Writing Emotional Projection

If the reader has a tear in his or her eye, it might not be bad. There's emotion present. What I refer to as a "projection." It's the emotion generated by the written word on a page that travels and surfaces in a reader's mind or heart. Perhaps, it's best to examine a made up example:

     Kate walked to the front of the building. The light shone dim. Jack waved her in.
     "There's stew left. I could reheat."
     "Okay," Kate said.
     "My kitchen never closes," Jack replied. "I feed my family from the kitchen. Our house is connected to the bar and we don't have any other kitchen. It's open 24/7, although the bar door is locked at 2 a.m."
     "Front of the house," Kate said.
     "Huh?"
     "That's what some call a restaurant, the seating part."
     "That so? We call the kitchen a kitchen; the bar, a bar; and everything else the house."

The scene is simple. We're in the point of view (POV) of Kate. We can assume they're human, but maybe not. For purposes here, it's unimportant.

We have an interaction between Kate and Jack. It's dull. Straightforward? yes; objective? yes; inspiring? hardly; emotional? far from it.

Emotional projection is subjective. It's judgments and opinions held by the POV character, a view of the story world unique to the character through whose eyes we are experiencing that world. If the reader would know how that character is feeling or reacting to his or her world, there's a greater chance for an emotional bond between character and reader. Even if the reader thinks the character is acting foolishly, there can be a bond created. And, the payoff for the writer is that the reader keeps turning the page to learn more.

A writer could self-edit the above and add attribution tags like: she said angrily, he cried out, or she demurred.

Let's try to be more forceful. Give it a go yourself.

Here's one attempt to blast greater emotion from the page:

Kate hesitated on the flagstone walk. The building looked so daunting in the dim light. What could those shadows, the creepy ones, do to her? She made her mind up. Nothing. She wasn't going to live in the past.

A shadow, the size of a man, emerged. She recognized Jack; thank heavens it wasn't Steve. She exhaled and welcomed his wave.

"There's stew left. I could reheat."

Kate loved stew. "Okay." She silently admonished herself for not being more grateful and cleared her throat. Her last meal, yesterday, hadn't stayed down. "Okay," she repeated, hoping no trace of her fear would show in her voice. Jack had his grandmother's stew recipe; the memory of its savory aroma from times past washed over her.

"My kitchen never closes," Jack replied, pride tinting his words.

Kate couldn't make out his smile, but she knew it would be there.

"I feed my family from the kitchen. Our house is connected to the bar and we don't have any other kitchen."

His speeding-train words wouldn't be slowed and Kate knew any attempt to encourage him to enunciate clearer would be met by his resistance and flare his anger. She would endure his rattling on for the stew.

"It's open 24/7, although the bar door is locked at 2 a.m."

Wow, is that nice? She couldn't fathom why she needed to understand all this and didn't wish to. "Front of the house?" Why had she asked?

"Huh?" Jack's expression remained perplexed as Kate stepped closer to him. The light's angle diffused the shadows on his face.

"That's what some call a restaurant, the seating part." Kate had taken too much for granted. She'd been blessed with college.

"That so? We call the kitchen a kitchen; the bar a bar; and everything else the house."

Writers can expect to add character emotion or projection at the revision stage or stages. On first draft, it's often better to charge ahead to get the story idea on paper and then spend time to mold the exact emotion to snare the reader. The benefits are huge.

While in Kate's POV it's easier to express how she's feeling or reacting, a writer can hint at what might be going on in Jack's head, even if it's colored by Kate's prejudices and worldview.

A caution, piling adjective upon adjective may seem to add extra emotion, but it can as easily confuse the reader. Be judicious. Salt can flavor a stew. Too much salt can make it uneatable.

What's Your Story Premise?

Every writer has an idea on where his or her story is going to take them, or should. The difficulty encountered is with the precision of the thought. One suggested exercise to distill, or to separate the wheat from the chaff (to use an old cliché), is to create a premise.

What is that you ask? It's a simple one sentence statement of the story. The premise contains the character, plot, and a sense of the outcome. A tough task to create? Definitely yes. But when completed your personal satisfaction will be higher and your story will be better off for it.

Hollywood is well-known for wanting to have "high-concept" stories. To the investors that is a short statement that connects with the audience and brings to their ears the sound of box office cash registers ringing-Caching, Caching.

To complete your premise start by brainstorming. Don't reject any idea. Keep scribbling or striking that keyboard in front of your fingers.

For example:

     Long lost dinosaurs and humans fight for survival and island dominance.

     Children survivors after a world disaster are forced to fight on TV by evil dictators.

     Couple nurtured by a child they'd abandoned two decades earlier find love.

     A male actor dresses as a woman to find employment and learns he's been
     treating women badly for years.

