Describe your writing and/or your reading life using a Kangaroo word.
Technically, a kangaroo word carries its own synonym within it (called a joey word), but I don’t know how else to describe this game. Bonus points if you do!
Fill in the blanks:
My writing puts the ____ in _______. My reading life puts the _____ in ___________.
To get the ball rolling, I’ll start.
My writing puts the sass in assassin, the laughter in slaughter. My reading life puts the fun in funeral.
Your turn!
We all do it—to some extent, that is. You. Me. The princesses on the top and the paupers at the bottom. It seems to be some primal urge. Some burning instinct to seek self-pleasure, not pain, and avoid the unpleasant or overwhelming.
I’m talking procrastination, of course. The art of putting off till tomorrow that which should be done today. I’d say the majority of writers are procrastinators, and that’s okay. Many times, though, procrastination can be a positive force and not a negative curse. Especially for writers who can perfect their procrastination down to a science.
Procrastination’s best defined as “the act of avoiding doing what you know (or think) you should be doing”. The word descends from the Latin word procrastinare which means “to postpone or delay” and the Greek term akrasia, the “lack of self-control or the state of acting against one’s better judgment”. Leave it to the Greeks and the Romans to label the condition because these ancients were some of the biggest procrastinators of all time. In fact, back then procrastination was viewed as an admirable quality—something that was to be perfected for peak performance.
I know that doesn’t make sense, on the surface. But drilling down, you can make the case that, properly done, intentional procrastination can increase your productivity on important tasks. It’s a matter of setting priorities and focusing on prime output that brings delayed gratification—not a waste time on trivial stuff that seems like fun in the moment (immediate gratification).
Psychologists have done a lot of procrastination studies. Traditional thinking suggests procrastination is nothing more than a time management problem. These thinkers suggest self-discipline is all that’s required to Get Things Done, or GTD as the acronym’s known.
Others aren’t so sure about this. Dr. Tim Pychyl of Carlton University in Toronto and his counterpart, Dr. Fuschia Sirois of Sheffield University in the UK, did a detailed procrastination project and came up with a different suggestion. They saw procrastination, at its root cause, as an emotional management issue, not time.
Drs. Sirois and Pychyl found their studied subjects reacted to procrastination in relation to how they felt in the moment about tackling certain tasks. It’s human nature to avoid pain and seek pleasure, and that emotional connection is just as hard-wired as flight or fight. It’s really about mood when it comes to GTD, say the Docs.
The Docs went on to report the anti-procrastination mindset for GTD is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which is a psychological offshoot to Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). They say that a GTD mentality based on ACT principles allows “psychological flexibility” to tolerate uncomfortable thoughts and feelings (ie: I really don’t want to do this right now, but I know I have to or the consequences will be more untolerable). Recognizing this lets a person stay in the present moment in spite of negative feelings and to prioritize choices and actions that help that person (you) get closer to what you really want in life.
Their studies, the Docs said, found most people couldn’t envision their long-term situation—where they’d be in five or ten years instead of at the moment. Procrastination, or putting off important works, kept their subjects “happy in the moment”. They termed this “mood repair” and found people naturally avoid uncomfortable feelings by putting off tasks-at-hand regardless if the tasks are vital to overall life success.
This doctoral work claims people are actually wired to think of themselves as two different people. They say we have our present selves and our future selves but, strangely, we naturally prioritize our present mood at the expense of our future well-being even though the choice is irrational in our long-term welfare. The Docs reported brain scan waves of people told to envision themselves ten years out were the same as when told to think of celebrities they didn’t know.
Thinking about it, this does make sense. We procrastinate because our brains are wired to care more about our present comfort than our future wellness. That makes it clear we have two ways of dealing with procrastination:
Yes. I know. This is easier said than done. However, as a serious writer, you have to focus on the long term. It means feeling less uncomfortable about facing the blank page and putting the fingers on the keys. It means completing the current WIP and starting the next—knowing that in five years, ten years, fifteen years, and longer, you’ll have built a backlist strong enough to support you ad infinite.
You’re probably expecting some examples of how to pull off perfect procrastination for writers. To start with, let me suggest you don’t really procrastinate as much as you think. It’s just a matter of setting the right priorities and addressing/attacking the most urgent issues first.
Before I became a serious writer, I was a long-time government worker with high-stress tasks. I faced life and death issues, literally, for over three decades. Often, there wasn’t time to procrastinate. Each day was a challenge to balance urgent and important issues along with non-urgent yet still important jobs.
I learned to work within a priority matrix of four quadrants. There’s nothing new or secret about this anti-procrastination process. It’s called the Eisenhower Matrix or the Ike Box and rightly named after the Second World War General and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower who was supremely famous for GTD.
The Eisenhower Matrix deals with two priority dimensions. One is importance. The other is urgency. It’s laid out like this:
Upper Left Box — Important and Urgent Tasks
Upper Right Box — Important but Not Urgent Tasks
Lower Left Box — Not Important yet Urgent Tasks
Lower Right Box — Not Important and Not Urgent Tasks
I’ve used the Ike Box as a police officer and as a coroner. Each profession has a system in place to minimize procrastination and prioritize workload as well as a built-in accountability checker. I won’t get into how they work, but I will let you peek at the Ike Box I have as a writer for this week’s priorities as well as into the near future. It’s all about building the world of five, ten, and more years ahead.
Upper Left — Write blog posts for The Kill Zone and DyingWords, Link backlist in based-on-true-crime series on Amazon, Kobo and Nook, Exercise/Eat/Sleep well, Spend time with Rita, Get a haircut and buy shaving cream
Upper Right — Develop City Of Danger series, Plan July stacked promotion for crime series, Plan podcast with cool co-star Sue Coletta, Publish true crime series on Apple and Google
Lower Left — Respond to two lengthy email assistance requests, Plan print releases for true crime series, Mow the lawn before it’s impossible to walk through and remind our downstairs tenant to pick up after their Rottweiler/Great Dane crossbreed
Lower Right — Renovate writing/recording studio, Have that discussion with Floyd, my neighbor
That’s it. That sums my priorities in this writing and living gig. Nothing fancy or complicated, but it gives me a snapshot of what needs doing right now and what doesn’t matter. I’ve learned (or try to learn) to take only so much on and to say “No” to unproductive time theft. I heard someone say, “When you’ve got it all down to one shopping cart, you’ve got it made.”
