Show and Tell

Every writer has been told by a writing teacher or editor to SHOW rather than TELL.

A simple way to understand this precept is to use synonyms. To “tell” something is to summarize  it. To “show” something is to illustrate it. In both fiction and nonfiction, if you want the reader to feel an emotional impact, show the reader what is going on. This is harder than simply summarizing, but always well worth the effort.

Here is an example of the difference between telling and showing from my first novel, Pandora’s Genes. The first passage is a summary of a short but crucial scene about halfway through the book. The second passage is the scene as it appeared in the published book.

Passage A:

Zach was sent away as his wife, Leya went into labor. He knew that she was in danger of dying and was very upset. To take his mind off his anxiety and sorrow he chopped wood.

Passage B

    It was a cloudy summer day, not really hot, but so humid with an impending rainstorm that the least exertion left him sweating and feeling tired. He positioned a log on the chopping block, brought the axe up above and behind his head, then swung it, thunk. He did this again and again, the movements easy from long years of practice. Wood chips flew around him, stinging his bare chest and arms. Cut wood piled up around him, and his breathing grew heavy as his arms began to tremble with the effort. He did not dare to stop, afraid to lose the comforting sound of the axe blade biting into the wood.

   After a time, his muscles stopped responding, and he was forced to rest for a moment. The sounds of the woods became deafening. He heard birds calling their territorial limits to one another; insects scuttling in the leaves; the warm breeze before the storm, pushing the branches of trees. He shivered as the wind took the sweat covering his skin. Sighing, he sat on a log and examined the axe minutely. He had made it himself from an old pre-Change axe blade, and a stout piece of hardwood he had carved himself, carefully fitting it to hold the metal, and binding the two pieces together with strong new-vine ropes. The ancient blade was as shiny as it must have been when it was new: he took care to keep it clean with fish-oil, and sharp on his whetstones. There were nicks and scores in the metal, but it was probably, he thought, in nearly as good condition as when it had been made, untold years ago. He ran his fingers over the blade and looked for signs of wear on the handle. This was the fourth handle he had made for the blade, carefully carving and polishing during long nights in the cabin while Leya read or worked on her projects from the Garden.

   He stood, already feeling stiff, and began to gather the wood he had cut into bundles of seven to ten each, tying them carefully with new-vine, and placing them to the side of his work area, in a small shelter he had constructed. A squirrel suddenly clambered down from a tree behind him. He turned, startled, to see the little animal poised on its hind legs, its nose vibrating with its breath, every nerve in its body stretched as it tried to sense possible danger. It looked at him, its black eyes as shiny as the axe blade, then just as abruptly it ran up the tree and disappeared along a leafy limb.

   Zach picked up the axe and began again to swing it, cutting the wood as if he could cut out everything else that was happening. Never had he worked so long and so hard. Soon there would be enough wood cut to last the Garden through the entire winter. And there was already more than enough for him and Leya. He became aware of another sound and realized that it was his own breath, rasping, wet, and too rapid. Still he did not stop, not even when the raindrops finally began to fall, washing away the dirt and sweat, then soaking him as a summer cloudburst developed. He could scarcely see what he was doing through the falling water, but still he swung the axe back and up, then down, splitting each precisely placed log as he did so, stopping only to move more wood into position.

   "Zach!"

   He turned, the axe half-raised, poised to split another log. Her head and shoulders covered with a dark shawl, the old woman stood looking at him. Her face was composed and without expression, and as soon as he saw it he knew the worst had happened.

*****

When you have finished writing a story or novel, go over it for places where you can change summaries into illustrations. For example, if you have a character “crying hysterically,” think how you might show that. (Jodie’s chin began to tremble and her mouth turned white as she bit down on her lower lip. But the trembling spread, from her face to her throat, and then to her lungs as she began to gasp, tears now spilling down her cheeks and onto her hands.) 

One of the greatest compliments I've received about my writing was in a review by Eoghann Irving of my short, gritty novella, The Ptorrigan Lode, which begins: 

If you want a great example of showing and not telling, then this is it.

As a short story it doesn't have much space in which to both create a futuristic world and set up a plot and yet the author Kathryn Lance makes it looks easy.

It wasn't easy, of course, but I'm glad it worked. 

For more on the difference between showing and telling, see #2 in my five-point revision checklist.

How I accidentally wrote a 300,000 word trilogy

When I first started writing PANDORA’S GENES, back in the early eighties, I had no idea that the book would consume not the year that it took me to write, nor the three more years it would take till publication, but rather--off and on--a chunk of the following thirty years.

I have written previously about how the book began as a mysterious dream, in which I had a hazy vision of a good man who was about to do something very bad for what he thought were good reasons. When I started writing I really had no idea where I was heading, and let the characters take me where they wanted to go. My original ending, which seemed logical to me, had the three main characters, Zach, Will, and Evvy, marrying each other in a triad, which was the most common form of marriage in the society I wrote about.

This is the first original cover for the paperback; at the insistence of a major bookbuyer it was withdrawn and another cover was made.

After I turned in my manuscript, I was shocked when my editor--who had bought the story as I had written it-- told me that the reading public was not ready for a marriage between two men and a woman, and I would have to change the ending accordingly.

So I changed the ending as requested, having Evvy agree to marry Will for the good of civilization, though we readers all knew that Zach was her true love. My editor pointed out that there was plenty of room for a sequel, so I wrote PANDORA’S CHILDREN, in which I detailed, through "artful" flashback, much of the story that occurred before the start of the first book. When  I turned this manuscript in, my editor made me take out almost all of the prequel material, which my subconscious and I continued to chew on.