Look at your unique life and the passions that motivate or mean the most to you. Keep on writing.

After the list grows you should begin to see a pattern. The examples above are not sufficient to
create the pattern that should emerge with your dedication to the exercise.

Remember, you are not sharing this with anyone unless that is your wish. Don't stop at the first
hint of having nothing more to bring forth from your brain. Put the list away. Dedicate more than
minutes or hours to the task.

Later, you must evaluate whether or not you can craft your most promising premise into the outline
of a story and decide upon the shape it may take, i.e., myth, nonfiction, children's story, mystery, romance, or historical.

If you already have a story written, there is no reason you can't draft a one sentence premise. Doing the exercise in reverse will most likely strengthen your existing story, make it sharper, give strength to that sagging middle. Your completed premise also makes a nice fit with that query letter you must write to attract an agent or publisher.

For the best premise possible, get ready, go.


Author Donan Berg has written four mystery novels. His full-length e-book Abbey Burning Love is on sale for 99 cents. Visit www.dotdonbooks.com .

To Revise Is Not Failure

To Revise Is Not Failure

If you were halfway through a Scrabble game with lines of words and random letters on the board in front of you, do you consider yourself a failure? Of course not. You stay in the moment, organize the letters you have before you and summon potential strategies to choose your next move realizing there may be no exact right or wrong word to be chosen. For example, the word initially played commanding the most points may lock out subsequent words that will garner a greater sum.

Each joining together of separate alphabet letters is not a failure. So too, the combination of ideas, thoughts and emotions written in a first draft may fill a page, but not express the volume of ideas, thoughts and emotions that will be sculptured into a greater vision.

Revision is not editing. It is not changing a comma to a semicolon or any other similar grammatical correction task. Revision is to bring forth from the initial draft the essence or understanding or desire the writer wishes the reader to come away with. Consider the initial draft as raw material. It is the iron ore that will become steel and frame the tallest skyscraper that touches the sky.

Therefore, the first tool for revision is to jettison a focus on grammar and read the entire piece, aloud works best, with particular attention paid to the substance, rhythm and evoked emotion. If desired, have a sheet of paper to jot down any reaction. The key word is jot, not an extensive writing that keeps you away from continuing with the read-through.

It may be hard, but trigger your subconscious to visualize the scene created by the raw material.

Pay special attention to the ending. Does it satisfy the ongoing theme? Was the most important element of the raw material highlighted and fully explained?

Are there underlying themes? Do they choke the main theme or add fashionable jewelry to an already stylist outfit. For example, a romance element can be either a distraction or a spotlight on a character’s defining trait.

After, and only after, the first complete read-through, is it time to focus on specific parts. Do the same technique with the parts as with the whole, i.e., read the entire part.

At each reading, cut the distractions and everything else that doesn’t fit in, mold the ambiguous into a recognizable shape and sharpen the feel and expression of what strikes you as being on target.

Jettison the notion that there are set number of revisions to be accomplished. There isn’t. Your heart and gut will tell you when the best is achieved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Objects: A Key to Suspense

Objects: A Key to Suspense

By Author Donan Berg

Every reader desires suspense and writers strive to create the page-turning anticipation. That last word “anticipation” is the definition of suspense. One could write a book on creating suspense. However, let’s focus our penlight of inquiry on a tiny spot. In that tiny spot is our protagonist. All around him or her are varying shades of gray (dare we count them to equal the number fifty, no, not today) destined to become the darkness we label as the color black.

Suspense may set up housekeeping within any genre. It’s the romantic secret, the dark hole of sci-fi space, the path to the mystery’s clue, the rattlesnake coiled on the cowboy’s prairie, or the youngster’s hand reaching into what he or she thinks is a chocolate chip cookie jar.

Common objects can be used to create suspense. Why? Because there is a history or association that the object carries along with it. It’s the traveler’s baggage, so to speak. For example, if one were to read the word “toga,” what comes to mind? Romans, Caesar, Animal House, Belushi, wild party, girls, sex. (That last word was a no-brainer, wasn’t it? The three-letter word could punctuate any list of human association examples countless times without being wrong.)

Can you foreshadow suspense? Sure. Common objects invite association with pending dread. Halloween is the easiest example. The holiday has witches, spooks, skeletons and all sorts of objects linked to fear, foreboding and horror. If the author said the protagonist lived on Elm Street, would you think of scissor blades for fingers, hockey masks or “Father Knows Best?” What if the day happened to be the thirteenth of the month? And, add to that, a Friday. Each day of the month is obviously equal in creation, but the world has added associations. Is death any more horrible if it happens on Friday, the thirteenth? What about the Ides of March?

