The Appeal of the Everyman

I've been writing about how to make your writing more literary, regardless of your genre.  One character that has eternal appeal is the everyman.  The everyman traces its origins to a medieval morality play, but it has been used throughout the history of literature.  The everyman is basically a regular guy, and there is an incredible appeal to a regular guy with whom we can relate.

Yes, we all love Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, and all the other specimens of perfection we could name.  They all run in circles we couldn't dream about, doing deeds that make our fantasies run wild, just as the Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and other pantheons did for their respective cultures.  But we don't really identify with them.  They're almost too perfect.  Batman and Iron Man are rich beyond our wildest dreams.  Super Man, Wonder Woman, and Thor are gods or close enough.  They're maybe just a little too perfect for us to imagine living next door to them, much less being them.

We all love an everyman.  When Spider-man came along, he was a novelty.  His alter ego, Peter Parker, wasn't super rich.  He was a teenager who could get zits.  He was the everyman.  And, as a result, he has become one of the most popular characters in the super pantheon.  Captain Kirk from the original "Star Trek," young Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars movies, and Star Lord from "Guardians of the Galaxy" all have this regular guy appeal of the everyman.  We can identify with them because they're not perfect.  They make mistakes.  They don't have god-like power, though Luke acquires it as he goes along, and Star Lord temporarily exhibits some in movie two.  An everyman helps us truly see a story from their point of view because we can see ourselves doing what they're doing.  We see some part of ourselves in them.  Some critics may argue that Rey from the latest Star Wars movies is a bit too perfect, a bit too much of a Mary Sue to be an everyman (everywoman), but others find her very identifiable in an everyman way.

Everymen are everywhere throughout literature.  Harry Potter is a clear case of an everyman.  When he starts the series, he has no idea he has powers and blunders more than he acts heroically.  The same is true of Percy Jackson.  Jane Eyre is very much an everywoman.  She's not rich.  She's not strong or beautiful, but she comes out with a happily ever after, anyway.  Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird is nothing special.  He's a hardworking, not particularly rich lawyer who only excels in his integrity.  Mark Twayne's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn both have nothing to recommend them beyond their humanity.  Neither is strong or rich or perfect in any way, but that is part of what makes them charming.  We can see ourselves doing what these everymen/women do because they are us.  They take us from where we are and show us that we can be more than we are now.

Look through your stories.  Identify your everymen.  If you can't find any, think of where you may insert one in order to help your reader identify more with your characters.  Make sure your character has human drives, flaws, and strengths, to bring more meaning into your works.

Writing Children's Literature

I've been writing about how to make any piece more literary.  Children's books can be shallow and trivial, but they can also be literary and profound.  A lot has been written on how to write children's books.  I've been making a particular study of this since I have been working on a children's book series.  There are some really specific things you can do to make your children's books more meaningful. 

I've made mention of a League of Utah Writers conference I attended recently.  In it, Christy Monson pointed out that if you want to write great children's literature, the best thing would be to find those award-winning, literary pieces and figure out how they do it.  She pointed out most good children's literature is built on a try-fail three cycle structure.  The character should solve his/her own problems without the help of an adult or outsider.  First, you introduce the characters and the problem.  Those characters should be quirky and flawed.  As the main character struggles with the problem, they try to overcome it three times then have some kind of revelation that allows them to prevail in the final climax.  There should be an aw moment or a plot twist.  Monson highly recommends an outline to help you know what's coming.  To get a feel for what works, though, the most important thing is to know the genre.  Read what you want to write. 

If you want to write picture books, study picture books.  If you want to write chapter books, read those.  Research your genre both in terms of the books and in terms of what experts say about writing them. Read the books that really make a splash, that kids really want to read.  Writer Jennifer Jensen says, "The most successful [children's books] let kids laugh, cheer or cry over characters doing things they can imagine.  You can develop characters that stretch readers' imaginations, but if they're really off-beat, try leaving them in a familiar setting."  Children are like other readers.  They want to see themselves in what you write, but they also want to feel.  If your book doesn't make them feel, you may get published, but you won't make a difference in these children's lives. If your reader doesn't relate in some way, you've lost them another way. 

As Jensen says on her site, write in a way that is fast paced, interesting, lively, and simple.  Use a lot of dialogue to show characterization. Make those stories work for your particular audience based on your research. But don't get bogged down in the research.  For the first draft, just write.  Then, make sure you follow the rules.  And most of all, have fun.  If you're not having fun, neither is your reader.  Best of luck. 

Emotional Symbols

I've been writing about making your pieces more literary.  Most recently, I've been focusing on talks from League of Utah Writers Fall Conference.  For this post, I'll look at advice by Angie Hodapp's suggestions of how to externalize an internal voyage.  Your main characters should make both, and this is one way to tie both together.  

A lot of novice writers make the mistake of simply explaining a character's emotions.  For instance, a beginning writer may write the following: "George was angry.  He could not stand what was happening to him."  This is very boring and doesn't make the reader feel anything.  The point behind writing is to make the reader feel.  Just telling everything fails on every side.  Meanwhile, a more experienced writer understands showing is much more effective as in the following: "George's face turned red, and he clenched his pencil until it snapped.  He stood up, threw his chair to the ground, and stomped out."  The reader is left in no doubt about the character's emotions.   

