Technical Topics -- Character Description

Someone was asking whether they should pour out the whole description of a a character all at once -- which might be dull -- or chop it up some and spread it out over a chapter or two.

It occurred to me that this was missing the point somewhat.

So I thought a few scattered thoughts on describing characters.
 
When you describe a character, you can give a mere list of the obvious. Hair color, eye color, what he's wearing, height, skin tone. But description is more interesting and useful when it serves a secondary purpose. That's thrifty writing.

So we describe our characters and do something else as well.  Here's three or four of the several ways to add value to character description:
(ETA, I made that five ways.)

1) You can tell story with description. Make the appearance part of the ongoing action. The description shows result of what has been and intention for what is coming. You could think of it as description propelled by the action.

Not -- 'he had blue eyes'.
So much as -- 'he opened blue eyes, bloodshot from last night's bender'.

Not -- 'she had brown hair, worn long'.
But -- 'She wrestled with wind-tangled brown hair, taming it before she walked into the meeting.'

Not -- He was a huge, rough-looking man with a scar on his face and gray streaks in his hair. He dressed in the respectable, worn clothing a laborer might wear.

But -- He was dressed like a laborer today . . . a big, ugly, thuggish, barely respectable giant in sturdy clothes. His hair was wet and the gray streaks didn’t show. The scar that ran down his cheek was fake. The imperturbable strength wasn’t.

See how the first set of these is a static description. The second is a description that could only be right in that exact moment.
We don't just say, 'this is how Doyle looks', we imply he has looked different in the past.  It's not how he happens to look; his appearance is related to the rain outside.

2) We do not just see our fellow; we see him through one specific set of eyes. The POV character adds value, insight and weight to the description. The description turns around and reveals that POV character.

She watched him work for a moment, disquieted by the edged beauty of his face. Lines of his hair fell in thin slashes of black. His lips were strongly marked.


She was totally feminine in every movement, indefinably French. With her coloring—black hair, pale skin, eyes of that dark indigo blue—she had to be pure Celt. She’d be from the west of France. Brittany, maybe. Annique was a Breton name. She carried the magic of the Celt in her, used it to weave that fascination the great courtesans created. Even as he watched, she licked her lips again and wriggled deliberately, sensually. A man couldn’t look away.


Could that description of Hawker come from anyone but Justine?  Could Annique be seen that way by anyone but Grey, right then, right there, in their prison?

3) Description is not a 'fill in the blanks' list of things we need to convey. It's part of an overall impression. We do not need to be only literal. For the larger portrait, we mix physical details with metaphor and symbol, story history, archetype. Give the hair color, shape of nose, texture of skin.  Sure. But also enmesh them in meaning when you do it.  Imbed them in the intangibles of the character you are creating.

She had the face of an ardent Viking. Strands of wet hair lay along the spare curve of her cheek, outlining the bones. Her eyes were the color of Baltic amber.

He was young to be captain. Thirty, maybe. He had black hair and a big beak of a nose, and sailor skin, dark and rough, burned by suns that weren't polite and English. Colorful splotches of blood were drying on his shirt. That would be her blood, probably.


4) We use the small details and all the senses.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted a street whore. This one was fresh as a daisy, clean and sweet. She smelled of soap and flowers and spices. Even her fingernails were clean.


ETA:  The comment trail, and a comment elsewhere, brought to mind another common use of character description.  This uses description for a structural purpose. 

5)  Let's say you're going to step outside the on-going action, bring the narrative drive to a screeching halt, slow the pacing to molasses, and do some backstorying or philosophizing.  Character Description is a great way to segue into the internals you're laying down.  Backstory, for instance.  

Lookit here.  We're fairly early into Black Hawk and I'm filling in the What Has Gone Before column. 

“She’ll make it. She’s hard to kill.”

“Many have tried.”

Her hair spread everywhere on the pillow. Light-brown hair, honey hair, so soft and smooth it looked edible. He knew how it felt, wrapped around his fingers. Knew how her breasts fitted into his hands. He knew the weight and shape and strength of her legs when they drew him into her.

A long time ago, she’d shot him. They’d been friends, and then lovers, and then enemies. Spies, serving different sides of the war.

The war was over, this last year or two. Sometimes, he walked outside the shop she kept and looked in. Sometimes, he found a spot outside and watched for a while, just to see what she looked like these days.