Examples of procrastination for writers? Right, I did mention that. One big return in putting stuff off is sitting on your manuscript for some time after you’ve completed a polished draft and before you ship it for publication. This brewing time is precious, and I see that as high-value downtime.
Speaking of downtime, you might view surfing Facebook and watching cat videos as terrible procrastination when you need to GTD. I don’t see it that way, because no one can work all the time and keep peak productivity. Note: If you haven’t read Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Productive People, please do so. This is time well spent.
Time away from the keys and screen lets the creative juices flow. My best downtime is while out for a walk on the waterfront. My worst is after dinner and at the end of the day when I’m creatively done. However, I don’t consider watching an evening’s net stream of the Moody Blues Nights In White Satin (Days of Future Passed) and a TED talk on brain science with Dr. Lara Boyd as a procrastinator’s waste of time which I did last night.
Another prime example of procrastination for writers is leaving a major decision until the last moment and then committing after you’ve had plenty of time to think things over. Rash decisions (gut responses) just to GTD quick can have disastrous consequences as the Lehman Brother organization found out. While researching this piece, I found a Smithsonian Magazine article on a book by Frank Patroy titled Wait: The Art and Science of Delay. Here’s a quote about how the Lehman Brothers destroyed their own future by failing to procrastinate:
“I interviewed a number of former senior executives at Lehman Brothers and discovered a remarkable story. Lehman Brothers had arranged for a decision-making class in the fall of 2005 for its senior executives. It brought four dozen executives to the Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue and brought in leading decision researchers, including Max Bazerman from Harvard and Mahzarin Banaji, a well-known psychologist. For the capstone lecture, they brought in Malcolm Gladwell, who had just published Blink, a book that speaks to the benefits of making instantaneous decisions and that Gladwell sums up as “a book about those first two seconds.” Lehman’s president Joe Gregory embraced this notion of going with your gut and deciding quickly, and he passed copies of Blink out on the trading floor.
The executives took this class and then hurriedly marched back to their headquarters and proceeded to make the worst snap decisions in the history of financial markets. Failing to delay, or procrastinate, their crucial decisions caused Lehman Brothers to go broke in 2008.”
What about you Kill Zone folks? How does procrastination fit into your short and long-term writing plans? Don’t put off commenting until it’s too late.
——
When it comes to procrastinating, Garry Rodgers ranks with the best. Garry managed to put off a writing career until his sixties. Now, he’s making up for lost time with an 8-part, based-on-true-crime series written and indie published within the last two years as well as penning a few stand alones.
What Garry Rodgers isn’t putting off is starting a new made-for-net-streaming detective fiction series called City Of Danger. Tagline: A modern city in dystopian crisis enlists two private detectives from its utopian past to deliver street justice and restore social order. Follow Garry on Twitter and checkout his personal blog/website at DyingWords.net.
I’ve heard that many writers sweat over the names of their characters. One very famous romance writer (I’m not sure which one or I would name her) says that she cannot begin a story until her characters have the perfect name. I’m not like that. While I’ll put some effort into naming primary characters–the ones that will live on throughout a series of books–secondary characters are get their names sort of at random.
Nathan Bailey, the eponymous character of my first novel, Nathan’s Run, got his name by process of elimination. My son, Chris, was about the same age as Nathan when I wrote the book, and since I knew what lay ahead for the character, I couldn’t name him Chris. But because he was the same age, and kids are not always forgiving sorts, I couldn’t use the names of any of his friends. He didn’t know any Nathans at the time, and Nathan Hale has always held a prime spot in my panoply of noble patriots. Nathan’s last name, Bailey, is a direct nod to George Bailey of It’s A Wonderful Life.
Lyle Pointer, the twisted bad guy in Nathans Run, and Warren Michaels, the kind-hearted cop, are both named as they are because I thought their names worked against type.
Jonathan Grave, the protagonist of my hostage rescue series, is named as a convenience. In my original plan for the series, I imagined a branded line of titles like Grave Danger, Grave Peril, Grave Doubt, etc. It turned out that I was the only person in my editorial food chain who thought that was anything but a terrible idea. I kept the name because I had already finished the book, and I like the character. (Hand to God: It never occurred to me that Jonathan and I share a monogram until I was many books into the series and a fan asked about it.)
Secondary characters in general come from one of two sources. Each year, I auction character names for charitable fundraisers, and those winners get a prime secondary spot–often as the bad guy, but not always. My next alternative is to go to IMDB, pick a movie that I like, and then click on “all cast and crew.” I rarely copy both the first and last names of crew members, but rather mix and match them.
Ethnic characters. Over the course of the Grave series, most of my bad guys have been American, but I’ve exploited Chechen, Russian and Mexican bad guys, too. (Jonathan and the cartels don’t get along at all.) For those names, I’ll do a Google search for “Chechen names,” or likewise for another nationality. It’s astonishing how that never lets me down.
Richard Goldsbury was the bully who preyed on me in junior high school. He’s died in at least five books. Most recently, he was incinerated in a nuclear blast.
Laziness. I don’t like typing complicated names. In my new Victoria Emerson series, a throwaway character named First Sergeant Paul Copley turned out to have a more significant role that I thought he would, and I ended up having to type his name a lot. I have accordingly instructed the autocorrect in Word to change “1stsgt” to First Sergeant. “1stsgtp” becomes First Sergeant Paul Copley and “1sgtc” becomes First Sergeant Copley.
