A Character-driven Approach to Kissing Scenes and Sex Scenes

The day I tried to write my first sex scene was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I'd avoided it for a long time, and then I realized that the story I was writing demanded it (not the first time I'd changed what I felt I was capable of due to the demands of a story). I had this idea of what had to happen, and I tried to write it. When I got through I realized it had devolved into a succession of meaningless generic actions and disconnected body parts.

It was awful. And, I realized, it was "sex-driven" in a bad way, the same way that stories can seem pointless and over-wrought when they are too heavily driven by plot.

Something changed for me at that point. I realized that that the point of a sex scene was not the sex.

Why do we need sex scenes? I suppose for erotica that they would be part of the point, but in my stories that's not it at all. In my stories, I have two people developing a relationship, and what is most important is what that relationship means to them, and how it changes them. I had already figured that out for kissing scenes, so that was where I went when I had to re-think the sex scenes.

As I see it, a first kiss is a form of communication between the characters. Tension may be building - and this is something I do by having the characters become more aware of one another physically, say, noticing for the first time the way the other person's throat moves when he drinks - but somebody starts it. The other person then has to decide whether to permit the kiss, and whether to return it. Internalization is critical here. Too little internalization and it will seem like I've slapped the kiss on from my position as author. More internalization may make it seem like the poor character is in agony trying to make the decision (which he or she may be!). Occasionally, since this is a big turning point in a story, I'll switch points of view and place the kiss itself at a chapter break so I can then move into the recipient's head and gauge the reaction.

What is important is not the movements. Yes, we can say "oh, this is how far they went this time." But what is important for me in a kiss is the nature of the communication - the psychological conditions that permit someone to take the chance, and the experience of the other person in response.

A sex scene is the same for me. The question is much less "how far did they go" but "what did they decide to do and why, and how did it affect the way they will interact in the future?"

I therefore place my focus on the characters. I start by asking, "What significance does this scene have for the characters, and for the story as a whole?" That will help me gauge what is necessary. If the scene is incidental, like a scene demonstrating that a character has sex as part of his everyday life and doesn't think much of it, then it will get a lot less attention. You'll see where the couple make their decision, and follow through with little detail, the critical ingredient being what the act means, and what it does for the characters, rather than what they do. I have one scene where a character makes love with his girlfriend because this is something relatively normal that they do often, and it helps him to release anxiety from the earlier part of his day.

The buildup for a first sex act is usually much longer. This I think is natural because, compared to kissing, the first occasion of such intimacy has far greater significance - and much greater possible disasters associated with it. Romance novels, after all, spend almost the entire book getting there! What I have found, though, is that in this case the physical act itself is far less important. I can build up the psychological conditions necessary, and once the two characters have made the decision to act, I can end the scene. The only reason I might include physical details is if there is some consequence of the act itself that must be experienced in order for readers to understand the characters as they carry forward.

All of this is to say that I recommend including only the most character-relevant details in a story, either when you're dealing with a kissing scene or with a sex scene (or anything else, for that matter!). Keep the motivations, the decisions, the justifications, whatever it is. Keep the mental states that matter in the front of your lens, and let all physical details follow directly from them. It's the best way I have found to create a scene of intimacy that actually fits the characters I'm working with, and matters to the story, without letting things fall into clichéd motions and lists of body parts.

Because of the subject of this post, I'm going to be moderating comments, but I am interested to hear what you think on the topic.

Combating Writer's Envy

I was inspired today by this post that I found through Elizabeth Craig on Twitter, a fantastic one called "When Going Green's Not So Cool: A Writer's Antidotes for Envy". My favorite antidotes were: enjoying the things you love, and exercising. I highly recommend those for all writers, especially since a lot of us (including me) need to exercise more.

I personally find that I'm not immune to jealousy, but that my jealousy is rather limited in scope. My jealousy will make me feel upset at myself, but not angry with others (I feel lucky about this). Even when I notice a bestseller whose work I don't particularly like, I figure that person has found something that a lot of people like - I just may not have grasped what that thing is.

The other thing I continue to believe is that writing is not a competition. It's not about whether my writing is better than someone else's. It's not about two writers with similar styles trying to fit into the same too-small market niche. It's simply about whether I find an editor who finds that my work speaks to him/her, and whether readers then are willing to pay for what I do. Honestly - why should I worry about whether I'm similar to my favorite authors? When I read, I don't say, "Ursula LeGuin is my sf author, and there isn't room for anyone else." The more someone's work is like hers, the more likely I will enjoy it too. Reading appetite is not finite. Reading quality work does not satiate; it only makes you hungrier for more brilliance.

The last thing I hope writers will remember is that statistics only operate effectively on large numbers. The fact that 99% of submissions get rejected at a particular magazine should not deter you; whether your story succeeds is about your story, and that editor, and it has nothing to do with anyone else.

Keep up hope, and keep submitting. So long as there are readers hungry for stories, there is room for more authors.

TTYU Retro: First Things First

I pulled this post out from the archives (and updated it somewhat) after the question I received from T.S. Bazelli about beginning a story. (T.S., this is about first sentences, not first scenes, but I hope it will address some of your concerns).

How important is the first sentence of your story?

I've seen whole discussions about this on the writing forums I frequent. Some folks will tell you that the first sentence of your story is the most important one of the entire piece, and if you don't get it right you might as well just give up. This doesn't seem a practical approach to my mind, because I don't like any advice that tells me to give up!

I'd like to call the first sentence "a great opportunity."

It's an opportunity to hook your reader, to impress them, to intrigue them and make them curious. But it's not everything. Imagine the disappointment of reading a terrific first sentence and then discovering that the rest of the paragraph is ho-hum. So don't put all your energy just into sentence one; save some for the continuation. I don't think a "just fine" first sentence will be enough to make someone reject your story. On the other hand, if you don't have some great stuff in the first paragraph, you may well lose a very impatient editor. They're zooming, because they have a lot of manuscripts to get through.

So how do I approach a first sentence?

Because I'm a very chronological writer, I need to have a first sentence for a scene before I can start writing it. Sometimes I'll wander around for several days trying out different first sentences in my head until I can find the way in. Ideally, I want any first sentence I write to do three things:

1. Make people curious
2. Demonstrate the psychology of the main character
3. Introduce the main conflict in some form (even obliquely)

I put "make people curious" first, because that's what gets a reader to read your second sentence with gusto, rather than with diminishing momentum. That's your hook. If it makes people curious about the main conflict or main character or the core of the story, so much the better.

I put "demonstrate the psychology of the main character" second because it's something that is very important to me - but I usually write either in first person or in tight third person point of view, and the psychology of the main character is therefore highly relevant. Not to mention the fact that if the main character is an alien, showing something of his/her psychology may help to make the reader curious (see #1 above).

I put "Introduce the main conflict" third because it's something that's really good to do, but can't always be done directly in the first sentence. Even if I don't manage to get it in there, though, I usually try to tap into some part of the main conflict (or the spirit thereof) before the end of the first paragraph. This kind of information does a lot to make the reader curious, but also provides an orientation to give them a sense of where the story might be going - not the plot, but the point, the reason I'm writing this story and they should keep reading it.

Just because I spend days trying to think of a first sentence doesn't mean that the first one I think of - my "entry" to the scene - will end up being my first sentence when I'm through. I often make changes to beginnings, sometimes even trying over and over until I find just the right thing.

Just so I'm not talking about air, I'll give some concrete examples below.


"Stealing eggs is a lot harder than stealing the whole chicken."
- Janice Hardy, The Shifter

I love this sentence. The first thing I think of when I read it is, "Why?" There's our curiosity, right there. It also reveals the psychology of the narrator, because it suggests this person is willing to try to get only the eggs rather than taking the whole chicken - or why would she be mentioning how hard it is? And while this sentence doesn't introduce the main conflict, it does demonstrate a moral sense that is finely tuned between what's right and what's necessary - which is what lies at the core of this character's involvement in the main conflict of the story.


"Lest anyone should suppose that I am a cuckoo's child, got on the wrong side of a blanket by lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a shortfallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court proper, for all the good it did me."
- Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

I have an extended analysis of this sentence in an earlier post, here. But speaking in terms of the three items above, I can say this: it makes me curious, by letting me know the main character is in trouble ("for all the good it did me"), and by giving an amazing amount of information about the psychology of the main character (class attitude, social position, etc.). The entire book maintains the same intense focus on the character of Phèdre - she is the magnetic core of the story, so the sentence is certainly consistent with what follows.


