Action like in a Movie

Think like a Movie:

I have heard it said that one of the best strategies for writing is to imagine your book as a movie.  Focus on the action.  What do characters do?  What can you show about what's going on inside by what they do?  Good writing prioritizes show, not tell.  Novice writers want to write, "George was really tired of his friends.  They always did the same thing every day."  Good writers understand that this would make for a terrible moment in a movie.  You'd get some kind of a cheesy and unnecessary voiceover.  However, you can instead show the same idea.  You could write, "George shuffled into the room where his friends slumped around the floor, playing with their ratty-edged cards.  He rolled his eyes and sighed, lowering himself to his corner of the floor where he'd worn the carpet thin."  We don't need to be told he's bored.  We see he's bored.  We don't even need to get inside his head if the reader can see boredom in everything he does.   If there's a spot where you catch yourself telling the reader anything, flip it and show the same thing.  Pretend you're the director in a movie.  How would you have an actor show what you're trying to convey?

Strong action and powerful moments are not to be built up by weak verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  In fact, most professional writers say it's best to avoid adverbs and adjectives as much as possible.  Stephen King's biggest problem with the early Harry Potter books was that they were chock full of adjectives and adverbs.  The first time I read these books, I didn't notice this.  Then I read Stephen King's review, and the adjectives and particularly adverbs jumped right off the page.  It's best to eliminate the extra wordiness of modifiers and focus on what you're really trying to say.  Compare these two:  1. "Handsome, long-haired George quickly lifted his really sharp sword angrily into the air and screamed loudly at the very big group that was running right at him."  2. "George's hair whipped in the wind as he thrust his sword to the sky and shouted his defiance at the charging horde."  Choose your words, carefully, and none of the modifiers are necessary.

Strong Verbs:

Part of showing is a focus on strong action verbs.  While writing the first draft, it's best not to focus on editing and catching all the to be verbs.  The writer's movie "Finding Forrester" advises that you write your first draft with your heart and the second with your head.  In other words, write the first draft just to get the words and the story on the page.  But for the second draft, each word needs to be carefully considered, each verb changed from passive tenses to a potent action word.  It's okay in the first draft to write, "George was under the tree, which was where he'd first fallen in love with Marilyn." However, by the second draft, a reader would find the following more compelling: "George stumbled through the forest and stopped under the looming branches of the gnarled oak.  He reached out to touch the carved heart grown into the trunk with his name just visible over Marilyn's."  The reader gets far more information and is far more intrigued by action and show than tell.  George stumbles, stops, and reaches.  The branches loom.  If the author saves "to be" for special occasions, even "am" or "was" can become significant.  For instance, "George stood with muscles tensed between Marilyn's limp body and the thugs snarling in front of him.  He thrust his sword toward his attackers and challenged them to try to get past him.  They charged ahead.  He deflected their jabs on every side.  None could get past where he was."  If the paragraph before is filled with strong action verbs, then "was" at the end feels stronger.

Just as a caveat, remember that strong, varied verbs are unnecessary in dialogue tags.  In fact, editors view the frequent use of anything but "said" or "answered" as a sign of a novice writer.  They may reject your manuscript simply for using other dialogue tags.  However, all other verbs should be carefully considered and chosen.

In short, it's best to write a novel as if you were composing a screenplay.  As much as possible, show emotion through action, and you'll be less likely to tell your audience everything you should be showing through strong verbs.

The McDonald's Test

My kids and I had a lot of fun with a test of characterization this week.  It's a simple test to see whether or not you have a real sense of your characters or not.  Take characters from any story and ask, "What would [insert character name here] order at McDonald's?"  You say your character is a fantasy/horror/science fiction/whatever character who has never and will never even SEE a McDonald's?  That's not the point.  The point is do you understand your characters enough to see through his/her eyes?  Do you know what they would do in any given situation?  My kids and I played a game in which we named kids' show after kids' show or kids' book after kids' book.  Some of them, such as the novel version of Percy Jackson or Harry Potter, we understood enough to say what they would do at McDonald's.  Some of them were such bland, indistinct/interchangeable characters that the question was impossible to answer.