Amusement. In one of the Grave books (I think it’s No Mercy), Jonathan and his buddy Boxers encounter a guy named Dick Semen, and they get the giggles. Thrillers need some comic relief and that worked. In fact, I’m smiling as I write this, thinking back on the scene. (Aspiring writers please note: men’s true senses of humor form and solidify when they’re 12 years old. Farts and funny names will always be funny. The more inappropriate the timing, the funnier they will be. [See: Rusty Bed Springs by I.P. Nightly.])
So, Killzone family . . . Any thoughts on naming characters? Any tricks or resources you’d like to share?
By PJ Parrish
I was an English literature major way back in college and I now am going on record that not once did I ever encounter the word “trope.”
Now it’s possible I might have dosed off during my 8 a.m. Post-Colonial British Literature class and missed it. But all these decades later, I can safely say that the word “trope” has never taken a front seat in my writer brain. Motif. Theme. Allegory. Irony. Even synecdoche I can remember. But trope…nope.
Yet I’ve run across the word at least six times in recent months, usually in book and movie reviews, which forced me to the Google machine to find out what the heck I’ve been missing. So, to save you the trouble…
A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. The word trope has also come to be used for describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works.
I added the red there because that second definition sort of pissed me off. One of my pet peeves is when a perfectly good word gets corrupted by misuse and comes to mean both sides of something, and thus means nothing. Examples:
Hellacious. It began life as college slang in the 1930s, a combo of “hell” and “bodacious” and it was used as a negative. “What a hellacious storm!” Now, it can mean either good or bad. Which renders it impotent.
Fulsome. It used to be negative, starting out (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) as “filling” then “tending to cause nausea,” then finally “wearisome from excess or repetition.” Now, I guess because “full” sounds good, it has come to be misused as “generous.” The beloved professor received fulsome praise. A good word gone to meh.
Okay, okay, I am being pedantic, I know. English is a gloriously elastic language. “Girl” was just a young lady once, then it became a sort of pejorative, to put women down or even men, as in “You throw like a girl.” But of late, women have (thankfully, I say) reclaimed it as a power badge. And then there is the word “fizzle.” We use it today to mean something just sort of peters out, right? In the 1500s, it meant to silently pass gas. Which is now called “crop dusting.”
But I digress. Back to trope.
As I noted above, it has two divergent definitions. At its best, a trope is a time-honored technique or classic theme. Good literary tropes honor genre traditions. At its worst, a trope is a cliché, something overused that shows a lack of original thought.
Now I for one, think “genre” itself is not a dirty word. I think of crime fiction the same way I think of ballet. (I spent 18 years as a dance critic). In ballet, there are only FIVE arm positions and FIVE foot positions. Everything in ballet emerges from that. Yet from that tight formula came love stories as old as Petipa’s romantic “Swan Lake” to the new of George Balanchine’s abstract “Agon.”
We crime dogs honor the formulas of our genre, yet the best of us, like Balanchine, color outside the lines. But here’s the point of all this: As you ponder your plot and characterizations, the hard part is distinguishing between what is a good and useful trope of our genre and what is just tired cliché. Let me give it a try and then I hope you all will weigh in, please.
Bad Clichés.
The Alcoholic Detective or Cop. This is an attempt, I think, to show that the protag has a hard job or worse, hates his job. Or it’s a lazy stand-in for “tortured past” or “deep soulfulness.” Bull hockey. Now, we were guilty of this our in my first mystery, Dark of the Moon. We had our protag Louis Kincaid hitting the cheap brandy way too often. I don’t think we realized way back in 1998 that it was a cliche, but there it was. To our credit, we built on this and had Louis recognize his fault, especially when a child entered his life. If you are going to use this, it darn well be part of a very believable character arc. Teresa Schwegel created a great portrait of cop Samantha Mack in her 2005 Edgar-winning debut Officer Down.
Eager Rookie Assigned to Bitter Veteran. Way back in 1976, Clint Eastwood grumbled about being teamed up with noobie Tyne Daly who is, gasp! also a woman. (Dirty Harry: “If she wants to play lumberjack, she’s going to have to learn to handle her end of the log.”) And of course, the rookie always ends up teaching the burned-out cop a valuable life lesson. (Or she gets offed. To his credit, Harry felt really bad about this). I’d steer clear of this one unless you’ve got a really fresh slant.
The Cop or Detective With Bad Marriage or Alienated Kid. Yeah, law enforcement is tough on relationships, but this has been done to death. In the hands of a great writer (think Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River), it’s deeply knitted into the plot. But don’t use this as a crutch to slap a veneer of emotional depth on your protag. I’ve seen veteran writers who should know better stumble with this one. Oh, and the divorced cop always seems to find a new hot woman to save him.
The Dumb Sidekick. A sidekick is a very useful plot device, as it gives your protag someone to talk to (dialogue is action!) and bounce ideas off. I wrote a post about creating good sidekicks a while back. Click here. But a clueless foil, put there just to make your protag look clever, contributes nothing. At best, these secondary characters should have talents and life experiences of their own. Think Spenser’s friend Hawk, McGee’s cerebral Meyer or Elvis Cole’s sociopath Joe Pike who was so cool he got his own book. And yes, we could spend a whole post here debating whether Watson is really as dense as he sometimes seems.
Good Tropes. (These are purely my taste!)
Creepy Settings. I am a sucker for anything decaying, neglected or isolated. (My favorite Nancy Drew was Clue in the Crumbling Wall). Whenever Kelly and I begin a book, we think hard about the setting, almost always leaning toward the neo-gothic. In An Unquiet Grave, we trap Louis in tunnels below an abandoned insane asylum. In Heart of Ice, it’s a ruined hunting lodge on Mackinac Island. In Island of Bones, it’s a remote private island in the Florida Gulf, peopled by a family time has left behind. I think I was influenced by Daphne du Maurier’s stories, especially Don’t Look Now, a chilling tale of a father who keeps seeing his dead child running through the dank alleyways of Venice. (Made into an eerie movie with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.)