"I hereby declare the end of Dana Turner."
- Juliette Wade, Through This Gate

Here's one I wrote myself, so I'll say off the bat that I've tried to have this sentence do all three things I mentioned. I thought I'd share some of the process behind this one, though - I came up with it pretty early in the writing process, maybe even as early as the first draft. However, for a long time I didn't know how to follow it. I worked and reworked the scene that followed this sentence, and even considered changing it, but in the end decided it was the right first sentence for my book, so the rest of the scene had better fit with it, and that was that. I worked until I managed to get it to fit.

Finally I thought I'd share a revision example. Here was the sentence that was my "entry" to the story, "At Cross Purposes":

"Piloting the shuttle between maintenance sites is my reward, the guys tell me - to make up for the five years it took Terrafirm, Inc. to grant my security clearance."

I wrote it, and it got me in, but I wasn't happy with it. Yes, you might be curious about why she didn't get her security clearance for so long, and yes, the sentence does show her attitude, but it doesn't really give you any hints as to where the story is going. Maybe something to do with security clearances? Certainly security clearances are relevant, but they aren't the point of the story. So I went back in and rewrote it - didn't edit it, but got rid of it and started in a completely different way. The physical details of location etc. for the opening scene remained the same, but the second draft of the opening sentence was:

"Kelly's on the comm and she's playing with my mind, trying to tell me she sees a cloud."

Psychology/attitude, check. Curiosity, well, it has to do with why someone who sees a cloud would be suspected of playing with anyone's mind. It wasn't really good enough, though, and didn't stand up for beta readers because of the problems I discussed in my last post - it tried to hop into the main conflict to early, without giving readers sufficient grounding (where is this person? What is she doing?). So I hopped back a bit, and the first sentence of the final draft was this:

"One more sector done; we shuck off our helmets with a groan and strap into the shuttle, guys in back and me in the pilot's seat."

This one tells us she's in the middle of an exhausting activity, she's a pilot, and she's about to take off in a shuttle - all of which are critical forms of grounding for what happens next. The hook/curiosity factor is a bit less, but we should at least wonder what she's up to in her work, and her work is directly related to where the story goes overall.

So at the end of this whole discussion I hope I've given you something to think about, and something to aim for - but I also hope that I've been clear about the difference between an entry sentence (first sentence for the first draft), and a first sentence (first sentence for the final draft). It's always cool and exciting when you can find a first sentence that really hooks a reader. Just don't be afraid to take as many drafts as you need in order to get there.

Transitions: linking forward through the story

I'm not sure if you run into this as often as I do. You're writing along, and you write a line and the narrative seems to stop. Suddenly you can't think of a way to start the very next sentence. Sometimes you stare at it, and sometimes you walk away, but when you break that block, you realize the problem was in the last sentence you wrote: it was "turned back" toward the previous text rather than being "turned forward" toward the next part of the story. Once you change it and turn it forward, the next sentence appears with no trouble.

Transitions can be tricky. So what is it that "turns" a sentence forward rather than backward?

The answer is in the content - but that's too vague to be much use, so I'm going to consider a couple of examples from my day of editing.

I've been working with integrating existing material for a chapter with new material that takes the ending in a different direction. In the existing material, a newly hired servant (Aloran) gets introduced to his new colleagues and shown his quarters, but when he realizes he's not fully prepared, he's too frightened to ask his mistress permission to go out and get new supplies. In the new ending, one of the things he needs in order to be prepared is to take her measurements for a pair of gloves, so in the end he must go back to face her despite his fear.

Here are the two lines where my scene ground to a halt:

Every member of the Pelismara society in a single room pressing hands, when one of their own had just died of Kinders fever? How could he stop Lady Tamelera from touching anyone?

These lines set up a significant question - the question of how to take Lady Tamelera safely to a party where disease might be passed around. However, they could serve quite well as the cliff-hanger ending of a chapter. I think this is because there's the declaration of a serious problem that Aloran will face at an upcoming event, but no hint of what solution he might need. Thus the final sentence has a threatening ring - perfect for a cliffhanger ending that will send readers forward across a chapter break looking for an answer, but not so good for a smooth shift of the chapter into the next section where Aloran pursues a solution. I therefore revised it as follows:

Every member of the Pelismara society in a single room pressing hands, when one of their own had just died of Kinders fever? With that kind of contagion risk, he'd be tempted to wear his treatment gloves.

Suddenly I had the way forward. The sentence about contagion risk references Aloran's medical training, and in that context the solution is obvious to him. The idea of "gloves" appears right where it needs to, and can easily be extended conceptually from "I should wear gloves to protect myself" to "I should get my Lady to wear gloves to protect herself." That's a motive he can act upon right away.

I ran into another block in a spot where Aloran decides to leave his room (because he wants to figure out what she'll be wearing, so he can make gloves to match). He faces a decision of whether to exit into his Lady's room or not:

He found his service speaker and flicked it on, but heard only silence in his Lady's chamber. If he opened the small door with the crescent-moon handle, he could go and study her wardrobe. But if she were still there, sitting quietly, she would be angry because she wanted to be alone. Lady Tamelera, angry.

In the earlier draft, his next thought had grown directly out of the idea of her anger; he'd decided he had to get away from the whole situation. This no longer fit with the requirement that he deal with her in the course of the chapter. After some thinking I decided that he was too rattled just to steel himself and go in, but that he could ask for help from someone who knows her better. I could have continued with "He went looking for Serjer," but I wanted to use a word-link to smooth the transition. In this case, since there are two doors out of Aloran's room, I chose opening the door as the link. The next line became:

He opened the door into the Maze, and went looking for Serjer.

This created an explicit parallel between "If he opened the small door with the crescent moon handle" and "He opened the door into the Maze", thus bringing attention to the fact that in the end he decided not to open his Lady's door.

I enjoyed working through this material and trying to create links where there had been none before. It put me in mind of something I learned about when I studied classical Japanese poetry: the idea of a "kakekotoba," or pivot word. A pivot word has two meanings. It serves as a pivot because one of its meanings should fit with the lines of poetry that precede it, but its other meaning should fit with the lines that follow it. If, for example, the pivot word were "matsu," then on one side of it we should find lines that speak of pine trees (matsu=pine), and on the other side, lines that talk about waiting (matsu=to wait). This concept spoke to me, because in each of these cases I could identify a critical element that allowed me to make the link forward to the next section: gloves, in the first instance, and the door in the second.

I suppose the main things I took out of this afternoon's editing were these:
1. The implication of a large unsolved problem is good for a cliffhanger, but not for a minor transition.
2. At the end of a sub-scene, consider "seeding" a motive for the sub-scene that follows, in order to smooth the transition.
3. If the implications of the last sentence you wrote seem to take you in the wrong direction, look back further, because you may find something you can use to turn the text the way you want it to go.

Vital Secondary Characters

A charming and unexpected thing happened to me last week. An acquaintance of mine who was reading "The Eminence's Match" told me that his favorite character in the piece was Harat. For those of you who have read the story, Harat is one of the secondary characters - the main character Xinta's exercise partner, who bunks with him in the school dormitory.

When I told my buddy Janice Hardy about this, she told me that she'd had notes from people who loved minor secondary characters in The Shifter - for those of you familiar with the book, one of them loved Kione the guard, and the other one really loved Soek the apprentice Healer.

In effect, you never know when someone might just pick one of your secondary characters as their favorite! Secondary characters can do so much to enhance your story that it's worth giving them some serious attention.

Maybe you've had the same experience I've had, when you read a book and the main character and his/her core group of friends seem to be the only people in the entire world, going about their business. This always disappoints me. I like to see a world that looks lived-in. There are going to be people in the mercantile street, or if there aren't, there should be a reason why. In a city, there are people working to keep the city going. People changing the lightbulbs. Hooligans and police, etc. etc. A world has a population which moves in patterns, patterns which are not necessarily aligned with those of your core group.

