Plot and Subplot

As far as I’m concerned, plot is the trickiest element in fiction writing. It can be tremendously difficult, because unless you’re writing a very short story indeed, it’s a multi-layered thing, and getting it right in one place doesn’t mean you have any idea what to do with the rest. If you’re not good at plot, you’re often not including enough layers, or they may not be the right layers. And if you are good at plot, it’s quite likely you’re one of those people who deals with plot intuitively, rather than consciously planning it out. Which works fine right up until you have a problem with your plot and can’t interact with it consciously and deliberately enough to fix it.

There are lots of different ways to address plot, and I’ve covered some elements that will help you out in my posts on pacing and the negative point. Right now, I want to talk about plot and subplot at the most basic level. Most of us were taught in public school that a plot consists of situation, complications, climax, and conclusion. For my purposes as an editor, I want to go back even a level above that.

“Plot” is secret writing code for “something happens.” It has to be something interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention, but relatable enough that they’re caught up in the fate your characters are struggling for or against. Let’s use the movie The Mask as an example. At one level, the plot could be described as “character gets a magic mask that fixes everything in his life, then gets rid of it again.” At a more relatable, human level, you could reduce it down to “dorky guy gets everything he ever wished for, but at a cost.” Both tell you what happens in the movie in fewer than twenty words, but the second description contains the emotional cues more likely to draw you into the story.

The overarching plot of your story is considered the A plot. Generally speaking, you’ll also have at least one major subplot, the B plot. In modern Western fiction that isn’t specifically genre-targeted, your B plot is almost always more character- or emotion-driven than the A plot. In The Mask, the B plot is “a local crime boss tries to steal the mask and get revenge on the protagonist.”

In screenwriting, your A plot will almost always get more screen time than your B plot. In novel writing, this will usually be true, but not always. If you need to know which is which, your A plot is the most important plot in your story–the one without which the story would simply collapse.

This is where subplots have a chance to multiply and things get interesting. If you feel your book might not have enough action, you can deliberately choose to add an action plot. If neither your A or B plot is a love story or other relationship between characters, you might add one. If you don’t already have a villain, you might insert one who brings with them subplots of their own. Sometimes, your editor looks at you and says “You never follow up on this thread, and by the way, whatever happened to the shark?” And then you try to come up with a subplot that has something to do with sharks, which also ties up that loose end.

When you’re adding in additional subplots, you want to be careful not to get bogged down in them–if you’re putting too much time into them and not into your major plot lines, you’ll end up with either pacing that’s really off or a book that isn’t the book you intended to write. Likewise, too many subplots risks complicating things for the reader. Keep in mind that the purpose of plot is to make something happen. If you already have enough happening, sometimes you have to drop a subplot.

(On the plus side, those dropped plots sometimes make great freebies–short stories or extra sex scenes or deleted scenes with “DVD commentary”–to give away to help you sell your finished project.)

Every scene you write should advance one of your plots. By preference, one of your major plots, even if it’s also applicable to a minor subplot. If you find yourself writing a scene that doesn’t advance one of your plots, look at that scene and ask yourself what it could be doing for you. If the answer is “nothing,” look long and hard at whether you really need that scene. It may contain your favorite line or an image you’ve had in mind since the brainstorming stage, and it may still not be a scene that belongs in the story.

There will always be exceptions to the rule. Going back to The Mask, the “Cuban Pete” scene/dance number was cut by the studio three separate times. The creators had a certain number of “overrides,” and every time the studio took that scene out because it isn’t really doing anything, the creators put it back in. And it is potentially the best, certainly the most entertaining, and definitely the most memorable scene in the entire movie.

If you have that type of the scene, you will probably need to stick to your guns when an editor challenges you on it. On the flip side, exceptions are exceptions for a reason–they don’t happen very often. Don’t assume you’ve got a “pointless” scene worth keeping in every story. If you find yourself in that position, the right way to deal with it is to ask yourself what could go into that scene to contribute to character development, plot, or other forward motion. Most of the time, you’ll be able to “fix” an otherwise-pointless scene that way.

reprinted/reblogged by permission at Storm Moon Press

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Hooks and Word Counts–How to Grab and Keep Your Reader

(A bit late–I wrote this last month, was too tired to post it that day, and then forgot about it. Mea culpa.)

