What's Your Flesch-Kincaid?

When writing for adults, a writer can basically write whatever she wants, the way she wants. She can use big words or little words, simple sentences, compound sentences, or complex sentences. She can even write sentences three pages long. The expectation is that most adults will be able to read and understand it.

But writing for children isn’t that easy. While adults are all lumped into one category, children aren’t. There are the board book and picture book crowds, beginning readers, kids starting chapter books, middle-grade readers, tweens and teens, and hi-lo’s. There are even sub-groups of upper and lower middle-grade and teen readers. All these kids read at different levels and have different levels of understanding.

One way to determine if you’re writing at the correct reading level is to use the Flesch-Kincaid Readability program. If you use Word, it will usually pop up after you do a spelling and grammar check. If it doesn’t, check the spelling of a word, and when the box opens, click options. When the options page comes up,go down the list and check off ‘show readability statistics.’ Aside from giving you word counts, it will give you the reading level you’ve written for, as well as a percentage that indicates how easy the piece is to read, and the percentage of passive writing it contains. (This paragraph has a 9.2 reading level, which means a ninth grader should be able to read and understand it. It has a 66.5% ease of readability level, which means I could probably write it much better. You want to shoot for the 90's. Let’s see.)

The Flesch-Kincaid Readability Program helps you determine what reading level you are writing at. If you use Word, it should pop up after you run the spelling and grammar check. If it doesn’t, check the spelling of a word, click options, then go down the list and check ‘show readability statistics.’ It will give you word counts, reading level, and the percentage of passive writing your piece contains. (I’ve lowered the reading level to 7.8 –middle school instead of high school, and I’ve increased the readability level to 69.1% - better, although not much better.)

Other programs may also make this available, but I’m not familiar with them. But if you can’t find the program on your computer, you can always google it and use the on-line version. Run it through something you’ve written and see where the piece stands. As you use it more and more, you’ll figure out how to easily knock a grade level or two off a piece, usually by just substituting one word for another, or by making a sentence less complex. This is easier in fiction than it is in
nonfiction.
















If you’re writing nonfiction about porcupines, you have to say porcupine. 10.1 Reading Level

If you’re writing fiction about a strange pet, you can turn your porcupine into a skunk. 7.6

If you’re writing fiction, you could just write about a duck. 4.7

But what if you are writing nonfiction about porcupines? How do you get the reading level down? Substitute the offensive word with something simple like duck, and if the piece suddenly drops to a 5th grade reading level, put the word porcupine back in and don’t worry about it. It’s just that one word, which a kid will remember after reading it the first time. But if you still have a high reading level, then you probably have issues in other places as well.

Sentence structure will also change your reading level.

John raced around the track, running as fast as his legs would carry him. 4.1
As fast as his legs would carry him, John raced around the track. 3.0
John raced as fast as his legs would carry him around the track. 3.0
John ran around the track. He raced as fast as his legs would carry him. 0.7

There are lots of ways to say the same thing. Your goal as a children’s writer should be to say it as clearly as you can, and at the appropriate reading level for your audience. Flesch-Kincaid will help you do that.

Foreshadowing

If a man is going to shoot someone in Act III, he must acquire a gun in Act I.

You’ve probably heard that, or something similar to it, before. It’s an old maxim that explains foreshadowing. Things cannot happen in a story just because you want them to, or need them to. If Mary is going to shoot her husband, she cannot just pull a gun from her purse at the necessary moment. The reader needs to know where that gun came from and how it got in her purse. Events must spring logically from events that have come before them. And it’s your job as a writer to set up those events by preparing the reader now for things that will come later.

There are several types of foreshadowing.

Blatant: Here, you’re telling the reader straight out what your character will be doing in the future.

Her mind was made up. She would kill her husband tomorrow.

Implied: This makes clear what will happen in the future without coming right out and saying it. It implies an event through action or dialogue, but is still pretty obvious to the reader.

She picked up the photograph of her husband, and with marker in hand, drew a fat, black X through his face.

Subtle: This is less obvious. It’s slipped into the background carefully so that it’s barely noticed.

She hurried down the street to the bar where she’d have to pry her husband from a sticky bar stool yet again. She passed several strip clubs advertising Girls! Girls! Girls! and a pawn shop window filled with the belongings of others - rings, watches, a tv and pistol, two guitars. And then there were the porn shops . . . .

You can also work foreshadowing into your manuscript in several different ways.

Through Dialogue:

"It’s going to be a tough game tonight. Do you think we’ll win?" Kevin asked.
"Of course we will," Tom said. "Jack’s back from visiting his Grandmother. We can’t lose with him on the team."

"Who are you asking to the dance?" Jake asked.
"I’m gonna ask Sue," Tom said.
Jake shook his head. "Bob already asked her. She’s going with him."
Tom smiled. "I think Bob’s going to be disappointed."

Through Flashback:

Let’s say your character has to swim out into the ocean to save someone from drowning. At some point before this event, you can add in a flashback to his days as a Navy Seal or swim coach to establish that he has the capabilities to swim the distance and rescue the drowning man. But don’t just use the flashback to establish he can swim. Make it do double duty. Perhaps we learn in the flashback that he once failed to save someone else from drowning, which is why he drinks now. Then when he swims out to save the drowning man, there will be no guarantee that he will succeed. You create tension and suspense.

Through Description:

You can use description to foreshadow an event that will happen in the same scene instead of a later one. Leonard Bishop, in Dare to be a Great Writer, compares it to the background music in a movie. If you’re just listening to a movie instead of watching it, you can still tell when something’s going to happen because of the change in the background music. In writing, instead of changing the music, you change the writing. Slowing it down and dwelling on the description will tip off readers to pay attention. Something is going to happen.

Mary slid out of the car with her groceries and headed for the house. She slipped her key in the lock and turned it. She stiffened. It was already unlocked. Had she forgotten to lock it?

