October 2012 | Staci Troilo

Five Ways to Avoid Ruining Your Scene Descriptions

When you write, you’ve got main characters, secondary characters, minor characters and villains. Many people contend that the setting can become a character in its own right, and in certain situations, a well-written setting can take on a life of its own. But there are mistakes to avoid with settings so they aren’t handled poorly.

Here are five pitfalls in scene-setting to be aware of.

1. Not Writing Enough
Have you ever read a scene so dialogue-heavy that you felt ungrounded? You were missing the basic foundation tools provided by “setting the scene.” Without just a few well-placed details to tell you where the characters are, you will uncomfortably float in the scene.

2. Being Lost in Exposition
Conversely, too much scene-setting can break down the flow of the writing. It’s a real slam of the brakes as your eyes scan the page if suddenly you’re mired down in a lengthy description of where the characters are. More isn’t always better.

3. Making Lists
One of the ways people try to condense their description is to just hit the highlights of the scenery. That often results in a laundry list of details describing the setting of the story. That’s a sure fire way to slow down readers. No one wants to read sentence after sentence of room or landscape detail, particularly if it really isn’t value-added information.

4. Writing Purple Prose
Sometimes the description is added simply as filler because the writer wasn’t sure what to do next or he or she wanted to slow the pace a bit. Often this is where the writer flexes the old poetry muscle, and purple prose is born. Scene descriptions are created in language so beautiful that The Bard himself would be envious. Don’t be afraid to kill your darlings. In this case, they aren’t really darling. Just because the language is exquisite doesn’t mean it belongs in your story.

5. Regionalizing
I was at a conference recently when an agent discussed scene-specifics. She said that stories set in Anytown USA are more marketable than stories written about miners in Western PA because a coal mine in Western PA poses a limited market. That doesn’t mean you can’t set your story somewhere real—plenty of wonderful stories take place in actual places—but try not to limit your market so severely that you make your story’s audience a small, segmented market.

So, we don’t write too little, we don’t write too much. We avoid writing lists and we cut the poetic phrases that were inserted as filler. Finally, we make certain we don’t pigeon-hole ourselves into a region that is too specific to be marketable. What’s left?

The perfect sprinkling of well-placed, well-chosen details. You don’t need to describe the whole forest; throughout the scene mention the darkness of the shadows, the thick carpet of fallen needles and the pungent scent of pine. Those details throughout one scene aren’t too many, but you know you’re in a forest without saying, “They’re in a dense forest. There are trees as far as the eye can see. Needles and cones line the path, and the scent of pine permeates the air.” Further, if you mention the details in lieu of dialogue tags, you’ve killed two birds with one stone. But I’ll leave that discussion for another post…

Five Ways to Write a Successful Villain

So we’ve been covering how to write successful characters, and we’ve talked about heroes and heroines. Those protagonists can be tricky, but I think we have a handle on it. Now we press forward to those pesky villains. Sure, everyone is picturing twirling mustaches and swirling capes, or creepy smiles and smeared make-ups, but it doesn’t have to be that sinister. Villains could be as innocuous as the bully who gave you swirlies and shoved you in a locker after gym class or the girl who spread rumors about you costing you your best friends and your homecoming date, causing you to lapse into depression, fail all your classes and drop out of school… Scratch that. She could be the girl who pulled your pigtails on the playground. Villains can be dark, but they don’t have to be. It depends on your genre. But they do have to have a few key points in common in order to be successfully written.

Here are five key strategies for writing successful villains.

Villains have to believe they are right.
No one starts down a path to evil saying, “I’m going down the path to evil.” They believe that what they are doing, whether they are seeking to become the popular kid at school or seeking to become the ruler of the world, they are doing it for the right reasons. If people get hurt while they benefit in the process, well, eggshells and omelets.
Villains have a tortured past.
There is almost always one inciting incident that created the villain. There should be that moment, that one deciding moment, where he could have taken the high road or the low road and when that defining incident occurred he felt he had no choice but to take the low road. That incident framed his life and his actions from that moment on to the present day, where he is now the villain who is terrorizing the village, bent on world domination, cannibalizing co-eds, or whatever his personal brand of crazy happens to be.
Villains need a character arc.
Just as our protagonists have to grow and change as they progress through the story, so should the villain. Whether he finds redemption or he goes off the deep end doesn’t matter. What matters is that the villain grows throughout the story. Readers need to see that the villain is a person too, a well-rounded and well-developed person with thoughts and feelings who grows and changes. By the end of the story he should have the same path options as the protagonists do.
Villains need human traits.
Villains aren’t uber-evil. They have thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, fears and anxieties. They experience joy and have nervous ticks. They have family and friends (possibly, unless their inciting incident resulted in them being abandoned and alone), and they have jobs and homes. When the villain is on the scene, play with these traits so the villains seem more human.
Villains need to interact with the protagonists.
The more the protagonists and the villain interact, the more the readers can learn about the villain. In fact, it is better for the reader and often the plot if there are paths of intersection in their lives. A villain who just shows up is fine, but a villain who has crossed paths with the protagonist time and again is so much better. It helps draw parallels between their lives, letting the reader see how things could have been different for the villain had the inciting incident gone another way.