Keep in mind as you work that everyone who walks onstage in your story is there for a reason. It may be an institutional reason rather than a personal reason, but even the spear-bearer is there because he's got a job to do. You may not care about that spear-bearer's opinion on these people he's standing next to, but believe me, he's got one. The person who jumps out of the way of your swordsman, the person who gives useful information to your spy, the innkeeper who serves your questing party beer - each one is doing those things for reasons of their own. It's worth thinking a bit and knowing those reasons, because at very least it will help you to figure out their tone of voice and the expression on their face.

I encourage you to think about secondary characters from their own point of view; it's a valuable exercise even if you're never ever planning to give them their own narrative. As you can imagine, I do this a lot - and I actually have a secondary character whose opinions about one of the main protagonists are so important that I've decided to promote her to a point of view character.

Ask yourself what this person does when they're not on stage with the protagonist. What is his/her job? How did it bring him/her into this room? How does he/she feel about being there? Sure, there will be bit parts and people who don't need to stand out in the crowd, but the more interaction this person has with the main characters, the more important it is for you to know what he/she wants and how he/she judges what's going on. Readers can tell, instinctively, whether this secondary character of yours has a life outside the scene they're reading. It only takes a detail or two, or a slight shift in the wording of the dialogue, to give the impression of that life and bring extra dimensions to your story world. Besides, you never know when a secondary character will grow in importance and take on a key role in your story - or give you an opportunity to deepen their character and tighten the story at a later point.

Finally, ask whether and how your point of view character judges the people he/she encounters. I've spent quite a bit of time on the idea of a narrator as a guide; where your narrators put their attention is going to be a great way for readers to tell what's important in the story, and what isn't. If the narrator notices a single individual in the crowd, then that person automatically gains more importance. By having your narrator notice particular types of people and judge them in particular ways, you can create an effect that deepens your world, informs us about your character, and also plays into such issues as theme and plot.

Give your secondary characters some attention. Your readers will thank you for it.

Point of view: triangulating pronouns, names and description

I just finished writing a scene in close third person limited point of view where I switched from one person's point of view to another's halfway through. I insert a chapter break at that point, but it occurs during a single ongoing event. At a certain point it struck me that this might be an interesting little microcosm to consider for point of view questions. Same room, same four people present for a continuous sequence of events, but at the point where you make the switch, the two different points of view have to feel completely different in spite of their third person pronouns, or there will have been no point in switching points of view at all!

The characters are as follows:

Grobal Garr, 56 years old, powerful member of the Grobal nobility and Speaker of the Cabinet.
Imbati Sorn, 58 years old, Garr's manservant (political assistant, valet and bodyguard).
Grobal Tagret, seventeen years old, Garr's son.
Imbati Aloran, eighteen years old, member of the servant caste interviewing for a position with the family.

The two points of view are the two boys, Tagret and Aloran. How do we distinguish their points of view?

First, by the way they indicate the other people in the room. Sometimes you know by gut feel how they'll do it, but it can't hurt to plan this out if you're feeling unsure. Keep in mind that how people are referred to, including titles, names, etc. depends on their social position, their relative rank, their special identity relative to one another, and the surrounding context. Here's what my characters call the others in the room:

Tagret => Garr

• "Father" when speaking or when thinking.
  
• "Garr" only if he's really mad.

Tagret => Sorn

• "Sorn" when speaking
• "Sorn" or "Imbati Sorn" when thinking of him as an individual
  
• "Father's Sorn" when thinking of him relative to his father.

Tagret => Aloran

• "Imbati Aloran" for first reference (the first time he refers to him in a stretch of discourse).
• "Aloran" for references thereafter, OR
• "the Imbati boy."
  

Tagret's references to his father and his father's servant reflect intimate knowledge. His references to Aloran suggest formality but also higher status. He's free to refer to him as Aloran even though they don't know each other well; he can also refer to his caste affiliation (his caste name).

In Aloran's point of view, things are very different.

Aloran => Garr

• "sir" when speaking.
• "Grobal Garr" when thinking, for first reference or thereafter, OR
  
• "the Master."
  
• in reference following a focus on Tagret: "his father."
  

Aloran => Sorn

• "sir" when speaking privately with no Grobal caste members present.
• in Garr and Tagret's presence, he doesn't speak or refer to Sorn at all.
• "Garr's Sorn" when thinking, for first reference.
• "Sorn" for references thereafter, OR
• "the senior servant."

Aloran => Tagret

• "young sir" when speaking.
• "Grobal Tagret," when thinking, for first reference or thereafter, OR
• "the young Master" OR
• "the Grobal boy."
  
• in reference following a focus on Garr, "his son."

Aloran's use of terms reflects both his lower status and his status as an outsider. He is not socially authorized to utter the names of any of the individuals in the room, and he must think of them formally. He is permitted to think of them by full name, or by caste rank (Grobal), by their relationship to each other, or by their status relative to the Household he is attempting to enter (Master/Young Master).

It's interesting to note that neither boy thinks of Garr as the Speaker of the Cabinet. This rank is not relevant to Tagret (obviously) but neither is it relevant to Aloran, who is not trained in politics and is not expected to engage with Garr in his capacity as Speaker but as a member of his Household.

You may notice that I talk about "first reference" here. This is a topic I've wanted to engage with for a while, but I find it tricky to discuss in a meaningful way. I'll do it briefly now. In discourse, and by that I mean stretches of narrative larger than a sentence, we don't use the same terms to refer to people or things every time we mention them. Typically it works something like this:

For objects:
first notice - a table
subsequent reference - it, OR
if some text has gone by and we need to be reminded - the table

For people:
first notice - a person
subsequent reference if gender is known - he/she, OR the person
if we know the person's name, first reference - full name appropriate to status and context
subsequent reference - he/she, OR shortened version of the name appropriate to context, or description of identity relative to social position

You can see that the introduction of the object or person generally includes the most information, and thereafter we relax a bit because we can refer readers back to that information by using pronouns or shortened references. I've seen cases, particularly in beginning writing, where people are not following this pattern, and it tends to be jarring.

Okay, back to differentiating two points of view. There are some other little things you can do to enhance this. When I am in Tagret's point of view, I try to use his name as little as possible (people don't typically think of themselves in third person). Since all three characters are male, however, I do need to use his name quite a bit to differentiate him. When I use it, I try to keep it in subject position rather than object position, so that we get the sense of the character being someone who does things, and to keep it out of anything resembling internalization. Here's an example:

Speechless with disgust, Tagret allowed Father to escort him to the Master bedroom, where Imbati Sorn opened the door to let them in. It didn't matter any more what this was about - the faster he got in, the faster he could get out and go back to Mother.
In his parents' room, daylights shone in the windows, and cast delicate shadows through the sheer curtains of the bed. The chairs from the lounge corner had been pulled out into the room. Between them, with his face expressionless, stood Imbati Aloran.

Then, of course, you also can differentiate by showing the two characters with different mental states and attitudes. Tagret is angry; Aloran is scared and trying to make a good impression. As you can see in the above description of the room, Tagret is in his home territory and knows every object there (note how he uses "the" for everything). He notices only particular conditions of light and furniture placement that might be different from other times he's seen the room. Aloran is not on home territory; he knows little about Garr and less about the lady he's supposed to be interviewing to work for, so he approaches what he sees entirely differently. Here's an example from immediately after the transition:

Aloran fought the urge to tense his arms and shoulders. Distance yourself, the lesson said. [...] The calm mind is observant and prepared.
He forced himself to review what he'd learned from the room. A wide bed with a filmy canopy indicated the Master and Mistress did sleep together, and the brocade curtains on the wall behind it hinted of manservants' doors. The watches atop the rich wooden dresser suggested it was the Master's, while a table of smoked glass set in a delicate gold-plated frame demonstrated the Lady's tastes.
His mind struggled, though, trying to drag his attention back to Grobal Tagret. If only he could be alone with Grobal Garr as before!

Point of view is not just about those pronouns we're always talking about. It's about tuning names as well, and also about putting the character's judgment into the way you treat everything else that is happening. Physical descriptions reflect social position and mental states just as much as internalization or action. In close point of view (whether it be first person or third), the judgment of the character affects everything that person notices or describes. Even actions are not just actions, but that character's interpretation of the action and what it suggests about the other character's motives.

It's something to pay attention to as you switch from one point of view to another.

Interviewing characters? Interview yourself!