I’ve heard acquiring editors say that most of the time, they’ve decided whether to discard a manuscript from the slush pile within the first page. Some have told me it’s down to the first paragraph. They can’t tell at that point, of course, that your story arc is or isn’t well done, that your characters are great or terrible, or that you’ve got a phenomenal idea on page 103. What they know within that first page or paragraph is whether you “just can’t write”: you can’t put words together into a coherent sentence, your story doesn’t grab them, or both. Harsh, but true.

The first sentence or two is your hook. It has to grab the reader’s attention well enough to drag them through that first paragraph. If you haven’t already hooked me in that first sentence, but it’s a reasonably interesting sentence, I’ll probably give you till the end of the paragraph to really set that hook. If you haven’t really engaged my interest by the end of that first paragraph, odds are I won’t read any farther.

Decide what’s happening to your character that’s interesting when the story starts. Start there. Then, when you’re done writing the story, come back to that first paragraph and the first sentence and make them as sharp and engaging as possible. Your hook needs to leave a reader asking questions. Sometimes, they’ll be great big questions:

“Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember–the enemy’s gate is down.”
–from “Ender’s Game,” by Orson Scott Card (original novella)

This is the best opening hook I’ve ever read. It immediately makes me want to know how gravity can be different, who the enemy is, and why “down” is even in question. But the questions don’t have to be that big. I pulled up a couple of first chapters at random for contrast, and this kind of hook also works:

“You need to find a new job.”
–from How to Date a Henchman, by Mari Fee

No questions about gravity here, but why does the character need a new job? What will happen if she doesn’t find one? And what’s wrong with her old one?

Once you’ve hooked a reader, you need to keep her engaged. Part of that is pacing, and I went into that in some detail in last month’s editing article. This month, I’d like to crunch some hard numbers that will help you know what you should be expecting from the book you’re writing and allow you to keep it on track when it starts to meander.

Not all books need to slavishly follow these numbers, but most of them will. If there is any doubt in your mind about why your novel is an exception to the rule, assume it isn’t. As with so many things in writing, this is a place where you really shouldn’t break the rules until you know them like the back of your hand.

In romance, 80,000 words is a pretty standard word count for a novel. There will definitely be romances that go longer and go shorter, but 80,000 words is a nice middle ground. 50,000-60,000 words is usually considered a short novel, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Line romances often run that length. Fantasy romances or certain historical romances may run up to about 120,000 words.

If you think you’re writing an 80,000 word book, but you’ve written 50,000 words and you’re still not at your act I break, you have a problem. Either your book needs to be longer or your first act needs to be shorter and tighter.

Genre really matters when you’re deciding on word counts.. Twenty years ago, science fiction pretty much needed to be between 100,000-130,000 words. Today, while you’ll see a lot of SF novels that length, we’re beginning to see shorter ones again–80,000-90,000 words. Fantasy, on the other hand, may run as high as 250,000 words. Mysteries often run short, but thrillers often run long, and the dividing line between a mystery and thriller has gotten a little fuzzy over the years.

If you’re writing in a genre, you also need to be reading in it. Check some of those books in your genre. Get the word counts from the publisher’s website or an online bookstore. And if you’ve read one that just feels too long or too short, see if the word count really reflects that, or if some other element of the book (usually the pacing) makes it feel that way.

Ultimately, as a writer, you’re in charge of deciding what kind of word count you submit to a publisher. But be aware that when you make choices that land outside of the expected range of word counts, you run up against reader expectations. A lot of romance readers won’t touch something above 120,000 words long. On the flip side, readers of epic fantasy may think an 80,000 word novel is either aimed at young adults or really dreadful–if it wasn’t, why wouldn’t it be longer?

As you’re writing, you want to retain some awareness of your word counts. If you use a modern word processing program and write an entire novel in a single file, this is easy–you can look up the word count with a couple of mouse clicks, or it may even display in a status bar as you’re working. On the flip side, if you work each chapter in its own file, you want to keep a rough estimate of your word count in your head as you go.

There are two major schools of thought on chaptering and word counts. The first is that a chapter is a single scene. You don’t see this very much anymore, and it’s most often a mystery or paranormal device. In that case, your chapter lengths will vary greatly, depending on the need of the scene. The best way to keep an eye on your word count in this case is to check the word count as you finish each file and keep a running tally somewhere.

