Category Archives: writing

January 27, 2025 · 6:00 am

Action and consequences #writing

The word of the day is consequence.

It’s a large word with many meanings and usages, but the one we’re concerned with today is its synonym, repercussion. Frankly, a story of actions without consequences is not much of a story.

Every choice our characters make should have repercussions, changing their lives for good or bad.

Once again, we will go to J.R.R. Tolkien and look at Bilbo’s choices and his path to becoming the eccentric eleventy-one-year-old hobbit who vanishes, literally, leaving everything he owned to his cousin, Frodo.

At the outset, Gandalf does the unforgivable. He scratches symbols into Bilbo’s pristine front door. To ruin a beautiful door like that? The fiend!

Worse, those symbols invite himself and twelve rough-looking strangers to be overnight guests in Bilbo’s home—and Bilbo is unaware of all this until the first guests appear at his door, expecting to be fed.

I don’t know about you, but I would be hard-pressed to scrape together the food to feed thirteen guests without a little advance notice.

In the morning, after the unexpected (and unwanted) guests leave him to his empty larder, he has two choices, to stay in the safety of Bag End, or hare off on a journey into the unknown. Bilbo chooses to run after the dwarves, and this is where the real story begins.

The Hobbit or There and Back Again is the story of how an honest and respectable middle-aged hobbit became a burglar. In the process, he became a hero who was forever changed by his experiences.

The consequences of his decision will alter his view of life forever afterward. Where he was once a staid country squire, having inherited a comfortable income and existence, Bilbo is now expected to steal an important treasure from a dragon.

At the outset, the role of burglar doesn’t seem real. He is beset by problems, one of which is his general unfitness for the task. He’s always been well-fed, never had to exert himself much, and no one cares about his opinions. For someone who is used to being an important voice in the community, that disregard is painful.

Bilbo’s hidden sense of adventure emerges early when the company encounters a group of trolls. He is posing as a thief, so he is ordered to investigate a strange fire in the forest. Reluctantly, he agrees. Upon reaching the blaze, he observes that it is a cookfire for a group of trolls.

Bilbo has reached a fork in the path of life and must make a choice. He’s not stupid, and the smart thing would be to turn around at that point and warn the dwarves.

However, his ego feels the need to do something to prove his worth. “He was very much alarmed as well as disgusted; he wished himself a hundred miles away—yet somehow he could not go straight back to Thorin and Company empty-handed.” [1] Bilbo feels the need to impress the Dwarves, which drives him to make decisions he comes to regret.

In the process of nearly getting everyone eaten and having to be rescued by Gandalf, he discovers several historically important weapons. One of them is Sting, a blade that fits Bilbo perfectly as a sword. Gandalf and the dwarf Thorin also find their respective swords, Glamdring and Orcrist.

Bilbo’s blade does not acquire its name until later in the adventure, when Bilbo becomes lost in the forest of Mirkwood. He uses it to kill a giant spider, rescuing the Dwarves. These actions gain him some esteem from a few of the dwarves, the ones who aren’t as arrogant as Thorin.

Although Bilbo’s weapon is only a dagger for a human or dwarf, it is the perfect sword for a warrior the size of our hobbit. It turns out that, like the swords of Gandalf and Thorin, this dagger was forged by the elves of Gondolin in the First Age and possesses a magical property—it shines with a blue glow when orcs are close.

As the journey progresses, Bilbo develops a clearer perspective of his companions, caring about them despite their flaws. With each event, he becomes more introspective and aware, and his courageous side begins to emerge.

All along the way, every decision forces an action, which has consequences that force his character arc to grow. His experiences reshape him physically and emotionally. Bilbo no longer thinks like the naïve, slightly prejudiced member of the sedentary gentry that he was at the outset.

As the Dwarves continue to get into trouble, Bilbo makes plans for their rescue, and does so successfully, receiving only grudging gratitude from Thorin.

Bilbo is now a warrior, strong and capable of defending his friends from whatever they have dropped themselves into. However, if you asked him, he would say he was just an ordinary person.

Action and its consequences force our characters to grow emotionally. It changes their worldview. Sometimes the decisions our characters make as we are writing them surprise us. But if those decisions make the story too easy, they should be discarded.

We, as their creator, must take over, cut or rewrite those scenes, and force the story back on track.

After all, consequences make the story interesting.

Credits and Attributions:

[1] Quote from The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by J.R.R. Tolkien, published 1937 by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.

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January 24, 2025 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Winter Scene in New Haven, Connecticut, by George Henry Durrie

I frequently find myself perusing the vaults at Wikimedia Commons, looking for clues about how people lived in times past. Winter Scene in New Haven, Connecticut, by George Henry Durrie is an intriguing window into the winter of 1858, a surprisingly intimate view of life in America just before the Civil War. I first posted this image in December of 2017, and it remains one of my favorite paintings, for a number of reasons.

Durrie had a modest reputation during his lifetime, an indie struggling unsuccessfully to market his works. After his death, the American printmaking firm, Currier and Ives, ensured his works were kept in the public eye.

The grandeur of the sky is reminiscent of Constable’s work, and the painting, overall, is both bold and comforting. Under a large sky, we find a small farm. It’s a simple pastoral scene, a moment painted during a winter long passed into memory. It’s pleasant, almost boring scene in its common hominess. When you look at the larger picture, you may ask, “How is this intimate? The landscape and the sky provide the drama, while the people are completely overshadowed by the scenery.”

But there is another, deeper story, one that is overshadowed by the majestic landscape and threatening winter skies, and Durrie included these people for a reason.

In Connecticut in 1858 things were not as simple and bucolic as the wide view of this image portrays.

Quote from Matthew Warshauer in his article for Connecticut History:

The state descended into chaos at the start of the war, splitting into warring Republican and Democratic factions that sometimes faced off violently.  Before the Southern states even seceded, the two parties faced off in the 1860 gubernatorial election, a contest that would decide the level of the state’s involvement once the war began.

