Tag Archives: readers

All Your Stage’s a World

Yes, I know Shakespeare wrote “All the world’s a stage,” but my point today has to do with the settings of stories.  The “stage” or “world” or “milieu” of your story is its setting.

The setting includes such things as the physical location, the time in history (including time of year and day), geography, culture, etc.  It includes all aspects of the description of this backdrop for the characters–the effect on all senses, as well as the overall mood.  Setting is, along with Character, Style, and Theme, one of the four fundamental components of fiction.

In my view, Setting is less important to a story than Character, but it’s still vital.  Your readers have a need to see the background, to imagine where the characters are, to visualize themselves in that venue along with the characters.  Without a setting, a story would consist of characters talking and acting in a void, standing before a blank screen.  (That would be interesting if done once, but tiresome if every story was like that.)  Think of the very beginning of almost any movie, just after the opening credits.  The audience is presented with a setting before the camera shifts to the film’s characters.

So how does a writer go about the task of hammering her stage together?  Keep in mind the primary sense for most readers is visual, so you’ll want to describe what a character sees, or would see if the character isn’t present yet.  However, emphasizing other senses besides sight might be more appropriate if a particular character has a keen sense of hearing or smell and you’re trying to work in a little character description, too.  Or if your main character is a dog, for example.

It isn’t enough to provide a neutral, fact-based description of your story’s setting.  This isn’t a news broadcast, so you should imbue your description with a mood or tone in keeping with the story, supporting its theme.  Or you could describe it through the eyes of a character, thus giving the reader a sense of the character’s attitude toward the setting, and how it makes that character feel.

You’re not writing for 19th Century readers, so you don’t get to go on for many adjective-loaded paragraphs describing the setting in pixel-by-pixel detail.  Today you have to keep it brief, and be very selective about the details you choose.  Your aim is to paint a few brushstrokes, as in classical Chinese art, and allow the reader’s imagination to fill in the rest of the world.  One way to do this is to go ahead and describe the scene fully as an exercise (either writing the text or mind-mapping), with all the details, then cut back to a few essential aspects.

You’ll want to place most of your setting description early in the scene, as an aid to your readers so they know where the characters are.  But you can also intersperse brief snatches of setting description throughout the scene.

The setting’s purpose in your story, then, is to form the backdrop against which the characters act.  Don’t fall in love with your setting; stories are about the human condition, and your characters must be in the foreground.  Your setting helps the reader place the characters in a context.  It can also help you bring out the story’s theme, mood, plot, and even introduce some symbolism.

As with all of my blog posts, I could be right or wrong about all of this.  Leave a comment and let me know what you think.  In this particular place and time, I’m–

                                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

May 20, 2012Permalink

Mixed Genres and the Platypus

Authors are having a lot of fun playing among the traditional genres these days.  In an era when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, and the movies “Ninjas vs. Vampires” and “Cowboys and Aliens” are popular, we might well question whether the term ‘genre’ has any meaning any more.

What is (or was) a genre?  It’s “a category of artistic works based on form, style, or subject matter, into which artistic works of all kinds can be divided.”  In its entry on genre fiction, Wikipedia provides the following list:  Action-adventure, Crime, Detective, Fantasy, Horror, Inspirational, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, and Western.  People can dispute that listing but let’s accept it for the time being.

Having a set of well-established genres into which any fiction book fits comfortably within a group is a nice arrangement for bookstores.  Booksellers know just where to shelve any new book that arrives.  Moreover, readers know where to look for their favorite types of stories.  That was the situation up until roughly when the millennium turned over.  In fact, experts used to discourage new authors from writing mixed genre novels because “bookstores won’t know where to shelve your book, and such books have limited appeal to readers.”

Well, forget all that!  Somewhere around the time people stopped going to brick-and-mortar bookstores to buy books, many readers started getting bored with the traditional genres.  They caught up with the authors, who had long been bored with them and ached to stir things up.  Now it’s the bookstores playing catch-up.

