ILesson: Get ride of the Nice Nice

This advice comes from my friend Candace, though I think she may have heard it somewhere else. When writers pass things on, it’s usually our interpretation of something someone else has said that clicked with us. So we steal it and pass it on to you.

So, the nice nice, as Candy tells it, is the conversational things that happen in civilized dialogue. So a conversation between character could go like this:

“Hi,” Jim said.

“Hey,” said John. “How was your flight?”

“Smooth, but the in flight movie sucked.”

Jim grimaced. “I hate it when that happens.”

The two men walked through the restaurant and then sat down and a waitress came over. She put down two cocktail napkins, then straightened and took out her pad and pen and then she looked at Jim and said, “What will you have?”

Jim looked over at the bar and read the signs on the wall to get an idea what they had on tap. “I’ll have a beer.”

She wrote it down and looked at John. “How about you?”

John read over the menu and said, “I just want a Coke.”

She wrote their orders down. “Thanks. I’ll have those right out.” Then she turned and walked off and after she was gone Jim turned to John and said, “I hear you’re under indictment for murder.”



Without my telling you, you can probably pick out the nice nice in the above example. It’s the things that are very “real” because it’s what real people do. However, dialogue in books isn’t meant to be exactly real but only to FEEL real. You want to mimic the way people talk, and maybe the rhythms of conversation, but you don’t want a literal transcription.

There’s a lot of nice nice in the action in this example. Again, you want to give the feel of the scene, not a blow by blow transcription.

You want to get to what’s important as quickly as possible. How quickly that is depends on your style, the pace of the scene, where it is in the book, and what you’re trying to accomplish.

If you’re trying to keep the pace of the book up, you could pare it all the way down to this:

Jim greeted John when he went into the restaurant, as if they were just two guys meeting for lunch. He kept up the façade until the waitress had seated them and taken their order, then leaned across the table and said under the clatter and chatter of the lunchtime crowd, “What’s this I hear about you being indicted for murder?”

Nothing wrong with that; if the purpose of this scene is to get to their conversation, get to their conversation. The ambiance of the restaurant may not be important, but it’s also easy to slide in with a carefully chosen word or two.

Sometimes you need a certain amount of nice nice to get you in and out of a conversation. And you need stage business to set the scene and avoid sounded like you have talking heads. But in that case, it’s not just nice nice, it’s establishing scene or character or tension.

Jim let is eyes adjust to the dim light in the restaurant, and wished they’d met somewhere with a better line of sight. He found John, and felt out his state of mind with a neutral, “Hi. How was your flight?”


“Smooth,” said John, glancing at the hostess as she stepped into earshot. “But the in flight movie sucked.”

It’s all a matter of balance. Everything in the scene should serve the story in some way. Pare it down until nothing is in there just to be nice. Make it work for you.

iLesson: the Do Over

This post is about more than just writing. It’s about giving up on a dream. As in, don’t do it.

Recently I was a writers meeting a someone said: “Well, real life has taken a turn for the crazy, and it’s interfered with writing, and I’m no where near my goal of finishing a book by the end of the year or quitting.”

And I thought… Quit writing? I think I could quit breathing first.

My first printed works of fiction were written on these:
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Even before I could write, I was making stuff up. Okay, some people would call it lying, but it wasn’t to get out or to make trouble. It was just to make a better story. Writing books is a job. But telling stories is an art and a passion. And if I am pleasing no one but myself, I will keep writing.

This is not the first time I’ve heard writers give themselves a deadline “or quit.” I’ve heard “If I’m not published in 3 years, I’m done writing.” Or, “If I don’t have an agent by January,” or “If I get one more rejection, I’m never submitting again…”

But that makes me wonder why they’re trying to be published at all. Writing, like all artistic professions, I think, can’t be limited to external measures of success. There has to be internal satisfaction. (See above re: writing = breathing.)

Maybe these people don’t mean quit writing, but simply quit submitting for publication. Fair enough.

But.

Who is to say what a “reasonable” timetable is in a business that is completely unreasonable? It’s driven by reader fads and economic trends and individual editor likes and dislikes.

