#WW Writer Wednesday, The Squishy Middle

If the middle of my cake is soft, I know I should have left it in the oven longer. If the clothes come out of the dryer damp around the seams, I know I pulled them out too soon. In other words, if I don’t finish my task, I have more to do. It’s easier to understand than nuclear fission.

   Life is too short to waste on mediocre anything, and I apply this mantra to my own writing. How can I expect others to overlook a half-baked center in what I serve?

   Recently I started reading a second novel in a series that attracted me with the dynamics between the main characters. Whoops! Something happened before the main conflict that changed the focus of the lady detective. She gave her dinner time with teenage kids more value than her murder investigation. I quit reading because the characters were boring. The first chapter promised intrigue that was too long in coming. I was bogged down in mundane details that felt like quicksand.

   I am willing to spend time with the thick intricate tales told by Elizabeth George when the complexity of a character is revealed slowly one layer at a time, like real neighbors. But I don’t want a minute description of activities or relationships like those I have endured in my daily routine. There is no tension. There is a reason for the popular saying, “Skip to the chase.”

   In other words, a writer risks losing readers when a cooking segment is too long and with no purpose. Or when an inclusion of a parent-teacher meeting has no vital information for the plot, or a long rant on clothing or music reads like a Wikipedia entry. The characters seem to be searching for a plot. That’s when a reader’s eyes glaze over. She does not turn the page. As a writer, I don’t want that fate for my stories.

   Some pros advise putting a conflict on every page, like a collection of scenes showing cause and effect, a string of dominoes falling one by one. I think that each scene should move a reader toward a goal, an obstacle, or the stakes.

   Literary agent Donald Maass suggests in The Fire in Fiction that the middle of a good story has an outer turning point and an inner turning point. The main character’s acceptance of the challenge and the stakes of pursuing a goal is an outer turning point. An inner goal of a major or minor character can change and become a turning point that sets up a larger conflict. An inner goal keeps the story moving on a secondary level.

   For example, in my short story “Dead Man Hanging,” a gentlemen farmer is discussing with the sheriff the possibility of a scam on his houseguest when a body is found at a hotel. In the first scene, the farmer has no intention of getting involved in law enforcement, but the circumstances yield to the great flood of 1916. The sheriff needs deputies. As the investigation proceeds, their philosophies tangle, and the farmer’s perspective changes. (This story was published in January in the anthology History and Mystery, Oh, My!)

   Screenwriter Blake Snyder gave excellent advice in Save the Cat. He insisted the turning point in the middle is preceded by fun and games. He considered this a back door to the premise of the story, a related tangent. Snyder pointed out that often the subplot carries the theme, which is a debate on the pros and cons of a particular issue. In the movie, Miss Congeniality, the premise asks and answers the question: Can a tomboy win a beauty pageant? (See the Buddhapuss Ink March 4 blog post about format by writer Selaine Henriksen.)

   I nurture the growth of my characters on the theory that their changes will influence the direction of the story. I imagine a writer making choices like Goldilocks. Too much change and the reader is lost in a flurry of hot events (like bar hopping). Too little and a reader is lost to cold boredom. We can’t please all of the readers all of the time, but we can make an effort for a happy compromise. A comfort zone is an elusive target, isn’t it!

    I try not to be engrossed in details that are superfluous, embroidering my sentences with fancy words and phrases like a literary art project. A verbal Renoir. When the heat is turned down, the center of the story becomes mushy.

   Beware! When we promise chocolate, we can’t serve mud. Yuk! How rude!

© 2015 Georgia Ruth

Georgia Ruth lives in the foothills of North Carolina. Now retired, she managed a family restaurant for ten years and worked in sales for fifteen years. Both experiences produced rich soil for her fertile imagination. Georgia is a member of Sisters in Crime and Short Mystery Fiction Society. She has stories published online for Stupefying Stories and Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, and in print, Mystery Times Ten 2013 by Buddhapuss Ink. Her story “The Mountain Top” will be published in a Sisters in Crime anthology in 2014. Her website is http://georgiaruthwrites.us

Thanks, Georgia, for a great piece! Avoid the “squishy middle,” no one wants to read something that's half-baked. We're looking forward to seeing more from you soon!

