Yearning, or What Your Character Wants Most

Only two days left of Blogging from A to Z. I'm going to miss the challenge of coming up with something to write about nearly every day. But, it'll be nice to breathe again!

Without further ado…

Y is for Yearning

Have you ever wanted something really badly? I mean, really, really badly?

Everyone has longed for something at some point in their life. It could be something good, like a relationship, a child, their dream job, an iPad, or simply wanting to pay the bills. Or you could want something bad, like your best friend's wife, or that third piece of chocolate cheesecake.

In writing a novel, every character needs to have a yearning for something. A character's wants are what drive the story forward. What does Katniss Everdeen want? To survive the hunger games and protect her family. What does Harry Potter want? To destroy Lord Voldemort and live his life in peace. What does Lizzie Bennet want? To marry a good man for love (and it would help if he's rich).

Notice anything in common about these wants? All the characters' wants are being denied. A want only drives the novel forward if it is thwarted. If the yearning is satisfied, then it disappears. It drops out of the plot and the character does not need to act to get it. In other words, don't give your character what she wants--take it away from her instead. Or make her yearn for something new. And don't let her have that, either.

It's the best way to get a novel's plot moving: get your character yearning for something that she cannot have.

Do you know what your character wants?

~I.E.

Xerox, or Backing Up Your Work

X is for Xerox. 

There's nothing worse than a computer failure when you're writing your magnum opus.

That blue screen of death, otherwise known as the death throes of an exhausted computer. 

It's the thing every writer dreads. The blood drains from your face, you stare at the computer in disbelief, you may scream. Or burst into tears.

It's happened to everyone. You click "save" at the end of a hard day's work, and instead of saving, the program crashes. Your work is gone.

In the old days, a backup might have involved you typing out your manuscript on a typewriter and then using a Xerox machine (like how I worked that "X" in there?) to make a second copy. Or you'd have to type out the entire thing again to get a copy, or maybe you used carbon copy paper the first time so you have a smudgy, almost legible second copy.

Nowadays, it's so easy to back up your documents that you can schedule it and forget it. A lot of programs allow you to set automatic saves at certain timed intervals. There are programs out there which give you no excuse for losing your documents. Except that people get complacent, or forget to backup their work, and stuff happens.

I've spent a day looking for a backup when my program crashed without me having saved it. I lost an entire day of edits, and another day of potential editing looking for what I thought I'd saved. Then I had to spend more time recreating the edits I'd lost.

I recommend backing up every ten minutes. Actually, every five if you're being super productive. And then invest in an external backup service, either Carbonite or some other online service, or external hard drives. (I have two external hard drives which I routinely back up to. And keep in a fireproof safe.)

Paranoid? Perhaps. But it's sure saved me a lot of hassle, and I can sleep at night knowing that I won't lose my magnum opus, even in the event of a fire.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go backup my computer...

~I.E.

Winning at Writing

W is for Winning at Writing.

As the end of April nears, I am faced with two possible "wins" on the horizon. One is the A to Z blogger's challenge. I have yet to miss a day, a fact of which I am a bit proud, considering how sketchy my blogging past is. The second is NaNoWriMo. I am just over ten thousand words away from winning my third NaNo event in a row (my first Camp NaNo).

I am a competitive person, so when I can compete with a near-sure chance of winning, I am all over it. I mean, I like to be challenged, yes, but I mostly like to succeed. I don't like doing something that I know or think I will fail at. Therefore, NaNo and the A to Z challenge have been both rewarding and challenging. I feel confident in attaining both goals, a fact I can feel proud of considering how time intensive both have been.

But in thinking about my "wins" this month, I find myself naturally applying this to the writing life. What does a "win" look like in writing? Is it success? Is it publication? Is it the bestseller list?

I don't think there's any right answer. I think winning, like a lot of things in life, is what you make it. I've lost games to a lot of poor winners and some gracious winners. I've won over poor losers and gracious losers.

Writing is not a challenge I want to lose. Nor is it one that I think I can lose. Losing implies giving up, saying that I've reached the end of the game and someone else has bested me. But how can someone win over me when the opponent is me? For all I have to do in order to be a writing "winner" is to write.

What makes you a winner at writing? Publication? Attaining your goals?

~I.E.

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

Voice (or How NaNoWriMo Helped Me Find My Writing Voice)

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

V is for Voice. 

I've recently finished reading a book called "Finding Your Writing Voice" by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall. I have to admit, it's taken me several months to get through it. Part of that is because of the variety of prompts included in this book. The other part is because there are so many magnificent points that I have to constantly put the book down and stew over my incapabilities as a writer.