She opened the door slowly and stepped inside. The curtains were closed and the room was gray and filled with shadows. She crept silently across the carpet and set her bag of groceries on the couch, listening for the slightest sound. Everything looked the way she had left it. Her purple sweats hung over the back of the sofa, an empty coffee cup sat on the coffee table beside the jigsaw puzzle she had been working on. She stepped carefully toward the kitchen and suddenly stopped. Looked back. The puzzle! There had been two pieces missing in the sky. Now there was only one.

And, of course, you would have set up this scene by foreshadowing it earlier before Mary ever went shopping. You would have shown her working on the puzzle, searching through the box for those two pieces of missing sky.

If you use it wisely, one bit of foreshadowing will lead to another, which will lead to another, which will do more than set up a future event. If done well, it creates a thread that strings your novel together, that creates tension and suspense, and that advances your plot. It might even foreshadow a book sale.

You Gotta Have Friends: Why They're Important to a Story

Everyone needs a friend, and fictional heroes are no different. Whether you’re writing high fantasy, a rip-roaring adventure, or a quiet contemporary story, your MC and story will be better off for having one.

Why?

Because it’s hard to be a hero.

If Harry Potter hadn’t had Ron and Hermione, who would have stopped him from belting Malfoy? And if he had hit Malfoy all those times Malfoy was calling him names, what kind of hero would he have been? In the Hunger Games, the whole premise is to kill or be killed, yet Katniss only kills her competition when her own life is in danger, or to save someone else. She never picks off anyone in their sleep just to cut the competition, because readers don’t want to root for a cold-blooded killer. Even on a YA level, in a story about killing, Katniss’ competition will die at the hands of others or through accidents. Or Peta will do it. That’s what fictional friends are for.

Their job is to make the MC look better, to make sure he stays clean and unsullied, to keep him heroic. They will commiserate with him when he’s upset, cheer him up when he’s feeling down, and inspire him when he’s ready to give up. They will stop him from doing things that go against his better nature, and they will tell the lies, do the killing, or steal the math tests if it needs to be done. Frodo may have been the bearer of the one ring, but he only got to Mordor and destroyed it because of his friend, Samwise Gamgee, who fought the orcs and drove back the spider, who found them food and shelter, and who nursed Frodo back to health when he needed it.

Fictional friends also help your story on a technical level. A hero alone is forced to do a lot of thinking and talking to himself in order to impart information to the reader and advance the plot. That means a lot of introspection, and introspection slows the pacing. A friend also gives your main character someone to interact with, which allows you to show characterization and growth that will make both characters more genuine. You can use the friend to inject humor into a desperate situation, to be a sounding board for a venting hero, or lift the hero’s spirits and inspire him to courageous deeds. And because it’s much easier for two people to get in trouble than it is for one, you can also use the friend to create conflict, tension, and suspense. Without a friend, your hero has to make the story work all on his own which, again, means more introspection and plot stalling.

For instance, consider this opening.

John sat in the waiting room, staring at a magazine, hoping the x-ray didn’t show anything bad. A broken ankle would mean he’d miss the entire track season, and that would mean no chance to show off for the scouts, no chance at a scholarship, and no chance at college or the Olympics. Everything he had worked toward for the last ten years would all go up in smoke. Why did that dumb rock have to be in the road? He sighed. Without college, without track, he’d end up just like Dad, scrounging all his life to just get by.

There really isn’t anything wrong with that, but all it does is impart information. The reader now knows the situation, but nothing else. Now let’s add a friend.

"Do you think you broke it?" Pete asked. He peered at John through a rolled up magazine.

John looked up from his own magazine and grinned. "Playing pirate, are we?"

"No. Just wondering how your entire body fits into this tiny circle. Perspective is weird, isn’t it?"

"I don’t know," John said. "You’re the artist. Not me."

"So did you break it, or what" Pete asked again, rolling the magazine even smaller.

"I don’t know," John said. "I hope not. That would ruin my whole life. If I miss the track season, I miss the scouts and that means no scholarships, no college and no Olympics. It means ten years of my life have gone up in smoke." He tossed his magazine onto a low table. "Dumb rock."

"Yeah, well the rock’s not sitting in a hospital, waiting to see if it’s life is over or not," Pete said.

He was grinning, making joke, but John didn’t find it funny. His life wasn’t like Pete’s. He had to worry about more than perspective. Without college, without track, he’d end up just like Dad, scrounging all his life to just get by.

Both bits impart the same information, but the second example moves quicker (even though it’s longer) and is more interesting to read. It even looks better on the page. All because John has a friend. Now he can talk to someone else instead of himself, and they can react to each other. The dialogue also gives us a bit of insight into each character. John isn’t so upset about the situation that he can’t laugh at his friend’s magazine telescope, and we get to know a bit about Pete - that he’s into art and he’s better off financially than John. I was also able to add a touch of humor and throw in the bit about perspective, which helps create a theme to build the story around. All because I added a friend.

And it isn’t that one way is right and the other is wrong. It’s that one way will do so much more than the other. Do you want to use the phone that allows you to make and receive calls, or do you want to use the one that lets you text, e-mail, and take pictures, too?

Friends are important. They matter, even in fictional worlds. So if your MC doesn’t have a friend in his life, consider giving him one. And if he does have friends, makes sure they are doing more than existing on the page. Put them to work and make them pull their weight - for your hero and your story.

Mentor Monday: Revising, Part 1

I have a motto I often share with new writers: Real writers are rewriters. Real writers know that first drafts are just that – drafts. They are brain dumps, capturing all kinds of ideas, plot devices, images, and lots and lots and lots of words. They are the lump of clay out of which you will fashion your work of art. There’s still a lot of molding, shaping, smoothing and polishing to be done before your work is ready to be read by an editor – who will then, if she likes it enough to consider buying it, have lots of additional work she wants you to do on it!