Consider the problem for a bookstore.  Imagine a line connecting two genres, say Romance and Horror.  A given book could be at the midpoint of that line, half Romance and half Horror, or it could be at any point along that line.  Now add all the other genres and connect each.  Quite a network!  Moreover, we only considered mixing genres two at a time, but you could combine three or more.  Given all that, how are you going to arrange the shelves in your bookstore?

But what if your bookstore is online and has a virtually unlimited number and arrangement of shelves?  What if your reader customers are demanding nontraditional stories?  What if those customers can type any combination of terms in the search feature of your website to see what you’re offering?  Suddenly it’s not necessary for a budding author to try to force-fit a story into one and only one of the established genres.

The situation is one of definition, like the duck-billed platypus, which once created a problem for zoologists.  Is it a bird or a mammal? It must certainly be one or the other.  It turns out the problem does not lie with the platypus, but with our categories, our definitions.  Similarly, genres are categories with fuzzy–even overlapping–boundaries.  Some stories fit snugly near the center of a genre’s definition.  Others lie out near the edge, still within the boundary, but also within the boundary of another genre.

So I advise you to write the story you want to write, without regard to genres.  It’s a new age, an era without rigid categories, sans genres.  Readers out there seem ready for some experimentation, some departures from tradition.  When you hit that magic combination that amazes the world and propels you to fame and fortune, write down how grateful you are, enclose a fat check, and mail it to–

                                                                      Poseidon’s Scribe

 

April 1, 2012Permalink

Hook ‘em, So You Can Reel ‘em In

How will you begin your next story?  The beginning, called the ‘hook,’ is important.  These days readers don’t have much time.  Other things like TV, video games, and the Internet compete with your story for their attention.  If your first sentence or paragraph doesn’t grab them, they’re on to doing something else.

Here are some examples of great hooks used in novels as chosen by the editors of American Book Review:

  • Call me Ishmael.  Moby-Dick, Herman Melville 
  • Marley was dead, to begin with.  A Christmas Carol,  Charles Dickens
  • It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.  1984, George Orwell
  • You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
  • Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.  The Trial, Franz Kafka
  • Mother died today.  The Stranger, Albert Camus
  • There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis
  • He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.  The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
  • It was a pleasure to burn.  Fahrenheit 451,  Ray Bradbury
  • The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.  The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane

These beginnings work well for several reasons.  They give us an early idea what the story will be about.  They establish the tone of the story, and something about the attitude of the narrator’s voice.

But most of all they seize our attention and compel us to want to read more.  What gives them this quality?  It’s hard to find a common attribute just by looking at them.  They seem to appeal for different reasons.

Writer Darcy Pattison has grouped the different beginnings into categories.  This is helpful since one category might work better for the start of your story than another.  Knowing the category can give you a starting point for developing your hook.

Many of the beginnings in the list start with a sense of the ordinary, and then give the reader something that clashes or is jarring somehow.  We’re left with a puzzle, an oddity, a question that can only be resolved by reading further.  So read on we must.

Those without that twist added to the ordinary seem to possess a different quality.  They settle us in, set a mood, fluff up our pillow, put on some appropriate music.  We’re now comfortably in the story, transported to the author’s world right from the start, and now that we’re there we might as well read on to see what the place is like.

Each of these beginnings without exception is easy to read.  None have rare or difficult words to stumble over.  All have rhythm, and almost poetic brevity.  Not a word is wasted.

How do you write an opening like these?  Heck if I know; these are some of the best ever written.  Ask one of the world’s greatest authors.

With that task added to your to-do list, perhaps we could set our sights a bit lower for now.  How do you write an effective story beginning?  For one thing, it takes time and many trials.  The beginning is the hardest part to write, usually takes the longest, and usually involves the most revisions.  You might decide to skip the hook and come back to it later as the story evolves.  You might like to write a first version of the hook knowing you’ll revisit it over and over.  In any case, be prepared to spend the time and thought to craft it right.

To learn much more about how to write story hooks, read Hooked by Les Edgerton.  What an invaluable resource!

