscape, and a few adjectives thrown about for color or texture do not make the description any more interesting. Writers often cheat by pretending to see the scene through the character’s eyes, but it still comes down to being nothing more than a list.

We are not children padding our flimsy essays with adjectives and adverbs. We are adults who know that the number of words seattlein a story mean nothing; it’s only what the words mean that counts. And in description, those words must count twice: to give us a feel for the setting, and to give us a feel for the character.

Description by its very nature is static; we need to find ways to make it flow with the story. One way is to have the character interact with the setting: to sit in a mahogany armchair with a faded green cushion; to hear the deep notes of the grandfather clock in the corner; to feel the texture of the oriental carpet underfoot, to smell the old leather bindings of the books. Without ever stepping away from the character, we know what the room looks like, including the parts that were not described.

Another way to describe a scene is to pick one significant item and describe it. Perhaps the dusty lace curtains, or the stains on the ceiling where the roof leaked. Even better would be to show what the curtains or stains mean to the character.

We can also describe a scene by showing contrasts. Yellow is brighter when it is next to purple than when it is next to green. Green is brighter next to red than it is to blue. The color combination with the strongest visual impact is black on yellow. I’m not suggesting that we use color in such a way; these are merely examples of how one thing looks different when it is next to something else. Those dusty lace curtains may be in an otherwise spotless room. Or they might be scrupulously clean in a dusty room. Either way, it says more about the character than just describing the curtains or the room.

Describing scenes by sound rather than sight can give the scene movement. We do not perceive sound as being static. A train whistle in the distance is not always the same pitch, is not always the same volume. Even taste seems more dynamic than sight; for example, the taste of the smoky air on a winter day. And smell is the most evocative of all the senses; perhaps the smell of lilacs makes one think of grandmother’s house.

However we decide to describe our scenes, we need to keep our characters in mind. They and their problems are the story. The scenes need to reflect this, to be a part of it.

When we get to the point where we can suggest our character’s inner conflicts by the way we describe the scene, we will be on our way to mastering our craft.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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He Said/She Said: Speaker Attributes

November 4, 2007 — Pat Bertram

For my study of bestselling authors, I have switched from a romance novelist to a thriller writer. Thrillers are more my style, so I expected to enjoy myself, but it’s not happening. In his own way, the author of the thriller is as terrible a writer as the author of the romances, which doesn’t say much for the taste of the people who buy these books.

Perhaps I’m too fussy now that I have a basic knowledge of the craft, but some elements cry out for commentary, such as his speaker attributes.

His characters never just said something. They agreed, cautioned, reminded, mimicked, answered, contributed, guessed, explained, responded, admonished, confessed, encouraged, clarified, blurted, pointed, winced, replied, corrected, acknowledged, returned, laughed, challenged, chided, objected, contested, quipped, offered, moaned, complained, repeated, stammered, pleaded, inquired, mumbled, interrupted, confirmed, addressed, countered, advised, completed, allowed, supplied, ordered, asked, continued, chided, answered, whispered, teased, requested, hollered, echoed, declared, informed, spoke, bellowed, spit out, thundered, hissed. All within a few pages. Whew!

The best speaker attribute, as we all know, is the word “said.” Like “the,” our brains barely register it, so it doesn’t yank us out of the story world. But the few times this thriller writer used “said,” he ruined it with an adverb. A professional, he should know that the only time to use an adverb with “said” is when the character’s words are at odds with his mood, such as: “I had a great time,” he said sadly.

In many cases, the writer would have been better leaving off the speaker attributes entirely, particularly when the dialogue was between two characters. It’s not difficult for a reader to figure out which character is talking when there are only two of them. And, to remind us who is talking, all the writer would have had to do was in insert an occasional beat.

Beats, those small actions that accompany a character’s dialogue, help set the stage, tell us about the character’s personality, and vary the rhythmn of the dialogue. Overdone, the beats are as distracting as any other speaker attribute, so the secret is to pay attention to the flow. Do you want short snappy dialogue? Don’t use beats. Do you want to slow things down a bit, keep the dialogue from seeming too disembodied? Use a few beats.

If the thriller writer had followed these simple rules, his work would have been much more enjoyable for me. But I guess I shouldn’t complain. He did give me a topic for today’s post.

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Whose Story is This?

November 2, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Every story is someone’s story. Whether we are writing about war, child abuse, romance, murder, or any other topic, we must make readers care about a character. Readers want someone to root for, to bond with, to love. Once they have found that, they will be eager to read further.

One of the hardest things for us new writers is to decide whose story we are writing. We create a lot of characters while writing our novels, and we fall in love with all of them, even the villains. We feel disloyal to our creations if we give one character more consideration than others, and we believe the story needs all those points of view. Perhaps it does. But the reader doesn’t know that. All the reader knows is what is on the page, not what is in our minds, and all those equally significant characters become confusing. Readers need to know whose story it is. Or whose story it mostly is.