These points will help craft a strong and compelling villain, but remember, most times writers don’t write from the villain’s point of view. That means that all these tips need to be implemented without insight directly into the antagonist’s thoughts. Don’t despair—it can be done, and done effectively. It just takes some clever writing to convey the message. And no one wants to admit they’re naturally good at it—people might wonder why it comes so easily to them.

45th Annual Ozark Creative Writers Conference

Lou Turner, Dusty Richards, Beth Bartlett, Johnny Boggs

I spent the weekend in Eureka Springs, Arkansas learning about writing, publishing, and platforming at a fabulous writers conference put on by Ozark Creative Writers. This was their forty-fifth annual conference, and while it was my first time in attendance, I can’t imagine they’d ever put on a better one.

Thursday evening began with President Dusty Richards hosting an informal discussion group welcoming everyone and discussing different writers’ journeys from novice to published author. Later, a reception was held and writers had the opportunity to read a few pages of their work to their peers.

Friday was a full day. After opening remarks, keynote speaker Cherry Weiner addressed the group. Ms. Weiner lives in New Jersey and is an agent who works closely with the Big Six publishing houses in New York. Rather than giving a prepared speech, she immediately opened the floor for questions, and boy did we have them. We learned about query structures (everyone has a format, but a general rule to follow is one page, four paragraphs: first is the genre, word count, and if it’s a single title or series; second is the storyline; third is any publishing credits; fourth is a thank you, followed by a request for instructions on how to submit if interested). We learned that the Big Six will only give an author six weeks on the shelves, and if the book doesn’t sell it gets pulled. That means an author must market. We learned that these days, series are preferable to single titles because it means that the author will have more books coming along. We learned that formal prose is likely too stiff, but that doesn’t excuse poor grammar and excessive colloquialisms. Manuscripts still need to be polished when they are submitted, because editors aren’t going to “edit” anymore. In short, we learned a lot.

After the break, Susan Swartwout from Southeast Missouri University Press talked about hooks in first lines and first pages. In addition to all writing needing to be tight and full of action, there are certain rules that will improve first page hooks.

Avoid starting with dialogue. There’s too much mystery when readers don’t know the characters. They don’t know who’s speaking.
Avoid straight description for too long. It will bore the readers.
Start with an action or a compelling statement and then fulfill the promise. If you start with something exciting or an interesting statement but the action isn’t resolved or the statement isn’t explained, you’ll lose the reader’s attention.
Think short and simple. Don’t begin with word play puzzles. The reader isn’t vested yet, so he or she won’t care enough to try to figure it out.
Don’t try to write the hook first thing. Just write; then edit and make a great hook.

After lunch, Johnny Boggs spoke about the YA market. Mr. Boggs has successfully written for adults and teens, and he offered tips for writing for a younger audience.

Girls will read about either gender, boys are really only interested in male protagonists.
A great hook is essential.
Language needs to be about two years older than the protagonist.
Kids are more sophisticated than we were; be age appropriate.
The missing parent is a typical plot device; it lets the kids be the heroes. They need to face life alone in some way.
Nothing is off limits anymore. Death, abuse, drugs, sex, violence, profanity… if it’s handled in an age-appropriate way, it can be written about.

After a quick break, Ms. Weiner returned with New York editor Daniela Rapp to do a “single page book buy.” Authors submitted one page of their WIPs and the agent and editor listened to them and offered comments, sometimes even saying they’d like to talk to the writer further after the session. This was by far the most helpful session, as we all got to see and hear firsthand what agents and editors look for in manuscripts, and what they reject.

We ended the day with the choice of attending a session by Poet Laureate Peggy Vinning or CEO of 2 Rivers Communications Dianna Graveman. I attended the session with Ms. Graveman to learn more about platform building. As expected from a social marketing guru, she spoke fast and covered a lot. While she did mention the usual Twitter and Facebook topics that social media experts have to cover, she also delved into blog tours, speaking gigs, Goodreads, eventbrite and speakerfile. I had explored the first three briefly on my own, but I had never even heard of eventbrite and speakerfile. The customization options of the two were quite impressive and worth exploring.