With regard to beginnings, we’ve reached the end.  Remember to check back at this site next week for further ramblings about writing by–

                                                                 Poseidon’s Scribe

March 4, 2012Permalink

Diagnosis: Writer’s Block

Have you experienced writer’s block?  That condition where you feel the desire or pressure to write but you can’t actually come up with any words?  It’s a real thing, an occupational “hazard” first diagnosed in 1947.

I think there are two forms of it–Major Writer’s Block and minor writer’s block.  I define MajWB as the state of being unable to start writing a new work, and of long duration.  On the other hand, minWB is a short-term state of being stuck while in the midst of a work.  MajWB can last for years or even be a career-ender.  But minWB is almost always temporary, lasting a few hours or days.  I have yet to experience MajWB, but get the minor version often.

In either case, the symptoms are pretty much the same.  Words won’t come out, try as you might, and after a while you don’t feel much like trying.  I pay attention to the blogs of writer Andrew Gudgel (full disclosure:  Andy and I are friends), and he wrote a great blog entry on writer’s block on May 3, 2011.  In it, he states that the condition of not writing is only a symptom, not the problem itself.  He makes the case that only when you know the problem can you begin to solve it, and that the problem itself points to the solution.

He divides the spectrum of possible problems into craft-related problems, and problems with other aspects of the writer’s life.  I’ll divide writing block problems a different way, as follows:

  • Story-related problems:
    • plotting problems–the story isn’t going in the right direction
    • character problems–a character isn’t fully fleshed out, or is taking over the story, or is otherwise not proving suitable
    • setting problems
    • other problems with the story itself
  • Craft-related problems that are writing-related, but not about the story:
    • overwhelmed by task
    • inferiority complex, thoughts that your writing won’t measure up
    • lost interest
    • pressured by deadline
    • paralyzed by own success
    • pressure of audience too close (more below)
  • Personal, but non-writing, problems:
    • illness
    • depression
    • relationship problems
    • financial difficulties

Again, identifying which real problem is present can point toward the solution.  The stress caused by any of the problems above can really inhibit the normal creative process.  What’s thought to happen in the short term to the human brain under stress is a shift of activity from the cerebral cortex to the limbic areas.  In other words, the focus shifts from the areas devoted to attention, consciousness, language, memory, and thought to the basic, instinctual fight-or-flight area we inherited from the dinosaurs.  Extended periods of stress damages brain cells, weakens memory, and causes depression.  All of that is bad news for writers.

Most of the items on the list of problems above are self-explanatory, but I thought I’d discuss the pressure of the audience in more detail.  Writing expert Dr. Peter Elbow wrote a much-discussed essay called “Closing My Eyes As I Speak.”  He claims writers feel the presence of an audience as they write.  Unlike performance artists such as singers or stand-up comedians, writers do not have their audience physically present, but they often imagine how readers will react to their work.  Dr. Elbow considers the pressure of this unseen audience can disrupt the flow of words, and suggests writers disregard the audience as they write their first drafts.  The writing will be more natural and genuine.

As a non-writing example, look at this picture of world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma in performance.  He often plays with eyes closed, as if he’s deliberately distancing himself from his audience and playing only for himself in his own private world.  Metaphorically, we should all write that way, too, at least in our first drafts.

I’ve discussed the condition of writer’s block and potential causes, but never got around yet to how to overcome it.  Getting unblocked will have to be the subject of a future blog post by–

                                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

February 12, 2012Permalink

What Happens Next?

Back in May, I promised to discuss suspense, and I’ve kept you in it long enough.  First, in defining the term, we learn that it means (1) the state of being suspended, (2) a mental uncertainty or anxiety, and (3) the state of being undecided or doubtful.

Definitions (2) and (3) may seem to have the most significance for us here, but I like the image of definition (1).  Imagine a character who is physically suspended over the ground at some great height.  There is a danger he may fall and get hurt or killed.  Neither the reader nor the character knows if the fall will happen or not.  However, at the moment there exists both the danger that he will fall and the hope that he will either not fall or that the fall will somehow not harm him.