Thirty years later, my editor was long since retired, the imprint I’d published with had disappeared, the entire publishing industry had changed, and I still couldn’t get the Pandora’s story out of my mind. I decided finally to write the story I wanted to write, PANDORA’S PROMISE. It starts a few hours after the close of the second book. Though Evvy and Will are still planning to marry, nothing has happened yet, and events propel a new story, following Zach in new adventures, while Evvy and Will become involved in quests of their own.

An entire section of this new book (about 1/4 of the whole thing) is devoted to the prequel--how the Change happened, and the ultimate connection of our characters with its early days. This time I wrote it in a way that is organic to the story, rather than as a traditional flashback. In the main story, Evvy sets off on a dangerous quest with Baby, her empathic fox-cat; while Zach meets some new animal characters, including  the River Clan of elephants, who now freely roam portions of the Great Plains. Along the way I got to explore some new societies, including one organized around a brutal futuristic form of football, and another that is connected with the mysterious Eye, which may or may not be a myth. And nobody made me to take these plot elements out!

For the record, I did have an excellent editor, who suggested many, many changes, most of which I incorporated. 

I feel that this book is by far my best, and that it encapsulates all the things I have most cared about in my life. It has turned out to be a more intense love story than I imagined, and I realize now that its seeds were sown more than thirty years ago when I imagined that unknown man riding into the yard of a poverty-stricken family, where he meets Evvy, the extraordinary young woman who becomes the heroine of the series. *


* (The original book, Pandora’s Genes, won an award from Romance Times in the year it was published, as “Best new Science Fiction of the Year.” I had not realized until I was notified of the award that I had also written a romance story.)

45. Five Truths About Researching a Novel

1. All writing requires research. This is as true for fiction as for nonfiction, even if you’re just writing a short story. I was once assigned to write a short story about Jack Frost for a children’s “horror” anthology. All I knew about Jack Frost was that in some mythologies “he” represents winter. Before writing, I spent some time looking up legends of Jack Frost, to get an idea of what “he” might look and act like. I didn’t use much of the material, but it made me more comfortable in my depiction of Jack Frost as a mischievous but dangerous sprite, which made the story easier to write.

                                Jack Frost

2. You must always sweat the small stuff. As a novelist, your job is to make the world your characters live in as believable as possible. For those who write historical or present-day fiction, it’s important to to at least touch on the minutiae of daily life. What do your characters have for breakfast? What are their leisure-time activities? In science fiction, these realistic details make your world more relatable. In my sf novella The Ptorrigan Lode, which takes place on a space station, there was not much room for detail, but I tried as best I could to give a flavor of the clothing (working women wear chadors, while tourists wear revealing street dress) and eating habits (they “dial up” food at home, and also visit restaurants).

3. Every detail must be followed up. In Pandora’s Genes and Pandora’s Children, I gave long, hard thought to what life would be like in a future world with none of the conveniences we take for granted. I did quite a bit of research on medieval life, and even bought a book on “the forgotten crafts.” Since the Pandora’s world has no petroleum products, my characters use “fish-oil” in lamps. I envisioned some sort of mutant fish that were used for this purpose, but neglected to ask myself how these fish were harvested and processed. Was this done by each household, or was there a small industry? I didn’t think of those questions till they were pointed out by an attentive reader. I have since worked out the answers for myself, and will use them in the third book in the series, which I am now writing

4. No research is ever wasted. As a former writer of nonfiction books, I have researched many, many subjects in depth. One of the topics I used to write about is sports, and I’m finding that my in-depth knowledge of American professional sports is coming in handy while writing the Pandora’s sequel. So is my first-hand  knowledge of the “flyover” parts of this country, which I visited many times on cross-country drives and bus trips when I was younger. Which leads me to:

5: Everything is research.

 

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,The Ptorrigan Lode,research for fiction

44. Skipping from Scene to Scene

My post last week (Beethoven or Mozart—what kind of writer are you?) has gotten me thinking more about my own writing process. I seem to be Beethovian through and through: not only in writing a whole novel, but also when writing small sections within that novel.

Although I only have about thirty new pages (in addition to the 100 pages previously written), I’m working steadily on the third Pandora’s book. But I can’t seem to go in a straight line. As I recommended in an earlier post, I’m focusing on individual scenes. These are scenes that I either have a lot of notes for, or have worked out pretty well in my head. However, as a Beethovian I am incapable of getting all the way through a scene without stopping to make notes as new things occur to me, or add something to a different scene, or change my focus completely.

Some of what I’m writing takes place BEFORE the first book began. In response to requests from many readers, I am telling what happened before and during the Change, explaining exactly how it was caused. I’m having fun with this. I knew most of it, of course, though it was never fully explained in the first two books. But I’m also learning a great deal as I write.

                          Mid-21st Century Oil Spill

For example, I have found out how global climate change in the middle of the twenty-first century made the Change worse than it would otherwise have been. I have also discovered that the Gulf Oil Spill in the early part of this century led directly to the terrible mistake that caused the Change.

If you have not read my first two Pandora’s books, none of this will make sense to you, but here is the take-away message: When putting together a long and complicated plot, it is not only allowed, but it can be helpful to write scenes out of sequence. This is especially true if those scenes excite you. You are likely to find, as I am, that these out-of-sequence scenes then inform material that follows and make it much richer, as well as easier to write.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,writing the novel,writing a sequel

43. Now the Work Begins….

Okay, I have finished inputting all the previously-written material, as I posted about last week. I have around 30,000 words and exactly 99 pages. Since the threequel will need to be approximately the same length as the first two books in the series, 90-100,000 words, that means I have around 1/3 the material that I need.

