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What makes us remember a character? Not what they're wearing, or the color of their hair, but "their quirks, their body language, their histories, their beliefs." How does a writer create vivid, memorable characters?
In "Tell Their Secrets" (NY Times, 7/13/13) Silas House gives examples of how to "shape your characters by revealing their deepest, darkest secrets. Show us what drives them, what makes them completely individual in this wide world. Tell us how they pine, how they tick."
A recipe for producing memorable characters? Perhaps.
Print it out. Reread often.
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| Sharon Wildey Calle |
After a week's vacation in the "Land of Enchantment" (New Mexico), I have come home inspired and ready to write.
My only challenge... How do I recreate the diverse and magical spirit of this environment as a setting for a story?
Literature has long been inspired by place.
The Grapes of Wrath, Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird- each of these transports us to a very specific time and environment.
Much is involved in scene setting. To give a true sense of place, one must incorporate the following: physical environment, people, culture, language, and history. It is challenging to not let your setting interfere with (or upstage) your plot. It must be seamlessly woven in between your characters' actions and dialogue.
As I sort through my photos, maps, and free brochures, I think of the people I met, the cultures I experienced, the landscapes I hiked through. I'm not ready to resign my memories to a scrapbook or picasa gallery just yet.
But I
am ready to share this adventure through storytelling.
What are some of the ways you incorporate a sense of place into your writing?
Are there certain children's books/authors that you feel do this exceptionally well?
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By: Sharon Wildey Calle,
on 3/10/2013
Blog:
The Paper Wait
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We all have our tried-and-true recipes that we return to time after time for potlucks, dinner parties, or family meals. But what is your recipe for writing success?
- If an idea excites you, go with it.
- Be open to revision, and then be courageous and submit!
- Reach out, make friends, and support other writers.
What are the ingredients that led to your writing success? (Whether your success is writing your first draft, conquering revisions, submitting a manuscript, or celebrating your published book!)
I’ll start the recipe and you can each list your choice ingredients….
Recipe for Writing Success
- 1 clever idea
- 10 lbs. of elbow grease
- 5 cups of constructive critiques
Mo Willems and his pigeon. Smile material. Masterful picture books!
In 2011, Mo was invited to give the prestigious Zena Sutherland Lecture. He titled his talk "Why Books?"
Here are some highlights:
"Always think of your audience; never think for your audience."
"If I re-read one of my manuscripts and I understand exactly what is happening, then the manuscript has too many words. And if I look at the images without the words and I can fully understand the story, there are too many drawings."
On enhanced digital books: ". . . after we turn them on, they don't need us. Turn it on and leave the room, and the book will read itself."
On real books: "But a real book is helpless. It needs us desperately. We have to pull it off the shelf. We have to open it up. We have to turn the pages, one by one. We even have to use our imagination to make it work. . . . So maybe books work because they make us work. Maybe we need them for needing us, just like we need real friends, not the digital imitations on Facebook."
Well said. Do you agree?
Photo credit: Marty Umans
As I was brainstorming for my blog post, I was determined to write a post that was relevant, interesting, inspiring, and witty. I had no trouble deciding between multiple ideas. Because I had absolutely no ideas to choose from.
Instead I wrote the following haiku:
Mind is a big blank
Can’t think of a thing to write
Wishing for a remedy
And then I got up and washed the dishes and made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
Writers, what do you do when the words just won’t come? How do you break through a creative block?
In the last year or so, two adverbs have crept into common English usage: "famously" and "arguably." One cannot read a column or news article without seeing them. "As Shakespeare famously said..." or, "Julia Child, arguably one of the world's best..." Any day now I expect to see "George Washington, arguably the first American President..." Both words add nothing to any sentence in which they are used.
As writers, especially for children, we are told to eschew adverbs. "Very, really, simply, wholly, completely, extremely, sincerely, strongly, happily, lately, rather, quite, almost..." All of these words tend to blur or weaken the action, something to be (strongly, ha ha) avoided.