Hodapp goes one step further.  She proposes that you use an external symbol to show a character's internal journey.  For instance,  she gave the example of cancer patients passing around a candle.  They may show fear of its going out through their behavior and how carefully they shelter it to make sure it continues to burn.  That candle becomes a symbol of their mutual fear that their own lives can be blown out just that easily.  Or each character can react to the fire differently to show how they feel about it.  

She gave further examples.  Say you want to show your character's disdain for a high class open house.  She sips the tea, makes a face, and then spits it out or tosses the glass.  The glass externalizes her internal emotion.  Say you want to show a character's discomfort at staying at a friend's house.  She beats the lumpy pillow repeatedly.  The pillow becomes a symbol for how she feels inside.   

There are so many examples of this in literature.  For instance, in The Scarlet Letter, the red letter A starts out as a symbol of Hester Prynn's fellow pilgrim's condemnation of her action that gave her a baby out of wedlock.  It becomes a symbol of freedom for her, a symbol of liberation from their expectations.  The turtle in Grapes of Wrath that keeps trying to cross the road represents the internal and external dangers and frustrations the Joads endure.   Prospero's staff symbolizes his internal power, emotional, social, and mystical.  When he puts aside it and his book, he's showing his internal voyage back to the land of the mundane.  

Go back through your scenes.  Is there a really emotional moment that could be embodied and shown more vividly in a physical symbol?  

Setting the Stage

I've been writing about making your pieces more literary.  Most recently, I've been focusing on talks from League of Utah Writers Fall Conference.  For this post, I'll look at advice by Angie Hodapp, writer and literary agent of the Nelson Literary Agency, and McKelle George of Flux, a publishing company.  They both argue the importance of setting a stage that has powerful impact on your piece. 

George tells us that we should only give as much backstory as is "necessary to infor what is happening in the present emotional arc."  Basically, you should know everything about your character and their backstory but only present what the reader needs to know at a given moment.  There are few more boring ways to start a piece of writing than through pages of exposition before the reader even cares about your character or what is happening.  That is a surefire way to lose your reader.  The reader needs to know enough about the character and his/her world "to understand the stakes of the story."  You, as the writer, should know much more. 

Imagine if J.K. Rowling started Harry Potter with a dissertation on the Wizarding World THEN hopped in to explain what Harry was doing there.  Her books would not be the powerful force they are today because no one would have gotten past that wall.  The same is true of Jane Austen's novels, Poe's short stories, and just about anyone's poetry.  The setting and backstory seep into the story and permeate it but don't become so important that the character gets lost in the middle.  Character is always key in these works. 

Hodapp advises that the tone and how you describe the setting are crucial for setting the reader up for your piece.  She says that the setting should "impinge on the character's senses" in every scene.  Show that setting's impact on your reader.  Help your really feel it with phrases like "Bob's hair plastered to his skull" (Hodapp) as opposed to "It was and stormy night."  She says that the author should make sure that the character should not ignore the setting, as if it were a character in every scene.  She adds, "The more present the setting, the more opportunity there is to prime the reader for the emotional experience" of your piece.  Make the experience of living in your world physical and present. 

In other words, make sure you have created a world that feels real.  Don't show off that you know everything about that world.  Simply include it as an emotional and breathing presence in the life of your character.  The same is true for their backstory.  Don't tell the reader every detail up front.  Make sure the reader experiences their backstory as part of the world, that the backstory informs and motivates what they do.  Go through something you've written and make sure that both setting and back story are present in a meaningful and powerful way without taking over in the for of exposition.  If you do this, your reader will do more than just read your book: he/she will experience it.

Emotional Writing Part 2: Know Your Audience

Recently, I've been writing about making your piece of writing more literary.  Of late, I've been focus on things I've learned on this subject from the League of Utah Writers conference I attended.  In the session I highlighted last time, Angie Hodapp of the Nelson Literary Agency talked of emotional writing.  One subject she emphasized was that one needs to know your audience's expectation and give it to them, or they will not be fulfilled. 

For instance, she pointed out if you're writing a romance novel, your audience will not feel fulfilled until your main characters get together.  Otherwise, it's not really a romance.  She says that romance writers are at the top of the game because they can so easily give the reader emotional fulfillment in so many ways.  Someone asked the inevitable questions what if they don't get together?  She said that if the main character doesn't get together, she said that one needs to give the main character some kind of fulfillment.  If she doesn't get love, she needs something else she desires, but that needs to be set up from page one.  This would be true, too, even if romance is simply part of a subplot and not the main point. 

Hodapp also pointed out that horror is the same way.  If the reader wants to be scared or startled, the writer needs to comply or he/she is in the wrong genre. 

I would expand that to any genre.  Know your audience.  Know what they're seeking to feel fulfilled after they finish your book.  You may find a unique and/or quirky way to fulfill that emotional need, but the basic emotional need still must be met, or the reader will walk away feeling unfulfilled. 