I'm sure you've heard about this technique, often used by writers, of conducting impromptu interviews with characters in order to get to know them better. I've written posts suggesting questions for such interviews myself (like here).

Answering questions like these will often provide you with useful information about your character. If you've asked the right questions, this information can help your story a lot. However, a simple interview format has one large disadvantage:

It isn't good at capturing how the character would think and talk about him/herself.

I've tried to alter the questions I use to improve my results in this regard, but the real problem isn't the questions. The problem is the questioner. Think about it this way: would you talk about your life and your concerns in the same way to yourself, or your spouse/best friend, as you would to someone who came from a foreign country? Of course not.

However, when you ask questions of a character who resides in a world not our own, the answers you are likely to get are those you might give to someone from a foreign country or another world. You'll discover that all kinds of distance markers start creeping in - names that you'd never use, ways of defining oneself that we never think about unless dealing with outsiders.

How can you defeat that tendency so that you'll learn more about what your character should sound like on the inside? It's definitely a challenge. In the post I linked to above, I have a list of eleven questions that I've deliberately tried to phrase in a way that encourages you to use your character's voice to answer. Another thing I'd suggest is interviewing yourself, or having a spouse or close friend interview you. If you find yourselves laughing at the questions because you both know the answers, that's a good indicator of shared knowledge that insiders wouldn't bother to mention. If you don't feel you can do an interview without becoming more distant than you should, try looking into a diary that you've written, or letters that you've composed to someone you know well. Look at how you describe your setting and social situation. Look at what you label (group membership) and don't label. How much of it would an alien or outsider really understand? I'll bet you any money that you don't find anything resembling the phrase "Americans do this/believe this because..."

After your interview or research is over and after you have a draft of your narrative voice, try to edit it with an eye for distance markers. These include "Americans" or "Californians" or "noblemen" or anything people use to describe themselves to outsiders. Look for places when you've used "there" instead of "here," "they" instead of "we." Think about what information is normal and what stands out, what is important to your character and what is beneath notice. Make sure you've used "the" to refer to objects or concepts the character knows or has perceived before, and "a" for new information.

Getting into a character's head is a very valuable point of view technique, but the interviews that you conduct are limited by the fact that your character lives in the world you've created, and you don't. Since your subconscious knows that you don't live in this place, I'd encourage you to experiment with an "insider interview" approach or a diary approach to see how you talk about your own world - and then see if you can apply what you've learned to the worlds you're creating.

When do you walk away? And how do you know when to come back?

These writing projects of ours take a lot of time and effort. Some folks I know can pound out short stories (and more power to them!), but I know I'm not like this, and certainly novels demand more. Even those who write NaNoWriMo novels often spend a lot of planning time in advance of the writing period, and then more time revising and cleaning up afterward.

So let's say you've invested a large amount of worldbuilding time, design time, and writing time into a project, but no matter what you do, it refuses to do precisely what you want. It might be that you've dived into something but it has petered out in the middle. That was what happened to me with For Love, For Power after I'd written around nineteen chapters. It might be that you've rewritten something over and over but every time you fix one thing, beta readers keep finding something else that bothers them. That one happened to me with a work in progress called The Past Unhealed, and the things they kept finding weren't tiny fix-its, but major rethink-this-whole-section stuff. It might be that you've got whole books which are sequels to other books that aren't quite working (yep, I have those too). Or maybe your work in progress is just acting ornery and doesn't feel right.

Walk away.

Don't just leave it alone for a weekend. That's fine, and it helps, but by this time you've probably already tried that. What I mean is, go and write something else.

Yes, it can feel like failure. Holy cow, I put years of work into this! How can I abandon it? But I'm not suggesting you take all your precious hard-won files and toss them in the trash can (either literally or figuratively). I'm suggesting that you refresh your brain by giving it a different problem to work on. A challenge - particularly if it's something you haven't done before.

When I walked away from my first four novels, I started writing short stories at first. That felt different. A good number of those were in the same world as the novels, and were up against some big hurdles because of that, but it was good to give them a try. Why? Because I'd never forced my brain to think short. I'd never tried to create a story small enough to balance in the palm of my hand. Slowly I started learning that when the story was small, I could visualize all its pieces in my head at once, and I started understanding how the parts of the story related to one another. Writing the short stories took on a new fire for me, and my rejections started getting better.

Then I picked up a new novel. Totally new - not in the same world, with none of the same characters. I applied what I'd learned from short stories to this novel. Lo and behold it was working. I wrote the whole thing in (for me) record time. Revising it was still brutal, and I had a few very embarrassing failures with agents before I had it in the right place, but when it came out finished, it made me happy. And my agent liked it too!

Because it was a novel that used none of the same parameters, I exercised my brain on it in a different way. I did different things trying to revise it, and set my brain against different kinds of problems. For a writer, trying new things is really important. We have to try things that are challenging, because they help our minds and skills to grow.

For me, more than four years went by before I went back to my previous material.

I wouldn't have had to, necessarily. There are a lot of people out there with "trunk novels" that never see the light of day. I could have left mine in the dark, but there were some factors that drew me back to them.

1. The world wouldn't leave me alone. I'd be going along, and learn something about language or culture or writing, and a new connection would form in my head. Wow, I'd say to myself, that could really apply to Varin in an interesting way.

2. The story shifted whenever I started thinking about it again. My new ideas of structure gave me new ideas for how to approach it, and I started seeing things here and there that would change for the better.

3. The characters grew without me writing them. They kept coming back to me and whispering things in my head - but even more than that, I started seeing things about how they interacted on a larger level. And when I spoke about them with friends, I figured out even more. The fact that Tagret had to be the protagonist in For Love, For Power (shoot, why didn't I realize that before?). The fact that sweet little Xinta can't be sweet little Xinta any more, but has to start out as the antagonist in the first novel where he appears (and I mean scary). The fact that one character whose head I've never visited has something terribly important to say that will add to the structure of the entire novel when I get back to it.

When I get back to it. Not if, though it was if for a very long time.

How do you decide to go back? I can't speak for others, obviously, but the thing that convinced me was when I decided experimentally to go back and think through the stories, reorganize my thoughts and outlines - and I discovered how much better everything would be. By writing for four years on other projects, I've improved my skills immensely. When I look at those old versions, I find some things that embarrass me, but other things that I think still have value. Those old words aren't a waste. They've created something in my head that has grown while I let it rest. They stand behind me now as I go back and write again. I'm not fool enough to try to revise them any more - empty files for me! - but if I need a reminder of what should happen next, or if I remember a phrase I loved, I can go back.

Here's the reward. Even before I've finished For Love, For Power, I can tell it won't die in the middle this time. I write a chapter in the beginning and I can feel everything in the story interconnecting. I can feel it's better. I handle everything more confidently and more subtly because I'm a better writer now. I can even feel ideas coming together for the books I wrote before this one, the really old books I wrote when I had no idea what I was doing yet. I'm excited now to think of those books, not embarrassed. I know I'll go back because I feel what I'll be able to do with them. The underlying structure of the world is still sound, even when I'm good enough to test it in totally different ways. It deserves a better writer to write it - and while I have no illusions of perfection, I know that I'll be good enough to draft something worth sticking with this time.

It's hard to walk away. But if you can do it, it might be the very best decision you ever made for those books you love.

Too cool to be normal

I've known a lot of people who've endured the stress of a parent or friend asking why they can't be more "normal." When the topic came up with my kids the other day we started asking, "What is normal?" Of course, with an opportunity like that, the anthropologist in me can't resist speaking out.

Normal, even in statistics, is defined relative to a particular group. Collect the data from this group, then calculate the mean and figure out a bell curve. That's how it's done when you can precisely identify the members of the group in question. In the social sense, though, the group is much harder to define. Asking someone to be "normal" implies that they don't belong to the "normal" group. Usually, but not always, it implies that the speaker does belong to that group.

So the first thing I'm going to ask is why we use this term at all? I found myself using it a few days ago to talk about people who do violent acts - "they're not normal." I'm pretty okay with that, I guess since the group I'm defining is good citizens of the world. But believe me, I know my kids are going to run across "not normal" comments about their love of school, and their intelligence, and their love of good stories, and on that one I'm going to be ready to go into battle.

"Not normal" isn't always a bad thing. I definitely consider myself "too cool to be normal" - something I definitely associate with being a lover of science fiction and fantasy - and I hope my kids will feel the same.