However, to prepare for the revision of an existing manuscript, I have been collecting adverbs. Certainly not "famously" or "arguably," but words such as "wheezily, stupidly, crazily, nosily, cowardly, hungrily, drunkenly, sourly." I need these words to enliven the condition of the action. Without them, my sentences are dry, like warm toast without butter.
Like many writers, I suffer from a dreaded writerly disease: trying to write it right the first time. I agonize over sentence structure, search my thesaurus for the perfect synonym, and doubt every plot line.
So when I came across this
New York Times Magazine Article that reminded me how important it is to be wrong -- and "to be wrong as fast as you can," I considered once again how overrated right is. In the article, Hugo Lindgren reviews a list of ideas he's had throughout the years and wonders why he hasn't written them. He recounts a Charlie Rose interview with Pixar's John Lasseter:
Pixar’s in-house theory is: Be wrong as fast as you can. Mistakes are an inevitable part of the creative process, so get right down to it and start making them. Even great ideas are wrecked on the road to fruition and then have to be painstakingly reconstructed. “Every Pixar film was the worst motion picture ever made at one time or another,” Lasseter said. “People don’t believe that, but it’s true. But we don’t give up on the films." We've all heard it a million times -- the stories of successful writers slogging through page after page of mediocrity, never giving up. And that is the real difference between success and failure. Never giving up.
So as I finish what I hope is my last major revision of this novel, I'll welcome making mistakes that can be fixed. I'll keep my eye on the light at the end of the tunnel and take the express.
Keep your plot unpredictable. Easy for you to say… I picked up a great tip on this recently. Use your critique partners – not just for review, but for breaking through plot bottlenecks.
Try this exercise: set the stage (your MC had a huge fight with her best friend), and ask your critique partners what might happen.
Wait for the first answer (she storms off and refuses totalk?) and avoid this at all costs: the predictable plot.
Delve deeper, seek alternatives. Brainstorm more answers with your partner. Does your MC tell other friends her side of the story, so that the basketball team shows its divided loyalties? Maybe. Does she cry on a badboy’s shoulder – the badboy her friend has crush on? Or maybe she’s so upset, she steals her father’s car to get as far away from the fight as possible… What happens then? Where does she go? That’s what everyone wants to know and where you should drive your plot.
You’re the writer, the creator, the omniscient presence, the grown-up. You drive. Drive your main character crazy. Test her, push her, force her to learn through doing, just like real life.
Remember: “Your main character is not your best friend.” You are not only allowed to put this ‘person’ into uncomfortable situations, you are supposed to. That’s your job.
Keep at it: tease, challenge and frustrate your characters. That’s when you’ll see what they’re really about. At some point you’ll be able to take your hands off the wheel and let them lead you on their journey of self-discovery and change.
Then you’ll have arrived at an interesting story.
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| Peter Pan Illustration by Kathleen Atkins |
How do you enter the magical world of your young readers?
To get into the right mindset, I think back to how I felt as a child. I also get lots of ideas from my students (I teach elementary art).
But how do you tap into that world if you don’t interact with children on a daily basis?
One resource is
Edutopic’s list of winning student blogs by children ages 6-13. It’s a great way to research how today’s kids spend their time, what they care about, and what they find funny. (Notice how many of the blog titles include the word, ‘Awesome’.)
Another resource I love is the New York Times’ blog,
“Kids Draw the News.” On this site, children submit illustrations to accompany articles on current events. It’s a great way to discover how children view the world. Plus, their illustrations are a hoot!
What resources help you enter the world of young readers?
Okay, so, I wasn't going to post this quite yet since I'm sure everyone is busy with the holidays but I can’t hold it in any longer…
I HAVE A BOOK DEAL!!!!!! Balzer + Bray is publishing my debut YA, The Promise of Amazing, in 2014!!! Champagne for everyone!!!
I’m still pinching myself.
