Adventures in Novel Writing

Welcome to Adventures in Novel Writing. Yesterday, I finished my third draft. For the fourth draft, I like to print it out and read through the pages looking for mistakes, as well as getting a feel for how the readers will see the finished work. Rather than correcting as I go, as I have done in the previous drafts, I work with pencil in hand and only correct the pages I’ve marked after I reach the end. With it printed  single sided, double spaced, the manuscript is pretty thick. So I set to work to print it out, knowing that it would take a while.

 

Twenty pages into the document, I ran into a snag. My printer died with a nasty error. “Wrong Cartridge,” it said, but it hardly matters what the error, my printer couldn’t fix it—not in short order, perhaps not at all. I began to consider my options. I have another printer, but it is designed for portability, not for printing large documents. Twenty sheets of paper is about the limit of its paper feeding ability and the ink cartridges are similarly small, so I decided I’d rather not use it. I began to look at printers, thinking I might go to the story and pick up one I liked, but I quickly saw a couple of problems with that. First, the printers that caught my eye aren’t the kind of printers most stores keep in stock. Even if I ordered one, it would be a few days before it got here. Secondly, what was I going to do with the 35 lb. paperweight sitting next to my computer. If it worked, I could sell it and get a little money from it, but with it not working, I’m not sure where I can dump it. It could be that all it needs is a new print head—expensive, yes, but much less than the printers I was looking at. So, I decided I’d try to fix it, but that didn’t solve my problem. How was I going to print 334 pages of my manuscript?

I turned to Kinkos, or Fed-Ex Office, as they are called now. I uploaded my manuscript and for about $50, they would print it and put it in a binder. That’s probably about twice what I would have paid if I had printed the thing at home, but considering I don’t currently have the capability to print it at home, it seemed like the best option. They were supposed to have it done by 10 this morning, but when I arrived at the store a little after 10, they hadn’t even started. They scurried around and found my order. For some reason, it had been placed on hold. I stood there and waited for several minutes as they printed it on their big machine. It didn’t bother me that much. I wasn’t in a hurry to be somewhere anyway, but when they were almost done, the manager or the owner or whatever he is came over to me and told me that he wasn’t going to charge me for it. I told him he didn’t have to do that, but he insisted and I wasn’t about to refuse a second time. So, I walked out of the store with my manuscript bound in a three inch binder and it didn’t cost me one red cent.

 

Please come back again when we have another episode of Adventures in Novel Writing.

The Bible and Storytelling

Editor's Note: This week has been busy, so I've asked one of my characters, Pastor Wayne Hiller, to write today's article. So, while I rest, please enjoy this post.

The Ten Stories in the Bible

Before we get into what I have to say, let me just say that you ought not to believe him when he says he’s resting. Timothy and I have discussed this topic extensively and even as I type these words, I feel as though he is right here with me. Perhaps that’s because he’s looking over my shoulder. But on to our topic.

I want to talk about the ten stories you will find in the Bible. I hope that you’ve read the Bible at some point in your life. With that assumption, I know that you’re aware that there are more than ten stories in the Bible. If all you do is read Hebrews 11, you’ll find more than ten stories mentioned, but if you consider the stories that we tell, we can classify them in about ten different stories. I’ll use the labels the late Blake Snyder gave them because they are so descriptive, but others have classified them differently and have called them different things. Blake Snyder called these stories, Monster in the House, Golden Fleece, Out of the Bottle, Dude with a Problem, Rites of Passage, Buddy Love, Whydunit, Fool Triumphant, Institutionalized and Superhero. All stories fall into one of these categories, with no exceptions, and we find more than one example of each of these in the Bible. Let’s look at an example of each.

The Monster in the House stories is about a character facing a monster he can’t get away from because of a sin he or someone else committed. Jonah and the whale is a prime example of this story. The monster is the great fish God prepared. The house is the boat his is owe. The sin is that Jonah refused to do what God commanded.

A Golden Fleece story is about a quest to find or accomplish something. We can look to the story of Abraham or of Moses to find an example of this story. They both made a quest to for the promised land.

Out of the Bottle is about a wish that comes true, but the character learns a lesson because it doesn’t happen like he hoped. We go to the account of how Saul sought the help of a witch from Endor for this example. Saul asks for Samuel to be brought back and much to the witch’s surprise, Samuel shows up, but Samuel isn’t happy and tells Saul that the kingdom will be taken from him.

When an ordinary person has a problem through no fault of his own, the story is likely a Dude with a Problem story. A Bible example of this story is Gideon and the battle he fault. We can also look at Daniel and the lion’s den.