Saturday began with Ms. Rapp discussing what kinds of things she looks for when deciding what to publish. She says it’s more than just a quality judgment, books should come to her polished and ready and must meet three criteria: They must tell a story. She must love at least one character. They must be different in some way from every other story. If they pass those tests, the author should keep these seven points in mind:

Research the industry – Know what’s going on and what’s changing.
Research the market – Know the genre.
Don’t be motivated by money or fame – Most authors don’t ever make a living writing.
Marketing isn’t a necessary evil; it’s the way books are sold today – You have to do it today if you want to sell books tomorrow.
Getting published takes time – Contract to shelf can take two years. Be patient.
Writing is a career, not a one-off – Know what other projects you have coming up and be working on them so you have something else to pitch.
Be an expert in your area – Research you genre, the authors in your genre, the time period in which your books are set…

After a break, Susan Swartwout discussed contracts. She recommended getting an agent, because an agent’s job is to get a writer the best deal possible, and an agent will understand the contract better than even a lawyer, and certainly better than the writer. Even so, she brought along a sample contract and pointed out some key areas of note. One thing that isn’t usually in contracts is cover control. Try to get some say over the cover design (at least veto rights), as that can make or break a novel. Also check that the copyright is in your name, not the publisher’s. And lastly, confirm who has international rights and film rights. Those are things agents can negotiate for you.

After lunch, Dianna Graveman hosted a session on selling an author’s work. Running concurrently was a session by the Board. Lou Turner, Dusty Richards, Beth Bartlett and Johnny Boggs took questions from the audience and discussed their careers. We got some valuable information about how to query a small press (and how not to nag them afterward), how to write dialogue and internalization using different voices and how to tag (also how not to tag), and how joining online organizations and being a good “netizen” can help drive up book sales. Listening to four such accomplished professionals was an honor.

The next session was by Ms. Weiner and Ms. Rapp. They put on a little skit showing how a manuscript goes from agent to editor to publication. This section was full of valuable information regarding timeframes, agent and editor roles, and publishing house functions. I now understand why it can take two years for a book to hit the shelves. I still don’t like it, but I get it. The manuscript goes through so many hands and so many revisions, plus cover design, marketing and sales… Not to mention, it’s not the only one they’re working on. It’s daunting. No wonder the publishers want our patience and our help promoting. We are our number one cheerleaders.

The conference “proper” ended with a toot-your-own-horn segment, where people could talk about their successes. There are a lot of successful people there. I hope to join the ranks soon.

I missed the awards banquet; I had to get back to town. A friend emailed me that I took second place in one of the writing contests and I won the Cherry Weiner raffle (for her to look at and critique some of my work), but I won’t believe any of it until I actually see it for myself. I mean, my first conference and to take second place in a contest and win a raffle! That’s too good to be true. Plus I picked up an anthology while I was there that I was published in, and I have a blurb on the back cover (Bigfoot Confidential – High Hill Press). If that’s not a great first conference, I don’t know what is. I can’t wait until next year’s! Hope to see some of you there.

Five Ways to Write a Successful Hero

My in-laws are here this week. In fact, they came a day early. I was woefully unprepared. There was no food in the house. I was in the middle of cleaning. Their bed sheets weren’t even on the bed yet. I was wearing my housecleaning clothes: sweat shorts and a ripped and stained oversized T-shirt that I “borrowed” from my husband years ago and never returned. Hey, I do the laundry. If he wants it back, he should wash it and put it in his drawer. Anyway…

Their arrival could have gone a few different ways. My in-laws could have looked around with disdain and made snide comments, but they’re too classy for that. (What they thought is another story. I’ll never know, and I like it that way.) My husband could have blamed me for the mess and sat there waiting for me to scramble. (I was scrambling anyway.) Or he could have explained how busy we’ve all been (which is true), explained that we expected them the following day (also true), and then pitched in more than he already had been to get the place serviceable. Which was what he did. My hero.

Okay, that might be a bit overdramatic, but my life isn’t in peril on a daily basis. But in fiction, heroes don’t always have to be saving lives. Sometimes they just come to the rescue of an unprepared leading lady. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes for all kinds of situations, but there are ways to ensure you create a believable and likeable hero. Here are five rules to follow when crafting heroes for your fiction.