The danger leads to the character feeling fear.  If the character has been previously introduced to the reader as a sympathetic one and the reader has come to care about him, then the reader will share both the uncertainty and the character’s fear of the fall.

The danger need not involve falling from a height, of course, but can be any real danger to the character, including emotional danger.  The feeling of suspense arises from not knowing whether the outcome will be good or bad and the feeling is more intense if the reader sympathizes with or pities the character.

In his book Poetics, Aristotle explained suspense the same way we have, with the concepts of a looming danger, a ray of hope, an uncertainty of outcome, and the audience’s (reader’s) caring about the character.  We’re not exactly plowing new ground here; suspense is a timeless idea.

We can bring in definition (3) of the word “suspense” by giving our character a choice of actions to take.  He does not know which choice will make the danger greater or which will cause a hoped-for positive outcome.  Since he does not know, he is uncertain and doubtful about which choice to make.

Most fiction involves suspense to some degree, but so-called suspense novels are chock full of that emotion.  What techniques does a writer of such novels use to ratchet up suspense?

  • Create in the reader’s mind an intense sympathy for the character.  Establish the character as real, human, and vulnerable.
  • Introduce a danger with high stakes.  It must be plausible and full of dire consequences for the character should the danger be realized.
  • Set up the situation so the negative outcome is far more likely than the positive one.  Make the odds nearly (but not) impossible.  Ensure Aristotle’s “ray of hope” is laser-thin.
  • Give the character a set of choices that all seem bad.
  • Provide the reader with knowledge of some fact the character doesn’t know, perhaps some fact about one or more of the choices being faced.  You might think this would lessen uncertainty and doubt, and thus reduce suspense.  But note that it doesn’t lessen the character’s uncertainty and it actually increases the reader’s sympathy for the character; it makes the reader want to shout, “No!  Don’t do that!”
  • Introduce a time limit, a race against the clock.  This forces the character to make one of the choices without enough time to fully analyze chances and consequences.
  • Conclude each chapter (or short story break) with some enticement to keep reading.
  • Bring in unexpected complications that worsen the danger, tighten the timeline, or narrow the ray of hope still further.
  • Keep the tension high for as long as possible.  In other words, delay the events that will resolve the suspenseful situation as long as you can, but stop short of the point where the reader gets bored and stops caring.

Do you think you can write in a suspenseful way?  What difficulties do you see in doing so?  I welcome comments on the topic. And for those of you wondering who wrote this blog entry, you may call me…I’m known as…(suspense building)…wait for it…

                                                                     Poseidon’s Scribe

January 15, 2012Permalink

Coming to Your Senses (in Your Writing)

If Poseidon’s Scribe suggests you incorporate an appeal to all five senses in your writing, that’s not exactly original advice.  But why are writers told to do this?  And how do you go about it?

The reason for using all the senses is to make your scenes more vivid, distinct, and real for the reader.  You’re trying to take your reader away from her world where she is sitting and reading a book, just sweep her away to your made-up world.  We speak of “painting a picture” in writing, but it should be more than that.  It should be a multi-sensory experience.  It’s like a Star Trek transporter machine that can move a person in an instant to a different location for a full immersion experience.

Artists, too, often bring the senses into their work.  This is “Still-life with Chessboard (the Five Senses)” by the 17th Century painter Lubin Baugin.

Each of the senses has certain properties.  Although they are obvious from lifelong experience, let’s think about each one from a writer’s point of view.

 

  • Our primary sense is sight, and that’s usually the first way a character perceives his surroundings.  Human sight is most especially tuned to moving objects, so characters notice them first of all. Depriving a character of sight using darkness or interfering objects can heighten tension.
  • Hearing is our secondary sense, and also has a long range.  Characters can hear things around corners and thus detect them before seeing them at times.
  • Smell has a strong link to mood and memory, and thus can provide a great opportunity for the reader to understand the point-of-view character’s temperament and background.
  • Taste is coupled to the sense of smell.  Letting a character experience food and drink in a scene can enhance the overall impression for the reader.  Remember that characters can learn things by tasting even non-food items, such as deciding whether a liquid is water or oil, for example, when gathering evidence.
  • The sense of touch is probably the most intimate.  It’s the only sense without a specific organ, and the only one we can’t block out except through numbness.