Here are the pages I’ve been inputting all these weeks. I drew blue lines across pages that had already been put into the computer.

I am going to try to write about five new pages a day, which means I will have a complete rough draft in forty days.

Except, who am I kidding? I know myself, and I know I will never write that much that quickly. But I’ll try to write at least something new each day, and meanwhile will look at the other material that will need to be folded into what I have now. This will be an intense combination of original writing and revision, all at the same time.

As for the material I just finished inputting, there were numerous places where I needed to expand or make other changes. Mostly I didn’t do that, but instead indicated what would need to be done later. I put those things in brackets, as a reminder to myself. This is a good technique for any writer during the creation of a first or second draft. It is often easier to write the difficult but necessary bits later, after you’ve let it marinate in your unconscious for a while. For example, here’s part of a scene from page 96:

Evvy had expected something of this sort. Even so, it took all her will to keep from running, from calling out to Baby for help. This was, after all, part of her plan, which she hoped would soon bring her face to face with Katha.
The men roughly grasped her arms, then stood beside her, holding so tightly she nearly cried out. [details of surroundings]
“Take her to be prepared,” the headman said.

As indicated, I’ll have to include here more details of where she is, what it looks, sounds, and smells like. Wish me luck!

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Children,Pandora's Genes,revision,novel writing

42. Writing the Second Sequel

Writing the third book in the Pandora’s series--the “threequel,” as I call it-- is turning out to be a very strange experience. I’ve posted about how I wrote the first draft of Pandora’s Genes straight from my subconscious; and in contrast, how I carefully plotted out the young adult books I did for a series. This is different. I started this novel, which I’m calling PANDORA’S PROMISE, many years ago without any very clear idea of where it was going, except that it began as a direct follow-up to the first book’s sequel, Pandora’s Children.

                                       

I began writing as I advise in my post on how to keep going when you’re stuck, by writing a minimum of one sentence a night. As often happens when using this method, that one sentence often became two, three, or even a page or more. I wrote these sentences and pages over several months, and when I finished I had quite a pile of papers, which remained in my filing cabinet till a few weeks ago. When I decided to write the threequel, I pulled those pages out and started reading, but soon gave up. There was  so much material that I realized it would be easier to just start inputting, making changes as I went.

In the meantime, since I first wrote those pages, I had also made a start on two other science fiction novels, both of which had very strong ideas that I could not forget. Both were post-holocaust young adult novels. One took place in a traditional post-nuclear-disaster world (as opposed to the Pandora’s World, in which the disaster is recombinant DNA run amok); the other  was set in an unspecified future, blasted world.I never finished either of these books.

Once I started writing Pandora’s Promise in earnest, a couple of funny things happened. First, I very early on discovered that the societal ideas from BOTH the unfinished novels fit perfectly into my threequel. I believe my subconscious had been working on these ideas all these years, and perhaps it had given me the ideas in the first place for the Pandora’s world.

Second, I was astonished to find out that I had a lot more material than I recall having written. I am nearly through inputting the pages and I already have more than 25,000 words and nearly 100 pages. Typing these pages has been fascinating, because there is so much action and excitement, most of which I don’t remember at all.

I haven’t even started looking at the material from the two unfinished novels.
There is a lot of hard work ahead. I’ll need to go through all the already-written material to see what can be used in Pandora’s Promise, and will of course need to make many, many changes in the material that is now in my computer. I’ll probably need to re-read both Pandora’s books, to make sure I don’t put something in the threequel that directly contradicts the things I’ve already presented in the first two books.

But I’m looking forward to this work. Overall, I’m  very pleased with Pandora’s Promise so far. I find myself getting excited as I write and as I think about it. I have not felt this way in a very long time.

Note: I may not continue to write this blog every week as I get deeper into the threequel. If anyone reading this feels strongly that they would like me to continue weekly,  please email me or leave a message here. If you have any questions you’d like me to answer, let me know.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,writing sequels,Pandora's Children,plotting

41. The key to creating three-dimensional secondary characters

In previous posts I talked about several ways to flesh out your main characters, such as basing them on real-life people and fine-tuning your characters’ motivation. But what about secondary characters? For me, the main key to animating less-important characters is visual.

                                                 

Cut out pictures. This sounds like something you would do in grade school, but it can be helpful in writing a novel, especially one with many characters. Flipping through magazine ads may give you a hint. Once you see a photo that screams: “That’s Celeste!” it may also be easier to grasp her personality.

Think of famous actors who might play the character and then write for that actor. A colleague who has written a successful mystery confided that she was able to write an important secondary character only when she visualized a specific actress in the role. Once she had done that, she could also “hear” the voice, and the character became real to her.

Give your character a quirk. In Pandora’s Genes and its sequel, Pandora’s Children, several generals in the Principal’s army play a role in the story. To keep them straight in my mind, and also to help readers keep them straight, I gave each general a trait that was noted most times they appeared. For example, Ralf is elderly and has a stutter; Marcus dresses like a dandy and spends excessive time on personal grooming; while Eric, who in my mind looks like Hugh Jackman, is hot-headed and impulsive.

It is important to keep the quirks from taking over, or you can end up with a character who is nothing but a collection of tics.