Why set an end date on a dream? It’s not like we have an expiration date. I was going to write: It’s not like it’s something we can only do when we’re young and fit, like running a marathon or climbing Mount Everest, but even THOSE things are accomplished by people who work toward it their entire lives.

Of course it’s important to make goals. The thing is, so much of life is out of our control. Parents and children get sick and husbands leave and hurricanes blow. Your goal will sometimes have to take a back seat, but you should never kick it out of the car.

That’s the difference between a goal and an ultimatum. You can ALWAYS set a new goal. But an ultimatum is more of a threat, and you’re punishing no one but yourself. If you take your toys and go home, the only one who loses is you.

Remember: Never give up, never surrender. But do overs are completely allowed.

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PS– A recent event makes me worry someone will think this is aimed at them, and it’s not. Just this week I’ve heard “Or I quit” from three different writers, but I hear this more often than you might imagine. Hence the rant.

iLesson: Move along

Here is a lesson that I never seem to learn.

I’m working on a scene. And it’s a thinky sort of scene, where I’m trying to get a lot of information across, or perhaps a lot of emotion across, and I’m second guessing myself about how much is too much exposition and/or introspection, and how much is not enough to get the point across to the reader. I’ll work for DAYS on, say, three pages. (I know. I KNOW!)

Then I’ll decide that I don’t really need that explanation anyway. Or, it was better in the first draft. Or I want to put it in a different place entirely.

And even worse! These pages aren’t really terribly important to the A plot. They are fine details of the character’s internal journey, or tweaks to the world building, or… basically, they’re not structural. They’re design details.

The moral of the story is, when you bog down on things like that, it’s easy to go in circles, writing, rewriting, and generally second guessing yourself. The best thing to do at that point is to throw the whole scene away and start over move on to the next chapter or scene.

Too often, I find myself changing stuff just to change it. When all I’m doing is moving paragraphs around, it’s time to move along.

The important thing is to not stall out. Don’t let the minutia of your book keep you from finishing it. Leave that battle so you can go one to win the war over the manuscript. You’ll be coming back to that scene later, anyway. As with anything, tackling the big stuff first will allow you to more clearly see the fine details that need to be finessed.

Twitter Writing Lessons (iLesson)

As much as I love Twitter (and I do) I know it can be a bit banal. But I work at those stupid posts. And it occurred to me, a lot of things I do to squeeze my formidable wit into 140 characters can be carried over to tighter, efficient prose. (Bear in mind, I am an over-write-then-cut writer, which makes me a bit of a freak, according to my friends. Apparently.)

1. Pick what’s worth saying. Not every Tweet has to be rofl hysterical or omg profound. But the best tweets, the least mock-worth and most re-tweetable have something worth saying. Likewise, what you put in your book has to carry information or reveal character, and if something is occasionally funny or deep, throw that in two… as long as it’s short.
2. No one wants to read inside jokes or stuff that’s only amusing to you. There are tons of things in the Maggie Quinn books that never made the cut. Trust me on this.
3. Cut the ‘nice-nice’ as my friend Candy calls it. (Polite exchanges that no one really cares about.) We have to say ‘hi, how are you’ and ‘fine, thanks,’ in the real world, but we only want to eavesdrops on the tweets that are juicy good stuff. Dialogue should kind of be the same.
4. You don’t need as many words as you think you do. Things you can easily cut:

• The word “Just.” Also, almost, simply, merely, and other words that don’t add meaning. Most of the time you don’t need them, and the few times you DO want to use “just” for emphasis, (i.e., it was just not going to work) it will actually have emphasis.
• Adverbs in general. Now, I don’t have the “-ly” hate that some people do, but it is true that one well chosen verb is better than a weak, boring verb plus a modifier. (He took it quickly out of my hands. Vs. He whisked it out of my hands.) And not just (ha!) because it’s less words, but also because it’s more vivid and specific.
• Prepositions and prepositional phrase. These can be very useful when you need to give a location of something. He sat on the chair might be an important distinction from He sat on the bed. But look at, “The rain fell down.” With few exceptions (like if you’re on a space station), there’s only direction things can fall, so ‘down’ is unnecessary. Same with ‘sat’ and ‘knelt,’ and the reverse with ‘stood.’ (This, btw, is something I never catch unless I’m looking for it.)
• The other one that gets me? “She nodded her head.” What else would she nod?

