Setting by Christine Duncan

Michelle’s post on the London riots hit close to home. Life these last few years has changed. Times are harder. And yet, do we include that in our books?
After 9-11, in this country, authors on DorothyL asked this very question. Many of them were in the middle of books, some set in NY and they didn’t know if they wanted to talk about what happened. Did they take any mention of the towers from the books? Should they move on, so to speak?
I think it is something that we all should grapple with on a regular basis with our books. Setting determines sub-genres-in a large part. And yet, in these times, with many struggling, including a dose of reality can really darken the book. Do we talk about the fact that many are without jobs? Do we include facts in a cozy that may be based in a real place that a neighborhood has changed, after many were foreclosed on? Or after, a riot for that matter? Can we show empty shop windows (many small businesses have failed in this recession) and older vehicles in parking lots (statistics show many of us are keeping our cars much longer.) and chalk it all up to the way things are now? Can we do it and keep it upbeat? You know, cozy?
It seems to me that many times, books and movies can reflect an era and yet not be about an era. I’ve seen a move toward black backgrounds in TV shows in shows that are S/F and mystery genre. I can’t help thinking that what we’re passing off as sophisticated today, may strike those in the future as just dark.
What are your thoughts? How real can we be without going too deep?

Rules for Writing Novels by Christine Duncan

There was a time when I would have told you that there are no rules to writing. The very thought conjured up visions of hackneyed plots put together according to some regulating editor’s vision of what a book should be.
I’ve changed my mind. And what changed my mind was once again, reading.
As a reader, I am not willing to wait very long for you, the writer, to tell me what the book is about. No, I’m not expecting you to announce, “Hey, reader, this is a Sf/Fantasy/Mystery but you better intro the way your world differs from mine PDQ and I want the body on the floor fairly quickly too–although I do allow you time to make me care about the victim. Still I’ve discovered I have no patience for too much meandering.

As a reader, I like hybrids. Witness the SF/Fantasy/Mystery mentioned above. I actually liked “Cowboys and Aliens.” But don’t throw in some other genre on page 150 just because you’ve decided it’s probably popular. I can figure out all by myself that you don’t really like writing in that extra genre but you think you should. Those books hit the wall. I once was one of the judges for a contest where the writer was writing a coming of age novel but felt it needed more action, so somewhere around page 75, he killed a character off, so his hero could solve the crime. Then he decided to enter it in the mystery category, because he felt it had a better chance there, because coming of age novels are more literate than mysteries. Yes, he actually told me that. His score for the contest was not very high, and he was protesting it. His protest did not make me raise the score.

As a reader, I’m not much into head hopping. I’m not talking about for instance, Angels and Demons where a chapter goes to the bad guy and another goes to the hero. I think that works. But don’t give me a paragraph in the heroine’s head and the very next paragraph or worse, sentence, tell me what the hero is thinking back at her. I can’t ping pong like that, although many new writers write that way, and defend it all the time. Stick with one head per scene, please. It makes me dizzy otherwise.

What rules for writing have you come to believe are mandatory? Or do you believe there are none?

Cliches by Christine Duncan

Recently my husband and I rented a movie that started in the morning with the characters on the way to work with the weather report playing in the background. Right away my husband was upset. “How many movies have to start this way!” He groused.

Well, okay, it is a bit of a cliche. But it’s such a great way to establish not just the weather but also place, the time of year, the time of day, that it was just an ordinary day in the life of….. You know, that’s probably how it became a cliche.

The movie contained no surprises whatsoever, which according to my spouse you could tell from that start. But it didn’t keep us from watching or enjoying it. It was still fun.

And it got me to thinking, yet again, on cliches. I think as writers, we need to be aware of them, which I admit, I sometimes depend on my better half for. But if we know that some writer (or apparently, many writers) used an ordinary weather report to jump start us into the story’s setting, we can start thinking about other ways to do that. And thus better our own story’s beginnings.

Another cliche that I have noticed,is that at the end of S/F adventures, the characters always seem to be flying off somewhere else–continuing their hero’s journeys. You know, this is the place where in Star Trek, Next Gen, Picard sits back in his chair and says “Make is so, Number One.” And you see the ship go speeding off.

I don’t think cliches like this are necessarily a bad thing. Readers (or watchers) feel a bit of satisfaction in the thought that maybe they can anticipate something new to look forward to. The saga continues.

So I guess it goes without saying that I like it when a book series has a sort of signature sign-off. Although, it does seem like a technique that modern writers have thrown by the wayside.

We can learn so much from cliches if we just take the time to consider them. Me, I’m still thinking about that weather report.

Revving up the Slow Spots by Christine Duncan

We all have parts of our manuscripts that seem to crawl. But there are a few tricks that you can use when you are editing that will help pick up the pace. Let me say first off, these tricks did not originate with me. But I have used them and they work.

First off, if you have a scene that is not moving, look for the goal and make sure it is prominent in the beginning of the scene. I’m not talking about your goal as a writer. I want you to state the hero/heroine’s goal right up front. I don’t care if the goal will be met or thwarted, or just plain postponed. Having the goal stated keeps the reader involved–gives them a question to answer. And it is the reason that they will keep reading.

It does not have to be a big to-do either. A short, pithy statement will do wonders to explain things to the reader.

If the Point of View person has no goal, you are in trouble and that is the source of your pacing problem. If you doubt it, think of real life. How often do you get to just wander around with no particular thing to do in mind? You have to work, pay bills, shop, cook, take care of your living quarters, and maybe the people who share them with you. Life is goal oriented and fiction pretty much imitates life here.

For more info on this try Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure or just about any writing book by Dwight Swain.

If the hero/heroine has a goal but the scene still lacks tension, take a look at your dialogue. Say it aloud. Tension is upped in dialog by short choppy sentences. Longer more eloquent flowing sentences slow things down.

If you’ve got no dialogue, try to figure out what you are avoiding writing there.

Last but not least, see where you can cut. Often times we think we have to explain every picky little thing to our readers. So we have the character hold the ringing telephone to their ear and say hello and tell each excruciating detail. But you don’t need to. When the reader reads that the phone was ringing, they don’t need to hear the static on the line unless that is important. Just give them the fun stuff. Take out a sentence or two and see if it still flows.