If you open up your writing to appeal to all the senses, you’ll find a wealth of new adjectives at your disposal.  There are many great descriptive words that apply to the non-sight senses.  These sensory descriptions should be used with purposeful ends in mind, though.  You’re trying to advance your plot, reveal character attitudes, or set a scene, not to demonstrate your knowledge of the senses.

Through practice you can improve the perceptiveness and sharpness of your senses as well as your ability to write better sensory descriptions.  It’s just like improving any other skill.  I’ll have more to say about that in a future blog entry.

I should caution you not to overdo it, though.  Modern readers dislike, and often skip, long paragraphs of description.  It’s best to sprinkle your sense-based descriptions in small chunks between and among character thoughts and dialogue throughout the scene.  This avoids overloading and boring the reader, and also gives the reader occasional reminders about where the characters are and the state of their surroundings.

As always, I welcome your comments on this topic.  From what I’ve seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt, this concludes another blog entry by–

                                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

January 8, 2012Permalink

Just Thinking to Myself

The title of this blog entry is a little joke to remind me not to ever do that in my fiction–state that a character is “thinking to himself.”  How else would he be thinking?

But the broader question facing us today regards how a writer should convey a character’s thoughts.  To get your fiction published these days, it’s important to be able to let your readers know the thoughts of your point-of-view character.  Fiction, as I’ve said before, is about the human condition, and a large part of the human experience requires thinking.  In fiction, we expect to find a protagonist dealing with one or more conflicts, and a large part of understanding her struggle is to know her thoughts.

Thoughts reveal a lot about a character.  Often thoughts are more extreme and emotion-packed than spoken words.  In the cases where a character’s thoughts are just as restrained as his speech, that tells the reader this character has a great degree of self-control.  A character that “speaks his mind” likely does not have much tact in social situations.

It’s rather strange that English has quotation marks to indicate spoken dialogue, but no analogous, standard symbol for a character’s thoughts.  Without such a standard, practices vary:

  • “I sure could go for a hamburger,” Steve thought.
  • I sure could go for a hamburger.
  • Steve thought about how much he wanted a hamburger.

The first example with the quotation marks seems to have fallen out of favor.  It’s potentially confusing, since a reader could assume the character is speaking out loud, until the tag–Steve thought–appears.  Some say the second example with italics has run its course and is not recommended.  It may also lead to potential confusing ambiguity, since italics are also used for emphasis, or sometimes to indicate foreign words.

As for me, I prefer italics.  I like how italicized words leap out and distinguish themselves as different.  When used to indicate thought, they really help the reader separate “dialogue” from thought and narration.  I suppose the knock against italics is they can interrupt flow.

Although the last example reads just like narration, the tag “Steve thought” clues the reader in that the character is thinking.  The use of standard text makes for a smoother read.

In my view, there are three guidelines you should follow:  (1) stick with the publisher’s guidelines, if known; (2) avoid confusing the reader; and (3) be somewhat consistent through your story in the technique you use.

There are some other helpful blog post articles on this topic here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.  As you’ll see from reading through them, there is general agreement, but some differences.  What are your thoughts on representing a character’s thoughts?  I welcome comments.

That’s another fine blog post I’ve written, thought–

                                                                               Poseidon’s Scribe

 

January 1, 2012Permalink

Alone With Your Writing

Most writers write alone.  Some collaborate, but for the majority it’s a solitary thing.

Do you like being alone?  Those who tend toward introversion prefer solitude to recharge after the drain of being around other people.  However, even the most introverted person is still a bit of a social animal; we all need company now and then.

Extroverted writers face a more complex dilemma.  Their need to write compels them to work alone to complete it, but solitude exhausts them emotionally until they can recharge by being around others.  There certainly are some extroverted writers, but it must be a struggle.