Over my next few Mentor Monday posts we’ll look at this Revision process, which breaks down into Rewriting, Editing and finally Proofreading or Copy-editing. Although in reality you will automatically do a little bit of the later steps at the same time as the earlier ones, it is helpful to think about each distinct piece of the process.

Of these, rewriting is the most dramatic. Remember that the word “Revision” means “seeing again.” This is when you massage and reshape the lump of clay that is your first draft. Don’t be afraid to consider major changes at this point. (If it helps you to be fearless, save a copy of your original in another folder.) If your story is told in the first person, try re-writing part of it in the third person, or vice versa. What would happen if your main character were a boy instead of a girl? If your story took place in the 1950s instead of the 1970s? (If your setting doesn’t really matter at all to the story, this may be a flag indicating a problem!)

Think about your story the way a teacher preparing a lesson plan would. What is the theme? (Please be sure your story has a theme but not a “lesson.”) Who are the main characters and what are their motivations? What is the conflict, and how is it resolved? (Make sure your protagonist solves the problem!) What are the relationships between the different characters? A common problem is having too many minor characters – considering combining some of the roles.

Keep in mind that although I’m referring to “story,” “plot” and “character,” the techniques of the revising process apply to non-fiction as well. You won’t be free to manipulate the chronology or the genders of the people, but you still shape the narrative, choosing what details to include, and managing the flow of your work.

Map the plot and subplots, and examine them carefully. Is the story balanced? Does the action rise and fall, gradually reaching a peak, or are there long flat places that need breaking up? Watch out for extended passages of narrative without dialogue – or pages of dialogue with no action. If your work is a picture book, be sure you can identify enough different “scenes” for an illustrator, and see how the text breaks out over them: you don’t want to create a few text-heavy pages while the rest of the book flips past quickly.

Keep an eye out for missing pieces and loose ends. Remember the old bit about if there is a gun on the table in the first act, it had better be fired before the play is over? The opposite is also true: if you need a gun in your climactic scene, you have to introduce it early, and make sure we know that the character who is going to fire it actually knows how. Often we don’t know in the beginning all the details that are going to develop as the story progresses, so it is very common in later drafts to go back and insert objects, skill sets and even whole characters into appropriate places (sometimes this means writing a new chapter to create the place).

Think about the structure and flow of your story. How much time passes between the opening and the conclusion? Are there markers entwined in the narrative that show this to the reader? These can be as straightforward as “On Tuesday, Janie overslept” or as subtle as “his boot crunched through the ice on the puddle.” Is the length of time covered by the story appropriate and necessary? Should you start the narrative closer to the climax? Or, if you do need some bits that occur a long time before the climax should you build in some “jump forward” transitions to get you more quickly toward the point? Don’t forget that it’s important to wrap up and get out quickly after the climax, or you’ll leave your readers feeling let down.

Consider the possibility of “re-stringing” your story. Think of each scene as a bead which you have strung together along your plot. Would things flow better if some of the beads were in a different order? Might you put a “brightly colored” or “loud” scene next to a quieter one, to heighten the effect of each? Or do you need to move a goofy scene to a different location so it doesn’t alter the somber mood of a particular passage?

Don’t overlook the value of distance in this process. Put the whole manuscript into a drawer and don’t look at it for a week. When you read it again you’ll notice all kinds of things that you skimmed over before, when it was all so fresh in your mind. Distance also makes it easier to identify (and eliminate) those precious but unhelpful words, phrases and scenes that all of us seem to create and cling to in our early drafts. But that’s a subject for another post.

Mentor Monday: The Asus Transformer

This is the Asus Transformer.

It's a great tool for writers on the go.
It has a fabulously textured surface, and a lovely, coppery color.
It looks like a netbook, and weighs about 1.5 pounds.
When it's closed, it's compact and feels substantial.

It has 93% size keyboard . . .

and a fabulous screen -- a nifty 10.1 inch display area with a tasteful black bezel. The glass is scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass from Corning.



Yes, it does look like a netbook, but looks can be deceiving!

The Transformer is an Android Honeycomb tablet with a docking keyboard.

You can read books on it!

The Transformer tablet runs Nvidia's 1GHZ dual-core Terra 2 Platform with 1GB of RAM. No Gs though -- 3G or 4G. It does have Wifi and lots of USB ports, slots, and buttons around its perimeter. You can transfer your files to and from your PC or to an external hard drive. It's got cameras, too!

You can read more here.

If you don't use an Android phone, there will be a small learning curve. This video features the Motorola Xoom, and it's pretty much exactly how the Transformer's Honeycomb system works.

With the docking keyboard, the battery life is supposed to run 16 hours. I've yet to achieve that, but am doing some trouble shooting to figure out why. Still, I'm getting a decent 8+ hours.

It comes loaded with Polaris, a word processing program. To write efficiently you need to lock the keyboard, which is the button directly above the pound sign. Surprisingly, locking the keyboard does not affect the keyboard for other uses; it just makes it easier to use the word processing program. I keep mine locked all the time.

The price of the tablet itself is $399. The docking keyboard is $150. Altogether the price for both is the same as the Apple Ipad without a keyboard.

I went looking for an Ipad, but found out that all the college kids that work at Best Buy use the Asus Transformer.

I completely understand why!

Subtext - What Your Characters Aren't Saying (at least not in so many words)

I have always thought of subtext as the invisible language of books. It’s there in every story you’ll ever read, and yet . . . it isn’t. Subtext is the things that are implied, the things that are felt, the things left unsaid and intentionally left out that are clearly recognized and understood by both characters and readers. It’s an eye roll, a tense silence, a bit of sarcasm, the rantings of a madman, or a lie. And even if you’re brand new to writing, if you’ve written any fiction at all you’ve probably used subtext in your work.