In honor of this and in the spirit of Christmas, I’m having a GIVEAWAY!!!
In the comments section, tell me which writers have influenced you and why and I’ll randomly select someone to win a $25.00 Amazon gift card! Okay, my turn:
One of the writers who has influenced me is fellow Jerseyan, Judy Blume. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was the first book I remember falling in love with. I lived in that book. It was also the first book I read over and over again. What struck me most about that book was the way it made me feel. I was going through some of the same things that Margaret was going through…trying to figure out where I fit in, who my friends were, getting a bra, (worrying about having something to fill out said bra!), and going to my first boy/girl parties. These were thrilling, yet sometimes, scary events! Reading about someone going through those same things made me feel that all the emotions, the highs and lows, that I was experiencing were…normal.
This is what I aspire to do in my own work - to create characters and stories which grab you by the collar and pull you into their world. To laugh, cry and maybe even recognize yourself there.
So how about you, Paper Waiters? Which writer has influenced you? Any comments left before midnight on December 24th will be eligible for the giveaway!! (Just make sure to include an e-mail address so I can contact you!)
Oh, and I apologize for the overuse of exclamation points...but I just can't HELP IT!!!!!!
With the New Year just around the corner, resolutions for 2013 come to mind.
I resolve to write one picture book manuscript each month. How will I keep that resolution, you may ask?
Reading the daily
PiBoIdMo posts during November inspired me to do a little writing each day. Now I didn't say
good writing. I do have hope that the act of writing each day will eventually lead to good writing. Or even
really good writing. Or one day (gasp!) a published book!
Here’s to a creative 2013!
Do you have a New Year’s writing resolution?
This year I have made progress on several projects, although I haven’t written as much as I intended. As the summer looms, and the inevitability of children rushing through my house all day approaches, I realize I will get even less done each day than I do now. How can I write more, and write it faster?
Many authors measure their progress in words per day. This doesn’t seem to work for me. I need to be a more ‘effective writer.’
Here’s what I need to work towards:
1. Plan. Outline. Draw a mind map. Looking ahead can save a lot of looking back and rewriting.
2. Separate writing from editing. Effective writers WRITE, without looking back. Just get through the first draft, not the first chapter. Edit through the dross and the good stuff in a second stage. (This is a biggie for me.)
3. Write every day, even just a little. Just one more page keeps the story moving forward. Over a year, a page a day is a novel’s first draft. (Reportedly, Stephen King writes even on Christmas Day. Wow. What discipline.)
4. Finish what was started. Don’t let good ideas rest in peace in the file cabinet. Resurrect them! Complete what was once a passionate and inspirational project.
5. Set deadlines. Deadlines demand a finished piece. (This is one of the many things a critique group is good for.)
6. Write first. Volunteer last. Instead of structuring free time around, say, school library volunteer work, and squeezing in writing, structure time around writing. Give up other activities and give in to the dream of writing. Then a book I write might appear in the library.
Summer, with frequent interruptions (whether children, visitors, or vacations) can be a tough time to be productive. But if I try, maybe I will make more progress than I expect.
How do you keep productive? Any tips?
In my last post I suggested that it might be “easier to juggle giraffes than to sell a rhyming picture book manuscript” (see “
Giraffe Juggling”). That’s still true, but at the moment, I feel like I’ve caught a giraffe and am bracing myself for the toss.
The latest critique of my rhyming PB manuscript left me stymied by a new question: “Have you thought about where you might submit this?” Submit? Really?
Immersed in meter, plot and my thesaurus, I had resolved not to consider next steps. I consulted the wonderful resources you readers suggested (thank you!), and revised, revised, revised. And, surprise -- the manuscript earned a thumbs up from my critique partners.