Heroes need noble professions
Don’t automatically default to the billionaire playboy philanthropist. Bruce Wayne has been written about enough already. A hero can be wealthy, but he certainly doesn’t have to be. Heroes can be middle class, they can also be living paycheck to paycheck. Income doesn’t matter. The key is to make their professions honorable. Whatever they choose to do with their lives, whatever their pasts and their histories, they need to have good intentions and actions in the present. They should also have the means to date a woman. That doesn’t mean five-star resorts and fancy restaurants, but he should be able to do better than PB&J sandwiches in the bed of his truck.
Heroes are men of action
Introspection is fine for the leading man, in fact, it’s encouraged. There’s no better way for readers to get to know the hero than to hear his thoughts, in his voice. But heroes are, by definition, men of action. Don’t let this guy spend too much time thinking without doing something. We want to learn about him, but we want to learn about him through his actions.
Heroes need to be open to new things
Two peas in a pod or opposites attract? I always vote opposites. If your hero and heroine share too many of the same traits, their relationship is going to be dull. The exciting relationships are the ones where the guy and girl come together from two different ends of the spectrum. That means, however, that one of them is going to want to go to the football game while the other is ordering ballet tickets. (It really doesn’t matter which one is which—don’t play into stereotypical gender roles all the time.) Let your hero not only willingly agree to give up his activity in favor of hers; let him enjoy her activity as well.
Work with a quirk
Yes, I know that was a suggestion I used for the heroines, but it holds true for the heroes, too. Guys aren’t always cool and collected. They have idiosyncrasies. If it’s not a nervous tick or a tell of some sort, then he’s likely to have some weird habit or an odd collection at home. Perhaps it has something to do with his car. Everyone has a quirk. Show his. Let us learn about him through his. Is it endearing? Is it weird? Is it something that is sentimental and emotional? Reveal something about him through the quirk.
MAKE HIM FLAWED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yep, another repeat. But this one definitely bears repeating. No one’s perfect. He might be perfect for the heroine, but he isn’t flawless. He can have wonderful qualities most of the time, but not always. He’s going to have indecision. He’s going to have doubts. And sometimes, sometimes, he’s going to do something completely idiotic and make the heroine angry. It’s okay. They’ll work it out. He’s still a good guy. He’s just not perfect. And that’s precisely what will make him the perfect hero for your story.

Heroes come in all kinds of packages: long and lean to big and bulky; boardrooms to operating rooms; the open range to the gun range. How they look, what they do, where you find them… none of that really matters. It’s all window dressing. What matters is what’s at the core. Heroes need to be flawed, challenged men striving for redemption, and they are successful by saving (or helping to save) the leading lady.

photo courtesy of Chris Hartford: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knight_at_Battle_Abbey.jpg

How to Build a Better Story

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Shakespeare wrote that in As You like It. If that’s truly the case, then stories themselves are houses. Let me explain.

Consider the framework for a simple A-frame house. It’s got four walls and a pitched roof. The structure of the story, any story, is like the framework of that A-frame house. It doesn’t change, no matter what. It is the support, regardless of the dressing. We’ll go into more detail about structure in a later post, but for now, we’ll just hit the highlights. This framework, in all fiction, will have five parts.

The left side wall is the Exposition, or Introduction. This is the part of the story where characters are introduced and relevant background information is revealed. The inciting incident occurs in this section.

The left pitch of the roof is the Rising Action. This is the part of the story where conflict is revealed the story progresses. A series of challenges and setbacks occur in this section to add interest.

The pitch of the roof is the Climax. This is the turning point of the novel, where suspense has built and the reader is caught up in the action, or surprised by the turn of events. This is the part with the most on the line for the protagonist—the most is on the line here.

The right pitch of the roof is the Falling Action. These events are usually the after effects of the decisions made during the climax, and therefore occur immediately after the climax.

The right side wall is the Denouement or Resolution. This is the ultimate conclusion and resolves any unaddressed conflicts that progressed throughout the story. There should be a release of any tensions at this point, and all mysteries should be solved.

Most fiction today is written in a three act structure. You can think of it as the three floors of the home (ground floor, second floor, and attic).

The Ground Floor is the beginning, or the setup. It tells who the characters are and what happens to them, right up to the inciting incident, or the thing that happens that sets the story in motion.

The Second Floor is the middle of the story. It’s where most of the book takes place. It’s where all the challenges and obstacles occur that keep the protagonist away from the goal.

The Third Floor is the end of the story. It’s when the protagonist finally reaches the goal and everything gets wrapped up.

These floors correlate to the side walls and roof, don’t they? You bet. Shouldn’t the framework of a house work together? You bet.

Now, it really doesn’t matter how you dress this thing up. It can be a western with weathered wood siding. A southern Civil War historical with columns and a wrap-around porch. A legal thriller Bostonian brick brownstone with a stately pediment above the door. None of that matters. What matters is that you build three sturdy floors, with solid walls, and a perfectly pitched roof. The dressing is all up to you. Variety is the spice of life, or, in this case, my bookshelf.