Artists, then and now, frequently deal in allegory and misdirection. Then, as now, they were pressured to portray an acceptable vision of life as it should be. They had to sell their work to live, so they did do that, but they still painted what they saw, inserting the truth into each painting. The story that Durrie hid within this painting can be found by examining the painting in detail. I have enlarged the important section for you.

A sled, drawn by a single horse and driven by a woman, has pulled up beside the gate. A man has emerged and is talking to her. In the doorway of the farmhouse, a woman and girl stand, watching the scene at the gate.

We can imagine that some drama exists in their relationships, beginning with the way the man is standing there, not inviting the woman in. She obviously doesn’t expect to be invited in by him but has come anyway.

The man speaks to the traveler, but his gaze is not focused on the woman who has traveled through the snow, bringing a large sack filled with… what? Presents? Food-gifts? Instead, he looks away, focusing on the fencepost. Is the visitor an unwelcome mother-in-law, or is she, perhaps, a travelling merchant and he is negotiating with her?

Did she purchase something? Perhaps they’re merely chatting and he just happens to be looking away.

The sky can be a clue to the deeper story, too. Dark clouds take up fully half of the scene, dwarfing the homestead. Storms threaten the peace and prosperity of this farm, and barren trees flourish. It’s 1858 and the country is divided politically and ideologically, and the threat of a civil war looms.

The final subliminal clue is in the title: Winter Scene in New Haven, Connecticut. The artist names the picture after the larger community, a town that doesn’t appear at all in the painting, instead of offering the farm’s name. Thus, the scene. the approaching storm threatening the peaceful farm, is an allegory depicting the mood of the larger community.

Does this small detail hidden in the larger picture depict a travelling merchant, a customer, or a disliked mother-in-law bringing gifts despite her son-in-law’s aversion? Or is there something deeper here? Nothing breaks up families or divides communities as surely as strongly held opposing opinions, and we were deeply divided in those turbulent times.

The story is there, and the world in which it is set is all prepared for you. George Henry Durrie painted it, and if you are looking for a deep story that echoes our modern political state of affairs, here it is.

Or, it could simply be a passing stranger, asking for directions on a winter’s day.

When you examine the art of the past closely and look for allegories, you may find a large story hidden within the the image.  It’s up to you to interpret it and then write it.

Credits and Attributions:

Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:George Henry Durrie – Winter Scene in New Haven, Connecticut – Google Art Project.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:George_Henry_Durrie_-_Winter_Scene_in_New_Haven,_Connecticut_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg&oldid=761233247 (accessed January 23, 2025).

The Complicated Realities of Connecticut and the Civil War, by Matthew Warshauer, Ph.D., Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University. Copyright © Connecticut Humanities. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 License (accessed January 23, 2025).

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January 20, 2025 · 6:00 am

Making Effective Revisions part 2: crutch words, style, and voice #writing

Our stories are an unconscious reflection of what we wish our favorite authors would write. But what is it that attracts us to their writing?

We love their style, their voice.

Some authors are forceful in their style and throw you into the action. They have an in-your-face, hard-hitting approach that comes on strong and doesn’t let up until the end.

Others are more leisurely, casually inserting small hooks that keep you reading.

What are voice and style?

  1. The habitual choice of words shapes the tone of our writing.
  2. The chronic use and misuse of grammar and punctuation shapes the pacing of our sentences.
  3. Our deeply held beliefs and attitudes emerge and shape character arcs and plot arcs.

We develop our own voice and style when we write every day or at least as often as possible. We subconsciously incorporate our speech patterns, values, and fears into our work, and those elements of our personality form the voice that is ours and no one else’s.

The words we habitually choose are a part of our fingerprint. First drafts are rife with crutch words. This is because, in the rush of laying down the story, we tend to fall back on certain words and ignore their synonyms. A good online thesaurus is a necessary resource.

I prefer to keep my research in hardcopy form, rather than digital. I have mentioned this before, but The Oxford Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms is a handy tool when I am stuck for alternate ways to say something.

And it makes the perfect place to rest my teacup.

We all have words that we choose above others because they say precisely what we mean. I think of my fallback words as a code. At this point in my career, I know what those words are and when I am making revisions, I make a global search for them and insert alternatives that show my idea more vividly.

Looking at each example of a code word and their synonyms gives me a different understanding of what I am trying to say. It gives me the opportunity to change them to a more powerful form, which conveys a stronger image and improves the narrative. (I hope.)

Saying more with fewer words forces us to think on an abstract level. In poetry we have to choose our words based on the emotions they evoke, and the way they portray the environment around us. This is why I gravitate to narratives written by authors who are also poets—the creative use of words elevates what could be mundane to a higher level of expression, and when it’s done well, the reader doesn’t consciously notice the prose, but they are moved by it.

What are some words that convey powerful imagery, some that heighten tension when included in the prose?

  • Lunatic
  • Lurking
  • Massacre
  • Meltdown
  • Menacing
  • Mired
  • Mistake
  • Murder
  • Nightmare
  • Painful
  • Pale
  • Panic
  • Peril
  • Slaughter
  • Slave
  • Strangle
  • Stupid
  • Suicide
  • Tailspin
  • Tank
  • Targeted
  • Teetering

And those are just the beginning.

Our word choices are a good indication of how advanced we are in the craft of writing. For instance, in online writing forums, we are told to limit the number of modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) we might habitually use.

We are like everyone else. Our work is as dear to us as a child, and we can be just as touchy as a proud parent when it is criticized. We should respect the opinions of others, but we have the choice to ignore those suggestions if they don’t work for us.

Our voice comes across when we write from the heart. We gain knowledge and skill when we study self-help books, but we must write what we are passionate about. So, the rule should be to use modifiers, descriptors, or quantifiers when they’re needed.