Trouble in Paradise. Ah yes. Everything is beautiful, until it’s not. Agatha Christie might have started this trope when she sent Poiret on a cruise down the Nile. But this idea has been recycled with great freshness, notably by Ruth Ware in The Woman In Cabin 10. One of my favorites is Noah Hawley’s Edgar-winner Before The Fall, wherein a picture-perfect family departs Martha’s Vineyard in their private plane and only a down-on-his-luck painter and a little boy survive a crash into the ocean.
Coming Out of the Fog. This is a classic in medias res opening. A character wakes up in a place they don’t recognize. How did they get there? Why are they there? There is a feeling (vague or real) of peril. And of course, getting out is what sets the plot in motion. Sometimes the character has no memory, or can recall an abduction, being drunk or in an accident. I ventured close to cliche with She’s Not There, wherein my protag wakes up in a hospital with amnesia. And it took a lot of plot effort and thought to backstory to make it work. Tread carefully here, but it can be a really great way to fast-break your story from the gate.
Over at GoodReads, they’ve got their own list of classic tropes and some good examples of current cirme fiction under these categories:
And last, we have to deal with…
The Unreliable Narrator. Okay, I recognize its lineage: Poe begat Roger Ackroyd who begat Holden Caulfield who begat Teddy Daniels who begat Amy Dunne who begat legions of liars. But I’m tired of the trickery. Trope or cliche? What say you?
by Jodie Renner, editor & author
Most of today’s popular fiction is written in first-person POV (I) or third-person limited point of view (he, she), both of which show us the story mainly from inside the character’s head and body. These narrative techniques engage readers much more emotionally than the more distant third-person omniscient, which was popular in previous centuries.
Current popular fiction, although a long way from the old omniscient style, still employs a variety of narrative distances, depending on the genre, the target readership, and the writer’s own comfort level. There is a whole spectrum when it comes to narrative distance, from plot-driven military or action-adventure novels and historical sagas at one end to character-driven romantic suspense and romance at the other.
Today’s post focuses on close or intimate narrative distance – how to engage readers emotionally, bond them with your character, and draw them deep into your story, so they can’t put it down. And how to avoid interrupting as the author, which some readers might even find akin to “mansplaining.” See a great post here on TKZ by bestselling thriller writer, Robert Dugoni, “Hey, Butt Out! I’m Reading Here!”
Most female readers (and apparently females make up about 70% of readers of novels) prefer to identify closely with the main character. The reading experience is more satisfying when we connect emotionally with the protagonist, worrying about them and rooting for them.
What is third-person limited POV? As Dan Brown says, “limited or ‘close’ third point of view (a narrative that adheres to a single character) … gives you the ability to be inside a character’s thoughts, feelings, and sensations, which can give readers a deeper experience of character and scene, and is the most common way to use point of view.”
(For an introduction to point of view in fiction, especially deep point of view or close third-person POV, see my articles here on TKZ: POV 101, POV 102, and POV 103)
From third-person limited, you can decide to go even deeper, into close third person or deep point of view to create an immersive experience where readers are more emotionally invested, feeling like participants rather than observers.
As David Mamet says, “Deep point of view is a way of writing fiction in third-person limited that silences the narrative voice and takes the reader directly into a character’s mind…. Deep POV creates a deeper connection between readers and characters.”
In deep POV, the author writes as the character instead of about him. The character and his world come to life for us as we vicariously share his experiences and feel his struggles, pain, triumphs, and disappointments.
As editor and author Beth Hill says, “deep POV…is a way of pairing third-person POV with a close narrative distance. It’s a way of creating the intimacy of first-person narration with a third-person point of view.” (And without all those I – I – I’s.)
Depending on your personal style, you could decide to write in a deeper, more subjective third-person point of view for a whole novel or story or reserve this closer technique for more critical or intimate scenes.
Assuming you write in third person and want to engage your readers more and immerse them in your story world, here are some tips for getting deeper into the psyche of your character, starting with more general tips and working down to fine-tuning.
~ First, decide whose scene it is.
Most of the scenes will be from the viewpoint of your protagonist. We know what your lead character is thinking and feeling, as we’re in their head and body. But we only know the feelings and reactions of the others by what the POV character perceives – by their words, actions, body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.
But sometimes you’ll want to write a scene from the point of view of another character. If you choose to use multiple POVs, make sure you only go into the head of important characters such as the love interest, someone close to the MC, or the antagonist. But as readers, we are (or should be) bonded to your MC, so it’s best to show more scenes from the viewpoint of your protagonist than all the others combined – about 70% is optional to keep readers satisfied.
How do you decide whose POV a scene will be told through? Ask yourself these questions: Who has the most at stake in that scene, the most to lose? Which character is invested the most in what’s going on? Who will be most affected by the events of the scene and change the most by the end of the scene?
~ When starting a new scene or chapter, start with the name of the POV character.
The first name a reader sees is the person they assume is the viewpoint character, the one they’re following for that scene. And don’t open a scene or chapter with “he” or “she” – that’s too vague and confusing. Readers want to know right away whose head we’re in, so name the viewpoint character right in the very first sentence.
~ Avoid head-hopping. Get into that character’s head and body and stay there for the whole scene (or most of it).
Don’t suddenly jump into the thoughts or internal reactions of others, and try to avoid stepping back into authorial (omniscient) POV, where you’re surveying the whole scene from afar.
Stick to the general guideline of one POV per scene. Viewpoint shifts within a scene can be jolting, disorienting, and annoying if not done consciously and with care. (On the other hand, when expertly executed, they can work. Nora Roberts has definitely mastered this difficult technique.)
Become that person for the scene. Are they anxious? Cold? Tired? Uncomfortable? Annoyed? Scared? Elated? We should be able to only see, hear, smell, taste, touch and feel what they do. Don’t include any details they wouldn’t be aware of.
~ Refer to the POV character in the most informal way, as he would think of himself.