Can deleting these tiny words and phrases make a difference if you’re writing something more than 140 characters? Yes, because the effect is cumulative. These little tweaks are like pruning a rose bush. You cut off the brown, useless bits to show off the roses.

When words go wrong (iLesson)

Sometimes perfectly good words get completely out control when they’re in the wrong company.

My Wednesday night critique group is a read and critique style: writers get (up to) 15 minutes to read their work aloud, which is then viciously torn apart commented upon by the group. This method has pros and cons, but it definitely makes you realize the value of reading your prose out loud, even if it’s only to yourself.

The writer’s brain often fills in gaps and smoothes things over so we read what we meant to write and not what we actually, you know, wrote. But the ear hasn’t heard the words as often as the eye has read them, so we catch things that sound weird or wrong (or even silly).

Last night, we had two instances of unintended hilarity in critique group. Rather than embarrass anyone I know, I’m going to use an example from a published work that came out so long ago, I don’t remember the title, or the author, just the instance.

So, it was a historical romance, and for reasons I don’t remember, the hero and heroine accidentally ended up in bed together, and there was mistaken identity or whatever, but they’re… um, doing what heros and heroine’s DO in such situations, and when the hero gets to the, er, moment of truth, this happens:

“Oh my God. You’re a virgin,” he ejaculated.

Um. I can’t help but think if the author (or editor! or copyeditor!) had read that aloud, I would not have gotten a C in Algebra when my hysterical laughter outed me for reading romance novels in class.

So, silly example aside, reading your work aloud can save you some mocking on the internet when you put words together that sound dirtier than you meant them.

Here are the other ways that reading aloud can help your writing:

1) If you stumble over an awkward phrase or clunky word combination, chances are your reader will, too. Even though we read without moving our lips (well, most of us) we still ‘hear’ the flow of the words in our heads.

2) Your prose shouldn’t sound like the refrain of a pop tune. The rhythm and structure of your sentences should vary, so you get a run of sentences with a sing song cadence.

3) If your dialogue sounds like it’s being spoken by a robot, a space alien, or a Victorian maiden (and it’s not actually being spoken by any of the above), you have a problem. There is no better way to discover if your dialogue sounds like words people would actual say than to actually say them aloud, and see how they flow.

4) Word and phrase echos will jump out at you. I love reading aloud and discovering I used the word “thing” five times in two paragraphs (or that my heroine’s sister laughs ‘musically’ three times in one scene).

5) If a sentence or paragraph seems too long and/or word, it probably is.

6) If the prose seems choppy, jumping around without smooth transitions, it probably is.

7) Words that sound innocent in your head, may not sound that way out loud.

I don’t read everything aloud, but when I have a scene I’m not sure about, or the dialogue doesn’t ‘feel’ right, or it seems to be dragging, or missing something, I’ll close my office door and have a reading circle with just myself.

A day in the life… (iLesson)

These are all the things that have happened since I sat down to write this post at 8:23 a.m.

08:35        The Fed-Ex van arrives. Dogs go crazy.

08:40        The package contains my edits on Texas Gothic. I go crazy.

09:00        Cease hyperventilating, resolve to finish iLesson and Genreality post for tomorrow before further freak out.

10:13        Business phone call.

10:45        Leaf-blower-of-doom arrives. Dogs go crazy. I go crazy.

11:10        Two dogs need to go out.

11:15        Family phone call.

11:20        Two more dogs need to go out.

11:21        One dog doesn’t finish business outside, so finishes inside. Wipe up floor.

11:30        I break a (full) glass. Sweep floor, mop, sweep again, vacuum, mop one final time for slivers.

12:00        Cannot remember Hemingway quote for iLesson. Google “Hemingway on writing.” Spend an hour reading amusing but irrelevant quotations and anecdotes.

12:05        Explained to Mom that “⌘C” is useless without “⌘V”. (Sorry Mom. But that was kind of funny.)