How we use them is part of our style. Modifiers change, clarify, qualify, or sometimes limit a particular word in a sentence to add emphasis, explanation, or detail. We also use them as conjunctions to connect thoughts: “otherwise,” “then,” and “besides.”

Descriptors are adverbs and adjectives that often end in “ly.” They are helper nouns or verbs, words that help describe other words. Some descriptors are necessary but they are easy to overuse.

Do a global search for the letters “ly.” A list will pop up in the left margin and the manuscript will become a mass of yellow highlighted words.

I admit it takes time and patience to look at each instance to see how they fit into that context. If, after looking at the thesaurus, I discover that the problem descriptor is the only word that works, I will have to make a choice: rewrite the passage, delete it, or leave it.

Quantifiers are abstract nouns or noun phrases that can weaken prose. They convey a vague impression or a nebulous quantity, such as: very, a great deal of, a good deal of, a lot, many, much, and rather. Quantifiers have a bad reputation because they can quickly become habitual, such as the word very.

We don’t want our narrative to feel vague, nebulous, or abstract.

  • In some instances, we might want to move the reader’s view of a scene or situation out, a “zoom out” so to speak. The brief use of passive phrasing will do that. I saw the gazelles leaping and running ahead of the grassfire, hoping to outrun it. They failed.

I saw is a telling phrase, slightly removing the speaker from the trauma.

Limiting descriptors and quantifiers to conversations makes a stronger narrative. We use these phrases and words in real life, so our characters’ conversations will sound natural. The fact we use them in our conversation is why they fall into our first drafts.

Our narrative voice comes across in our choice of hard or soft words and where we habitually position verbs in a sentence. It is a recognizable fingerprint.

Many times, I read something, and despite how well it is constructed and written, it doesn’t ring my bells. This is because I’m not attracted to the author’s style or voice.

That doesn’t mean the work is awful. It only means I wasn’t the reader it was written for.

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January 13, 2025 · 6:00 am

Making Effective Revisions: Power Words part one #writing

The events we imagine as we begin to write a story have the power to move us because we see each scene fully formed in our minds. We are under the illusion that what we have written conveys to a reader the same power that moved us. Once we’ve written “the end” it requires no further effort, right?

I don’t know about your work, but usually, at that stage my manuscript reads like it was written by one-hundred monkeys at a writers’ workshop.  

The trick is to understand that, while the first draft has passages that shine, most of what we have written is still in the proto-stage. It contains the seeds of what we believe we have written.

Like Michaelangelo sculpting David, we must work to shave away the detritus and reveal the truth of the narrative.

One way we do this is by injecting subtly descriptive prose into our narrative. Properly deployed, power words can serve as modifiers and descriptors, yet don’t tell the reader what to feel.

Think of these commonly reviled words like falling leaves in autumn. A sentence made of a noun and a verb weighs nothing, feels like nothing: She runs.

Put those leaves in a pile, add a day or two of October rain, and they have weight. She runs through the leaves.

Our words gain weight when we incorporate descriptors into the narrative. If we are careful, our modifiers and descriptors add to the prose, coming together to convey a sense of depth.

And yes, modifiers and descriptors are also known as adjectives and adverbs.

Modifiers are like any other medicine: a small dose can cure illnesses. A large dose will kill the patient. The best use of them is to find words that convey the most information with the most force.

Let’s consider a story where we want to convey a sense of danger, without saying “it was dangerous.” What we must do is find words that shade the atmosphere toward fear.

Power words can be found beginning with every letter of the alphabet, but words that begin with consonants convey strength. What are some “B” words that convey a hint of danger, but aren’t “telling” words?

  • Backlash
  • Blinded
  • Blood
  • Blunder

When you incorporate any of the above “B” words into your prose, you are posting a road sign for the reader, a notice that “ahead lies danger.” Mingle them with other power words, and you have an air of danger.

As authors, it is our job to convey a picture of events.

But words sometimes fail us. I look at each instance of a modifier and see how it fits into that context. If a word or phrase weakens the narrative, I rewrite the sentence. I either change it to a more straightforward form or remove it. For example, bare is an adjective, as is its sibling, barely. Both can be used to form a strong image depending on context.

Revising your manuscript seems like an overwhelming task, but it isn’t. The best resource you can have in your personal library is a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms. Your word processing program may offer you some synonyms when you right-click on a word to open the thesaurus.

For most genre work, I suggest you don’t use “highfalutin” words or use acronyms and technical jargon.

But don’t dumb it down. Readers like it when you assume they are intelligent and aren’t afraid to use a variety of words. Yes, sometimes one must use technical terms, but I appreciate authors who assume the reader is new to the terminology and offer us a meaning.

The book of synonyms and antonyms is full of words we’re familiar with and which we often forget are available for our use when we want to convey an overall mood.

Let’s look at the emotion of discontent and how we can shape the overall mood of a scene and reinforce a character’s growing dissatisfaction without saying “they were discontented.”. The following words can serve as descriptors. If you are sparing about adding suffixes [ly or ing], they’re not fluffy. But you must work harder to compose showing sentences when you avoid mushy suffixes.

  • Aggression [noun] aggressive [adjective]
  • Awkward [adjective]
  • Disgust [verb or noun, depending on context]
  • Denigrate [verb}
  • Disparage [verb]

How we incorporate words into our prose is up to each of us. We all sound different when we speak aloud even when we speak the same language and the same dialect. The same is true for our writing voice.

We can tell the story using any mode or narrative tense we choose but the opening lines on page one must hook the reader, must hint at what they are in for if they stick with the story.

I meant to run away today.

If that were the opening line of a short story or novel, I would continue reading. Two words, run away, hit hard in this context, feel a little surprising as an opener. The protagonist is the narrator and is speaking directly to us, which is a bold choice. Right away, you hope you are in for something out of the ordinary.

That single sentence comprised of five words indicates intention, implies a situation that is unbearable, and offers us a hint of the personality of the narrator.