Let the character’s appearance do double duty. The evil drug dealer in The Ptorrigan Lode is described as having a “patchwork face,” which I explain early on is the result of radiation burns. This gives us an idea of how he looks—and also how he has lived his life.

In another example, readers tell me that Ivory, the teenager who befriends Peej and Annie in Going to See Grassy Ella, is a very memorable character. I knew that I wanted her to be very different from the two sisters, and also to have an innocence about her. Ivory became real to me when I began to visualize her as a former student in one of my Freshman English classes, a very bright girl who dressed in what she thought was the height of punk fashion: ripped black clothing, hair dyed blue on one side, the other side of her head shaved; and multiiple piercings on her ear, nose, cheeks, and lips.

Next week I will answer some questions readers have sent or asked in these posts. Please feel free to ask anything you’d like to know, either about my books or about writing. Post a comment here, or email me through the link to my website.

Technorati Tags: Novel writing,secondary characters

39. Where does a novel begin?

There are two main considerations in beginning a novel. First--WHERE do you begin? And second, HOW do you begin? This week we’ll look at the first consideration.

A rule of thumb is to begin your story in a place where something compelling happens. A friend of mine who writes young adult adventure novels advises: “Begin the day after everything changed.”

One way to look at it is to decide what the most important conflict in the story is and begin with an illustration of that conflict. That is what I did when I began Pandora’s Genes. As I mentioned in a previous post, it started with a dream, in which I saw a good man reluctantly doing something that he knew was wrong.

You could argue that the story actually begins when he makes the decision to go against his conscience, but the real story is in the consequences of that action as they unfold, and therefore that is where I started the novel.

Peter Falk as Columbo

In many murder mysteries, the story begins when a body is found, or at the moment of a murder. This decision can vary depending on the sort of mystery it is. If it’s a procedural, you may well begin with the murder, or the events leading up to the murder. Think of the old TV show Columbo, in which all the suspense lay in seeing how Columbo would figure out the events that we, the viewers, had already witnessed.

In other mysteries, the story may begin when the detective first learns of the murder, which may even have been committed long in the past. In this case, readers will see clues as the detective does and put the pieces together with him.

In my science fiction novella, The Ptorrigan Lode, I began with the main character already in trouble, in danger of dying from drug withdrawal on a space station. It is only in the course of the story that we learn how he became addicted in the first place, and why he is on a space station.

A story that begins like this is said to start in media res—in the middle of the action, and it’s long been a common technique with science fiction. Experienced science fiction readers know to be patient and the questions they have about technology or terminology will eventually be answered, either directly or implicitly. This technique is often used in mainstream fiction as well.

Other genres have other conventions for where to begin a story. Romances often begin either at the time or just before the first meeting of the star-crossed lovers. Here again, it’s important to get the story going before worrying about the events that led up to it.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you must begin with some sort of action—physical or emotional. It’s tempting to want to explain how your main character arrived at the action or decision point that actually starts the story, but that’s a tactic that is likely to lose your readers. The best way to explain your character is to show us how she reacts to events throughout the story.

Next week: HOW to begin a novel.

Technorati Tags: novel writing,beginning a novel,novel structure

38. Motivation: Why do your characters do what they do?

In a novel, motivation is the engine that drives your plot. WHY does Sabrina act the way she does? WHAT causes her arch-nemesis, the Zombie King, to relentlessly pursue her?

It is your job as author to know and communicate the answers to those questions. Another way of looking at your character’s motivation is to ask: what does she want?  The answer to this question is one of the six elements of a plot, and it must be answered. Whatever your character most wants must be important, and failure to achieve it must have serious consequences. 

Without something important at stake, your main character’s actions may seem random and readers won’t identify with her. You must also be aware of the motivation of the main secondary characters.

Several years ago, when I was writing a “horror” novel for my young adult series, Phantom Valley, my editor and I got into a lengthy argument because we disagreed on why a ghost was haunting the main character.

                                                       

That’s how important motivation is: we couldn’t agree on the resolution of the plot until we resolved the motivation of the ghost!

Note that motivation is not the same thing as conflict. Motivation is the WHY; conflict is often the WHY NOT. A good example can be seen in my first science fiction novel, Pandora’s Genes. At the beginning of the story we know that Zach’s primary motivation is to carry out the order of his leader, the Principal, to purchase and deliver to him a young girl, Evvy. But there are also important conflicts that bear on this motivation. For one thing,  the Principal’s directive goes against Zach’s own moral code. Other conflicts include those imposed by the environment (poison bats) and other characters (the brigands who want to kill Zach and kidnap Evvy).

Zach’s moral trepidations here are a good example of inner conflict; the poison bats and brigands are examples of outer conflict. A complex, well-thought-out character will be faced with many examples of both sorts of conflict.

A rule of thumb is that resolution of inner conflict results in a change in attitude, while solving an outer conflict results in a change in circumstance. In Pandora’s Genes, Zach comes to see that he was more complicit than he had believed in the Principal’s wrongdoing; while he eventually overcomes all the outer conflicts and returns home to a situation that is changed by his having resolved the inner conflict.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,novel writing,characterization,motivation

37. Novel Writing: Three DO’s and One DON’T

Pandora’s Promise, the novel I am currently writing, is the third book (what I call a “threequel”) in the “Pandora’s Series,” though the first book, Pandora’s Genes, was originally a one-off.

