Writing

Settings

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One of the things you learn in any fiction writing class is the importance of setting–a reader needs to be able to “see” where you’ve located your story. Sometimes writers can focus on the plot and the characters to the exclusion of setting. Sometimes setting can be just as important as memorable characters or a finely detailed plot.

When your work is a novel, unless it stays in one place for the length of it–like Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians or Murder on the Orient Express–you have to do some research if you’ve never been there. That’s a key component of the writing, because a reader might have been there and can spot the errors.

When John Updike got the idea for The Witches of Eastwick he had the perfect small town in mind–Wickford, RI. However, when he went to the town to research and people got wind of the plot–three witches in the 1970’s who take petty, and not so petty, revenge on neighbors–they threatened law suits if he used the name of the town. Updike let them think they won. The book’s title is The Witches of Eastwick, but if you read the description of Eastwick in the first few pages you recognize Wickford right away. And it was the perfect setting for this quirky novel about the devil coming to earth. (What would have been the difference had the Wickfordians not been such typical New England prigs? Maybe it would have been a tourist destination–it’s a quintessential New England town–instead of a town you drive through to get to the Newport beaches.)

I grew up in a rural area near a small town, so those are settings I’m comfortable with. I can tell from a story if someone has only seen a picture of a farm or gone to one. I spent a lot of my life in a large urban area and worked in the Nation’s Capital for the most part. I’ve spent a great deal of time in New York City, so I get the urban setting and am also comfortable setting a story in busy cities. I also like the juxtaposition of city and country–it’s something that’s never quite been overcome by urbanization.

I’ve done some world travel–a modest amount–to England, Scotland, and other places in Europe. I can insert any place I’ve visited in a story with ease. Some of my work is based in Eastern Europe, and that’s an issue. I’ve never been there, and, frankly, unless you’re a high-paid, commercial novelist, extensive travel to research your settings can be beyond the budget.

Atlases can give you maps and facts and figures–all good, of course–but Google Earth can put you there. Its “Street Views” options can put you in the city or town or countryside you want to write about. It’s still not as good as being there, but it can give you a starting point. The next point is finding someone familiar with the area to give you the personal touch or cultural memes for a setting. I had a friend who had traveled extensively with USAID, and he was always able to give me a good read-over for settings.

Some writers overcome the setting issues by creating completely fictional ones. Whether in fantasy, other genre, or literary fiction, that can eliminate any setting errors or hard feelings from the locals. For his collection of linked short stories, In an Uncharted Country, Clifford Garstang created Rugglesville, VA. For her first book of linked short stories, Thrown Out,  and an upcoming series of novels, Jennie Coughlin created Exeter, MA. Both constructs are real; you can “see” yourself in either place. They feel real. Even in fantasy or science fiction, if you create your own world, people still have to be able to “walk” through it. It’s not enough to say “we’re on a spaceship” or “we’re in a fairy land.” The writer has to give the setting depth.

Which do you prefer–setting your work in known locales, or do you create your own world?

Friday Flash Fiction–and Good News!

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Writing can be the strangest occupation ever, especially when you’re dealing with a prompt–a word or a picture
–someone else provides. Since I’ve been participating in Madison Woods’ Friday Fictioneers’ 100-word flash fiction, I’ve been amazed how one picture can evoke so many different responses. One person always goes for the romantic, another fantasy, and I’m the quirky one. That’s a nice word for it.

Many times I get the Friday Flash Fiction inspiration picture on Wednesday and think, how will I ever come up with something for this? Then, it just comes to me. I’ve always been more of a seat-of-the-pants writer–whatever pops into my head goes down on paper (or on the screen). I’m not a methodical outliner or plotter. I get an idea and ride it to whatever conclusion comes to mind. That’s the way I write. I don’t recommend it for the faint-hearted because sometimes even I don’t know where the story’s going. Like today.