The last time they'd exchanged words, she'd promised to kill him.  He hadn't expected her on his doorstep, half-dead, running from an enemy of her own.
 
I have the most dangerous woman in London in my bed.  


That's description opening the door to backstory.  We go in the order:
a) See her now. 
b) Think about her then.
c) Talk about the past.
d) Bring it back to the present. In this case I do that with a line of Internal Monolog.




ETA2: It occurs to me that I didn't really answer the question at the top.  
How long can a piece of Character Description be?  

Keep it short.  

Do not indulge in the flowery crap that readers skip anyhow.  
Doesn't matter how beautiful the words are, they have to earned a place in the story with something more than pretty.
This here is a famous example of what readers skip. 

I don't say you can't describe at length.  But if you've written more than half a page of Character Description, you should probably go back and reconsider.

Hoo Boy, Black Hawk is Best Romance at All About Romance

Oh wow.

Black Hawk has made an incredible showing in the All About Romance Reader's Poll.
Here.

(People liked it!!  They really liked it!  Lookit!  Lookit!)
(hyperventilates and uses up most of her exclamation points for 2012.)



Go here to see the covers of the other wonderful books readers chose.  You can click right through and have a close look and buy.  It's a wonderful list because these are fellow readers talking to you. 

This is the great stuff that came out in 2011.  Something for everybody.


Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews
Seduction of a Highland Lass, Maya Banks
The Black Hawk, Joanna Bourne
The Perfect Play, Jaci Burton
Silk is for Seduction by Loretta Chase
The Other Guy's Bride, Connie Brockway
Breaking Point, Pamela Clare
Dragon Bound, Thea Harrison
My One and Only, Kristan Higgins

Notorious Pleasures, Elizabeth Hoyt
Fifty Shades of Grey, E.L. James
When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James
A Lot Like Love, Julie James
The Admiral's Penniless Bride, Carla Kelly 
What I Did for a Duke, Julie Anne Long
To The Moon and Back, Jill Mansell 
All They Need, Sarah Mayberry
Curio, Cara McKenna
Unraveled, by Courtney Milan 
Unlocked, Courtney Milan 
Call Me Irresistible, Susan Elizabeth Phillips 
Just Like Heaven, Julia Quinn 
Treachery In Death by J.D. Robb 
New York to Dallas by J.D. Robb 
Archangel's Blade, by Nalini Singh
Stranded With Her Ex, Jill Sorenson 
Yours To Keep, Shannon Stacey


This is what I said at the AAR site:

I don't know what to say. I am touched beyond measure and utterly flabbergasted. Thank you. 

Black Hawk was a hard book to write. Five years ago, when I was putting the finishing touches on Spymaster's Lady, I firmly relegated Adrian to supporting-character status. He wasn't sequel bait, I thought. He was too hard, too cynical, and too wounded to ever make hero material.

"But I found myself fascinated by him. He kept trying to take over other people's books. After a bit, it became apparent the only way I could get Adrian to stop upstaging the current hero was to give him a book of his own.

"I am so happy to think of my Justine and my Adrian coming alive in peoples' minds. If I was writing of the long journey these two had to take to earn their happy ending, I'm overjoyed to know readers liked traveling with them.

"I am so proud that Black Hawk holds these honors for 2011. Thank you, everyone who voted. And thank you, AAR, for supporting the Romance genre for all these years.

image Hawk attrib phae

A Black Hawk Excerpt

At Romcon.  An excerpt (where they're about to make love.)   Here.

At Jeannie Lin's blog.  A fellow author's take on Black Hawk -- always interesting what other authors see --  Here.
You should click on 'books' up at the top and go see her covers.  Some of the loveliest in the business.

At the Debutante Ball.  An interview.  That's here.

Visiting the excellent writers at Risky Regencies.  Here.    There's an excerpt there and some discussion of cats, birds and dogs arising out of why the book is titled Black Hawk.



Where to Buy  Black Hawk


Oh.  I should mention that you can buy Black Hawk, (and it is on special sale in both sites,)  at:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble


Some Interviews with Me and Some Comments on Black Hawk

At Booktopia.  Nine interesting questions about the writing life.  Here.  

At History Hoydens.  An interview where  I talk about the problems of plotting Black Hawk.  There is no corner of that blog that is not interesting.  Here.

At Romance Dish -- you will find just the most flattering and wonderful review here .  That is four wonder folks --Gannon Carr, Buffie Johnson, PJ Ausdenmore, and Andrea Williamson who support Romance genre in all its forms.