Some lines from a different type of story, one told from a third person point of view:

The battered chair creaked as Angus sat back. “So, what’s your plan then? Are we going to walk up to his front door and say, ‘Hello. We’re here to kill you’?”

This is a conversation, but it shows intention, environment, and personality in thirty-one words. Battered is a power word and so is creaked.

And here is one final scene, one told from a close third person point of view and uses a form of free indirect speech. This is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech; it is also referred to as free indirect discourse, or free indirect style. The paragraph ends a scene, showing yet another way to incorporate world building along with subtle power words into the prose:

Sara saw the vine-covered ruins of Marlow as an allegory of herself. The core of her, the essence of her that was Josh had been burned away. She’d been destroyed but was coming back to life in ways she’d never foreseen.

The power words are ruins, burned away, destroyed.

When we are consumed with just getting the story down, we often lean too heavily on one word that says what we mean. This is hard for us to spot in our own work, but a friend of mine uses word clouds to show her crutch words.

When we turn a document into a word cloud, the words we use most frequently show up as the largest. Word clouds are a great way to discover where we need to consult the thesaurus and expand our word choices. Free Word Cloud Generator.

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January 10, 2025 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime by Leon Zanella

Title: La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime

Artist: Leon Zanella

Date: 2018

What I love about this painting:

La Rochelle is a city on the west coast of France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department, a département in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region on the southwestern coast of France.

Leon Zanella has captured the calm water of the ancient harbor on sunny day. Sailboats and motorboats are anchored there, floating serenely beneath the sky of many shades of blue. The bright colors of the modern boats and the soft, fluid motion of the waters are contrasted against the solid stone of the medieval architecture of the ancient town.

I love the simplicity of this scene, as well as the rich colors of the sea and sky.

About the artist:

Leon Zanella (1956 — present) was born in Marseille, France. He lives and works in the medieval town of Vaison La Romaine  a town in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region in southeastern France.

Zanella is deeply connected to his town and the surrounding countryside, which is featured in most of his work.

His work is straightforward and powerful, a clear depiction of each scene. The use of intense color celebrates the landscapes of his area of Provence. His style is bold and some have said it is reminiscent of the fauvist movement. And yet it is a unique interpretation of how he sees the world.

You can find his work at his website or view them in person at ARTE MUSEUM LAS VEGAS.

Credits and Attributions:

Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:17-CHARENTE MARITIME-La Rochelle-20F-2018.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:17-CHARENTE_MARITIME-La_Rochelle-20F-2018.jpg&oldid=744455658 (accessed January 10, 2025).

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January 6, 2025 · 6:00 am

Motivating our Heroes and Villains #writing

 

WritingCraftSeries_character-arc

In any narrative, the shadow provides opportunities for the plot. Whether it is a person, a creature, or a natural disaster, the antagonist represents darkness (evil), against which light (good) is shown more clearly.

Best of all, the shadow, whether a person, place, or thing, provides the roadblocks, the cause to hang a plot on.

When the antagonist is a person, I ask myself, what drives them to create the roadblocks they do? Why do they feel justified in doing so?

If you are writing a memoir, who or what is the antagonist? Memoirs are written to shed light on the difficulties the author has overcome, so who or what frustrated your efforts? (Hint: for some autobiographies, it is a parent or guardian. Other times it is society, the standards and values we impose on those who don’t fit into the slots designated for them.)

In a character-driven novel, there may be two enemies, one of which is the protagonist’s inhibitions and self-doubt.

 

Many times, two main characters have a sharply defined good versus evil chemistry—like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. (Trust me, the antagonist is a main character, or the hero has nothing to struggle against.)

The characters on both sides of the battle must recognize and confront the darkness within themselves. They must choose their own path—will they fight to uphold the light? Or will they turn toward the shadow?

When the protagonist must face and overcome the shadow on a profoundly personal level, they are placed in true danger. The reader knows that if the hero strays from the light, they will become the enemy’s tool.

The best shadow characters have many layers, and not all of them are bad. They are charismatic because we can relate to their struggle. We might hope events will change them for the better but know in our hearts they won’t.

Antagonists must be fleshed out. Characters portrayed as evil for the sake of drama can be cartoonish. Their actions must be rational, or the reader won’t be able to suspend their disbelief.

The most fearsome villains have deep stories. Yes, they may have begun life as unpleasant children and may even be sociopaths. Something started them down that path, reinforcing their logic and reasoning.

When the plot centers around the pursuit of a desired object, authors will spend enormous amounts of time working on the hero’s reasons for the quest. They know there must be a serious need driving their struggle to acquire the Golden McGuffin.

Where we sometimes fail is in how we depict the enemy. The villain’s actions must also be plausible. There must be a kind of logic, twisted though it may be, for going to the lengths they do to thwart our heroes.

A mere desire for power is NOT a good or logical reason unless it has roots in the enemy’s past. Why does Voldemort desire that power? What fundamental void drives them to demand absolute control over every aspect of their life and to exert control over the lives of their minions?

The characters in our stories don’t go through their events and trials alone. Authors drag the reader along for the ride the moment they begin writing the story. So, readers want to know why they’ve been put in that handbasket, and they want to know where the enemy believes they’re going. Otherwise, the narrative makes no sense and we lose the reader.

Most of us know what motivates our protagonist. But our antagonist is frequently a mystery, and the place where the two characters’ desires converge is a muddle. We know the what, but the why eludes us.

This can make the antagonist less important to the plot than the protagonist. When we lose track of the antagonist, we are on the road to the dreaded “mushy middle,” the place where the characters wander around aimlessly until an event happens out of nowhere.

The reader must grasp the reasoning behind the enemy’s actions, or they won’t be able to suspend their disbelief.

Ask yourself a few questions:

  • What is their void? What made our antagonist turn to the darkness?
  • What events gave our antagonist the strength and courage to rise above the past, twisted though they are?
  • What desire drives our antagonist’s agenda?
  • What does our antagonist hope to achieve?
  • Why does our antagonist believe achieving their goal will resolve the wrongs they’ve suffered?