The more common way to handle chapters is to aim for a specific length and end the chapter when you’re somewhere near that length, either at a lull in the action or a cliffhanger. How long those chapters should be depends on whom you ask. *g* In general, I don’t worry about chapter lengths between 2000 and 4000 words. Some writers don’t feel they’ve written a meaty, substantial chapter unless they’re at about 5000 words. The big thing you’re aiming for with a roughly standardized chapter length is giving your reader an idea of what to expect. It caters both to that reader who just wants to read one chapter before bed and to those readers who need a breaking point to feel like they’re making any progress in the story. Long chapters can make a book feel like some piece of your plot just goes on and on forever.

The added bonus of writing chapters with similar lengths is that, as the writer, you can estimate your word count without keeping the entire manuscript in a single file. If you’ve written twelve chapters, and your chapters are about 4000 words each, you know you have about 48,000 words already.

Scene length can also help keep a reader engaged. A scene generally involves the same people, the same setting, and the same time. If you change one of those–for example, if your characters get in the car and drive somewhere–you may decide simply to summarize the transition and not separate into two scenes. If you change more than one, you usually want to start a new scene.

Some people will tell you that scene breaks are lazy–that a scene break where there is no point of view change means the author didn’t want to bother writing a transition. The counter argument was presented to me by a reader with a small child. From her point of view, scene breaks were critical: they gave her a place to put the book down and check on her kid, knowing that when she picked it back up again it would be easy to see where she’d stopped and she wouldn’t have to spend extra time getting her bearings again in the middle of the scene.

If you choose to use scene breaks, I recommend you consider each scene as if it were 1000 words. Sometimes a scene will go long, or the best way to tell it will be to write that transition, essentially combining two scenes. When that’s the case, you’ll seldom go over 2000 words in a single scene, and you probably won’t be doing it in every chapter, so it’s likely your reader will never notice the change.

Short scenes are actually a bigger concern. 1500 words doesn’t look that different from 1000 words, but when you drop below 800 words, that begins to look very different indeed. The hazard of short scenes is that they can feel choppy and drag the reader out of the story. One short scene is usually acceptable–and when you need those short scenes, you really need them. But when you put two of them together, you’re asking the reader to “come up for air” an awful lot.

Ideally, your structure–from that beginning hook to the end of the novel, and everything in between–should be transparent to the reader. You want to make her reading experience as smooth as possible so she keeps turning pages. You can do just about anything you want with scenes, chapters, and book length to that end, but most of the time, sticking with these general rules will help you create that illusion of seamlessness in your story.

reprinted/reblogged by permission at Storm Moon Press

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Pacing

Pacing is one of the most important facets of an engaging story, and the longer the story, the more important it gets. It’s also one of the most difficult elements to judge for yourself as a writer, without an independent set of eyes to point out issues.

There are structural elements in Western literature that will go into every story you ever write. If you outline, looking through your outline and picking out these elements will give you a reasonable idea of whether you’ve set up strong overall pacing. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t outline, it’s worth keeping them in mind as you write your story and trying to make sure that they fall in more or less the right positions.

Modern Western fiction follows a three-act structure. Act one ends where your characters begin to understand the nature of the complications they face, usually 15%-20% of the way through the story. Act two ends where your characters finally understand the action they must take to win the day, and usually falls 80%-85% of the way through the story.

The dark point or negative point of your story is the point at which your protagonists are at their lowest and your antagonists appear to be triumphing–at least temporarily. Typically, it should fall near the end of act two. The other point you really need to care about to judge your pacing is the climax: the high point of the action, whether it’s a gunfight at high noon or your commitment-shy hero admitting he’s in love. It should fall somewhere in act three–exactly where depends on the particulars of your individual story, in terms of loose ends that will still need tying up and closure that needs to be had.

So once you’ve found out you have a problem with slow pacing, whether that’s a test reader telling you where the story drags or you’ve determined that your dark point/second act break/whatever is in the wrong place, you need to choose what to cut to fix it. At that point, look at each scene in the problem area and an answer two questions: does it move the story forward and does it provide critical information? If you have a scene that doesn’t move the plot (or in the case of a romance, the relationship) forward, you generally need to cut it and move any critical information into another scene.

Less often, your pacing will be slow but cutting isn’t the right way to fix the problem. In these rare instances, usually where character interaction is happening but plot isn’t, the solution is to add plot to make those slow scenes move faster. Adding action without plot is “padding,” and it won’t fix the problem.

If your pacing is too quick, you’ll need to add information–and sometimes whole scenes or story arcs–to slow it down. What you need to add varies depending on the particular fast spots. The usual culprits are missing emotional interactions, lack of description (setting, action, etc.), and plot threads which aren’t followed through adequately. Again, a test reader is incredibly valuable in identifying which parts of the story are still in your head, and not yet on the page, so that you can flush them out.