As an example, we went through the list of "mane" characters of the popular kids' show "My Little Pony," using the McDonald's Test.  Pinkie Pie is the nutty one who loves parties.   She'd bound in and order some cake.  She loves cake.  They'd tell her they didn't have cake.  So she'd ask for cake.  And maybe some balloons.  Fluttershy is the sweet one who loves animals.  She'd order a large salad, so she could share it with her animal friends.  Rarity is vain and finery-obsessed.  She wouldn't want to step hoof in a McDonald's.  If she did, she'd do it to support her friends.  She'd order a cup of water and find the flavor off.  Then she'd wash up and go to a nice restaurant.  Twilight Sparkle is the practical, studious one.  She'd order grilled chicken on whole wheat but not eat it because she'd be too busy studying a scroll to notice or care.  Her assistant, Spike the dragon, is the child-like one.  He'd order a kids' meal with nuggets and fries then start a food fight with it.  Apple Jack, the country girl, would order the apple pie.  Rainbow Dash would order everything on the menu and challenge everyone to an eating contest.

The modern "My Little Pony" is a great example of clear characterization that leads to understandable motivation in episodes with enjoyable storytelling, hence its popularity among boys, girls, teenagers, younger kids, and even adults.  However, if you look back at episodes of "My Little Pony" from the some of the earlier generations, you may have a harder time figuring out what they would order because most characters were interchangeable.  They were all sweet and playful but not necessarily distinct.  It was very much a young girls' show.  I liked it when I was a kid, but I wouldn't waste my time on it now because it didn't have strong characterization like the newest generation does.  This is what makes the difference between a compelling story and one that is much less so.

You can take this game and play it with your characters.  What would your characters do?  Something above?  Protest the restaurant?  Buy it?  Take charge of it and change it into something else?  Conquer the city and knock all McDonald's to the ground?  How would your character respond to a McDonald's?  What other questions can you think of that would be telling of your characters?  You may learn something you didn't know before.  

Experimenting with Points of View

Perspectives:

Before writing a story, it's important to consider carefully what point of view you're going to use.   Most of us know the kinds of points of view available: first person, second person, and third person, which can either be omniscient or limited.  Writers, as a rule, know these perspectives.  But creative things can be done within the limits of these points of view.

Most modern fiction writers choose between first person and third person limited.  Third person limited is like in Harry Potter, wherein the narrator follows the perspective of one or more important characters to tell the story.  I, personally, prefer first person because I can use it to get deeply into the character's point of view, though a lot of writers can achieve a similar effect with third person limited.  If you're not sure which you'd prefer to use, experiment with it.  See what sounds better.  If you're trying third person, and it doesn't feel right, try first person.

Something New:

Experimental and interesting approaches are available with all of these perspectives.  With my current series of novels, I'm following the example set by Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help.  In that popular novel, three women, a white woman and two black women, take turns being the narrator.  The reader gets a more complete understanding of the situation because he/she isn't limited to just one set of eyes or thoughts.  The narrator in each case speaks in the voice of the perspectival character.  Currently, I am writing first person, alternating between the male character's and the female character's voices.  It's not a common technique, but I enjoyed using it to fully explore both an insecure, introverted woman and an insecure, introverted man.  I have yet to find out what kind of reception I will receive from the publisher since it's not a common technique.

The more common approach to this kind of shared narrative would be 3rd person.  The traditional, and somewhat outdated, way of writing would be to assume an impartial voice of a narrator who knows everything, but fewer and fewer writers use this approach because readers prefer the experience of feeling what the character feels rather than just hearing what they do.  It's easier for the writer to show rather than tell when viewing the story through the eyes of a character.  3rd person limited allows the flexibility of shifting perspectives between main characters and even minor characters involved in events critical to the story.  One danger with too much head jumping is that it's easy to flit back and forth in the middle of a chapter and, more problematic yet, a single paragraph.  Readers can find a dizzying amount of head jumping disorienting, and publishers take this as a clear sign of a novice writer.  I read a romance novel recently in which the meeting of the man and the woman was like a pingpong game, where each event was told from one perspective then the other in rapid succession, so there was no mystery, no tension, and no stability.  It's usually best to limit head jumping to between sections of a chapter or, better yet, a shift between chapters.