Children’s dolls are the Utopian fun object and the acme of all that is good, hopeful and innocent. And then an author created Chucky. What made Chucky more terrifying? His actions, of course, but he broke a perception of what a doll normally stood for. Anyone desire to open a drawer and spy a voodoo doll? An object, the doll, that stood for good, now acts or stands for evil or a premonition of bad. The opposite is when a mild-mannered reporter steps into a telephone booth and re-emerges as you know who.

A second more common foreshadowing of suspense is to use an object itself associated with foreboding. The most common example is the storm, either in full-blown glory or massing clouds on the horizon. Once Dorothy was sucked into the Kansas tornado, the reader didn’t expect the girl would be sitting down to milk and cookies. Remember, you don’t have to have terrible things happen after each suspense foreshadowing. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. If the proverbial cat walks out of the shadow after causing its owner a panic attack, the next time there’s a noise in the shadow confronting the owner it may not have to be the cat. Be careful of dream sequences. Ever since Bobby Ewing on TV’s “Dallas” opened the shower door in the 1980s, or maybe before that, announcing that the event had been a dream has carried its own association, and it's very negative, a reader turnoff.

Look for ways to create suspense in all kinds of situations. One way of many is to find a prevalent object in cultures, religions and/or exotic locales and set your mind to work. What could be different? What does the protagonist expect? What does he or she not expect? What moves the plot forward? Is the pumpkin a descriptive object to announce Halloween or to become a princess’s carriage? Or maybe the carved smiley face with the burning candle spooks a pair of lovers trying to sneak into what they anticipated to be an unoccupied cabin miles from nowhere.

Let’s try an example of a typical scenario of the police waiting to capture suspects arriving at an abandoned Midwest farmhouse. Should be a straightforward situation, or not? Detective Second Class Adolph Anderson is sweating out whether or not he’ll earn a nomination for a gold shield. Officer Sean Finnegan dreams of sewing on sergeant stripes.

 What follows is an excerpt by the author from his currently unpublished manuscript entitled “Garden Bones.” All rights reserved.

“C’mon, dirtbags, we’re ready for ya,” Adolph muttered to no one in particular. He endured the ear itch his stretched black stocking cap created and shook his head to drive out the arid smell of burnt field stubble the westerly breeze carried into his nostrils. Before he organized this stakeout, he’d demanded his daughter Kirsten promise not to leave home and be at Mary’s side. Adolph had personally verified all exterior home door locks worked. His cell phone listed the number of the security company scheduled to install perimeter sensors the next day. He heard two owl hoots and braced his shoulder against a sturdy cottonwood.

Two pairs of headlights turned off the county road into the graveled farmyard, the second pair those of a small truck. If Luann’s prediction came true, she’d be in a van with Rebecca. An old Cadillac sedan’s headlights illuminated the two words “Salvatore Pizza” on the visible side of the panel van. Adolph strained to count two women, five males, and an unidentified smaller person before the doused headlights returned the farmyard to the night’s murky darkness. Luann right again. Damn. Could be the teenage girl. Adolph hated the complication.

The parade of visitors disappeared into the farmhouse. Second story bedroom lights went on after the first floor living room. Adolph wanted to wait until the lower level lights were flicked off, but they stayed on. He thanked God no vehicle guard patrolled and the numerical odds were even, better than even if he could count on Luann being on the inside. He fumbled for his walkie-talkie not regretting he hadn’t invited the SWAT team with its audio headsets. He spoke one word into the walkie-talkie: “Forward.”

The noose of officers tightened around the farmhouse.

Tense leg muscles subdued rising adrenaline to slow Adolph’s steps. He brushed against the words: “Salvatore Pizza.” He hesitated. Finnegan would take longer to get in position at the rear farmhouse door. A shadowed figure to his left waved. Adolph raised his left palm now holding the bullhorn. He peeked across the van’s hood. Lights remained on on both farmhouse levels. To his thinking that wasn’t a good sign. If the impromptu porn studio existed in the master bedroom, all inside actors should be on the second level. Yet, a black form passed in front of what had to be a lamp and behind the gauzy living room window curtain. A light beam flashed on and off in the basement casement window.

Adolph ignored the tightening knot in his stomach and his fears of being seen. Someone inside had merely checked the house entrances and exits. If concerned, the yard light would’ve been flicked on. Patience. Keep cool. He lowered his left arm. Two owl hoots. Finnegan positioned. Adolph waved to the figure on his left and exposed his upper torso from the cover of the van. Until he reached the solid surface of the front walkway, he tried not to kick the pebbles in the gravel underfoot. No moonbeams guided his effort. To his right, a third figure, crossing the lawn, matched Adolph’s advance. The three men joined forces on the front porch. Both officers, shotguns vertical, fingers on their respective triggers, nodded to Adolph and flattened their backs against the house clapboard on opposite sides of the front door.