Subtext is like a secret code in which we impart information without saying a word, or by saying something totally opposite of what we mean. Even children are aware of subtext and learn to read it before they learn to read words. Picture books are filled with subtext, mostly in the illustrations. When a child opens a picture book, what do the bright colors say to him? What do the dark colors tell him? If characters are drawn in a cartoony style, a child can infer that the book will be funny. If the characters are more realistically drawn, they can tell the story will be more serious. A child who can’t read words can look at the two books below and immediately decide which will be the scariest because he can read the subtext - what the cover art is saying.

In novels, however, we don’t have illustrations to work with, so we include subtext in other ways, and we include it to show characterization, to add irony, to make a point, and to stress themes.

A character burps, and two other characters give each other a knowing look. The writer could follow the burp up with some whispered conversation between the two about how rude this kid is, but what’s the point? The knowing glance says it all. Mom tells Suzie, ‘No, you can’t go to the dance. You’re too young.’ Suzie roll hers eyes and stomps away. We can see she’s angry, imagine what she’s thinking, and infer that this is a family where talking back isn’t tolerated. And we learn a bit about each of the characters involved without the author saying it in words.

Sarcasm and lies are another way to add subtext. Two friends are going out on a first date with two guys they just met.

“So how do I look?” Betty asked, standing there in her baggy overalls and brown plaid lumberjack shirt. “Do you think Dan will like it?”

Laurie forced a smile and clutched the pearls hanging over her black cocktail dress. “Yeah,” she said. “He’ll love it. You look great.”

The reader knows Laurie’s remark is a lie and she just wants to spare her friend's feelings. It says something about who Laurie is, as well as her relationship with Betty. Now we’ll throw in some sarcasm.

“So how do I look?” Betty asked, standing there in her baggy overalls and brown plaid lumberjack shirt. “Do you think Dan will like it?”

Laurie smirked and twirled the pearls hanging over her black cocktail dress. “Yeah, if we were going to spend the night slopping the pigs.”

Again, Laurie isn’t saying what she means, but we know she thinks Betty should go and change, and the fact that she can say that to her friend infers a different kind of relationship than the first example, again, without the writer explaining their friendship. And now lets throw in some irony.

“So how do I look?” Betty asked, standing there in her baggy overalls and brown plaid lumberjack shirt. “Do you think Dan will like it?”

Laurie smirked and twirled the pearls hanging over her black cocktail dress. “Yeah, if we were going to spend the night slopping the pigs.”

“But we are. Kind of,” Betty said. “Didn’t Jack tell you? We’re going to the rodeo?”

Subtext can also be used to get the author’s point across, to create theme. At the end of Mockingjay, (spoiler coming for those who haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. Skip this paragraph if you care.) Kat has spent three books learning how bad her government is, and in the end, is fighting with rebels to overthrow it. And they do. But that doesn’t end the story, because Kat has also learned things about the people who will run the new government, and in the end, she assassinates the new president. The pull of the bow, the release of the arrow - two small movements - get across the author’s subtext for ‘power corrupts,’ or ‘always question authority,’ or ‘don’t trust the government.’

However you take it (and that’s the beauty of a good book. It can say different things to different people, even things the author never intended) Collins gets her point across with that one action, rather than tacking on a didactic, moralistic ending that says - and this is the lesson, kiddies. She has done it subtly and with finesse through subtext, which also drives home the irony (another spoiler) that all Kat fought for through three books, all the death and suffering, didn’t mean a thing. In the end, they got the same old package with a new wrapping on it.

So the next time you’re reading a novel, take the time to listen for the subtext, or look for it in picture books. What are the author and the characters saying without actually saying it? Learn to pick it out and see how it works for the story you’re reading, then try it in your own work. As you use it more and more, you’ll see your word count suddenly start to go down, (because you’re not saying what you’re saying) and your novel will become sharper, richer, and have much more depth.

Speak No Evil - Art by elsma

Mentor Monday: Keeping up the Pace

I read Kathryn Stockett’s The Help while on vacation recently. I couldn’t put it down. I started to think about what that phrase, “couldn’t put it down,” means. Why is it that some books keep us up at night turning pages and preventing sleep while other books are sleep-inducing?

I believe part of the reason lies with the pacing of the novel. The story grabs you right from the start and takes you along much like the hook grabbing the front cart of a roller coaster. A good story won’t let go and just when you get to the top of the first rise, it drops you. The tension repeats and repeats until you can hardly stand it and then…the writer gives you a break. The next section you read is quieter, perhaps descriptive, giving your imagination time to catch its breath. But the ride’s not over. Soon you’re climbing another hill. You hold on, refusing to let go because you don’t want to miss a minute.

Jordan E. Rosenfeld, in a 2007 article for The Writer (February) called pacing (or the action of a story) “The Heartbeat of Fiction.” He suggested that “Scenes should be created in a physical setting that feels real, and should contain action, new information for the reader, and dramatic tension all of which is usually accomplished by putting the characters in some kind of conflict or danger.”

Beware of excess exposition. Don’t worry about telling your reader, right from the beginning, what your character looks like, sounds like, is wearing, what time it is, which room he’s in, etc. Get into the action right away. Your reader won’t care about the who as much as the who + the what. That is, what’s happening to the protagonist.

Rosenfeld states that action is “comprised of all the elements a reader can ‘witness’ taking place. From physical movement to spoken dialogue, action transports your readers into your writing and brings your writing to life.”

As you revise, check the pacing of your story. Give your readers the ride of their life. Check for:

√ A hook on the very first page

√ Well-constructed scenes

√ Revealing dialogue

√ Occasional flashbacks (don’t have your character say “Remember the time…” Put your character in the scene. Describing a memory creates a passive, boring scene.

√ Pay attention to the character’s body language. A hand that trembles while the character is writing her name, for example, tells the reader more than the phrase “She was nervous.” And it ups the tension.

