Death to the Iron King!

Once upon a time, there were two callow college students, who each had dreams of writing books. Fate saw fit to put these two in a room together, one's bass guitar amplifier cheek by jowl with the other's collection of Al'Quadim roleplaying books and Clan of Xymox records.

The years passed, and though these two adventurers in the realm of writing found themselves separated for a few years, the tides of time chose to once more put them in close proximity. Thus, it was chosen by the skeins of fate that they would end up working closely with one another.

Putting aside the fairy tale linguistics, Paul Genesse and I have have been writer friends and alpha readers for a lot of years. In that time, Paul has shown himself to be about as dedicated to the craft as anyone can possibly be. He's taught me so much about what it takes to succeed in a business that can be cruel and difficult. I like to think I may have helped him out here and there, too.

This week, the fruition of a project that has borne the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune at last hits the shelves, both actual and digital. I'm honored that I was able to be a part of it, along with our august and talented friend Brad Beaulieu. Let me explain further:

Paul began publishing the Iron Dragon Series with a small publishing house. He released The Golden Cord, and followed it with The Dragon Hunters. Both books were very successful, The Golden Cord being the best-selling fantasy book for the house. Sadly, the exigencies of a shrinking publishing market and a weak economy caused the publisher to cut their whole fantasy line.

Paul's series, of which two out of five had been released, was orphaned. Misery and woe. Paul picked himself up, dusted himself off, and started pounding the pavement, looking for a new publisher. The thing is, no one wants to pick up an orphaned series.

There was a time when it appeared the fans of the Iron Dragon series would never know what happened to Drake and company, or if the evil plans of the Iron Dragon would come to fruition, allowing him to dominate A'leron forever.

But there was hope, even in the darkest of hours. Authors, now more than ever, are in control of their own destiny. They can seek other publishing models and still get their work out to their fans. By using electronic publishing and the CreateSpace model, Paul's books are once more seeing the light of day.

So, after all of that, I want to encourage, if not enjoin you to follow the links below and experience the heroic action of the Iron Dragon Series. Having helped edit all of these books, I can say that they are fast-paced, hard hitting stories with all the wonder, heart, and grit that fantasy fans desire. The newest, and just-released, is part three of the series, The Secret Empire. I really think that this one is Paul's best yet, rife with furious action, staggering betrayals, and the highest stakes possible, leading up to a finale that will knock your socks off.

To explore The Secret Empire, follow the links below:

The Secret Empire Ebook

The Secret Empire Print Version

The Secret Empire Createspace page (Paul gets a better cut of the profits on this one)

The whole series on Amazon

What's Goin' On?

So,

I've been fairly remiss in posting stuff to this blog for a time. That said, there's been quite a bit to speak about. First, let's get the less wonderful stuff out of the way.

My post about World Con late this summer saw me feeling poorly. Here are the reasons for this, insofar as they have been determined.

1) My Gall Bladder was going haywire. (It had to be removed.)
2) I had contracted a bacterium that was attacking my stomach with ruthless abandon. (I had to take a serious dose of antibiotics, with acid reducers that are still necessary.)
3) The top two caused my ability to eat to be severely curtailed.
4) I find myself below the body weight at which I graduated high school. My clothes appear as if I have been borrowing from an older sibling. That's the awesome part of things, by the way.

Now, onto writing news:

1) The Crimson Pact Anthologies have been doin' all right for themselves. Having a rather vested interest in the whole project, this is a happy thing for me. To remind anyone who may have forgotten, I co-wrote the origin story, "The Failed Crusade" with Paul Genesse, and have had two other stories featured in the anthologies, as well. ("Red Test" and "Red Bandanna Boys")
HERE IS THE LINK to the website for the anthologies, if you're interested.

2) The publisher for CP, Steven Saus, invited me to be a part of a Christmas-themed speculative fiction anthology that would raise money for Heifer International. It so happened that I had an evil story about a bad Santa that fit the bill. Thus, "Spec the Halls" featured one of mine. The name of the story was "Kicked in the Teeth Again", and will forever jaundice your eye when you look at a department store Santa.
CLICK HERE to check out Spec the Halls.

3) Not content to just work on fiction, I've also gotten a poem published in Pens On Fire. My poem, "This Misspent Requiem", was featured in the January issue of that publication.
POEM can be read by clicking on the link.

4) I've also been working on new stories for the upcoming 3rd and 4th volumes of the Crimson Pact. I have two stories submitted to the editor already, and should be submitting another one within the next few weeks. More on that as the information is available.

5) As if all that were not enough, I've also been working with Paul Genesse to get his newest book in the Iron Dragon Series ready for publication. Since Paul and I were in college together and are close friends, we've been talking about these books for a decade or more, and seeing the most recent one come to fruition has been quite a thing. It is called "The Secret Empire" and you'll be hearing a lot more about it tomorrow, as the big media blitz will take place at that time. Suffice it to say, though, that I have insider knowledge about this, the third in his series, and I have to say that it's going to kick some major butt. Fans of epic fantasy are going to get their surfeit of fighting, deadly terrain, evil plots, difficult sacrifices, and staggering betrayals in this rip-snorter of a story.

For more info, please check out Paul's Website.

Cheers,

Patrick

WorldCon Wrap-Up

I had a great time at WorldCon in Reno (Renovation, as they called it) this year. It was my first WorldCon, and marked the attainment of my "Triple Crown" of World speculative fiction conventions, as I'd already been to World Fantasy multiple times, and to World Horror once.

Why am I a week late in posting this info? Well, all was not sunshine and roses, and I ended up coming home a pretty sick puppy. I'll talk about that later on in the article.

First, let's talk about the good stuff.

I resolved to drive to Reno, as it's a fairly simple thing to point your car west and just go. Western Utah and Northern Nevada are pretty barren, though, and so I decided to arm myself with some audiobooks for the journey. Yeah. Alone for @530 miles? I knew I'd need them.

I went ahead and put the first five audiobooks for the Oz series on a CD, as I'd heard about the coolness of the series, but had only known about the first one, as in the movie with Judy Garland and so forth.

Okay, so the Wizard of Oz is a pretty fun little book. It's for kids, and so it's somewhat repetitive, and it's old, but it's still pretty neat. I finished it and got a few chapters into "The Land of Oz" by the time I arrived at the Peppermill in Reno.

It had been a while since I was last in a casino, and so there were a few moments of culture shock. Seeing people light a cigarette indoors and not be immediately tackled, escorted from the premises, or perhaps vaporized with lasers was odd. The Peppermill is frickin' dark on the casino floor, too. Like you've just stepped into a weird purple cave filled with chiming, muttering machines. And, unlike the old days, there's none of the sound of change actually falling into a catch bin. No, there's just an odd electronic analogue of that sound. It seems that you now redeem a ticket at various machines around the hotel, rather than getting your tokens changed for actual money. Anyhow...

I got to Reno Wednesday in the afternoon, perhaps around 4:30 or thereabouts. I checked in and got my stuff up to the room. Which was nice, by the way. Pretty swanky. And...what happened to cheap rooms in casinos? I guess those days are over. I won't dwell on that.

I managed to fart around until it was too late to actually go over to the convention hall and check in, so I decided to, instead, go and find their weight room and get me some exercise. I did so. It was good. I found that I could stack their triceps pushdown machine for ten reps (that's 200 lbs).

Life was good. I continued from there by walking around. That walking around resulted it me being vaguely lost for a little while, and turned out to yield the cardio portion of my workout by sending me on about a forty minute tour of the slightly seedy neighborhood nearby. I found a variety of things, including something that touted itself to be a European Fitness Center. Perhaps European fitness is somewhat different from the other sorts of fitness. I'm sure I couldn't tell the difference.

That night, I found that I had more than enough road food to get along, and made liberal use of the in-room coffee maker. Being unused to watching television without some specific goal in mind, I found that it took me a while to figure out what I would do with myself. In the end, I ended up watching a show about tough guys from various military arms competing to be the biggest badass. After that, there was a show about guys who made big and ludicrous firearms in the Deep South. I was really congested. I then went to bed.

Thursday was a big day at the convention. Most of my friends were arriving that day, and I was pumped to see what the Con would have in store. Sadly, I ended up at more than a few panels that I either didn't care about, or that I hadn't read the right foundational material to "get". This happens some times.

I was able to watch a cool panel that featured Eric James Stone, short story writer extrordinare, about religion and science fiction. That was pretty neat, and gave me hope that the panel discussion scene wouldn't be a total bust. (which it wasn't)

The exhibit hall was...frighteningly huge. Like, my hometown would have fit in there with room for a few of the nearby towns to spare. The art show and the dealer's room crouched in a corner of the giant space, though they were, in reality, pretty damn big.