Use the POV character’s name at the beginning of scenes, then only when needed for clarity. If we’re in Daniel’s head, he’s not thinking of himself as “Dr. Daniel Norton.” He’s thinking of himself as Daniel or Dan or Danny. When you introduce a new POV character for the first time, you can use their full name and title for clarity if you wish (or just slip it in later), but then switch immediately to what they would call themselves or what most people in their everyday world call them. Most of the time, just “he” or “she” is even better. How often do we think of ourselves using our names? Not often.
~ Don’t describe the POV character’s facial expressions or body language as an outside observer would see them.
Unless she’s looking in a mirror, your character can’t see what her face looks like at any given moment, so avoid phrases like “She blushed beet red.” Instead, say something like, “Her cheeks burned” or “She felt her face flush.” Instead of “Her face went white,” say “She felt the blood drain from her face.”
Or if we’re in a guy’s point of view and he’s angry, don’t say “His brow furrowed and he scowled.” Instead, show his anger from the inside (irate thoughts, clenched teeth), or show him gripping something or aware that his hands have tightened into fists, or whatever.
~ Don’t describe other characters in a way that the POV character wouldn’t. For example, don’t give a detailed description from head to toe of a character the POV character is looking at and already knows very well, like a family member.
~ Refer to other characters by the name the POV character uses for them.
If we’re in Susan’s point of view and her mother walks in, don’t say “The door opened, and Mrs. Wilson walked in, wearing a frayed blue coat.” Say something like, “The door opened, and Mom hurried in, pulling off her old coat.”
~ Show their inner thoughts and reactions often.
To bring the character to life, we need to see how she’s reacting to what’s going on, how she’s feeling about the people around her. Use a mix of indirect and direct thoughts. Short, direct, emphatic thought-reactions, often in italics, help reveal the character’s true feelings and increase intimacy with the readers. For example, What? Or No way. Or What a jerk! Instead of: “They’d been set up” (narration), use: We were set up. (The character’s actual thoughts.) For more on this, see “Using Thought-Reactions to Add Attitude & Immediacy.”
Indirect thought: He wondered where she was.
Direct thought: Where is she? Or: Where the hell is she, anyway?
~ Frequently show the POV character’s sensory reactions to their environment, other characters, and what’s happening.
Use as many of the five senses as is appropriate to get us into the skin of the character. Also show fatigue, fear, nervousness, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, etc. That way, readers are drawn in and feel they “are” the character. They worry about the character and are fully engaged.
~ Describe locations and other characters as the POV character perceives them.
Filter descriptions of the setting or other people through the attitudes, opinions, preferences, and sensory reactions of the viewpoint character, using their unique voice and speaking style. Don’t step back and describe the environment, another character, or a room in factual, neutral language. And don’t describe details that character wouldn’t notice or care about.
~ Use only words and phrases that character would use.
If your character is an old prospector, don’t use sophisticated language when describing what he’s perceiving around him or what he’s deciding to do next. Use his natural wording in both his dialogue and his thoughts – and all the narration, too, as those are his observations.
~ Don’t suddenly have a character knowing something just because the readers know it.
If you’re using third-person multiple POV, it’s very effective to sometimes go into the head of another character, maybe the love interest or the villain, in their own scene, without the protagonist present. We readers know this other character by name, but the viewpoint character may not even know they exist. Later, we’re in a scene in the POV of the main character when the secondary character appears to them for the first time. It’s easy to slip up and use that character’s name (or other details about him), since we know it so well, before the protagonist knows it. Watch out for this subtle mistake creeping into your story.
~ Don’t show things the character can’t perceive.
Don’t show something going on behind the character’s back or in another room or location. Similarly, don’t show what’s happening around them when they’re sleeping or unconscious. Instead, show what they’re perceiving as they wake up, or you could leave a line space and start a new scene in the POV of someone else. Avoid slipping into all-seeing, all-knowing, omniscient point of view.
~ Keep the narration in the POV character’s voice.
In deep point of view, not only should the dialogue be in the character’s voice and style, but the narration should too, as that’s really the character’s thoughts and observations. For more on this, see my post, “Tips for Creating an Authentic, Engaging Voice.”
~ Don’t butt in as the author to explain things to the readers, outside of the character’s viewpoint.
Avoid lengthy “info dumps.” Instead, reveal any necessary info in brief form though the character’s POV or as a lively question-and-answer dialogue, with some attitude and tension to spice things up.
Avoid author asides, like “Little did he realize that…” or “If only she had known…”. If the character can’t perceive it at that moment, don’t write it. You can always show danger the protagonist isn’t aware of when you’re in the POV of the villain or other character.
~ Use more action beats instead of dialogue tags.
Instead of: “Why do you think that?” she asked, crossing her arms.
Use: “Why do you think that? She crossed her arms.
We know it’s her talking because we immediately see her doing something.
~ For deeper point of view, try to avoid phrases like “she heard,” “he saw,” “she noticed,” etc.
Since we’re in the character’s head, we know she’s the one who’s hearing and seeing what is being described. Just go directly to what she’s perceiving.
He saw the man staring at his wounds. => The man stared at his wounds.
~ Similarly, use “he wondered,” “she thought,” “he believed,” and “she felt” sparingly. Without those filter words, we’re even closer in to the character’s psyche. Go straight to their thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.
For example, here’s a progression to a closer, deeper point of view:
She thought he was an idiot. –> He seemed like a bit of an idiot. –> What an idiot!
The last is a direct, internal thought or thought-reaction, often expressed in italics if it’s brief and emphatic.
Third-person limited POV:
As she hurried along the dark, deserted street, she heard footsteps approaching behind her, getting closer. She wondered if they’d finally found her.
Deep POV:
She hurried along the dark, deserted street. Footsteps approached behind her, getting closer. Could that be them?
“she heard” and “She wondered” are not necessary and create a bit of a psychic distance.
