Author Archives: James Scott Bell

About James Scott Bell

International Thriller Writers Award winner, #1 bestselling author of THRILLERS and BOOKS ON WRITING. Subscribe to JSB's NEWSLETTER.

What is Your Unique Selling Proposition?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Steven Wright (Wikimedia Commons)

If I had to name my favorite comedian, the one I’d most like to see in concert, it would be Steven Wright.

Because he’s a true original, not your typical “Hey, what’s the deal with airline peanuts?” standup guy. He has a hangdog look and deadpan delivery. He specializes in one- or two-liners that are language-bending riffs that twist reality into an existential pretzel. He says things like:

I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place.

I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.

I went to a restaurant that says they serve breakfast at any time. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.

There have been many one-liner comedians, like Henny Youngman (“A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn’t pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.”) and Rodney Dangerfield (“My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I told him I wanted a second opinion. He said, Okay, you’re ugly, too.”), but Steven Wright has carved out a unique niche and loyal following.

He knows his unique selling proposition (USP). He probably wouldn’t use that term, which comes from the world of marketing. But the concept is the same.

In brief, the USP is that special something that sets your product apart from the competition. It’s a market differentiation strategy. And it’s necessary because we have markets stuffed with similar products vying for attention.

There were several delivery services available when Federal Express came along. What did FedEx offer that was different? Overnight delivery. It became the center of all their advertising: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”

In the 1990s a fellow named Bezos thought this internet thingy was going to be important someday. He also knew people liked reading. What if he could create a way for readers to browse for books online, order the ones they wanted, and have them delivered right to their door?

Amazon went live in 1995. In 1999, Barron’s Magazine wrote a cover story called “Amazon.Bomb” predicting the company couldn’t possibly sustain itself.

I wonder whatever happened to Amazon? I’ll have to look it up.

The point is, Jeff Bezos is a true visionary, and the first thing a visionary does is develop a USP.

You should too, writer. What is it you bring to the table that a reader can’t just as easily get from some other scribe?

Part of this calculus is voice. But beyond that, it’s what you care about most in your writing. What do you want readers to feel, to know, to awaken to? What themes do you find yourself gripped by?

Write out a mission statement. A mission statement is a one- or two-line encapsulation of what you do, why you do it, and why the market should take notice. For example, here’s Amazon’s current version: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”

What’s yours?

Now take USP to each book you write. Look at your plot and characters and ask, How can I do something different? Even a little difference can make … a difference.

When I started thinking about my series character Mike Romeo, I knew I wanted him to be a “down these mean streets” character. We’ve had a lot of those. So I asked myself how I could set him apart. After considering several options, I landed on one of my own special interests, philosophy. I made Mike a genius kid who went to Yale at age fourteen and received specialized training in both the Eastern and Western intellectual traditions—before circumstances sent him on the off-the-grid trajectory. He’s still a seeker of wisdom, but wrapped inside a fighter’s skin. He will try to reason with you, but if you insist on being mean will employ more gladiatorial methods of persuasion. That was enough to get me excited about launching the series.

Another area where authors can strike rich veins of uniqueness is the supporting cast. Don’t ever write “throw away” secondary or minor characters! Use them to add spice to the plot. This is one of the things that makes Janet Evanvoich’s Stephanie Plum series so popular. For my Ty Buchanan legal thriller series I concocted a cast that includes a basketball playing nun (who is not shy about using her elbows), and a former college professor who went nuts for awhile and now runs a coffee house and raises butterflies for funeral ceremonies.

In short, friends, you are the CEO of a company trying to compete in a crowded market. The company is you. Your product is books. So do what all successful companies do—develop that USP. Set yourself apart. Strive to become an original.

Like Mr. Steven Wright:

I’m traveling today, so may not be able to drop by much. Talk amongst yourselves:

  1. Do you have a unique spin as an author?
  2. How is your WIP a little different than what’s been done before?
  3. What authors do you admire who bring a unique quality to their work?