I was already a professional writer when I wrote Pandora’s Genes more than twenty-five years ago, and I have learned a great deal since. Here are some tricks of the trade that theoretically make the process--this time--a little bit easier.

                                   
DO know that the process of writing the novel will be long and difficult, with as many ups and downs as the plot twists you present your characters with. Some days you will sit down and the words will flow easily.... Other days you will stare at a blank page and spend your writing time thinking of things to do other than write. I’ve been in this place with my “threequel” lately, but I know it will pass and my passion will return. 

DO work on your novel every day, even if only to to make notes or add a single sentence that you end up crossing out later. This is one of the most important DO’s. Remember to trust your subconscious, and let it know you expect work on the novel to proceed daily.

DO realize that you don’t have to proceed in a straight line. If you are writing a novel on assignment, and have an outline to follow, then you will probably write in a more linear fashion. But even when working from an outline, there is no reason you have to proceed point-by-point. I have always found it easier to skip around a bit. If I’m having difficulty with a scene, for example, it can help to go to a different scene, perhaps later in the book, and write that. Often that later scene will inform the earlier one that was problematic.

DON’T share your work in progress with other people, especially when you are beginning a piece of writing. I have found that telling others can somehow dissipate the impetus to get it down on paper. Once you’ve got a rough draft, you can bring other people—such as members of a writing group--into the process.

When I was well into Pandora’s Genes and knew more or less what would happen for the rest of the book, I began sharing sections (second or third drafts) with a friend who lived across the hall in my apartment building. Her feedback was very helpful, and her positive response helped me keep going through difficult times. But I didn’t even tell her (or anyone else) that I was writing a novel until I already had well over 100 pages.

There is a lengthy section of Pandora’s Promise that I am currently working on that I LOVE. It is important to the story—perhaps the most important of all the story arcs. I want so much to show it to someone or even tell someone about it. But I know that talking about it is likely to dilute the excitement and reality of it in my mind, so for the present I’m keeping quiet.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,novel writing,writing tips

36. Self-editing II: Revision checklist

Last week’s post discussed five global ways to approach self-editing. This week, five specific things to check when you’re going over your draft.
1. Check for wordiness, especially at the beginning. A lot of writers tend to do what I call throat-clearing before getting down to work. When you have finished your draft, go back to the beginning and see if there are words, sentences, even whole paragraphs that don’t lead directly to the body of the piece.
Here is an example of what I’m talking about. This is my first stab at the opening of this blog post:

In last week’s post, we examined some global ways to approach self-editing. This week, let’s look at more specific techniques. Here are five things to check when you’re going over your draft.

For more on wordiness, see Less is More for tips on keeping it clear and simple.
2. Show, don’t tell.  Another way to say this is “Dramatize, don’t summarize.“ Example of telling:

Hearing the zombies outside, Evelyn was frightened.
The same scene, dramatized:
CREAK… CREAK… the sound of the rattling door made her shudder, imagining what might be on the other side. Zombies, perhaps dozens of them, pressing against the flimsy wood, trying to break through, to get to her….

                                          
 
3. Use the active voice. The active voice is more dynamic and direct than the passive, for both nonfiction and fiction. It is the difference between “mistakes were made” and “the CEO made several mistakes that resulted in the ruination of the company.”
4. Get rid of participles. Whenever possible, simplify by turning participles into verbs or eliminating them altogether.

She was sitting in the overstuffed chair and crying, waiting for the zombies to eat her brains.

Better:

She sobbed in the overstuffed chair, waiting for the zombies to eat her brains. 

5. Be ruthless. Sometimes you resist necessary changes because you just plain like a sentence or a section.That happened to me in a passage in Pandora’s Genes. In that scene, the Principal and Zach were discussing the succession for rule of the District. I had the Principal say, “I suppose I always thought I would live forever.”
I liked that sentence. To me, it summed up the Principal’s character. But the scene just didn’t work. The rhythm was wrong and the entire dialogue rang somehow false. It took me seven or eight revisions, trying different ways to insert the sentence, to realize that the sentence simply didn’t fit. Once I got rid of it, I easily finished the scene.
Moral: If something just doesn’t work, and none of the above suggestions help, KILL the thing that doesn’t work.
Next week: Pandora’s Promise: progress report

Technorati Tags: Writing tips,revision,self-editing

31. The Ending of Pandora’s Genes

In my first Blogathon post here, one month ago, I talked about how Pandora’s Genes came to me in a dream, and how writing the first part quickly, in a few weeks, was “like a three-week orgasm.”

Now I want to tell you about writing the ending, which was both very similar and very different from writing the beginning.

In yesterday’s post I described my frustration when I kept having to rewrite the entire novel. I ultimately rewrote most of it six times. The reason I kept at it was because I LOVED Pandora’s Genes and believed in it. Although it may appear to be just another post-holocaust adventure tale, I felt that I said some important things in it. And the characters were more real to me than my family and friends.

Ebook cover, designed by Glenace Melton

My final revisions took a few months, and just when I thought I was nearly finished, my editor said to me: “Now, you know you’ll have to change the ending.”

WHAT?

I didn’t know any such thing. I loved the ending, which originally was that Zach, Will, and Evvy would be married, since the most common form of marriage in the Pandora’s world was two or more husbands and a wife.

“Our readers,” my editor told me, “Are not ready for a three-way marriage.”

I was stunned. Stunned and dismayed. It had never occurred to me that I would have to change one of the most important parts of the book. And how could I change it? I was so distraught that for several days I felt as if my mind had gone blank, that my formerly reliable imagination had deserted me.