12:30        Lunchtime. Mom makes her lunch. Dogs go crazy.

1:05 pm        Consider running away to Key West to live with bottle of scotch and house full of polydactyl cats.

1:14. Have abandoned original post, and thanks to reader suggestion, gone in a different direction.

People say to me (a lot) “I wish I could just stay at home and write without the distractions of a full time job.” To which I say, there is no such thing as a world without distractions. And these are just the things I can’t control. I didn’t mention the temptation distractions, like Supernatural on TNT every morning or the sale at the mall or “just one game” of Rock Band.

I say with embarrassment that I spent my time much more productively when I had a “day job” and could only write at night. I wrote more in those stolen two or three hours than I sometimes do now all day. I guarded my writing time preciously, knowing I only had that much, and no more.

Even now, I sometimes don’t even bother trying to produce new prose during they day, but stay up late to write when dogs, moms, and lawn services have gone to bed. I know writers who get up at 4 am to write before their kids wake up for school.

Whatever works.

Make the most of your time, however much time you have. Don’t be afraid to guard that time, and stress the importance of it to your family… and to yourself!

iLesson: The Empty Gesture

Gesture: 1. A motion of the limbs or body made to express or help express thought or to emphasize speech.

During a great, productive writing session last night, my friends and I got to talking about character gestures in our writing. We tend to do them a lot, as action tags and as ‘shorthand’ for showing emotion. But are they actually effective, or do they just clutter up writing with meaningless stage business? And if you don’t have any gestures at all, then will your scene be two talking heads?

I don’t like to be wrong–ever–but looking at the chapter that they were critiquing, I could see exactly where my characters’ gestures were basically just empty motion. Not all the time, of course, ’cause I’m awesome. But there were a lot of ‘dancing eyes’ and ‘curling lips’ that were quite cliched superficial.
Say your character is supposed to be mad, and she stomps her foot. By itself, that foot stomp is just a placeholder for authentic emotion. If you do your job, then her dialogue (internal or external) will leave no doubt that she’s angry, and the gesture becomes unnecessary.

Your point of view character has a brain, and is able to interpret expression, tone of voice, and, yes, gestures, just as well as you and I. If she’s been on the planet for any length of time, she’ll know that a stomping foot means that her sister is angry.

Compare: “She vibrated with fury.” with “She shook all over.”

Compare: “His hands clenched.” with “He looked like he wanted to wring my neck.”

It goes back to the pizza pie in the face method of writing. Are you, the writer, making your character stomp her foot because that’s what people do when they’re angry? Or is the action motivated by your character’s emotions?

Actions, like everything else on your page, have to be multitaskers. They can reveal character and give a sense of movement and move the story along. If a character action is just a placeholder for real emotion get rid of it, and replace them with something that will pull it’s weight.

(Credit where it’s due: This post owes much to Jenny Martin, Jamie Harrington, and Chantal Kirkland. They rock.)

iLesson: Don’t hammer the funny

Mosquitos Suck contest update. Thanks to your generosity, and helping me spread the word, we contributed hundreds of dollars to the efforts to end malaria. I have the winners of the drawing, and I’m contacting them via e-mail. I’ll post those that are cool with my putting their name on the blog (hey, not everyone is) when I’ve heard back from everyone.

Nothing but Nets continues their efforts to stop the spread of malaria and mosquito borne diseases in Africa. Click here for more information on this cause.

Ironically, mosquitos factor into the inspiration for today’s lesson. I couldn’t sleep the other night, and The Land of the Lost was on. The recent movie, I mean. (Don’t judge. It was 3 am.)

I must have been really tired or desperate for distraction, because I ended up watching the whole thing. Every time I reached for the remote, something juuuuust amusing enough to give me hope would stay my hand, until I got to the point that I figured I may as well watch to the end.

Funny bits? Grumpy the dinosaur, don’t trust anyone wearing a tunic, Matt Lauer’s deadpan self-portrayal.

Unfunny bits? Giant mosquito and other bloodsucking insects. *shudder* Not. Funny. Ever.

One of the problems with this movie (among many) was that the jokes weren’t allowed to stand by themselves. They had to be spotlit, underlined, italicized and beat to death.