Stuff That Takes Readers Out of a Story

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Today is an open forum. I want to discuss my theory of speed bumps. Why do we writers seem a bit obsessive about things like point of view, “head hopping,” dialogue attributions and so on? Some might think, Hey, man, if you’ve got a good story, those things won’t matter so much.

Well, I think they do. Because if you’re enjoying a pleasant drive, but keep hitting speed bumps, the pleasure you might otherwise have enjoyed will be diminished. And if it happens a lot, you may decide not to take that road again (meaning, not buy another book by the same author).

We want our novels to be more than good. We want them to be unforgettable. A high bar indeed, but why settle for less? “When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one,” the old saying goes, “but you won’t get a handful of mud, either.”

I thought about all this the other day when reading a thriller by a bestselling author. Four things bumped me out of the story. I’d like to see if you agree. I have tweaked the details just a bit because I’m not here to throw shade on a fellow writer. But I do want us to learn.

The novel is about a female police detective on the trail of a serial killer.

  1. Double Punctuation

So I’m reading along and come to this line:

“You mean she took all of them!?”

I blinked a couple of times to make sure I was seeing correctly. Yes, they were there, the two punctuation marks.

It jolted me because I don’t even think this was done in the old Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew books. Where was it done? In comic strips.

But here it is, in a contemporary thriller. I think it looks amateurish. But maybe that’s just me. Would a reader really care?

What do you think?

  1. Unneeded Attribution for Italicized Thoughts

It’s not going to happen, she thinks. Not here, not ever.

There are several ways to give us the interior thoughts of a character. One of them is via italics. But the whole point of an italicized thought is so you don’t have to use a tag like she thinks or she thought.

It’s an unnecessary interruption and thus a speed bump. Sure, maybe it’s a little one, but why have any at all when it’s so easy to smooth them out?

  1. But The Rock Does It!

Now we come to the climactic scene. The cop comes home only to find the serial killer waiting for her, with a gun, and holding a hostage by the neck.

The killer shoots. The bullet hits the cop in her upper arm and propels her body backward into the living room wall.

You know how we see this in movies all the time? Like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson with a sawed-off shotgun and the bad guy’s body slamming into a wall or out a window or through a door.

Only problem: bodies don’t do that. Brother Gilstrap will back me up on this, but even with a shotgun blast to the chest a body falls downward like a sack of laundry.

But here we have a mere bullet from a revolver hitting an arm. I’m taken out of the scene because there’s no possible way for a body slam to happen.

But will readers notice? I ask you.

  1. Thrillus ex machina

You should be familiar with deus ex machina—Latin for “god from the machine.” It’s a term for something that happens to resolve the climax, only it drops in out-of-the-blue, unjustified. The protagonist is saved but the reader utters a great big “Come on!”

In some thrillers I’ve read there’s a kind of thrillus ex machina (apologies to Aristotle) at work. Suddenly the protagonist develops an instant set of skills or finds almost superhuman strength at just the right time. Or maybe there’s a suspension of physical or forensic reality.

So here we have our serial killer winging the protagonist while holding a hostage. The cop reaches behind her, with her left hand, for the service revolver she has holstered at the small of her back.

Then, using the hand she’s never practiced with, she fires off a shot and hits the killer’s right shoulder, inches from the hostage’s head.

Blood sprays from the wound.

The cop fires another round with her left, a perfect shot to the killer’s other shoulder, once again next to the hostage’s head.

At which point the killer passes out from shock and blood loss.

If I may: A bullet to the shoulder (or other soft tissue) does not cause a spray of blood.

Also, it’s hard for me to believe a trained cop would shoot with her unskilled hand with an innocent target exposed. But perhaps we can let that first shot pass. That she manages another perfect shot with her left, hostage still there, is too much.

Finally, someone doesn’t pass out from blood loss in a matter of seconds. A person needs to lose 3 to 4 pints of blood before they start to have oxygen issues.

Again, I’m not here to throw stones at this author. It’s doggone hard to end a thriller in a way that’s satisfying and unpredictable. Perhaps an A-list writer can get away with thrillus ex machina from time to time. It probably won’t put a big dent in the ol’ fan base.

But why risk any dents at all?