Pacing is critical to a reader’s experience of your story. If it slows down too much, the reader may just put the book down and never pick it back up. If it’s too fast, the reader is likely to end up feeling lost or like they’ve missed something. Neither one of those leads to strong writing or good reviews. If you already have a contract for the story, your editor will be able to help point these things out. But if you’re still trying to market the story, your best option is to ask several test readers to look at it before you submit. They’ll be the most valuable source of information you can get on a problem you may not be able to see your self.

reprinted/reblogged by permission at Storm Moon Press

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Head-Hopping and Point of View

Point of view seems like it should be intuitive and easy to identify. After all, the narrator of the story is either writing about “I” (first person) or “he/she/they/ze/whatever” (third person). Unless you’re writing nonfiction or a choose your own adventure book, you’re not likely to be writing about “you” (second person). So how hard can it be?

Harder than many of us would guess. Point of view is a literary conceit which is terribly artificial and absolutely essential for helping the reader follow along in fiction. Just to complicate matters the way we execute point of view changes over time, so that people who’ve been writing for thirty years very often handle point of view differently than people who’ve only been writing for five.

First person point of view is probably the most intuitive point of view for new writers, so I won’t touch on it much here. In first person, your narrator is the “I” in the story. It’s an intimate point of view, because you’ll get details in first person point of view that the narrator just wouldn’t mention in a third person narrative, no matter how close or detailed. For quite a stretch of years first person “just wasn’t done” in much of the literary world. Telling a fictional story in that point of view was considered the mark of a juvenile or an amateur. This has changed drastically in the last…call it ten years or so. It depends on the genre, but in general, enough big-name books have been written in first person by now that you’re unlikely to run into much stigma surrounding it from an average reader.

On the flip side writing in first person restricts the story you can tell to whatever the narrator can see. Some books get around that by alternating back and forth between a first person narrator and a third person narrator, but the style is uncommon and can be difficult for a reader to adjust to.

The most flexible point of view for third person narrator is the one almost never used anymore: third person omniscient. In this point of view an omniscient narrator can dip into the head of any character in the scene, giving you the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of anyone on the page. The trouble is, in modern prose, this is considered head hopping, meaning that it comes across to the reader as if you don’t know how to stay in any one person’s head. It can be difficult for a reader to follow and is currently perceived as a very amateur device.

Third person limited point of view does not involve an omniscient narrator and gives you the thoughts/feelings/etc. of the one particular character narrating a scene. When writing in third person limited you’re allowed to switch narrators whenever you switch scenes. It’s still considered a limited point of view, because you’re limited to one narrator at a time, even if you have multiple narrators in a book.

Third person deep/close point of view is a comparatively recent development. It works on the premise that you as the writer are transparent to the storytelling process. When writing a deep point of view you want to avoid filter constructions like “he felt/she saw/they noticed/ze thought”–that type of construction is considered to put the reader out in the author’s point of view, rather than directly in the character’s head. But deep point of view is more than that. There are certain ways your character might describe something that just aren’t the ways you as the author would describe the same thing. It’s a tricky difference to get a handle on, and a lot of authors I know never worked in deep point of view until they had their first book contract and had a chance to work with a professional editor.

In particular most new romance being written right now is in third person deep point of view. This may not be true for romance writers who’ve been writing for decades–the longer you’ve been writing, the less an editor wants to change your style, because it obviously sells books. But if you pick up a romance by anyone who started writing in the last five or ten years, you’ll probably be looking at third person deep point of view. This is not nearly so true in other genres, but as editors begin to give preference to deep point of view, it spreads more and more.

As a general rule–and keep in mind, rules have exceptions–you should establish the point of view characters you’re using toward the beginning of the book. You have some flexibility with which characters you choose, though this, too, varies by genre. A romance should typically be written from the point of view of one or more of the characters who live happily ever after, but should not include any character who isn’t part of the relationship. As an example that goes the other direction, in epic fantasy and alternate history, you may choose to write from the point of view of any number of characters, sometimes including the minor characters who merely witness the main characters.

The more point of view characters you include in a story, the more complex it gets, and the harder it may be for your readers to follow. I’ve seen stories with many points of view work best when the story is less about a particular character and more about an event or a team.

Will there be exceptions to these rules? Absolutely. There are always exceptions to the rules. But it’s most useful to know what those rules are so you only ever break them on purpose, not by accident.