Melanie and I, at Bookworm 2 Bookworm, do an interview, talking about the age of the hero and heroine, talking about  writing in general and plugging Black Hawk. That's here.   Bookworm has also posted such a lovely review of Black Hawk.   Here.


Reader I created him has another interview with me.  And it is so thoroughly another interesting place you should be visiting just on general principles anyhow.   That's here.



And I got an excerpt right here  (or Rat Cheer as we say in the South):


His chin was shadowed with a need to shave. She had known a boy three years ago. She did not really know this young man.

I do not know how to ask. Everything I can say is ugly. I do not want this to be ugly.

She gave her attention to pouring hot water onto the tea leaves. Rain drummed on the roof. Since they were not talking, since they were not looking at each other, it seemed very loud. He said, “As soon as you drink that, you should leave. It’s getting worse out there.”

I must do this now, before I lose my courage. “I am hoping to spend the night.”  She chose words carefully, to clarify matters beyond any possibility of misunderstanding. “It is my wish to spend the night with you, in your bed.”

Hawker was silent. He would be this self- possessed if tribesmen of the Afghan plains burst through the door and attacked him with scimitars. The refusal to be ruffled was one of his least endearing traits.


Time stretched, very empty of comment, while she swirled the teapot gently and he was inscrutable.  Finally, he took the oil lamp from the end of the mantel and busied himself adjusting the wick, lighting it with a paper spill from the fire. “The hell you say.”



Buying Black Hawk Overseas

Black Hawk is available as an English language book in Germany at amazon.de, here.   They don’t seem to sell the kindle version in Germany.  In the Netherlands, one can order the paperback here , in theory, but possibly not in practice.    The book is available on kindle at amazon.uk here but won't be out in paperback till January 19th. (Thank you, Ute, for the information.)


Book Depository has it here for free delivery worldwide.

Little blurb for Black Hawk

Black Hawk

Joanna here, talking about my new book, Black Hawk.

This is Adrian's story.  I don't know about anyone else, but I'm relieved the boy finally has his happy ending.
We've met Hawker as a secondary character in the other books.  He's Hawker, or Adrian Hawker, or sometimes Sir Adrian Hawkhurst, depending who he's pretending to be and who he wants to impress.  He is deadly and sarcastic and maybe a bit too fond of sticking knives into people.  Naturally he has the making of a Romance hero.   
 
Two of the most dangerous spies of the Napoleonic War — on opposite sides, natch — fall in love.  Think Montague and Capulet.  Think Yankees and Red Sox.  Think Hannibal and Scipio Africanus.  Think about the owl and the hawk, two birds that  might share the sky for a while, but can't live together.

hawk is cc attrib velosteve

. . .  The rest is here at Word Wenches.

Giving Away Black Hawk (What I'm doing here . . .)

This is soooo overtaken by events.  Just read right on through.

Giving Away Black Hawk. (Where I'm doing this . . .)

I've bumped the giveaway post up a bit, just so it stays on top.  I'll do this as long as I'm blogging around the town and giving away books.

Technical Topic -- You're Out of Order

Someone asks, more or less,

"When it comes to publishing a series, can I start somewhere in the middle and fill in the blanks as I go?"


Well, of course you can.
People do weirder things than that every day of the week.

You can start anywhere in the timeline and slip the next book in before or after, as you please.  This is what I do.
I'm headed into planning the sixth book, the PAX STORY, and it'll hit about midway through the series, timewise. 

If I were giving advice, I'd say:


-- Every story should be standalone.

This doesn't just mean each story has a full story arc and that you've shovelled in the needed backstory.

It means your twelve-year-old minor character doesn't telegraph what he's going to be at twenty.

You suppress foreknowledge.  Even though you know a character will die six years after the close of the book, you don't write her as 'doomed'.   In this book, she's not.

And you try not to pull characters in from other books just to say hello.  Continuing characters appear if they earn a place in the plot.  If not, they wander off to live their lives outside the book.


Certainly, leave Easter Eggs for your insiders.  That's part of the fun. But these references have to be invisible to the novice reader.








--  Be stingy with backstory

Well, one is always stingy with backstory. 

But in a discontinuous series it's especially wise to avoid handing out all the particulars of, 'what has gone before'.  You may want to write something cool ten years in the past.  Something that hasn't occurred to you yet.