I am thrilled to see light at the end of the revision tunnel. Admittedly, the manuscript is needs tweaks, but they feel manageable. Today, my efforts to hone this craft made a difference and lifted me to a new level of confidence. I’m not juggling yet, but at least the giraffe is within my grasp. I know this is just the beginning of a confidence-deflating process (ah, rejections) but still, I'm looking forward to launching that giraffe skyward. So this is my way of encouraging all you frustrated writers out there: Keep at it! You can catch a giraffe too.
I’ve never met agent sister
Brigid Kemmerer in person, but after interviewing her for The Paper Wait, I feel like I’ve had a virtual cup of coffee with her! Brigid is the author of the
Elemental series. The first book
Storm is due out Tuesday, April 24th. If that’s too long a wait for you, the awesome prequel,
Elemental, is available for download NOW. Last week she took time out of her busy schedule to chat with me about craft.
Four brothers who can control the elements – how cool is that! How did you get the idea for the Elemental Series?
The first novel I wrote in high school was about four vampire brothers, named Michael, Nicholas, Gabriel, and Christopher. It was a silly story, but I still have most of it on paper. In my twenties, when I really began to take writing seriously, I wrote a few books but was unable to find a literary agent or a publisher. I couldn’t get those four brothers out of my head – but I didn’t want to do vampires again. I started tossing around ideas that would work with the number four. Four horsemen of the apocalypse. Four leaf clovers. Four, four, four. The four elements of earth, air, fire, and water seemed to work best—and I had a lot of ideas how I could make it fun. What teenagers wouldn’t want to be able to control the elements?
Did you originally set out to write a series or is that something that came after you began writing?
I love discovering new series, so I wrote the book with the hope that I’d be able to write more—and luckily Kensington chose to buy three! Storm is out on April 24, Spark will be released on August 24, and Spirit is scheduled for early next summer. When I originally started the series, I planned on having the books follow Becca’s point of view all the way through, much like Bella in Twilight or Katniss in The Hunger Games. I’d even written half of Storm entirely from Becca’s point of view. But then I realized I was selling the brothers short, that they should each get a chance to tell their story. I went back and rewrote the first half of Storm to include Chris’s side of things, and it just developed organically from there.
In regards to the prequel, Elemental, I actually wrote that after Storm was completely finished, and I was halfway through Spark. There’s a lot of reference to an event five years before the events in Storm, and the short story came together easily.
What inspires you to write – do you start with characters or plot?
Characters! Wait. And plot! No, seriously. I think one of the greatest writing mistakes is starting with a scenario instead of a plot. (I used to do that all the time, and my books ended up long and rambling.) Starting with a scenario is easy: it’s like coming home and saying to your spouse, “I stopped off at the grocery store, but armed men jumped out of the freezer aisle.”
Instant conflict, instant excitement. But if you don’t start the story knowing what those armed men want, and how the story is going to ultimately resolve itself, you’ll spend 400 pages floundering around trying to figure out your plot. That’s what I had to make myself do with Storm. I knew what the ultimate conflict was going to be, and I kept my eye on the ball the whole time. That’s when I finally sold a novel.
What have you learned on y
Shannon Hale on writing:
Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it’s a struggle. I am (as usual) attempting to write a book that’s too hard for me. I’m telling a story I’m not smart enough to tell. The risk of failure is huge. But I prefer it this way. I’m forced to learn, forced to smarten myself up, forced to wrestle. And if it works, then I’ll have written something that is better than I am.
Colleen Mondor on the difficulty of finding a book’s audience once it’s published:
There is less money out there to promote books like mine (mid list debut author) and more noise to compete against. Not only are there still the high dollar books sucking all the marketing oxygen out of the room (this will never change) but now there are a million self-published authors sending out emails on their indy publications and they are filling up inboxes left and right as well.
[snip]
Somehow, in the midst of all this, I am supposed to still be a writer but now on something new, and still run a small business and still do all those other things that we all do. And I’m supposed to do this because this is just how it is now, this is what it is like for the average 21st century author. The question I’m weighing – seriously weighing – is if it is worth it. Is this life, where you feel overlooked and underappreciated and sometimes just flat out angry, the life I want to have? Did I expect a NYTimes best seller? No – please. But I expected just one – just one - response from all those emails and mailings. So I have to think long and hard about where I go from here and how far on this road I’m interested in traveling now that I know how lonely it gets.