For example: "You can learn the concepts of craft by taking classes and reading books. But you won't know how to work with them and they won't have concrete meaning unless you discover them in the outpourings of your own voice. This is because the craft of fiction wasn't invented by critics and teachers. It comes from stories and the voices that create them." (Page 74, paperback version, published 1994.)

Wow. So true.

But what really struck me this month was how an "exercise" like NaNoWriMo serves to put everything I've learned into practice.

I don't know about you, but I get so caught up in editing my first drafts (sometimes to the nth degree) that I forget to actually write new material. NaNoWriMo helps me focus on simply being creative, no holds barred. No expectations, no agenda in mind, simply a word count goal and a date to finish by.

It's astoundingly liberating. It's the main reason I like participating in NaNoWriMo. By forcing myself to use all the things I've learned, and by doing it on a time crunch, what comes out becomes...natural. It's almost counter-intuitive, but you begin to speak in your character's voice--in your voice.

Have you participated in NaNoWriMo before? Or have you been holding out on giving NaNoWriMo a shot? 

~I.E.

Under-Developing Your Novel

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

U is for Under-developing Your Novel 

We've all heard about underdeveloped characters and plots and how that's a total faux pas. However, there are times when under-developing, or under-explaining, is preferable.

What do I mean by this?

Let's start with character development. We all want a well-developed character. We need to know enough about the protagonist, or even the antagonist, in order to identify with them and to find their actions believable.

Revealing a character can be done in two ways:

1. Showing

2. Telling

Was that too obvious?

Allow me to explain a bit. Showing the reader your characters means that the reader is being asked to discern what the character is like by the character's actions and reactions, thoughts and beliefs.

Telling the reader about your character means that you use narrative, other character's dialogue, or the character themselves to explain to the reader exactly how the character is.

We've all heard the adage, "show, don't tell," which by now has become cliché. Yet all clichés, just like all stereotypes, have a vein of truth in them.

In this case, as with most of your novel, showing is the preferable way to reveal your character. However, that's not to say telling is never acceptable. Telling must be done with caution and in keeping with the voice of the novel. 

For example, an omniscient narrator can better reveal a character trait of the protagonist (and especially the antagonist) than a first person narrator can state about him- or herself. I don't walk around telling people, "I can be vindictive and hold a grudge." If your character does that, your reader is going to be surprised or even skeptical. But I may very well reveal this character trait about myself when someone wrongs me. (And I'm just using those traits as an example...I like to think I am neither vindictive nor a grudge-holder.)

As much as possible, show the reader your character, revealing them through actions and reactions, thoughts and beliefs.

Under-description

(or "sometimes, less is more")

This is the: "what was that about under-developing a novel?" section.


Part of the reason that showing the reader your character, asking them to discern what that person is like, is better than telling is because when you lapse into telling, it can quickly get repetitive and boring. 


The reader doesn't need to know every inch of a character's body, nor every twitch of their muscles. All we need to know is enough to put a picture in our mind—and one reader is allowed to have a slightly different picture than another. This is why so many readers watch the movie version and say, "that wasn't how I pictured it."

I mean, really--how annoying is it when you're told every single action of a character?

E.g.

"John pushed his barrel-chested body into the air, his dusty brown hair falling into his eyes. He brushed it back impatiently with a meaty hand, then crossed to the door with a determined stride. His feet made heavy thuds on the carpeted floor in his irrational anger."

Too much? Definitely.

How about:

"John stood up, his brown hair falling into his eyes. He brushed it back impatiently, then crossed to the door with a determined stride. His feet made heavy thuds on the carpeted floor in his irrational anger."

Too much? Maybe.

What about:

"John rose and brushed back his hair impatiently. His feet made heavy thuds as he crossed the room in his irrational anger."

Too little? It certainly doesn't seem like too much.

And yet, I'm willing to bet that there would be someone out there who might disagree and say that it still is too much. (And that may very well depend on whether John rising and crossing the room is important at all!)

But therein lies the difficulty of writing. When is enough? When is too much? Unfortunately, there is no magic formula, like subject + adverb + adjective + verb can only be used be used once a page, or once in 250 words. No, writing is far too subjective for that kind of formula. But therein also lies the art of writing, which is what I love the writing craft for.

As authors, we need to leave some of the picture up to the reader's imagination. The amazing thing about reading is that when we reread a book, we can picture the story slightly different every time. As authors, we must give the reader enough to offer a picture, but refrain from over-describing the world.

What do you think? I'd love to hear from you in the comments section. 

Is there such a thing as under-development? Or over-development? What makes a novel or its characters under- or over-developed to you? Have you ever read a book that didn't satisfy because of under- or over-development?

~I.E.

Time

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

T is for Time.

"More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina."

John Irving 

Everyone has a limited about of time in their life. Some of this goes to responsibilities, some to hobbies. Some to plain ol' fun. It all comes down to how we spend our time.