Best of all would be as with Harry Potter, to focus on one single perspective for the entire story.  Some stories can't easily be told this way.  However, remember that the reader still sees some chapters through Voldemort's eyes because Harry is in his head or having a dream at the time.  The reader still gets multiple perspectives by following Harry around.

Experimenting:

There are other techniques one can use with point of view that would be even more experimental.  I have read short stories told through the 2rd person perspective, one usually reserved for instruction manuals.  The most well-known type of 2nd person story is Choose Your Own Adventure books, in which the reader participates in the story, choosing what the characters will do.  But this is not the only use for the 2nd person perspective in fiction.  What could happen when the "you" addressed in the story actually does something like commits a murder and has to hide it?  Or when the "you" in the story is a detective or a romantic lead?  This could be either a narrative or an instruction manual, a how-to of crime, crime solving, or whatever.  I've seen this technique used, but it would be difficult to pull off well.  Examples are listed here.

With third person, the narrator is assumed to be trustworthy because he's simply a voice telling the story.  Why would he lie?  A truly good author writing in 3rd person limited or 1st person can achieve a higher level of art with an unreliable narrator.  Somehow, either through switching points of view or through some other means, the writer is able to indicate to the reader that his narrator is untrustworthy, that the narrator has a clear bias or is telling the story in such a way that it shouldn't be believed at face value.  In Wonderlandiful World of the Ever After High trilogy by Shannon Hale, the narrator first interacts with a character in a way that shows the narrator to be a character in his own right, and his descriptions suspect.  Then the true narrator goes insane.  His words make less and less sense as he's consumed by the Jabberwock's magic.  Maddie, daughter of the Mad Hatter, takes on the role of narrator and quickly shows her own biases and thought processes contrasting with the reality of the story.  When her father is in trouble, she doesn't even want to talk about what's happening. At one point in the narrative, Kitty, the daughter of the Cheshire Cat, takes over as another narrator and blatantly starts to make things up because what's actually happening is boring.  This kind of unreliable narrator enhances the intrigue and level of art in the story if done well, though it can confuse the reader if done poorly.  Here is an article with examples of novels with unreliable narrators.

Sometimes, an entire story can be inspired by points of view.  I have written fun short stories from the points of view of a McDonalds paper cup, the evil fairy in my own version of "Sleeping Beauty," and from the point of view of the frog in "Frog Prince," among others.  Sometimes, all it takes to make a story fresh is to see it from another point of view.  Disney with "Maleficent" and "Descendants," Broadway with "Wicked," and so many others have made this practice more common, though there is so much more territory left to explore.  One of the most interesting experiments in perspective was written by Orson Scott Card.  Multiple decades ago, he wrote Ender's Game from the point of view of Ender, an earnest young man in a military academy set in space.  About a decade ago, he retold the same story in Ender's Shadow from the point of view of Ender's subversive sidekick, Bean, who experienced the same events in an entirely different manner.  If you're interested in perspective hopping and what it does for a story, read those two novels back to back.

Heightening Drama: 

One of the things to consider with point of view, especially a shifting point of view, is which character to follow at any given time.  Which character's perspective will heighten the drama?  If there are two characters entering a situation, it may be more helpful to follow the perspective of the newcomer because the reader, too, will be new to this situation.  That character can stand in as the reader in their exploration of that situation.  For example, we enter the Wizarding World through Harry's eyes.  If one character is really hurting but not showing it, it may be interesting to get inside her/his head, so we can experience the whole depth of the character's pain. Orson Scott Card points out that too many tears by the main character can actually turn a reader off.  Sometimes, it may be best to follow the character who isn't suffering the most, so readers can watch the suffering character's heroic struggle.  The best way to figure out which character would be best to follow may be to write both perspectives and see which is more successful, which does a better job of enhancing the plot and meaning.

Reader's Lens: 

The point of view of the narrator and main character are your reader's lens through which they see the entire story.  If the narrator's perspective on the main character is engaging, convincing, and clear, the reader is far more likely to follow your books and listen to your entire story and its sequels.  If the narrator's voice is humorous, endearing, clever, or in some way unique in a good way, you'll probably get a fan base who will follow you to the ends of the earth and beyond.  That is the power of point of view.

