It's Dead Jim - When a Book Just Doesn't Work

Full disclosure. This topic was my suggestion. Yes, indeedy, you CAN blame me for this one. I suggested it because at the time, I was struggling with a novel. Still am. It's historical fiction. I *thought* I had a plot, but the more I write, the less momentum within the story there seems to be. The more I wrestled with the themes and the characters, the less sure I was of anything. So I put it aside and wondered if either it or I should be put out of our mutual misery. Thus the question. How do you know when there's no hope?

I ask because I have a forest of file folders filled with abandoned stories. Some are little more than ideas jotted down. Some have half a chapter. Others are several chapters. Only one is past the 25,000 word mark and that one wasn't abandoned because it wasn't working - it is awaiting its day in the sun after having been orphaned by a publishing house that declined the option for it. It WILL get finished and pubbed in some fashion.

So even though I have plenty of stories littering the corners of my brain (and notably, my hard drive) I've discarded not a single one of them. Because of three things:

1. Hope springs eternal - If I let these stories stew long enough, what ever issues kept me from completing them will be worked out
2. I'll get better - I have bitten off more than I could chew in any number of stories and I simply do not yet have the storytelling chops to pull these things off, but the more I write, the stronger I'll get and then these difficult story concepts will become approachable
3. Your time will come - some of the stories I've abandoned in my past are from when I was a kid. I am no longer in the same place as a human being as I was, but la plus ca change, right? I'm not the same person I was yesterday, either. So there may come a time when one of those old stories strikes a chord and I'll finish them.

Why do I not power through my issues with my stories? Because I subscribe to Shakespeare's words:

O time, thou must untangle this, not I.

It is too hard a knot for me to untie!

Dialogue: Choosing Your Weapon

Happy Friday the 13th!

 

We're chatting about dialogue this week. And let me say I have had more than my fair share of truly crappy advice regarding dialogue - the worst? "It should sound real!"

Took me a long time to figure out that's the worst move, ever. Dialogue in fiction is not about replicating the natural speech patterns we hear in day to day life. Mainly because most of us would want to gouge out our eyes after the third sentence that began, “And *I* was like . . .”

Dialogue isn’t meant to be a faithful representation of an entire conversation, either. It’s a weapon that each character in your story must choose and then wield to his or her best advantage. Words spoken in the text have several jobs to do: render the internal life of the character, put emotion and conflict on display, and place the story, characters and conflict in time and space.

Example from a WIP – I’ve removed almost all of the business, tags and stage direction. See if you can place the time and location based solely on what’s said and how it’s said. If I’ve done my job, you can.

----------------------------------------------- 

“Whoa. Whoa, there, Brutus!” a man called into the heated afternoon. “Silas!”

            “Henry.”
            “Look there. What do you see?” Henry asked.
            “It ain't what I see you got to worry about,” Silas finally said. “It's what I smell.”
            “Death,” Henry said.
            “Aye.”
            “Damnation.”
            “What is it? What's wrong?” a woman demanded.
            “Sally,” Henry said. “Looks like we've run across another damned massacre. Break out the shovels, boys. Celeste?”
            A slender woman riding a black and white paint with wicked eyes pulled up beside the lead wagon.
            “Town’s no more than a few miles,” Henry said. “Ride on ahead and fetch the sheriff. And a preacher, if they got one.”
----------------------------------------------------------- 

If this works the way I imagine it does, it’s the sound of these people talking that puts you in their time and place. Notice that in this dialogue set there’s not a single ‘that’ – it’s a modern addition to speech patterns that isn’t appropriate here. Then there are word choices: ain’t, preacher, damnation – all words that aren’t often used in modern speech. (So yes, this should say American West circa late 1800’s)

Contrast it with this bit from another book:

------------------------------------------------------------
“Dad. Status.”
“Screwed six ways to Sunday. The ship’s been commandeered. The four of them caught us unaware. No one takes science ships. We . . .”
“Casualties?”
“None.”
“Repairs?”
“Complete. Except that someone’s scrambled my command codes. What in the Three Hells were you thinking, locking me out of my own ship, Alex?”
“SOP, Dad,” she growled. “Could we put a cap on the trade secrets, please?”
The captain’s voice cut off anything her father might have said. “You know what I want you to know, now. So how about we talk trade?”
-------------------------------------------------------------------

 This should sound far more modern than the first example – if only because it’s from a science fiction novel. It’s terser. Faster. A more rapid fire query and response set designed to extract maximum information while giving away as little as possible (from the main character’s point of view – this dialogue was written entirely with her goal in mind – find out as much as she can without tipping off the bad guys.) While there’s a bit of military-ish jargon, there’s really nothing here in the dialogue to tell you that this is scifi, but you do get some hint of the conflict between Alex and her father with his comment about his command codes having been scrambled.