I met Brad Beaulieu, Paul Genesse, and his wife Tammy a bit later. I had lunch with them at the hotel, and then we went to see Brad read from his book, Winds of Khalakovo, along with Courteny Schafer and Katy Stauber, who are also Night Shade Books authors with books out. All of the readings presented intriguing works, and I look for these three authors to be forces to be reckoned with in the future.

From there, we eventually ended up at the Night Bazaar party in the Atlantis, put on by the selfsame three that were just mentioned. I had been enlisted to provide paltry entertainment in the form of an ersatz strongman show during the party. I did so. The surprise of the night: Brad Beaulieu ended up ripping a yellowpages in half in front of everyone. It was a shocker. We always did think that Brad had a few superpowers up his sleeve, and now we know that's true.

Larry Correia and his posse appeared, and they were quite intrigued with the nail bending portion of the show. Many of them gave it a try, and Larry has the distinction of being the only other writer in residence who could put any kind of kink in a 60D nail. It was a fun party, and quite a hand workout, as I probably bent over twenty nails in all the traditional grips. I also broke out the Captains of Crush grippers, which were fun for all. Larry almost closed the #2 grippers a few times, and acquitted himself well. I can't easily go into all the cool people who were around at the party, but there were many, and I bent nails for most of them. The entertainment also featured the eating of candy-coated insects and crustaceans of various kinds, of which I did not partake. I did find that I like Stella Artois beer, though.

On Friday, I went to see some good panels, including one called Urbane Fantasy vs. Urban Fantasy, which featured Gail Carriger, who writes the Parasol Protectorate books, which I've quite enjoyed.

That night, I went to dinner and drinks with Chante' McCoy, Christine McMillan, Paul G., and his wife Tammy. We nerded out about writing and the Crimson Pact project, as Chante' is one of the writers, as well. Later, there was more drinking and some dancing as well. We were able to see a short set by Rachel Bloom, who was up for a Hugo for a song she wrote, the title of which I will not share at this time, as it is a little salty for this blog. A fun night.

Saturday featured some good hang-out time with Chante', Christine, Paul, and others. I sat down to a big dinner with Brad, Paul, and Gregory Wilson. I had a big steak. Herein began the "not so good" portion of our show.

After dinner, we went to the Hugo Awards Banquet. I was no sooner seated then I began to feel really poorly. I had to excuse myself. I did not get better after walking it off. I felt bad.

I went back to my hotel room and tried to wait it out, but started getting really concerned that something serious was going on with me. I was having a hard time breathing, sudden sweats, heart palpitations...not having any fun.

I called Paul (a cardiac nurse) to come and check me out. He assured me that I was okay, and that my heart sounded fine. The festivities, though, were over.

The drive home the next day was, well, really long and pretty darned miserable. I made it, though, and was in the house by 9:30 PM. I had to go to work the next day, which wasn't too cool, but what can you do?

In the end, I came home with a lot of good memories, and a pretty ugly case of the stomach-in-revolt blues. I hoping that I feel a hundred percent pretty soon, but as we speak, it's not quite there.

Hope you are all well, and thanks for reading this ludicrously long post.

Patrick

Settled Dust getting closer; The Union Trade

Folks,

I've had some good critiques for the bulk of "Settled Dust" from my friend Julie Frost, and I'm feeling confident that I can actually pull the project off as a singular whole. I just collected the last part and did yet another editing pass. It'll go out for concrit later this week.

I've got a few "fill in" scenes yet to write, and I've been told to make one segment nastier still. Aye, aye! I will do this. Once I get the corrections and concrit changes put in, I'll be ready to put the whole thing into "pretty" format and send it around to a few more of my readers. If they don't squawk and holler about awful things I've screwed up on, it'll be near the time that I will need to reach out to possible publishers for my little project.

In other news, I found another sweet album at Magnatune. This one's more of a rocker, from a band called The Union Trade. I dig it. Check it out. If you like it, Magnatune will sell it to you for a reasonable price. Hope everyone's well.




Everyday Including by The Union Trade

Working on "Settled Dust", music from "Blind Divine"

Hey, Folks,

Working on making "The Settled Dust" what it should be. Just wrote a few new scenes that I think will really tie the story arc of a secondary antagonist together. I feel like the scenes are strong ones, and I hope that they improve the work. I hope to have a full manuscript of "Dust" ready to pass around to a few readers by the beginning of April. That would be kicky! Wish me luck.

In other news, I recently bought a subscription to Magnatune.com, and I've been downloading some great music from them with. Among the disks I recently got, here's one that I dig. It's called "Queen of Venom" by Blind Divine. They're low-key rock with a very haunting female vocalist. Very haunting. My favorite track is probably "Twist the Knife".

Expect more music here. I think it'll become one of my things. Good to have, things are.

Anyway, enjoy!



Queen Of Venom by Blind Divine

Fundamentals of Flash Fiction

What is Flash Fiction?

For some, the term "flash fiction" itself may be unfamiliar. Flash fiction is the art of telling a full-fledged story with very few words. Most commonly, flash fiction is considered to be a story between 200 and 1,500 words. For those who can more easily relate to manuscript pages of text, these stories are between one and five pages in length. These tiny stories contain beginnings, middles, and ends, just as longer stories do. Everything simply occurs much more quickly. While writing, say, 500 words may seem easy, there is some art to the process of telling a good story in such a short span.

Why would I want to write Flash Fiction?

Writing flash fiction can provide a variety of benefits. If a writer is just starting out, the short word count can decrease anxiety. If you must only write a few hundred words, there's little to fear. Also, because a flash fiction story can often be written to the conclusion of a draft in one sitting, the beginning writer can experiment, being unafraid of a story “failing”. For more experienced writers, the discipline required to write “short” can be of great benefit to them when the return to longer works. If the writer can maintain the economy of language he learned while writing flash fiction, his longer stories will move at a fast pace as well. Finally, there is a market for flash fiction on the Internet. If you become highly skilled at writing these short tales, you may be able to make a few bucks and gain some publication credits for your efforts.

What's the Secret?

There are no “secrets” in writing, only helpful maxims. Here are a few that are especially useful for flash fiction:

1. Brevity is the Soul of Wit: As the Immortal Bard said, express your ideas with the minimum of words. Of all story forms, flash is the least tolerant of excess verbiage.

2. Don't use one POV too many: Generally, using more than one point-of-view character in a flash fiction is a bad idea. Tell the story from one character's perspective, if you can. If you're having a hard time, you may need to plan the story out more thoroughly.

3. Use your Allusion: Yes, it's a bad paraphrase, but it's also a great tool. In flash, you'll need to allude to the past and hint at the future. You don't have enough space to show everything that has happened or might. You can only structure your words so that the reader does this “broadening of the tale” for you.

4. One Memorable Scene: Frequently, you'll only have one scene to work with. Think of flash being a distillation of a bigger story, and you're coming in just in time to see the climactic events occur. If you can properly contextualize those events, you've told a great flash fiction story.

5. All the Standard Rules Apply: Just as any other story, flash fiction needs a great opening line, an interesting character, and a vibrant setting. The challenge a flash writer faces is that you have to convey all of this in a few artful sentences.

A Final Message:

Don't be afraid to try writing. Flash fiction is a great medium to start on. Remember, it's better to have written and stunk than to have never written at all. In order to write well, you must first WRITE to begin with. None of us writes a masterpiece in our first effort. It's okay if your early stories aren't earth shattering. You can't sit down at the piano and play Rachmaninoff the first time out, either. It's a process.

Good Writing: Style, Part Six, Character

Without great characters, even the cleverest story is like a pretty car with no engine.

At last, we come to the end of this extended inquiry into what constitutes good writing in fiction. Though we come to it last, the topic of character is far and away the most important consideration for most stories. Stories live and die by their characters. Without a compelling cast of characters, even the most fascinating events are simply that...events. It's the characters that connect readers with the events of the story. Without them, there is nothing of lasting import, nothing more than an anecdote that will soon be forgotten.

What about plot-driven stories?

I'm glad you asked. Yes, there are stories that are carried by the events more than the characters, but let me ask you—how many of the books you list amongst your favorites work that way? I may be projecting, but I think that most of the plot driven books, while fascinating, don't etch as deeply into people's memory. We're human. We need access points to get into the story, people to care about. If the story introduces terrible danger and hardship, these are but empty echoes and shadows on the wall if we don't have some feeling for the characters. All the plot devices, all the pathos and joy in a story—all of these qualities we try to evoke are filtered through the characters. The characters serve as the binding agent that allows our other techniques to succeed.