Look at your book.  What is its genre?  Is it suspense?  Read suspense.  Research what a reader of suspense needs to feel by the end of the book in order to feel fulfilled.  The same would be true whether you're writing historical fiction, women's fiction, children's fiction, or any other genre.  What is your reader seeking?   

Write the first draft for yourself.  Write what you love and what you're seeking.  That's when you go to work to research how to fulfill the reader's needs if you want this book to go anywhere in the market.  Best of luck. 

Crying when It Hurts: How to Write with Emotional Weight Part 1

Recently, I've been writing about making your piece of writing more literary.  Of late, I've been focus on things I've learned on this subject from the League of Utah Writers conference I attended.  In one session, Angie Hodapp of the Nelson Literary Agency talked of emotional writing.  She said that moments of emotional connection are what your reader will remember. 

Hodapp highlighted emotional soft spots for readers: children, elderly people, animals, death, rites of passage, lust/love, sacrificial acts of kindness, underdogs/one against man, honor, forgiveness and redemption, separation and reunion, and hope.  She emphasized the importance of giving moments involving these emotional hot spots enough space in the story to really connect with the reader.  Other moments should be shortened, so we can heighten the impact of these moments.  She also pointed out the need to make turning points in the story emotional. 

Above all, the emotions in the story need to make sense with what is going on, according to Hodapp.   She said that the stimulus should go first then the response.   If there is a small event, there ought to be a small reaction.  If there is a major event, there ought to be a much more intense reaction.  Your reader is likely to laugh if  there is a mismatch, such as a killer covered in blood showing up resulting in an eye roll or a timid knock resulting in a shrill shriek.  She pointed out that if humor is what you're going for, this could work.  If not, make sure the response matches the stimulus. 

These seem like basic concepts, but it's always good to review the basics.  It is so important to get the emotional beats and responses right, or the reader will be jarred out of the narrative.  Once you've lost your reader, you're not likely to get him/her back.  If you want your reader to empathize with your main character, to care about your main character, they should really be able to get inside the characters head and heart understand what he/she is feeling. 

I've watched movies and read books in which I just couldn't figure out why a character was acting a certain way.  If I can't feel what the character feels and understand their emotional motivations, I'm not going to care about that character.  If I don't care, nothing else matters. 

Take a look at your story.  Have you given enough time to what is emotionally most important?  Have you glossed over the things that don't have much emotional weight?  Are the turning points emotional?  Do your character's reactions match the stimuli?  If not, it's time to fix it. 

Show and Tell Time

I've been writing about how to make your pieces more literary.  For the next few weeks, I'll be pairing that theme with experts' suggestions that I heard at the League of Utah Writers conference this last weekend.  This week's featured expert is McKelle George, author and editor of Flux Publishing. 

Authors are always being told to show not tell, but George says that the trick is to find the right balance.  Doing one or the other all the time gets boring.  Show can get confusing if there's no tell to pin it down and explain. If it's all dramatized, the reader can get lost.  If they have to infer everything without any confirmation they're right, they won't be sure what's going on.  Tell can get boring because it's simply narration.  Narration without action is summary and gets dull.  She described telling as the skeleton and showing as the soft parts.  One without the other is incomplete. 

I once read a novel that showed EVERYTHING.  The author described every moment in vivid detail.  It dragged.  I couldn't tell what was important.  It was all highlighted and got dull.  I've also read pieces where there is next to no description.  I put them down as quickly as possible because they're intolerable. 

George said good telling "marks a change, a physical jump in time or space or a subtle shift in mood that carries the reader from one emotional beat to another."  Those parts confirm what the reader infers, "directing emotional takeaways."  Meanwhile, show is useful in getting the reader to feel things, to have a "strong visceral reaction."  She says, "A novel is a series of dramatic scenes joined together by narration, which covers the passage off time."  If nothing is happening, the writer may be lovely, but the show isn't doing its job. 

It's your job as a writer to carefully review your writing to make sure that balance of show and tell is there.  If your story is dragging or confusing, work on paring back description, so you're narrating to avoid confusion.  If your character is eyeball deep in major events, show them.  Don't describe every detail of the ornate hallway on the way to the big combat, or your description of the combat will just blend in. Highlight what the reader should feel strongly about, not just what looks pretty. 

At that same conference, I had the first chapter of an early chapter book I wrote reviewed by freelance editors.  I found I'd told in all the places that I should have shown and was showing things that could just be summarized.  It can be hard to strike that balance, so it helps to get outside eyes to look at your work to see if it works. 

It's your turn.  Go and read your piece out loud.  Are there places it drags or is unnecessarily pretty?  Are there places where your reader might get lost?  Are there places where something interesting or important is happening that you haven't described?  It's time to fix it. 

Voice

I've been writing about how to make your pieces more literary.  Novice writers make little to no effort to consciously shape their writer's voice.  They just put words on the page without thinking how they sound.  More experienced writers pay attention to each word, how they sound, and how they work together.  They consciously shape how their voice sounds on the page.  If your words sound like everyone else's words, they're less likely to grip and hold the reader.

