3 Tips for Compelling, Shareable Writing

Everyone who creates an online post, tweet, or meme hopes it goes viral. That occurs when others read it, like it, and share it. Viral posts often contain three key attributes. Do these same attributes apply to fiction in general?

Author, speaker, and producer Shane Snow blogged about these attributes and gave them an easy mnemonic to remember—FIN.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Fluency

The F in FIN stands for fluency. Snow means this in the sense of smooth, flowing prose, rather than familiarity with a language. He advocates plain, easy-to-understand writing.

Go for a low number in the readability index. Don’t force readers to wade through flowery phrases to grasp your meaning. Shorter words, sentences, and paragraphs make life easier for your readers. Read your writing aloud to check for awkward phrases or other stumbling points and edit as needed.  

Identity

Here, Snow refers to how well the reader identifies with the characters or topic. To engage readers, connect with universal themes and struggles.

Give readers something familiar to latch onto. Often, novels begin in a familiar setting to orient readers to an identifiable locale—home, office, neighborhood, etc. They give characters commonplace problems readers can relate to. Having grounded the reader in a familiar place, the novel can then launch into the unfamiliar.

Novelty

Speaking of the unfamiliar, Snow includes novelty as the final third of the acronym. We call them novels for a reason. Be bold and creative. Strike off in a new and different direction.

Take an old idea and give it a fresh twist. They say there’s nothing new under the sun, but ‘they’ haven’t read your book yet.

Putting FIN Together

Shane Snow focused on FIN as a technique for giving your social media posts and memes a better chance of going viral. Fiction stories can be sharable, too, in the sense that fans get a buzz going and that increases sales.

For a short story, novella, or novel, consider applying these attributes in reverse order–NIF. First, think of a new and fresh thing to write about. Then, begin your story by giving readers something to identify with. Last, as you edit, work to keep your prose clean and fluent.

Soon, you’ll FINish a wonderful, sharable tale, thanks in part to Shane Snow and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 13, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Revive Your Open, Creative Mind

How often do you read a book, watch a TV show, or see a movie, and think, “How clever! I wish I could come up with ideas like that.” You can. I’ll tell you how.

Seeing the World a New Way

Creative people share a trait. Their brain neurons connect in a different manner than those of other people. When you sense the world around you, it is what it is. Creative people sense what the world could be.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Psychologists talk of ‘trait theory’ and the ‘Big Five’ personality traits. (For information, those are: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.) Of those, creatives seem loaded with an excess of Openness to Experience.

In this post, Luke Smillie and Anna Antinori explain how we all form mental models of the world. The closer our mental model matches the real world, the better we can deal with things.

Creatives play with their mental models. They think about unusual connections between unlike things. They imagine different possible worlds. They see in a way most don’t.

Binocular Rivalry

As one example, psychologists showed a group of test subjects a different image to their right and left eyes. The subjects tried to make sense of what they saw as one image rivaled the other.

The test revealed the more creative test subjects ended up ‘seeing’ a combined picture, one sharing attributes of both images to a greater extent than less creative subjects did.

Inattentional Blindness

In another test, psychologists gave test subjects a task requiring focus. They showed the subjects a video of six young people passing two basketballs around. The task—count the number of times people wearing white pass the ball.

Half of the test subjects concentrated so much on the task that they missed a bizarre event occurring in plain sight during the video. Those with more ‘openness to experience’ saw the event. Creatives saw what others screened out.

The Openness of Writers

The best fiction writers see what the rest of us see, but combine unlike things. Micheal Crichton merged his children’s interest in dinosaurs, then-current genetic engineering research, and mathematical chaos theory when writing Jurassic Park.

Suzanne Collins had been flipping TV channels between a reality show and coverage of a war when she combined the ideas and wrote The Hunger Games.

The ideas lie out there waiting for all of us, but fiction writers join and twist things and ask ‘what if…?’

Opening Your Mind

Can you train yourself to think like that, to see the story ideas others miss? I think so. In fact, I believe we’re born with the ability, and most of us lose it over time.

Most five-year-old children teem with creative ideas. They see animals in clouds, monsters under the bed, imaginative uses for sticks and stones and acorns. For some, that ability never fades, but most grow out of it, abandoning their magic dragons.