So, then, if we agree that we need great characters to get our story to function at a high level, we'll need to move forward and figure out what makes a character great. We'll need to make generalizations, all of which will be contradicted by some famous example or another. These are troubled waters. Perhaps the best thing to keep in mind is that, while characters don't have to conform to every one of these directives, they should probably conform to at least some of them.

Great characters are identifiable.

When introducing a character, a reader should be able to picture them. The details you choose to describe, while they may be sparse, must give a clear picture of who this person is. If you're really doing your job well, some readers will say, “I knew a guy just like that when I lived in Duluth!”

Now, a great character is an effective character, not necessarily an admirable one. There are great characters who are lamentable slobs, sinister brigands, or spine-shivering lunatics. Great characterization is purely a function of making the reader “feel” that character. If the reader reviles a villain character, so much the better. Just be sure that you're having your desired effect, and not the opposite. It's bad if you hope they'll adore your hardboiled detective, but they just think he's a huge moron.

Great characters have it tough.

Compelling characters live in difficult circumstances. They have to make choices we wouldn't want to make. They have to make sacrifices we hope we won't have to. They bear the scars of a hard life. Maybe they've accomplished a lot, but that's not to say they haven't had to pay for their glory in some way.

If a character is comfortable, feeling safe, and wanting for nothing in the world, there's not much of a story there. Great characters need to be in trouble. They need to be driven, to strive for something that seems out of reach. Perhaps they lament that they'll never be able to achieve that goal they swore to reach. If your characters think they've got it made, you'd better take steps to show them otherwise as the story progresses. You'd better keep them sweating until the story ends, or your story will falter. Readers know it's the end of the story when the dust clears and the character has either succeeded or failed. Don't surrender to your better angels and let your characters have it too easy. Only hard-fought victories and tragic failures need apply.

Great characters are active.

Characters that sit and wait for something to happen to them aren't very engaging. In general, characters that keep trying, even if they do the wrong thing, are more interesting than those who sit on their hands. Characters that spend chapter after chapter navel-gazing don't help the whole dramatic structure of the story. Unless one of the primary struggles of the story is that of the character seizing initiative after months or years of hesitation, you'll be better off with an active character. An active character doesn't wait for the world to do something to him, he goes and does something. Let your characters be decisive. Put them under pressure, so that they don't always have the luxury to sit back and think about their next move.

Great characters are fallible.

A hard lesson to learn, this one. When many of us start writing, we tend to make our main characters idealized versions of ourselves. They're what we wish we could be, what we always dreamed of being. Consequently, we make them into little cult objects, and it's hard for us to get our heads around these characters making huge blunders. We'll have to be mature, however. Often, a huge mistake on the main character's part is a great plot device. Not only that, the character seems more real, more earthy once they've gotten down into the big, muddy river with the rest of us.

Don't have characters make absurd mistakes or act like morons (unless that's their character), but allow them to make understandable mistakes. If they have the wrong impression of what's going on, sometimes it's okay to let them act on that bad information. Remember that the crux of a story is change, and nothing brings about changes like a catastrophic error. Let the characters play with fire, and let 'em get burned.

Great characters have “that one thing”.

What do I mean by this? I mean that a great character has some skill or attribute that makes her stand out from the rest. Maybe she's sort of average in other endeavors, but when it comes to “that one thing”, she's really amazing. Maybe it's smarts, or a special skill, or being tremendously driven to succeed...it could be anything. Whatever that signature element of the character is, everyone who reads about her will agree that, yes, she was sure amazing at that pursuit. This can be traced back to the hero myths of the ancient days. Achilles was nearly invulnerable. Hercules was the strongest of the strong. Beowulf had such an iron grasp that he was able to tear Grendel's arm from its socket. Your character doesn't need to have something so tangible as super strength or skin like iron, but characters with something special about them tend to work better.

But the balances of fate must be heeded.

The heroes of legend all had that one, ideal quality. They were often counterbalanced by some tragic failure. Sure, Achilles was a bad dude on the battlefield, but he wasn't anyone's idea of a nice guy. He was sullen and morose, filled with spite. The spot on his heel where he could be harmed is the prosaic “flaw”, but it could be said that his greater flaw was in his nature—that unreasoning rage that drove him to the brink of madness. For all his martial power, he was not a happy or well-adjusted guy. Otherwise, he'd have surely been king, not Agamemnon.

It's not required that all your characters have a fatal flaw, but they surely will have some downfalls. Maybe they're lazy when things seem safe. Maybe they have some compulsion they can't control. It's possible that they can't be trusted for some reason. They may know very well that these flaws exist, and hope to change them. Some characters may be unaware of the impact their flaws have on other people.

Perhaps the most interesting solution is to make the same element that makes them special be the element in their makeup that causes them the most grief. This creates an innate conundrum, and can make for a character who continues to wrestle between her strength and her folly, which are doomed to be forever intertwined.

Great characters are detailed.

When constructing characters, we don't necessarily have to know that their middle name is Clyde, or that they got a detention for shouting at Sally-Anne when they were in fourth grade. We don't need to know if they're still mad at their brother, Bill, for some obscure incident that involved firecrackers and a toy truck. We don't even need to know if their Senior Prom was a huge disappointment. Maybe we do know these things, but unless it's an element of the story at hand, it's only a tool to deepen our understanding about how that character approaches the world.

What do we need to know? For one, we need to know what motivates the character. Why does she act the way she does? How does she react to the stresses put on her during the story? To whom does she turn when things get out of hand...or doesn't she have anyone to turn to?

We have to understand how the character got to the place we find them. Is this where they wanted to be? Is there some great, unfulfilled dream in their past? Are they damaged goods? What are they hoping for? Have they abandoned hope? Is there some inner conflict they've never settled?

If, in the midst of your story, you find that you can't figure out what a character would do, you probably don't know the answer to some of the questions above. Remember that it's not just the plot points you have to understand. It's just as likely that a weak grasp on your character's motivations will shoot you down. When you really know your character, the writing process should become intuitive. You'll be in the character's head, thinking her thoughts. What she says and does should be as clear to you as what you would do in the same situation. Perhaps clearer, because even detailed characters are straightforward compared to the genuine article.

The details of a character, even if they never appear in the text of a story, can help you grasp deeper meanings, capitalize on inner turmoil, and generally present a much more realistic character. These detailed, understandable characters will help your story stay on track. You'll know them well enough that, should one of your plot points be flawed, you'll feel it. You'll think, “This character would never say this, never do that.” With each great character, you come closer to the possibility of writing a great story.

Great characters make sense.

When you're creating a character, make sure that you've put him together in a way that allows them to logically exist in your setting. There must be a reasonable explanation for their skills, their personality, and their life. If they're tragically flawed, why? If they're in a position of power, why? If they're the world's greatest fencer, why? If any of the questions you could ask about your character take a long-winded and complex argument to explain, maybe your character doesn't make sense. Skills come from somewhere. Characters have to be able to eat, work, travel...etc..

Now, readers will often let you gloss over some tedious elements of a story, but they will, in the end, catch you if you're not thinking a character through and making sure that they have the tools to make it in their world.

Alternately, if you plop skills and advantages on a character in heaping measures, you'll have to explain where they got these skills. If your character is a desk clerk at a business, readers will want some manner of explanation if you later reveal that he's also an arch-ninja. If no good explanation is forthcoming, they'll start looking at your story as hokum. Trust me, you don't want that.

Final Thoughts:

I'm sure that there are many elements in building a character that I didn't cover here. While I'd love to say that I had all the answers, I don't. I've gathered my paltry wisdom here and I hope that some of it helps you with your writing.

As with all inquiries into a topic such as writing, this one is far from encyclopedic. I will end our series of good writing articles here, nonetheless. As the mood strikes, I'll expound with a fool's vigor about other elements of the writing craft, but for now, this journey is at an end. For now, thanks to all of you who took the time to read these articles, and good luck to you.

"Cleanup Crew" featured at "Tales of the Zombie War"

Hey, Folks. Just checking in with the news. I spruced up one of my NBNS stories, "Cleanup Crew", and submitted it to a site called Tales of the Zombie War. For a wonder, they accepted it and asked for more, should I choose to submit more. The story's up now, and should be on the front page for a while. From what I understand, it'll move into the archive after that. As for the story, it's about twice as long as the NBNS version, and I think that it deepens the story. If you're interested in taking a gander, check it out HERE.

In other news, I posted a new poem called "'Tis the Work of Leviathans" at Hawk Circle, if you'd like to check it out.