The floor is open.

Avoiding Burnout With Strategic Breaks

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

As is my usual practice, I spent a few days this past December going over my writing goals and practices, and making plans for the new year. And once again I found myself appreciating the discipline of the writing break.

Its value hit me anew as I read a Business Musings post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch titled “Burnout and the Indie Writer.” She writes:

Burnout.

I’ve been hearing that word a lot in the writer community. It took a while for the word to penetrate. I’ve had my own things to deal with this year, and I really haven’t been looking outward as much as I usually do.

But a friend who traveled to a number of conventions this year mentioned that avoiding burnout was a topic at every single one of those conventions.

Kris goes on to recommend some self-care items such as adequate sleep, being with loved ones, eating right and so on. All important suggestions.

The pressure comes when the writer who wants to make good dough at this thing (even a living) realizes that the only “formula” (and lottery-type luck is not a formula) is to keep producing quality work at a steady pace.

Notice that word, steady. I believe this is the key to avoiding writer burnout. Every writer has a sweet spot where production meets life and stays on its side of the fence. We call this a quota.

Now, those of you who’ve read my craft pieces over the years know I’m a quota guy. It’s the single most important discipline in my own writing life. I started down this road in 1988, and early on I remember reading about how important a quota was. The very first writing craft book I ever purchased was Lawrence Block’s Writing the Novel. In it, he has a section on quotas, and notes that most pro writers keep track of the words they produce, not the time they spend at the desk.

That got to me, and I have stuck to a quota ever since. It’s almost always been 1,000 words a day, six days a week, with a day of rest on Sunday.

Though I have cheated on occasion when a deadline was breathing down my neck, this “writing Sabbath” has been crucial for me. It gives my brain much-needed rest. I find I’m always energized to start up again on Monday. That is perhaps the main reason I’ve never truly felt burned out. Tired, yes. But the big fizzle, no.

It’s also important, I’ve found, to take daily breaks. I’m usually not more than an hour at a time at the keyboard. I’ll then take a five- or ten-minute stretch or stroll. In the afternoon I take a power nap—15 to 20 minutes.

One other thing I have to do is keep myself from “over-writing” when the going is good. Block addresses this in his book:

One thing you might try to avoid, in this connection, is attempting to extend your productivity. This sort of overload principle works fine in weightlifting, where one’s ability to manage more weight increases as one lifts more weight, but it doesn’t work that way in writing. It’s tempting to try to do a little more each day than we did the day before, and I still find myself intermittently struggling to resist this particular temptation, even after lo these many years. If I can do five pages today, why can’t I do six tomorrow? And seven the day after? For that matter, if I really catch fire and do seven today, that proves I can definitely do a minimum of seven tomorrow. Doesn’t it?

No, it doesn’t.

What does happen, in point of fact, is that this sort of overload generally leads to exhaustion … Find your right pace, make sure it’s one that’s not going to be a strain, and then stick with it.

And sometimes writing breaks are thrust upon us.

Like getting sick. I thank the Good Lord I’m pretty healthy most of the time, but last year I got taken out by a bout of pneumonia. It actually set me back a couple of weeks. I managed some writing, but mostly I rested and took my antibiotics and sniped at my wife (this saint continued to take care of me.)

I’ve also found that when I go to a convention, like Bouchercon or ThrillerFest, it’s almost impossible for me to get in any writing time. There’s too much going on, like Gilstrap holding court in the bar with his Beefeater martini. No one wants to miss that. So I give myself permish to take several days off when I attend. (I also find I can write on a plane going to a location, but not coming home. I think that has to do with my being a morning person, as I described a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, there is one exception to all this steadiness, and that’s NaNoWriMo. We need not revisit the debate over this singular month of writing madness (you can search for NaNoWriMo in our archives for that), but it’s there for you to consider.

What I’m saying is simply this: be as intentional about taking a break from writing as you are about producing the words. Be strategic, be smart. I’ve said this many times before, but here it is again: figure out how many words you can easily write in a daily session. Now up that by 10%. So if it’s 250 words, you aim for 275. 1000 = 1100. Try to do that six days a week.