One good way to work on one's writer's voice is to listen to the voice of good writers.  Any author will tell you the way to learn a genre is to read representative samples of that genre.  Those who admire spare writing can break out Hemingway and read it out loud.  Listen to how it sounds then go to your own writing and cut out any words that don't absolutely need to be there.  Those who want to write horror may do well to read aloud authors like Poe or Stephen King.  How do they shape their words?  What makes them distinct?  Someone who dreams of writing fiction for the young can read such writers as J.K. Rowling or Rick Riordan.  I've found that if I'm reading Riordan's Percy Jackson series, my writing starts to echo his snarky tones.

However, remember that an author doesn't become famous just because he can mimic another writer.  He or she needs a distinct voice.  You can also listen to people talk.  What do children really talk about?  Just listen and take notes.

Also, pay attention to the language of your piece itself.  This is often an important step in the revision process.  Experiment with alliteration, with metaphors, with turning nouns into verbs or verbs into nouns, with unique turns of phrase, with language you can make special just to you.  I wish you the best as you work on your writer's voice.

Flashing Back

I've been going over various ways an author can make any piece more literary.  One technique that an author can use is the flashback.  Flashbacks can be important to highlight the importance of current events in the story.

However, authors can bet themselves in trouble quickly with flashbacks.  Too much of a good thing is really too much.  Here are some common issues with flashbacks:

1. Problem: An author will often make the present so brief and unmemorable that the reader gets disoriented and forgets what's happening.

Example: "Jill picked up a book, which reminded her of a time several years ago when she picked up a book just like this.  It had medieval-style cursive on it and illuminated images that told her it could not have come from this century.  She'd opened it and found a knight, springing forth...."

Note: By the end of a paragraph like this, full of detailed description of things that happened in the past, the author has no memory of what led the character into all of this.  Once the flashback ends, the reader has to go back to the beginning to remember what was really going on.  Any time a reader feels forced to look back, he's been thrown out of the narrative.

Solution:  Make sure to flash back only when the current events are established firmly in the reader's mind.  Make what's happening in this moment meaningful and vivid, so the flashback merely supports and enlightens some aspect of it.

2. Problem: An author will let flashbacks pile on top of each other in a confusing manner such as a flashback within a flashback.

Example: "Jack remembered the day he led his football team to the state championship.  He'd felt so triumphant.  As he'd spiked that ball, he'd thought of all the doubt his father had piled on him, how his father would slap him around and tell him he'd never amount to anything."

Note: By the time the author is two flashbacks in, he's forgotten what was happening and has to look back.  As the above note pointed out, this is a very bad thing for the magic of the narrative.  

Solution: Keep flashbacks simple, straightforward, and sparing.  Do not show multiple flashbacks within one chapter.  Avoid the impulse to give a flashback within a flashback.  The reader gets lost quickly.  The point is the present.  Anything from the past should support it, not overtake or muddle it.

3. Problem:  The reader may not understand this even IS a flashback.

Example, "So I says, remember that time except it wasn't really that time.  It was more like this time.  Anyway..."

Note: Don't confuse your reader.  Just don't.  It's rarely helpful.  You can keep bits of information to yourself until it's critical to bring that information forth, but it's never a good idea to frustrate the reader and make him want to put your book down.


Solution: Cue the reader in somehow (through tenses, italics, clear phraseology, or a similar technique) that the author is entering a narrative that happened in the past.  Then, make it clear when the flashback ends.

4. Problem: Including a flashback in chapter one.

Example:  Chapter 1: "The Time Far Gone."  Joan loved writing in her journal.  She picked up her pen and wrote about the time she was five, when her best friend came over for a visit.

Note:  Chapter one is about establishing your character now in what they're doing.  Don't confuse that or fill it with explanations.  You'll lose your reader first thing.

Solution:  Hold off on data dumping (indefinitely, if you can manage it) and flashing back until at least chapter two, when your reader has a firm grasp on your characters and events in the story.

Conclusion: Flashbacks can be very helpful and enlightening when done well.  They can show your reader who the characters really is underneath.  However, they need to be kept short and meaningful.  They should not control the narrative but simply support it.

Choosing Your Own Adventure

I've been blogging about making any piece of writing more literary.  As any writer knows, conflict (confrontation of obstacles) is key when it comes to story.  As literarydevices.com points out, "The absence of conflict amounts to the absence of story."  Also, conflict builds character.  Conflict types include man vs man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, man vs. machine, man vs. society, and man vs. fate.  One way or another, your character has to face difficulties, or your story will flatline quickly.  Your reader will go find someone willing to tell a real story.

But what makes conflict, and by extension, characters more interesting?  It's critical that conflict is actually challenging.  Conflict is about a character coming upon a difficulty (either posed by someone with different motives or by something else) and making choices about how to resolve the obstacle.

Remember that if your character consistently makes the best choice the reader can imagine, he or she may inch toward perfection and the dangers of being a Mary Sue, a stereotypical and perfect character.  The important thing is to know your character as you decide on a conflict.  Know what would challenge him/her the most.  Know your character well enough that you know what mistakes he/she can and will make and what strengths and weaknesses will come into play with each choice.  Don't be afraid to let your characters decide things and make mistakes. Those decisions shape your story and your character.  Make sure your reader is invested enough in your character beforehand that the risk feels real to the reader and the character's choices feel authentic to the character.  Good storytelling is all about characters meeting challenges and making choices that may make things even harder for him/her/them or may get them out of trouble.  Keep it challenging but not so ridiculously impossible that only the perfect will survive.