Here’s the inspiration photo:

And here’s my 100-word story:

The Mess

The inspector thought, How could this happen? There are procedures in place. I’ve talked myself blue in the face about the importance of following procedures. One little slip and look what you have. A mess. This isn’t going on my record. I’ll make sure of that.

The security guard thought, Man, why now? A completely dull day, then fifteen minutes away from shift end, this happens. Everybody else will be at the bar, watching the game and the babes, and where am I? Cleaning up this mess.

The boy thought, I really didn’t mean to do that. Please let me go.


———–

To read other Friday Fictioneers’ stories, take a look at Madison Woods’ blog.
———-

And some really great news. My short story, “Trophies,” about a marriage saved by a near suicide and an unexpected death, will appear in the February Romance Issue of eFiction Magazine. I got the acceptance yesterday, and I’ve been giddy ever since. A great start to the new year!
This story was the first one I wrote using a creativity prompt called Rory’s Story Cubes. Check them out.

Why Bother?

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The picture has nothing to do with today’s topic. Rather, this is the fourth day in a row of drizzle, freezing or otherwise, and overcast skies here in the Valley, so I needed a reminder that the sun is out there. Somewhere.

I ran into a member of my writers group at lunch over the weekend. He was deep into reading a book on ancient history as research for what he writes. He was so engrossed in the book, I stopped by his table to ask if the book were good.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “It’s so good, I wonder why I bother to write.”

I’ve had those moments, and you have, too. You know it. You come across a line or a passage in a book, or you close a book upon completion, and your shake your head and murmur, “Why do I bother?” Somehow, those rare occasions weigh on your writing psyche more than all the common occurrences of reading something trite or mundane and knowing you can do better. Well, we know good writing when we see it, and, as writers, we have to stop and appreciate the good, even while acknowledging the bad.

When I’m in the process of editing or revising, I’ll come across something I’ve written that’s so good, I actually wonder if I wrote it. Of course I did, but it resonates with me the same way as a passage from Faulkner or King or Vonnegut or Atwood or some other famous author I admire.

Now, I’m not saying my words are gold because, believe me, I’ve come across some real stinkers in my own work–including a story that won the competition to be included in the college literary magazine. When I do, I cringe, but I immediately start to see how I can make it better.

Like any other organism or system in our bodies, our writing grows and evolves. In five more years I’ll be a much improved writer than I am now–and I’m far improved over the writer I was ten or even five years ago. The only way to improve is to write–and write some more. And listen to the feedback without being defensive. That’s hard, I know, but it’s all part of that growth.

Even then, I’m sure I’ll come across a passage in something by King or Vonnegut or Faulkner or Atwood, and I’ll think to myself, “Why do I bother?” But it won’t stop me.

Who’s the author who makes you want to close the laptop forever?

Deciding Not to Review

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Because I’ve given the author of a book I was supposed to review the option of my not reviewing it, I won’t be mentioning the book or the author in this post.

I’ve always been a bit quixotic–I voted for George McGovern in 1972, after all. Lately, I feel as if I’m single-handedly tilting at the windmill of “not self-publishing before you proofread.” I don’t want to be like some writers and disdain other writers who have “indie published,” or self-published, if you will. If a writer comes to the decision that self-publishing is for him or her, I respect that decision, and I try not to be judgemental about it. My collection of short stories, Rarely Well-Behaved, technically, was self-published. I won the contract in a short story contest, so I like to think that the merit of the story got the contract. Even up against a submission deadline, I read each story over and over, trying to make the manuscript as perfect as possible. Of course, after the book came out, I found typos.

In a post earlier this month–“Put That First Draft Aside“–I wrote about what I think is the major pitfall of self-publishing, that you can write something and publish it almost immediately. Some indie writers want to skip the editor for fear that will change their work too much. The least you could do, then, as an indie author is not skip the proofreading. If you do it yourself, you have to put the work aside so it’s not so fresh you don’t spot obvious errors. The best proofreading is done by someone who has never seen the work before.