√ Leave the last scene in the chapter open. Make your reader need to turn the page.

√ Occasionally give your reader a break. Use a little humor or a little exposition to slow the pace after a particularly tension-filled scene. But don’t linger too long. Your reader wants to get caught up in the action again.

Mentor Monday - Fixing the Fizzle - From Idea, to Plot, to Story

Ooh. I just had a great idea for a story!

If you’re like me, you probably say that a lot. So many things I come across give me ideas for multitudes of stories. Sometimes, I’d get so caught up in an idea, I’d sit down and begin writing to see where it took me, and the next thing I’d know, I’d be into chapter five or six of a new novel. I might even make it to chapter twelve or fifteen. And then, suddenly - the novel fizzled.

Why? I wondered. It was a cool idea. Why couldn’t I make the story work?

The answer, I have since leaned, is because I didn’t have a story. I didn’t even have a plot. All I had was an idea, and an idea is nothing more than a sudden thought with potential, which is why an idea can’t be copyrighted. It’s too vague and malleable. I will turn it into one thing, and you will make it into something else, which is why you should never be afraid of someone stealing an idea of yours. An idea is -

Ooh. What if the government could control the weather?

And the potential?
All the what ifs.

What if a secret government organization got hold of it?
What if it was run by an egomaniac who went rogue?
What if he wanted to take over the world?
What if he threatened the whole planet with hurricanes and earthquakes?
What if, just to give us an example of how powerful he was, he bombarded Japan with one earthquake after another until it sank into the ocean? (Hmm. I seem to remember a Bond movie with a similar plot.)

As you can see, my idea certainly has the potential to grow into something more, and you may have gone in a totally different direction. As a beginning writer (and sometimes, even now) I’d sit down and start writing, thinking I had a story. I would throw in some perfunctory characters and get the ball rolling. Eventually the novel, like so many others of mine, would have withered away and ended up as a half-finished manuscript taking up space on my hard drive for years and years and years - all because I didn’t realize that an idea wasn’t a plot.

Ideas tend to be broad, while plots are more specific, and story is even more sharply defined. If I narrow my focus from the broad to the specific, I might come up with a character who is a reporter, who learns of this organization and takes steps to expose them while trying to save himself from their death squads. I still don’t have a plot or a story, but I do have a log line of sorts, an overall premise. I need to get even more specific.



I zoom in closer and give my reporter the tools he needs to work within my overall idea. I give him a name and a newspaper. I give him a city to live in. And because he needs a real reason to do what I’m going to make him do, I give him a burning desire to become famous for his work, or perhaps he has a deep mistrust of the government. Maybe I’ll give him both. But there have to be complications, so I invent a family for him and make him a drug addict. I give him a history with baggage. And then, to get the story started, I give him an opportunity to learn of the secret government organization and what they plan to do.

But I’m still not ready for a plot. Every protagonist needs a foil. So I create one. I give him a name and a government organization to work for. I give him a city where his operation is based. And because he needs motivation, too, I give him a superiority complex. I make him a perfectionist with the need to always be in control, and I give him a deep mistrust of the government. And the complications? I give him a cadre of followers, not all of whom are totally loyal. And I make him a narcissist. I give him a history with baggage. And to get his story started, I give him the opportunity to put his evil plan in motion.

Now I’m ready for plot. And for me, plot is the road map that gets my character from point A (discovering the scheme) to point B (destroying the weather machine and saving the world.) I have a beginning and an end, (yes, it's cliche and corny, but it works with the pictures) and now I have to fill in the middle. The middle will simply be a series of actions and reactions between the two players that goes over the major plot points.

Hero discovers organization and writes about it.
Villain feels his hand is forced and starts the sinking of Japan and orders hero killed.

Hero discovers where organization is and sneaks in as a new recruit.
Villain begins to make life miserable for the countries of the world.

Hero snoops around and learns all he can about villain and weather machine but withdrawal kicks in.
Other soldiers become suspicious and capture him.

Villain decides to kill hero, but the narcissist in him wants the world to know all about his superior genius.
Hero agrees to write Villain’s biography in return for drugs, and because if he ever gets out of this, the book will make him famous.

Japan sinks and Hero is mortified. He decides to kill the villain and destroy the weather machine. With the help of an unloyal security guard, he escapes within the confines of the compound.
Villain’s goons search for him. Villain flashes photos of his captured family on compound tvs.

In the throes of withdrawal, the hero risks his life to save his family and find the weather machine.
Villain is furious that the hero has gotten away and goes to the weather machine to take his anger out on the world.


The two meet for the climax at the weather machine. The battle between them is fought, the weather machine is destroyed and the world is saved.

Notice the plot isn’t ultra-detailed. For me, that leaves room for side trips and detours, and like following any road map, I might even get lost a time or two, but I do have the map that enables me to find my way back. And as I write and fill in the specifics between plot points, my world becomes more defined and my plot slowly turns into story. Yes, it will have to be revised and reworked, but in the end, it will be a story - a finished story that won’t languish on my hard drive.

Save the World Today v2 by voythas
see more of his work at deviantart
type voythas into the search box

Breaking Into (and Out Of) Print—Part Three

Last week we discussed ways to get a by-line or two while working on your main project(s). I said that I feel that doing so allows you to feel like a “real” writer.

A career in the arts is one that is built on past successes. Unlike most jobs, you don’t go in to work every day and complete your required production with a guaranteed payment each week. In the arts, whether it is acting, music, painting, or writing, your career is always built on the things you did recently. The job of the artist is to make others want more of what we have to offer.

Think about it: are you more excited to hear a new song by a performer you’ve come to love or one you’ve never heard of? Do you automatically buy a book by an unknown author or one by a writer you’ve enjoyed before?

One of today’s buzz words is “branding.” Artists and writers have always developed their own “brands.” You can easily tell a Picasso from a Monet. Taylor Swift’s songs don’t sound like Lady Gaga’s. As you write, you are developing work that you hope others will learn to recognize.