But do not beat yourself up if circumstances conspire against you. Treat every new week afresh.

Do this day after week after year—with regular breaks—and you will not only avoid the B-word, you’ll see an amazing output of material. Which is the difference between someone who wants to write and a writer.

So how have you been feeling about your writing life of late? Pressure? Not enough time? Are you beating yourself up a lot about production (or lack thereof)? Maybe you need to think about strategic break-taking. 

___

Because I believe so strongly in the mental game of writing, I’m making my ebook on the subject 99¢ this week.

KINDLE

NOOK

KOBO

 

 

Don’t Let Your Dialogue Stray From Your Characters

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Our first-page submission today is an opportunity to discuss one of the more common errors I see in beginning fiction. We’ll talk about it on the flip side.

JOE’S STORY

Chapter One

On a sunny October morning, Attorney Joe Morales parked his Lexus, carried his brown leather briefcase past a sweetgum tree sporting red, yellow, and orange leaves, and headed to his Dallas office. Inside the red brick building, he walked across the pink and gray granite floor, caught a whiff of the scents from a tasteful arrangement of marigolds and chrysanthemums on the counter, and waved to the clerk behind it. The smell of coffee wafted from the little restaurant down the hall.

Moving here to help his mom with his ailing father had its good points. Something interesting was always going on in Dallas. The energy-sapping summer heat didn’t last as long as it did in San Antonio.

His phone rang. Satisfied all the arrangements had been made for the deposition this morning, he answered. “Hello.”

“Joe Morales, this is Cash Carter, your opponent in the race for representative for the 104th District in Dallas County.”

“I know who you are.” His face and voice were all over billboards and TV ads. What did the guy want now? He’d certainly paid for several erroneous ads against Joe and kept him busy denying them.

“We need to meet to talk about the issues,” Cash said in his booming voice.

“Why? I have discussed them with voters in several town meetings.”

“Actually, I believe the main issue is your running for office.”

Man, the guy had nerve. “Why? I gathered over 5,000 signatures and paid the $750 filing fee.”

“You have no legislative experience, and you haven’t lived in the county much longer than the required one year. As a candidate for the more popular party, I have an excellent chance of winning, but you running against me is an embarrassment. You’re a pitiful excuse for a candidate. You should withdraw so you won’t suffer an ignominious defeat.”

Joe laughed. “I can’t believe you have the gall to suggest that. You must be scared you’ll be the one to suffer defeat at the polls. I intend to run and make things better for my future constituents, many of whom are Hispanic like me, so if you have nothing better to say, I’m going to hang up.”

“I suggest you rethink your position.” His opponent’s voice was now disturbingly quiet, but Joe heard every word. He frowned, searching for a good reply, then heard Cash say, “Things might get ugly. Goodbye.”

# # #

JSB: Since this scene is mostly dialogue, I’m going to concentrate on that aspect. But let me make a couple of comments about the first two paragraphs.

The opening graph is overloaded with description. There’s too much of it, so instead of creating a vivid picture it just all blends together. Do we need to know the briefcase is brown, or the floor pink and gray? I like that the author employs the underused sense of smell, but there are two smells here and they cancel each other out. Choose one. The coffee smell, probably, because it’s in line with the character at this moment. Please see my post on describing a setting.

The second paragraph is backstory/exposition. I’m not opposed to bits of backstory in opening pages, and for practice’s sake I advise beginners to stick to three sentences of backstory in the first ten pages, all together or spaced out. This one has all three together. But they occur too early in my view, and do nothing to get me interested in the character. The first line is a too overt in trying to get us to like Joe. The second line is there only to tell us we’re in Dallas. The third only to tell us where Joe had come from.

All that information can wait. Act first, explain later. Let’s get Joe right into the phone call, and take a look at the dialogue.

First off, an attorney in a fancy office is not going to just pick up the phone and say, “Hello.” He will either be alerted to the call by a receptionist, or in some cases may take a direct call, but then would answer by saying his name.

“Joe Morales, this is Cash Carter, your opponent in the race for representative for the 104th District in Dallas County.”