Being alone, of course, does not necessarily mean being lonely.  Aloneness is a condition, but loneliness is an emotion under your control.  If you enjoy what you’re doing while alone–writing, in this case–then you won’t be lonely.

Most writers would argue they’re not completely alone when they write.  They’re surrounded by groups of “virtual” people.  First are their story’s characters.  For a writer who is “in the zone,” the characters can seem very real and almost present.  Rather than feeling alone, then, a writer is actually transported to a different world, the world of his story, which might be very crowded indeed.

To some extent, writers also feel the presence of their readers.  The writer shares the reader’s eventual emotional reaction to the story as if the reader is looking over his shoulder.

Lastly, while alone, the writer can also be “accompanied” by an editor or critique group member.  Each time he types an adverb or mixes a metaphor or creates an awkward point of view jump, he’ll hear the disapproving voice of that person in his ear.

If you are considering becoming a writer, my advice is not to let the prospect of spending all that time alone deter you.  If you have a story to tell and something inside is driving you to write it down and share it with the world–if the passion is that intense, you’ll welcome the solitude rather than fear it.

One note of caution:  not only is writing a solitary endeavor, it is also a sedentary one.  It’s pretty much the opposite of physical exercise.  It requires hours and hours of sitting.  Here’s my advice on dealing with that:

  • Make yourself as comfortable as possible while writing, so you’re not straining any particular muscles.
  • Take pacing or stretch breaks when you can so you’re not in one position for too long.
  • Don’t eat while you write.  Once you begin mentally associating writing with snacking, that will become your normal mode and undesired weight gain can result.
  • Find time to exercise.  It’s true that both writing and exercising consume time, which is precious for us all.  But think of it this way–your eventual readers will want you healthy enough to keep cranking out more books!  Besides, you might be able to take a small digital voice recorder with you as you exercise (particularly jogging or walking) so you don’t lose the ideas that occur while your mind is otherwise unoccupied.

In summary, sitting alone is what writers do.  If writing is what you love, then you’ll be able to cope with the sitting and the solitude.  On this and in all other matters, you know you can trust…

                                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

December 18, 2011Permalink

Give Your Characters Vivid Personalities

Figured out the plot for a story you’re going to write, have you?  Got some rough character ideas in mind?  You say the only problem is, you’re not great at fleshing out the personalities of your characters?  Well, you may have surfed to the right blog post.

I think the first rule of character personalities is–they must fit the story.  Sometimes the plot itself necessitates certain personality types for your major characters.  Of course, from the reader’s point of view, this fitting is the other way around.  Readers learn about the character’s personalities early as they are introduced and relate to each other, and then read about the plot events.  So from your reader’s perspective, it seems fortunate that your characters had just the right personalities, given what eventually happened.

You may have read plot-driven stories in which there’s a lot of action but the characters seem shallow or stereotypical.  These stories get published because the plot action is so riveting, and despite the character portrayals.  There are also character-driven stories where the characters are fully fleshed out, but very little action occurs other than people talking to each other.  These stand a better chance of publication because readers like compelling characters.  However, it’s best to have both a gripping plot and captivating characters.

Let me explain more clearly what I mean about character personalities fitting the plot.  The protagonist in your story will face a conflict consisting of increasing levels of challenges.  That’s what stories are about.  The conflict can be external or internal or both.  In the end, the conflict will be resolved somehow, and the protagonist may undergo an internal change.

So you could pick a personality type for the protagonist that suits her well for the conflict.  In that case the story line is about her dealing with the challenges as they arise, and the actions she takes in accordance with her personality help to resolve the conflict.  Or you could pick a personality type that’s at odds with the conflict.  (For example, the conflict requires bold action, and you’ve got a shy protagonist.)  Now the internal struggle within the protagonist is one more challenge she faces as she deals with the external conflicts.  The actions she takes may actually worsen the conflict initially and trigger the increasing challenges.