Having met and worked with many writers, I am still amazed at the number of people who say they want a career but don’t treat writing as a career. Here are some ways they break out of print:

1) They don’t set aside time to write regularly. It doesn’t have to be every day. My first novel was written primarily on Saturday afternoons. I was teaching elementary school and had three young children. I’m not one of those people who can get up an hour or two earlier or write late into the evening. With the help of a very supportive spouse, Saturday afternoons, though, were mine.

2) They don’t do their homework. They send picture book manuscripts to houses that only accept agented material. They send novel synopses to houses that only do picture books about nature. In short, they waste time, postage, and some editorial assistant’s time, and make a lousy first impression.


3) They fail to use connections. They go to writers’ conferences and get critiqued, but they don’t listen to what the editor said, so they don’t revise. Many times, I’ve heard writers come out of critiques with this bit of conversation: “The editor liked my story but they just did a picture book about a frog. She asked me what else I had.”

When an editor asks you what else you have in your writing pile she’s saying: I like your stuff. I like your style. I’d really like to find a place for you in our list.


If you don’t write regularly, you don’t have anything else to send. Connection lost.

We'll wrap up tomorrow with point #4 as well as a cautionary tale.

Mentor Monday - Google Earth

If you’re a writer and you don’t know about Google Earth, you should really get acquainted. Google Earth is exactly what it sounds like - the Earth, brought to you by Google. You start out with the Earth, type in where you’d like to go, and it takes you there, or you can explore on your own. Want to see what Sendai, Japan looks like after the tsunami? Type it in. Want to see the Great Pyramid at Giza? Type it in and you’re there. Want to see your own house? Type in your address. You zoom in from outer space and get a bird’s eye view.

What good is this to a writer? Well, let’s say you’re writing a story that takes place in a city far, far away. Let's say Paris. Just zoom in, and there it is.

That's at about 20,000 feet. All those icons show churches, businesses, museums, parks, and historic sites. A Portuguese American club lets you know what ethnic group lives in the neighborhood, which might suggest a name for your character. Churches, temples and mosques let you know if your population is mostly Catholic, Jewish, or something else. The liquor stores or Starbucks on every corner tell you something about socio-economic levels, all fodder that can help with characterization and description.

Perhaps you’re writing a thriller. Need to know how far it is from the Palace at Versailles to the US embassy? Need to know what the palace looks like? It’s right there. Just zoom in closer.

They even have a street view, so you can walk around your site. You can see any place you need to describe without ever leaving your desk.


Maybe your latest WIP takes place on an imginary desert world? Check out the Gobi and Sahara for ideas. Are there castles in your story? Buzz over a few to see how they use terrain for defense or to see how they were built. Look at the differences between an English castle and a German castle. Do you need to know what the bayou looks like, or a seaside town? Does your story take place in Hollywood or a South African diamond mine? Google Earth can help you. You can even go to the moon and Mars if you like. While there’s not much to see (yet) you can at least get place names.

And what about non-fiction? If you’re writing about places or national monuments, the benefits are obvious. You get a bird’s eye view of whatever place or monument you’re writing about. Doing volcanoes? You can go to any volcano on Earth. You can stare right into the mouth of one.

Writing about Nascar or baseball? Visit a few tracks or stadiums. Doing the Olympics? You have aerial views of any Olympic village you want to visit. Biographies? Visit your person’s hometown or the place of their demise. I haven’t explored copyright issues on using these pictures, but it may be worth looking into if you’re paying for your own photographs.

Google Earth comes with lots of extras, too. You can see earthquakes in real time (not the actual quakes, but dots on the map that show position and strength.) They place shipwrecks and ocean expeditions, what seafood you’ll find off any given coast, and even water temperature. You can go back in time (to the inception of Google Earth) and see Sendai, Japan before the quake, and after it. The same with the gulf coast oil spill - very helpful if that’s what you’re writing about.

There are so many things here that I haven’t yet explored, or simply touched the surface of. Some museums and archeological sites have even made it possible to tour them in street view. Unfortunately, street view isn't available everywhere. Mostly it’s just the larger, more well known cities. But perhaps, in time . . . .

The drawbacks? 500 feet, give or take, seems to be about as close as you can get without everything going blurry. And when you go back in time, you can only go back to the times they have images for.

So how do you get Google Earth? How else - google it and download. Or you can use this link. It’s free, it’s fun, and it’s fascinating.

Happy exploring.

All photos were taken on Google Earth.

Mentor Monday: Why We Do What We Do (2)

Last week I decided to learn why there are so many people willing to try their hand at writing for children when they probably won’t receive the usual rewards (fame/fortune) that most people expect for their work.

I’ve been reading Daniel H. Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I know a lot of writers. The majority of us get very little return on our “investment.” I asked various authors to share the reason they write for kids. Most of the answers, like the following, were quite altruistic:

“I write for kids because they still wonder and dream and question. They look at the world with fresh eyes, they’re open to new things, and I get to show it all to them.” Barbara T.

Barbara’s answer actually fits right into one of the three reasons Daniel Pink says we can be naturally motivated. According to Pink, there are three intrinsic motivators and, I think for most of us writers, all three exist in the background of our determination to succeed. The three intrinsic motivators are: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Autonomy allows us the privilege of self-determination. We create our own work. We pick the time of day we will complete that work. We choose the way we will present the work. We even get to pick what we’ll wear while we’re working.

“[I write for kids] because I have enough confidence, now that I’m older, to believe that what I have to say is worth writing down. I don’t necessarily write for kids, I write for myself.” Diane M.

“Writing for kids is like discovering a coral reef that teems with life both on its surface and hidden within. When I submerge myself in words, I become playful, gain insight, and feel alive. In short: If I can’t write, I go crazy. Deborah B.

