Today’s post is written by regular contributor Susan Bearman. 

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”  — William Faulkner

There’s debate about whether Faulkner really said “kill your darlings.” And if he did, was he talking about editing out beautiful, but superfluous words; or was he talking about how we treat our characters?

We’re all guilty of falling in love with our own writing. It’s an occupational hazard. Who would want to write about a character you didn’t like, or at least find compelling? Given the amount of time you spend with a main character (MC), it’s important to feel a real connection.

But there is danger in liking your MC too much. Here are some things to keep in mind when trying to create memorable characters.

Perfection is Boring

There’s a little bit of autobiography in everything we write, and it’s human nature to try to revise history to our own advantage. When creating a character, we are recreating some aspect of ourselves and it’s tempting to make that character perfect.

But perfect is boring, and boring is fatal when it comes to a main character. As readers, we are far more likely to identify with the follies and foibles of our favorite characters than with the things they do well. Forget perfection. Turn yourself into an armchair shrink and get your MC to open up about all his secrets. Keep investigating until you find his fatal flaw—that one character trait that will get him into trouble every time.

Good fictional flaws should be more than superficial. They should be genuine and difficult to overcome. Good flaws tend to be more psychological than physical, although they can certainly have physical manifestations.

I’m not much of a gamer, but I was thrilled to discover the Dark World RPG Demonic Renaissance website, which has compiled a great list of character flaws. Bookmark it for future reference, and have fun trolling through this magnificent collection of human frailties.

Up the Ante

Sometimes, our characters are like our children. We want to protect them, or at least let them learn from our mistakes. But just like children, characters need their own experiences to become fully developed. They need to make their own mistakes.

So, take off the training wheels and let your character go. Your job isn’t to make her ride smoother, just to set her on her path. Be her shadow, not her savior.

“Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.” — Ray Bradbury

Today’s post is written by regular contributor Susan Bearman.

A story either leaps off the page or it doesn’t.

Beatriz Badikian-Gartler once told our writing group that “Titles are a kind of promise you make to the reader.” Certainly, titles are important, but I think her point applies even more to the beginning of your story than to the title itself.

In the beginning, we establish our voice, invite the reader into our world, and tempt them to come along for the ride. We make a promise that the story to come will be worth their time and emotional energy.

And, attention spans being what they are today, we don’t have much time to get them hooked. In the age of the Internet, it’s estimated that a web page has three seconds to catch someone’s attention before they click off to another page. You can probably assume that you have a bit more time with fiction, since presumably the reader has come willingly to you. But you are still making a promise.

We can all think of famous first lines in literature, lines that continue to resonate long after the novel has been put back on the shelf. The classic “Once upon a time…” may be considered cliché, but it does a lot of work in just four words:

• It lets the reader know that a story is at hand.
• It eases the way for suspending disbelief.
• It sets the story in a different place and time.
• It awakens curiosity and raises questions.

These are the kinds of things you want your own beginnings to accomplish.

Change of Pace

It used to be that the writer had loads of time to get a story started, but in today’s fast-paced world, some celebrated opening pages might not hold up. Let’s take a look.

Most people know “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. But how many people remember the rest of that first sentence:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Brilliant writing, yes, but I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t be able to sell a 120-word first sentence today. And unless you are Charles Dickens, don’t even try. Can’t you just imagine a literary agent working with Dickens today?

“Hey, Charlie, you’ve got a lot of pretty words here at the beginning. I mean, it’s really good stuff. ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ We get it. Stop there, dump the rest and start with the action scene in chapter 2. Sure, weave in a little backstory here and there, but stick to the plot. Tighten this baby up, cut out maybe 35,000 words or so and I think you’ll have a real winner.”

I’m kidding, of course, but today most stories don’t begin with such philosophical ruminations; they start in the middle of the action, or in media res. Author Patricia Lear once said: “The opening of a story is akin to an attack. It has to be strong.” Them’s fightin’ words, and they imply that you need to grab your readers by the throat, but what you really need to do is grab their attention.

Don’t Get Stuck at the Beginning

I want to take a minute here to reiterate that your first draft is not the time to hone your beginning. The job of a first draft is to get the story down. Sometimes, your first line may stand just as you wrote it. It may be that this first line was truly inspired—the inspiration for the story that was not yet completely formed.