The book I was to review, requested by the author as a result of a guest blog-post I did, is a perfect example of lack of proofreading. The mistakes are all what I call elementary school grammar goofs, i.e., they are diversions from basic, not advanced, grammatical norms. Enclosing dialogue in quotation marks, comma usage, and subject-verb agreement are examples. In the first two paragraphs of this book, I found eleven punctuation, grammar, and usage errors, including using the word “hallow” when it was supposed to be “hollow.” Throughout the work, quotation marks are missing, as are dialogue tags, commas, and contractions, among others. When I read a sentence about a bodily function that was anatomically impossible, I gave up and e-mailed the author to explain why I couldn’t finish the book and didn’t want to review it.

Sounds like a cop-out, I know, but I was pretty frank, and detailed, in the e-mail; merely, I didn’t want to blast the book in a review, which, as an honest reviewer, I would have had to do. I could have done that, and the author would have received a nasty surprise. I’d rather explain, privately, why I couldn’t do the review, and treat the book as if I’d never read it.

All of which is a shame, because I could see glimmers of a thoughtful story. It’s too bad the barbed wire tangle of basic, grammatical goofs hid it.

Indie authors, I cannot say this enough: You can’t do a brain dump and immediately slap it up on Amazon or Smashwords and call yourself a professional writer. Writing is writing and rewriting and revising and rewriting and proofreading, then rewriting and revising all over again. Tedious, yes. Instant gratification, no, but with writing, that’s a good thing.

Second Post of the Day! That’s a Record!

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You didn’t think I’d forget Friday Fictioneers, did you?

Here’s the inspiration photo. I’ll admit nothing came to me right away, then, duh, it was obvious.

And here’s the story.

Nut Case

Perfect disguise, they told me. No one will ever notice you, they said.

And I bought it. I put the cynicism aside and went along with our astro-geeks’ plan for observing the bipedal, indigenous life on the exo-planet they found. Their arguments were convincing, I’ll admit, but I should have listened to the little voice in my head that said, “What? Are they nuts?” Uh, no pun intended.

I mean, I understand you can’t land the mothership in someone’s backyard and do the “Take me to your leader” thing. I get that.

But why didn’t they notice the damned squirrels?

Want more 100-word fiction? Go to Madison Woods‘ blog and have fun reading them.

I ♥ My Writers Group!

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I’ve written before about my great writers group–SWAG, Staunton/Waynesboro/Augusta Group of Writers–about how supportive everyone is, and how I’ve made lifelong friends from being a part of it. Wednesday evening was our monthly social hour and open mic night. This was also the first meeting after we got a nice spread in the Living section of our local Sunday paper. We had a full house of readers and listeners–and lots of first-time-at-SWAG readers. It was probably the best night we’ve had with lots of thoughtful work and lots of laughs.

Why are open mic nights important? I’ll admit when SWAG’s founder, Cliff Garstang, suggested last year that we start doing readings–out loud, in front of people–I was nervous. That’s a tough thing to do, to stand up amid acquaintances and a few strangers and read what you’ve written. And that first time last April, my knees were shaking, and my throat was dry. Afterwards, I remember wishing I’d had a writers group ten years ago when my collection of short stories came out. I did three readings and book signings back then, without a clue as to what I was supposed to do, and the feedback I got was that I read too fast for people to understand what I was saying. At SWAG, I’ve learned to slow down and get across what it is I’m trying to say, and that’s an experience I wouldn’t have had without SWAG.

So, doing open mic readings among friends can help build your confidence for when you’re on that book tour you dream about being on one day.

The other good thing about open mic is you pay a good deal of attention to the exact piece you’re going to read. We get five minutes, so the passage has to be tight, succinct, which means, beforehand, you’ll do some needed editing and revising you might not normally do. That’s always a good thing.

And here’s the best part–it’s great when open mic is over and someone in the audience comes up to you and tells you he or she enjoyed what you read and begins to ask questions about your work. You feel like an honest-to-God writer when that happens. It’s great.