This is something I notice with writers in my critique group who are good writers but haven’t learned to trust their own writing yet. They’ll write something funny or evocative, then immediately explain the joke or metaphor.

Going back to Land of the Lost. There was this bit with the T-Rex, where Will Farrell, et.al, had escaped over a ravine and the dinosaur couldn’t follow. He was turning away in resignation when “Dr. Marshall” goes, “Don’t worry about him, he has a brain the size of a walnut.” There’s a nice, full-stop beat of reaction from Grumpy, and he resumes the chase.

Then later, while the humans are hiding in a cave, there’s this thump of something heavy hitting the ground outside the entrance. They go outside, and there is a leaf-wrapped gift on the figurative doorstep. A walnut the size of a kitchen table. Cut to Grumpy, watching. Waiting to exact his revenge.

I laughed out loud, not just at the walnut, but the image behind it, of this dinosaur planning and executing this message/threat, grumbling to himself, “Walnut my scaled ass. There’s a day of reckoning coming, you human butthead.”

Then the actors had to open their mouths: “Wow, that’s a big walnut. Oh, we get it. You’re smart.”

They’d just show me Grumpy was smart. They didn’t have to tell me. Apparently they didn’t think *I* was smart enough to get it.

The lesson here is this:

• Trust your writing.
• Show it. Don’t show, then tell me what you’ve just shown.
• Give your readers some credit, too.

It’s a balancing act, like everything else in writing. The only way to find that balance is to keep writing, and keep experimenting!

iLesson: The Pie in the Face Method

I had this director who talked about the “Pizza in the Face” method of acting. I think that he was actually thinking about a pie in the face, but he said ‘pizza’ and that’s what stuck in my head. However, since this is is an iLesson, straight from last nights meeting at IHOP, it’s now going to be a plate of pancakes.

The “Pancakes/Pie/Pizza in the face method” concerns the moment where you process that something just happened and you have to react to it. In acting, we call this a “beat.” It’s a pause–sometimes long, sometimes very very short–of internalization before taking our next scripted action.

It goes like this:

1. Someone hits you in the face with a pancake (or pie, or pizza).
2. You feel the smack in the face, the floppy, sponginess of the pancake, the stickiness of the syrup, the sweet smell of maple or salty tang of butter.
3. You internally process the fact, and perhaps have an emotional reaction to the fact that someone threw a pancake at you.
4. You take action.

You may instinctively flinch as something comes flying at your face, but before you can have an external action–clean it off, laugh, slug the person who just hit you, or anything else–you have to experience the pancake and have an internal response–get mad, be shocked, etc.

Look at the difference between:

A ghostly figure slowly materialized in front of her. The air seemed to coalesce with an unearthly chill, and Mary screamed in terror and ran away.

…and…

A ghostly figure slowly materialized in front of her. The air seemed to coalesce with an unearthly chill. Icy fingers of fear crawled through Mary’s insides and came out as a scream. Desperate to get away from there before it finished taking shape, she ran away.

Sometimes, especially when something action-y happens, your character may have a reflex reaction first, but then still have to process what happened before they can take a conscious action.

A bullet zinged past my ear. I dropped behind the cover of a low stone wall, took out my gun, and started shooting in the direction of the sniper.

…versus…

A bullet zinged past my ear. Instinct dropped me to the cover of a low stone wall, my gun in my hand before the sting of adrenaline had time to take hold. Where the hell had that shot come from? If I couldn’t take out the sniper, I’d be pinned until the bad guys arrived.

Spending word count on that moment of internalization gives depth and reality to your scene, and makes your character seem more like a real person and less like a stick figure that you, the author, are moving through the book.

How much time (i.e. word count) you spend depends on what’s going on in that scene, the pace you’re trying to set, and also how important the moment is to the whole story. Think about it like the musical score for your book. These ‘beats’ may be fast and light, hammered hard, or drawn out and emotional.

But whenever your characters start to feel like they’re just going through the motions, remember to stop and smell the pizza.

(Also remember, tomorrow is the last day to enter the Highway to Hell/Nothing but Nets contest!)