Wordswoman

The only trouble is that reading it makes me think of doing all those things I"m not supposed to do.

This is only a rough draft, so I'd love feedback from my LJ writer friends.

Web Links

• Holly Lisle's How to Create a Character
• Tami Cowden on Characterization
• How to Create a Character Profile
• Creating Characters from Scratch
• Character Checklist
• Working With Your Reader: Character Description
• Building Three-Dimensional Characters
• Using Body Language to Create Believable Characters
• Character Development Drives Conflict
• Character Development Worksheet
• You and Your Character
• The Plotter & The Pantser: A Writing Chat About Characterization
• Problems with Character Names

• Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
• Dynamic Characters: How to Create Personalities That Keep Readers Captivated by Nancy Kress
• Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints by Nancy Kress
  

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the Army.

I'm a sucker for a catchy opening, I must admit. Not for me the slow seduction of scene-setting, wherein each curve of the road or leaf of the tree is described in loving, lyrical detail. Not for me the lazy pan of the camera across the town as an unseen narrator relates its history. If I want a picture, I'll go to a museum. No, I want those opening lines to delight or surprise or madden me. Anything but indifference. I want them to draw me into the story irresistibly, inescapably.

All children, except one, grow up.

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

But as I sat there happily remembering favorite opening lines--and it's quite a collection, by now--I realized that I couldn't think of any favorite closing lines. Not one. And that felt to me like a great omission. Surely how the story ends is every bit as important as how it begins?

I know that Hamlet's final words are "The rest is silence." But those are the character's last words, not the close of the play.

Many of you LJ friends are great writers and readers. Do any of you collect closing lines? Have you written a closing of which you're particularly fond/proud?

Courtesy of Inkygirl: Daily Diversions for Writers.

I got a phone call from Edmund Schubert, editor of Intergalactic Medicine Show. He explained that he'd been trying to email, but his messages were being returned as undeliverable (damn those interweb gremlins!). He apologized graciously for holding my story for so long without any word.

He went on to say that while he is not buying the story (apparently he's seen one too many "somebody meets Mr. Death" plotlines), he really liked my writing style and my characters, and he hopes to see something else from me. He was so warm and courteous that it almost slipped my mind that this was a rejection notice.

I should be disappointed, I suppose, but he was so gracious and complimentary--and I've never been 100% satisfied with that story myself. So I'm just gratified to know that other work of mine may have a good chance with that market.

"The Angel of Death and the Godess of Pie" goes in the drawer for now, until the Muse sends me a better ending. Or perhaps a whole new adventure for Annie the pie baker.

"Though I'm current on reading 95% of the submissions, there are still a handful of folks who have been waiting a looong time for a reply. However, if you have not heard from me and your story was submitted more than 100 days ago, take heart: all that means is that I like your story and have been waiting to sort some of these publishing/scheduling matters out."

:::::crossing fingers and toes and ankles and knees:::::

Recently I had the happy privilege of critiquing

mmerriam

It's an unholy gumbo, in other words. By all rights it shouldn't work—but it does. Once he irons out a few rough spots, this one is going to sell.  (Remember, you heard it here first. I knew him when.)

Reading an entire novel with my critiquer's hat on, though, was quite different than experiencing a novel as a regular reader. I found myself noticing certain small issues in Michael's writing that I struggle with myself, and I suspect many writers do.

• Then there was Mrs. Henry Filbert, whose postmortem vocabulary consisted entirely of Baptist hymn titles. Oddly enough, these could often be strung together in such a way as to approximate conversation.

• The distinction between astonishingly rare and imaginary is critical, but often unrecognized until far too late.

She's looking especially Polar bear cubbish in this shot:

How am I supposed to get any writing done with THIS in my house?!?

jimvanpelt

http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/42399.html

Meanwhile, I'm writing a cheery little monster story that's getting downright gothic, full of unseen perils and nameless dread. Such fun! Makes me want to run out and buy Call of Cthulhu. I don't have an ending for it yet, but that's OK; it's an interesting experiment in building tension for as long as possible without revealing the Very Bad Thing behind the curtain. Eventually I'll have to show it, of course, and I suspect that nothing I can describe will be as scary as the anticipation.

(My gripe with 99% of all horror movies is that their makers don't believe you can scare people without splattering gallons of blood across the screen. To them I suggest a very special literary selection: Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. The woman was pure genius at making the fine hairs stand up on the back of your neck--with no more potent ammunition than nervous conversation and uneven doorframes.)

The dead naked grandma story is also coming along, and I have at least an inkling of an ending for that one. Enough to set a rough course by, anyway. It's going to be sad, much to my surprise, although you wouldn't know it from this bit:

As near anyone could figure, Heaven filled up at 3:07 p.m. on October 14th. Every soul since then had just come on home.

The first confirmed sighting in America was Gertrude “Trudy” Neuberger of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who appeared at her Marietta Avenue home a week after her death, surprising her three grown children in the middle of a vicious argument over the antique furniture. Her historic first words were, “Shut your greedy traps, you bone-picking vultures!”