If you have ever been a victim of the phrase, "not normal," use your writing as your chance for revenge. First of all, take pride in the fact that you're above average. And second, redefine normal in your writing. Use the word shamelessly in whatever world you've created, and think it through, making sure it means something utterly different there from what it means here in our world. In Cochee-coco society, it's not normal to seek privacy. In Aurrel society, it's not normal to cook vegetables (and only your pets would eat them anyway). In the Realm of Words, not saying what you mean isn't only "not normal," but against the law.

We all know people who use "normal" as a sword. It's time for us to give that sword a second edge.

Your dialogue can do more

I've just spent a week working on one conversation.

This is not because I had no time (not that I had a lot, but I did write consistently). It's because for me, conversations are very important. Particularly if the conversation features a character who hasn't had much "screen time" previously, and particularly if that character is one who influences the course of the main story as it goes forward, it's worth giving people a good look - and listen - to her. So each time I came back to work, I started by reading through the conversation so far. Each time, I found places where the dialogue I'd written could accomplish more.

I know many of you write in layers. By this I mean writing one type of thing to get started and then going back to flesh out other elements later. Often, that first thing is dialogue - but just because it's the thing you feel comfortable enough with to write your dialogue first, you shouldn't necessarily leave it. It may be able to do more.

When people speak, we don't ever really say one thing at a time. Think about the conversations you participate in. Everything you say gives extra hints about social context, your intentions, etc., but because in reality you're engulfed in that context, and you hold those intentions, what you notice about what you say is the language that imparts new information. That is to say, the social and other contextual information is evident when we speak in person, so we typically don't notice it unless we are actively trying to determine where another person is "coming from."

In writing, this process can be reversed. Certainly in most cases, dialogue isn't enough to carry a narrative all on its own (plays are different, of course) - I usually add internalizations, actions, body language, and other kinds of cues to any kind of dialogue situation, even if it's just a conversation. However, if you think about it, when you write the subconscious cues that would ordinarily reflect the social context can actually imply the social context. They can imply the character's motives. This is particularly useful if you have a non-point-of-view character on your hands.

Since this may sound vague, and since a lot of it is subconscious anyway, I'll give some before-and-after examples of how I went about adding an extra layer to dialogue.

Tamelera, Version 1
"Maybe I should try to speak with her [Selemei], but since she joined the Cabinet, I'm not sure I can trust her."

This isn't bad. Captures Tamelera's emotional reaction to Selemei, the reason for it, and the proper chronology. Also shows a glimpse of the political structure (Cabinet).

Tamelera, Version2
"Maybe I should try to speak with her [Selemei], but when she took a Cabinet seat she joined the men's side. I'm not sure I can trust her now."

Better. Why? It keeps the earlier details, but also makes clear that Tamelera is aware the Cabinet is dominated by men (which has been pointed out earlier; Selemei is the only woman on the Cabinet). Furthermore, it shows that she thinks of the world as divided into men's and women's sides, which are opposed to one another. This is a major characteristic of hers that I can build on later.

Here's another example.

Recited message, Version 1
"I extend my invitation to you to attend an informal tea and concert at the Club Diamond [...] I expect to see you there."

Recited message, Version 2
"I extend my invitation to you to attend an informal tea and concert at the Club Diamond [...] See you there!"

Here the difference is very small, but important. You may notice that neither one says "please let me know if you're able to come." The message sender wants the recipient to show up at this tea, and in fact has information that could potentially be used to blackmail the recipient into coming. I tried to reflect the attitude of "I could blackmail you" when I first wrote the invitation, but it seemed too dark. It also seemed a bit heavy-handed for the message sender, who is a bit more subtle and refined than that. Thus I decided to change it to "see you there!" which conveys a certain charming excitement, but also relies on the underlying assumption that the recipient will be attending the event.

The next example I think shows how a slight change can give a clearer idea of a character's assumptions and social expectations. It comes from a section where Tamelera's son has told her he's met a girl, but he hasn't told her under what kind of circumstances they met. Here is her comment:

Comment, Version 1
"I'm sure any girl would feel lucky to meet you."

This is certainly true, as her son is quite handsome and a pretty nice kid, too.

Comment, Version 2
"I'm sure any girl would feel lucky to be approached by someone like you."

I decided to use "be approached" to show that Tamelera assumes her son decided to approach the girl - when in fact she was the one who approached him. I decided to use "someone like you" because Tamelera doesn't want to engage emotionally with the idea of her son meeting a girl. Thus she speaks of him as a member of a group of people (people like him). Given that people in this society are primarily defined on the basis of their social standing, it means that girls like to meet boys who are in a good social position, and implies that Tamelera is trying not to imagine the actual people involved.

Here's another example:

Household Keeper, Version 1
"Yes, sir. She will join you as soon as I have your breakfast ready."

Household Keeper, Version 2
"Oh, yes, sir. Join you she will indeed, as soon as I've your breakfast ready."

In this case, the Household Keeper's voice was turning out to be too similar to that of another servant, also in the room at the time. Since he's a recurring character who will be seen more closely in other chapters, I decided to give him a different speech rhythm. This differentiates his speech from that of the other servant, and it also helps me give a sense of the scope of my world, because he sounds like he has a dialect (and later when it's relevant I'll mention that he's from a provincial city).

And one final example:

Surface, Version 1
"Let me tell you about the surface."

Surface, Version 2
"Do you remember what I told you about the surface?"

This sentence is one character bringing up a topic that she's about to discuss with someone else. As you can see, the dialogue will turn out differently depending on whether the characters have met before, and whether they have spoken previously about a particular topic. I realized that the way I phrased this topic opener needed to reflect these characters' shared history - and that it could thereby help me handle backstory. Anyone who sees version two will immediately know that these two people have discussed the surface before, which gives me the opportunity to say a few words about what the content of that communication was. The advantage for me in my revision was that if I hadn't placed their previous conversation as backstory, then their current conversation would have had a lot of ground to cover before I could get to what they really needed to discuss. So not only did the dialogue sound more natural, but this segment of the conversation become significantly shorter and less clunky.

To summarize, dialogue can help you reveal:

• character attitudes (Tamelera example)
• character intent (Recited message example)
• character assumptions and social expectations (Comment example)
• character differentiation, background and world characteristics (Keeper example)
• character backstory and personal history (Surface example)

These aren't the only things that dialogue can help you do, but they're the examples that I was working with this week. Your choice of words in dialogue can leave other kinds of clues, like indicating what kind of information is known and which is new, or whether your character feels comfortable or uncomfortable with the situation. It can also help you strengthen the theme of your story. When handled well, it can often help you take some of the information burden off the main portions of the narrative.

It's something to think about.

Break down your goals!

I don't have a lot of time to write, so I'm always very cautious about setting writing goals. I don't even track my word counts. Why? Because it depresses me every time I see friends on Facebook or on the forums talk about how they wrote 1000 words today, or 3000, or however many. If I counted, I'd probably end up with 100, or some number that merely indicates I redid a scene with hardly any wordcount change. And of course there are always days when I get zero words. But zero words might mean I was too sick or busy - or it might mean that I got a lot of fruitful thinking done, just no typing.

My number one rule of goal-setting is "be compassionate with yourself." I focus on saying "I did a bit of work today," and on keeping a sense of momentum.

That said, there are times when setting a goal can be motivating. Don't set one that's too big, like "I have to write a novel as soon as possible." Ouch! If you're writing a novel, and it's a big project, it's a good idea to find ways to keep your eyes on the prize, but break it down. I made some good progress yesterday (unexpectedly) and now I'm thinking, "Can I get Chapter 5 done by Monday?"

For me, goals come in several categories.

1. Write every day. For this one, thinking/plotting/outlining count. This is maintaining momentum.
2. When you sense a potential goal close, try giving yourself a timeline to reach it. I'd call this one opportunistic goal-setting. It can help you get a boost of motivation over a short time period.
3. When you have a big project, set smaller goals. Set a chapter writing-rate goal, realizing that it will vary longer/shorter depending on the demands of your life. Set a chunk goal, too. My current chunk goal is to get to Chapter 10 - the end of a major arc. My sense of when I'll finish the whole novel will depend on how long it takes me to get to Chapter 10, and how I feel at that point.