Let's say you're writing a story about a hero deciding whether or not to enter a darkened tunnel to save the damsel.  A darkened tunnel may become a great challenge if your hero is either afraid of the dark or enclosed spaces or both.  A hero that is too perfect will charge ahead without thinking or hesitating, facing his fear with his strong jaw set and his sword clutched in his perfect hand at the end of a perfectly chiseled arm.  Your reader may find such perfection fun at times, but it's going to wear thin quickly.  A more interesting and shaded hero may hesitate or find a way to save the lady without having to charge through that tunnel.  So what if your character is so cowardly, he decides the lady isn't worth the risk?  Your reader may fall out of love just as quickly with a character that isn't heroic enough.  Unless you can find a way to move the story forward, anyway.  What if he turns back, but the lady frees herself?  Twist.  But does such a twist fit with your story and/or advance the characters and/or story in an interesting way?  Can your characters grow this way?

Let's say it's a romance instead.  There is no challenge, no story, if the man always says and does the right things to woo the lady.  He begins to feel too much like the writer's puppet instead of a strong and interesting character.  What keeps them apart?  How do their choices play into that?

Dealing with conflict should be about characters making choices with room to make mistakes and fail.  There should be room for growth, so the character can be further developed through the choices he/she makes.  Few people have much patience for a flat character, a character who doesn't grow, who may be so perfect already that there is no growth possible.  Create conflict that is difficult, that challenges your character in all the right ways to help them grow.  Avoid predictability, cliches, and the easy answer.  If you do all that, your conflict is likely to be more literary.

When Dialogue Runs Deep

I've been suggesting how to make any piece of writing more literary.  A big part of this is making sure your piece is meaningful.  One thing that helps is when your dialogue works on more than one level, that it suggests more than it says.  It's important that your dialogue develops the story and/or character, that it's more than just an excuse to data dump on the reader.  It's also important that the purpose of each conversation is clear, that each character within that dialogue have an understandable motive for the things they say.  You don't want the characters to be talking heads or interchangeable with the narrator, or your reader is likely to take a nap sooner than read your book.  

Nap-worthy example: 

    "Did you see that ship?  It was a Morgan 2-26,  a new kind of battleship made with cutting edge technology."  

    "Yes, I noticed that.  Did you know Mega Dark, our greatest enemy loves those?"  

    "Oh, really?  I wonder if he's on this one.  If he is, that would be bad." 

Note:  There's no drama here.  The nightly news has more tension and suspense than this kind of dialogue. 

Better example: 

     "The Morgan 2-26 is upon us, Captain." 

     "No!  You swore that couldn't happen, that such technology was beyond their grasp!" 

     "Our agents assured me this could not be." 

     "I was a fool for buying into your false sense of security." 

     "We suspect Mega Dark is on it."  

     "Then we all die here."  

Note:  There is more suspense, tension, drama, and conflict here.  The same information is shared but it is shared as part of the storytelling.  

It's better yet when not all information is on the surface, when much of the meaning is shared through texts and subtexts, through suggestions and hints.  There can still be a lot of drama and tension but with fewer words.  The reader feels clever when he/she is able to feel what's under the surface and make the connections for themselves.  It also means more and is more memorable.  

Better example still:  

"What is it?" 

"The Morgan 2-26, Captain." 

"No!  It can't be his ship." 

"We're readying the cannons." 

"For all the good they'll do."

  More is suggested here than is said.  When everything is on the surface, it can be dull and uninteresting.  The more meaning your story suggests rather than spells out, the more powerful your story for the reader.  

     

  

Shooting down Giant Space Fleas and Big-lipped Alligators with the Rifle on the Wall

I've been making suggestions about how to make any piece of writing more literary.  In this case, I will talk about story unity. Have you ever read a piece wherein events, characters, and even climaxes seem sort of tacked on, to come out of nowhere?  A good story is well-integrated, all events planned with foreshadowing and build-up.  As Anton Chekhov tells us, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter, it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."  In other words, if you're going to include some prominently displayed item, character, or symbol, it should be used somewhere in your story. It should be there for a reason, or you're wasting words and the reader's time.  Conversely, if you're going to have a major event like a rifle going off at the end, you should hint at the possibility somewhere earlier.    

There are several pitfalls to avoid, mainly with characters or events in the story that feel tacked on and poorly integrated.  The first two are often associated with video games or television. The Big Lipped Alligator Moment, or pointless and unrelated and often ridiculous side event or character, seems to exist to fill space or distract.  The name traces to a scene from "All Dogs Go to Heaven," wherein an alligator shows up for no reason in a scene unrelated to the plot.   Giant Space Fleas from Nowhere are simply major antagonists (major bosses in video game terms) that don't tie into the story.  There is no foreshadowing and no deeper meaning.  A big baddie shows up, makes things harder for one scene, then is never seen or remembered again.  Why are they there?  Often, not even the author can explain them.  If you can't justify major or minor events and characters in terms of your overarching plot, meaning, or character development, cut those scenes.