The Magic of Humor

Sparkle

Sarah Boucher, a friend of mine, asked me to write a blog post she could feature on her blog here.  I imagine it won't appear for a bit, but this is what I came up with, with some added since I have more space on my own blog.  

My husband and I have watched many movies over the years and have determined what makes a good movie vs what makes a truly stellar movie worth watching repeatedly. A good story requires great characterization with clear motivation, and a meaningful plot.  A stellar story requires all that plus humor. 

I love Lloyd Alexander’s Taran the Wanderer series, Anne McCaffrey’s Harper Hall trilogy, and Brandon Mull’s more recent Fablehaven series.  They’re good books.  They have great plotting and characterization.  All of them have a smattering of humor here and there.  But my kids and I read the beginning of each of them to decide which book to read next, back to back with the snarky, tongue-in-cheek Percy Jackson series, written by Rick Riordan.  Percy won for all of us, hands down.  Why?  One could say it’s because the Percy Jackson has a fresh, exciting voice.  That is true.  But for me, the biggest reason is because of the humor.  Humor appears not just in one or two comic relief characters but in the chapter titles, the first person narration, around every corner, and in every confrontation.  A lot of authors don’t bother with chapter titles, but Riordan’s chapter titles include such titles as “I learn how to Grow Zombies,” “I Break a Few Rocket Ships,”” “I Go Snowboarding with a Pig,” “I Wrestle Santa’s Evil Twin,” and “We Meet the Dragon of Eternal Bad Breath.”  My kids plead with me to keep reading one more chapter, even after bedtime, because the titles amuse and tantalize at the same time.  Each chapter is fresh, funny, and well worth a few minutes of sleep.  The narrative isn’t all funny.  There are serious events, solemn moments, and emotionally potent times.  But they are counterbalanced by laughs.  The humor pulls us through the book like a force of gravity, making the experience of reading it truly pleasurable.  What makes the narrative magical is entirely lacking in the movies, of which even Riordan is severely critical. 

Unfunny vs Funny

Let’s look at the Star Wars series.  Movies 1-3 flop in part because all humor is produced by Jar Jar Binks, a buffoonish character who frustrates because he is a cheap shot for the kids and because he’s not funny to many adults.  Meanwhile, dialogue and banter are often absent throughout the rest of the trilogy. Therefore, the only humor distracts from rather than enhances the storyline.  Lacking their comedy relief, the other two movies don’t try to be funny.  The lack of humor makes them fall flat and feel untrue to the original trilogy.  As with many movies, we watch them once and walk away.  

A lot of movies and stories are like this for my family and others, flat not because the characters aren’t good or the story isn’t interesting but because they are like the description of the FBI in the movie “Men in Black”: “[They] have no sense of humor that [they] are aware of.”  We may watch them once, but they’re not worth revisiting because they’re not much fun.  Entertainment should be fun.  It should not feel like work to read a novel or watch a movie unless you’re writing papers on them.  Even serious stories can be made more likable and engaging through a touch of humor.  

What works in the Star Wars series?  Movies 4-7 work because of humor.  The Ewoks and the comedy duo straight man and chubby funny man, C3PO and R2D2, provide comic relief, but others also provide humor as well.  Anyone can be funny, whether intentionally or not.  Even the simple, ubiquitous line, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” becomes humorous when handled right.  Han Solo and Leia are both serious throughout the series, but they exchange banter and zingers on a regular basis that carry the movies with their humor and charm.  Audiences still chuckle over, “You stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!” and Han’s winning response, “Who’s scruffy-looking?”  Luke, too, seems to take himself seriously, yet I went to a screening in the nineties of the original Star Wars movie, and some of the loudest laughs from an audience of seasoned Star Warriors came from Luke’s teenagerly whine, “Ah!  I was going to go to the Tashi Station to pick up some power converters!”  These are not lines with comic intent.  These lines are funny because they’re a combination of familiar and unexpected. 