Building confidence, honing your editing skills, and boosting your writer ego–that’s what you get from a writers group. Find one. Join one.

Dr. Frankenstein, I Presume

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Yesterday, I had a long talk about writing–its joys and frustrations–with another local writer friend of mine. She was talking about a character she created and a certain aspect of his life and how she didn’t set out to write him that way, that it was just “there.”

“He told you who he was,” I said. (No, I’m not usually that profound.)

I’ve had this conversation with other writers or heard or read other writers who say the same thing–a character you create somehow becomes his or her own entity and proceeds to tell you, “I’d really do it this way. No, no, no, I’d never say/do/believe/want that.” That character leads you down plot paths you never anticipated, but that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Merely, our constipated brains need the liberation provided by creating a fictional character who is our alter ego.

My main character–an Englishwoman who is a spy–gets to say things I’d never say, and I’m known for being outspoken. When your character can let loose with something society and propriety require you to keep quiet about, that alleviates a lot of pent-up frustration and keeps it from exploding at an inappropriate time. See, having your characters talk to you can be a good thing.

How do you know they’re speaking to you? When you’ve written something you think is the way you want the story to go, but then you’re pulled back to the keyboard and end up rewriting or revising or tossing out words until that story has set off in a different direction, and it’s for the good–that’s when your characters tapped you on the shoulder and said, “I think you need to reconsider.”

I struggled for a long time to find the ending for my trilogy about a domestic terrorism event, and it just didn’t come. Oh, the various attempts were good endings, but none of them was The Ending, the way the series was supposed to conclude. Then, the death of the person on whom one of the characters in the trilogy is based gave me that ending. It was as if the fictional character finally got through to me and said, “You’ve been avoiding the reality that this was the only way it could end.” And he was right.

We think we create our characters from whole cloth, but the truth is we take pieces–the good and the bad–from every person we’ve ever known or loved or disliked. We stitch them together and give them our own life-force, and they are as real to us as any flesh and blood person. They have to be. Otherwise, a reader would never be interested. They come from within us. They’re our “children.” We speak to other writers of them as if they were real and sitting around the table with us. We defend them and their actions to members of our critique groups/agents/editors. We think of them at odd times. We anticipate getting back to the story so we can see them again. We see something happen and know how our characters would react to it. They are our waking and sleeping companions, often our best friends and harshest writing critics. We are the ones who shout in triumph, as they rise from the laboratory tables in our minds, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”

How about it? Do your characters speak to you? If so, leave a comment and tell me about a time when they did.

———-

Writing Work Schedule Update:

Things are actually still going according to schedule, even with having had a nasty cold last week. On “Submission Friday” I send in two book reviews and two author interviews to a fiction magazine. This week, on the Editing/Revising days, I’ll concentrate on proofreading and finalizing the re-typed (and edited) manuscript of my collection of short stories, Rarely Well Behaved, which I’m re-releasing as an
e-book this spring–or earlier.

Two For One!

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Aren’t you lucky? Today, you not only get a 100-word flash fiction, but, at no extra charge, you get a little writing lore as well.

Yeah, I wouldn’t do well writing for infomercials, would I?

Here’s today’s Friday Fictioneers inspirational photo:

And here’s a piece I call, “Winter Wonderland.”