It is particularly important to build toward the climax of your story and to make meaning of it.  When an author does neither, he likely has either a Deus ex Machina or Diabolus ex Machina, which are more literary terms.  Deus ex Machina--God out of the machine--is when a literal or figurative hand of God shows up and fixes what's wrong.  Some crazy powerful new ability or character shows up and saves the day.  In The Stand miniseries, a literal big hand shows up and makes things better.  Meanwhile, Diabolus ex Machina, or devil from the machine, is where an overly powerful bad guy who has not been foreshadowed, hinted at, etc. appears and makes things much worse for the heroes.  The solution here is not necessarily to cut the character or event but to integrate it.  Hint at it in a way the reader won't necessarily catch.  If possible, make either good or bad relate to the main characters and/or come from the characters. Make it all seem possible within the world of the story.  Basically, set up for it and then make sure it enhances meaning, character, and plot in a way that makes sense.

Literary greats usually build up toward minor and major events and characters then use them to build on their deeper meaning, plot, and/or characters.  Yes, anything is possible in writing.  However, if your reader finds scenes and characters far-fetched, unrelated, ridiculous, or distracting, you've lost them.  They are thrown out of the world of the story and won't likely come back in a hurry.  Everything you do in your story should be carefully planned, integrated, and meaningful.

Yin and Yang

I've been writing about what makes a piece of writing literary.  This week, I'll address specifically part of what makes a piece meaningful.  I've watched some dark movies of late, ones that were just dark or angry or violent or whatever without a glimmer of humor, personality, joy, light, warmth, or anything that would redeem them from their merciless darkness.  They fell flat for me because they lacked what makes movies entertaining, meaningful, or fun.  I've also seen quite a few shows that are simply light fluff without any darkness, any abuse or trauma or loss or sadness, to make the characters in them feel human.  Dark without light or light without darkness lose their meaning.  They don't reflect the human experience.

A good writer needs to include both light and darkness since they define each other.  Finding the balance can be the hard part.  Part of this can be based on the genre the writer chooses.  A dark fantasy or horror writer would obviously spend more time in the dark with flashes of light to keep the reader going.  A humor, romance, or children's writer may spend longer in the light, using bits of darkness from past losses or trauma to give the characters meaning and human qualities.  This is likely a big part of why Disney writers always tend to tell stories of children who lose or have lost parents: to introduce a bit of tragedy that makes light moments in the present more meaningful and characters more sympathetic.

Shakespeare understood the need for this balance.  Hamlet is a dark piece.  It's a revenger's tragedy in which most of the characters die.  Shakespeare understood the need for the porter scene, the scene that introduced the knock knock joke in the middle of two much darker scenes.  The reader needs that kind of emotional release.  Meanwhile, in his comedy Twelfth Night, the main characters, a set of twins, start their stories in earnest mourning each other's supposed death after an accident.  Shakespeare understood even the lightest comedy needs the gravitas of loss and sadness, and even the heaviest tragedy needs moments of light.  One without the other is meaningless.

As a side note, remember to research and fully understand the kind of darkness or light you want to use.  If your story features a woman who has lost a child, but she doesn't act like a woman who has lost a child, your reader who has suffered that kind of loss can feel betrayed.  Also, if you're including a bit of light into the darkness, make sure the light doesn't fall flat with readers.  Light and dark both need to work together to create a seamless whole in order to shape your meaning.

Now, it is your turn.  Look over the pieces on which you're working.  Do you have enough light or darkness to balance out the other?  If not, look to the classics to figure out how to strike the yin yang balance.

Pushing past Clichés

I've been writing about elevating the level of your writing, making any piece of writing more literary. One thing that can kill a piece of writing for the reader faster than most other things is to fill it full of clichés.  It doesn't matter if those clichés are characters everyone has seen hundreds of times before, subplots that seem lifted from a movie, or even turns of phrase people have read in every other tired piece of writing.  People want fresh writing, fresh characters, and fresh plotlines.  If your writing feels like every other fantasy novel, every other poem, every other anything they've read, your piece is dead in the water.  In other words, avoid clichés like the plague [pardon the clichés].  

When most people go to write, what they have to draw on is the standard list of phrases, characters, plotlines.  Good writers don't stop there.  You don't have to do this with draft one.  As the quotation from the writers' movie "Finding Forrester" goes, "You write your first draft with your heart, and you rewrite with your head."  When you write the first draft, you can fill your piece with whatever clichés come to mind first.   But when you go to rewrite, pinpoint the clichés.  Find them one by one and push past your initial impulses.

How can you do that?  One method is by brainstorming.  Say you've written a draft [or simply have first thoughts and some basic notes] in which your language is riddled with clichés.  Find synonyms.  Make nouns into verbs and vice versa.  Search for the perfect metaphors and similes.  Find a way to make the language fresh.  