More likely, though, you have the glimpse of an idea and you need to push through that first draft before the entire picture emerges. It may be that your first line is the last one you polish after all your revisions have been completed—that you find your true beginning at the end of the process.

The point is, don’t agonize over the beginning at the beginning. Save that particular angst for a later date. When you are ready to see if your beginning works, here are some suggestions.

Ask Your Beta Readers

This is a great task to assign to your trusted critique group. Presumably, these invited readers will give you the benefit of the doubt and read past even a terrible beginning. Ask them specific questions:

• When did the story get interesting?
• What was the hook that drew them in?
• What did they experience when they read the first line, page, chapter?
• What drew them up short?
• What questions did the beginning raise?

Look at the Words

Words are your paint box. The colors you choose for the beginning sentences of your story will set and light the stage.

The words you choose here tell the reader what to expect from you as a writer. Do you use language well? Are you gifted at your craft? Do you care enough to use rhythm and pacing and nuance in a way that’s never been done before?

Be specific. Specificity engenders trust. Name your characters. Set your story in a defined place and time. A telling detail can draw your reader in quickly by making your fictional world real. Words have literal meaning as well as emotional connotations. Think how a well-chosen noun can evoke setting, like parasol, palm tree, or rickshaw.

Though beginning with action is the current trend in fiction, delayed gratification has its pleasures. When you start with setting, you can draw the reader into your reality. Just don’t make them wait too long.

Find the Magic

Reading a great beginning is like falling in love at first sight. There is a certain amount of magic involved. No one can teach magic, but you can practice the tricks of the trade until your skills are so honed that the reader can’t see how you did it. You can’t see magic, you just believe.

Today’s post is written by regular contributor Sarah Baughman.

I’ll give you twenty seconds to skim these paragraphs and tell me which one exhibits stronger, more engaging writing:

Paragraph A

The hottest month in Ayemenem would certainly have to be May. Each and every day is long and exceedingly humid. The river starts to dry up and black crows, which sit in trees that are a dusty-colored green, eat golden, sun-ripened mangoes. It is a time when red bananas as well as plump, yellow, odd-smelling jackfruits are starting to get significantly riper. Flies buzz around and around in the sweet-smelling air. Then, because they don’t understand what glass is, they fly right into the windows and are killed by the impact. 

Paragraph B

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.

Even though I wrote Paragraph A, I hope you hated it. It’s my decidedly unimpressive 91-word rewrite of Arundhati Roy’s arresting beginning to her novel The God of Small Things. Roy’s version, at 55 words, is undoubtedly cleaner, tighter, and more powerful.

A lower word count doesn’t always point to superiority, but wordiness is best avoided, and it’s the main culprit lurking behind my rewrite’s failure.

Are you wordy? Recognize the signs

Scan your writing for the following symptoms of wordiness:

• “Being” verbs. You’ll have to use them sometimes, of course, but they often slow the pace of a sentence. Compare “still, dustgreen trees” to “trees that are a dusty-colored green.” My paragraph contains seven “being verbs”; Roy’s just two. Highlight the “being” verbs on a page of your WIP and try to cut them in half.
• Passive constructions. Passive voice, which occurs when the subject of the sentence receives action rather than performing it, inevitably clogs sentences. Compare the flies that “are killed by the impact” versus the flies that simply “die.”
• Filler words. We writers love words…maybe a little too much. Are all of our words necessary? My rewrite quickly bogs itself down under the weight of ” would certainly have to be,”  ”each and every,” “around and around,” and “it is a time when”. Play a game with your WIP: take a few sentences and try to rewrite them to be half as long, a third as long, even just an eighth as long. Experiment with what words you can cut without losing meaning.
• Clichés. We’ve read these so many times that when they pop up, it’s easy to read right over them. Except for the unnecessary space they consume in our writing, it’s almost like they don’t exist for all the impact they have on readers. My rewrite’s description of “sun-ripened” mangoes and “sweet-smelling” air are not only longer, but lamer, than Roy’s.
• Unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. When it comes to description, sometimes less is more. My use of “exceedingly” and “significantly” doesn’t help readers visualize the gravity of the description, and the ” plump, yellow, odd-smelling” jackfruits might just have gone a bit overboard; Roy’s startlingly clear verb (“bursts”) packs more punch.