Adolph gulped two shallow breaths and pressed the bullhorn to his lips.

“Police. Come out now. Hands up.” He angled his body forty-five degrees to the door to protect against bullets shredding the wood and striking him. He tapped his 9mm against the bullhorn’s flared-molded end. His companion officers stepped out and pointed their shotguns at the front door.

Adolph called out again. “Police. Come out with hands up. (Silence) Now.”

No answer greeted his third shout. The silence irritated, but didn’t surprise, Adolph. The Dragons had to be calculating their escape. Or, eliminating hostages!

Adolph shouted, “Finnegan.” His bellow wasn’t the planned signal, and Adolph’s shoe sole slamming into the front door near the door handle elevated Plan C to Action Plan A. Following his sole, he burst into the living room. Empty. He heard the back door squeak and Finnegan emerged from the kitchen. Adolph tossed the bullhorn to the carpet and pointed his left forefinger at the ascending stairs. He ordered one of the officers with him to go back outside and stand guard at the two vehicles. “Don’t shoot. Expect hostages or innocents fleeing.”

With Finnegan’s butt tight to his, Adolph tiptoed up the stairs. He stopped two treads from the landing. An eerie silence. C’mon, Luann, knock something over. Give me a hint as to which room you’re all in. He braced his left hand against the peeling floral wallpaper. The 9mm weighed down his right hand. The glove worn didn’t allow the moisture gathering on his palm to streak the gun’s butt. A new scalp itch intensified. Brain cells warned his timing had to be just right or someone’s going to get hurt.

He rotated his head toward Finnegan. Their eyeballs met. Finnegan’s gaze mirrored Adolph’s thoughts: What now?

Adolph leaned forward; placed his left knee on the higher tread, sliding his left hand lower on the wall. Without exposing his head, he listened ever more intent on deciphering the slightest of noises. His ear canal might as well have been a laboratory vacuum chamber for the absence of noise-transmitting air. He straightened up. His butt bump alerted Finnegan to his next move, which was to bolt ahead, pivot into the upstairs hallway, and flatten himself against the wall ready to fire.

All upstairs inhabitants might as well have been possums playing dead for the amount of sound Adolph’s ears detected. When Finnegan’s face appeared, Adolph’s hand motioned toward the master bedroom door, his choice for room most likely occupied. He swallowed a premonition that he wouldn’t like what he was about to find. What to do? Indecision no option.

Adolph called out, “Come out. Play’s over.”

Only the scratch of Finnegan’s boots as he sidled up to Adolph drifted to the ceiling. Adolph lifted his right foot and feigned a kick. Finnegan nodded and braced himself against the opposite hallway wall, shotgun shouldered and aimed.

The bedroom door thudded its inside door handle three times against the wall and gouged a crescent into the plaster.

“Damn.” Adolph’s expletive echoed among the disturbed dust particles floating beneath the lit ceiling light fixture. “Damn. Double Damn.”

“What the hell!” Finnegan exclaimed.

Finnegan’s surprise wasn’t lost on Adolph. He pulled back the black window curtain and waved to the officer standing on the front lawn, next to both suspect vehicles still parked where first seen. Adolph’s supposition verified when he raced through the two adjoining bedrooms and the bathroom, opening closet doors, and finding nobody present.

He met Finnegan in the hallway. “What’d we miss, Sean?”

“Thought you’d know... Sorry.”

“No one came out the front.”

“Not the rear, either.”

Adolph slumped against the wall. Think, stupid. He recalled house lights on both the first and second stories. He’d seen a figure later moving on the first floor, and then the basement light. “Let’s check the basement. Only place left.”

Adolph led the twosome’s clomp down the stairs. “Nothing upstairs,” he said to the officer in the living room. “Hand me your flashlight and stay here while we check out the basement.”

Finnegan unclipped his own flashlight and the two beams preceded Adolph and Finnegan into the basement. Dark and dank, they found it devoid of human life. The arachnids skittered within the heaven they’d created. Adolph swiped at a cobweb before he noticed a cleared path above his head and scattered dust on the concrete floor.

“Was told a torture chamber existed with an entrance here in the basement,” he told Finnegan. Adolph purposely left Luann’s name unmentioned. Where was it? She hadn’t explained that. “Check behind those shelves moved out from that wall to your left.”

“There’s a door.”