By increasing your creativity, you’re not learning a new skill, you’re re-learning a forsaken one.

Travel, especially foreign travel, can expose you to different ways of thinking that might spark creative ideas.

I like another technique, one much cheaper than flying overseas. Psychologists call it the ‘divergent thinking task’ but I call it ‘brainstorming twenty ideas.’ Take a common object and write down twenty alternative uses for it. Your ideas need not make practical sense, but don’t stop until you reach twenty. You can do this for any problem you face, not just imagining uses for things. By churning through the absurd and crazy ideas, you might hit on a brilliant one you wouldn’t have considered otherwise.

But That’s Not All

Disclaimer—writing a book requires more than just creativity. If you’re able to bolster your imaginative ability, you’ll generate good story ideas. But you still have to buckle down and write the novel or TV/movie script. Many writers consider that the hard part. Still, if the techniques in this blogpost help you over the first hurdle, that’s a win for you and for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 5, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Uptime for Writers

You’re a fiction writer who wants to crank out better books faster. Maybe this blogpost will help you do that.

Intro to Uptime

I just read Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing by Laura Mae Martin. The author worked as a productivity expert at Google who helped employees do more work faster, with less stress. Could her techniques work for fiction writers?

She packed her short book with numerous techniques, and many might work for you. I’ll focus on one of those here.

Power Hours and Flow

She discussed the concept of ‘power hours,’ the few hours of highest productivity in your day. That sounded a bit like being ‘in the flow’ to me. I’ve blogged about that wonderful feeling before. Picture the flow state as focused concentration, effortless action, a lack of self-consciousness, unawareness of time, and obliviousness toward bodily needs.

When I wrote about it, I imagined doing the more creative phases of writing while in this flow state. But fiction writing includes more than creativity and that complicates the picture.

Off-Peak Hours

In addition to power hours, Martin discussed off-peak hours, during which fatigue sets in (or continues from the night) and you’re less productive. Each of your workdays contains power hours and off-peak hours, and they’re somewhat stable, occurring at the same times each day. However, these cycles vary between people, so you’ll have to experiment to discover your own power hours, if you haven’t already identified them from past experience.

Uptime, Downtime

Uptime, if I understand her concept, can include both power hours and off-peak hours. During uptime, you’re performing work, but not always at the same level of productivity.

However, for your health, you require downtime, too. Downtime includes non-work-related activities, particularly those requiring little concentration. Examples include meditating, showering, walking, mowing the lawn, gardening, etc. Unlike power hours and off-peak hours, you can schedule downtime. You’re in control.

Funny thing about downtime. People report their most creative ideas occur then. Fiction writers can use that to their advantage.

Fiction Writing Tasks

The fiction writing process contains many tasks, including generating ideas/brainstorming, outlining/researching, writing the first draft, editing later drafts, and marketing. Some require more creativity, some less.

If you had the option, you’d choose to accomplish your highest priority writing tasks during the power hours—in the flow, ideally. You’d save routine or less vital tasks for off-peak hours.

Don’t forget the advantage of downtime, which you control. Say you get stuck while writing—a plot problem, a character motivation issue, etc. Take some downtime, a few minutes off from writing. Your subconscious may work on the problem and solve it when you least expect it.

Get Real

I know—most fiction writers have day jobs. You seize as much writing time as you can, cramming it in among all the other obligations of life. Some days you barely write for half an hour. Perhaps your writing time varies from day to day. How are you supposed to make use of this uptime/downtime/power hours/off-peak hours concept?

Maybe you can’t. But perhaps just being aware of your daily productivity cycles and the creativity-laden power of downtime will help you reschedule as close to your optimum writing times as you can. Also, this knowledge may help you squeeze the most from those rare days you can devote to writing.

Uptime over. It’s now downtime for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 29, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Authorial Reticence—Why Writers Hold Back

You’re asking if you read that subject line correctly. Hold back? Aren’t writers supposed to explain things? Aren’t they supposed to…you know…write to be understood?

I’d never heard the term ‘authorial reticence’ until last weekend, when I listened to author Michael Scott Clifton talking about it at a conference.

He spoke on the subject of ‘magical realism’ and dropped ‘authorial reticence’ on his audience. Intrigued by his description, I decided to blog about it.