One way for us to decide this is to figure out which character has the most at stake, which one will change the most. If we are lucky, the two will be the same, and we will know whose story it is. If not, we have to make the character who will change the most into the main story character while upping that character’s stakes.

A character with nothing to lose is not one people will care about. If someone in the story parachutes out of a plane for fun, readers might find it entertaining, but they won’t be concerned. But if someone wearing a faulty parachute jumps out of a plane into flames to save a child lost in the middle of a forest fire, everyone except the most curmudgeonly will care.

The same is true of character growth. A character who remains static, who learns nothing from experience, is not someone readers can love. A story is always about change, and since a story is also about a character, that character must grow. A timid character must learn to stand up for himself. An arrogant character must learn a touch of humility. The essence of the character does not need to change. A timid reporter who turns into superman is the stuff of comic books, not a realistic novel. But a character who grows, who learns, who comes back from his or her experiences with something to share, that is a character readers care about.

And that’s whose story it is.  

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The Scan Test: Paragraph Size, Italics, and Dialogue

November 1, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Appearances count. This might sound like grade school all over again, but I’m not talking about the neatness of your work. I know your work looks great; you are or you want to be a professional, and you act like it. What I am talking about is the overall appearance of the printed work; what the book, blog, or article looks like as a whole.

You have a great beginning, so you sit back smugly thinking that all a reader has to do is pick up your work and they will be hooked. Not so fast. Even before people read that first line, they quickly leaf through the book or scan the article. If they don’t like what they see, that fabulous first paragraph will never be read.

So, what is it they are looking for?

First, potential readers look at paragraph size. If the paragraphs are too long, they feel that the work will be ponderous; if the paragraphs are too short, they think it will be lightweight. And if all paragraphs are more or less the same size, they get an immediate impression of stagnation. An experienced writer knows how to vary the lengths of the paragraphs according to the flow of the story. Since everything in a story is connected to everything else, the size of your paragraphs should be connected to the rhythm of the story: short paragraphs for action scenes, longer ones for a respite. A variety of paragraph sizes from one to ten lines tell readers you will keep their attention.

Second, potential readers look for italics. An occasional italicized word is good for emphasis. An occasional italicized sentence is a way of indicating the character’s thoughts. But when there are long italicized paragraphs, or even entire italicized chapters, readers lose interest. Italics tell them that those passages are not part of the story, and can be skipped. So if you know most readers won’t read those passages, may even use the sight of them as an excuse not to read the entire work, figure out another way to present the material. I know that some experienced writers fall into the trap of italicizing flashbacks, but they (or their editors) should know better.

Third, potential readers look at dialogue. Long dialogue looks like preaching, and few readers are interested in your sermons. And long sections of one or two word dialogue looks inane. And generally is inane:

“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“How are you.”
“Fine, how about you?”
“Can’t complain.”

Even worse is using dialect. Too many apostrophes say that you do not know how to write dialogue. It’s better to use colloquialisms like “That dang fiddle-foot don’t rightly know what he’s talking about.” It gets the point across, and is easier to read.

Now that you’ve passed the scan test, you are ready to hook your reader.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Hooking a Reader

October 31, 2007 — Pat Bertram

The age of writing long descriptive passages (or even short ones) at the beginning of a novel is long past. Today people want to be drawn immediately into the story without wading through unnecessary verbiage. An editor might look at the first five pages before tossing aside your manuscript, but potential customers will give you a mere twenty seconds to draw them in. Once you have caught their attention, they might read a little further, and perhaps they will even buy the book. They certainly will not wade through the first five, ten, fifty pages until they get to “the good part.”

That “good part” must be right up front, especially if you’re a first-time writer. That’s all you have going for you — the ability to get off to a fast start and capture the reader’s attention. Your name certainly won’t do it; no one knows who you are yet. Your credentials might help, but only to establish your credibility after a potential reader has been hooked. And they will never be hooked by your ability to turn a clever phrase.

So what will hook the reader?  A character. Always a character. No one reads a book for a description of the weather, a place, or an issue. They don’t even want a description of the character. They want to meet him, to see life through his eyes, to bond with him. They want to know what he wants, what his driving force is. And they want to know who or what he’s in conflict with.

Without conflict, there is no story, but without a character for the reader to care about, there is no story either. Character and conflict are inextricably combined, and together they create the tension necessary to sustain a story. I know you think it’s okay to let the tension rise slowly, which it is, but the tension level at the beginning must be high enough to let the reader know something is going on.

A practiced writer knows how to adjust the tension by temporarily letting up on the main conflict and interjecting intermediate conflicts, or even adding inner conflicts to shadow the outer ones, but all conflicts must be somebody’s conflict. For example, you might be concerned about war, but seeing a specific soldier dealing with his experiences makes you care, maybe even makes you cry. And you will want to know what becomes of him.

That’s what hooks a reader.

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