But I should have trusted my subconscious to come to the rescue.

One night a week or two after the upsetting conversation with my editor, I had another dream. In this dream I was at the end of a long pregnancy and in labor. Many people were gathered around helping me as I pushed the baby out of my body.As the baby was born, I felt pressure, but not pain; warmth, spreading throughout my body, and intense pleasure, very like an orgasm.

When the baby was fully born, I woke up with the new ending for the book in my mind.

I wrote it down before I could forget it, and submitted it. The editor loved it.

 

Technorati Tags: the subconscious and creativity,novel writing,editorial revisions

30. From writing a novel to publishing it

In my first blog post this month, I talked about writing the first part of Pandora’s Genes in a kind of white-hot frenzy of creation. It took me about three weeks to get those first 100 or so pages down, and then another several months before I finished the first draft, which was around 400 pages.

I typed it all on my Selectric typewriter, on green paper, which I superstitiously used for all my fiction drafts. Whenever I came to a passage that was too slow or otherwise wasn’t moving, I switched to pen and white paper, then transferred what I had written to the typewriter.

I continued to revise and retype, and a couple of years after I’d started I finally had something that I was happy enough with to take to my agent, who had so far only represented my nonfiction books.

My agent suggested numerous changes, so I spent another several months of revising, retyping, and so on. At last she was happy with it and began sending it out.

After a year’s worth of rejections, we finally got a nibble from Warner books, which was looking for new writers for a new science fiction imprint, Questar. The only catch was that the editor wanted a complete rewrite before she would commit to buying it. So I spent the summer revising the whole thing again, on spec, and finally turned it in, approximately 4 ½ years from when I started writing.

The good news was, she bought it! The bad news… well, she wanted more changes. I’ll tell you about the biggest change tomorrow, but I spent another few months revising again, and then making more changes for the copy editor, until finally the book was done! We had a cover! It was scheduled to come out in six months!

                                              First cover

Except that the head buyer for Waldenbooks, a major player in the sf market in those days, hated the cover. He told our marketing department that he would not order the book unless we got a whole new cover. This would delay the book another six months, but that was not his problem.

It was mine.

A new cover was prepared.

This one was by the great sf artist Don Mattingly, and this time Waldenbooks approved. Approximately six years from the morning I wrote down the dream that became Pandora’s Genes, my book was, finally, published!

Tomorrow: The ending of Pandora’s Genes

Technorati Tags: novel writing,publishing business,book covers

22. Novel writing: Trust your subconscious

The most important thing I have learned in forty-plus years as a professional writer is to trust my subconscious. Not only does it give me entire plots in dreams, it is apparently hard at work on my fiction even when I’m doing something else, like cooking or leading bird walks.

                                                     

In a previous post I mentioned that some writers of seemingly-intricately plotted works maintain that they never use an outline. I believe them, because I am quite sure that their subconscious does the intricate plotting for them.In that same post I showed how instead of a formal outline I jot down notes as ideas for the novel occur. Those ideas come from my subconscious, which is always several steps ahead of my conscious mind.

For example, my subconscious often plants things I will need later in a story. When I was writing Going to See Grassy Ella, my YA novel, I had Peej, the heroine, get motion sickness in a very early scene. At the time, I thought it was just a character point, but it turned out to be a crucial plot point later on, when Peej and her sister are trying to escape from kidnappers.

As far as I knew when I was writing Pandora’s Genes, Zach was not directly based on anyone I knew. But my subconscious may have known better, because thirty years after I had last seen him, an old boyfriend turned up in my life to thank me for writing about him. He had read the book, read the description of Zach, and concluded that I had based the relationship between Zach and Evvy on him. At first all I could think was, “You’re so vain I’ll bet you think this book is about you,” but on further thought I realized that he was probably, in part, right.  

In the case of The Ptorrigan Lode, my gritty sf novella, I knew in a general way that the protagonist, Jay, would be okay in the end,  but wasn't quite sure how that would happen, until it happened. Jay’s literal transformation was as big a surprise to me as it has been to many of my readers. It was like a light going on in darkness when I realized that my subconscious had been leading me to this denouement from the beginning of the story.

Here are three proven ways to enlist your own subconscious in your novel-in-progress:

1. Write down your dreams--especially if they contain vivid imagery. Even if those images don’t seem at first to connect to your novel, just writing them down will help to open a channel to unconscious processes.

2. Carry a notebook everywhere--or use your cellphone’s memo feature--to record thoughts as they bubble up. I’ve noticed that the more I do this, the more ideas occur to me. I think the subconscious LIKES to be noticed.

3. Spend some time daily in a mindless, repetitive activity like jogging, or meditate regularly. These activities will help you get your conscious mind out of the way and allow your subconscious ideas to surface.

Tomorrow: How to insert background information unobtrusively

Technorati Tags: The subconscious and creativity,novel writing

20. Basing fictional characters on real-life people

“Roman a clef,” which means “novel with a key,” is the term for novels and movies  in which actual persons and events are disguised as fictional.

The most famous movie roman a clef is Citizen Kane, whose protagonist was based on the publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. A more recent roman a clef is the novel and movie The Devil Wears Prada, in which  Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue Magazine, is thinly disguised as the character Andrea Sachs.

                                 Anna Wintour        

Now I happen to believe that all fictional characters are based in some way on real life people even if the author isn’t consciously aware of doing so. After all, we all learn human actions and motivations from the people we know, starting with our family members.