Definition

Most often associated with magical realism, authorial reticence refers to a writer refraining from explanations about a fantastical setting or event. The story proceeds as if the astounding, magical thing happened every day. This encourages the reader to accept it and keep reading.

Antonyms

If that seems confusing, it might help to understand the term by exploring its extreme opposites. Think of a story where the author used an As-You-Know, Bob or an infodump to give a detailed description. Or consider a story where the author wrote out the moral. In each case, the writer took you by the hand and told you what to think.

Authorial reticence is the opposite of that.

Example

Authorial reticence can apply to sub-genres beyond magical realism. A classic example from science fiction occurred in Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Beyond This Horizon with this three-word sentence: “The door dilated.” No further explanation or description. Heinlein expected readers to form the mental picture, accept it, and read on.

Pros

Done well, this technique fosters engagement on the part of the reader. The author says, in an implicit way, “I trust you. If you’ll go along with me, I’ll entertain you without moralizing or boring you. No spoon-feeding, though. You may have to stretch your mind beyond normal credibility limits.”

Benefits include a shorter, tighter story that highlights action and drama. Readers get a sense of being welcomed into your story’s world, as if they’ve lived there for some time. Also, readers who feel trusted might well buy your other books.

Cons

Like any good thing, you can stretch authorial reticence too far. Throwing too many bizarre or fantastic elements in at once can confuse a reader, who now will be less likely to finish the story, or buy another.

Also, if you fail to establish authorial reticence in your writing style at the story’s outset, introducing it later can prove jarring.

Reticence and Me

Given my engineering training, I suffer from a tendency to over-explain. I fear the reader might not form an accurate mental picture, or might reject my story element as too far-fetched. I’ll strive to resist this impulse. I’ll try to trust the reader’s imagination to fill in gaps.

From now on, if you’re looking for authorial reticence, you’re looking for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 22, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

What are Animals up to in Fiction?

Animals don’t read. People do. Why, then, do authors include critters in their fiction? First off, most readers like animals. But what literary purpose do animal serve?

Diogenes from Ripper’s Ring, created using perchance.org

I’ve blogged before about the pets owned by authors. But authors write about animals as well, and my topic today is about how animals make stories better.

The Talking Kind

From ancient times to the present, authors have penned tales about talking animals. Though they make endearing characters, I’ll gloss over them in my post today. For the most part, talking animals merely substitute for human characters. Speech serves only to make these animal characters more relatable and places the story in the realm of fantasy.

An author may, however, write about normal, non-magical animals that have been given the power of speech. Science fiction author David Brin exemplified this in his Uplift Universe series, where humans biologically manipulated some Earth animals and designed in the ability to speak.

In any case, according to editor Mary Kole, stories with talking animals aren’t trending. She suggests including a talking animal only if your story won’t work any other way.

Purposes

Why include regular, non-talking animals in fiction? In a valuable post on the subject, editor Moriah Richard listed three reasons: tool, weapon, and companion. Richard noted these purposes overlap and do not constitute all possible uses. I’ll explore the ones Richard listed and add some of my own.

Tool

For any attribute humans possess, (except speech, higher level thought, and manual dexterity), you can name an animal that surpasses us. Access to narrow places, burrowing, seeing, flying, hearing, smelling, speed, strength, and swimming—certain animals have us beat. Often, in stories, we read of a human using a trained animal as some sort of tool. For hearing and smelling, writers often choose dogs. Easy to train and readily available, dogs are also well known to readers, so require little description. For transportation, horses seem ideally suited, though other animals can suffice.

Weapon

I suspect this use occurs less frequently in fiction than the tool use. A weapon is a kind of tool, though, so you can regard this as a subset of the previous use. For attacking other people, dogs again represent a good choice, due to their trainability, their speed, and their teeth.

A writer may use all types of other animals as weapons in a story, including bears, bees, hawks, lions, sharks, and dozens of others. However, these belong in the difficult-to-train category, and might just turn on the person who releases them.

Companion

Perhaps the most often used purpose of animals in fiction, companionship provides the author several opportunities. When a character enjoys a companionable relationship with an animal, it endears the character to the reader. It also portrays, by inference, the kind and caring nature of the character.

Examples include the film Hachi: A Dog’s Tale and the book Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog, by John Grogan. A stranger example might be Life of Pi by Yann Martel, featuring a tiger as companion.