Stop wordiness before it starts

Editing out unnecessary words is great, but can we train ourselves not to include them at all? When meaning infuses each word, we’re less likely to use too many. Consider minimizing unnecessary words by regularly employing the following language devices:

• Fresh verbs. Roy’s river “shrinks”; her crows “gorge”; her jackfruits “burst”; her flies “stun themselves.” These verbs aren’t typical; they also require less elaboration than my ho-hum “starts to dry up,” “eat,” “starting to get significantly riper,” and “buzz around and around.” Yawn.
• Active voice. Roy’s repeated subject-verb sentence construction lends immediacy to her writing. Your sentence structure can vary from this, of course, but putting subjects in charge of their verbs trims the word count and reads smoothly.
• Stark contrast. Moving quickly from one opposite description to another or juxtaposing contrasting images economizes words and efficiently establishes action or setting. Roy’s days are “long,” but the river “shrinks.” Birds “gorge” in “still” trees. Those trees are “dustgreen” while the bananas are “red.” Her flies first “hum,” then “die.” All in 55 words.
• Varied sentence length. Achieve unique rhythm by alternating short and long sentences. We’re ready to digest Roy’s “Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air” in part because we’ve just been slammed with the fast– and effective– “Jackfruits burst.” In my rewrite, the sentences are all about the same length; there’s no break.
• Unusual description. When was the last time you thought of those flies wriggling on their backs on your windowsill as “fatly baffled?” A summer month as “hotly brooding?” Descriptions that make readers pause, think, and wonder need not be long; their strangeness carries the writing.

How do you avoid wordiness in your writing? What strategies do you have in place for editing wordiness out of your work, or for writing efficiently in the first place?

Today’s post is written by regular contributor Sarah Baughman.

Is anybody else out there a terrible titler?

Naming pieces of writing is one of the hardest parts of the process for me. To give you an idea of just how hard, I offer this confession: in college I wrote a swath of poems as various incarnations of “Untitled” (I was even known to title poems in a series “Untitled 1,” “Untitled 2,” “Untitled 3″…). Pretty bad, I know.

What is it about titling that’s so difficult? Personally, I have a hard time being succinct, and it’s even more difficult to achieve that in a title that’s simultaneously meaningful, catchy, and relevant to the work as a whole.

Since I have some writing I’ve been putting off submitting for publication in large part because I can’t for the life of me figure out what to call it, I decided it was time to stage an intervention. For myself. I took a long look at titles and identified some major types in hopes that doing so would help me divine how great authors handle such a tricky task. This list is hardly exhaustive, but it’s a start.

Types of Titles

Direct Character Descriptor

Some titles refer quite specifically to a particular character; many offer a key description whose significance emerges through reading.

Consider using it if: A particular characteristic of your protagonist drives the plot.

Examples:

• The Girl With The Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier
• The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski

Indirect Character Descriptor

These titles refer to characters as well, but in more general terms or using only a descriptor as opposed to a specific pronoun.

Consider using it if: Something that happens to, or embodies, your protagonist is ultimately more significant than his or her separate identity.

Examples:

• The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
• The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

Setting Descriptor

Titles that indicate setting can be poetic or plain, mysterious or straightforward; what unites them is their shift in focus from person to place.

Consider using it if: Where or When your story takes place drives the plot.

Examples:

• House of Sand and Fog, by Andres Dubus
• Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane
• The House at Tyneford, by Natasha Solomon

Gerund Verb

There’s just something about an -ing verb; these titles feel active, assertive, and suggestive of an exciting read.

Consider using it if: An action characters perform drives the plot.

Examples:

• Running the Rift, by Naomi Benarom
• Bringing Up Bebé, by Pamela Druckerman
• Losing Clementine, by Ashley Ream

One Word

Sometimes that’s all it takes. These titles stand out because of their spare clarity; just make sure the word you choose counts for a lot.

Consider using it if: You want to pack a punch and can condense the essence of your work into a single noun or descriptor.

Examples:

• Run, by Ann Patchett
• Saturday, by Ian McEwan
• The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink

Poetic

Poetic language doesn’t just belong in poems. A pretty, descriptive title attracts readers.

Consider using it if: Your story is rich in metaphor, you want to call attention to a particular detail, or you want to create a mystical effect.

Examples:

• Tomorrow River, by Lesley Kagen
• Dry Grass of August, by Anna Jean Mahew
• Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi

Surprising or Strange

There’s just enough oddness in these titles to make you want to read further and figure out what in the world is going on.