I speculate about how I'd like to finish writing this novel by next October or so. It's a good thing to imagine, but at the moment I have no idea how realistic it is. It depends on too many factors. If you find your larger goals are overwhelming you, be compassionate with yourself. Break down your goals to make them more manageable. Then as the smaller ones are achieved, you can get a better sense of what to expect with the larger ones.

Above all, don't punish yourself for underperformance. It will only make things worse.

Culture isn't uniform!

Way back in the very early life of this blog (in 2008!) I wrote a post about making sure your characters aren't all the same. Not surprisingly, the post was called "Don't make them all the same," and I encourage you to go back and look at it.

Today's post deals with culture, but it has the same message. Not only aren't different cultures the same as one another (on a very fundamental level), even cultures that are spoken of as if they were uniform aren't really uniform.

American culture. Which one? From the point of view of Australians or Japanese, our culture is what they see on the television and in the movies. I remember having to explain over and over when I was living as an exchange student in Japan that just because they hear stories about Americans who own guns doesn't mean that every American owns a gun. Just because they hear Americans talk about Christianity doesn't mean every American is a Christian. As my Aussie husband has remarked, "America has Utah, and it has Nevada, and the two are side by side."

You shouldn't be surprised to learn that Japanese culture varies a lot also. There are a myriad dialects across the Japanese islands (as should be expected given the length of time that the population has lived there). The Japanese are particularly proud of their regional delicacies, but the differences go beyond just that.

In fact, culture isn't necessarily uniform even in a single location. In a tiny town dominated by a printing plant, you might have a microculture for the people who work at the plant which distinguishes itself from the people who work in service positions for the plant workers. In a major US university you'll have African American groups and Asian American groups as well as groups based on religious affiliation, hobbies, etc. People align themselves based on professions, religions, neighborhoods - almost anything can become the basis for alignment, or realignment. When I was an undergraduate one of the major issues that came up was that the Asian American group was splintering into subcomponents - the Filipinos and the Chinese, the Koreans and the Japanese were starting to want their own groups. In the US we often talk about the culture of a company, or the culture of sports, etc.

So let's say you're creating a fictional culture. It could be aliens, or elves, or humans in a secondary world - that part doesn't matter. The characters that you create will differ enormously based on the culture they are a part of, but also upon the subcultures they belong to. And here's another thing - different subcultures aren't necessarily even aware of one another's existence, even when they interact all the time. Let's say that you have one group that works as servants to another group - the master group will know a lot about the servant group as pertains to their interaction with the master group, and the expectations for intergroup relations. However, they may not know much if anything about the norms for relations inside the servant group, when the master group is not present. People can live side by side and interact constantly but have no idea how members of another cultural group think.

I encourage you to think this through as you build a world. A character doesn't behave the way he/she does because he/she is a member of X labelled group. That character is a product of his/her own experience and has layers of cultural awareness. That character will also have ideas about how other groups work - and those ideas probably overlap with other groups' views of themselves, but they probably miss a lot too.

I have a big trilogy in my future (something I wrote before when I wasn't as good a writer!) and I'm having ideas for it on and off continually (which is why I'm sure I'll go back to it). One of the things that's developing is the social structure and the intra-cultural contrasts. It's a Varin trilogy, so it's set in a society with seven caste levels. I used to have three point of view characters, but now I have four planned, and contrast is the reason for this. It's going to look like:

1. Imbati #1
2. Imbati #2
3. Akrabitti #1
4. Akrabitti #2

Each of the two members of the Imbati caste have very different ideas about what it means to be Imbati, which grow out of very different sets of experiences - and as you can imagine, the same is true for the Akrabitti characters. There's also going to be an important contrast between the noblemen that Imbati #1 and Imbati #2 work for. These contrasts give the portrayal of the castes and the world far more depth than they could have if I used only a single character from each group. In my reading of science fiction and fantasy I've met a lot of quest groups, and other groups, with different races and cultures - but usually only one representative of each. It's not a problem, per se, but when you want to create a truly three-dimensional society, it can really help to get a stereoscopic view of the cultural groups from which it is formed.

An artifact example: we're not just making up random stuff!

I had an epiphany yesterday, about a suit. Yes, a suit - one that my protagonist's mother gives him for his birthday. If you think about it, if you use those words alone, it's pretty generic. Could be the real world, or a fantasy world, or a science fiction world. The epiphany came to me because I found myself spending a lot of time describing the details of this suit, and wondering why I was doing so. After all, I'm not writing Regency romance where the fashions are much of the point. I don't want random stuff in my book that isn't relevant in some important way.

Let me tell you, it irks me when someone says, "But you're writing fantasy. You can make up anything you want."

Grrrr.

I'm not going to waste words describing a suit if it's not important. And it is - in much the same way that the sun armor was important in "Let the Word Take Me" (discussed in my post "Focus your Worldbuilding Efforts").

But wait, there's more to it even than worldbuilding. That's why I thought it would be worth breaking it down here. First, an excerpt:

"Inside the box [Tagret] found a cutaway coat of mottled blue and green with touches of white. Parts of it glimmered like spider-silk, while others seemed woven of more common fibers. Underneath were two glowing white silk shirts and a pair of trousers in matte slate-green. [...] The new shirts had long cuffs that buttoned with pearls up to the elbow, clearly intended to match the coat's short, flaring sleeves, and to echo the darker pearl buttons that fronted the trousers. This was a style the Pelismara society had never seen - a choice that said 'Mother' all over..."

Even though it occurs in two locations in the scene, this is a lot of words to spend on the details. I asked myself why all these details were important. There were lots of answers.

Worldbuilding
The idea of a cutaway coat is familiar from our world, and the term is important to suggest the shape of the coat, but other details like spider-silk, the long shirt cuffs and the short coat-sleeves are there to make clear this isn't your typical Earthly fashion. Furthermore, the coat is woven in an ocean pattern (ocean is also evoked by the pearls) - but in this world of underground cities, nobody sees the ocean unless they travel, and travel is very dangerous. Thus my protagonist has to describe the pattern as he understands it, one detail at a time. "A style the Pelismara society has never seen" also implies world, because it shows some of the social significance a fashion like this might have. In fact, the Pelismara society ladies and gentlemen are accustomed to wearing jewel colors or earth/stone colors, and the ocean design causes a minor fashion scandal later in the story!

Character
" - a choice that said 'Mother' all over..."
The presentation of the suit precedes Mother's entrance into the scene, and though she's been seen before in the story, this is the first time we see her through the eyes of someone who knows her well and cares about her (Tagret). Essentially, this is when we first see who she really is: a noblewoman of considerable intelligence, with a penchant for humor and subversion, who is trapped in an extremely restrictive social role. How do I get all that in, when the two of them will be talking mostly about the social issues that my protagonist is currently dealing with? Well, I can't tell readers about her (her son would never think about her that way), so I use the suit to imply it. The suit has been specially commissioned, so she's noblewoman with a great deal of money at her disposal. It's a very unusual fashion, so she doesn't follow trends. It also brings an image of the surface world down into the underground city where such things are never seen, suggesting that she doesn't think like everyone else. The rest of her outfits for herself are also going to use surface motifs, so once I had this piece in place I got inspired to expand its scope.

Theme
One of the major ideas that recurs in this novel is that of being trapped and wanting freedom, but having real freedom and the search for it be full of risks. The underground city/dangerous surface travel situation parallels Tagret's inability to escape from the political situation his father thrusts him into, and also the awful marriage situation that Mother suffers. When Mother brings images of the surface down into the city, in this suit and in her own clothing, it shows her struggling against her situation in the limited way she can - a struggle and a tendency for subversion that she's passing on to her son.

Foreshadowing
"Parts of it glimmered like spider-silk, while others seemed woven of more common fibers."
This was an artistic choice by the artisan who created the suit to try to represent light on the ocean water by mixing spider-silk and other fibers. It's also more than that, linking back to an earlier scene when the protagonist takes his friends (all dressed in silk) to a concert hall attended by members of Lower castes (who dress in matte fibers). Tagret remarks that "Tillik-spider silk might be an unregulated commodity, but evidently it was expensive enough to sift Higher from Lower all on its own." The mixing of the fibers in the coat given to him by his mother thus gains an extra meaning of subversion, and hints at Tagret's future, where he'll see that the separation of the castes is another kind of trap and work to break the barriers down.