Say you've done some preliminary work and found your main characters to be so familiar as to be dull.  Say he's a weak nerd who is bullied by a big kid.  You say to yourself, "I've lost count of the times I've read this story before."  So how can you make your particular nerd special?  How can your bully become something fresh and new?  You say to yourself, "Okay, how about I make the bully a super genius and the main kid an impish girl."  That starts to be a little different.  But you don't have to stop there, either.  Push it further until you've found something not just fresh but with more potential for drama.  You could change genres if you're at an early enough point to do so.  Would the bully and nerd be more interesting in space?  In a magical land?  Would it work in the future?  Or in a gothic horror story?

Whether or not you change your genre, it will be critical to spend more time developing the individual characters.  You could write the character's journal.  You could simply write more, draw more, plan more.  You could do a character interview in which you ask your character a series of questions that shed more light on him/her.

Do whatever it takes to turn your character, your story, your words into something new.  Don't settle for the first thing that comes to mind.

Personify This

I’ve been blogging about literary devices.  One that I haven’t talked about yet is personification.  Personification is where you as the author describe the environment with adjectives usually used to describe a person.  It suggests human-like motivation in inanimate objects. 

Personification can be used to make things around the character into active participants.  It can be employed for humorous purposes or to make the environment seem more dangerous or friendly or however than it otherwise might.  Using this technique, one can highlight the characters’ emotions through adjectives and word choice.  Using personification makes the world around your character come alive. 

For instance, you could write “A girl walked through scary trees, but she felt protected by her red hood.”  However, this stays flat on the page.  There’s nothing too interesting about that sentence.  Listen to the difference when I use personification: “The shadow of the tree reached its long fingers toward the little girl, who felt comforted in the protective arms of her crimson hood.”  Both objects have been personified in different ways.  The tree’s shadow can’t have fingers, and it certainly isn’t actively threatening her through any human-like intent any more than the inanimate hood is seeking to help her feel protected.  But her emotions are projected onto the world around her using the vivid imagery of personification.   

Like I said, personification can also be used for humor.  Here is a rough example: “My sister thinks I’m clumsy, but I say my house likes to throw me parties.  I was walking along, and the rug jumped up to trip me and send me flying. The lamp invited me to dance, and the coffee table hugged my legs.  I passed on those partners because the ground was much more insistent but not much of a dancer.  You know, the usual."  The narrator here is turning her clumsiness into a joke through self-deprecating humor.  

How can you use personification in your book?  Are there places your humor can be enhanced through personification?  Are there places where, rather than using straightforward language, you can use the figurative and descriptive language of personification?                                                                  

Following Patterns that Work

Defining Patterns:

Over the last several months, I've been featuring ways to making any work of writing more literary.  A few weeks ago, I talked about allusion.  This is where you refer to some great work of literature as part of your essay, poem, short story, etc.  The use of allusion draws on the meaning, feeling, and cultural connections of the original piece.  Many authors go beyond allusion and, in fact, use such pieces as a model for their own works.

The most basic use of the literary patterns has become almost nearly universal among adventure stories: the hero's journey. Several decades ago, Joseph Campbell wrote several books explaining the concept of the hero a journey makes from normal world into the underworld and back, one from which he emerges master of both worlds.  Almost every adventure yarn you've read or seen recently from Pixar to Star Wars [Lucas actually had Campbell on the original set to make sure he got it right] to Harry Potter to any given Avengers story to Greek mythology follow the pattern of the hero's journey.  One of Campbell's most famous books was Hero with a Thousand Faces, based on the concept that this template is so universal that it can be placed on almost every traditional saga throughout human history.  Many of the least successful stories fall flat because they don't follow this pattern.  To learn more about this pattern, feel free to follow the link above or use Google.  You will find no shortage of explanations.  Most modern adventure stories that stand the test of time follow this format.  If you watch some of the older Disney and other movies, those that were written before Campbell's theory became so ingrained in the culture, you'll see they often meander without clear purpose.  They lack a definite model to follow and narratively fall apart.

Discovering Patterns: 

If this model is too vague for you or does not fit your genre, you can look around at classical literature and pick something that will not get you sued for copyright infringement.  Many authors turn to fairy tales since so many are familiar.  Successful authors sidestep Disney (since so much of the original tales is glossed over) and look to the older variations of tales to come up with a story that is fresh, new, and vibrant.  Say you love "Cinderella" but have something new to say about it.  You can dissect the tale, pick out the essential beats of what makes the tale work like Campbell did with mythology, and then rewrite it as a western with Cinderella as a poor farm girl coming to the big city and meeting a rancher at a hoedown.  Or you can set Cinderella in a fantasy, where the mages of the world are rich, and everyone else is poor.  She finds a way to borrow magic in order to show up at a mages' ball to woo the emperor of the land.  Or you could set her in steampunk, in post-apocalyptic America, in outer space, in the land of the mermaids, or anywhere else because you know the reader, unlike her evil stepsisters, will instinctively recognize Cinderella in whatever guise.  The magical and universal appeal of the poor, abused girl attracting the rich man at a party will carry its familiar power no matter the setting.  "Cinderella" and other tales like it have stood the test of time, through the centuries.  It will continue to stand and be recreated long after modern writers have laid down their pens.