You can change a scene drastically by changing the character whose point of view you use. All things being equal, you will usually want to write from the point of view of whichever character experiences the most change in a scene. Sometimes all things aren’t equal, and you end up choosing a point of view that will let your reader in on a particular emotional reaction or sudden leap of understanding. Sometimes you’ll choose your point of view through the process of elimination, refusing to tell a scene from a point of view that gives away a secret you’re not ready to let your readers in on.

Regardless of your reasons, if you hit a point in your writing process where you just seem to stall, consider whether you need to tell the scene from a different point of view. If your point of view character isn’t active or the scene seems to have no momentum, a different point of view will get you a different internal landscape. That may make all the difference to driving the scene–and the story–along.

reprinted/reblogged by permission at Storm Moon Press

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Let’s Hear It for the Villains

Conflict comes in all shapes and sizes, from the hero’s mad dash to get home and clean before his girlfriend comes over to the final battle at the climax of your novel. Most of us who write remember sitting in some class and being lectured about Person vs. Person, Person vs. Society, Person vs. Nature, and Person vs. Self until our eyes glazed over. Since it’s conflict, you’d think it would have been a more interesting lecture, but it never seemed to work out that way.

Not that it isn’t useful to know you have options. I’ve read romances where geographic separation was the core conflict and science fiction where the conflict revolved around not being eaten by the local plants. You can take any of these types of conflict and find something that really works for your story. But in all the reading and editing I’ve done, I’ve noticed a trend in conflict:

Villains make everything easier.

Not every book has or needs a villain, but when you’ve got one, you never have to look far for new conflict. No random natural disasters need apply and no evil record companies need to make irrational changes to a tour schedule to keep the heroine and hero apart. When you have a villain, someone is actively plotting against your protagonists. Need to get two characters locked into a room together for eight hours? Ask your villain. Want a brush with death to make sure they realize they can’t live without each other? Ask your villain. Slow spot in chapters 15 and 16? Ask your villain.

Villains don’t operate in a vacuum, no matter how convenient they are to a writer. Whatever your villain does has to make sense from his own point of view and within the context of his world. And he can’t be having a bad day where he just doesn’t feel terribly villainous–like heroes, your villains must perform to their own maximum capacity. A villain who is only a real danger when you want her to be doesn’t present enough challenge for your protagonists, and one who doesn’t act in her own best interests really ought to get into a different line of work.

The most frightening thing about villains is that so often, they believe they are the heroes. Your evil dictator may honestly feel that she can save more lives as an absolute ruler than she could as a president. Your mad scientist may be doing everything to save of the life of his only child. Villains are people in the same way that heroes are, and if you don’t write them that way, both your villain and your story will come out a little flat and unbelievable.

Give your villains motivation and the capacity to triumph, and your heroes will never want for someone to struggle against. What’s more, they’ll look that much better when they win the day.

Let’s hear it for the villains.

reprinted/reblogged by permission at Storm Moon Press

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Artistic License and the Exception to the Rule

In the context of fiction, artistic license is the ability to break rules for the sake of the story, and it can lead to some of the most beautiful, most memorable passages in your favorite books. Writers need that fluidity to help them tell stories the way those stories need to be told.

But as writers, you also need to know what artistic license is not.

In the past month, I’ve had the privilege of doing line and copy editing on Storm Moon Press’ upcoming anthology, Like It or Not, which means it been working with six different stories. And while I have profound respect for the authors I work with, there is a single problem I noticed coming up again and again: You need to know a rule before you decide to break it.

This applies to all art, but in the context of writing, I most frequently end up frustrated with punctuation, grammar, and syntax. Those purely mechanical elements of writing you probably thought you’d never need to know again once you were out of school (I know I did) are really critical to the process, and too many authors grow frustrated enough with them that they blow them off, deciding that those are the editor’s problem. The editor will change it anyway, so why should the writer bother looking things up or learning how the rules have changed since school?

But your understanding of those basic nuts-and-bolts elements of writing is what wins you artistic license.

I may have ranted and raved on Twitter sometime in the last few weeks that if you do something right nine times out of ten, that tenth time can be considered artistic license. On the other hand, if you only do that thing right six times out of ten, I have to assume that the other four are just wrong and crunch them all back into standard written English.