“Let’s go.” (End of example)

If the above were a full novel, the reader wouldn't be ending here, even if it was a chapter ending, which would be totally acceptable. All hopefully will pardon the abrupt ending here for further discussion of suspension creation. To be successful, suspense shouldn't always race on at unrelenting warp speed. The trick is to create a pause, a release. The forward momentum to be similar to a radio wave with its up and down variation gracefully accomplished. In the above example, could the reader have expected gunfire? Sure. Was there any? No. Where did the suspense come from? Objects like shotguns are typical in a police procedural. What or where else: an empty farmhouse; the internal dialogue of Adolph monitoring his emotions, what he expected at the farm, including Luann’s help; the security features he was installing on his own home and what about the possum?

Two final notes:

(1) The extent of the reader's expected knowledge of the scene or situation can dictate the amount of necessary writing detail. If the locale is exotic, include additional description to ground the reader.

(2) Holding back information can add or detract from suspense. To hold back information the viewpoint character possesses can be a cheap trick that will irritate the reader. Likewise, adding words to the effect that the main character didn't know he would be hospitalized the next day are also to be avoided. In the example above, was it fair for the author not to detail who exactly constituted the group of suspects? Later, the excerpt reader learns Adolph knows a woman named Luann and that she’s inside and may or may not be a suspect. In context, to be fair, Luann was a detective assigned to be Adolph’s partner. The reader would know this from earlier events. Now, everyone’s up to speed. No suspense. No anticipation.

Ps, And who's that standing behind you?

Dialogue - Write it Right

Dialogue — Write it Right

Be it to increase pace, slow pace, or impart information, dialogue construction need not baffle any writer. Perhaps it’s neither the dullness of studying punctuation nor the belief of its simplicity, but the focus on dialogue content that hinders fiction writers in nailing dialogue punctuation. While rules and conventions can be described as legion, budding authors need to understand and apply the following basic principles to create a favorable impression with any serious reader or acquisitions editor.

Dialogue can either be internal to the point of view (POV) character or external. Thoughts are internal dialogue. Spoken words, no matter how uttered, classified as external. A common convention for indicating exact-word internal dialogue is to put the words in italic. Example: Claris stepped back. Stupid horse. She tossed the saddle onto the blanket.

The italics used in the example to indicate internal dialogue are replaced by quotation marks to show the exact words a person or character vocalizes externally. Words enclosed in quotation marks indicate the exact words and order in which spoken. This is referred to as a direct quotation. Example of direct quotation: “The house on the corner is where I grew up,” Jane said.

The same information can be conveyed via an indirect quotation. Example of an indirect quotation: Jane said she grew up in the house on the corner. No quotation marks or italics are used for what Jane said. Her exact words aren’t being quoted. However, the information content of these two examples is identical. The quotation marks are a signal to the reader that the speaker is being quoted verbatim. The italics used for “Stupid horse.” in the internal dialogue example above also indicate those are the exact words thought, but not uttered. For character internal dialogue that doesn’t impart the exact words the author may write: “Claris thought the horse acted stupid.”

Be on guard for the incorrect use of quotation marks with indirect quotation.

Correct indirect quotation:  John said he didn’t wanna go.

Incorrect indirect quotation: John said, “he didn’t wanna go.”

Identifying the speaker is done with what is called an attribution tag. The word “said” is, and should remain, the workhorse. Most reader minds skip over the word making it almost invisible. That is good, really. For questions, the word “asked” will replace “said.” While writers may unnecessarily search for attribution tags to substitute for “said,” there are several that express the how or the sound of what the character says. Example: muttered, whispered, uttered, etc. A waiting trap is to use a word that has everything to do with an action and nothing to do with speaking a sentence. Example: “Wow,” John smiled. “Smiled” is an action, not a way language is spoken. Actions are not to be used as attribution tags. (A second problem with a word like “smile” is that a character speaking can’t “see” a smile unless utilizing the cliché of gazing into a mirror.) Coughing and nodding used as attribution tags duplicate the same mistake as when smile is inappropriately relied upon. However, they, unlike smile, are physical actions a POV character does not have to see to understand that they’re happening.

Since the POV character is the main speaker in most fiction, an author can often dispense with attribution tags altogether by utilizing the convention that each time a character speaks he or she begins a new paragraph. Thus, once identified in a two-person conversation, the paragraphs keep track of who’s speaking. To help the reader and give context to the dialogue, little bits of action can be included, especially as relates to the POV character. The following example illustrates.

“Where did you say you lived?” John asked.

“The house on the corner is where I grew up,” Jane said.

John gazed past the white picket fence. “Wow!”

“Didn’t think so then.”

“Huh?”

“Always had to do chores after school.” John glanced at the horizon; eyes refocused on the fence as he waited for Jane to quit fiddling with her knapsack and continue. “Loved music. Mother forbid playing the piano until house swept, dusted or...”