Do read this whole post, if you care about books. Selling a book to a publisher is only the first hurdle. Getting it in front of readers’ eyes can be even harder. There’s maybe a six-month window of time when your publisher can put some effort into promoting your book—along with all the other books on that season’s list. As Colleen explains, only a few of those books will get a significant push. Much depends upon the efforts of the author: connecting with readers, arranging booksignings and school visits, attending conferences, participating in blog tours, doing all sorts of leg work. And usually, by the time the book does come out, you’re deep into the writing of the next one, possibly on deadline. It’s hard to climb out of the book you’re writing to help promote the book that just came out. And as Colleen notes, you’ve got about a six-month window of time for the new book to take off, or it may fade away altogether. Three months before launch date to three months after. If it fades, you may not get a contract for that next book. It’s all quite precarious.
Colleen’s book, by the way, sounds amazing. The Map of My Dead Pilots, about “flying, pilots, and Alaska—and, more specifically, about those pilots who take death-defying risks in the Last Frontier and sometimes pay the price.” Very much looking forward to reading it.
Julianna Baggott’s advice to a young novelist:
What I’d like to add is that it’s hard to go public with this very private endeavor — this thing that lives in the drawers of your desk — no matter how long you’ve worked toward it. And the catch is that you won’t be able to complain about it. People won’t understand. You got what
In my absence here’s Maximus Clarke — aka the guy I’m married to — on, and in conversation with, William Gibson, one of his favorite writers. Gibson reads from his new book, Zero History
, tomorrow, 9/23, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, at 7 p.m.
William Gibson rose to prominence a quarter century ago with a unique hybrid of science fiction, noir, and grimy realism, set in an amoral, multicultural, commercialized, networked future. Gibson developed his distinctive vision (dubbed “cyberpunk” by others) in a series of short stories written in the late ’70s and early ’80s. I remember discovering his writing around that time in Omni magazine, and realizing, young as I was, that this guy was operating on a whole different level from the conventional SF authors I’d grown up reading.
Gibson’s first novel, Neuromancer (1984), won science fiction’s three most prestigious awards, but was soon acclaimed well beyond the confines of the genre. Neuromancer deviated sharply from traditional “space opera” in its subject matter, portraying the cutthroat struggles of global conglomerates, street gangs, and computer jockeys who hack into online systems brain-first. But it was Gibson’s virtuosic style that gained him literary respect.
As an introverted teen, he’d been an equally avid consumer of pulp sci-fi and the writings of William S. Burroughs and friends. As a writer, Gibson developed a blend of clipped, hard-boiled language and dense, sometimes overwhelming imagery. His work has often featured allusions to Asian, European and Caribbean cultures, street-level snapshots of decaying cityscapes, and fragments of consumer technology and broadcast media. Narratives tend to emerge gradually, from the perspectives of multiple protagonists.
Neuromancer and its two sequels were followed by The Difference Engine (an alternate-history tale of a computerized Victorian England, co-authored with Bruce Sterling), and a trilogy of novels revolving around a near-future version of San Francisco. But as the 21st century unfolded in ways that neither Gibson nor anyone else had quite foreseen, he turned his attention to writing about the present.
Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and the recently released Zero History are, Gibson told me, “speculative novels of last Wednesday”: adventures in the stranger-than-fiction contemporary world, as seen through a science-fiction lens. Instead of making alien futures familiar, these stories show us the familiar present in an alien light. They remind us that our age of fetishized fashion, shadowy capital flows, digital art, devious marketing, and military contractors run amok is a deeply weird time to be alive.