Consider using it if: A contradiction in your work can be easily summed up.

Examples:

• The Tenderness of Wolves, by Stef Penney
• Holy Fools, by Joanne Harris
• What is the What, by Dave Eggers

Prepositional Phrase

These titles suggest you’re already in the middle of the action. They’re unfinished; they suggest a question. Which, of course, is a great reason to read.

Consider using it if: An important message in your work can also be expressed through concrete action.

Examples:

• To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• By the Iowa Sea, by Joe Blair
• In One Person, by John Irving

Saying With A Twist

Titles that relay something people are used to hearing, but not quite, create immediate intrigue.

Consider using it if: You’re witty and can figure out how to reappropriate a cliché or common phrase to reflect a theme in your work.

Examples:

• Birds of a Lesser Paradise, by Megan Mayhew Bergman
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver
• A Spoonful of Promises, by T. Susan Chang

Noun, Plus

These titles create a distinct image, concrete or poetic, that elaborates on a key noun.

Consider using it if: When you sum up your work, it’s not a single word, but an action, phrase, or description that comes to mind.

Examples:

• A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey
• The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, by Jan-Philipp Sendker
• A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty, by Joshilyn Jackson

Two-Part Title

Particularly common in non-fiction works, two-part titles are generally made up of an interesting hook and a longer, relatively detailed explanation of exactly what the work entails.

Consider using it if: A catch-phrase isn’t enough; you want to be creative but also explain exactly what readers will encounter.

Examples:

• It Sucked and then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita, by Heather B. Armstrong (Phrase + Explanation)
• Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected, by Kelle Hampton (Single Word + Explanation)
• Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, The Bad, and the Scary,  by Jill Smokler (Short Plot Description + Explanation)
• Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, by Tom Mueller (Twist + Explanation)

How To Title

How do you decide on a title for your work? Do you have any strategies that work particularly well? 

Today’s post is written by regular contributor Sarah Baughman.

I often read about the importance of spicing writing up with dialogue or description: a little show-don’t-tell language, a heated argument relayed with fast-paced exclamation points, a vivid image, an exchange whose subtext reveals more than the words themselves.

“Absolutely!” I always say. “I need to include more of that in my writing.” The only question is—when? How can I gauge when to give way to rich description, and when to let my characters speak for themselves?

Certainly part of the decision depends on balance. If we rely only on dialogue or description, challenging ourselves to develop the other at some point will surely benefit our writing. But assuming we strive to incorporate both in appropriate measures, are there any indicators available to help us see in which instances one might serve more purpose than the other?

Choosing Dialogue

Dialogue reads easily; it’s familiar, and its structure mimics regular conversations. It’s by nature colloquial and comfortable. Consider inserting dialogue when you want to:

1. Establish mystery or create tension between what’s said and what’s meant.

Readers can be just as taken with what isn’t said as with what is; suspense grows from reading between the lines. The following excerpt from Sara Gruen’s Like Water for Elephants (pg. 187) recounts an exchange between the protagonist and antagonist, and the fact that the characters don’t tell the whole story suggests a lot about their relationship as well as how the plot might develop.

“I need to arrange to get a doctor out here.”
“Why?”
I hesitate. “I’d rather not say.”
“Ah,” he says, winking at me. “I understand.”
“What?” I say, horrified. “No. It’s nothing like that.” I glance at Marlena, who turns quickly toward the window. “It’s for a friend of mine.”
“Yes, of course it is,” says August, smiling.
“No, it really is. And it’s not…Look, I just wondered if you knew of anyone. Never mind. I’ll walk into town and see what I can find.”

2. Accentuate a character’s voice or personality.

Think about the key relationships in your life and the extent to which conversation fuels them. Can’t we determine a lot about someone from the way they speak—their tone, vocabulary, syntax, use of humor or sarcasm?

In the following excerpt from She’s Come Undone (pg. 220), Wally Lamb expertly illustrates in just a few sentences of dialogue the differences between two characters. Marcia’s proper chiding, her quaint, chaste expression (“fry ice!”) contrasts perfectly with Naomi’s blunt, crass response, efficiently setting the two women at odds.