 

The last example I’ll offer should sound different yet again:

------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

“Hey. Ice,” he wheezed. “You’re looking good as always, babe, though I hear they make clothes in colors other than black these days. Ole Zoog was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”

“I don’t want any crap, Zoog. What the hell is going on?” I demanded. “Did your new boss put a guy on my front door, a line into my computer, and then somehow divine my unlisted cell number? There’s a message being delivered. Care to guess what it is?”

“He doesn’t want you to help me,” he croaked. “Should have known he could reach this far. I told him you couldn’t be corrupted. Not like me.”

“Read a certain way, this could look like the grandmother of all set ups, Zoog. Look me in the eye and tell me it isn’t.”

“I don’t know, Ice. If it is, I’m not in on it. Honest,” he groaned as I hesitated. “I’m in big trouble, babe. I didn’t know where else to go.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

This is meant to place you in a city on the west coast of the US. Maybe the day after tomorrow. The dialogue is supposed to sound modern without being pigeon-holed by a bunch of idiomatic expressions that would date the speakers. At least, that was the idea. Longer arcs of thought and speech here are intended to give you the impression that these people are speaking everything that enters their heads – that this stuff is pouring out unchecked because the scene is starting to go pear-shaped. I don’t know that the dialogue actually does that all by itself. It would have been a more skillfully crafted scene if it did, but hey. Learn by doing, right?

 

So how do you shape dialogue to convey all you want?

1.     Each of your characters wants something in each scene.

a.      Only one character can win his or her objective

b.     They will each do their damnedest to win

c.      Let the fight begin

2.     LISTEN

a.      Your ear is your best friend when it comes to dialogue

b.     Read someone who writes in the time period and genre you’re writing (Shakespeare sounds totally different than William Congreve and Richard Sheridan, who sound different from the dime novels of the American west, which are different from scifi . . .)

c.      Movies with some modicum of verisimilitude totally count as research. Listen to how different characters pursue their goals via dialogue

d.     In the editing process, read your dialogue aloud. You’ll hear where it doesn’t work and where it does.

3.     Write

a.      Write more

b.     No, more

c.      Keep going

 

The Mirror of Emotion

Emotion is a mirror. Reflect your character’s emotional state to the reader by selecting what your character sees, hears, tastes, touches and smells. Have you ever noticed how at Halloween, everything suddenly takes on a creepy tone? Mundane objects and events take on sinister connotation because you are psychologically primed by the cultural association of Halloween, horror movies, and the things that go bump in the night. Your readers (and characters) are, too, and you can mine that. A bright sunny day looks one way when you’re happy. When you’re scared, you suddenly notice the murmur of the wind in the tree branches in voices you can almost understand. The tree limbs claw at the raw sky. The shadows are sharp enough to slice skin. That same scene when you’re angry – the wind that was bracing when you were happy might now a slap in the face. An assault. Maybe traffic grumbles. And the people passing you avoid your gaze but you see the whites of their eyes for a long time until the fall behind. So many ways for your character to reflect his or her emotional state based on what they sense. It’s as if emotion is a filter for a camera lens that only allows certain information to register.

Dialogue is another mirror. You, oh petty god and master of massive creations, have the power to show readers how a character feels based solely on what he or she says.

“I’ve got it.”
“No. You don’t. Try --”
“I said, I’ve got it.”

You know nothing about the scene, nothing about the characters, but I bet you knew exactly how to read that last line. Have a look at Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet – the garden scene just after ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo.’

JULIET

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

How long winded she is. She’s indulging in long sentences and thought arcs. She has the time for reflection, a little love-sick introspection, and some heady game playing in that line – ‘Take all myself’. Speak the lines aloud. Listen to the sounds – long, open vowels. Lots of hard consonants – things that stop you and slow you down in the speech. It’s to show the actor and the audience that Juliet is developing a thought as she speaks and that she’s still giddy with infatuation.

ROMEO

I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

JULIET

What man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night
So stumblest on my counsel?

