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.