Hope you're all well. More info as it becomes available.

Update

Hey, Folks,

I just thought I'd check in and tell you the latest news.

I submitted two stories and a poem late last week, so maybe a few of them will "pop". I'm working on a few stories to send out in the near future. I created a larger, more complete, better sorted version of my story, "Predators in the Dark" (featured in a different form on NBNS). I've got a "spooky" story that I'm about ten pages in on, but has no title thus far. It's about an abandoned boarding school where things are not entirely "right".

I have a new poem up at Hawk Circle called "Circular Breathing II" which uses a poetic form I sorta created my own self. Check it out, if you get a chance.

I also posted a new, final edition of Bloodcraft at NBNS. This one is the "letters" segment of the fictitious newsletter for mass killers.

Anyway, that's my world. Hope you're all doing well.

NBNS delves into Bloodcraft once again!

Hey Folks,

I just posted another of my Bloodcraft stories on my site, Nasty, Brutish, and Short. The idea behind the series of stories is that there's an online newsletter for mass killers, and that we're getting the editorial. It's been a fun and durable concept upon which to develop flash horror fiction, and there's at least one more installment left in the old franchise. In any case, I hope you'll check it out and tell me what you think. I'm still looking for contributers for NBNS, so if you've got some evil short stories, I'd love to feature them.

Cheers!

Style, Part Five: Emotion and Intent

Emotion:

Question: To what level are the readers affected by the emotional elements of the piece? Are the events more or less important than their emotional responses?

To be sure, there are few good stories where the reader's emotions are not affected as she reads. Without some emotional attachment to the characters in a story, all the clever plot twists in the world won't help you retain your readers. Readers will only sit still and follow your plot if they care about your characters.

This is an emotional response, most often, but this doesn't mean that it's outside the realm of rational discussion. It's not black magic. Making characters who are interesting, believable, and sympathetic is neither a trick nor a science. It's somewhere in between. We, as authors, have to do our homework. Think about characters who have been your “friends” in the stories you've read. What qualities did they display? How did the author portray them? What was it, in the end, that made them so remarkable? Were they especially brave, loyal, or true to their word? Did they make you laugh? Did they remind you of yourself, or someone you care about, or someone you've always hoped to meet? Whatever the case may be, try to distill these qualities and pour them into your own characters.

Of course, the characters you portray can owe debts to real people, not just book characters. The more true-to-life your characters can be, the more honest to your own experiences, the better. In reality, that's the heart of it. Be honest. Fix yourself in the point of view of your characters and be sure that you're having them act as they would normally do. If a character would fall prey to their weaknesses, let them do it. If they would figure out what's going on, don't have them play dumb. Readers will always know if you're straying away from a character's true nature. If they stop trusting you, they stop caring, and you're sunk.

A good character is the carrier wave of your story. She's the point of entry for a percentage of your readers. And yes, you'll need more than just one. Not everyone will identify with the same character. If your lead character is stern and difficult, perhaps even unknowable, you'll need to have a few secondary characters to lend the story a human touch. So often, people's favorite characters are the second leads, the sidekicks, and the mentors. These characters, while having admirable qualities, are often flawed and prone to mistakes. They're funny. They're more brave than competent, perhaps, or they're doomed to fall so that the hero can succeed. In some ways, the second lead, the supporting role, is the glory spot. They can be braver, perhaps, than the hero, because their abilities are not so grand.

This is not to say that it's wise to fashion a lead character who's hard to like and harder to understand. That's bad structure. Still, it's often the case that your readers will admire your lead role, but identify with your supporting character. After all, how many of us are really the iron-jawed hero? Maybe we want to be, but it's a lot easier to relate to a character with smaller dreams and smaller responsibilities.

After that long preamble, let's talk about how much emotion you can realistically hope to elicit from your audience. First of all, there is no way that some of your readers will cry, no matter how much poignant tragedy you put before them. Not all readers are open enough emotionally to be affected in such a way. I don't know if you should, as a matter of premeditation, set out to make your readers cry. Obviously, you'd like your readers to feel sad when they're supposed to, elated when you hope they will, and so forth. If they're laughing at the scary parts and shrugging at the glorious resolution of tension at the end, something has gone very wrong.

My advice is to try to make the most honest story you can, telling it with the drama that you're able to use, but not going overboard. Trying for an emotional response can lead you astray. Don't compromise your story for the “big emotional payoff”. If you've done your job all along, you won't need to stretch to get there. Your structure and style will naturally lead you to that great scene you hope for. Someone once told me that it's not sad when your characters cry, it's sad when they should, but can't or won't. Often, a scene presented with subtlety and restraint will end up touching your readers more than a ham-handed attempt at sentiment.

Okay, on to the second question. Is it the action or the reaction that carries more weight? This is really all about the type of story you're telling. If you're writing a story that's all about the external struggle, the characters fighting like hell to break through the physical barriers in their way, you'll pay most of your attention to actions. You should ground your characters as real, fallible people who can reach the end of their endurance, but you'll want to avoid long sessions of naval-gazing. That slows down the story, and you'll want things to go fast.

If you're writing a story where many of the struggles the characters encounter are internal, emotional in nature, you'll want to have fewer events, but bigger personal consequences. Maybe something that happens on page one or two is an event that the characters will need the whole rest of the story to live down, if they can ever do so.

When telling this sort of story, you'll have to be careful not to let the inquiry into the emotional fallout of these events become boring. At worst, the reader can completely lose patience with your characters and throw the book at the wall. Avoid prolonged bellyaching. The reader wants to see the character striving to get somewhere. If the story devolves into simple complaint, you're sunk. Stories are all about trying and failing, not sitting around and bitching about problems that you're not even trying to solve.

Often, stories fall somewhere in between these two extremes. The characters encounter both physical and emotional obstacles, and the author will need to work hard to make both of them important to his reader. In the best of times, there will be a synergistic relationship between each of the events in the book and the resultant aftermath. The character will have some physical episode, then grapple to deal with what happened, thereby steering herself ever closer to the next physical challenge.

Though events in reality often occur in random patterns, fiction requires more cohesiveness than that. We need to create webs of meaning and emotion around the events in our story. Things shouldn't happen for no reason, or be unconnected to anything else in the tale. This is one of the harder lessons to learn for many of us. We insert events to keep the characters busy along the way, but they are apropos to nothing. We end up grappling with whole chapters that seem exciting but go nowhere. The obstacles a character encounters need to forward the story, revealing something about her, pushing her further into a difficult situation, letting her gain some vital bit of information.

Don't just give your characters busy work to pad out your word count or spice up a trip from point A to point B. Like Depeche Mode said, “Everything counts in large amounts.” Don't let yourself write do-nothing scenes. The character has to be taking on a challenge or fighting to cope with the aftermath of that challenge. Everything else runs the risk of being unimportant. Stories don't need extra baggage. Explain what you have to, when you have to. Nothing less, nothing more. Lightness is rightness and fat don't fly. It's the same with writing as it is with ski jumping.

Intent:

Question: Does the piece aim to inform, persuade, entertain..? Is the piece, in the end, hopeful, tragic, humorous, or simply factual? Does the story end here? Is the piece part of a larger framework of other works, or does it end with a full stop, standing alone?

There's an old Joe Jackson song that states, “You can't get what you want/'till you know what you want.” That's just as true in writing as in any other field of endeavor. If you don't know what you're trying to do with the story, you'll have an awfully hard time getting the job done. We're not an army of chimps at typewriters. We can't afford to struggle along without any idea of what we're trying to accomplish, just hoping we trip over it in the gloom.

If we're writing our fiction to inform, we're going to have to fashion a story where this information is critical to the story. The reader, in learning about topic X, is going to have the tools to unravel the mysteries of the story and appreciate it.

If our purpose is to persuade, we'll have to create a sort of parable or morality play. The characters who act in the method we're promulgating will be the ones who succeed in the end. Those who act counter to our thesis will have to suffer the consequences. Whenever we have characters fail, suffer ignominy, or die badly, we're unconsciously making a value judgment about their philosophy of life. If we structure a story in such a way as to reward whatever “piety” we're pushing, we create an effective morality play. A good example of these in modern culture can be found in the 80's horror movies. The teenagers who were smoking reefer and having sex all got iced first. The good kids at least had a chance to survive. Get it?

It's possible that my view of morality stories is jaded, but the process is the same whether you're a true believer or a BS artist. Beware of “laying it on too thick” when you're trying to persuade with fiction. If your thesis is so obvious on every page, you're going to lose your readers. You have to use a little finesse. The idea is to leave your readers thinking about the broad topic of your story, moved somewhat toward your view of things. Bold-faced statements of purpose are better reserved for speeches and sermons. If your characters are delivering these speeches, make sure there's a logical dissenting opinion of some sort. If your story looks like the following dialog, you may be in trouble.