Look how short this is. Say it aloud. Again. See how the sounds slide right into one another and pull you along the words? Do you speed up as you get through the sentence? Shakespeare is brilliant for using words and their sounds to either speed you up or slow you down as you speak his lines. If you’re paying attention, you find the emotion in the dialogue, too. Because this line is in such contrast to the longer speech above, it’s pretty easy to get fear from her ‘WHO ARE YOU WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE’ demand. While there are plenty of hard t sounds at the ends of words in this sentence, the vowel sounds are almost entirely formed far forward in the mouth. Sounds weird, I know, but big, open vowel sounds move farther back – like when you say ‘ah’ at the doctor’s office. In Juliet’s ‘What man . . .’ sentence, the vowels are all just behind the teeth and pinging off the hard palate. Point being that based on the sounds of words, you control and convey emotional states. Plays make it easy to see, but you can watch movies and TV, and if you listen carefully, hear how other writers spoon feed you emotional states with what their characters say.

I will confess here and now that I suggested this topic for the week because it’s something I struggle with. A lot. Just when I think I have it all figured out, I stumble and fall again over how to get emotion on the page. Show! Don’t tell! Madness dwells beneath a crit partner's suggestion that a scene lacks emotion. Suggesting this topic was my bid for a week long workshop on the subject. What’s your favorite trick of the emotional manipulation trade?

Close Up the Wall

"Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more;
Or close up the wall with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;"

Henry V, Shakespeare

William Shakespeare knew a thing or two about protecting his writing time if this bit is any indication. Or maybe he really was just putting words into the Henry V's mouth so he could get the action going on stage. However, Henry's monologue echoes the advice you've seen this week for protecting your writing time, right? Wall off your time, defend it from all comers.

Here, then, are the bodies with which to shore up your defenses:

If you write, if you want to write, and you're juggling a family and a life as most of us are, you'll get much farther if you accept a few basic tenets.

1. You are equally worthy of consideration as anyone else.
2. Life is happening with all of the bumps, blows and traumas associated therewith. Accept it. Deal with it. Write in spite of it.
3. Recognize that if your writing time is being encroached upon and/or interrupted, you're participating in that pattern.
4. You can only impact one person's behavior. Yours.

The first point is an echo of Jeffe's post from Sunday. It's easy to make excuses for not writing based on whatever our families and loved ones need - but it conveniently dodges what WE need. That shifts us into the whole martyrdom complex where we sacrifice our lives and our dreams on the altar of the family. Reality check yourself. Is your family actually asking you for that sacrifice? If yes, consult a counselor. That's abuse. Most families neither ask nor want you to sacrifice yourself. Healthy families have room for everyone's needs - including yours. Some give may be necessary to accommodate everyone, but at no time should your needs automatically and always take a back seat to everyone else's. You're a member of your family. You count just as much as everyone else. Negotiate your time and your space for writing.

The second point, that life is what's happening right this second, is about excuses. You know the ones. "I've had a lot going on. I just haven't been able to write." A Lot Going On. It should be a sign painted in bright letters and posted above your computer. Loved ones get sick. People die. They're born. They have crises and weddings and graduations and life altering car accidents. You either write through all of that, or you don't. Make writing your refuge, your celebration, your place to go to find sense and meaning and comfort. If you can do that, it won't matter what life brings. You'll write. You'll sink into story and rest there, emerging back into life rejuvenated and calmer. Saner. How, you ask? You decide to do it. It's that simple. And that difficult.

The third point requires that you identify where and how you're participating in the patterns that make it okay for people to interrupt your work. Many of us get caught up in feeling like we're indispensable - our loved ones NEED us, man! What we're really saying is that we've successfully trained our families to lean on us rather than stand on their own two feet.

If you've made that bed, you can unmake it. You can require that family members learn to fend for themselves. I'm not talking about throwing tiny children or pets into the ocean and demanding that they figure out how to swim. That way lies having your house burned down when the six year old decides to stuff marshmallows in the toaster. Start with small, incremental steps that teach self-sufficiency. This makes the individuals within the family unit capable, and it weans you off of the heady, addicting feeling that they just can't make do without you.

The last one is, for me, the real game changer. It's what pushed me over the edge into committing to writing every single day, regardless of what my family said, did, or thought.

It's this: At no point, ever, is it incumbent upon anyone else on earth to respect your writing time. That's on you. 100%.

If you can't write at home without someone interrupting you, go into a room and close the door. Family barges through the door? Get a lock. They knock? Ear plugs. Shouting, texting, and phone calls, constant angst? Leave. Physically leave the premises. Find a coffee shop or a tea shop or an all night diner that will let you flip open your laptop and camp for an hour or four so long as you buy a beverage and a treat of some kind. Cheap office rent. You can take the cell phone with if it makes you feel better, but don't answer it. Not texts. Not ringing. Nothing. Work out an emergency ring code before hand with the one person you trust to not abuse your time. One ring, hang up, call again - this equals an emergency that requires you to answer the phone. (You're also wise to lay out what qualifies as an emergency ahead of time, too.) Anything else can go to voicemail.