Mastery gives us the pleasure of watching ourselves become more skillful. We are thrilled at the perfect turn of a phrase. We secretly rejoice when a sentence says exactly what we want it to. We revise and revise again until the words feel right.

“Writing for kids is often the greatest challenge for me as a writer. Younger readers require clear, concise, and captivating prose, so I have to be on my game.” Jo P.

Purpose is the most important “why” of the three in my opinion. Your purpose is your goal and generally this goal has to do with the way you will contribute to society, to the greater good. Like Barbara T., many writers feel an innate need to give back:

“I write for kids because when I was a kid, books were the most important thing in my life.” Sally W.

"When I first started writing, my audience was adults, but from the beginning I was eager to write for young people. Maybe because I enjoy having conversations with them (both literally and via the written word), being part of their education, entering their imaginative worlds.” Tabatha Y.

For the last few years, we’ve devoted Mentor Mondays to study the art of writing for children. I believe it’s important to stop once in a while and study yourself. Ask yourself, as I asked these writers, why you do what you do.

Now that you know that your motivation should have three segments, make sure you are meeting all three intrinsic needs: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. If your writing has become a chore, it’s possible one of these parts is missing. If they’re all there, you might feel like Tammy G.:

“I enjoy writing for children, because everything is new and interesting when seen through a child’s eyes. I find myself looking at the world in a completely different way every time I write for kids. I get to learn right along with them.”

Mentor Monday - Internal and External Plots

We all know that without plot, there is no story. Plot is the map that takes you from beginning to end and everywhere in between. It’s what drives the story forward. It’s what took Bilbo Baggins there and back again, and what drove the Starship Enterprise to boldly go where no man had gone before. And if all you’re looking for is a fun adventure, then external plot is enough. But, if you want your story to have any depth, if you want to give meaning to your little adventure, you also need an internal plot.

What’s the difference?

An external plot is tangible and straightforward. Jack plays guitar in the school band. He wants to buy a guitar of his own. He finds a job, saves his money, has a few setbacks here and there, and finally buys his guitar. You can see and touch the guitar. You can see every success and failure Jack has along the way, and you can see him getting closer and closer to reaching his goal. And with each step he takes, the plot moves forward a bit.

An internal plot is not tangible and is generally complicated. It’s all about feelings and emotions, ethics and morals. It’s about Jack figuring out who he is, and what his place is in the world. Jack wants to win his father’s love. But what is love? If I show you a guitar, we can both agree it’s a guitar. But love? We all have our own definitions and our own ways of showing it.

So Jack brings Dad breakfast in bed. Dad grumbles about crumbs on the sheets. Jack sits down and talks to Dad about the baseball game on tv. Dad tell him to be quiet so he can hear. This could go on and on forever because Dad already loves Jack, he just doesn't know how to show it. Since Jack doesn't know this, and Dad doesn't know how to change, there is no movement in the plot. The situation will remain the same until Jack has his light bulb moment and realizes Dad always loved him but just didn’t know how to show it, and that will happen at the end of the story, so there's no progression toward the ultimate goal. It just suddenly happens because that’s how realizations come to us. Suddenly and unexpectedly.

Can a story work with one kind of plot without the other?

You can create a decent story with just an external plot, although it will have little depth. But it’s harder to make a story work if all you have is an internal plot. As we’ve seen in the example above, there is little or no plot movement with an internal plot, which means boredom sets in quickly. Your story goes nowhere fast, because all you have to talk about is how do I win Dad’s love.

It’s like swimming in a pool, back and forth, round and round, until you either get out or drown. Not very exciting. With an external plot, you’re swimming in the ocean. You can swim to another beach. You can explore beneath the waves. You can get on a passing boat or catch a fish. And each advancement creates a new situation.

Of course, the ideal situation is to use them both together. Jack’s homelife sucks because he believes his dad doesn’t love him. When he plays guitar in the school band, it fills the emptiness inside him. He figures if he can get his own guitar, he can play at home and take that good feeling with him, rather than stare at the walls because Dad never talks to him. So he gets a job, but Dad loses his. In an effort to win Dad’s love, Jack sacrifices his guitar and gives Dad the money he’s made to help out. Dad sees it as an insult and flings the money out the window. Now Jack has a dilemma. Does he continue working and keep the money and get his guitar? Or does he quit so Dad won’t feel like less of a man? Or does he continue to work and put the money toward food and rent even though it makes Dad angry?

Regardless of what he decides, the plot moves forward because Jack was forced to make a moral, ethical or emotional decision, and that makes him a more rounded character. He becomes more human. The story also becomes more interesting because the internal and external plots are working against each other, which causes conflict and tension. As the story progresses, these two plots will continuously intertwine and, instead of having a story that’s all action or all emotion, you have a story that contains both. You have a story with depth. You have a story kids will want to read.

Mentor Monday - And How Do You Feel About That? Creating Emotion.

Emotion is a powerful thing. People murder in the heat of rage and have nervous breakdowns in the pits of despair. Envy and greed can bring a man to ruin, or they can raise him to the heights of society. Hope has the power to lift the spirits of multitudes. Feeling emotions, and reacting to them, is part of being human. If we had no emotions, if we didn’t feel, we would be little more than robots. And if you want your characters to be more than robots, to be more than names on a page, they also have to experience emotions.

But writing emotion is a tricky thing. Not only does your character have to feel, but the reader must also feel those same emotions.

So how do you do that?

Prepare

John was sad when his hamster died. He cried and cried.

Now did you feel sad for John? I might have gotten a two-second ‘awww’ from you, but I’ll bet nobody is wiping tears from their eyes. Why? Because you don’t know John yet. You don’t care about John. You don’t know how attached he was to his hamster. So the first step in writing emotion successfully is to prepare for it.