I wasn’t sure if it were safe to go out yet, but the dog, cooped up for so many days, was insistent. I tried to keep him close, but dogs wander. Still, I understood. Cabin fever had grasped me, too.
The blanket of snow seemed muted beneath the still-gray sky but was so beautiful compared to the four walls where we’d hunkered down. There were no tracks except ours.
The dog bounded toward the road. I slogged after him, my cries loud in the still air, echoing off the trees.
You don’t go far from home in a nuclear winter.
———-
Yes, I’d gone a few days without any apocalyptic writing. 😉 Now, here’s your bonus–a brief discussion about a writing tool I can’t be without.
Even after teaching English, being a journalist and an editor, and writing since I was ten, there are certain aspects of English grammar where I still falter. Lie versus Lay. Which versus That. Those are my particular downfalls. I’ll write them one way, decide they’re wrong, write them the other way, then discover I was right the first time.
Who wants to go pull the dusty, old English Grammar Reference off the shelf? Not I. I use a small tome that has been on or near my myriad writing desks for the past forty years–The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White, or as it’s colloquially called “Strunk and White.”
“Make every word tell,” was Cornell English professor William Strunk, Jr.’s advice to his students, one of whom was E. B. White, ofCharlotte’s Web fame. Strunk wrote the first The Elements of Style in 1918 and made it obligatory for his students. It wasn’t until after Strunk’s death that E.B. White, writing in The New Yorker, told the world about the “forty-three page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English.” White was asked to edit a re-issuance of the volume to bring it into modern usage. That was about sixty years ago, and this “little book,” as White called it, is still an indispensable aid to writers from high schoolers toiling over term papers to the rest of us who hope to be considered accomplished.
My well-thumbed copy, which helped me write features and editorials as a reporter and countless government reports, is still packed away with my work “stuff,” so I had to replace it with this fairly fresh copy (below). Strunk and White pares down the sometimes vague structures of English grammar to the basics of language usage and composition.
 
It has almost doubled in size from the forty-three page volume White extolled in The New Yorker and now has a glossary and an index. It’s original outline remains much the same as Strunk’s version from the early part of the previous century: Elementary Rules of Usage, Elementary Principles of Composition, A Few Matters of Form, Words and Expressions Commonly Misused (my personal favorite), and An Approach to Style. (I love the perfection of those section titles.)
Strunk and White is great for writers who hate grammar–notice they don’t use the word–because it has condensed the whole, arcane grammatical schema into a pocket-sized reference. You could call it “Style Basics” and be accurate, but “The Elements of Style” is just, well, stylish.
My new copy cost me ten dollars in a book store, but consider it an investment. Big box and independent book stores will order you a copy upon request. You can get a used copy from Amazon for as little as seven dollars or from free to $2.99 in the Kindle Store–though the Kindle version is the original Strunk work. Go for the Strunk and White version. If you’re a Nook person, the price and the version is the same. A used copy from Barnes and Noble can be as low as three dollars.
Considering the state of some of the indie published books I’ve been reading to review, every person who calls him- or herself a writer should own one of these and use it. Then, you won’t be disingenuous when you call yourself an author.
I have no financial interest in The Elements of Style or with its publishers. It’s just a darned good writing book.

Set That First Draft Aside

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I’ve been doing a lot of reading of indie published books lately (or, if you’re a stickler for terminology, self-published books, but terminology adapts, by the way). I have a list of eight of them I’m going to review, and, unfortunately, it’s been a mixed bag of quality. Oh, the stories have been decent; getting to the story through the morass of bad grammar and punctuation has been the hard part. Part of the problem is I’ve been both an English teacher and a magazine editor. What, to some apparently, may be unimportant details, to me are essentials of language. If those fine details–commas, word usage, grammar–aren’t present, I get distracted–and frustrated–by what I consider elementary school-level errors.

It’s too easy to attribute this to lack of education, but the authors involved–on their blogs or on social media–seem to have had a decent education. Then, it hit me, as I was helping a friend with a manuscript, these works read as if the authors had published their first drafts.

That’s the seduction of indie publishing. It is very empowering, on one level, to eliminate all those filters (agents, editors) who don’t get your fiction, who don’t see you as a money-maker, who have to take a cut of your royalties, etc. I believe publishing is evolving, but for indie publishing to get any sort of professional acknowledgement from traditionally published authors, you can’t publish your first draft.