John’s thoughts of a troubled childhood with vaguely linked foster homes snaked through his brain and interrupted his retention of Jane’s description of unending chores. He would’ve enjoyed having his own room and the security that came from living under the same roof for more than a year at a time. (End of example.)

The above example with its short dialogue bursts may not always serve the author’s purpose. While short, crisp, one-line statements speed up the reader, a longer dialogue insertion may be needed to match reality and/or satisfy the author’s need to slow the pace without going into narrative. Lurking in the background is the “comma splice.” This is a term used when two independent clauses are linked with a comma. Authors remember the independent clause. It’s a grammatical unit containing a subject and a verb and could stand alone as a sentence.

In dialogue it may appear thusly: “The way the forwards have been playing, the team will be lucky to advance into the playoff’s second round,” the announcer said, “I’m fearful the goalie will bolt for greener pastures next season.” The comma after the word “said” must be replaced by a period.

Where you place the attribution tag, is always a consideration. There are three locations.

In front: Jane said, “I wanna go now. Not later.” Generally, this is the weakest location. Although, when a speaker is interrupted by environmental action and then continues, it may be clearer to say: Jane continued, “I wanna go now. Not later.”

In the middle:  “I wanna go now,” Jane said. “Not later.”

At the end: “I wanna go now. Not later,” Jane said. While the attribution tag is strongest at the end of a sentence, where there are several sentences the tag is usually best after the first sentence. “I wanna go now,” Jane said. “Not later. The sun gets so hot in the afternoon. I’ll burn something fierce.”

Reading the examples aloud should give a sense of the different rhythms. Placing the attribution tag in the middle tends to give a slight pause. If the author wishes to indicate a pause, here’s a way he or she could rewrite the middle example: “I wanna go now.” Jane paused. “Not later.” Remember, the following would be incorrect:  “I wanna go now,” Jane paused, “not later.”

In addition, please note that if you’re quoting more than one sentence the quotation marks go at the beginning and at the end when the speaker finishes. If the same speaker goes on for more than one paragraph, quotation marks are at the beginning of each paragraph and then closing quotation marks at the end of the concluding paragraph when the speaker finishes.

While the focus has been on quotation marks, other punctuation can show the speaker’s physical action or that of another character. Ellipses show that the words of a speaker trail off. Example: Jane pushed back from the table. “I wanna go...” Use a dash to show that a speaker is interrupted. Example:

Jane pushed back from the table. “I wanna go—”

“Not so fast, sis,” Alice said. “It’s your turn to do dishes.”

This last dialogue example also demonstrates that when a character-speaker directly addresses another by given name or nickname, be it Jane, Sis, Mr. Jones, Honey, the direct address is set off by commas front and back.

Also note that every comma, period, ellipsis and dash is inside the quotation marks. This is the standardized American convention and the list also includes question marks and exclamation points. Colons and semicolons will most often appear outside quotation marks. Differing conventions apply in British English and some writers eschew quotation marks altogether in favor of dashes, colons or whatever. No opinion is expressed. All authors need, however, to be aware of the maxim that not one rule or convention governs the world.   

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Author Donan Berg has published four novels, A Body To Bones, The Bones Dance Foxtrot, Baby Bones, Abbey Burning Love and a collection of short stories, Bubbling Conflict and Other Stories. Contact him through http://www.abodytobones.com/ or http://www.dotdonbooks.com/ .  

 

Survival or Getting Through First Paragraphs

Review excerpt from Survival by A.M. Hargrove (Editor Sarajoy Porter) available on Smashwords.com.

Maddie slowly cracked opened (sic) her eyes to see the brilliance of the morning peeking through her tent. Squinting, she poked her nose out of her sleeping bag to test the temperature, and just as she imagined, the frost in the air nipped at her. She knew she would have to get up soon to use the facilities, if you could call the outhouse that, and also to make breakfast as well as break down (sic) her campsite.

(Three line paragraph excised. Think Christmas Day.)

She quickly unzipped her toasty sleeping bag, slipped her boots on, threw on a jacket, and unzipped the door to her tent. When she got her first glimpse of the morning, her jaw hit the ground, and she sucked in her breath. She was standing in a winter wonderland, complete with a three inch blanket of snow.

(Later....)

Cat was full of life. There was just no other way to describe her. From the first moment I met her. I knew we'd be BFF's-and I mean forever.  She was my soul sister. AND we were so much alike it was uncanny. Like me, she was constantly in a rush, and she always looked like she had just survived a hurricane. When Catherine made up her mind about something, well, that was it. She was as hardheaded as a cinder block, again, like me, in that regard - and funny! OMG, that girl could make me laugh until my sides were killing me.

She was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, so it was easy to find one thing we both loved. That was, no surprise, hiking. She had spent over the summer hiking the Appalachian Trail and was hooked.