“I know who you are.” 

One of the “speed bumps” I see often in beginning fiction is dialogue that does not sound natural because the author is using it to feed information to the reader. Most of the time it manifests itself by having characters tell each other things they already both know.

And that’s what’s happened here.

Cash Carter and Joe Morales know each other well. They’re political opponents and Joe’s been the subject of many Cash Carter ads already. So there is no reason for Cash to explain that he is “your opponent in the race for representative for the 104th District in Dallas County.” Joe knows that! And Cash knows Joe knows! The author is feeding us, the readers, the information, thinking we need to know it right now. We don’t. It can come in later and in a much more natural way.

“We need to meet to talk about the issues,” Cash said in his booming voice.

“Why? I have discussed them with voters in several town meetings.”

“Actually, I believe the main issue is your running for office.”

Good dialogue is compressed (unless there’s a reason for the character to be prolix). Three ways to do that are to eliminate fluff, cut words, and use contractions.

I define fluff as a needless word or two at the beginning of a sentence. Here, Why and Actually don’t do anything for us. See how much crisper this dialogue is without the fluff, with a couple of words dropped, and with contractions:

“We need talk about an issue,” Cash said in his booming voice.

“I’ve discussed the issues at the town meetings.”

“The issue is you running for office, sport.”

I added sport as an example of a simple way to add tension, another mark of excellent dialogue.

Man, the guy had nerve. “Why? I gathered over 5,000 signatures and paid the $750 filing fee.”

Again, Why is unneeded fluff. And once more the line smacks of exposition. Carter would know all this, and why would Joe bother to cite the filing fee?

Also, as much as possible, let the dialogue do the work of revealing the characters’ feelings. The line Man, the guy had nerve wouldn’t be needed if you had Joe say something like, “You gotta be kidding.”

“You have no legislative experience, and you haven’t lived in the county much longer than the required one year. As a candidate for the more popular party, I have an excellent chance of winning, but you running against me is an embarrassment. You’re a pitiful excuse for a candidate. You should withdraw so you won’t suffer an ignominious defeat.”

This doesn’t sound real to me. Would Cash really say “ the required one year” (something they both know!) or “the more popular party” or “I have an excellent chance” or “ignominious defeat”? If he’s trying to scare off Joe, wouldn’t he use more colloquial and colorful language?

Here’s a dialogue tip: Read it out loud, with feeling (like an actor). The sound will smack you in a whole new way.

“I can’t believe you have the gall to suggest that. You must be scared you’ll be the one to suffer defeat at the polls. I intend to run and make things better for my future constituents, many of whom are Hispanic like me, so if you have nothing better to say, I’m going to hang up.”

I hope you can see it by now that …many of whom are Hispanic like me … is a line for the readers.

Here’s another tip: when you catch yourself giving expositional dialogue to a character, see if you can put it in the other character’s mouth as part of tense exchange. For example, you could have Cash say something like, “You may think you got the Hispanic vote, Morales, but your skin ain’t gonna win this thing.”

“I suggest you rethink your position.” His opponent’s voice was now disturbingly quiet, but Joe heard every word. He frowned, searching for a good reply, then heard Cash say, “Things might get ugly. Goodbye.”

I have a hard time believing a candidate would think such a vague threat over the phone would be enough to get his opponent to drop out. (Another needless word is Goodbye. Especially after a threat. Just have the guy hang up.) Because of that, I have no feeling of threat here, and thus am not worried about Joe. And a major goal of the first page is to start the reader worrying!

Whew! Listen, writer, don’t be discouraged. I went into detail because dialogue is the fastest way to improve—or sink—a manuscript. Editors, agents, and readers all make judgments based in large part on how the author handles dialogue. The good news is there are some basic dialogue techniques that are simple to understand and employ. If you wish to dig deeper, let me modestly suggest a book on the subject.

Bottom line: It’s crucial to know your characters inside and out, and know what they would say in a given situation. Don’t ever let them get caught slipping information to the reader.