Give yourself room to maneuver.  The more you've tacked down the past, the more you limit what you can do there. 


-- Every book is trapped in its own moment of time.

We deal with this all the time when writing historicals.

We know the French Revolution turned out badly. Folks in 1789 didn't. They had high hopes.  When we write what characters thought and did, we can't let our knowledge of future events creep in.



-- Imagine the entire lifetime of the characters.

When you write your fifty-year-old man, try to image him as a twenty-year-old and a twelve-year-old.  You may someday need him in that capacity.  You want to make him a useful character, doing interesting things at all ages of his life.

I find it easier to imagine forward than to imagine back, as it were.  Easier to see the old man who grows from the young dude than pulling the young dude out of that old man.




-- Leave big empty patches in everybody's life.

When we write chronologically, we're free to build any future.  ("Always in motion is the Future.")  We are so powerful and unconstrained. 

When we set a story in our fictional world's 'what has been', the action must be consistent with and lead to what comes later. Our feet are all tangled up.

Some of it we can avoid somewhat.
I mentioned above that we don't get specific with backstory.  Being vague about our character's past is particularly important.   We try not to just randomly predetermine our character's life left, right, and center.

So we might be specific about stuff that won't affect anybody's action but coy when we assign life events that do constrain.  We'd say, 'he was promoted to lieutenant in 1809,' rather than 'he fought at the battle of Corunna'.  That way we don't sit down to write a scene set in Paris in 1809 and suddenly notice, (by way of those charts we're keeping -- see below,) that somebody we need is off fighting in Spain.

And we leave some years in the chronology just as empty as we can.  We don't say what anybody's doing.  Those years are vacant lots where we can build something.


And, finally:

-- Keep records

From the first chapter you set down in electrons, make notes.  Make charts, year by year and even month by month over the whole period covered by your books.

What's going on in the world?  Where is everybody?  What have they got themselves up to?

If you don't write this down, you are not only going to get stuff wrong and feel like an idiot, when somebody points it out to you,
you're going to get cross-eyed with looking things up when you have three or four books out.

Technical Topic: Creating Characters

Elsewhere, someone writes, pretty much:

My characters never develop beyond something used to fill a gap in the story or follow the plot as directed by the writer.  

What goes on through your head when you create a character?



There are dozens of good ways to develop characters.  You get thirty writers talking and you're going to hear thirty methods, most of them contradictory, some of them involving lists and interviews and diagrams and scrapbooks.  Some of them mentioning alcohol.

The best way to create characters is to try a bunch of these methods with an open mind and then go along doing what works for your particular and idiosyncratic creativity.

When I suggest this stuff below, you are advised to take it with a grain of salt because it may not work for you.  But here something to try:

Sit down where it's quiet and you don't have anything you need to do for a while. Get comfortable. Close your eyes. Think of your character in one particular scene, in one specific time and place.


This is a visualization exercise. You're going to crawl inside that character. You are going to see the world from his POV.

Try real hard not to feel silly, ok?

We enter the character by imagining what comes to his senses.

He or she is sitting, as you are. What's underneath him -- the stairs, a log beside the campfire, a velvet sofa? Is there wind? What do you smell in the air? What do you hear?

We enter our character by imaging the interior of his mind and body. He is filled with emotion and needs. Is he warm, cold, tired, hungry, excited, angry, annoyed, afraid?
Our guy has just finished doing something. What? He carries the immediate memory of those recent actions and feelings.

And we enter the character by imagining his needs.

Your character, at every moment, is just chock full of some goal.
What does he want, right now?

A sandwich? Directions to the zoo? A chance to kiss Molly? The combination to the safe? Escape from the toothed boomerslings?
What emotion does he feel in regard to that goal?
What action does he plan to get him what he wants?

This is how we create our people.  We don't look down from on high as if they were chess pieces we're going to move around at our convenience.  We get down in the mud with them.  We gain our insights from sensing what goes on inside the skin.  We find out how the characters see each other at eye level.
Because that's where we are.  At eye level.

I don't mean to say we shouldn't set down a list of parameters for the characters.

In Forbidden Rose, right from the start, I knew Justine had to be very young, no older than Adrian.  She had to be intelligent and educated, of the nobility, a great and loyal French spy, more fond of guns than knives, and with a horrific past.  I pictured someone of sorta midbrowny coloring, so she wouldn't match Adrian's darkness.