None of this backstory needs to be dumped into the narrative. It should be written out and saved as a separate document and brought out when it is needed. The past must emerge in tantalizing bits and hints as the plot progresses and conversations happen.

The hero’s ultimate victory must evoke emotion in the reader. We want them to think about the dilemmas and roadblocks that all the characters have faced, and we want them to wish the story hadn’t ended.

The villains we write into our stories represent humanity’s darker side, whether they are a person, a dangerous animal, or a natural disaster. They bring ethical and moral quandaries to the story, offering food for thought long after the story has ended.

Ideas slip away unless I get them on paper first, so I create a separate document that is for my use only, and I label it appropriately:

BookTitle_Plot_CoreConflict.docx

CharacterVoidVerbNoun01052025LIRF

It’s a synopsis of the conflict boiled down to a few paragraphs. Whenever I find myself wondering what the hell we’re supposed to be doing, I refer back to it.

In my current unfinished work-in-progress, Character A, my protagonist, represents teamwork succeeding over great odds. Character B, my villain, represents the quest for supremacy at all costs.

  • Each must see themselves as the hero.
  • Each must risk everything to succeed.
  • Each must believe or hope that they will ultimately win.

When I create a personnel file for my characters, I assign them verbs, nouns, and adjectives that best show the traits they embody. Verbs are action words that show a character’s gut reactions. Nouns describe personalities best when they are combined with strong verbs.

They must also have a void – an emotional emptiness, a wound of some sort. In my current WIP, Character B fell victim to a mage-trap. He knows he has lost something important, something that was central to him. But he refuses to believe he is under a spell of compelling, a pawn in the Gods’ Great Game. He must believe he has agency—this is his void.

This void is vital because characters must overcome fear to face it. As a reader, one characteristic I’ve noticed in my favorite characters is they each have a hint of self-deception. All the characters – the antagonists and the protagonists – deceive themselves in some way about their own motives.

My task is to ensure that the stories of Characters A and B intersect seamlessly. Motivations must be clearly defined so the reader knows what their moral boundaries are. I like to know their limits because even cartoon supervillains draw the line somewhere.

For me, plots tend to evolve once I begin picturing the characters’ growth arcs. How do I see them at the beginning? How do I see them at the end?

As I write the narrative, they will evolve and change the course of what I thought the original plot was. Sometimes it will change radically. But at some point, the plot must settle into its final form.

I love a novel with a plot arc that explores the protagonist’s struggle against a fully developed, believable adversary, one we almost regret having to defeat.

If you are currently working on a manuscript that feels stuck, I hope this discussion helps you in some way. Good luck and happy writing!

Plot-exists-to-reveal-character

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December 30, 2024 · 6:00 am

The business side of the business: a secondlook at budgeting for in-person sales events #writing

January is approaching, and this is a good time to consider the business side of writing. Looking forward in the year ahead, some things must be budgeted and planned ahead for. This post, which first appeared here in June, covers some but not all of them. If you are doing in-person sales events, it’s a good idea to go to your city and state licensing agencies to be sure you are operating within the law.

If you have already seen this post, feel free to move on, and I sincerely thank you for stopping by! Otherwise, without further ado, here is the Business Side of the Business.

Regardless of your publishing path, indie or traditional, you must budget for certain things. You can’t expect your royalties to pay for them early in your career. And just so you know, many award-winning authors must still work their day jobs to pay their bills long after becoming bestsellers.

Its a BusinessNowadays, I am rarely able to do in-person events due to family constraints, but I used to do four events a year. However, I have some tips to help ease the path for you.

At first, getting your books in front of readers is a challenge. The in-person sales event is one way to get eyes on your books. This could be at a venue as small as a local bookstore allowing you to set up a table on their premises.

Or it could be as large as a table at a regional conference or convention. Regardless, if you are traditionally published, your publisher won’t provide you with free copies of your book to sell at the signing event. You will pay for them at a reduced cost. If not up front, then you will pay out of any future royalties. You will also have to be your own publicist and getting the word out about your event will be your responsibility. On the good side, you will keep the monies earned by your in-person sales.

Signings at writers’ conferences are usually a bit pricy for the number of books you might sell, but they are great ways to network.

What are the minimum costs for working a table at a signing event? The bare minimum expenses are as follows:

  1. You must have a stock of books on hand. You can’t sell books that you haven’t ordered. I order well in advance, as it can take three weeks for an order to arrive via the least expensive shipping method. Paying for overnight shipping of fifteen to twenty books is well out of my price range.
  2. We must consider the table fee. A bookstore might not charge you anything for the table, but they may take a small cut if they run your sales through their cash registers.

However, large conferences and conventions will charge table fees ranging from $70.00 to as high as $300.00 or more. This varies with the size and type of conference, the venue where the convention is being held, and the vendors you will be competing with.

Sci-fi and Fantasy fan conventions can be quite pricy. You will be in an immense, crowded room, competing with big-name RPG game franchises and movie franchises, plus all the vendors of memorabilia and collectibles that are available in the vendors’ alley.

  1. If you are able to get a table at a major fan convention, you must pay for transportation, food, and lodging. These costs could be gas, parking, airfare, hotel, etc., if you don’t have friends or family in that area. If you are planning to stay in a hotel, take simple foods that can be prepared without a stove. Being vegan, I tend to be an accomplished hotel-room chef, as most coffee bars don’t offer many plant-based options. While that bias is changing, I still go prepared.
  2. Bring at least one pen for signing your books. I bring four or five because sometimes the pens don’t work as advertised.
  3. cashbox 3The final thing you will need is a way of accepting money. I have a metal cash box, but you only need something to hold cash and some bills to make change with. A way to accept credit cards, something like Square, is a good option. You will find a lot of vendors use Square, but there are other options out there.