Writers hate it when I do that. Please don’t make me. As the editor, it’s my job, but arguing with a writer that whatever they meant to do, it isn’t what they actually did is not my idea of fun. It wastes my time, it wastes the writer’s time, and it upsets everybody involved. I want your writing to show me that you know your stuff. Then, when I hit that lyrical run-on sentence in the middle of a sex scene or that string of sentence fragments as the protagonist rolls her car I can tell it’s deliberate. I want to see that it’s accomplishing exactly what you meant it to. I want to be able to say to the managing editor, “I let this slide because it genuinely adds something to the story.”

If you’re unsure about how you’re doing something–or you notice me making the same kind of correction in your manuscript a whole bunch–there are some really excellent online resources that will help you verify or update the writing rules you learned in school. I suggest starting with the Purdue Online Writing Lab. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, a Google search will turn up specific references from a lot of reliable sources.

Don’t forget to check the reliability of your source. Grammar Girl is your friend. Yahoo! Answers, not so much.

If you do it right, you can break grammar rules, use epithets, and incorporate otherwise-cliché turns into your story and make it work. But simply telling me in a comment in your manuscript that “I meant to do that–it’s artistic license” isn’t enough. Prove it to me.

Earn that exception to the rule.

Cross-posted in the Storm Moon Press newsletter and blog

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The Negative Point

There may be a proper literary term for the negative or “black” point. I have no idea what it is. No formal writing or literature class I’ve ever taken has covered it, and it’s a critically important part of a modern story arc that can make your life as a writer much, much easier.

In a nutshell, the negative point is that terrible moment just before the act two break in your book where it seems like all hope is lost. It’s that moment where the bad guys might win, or even do win temporarily. It’s a critical part of maintaining tension in your novel, because without knowing just how bad things can be, the eventual triumph of your characters is less fulfilling.

The key to making your negative point do its job is really challenging your main characters. You can do terrible things to them. You can rub their noses in the fact that they will never, ever achieve their goals. You can kill off other characters they care about.

If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right.

Let me pick on a couple of different movies that many (most?) of us have seen for some examples. In Star Wars, the negative point is when Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan Kenobi. Star Wars has a classic, epic story arc, so a fight scene ending with a character death is entirely appropriate. In that moment, the dark side of the Force has won, and all our remaining main characters can do is escape with their lives.

On the other hand, in Grosse Pointe Blank (yes, my taste in comedies is somewhat macabre), the negative point is when Our Heroine tells Our Hero that they can never be together. There is no hope of a relationship between them, because he kills people for a living, and he doesn’t understand why that’s wrong. This is the antithesis of the epic story arc’s negative point, and it would never work in a narrative like Star Wars. But for an anti-hero whose biggest challenge is his failure to relate to other human beings in a socially acceptable way, it seems absolutely insurmountable.

ALL HOPE MUST BE LOST. Or at least close enough that a despairing character may justifiably think it’s true.

The absolute worst, least-fulfilling, most lackluster attempt at a negative point I have ever seen is a fallback device in certain romances: having the evil ex show up. The idea is that this is a challenge to the relationship which is the driving force in the romance. The problem is, in a romance, everyone knows the main characters will end up together at the end, and the ex just doesn’t seem like a threat. There isn’t enough conflict in that confrontation for the story to maintain tension and the threat barely challenges the main characters. It leaves nothing for those characters to triumph over.

Don’t be afraid to push your characters. As a rule, unless you’re writing a tragedy, your characters will overcome even the terrible tribulations of the negative point during the climax of the story. But they have to put everything into overcoming that negative point, or your storyline will feel dissatisfying, no matter how well-written the rest of your book is.

Make them work for it. Your readers will thank you.

reprinted/reblogged by permission at Storm Moon Press

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Fighting and F#&%ing: All About Action Scenes

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the sex scenes and fight scenes most writers tell me they hate dealing with are two sides of the same coin. Both are action scenes, and the most common points of first draft (and sometimes final draft) failure are poor visualization, problems balancing narrative elements, and lack of research.

Visualization is exactly what it sounds like: the ability to see the physicality of the scene you’re writing in your head. This is easy for some folks, while it makes others break out in a cold sweat. The important thing to remember is that no matter how much trouble you have, there are always additional tools you can use to help you “choreograph” your scene.

More applicable to fight scenes than sex scenes, drawing will help you with almost any other kind of action scene you can think of. Don’t feel like you have to be Picasso–just grab a piece of paper and sketch the room your characters are in. Circles, squares, and stick figures are great for being able to see where the coffee table sits before one of your characters trips over it. You can use graph paper if the dimensions of the space are critical, but most of the time, you just need a rough idea. I still have sketches relating to stories I wrote fifteen years ago, and I keep them because I never know when I may need to go back to that setting.