These are character parameters I needed for the long-term plot of Forbidden Rose and Black Hawk.

But see how none of this is important stuff about her.  None of it helps me know who she is. Any kind of persona at all could fit inside those parameters.

I didn't know 'Justine' herself till one day I was writing along in the early imagining of the story and I closed my eyes and there she and I were, in her bedroom, with Severine and Adrian.  It was one of the first scenes of the book I could visualize.  That's when Justine began telling me about herself.  And that's the first time I saw Severine and knew how I'd wrap up the story.

So this is what I'd advise.
Instead of laying down the law on what our folks have to do for plot reasons or what they have to be so they match some consistent and usable character we want them to be,
we let them tell us what they feel and think and need.

We learn this stuff because we are inside their skin.

Eventually, we can ask what they want, long term, and we can go back and look into their past to discover why they want it.

Finished the Page Proofs.

Finished the page proofs of Black Hawk.
I turned them in yesterday.

Yeah!!!

A book is not finished when you turn in the manuscript.  The book is done when you turn in the corrections on the page proofs.
This is why I don't celebrate sending in the ms.  But tonight, we went out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant.

Now, I can let my fingers unclench on the manuscript.  I can let it go.

And I can now direct some more energy to this website banner problem.

Page proofs are also called galleys.  What you're doing when you go over the page proofs is you look at the actual pages the way they will appear in the book.

You have to find all the typos.


It is like finding Waldo.  For 300 pages.  Under a deadline.

You have one last chance to catch the place where your character walks across the room and opens the window and then three pages later somebody else opens the same window.  You have to make sure it's clear who's speaking the next piece of dialog.

You look at it word by word by word. 

When you finish this process there is not a great deal of your brain left.

You know you're on deadline

Wednesday afternoon, at three o'clock, I turned in the editorial revisions of Black Hawk.   Now I await the copyedits.  We are just moving along at a rapid clip.  And Black Hawk is scheduled to hit the shelves on November 1.




You know you're on deadline when:

-- The refrigerator is full of boxes of Chinese carryout.

-- The milk is sour.

-- There are no clean clothes.  There are no clean dishes.

-- You find yourself mentally moving the commas around when your daughter speaks.

-- There is no dog food.  There has not been any dog food for some time.  No one is saying what the dog's been eating.

-- Your three koi have mysteriously transformed into four goldfish. 

-- Every surface of every room in the house is covered with stuff.

-- The rug is the color of cat hair.  It didn't used to be.

-- A cold, stiff, mummified piece of pizza lurks in the toaster oven and nobody remembers putting it in there.

-- You have 1687 messages in your inbox.

-- There's a pile of newspapers at the bottom of the drive.

-- Outside, in the planter, the mint has died.

-- Your head is stuffed with something.  Styrofoam?

-- You do not merely fall asleep sitting up.  You fall asleep standing.

-- Someone asks, "Is this the book about Adrian Hawker?" and you can't remember.

-- You hurt.  Everywhere.  The words carpal tunnel syndrome are mentioned.

-- Your desk is two feet deep in advertising flyers and bills.

-- The nice people from the electric company are calling to discuss nonpayment of some of those bills.

-- When somebody speaks to you, there's a half second lag before you reply

-- Your feet stick to the kitchen floor.

-- You plan to hire somebody in a HazMat suit to clean the refrigerator.

-- The Dust Bunnies have declared your house to be a Dust Bunny Republic.  They are printing up postage stamps.

Adrian looks like . . .

I'm gearing up to make the Romance Trading Cards for Adrian.  I have a few possible faces and I  . . .

I just don't know.

These are stock photos.  I have not bought all of them, so I'm only going to leave them up till Saturday.

So, tell me which Adrian you like best.  I'll send Romance trading cards to some lucky poster . . .  *g*

ETA:  There's watermarks on some of the photos.  These will go away.

Photo A

Photo B

Photo C

Photo D

Photo E

ETA:  I went and bought the stock photos so I could leave them up on the bog.

My Romance Trading Cards

My Romance Trading Cards -- here.  I'll be handing these out at the RT Convention and at RWA National.  I don't know which one is going to be more popular -- the realistic or the manga style.

ETA:  I wanted to do one for my Adrian, but I haven't really got my act together for this yet, so I won't be handing out an Adrian trading card at RT.  I tried out a manga version -- no dice on this so far.  I don't have enough dpis or something on my anime picture. 