One last item: the title. Perhaps this one is temporary for purposes of the WIP. I hope that’s the case, because you can and should come up with a much better title. On that matter, see this helpful post by our own P. J. Parrish (Kris).

All right, Zoners, add your helpful comments for our brave writer!

Do You Have a Typical Writing Day?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Novelist Tracy Chevalier recently observed:

Part of me wishes it were easy to describe my typical writing day. I have heard about them, those smug productive hours when a writer – usually male, it has to be said – sits down each day at 9am with an espresso, writes till 1, makes bouillabaisse, writes from 2 till 5, plays tennis, and after supper sits with a glass of single malt whisky reading over what he’s written that day. That is a scenario I both crave and detest. It will never be that controlled and disciplined for me.

This is an absolute slander! I make a sandwich for lunch, haven’t played tennis in years, and in the evening prefer a California red.

I do, however, have a typical writing day, though of course it has varying tones and I’m free to be as flexible as I want to be. That’s the nice part of being your own boss. Yes, I have to call myself into the office and chew myself out from time to time, but I generally get along with the old so-and-so fellow.

Here’s how I like my day to go:

I’m up before the sun rises. The coffeemaker was set to timer the evening before so my morning brew is ready. I love starting work in the dark. Most people I’ve broached this subject with look at me with a mix of wonder and horror. Their eyes and dropped jaws nonverbally retort, “You do what? The dark? Are you daft?”

Yep. From daft to draft!

I try to do some writing immediately, to bring up what my writer’s mind has been working on all night. There might be a good plot twist there, or an idea for another book, or maybe just a way of phrasing something. Or perhaps it’s just junk. Whatever it is, I spill it into a free form document that I’ll assess later.

I then set out to write a Nifty 350.

Later on, I’ll give a light edit to my previous day’s pages, then go for my quota.

What I really have to watch out for is the temptation to jump onto social media the moment I hit some challenge or other. I’ve written about this before.

However, I do like having some ambient noise going on, which means I will sometimes be found writing at some local coffee establishment. But at home, I turn on Coffitivity. I compose in Scrivener, which allows me to have a background on my screen. I have taken a photo of my favorite deli, Langer’s, so it’s like I’m there in a booth, writing:

From about 11 – 1 I’ll generally take care of business matters (e.g., marketing, email) and have some lunch. I’ve pretty much settled that from 1 – 3 it’s zombie time. My brain just wants to lie in a hammock. So I’ll work in a power nap (15 – 20 minutes). That sets me up for the late afternoon. I can usually squeeze in another hour of writing or editing from about 4 – 5.

Then I pretty much knock off. Dinner with Mrs. B. We might watch a movie or classic TV show. If I finish a book, or my wife closes a real estate deal, we’ll celebrate by going out to eat. It’s a short drive to Malibu, where we can nosh by our beloved Pacific Ocean.

That’s as typical as it gets, so long as there are no earthquakes, fires, mudslides, power outages, or locusts.

So now I’d like to hear from you. Do you have a typical writing day? If not, how would you design one?

What’s the Deal on Dreams in Fiction?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Check out this first page from a brave author:

The house alarm is screaming out, not the early-warning beep but the piercing you’re-totally-screwed-if-you-don’t-move-now squeal. I don’t know how long it’s been going off, but it’s too late for me now. The searing oven-blast heat within the four corners of my bedroom. The putrid black smoke that singes my nostril hairs and pollutes my lungs. The orange flames rippling across the ceiling above me, dancing around my bed, almost in rhythm, a taunting staccato, popping and crackling, like it’s not a fire but a collection of flames working together; collectively, they want me to know, as they bob up and down and spit and cackle, as they slowly advance, This time it’s too late, Emmy—

The window. Still a chance to jump off the bed to the left and run for the window …

The author is Mr. James Patterson (along with his co-writer David Ellis). The novel is Invisible. Mr. Patterson is “brave” for choosing this opening gambit, for later on in the scene we learn the above is only a dream!

And that simply isn’t done.