“Now you just watch your language and I mean it,” Marcia said.
“Oh yeah, your virgin ears,” Naomi laughed. “That’s probably your trouble, Marcia. Virgnity.”
A tremor passed over Marcia’s face. “You know, Naomi, I try hard to love a little something about every gal in this dormitory. But you can just go fry ice!”

3. Step back from interpretation; let characters reveal relationships.

In description, writers choose key details; they create metaphors that carry subtle connotations and paint images that might guide readers to a certain feeling about the subject being described.

Bare-bones dialogue leaves interpretation to the reader; it’s a pure form of characterization. In fiction, characters often take on lives of their own, ones the author might not have predicted at the beginning. In creative non-fiction, relaying a conversation ensures objectivity.

Consider how, in the following excerpt from A Thousand Splendid Suns (pg. 209), Khaled Hosseini creates an argument between two characters whose stark dialogue, unaffected by description, refrains from judgment:

“Where did you put it?” she said, wheeling around to face Laila.
“Me?” Laila said. “I didn’t take it. I hardly come in here.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Is that an accusation? It’s how you wanted it, remember. You said you would make the meals. But if you want to switch–”
“So you’re saying it grew little legs and walked out…”

Choosing Description

Rich description brings readers into the world we’ve created, making fictional settings and characters undoubtedly real. Consider inserting description when you want to:

1. Explore the significance of setting.

Writers know that characters, like people, are influenced by their environments. Using vivid description to linger on aspects of setting especially important to plot or character development is an excellent strategy.

In Snow Falling on Cedars (pg. 5), David Guterson assigns human qualities (optimistic, implacable) to his setting:

A few wind-whipped and decrepit Victorian mansions, remnants of a lost era of seagoing optimism, loomed out of the snowfall on the town’s sporadic hills. Beyond them, cedars wove a steep mat of still green. The snow blurred from vision the clean contours of these cedar hills. The sea wind drove snowflakes steadily inland, hurling them against the fragrant trees, and the snow began to settle on the highest branches with a gentle implacability. 

2. Create a close study of one character’s private thoughts.

We can carefully script and edit what we actually say out loud, but our thoughts run wild. Description reveals truths about a character that might seem unrealistically revealing or even disingenuous if spoken in conversation.

In this excerpt from The Snow Child (pg. 3), Eowyn Ivey uses imagery to plumb her main character’s disappointment with a depth Mabel certainly could not bring herself to reveal through dialogue:

Mabel had known there would be silence. That was the point, after all. No infants cooing or wailing. No neighbor children playfully hollering downy he lane. No pad of small feet on wooden stairs worn smooth by generations, or clackety-clack of toys along the kitchen floor. All those sounds of her failure and regret would be left behind, and in their place there would be silence. 

3. Move plot forward quickly, using shifts in time.

Vivid description can quickly layer different plotlines to create an unconventional narrative structure. In Cold Mountain (pgs. 4-5), Charles Frazier uses an element of setting–a window–to trigger a character’s memory and build backstory:

Inman suspected that after such long examination, the grey window had finally said about all it had to say. That morning, though, it surprised him, for it brought to mind a lost memory of sitting in school, a similar tall window beside him framing a scene of pastures and low green ridges terracing up to the vast hump of Cold Mountain…The memory passed on as the light from the window rose toward day. 

How do dialogue and description complement one another? How do you determine whether to develop one or the other in a particular part of your manuscript?

Writers write. But writers also read … at least we should.

My own to-be-read pile is officially as tall as my house, so I’m as guilty as the next writer of neglecting the reading part of my life, but this is a mistake.

I once heard that authors write only half of a novel; readers write the other half, and every time a book is read (or reread) it is rewritten.

I think this is brilliant and I wish I knew who said it first. It reminds us of the unique synergy between writer and reader (who usually don’t ever meet) in creating the world of the story that only starts on the page, but is transformed into something greater and completely new as the words are read.

But how can we use our reading to make our writing better?

1. Renew Your Love of Reading

Do you remember the first book you ever loved, perhaps one that was read to you over and over again as a child? Or the first book you read all by yourself? Or that love story you read as a teenager that made you fall in love with falling in love?

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.” — Ernest Hemingway

I’m wiling to bet there isn’t a writer, dead or alive, who hasn’t been transformed by reading. But when was the last time you got lost in a wonderful story?

If you believe, as I do, that writers do half the work and readers do the other half, then the act of reading is an act of writing.