That's why I described the suit - but I did it before I realized any of these connections. Sometimes you don't know precisely what you're doing - and you don't have to - but your subconscious says this is how it has to be. The exciting part for me about seeing these larger patterns was knowing that I could extend them further across the book. It gave me insight into Variner fashion, and into Mother's character as well. I didn't have to "make up" the rest of the clothes she wore, because I knew what kind of thought had gone into the design of Tagret's suit, and thus the same kind of thought could be applied to her choices for her own clothing. And I also knew that she'd be brave enough to be the only one wearing clothes like this, strong enough to set off a scandal and eventually a new fashion trend in the claustrophobic, decadent Pelismara society.

Because of a single suit, I know so much more about my novel now.

Yesterday was a good day.

An interesting post about story

This is fun, coming on the heels of Janice's and my discussions of the rules of writing and story. Kay Kenyon shares her thoughts on what keeps her reading: story.

A useful outline format

I've come to the point in my outlining process where I don't feel I can progress any further on For Love, For Power without doing the writing that will take me further in. This in itself is interesting, because I'm sure there are people out there who think that outliners must know everything in advance and count on their outlines not to change much. On the contrary. I'd feel rather more comfortable with this novel if my outline were a bit more solid, but I expect it to change, and in fact I expect it to become more fully fleshed as I start writing and discover the various new elements, character alterations, etc. that will help me see more about what needs to happen. The part of my outline that has the least information is actually the middle of the story - the beginning is pretty solid through chapter 13, and I have a pretty good sequence going for the final eleven chapters (yes, it has lots of chapters!). In any case, the thing that has let me get this far is creating a particular outline format in Excel, so I thought I'd share how I've been doing it in case any of my readers might find it useful.

Here's an example from the start of the novel:

CHAPTERS	EVENTS	DAY #	CALENDAR
1	Tagret meets Della in the panic	1
1	Tagret kisses Reyn	1
2	Aloran interviews with Eyli	2
2	Indal institutes the Kartunnen ban/health checks	2
3	Tagret sees Della at the concert and speaks to her	2
3	Tagret speaks to Lady Selemei	2
4	Nekantor tries to break Tagret's door	2
4	Garr and Tamelera return home	2
5	Tagret receives an invitation to tea from Lady Selemei	7	Tagret's birthday

As you can see, the main content is in the second column, labeled "events." I write down what needs to happen in varying levels of detail, depending on how much I can envision. In this case, this section is rather minimal because I'm summarizing something I've already written. When I have a clear idea of whose point of view the event must fall in, I give the event a color code showing who it belongs to. I also have the names included, but the color coding helps me to see the balance of the points of view at a glance. If I don't have enough chapters in someone's point of view, it will jump right out at me because there won't be enough of their color in that section of the outline.

In the far left column I make sure to note which chapter each event falls in. That helps me gauge the length of the book. For this book, each switch of point of view is a new chapter.

Then to the right of each event I number the days that pass. This is important for me because I need to make sure that people have enough time to change their minds, fall in love, etc. and everything has to happen pretty quickly, but it shouldn't be totally unrealistic. I also need to track whether people have had enough sleep/food/activity/healing time over certain periods of the novel (to see how worn out they would be), and the day counter makes this much easier.

Finally on the far right is the calendar. I haven't actually filled in the dates (most of the book occurs in the month of Soremor), but this is where I put important events like Tagret's birthday, his mother's birthday, the Eminence's death, the Accession Ball, and the different rounds of voting in Heir selection - which, by the way, need to occur on a fixed schedule every three days.

I think you can probably see how this was tangling up my head before I worked out this outline format. There was a time when each point of view character had his own column, but that was more confusing for me and made it harder to track which events caused one another and how the characters interacted.

In any case, I hope a glimpse at this will give you ideas for organizing your own projects - it's pretty easy to set up.

Happy outlining!

Should writers "follow the rules"?

I've been following a discussion recently on the Absolute Write forum about point of view and the idea of head-hopping (there are now two threads! 1/2). At the root of that discussion was the question of whether readers notice an author's use of point of view, and whether it's done consistently, etc. One of the issues that came up was the question of rules, since point of view (POV) follows "rules" that people say you should follow. There are also rules about not using adverbs, rules about show don't tell, rules about three-act structures, etc., etc., all through writing. One of the common exchanges that I often see coming up in discussions of rules looks like this (and let me remark that I'm not specifically referencing the AW discussion/participants here, but all the different instances of rule discussions I've seen):

Person A: "But really good writers get to break the rules all the time."
Person B: "You're just saying that because you don't know how to write."

This saddens me every time I see it. Usually person A isn't actually saying that because they're trying to cut corners, but because they've heard this refrain about breaking rules. If you've been writing for any significant length of time, you've heard this - just as you've heard the rules about adverbs and "show don't tell," etc. At the same time, person B is often not trying to attack person A, but to defend the idea behind the rules.

So why are the rules there? Can they be broken?

When these questions come up, I'm extra glad of my experience in Pragmatics - because this is be a perfect time to talk about H. P. Grice's Cooperative Principle. This principle says, "make your contribution to the conversation optimally relevant and appropriate." As I've remarked before, this may seem terribly obvious. However, it is quite powerful, because the assumption of cooperativeness allows us to draw conclusions about other speakers (and in our case, other writers).

When you assume that the writer is being maximally cooperative, you're essentially relying on two things (both of which we assume about people in speech all the time):
1. The writer knows the rules
2. When the writer breaks the rules, he/she breaks them intentionally.

This is to say that following grammatical rules establishes a default value for language - a way of using language in which everything flows and nothing stands out or gets noticed. Consequently, breaking those rules causes a marked state, a state in which things stand out as having possible hidden/additional meaning.

Compare the workings of grammar, point of view and story structure to a room with which you're very familiar. You leave the room in a particular (default) state, and have a basic memory of that state when you return to the room. When you return, if something has been moved in the room, a. you notice it and b. you draw the conclusion that someone or something has moved that thing. Depending on what has been moved and how, you can easily conclude that someone opened the window and the wind blew some papers, that your husband picked up the envelope you left for him, that your cat knocked over the plant, or that you've been robbed.

To quote from my 2006 IROSF article on Point of View:

"The voice of a narrator is usually so transparent that we feel it without needing to analyze it. [...] But then, every so often, we run across a sentence like the opening of Alfred Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit" (Science Fiction 101, p.100, emphasis added):

He doesn't know which one of us I am these days, but they know one truth.

Suddenly, the words used for point of view are not only visible but provocative. "What is he doing?" we ask. "Four different pronouns in the same sentence?" Then quickly we move on from our initial surprise to ask, "What special situation or alternate reality can this signify?""

Readers - and I'd think, particularly readers of science fiction and fantasy - will be willing to do a lot of deduction to figure out precisely what special situation is being described. Personal taste is involved, of course. Some readers find certain departures from the norm bothersome, while some don't notice those much and object to others. However, to keep reading, readers must feel a level of trust for the writer. If a departure from the rules violates that trust, perhaps through making some change that the reader finds particularly irksome, or by using language loosely so that some grammatical changes don't paint a consistent picture of an alternate situation, then the reader will stop reading.

All right, so what about those famous folks we all know about who violate all kinds of rules (grammar, point of view, structure, etc.) in inconsistent ways - yet people read their books voraciously anyway?

I'd say there are a few core elements that have to be in place grammatically - like, say, that it's really convenient to be able to identify who your characters are and keep track of who is doing what, etc. Beyond those really fundamental confusion-inducing principles, though, the kinds of rule violations that are a matter of taste can potentially be outweighed by the content of the story. Usually that has something to do with the situation, the characters in the situation, who they are and what is at stake. When the story content is exceptional, a lot of readers will ignore faults of the writing. But not all of them - take my husband, who is not a writer but is a voracious reader and was absolutely furious by the time he finished The DaVinci Code. Okay, yes, he finished it, but he's unlikely to pick up another book by Dan Brown. I personally picked up Twilight to see what it was all about (because something about the story had to be exceptional) and couldn't stand it long enough to get past page 3.

The fact is, I love a good story. But I love a good story well written even more.

If you're a writer out there wondering about rules and whether to follow them, you're asking the wrong question. The question should instead be what it means to follow them, and what it means when you break them for specific effect.