Posted for WordPress DPchallenge Easy as Pie

photo credit: Patrick Dinnen licensed under Creative Commons.

Five Ways to Write a Successful Heroine

I’d like to spend some time over the next few weeks working on elements of a novel. Today I thought we’d talk about the leading lady, or the heroine, primarily because I was sick this past week and spent more time reading than writing. The novels I read I won’t name, but they all had something in common: the leading ladies bugged the crap out of me, and soon I’ll tell you why. But first, a personal anecdote…

Yesterday was my seventeenth wedding anniversary. What does that have to do with the price of chocolate at Walgreens? I’m getting to it. See, Corey (that’s my husband) and I were high school sweethearts (awwww). We grew up in the same town, attended the same church, knew many of the same people. We actually had crushes on each other in junior high school, but we didn’t tell each other, or anyone else. When we finally got together in high school, we were (sickeningly) inseparable. Our relationship matured through college and long distance romances when he worked out of state. We even had some long distance issues during our marriage when his job took him away from our family for extended periods of time. Now we’re all under one roof and, although we’re not in our home state, we’re happy with our lives. Is everything perfect? No. But our relationship is perfect for us. Are we perfect? (Pause for hysterical bout of laughter.) Heavens, no! We’re perfect for each other though, and we know each other’s short comings and accept them.

Enter today’s heroine.

I’m not sure when it happened, but I think I know why it occurred. Many of today’s leading ladies are being put on pedestals so high that Zeus would have to look up from Mt. Olympus to see their feet. And they’re being written this way so they seem strong, capable and desirable. Guess what? Women can be strong, capable and desirable without being COMPLETELY FLAWLESS. These love triangles where two amazing men are fighting over Ms. Right (who, by the way, isn’t even that great half the time, they just seem to think she is), are tired and cliché. Ms. Right needs to be real. She needs to have flaws, and not just superficial ones that she notices, but ones that the men notice, too. Our daughters need realistic role models so when they read our books, they don’t feel that they fall inexplicably short or think that men have to duel over them for them to be worthy of love.

The books I read this past week had heroines that were either so helpless that they needed the men to rescue them or were so over the top wonderful that the guys couldn’t get enough of them, but in every case they were the “perfect” women: flawlessly beautiful, intelligent, generous, giving. Every man on the planet stopped and stared when they entered a room. Enough, already.

Here are five points to keep in mind to create a believable and likeable heroine in a novel.

Get in your heroine’s head
We need to see things from this woman’s point of view. We need to think her thoughts, in her voice. Respond to things realistically, avoid melodrama, but give us something we can really sink our teeth into so we can get to know her and like her. As with any character, the best way to get to know her will be through her ability to deal with conflict. Put her in stressful situations as soon as you can so we can see how she reacts. We need to feel her emotions, and let us experience them with her. This isn’t the place to hold back.
A little less conversation, a little more action please
I know, women complain. I’m a lovely and likable person, but even I have been known to utter a negative word or two here and there. The women who sit around bemoaning their lots in life waiting for the hero to rescue them need to be eliminated from literature. I’m not suggesting the heroine rush off half-cocked without a plan (the woman who acts without thinking also needs to be eliminated from literature), but there needs to be a methodical plan of action in place. Believe it or not, woman can be rational.
Give us a believable reaction to her beauty
She may be a knock-out, she may be an untraditional beauty, but she’s going to be good looking. In either event, she shouldn’t be obvious about it. This woman isn’t going to be staring into mirrors appreciating what she sees. However, I wouldn’t go to the other extreme, either. Humility is one thing, arguing about it and denying it is another. If she is complimented, she shouldn’t be shocked, and if she’s complimented repeatedly, her man shouldn’t have to convince her he finds her gorgeous.
Work with a quirk
Everyone has a thing. A nervous tell. A boredom tick. Something. The heroine needs one, too. A twist of a ring, a twirl of the hair, a bounce of the leg… Pick a thing that you can use to display emotion for your leading lady and use it. But use it sparingly. It’s just another layer for you to build with and us to unravel as we get to know the heroine.
MAKE HER FLAWED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did the bold, all caps, and several exclamation points do enough to keep your attention? This is the most important one, so I hope so. This woman isn’t perfect, so don’t make her be perfect. She makes bad decisions (although they need to be consistent with her character). She has bad hair days. She loses her temper. She doesn’t always recycle. She runs out of gas on the interstate when her cell phone battery is dead. She’s NOT perfect. No one is; why would she be? Lower the pedestal.

photo credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:French_Kiss.JPG