Pictures are also your friend. If you’re writing romance on a tall ship and you’ve never been on one, googling pictures of ship’s cabins will both save you having to sketch one out yourself and make sure that what you’re putting into the cabin is realistic. Just be careful that the source you’re using is drawn from fact, not fiction. Any time you use an image from fiction, your research is only as good as the research the creator of that work did.

Visualization applies to sex scenes, too. Don’t take sex scenes for granted just because you have some experience with the subject matter–romance editors tell each other horror stories about 4’11″ women somehow kissing 6’3″ men while attached at the pelvis and characters bending into positions they couldn’t accomplish without breaking their backs. Pull out a tape measure and compare those heights to each other. Buy poseable dolls to reality check a position. Don’t be afraid to look online for examples. A Wikipedia search will show you body parts that aren’t porn and a Google image search will show you an array of images without your ever having to visit a webpage your virus scanner thinks is dangerous.

The biggest problem balancing narrative elements in an action scene is being so focused on the action that you forget some other element. In both sex scenes and fight scenes, the thing most likely to slip is a character’s thoughts and emotions. In a first draft, you’re in a hurry to simply get the gist down on the page, and that’s fine. But when you’ve finished that first draft, go back and reread those action scenes. Do we know what your point of view character is thinking and feeling? For that matter, what can your point of view character tell about the other characters in the scene based on their expressions, body language, or tones of voice?

Next, consider the evidence of the character’s senses. Maybe it’s not realistic for your character to notice the smell of flowers in the air if she’s in the middle of a fight, but she needs to be aware enough of her surroundings that she doesn’t step into a gopher hole or off the edge of a cliff. Be sure to let us continue to see (or sense) important information.

It’s easy to remember your point of view character and the characters she’s interacting with, but sometimes characters who are minor within the scope of the scene are forgotten in an action scene. While you’re doing that reread, make sure none of your characters fell off the page. Even if they aren’t kissing, talking, or fighting, they are still reacting, and we need to be aware of them once in a while, or it feels like the writer simply forgot them.

Lack of Research is one of the trickiest things to tackle in an action scene, because it follows the simple rule that “we don’t know what we don’t know.” Consequently, I have caught research issues in the action scenes in five of the last six manuscripts I’ve edited. If yours happens to have been one of them, I’m not singling you out. But by the same token, don’t assume that yours was the one that came away clean. *g*

    With that in mind, here are some places to start:

  • People do all kinds of things they would call sex that may not bear any resemblance to your experience of sex. Look it up. To avoid porn, add the word “forums” to whatever search you’re doing–that will get you discussion instead of pictures most of the time. Use reputable sex toy sites to learn about everything from sex acts to anatomy. Try adding the phrase “tips for writers” to whatever search you’re using to get detailed information. A remarkable number of sites have gone up aimed at fanfic writers, to try to keep them from “doing it wrong,” and the information on these sites is often very good.
  • Real fighting is not like movie fighting. Boxing is different from back alley, bare knuckles fighting and karate is not tae kwon do. However, looking for information on boxing will tell you some of the basics about how to throw a punch. If you’re picking a fighting style for a character, be sure to pick one that character has access to, but also try to pick one you can find information on. It’s amazing how many different fighting styles you can find video clips of online, from old-school Greco-Roman wrestling to capoeira.
  • Not all weapons are created equal. Romance writers will probably laugh at this and science fiction writers may already have thought of it, but believe it or not, a role-playing game manual is not the worst place to start. These types of manuals are sometimes available online and tend to group weapons in useful ways. Some swords are meant to be wielded with one hand, some take two hands, and some can be used either way. Close-quarters weapons may be piercing weapons, slashing weapons, bludgeoning weapons, or some combination of the same–and it changes how you use them. There are a ton of specialized pole arms and they all have different names. Different types of armor are more effective against some types of attack than others.
  • Weapons you can use from a distance have their own wrinkles to know about. A web search will generally produce pictures, and it’s important to look up anything you haven’t personally seen. We all know what a knife looks like, but a throwing knife is an entirely different animal. You’ll need to double-check your knowledge of any weapons that take ammunition on a case-by-case basis. Crossbows may load and fire very slowly due to the cranking mechanism. A revolver only hold six shots, but an automatic may hold a different number of shots depending on what size ammunition it takes and who makes it. Automatic and semiautomatic rates of fire produce different results.
  • Finally, regardless of subject, don’t be afraid to go onto online forums and ask questions. Sometimes, you can even find people with firsthand knowledge who are willing to read over manuscripts or sections of manuscript and let you know if they see anything wrong. It may seem awkward to charge into a forum and say “Hi, I’m writing a book, and I really need to know this obscure thing that I can’t find a posted answer to,” but that’s exactly what you want to do. Most people are fascinated to meet “a real writer” and delighted to be asked for their opinions, whether the question is how fast you can field strip a M-16 or whether Vaseline makes a good personal lubricant.