MC: In your fiction, certain physical objects have extraordinary presence — they become more than just plot devices. The Cornell boxes in Count Zero, the
Poet Susan Ramsey and I have been corresponding for years, since she worked as a bookseller and I actually had time to answer my email, and she’s been urging me to read her friend Bonnie Jo Campbell almost that long. When I finally do crack the spine on American Salvage, I’m sure I won’t be disappointed. Ramsey is basically never wrong.
The National Book Awards judges might agree. Last month Campbell was named one of the 2009 fiction finalists.
Below, in advance of the final prize ceremony, Campbell talks with Ramsey about writing, mathematics, obsession, Flannery O’Connor, killing characters, drinking the Eastern European equivalent of Everclear, and untrustworthy chickens.
When nominations for the National Book Awards were announced in October, there was a double-dark-horse contender, Wayne State University Press’s nominee Bonnie Jo Campbell — a university press nominating a little-known writer. Though reports of her rookiehood have been greatly exaggerated (her collection Women and Other Animals won the AWP award and her novel Q Road was published by Scribner), A.S. Byatt hasn’t been sitting up nights worrying about her.
Still, the six-foot tall blonde in the Carhartt coveralls is, as Mel Brooks almost wrote, world-famous in Kalamazoo and when Maud invited me to interview her for the blog I jumped at the chance. I’d pulled garlic mustard with Bonnie Jo, I’d de-stemmed elderberries with her and argued books with her, but I’d never interviewed her. We met at Eccentric Café, usually a quiet place on a Sunday evening, but that night we’d hit their All Stout’s Day, and it was standing room only. We managed to score a couple of caustic red wines and huddled at a picnic table in the beer garden to talk about writing.
N.B. In order to shorten the transcript by half I have usually omitted the aside [laughter]. Imagine it preceding and following most questions. Tone is a truth like any other.
SR: You got a B.A. in philosophy followed by an M.A. Mathematics. How did an M.F.A. in Creative writing slip in there?
BC: Well, I always wanted to write, but writing is one of those fields where you come up against a lot of obstacles, and it seems like the writing isn’t going to pay off.
As opposed to mathematics?
Mathematics can pay off, actually — good jobs in mathematics. I always wanted to do creative writing, but I was just insecure about it, because everybody wanted to do it. It was like the handsome guy everybody wanted to have for a boyfriend — that was creative writing. And if they all wanted him, I didn’t want him. So I decided I would do math; that would show how smart I was.
But I always wrote, and I wrote all the time. I wrote essays, I tried different things. But after a couple of years in graduate school mathematics — I was in a PhD program, I took my preliminary exams and I did okay, I was in good standing, but I found I was just weeping all the time. Just weeping — every time I sat down to do some proofs I would just weep. So my PhD advisor told me maybe I should take a writing class, and that would make me feel better. And it did! My PhD adviso
My mom blogged about my birthday. Svensto
No wonder I dabble in magical thinking...
Thank you, Gale. I printed this out and will re-read often!
Great article! I've a quote from it that I want to put on my corkboard for inspiration. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it and found it useful. No more "blue-eyed blondes in red dresses."!
I liked his wanting "characters who resonate because they epitomize our own hopes and struggles and stories."
Excellent. Very well put and memorable. I love the 'heart gone to seed' quote. Thanks Gale. Read, printed, and pinned, to be reread soon.
Excellent. Very well put and memorable. I love the 'heart gone to seed' quote. Thanks Gale. Read, printed, and pinned, to be reread soon.
Happy. Happy. That you liked it. That you liked it. :)
Awesome article! Thanks for sharing! So many great quotes. I will be rereading many times!
I will print it out. And it's funny -- in my writing, what makes me stop most often is description. I can't dash off description in a draft, because getting it right -- or close, at least -- is central to me getting to know a character.
"That’s the way we talk in real life, but fiction has to be more revealing, intriguing and eloquent.
Indeed.
And I so admire anyone who can produce characters and dialogue that rise above real life!
Even though this article is basically for fiction writers, I think we PB people can learn from it also.