Applying Patterns:

If fairy tales don't work for you, look to Shakespeare or Jane Austen or any other major author whose work has proven sticking power and see what makes their tale tick.  Take it apart.  Figure out what events have to happen for the reader to recognize the tale.  What characters do you need for the reader to understand what you're doing and for you to draw on the power of the original tale?  If you don't want to base your entire story on their model, pick a section of their story.  Your story may start out as Romeo and Juliet and end up as Pride and Prejudice or something entirely new.  This may sound like the formula for fanfiction for some people.  But fanfiction mostly uses someone else's tale, someone else's characters, and simply poses the question, "What if?" It is largely derivative.  Using a model transforms the basic pattern of the narrative into something familiar but new, something traditional but also uniquely your own.

If you have already started to write a tale, look carefully at what you have written.  Is there a section of your narrative that you can transform and make more powerful through use of a model like this?  If you haven't started a tale, look at your favorite classical works of literature.  What can you reshape and revitalize in your own voice?  Have fun with it.

Choosing Point of View

Choosing your perspective:

I've been writing a series on how to make your writing more literary.  This particular step is critical no matter how literary you want your piece to be.  From personal experience, I can tell you that you want to choose a point of view from which to write your piece as early in the process as possible.  After I'd written two novels in one perspective, I was told by multiple people that it did not work and should be from another point of view.  Making the change with an entire manuscript is tedious and frustrating because it's one of those changes that can't be easily done with a "replace all" kind of option.  There are just too many I's and me's that have nothing to do with perspective.  It's, therefore, most critical that you make this decision quickly, preferably before one word appears on the page. 

Third-Person Omniscient:

The most archaic option--and one that very rarely works anymore--is 3rd-person omniscient.  This is where you write from outside the text and know everything about everyone.  If you read a book from twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years or more, chances are, that is the perspective the author is using.  This is the kind where the narrator can tell you about what this character is thinking then what another is thinking then what another is thinking with the detachment of someone who knows but isn't part of the story.  This has become increasingly rare in modern books.  Readers aren't used to it and tend not to like it.  It's fairly impersonal and emotionally distant.  A lot of great works of classical literature are written using this perspective, but I wouldn't recommend trying it now.  You may have a hard time getting published.  

Third-Person Limited:

The most common perspective is third-personal limited.  Think Harry Potter.  Your narrator follows one character around and tells you what he or she thinks, feels, and experiences.  Most modern literature is in either this perspective or first-person because it's personal, humanizing, and easy to relate to. There are two major options here.  You can either stick with one perspective only--like the Harry Potter books--or you can do what writers call "head hopping" from perspective to perspective.  If you're using third person limited with just one character, you have to find a way to show anything that goes on outside his immediate experience from his point of view.  J.K. Rowling does this by showing what Voldemort or others are doing via visions and dreams.  Harry doesn't personally view these events, but he knows what is going on through supernatural means.  If your story is not supernatural, you could use something like news, social media, phone calls, rumors, or some other device to show what is going on outside his immediate experience.  

If you're going to use limited perspective but through multiple character's eyes, you'll solve the problem of the limited knowledge but create a host of other things to consider.  You'll want to give careful consideration to how head hopping will occur and how many characters you want to use.  You're still showing each character's perspective, and only their perspective, at any given time.  A big no-no is to hop to someone else's head and back again in the same section, chapter, or--worse yet--paragraph or sentence, e.g. "She looked at him and saw how handsome he was, and he looked back and saw how beautiful she was."   It's a sure sign of a novice to hop heads in the middle of a paragraph.  It often takes away all sense of suspense when you know everything about everyone all the time.   I read a romance novel like that, and there was no mystery or romance to it.  I knew everything everyone was thinking all the time.  It's best to keep one chapter or section to one narrator.  Some people can successfully hop to stranger's heads for just one section then back to main characters' heads then off to some bystander's head.  However, it's usually clearest and most sensical to a reader if you choose a finite number of heads--two or three, maybe four--and just alternate sections, possibly chapters.   It's usually best as well to choose the character who has the most emotional stake in the events.  If it doesn't work one way, you can always rewrite that segment and see if another character's eyes improve an important segment. 

First-Person: 

The last common point of view is first-person.  This can be even more emotionally charged and intense than even the most personal third-person narrative.  You're actually in that person's skull for the duration of the story.  Everything is through his/her eyes alone.  This limits the writer in the same way third-person limited with one narrator does but to a greater degree.  The reader only knows what the narrator knows.  It's possible to write this kind of perspective in such a way as to show your character is unreliable, but that can be tricky.  If successful, however, you can truly impress even the most discerning reader.  In order to figure out how it's done, it's usually best to read several first-person unreliable narrations to see how the author clues the reader in that the narrator can't be trusted.  Another limiting factor is this rarely works well if you have multiple protagonists.  I tried it, and it didn't work for me.  However, The Help pulls it off to critical acclaim.  Anything I say here has exceptions.  These are just rules of thumb.  

Before you launch fully into writing a novel, I'd experiment with perspectives.  Research which is the best match for your story and your characters.  Try one for a chapter.  If it's not working, rewrite that chapter.  Don't be me.  Figure out what works before it's too late.