Peej, the protagonist of my YA novel, Going to See Grassy Ella, is based on my real-life sister Margaret Jane. In the novel, Peej survives her cancer, unlike my sister. For me, creating Peej was a way of allowing my sister to live again.

Margaret Jane Lance

As a rule, it’s not a great idea to create characters that are too close to someone in real life. This is so for a few reasons. First, most obviously, if your novel is successful, you might get sued.

But second, basing a character too closely on someone real can limit you. The whole point of fiction is to create scenes and situations. If you base your character on Uncle Fred, you may second-guess yourself. “I really want Adam Stark to commit murder during a sky-dive, but I know that Uncle Fred would never do that!”

It is always tempting to use your fiction to settle scores, and I imagine that a large number of fictional characters were written for just that reason, even though we readers are never let in on the secret. I have done that myself on more than one occasion, especially in the young adult series novels I wrote as Lynn Beach. For example, a certain girl who bullied me in junior high school was strangled by a ghost in one of these stories. Just saying.

The bottom line is to so thoroughly disguise any real person you use for a fictional character that he or she will never make the connection. Or at least won’t be able to prove it.

When I was first working on Pandora’s Children, a casual friend  who liked Pandora’s Genes asked me to name a character in the sequel after him. By the time he asked, all the important new characters but one had already been named. The remaining character was a villainous serving boy, and I did name him after my friend. When my friend read the book, he was furious. It turned out he wanted only a heroic character to bear his name

Tomorrow, a special guest post by Kate Fowler Kelley, on how to live with a novelist.

Technorati Tags: fiction writing,creating fictional characters,basing fictional characters on real life people

17. Creating science-fiction animals: the strange creatures in Pandora’s Genes

When I began writing Pandora’s Genes, the strange, mutated animals appeared to me fully-formed in the same way as the main characters.

At the beginning of the novel, Zach visits Evvy’s family on an “ill-tempered” mount that becomes immobile at sunset; Zach and Evvy must shelter in a cave, protected by fire, to avoid poison-bats, which cannot bear to exposure to light; and Evvy is helped to find the Garden by Baby, the inquisitive and friendly fox-cat.

Baby, the Fox-cat

Could such creatures exist in real life? Probably not, but some of their adaptations are not really so far-fetched. Take the poison-bats. Most of today’s bats avoid bright lights, preferring to operate at dusk or in the dark. And although it is rare, a number of mammals, such as some shrews and moles do produce venom.

Likewise, the stolid mounts, which in the Pandora’s world have replaced most other riding and pack animals, might have evolved from camels, which do have very thick skins and can travel long distances in unpredictable terrain. They are also known for their unpredictable, surly temperaments. In the Pandora’s world, these mutated creatures have developed the ability to remain completely immoblle after sunset, when hunting bats would be attracted to any movement.

The fox-cats are everyone’s favorite Pandora’s creatures. Although there may or may not be such a thing as an empathic sense in real life, anyone who has ever owned cats knows that they often appear to read minds. In my post-Change world, the remaining house cats developed this ability along with larger ears for more acute hearing, and the superior intelligence necessary to live in such a dangerous world. Like today’s cats and dogs, the fox-cats bond readily with humans.

My wonderful cover designer, Glenace Melton, based the fox-cat’s appearance on that of my most beloved and always-remembered Hatshe, pictured here:

Tomorrow: Plot or not? (Part I)

Technorati Tags: science fiction animals fictional animals science fiction mutations writing science fiction

13. The Political World of Pandora’s Genes

The other day I received the following question in an email from a friend who has been reading these posts:

What drove the politics of the story (the political intricacies – were they sourced on anything in particular)?

As it happens, the political setting in the Pandora’s World fascinates me. When I was a teenager, my father shared his interest in ancient warfare with me, and then in my twenties I read the Greek novels of Mary Renault. They all gripped me, particularly Fire From Heaven and The Persian Boy, which were both about the education and military career of Alexander the Great. This rather unusual interest for a young woman led me to ponder:

• What makes a good leader?
• How do you deal with an excess of young men (and a dearth of women)  in a society?
• What are possible solutions to the never-ending conflict between superstition and reason (or, put another way, religion and science)?
• Can one man, one strong leader, make a difference in the tide of history?

Alexander the Great

These questions were all put into the head of my leader, the Principal. I touched on each of them to greater or lesser degrees throughout the two books.

For example, Will, the Principal, models himself on Alexander the Great. He feels that a good leader must be strong and decisive; that hearing all sides of an argument is important, but that one person alone must make all final decisions. This view leads him to scorn the leaders of the Garden, the allied enclave that is run and inhabited by female scientists, whose leaders rule by consensus rather than fiat.

The question of how to deal with excess young men in a society has vexed many civilizations throughout history. In modern China, for example, leaders are only beginning to confront this issue as a result of their one-child-per-couple policy, which has led to a shortage of marriageable women.

In the Pandora’s world, Will takes large numbers of young men into his structured army/police force, which is how many societies have handled this problem in the past. Polyandry is an accepted form of marriage in his District.

In Zach’s travels, he encounters the Road Men, who form roving bands of “engineers” and “pullers,” who worship dead automobiles as they pillage the countryside, taking women as spoils. In the third book in the series, Zach will encounter another society that has found yet another way to handle the gender imbalance, this time based on modern US rituals.

The next issue,  the conflict between superstition and reason, is dramatized in the Pandora’s world by the clash between the Principal, who wants to try to restore as much as possible of the old vanished civilization, and the superstitious Traders, who have elevated fear of technology to a religion.