Rites of Passage are about a character headed in the wrong direction experiencing things that change his life and turn him in the right direction. When Joseph went to Egypt, he experienced a rite of passage. He wasn’t liked by his brothers or many other people, for that matter, but he got some valuable experience and he became the prime minister of Egypt.

Almost any love story can be classified as Buddy Love. Of course we would include such stories like that of Ruth and Boaz, but we would also include the story of David and Jonathan.

You might not expect to find a Whydunit in the Bible, but take a look at Joshua’s second battle in the promised land. They had just defeated Jericho, a great walled city, but when they went up at against the little village of AI, they ended up turning their tails and running. You might ask why and if you read the rest of the story, you’ll find out.

The Fool Triumphant story has an example in that of David and Goliath. Everyone thought David a fool to face Goliath, from the king to his brothers to Goliath himself, but as is the case in these stories, David knew something they didn’t and he came away victorious.

The good of the many outweighs the good of the one, or so is the claim of the Institutionalized story. By coming together and sacrificing for the goals of the group, we can accomplish great things. Need an example from the Bible? Look at the Book of Acts. The early churches worked together, often at great sacrifice and we have all benefited from it today.

Lastly, we see the Superhero story. The superhero has some special power that makes him better than everyone else, but he is opposed by others. Often he faces a villain, but he is also an outcast among the people he tries to help. The are plenty of examples in the Bible, but none greater than that of Jesus himself. He came into the world to save it, but the world rejected him.

Keep looking and you’ll find many other examples of the ten stories in the Bible. Read the Gospel of Luke and you’ll find how Jesus used these stories in his own storytelling. What better way to learn to tell stories than to look at how the master storyteller did it?

Editor’s Note: Wayne is the narrator from How to Become a Bible Character and is a recurring character as he is on staff at the church in each book after that.

You Might Want to Know

When we write, we often insert information that isn’t important. Some people call this backstory, but this information doesn’t have to deal with backstory at all. It could be description of the current scene or it could be foreshadowing as well, but we stick it in, thinking the reader needs this information to understand why a character will do what he is doing or think what he is thinking. Most of the time, this excessive information takes away from the story and should be deleted.

Imagine that your story is a ticking clock. With each action word, the clock ticks forward, carrying the reader along with it. But suppose you don’t use an action word. Consider this example:

Tom brought his Camry to a halt. Opened the door and ran around to the front of the car to see how badly the man was injured. The man was in his late fifties and carried a cane. The cane was on the ground. “Are you alright?” Tom asked.

Notice how the description of the man brings the ticking clock to a standstill. In this case, that may be important information, but often we use information that isn’t that important. We’re afraid that the reader won’t get it if we leave it out, but the reader doesn’t want to see it. Whenever we find the clock has stopped, we should consider the words we have chosen. If there is any way to get rid of the dead section, we should yank it out and either reword it or not say what we have said.

Flashback Revisited

We've looked at the topic of flashbacks before and we compare them to the topic of backstory, saying that these are two very different things. Now, it can be noted that flashback is one way of revealing backstory, but not all flashback is backstory. The important distinction we made before was that flashback is a means of telling a story out of chronological sequence, while backstory, is from a story that precedes our current story.

In For the Love of a Devil,there is a scene in which the protagonist recalls an early encounter with his wife (pg 166). She was not his wife at the time, but rather it occurs when they are both in high school. She isn’t well liked by some of the other students, due to the rumors going around about her and her family, but Geoff makes a small effort to show kindness to her. We ask ourselves, is this backstory or flashback. Certainly, there is an element of backstory to it, since this could be part of the story of how Geoff and Heather fell in love and got married, which is an event outside of our current story, but this is also a flashback. It is also part of our current story because this story is about a man with an unwavering love for this woman. Through this scene from high school, we  see that the story spans far more than just the two year period within which the primary action of the novel is bounded.

Why use flashback at all? If I had wanted, I could have written For the Love of a Devil in such a way that the story flowed in chronological order. But were would I have started? I would have begun with that scene from high school, where Geoff and Heather really met for the first time. Then I would have moved to a scene in which Heather showed Geoff the escape tunnel leading our of her grandmother’s basement to the neighbor’s back yard. There might be some other scenes I would have to throw in before I could begin our story with Geoff not really wanting to go home, for fear of what Heather will say and do. As a reader, you would be wondering how we got from Geoff being such a great guy in Heather’s eyes to being something she abuses, but that isn’t what the story is about. Even though the reader needs to know the things we reveal through flashback, revealing these things before it is time will mess up the story.