Language is a marvel. Its patterns are complex, and multilayered. I discover things constantly that put me in awe of its beauty and complexity, as well as its flexibility as a tool. If writing is your passion, and you want to make it your life, it's worth the time and effort to explore what it can really do.

P.S. Since I wrote this post, Janice Hardy has put up a companion piece dealing with story, that other critical aspect of writing - and the part that tends to make people ignore problems of grammar etc. Go here to check it out!

Feed your writing soul

If you're like most writers, you have two lives.

Mild-mannered fusion physicist by day... sf writer by night!
Fun-loving graphic designer... and fantasy writer!
Nurturing mom... and sf/f writer!

If you're at all like this, you may find it difficult to balance these two sides. There are times when the demands of your "day job" (and yes, mother/homemaker counts) completely overwhelm you to the point that your creativity may feel blocked by sheer exhaustion. Sometimes you'll experience a period of high demand from your mild-mannered alter ego, and writing will get pushed to the side.

This happens to me a lot, and I find that after an extended period of this, I need to feed my writing soul. There are many ways that I do this. Sometimes all I can do is find a really good book to read, to help me feel inspired. Sometimes I call a writing friend and have a good chat about story ideas, story structure, rewriting, etc. When I can, I try to find a convention that I can attend, even if it's only for one day.

I occasionally do this crazy thing where I fly to a nearby convention, stay for a day, and then fly back without spending the night. Yes, I know it's nuts - but it's something I know I can do, and when the convention is close enough, it's worth the trouble. I save money by not staying in the hotel, and I get a few good hours of solid time where I can be a writer - shed the alter ego and be the superhero just for a little while. It tires me, yet energizes me at the same time.

I'm going to be flying down to Los Angeles for a day at LosCon on November 27th. Even just knowing the plan is in place has made me feel more energized to do my writing, and I know that being there will help me even more.

For all of you who may occasionally (or more than occasionally) feel trapped behind the mild-mannered alter ego, I encourage you to look around for things to feed your writing soul. Even the small things. Even the things that seem a little nuts. Keeping yourself inspired as a writer is really important to keeping that alter ego happy. Even though I do my mothering while I'm not writing, I know that I'm a better mother when I'm feeling strong and energized in my writing, because I feel like a whole and happy person. So making sure to care for your inner writer-superhero can make every part of your life better.

The Experience of Pregnancy

How many of you out there have ever been pregnant? The number of you answering "yes" is going to be limited by certain factors, such as being female, being of a certain age, etc.

Okay, then, how many of you have ever considered writing about a pregnant person in a story? Probably far more - the limiting factors aren't so limiting in fiction!

So many times when I see pregnancy in a fictional context, it tends to fall into the tired old throwing up - food cravings - fat tummy combination. But there's so much more to pregnancy than that! So for those who might want to know for their research, I thought I'd start this entry. I encourage any of you who have experienced pregnancy and would like to contribute any of your own experiences to comment at the end of this post. I'm trying not to be gross here, so please keep the comments informative and not too detailed.

Let me start with some refuting/refinement of the traditional basics, and then I'll add some different kinds of pregnancy stuff.

1. Throwing up.
Not everyone does this - I felt nauseated at times, but never actually threw up in either of my pregnancies. Morning sickness can hit people in the morning, but sometimes people feel it more strongly in the afternoon (I did). For some, it can last all day. My own experience was that I would feel nausea if my stomach was ever totally empty. Therefore, I had to make sure not ever to let my stomach be empty. I took food with me everywhere (more on this below). Morning sickness for most people lasts through the first trimester (12 weeks); for me it lasted 15 weeks. I have known people for whom it lasted through the entire pregnancy, but this is more rare. So if you have a character experiencing morning sickness in their 8th month of pregnancy, this is a really unusual thing (and in addition, they've probably had it all along until then).

2. Food cravings.
Yes, these happen. But pickles and ice cream would be something I'd expect to hear about from one woman in a hundred (or maybe more). My experience was more that I wanted to eat in a particular pattern. This pattern was different for different pregnancies. With my son, I wanted to eat meat. Lots of meat, in lots of forms (though I remember feeling revulsion for tangerine beef; go figure). With my daughter, it was vegetables and fruit. Meat didn't gross me out, but neither was I excited about it. I definitely did want to keep supplies of my favorite foods available. Note for the curious: this is not a boy/girl thing. It's all about the individual pregnancy and the individual child. I have heard lots of stories about indicators that you're carrying a boy or a girl, but none that actually have consistent patterns across groups of people. The thing I experienced the most was hunger, and hunger like I'd never known it. A moment would come, and I would need to eat. NOW. Even once the nausea effect was gone, the hunger effect would remain, and I'd get so ravenous that I'd feel dizzy and angry. This again was why I carried food with me all the time. I wasn't able to wait five minutes for a table.

3. Fat tummy.
The weight that a woman gains in pregnancy is significantly more than the weight of the baby, but she may or may not put on fat. This weight comes from amniotic fluid, placenta, and other things - not the least of which would be the extra blood the woman needs during a pregnancy (up to 50% more than usual). Early in the pregnancy you'll see the tummy bulge but it will feel soft because the uterus will still be too small and too far down in the pelvis to feel. The hard round tummy of later pregnancy is the feel of the uterus which has pushed other things (intestines, etc.) out of the way. In a second or subsequent pregnancy, the abdomen will expand more quickly than in the first pregnancy, because the body has already "learned" how to stretch out to accommodate a growing baby. In addition, the tummy does not expand gradually and consistently, but will remain at one size for a period of time, and then expand rapidly over a day or two before staying at that size for another longer period.

Some other elements of pregnancy that aren't usually accurate in fiction include:

• a pregnant woman may experience slower digestion (even constipation), but she'll have to go to the bathroom more often because she'll be eliminating the baby's wastes as well as her own, and the uterus often presses down on the bladder.
• a pregnant woman will have changes in balance, and may stumble or fall, or have difficulty navigating stairs or narrow aisleways (such as passing people in a theater or stadium). The irregular expansions of the belly have a lot to do with this, as they change your center of gravity constantly.
  
• a pregnant woman will very often experience an increase in the sense of smell. I could smell cigarette smoke practically half a mile away; a friend of mine was able to smell pizza before it even came out of the kitchen. My brother referred to this as "Spidey-senses." Perhaps included in this is an increased awareness of surroundings, and increased anxiety about dangers.
  
• starting around the third trimester the woman will probably start to feel Braxton-Hicks contractions, which are uterine contractions not associated with actual labor. (It feels for a few moments like you're holding a basketball inside your stomach!) For most women I know, it has been difficult to distinguish between strong Braxton-Hicks contractions and the early onset of actual labor. Cries of "The baby's coming!" and "It's time!" occur often in fiction, but seldom in real life.
• one very common symptom of pregnancy is extreme fatigue. My own experience with this was having sudden waves of fatigue hit and knowing I had about ten seconds to lie down (bed, couch, wherever) before I'd fall asleep, whether I wanted to or not. During my first pregnancy, I'd sleep for two hours each time. During my second, the baby would wake me up after a much shorter time. On one of those occasions, I discovered he had learned to use the CD player while I was sleeping! I'm very lucky he wasn't a destructive baby.
• the "water" doesn't always break. Some women experience their water breaking at home, and some in public places. It's not always dramatic, though our pregnancy counselor joked that if it happened at the grocery store you should just break a pickle jar on the floor and shout "clean-up on aisle 3!" However, once the water breaks the baby needs to come out within 48 hours or be at risk of infection.

A few last thoughts - I include these because they stand out to me, though childbirth and its aftermath aren't really official topics of this post:

• women don't always scream in childbirth.
  
• women experience continued contractions after the birth (even when everything is out), because these serve to bring the uterus back down to its normal size and to stop the bleeding.
• breastfeeding is both instinctive and learned, and it isn't easy at first; it's also very individual. There's no one way to do it.
  

I hope this post expands your thinking about pregnancy if you haven't experienced it. It's worth doing research about it if you want to include it in a story. The web has lots of sites where you can find medical information about pregnancy and its physiological changes, including this one. You can also interview friends or try to find personal accounts of pregnancy experiences. It's worth doing, so that your story doesn't fall into a pregnancy cliché by accident.