I don't know about you, but when I waste an entire day watching TV or running around doing errands, I don't feel productive in the slightest. It may have even been a fun day, but it wasn't productive unless I did something worth doing.

We can go through life and have a great deal of "fun," but not end up leaving something behind. As a writer, I want to accomplish something. I want to leave something of my writing behind every single day. So I was thinking about time, and how there's a limited supply of it, but also about what I do with the time I spend writing.

I can break my writing time into three parts: 
1. Planning
2. Writing the First Draft
3. Editing

But where does the majority of my writing time go? 

1. I'm not a huge outliner, so my planning stage tends to be brief, and usually mental (as in, unwritten). However, for the sake of argument, I'll include the mental outlining time in my calculations, because it is time on the novel. I'd say this is maybe 10% of my time.

2. I can type pretty fast, and NaNoWriMo helps me to put a first draft on the pages in about a month, month and a half. I spend from 1-3 hours a day on those days pounding out the first draft words.

3. Personally, like John Irving, I believe two-thirds of my time on a novel is spent editing. 

Allow me to rephrase: at least 66% of my time is spent in the editing phase. Perhaps this goes back to my perfectionism (see post here), and my desire to get every sentence perfect before sharing it with someone. That can be crippling. 

So it leaves me with a dilemma of when to stop. I could spend a lifetime editing and re-editing a novel (and, who knows?, maybe I will). But where's that moment in time when you stop doing good for the novel and start doing harm instead? I wish there were a timer on each of my novels. They would be just like those little plastic pop-up timers on the turkeys you cook every Thanksgiving. When the novel is prime and juicy, ready for consumption, the little red sphere pokes out and says, "Bing! I'm done. Send me on to a publisher, I'm not getting any better than this!" 

Okay, that's a bit unrealistic; let's get back to time. 

I think most of our time working on a novel should be spent in the editing phase. A first draft is crap.

For example, every NaNo month, the NaNo supporters and the NaNo haters pop up with their blogs, either encouraging or discouraging people to try their hand at writing a novel. Both have valid points. 

A first draft is crap. It's inedible swill, it's raw turkey. Maybe half-baked. And consuming it will give you food poisoning. Beginning writers must remember this. It's something that has taken me many years to learn. Looking back at my first novels, ones that I chose not to edit much, I know a first draft is not ready for a reader's eyes.

So the NaNo haters have a point: don't write a first draft and expect it to be awesome. Unless you're willing to do the work editing, you aren't going to make it as a writer. "Everyone has a novel in them," is an oft-quoted bit of encouragement for the wannabe writer. Yes, everyone may have a novel in them, but not everyone has the perseverance to make that novel the best they can make it.

A writer must accept that writing a novel is not just putting the words on the page. Writing a novel is rewriting. And that, my friends, takes times. And it's hard, sweaty work.

"There is no great writing, only great rewriting."Justice Brandeis 

Strength

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

S is for Strength. 

Everyone has certain strengths. For one person this may be singing, another public speaking, yet another gardening. But even within those areas of strengths, a talented speaker may be able to engage his audience well, but struggle with making a PowerPoint or an outline. Still, they may be considered a powerful speaker because of their mere stage presence.

It's the same with a writer. Each writer has their own strengths. The trick is to find out where your strengths lie and use them. In many ways this is easier said than done. How many of us can see our writing as a total stranger does? (Anyone? Anyone?)

I certainly can't. I've been shocked by the feedback I've received, highlighting strengths (and weaknesses) that I was never aware of. For example, I've been told several times that I can write natural sounding dialogue. This was never a strength I was aware of, I merely wrote it as I thought it sounded. But to the odd reader, it read like natural dialogue. The only way I would have known of this strength is by asking for feedback.

Now, I don't mean that you take every compliment you're given and conclude that you are the best writer to ever grace this world with your writing. No. But, if you consistently receive the same comments from several independent people on different projects, perhaps you may conclude that you have found one of your strengths. This may be creating lively, lovable characters, or a nicely paced plot, or a talent for description, or an enchanting voice.

Why bother finding your strengths?

I think it's just as important to know your strengths as it is your weaknesses. Often we overlook our own strengths and focus on what needs work. While this isn't a bad thing, as our weaknesses need more time and effort than our strengths, if we don't know what we're good at, we run the risk of trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Often when we try to fix something of ours, we look to others and how they accomplish this task. This may be the most valuable method out there. Except for this: there are as many ways to write as there are people on this earth.

By not knowing your strengths, you might end up believing your strength is a weakness and try to fix it. In other words, you could spend a lifetime trying to fix something that isn't broken.

What are some of your strengths? I want to hear from you!

~I.E.