Writing Tidbits #3

Telling, Showing, Implying

If the information is vital for understanding the story, then outright state it. ("She feared dogs.")

If the information is important but not vital, then show it in a scene. (Have a scene where the heroine screams and runs away when she sees a dog.)

If the information adds to the story but isn't important, then imply it. (When the stablegirl and prince are out walking, she notices they will pass close to the kennel, so she diverts their route towards the gardens.)

Writing Tidbits #2

Tension v.s. Surprise

Don't go for surprise over suspense/tension. If you are withholding information to create a surprise later, but it decreases the suspense up to that point in the story, then stop withholding information. Suspense always trumps surprise because suspense is what makes the reader continue reading to the end.

Likewise, twists in the story should never be surprising even if they are unexpected.

Writing Tidbits #1

"Writing Tidbits" are, in part, to remind me of important writing lessons I've learned. You may find I've sometimes overlooked applying them in my stories, but that's partly because those things don't come naturally to me. I'm writing these Tidbits on this blog in the hopes they may help other writers.

Increasing Tension

If a scene has potential danger, increase the tension for the characters by making them react as if the danger is present (even if you, as the author, know that they don't need to be afraid of the outcome). Don't overlook any opportunity to keep some level of tension in the story. Even if the character is oblivious to the danger, the reader needs to know that the danger is present.

Creating Interesting Characters

On DeepGenre, David Louis Edelman wrote an article on Building Character(s). In the comments section, Sherwood Smith said something I found very useful about creating interesting characters:

...A couple more possible additions to your list:

1) Character emotional range. If the character is always gloomy, always sarcastic, always with the wise-ass quip, or always nasty, even if he or she has all the motivation in the universe, that character is going to read one-dimensional because we all know we’re a bundle of (usually contradictory) emotional reactions. The hard-assed villain at a light or even tender moment, the hero being off-balance, the side-kick having the cool head, you get the idea, giving characters range helps because:

2) The perception of lack of dimension (I think) comes through readers’ expectations being fulfilled. If the reader can guess ahead of time how a character will react, even if there is every logical reason for the character to do or say that thing, then there’s no growth or guesswork. When the character takes the reader by surprise, I think it ups the ante, the possible interest.

Some Things Change, Others Never Do

The New York Review of Books (Volume 55, Number 10, June 12, 2008) contains a very interesting article. "The Library in the New Age" by Robert Darnton talks about books and newspapers, how things have and haven't changed, and why printed books will be with use for a long time. I'd encourage people to read the whole article, but the following is an except to whet your curiosity:

Having learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surprised by historians who take them as primary sources for knowing what really happened. I think newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events themselves. A study of news during the American Revolution by a graduate student of mine, Will Slauter, provides an example. Will followed accounts of Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine as it was refracted in the American and European press. In the eighteenth century, news normally took the form of isolated paragraphs rather than "stories" as we know them now, and newspapers lifted most of their paragraphs from each other, adding new material picked up from gossips in coffeehouses or ship captains returning from voyages. A loyalist New York newspaper printed the first news of Brandywine with a letter from Washington informing Congress that he had been forced to retreat before the British forces under General William Howe. A copy of the paper traveled by ship, passing from New York to Halifax, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, where the paragraph and the letter were reprinted in a local newspaper.

The Edinburgh reprints were then reprinted in several London papers, each time undergoing subtle changes. The changes were important, because speculators were betting huge sums on the course of the American war, while bears were battling bulls on the Stock Exchange, and the government was about to present a budget to Parliament, where the pro-American opposition was threatening to overthrow the ministry of Lord North. At a distance of three thousand miles and four to six weeks of travel by ship, events in America were crucial for the resolution of this financial and political crisis.

What had actually happened? Londoners had learned to mistrust their newspapers, which frequently distorted the news as they lifted paragraphs from each other. That the original paragraph came from a loyalist American paper made it suspect to the reading public. Its roundabout route made it look even more doubtful, for why would Washington announce his own defeat, while Howe had not yet claimed victory in a dispatch sent directly from Philadelphia, near the scene of the action? Moreover, some reports noted that Lafayette had been wounded in the battle, an impossibility to British readers, who believed (wrongly from earlier, inaccurate reports) that Lafa-yette was far away from Brandywine, fighting against General John Burgoyne near Canada.