First drafts, of course, are necessary. First drafts are the place where you finally get on the page that story that’s been rattling around in your head for a long time. It is an accomplishment in and of itself to do that–one of the reasons I like National Novel Writing Month. I can come up with something completely new at least once a year. Have I published any of the manuscripts I wrote the past four Novembers? No. They’re first drafts of what will be good works later. After proofreading and editing. When I finish a NaNoWriMo project, I set that draft aside for a good six months or more before I pick it up again. In the meantime, it’s never far from my thoughts, but I’d never, ever see the holes in the plot or the un-obvious typos if I started the edit immediately after finishing the first draft.

Whether you’re pursuing traditional publishing or indie publishing, the process is to set the first draft aside for the amount of time it takes to make it fresh when you look at it again. When you publish your first draft and start seeing those five stars on Amazon (which your mother and all her friends have put there) and read the comments like, “We need more of [insert character name here]!” resist the temptation to write a sequel in a weekend and publish it raw.

Cultivate a friendship with a local high school English teacher or newspaper editor or even a friend from school you know got good grades in English. Let them proofread your work for the typos, punctuation problems, grammar, etc. You can accomplish some of this yourself by reading your work out loud–at home, preferably, unless you like people at Starbucks staring at you and wondering if they should call the cops. (In reading this post aloud, to this point I’ve found a half dozen typos, now fixed.) But nothing beats a “fresh” set of eyes.

Then–and this has been something hard for a lot of indie authors to accept–hire a developmental editor. Yes, you get a higher percentage of royalties if you self-publish without all that traditional publishing detritus, but you’ll get better reviews and more sales if a reader/reviewer can’t tell the difference between your book and a traditionally published one. That takes work. That takes commitment not just to telling a good story but presenting a good story.

I have an indie writer friend who consistently produces a good first draft–in the sense of proper punctuation, grammar, and usage–and the story is decent as well. Recently, she sent a copy of her first draft of a new novel to her editor, and now she’s in the midst of a total rewrite. You may say, “See, that’s what’s wrong with editors, and that’s why I don’t want one.” However, this writer understands the editor’s purpose–to make it better–and she’s excited about the major revision because she knows she’ll have something beyond a good, first draft. She’ll have an outstanding novel.

So, set that first draft aside for a while. Resist the temptation to publish it until it’s polished. Get a tougher skin when your proofreader/editor suggests changes (being part of a critique group helps with this). Don’t be suckered in by seeing your words in print until what you’re trying to say is in its best shape.

Be a writer, not a hack.

————
I set out my writerly resolutions for the new year in a recent post: http://mymusings-maggie.blogspot.com/2011/12/resolved-to-write.html. So, periodically, I’ll provide an update because I know you’re just dying to know.

Writer Work Schedule Update:

  • Sunday: Started reading one book to review (which inspired this post) and finished another
  • Monday morning: Blogged on writing (see above)
  • To do Monday afternoon: Edit/Revise a review of Linkage: The Narrows of Time Series (Volume 1) by Jay J. Falconer and get it ready for submission to eFiction Magazine

Post-Holiday Friday Flash Fiction

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The Friday Fictioneers took Christmas off, and the break was obviously inspirational for our Flash Fiction guru, Madison Woods. She found an amazing photo to spark our 100-word flash fiction. Here it is:

And here’s my exactly 100-word story–with the bonus that it features one of my regular characters and the espionage organization she works for.
“Fly on the Wall”
Mai Fisher had always been dubious when The Directorate’s R&D Department wanted to show her some new spy gadget. The Subcutaneous Personal Tracking Module, which made her feel like a tagged dog, was the one that had damped her enthusiasm.
The tech held the “Fly on a Wall” on his finger for her to see, his broad smile fading as she gave him the skeptical, raised eyebrow.
“Nanotechnology?” she asked.
“Yes. Cutting edge,” he replied.
“You know, every piece of sci-fi I’ve ever read says nanites are going to take over.”
“That would never… Ouch!”
“What?”
“It bit me!”