Dialogue with humor provides magic for the original trilogy, and Force Awakens recaptures that, both with BB8, the quirky droid, and others.  [Spoiler alert].  Audiences see an entire village massacred then we get Poe Dameron’s line, “You speak first or I speak first?” to relieve the tension. One of the funnier scenes is the one in which Rey rescues herself using the force for the first time on a storm trooper played by James Bond’s Daniel Craig.  Two serious characters make a funny scene while being serious because what happens there is so unexpected and straight-faced.  Humor comes from fresh dialogue between intriguing characters with no “comedy relief” characters required. 

Your Turn

            In most writing, humor is critical to the enjoyment of the reader.  Humor doesn’t have to be constant or laugh-out-loud, but it should be present.  It adds sparkle and fun.  Entertainment is why most writers write and most readers read.  Adding humor to a situation can make an otherwise serious story more enjoyable.  Humor makes a reader care and helps carry the message and story into the reader’s mind and heart.  Everyone’s brand of humor is different.  Find yours, and your story will take on more magic and charm. 

Drives

Driving Forces: 

What drives your character?  I watched a well-written tv show this week that made me wonder if my characters' voices are as distinct as those in the show.  Then I saw a post on FaceBook that reminded me what that meant specifically.  What drives a person?  Their purpose or goal, their fears, their loves, and their losses.  I could talk about the differences between what they THINK their goal is vs. what their actual goal is.  These could be different.  A character could tell himself he's here to help another character when he's actually here because he wants to be loved.  The same is true for fears, loves, etc.  But that's a subject for another day.  What is their true goal?  If their motives are clear to the reader--even if they're not always clear to the character--the author, and therefore the reader, understands the character, and the character becomes more compelling.

Purpose: 

A real person is complicated and can have any number of goals.  However, most often, in their heart of hearts, a character wants one main thing, a dream, a hope, an aspiration.  A writer can look to the Enneagram for the goal as given in that character theory or that same writer can figure it out based on his or her origin or story.  

Why does the character get up in the morning or do what she does in the day?  What is the thing she wants MOST in the entire world?  Now, there could be an overriding goal for the character in general that is different than the goal of the moment.  Let's look at the song "I've Got a Dream" from "Tangled."  The current occupation of the entire bar full of warriors and villains is to maim and kill for money.  At first, the main characters assume that is their ultimate purpose, their greatest desire, in life.  But as the warriors and villains sing this song, they make it clear this isn't what they truly want to be doing.  This isn't their real purpose, just what they're doing now.  One of them wants to be a concert pianist, one a mime, one a sculptor, one a husband, and so on.  The circumstances of the moment are such that they can't fulfill their dreams.  So what is your character's goal of the moment and what is their ultimate dream or purpose?  Do they relate or clash?

I went through and figured out the ultimate goals of my main characters.  Connor is a lawyer whose real purpose in life is to avoid pain through having fun.  So when he has to sit and do law-related things, he does it, but the whole time, he's fantasizing about playing video games to avoid thinking about what's really going on beneath the surface.  His real purpose, then, is to avoid pain.  He will do ANYTHING to avoid pain.  So at the base of everything he says, there should be an element of pain avoidance.  Robin is a pilot and a dental assistant, but her real purpose in life is to protect others.  So everything she does should center on that goal in life or interact with it in some way.

Fears: 

Fears can also drive a character in a scene.  What keeps your character from living as he wants to live?  What stops him from achieving his dream or getting the girl?  Many times, the answer is fear.  This is his internal roadblock and another possible motivator for a scene.  Let's look again at that "Tangled" with the scene in which Rapunzel has finally escaped from the witch's tower.  Her stated goal is to see the glowing lights that float up to the sky every year on her birthday.  Her underlying longing is to find the joy the witch denies her.  Her fear nearly overcomes her and takes her back to the tower.