At least you would think so if you’ve spent any significant amount of time around writers talking writing. Surely at least once a week, in some critique group somewhere, someone is uttering, as if citing stone tablets, that you must never begin a novel with a dream. Les Edgerton, in his book Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One (Writer’s Digest Books), is unequivocal:

Never, ever, ever begin a narrative with action and then reveal the character’s merely dreaming it all. Not unless you’d like your manuscript hurled across the room, accompanied by a series of curses. Followed by the insertion of a form rejection letter into your SASE and delivered by the minions of our illustrious postal service.

Les brings up a practical matter. If you’re submitting to an editor (remember the old days of the SASE?) and you pull the dream-opening thing, it’s almost certain he or she will consider your manuscript amateur hour.

But what do readers think?

The aforementioned Mr. Patterson, it may be safely said, is unequaled in his ability to gauge the pulse of the reading public. He has at least one other novel, Maximum Ride, that opens with a dream. (And last time I checked, Mr. Patterson’s manuscripts are not being returned.)

So what’s the actual deal on opening with a dream?

I don’t like it. There! That settles it.

Okay, just my opinion, folks. But it always feels like a cheat to me to get me caught up in the action, only to have the character wake up.

In all fairness, however, I’m hyper aware of craft. Most readers are not.

Maybe they don’t care in the slightest.

Let me make a subtle yet critical distinction here. One of the most famous openings in literature is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. It begins:

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.

Here we have the first-person narrator telling us about a dream. That’s not the same as the “dream fake-out”—beginning with intense action that turns out not to be real.

Practically speaking, then, if you’re a writer seeking a traditional book contract, I would counsel you not begin with a dream, for the reason Edgerton suggests. Most editors won’t go for it.

If you’re self-publishing, you have the choice.

I’d still advise against it.

Here is my further thought on dreams in fiction: Unless dreams are an integral part of the plot (e.g., a character has recurring, prophetic dreams), I would suggest limiting yourself to using a dream only once, if at all.

For what purpose? To show the emotional state of the character at some intense point in the book. Or to reveal backstory that is affecting the character’s psyche. I would also make sure the reader knows up front it’s a dream, as in the beginning of Chapter 15 of The City by Dean Koontz:

Eventually I returned to the sofa, too exhausted to stand an entire night watch. I dropped into a deep well of sleep and floated there until, after a while, the dream began in a pitch-black place with the sound of rushing water all around, as if I must be aboard a boat on a river in the rain …

Another option is to eschew a dream sequence altogether, and simply have the character describe the dream and how it is relevant. Thomas Harris does that in the aptly titled The Silence of the Lambs. Clarice Starling is a young FBI trainee tasked with extracting clues from the notorious killer and creative chef, Hannibal Lecter. Lecter trades her clues for intimate details about her life. At one point Clarice tells Lecter about the haunting memory of being at her uncle’s ranch, when she was ten, and hearing the screaming lambs being led to slaughter. And how she still dreams about it.

Lecter tells her that’s why she’s obsessed with catching Buffalo Bill. She thinks it will stop the lambs from screaming. It leads to the moving last line of the book:

But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.

To summarize my take:

  1. Don’t open with a dream fake-out.
  2. Use dreams sparingly (like, once) unless it’s an integral plot element.
  3. Let the reader know up front it’s a dream.
  4. Consider characters talking about a dream rather than giving it to us as a scene. Just make sure the dialogue has conflict or tension. (For example, the character doesn’t want to talk about the dream, but the other character drags it out of her, as in The Silence of the Lambs.)

Now it’s your turn, O Writer and (especially) O Reader. What do you think about dreams in fiction?

 

Reader Friday: That Voice

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“The most debilitating thing about writing is that the voice inside us, the voice we trust more than others, says, ‘You’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough, what you wrote yesterday really stinks.’ What aspiring writers should keep in mind is that we all hear that voice, and sometimes that voice lies to us. In fact, when it comes to writing, that voice almost always lies to us. Midway through a book you are going to read back and think, ‘This is awful.’ Now it may be awful, but it also may be wonderful and you’ve simply read it so many times your ear has gone deaf. Don’t listen to that voice.” — Randy Wayne White

Ever happen to you? What would you advise a writer who is bothered by that voice?