My teenage daughter and I had a long discussion once about magic in fiction--how it needs to have a price, or it's no different than a deus ex machina. If a wave of a wand can fix everything, even death, that's not magic, it's cheating.

And it's not just true of magic. Any important thing or purpose desired by a fictional character ought to cost the character something, even if it's only regret.

Hilary's work has been published in Realms of Fantasy, Tales of the Unanticipated, and New Voices of Science Fiction. She is also the organizer of the Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Writers Network, where I serve as one of her minions--er, assistant organizers. Like me, she struggles to carve out writing time in a life that includes a day job, spouse, and two children, so opportunities to hear her marvelous work are rare and precious. I'm honored to be her reading partner for the evening.

Watch for updates soon on convention readings this spring and summer.

"Did you know your grandma is walking naked on the railroad trestle?"

"Which grandma? The live one or the dead one?"

"The dead one."'

"Shit."

I may also forgive shallow characterization if a writer gives exceptional plot--but not as often, and the forgiveness tends to expire when I turn the final page. Good plots with badly drawn characters usually land in my Donate pile, while weak plots with fabulous characters earn a place on my shelves. (I'm sure there are other readers who do just the opposite.)

What makes a well-drawn character is as individual as a snowflake. But what makes for a bad one? Here are a few wince-worthy examples (feel free to contribute your own):

• The Snidely Whiplash. A one-dimensional villain who's evil and mean just because he's evil and mean; no redeeming traits or apparent motivation. Tends to sneer, gloat, lust and scheme in tired clichés.

• The paragon. The perfect protagonist without a single flaw. Smart, gorgeous, noble, self-sacrificing...and boring as hell. Never farts, probably craps roses.

• The one-trick pony. Has just one distinguishing character trait (usually an exaggerated one) that the author trots out over and over and over.

• The genderpuppet. Any character who seems to exist purely as fantasy fulfillment for an author of the opposite sex. This character acts the way the author wishes men or women behaved, not as real men and women actually do. Womanpuppets tend to be beautiful, busty and beddable; manpuppets tend to be strong yet sensitive, and unusually willing to talk about their feelings (especially their feelings about the heroine). Often distinguished by fabulous hair and an exotic eye color.

• The mime. Has a problem or secret but can't tell anyone because that would resolve the issue on the spot. Spends most of the novel agonizing silently when any sane person would just speak up and clear the air.

In addition to its openness to all genres, this group had several other pluses:

• Longevity. They've been meeting for years, so they are long past the "growing pains" stage when a group is still sorting out its mission and methods.


• Frequency. They meet weekly, so missing one session doesn't mean a long drought in support/inspiration.
  


• Critical mass. There were at leat 15 members present, many of whom were longtime participants.
  

I'll probably visit once or twice more before I make up my mind, though. I'd like to get better acquainted with the individual members and learn where they're at in their writing careers.

As an exercise, I decided to list some of the smells, tastes, sounds that are the most vivid to me. Today, the smells:

BEST:
bacon frying
freshly peeled tangerine
fresh-ground coffee (even though I don't drink it)
chocolate chip cookies baking
bread baking
baby after a bath
woodsmoke
line-dried laundry
cut grass
the air outdoors after a spring rain
cilantro
vanilla
cinnamon
mint
wild roses
lilac blossoms
pine trees

WORST:
vomit
pig shit
burnt electrical wires
sulfur
burning hair
burning plastic
skunk
rotting animal carcass

NEITHER BEST NOR WORST, BUT UNMISTAKABLE:
Play-Doh
Vicks vapo-rub
markers
Jergens lotion
wet dog
horses
old books

matociquala

Thirteen things to do when you run out of plot.

Don't get me wrong, I am delighted when an author honestly surprises me. But the operative word here is honestly. A deus ex machina is not honest. You can't just pull a rabbit out of a heretofore unseen hat and call it clever.

If your ending hinges upon facts that you've never so much as hinted at to your reader, you're cheating.

A well-crafted surprise ending is a thing of beauty. It's the flowering of seeds skillfully planted early in the story, in plain sight of the reader, all unnoticed until the end. Startling, yet inevitable. Damn, I love it when somebody pulls that off. I want to applaud when a writer blindsides me with something that's been there all along, big as a house, if only I'd been clever enough to pay attention to it.

The playwright Chekhov said that if you put a gun onstage in Act I, you must fire it by Act III. Surprise endings require a corollary: If you're firing the gun in Act III, you have to show it to us in Act I.

This is abominably difficult to do well. If you're too obvious, you might as well hold up a big sign saying THIS IS IMPORTANT LATER. If you're too subtle, your reader will be scratching her head at the end, saying, "How the f--- could the butler do it? What butler?" If it can't be done elegantly, you're better off trying to craft a strong ending that doesn't rely on the element of surprise.

I think the acid test is that a bad surprise ending is only satisfying once (if that). A good surprise ending is satisfying even when you've read it before.