What internal conflict or fear bars your character from forward momentum?  Once again, I looked at my characters.  Connor's greatest fear is obviously pain.  He has experienced a lot of pain in relationships and will do anything to avoid them.  He dates but will run at any sign of a commitment.  Women aren't scary to him.  But women who want more than the thrill of the moment are. This prevents him from really growing up since relationships are part of adulthood.  Meanwhile, Robin's fear is men.  They have hurt her repeatedly, and she fully expects every man she meets to cause pain to herself and those around her.  Both of these fears are paralyzing when it comes to forward momentum in a romance.  So what keeps your character from doing what he or she wants to do?  It could be a physical barricade like Harry Potter's buddy Ron Weasley faces in scenes with giant spiders or it could be internal like Ron faces when he discovers he's interested in Hermione but doesn't know what to do about it.  The first section of this blog post is about what drives your character forward.  Now, figure out what holds her back.

Love and Loss: 

Either  a character's goal or fear may relate to love and loss.  Most characters love or have loved someone or something.  Otherwise, how can we love them?  How does love of the present or the past play into your character's goals or fears?  In the early Disney movies, future love is the title character's primary goal.  But this isn't the case in later Disney movies.  "Someday, my Prince Will Come," a song about how a girl's dream centers on romance, has given way to "Let it Go," a song about a character who doesn't think she needs anyone.  Cinderella lives for dreams of future love while Elsa is stuck in pain and loss of the past.  How does love from either the past or present complicate either goals or fears?  Maybe the character doesn't want love, will reject any love offered.  Do goals, loss, or fear drive the character the most in this case?  It depends on the character.  Why does the character have this relationship with love?  Or maybe the character is in love with being in love like Shakespeare's Romeo.  He would love anything that steps in his path.  How does this complicate his dreams and fears?  Maybe, like Snape, your character feels he can't love again because he's already found and lost the love of his life, and that love will ever affect his interactions with others.  

As mentioned, loss can also be a powerful storytelling device for enlightening a character's soul and motivation.  Maybe there's a character who wants no one's love or sympathy.  Look at Flynn Rider in "Tangled."  In the song "I've Got a Dream," he comes out sounding worse than the criminals around him because his dream is "much less touchy-feely."  He says he wants money.  But later, in a heart to heart discussion with Rapunzel, he confesses he really wants to escape being the hurt little boy he once was.  She sees his heart, feels his fear and pain of the past, and calls him Eugene, the name that describes that hurt little boy.

Love and loss are often tied together in ways that may or may not relate to romance.  Say you're writing about a hard-bitten character who thinks he neither wants nor needs people. But yet he has a dog for which he would die.  This is still love.  This character becomes sympathetic because he loves that dog.  Then the dog is murdered, and the character goes on a vendetta against those who did it.  We understand this character because he has loved and lost.  His love is in the past, but it still drives him.  We see his heart and understand pain and anger drive his character.  Though his actions are inhuman, love and loss drive him to those actions, so he is humanized.  This is very like Spider-Man's origin.  He loved his uncle.  Because of his own carelessness, his uncle was murdered.  He will forever after be driven to protect because he failed and, therefore, lost.  His drive will always be to protect.  His fear will always be more loss if he fails.  Romances are complicated by his fear of losing again.

Your Turn:

So what drives your character?  Most likely, desires or goals [her life's purpose], complicated or enhanced by love and/or the paired emotion of hate, loss, and fear.  So what are your specific character's drives?  If the audience can feel these drives in villains and heroes, your characters start to become real to the reader.  The characters start to jump off the page and carry the reader through book after book.  Characters that lack this kind of clarity of motivation become mushy, uninteresting, confusing.  Even if you're well advanced in writing a book, make sure you know these factors that limit and define each major character.  Is there a scene wherein your character defies what defines them?  Is there a real reason for it?  If not, you may want to rethink and rewrite.  No scene should be there simply for a writer's convenience.  Everything should be there to drive the character or the story.  Since characters should drive story, if your story is getting muddled, go back to the characters.  Chances are, that's where the muddle begins.

Getting the Eyes Right

Eyes?

A critical part of my characterization is to get the eyes right.  "Eyes?" you ask.  "What, you mean color?"  No.  Physical descriptions, as I've heard repeatedly, should be minimal in the narrative.