Do a search for all those describing words, like saw, heard, felt, knew, wondered, noticed, and thought, and explore ways to express the sounds, sights, thoughts, and feelings more directly.
My third writing guide, Captivate Your Readers, is full of practical tips, with examples, for deepening the point of view in your fiction and drawing readers in more emotionally.
Readers and writers: Do you have any more tips for deepening point of view in fiction? Or maybe some good before-and-after examples? Please leave them in the comments below. (If you prefer a more distant POV, let’s leave that discussion for another time.) Thanks.
Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, and WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized and edited two anthologies. Website: https://www.jodierenner.com/, Blog, Resources for Writers, Facebook, Amazon Author Page.
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend.
– Puck, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Are you a dreamer?
By that I don’t mean someone who has a vision of how they’d like life to be, or of a goal they’d like to achieve. Those are good dreams to have. They keep us motivated.
I’m talking about when-you’re-asleep dreams.
I don’t dream a lot. But when I do, it’s choice.
And I have a distinct dream pattern.
Once a year or so I have a recurring nightmare. I’m on a cruise ship at night in the middle of the Pacific. Or maybe it’s the Atlantic. All I know is it’s the middle, and there’s no land or other ships in sight.
And I fall off the stern. (How is a mystery. Is it murder?)
Anyway, I splash into water, then pop my head up and see, leaving me at 30 knots, the lights of the cruise ship. I yell, but no one hears me.
As I tread water the ship gets further and further away, until it is only a dim light in the impossible distance.
That’s when I wake up.
What is this dream telling me? It’s not something mundane like fear of death, since I don’t fear it. But what else could it be saying?
Does it even have to say something?
Freud, of course, thought dreams were crucial windows into the psyche, revealing repressed impulses from childhood. He made a lot of cigar money that way.
On the other hand, Harvard psychiatrists J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley have proposed the Activation-Synthesis Model of Dreaming. This theory holds that the brain, when you’re asleep, tries to bring order to a chaos of neural activity we are completely unaware of. As Hobson puts it, “The brain is so inexorably bent upon the quest for meaning that it attributes and even creates meaning when there is little or none in the data it is asked to process.”
Who knows? I just know I don’t like my recurring nightmare and I’ll be happy if I never have it again.
There’s another pattern to my dreams. I like to get up early…I mean, really early, while it is still dark, the house is quiet, the coffee maker has my joe ready. In this tranquil time I’ll often write a little or read a little. I wait for my lovely wife to join me, and we usually have a little devotion together, or just talk.
Sometimes, depending on the amount of sleep I’ve had, I’ll head back to the sack for another hour or so of Zs.
This is when I often dream, and these dreams are vivid. According to Hobson, dreams tend to have five characteristics: illogical content, intense emotions, acceptance of the bizarre, strange sensory experiences, and difficulty remembering dream content upon waking.
But I usually remember these early morning dreams. The emotions are indeed intense, the narrative strange, and in my dreamscape I believe everything is absolutely real and happening.
Let me tell you about the most recent example.
My wife and I are in New York, staying at a hotel. We have a date to go golfing with Jerry Seinfeld. Seinfeld drives his car up and Cindy gets in. I tell them I’ve forgotten something and I’ll meet them at the golf course.
The dream cuts to me in a sleazy office in Midtown, renting a car. I get the car, which is in an alley, and drive to the end of it. I take out my phone to get GPS directions to the golf course. I’m having trouble with the connection, so I get out of the car and go to a newsstand which is right there to ask the guy for directions.
When I turn back the car is gone! Stolen! In five seconds flat!
I run down the street trying to spot it.
Nothing!
I’m saying, “Oh man oh man oh man!”
I run back to the car rental place, but it’s not there. I’ve apparently taken a wrong turn. I keep looking around in the building, but just run into closed doors, empty hallways, and finally the end of the corridor with a locked door.
And for some reason I have no shirt on.
Desperation choking me, I run out to the street, thinking I’ve got to call Cindy, now!
And I discover the shorts I was wearing for golf are gone. I’m now in a pair of new blue jeans.
With nothing in the pockets!
My phone is gone, my wallet is gone.
I run back into the building asking people if they’ve seen a pair of shorts anywhere.
Blank stares.
Now here’s the most intense part. In the dream I’m saying to myself, “Please let this a dream.” But I don’t wake up.
Oh no! This is real!
I run back to the street, losing breath, patting the jeans all over in a vain attempt to find my phone and wallet.
“Please, God,” I say, “let this be a dream!”
But no, I’m still there. It isn’t a dream at all. It’s happening!
And then I wake up.
For long moment I just lay there, catching my breath. Then realized it was a dream. Flooded with relief, I said out loud, “Thank you, God!”
I jumped out of bed and threw on my robe and looked for Cindy. She was at her computer, sipping her coffee. She was not golfing with Jerry Seinfeld.
Again, I have no idea what this dream signifies.
Do I want to meet Seinfeld?
Or was this just a bunch of neural activity with no meaning at all?
Perhaps we’ll never know for sure. But we don’t have to solve the mystery in order to use our dreams in our fiction. What I have done is the following:
Now over to you. Do you dream? Do you ever use your dreams, or parts of them, in your stories?
Image (c) Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.
A novel titled Falling is scheduled to be published on July 6, 2021. There has been quite a bit of pre-publication chatter about it. Many are calling it the beach-read for this year. The truth of that declaration is way above my paygrade but I have read it and suspect that beach-read or not, many other people will read it this summer as well.
Falling has a terrific plot and is well-written, two parts of a creative equation that are not always present at the same time. Falling concerns an airline pilot whose family is taken hostage by an enigmatic individual while the pilot, his plane, and one hundred forty-nine innocent souls are in mid-air. The pilot is given a choice: crash the plane or his family dies. His response is that neither will happen.
Photo (c) Melissa Young. All rights reserved.