reprinted/reblogged by permission at Storm Moon Press

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When Punctuation Isn’t Just Punctuation

I’m not going to talk about punctuation today. S.L. Armstrong did an excellent post on punctuation and grammar just a few weeks ago. Instead, I want to tell you why you should care.

Most of us learned punctuation and grammar in elementary school and haven’t thought about them much since. When I hear from a writer about punctuation at all, it’s usually because she’s just washed her hands of it. Whatever the complaint—and there are definitely some valid complaints—the end result is the same:

It doesn’t matter if my spelling and grammar aren’t perfect. My editor will fix that before the book goes to press.

From an economic standpoint, this makes a superficial sort of sense. After all, if you’re trying to crank out three or four books a year, looking up grammar and punctuation rules may seem like time that could be better spent writing. It’s certainly tempting to assume that Somebody Else is getting paid to do grammar and punctuation.

For better or for worse, it’s not that simple.

Most writers have had a manuscript come back to them with so many corrections in the text that they aren’t sure they can find their original words. On a good day, it’s disheartening, and on a bad day, it’s terrifying. The piece of the writer doesn’t see is that it’s also limiting. If your editor is putting that much time into mechanics, her developmental editing almost certainly suffers.

Developmental editing is that thing that can help your book go from “okay” to “wow!” Developmental editing helps sell books. You want your editor to be able to do that piece of her job as well as possible, and it becomes hard for her to keep track of story elements and flow when sometimes she has to read a sentence three or four times just to figure out what you were trying to say.

As an editor, I’ve had to quietly refuse to review books written by acquaintances because the copyediting was so bad I’d never be able to give it more than three stars, no matter how good the story was. You can’t always trust that your copy editor or proofreader knew her stuff. You need to be able to do a reality check.

So while no editor expects a manuscript come into her hands mechanically perfect, do your homework as much as possible. Look up grammar rules—there are some great resources online. Ask your editor punctuation questions when she’s changed something in your manuscript and you don’t understand the underlying rule. Do everything you can to improve the mechanics in your writing, so that your editor can focus on her job, so that you’ll know if your editor isn’t doing her job, and so your publication dates are less likely to be pushed out because your manuscript was more work than anyone expected.

In the end, you’ll be happier if you do.

reprinted by permission in the Storm Moon Press newsletter

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On the Bookshelves: Power in the Blood

Do you like paranormals? Vampire hunters? Macabre humor? Then pick up Power in the Blood, by Angelia Sparrow.

This is the first novel I’ve edited for Storm Moon Press, and it’s the most outright fun I’ve had with an edit in quite a while. Full of quirky characters, from the insatiable Oren Stolt and the six kids who’ve grown up in his shadow to assorted lunatic immortals, nothing about Power in the Blood is bland, stock, or repetitive. It’s composed of equal parts horrifying ideas and inappropriate giggles.

It won’t be for everyone–the violence level goes past “high” all the way to “gruesome” and two pagan readers have suggested that it really ought to carry a blasphemy warning for the Christian portion of the audience. But if you think you can handle that, it’s a hoot. The eBook is priced under $6, and the dead tree version should be available within the next month or so.

Here’s the official blurb:

Oren Stolt understands the natural order better than most people. Vampires prey on humans and Undying keep the vampires’ numbers in check.

Until now.

Now, across the United States, vampire numbers are exploding, thanks to a new church. The Tabernacle of the Firstfruits preaches a Risen Lord and invites believers to follow Him in death and resurrection… quite literally.

In Memphis, the church is about to host its first conference, with an eye to converting the whole world to the vampiric gospel.

And all that stands between humanity and eternal night is Oren, his kids, and a thin line of insane immortals.

Power in the Blood, by Angelia Sparrow, now available from Storm Moon Press

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