Antagonist

I’ll add this purpose to Moriah Richard’s list, though the traditional role of antagonist doesn’t fit most animals. Animals do not often oppose a human through hatred or malevolence. They act according to their natures, but humans may hate them for that, so it’s more about the human’s feelings than those of the animal. In stories with animal ‘antagonists,’ often the real antagonist is another human or a psychological struggle inside the human protagonist.

Examples include Moby-Dick by Herman Melville and Jaws by Peter Benchley.

Symbol

This blogpost at MasterClass.com explains the use of animals as symbols in literature. As metaphor, the animal represents something else, often some quality of humanity, without stating the comparison in an overt way.

The albatross in the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Coleridge symbolizes good luck. The bird in the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe symbolizes the persistence of grief. The owl Hedwig in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling symbolizes Harry’s innocence, which he loses when the owl dies.

Conscience

An animal may also serve as a sort of unwitting conscience for a human character. The character who talks to a pet may arrive at a solution to a problem without any reaction from the pet, and nevertheless credit the animal with providing valuable assistance.

My Own Animal Characters

Mutant from “The Cats of Nerio-3” created using perchance.org

I’ve rarely included normal animals in my stories. Not sure why. Mutated cats serve as ‘antagonists’ in “The Cats of Nerio-3,” a story appearing within In a Cat’s Eye. A basset hound named Diogenes assists a detecting in locating an invisible murderer in Ripper’s Ring. In that story, the dog serves as tool, companion, and conscience.

Whatever you do, don’t write a shaggy dog story—then you’d be barking up the wrong tree. Okay, I guess it’s off to the doghouse for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 15, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

The Inner Drives of Fictional Characters

You should know the motivation of each fictional character you create. What do they desire? What inner need compels them to act the way they do? I’ve blogged about motivation before, and I’ll build on that today.

Motivation versus Goals

Every major character may pursue a goal, too, but that differs from motivation. A goal is the outcome a character seeks, and motivation is why the character wants it.  

Maslow’s Hierarchy

In my earlier post, I mentioned Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The pyramid shape suggests a character must meet lower-level needs before pursuing higher levels. If an antagonist or other circumstance deprives a character of a lower-level need, the character will revert down to that need and pursue it.

Russell’s Theory

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell discussed motivations (calling them desires) in his 1950 speech accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature. He focused on the motivations of political leaders, because these, he thought, influenced human history the most. If you include a political leader in your fiction, Russell’s thoughts may interest you.

The philosopher named four major desires of political leaders—acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power. Put another way:

  • acquisitiveness = I want your stuff
  • rivalry = I want to surpass you
  • vanity = I want you to worship me
  • love of power = I want to control you

As Maslow did, Russell put his list of desires in a specific order, but in a more negative way. Perhaps an inverted pyramid makes more sense, for he ordered his group by strength. He rated acquisitiveness the weakest and love of power the strongest.

Moreover, he considered these needs insatiable. Like a snowball rolling downhill, the more you feed any of those needs, the bigger they get. No satisfied contentment awaits at the end.

Combining the Theories

Despite the differing approaches, I see parallels between Maslow’s positive list and Russell’s negative one. Acquisitiveness connects to Psychological and Safety needs—both concern material things and feeling secure. Rivalry connects to Belonging and Esteem—both concern relating with others. Vanity also connects to Esteem as well—both concern how the character is seen by others. Love of Power connects to both Esteem and Self-Actualization—both concern the achievement of full potential through creativity.

It’s Complicated

Perhaps, in trying to categorize and group motivations, both Maslow and Russell oversimplified matters. Humans exhibit a wide array of motivations, not just the ones listed by those two thinkers. Your fictional characters may act out of any motivation you choose, from an infinite list.

As you create characters, you may find Maslow’s pyramid and Russell’s list useful as a starting point. Feel free to add nuance and variation when determining what drives your characters.

Whatever my own motivation, concluding this blogpost is the immediate goal of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 8, 2024Permalink 2 Comments

Is it Really About Who You Know?

In the fiction writing business, how much depends on what you know and how much on who you know? (Yes, English teachers, I know that should be ‘whom.’ Sorry.)