We’ve talked about the outline and sequence of a story before. Every well written story follows the same high level outline. We begin with the protagonist in a bad situation, one which he will die if he doesn’t change. The protagonist does something proactive to move us into the second act in which he is a fish out of water. He is doing things differently, but true change hasn’t taken place. Then in the third act, he commits to the change and will live or die based on the success of that change. We can actually provide more detail to the general outline than that, but keeping in mind that all stories follow the general outline, the flashbacks we include must also fit within that outline. There are points in our story where the character is debating whether to change or not and what changes he should make. Flashbacks tend to show up here because the character is thinking back to the ways things used to be and considering how they can be. They may show up in other places as well, but when they do they should match the specifics of that part of the outline. For example, there is a section in which the antagonists begin to succeed. While they may have been plotting and scheming in a section where the the protagonist is making gains, we don’t want to show it in chronological order because it takes away from the protagonist’s successes. Instead, we want to throw in a flashback that reveals that while we thought he was doing well, the antagonists were actually doing something behind the scenes.

Flashbacks, when used well, can improve our stories and keep the story in line with the ideal outline.

Corny With a Capital C

Some people say that Christian fiction is much better than it used to be. I suppose that might be true, if you’re comparing the current state of affairs to the prairie romances of the past, but when I think of Christian fiction of the past, I think of titles like Pilgram’s Progress, Not My Will and In His Steps. The fact is that most of the current Christian fiction doesn’t measure up to the quality of writing we find in Pilgram’s Progress and Not My Will.

One of the big problems I’ve seen in contemporary Christian writing is what I will call corny writing. We see it often and I fear we all have a tendency to do it. I’m not excluding myself from this by any means. It usually shows up in the form of Christianese that should have more significant meaning than what it does. To provide an example, I’m going to pick on For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll by Nancy Mehl. In part, I’m choosing this book as an example because it is on of the winners at the most recent ACFW conference in the category of Mystery. Based on that, we should assume that this book is representative of the best that contemporary Christian fiction has to offer. Moreover, since the award came from a Christian writers’ organization, we should assume that this book is representative of what Christian writers believe is good writing. With that in mind, lets look at what we find.

Throughout the book, we find several references to prayer. This person prayed; that person prayed; you get the idea. On page 165, we find an example. The protagonist has taken some food out to a dog that has been sleeping in a shed. After that, the narrator tells us that the dog has become a symbol to her that God can do the impossible. She then says:

I went upstairs and collapsed on my bed. As I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, I realized that a lot of people were in the same condition as the abandoned collie…. As I fell asleep, I prayed for the collie and for all the people in the world who had never felt the kind of love that God has for anyone who will simply accept it.

Keep in mind that this is only a quote from a much larger work. It doesn’t seem quite as corny as I look at it as a separate paragraph, but in the context of the book, it seems extremely corny. The book is about finding out who killed the wedding planner, but then we have these flare prayers that keep popping up that have nothing to do with the theme. And the prayer doesn’t seem to have much power. I think what strikes me as particularly corny in this example is that prayers for an abandoned collie are given the same importance as prayers for the salvation of the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I think prayer is an important topic to cover in Christian fiction. The problem is that we risk creating corny fiction when we don't focus that prayer on the theme of the book and we insert it at every turn without clear results. I think this is an example of the author trying to use this dog to make a point in the story, rather than keeping the focus on the theme. If you’ve read much of this blog, you know I’m not a fan of authors making points in novels.

Corny writing happens, but we should try to avoid it. If we’re going to throw Christianese into our writing, we should elevate it to the level of the theme. At the very least, we should write in such a way that it is clear that the characters believe in the power of things like prayer and aren’t just doing it as a religious obligation. Don’t just have throw in a prayer who can, but when the characters pray, spend several paragraphs on it. If prayer is important, then surely it is important enough to have the characters discuss it. If it isn’t, then mention it once and only once. That should be enough to show us that the character prays. But we must find a way to avoid this corny writing that exists in Christian fiction.

Telegraphing: I See Where You’re Going

This article is going to tell you when you should and shouldn't use telegraphing. I hope I didn't spoil it for you.

Years ago, travel was long and difficult. You didn’t just head off to someone’s house at someone’s house. You might get there and the guy wouldn’t be home. It might not be so bad for you, but your horse might not like you all that much, since she’d have to carry you all the way back. And telephones were scarce, so you couldn’t just call up your friend and discuss when you would show up. Instead, you’d send a short message by telegraph, “Arriving April 17 by rail.” It’s just enough to tell your friend you’re coming.