I will give this some more thought in April.
 

Black Hawk -- the Excerpt

In celebration of February 19th, (why should one not celebrate February 19th, eh?) and because the excellent Annie asked -- here is a short excerpt from Black Hawk.

Black Hawk won't be published till November.  We will hope this excerpt does not make that seem too soon.

***

Justine had told the boy to meet her at the guillotine.  It was not because she was blood-thirsty--indeed, she was not--but because they would be inconspicuous here.

She was dressed as a housemaid today, in honest blue serge, white apron, and a plain fichu.  She became indistinguishable as the tenth ant in a line of ants.  She held her basket to her chest and leaned on the wall that marked the boundary between La Place de la Révolution and the Tuileries Garden. 

She was too young to pretend to the august status of lady's maid.  A thirteen-year-old must be a housemaid, no more than that.  But a housemaid was exactly what a respectable woman would take with her when she went to an assignation in the Tuileries Garden.  A housemaid could be left in a corner of La Place de la Révolution, bored and resigned, while her mistress played fast and loose with her marriage vows. 

To play this part realistically, she assumed her appropriate expression of bored and resigned.  She waited.  Hawker would find her easily.  She was still when everyone else was in motion.  Nothing is more apparent to the eye.

This was a good spot for enemy spies to meet.  From a hundred yards away Hawker could look across the Place de la Révolution and assure himself she was quite alone.  The chattering stream of humanity that flowed through the square would allow him concealment as he approached.  Beyond, to her right, the tight, milling confusion of the arcade and shops of the Rue de Rivoli offered a dozen paths of escape.  Her good intentions would be clear, even to an English spy of limited experience.

Or perhaps not.  She would not trust herself if she were an English spy. 

Regency Bling

Regency Bling

The Regency gentleman's code might be summed up as, "no perfumes, exquisitely fine linen and plenty of it, country washing . . ."
and bling. 

I went in search of Regency bling, hoping for a gold ring in the ear of at least some Regency fops. 
Alas, not so much. 

The robust and adventurous Tudors wore earrings.  The courtier Buckingham sported major rubies.  That man of action, Sir Walter Raleigh, a gold hoop.  (This picture here shows him with a remarkably fine pearl earring.)


A half century later, Charles I wore a great pearl in his ear when he mounted the block to face the axe. 
By the Eighteenth Century, however, earrings had become the province of buccaneers, exotic foreigners, and the most foppish of macaronis.

See the rest at Word Wenches  here.

Technial Topic -- Outlines. I mean, like, why?

In the comment trail, excellent commenter Annie said:

But I can't quite imagine how I'd outline a story, since all I have are scenes. The few I've written down I already know would have to be thrown out--the setting isn't right, the characters are a different age than I thought, etc. And then there's a character off stage who's not even in the story, and I find him really annoying. I'm in awe of you and other writers who can live with the unrulyness.


Scenes come up and clamor for attention and we love them all as a hen loves her chicks.
But we must stop thinking -- Is this scene not wonderful?  Is this scene not cool?  And start thinking -- what does this scene do? 

An Outline is simply a list of scenes that tells the story. 

Lots of stuff goes on in our fictive world . . . . battles and betrayals and getting yer hair cut and eating asparagus.
We have to pick just a few morsels of all this activity for the manuscript.

We fall in love with the scenes that come to us.
It is a traditional weakness that we collect up wonderful scenes that take place before the story actually starts and make them Chapters One-through-Three.  This leads to many a carefully crafted Chapter One-through-Three being torn out by the roots. 

All along, we create scenes that serve no story purpose. 
They become outtakes. 

It's like some cruel sacrifice to the Writing Gods.

In the end, in a mood of cold, dire ruthlessness quite alien to our character, we will gather to our bosoms the few, favored scenes that tell the story and toss the others away onto the scrapheap of our subconscious where they will jitter at us in dreams for the next decade which is why we are like this.


How do we take the inchoate mass of possible scenes -- which are not in any order and some of them don't fit at all and we have no idea how they relate -- and make story?

Well . . . we outline.

Basic process, (and I am talking about my process, since I have no idea what anybody else does,) is we work backwards. 
We go from what we need back to what we have imagined. 

Ok.
There are several kinds of scenes we need.

I) -- We need scenes that convey plot. 

Plot consists of a series of Necessary Actions.  You know something is a 'Necessary Action' because if you leave it out or you change it, the story doesn't happen.  All else being equal, we try to show these Necessary Action on stage because they tend to be interesting.