Maybe we need a new word to describe this phenomenon, but for right now, make a writerly commitment to enjoy reading on a regular basis. Make a date with the library or that pile of books on your nightstand, and rediscover the joy of reading.

2. Read Like a Writer

Once you’ve made a commitment to regular pleasure reading, set some time aside to read like a writer. This is a completely different kind of reading. Instead of losing yourself in the story, take a step back to look at how the author did what he or she did to keep you enthralled. This is usually best done with a book you have already read.

As you read, think of yourself as an apprentice, looking over the shoulder of a master writer and learning the tricks of the trade. Here are some things to look for:

• Beautiful language
• Rhythm and pacing
• Good verbs
• Metaphors and similes
• Transitions and turning points
• Character development: wants, needs, goals
• Conflict and obstacles
• Plot twists and subplots
• Climax and resolution

Take notes. My mother was a librarian, so I still can’t bring myself to mark up a book, but feel free to do what works best for you. I’m finding my e-reader to be an excellent tool for this kind of book dissection, but sticky notes or a plain old spiral binder work just as well.

Read out of your genre to see what other kinds of writers have to offer. Top-notch mystery writers can give you a graduate level education on escalating tension, plot twists, and climaxes.

Think you have nothing to learn from reading picture books? Think again. Great picture books writers do everything writers of adult novels do in roughly 1,000 words, often using a limited vocabulary. Rarely do adults read books more than once, but as children’s book writer Rosemary Wells once said: “All really good picture books are written to be read five hundred times.” What can we learn from picture books that will make our readers want to read our books 500 times?

Sit down and reread some of your favorite picture books or spend a little time in the children’s department of your public library looking for:

• Relatable characters that we care about
• The beginning, middle, and end
• The inciting incident
• What the main character wants
• What obstacles get in the way
• How the main character changes

Pacing is important in picture books, as well. Look for the page turns and ask yourself why they happen when they do. What can you learn from these page turns about where to end a chapter? Language and rhythm are also key to good picture book writing. See how the rhythm of the words keeps the story moving.

3. Read to Learn

How about a how-to? There are plenty of great books on how to write. My personal favorite is The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner. If you haven’t started your writing book library, now’s a good time.

But there are many other how-to books that can help your writing. For example, what if your main character knows something that you don’t? What if he’s a chef, or she’s a taxidermist? Maybe it’s time to read some great cookbooks or Taxidermy for Dummies. (I checked. It doesn’t exist, so if you are a taxidermist by trade or avocation, this could be the book to write. In the meantime, don’t despair if your main character is into taxidermy. This book looks like a good how-to: The Complete Guide to Small Game Taxidermy: How to Work with Squirrels, Varmints, and Predators by Todd Triplet. But I digress.)

4. Read to Learn the Business

I don’t want to dwell too much on this point, because it could be easily misconstrued, but it is important to know what is being published and where. Don’t read to discover the trends. By the time you write a “trendy” book, the trend will have passed. But there is a lot of good information you can discover by reading new releases.

Read the front and back matter for thank yous to agents and editors, often named in the acknowledgements. Look at the name of the publishing imprint to learn which houses publish which kinds of books. Know your competition, both to be able to compare yourself favorably and to differentiate yourself. It’s a tricky line to walk in a query, but the point here is that you have to know what other authors have published for your target audience.

If, as a writer, you have neglected your reading life, then you are also neglecting a vital part of your writing life. Start a GoodReads or LibraryThing account to track your reading and to look for recommendations. Make a reading plan and stick to it, and watch how it improves your writing.

Have you read a book that has changed your writing? Tell us about it.

*Please check out my guest article, Cut the Comparisons: 3 Ways to Embrace Your Unique Path, today at Change Your Thoughts.

Ever feel you might be writing the wrong story?

Let’s say you have a great premise and the characters are fully realized in your own mind. You rush to get something down on the page, either in the form of a detailed outline or a rough first draft. Everything goes pretty well for the first bit, but at some point you start to second-guess yourself.

The plot just doesn’t seem to be meshing as well with your characters as you thought it would. You’re having trouble translating your initial vision onto the page. You begin doubt you have the skills to make the story everything you wanted it to be.

Does all of this mean you chose to write the wrong story? Should you cut your losses and move on to the next idea?