These things are the bare minimum you will need to provide. At many shows, you’ll be given a table with skirting and a sign attached to the front with your name in block letters. You can get by with this if you’re on a tight budget. New vendors manage with this minimal setup all the time. This option lets you squeak by on little more than the cost of your books. Your setup and teardown time will be short, and you’ll have little to transport—always a positive, in my opinion.

My good friend, Lee French, is a best-selling YA author and a pro at successfully working conventions. She co-wrote the book Working the Table: An Indie Author’s Guide to Conventions with the late Jeffrey Cook. She tells us that to really succeed, you’ll need to invest a bit more.

It helps to have some kind of promotional handout. I find bookmarks and business cards are the most affordable option. I know a few authors who order all sorts of little buttons and promotional trinkets advertising their books. They give them out to everyone who passes their table, buyers or not.

Trinkets are nice, but if you are cash-strapped, business cards and bookmarks offer the best return on your cost outlay for promotional material. They are less expensive when purchased in bulk, so I get as many as my budget allows.

You will need a business license to sell books at most conventions. Each state in the US has different requirements for getting these, so do the research and get whatever business license your local government requires. This allows you to get a reseller’s permit, enabling you to buy copies of your own books without paying sales tax. If your state doesn’t assess sales tax, you don’t need this, but you’ll still need the business license.

If you live in a state like Washington State, be smart and set aside the money collected as sales tax. It is not yours and shouldn’t be considered part of your income.

the _book_signing_eventInvesting in some large promotional graphics, such as a retractable banner, is a good idea. A large banner is a great visual to put behind your chair. A second banner for the front of the table looks professional but requires some fiddling with pins.

Lee French suggests getting a custom-printed tablecloth that drops over the front of the table, acting as a banner. It looks more professional, and the books will hold it down, so you don’t have to mess with pins. You can find a wide variety of sizes and shapes of banners and graphic promotional props on the internet.

I have an inexpensive black tablecloth for under my books, but you can get one in the color of your choice. Venues will often provide a white tablecloth, so buying one isn’t necessary, but it makes your display look more professional. Many shows offer a 6’x3′ table, but, as with the tablecloth, check first to be sure you don’t need to bring your own.

I suggest buying book stands of some sort. Recipe stands work, and so do plate and picture stands. Whether they’re fancy or cheap, be sure you know how to set them up so they don’t fall over when someone bumps the table. I use folding plate stands as they store well in the rolling suitcase I use for my supplies.

This brings us to storage and shifting goods. We must move our gear between the table and our vehicle, and sometimes, we’re forced to park in inconvenient places. Many people use wheeled bins or fold-up handcarts. Folding luggage carts are a great, lightweight option when you only have a few bins and boxes. I use a large, wheeled suitcase for my books, as I travel pretty light.

I also use a plastic container with a good lid for storing pens, bookmarks/cards, book stands, and other whatnot.

HTB Bookmark side A copyMake your display attractive, but I suggest you keep it simple. People will be able to see what you are selling, and the more fiddly things you add to your display, the longer setup and teardown will take. The shows and conferences I have attended offered plenty of time for this, but I’ve heard that some of the big-name conventions require you to be in or out in two hours or less.

Aside from the table fee and transportation, Lee French says it will cost about $400 for your initial stock of books, banners, bookmarks, and odds & ends. The way inflation is going, it may take more than that, but you can make it less painful by purchasing one thing at a time in advance as your budget allows.

Shop the internet for sales on banners and similar items. You will need to replace bookmarks, business cards, and book stock after each event, but most larger promotional items won’t need to be repurchased or updated for a year or two.

If you plan to get a table at a large conference this year, I highly recommend Working the Table: An Indie Author’s Guide to Conventions. This book has all the information you will need to successfully navigate the wild seas of selling your books at conventions.

And if you choose to embark on the in-person event circuit, I wish you good luck and many happy sales.

working_the_table_French_and_Cook

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December 27, 2024 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: revisiting ‘The Wonderful Tree – Children’s costumes for Christmas’ by Charles Martin ca. 1913

About the Artist, via Wikipedia

Charles Martin (1884–1934) was a French artist and illustrator.

His illustrated books include Les Modes en 1912, a hat collection; the erotic Mascarades et Amusettes and Sports et divertissements (published 1923), a collaboration with composer Erik Satie. [1]

(That is ALL I was able to find about this wonderful artist.)

What I love about this image:

I love the  sense of the grotesque embodied in this image. This cartoon was published at the time Europe was poised on the edge of World War I. In this image, I can see the beginnings of an evolution in art style, one that illustrated the passion for modernity in the first four decades of the 20th century.

The slightly macabre style of Charles Martin’s illustrations may have influenced the work of American cartoonist, Charles Addams. At least, in my untutored opinion, his iconic Addams Family, first published in The New Yorker in 1938, seems reminiscent in style and theme to that of this illustration.

This image was published in the French magazine, La Gazette du Bon Ton, issue no. 1, Christmas 1913—January 1914.

Credits and Attributions:

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Charles Martin (artist),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Martin_(artist)&oldid=1082966917 (accessed December 26, 2024).

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Vintage Christmas illustration digitally enhanced by rawpixel-com-25.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Vintage_Christmas_illustration_digitally_enhanced_by_rawpixel-com-25.jpg&oldid=350923612 (accessed December 26, 2024).

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December 23, 2024 · 6:00 am

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, a master class in structure and my favorite audiobook as read by Aaron Volner

Our post today explores my favorite Christmas story of all time, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.

My dear friend (and one of my favorite indie authors) Aaron Volner is an amazing narrator. Last year, he posted his incredible reading of the original manuscript of A Christmas Carol on YouTube. It is read exactly as written by Charles Dickens.

My Sister's Ornament, cjjaspAaron’s interpretation of this classic is spot on. He has gotten all the voices just right, from kindly Fred down to Tiny Tim.