That is the plot. Let’s talk for a minute about the well-written part of the equation, which means that we get to talk about the author. T.J. Newman worked for a while at a bookstore in her home city of Phoenix. She left that worthy and honorable position approximately ten years ago and, as did her mother and sister before her, became a flight attendant. Ms. Newman often found herself on “red-eye” flights, so-called because they are long in duration and take place late in the night. She conceived the idea that became Falling during one such flight. After asking a pilot a “what if” question about her plot and receiving the reaction she hoped for (a look of utter terror) she began writing her ideas, vignettes, sentences, and paragraphs in dim light during her flights while her passengers slept. Her software was a pen and cocktail napkins. She somehow kept all of those little paper squares dry and legible until she could transcribe them into what eventually became the story that she wanted to tell.
Ms. Newman, thanks to her bookstore employment, knew a bit about what she was getting into before she started. Writing the book was the first and extremely important step. The next step was finding an agent. Falling flew out into the ether forty-one times and crash-landed on takeoff. Query forty-two, however, met with success. An agent, who saw something that forty-one others did not, accepted stewardship of Falling and pitched it to Simon & Schuster. S&S offered Ms. Newman a two-book deal for an amount I am too polite to disclose. Let me say that it is enough to keep her in wine, cheese, and whatever else she might reasonably want for the foreseeable future. Oh. I almost forgot. There was a bidding war for the film rights. The winner paid a royal sum for the right to create a movie version of Falling. The book that nobody wanted thus became the movie that everyone wanted to make.
I originally wrote that last sentence to include the phrase “all of a sudden.” I took it out because what occurred here didn’t happen “all of a sudden.” It took well over a year of writing, keeping those napkins dry and secure, polishing, proofing, and polishing some more, and then getting so used to hearing “no” that, I would guess, Ms. Newman couldn’t believe it when she heard “yes,” “yes,” and “yes” again.
After learning this backstory, one might wonder why the author and her manuscript were rejected by forty-one agents, each and all of whom knew what they are doing and who are probably exhaling a collective “oops” over this missed opportunity. Agents spend a lot of toil and trouble learning what editors and publishers want and don’t want at any given point in time. Whether an agent likes a book or not is important, but it is but one moving part of the entire process. Another is that an agent, and for that matter an editor at a publishing house, does not get in trouble on the job for the books they turn down. They get in trouble for the books (and authors) they take on that do not subsequently sell, for whatever reason. You, as an author, can’t control that part. What you can control is forming your premise clearly and writing the best book that you can, regardless of genre. When you get discouraged, think of Ms. Newman writing the best book she could on those cocktail napkins at thirty thousand feet in a dim cabin sometime after midnight, and then being turned down forty-one times by individual gatekeepers who, probably to their quiet dismay, wound up looking like Monty Python’s Black Knight. The lesson is that, regardless of the endeavor, we must hack our way through the naysayers until we reach our personal Holy Grail. You have just read the story of one who did.
Happy reading on July 6, and happy writing for the rest of your days. If you are inclined, would you care to share any encounter with adversity that you have experienced recently, in writing or otherwise? How did you get through it or around it? Thank you.
The pandemic changed the reading and/or writing habits for many.
Some readers stopped reading anything too real or violent and turned to lighter storylines, or at least stories with a HEA or uplifting ending.
Some writers couldn’t inflict as much pain, emotional and/or physical. Other readers and writers didn’t change a thing.
Did anything change in your reading and/or writing habits? Please explain.
By Elaine Viets
The English language is expanding faster than waistlines during quarantine. This year, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary has added another 520 new words.
English is a living language, so growth is good. Or as Webster says:
“The words we use—if they are new or relatively new—are the words we need to express and explain our world. If these words then also become widely used, it becomes the dictionary’s job to explain this use.”
The new crop includes words and abbreviations I’ve never used – including “hygge” and “ASMR.”
And words I hope we’ll never use, like the clunky “decarceration.”
Plus words that we’ve been using long before Webster got wise to them, including “silver fox.” (George Clooney, anyone?)
So what’s “ASMR”? It’s short for “autonomous sensory meridian response.” Uh, right. That clears it up. This example from Webster explains it better:
“It might sound like a bafflingly bizarre way to spend time on the internet. But for Maria’s viewers, her voice and movements hold a certain magic: they can instill tranquility, overcome insomnia—and induce a mysterious physical sensation known as … ‘ASMR’, wherein the body is flooded with waves of euphoric tingles.”
“Hygge” sounds like a type of Scandinavian salt fish. It’s actually a Danish word, meaning “a cozy quality that makes a person feel content and comfortable.”
Here’s how the dictionary says it’s used: “During the long, dark winters when Danes retreat inside their homes, ‘hygge’ is what brings them a great sense of comfort and joy.” It’s sort of pronounced like “hugh-ga.”
“Hygge” and “ASMR” were used a lot in the past year, when we needed comfort. At least, that’s what Webster said. My friends used other comfort words, such as “Ben & Jerry’s” and “Johnnie Walker.”
Thanks to Covid, old words have taken on new meanings. “Long hauler” is not just an over-the-road trucker. Webster says it’s now “a person who experiences one or more long-term effects following initial improvement or recovery from a serious illness (such as COVID-19).”
“Pod” and “bubble” both gained new meanings. A “pod” is a small group of friends, relatives or co-workers that we can safely socialize with and avoid spreading COVID. Now that all my friends are vaccinated, my “pod” had an indoor party without masks.
Any sports fan knows the new meaning of “bubble.” Sports Washington wrote:
“To avoid COVID-19 infection, the NBA and NHL instituted strict ‘bubbles’ where players, coaches, media and staff are sequestered away from the general public. Major League Baseball . . . instead is asking its players to be responsible as they travel the country for games. It’s not working well, and in the case of the Miami Marlins, it’s been awful.”
Most of us are aware of the new words in corporate speak:
“Hard pass” is a firm refusal.
“‘Makerspace’ is a communal public workshop where makers – including artists, painters, jewelry designers – can work on small personal projects.