You deserve to spend time each day chasing your dreams. It's not just okay to be as ruthless as Henry V about defending your right - it's healthy.

From Hamlet to Zombies - Sick Days

To write or not to write, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to appear more than human in powering through virus or bacteria, or to admit mortality in the face of such tiny invaders and to wilt, thereby defeating them.

Enough with butchering Shakespeare. The wisdom of sick days is in the eyes (and constitution) of the ailing. Some people can work through just about anything. I’m not one of them.

Pain? No problem. I cannot work through having my mental capacity impaired. Most illnesses only kick me in the teeth for a day then linger for a few more. I can usually get at least a partial word count out of that. Some bugs come along, though, and grab hold of my brain. This is a real thing. Pick up a copy of The Great Influenza for evidence. A flu virus at the end of WW I set the stage for WW II, all because the virus didn’t just infect the body of the US president negotiating the truce. It crossed the blood/brain barrier and infected his brain, leading to a treaty being signed that he’d been opposed to signing.

It’s a rare cold or flu that turns my brain to goo, but when one does, I am down for the count. There will be zero word count. There will be bad TV, tea, soup, and likely, an odd-tasting Chinese Herbal medicine to drink. I’ll always drink them, though, because those herbs kick viral backside and I get to work much faster.

My real problem, one I haven’t found a way around, yet, is migraines. They are the single reason I lose the most days per year of work. They are a perfect storm of neurological impairment and blinding pain that manifests as mental impairment. Sometimes, the blind part is 100% true. No writing through what amounts to an electrical storm in the brain. I have yet to find a way to push language and coherent thought through a migraine in order to muscle out word count. My best coping mechanism is to take my meds, go to bed, and get back at it when I wake.

Most of the time, this works out just fine. Now that I’m on deadline (and this is a migraine night – for the forensically minded, you might be able to detect a pattern by comparing my posts over time – I secretly suspect I make less sense and that posts written under the influence of migraine jump around) if I need to fold up shop early because of a migraine, I make up the word count on the weekend. My deadlines are figured without me working weekends. That allows for make ups as needed. It also allows me to remain married and acquainted with my family.

For the record, I’m not in favor of powering through your body's signals to rest. It doesn’t make you tough or virtuous. It makes you deaf to your body's ability to heal itself. Besides, if you’re going out in public while you’re sick, you're not taking your responsibility for preventing the zombie apocalypse at all seriously. Do you really want the CDC to identify you as patient zero? Oh. Wait. I guess if you were patient zero, you won’t care. You’ll be strolling the ruined remains of civilization looking for a tasty snack of brains.

From messing up Hamlet to zombies in one post. Do I win?

Flawed Road Signs

Flaws. Whose idea was it that we’re supposed to obsess over some perceived imperfection? I suspect a conspiracy. Modern society benefits by convincing you of your flaws so someone can make a buck selling you the remedy thereto. Early religious leaders (of all stripes) benefited because salvaging flawed human beings brought more money in the door. And, early in the life of several religions, if you wished to indulge in your flaws without guilt, sanction for such things could be had – for a price.

So really. Are we as flawed as all that? Or are we indulging someone else’s notion of who and what we ought to be? That’s what I decided long ago. I’ve been a much happier human being since I stopped worrying about what everyone else thinks and began paying attention to what matters to me. Oh, sure. There are people in my life whose opinions I value. Some of them even coach me on my shortcomings. It’s just that I no longer equate flaw with failure. I equate it with opportunity. Typically, I prefer not to use the word ‘flaw’ either. Channeling the few years I worked in the business world, I prefer ‘growth opportunity’ or ‘damn, that’s gotta change’.

What are my current growth opportunities? I’m impatient. I have elevated procrastination to an art form (I give lessons). I have the annoying tendency to put everyone else’s happiness and well-being before my own. Oh. Does that last one sound like a virtue? Some Disney-esque Cinderella sort of thing? Bull-pucky. It’s not. It’s a form of self-sabotage, first. Second, it doesn’t actually serve the people you love who’d be better off developing the initiative to learn whatever skill they’re asking you to perform for them. Third and maybe most importantly, it’s deceptive. I’m not putting everyone else first because I’m all sweetness and light. No. This is a subtle remnant of low self-esteem. If you serve everyone else and make them all happy, look at what a good person you are! Except that you’re also exhausted, resentful, and cranky most of the time. And notably, very little writing gets done.