“This is so,” said Joe.

“Amen, Brother,” said Fred.

“Testify,” said Sally.

“Good then. Let's go kick some ass,” Joe replied to the congregation.

Many of us are just trying to entertain our audience. If that's the case, remember that an audience of readers still wants a good story in there somewhere. Trying to get by on shock value, low humor, and foolishness won't do. Give your audience a little credit. They may not want to read Dostoevsky, but they deserve a good story. If your plotting is cribbed from a bad romantic comedy and your character never encounters any more adversity than a bad hair day, you're cheating your readers. If there's one cardinal sin in fiction, that's it. Don't cheat your readers. Even in “light reading”, there's room for quality prose, deep characters, and genuine conflict. Heck, it's even possible to get ambitious and make a statement about the human condition.

In most cases, we've got a number of goals for a story. Maybe we want to get the reader thinking about the morality of some social phenomenon. Maybe we'd love for the reader to empathize with the character's plight, which is not so different than millions of people across the globe. Maybe we also want to take the reader away from their hum-drum life for a few hours, too. These are all parts of a good story, roles a good story can fill. If we can parse through our expectations and figure out if our story is working on these levels, we'll be on the way. We'll know what we want, and be able to set about getting it.

Let's talk now about the mood of the story. If your intent is to present a humorous tale, you'll want to be sure you're supporting this mood with your line-by-line tone. The big events of a humorous story don't all have to be laugh riots, but a funny story generally doesn't batter its reader with a long litany of tragic events. No story is just one thing, nor should it be. There will be moments of humor in the sad stories and points of pathos in the silly ones. That's life.

That being said, we have to understand what we want out of the story's mood, and make sure we're feeding and watering that mood. Funny stories are, in point of fact, funny. Tragic stories lead the reader to believe that, yes, it's possible that everything will turn bad at the end. Putting the “and then all the bunnies died” ending after a happy story is going to do nothing but make the readers angry. Give the story the ending it deserves. If you build up a grim mood throughout the story, then let all the characters get away unscathed, you'll let the reader down. Know what you're shooting for, write your story accordingly, and don't change your mind at the eleventh hour. What use is foreshadowing if you don't know what you'll do in the end?

Another question comes down to your future usage of a story. Is there anything left to examine after the story ends? Do you want the reader to nod, put the book down, and have no more expectation of seeing those characters again? Do you “leave the door open” for future stories?

A few stories stand on their own, needing no preamble and calling for no second interval upon the stage. In most cases, however, a story hints at earlier events that could be amplified or consequences that could be explored. Whether or not you, as the writer, choose to those roads yet traveled, is an open question.

Really, you have three choices. Your story can either preclude any further stories, hint that there could be, or make them a necessity.

Some stories end with the character changed so much that there would be no point in writing more. If the character's big problem is solved, why go further? If the character is dead, yeah, you can stop. (Unless it's a supernatural story, then you may just be getting warmed up!) If the character has one great purpose, whether she succeeds or fails in the attempt to fulfill that purpose, the story is finished when you write the last line. There's nothing more to say or do.

Most stories offer the ability to go on and tell another tale. Because readers become attached to characters, they often want more stories about those “friends”. A story that can be expanded is one where a big event happens, but leaves the characters in a position to take on another event. There are unexplored elements to the setting and the characters, so that you'll have plenty of “ammo” for another story. Still, these stories have a satisfying conclusion, and if the reader never gets to see the next story, she won't feel cheated.

There are stories that ask as many questions as they answer, stories that interest the reader in plot elements that cannot be resolved within the confines of that tale, but lead inevitably to the next one. If the reader finishes the story saying, “cool, but what about...” then you're in this third category. The story has started, but the saga has only begun.

What can we take from this? If it's your intention to write a series of stories, don't sew the story up so much that there's nowhere to go. If you're writing a stand-alone story, resolve your plot threads and be sure that the ending leaves the reader feeling satisfied. If you're not sure, it's best to have a good, rousing ending, but leave a few people “standing” to continue the story.

If you remember nothing else, remember that most of a writer's problems stem from being uncertain about what she's trying to accomplish. You don't have to know everything, but if you can start a story with an understanding of your characters, their roles in the story, how you want the readers to feel as events unfold, and what the overall mood of the story should be, you'll find that things go a lot more smoothly.

Next Time: The Biggest Question of all: Character

"With a Dancer's Grace" to be published!

Hey, Folks. More publishing news--the good kind. My story, "With a Dancer's Grace" is going to be published in the upcoming issue of The First Line, a quarterly literary journal. If you get a chance to go over there, I hope you'll support them. I think they put out a good product, and I'd love you to check out my story in the next issue. I'm really pleased to get the publishing credit on this one. I've been working to get one in this journal for a while. Seems like things are going my way lately in this regard. In any case, I hope you're all doing well. If you're writing, write well. If you're not, get to work!

Dayhunter is submitted!

Well, my novella, Dayhunter, is off to be weighed and measured. Final tally: 24 days, 28 K words, 2 edits, synopsis (re-written twice), cover letter (yep, second try on that one, too).

I'm a little tuckered out, but I've been productive in the way I always thought I could be. I've been working full time during this whole time, written and posted stuff on all my websites, and actually found a way to build up a surplus of flash fiction for NBNS. I've been in "death blossom" mode, basically (Last Starfighter reference), firing in all directions at once. It's neat when you can do it, but it's not a sustainable phenomenon.

Anyway, it's been a great month, but I'm glad the weight is off my shoulders. I just hope that the novella is accepted. That would be sweet. I hope you are all doing well. I'll keep you posted with all the gory details of my success/failure. Peace.

Dayhunter: Done!

Well, here's the final tally for the first draft of my novella, Dayhunter. I started on July 4th and finished on the 21st. That's 17 days. Word count for the draft is 27,151, giving me a little breathing room under the 30k cap. I anticipate that I'll use most of that up on the second run through. I wrote Dayhunter as tight and spare as I knew how. I made sure that every chapter, every scene, every line was "on the clock".

The MS is with my alpha readers now. I'm going to get their feedback and let the story rest for a few days. For me, I think it turned out great. They're never quite as good as you hope when you come back, though, so I'm prepared for a rigorous edit when I come back to it. I'll probably start the editing on the 24th. I've got the day off for the local "Pioneer Days" holiday.

This has been a great experience for me thus far. It was a challenge that sometimes caused me to seek out the antacids, but the rush was worth all the missed sleep and all the stress. It's been a while since I tackled a big project like this. That is one thing that you tend to get on a novella or novel--that rush, that flow where you're thinking about it all the time, living in the story.

I hope that I'll have great news about this one, folks. If the publisher is looking for the sort of story I wrote, I think it'll succeed. If not, I think there's a market out there somewhere that'll take it.

Hope everyone's doing well out there. I'll be back with more news as soon as I move on to the editing process. For now, though, I'm going to lay around for the rest of the day and feel good about myself.

Dayhunter: Second Act is Done!

As of last night, I'm at 20,451 words, and the second act is finished. I think the story's coming out great. I have another week of writing to finish the third act. My guesstimate for total length is around 25k or 26k. If I keep my mojo working this week, that'll give me up to nine days to edit the darned thing. I don't feel like there are any big plot holes to fill (thanks, outline!), and the writing has been coming out fairly clean. It'll be spit and polish, for the most part, I hope.

I've had good responses from my alpha readers, so I think all is well.

Wish me luck!

Hope you are all well. If you're writing, buena suerte.

Style, Part Four: Intensity

What keeps a reader interested, reading late into the night, even when they have that important meeting at work the next day? What prevents a reader from wandering off to clean the breakfast nook or play a video game? What makes a story vital, exciting, and dynamic?

Intensity, that's what.

An intense story grips the reader, making her need to keep reading, need to know what happens next. Intense stories are the ones that make the fourteen-year-old sit there on the couch and say, “Wow. That kicked ass!”

We want to write intense stories, because they're the ones that get read, remembered, and talked about. In the end, intense stories are the ones that sell, especially in genre fiction. If given the choice between a contemplative bout of navel-gazing and a rip roaring adventure, readers tend to pick the latter. That doesn't mean that there's no room for the former, but let's be honest here: we want to fish from the wider, deeper pond when we're submitting stories. We're already running uphill in the driving snow, just trying to get through to anyone. We don't want to limit ourselves further with a story that, to most markets, is a non-starter.