While this may be the case some of the time (for example, you’re attempting to write a story that necessitates knowledge you can’t acquire through research), in many cases…

…it’s less about writing the right story, and more about writing the story right.

There’s No Such Thing as a Small Story

You know how, in the acting world, they say there are no such things as small parts, only small actors? That means even the smallest of roles can be memorable, and played with depth and enthusiasm, given a talented actor.

My theory is that the same truth holds for writers and their stories. There is no such thing as a small story, only small writers (that is, writers who think small in terms of the story—those who cannot do it full justice).

Think about it. Wonderfully powerful stories have been written about relatively everyday or mundane concepts. For example, John Cheever’s The Swimmer is about a man who tries to get home from a friend’s house by swimming through all the pools in the county. Hardly anything happens in the story, but it features a lot of symbolism and has a surprise ending which makes it a classic.

But, told in the wrong manner, that classic could have been a complete flop.

Is Your Story Too Big for You?

I started writing a short story a few months ago, one which came to me like a lightning bolt. I knew where I wanted to go with it, and did a basic outline. But once I had written a skeleton draft, something just felt wrong. The plot was unfolding in two contrasting locations, and for that reason it felt as if I were trying to tell two stories instead of one. The more I second-guessed myself, the more my characters began to slip out of focus. I felt I was in over my head. Perhaps this wasn’t the right story for me, or for these characters.

But, for some reason, I just couldn’t abandon it. It meant something to me on a personal level. It was a big story, not in terms of plot, but in terms of depth. It would require plenty of blood, sweat and tears to make it the best it could be.

That’s when I realized that it wasn’t a matter of me having the wrong story; it was a matter of me not telling the story in the best way possible. The dual settings could work so long as I found a way to better connect them to each another and to the plot. The characters could become what I had initially envisioned with some more fleshing out. I could find the best narrative point of view by testing a few parts in first and third person. And, some parts which I had already written—but weren’t really working—needed to be discarded.

The story didn’t need to be abandoned. It just needed to be told in a different manner. It was my job to discover what that meant.

Writing the Story Right

In A Brief History of the Short Story, Part 37, The Guardian claims Alice Munro once remarked that she eschews definite conclusions in her stories because:

“I want the story to exist somewhere so that in a way it’s still happening, or happening over and over again. I don’t want it to be shut up in the book and put away – oh well, that’s what happened.”

To me, that’s the definition of writing the story right. Where the story and characters actually live on in the readers mind, in some sort of alternate universe, long after the pages are closed.

How can we make sure we’re writing our stories in the best way possible?

1. Persevere. Some stories will simply fall out of your fingers, and other times you won’t be so lucky. Think of it this way: if a story comes too easy, there’s a good chance you could have written it better. It might be good, but is it the best it can be? When you’re tempted to say ‘it’s finished,’ leave it alone for another week and come back to it again.
2. Understand what your characters want. Character motivations are powerful. What’s the main thing your character wants? What are her goals and dreams? As readers, we need to not only be told what your characters need—we must be made to believe it and feel it ourselves, to some degree. We have to want to see those characters achieve their goals.
3. Experiment. When you just don’t know what the problem is, you may need a little experimentation to help your story along. You can always copy it into another document in order to try on different points of view or writing styles, or add/axe characters or subplots. Sometimes just rearranging existing parts of your story can make a big difference.
4. Break the rules, if necessary. There really aren’t any rules with writing. There are tried-tested-true guidelines, but no absolutely never-ever-break-’em rules. Sometimes, telling your story right means you go against the grain. Just make sure you understand why you’re going against the grain.
5. Write with your heart, but edit with your head. Writing just with your heart can result in a sloppy mess. Writing just with your head means you overthink things and don’t give yourself over to your creativity. It’s been said that first drafts are for telling the story to yourself. Write with your heart first so you have the freedom to be creative, but edit with your head to polish your story.

We may not finish every story we toy with, but I think we seldom begin writing stories so wrong for us that they cannot be completed. Any story can be memorable and well-written, given the right artist to craft it.

Can you share an example of a time when you successfully overhauled a story you would normally have abandoned? Do you have any further advice for writers struggling to tell their stories in the best way possible?

Today’s post is written by regular contributor Sarah Baughman.

A talented member of my writing group once told me she couldn’t imagine writing a personal essay.

While the powerful description and plot development she employed throughout her novel-in-progress impressed us all, she said she would find it impossible to generate ideas for a nonfiction piece about her own life.