But don’t confuse “makerspace” with “coworking.” That means people are working in a building with many different kinds of tenants, including new start-ups, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits. These tenants rent their work space and use communal facilities.
I don’t have to explain “crowdfunding” or “gig worker.” You already know those words.
“Decarceration” is a new word that I wish would go away. It means “to release from prison” or to reduce the number of people housed by the “prison industrial complex” – and those three words are another new term. “Decarceration” ranks right up there with “deplane” as one of my most hated words.
“Second Gentleman” has been around since 1976, but Webster finally made it official after the 2020 election, when Kamala Harris was elected Vice President and her husband, Douglas Craig Emhoff, became the first Second Gentleman of the United States.
Wanna know my favorite new word?
“Sapiosexual.”
That means you’re attracted to smart people.
Love words? Logophiles can sign up for Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day. It’s free.
Enjoy forensic mysteries? Kirkus says this about DEATH GRIP, my new Angela Richman mystery: “Viets produces chills with a murder hunt turned on its head.” Buy it here: https://tinyurl.com/ya9q9tfm
Character Descriptions – Part 2
Terry Odell
Last time, I gave some tips for character description. I’ll repeat them here:
Today’s focus is on dealing with character descriptions in First Person or Deep/Close/Intimate Third (which are almost the same thing.)
I am a deep point of view person. I prefer everything to come from inside the character’s head, However, I will read—and enjoy—books written with a shallower point of view. It all comes down to the way the author handles things.
What are authors trying to convey to their readers with physical character descriptions? The obvious: hair color, length, style to some extent. Eye color. Height, weight, skin color. Moving forward, odds are the character is dressed, so there’s clothing to describe. This is all easier in a distant third POV. Using that POV, you can stop the story for a brief paragraph or two of description, a technique used by John Sandford. In a workshop, he said he didn’t like going into a lot of detail, and listed the basics that he conveys in each book, usually in a single paragraph. Here’s how he describes Lucas Davenport in Chapter 2 of Eyes of Prey, one of his early Davenport books:
Lucas wore a leather bomber jacket over a cashmere sweater, and khaki slacks and cowboy boots. His dark hair was uncombed and fell forward over a square, hard face, pale with the departing winter. The pallor almost hid the white scar that slashed across his eyebrow and cheek; it became visible only when he clenched his jaw. When he did, it puckered, a groove, whiter on white.
But what if you want to write in deep point of view? Staying inside the character’s head for descriptions is a challenge. Is the following realistic?
Sally rushed down the avenue, her green-and-yellow silk skirt swirling in the breeze, floral chiffon scarf trailing behind her. She adjusted her Oakley sunglasses over her emerald-green eyes. When she reached the door of the office building, she finger combed her short-cropped auburn hair. Her full, red lips curved upward in a smile.
You’ve covered most of the “I want my readers to see Sally” bases, but be honest. Do you really think of yourself in those terms?
There are other ways to convey that information. First, trust that your reader will be willing to wait for descriptions. Make sure there’s a reason for the character to think about her clothes, or her hair. Maybe she just had a total makeover and isn’t used to the feel of short hair, or the new color, or the makeup job. Catching a glimpse of herself as she passes a mirror and doing a double-take is one of the few times the “Mirror” description could work for me.
Even better, use another character. Some examples of how I’ve handled it:
Here, an ex-boyfriend has walked into Sarah’s shop and says to her:
“You look like you haven’t slept in a month. And your hair. Why did you cut it?”
“Well, thanks for making my morning.” Sarah fluffed her cropped do-it-yourself haircut. “It’s easier this way.”
Note: there’s no mention of the color. Someone else can bring it up later. Neither of these characters would be thinking of it in the context of the situation.
Later, Sarah is opening the door to Detective Detweiler. We’re still in her POV, but now we can see more about her as well as a description of the detective, and since it’s from her POV, there’s none of that ‘self-assessment’ going on.
She unlocked the door to a tall, lanky man dressed in black denim pants and a gray sweater, gripping several bulky plastic bags. At five-four, Sarah didn’t consider herself exceptionally short, but she had to tilt her head to meet his eyes.
Sometimes, there are compromises. My editor knows I don’t like stopping the story, especially at the beginning to describe characters, but she knows readers might want at least a hint.
This was the original opening paragraph I sent to my editor:
Cecily Cooper’s heart pounded as she stood in the judge’s chambers, awaiting the appearance of Grady Fenton, the first subject in her pilot program, Helping Through Horses. She’d spent months working out the details, hustling endorsements, groveling for grant monies, and had done everything in her power to convince her brother, Derek, to give Grady a job at Derek’s Triple-D Ranch.
This was my editor’s comment to that opening: Can you add a personal physical tag for Cecily somewhere on the first page—hair, what she’s wearing? There’s a lot of detail that comes later, but there should be something here to help the reader connect with her right away.
So, I figured there’s a good reason I’m paying her, and added a bit more.
Shuffling footfalls announced Grady’s arrival. Cecily ran her damp palms along her denim skirt, wishing she could have worn jeans so she’d have pockets to hide the way her hands trembled.
My reasoning: I mentioned the skirt was denim, because the fabric helps set the “cowboy” theme for the book, but there’s no more detail than that. Not how many buttons, or whether it’s got lace trim at the hem. Now, let’s say she was wearing Sally’s “girly” skirt. For Cecily, that would be far enough out of character for her to think about it, BUT, I’d make sure to show the reader her thoughts. Perhaps,
“She hated wearing this stupid yellow-and-green silk skirt—jeans were her thing—but Sabrina told her that skirt would impress the judge.”
See the difference between that and Sally’s self description earlier?
How do you handle describing your POV characters?
A brief moment of promotion–thanks to a BookBub Featured Deal, the box set of the first three novels in my Blackthorne, Inc. series is on special this week only for 99 cents instead of $6.99. Ends the 17th. Available at Kobo, Amazon, Apple & Nook.
Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.” Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.