So, what is intensity and how do we put it into our stories? Many authors, editors, and teachers like to say, “Conflict on every page.”
That doesn't mean that there has to be constant fist fighting and gun/knife/swordplay, but it does illuminate one method of creating intensity. Physical conflict, at least the kind where a character stands a chance to be injured or killed, is certainly the most literal embodiment of conflict. It's not the only one, however. When characters are striving their uttermost to achieve a goal that seems out of reach, that's conflict. When characters suddenly begin to doubt all the motives they've ever had, that's conflict. When characters stand up and refuse to do a deed that they feel is wrong, that's conflict. When they, on the other hand, compromise their morals to achieve an end, that's conflict, too.

Anytime a character faces a tough situation or a tough choice, that creates conflict for that character. Should she stay or go? Should she fight or run? Should she choose the easy, safe road or one that's going to involve risk? We're all conflicted about the small stuff in life, and often the big stuff, too. Even if it isn't fight or flight, our decisions can be nettlesome. All those decisions, in the end, become us. It's no different for fictional characters—only the scale is altered.

Here's a great truth of fiction writing: our characters have to lead difficult, even perilous lives. They have to be put under great strain and generally have a tough time. We don't want to read stories about their “normal” days. We assume that they have quiet days, and we can allude to normalcy, but when we're reading, we want to hear about the good stuff. We want them in turmoil, facing difficult circumstances that will test them and change them. We want the stakes to be high—for them, and possibly for others they care about. Intensity comes from conflict, if that conflict is well executed and believable. Intensity comes from hitting the characters where it hurts, giving them problems they don't think they can overcome, and challenging them physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Be mean to your characters—readers are sadistic, and they like that stuff. It sounds crazy, but think back to the stories that you really liked as a kid. In most of them, I bet that the character was having all sorts of trouble. Think about the simplest of stories, like folk tales and nursery rhymes. The three little pigs didn't get good at building houses out of brick because they thought it would improve their property values. They needed that brick house, or the wolf would eat them. Scheherezade needed to tell her tales well, because her evil husband would kill her if he lost interest. That's a tense situation.

Now, some would disagree with this, but I believe that, like everything else, tension can be overplayed. If your story goes far beyond the realms of human endurance, never letting a character have even a moment's rest, I think that blows your credibility. You don't have to go deeply into a character's “lunch break” from the horrors of the story, but if a tale takes place over months or years, it's clear that there will have to be lulls in the action. If anyone watches the show 24 with a critical eye, you know that one guy can't do that much in that time, that often. Jack Bauer would be a physically broken emotional wreck by the end of season two. Not to mention, a lot of physicists would be beating down his door for being everywhere at once. Still, the intensity in the story is such that we're willing to overlook small (or large) lapses in logic.

In the format of the written word, readers are not so forgiving. They'll eventually need to know that your characters sleep, eat, and use the restroom from time to time. If you stress your character to the breaking point, they'll have to break. Really. Having a character lose his nerve, fall apart emotionally, or otherwise be unable to continue is not a bad thing. Readers identify with characters that have limits. Why? because we're all limited, we're all frail on some level. Yes, we want to see heroic characters push on until the bitter end, but perhaps the bitter end for them comes before the victory is won. Maybe they need help. Or maybe—the worst happens.

It's okay for characters to fail, fall, or die. These things happen. If it's totally unimaginable that a character could survive the horrible circumstances of your story, don't be seduced by the idea of a happy ending and ruin the continuity by having some miracle save the hero. Heroes make their living succeeding where they shouldn't, living where others wouldn't. Living on when, realistically, they couldn't, however, dissolves the intensity of the story, since the reader no longer believes in the ultimate consequences of the tale. (That's a reason I'm dead-set against characters returning from the dead, but that is another story.)

If you're concerned with dissolving the tension when your character finally crashes or overcomes one of the hurdles of the story, there are a few things you can do to keep the tension high. One tactic is to create a cascading, geometric progression of difficulties. For instance you could have the first hurdle reveal the full scope of the problem at hand, so that one victory will be followed by a sobering truth. The second hurdle may seem to hold the key to everything, but after attaining it, those hopes could be dashed, revealing it as a false lead or a further widening of the conflict. The third hurdle in the story could seem insurmountable, leading the character to question whether or not his motives from the beginning were even valid. This can go on as long as the story requires. As soon as the character sits back for a moment and thinks, “Well, I'm okay now,” we find out something that makes it clear that this is anything but true. Every perceived victory throws the conflict further out of control, increasing the stakes, making the possibility of victory more remote.

Another tactic for holding a story's momentum is to have multiple conflicts occurring in different places. This can help you keep the intensity of the book high without putting so much pressure on you to “top yourself” with each plot twist. You can alternate between conflicts, always keeping the reader apprehensive. When one area of conflict dies down, you can focus on another character's plight, thereby maintaining your intensity.

Also, remember that conflicts are not always “concrete” things, like your formidable swordswoman fighting the evil Dronjak raiders of the Northern Reach. Many conflicts are internal, such as the aforementioned swordswoman knowing that the Dronjak are not really evil, but only striving for arable farmland with which to feed their people. She may be consumed with guilt for all the blood she's spilled in the name of a king she knows to be a conniving, underhanded snake.

Conflict can also be promulgated in the reader's mind. This can happen when the reader is aware of things that the character is not. For instance, if the reader is aware that Juliet isn't dead, but only sleeping on the slab in the crypt (weird, but hey...), she knows the awful mistake Romeo makes when he chooses to kill himself. Using reader knowledge against character knowledge can really make for heart-wrenching scenes. When the reader knows the character has it all wrong, and is headed for ruin, that will fill them with the urge to shout at the character, “No, don't do it! Just wait!” that's intensity. If the reader is reading with their heart, you have them. It's a good story. You've done your job.

Here's another news flash, something that takes many of us a book or three to figure out: Characters can be wrong. They can be fallible. Big mistakes are one of the great plot devices at your disposal. Most of the classical stories in literature are based upon a character who is powerful, but fallible. The character has some great downfall that ruins everything. You don't have to write tragedies, of course, but allowing characters to fail, especially in spectacular fashion, can sometimes make for the most dramatic story lines, the ones with the most intensity. In the parlance of the Bible, you have to fall in order to be redeemed.

When we read, we're agreeing to go along with the author, to sublimate our concerns about next month's rent, to ignore our roommates as they're playing on the Nintendo. We're taking time away from other pursuits, some of which may be important. In order to justify this gift of time our readers tender up, we as authors must give them something vibrant, exciting, well-crafted, and meaningful. It's our only stock in trade, so we can't afford to pawn off second-rate merchandise. If we can present a story with far-reaching consequences, with emotional turmoil, with the Stygian depths of despair and the august heights of triumph—that's going to justify the reader's faith in us. We must go beyond the norm, we must present a tale outside the tired rank and file. It has to be more intense than the lives our readers are leading.

Using all the tactics discussed above (not to mention a myriad of others you may think of on your own), along with good structure and solid line-by-line style, you can write a story that will run around in your readers' heads for years. If you do it right, there will be a few people who will keep thinking about your story, whose lives may actually be altered in small ways by the words you wrote down. With words, you can wield great magic, but that sorcery is neither quick nor simple. It takes work, time, and sometimes tears. If it means enough to you, you'll pay the cost and cast the runes.

Good luck, and happy writing.

Next time: Emotion and Intent

Style, Part Three: Word Choice and Linguistic Complexity

Word Choice:

Words are the dirt of your story, the grass, the twigs and branches, the air and the heavens above. Words are the elemental necessity of your story, and the choices you make dictate the lay of the land. Word choice takes place in every phrase and sentence. There a dozen words to describe even the rarest of events, feelings, or subjects. Which words should we choose? Which words will forward our story and give the reader the most accurate information? Which words will “set the twilight reeling?” (Lou Reed)

Arriving at the right words is probably the most essential struggle that any writer can have. How often have you thought, “I know what happens, right through until the end. I just can't frame it in words.” We all have had that feeling. The translation from thought to word can sometimes be a rough and inexact thing. We, as writers, however, have signed on to make that conversion take place. It's a dirty job...

We talked about tone in one of the previous articles, and your word choice is certainly going to dictate the tone of your story. Insofar as a story can have a texture, the words provide it. I won't try to enumerate the words that can lead to particular tones and colors here, but I want you to start thinking about how certain words make you feel. “Tone” words are not simply adjectives and adverbs, of course. Often, we'll want to steer clear of throwing too many modifiers at our nouns and verbs—this tactic can seem amateurish to editors, not to mention clogging up your story's flow. No, it's often the verb you use that'll start your reader's mind turning. There's a big difference between walking and trudging. There's a big difference between giggling and gibbering.