In addition to fitting the plot, a character’s personality should fit, and emerge from, his background.  As you figure out where the character was born, his birth order in relation to siblings, what his upbringing was like, and what occupation he chose, those background details might well suggest certain personality traits.  (Alternately, you can determine personality traits first and come up with a suitable background later.)  Keep in mind that people sometimes form personality types in reaction against their upbringing rather than being in harmony with it.

In addition to having a protagonist’s personality fitting both the conflict and the character’s background, you should ensure your major characters have different personality types.  That makes their interactions much more interesting.  As a beginning writer I have found this difficult.  It’s easy to have characters act as I, the writer, would act in their place.  That results in characters with personalities much like mine.  A good writer populates her stories with characters of several personality types that are both revealed by their actions, and determine their actions in a believable way.  Ideally your readers should be unable to determine your personality type from your writing.

There are many sources of information about personality types that can aid you in developing your characters.  Internet searches on any of the following terms will provide plenty of information:

  • One (my favorite) is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which lays out sixteen different personality types.
  • There are four-color personality representation schemes which seem a little less useful to me.
  • Enneagrams provide nine personality types.  I have not used or studied this much, but it looks intriguing.
  • Astrology, either Western or Chinese, provides twelve unique personality types.

I listed these aids last because they are only useful to you in fleshing out a character’s personality type after you’ve already ensured the personality (1) fits the plot, (2) fits the background, and (3) differs from other characters and from the writer’s.

As always, feel free to leave a comment whether your personality clashes or matches with–

                                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

December 11, 2011Permalink

Show and Tell

Did you have Show-and-Tell in elementary school, where you brought in some object of interest, showed it to the class, and told them all about it?  The shown object gave something for the class to look at while listening to the speaker’s narration about it.  The whole process wouldn’t have worked as well if it were just Show or just Tell, would it?

Today I’m tackling the age-old caution given to writers to “Show, don’t Tell,” which I briefly mentioned here.  As with many of my blog topics, I’ll write about it as if I’m an expert, though I still struggle with the concept in my own fiction.  First let’s define terms.  In writing, “Show” means to convey to the reader a sense of being inside a character, experiencing what the character is going through, portraying the character’s senses, thoughts, and feelings.  “Tell” means to describe or inform in narrator fashion, mainly using facts much like a journalist would use his “who-what-when-where-why-how” model.

In Showing, you really engage the reader.  Remember that the purpose of storytelling is not just to convey information, but to create a reaction in the reader, to entertain (and I mean that in the broad sense, not the comedic sense).  Showing does that in a way Telling never can.  Think of the best stories you ever read.  Chances are you felt a part of the story as you read along, and that made you care about the characters and about the outcome.  Unfortunately, Showing typically takes more words.  It’s very hard to be blunt while Showing.

On the other hand, Telling can be very compact.  You can convey a lot of information with very few words.  However, Telling is often boring.  It doesn’t engage your reader for long or help her care about your characters.

My advice is to use both techniques, but learn when to use each.  Showing is necessary for the more dramatic moments of story scenes.  It’s vital to show the key moments of your protagonist’s struggle to resolve the conflict of your story.  However, events have to happen between these key dramatic moments.  Use Telling to catch the reader up on these in-between events.

The suggestion to combine some Telling with Showing isn’t just my idea, but any writer will pretty much tell you the same thing.  Why, then, do you still hear the “show, don’t tell” advice?  It’s because Showing is harder to write than Telling, and it’s easy to lapse back into that narrative, journalistic way of writing. It’s difficult getting into a character’s head and conveying the character’s feelings and impressions.  You have to force yourself to Show.  Although writers must Tell on occasion, they need not be reminded to do that.

One key to writing well in both the Show and the Tell mode is to choose details wisely.  That is well worth a future blog entry all by itself.

So just like in elementary school, it’s important to both show and tell.  For now, class dismissed.  Your homework assignment is to leave a comment with your opinion about the “show, don’t tell” admonition, to–

                                                                Poseidon’s Scribe

 

November 20, 2011Permalink