As to whether one man can make a difference to the tide of history, the Principal certainly believes the answer is yes, and that he himself will be featured prominently when history books are again written.

What none of the Principal’s views take into account are what used to be called Acts of God, which can blight the plans of even the most enlightened ruler. This is what my characters will face in the third book, the one I am writing now.

Tomorrow: BLOGATHON SWAP DAY, in which my blog will be written by fellow Blogathoner Anne Wainscott, and hers will be written by me.

Technorati Tags: Alexander the Great in literature,political fiction

12. Outline or Wing It? Three Ways to Plot a Novel

Beginning novelists often want to know whether they need a detailed outline, or whether it’s okay to just start writing and see what happens. In my view, there are three basic ways to construct a plot:

1. Follow an outline. Your outline might be very detailed, with headings and subheadings, much the way you outlined term papers in high school. Or it could be a list of points to be covered, in the approximate order in which they occur. I have a friend, a successful author of mystery and science fiction stories, who will not put a word on paper until he has a thoroughly thought-out outline. He’s told me that sometimes the outline is longer than the finished project.

I’ve written a number of YA series novels for book packagers, and they always require that a chapter-by-chapter outline be submitted for approval before writing the story. Usually, the outline just hits the high points of what would happen in each chapter, but sometimes I’d include bits of dialogue or description to show the flavor of what to expect. (In Chapter Six, Sara realizes she has turned into a werewolf. We see her horror and fascination as she examines her newly hairy, clawed hands. “Oh, no,” she thought. “What will Drake think?”)

I found writing the outlines tedious, but ultimately very helpful for meeting my daily writing quota.

2. Wing it. As I mentioned in my first post in this series, I just started writing Pandora’s Genes and kept going.  This got me to the end of Part 1, a little over 100 pages. But what then?

There are many writers, including some very popular mystery writers, who maintain they do not know what is going to happen until they get to the end of a book. I believe that this is possible, and have some ideas about why it can work for some writers (I will explore this topic in a future post).

I’m not sure it is a good idea for a beginning novelist to completely wing it, however. There is too much danger of losing any thread of plot and having to throw out a few dozen or even hundred pages, or--worse--losing interest in the novel. Instead, I recommend a hybrid method of plotting, which is:

3. Plot-as-you-go. This is what I ultimately ended up doing with Pandora’s Genes, and it began before I reached the end of Part I. What happened was that ideas for the rest of the story started occurring to me, almost randomly, so I scribbled them down as I thought of them--sometimes on a page I was working on, sometimes on index cards or scraps of paper. I consulted these notes often, and added to them continually.

I’m doing something similar with the third book in the series, which I’m working on now. I have in my head a general idea of the story’s main themes and where I want it to go. But there are a lot of possibilities, and I just found around a hundred pages I had written a few years ago that I don’t remember. So I’ve stopped writing and am reading--and making lots and lots of notes.

The soap opera doyenne Agnes Nixon once told me, of her soap opera’s “Bible” (the long-term outline for a year’s worth of plots), “it is like a road map. You know you’re leaving from Chicago and ending up in Los Angeles. But you never know what side trips you will take along the way.”

 

 

Agnes Nixon

Tomorrow: The political world of Pandora’s Genes

Technorati Tags: Outlining the novel

11. Keeping Track: Continuity and Consistency

The other day, in response to my post on mapping novel locations, a reader sent me a question by email:

When I've tried fiction, the main problem I've had is consistency.  In other words, I would write something on page 98 that was inconsistent with something I had written on page 28.  How do you get around this?  Do you start from the beginning every time you sit down to write more?  Or do you say, who cares?

In another life long ago, when I was one of several writers for a soap opera, there was always someone in charge of “continuity.” This person made sure that when the Miller family sat down to a dinner of roast beef they did not get up three episodes later from a delicious chicken cacciatori. Every novelist needs to be her own continuity expert. 

To answer my reader’s last question first, of course you must care about consistency! One of the surest ways to lose readers is to write a novel with random character or plot changes. Can you imagine a movie in which a character starts out as Nicolas Cage but ends up as John Travolta? (Okay, bad example, since there IS such a movie. Never use Nicolas Cage in an example.) My point is that when you’re dealing with a large cast of characters and a complicated plot, it’s not always easy to remember everything. Here’s what I recommend to my writing students:

• Make charts and graphs. I do this in addition to the maps I draw of the locations for various scenes. Pandora’s Genes  had three major characters and dozens of lesser characters. It took place in several locations over a period of five years. I pieced together several sheets of paper and made a long timeline that mapped the most important scenes. It showed me where and when everyone was at any given time in the novel.
• Keep notebooks or index cards—or the electronic equivalent--for each character and plot point. I’m an index-card kind of writer myself, but I know other novelists who keep a small notebook or electronic data-base section for each character and each important plot thread. In Pandora’s Children there is an important subplot about a spy among the Principal’s closest aides. I kept careful notes on the clues I left, to make sure both that they were not too obvious and that I did not forget them later.
• Be flexible. Sometimes unexpected plot twists will turn up and ruin all your best-laid plans. Or a character will decide to do something you hadn’t foreseen. When this occurs, if the change seems right for the book, then go with it. But always go back and change earlier scenes so that they match up with the new fictional reality. When you do, you’ll find that all those charts and index cards make your job a lot easier.

Tomorrow: Outline or Wing It?

Technorati Tags: novel writing