In a recent post, poet Damiana Andonova discussed the importance of establishing and maintaining a network of useful contacts to help your writing career. That caused me to wonder about the what-you-know/who-you-know dichotomy as it applies to fiction writing. The age-old conundrum exists for people in all fields, of course, but I’ll limit my discussion to authors.

Generated at www.perchance.org

The who-you-know method conjures the image of hitching your wagon to a star. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson coined that phrase, though he meant something different from aligning yourself with an up-and-comer so you can rise. I’m referring to that modern interpretation.  

Who You Know

Advocates of this school believe in the power of networking. Where’s the value in writing amazing prose if the right editors never see it? You can learn so much by connecting with other writers, editors, and agents. Not only learn, but—let’s face it—editors and agents would rather not take a chance on a fresh unknown, and would prefer to work with someone they know and can depend on. The sooner you become that someone, the sooner your writing career will succeed.

Those who hold this view contend that all famous writers, every one of them, established and maintained a strong relationship with one or more editors, agents, and publishers. How could a writer become famous without that?

What You Know

Adherents of this school believe everything starts with what you know. Unless you write well first, you’ll never form the network at all. No agent or editor will champion a writer who crafts low-quality prose, and they won’t stick with a skilled, one-book writer after the pitcher of creative juice runs dry.

Hone the craft, they say. Put your effort into churning out product. If you write it, they will come. Yes, famous writers can point to a network, but they didn’t become famous without a lot of readers, and readers want good writing.

Taken to Extremes

You may stretch both views too far. A who-you-know writer may schmooze and flatter while dashing off mediocre drivel. A what-you-know writer may scribble in the basement by candlelight, generating wondrous masterpieces that crumble to dust, unread. Neither extreme appeals to me.

The Elusive Balance

A compromise seems the wise course. But where’s the balancing point? To be specific, what percentage of time should a writer devote to writing versus networking?

On a line segment with ‘who you know’ at one end and ‘what you know’ at the other, the optimum point between them will present a problem no matter where it lies. In general, extrovert writers enjoy networking and introverts hate it.

As with many other areas of life, success requires leaving your comfort zone and enduring the distasteful but necessary tasks.

Worse, I suspect the optimal balance point varies from writer to writer, and even shifts over time. In other words, you have to find your own optimum, and wherever it is, you won’t like it. Even if you learn to accept it, it will move somewhere else on the line to a place you won’t like.

Don’t Get Me Wrong

I mean no disrespect toward Damiana Andonova and am not criticizing the points she made in her blogpost. I’m delighted she found success. She attributes a good part of that to networking, and no doubt she’s right. I suspect she writes marvelous poetry, though, and therefore what she knew played a role as well.

My Own Balance

Though I scribble in the basement by candlelight, I must acknowledge the people in my own network. The employees at Gypsy Shadow Publishing and Pole to Pole Publishing as well as several editors at other publishers have been of enormous help to me. I’m grateful to them all.

Each of those stars has towed the wagon of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 1, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Busting 10 Myths About Writing Fiction

You’ve thought about writing fiction. However, the moment you did, your inner critic bashed the notion and rolled out ten reasons you shouldn’t. Your inner critic was wrong. Today, I’ll bust those myths about writing fiction.

10. I don’t have time to write.

In one sense, your inner critic was right about that. You don’t have time to write. Neither do I. No writer does. We all make time for it. We deliberately carve out time out of our day for writing, no matter how brief it may be.

9. I could never write as well as [insert your favorite author’s name].

Since you’ve never tried, how would you know? Even if it’s true, who cares? You’re aiming at the wrong target. Adjust your aim to write as well as you can.

8. I’ve led a dull life. If I write what I know, it’ll be a dull book.

If you had suffered a troubled past, that would give you much to write (with authority) about. But you’ll have to admit—your past wasn’t all dull. You experienced fear, pain, triumph, loss, and love. Remember those emotions and write about them. More important than writing what you know is writing what you feel.

7. I don’t know all the English rules well enough.

This ain’t English class. Editors and publishers won’t quiz you on the difference between a reflexive pronoun and a ditransitive verb. They’d trade a hundred grammar experts and another hundred spelling bee champions for one great storyteller. You can learn the rules of English faster and easier than you can learn the craft of weaving a compelling tale.

