Angela Ackerman (a.k.a. The Bookshelf Muse) has finished her collection of posts about her seven deadly sins of novel writing, and they’re good to read for writers at all stages of a manuscript. On Monday, I’ll be beginning what I think — hope — will be my last revision of my current novel, and as I go through the chapters, I’m going to make sure I haven’t made any of these sins.

Here are her sins:

1. Keeping the stakes too low for the characters. Conflict keeps our worlds going round.

2. Characters that don’t measure up. Characters should be unique, yet natural; likeable, yet flawed; active, yet true to character.

3. A weak voice. To quote Angela, “Voice is the song of the story, the heartbeat of the main character. It is nothing short of magic.”

4. Plot holes. Including, illogical steps, saggy middles and coincidences.

5. Bland writing. Use all five senses and choose words wisely.

6. Drowning the dialog. Too much, too little and “said” vs. anything else.

7. Giving away too much. Showing vs. telling and how much to reveal.

Thanks for these, Angela. A great guide.

Can you think of any more deadly sins of novel writing? What sins have you committed lately?

I still feel pretty punky, but managed to make some headway on my novel yesterday, which makes up for a lot of internal ickiness. I also started a large map of the territory of the book. There are several scenes in which I've written (this is the craptascular first draft, remember): "MC goes from Point A to Point B. Insert interesting details of his path." I imagine my editor and reader are going to expect me to actually make that stuff up and insert it. I'll work on that today.

Do you have a Creature With Fangs, like mine, who has an unseemly need to be adored by millions? Enter this contest.

I have hundreds of cherry tomatoes. Anyone have a good recipe?


Ready...

Today's advice: "Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability."


Set....

Today's prompt: Elizabeth George (Write Away) has a wonderful technique to get rid of those pages of dialog that meander along until your reader fears she has accidentally picked up a screenplay.

George calls them THADs: Talking Head Avoidance Devices.

You are going to make up a bunch of them.

Think about your MC's life, and where and when she has conversations. Brainstorm 50 different kinds of actions that might reasonably take place while she is talking.

Hint: setting often determines action. If you are not clear about the What The Heck Is She Doing in a scene, first insert more details of the setting. That should get you going.

Scribble....Scribble.... Scribble...

August is a wistful month for many reasons, including the fact that it is when the SCBWI Annual Conference is held in Los Angeles. Le sigh. I really need to go back soon. Until I can, I will have to content myself with reading the official blog about the conference.

That's enough wistfulness. I woke up with the sun and harvested a bunch of green beans that will soon be on their way to the freezer. I planted 10 plants, but that's not nearly enough, given that green beans are a staple here. Next year I think I'll plant 30. The tomatoes are starting to ripen and my popcorn plants have tasseled.

Has anyone ever frozen kale?

From the garden to the writer's desk. We've been doing a lot of character development this month, so it's time to mix things up. Are you listening? Good, because today is all about dialog.

Dialog should carry one of the two burdens of Story: a) move the plot forward, or B) add to our understanding of character.

Beware the temptation to load dialog down with backstory blathering, as in this Draft 1 Example:

Narrator: "You know, it's funny you should say that, Drake. Remember the time when we were kids and our house burned down because Cousin Ichabod tried to repair the stove with a blowtorch and how he forgot to turn off the gas and remember how after they let him out of the hospital he got on a bus to Las Vegas and was never heard from again? Well, sure as heck, he came home today - thirty years to the day after destroying our house and family."
Drake: "Do you think he knows that Ma and Pa have been scheming to kill him every day since and they put all the insurance money into the finest weaponry and land to hide the body?"

Yeah, I know. Made of suckitude.

But we all write like this, when no one is watching. I think ::lowers voice to whisper:: I think it might be part of the process. Don't tell the people who give standardized tests. They enjoy the delusion that first draft writing is always polished prose. (Silly bureaucrats!)

I have a cure!

Prepare yourself!!!  Get down on one knee and bow your head.

::raises staff of oak and ash:: I, Madwoman of the Forest, do hereby grant thee the First Draft Exemption For Writing Bad and Pointless Dialog. 
::bonks assembled writers on head with staff::

OK, get up now. Don't you feel better?

I find that I NEED to write banal and blathering dialog in a first draft because it help me understand the characters and their backstories. The trick is to have the courage to admit how bad it is when it comes time to revise. And cut out everything that is useless.

Example, Draft 2:
Narrator: "Ichabod's back."
Drake: "I know. Ma has the cannon ready. I'm supposed to dig a hole."
Narrator: "Already did it."
Drake: "Then I get to cover him up."
Narrator: "Fair enough. But don't tell Pa."