Even nouns, the stoic role-players of our linguistic scheme, can play a part. Often, this has to do with specificity. Can you name your objects and subjects with a pin-point laser, or are they vague generalities? After all, it makes a difference when your character refers to a fossilized heap of bones as an Australopithecus Afarensis. It reveals a lot about a character when they think in this way. On the other hand, if your character doesn't know a distributer cap from a manhole cover, he'll see a mystifying array of wires and hoses underneath a car's hood. You choose the words, and that choice tells the reader a great deal. The way a character sees things, they way she understands them—that's storytelling gold, because you can give the reader this information without overt “telling”.

Example:

Not-so-good: Jim didn't understand cars. He had always felt bad about it, but everything that took place under the hood was a mystery to him. He'd only agreed to look at Clarissa's car because he was do damned infatuated with her.

Better: Jim peered at the dark crevice between the hood and the car's grill. He'd already pulled hard at the damned thing, but it wouldn't come up. There had to be a catch. He put his hand in there and felt around, only to pull it back with a mashed fingernail. He shook the injured hand and swore, sotto voce. “May as well be Scylla and Charybdis, for all I can get through.”

“How are you doing?” Clarissa asked from the door.

“Fine, fine. Just getting started.” He smiled at her, but the sweat rolled down the center of his back.

She squinted at him, then nodded. “Let me know if you need a glass of tea.”

Jim watched her go. She had a backside that would make Aphrodite weep with envy. Failure was not an option.

So, then, we see that the verbs we use indicate the manner in which actions are taken. The closer those actions are to the intent you have, the better. With nouns, we see that specificity and generality are great tools to indicate the knowledge base of the character, their background, and their thought process. Of course, we will also be using modifiers—adjectives and adverbs. If necessary, you can indicate that your noun is gargantuan, or your verb takes place horribly. Just make sure you're not loading sentences so full of modifiers that that can't get out of their own way. We don't want huge, dark, bellowing, insane, bloody, horrific bunny rabbits, do we? Well, maybe we do, but we should find better ways than a huge stack of adjectives to get the point across.

There are some times when a reader or editor will mark your story up with “word choice issues”. In these cases, there are several things that may be happening. The first one is simply misuse of a word. Maybe you always thought a word meant something that it really doesn't. This isn't anything to be upset about. We all carry around a certain amount of misinformation. Figure out what word you should have been using, and what the correct application of the original word is, and you won't make that mistake again.

In other circumstances, you'll use a word that is perfectly serviceable in the sentence, but could be replaced by a better choice. In this case, there are probably several choices out there for you, and some of them may be “more perfect” than the one you chose. In this case, it's usually an issue of “shadings of meaning”. Every word has an invisible freight of assumptions and associations attached to it. When the word occurs, it will stir up these meanings like a fish skimming the sandy bottom of a pond. If some of the associations that are stirred up with your word choice work counter to your overall intent, you'll want to search for a more, ahem, simpatico word.

In some cases, your word choice will have to be monitored, so that it matches the story's setting. Historical tales, fantasy stories, and other stories that do not take place in the same time and place as the “normal world” will require special attention. If you're writing a story about stone age man being pursued by fire-breathing lizards on the plains of some imaginary planet, you won't want to use linguistic forms and references from modern pop cultures. Having Barg, hunter of the Zuul tribe get “really bummed out” and need some “alone time” will make everyone laugh at your story. This is what's called anachronistic language. It's language that is “out of time” with the rest of your story. Be careful of it. It's surprisingly easy to slip and start writing modern ideas and terms into your historical/fantasy tale. Of course, there are some elements that you can choose to leave in, so that modern readers will identify with the characters, but be careful. Like any other rule, break it only when you know what you're doing.

Finally, particular people will come up with a personal lexicon of words that they have a special relationship with. These words either become favorites or “pet peeves”. In the case of the former, you'll notice that most people have stock phrases or words that they use more frequently than the average. Your boss at work might say, “Outstanding” at least once per day. Your friend from fifth grade may describe himself doing things “like a little monster” all the time. These are the favorites, the modes of speech you can internalize and use to model a character on at a later date. This stuff is gold. If you use words that people have in their “favorites” list, you'll generally notice that they identify with your story a bit better than they would otherwise. If, on the other hand, you hit their pet peeves, you'll have the opposite reaction. This can be something as prosaic as naming a character after someone's hated ex-spouse and convoluted as using a word they associate with their favorite cat, who is long dead and often mourned. You never know. It's hard to plan for this instance, but you can use what you learn from people's reactions. If you're writing to a particular audience, you may wish to internalize their vocabulary, so that you can insert words they'll have positive associations with into your story.

Linguistic Complexity

Here, yet again, we're treading quite closely upon the “tone” issue. We'll go a bit deeper into a specific aspect of it, however, and talk about the appropriate level of complexity to introduce into your story. We'll want to match our linguistic complexity to our intended audience, of course. It's not productive to reference Shakespeare and Kierkegaard in a book designed for beginning readers. They won't get it. On the other hand, we don't want to make a story we're writing for teens so simple that we're insulting their intelligence.

The English language is gigantic in regard to its total vocabulary. None of us can know every word in circulation, or even a large fraction of them. We can, however, call upon words that others may have never seen. We each walk our own path, after all, and we may have encountered and assimilated words that others have never even heard or read. That's fine, but we don't want to boggle the reader's mind at the critical juncture of our climatic scene. A good rule of thumb is this: if you think that the word may be wholly unfamiliar to your readers, introduce it in context. That is to say, introduce it in such a way as to help the reader understand what you mean. It's not necessary to actually define the word within the text of your story, but it should be placed cheek-by-jowl with other, more familiar words. The point of your passage should be manifest, even without perfect understanding of the obscure word or phrase.

In addition to all the generally-used words in English, there are innumerable subsets of language that serve one technical community or another. This is often referred to as “jargon”. These words will be utterly familiar to a small group of people who need them, but otherwise mysterious. Just because you're an astrophysicist, that doesn't mean that we all are. Be careful of using your specialized terminology in a story, unless you're willing to introduce it and help us understand. If you're going that far, however, the term had better be important to the tale at hand.

It's more than words that make your language complicated. Sentence structure also plays a part. I've kicked this horse around on multiple occasions already in this series, so I'll simply say that the more compound, complex sentences you feature in your story, the more difficult it will be to read. If your readers are all very high-functioning, you'll have no trouble...unless they're tired or distracted or just not in the mood for a ceaselessly convoluted string of predicates and sub-predicates. Most good writing features a mix of simple declaratives and more complex sentences. This allows the “beat” of your narrative to ebb and flow, like a good jazz song. It's always best when the flow of prose allows for the build-up and release of tension. The mixture of short and long sentences allows for that essential ebb and flow. I recommend it.

Now we come to another issue. Thus far in this segment, we've been talking about the narrative of the story. When we face dialog, we're up against a whole different issue. How a character talks is one of your best indicators of her mental state, her background, and her comprehension of the world around her. You needn't say a character is a slack-jawed yokel. If the character speaks, the truth can be betrayed in a few lines of dialog. And again, if your character is a doctoral candidate in philosophy, her way of speaking can be equally telling. This, perhaps, is one of the secrets of good writing. To be able to “tell” the reader without ever writing a line of exposition on the subject. In this way, our linguistic complexity choices can make or break a story.

In Summation:

1)Word choice is an essential part of your style and tone. Pay close attention to the “invisible payload” of your words. This emotional payload can either create a wonderfully enveloping tone or break the reader completely out of the flow. Have your proofreaders mark the words that made them stop “seeing” the story, and start reading again. It's those words you'll have to work on most closely.

2)Appropriate word choice can reveal things about a character's state of mind that would take you a paragraph of exposition. Inserting these “keystone” words is the essential element of “showing”, rather than “telling”. It's always better to throw one perfect word at a problem than a hundred sub-par words.

3)When fretting over an uncommon word, make sure that your whole point is not reliant on the reader's comprehension of that word. Give some contextual information to help him along, and he may actually learn something.

4)Try to use a level of linguistic complexity that is appropriate to your audience, but don't “dumb down” too much. Remember that even pre-teens have big vocabularies, and can understand much of what an adult can. Still, even in adult-biased stories, there's no need to seek out the most baroque sentence structures. Simplicity brings clarity and quickness to your prose. A “rhythm” can often keep readers from looking away, and that rhythm requires that the language ebb and flow.