6. I’ve heard you need a muse. I don’t have one.

Forget the muse. It’s a metaphor for creativity. I’ll give you two ways to increase your creativity, and each beats waiting around for an ancient Greek goddess to whisper in your ear. (1) Practice 20-solution brainstorming, where you write down 20 solutions to a problem without regard to workability or practicality. Don’t stop until you reach 20. (2) Channel your 5-year-old former self. You were creative then.

5. I don’t know the ‘author tricks.’

Of course you don’t. That’s because all the highest-paid authors belong to a secret society, and you haven’t been initiated. Wait, no. There’s no such secret society and no author tricks. What worked for others won’t work for you, and vice versa. You’ll have to figure out your own tricks, like everyone else. Many authors have written how-to-write books, but there’s no sure-fire formula in this biz.

4. Writers are introverts and I’m an extrovert.

You may be extroverted, but writers come in all personality types. If the thought of writing alone bothers you, collaborate with another writer. Or attend a party after each writing session, to get back in your comfort zone.

3. I’ll get stuck and suffer from writer’s block.

Maybe. Probably. It never lasts long. Whatever inner force compels you to write will insist you resume at some point. If you listen to that voice inside, it will help you get unstuck.

2. All the best stories have already been written.

Maybe that’s true. So what? More stories get published now than ever before, so that excuse doesn’t seem to be stopping other writers. One thing’s for sure—your best story hasn’t been written, and you’re the only one who can do it.

And the number one myth about writing is—

1. I won’t make any money from writing.

    Hmm. What a coincidence. All the highest paid authors in history likely had that same thought at some point. It might end up being true in your case, but you can’t know that yet. Most writers keep their day job until their writing income grows to a point that they feel comfortable quitting that job. Maybe you’ll end up loving writing so much that you won’t care so much about the money.

    There. I’ve busted the top ten myths about writing fiction. What’s your next excuse? Whatever it is will soon get demolished by the sledge hammer belonging to—

    Poseidon’s Scribe

    August 25, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

    Write for 2 Audiences

    If you write genre fiction, you write for two sectors of the reading public. Problem is, they want opposite things. What do you do?

    For any genre—and I’ll use science fiction as my example—you’ll have two types of readers. Let’s call them Experts and Newbies. You’d like both of them to buy and enjoy your books.

    Experts

    The first type knows the genre well. Scifi experts can quote the Three Laws of Robotics, have a ball lecturing you about Dyson Spheres, reveal the universal question for which the answer is 42, and babble on about Babylon 5. They read often, and crave the most recently published stories, and prefer them crammed with all the technologies and the latest scientific discoveries.

    Newbies

    Don’t take that term the wrong way. We all start as newbies. The newbie takes a chance when buying your book. Despite harboring doubts about scifi, the newbie remains curious and willing to learn. The newbie may not know a warp drive from a hard drive, but likes a good story as long as it doesn’t confuse.

    These two types differ in their approach to what I’ll call New Stuff and Tropes.

    New Stuff

    I mentioned experts seek technology and scientific discoveries. They want the latest, the cutting-edge, the most imaginative concepts. Give them the New Stuff. Not only that, they want the full explanation. What’s it look like? How is it powered? How fast does it go? What languages can it speak? You could write many pages of convincing technobabble without boring an expert.

    Newbies don’t delight in New Stuff. It’s all new to them. They just want to know how the characters feel about the new stuff and how it affects the plot. Any paragraph that reads like a technical manual annoys them, maybe enough to stop reading.

    Tropes

    With tropes, the situation reverses. Here, I using the term to refer to technology or concepts well known to readers of the genre. Expert readers get your meaning as soon as you mention wormholes, the multiverse, generation ships, FTL, or cryosleep. If you go further to explain the trope, experts feel insulted.

    Newbies, by contrast, get stumped by tropes. These strange words and phrases serve as an ejection seat to launch them out of the story. Just a brief definition would save newbies from frustration.

    The Balance

    As a writer, you’d like to please both types. When it comes to New Stuff, you should aim for just enough explanation to satisfy experts, but not so much that it bores newbies. With Tropes, seek the briefest definition to help out the newbies. Better yet, define the term in context so newbies can catch the meaning and experts don’t get exasperated.