Review Your Fiction Fundamentals

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Things change.

For instance, as of January 1, recreational marijuana use is legal in California. I can’t help but wonder how this is going to affect our traffic problems. I think I know: Now, more than ever, California drivers will seldom leave a turn unstoned.

Ba-dump-bump. Thank you. I’ll be here all week. Tip your waiters on the way out.

Other things don’t change. Grant is still buried in Grant’s Tomb (isn’t that a marvelous coincidence?)

And the foundations of great fiction remain solid and true.

You still need a character and you still need a plot. A plot is the stuff that happens to a character that forces him into a battle requiring strength of will. If you don’t have those elements, you don’t have a story. You might have a slice of life, or a character study. You might even have an “experimental” novel, which is also defined as a novel no one reads.

So know your fundamentals.

But also realize that conditions around you change, which may require applying the fundamentals in a slightly different way.

Case in point: The Golden State Warriors.

Basketball fundamentals include dribbling, shooting, passing, setting screens, playing defense. A coach figures out ways his team can do these things to create high-percentage shots and stop the other team from doing the same.

In the “old days,” the ideal offense was designed around a dominant big man, like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, or Shaquille O’Neal.

But things have changed because of a couple of kids named Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. These are the two guards on the Golden State Warriors, and they are the best three-point shooters I’ve ever seen. They have made the Warriors the pre-eminent team in the NBA by virtue of their ability to score from twenty-five feet or more.

Now, common sense would tell you that a fifteen-foot jumper has a better chance of going in than a twenty-five footer. And you’d be right. But sports has been taken over by analytics, and the numbers say that a three-point shot, even at a lower percentage, has a higher overall value than a two-pointer. You can look it up.

What’s happened as a result is that the NBA has become three-happy. A big man doing battle below is no longer seen as essential to a championship. Indeed, it may be a liability. If you’re a seven-footer these days, you’ve got to be able to fling the rock. Broad and bulky has been replaced by lean and lithe (e.g., another Warrior, Kevin Durant).

The antiquated notion of trying to get close jumpers, layups and dunks has given way to schemes designed to spring shooters outside the arc. The same fundamentals (passing, screens, shooting) are in play, but applied in a different way.

Which brings us back to fiction writing.

A hundred years ago, the standard point-of-view for a novel was omniscient, often with the authorial voice intruding into matters, as in the opening pages of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900):

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms.

You almost never see this style today. Hemingway—the Steph Curry of his day—exerted tremendous influence in the 1920s by way of character-centric minimalism (the very opposite of what Dreiser did, above).

By the 1990s, the trend was toward immersive (or deep) POV, which keeps author voice out entirely (unless that voice is itself the point of the novel, e.g., Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams).

It also used to be common—even expected—to have adverbs attached to dialogue attributions. For example, here are some clips from a single page in a1929 novel, The Stray Lamb by Thorne Smith:

“Off again, major,” Sandra said resignedly . . .

“Not a scrap of evidence left behind,” Mr. Long optimistically informed the party . . .

“That depends,” answered Thomas consideringly . . .

Ack! Do that now and your book is likely to be set aside contemptuously.

So … what are the current conditions for the writer of fiction? We all know attention spans are shorter and demands for our time and money louder and more pervasive. Which means getting and holding the attention of the reader from the jump is a major challenge.

The fundamentals are still there to help you, by focusing on the crucial questions:

  • Is your POV consistent and immersive?
  • Is your dialogue crisp and compressed? Can it stand alone without being propped up by adverbs?
  • Is your structure solid? When your book starts to “drag,” do you know why and how to fix it?
  • Are your scenes organic? Do they all have a connection to the overall plot?
  • Do you know how create “jump off the page” characters?
  • Are you aware of the “speed bumps” that interrupt the fictive dream?

We’ve talked about goals and resolutions this week on TKZ. A good thing for the new year. This is my gentle reminder to include craft study on your list. That way, even if you live in California, your books won’t go to pot.

What’s something you’ve recently learned about the craft of writing that is serving you well? What’s an area you need to revisit and shore up?