READERS: We hope you enjoyed this week's edition of our #WW Writer Wednesday Series. We will be taking a short hiatus for a few weeks. Until we return, Butt in chair, WRITE!

~ The Black Cat

Buddhapuss Ink LLC is proud to be a small, but solid house, known for great fiction and nonfiction books, that are written for readers with brains, by authors who have more than just one book in them.

#WW Writer Wednesday, Choosing the Right Format

I recently became interested in writing screenplays. I had an idea for a 'noir' novel and then read that Meryl Streep was calling for more screenplays, not just for women, but for older women. I thought my 'noir' was perfect for an older actress (two, actually). So I took a screen writing course and set myself to learning all I could about the process. While writing the screenplay, my 'noir' became a romantic comedy (par for the course for story-telling in any form!)  I've fallen in love with screen writing; it feels liberating and yet requires a concision even more than short stories do. For me, the constraints of the format actually free my imagination.

My foray into screen writing has made me consider, though, just what form is best for the kind of story you want to tell. Making movies is expensive and a lot of work. Your story might be wonderful but is it suited to the screen? Is it visual? Does the tone translate to the screen? The audience can't see into the character's heads, you can only show who they are. Maybe your character would be best written in first-person narrative in a novel. Moreover, perhaps it isn't a novel, with all that entails: a plot and characters that carry it for the length required. It may be best suited to the precision of a short story. A poem? Flash fiction?

Although I finished my screenplay, and am happy with the result, I'm still working on writing the story as a 'noir' in novel form. Same characters, similar plot, but as a 'noir' it has a very different tone and, as a novel, a different set of problems to work out. My point being there are a variety of ways and forms to tell a story and it's worth thinking about before you start.

©2015 Selaine Henriksen

NOT Selaine!

Selaine Henriksen has supported her writing habit by working many different jobs over the years from bookstore clerk to Research Technologist. Currently a Fitness Instructor and mom to two editors-in training, she lives in Ottawa, Ontario where she is a member of Capital Crime Writers. She blogs at
http://miss-selaine-ious.jesande.com reflecting an eclectic taste in reading, as well as writing, although
she is a firm believer that at the heart of every good story is a mystery. Selaine also has two self-published books at http://www.amazon.com/Selaine-Henriksen/e/B00RLWGB6C# and http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Bainer.

Thanks, Selaine, for a great piece on trying out new formats!  

READERS: We hope you enjoyed this week's edition of our #WW Writer Wednesday Series and that we'll see you again next week when our guest is Tom Irish with a new short story. Until then, "Butt in chair, WRITE!

~ The Black Cat

Buddhapuss Ink LLC is proud to be a small, but solid house, known for great fiction and nonfiction books, that are written for readers with brains, by authors who have more than just one book in them.

#WW Writer Wednesday: Get Close to your Readers through Point of View

In any story, there’s a narrator that is separate from the writer. Point of view concerns how the narrator tells the story, and this will determine how close the relationship between the narrator and reader will be. Each point of view, from first person to third to second works differently to move the reader, and through the manipulation of point of view (POV), a writer can create intimacy or add necessary distance.

FIRST PERSON POINT OF VIEW

First person POV narratives are the most intimate as the narrator, “I,” tells a story directly to the reader. We become his or her sole confidants. As a writer, it’s important to have a firm sense of who your narrator is, how he views the world, how he speaks, and why he’s compelled to tell this particular story. Is the narrator confessing a past misdeed? Trying to clarify past events for his own state of mind? How faulty is his thinking? Os he funny, confident, tongue-tied, or driven? What discoveries does he make in the telling of his story?

With first person POV, a writer can create an unforgettable character through a distinctive voice, which helps to endear the narrator to the reader. Author Dorothy Allison does this in Bastard Out of Carolina. The story is told in the informal voice of the colorful character “Bone,” who starts sentences with clauses, conjunctions and declaratives, as if speaking in real time, gossiping with us at the kitchen table. We quickly realize Bone knows terrible secrets about her unconventional family, and there’s no doubt she’s going to tell us everything. We enjoy being her chosen audience.