    At a critique group meeting recently, one member criticized my manuscript, saying I hadn’t defined an unfamiliar term, but that member managed to glean what it meant. Another group member knew the term, and said I shouldn’t bog down the prose with further explanations.

    I’d achieved balance.

    The Signal Technique

    Say you’ve got some new stuff in your story. You want to explain it all for the benefit of experts without making newbies nod off. Perhaps the signal technique will work. At the beginning of a paragraph, provide a signal to the reader that a long description follows. If you make the signal clear enough, the expert reads on with eagerness and the newbie skims or even skips that part.

    This method might work as well for tropes. Here the signal tells experts they may skip an upcoming explanation without missing anything, while the newbies should read the paragraph to understand the unfamiliar jargon.

    Jules Verne mastered that technique. Known for including long lists, he provided unmistakable signals in advance. It’s as if a hypertext alert pops up from the page saying, “Uninterested readers may skip this next part.”

    Summary

    Needless to say, I’ve simplified things in this discussion of two audiences. Your readers span a spectrum from newbie to expert and all points in between. You can write for them all if you keep their preferences in mind. Maybe, for your next book, one member of your reading audience might be—

    Poseidon’s Scribe

    August 18, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

    Entwining External and Internal Journeys

    Often, the best stories show us two journeys. In one, the protagonist contends with an outside force, possibly another person, to confront and resolve a problem. We call that the plot. The other journey takes place within the protagonist’s mind and involves emotions, beliefs, personality, and, in the end, learning and change.

    You’ll find a nice overview of this in editor and writing coach Ley Taylor Johnson’s post here and I encourage you to read it. My post emphasizes different points but (I hope) expresses the same overall view.

    The 4 Aspects

    Johnson says your main character should have a want, an obstacle, a need, and a flaw. She states them in that order since that’s the sequence for revealing them in the story.

    The character wants something, and that strong desire provides motivation. However, the obstacle stands in the way. The obstacle could be a person, some aspect of the setting, or some other negative force. You should establish the want and the obstacle early.

    Later, introduce the character’s need. The need is the reason for the want, and goes deeper than the want. The need is the underlying, emotional, psychological, or philosophical answer to the question, “why does the character want what she wants?” The character may be unaware of the need early on.

    Most often, protagonists also suffer from a flaw. Like the need, the flaw resides within the character—a personality defect, a phobia, a suppressed memory, etc. As with the need, the character may be unaware of the flaw at the beginning, or might have grown accustomed to concealing it.

    How the 4 Aspects Relate

    The want and the need both propel the character forward. The obstacle and the flaw oppose that movement. The want and the obstacle are, most often, tangible and external to the character. The need, as mentioned before, explains the want—providing the underlying reason for it. The want may not last to the end, or may change. The character may abandon the want. But the need usually does not change, though it may be satisfied at the end.

    How do the obstacle and the flaw relate? The obstacle, whether wittingly or not, preys on the flaw, targets and exploits it. While the obstacle appears early, the flaw may lurk unseen until late, though the writer might provide hints of the flaw all along. In the end the character must confront both the obstacle and the flaw, and resolve, in some way, the problems they create.

    The Journeys

    In the external journey, the character pursues the want but is stymied by the obstacle. When asked what a book is about, a reader often answers with this external journey, the plot.

    The internal journey takes place in a different realm, one of doubts, fears, bouts of sadness, joys, thoughts, prejudices, mindsets, etc. Within her mind, the character journeys first to understand the need and eventually to attain it, despite being opposed by the flaw.

    The Journeys Intersect

    Much of the time, the external journey moves forward through action and dialogue, leaving only brief moments for a character’s fleeting thoughts. A good writer won’t let the internal journey slow the pace of the most intense scenes of the external journey.

    Use the down-times between high-tension scenes to allow the internal journey to come to the fore. During these interludes, the character takes time for reflections, deeper thoughts, realizations, revelations, and learning—progress on the internal journey.

    In the end, both journeys reach completion. The external journey features the character confronting and overcoming the obstacle to either attain the want, or to achieve a larger goal. The internal journey shows the character confronting and overcoming the flaw to satisfy the need.

    Perhaps two other journeys end here, as well. You’ve finished reading this blogpost, and the writing has been completed by—

    Poseidon’s Scribe

    August 11, 2024Permalink Leave a comment