Moments later, two adults appeared, which I correctly assumed were her parents. We quickly introduced ourselves and then the question I had so been dreading was popped.

"So Maddie, are your parents here?"

I felt my head swin a bit as I was thrust into another disturbing flashback. (End of quote.)

No star rating expressed since this reader stumbled with the distractions presented by the entrance into the novel's world. It's billed as a young adult paranormal, although the line of teendom and older becomes blurred by the main characters being in college. A male character, named "Henry," could be because the credits list a spouse as a Henry or it's a veiled reference to the character Henry in The Time Traveler's Wife.

Let me put forth my reaction to the excerpts presented, in no way highlighted as representative of the entire novel, just that the words arrived on early pages.

1. The words "cracked opened" in the first line must be a typo. The two words "break down" caused a reading hiccup. Perhaps the term should be "breaking down" or "strike," but, since these words apply primarily to the tent alone, the greater action may be to "pack up" the campsite.
2. Then there is the participle "Squinting." Participles are words ending in "ing" or "ed." They are to describe the subject of the conventional sentence. Does "squinting" describe the nose? Of course not.
3. Maddie supposedly sees the brilliance of the morning peeking through her tent. A paragraph later says, "When she got her first glimpse of the morning..." How can that be? If she had seen the peeking sun brilliance, she couldn't be first glimpse awe-struck when stepping outside her tent minutes later.
4. As one reads, one cannot help but be bombarded by the constant use of "to be" verbs. These inert verbs require the action to be exhumed and enlivened by vigorous verbs. Count the number of times the "to be" past tense verb "was" presents itself in the latter portion of the excerpt.  The inert verbs highlight the "telling" of a story, not its "showing." Review clauses such as "full of life," "were so much alike," and "like she had just survived a hurricane". What specifics are told? Are they cliches, overused and/or meaningless?
5. Metaphors can be confusing. Consider the use of the words "cinder block" connected to "hardheaded." A normal construction cinder block has a hollow core. Does the author wish to convery the character is an "airhead" or merely "stubborn." The traits could be polar opposites.
6. In the latter part of the excerpt, would  the two words "Moments later" be enough to avoid a mind-jarring interruption or merely slight confusion with the time shift from the past to the present?
7. Is all believable? Would a teenage female meeting her parents introduce herself? That's what the language says when it refers to "We quickly introduced outselves."
8. This final comment brings forth the question: Where's the present inciting action that sets forth the central conflict? The introduction travels through backstory with a minimal reader grounding. Yes, this is young adult literature, but how many teenagers spend today trudging through the past. If a teenager lost a parent, do they, at seventeen, lament their seventh birthday party when Mom lit the cake candles or do they suffer losing a job interview or being late for a longed for date when the car won't run and Dad's not there to fix it? And then, there's the placement of the two incidents on the conflict scale.

Author's Note:
Author Donan Berg writes murder mysteries with strong romantic elements and his latest E-book novels are Abbey Burning Love and Baby Bones, neither of which are young adult novels. They may be purchased at http://www.dotdonbooks.com/ and through major E-book retailers. Previews of all four Donan Berg novels are presented at http://www.amazon.com/ .

Write Better with Four-Top Conflict.

By Donan Berg

Author of A Body To Bones

and The Bones Dance Foxtrot

            Conflict attracts and builds fiction readership. The concept is not a mystery, but challenges fiction writers with every story. How can authors master the task?

            Conflict as defined for writers is the clash of beliefs, values, and/or moral judgments. Conflict is not a left jab, right upper cut punch combination. Nor is it a hero defeating each opponent at every mile marker post on the interstate between journey start and finish.

            The author begins with a story hero, often called the protagonist. If he or she lives in an idealistic state with satiated desires and no worries, the hero may love it, but the reader will be bored. Life’s reality contains ups and downs; the reader expects novel conflict to surpass actuality with greater intensity and proportionality.

            In its simplest form, conflict for the hero involves one antagonist or a villain, as mystery writers will label the person or peril of nature. For illustration purposes the villain will be another human. To have the greatest conflict both the hero and villain must seek the identical goal. Both may crave the final say where there’s but one authority position. The hero desires to win the election to provide justice for residents. The villain desires to win the same election to fatten his or her bank account. A detective hero investigates to learn the killer’s identity. The villain uses every trick, lie, and false insinuation to avoid detection justifying the action as self-defense or biblical revenge.

            Hero versus villain is a straightforward back-and-forth contest. Like a tug of war, one can have the advantage, then the other, back to the first, the second resurges, and eventually the hero prevails, well most often, except in the tragedy. While this format presents an acceptable template for storytelling, the good versus evil conflict remains largely superficial without engaging character depth. The hero evokes no lasting emotional attachment in the reader’s mind.