In Roddy Doyle’s novel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, the narrator is an abused wife who works as a housecleaner. In this excerpt, she both admits and denies her alcoholism:

Years ago, I had to drown the alcohol with coke or blackcurrant. Now I prefer orange juice, but I’ll drink anything. I don’t know when I started being like that. I don’t know when I became an alco [sic]. My children have gone without food because of my drinking. My children have suffered because of my drinking. But I have it under control. I’ve been taking back some of the day. I don’t drink now until after Jack has gone to bed. . .  Sometimes I put him to bed a bit early.

Such a candid confession creates empathy, all the more profound because readers can clearly see what she cannot. Some of the most fascinating stories are those in which the narrator does not seem to be aware of their own distortion of the events.

Multiple first person points of view, when the writer alternates two or more first person narrators, can also be used. Romance novels are commonly written this way. Readers form an alliance with the narrator they most identify with, yet feel sympathetic toward the other narrator(s) because they are privy to their private thoughts, too. That said, having two narrators may not be as intimate as one if readers find themselves torn between differing viewpoints. Not everyone likes being forced to form alliances.

Conversely, this can work to a writer’s advantage by provoking sympathy for multiple characters and entrenching the reader in their dilemmas. It’s like being at a family dinner where everyone you love is arguing, and you don’t want to take sides. This happens in Joanna Briscoe’s Sleep With Me, a novel about a love triangle narrated in alternating chapters in first person points of view by a husband and his pregnant wife, who unwittingly have an affair with the same woman!

THIRD PERSON POINT OF VIEW

Third person is one step removed from first POV since an invisible narrator is telling a story about a “he” or “she.” Third person limited POV (where we see the world only through a particular character’s eyes) can be as intimate as first person, but there are subtle differences that make it well-suited for certain characters.

A good example is Belly, by Lisa Selin Davis. Belly is an argumentative, belligerent ex-convict at odds with his adult children. The reader needs distance from this prickly character. Although Davis makes use of Belly’s caustic voice when we see events through his eyes, his inner monologue is still separate from the narrative. This allows us to be observers, yet brings us just close enough to empathize. In this scene, Belly openly grieves, but he is so out of touch with his emotions that he doesn’t have the tools or words to express them:

He turned and looked at his youngest [adult] child, her pale stringy hair and her pale eyes, everything about her light against the darkening sky and he felt something strange, some foreign object clogging his throat, I’m giving birth to an egg out my mouth, he thought, and then he coughed and made a sound and he thought, What is happening to me, what is this? And Eliza put her skinny little arms around him and said, “It’s okay, it’s okay Daddy,” and he still didn’t know, he could not see out his left eye and he let his head hang down on her bony shoulder and he shook and her shoulder was wet. It was all over in a minute.

As you can see, third person POV permits a writer to make use of descriptions, metaphors and language that the character himself wouldn’t use. In this way, third person opens up possibilities to do more with the writing. An objective narrator can also reveal things about flawed or shady characters that would be less than honest with the reader.

Third person works well with multiple points of view, too. We are observers who learn the motives and thoughts of various characters in a story. A sense of intimacy with the reader can be gained by using limited POV, when the narrator zooms in to get the inner thoughts of a particular character. Chapter or section breaks help cue the reader as to whose inner thoughts we are privy to.

Another type of third person narrative is omniscient, where the narrator knows everything and everyone’s thoughts. This type of narrative is the most distancing, but well suited for novels where setting and history are as important as the characters.

SECOND PERSON POINT OF VIEW

The second person pronoun “you” can be used several different ways, and this POV can create a surprisingly intimate bond between the narrator and reader. “You” turns reading about something into experiencing it.

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerny, begins: “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. . . ”

Obviously, the “you” in this novel does not refer to the reader. Here, the self has split, creating a “you” in an inner dialog. The narrator is speaking to the self in denial. Although we understand the narrator is not us, his inner dialog becomes internalized through use of the word “you.” We are drawn into the mind of this conflicted narrator as he avoids dealing with reality through escapism. I won’t give the plot away, but when the reason for his distress is revealed, his self-discovery becomes, in essence, our discovery, too, and it packs an emotional punch. The same story told in first or third person POV wouldn’t have the same impact.