I think this is by far my favorite version of A Christmas Carol as it is the original manuscript and is one I will be listening to every year. The original version, as it fell out of Dicken’s pen and onto the paper, is far scarier than most modern versions, and Volner’s interpretation expresses that eeriness perfectly.

Scrooge’s horror is visceral, and his redemption is profound.

Charles Dickens would have greatly approved of this reading. I give Volner’s performance five stars—something I rarely do. You can find this wonderful reading via this link: “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens – YouTube.

It is divided into staves (chapters) so that you can listen to one a day or binge them the way I do.

Last year, Aaron’s rendition of this wonderful story prompted me to revisit a post on what modern writers can learn from Dickens, one posted several years ago.

Each time I read this tale or listen to Aaron’s narration, I learn something new about story and structure. The opening act of this tale hooks the reader and keeps them hooked. It is a masterclass in how to structure a story.

Let’s have a look at the first lines of this tale:

Christmascarol1843_--_040“Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.”

In that first paragraph, Dickens offers us the bait. He sinks the hook and reels in the fish (the reader) by foreshadowing the story’s first plot point–the visitation by Marley’s ghost. We want to know why Marley’s unquestionable state of decay was so crucial that the conversation between us, the readers, and Dickens, the author, was launched with that topic.

Dickens doesn’t talk down to his readers. He uses the common phrasing of his time as if he were speaking to us over tea — “dead as a doornail,” a phrase that is repeated for emphasis. This places him on our level, a friend we feel comfortable gossiping with.

He returns to the thread of Marley several pages later, with the little scene involving the doorknocker. This is where Scrooge sees the face of his late business partner superimposed over the knocker and believes he is hallucinating. This is more foreshadowing, more bait to keep us reading.

At this point, we’ve followed Scrooge through several scenes, each introducing the subplots. We have met the man who, as yet, is named only as ‘the clerk’ in the original manuscript but whom we will later know to be Bob Cratchit. We’ve also met Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, who is a pleasant, likeable man.

These subplots are critical, as Scrooge’s redemption revolves around the ultimate resolution of those two separate mini stories. He must witness the joy and love in Cratchit’s family, who are suffering but happy despite living in grinding poverty (for which Scrooge bears a responsibility).

We see that his nephew, Fred, though orphaned, has his own business to run and is well off in his own right. Fred craves a relationship with his uncle and doesn’t care what he might gain from it financially.

By the end of the first act, all the characters are in place, and the setting is solidly in the reader’s mind. We’ve seen the city, cold and dark, with danger lurking in the shadows. We’ve observed how Scrooge interacts with everyone around him, strangers and acquaintances alike.

Now we come to the first plot point in Dickens’ story arc–Marley’s visitation. This moment in a story is also called “the inciting incident,” as this is the point of no return. Here is where the set-up ends, and the story takes off.

Dickens understood how to keep a reader enthralled. No words are wasted. Every scene is important, every scene leads to the ultimate redemption of the protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge.

This is a short tale, a novella rather than a novel. But it is a profoundly moving allegory, a parable of redemption that remains pertinent in modern society.

In this tale, Dickens asks you to recognize the plight of those whom the Industrial Revolution has displaced and driven into poverty and the obligation of society to provide for them humanely.

This is a concept our society continues to struggle with and perhaps will for a long time to come. Cities everywhere struggle with the problem of homelessness and a lack of empathy for those unable to afford decent housing. Everyone is aware of this problem, but we can’t come to an agreement for resolving it.

A Christmas Carol remains relevant even in today’s hyper-connected world. It resonates with us because of that deep, underlying call for compassion that resounds through the centuries and is, unfortunately, timeless.

Ghost_of_Christmas_Present_John_Leech_1843As I mentioned before, this book is only a novella. It was comprised of 66 handwritten pages. Some people think they aren’t “a real author” if they don’t write a 900-page doorstop, but Dickens proves them wrong.

One doesn’t have to write a novel to be an author. Whether you write blog posts, poems, short stories, novellas, or 700-page epic fantasies, you are an author. Diarists are authors. Playwrights are authors. Authors write—the act of creative writing makes one an author.

And that brings us to the featured images. The two illustrations are by John Leech from the first edition of the novella published in book form in 1843.  We’re fortunate that the original art of John Leech, which Dickens himself chose to include in the book, has been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Thanks to the good people at Wikimedia, these prints are available for us all to enjoy.

From Wikipedia: John Leech (August 29, 1817 – October 29, 1864, in London) was a British caricaturist and illustrator. He is best known for his work for Punch, a humorous magazine for a broad middle-class audience, combining verbal and graphic political satire with light social comedy. Leech catered to contemporary prejudices, such as anti-Americanism and antisemitism, and supported acceptable social reforms. Leech’s critical yet humorous cartoons on the Crimean War help shape public attitudes toward heroism, warfare, and Britain’s role in the world. [1]

I love stories of redemption–and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens remains one of the most beloved tales of redemption in the Western canon. Written in 1843 as a serialized novella, A Christmas Carol has inspired a landslide of adaptations in both movies and books.

Dickens was an indie, as all writers were at that time. He struggled to support his family with his writing. But we remember his works today. His great talent for storytelling gives us permission to write what we are inspired to.

May the holiday season and New Year find you and your loved ones happy and healthy, and may you have many opportunities to tell your stories.

CREDITS AND ATTRIBUTIONS:

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “John Leech (caricaturist),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Leech_(caricaturist)&oldid=871947694 (accessed December 25, 2022).

Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Christmascarol1843 — 040.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Christmascarol1843_–_040.jpg&oldid=329166198 (accessed December 25, 2022)

A colourised edit of an engraving of Charles Dickens’ “Ghost of Christmas Present” character, by John Leech in 1843. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Ghost of Christmas Present John Leech 1843.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Ghost_of_Christmas_Present_John_Leech_1843.jpg&oldid=329172654 (accessed December 25, 2022).