If you want to evoke some sadness when John’s hamster dies in chapter 10, make sure you’re showing the reader how much John loves his hamster in chapters 1-9. Show us why he picked that particular hamster from all the others at the store. Show him caring for the hamster and playing with it. Show us why the hamster is so important to him. Show us just how much he loves that hamster and then, when it dies and John cries, you’ll be pulling at heartstrings.

Forget Abstractions

Fear coursed through her body. She was frightened to her core.

What do those two sentences mean? She was really, really frightened? What images do they bring to mind? Nothing that I can see. And that’s the thing about abstractions. They’re abstract. You can’t see them. You can’t touch them. They’re sort of like emotions.

Fear is intangible and being fearful is a state of mind. Fear cannot race around someone’s body. The body can, however, react to the emotion, and that’s what you need to show--how fear physically affects your character. What happens when you are afraid? Does your heart race? Does your mind go blank? Does your body become numb? Are you unable to move or speak? Use your own emotional reactions to show the affects that same emotion has on your character. Allow your readers to see whatever emotion she is experiencing.

Show–Don’t Tell

We all know this, but we don’t always do it. So when John’s hamster dies, don’t tell us he was sad and that he cried and cried. Don’t even mention sadness. Show him having no interest in his favorite snack or toy. Show tears running down his face. Show him sniffling. Show his body heaving. Maybe he stutters when he tries to speak because he’s crying so hard. Maybe he hides out in his room and doesn’t want to talk to anybody. But regardless of how he reacts, write it in a way that it can be seen.

Remember who your character is

People are individuals and we don’t all experience emotion the same way. Your characters shouldn’t either. While one person may break down and cry when a loved one dies, another person may become angry and start to throw things. While some people have no problem being loud and boisterous when they’re happy, a more reserved or shy person may just simply smile. How your character reacts will depend on the type of person you have made them. And if you have prepared for that moment of joy, the reader will know that the character with the small smile is really jumping for joy on the inside. They will feel it. That little smile will be enormous in the readers’ minds and they will be just as happy for your character as she is for herself.

It may seem daunting, trying to evoke emotions from thousands of strangers, but it’s not as hard as it seems if you just remember that we all feel the same things. It may be in a different way, or for different reasons, but everyone knows what it’s like to be scared or lonely, to be excited or joyous. If you show your readers that fear or joy, if you make them see it, you will also make them feel.

And now, two minutes from a master storyteller.

Mentor Monday - Good, Better, Best

Nope. This is not a blog about grammar or the rules of English. This is about making a good manuscript a better manuscript, and a better manuscript the best manuscript. It’s about taking your work to a level a notch or two higher than it already is.

How do you do that?

The secret - like God - is in the details. Unlike God, it is easy to explain and understand, and even easier to do. Simply take the generic and make it specific. In every single case, it will make your manuscript better.

Here are some examples.

John went to the store.

Let’s say we don’t really care how John got to the store. The important thing to the story is that he got there. Why worry about the sentence? If you have a good story, no editor is going to turn it down because of that line. The truth is, an editor probably won’t even notice it.

Still, if you change the vague ‘went’ to something specific - walk, run or drive - your plain factual statement becomes a sentence that conveys mood. Walk makes us think everything is fine and dandy, run makes it seem like something is wrong, and drive indicates he’s in a hurry. You, of course, will choose a word that conveys the mood you are trying to create, and mood is something an editor will notice. Now, a section of your story that didn’t stand out, suddenly will, and all you did was change one word. Imagine the effect if you changed all the vague words in your manuscript?

Another way being specific helps a manuscript is in turning a piece of description that is just there for description’s sake, into description that matters. Let’s say your MC is on her way somewhere and stops to pick a flower. The flower will have no major bearing on the plot. You’re just doing a bit of description to set the scene. You can say she stopped to pick a flower, or you can say she stopped to pick an aster.

Why does it matter one way or the other if the flower isn't important? Again, it doesn’t really. It won’t prevent you from selling an otherwise good manuscript. But ‘a flower’ tells us nothing. An aster, on the other hand, says it is fall, and now the reader knows what time of year it is without the writer telling them, (Although you did tell them, in a sneaky, unobtrusive way) and that allows the reader to envision the surrounding scenery, too - the reds and golds of autumn rather than the green of summer and spring. Your irrelevant sentence becomes relevant - not to the plot, but to your scene setting. You've added an extra layer to your work just by changing a vague word to one that is more specific.

Now let’s suppose something does matter to the plot. Here is an excerpt from M. T. Anderson’s Feed. The MC and his girlfriend have gone out to the country to tour a farm.

It was a filet mignon farm, all of it, and the tissue spread for miles around the paths where we were walking. It was like these huge hedges of red all around us, with these beautiful marble patterns running through them. They had these tubes, they were bringing the tissue blood, and we could see the blood running up and down.

Anderson could have written, It was a filet mignon farm and there were steaks growing everywhere. It’s simple and direct and tells the reader they are not in Kansas any more, and if that was all Anderson wanted to convey, it would serve his purpose.

But by this point in the story, we already know we’re not in Kansas. The point of the description is to convey just how out of whack society has become, and the more detailed he is - the tubes, the marble patterns, the tissue and blood - the more out of whack his world seems. This is more than a futuristic world where steak grows on a stalk. This is a world where things have gone horribly awry, (or magnificently wonderful, depending on your personal take on life) and Anderson makes it so easy to see and understand because he gave us the details.

The above examples, I think, show the differences specificity and details can make in a story. Nobody is going to say, “Oh, I loved that you used the word aster instead of flower.” It’s just not all that noticeable. But when you’re looking at the big picture - the novel as a whole - that’s where it makes the difference. It gives your writing nuance, mood and tone. It takes your writing a step higher than it was. And it will make your work stand out above the work of others in the slush pile who aren’t being specific.

The road to publication is long and hard. If you’re a beginner trying to break in, you need to be above average. Give yourself every advantage you can.