5)By looking carefully at the language we use during dialog, we can build elements of character without a word of exposition, again steering us toward economical, involving prose. The linguistic construction of a character's dialog will reveal him in a way that readers will understand almost intuitively.

Next time: Intensity

Style, Part Two: Tense and Point of View

From the top-- Third person, Past tense:

Most stories occur in the past tense, and are conveyed with a third-person point of view. This is the classic way of telling a story, with a narrator describing the action as it happened in some historical episode.

Example:

Grim faced, Fred took up his sword and called for his armor. They girded his mail across his shoulders and held forth his shining helm. The women of the castle wept at the sight of him, so awful was his rage. Taking his retinue, he set out to the west gate, prepared for battle.

“If I do not return, remember me not for today, but for how I lived in the good, many years of peace,” he called out. These were the last words anyone heard him utter.

As you can see, the past tense, third person point of view is useful and comfortable. It allows us to tell stories that involve a great many characters and settings, since we don't rely on a character in the story to relay the information. In classical storytelling, the narrator knew all that occurred, and could convey both factual information and internal thoughts and emotions of all the characters. The classical storyteller could “hop from head to head” within a scene, conveying whatever information was required. This is called the Third Person Omniscient point of view.

More about the past tense:

The past tense is a distancing tense, however. Things are not in the process of happening. Rather, they have already occurred, and all that remains is to relate the tale of deeds and words. It is a conceptually understandable format, where no suspension of disbelief is required. What it gives up in immediacy, it gains in simplicity.

A drawback that some may encounter with the past tense is that, when referring to an event further in the past than the time frame at issue, it will require the use of the past perfect tense. This can “slow” the flow of information, and some verb forms become ugly in the past perfect, as well. The past perfect tense looks like this:

Example:

Many years before, the mill pond had been the backdrop for a tragedy. A young Gavelbohn, having been scorned by his lover, set upon a peasant and slew him out of hand. Years later, when Gavelbohn had become king, people still talked of the incident, saying that his eyes had been wild as a boar's.

The present tense:

The most frequent alternative to the past tense would be the present tense. In this tense, things are happening in real time. It is a very immediate tense, though it can prove nettlesome in some cases, since the flow of information must be handled carefully. Also, some readers have a hard time “believing” the present tense, since stories obviously take place in the author's mind, and the process is far from immediate.

A big plus to the present tense is that it “pushes” the action. Since all the verbs indicate current action, it lends the text vitality it might lack in the past tense. Also, the present tense allows you to use the simple past tense for previous events, thereby virtually eliminating the past perfect from your area of concern.

Example:

Angelina sits up, looking around. The battlefield stretches in all directions, smoke and dust rising up to meet the purple dusk. Her head aches. She can feel the sharp rasp in her ribs that tells of fracture points. The smell of old blood, fire, and spent gunpowder is cloying and horrible, but the noise of the killing field is muted.

“It's over,” she whispers. “We lost.”

A carrion bird flutters to the ground, studying her with its ebony eyes. It pecks at a fallen soldier's lifeless palm, pulling free a small chunk of flesh. Angelina wants to scream out, to shoo the bird away, but the sky turns pale in her vision. She gasps, and all returns to a blessed blackness.

In the example, I used a third person, present tense format. You'll notice that I restricted myself to the information that the character in question could know. The third person, limited point of view allows you to only take the part of one character per scene, so that the whole scene must be told from that character's point of view. Just because another character knows something or feels an emotion, that is not obvious to the current point of view character. Most modern stories are told in the third person limited point of view. Many people prefer it, since it “keeps the author honest” by making him/her stick with one character and examine that character's point of view. If in doubt, use the third person limited, past tense. It's the most common tense. The present tense, as above, is a somewhat more advanced technique, and will require you to edit carefully. It'll be tempting to drift back into the past, and you'll have to watch yourself all the time.

First Person:

Many of the stories that people tell orally will be first person narratives. They're the most natural form of story around. They tell a story in which you are the main character, or at least a present member of a group that can act as a chronicler. First person stories, like present tense point of view, tend to be fast and immediate in their storytelling. They tie the events to a particular character, giving immediate context.

The first person point of view also introduces us to a great new tool: the unreliable narrator. Sometimes, the way a story is related can reveal a lot about the person narrating the story. There may, in fact, always be an inherent bias present. Certainly, the bias of the writer will come through. You are who you are, and you'll have to write your stories from your own headspace. Any divergence from this is a mental exercise, and will always be imperfect. You can't simply “be” another person, with different likes, dislikes, and history. You can conceptually grasp that step, but you can't really take it.

Okay, that's an aside, but let's get back to the real issue: unreliable narrators. What a narrator says and doesn't say, how they portray themselves and others in the narrative—these things give the reader clues as to how much to trust their judgment. If the narrator is an egotistical snob who always views himself as being in the right, that should be clear. A clever writer can make a lot of hay with this concept. Think about it. Work with it. The first person has this power.

Now, just like any stylistic choice, going with the first person will limit you in some ways. For one thing, you'll have to limit the scope of the narrative to what one character knows, thinks, and finds out from some third party. You can't really leap around from one location to another very smoothly. Many things will always be a mystery to your narrator, unless your first person is some god or omniscient being (which sounds interesting, but hard to pull off). You could even go with more than one first person narrators, but that seems like the road to madness to me.

No, in general, you're stuck with one narrator, with all her strengths and weaknesses. If you're going with first person, make sure that you REALLY LIKE the narrator, because you'll be with her for a long haul. If she isn't very interesting, the story is probably ready to squat down before you've even gotten into it very far. If your story relies on a massively multi-threaded tale going on across several continents, you're probably not going to like trying to write it from the first person, either. It can be done. With enough cleverness and skill ANYTHING can be done, but are you going to be the one to try it? If you're not a WRITING GOD, maybe you want to say, “no.”

What about...

So, you ask, what about the other tenses? What about the other points of view? Yes, it's possible to write a story in the future tense, but think back to all the stories you've read. Any one of them sound like this?

Example:

It will be wonderful. I will say things like, “Hey, Bob, what's shaking?”

Bob will answer, “Jim, I'm doing well.”

Sound fun to you? If it does, have at it! You'll be one of the first to try something like that. You could write a story in the second person, too. Here's second person, present tense.

Example:

You gasp, barely able to keep running. The creature behind you is gaining ground with every minute. You don't know how you got this far, with all those cigarettes you've smoked in the last ten years. And all those donuts. Holy mackerel! The donuts alone could have killed you ten times over.

Sure, you could take the road less traveled, but if you're a beginning writer, maybe you want to get your chops up to speed before you take on a big project in an unusual tense/POV. Give yourself a break. Starting out on a novel in first person, present tense is like deciding you're going to write a symphony in 9/8 time, just as soon as you learn to play the piano. It's a tall order.

So, here's a rundown of tense/POV combinations for you, with notes, in case some of you skipped the big speeches and went for the sweet spot.

Third Person, Past Tense: The most common combo. Most of what you read will be in this tense/POV. You can choose to have a limited narrator, as if one of the characters were experiencing the story from ground level, or an omniscient narrator, who knows what everyone is thinking and feeling, and even knows how everything will turn out in the end. The “limited” narrator is more popular in modern fiction, but some good authors have used the omniscient. The key with that much power is to use it wisely. You can say and show too much, ruining the symmetry of the tale.

Third Person, Present Tense: Less common, but a viable choice. Essentially, you're trading in the “already happened” for the “happening right now” here. The present tense takes a little more concentration, but is otherwise utilitarian, just like the third person past. Both limited and omniscient narrators can be used.

First Person, Past Tense: Probably the second most common choice. You can hear a lot of this voice in old detective stories. “I could tell she was trouble as soon as she walked in.” You can “push” the story here, and you need only furnish the details the narrator needs to tell the tale. If there are gaps in her knowledge, that's fine. It can sometimes improve the tension. “I wonder why?” can keep a reader going though the night, if it's done well. Unreliable narrators can add another layer of intrigue, if done right. You lose the ability to tell such a vast story, however, since you're tied to the knowledge and experience of one person.

First Person, Present Tense: Much of what was said above counts for this choice, too. This is probably the “fastest” of the choices, but also can cause logical difficulties, since it's like riding in someone's head in real time. Not a particularly common technique, but it's worth a try, especially on a short project. The immediacy of the voice is somewhat addictive.

If you find a story seems flat with the same old tense/POV you've always used, maybe you need to give it a kick in the pants with a new technique. Try to rewrite a page or two with an alternative tense, and you might find that spark you've been missing.

Next Time: Word Choice/Linguistic Complexity