As for physical flaws? Gave those up. I figure I was built the way I was built for a reason. We can talk about ‘gee, I wish I had curly hair’ or ‘wouldn’t it be nice if I were a size four’. But really, no one is a size four forever. No one. We all change shape. That’s life. Ultimately, physical flaws aren’t about the freckles or the bump on your nose. It’s about things like asthma which meant I could not join the military in any capacity. I took that as a message from the Gods. A pretty clear one, I might add. That’s how I classify flaws – as markers, things that say ‘go here, not there’. I can’t be an astronaut in this lifetime. When I wanted to join the military, I couldn’t fly a fighter, and then found out I couldn’t even drive a truck wearing a uniform. But I can sail a boat by feel. I can navigate unfamiliar water based on nothing more than a detailed chart (though a GPS unit for reference checks really ups the confidence factor – so long as you’re aware that a GPS unit will ask you to sail through land to get to a waypoint…). I can unclog my own galley sink. I can repair a drywall crack in such a way that you’d never know it had been there. I can recite Shakespeare and make it comprehensible to most people (who said the acting degree was worthless?).

Cataloging flaws seems like a twisted form of violence against oneself. If you count your flaws, remember to give the other side equal time. Count your fine qualities, too. What can you do? Sing? Design a website? Run a 25 man raid in World of Warcraft without swearing once, even off microphone?

As a last note, I’ll confess one physical thing. All my life, everyone has said I have bird legs. They are pretty bony and skinny. Flaw? Nuh-uh. I’ve always secretly loved my legs, because those skinny little things are *strong*. Maybe they don’t look right to someone else, but they’ve carried me over mountains carrying a 50lb pack. They’ve cycled 40-50 miles in a day on a bike carrying 60lb packs. They’ve danced. They’ve kicked the crap out of that bully in third grade. What’s not to like?

Euphemism, Repartee, and the Master

by Kerry Schafer

"Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia: I think nothing my lord.
Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maid's legs.
Ophelia: What is, my lord?
Hamlet: Nothing." ~Shakespeare

My sister word whores blew me away this week with their euphemistic prowess. I had thought myself reasonably well versed in sexual verbiage and repartee until I read their varied and educational posts. Every day this week I found myself staring at the computer screen, mouth ajar, eyes crossed, realizing just how sheltered I have apparently been all my life.

As the week progressed, my sense of doom and foreboding grew. I was going to have to write a post myself. I thought about offering up an excuse - that there are only so many good euphemisms to begin with, and they'd all been taken by the time we got around to Saturday. Only, I have to admit that even if I'd had the first post I'd still have come up empty.

Clearly I needed a little help, so I turned to the Master of sexual innuendo and repartee - the one and only Bard of Avon - Mr. William Shakespeare himself. Strictly speaking, the samples I've chosen from his work aren't exactly euphemisms. I'm afraid you'll have to humor me. Whether it's euphemism or innuendo or word play, you've got to admit he was a pro.

Here's another one from Hamlet:

• Hamlet: My excellent good friends! How dost thou Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both?
  Rosencrantz: As indifferent as children of the earth.
  Guildenstern: Happy in that we are not overhappy; on Fortune's cap we are not the very button.
  Hamlet: Nor the soles of her shoe?
  Rosencrantz: Neither, my lord.
  Hamlet: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?
  Guildenstern: Faith, her privates we.
  Hamlet: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet. What's the news?

Moving right along from the Privates of Fortune, try this little snippet from the Taming of the Shrew:

PETRUCHIO

Who knows not where a wasp does
wear his sting? In his tail.

KATHARINA

In his tongue.

PETRUCHIO

Whose tongue?

KATHARINA

Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.

PETRUCHIO

What, with my tongue in your tail? nay, come again,
Good Kate; I am a gentleman.

Next, from the poem Venus and Adonis:

Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.
- William Shakespeare

And then there is this well known phrase from Othello:

Iago:
"I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs."

Interestingly enough, Shakespeare appears to have lifted this from a much earlier source, Rabelais, circa 1532:

"In the vigour of his age he married Gargamelle, daughter to the King of the Parpaillons, a jolly pug, and well-mouthed wench. These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully rubbing and frotting their bacon 'gainst one another."

I think "frotting their bacon" is a lovely image with which to end this week. If anybody else has any favorite quotes from Shakespeare or beyond, I'd be delighted to see them.