Finally, close readings of Washington's letter revealed stylistic touches that could not have come from the pen of a general. One—the use of "arraying" instead of "arranging" troops— later turned out to be a typographical error. Many Londoners therefore concluded that the report was a fraud, designed to promote the interests of the bull speculators and the Tory politicians—all the more so as the press coverage became increasingly inflated through the process of plagiarism. Some London papers claimed that the minor defeat had been a major catastrophe for the Americans, one that had ended with the annihilation of the rebel army and the death of Washington himself. (In fact, he was reported dead four times during the coverage of the war, and the London press declared Benedict Arnold dead twenty-six times.)

Le Courrier de l'Europe, a French newspaper produced in London, printed a translated digest of the English reports with a note warning that they probably were false. This version of the event passed through a dozen French papers produced in the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Switzerland, and France itself. By the time it arrived in Versailles, the news of Washington's defeat had been completely discounted. The comte de Vergennes, France's foreign minister, therefore continued to favor military intervention on the side of the Americans. And in London, when Howe's report of his victory finally arrived after a long delay (he had unaccountably neglected to write for two weeks), it was eclipsed by the more spectacular news of Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga. So the defeat at Brandywine turned into a case of miswritten and misread news—a media non-event whose meaning was determined by the process of its transmission...

Description and Title for My First Novel

I've been trying to write a "back cover summary" description for my first novel to use when friends ask, "what's it about?"

Here's my attempt:

Rica grew up at a strict military school in an isolated village. She's been trained to obey orders without hesitation and knows little of the world beyond the school except what she's been taught. Her teacher doesn't believe she has what it takes to become an officer, so she's about to start her life as a mercenary when a heavenly being appears. He indicates that she's the new queen of the kingdom of Norida by decree of the kingdom's god.

Norida's high ministers have ruled for twelve years, since the death of the last king. Rica tries to learn her new duties and what powers she holds as Queen, but her High Ministers are more interested in manipulating her into doing as they wish than in educating or obeying her. But she's too stubborn to let that stop her.

When two assassins attack her, Rica realizes that her ministers and perhaps her own guards want her dead. Now she has to discover who her enemies are and bring them to justice while hunted by the very people who should be protecting her.

I've been calling this novel Queen's Justice for some time now, but I'm changing the title to Justice Rising. It hardly matters, though, since any publisher who buys this novel will probably change the title to something else.

A Little Bit About Me

I've always been a storyteller. Even as a teenager, I'd make up stories to tell myself as I was falling asleep. I was never very good at writing them down, though. If I started writing one of my stories, I'd mentally finish it and move on to the next story before I had more than the first chapter written down. (Part of my problem has always been the desire to re-write a scene until it is perfect. I'd never get around to writing the rest of the story. Now I force myself to write the complete story down before editing it.)

When I was in high school, I saw an ad for a mail-in course on writing children's literature. It was with the Institute of Children's Literature. I somehow (and I'm still not sure how) convinced my parents to let me take this course. The Institute wrote back saying they normally didn't take students as young as I was, but that my writing was good enough that they'd decided to accept me. I took the course and learned a lot from it. However, my teacher didn't really like my fantasy stories. She saw that I was very good at writing educational stuff and encouraged me in that direction.

I turned in my last assignment--a fantasy story!--right before heading off for college. It was returned with a "you can do better than this--try again!" note. Well, I probably could, but I was too busy with school work and settling in at college. Nearly two years later, in 1996, I finally decided that it would be a shame not to finish the course. I wrote another fantasy story. Back came a letter saying, "I never thought to hear from you again after so much time!" along with some notes on my story and a graduation certificate.

At that point, I started to ponder how I could combine my college major--equine science--with writing. I decided to create a CD-ROM on horse care for my Honor's Thesis. I sat in on a graduate-level course on authoring CD-ROMs and created my first CD-ROM on how to select, buy, and care for a horse. My equine science teacher knew about this and asked me to do my internship with her. Some of my fellow students had troubles learning the various horse gaits (e.g. walk, trot, canter, gallop, foxtrot, rack, slow gait), and my teacher wanted me to write a CD-ROM teaching this information. My "Horse Movement and Gaits" CD-ROM is now used by many universities, horse clubs, and individuals all over the world. After I graduated, I refined that CD-ROM and went on to produce CD-ROMs on "A Guide to Horse Nutrition" and "Horse Conformation & Athletic Movement."

About a year ago, I decided to write fantasy stories again. Looking back, I can see that my Children's Literature teacher was right about the problems with those stories. I can also see how far I've come in my skill as a writer. One bonus in writing educational CD-ROMs is that it taught me how to clearly convey information in as few words as possible. That is a very important skill for any writer.

Writing fantasy is very different from writing educational CD-ROMs, but I love it!