I think she’d probably be surprised. Creative nonfiction depends on many of the same literary qualities that make great fiction.

Describing this genre as embodying the “use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction,” Creative Nonfiction Editor Lee Gutkind says that creative nonfiction writers “make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.”

If you’re interested in writing a personal essay, some of the very tools you rely on most while crafting short stories or novel chapters are the perfect building blocks.

Conflict

Fiction writers know the importance of conflict in moving a plot forward, and outside the writing world, conflicts large and small move life forward! We all experience them, and these daily conflicts, even the trivial ones, can fuel a personal essay.

Track the internal and external conflicts you experience on a given day.

• Which ones get under your skin?
• Which ones teach you something about yourself you didn’t know before?
• Which ones make you feel more connected to your environment and the people around you, and which ones are isolating?
• Do any conflicts, in their resolution, give way to a heightened sense of peace?

Behind every conflict that causes further reflection, there lurks a story.

Example: “Just the Two of Us, When One Toddles” by Jennifer Baumgardner, The New York Times, 8/25/11. An annoying conflict in the airport parking lot gives way to reflection on the larger conflict, and benefits, of being a single parent.

Writing Prompt: Identify a recent conflict, internal or external, trivial or significant, that has led you to a greater understanding of yourself. Recall a specific moment that made you aware of the conflict and begin by narrating the scene (as in Baumgardner’s essay: “Our car, a 17-year-old red Honda Civic, shimmered in the heat. ‘This isn’t good,’ I thought.”)

Characterization

There’s a t-shirt floating around the web that writers will love: “Careful or you’ll end up in my next novel,” it proclaims.

Certainly the best characters in fiction feel like real people, and observing the details used to establish those characters—appearance, thoughts, dialogue, actions—can help us see people in our lives with new eyes. Unlike fictional characters, people we know can’t change according to our imagination, but they do have their own stories. A willingness to step outside our relationships and view people with a “writer’s eye” can actually lead to deeper appreciation because we’re challenged to pay such close attention to their characteristics.

Example: “Christmas Eve at St. Clement” by Amy Rosenquist, Literary Mama, 12/6/09. Rosenquist’s essay about her autistic son thrives on detail–past actions, small obsessions, statements, reactions, physical characteristics–and paints an engaging portrait of a complex, endearing boy.

Writing Prompt: Describe an important person in your life via an event you both attended that reveals the character of that person and holds significance for your relationship (like Rosenquist’s Christmas Eve service).

Setting

Places we know well provide powerful backdrops for personal essays. But “setting” doesn’t have to include a spectacular sunset or breathtaking mountain range–even noting the ordinary detail in our own homes (dishes cluttering the sink, dust on the windowsill, a quilt tossed over a sofa) is an excellent exercise for recognizing how place informs plot. 

Whether you choose initially to write about a significant experience, working place descriptors into the story as you go, or whether you use place as a starting point, you’ll find that your own ties to different settings can enhance a personal essay.

Example: “Not Like You” by Katherine Gries, Brevity, Issue #32, January 2010. In Gries’ compelling essay, peaceful settings—first in the woods, then in a house—provide stark contrast to the violence she suffers.

Writing Prompt: When has a particular place served as a meaningful backdrop to an experience? Step outside the experience to provide a detailed description of the place. Consider exploring how the place either reflects, or contrasts with, the experience.

Dialogue

I always found dialogue tricky, but writing down interview quotes for freelance journalism assignments helped me overcome some of my reservations about using it.

While everyday speech might be punctuated with clumsy interruptions you don’t always want to include in writing, listening closely to conversations and mirroring actual speech patterns can aid the development of authentic dialogue. Readers like dialogue—it’s a nice break from solid description, moves plot along, and reveals character quickly. Try jotting down just a few interchanges from conversations you’ve had during the course of a day and seeing what might lead to a story.

Example: “Montana Soccer Mom Moment” by Laura Munson, The New York Times, 7/23/10. A conversation between mother and daughter, punctuated by description, forms the core of Munson’s heartfelt essay.

Writing Prompt: Recall a conversation you had that, like Munson’s, served as some kind of turning point. Use dialogue interspersed with description of your internal reactions to relay the conversation.

Do you write both fiction and creative non-fiction? What strategies do you use that apply to both genres?