Second person POV can be used in an instructional narrative, as in Bonnie Jo Campbell’s short story “The Solutions to Brian’s Problem” from American Salvage. The narrator, Brian, brainstorms how to deal with his wife, who is a meth addict and the mother of their baby. The narrative is gut-wrenching because we cannot help but imagine ourselves in his shoes as he lists any and all possible ideas.

Solution #1

Connie said she was going out to the store to buy formula and diapers. While she’s gone, load up the truck with the surround-sound home entertainment system and your excellent collection of power tools, put the baby boy in the car seat and drive away from this house you built with your own hands. Expect that after you leave, she will break all the windows in this living room, including the big picture window and the big mirror over the fireplace, which you’ve already replaced twice. The furnace will run and run. Then she will go to your mother’s looking for you, and when she doesn’t not find you, she will curse at your mother and possibly attempt to burn your mother’s house down. . .

Solution #2

Wait till Connie comes back home from the “store,” distract her with the baby, and then cut her meth with Drano, so that when she shoots it up she dies.

By the time Brian arrives at the seventh and most plausible solution, we are right there with him, feeling his inner conflict and pain as if it were ours.

Another way of using second person is when a first person POV narrator, “I,” addresses a specific character, "you,” throughout the story. John Ames, an elderly minister, dying of a bad heart, is the first person narrator in GILEAD, by Marilynne Robinson. Ames is writing an account of his life for his six-year-old son to read when he’s an adult. Gilead is an epistolary but written as informal conversational, so it reads like a second person address. Here, Ames refers to a playful moment with his boy that turns somber:  

And then I pretended I had a bee buzzing around in my mouth, and you said, ‘No you don’t, there wasn’t any bee!’ and I grabbed you around the shoulders and blew into your ear and you jumped up as though you thought maybe there was a bee after all, and you laughed, and then you got serious and you said, ‘I want you to do this.’ And then you put your hand on my cheek and touched the flower to my lips, so gently and carefully, and said, ‘Now sip.’ You said, ‘You have to take your medicine.’   

The second person address creates a contradictory reaction in the reader: we feel the narrator is personally addressing us, while, at the same time, we acknowledge the “you” as a specific character in the story. Our emotional response deepens because we cannot help being called into the father-son relationship. We feel the love, tenderness and sorrow firsthand, as if we were Ames’ son.

If this novel were a typical first-person narrative, it wouldn’t have the strength that it does to move readers. It would be simply a sad sermon delivered by a devout man on his deathbed. Instead, we’re able to step into a loving and affectionate relationship through the virtue of the second-person pronoun “you.”

Whichever POV you feel most comfortable with, don’t be afraid to explore different narratives in view of your characters, their motivations, and the story they are telling. How intimate do you want your readers to be with your narrator? Does intimacy serve the story? The subtle and complex layers of POV are worth studying so that your work receives the desired response from your readers. What a story is about cannot be separated from who is telling it, and how.

In addition to the books mentioned above, a solid resource for writers is Points Of View: An Anthology Of Short Stories, edited by James Moffett and Kenneth R. McElheny. The anthology contains stories by Steinbeck, Capote, Updike, Dostoevsky, Poe, and more, and gives an excellent account of the many variations of fictional techniques concerning point of view.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a published poet and writer with a chapbook award and an MFA in fiction. She wrote her forthcoming novel, In The Context Of Love, (July 2015, Buddhapuss Ink) in a first person POV second person address, where the narrator talks to her lost love throughout the story.

Thanks, Linda, for a very clear and intriguing explanation of POV and the important role it plays in every story!

READERS: We hope you enjoyed this week's edition of our #WW Writer Wednesday Series 

~ The Black Cat

Buddhapuss Ink LLC is proud to be a small, but solid house known for great fiction and nonfiction books, written for readers with brains by authors who have more than just one book in them.