            How can the author increase the conflict? And expand the emotional attractiveness of his or her characters. Try four-top conflict. Four-top is restaurant terminology for a table with four seats. Authors will have the hero at position one, the major villain at position two, nature’s peril or another adversary at position three, and the third adversary at position four. The potential for competing values is vertical, horizontal, and/or diagonal. The hero must not only face attacks from the major villain, but his or her weakness is exposed to positions three and four as well.

            Let’s consider a public safety mystery novel example. The detective hero must solve an accountant’s murder. The major villain must thwart the hero’s murder-solving goal so as not to jeopardize a personal real estate business scam. The major villain tries to pull political strings to have the detective’s boss reassign or not authorize the tools the detective needs. At position three is the actual killer. A winter storm traps and almost kills the hero at a desolate cabin in pursuit of a clue or the actual killer, a gun for hire. The killer becomes unhappy and threatens to expose the major villain unless he’s paid additional money. This pressure intensifies the major villain’s actions against the hero. The hero’s fourth position adversary can be a fellow detective who seeks promotion to the one departmental advancement vacancy. In acting for personal gain, the fellow detective intentionally misfiles evidence, doesn’t pass on evidence tips, and/or tells a potential witness that the witness would be better off not speaking to the hero.

            It’s easy to visualize the diagonal possibilities between the actual killer and the hero, often a simple clue detection tug of war. However, utilization of the four-top conflict model allows the major villain to complicate the perils the hero must overcome and aid the actual killer’s actions to prey upon the hero’s weaknesses. For example, unbeknownst to all others, the major villain plants a false clue that causes the hero to walk into a booby-trapped restaurant where the major villain had also induced the real killer and fellow detective to be spreading button on the same bread loaf. If the fellow detective avoids death, the fellow detective can challenge the major villain with exposure as he or she strives for personal promotional glory. The real killer may decide on revenge against the major villain.

The author’s illumination of how and why the hero acts and reacts to three, not one, adds depth to this main character. The same happens to other characters when the author shows how they are challenged or required to respond to the actions of others to attain desired goals.

Can the same four-top concept apply to subplots? Yes, for example, the home life of the hero can have tugs between a spouse, child, and mother-in-law. There are countless possibilities. Forget the mother-in-law and give the hero a serious addiction, your choice. Create the relationships between the hero and others or internally to show the hero with praiseworthy values and a personality flaw as a rounded character.

Don’t forget that the challenges to the hero’s beliefs, values, and moral judgments will change him or her in incremental stages to create a totally different personality when the story ends.

(Comments? Author Donan Berg may be contacted via e-mail at mystery@abodytobones.com.) A Body To Bones mystery novel. Latest E-book novel, Baby Bones.

Editing Never Easy or Ironclad

Every author needs practice at editing and feedback both before and after the revisions.

The following is an example of an author's draft, not mine, where I tried to enhance it in my personal way staying true to the author's original prose. If you'd share how you'd do it different, we all gain. An old adage never more important than practice, practice, practice.

Here is the original sample:

As dusk approached, Eric marveled at the rifle Zachariah had once ownedand now through the old man’s generosity, Eric owned. He grasped the barrel with one hand and the stock with the other. It was a handsome piece of craftsmanship of walnut stock and glimmering steel. He clicked on the safety button and pushed the locking lever to disengage the barrel. There were two cartridges in the chamber. As Zachariah always said, the rifle was useless unless it was always loaded. It was an impressive clicking sound when he opened and closed the chamber. He felt empowered by the heft to it. He took out the two cartridges, fondled them in the hands, a cool and somewhat unsettling feel to them and put them back in their chamber.

Here is my suggested revision:

Dusk hovered ready to descend or be blotted out by the massing crow wings. Eric stood motionless, gravity tugging at his lower jaw, as curled fingers clutched the rifle Zachariah once owned, now his through the old man’s generosity. Eric thrust out both arms to again admire the everlasting craftsmanship of a polished walnut stock routed out for oiled glimmering steel. Bracing the rifle’s butt against his right shoulder, he clicked on the safety and pushed the locking lever to disengage the barrel. Two cartridges in the chamber. Why should he have expected otherwise? Zachariah repeatedly said the rifle useless unless loaded. An impressive sharp click sounded when he flexed the chamber open, closed and open again. The heft empowered him. He fondled the two cartridges in his left hand, the cool metal casing giving them an unsettling feel. Zachariah’s shells more at home nestled in their chamber ready for the firing pin.

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Please note I added the crows which show up in the paragraphs after this initial chapter opening. The result for me more descriptive with a sense of drama and a link to the paragraphs that follow. Thank you for reading.