What Telegraphing Is

Telegraphing in writing is very similar. Instead of sending a message saying, “I’m coming,” we’re telling the reader what to expect. This goes beyond foreshadowing, although they are closely related and what one person calls telegraphing another might call foreshadowing. If we look at the extremes, foreshadowing is only an indication of what might happen, while telegraphing is a clear statement of what will happen.  If we have a scene in which two children are playing with a gun, that is foreshadowing. We have an idea where this is headed. Someone’s going to get hurt or killed. But, if we were to write, “I know what it is to experience guilt because of the death of a sibling. When I was eight and my brother was five, I found the key to my father’s gun cabinet,” and then we went into the scene with two children playing with a gun, that is telegraphing. The reader not only has an indication of what might happen, he knows what is going to happen. We came right out and told him.

Arguments Against Its Use

The biggest argument against telegraphing is that it kills the suspense and removes the element of surprise. Its a good argument. If we’re writing suspense and we say something along the lines of “There’s this guy hiding in the bushes and he’s thinking about killing someone, but he won’t because a policeman will show up in about twenty seconds,”  there’s no suspense at all

Even if we aren’t aiming for suspense, if we put wording in our writing that causes a reader to say later, “Yeah, I saw that one coming,” we won’t hold the reader for long. In fact, the reader is likely to become frustrated. If we hold him for the rest of the book, we’ll be lucky and we probably won’t be able to sell him another book.

Arguments For Its Use

Almost every literary device that we’re told we shouldn’t use has a legitimate use, if you look hard enough. You don’t have to look far to find a few for telegraphing. The first argument for its use is that it is how we naturally tell stories. If you wreck your car. You aren’t likely to go home and say, “I was driving down the street and I saw these flowers on the side of the road. I pulled over to the side and got out to pick some. I didn’t have anything else to put them in, so I combined the groceries from one bag with another….” Whoever you’re talking to will likely excuse himself, so he doesn’t have to listen to a long drawn out story. Instead, you would say, “I wrecked the car.” After that, you would provide the details of how it happened. The listening now understands why what you are saying is important and he will listen.  When writing, telegraphing does the same thing. The reader needs to know where we’re headed so he understands the importance of the words. In that way, telegraphing is somewhat like the hook.

Though it can kill suspense, telegraphing can also be a means by which we build suspense. Above, I told you about two children playing with a gun. In one instance, I told you that one of them would die. That may seem to kill suspense, but if the reader know that a character is going to die, he becomes leery of turning the page and rounding the corner. He knows it’s going to happen, but he doesn’t know when or to whom. He turns the page gingerly, hoping death doesn’t jump out at him.

Telegraphing can add surprise. Going back to the two boys with the gun, the surprise is gone. We know what will happen and we’re just waiting for it. The gun goes off and lying on the floor dead, is the older sister, not the younger brother. The twist has greater punch when we use telegraphing. The reader knows what to expect and is waiting for it, but when it happens, he realizes it wasn’t as cut and dried as he thought it was.

Conclusion

By all means, use telegraphing, but use it well. Don’t just tell us what to expect and then give it to us. Give us reasons to read the details and combine telegraphing with a good twist to heighten the level of surprise.

A Visitor

Characters are supposed to stay in those nice little boxes we create for them. At the very least, they ought to stay in their books. They aren’t supposed to be able to escape Fantasia, but somehow one did. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. If there was ever a character of mine who could do such a thing, it would be Sara.

Last week, I sat down with a couple of other protagonists and we had a discussion, but Sara wasn’t very happy when I left, but I pushed that aside. That is, until Sara showed up in my office to talk to me.

”We’ve got to talk,” she said.

I pushed back my chair and looked at her. It isn’t often that a figment of my imagination shows up like that.

”Talk away,” I said.

”I want to know about you trying to kill me off.”

I didn’t try to kill you off,” I said. “Not exactly.”

”But you said…”

”Let me explain,” I said. “I didn’t know you very well when I was considering that. I was still looking at the story as a love story between Ellen and Mark. I figured that if they both lost you that it would draw them closer together.”

”But I would’ve been dead.”

”True, but like I said, I didn’t know you. There was another girl who ended up dead. I don’t know much about her at all other than she was in the accident. How do you think she likes getting killed off.”

”That’s different.”

”Perhaps,” I said, “But I want you to understand that it doesn’t come easy for me to make those decisions. I don’t like killing off minor characters and it’s even harder with major characters.”

When Sara left, I think she was a little more at peace. We’re friends again. That’s good, since she and I have a long way to go together.