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December 20, 2024 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: allegory and symbolism in “Hunters in the Snow” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder 1565

Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Hunters_in_the_Snow_(Winter)_-_Google_Art_ProjectArtist: Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569)

Title: English: Hunters in the Snow (German: Jäger im Schnee) (Winter)

Date: 1565

Medium: oil on oak wood

Dimensions: height: 1,170 mm (46.06 in); width: 1,620 mm (63.77 in)

Collection: Kunsthistorisches Museum

What I love about this painting:

This is one of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s most famous paintings and is a favorite of mine because of the rich societal commentary Brueghel painted into this scene.

Perhaps you have seen it at some point, on a calendar or a Christmas card, and after a cursory glance, you dismissed it as a bucolic illustration of a bygone era.

You fell for his trap. Bruegel the Elder was an observer of life and had a wide streak of sarcasm that emerged in his work. He lived in a time of extreme capitalism, where the nobility and the Church made the rules, with no regard for those whose labors had made them rich.

Brueghel was a master at slipping pointed observations into the scene in such a way that they go unnoticed if one can’t be bothered to look closely.

In his day, the fortunate few who were wealthy were gloriously, impossibly rich. Money was minted by the rulers in the form of coins, and trickle-down economics didn’t work then any better than it does now. The peasants struggled to find food and shelter, going underpaid and overworked.

The middle class hung on, doing comparatively well. However, all it took for the prosperous farmer to be reduced to starvation was one bad harvest. That bad harvest toppled the small traders and crafters as well. When the middle class can’t afford new shoes or garments, tailors and cobblers suffer as well.

Critics didn’t praise his work, as it is unabashedly primitive, created for the common person’s enjoyment, and art critics don’t care much about what the common folk like. Nonetheless, his work is still highly prized by collectors.

Brueghel had a sneaky sense of humor and employed it to show the truth about humanity and inhumanity in his work.

Even now, four centuries after his era, ordinary people can relate to his work because, underneath the technological advances that we will be remembered for, things haven’t changed that much. The uber-rich are still uber-rich, and the middle class is still footing the bill.

Brueghel lived during a time of religious revolution in the Netherlands, and walking the line between both factions must have been difficult. Some have said that Bruegel (and possibly his patron) were attempting to portray an ideal of what country life used to be or what they wished it to be.

That is because they didn’t look deeper, giving it a cursory glance and moving on. On the surface and from a distance, this is a bucolic scene depicting ordinary peasants enjoying the winter. But when you look deeper, really look at it, you can see the irony of it, the honesty that Brueghel hid in plain sight.

Brueghel used symbolism to convey an entire story by employing paradox and gallows humor in every painting. Here, he shows us that winter was harsh, and for the average person, survival required a lot of work, sometimes for nothing.

He shows us the hunters returning with empty game bags, the lone corpse of a skinny fox, and little else.

One dog looks at us with starving eyes, as if hoping for scraps.

detai_Dogs_hunters_in_the_snow_Brueghel

The tavern’s sign is about to fall down, a large hint that all is not well. That symbolic broken sign tells us the owners are bankrupt.

detai_sign_hunters_in_the_snow_Brueghel

The owners are cooking outside, directly in front of the door, evicted from their home and business. A woman brings a bundle of straw out of the inn to use as fuel, while in the distance an ox-drawn wagon is heavily laden with firewood. Where is it going? Not to their inn, that is for sure.

And most intriguingly, a man is carrying a table away. He glances over his shoulder at the meager soup they are cooking, as if they had somehow gotten it away before he could take that, too. Is he the new owner, having acquired it for pennies from the city by paying the taxes at a forced bankruptcy sale? Or is he a hired thug employed by the new owner?

detai_innkeeprs_cooking_hunters_in_the_snow_Brueghel

A rabbit has crossed the hunters’ path and evaded their snares.

detai_rabbit_tracks_hunters_in_the_snow_Brueghel

Ravens, long considered birds of ill omen, roost in the trees above the inn and the hunters and fly above the revelers, a portent of worse days to come.

detai_birds_hunters_in_the_snow_Brueghel

But in this story, Brueghel’s characters have hope and faith that things will improve. In the distance (the future) people are playing winter games.

detai_skaters_hunters_in_the_snow_BrueghelBut they are indistinct and far away, shown in a fantastic, mountainous landscape rather than the flat terrain of the Netherlands. It is almost as if they are visions of what winter could be if only the harvest had been good rather than the truth of the lone fox, hounds with empty bellies, a bankrupt tavern, and the rabbit that got away.

About this painting, via Wikipedia, the Fount of All Knowledge:

The Hunters in the Snow (Dutch: Jagers in de Sneeuw), also known as The Return of the Hunters, is a 1565 oil-on-wood painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Northern Renaissance work is one of a series of works, five of which still survive, that depict different times of the year. The painting is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. This scene is set in the depths of winter during December/January.

The painting shows a wintry scene in which three hunters are returning from an expedition accompanied by their dogs. By appearances the outing was not successful; the hunters appear to trudge wearily, and the dogs appear downtrodden and miserable. One man carries the “meager corpse of a fox” illustrating the paucity of the hunt. In front of the hunters in the snow are the footprints of a rabbit or hare—which has escaped or been missed by the hunters. The overall visual impression is one of a calm, cold, overcast day; the colors are muted whites and grays, the trees are bare of leaves, and wood smoke hangs in the air. Several adults and a child prepare food at an inn with an outside fire. Of interest are the jagged mountain peaks which do not exist in Belgium or Holland. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Pieter Bruegel the Elder – Hunters in the Snow (Winter) – Google Art Project.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Hunters_in_the_Snow_(Winter)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg&oldid=898942431 (accessed December 18, 2024).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “The Hunters in the Snow,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Hunters_in_the_Snow&oldid=1262746140 (accessed December 18, 2024).

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