(Yes, I deliberately created a question with that last line. It's supposed to move the story forward.)



Ready....

Today's advice: Mystery author Robert B. Parker said, "Say a lot in a little. Put the most meaning in the fewest words."


Set...

Today's prompt: Today you eavesdrop. Sit next to people who do not know you are listening and write down as much as you can overhear. Stop before the police are called. Read over what you've written, paying special attention to how often they spoke in fragments and how quickly information was conveyed. How does the way they speak differ from the way your characters speak?

Extra Bonus Points: Rework some of your dialog from your WIP. Be merciless - what can you throw away?
 

Scribble...Scribble....Scribble!

Yesterday we posted part two in our dialogue between Robert Paarlberg (who recently published Starved For Science) and Pamela Ronald (author of Tomorrow’s Table). These two experts have been debating all week how to best ensure a safe food supply with the least amount of damage to the environment. This is the third and final part of the series, so be sure to read parts one and two first.

Robert Paarlberg is the Betty F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College. His most recent book is Starved For Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa(Harvard University Press), explains why poor African farmers are denied access to productive technologies, particularly genetically engineered seeds with improved resistance to insects and drought.

Pamela C. Ronald is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis. Her laboratory has genetically engineered rice for resistance to diseases and flooding. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her most recent book, written with Raoul W. Adamchak, is Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, genetics, and the Future of Food, which argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture–genetic engineering and organic farming–is key to helping feed the world’s growing population in an ecologically balanced manner.

Dear Pam,

Thanks for your last note. I like your final observation:

“So what I advocate is intensive farming using the most ecologically responsible approaches. In our view this would include many organic production practices and GE crops.”

I am attracted, as you are, to a number of organic production practices. What I find less attractive are the strict prohibitions in organic farming against some practices, such as the prohibition against all synthetic fertilizer use, or against all synthetic pesticide use. In many cases it will make ecological sense to restore soil nutrients by using a combination of both compost and synthetic nitrogen, yet the rules of organic certification make this impossible. It makes ecological sense, in many cases, to adopt an integrated pest management strategy, eliminating the routine use of synthetic insecticides yet keeping the chemical option available for the occasional circumstance when pest damage crosses a certain threshold. Yet once again the rules of organic certification make this practice impossible, since no use of synthetics is permitted.

I have another question about the rules of organic certification, which say it is perfectly all right to use “natural” poisons to kill insect pests. What is it that allows us to assume naturally occurring insecticidal substances are good, while those fabricated by people are always bad? This rule seems to derive, a bit too much, from the pre-scientific views held by the mystics and romantics who originated “biodynamic” and organic farming a century or more ago.

But perhaps I am missing something here.

Thanks,
Rob

The organic certification system provides guidelines for a biologically-based agricultural. One of the points of our book is that a truly sustainable agriculture will need to integrate many of these organic, scientifically-based principles. Yet it will also need to integrate new crop varieties, including those GE crops that satisfy principles of sustainable production. As you point out, different locations, crops and farmers will need to employ different approaches to achieve this vision. As Mike Madison, a fellow farmer, neighbor and writer says, “In dealing with nature, to be authoritarian is almost always a mistake. In the long run, things work out better if the farmer learns to tolerate complexity and ambiguity . . . Having the right tools helps”

Unfortunately such a sustainable system, although increasingly used around the world, has not yet been clearly defined. We begin that dialog in our book and appreciate your valuable contributions.

All the best
Pam

Yes, I appreciate the dialog we have begun, and look forward to staying in touch. The point made by Mike Madison is solid. It was Rachel Carson who taught us best not to be either authoritarian or arrogant when working with biological systems, as we still know only a small amount about how they work, and especially how they work with each other. Whenever we introduce agricultural cropping systems into the natural environment we risk doing harm as well as good.

I have just been asked by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN to prepare a background paper that tries to imagine how the world can double its food production by the year 2050 (as will be necessary, given projected population and income growth in the developing world between now and then) without doing unwanted harm to the natural environment. A tall order, I think you would agree. I will have your nice book, Tomorrow’s Table, open on my desk when I get started on this task. Your willingness to integrate multiple approaches - from organic to GMO - into the design of sustainable farming systems is a persuasive approach to me. Thank you for opening so many minds with this inclusive approach.

Rob Paarlberg

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sweet nothings

What bitter black pearls
do you feed me? Each word

stings my lips as you coil
a necklace of desire within

my mouth. I would that they were
stones, easy to spit out

and not such chained smoothness

that I pull them out,
over and over, to taste

the tang of praise
against my tongue.

----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)

Poetry Friday is hosted this week by Semicolon