How to Use Description

For me, eye color and the rest of the description only matters when it plays a part in how the character feels about him/herself or in how another character sees them.  Say the character's eyes are brown like a puppy dog's.  That might not matter to the character, so he/she doesn't think about it.  However, that's what draws another person to them or makes them seem trustworthy.  Then the physical description matters.  For example, Harry Potter has his mother's eyes, and most of the other characters' initial reactions are to his mother's reflection in his green eyes or his father's reflection in his face.  Professor Snape's reaction to him is clearly complicated by Harry's resemblance to both parents at once.  This is when physical description matters, when the description is meaningful to the plot, the main character, or both.  

The Connotations of Appearance

If the description is more than minimal, it's just window dressing and may be more distracting than helpful.  I have heard from experienced writers that physical description should be a brief suggestion, so the readers can fill in the rest with their imaginations.  If a woman has "hair the color of a gold coin and eyes as cold as a frozen lake," she's clearly not supposed to be lovable.  We get an image without any more than that, though it suggests more.  Another female character may have "hair as golden as a sunset and eyes the color of a shimmering pool in summer," which gives us a woman similar in appearance to the first.  However, we get a more positive response with this description.  We want to meet the second woman but not the first.  It may be interesting if both descriptions turned out to be two other character's descriptions of the same woman.  But I'll have to think about how that would fit into a story.  

The Process

Then, you ask, "What DO I mean by getting the eyes right?"  This week, I sat down to reexamine my notes and characterizations preparatory to revising my novel and realized something was missing: images that captured each character for me.  No one will see these images but me.  However, they're a critical part of my notes.  First, as I described before, I come up with the gist of my characters and their relationships to each other.  Then, I get more descriptive, using the enneagram.  Third, I sit down and find an image that captures my sense of each character.  Who is this character to me?  How does he or she look and, more importantly, feel like to me?  Look at the image above.  This child tells a story in his  eyes.  Without this image, I may just describe a dark-skinned child with almost black eyes.  However, staring into this face, into those eyes, I see a soul worth exploring.  I can begin by talking about his chocolate brown skin and eyes like a whirlpool at night, troubled and churning.  If a picture is worth 1000 words, the image of a soul is worth far more.  

Finding the Soul

I look for images that show the eyes from as close up as possible and that give the right character and emotional sense.  I may spend quite a long time looking for just the right image because that image will then inform my writing.  I may even change the eye color of the character to match the picture.  This process helps me capture the character's soul in a way I may not otherwise be able to do.  This process may seem like a waste of time to some people since no one will ever see the photo but the writer.  But it helps me get the voice right.  It is absolutely critical to my writing process.  Without it, the character may get lost in the words.  Try looking carefully into the images above.  Who can you create from these photos?  Now, go and find images that fit your characters.  

Writing Comes Alive: Voices in my Head

Old vs New: 

I have read my old writing recently, and it stayed black words on the page, clunky.  Of late, my writing has come alive.  I actually hear the voices of my characters and have to put them down.  How did this happen?  It’s probably a combination of things.  

1. Humor: 

One of those things was the discovery of the critical nature of including humor.  I will be writing a blog on this soon as a guest blogger on a friend's wall.  I can scarcely read a book or watch a movie anymore that doesn't have at least a little humor.  I loved the 90s rendition of "Mission Impossible" when I was a kid.  I recently tried to watch it but couldn't make it very far.   Why?  Because the characters were too serious.  I don't do sitcoms.  I don't want a show or a book with a built-in laugh track, necessarily.  But I also don't want to watch an unremittingly grim slugfest.  "Dark Knight Rises" illustrates exactly how hard it is for many people to enjoy that.  More on this in a later blog.  

2. Writing out loud 

 Another factor in the life in my writing was the discovery I made last week, that the writing in isolation doesn't work for me.  You can just page to the previous post for that discovery.  If I can talk through the dialogue and the narrative, if I can read it out loud and hear the voices in it that aren't mine, my writing has started to come to life.  If it sounds like me, I still have work to be done. 

3. Character Planning:

Yet another factor is the careful crafting of characters in advance.  I have to know what kind of person this character is and often have someone I know to use as an emotional model in my head.  The character has to care about something or someone, which makes me care about them.  My blog about heart of the story is here.  

4. Read what You Want to Write:

A fourth factor is reading voices in fiction that come to life.  If you read oatmeal fiction, you write oatmeal fiction.  Oatmeal fiction is the kind that is sloppy and lazy, the kind that some writers tend to write early in their careers and some tend to write when they're constantly racing the clock, where all of the characters feel like stock and little effort seems to have been put in considering and crafting each line, each word.  When the book tends to feel more like a summary than a lively tale that comes alive in your head, it's oatmeal fiction.  Sometimes cold, lumpy oatmeal fiction.  

However, there are writers whose voice is fresh and fascinating.  Harry Potter books, especially the later ones, are like this for me.  The characters leap off the pages.  I can see them, hear them, and imagine myself sitting and chatting with them for hours.  These characters were meticulously planned out and often based on someone the writer knew to help the writer get the voice right.  The power of Rowling's fiction transformed the face of children's fiction, fiction in general, movies, and the world.  

The Percy Jackson is another popular example of a series wherein the writer's voice is fresh and unique.  It's clearly in the tradition established by the Harry Potter series but does not feel derivative since it draws from Greek mythology rather than fantasy fiction.  Every chapter title reveals, amuses, and keeps one guessing.  Percy's first person voice is snarky and full of personality.  And for me, a great charm is that he has both dyslexia and ADD.  He feels unique and real because he struggles with problems many readers may understand.  If one wants to hear what a lively, intriguing voice sounds like, skip the bland movies and go right for the book.  

The third of these writers that have blown me away with their unique voice is Shannon Hale with her Ever After High: Storybook of Legends trilogy, particularly the third one.  This series follows the fairly recent fad of following the adventures of high school-aged offspring of famous fictional characters, a la Monster High, but it is so much more.  The pages are full of wit and intriguing characters. In the third book, the narrator goes insane like the rest of the world.  The daughter of the Mad Hatter takes over as an unreliable and quirky narrator.  Later, the daughter of the Cheshire Cat joins the party as a narrator so unreliable, she's willing to make events up because what's actually happening isn't interesting to her.  For an example of unique voice, I highly recommend that book.  I didn't like how the text used the device of effectively erasing the story for characters involved, but the book is well worth reading.  

These writers employ humor, research, wild imaginations, and careful planning to create something new and compelling for readers.   Their characters are fully realized with quirks, flaws, sometimes trauma, and even occasionally disabilities (a topic I blogged about here).  Hearing the narrative and character voices of writers like these in my head helps my capture my own voice.  If I read oatmeal fiction, my writing may start to feel like oatmeal.  If I read lively, quirky fiction, my writing can pick up that flavor as well.  I can forgive a lot of issues if you have the voices down.  Clear voices share clear motivation, which helps push the plot.  I want to hear from the characters and know what they are doing and why.  This is what helps characters and the entire text come alive.   

5. Becoming the Character: 

Good writing is like method acting.  One doesn't just write about a character.  One becomes the character, hears the voices in one's head, speaks and writes with that voice.  I never know what my characters are going to say until they say it on the page.   But as hear their voices in my head, I become them for that short time.  

6. Writing Truth

As I’m writing, it feels real, exciting, funny, emotionally charged to me, and I tend to get a positive response from my readers.  I can cry over my own writing or laugh with my characters.  Good writing is unexpected, well-crafted, meaningful.  I find I write my best when I'm true to my heart and to my light within, when I write what I know to be true and real encoded in fiction. I share a version of my experience or the emotional realities of those I know through my stories.  When I write truth, my stories mean something, and my writing comes alive.  I feel guided, so I know it's not just me writing.   If it's meaningful to me, it will be meaningful to others as well.   

7. Polish: 

At the end of writing, do make sure to edit well.  Get readers to help you make sure your characters and story are complete and flow well.  Just now, I started looking into the editing software Autocrit.  The reviews are positive, and it looks like it may help me liven my writing by avoiding redundancies, filler words, adverbs, etc.  Whether you use a service or not, your lively writing will be easiest to read if well edited. But I save editing for later.  If I belabor one short fragment of the text as I write before moving on, I don't go anywhere.  

Your Turn: 

For a long time, I sought a voice.  Now, I've found that voice, and it comes from inside.  It makes writing fun and interesting for me and the reader.  For those still seeking, good luck finding yours.