II) -- We need scenes that change the protagonist. 

In a coming-of-age story, the change might be his developing maturity.  In a spy thriller, this might be the villain deciding to blow something up, or the hero deciding to leave his comfortable retirement and go hunt villains.

In Romance genre,
(I love Romance genre because it is straightforward,)
this character change is growth of the love relationship.

In a Romance genre story, we show the Character Change as a series of Romance Stages.  There is an analog to the Action Plotting in that there are Necessary Romance Stages.
You know something is a Necessary Romance Stage because if you leave it out, the love relationship doesn't hold together.  It seems unrealistic. 

(Erotica is not Romance genre because there is no development of a love relationship through a series of stages.)  

See how when I talk about the kind of scenes we need I am not saying, scenes that 'explain why,' or scenes that 'set up the story,' or scenes that 'reveal character'? 
We do not write scenes to convey information. 
Really.  We don't.  There are reasons for this.

III) -- And we need scenes that are just so wonderful we can't leave them out.
"No, we don't."
"Yes, we do."
"No."
"Yes".
"Oh, go ahead and add them.  I can't stop you.  But the editor is going to jerk them out anyway."
(jo's subconscious pouts.)

Just about every scene in the final manuscript will be built around either Necessary Plot Action or Character Change. That's what we outline.

See how this helps corral the little darlings?

Even before we begin to outline we can shoo away many of those clucking, fluttering, beloved scenes
because they do not contain the protagonists learning and changing,
do not contain action that is essential to the plot,
and a good many of them do not even occur within the brief span of the story here-and-now.

This gets rid of much of the chirping throng.


SPOILERS lie below the cut.
BIG SPOILERS.
Just don't go there if you haven't read Forbidden Rose.

Walking Sticks and Canes

I'm talking about Sticks and Canes over at Word Wenches.

I am now a Word Wench.
*jo hugs herself madly*

This is so wonderful.

I am so delighted.

Word Wenches is THE cool blogplace to be.

And I am there.  From now on.

Yes!!






*cough*

Settling down now to talk about canes and walking sticks in a historical Regency sorta way . . .

I'm here to talk of walking sticks and canes carried by the haut ton of England and France.

English gentlemen, long before Teddy Roosevelt showed up to advise this, walked softly and carried a big stick.  Every other portrait shows some nattily dressed fellow  with a walking stick pegged jauntily into the ground or a slim baton negligently tucked under the elbow.  The dress cane was the quintessential mark of the dandy for three centuries, part fashion accessory, part aid to communication, part weapon.


And I suppose you could always just to lean on it.


More here

Technical Topic: Before the Seat of the Pants

One of several unprofitable debates in writing circles is whether it's better to 'Outline and Plan' or better to be a 'Pantser' which is somewhat jumping off a cliff, flapping yer wings, and discovering what the story is about as you fly along.

There are successful writers playing both sides of this field.  They probably do other things that involve numerology or sacrifice of radishes or wearing funny hats or drinking coffee on the Rue Satin-Michel or sitting down to write naked,

though it is to be hoped no one tries all of these simultaneously.

Lots of different working styles.  All the methods have practitioners who build story just fine. All of them are 'right'.


But before the Seat of the Pants . . . before The Extensive Outline . . how do we first approach story?

If I were handing out advice wholesale, (because, for instance, I didn't want to buckle down to work this morning,)  I'd say to start writing before you know the story.

When to use saidisms.

A 'saidism' is one of those nifty replacements for 'said'.
He whispered, he noted, he declared, he suggested, he promised and so on and on and on.  

You run into the rule sometimes --
No Saidisms.

And it just seems so wrong.

What it is . . .

there's this unfortunate tendency of novice writers to pluck creative dialog tags, apparently at random, from a list they have in the back of their three-ring binder from sixth grade.

This leads the friendly folks who put together writing books to grow thin and haggard and tear their hair out and make a rule
No Saidisms
which probably relieves their minds considerably,

but it's, like, y'know, more of a guideline.

When do we use saidisms?

Lots of places.

Pretty obviously, the first thing we ask ourselves when we come up with a nifty saidism is whether this word
-- and all the information packed into this word --
has been put into a dialog tag because we need that information.

Are we writing he complained because the complaining is important
or have we just decided to tag dialog in a novel way because we're sick of using 'said' and Mrs. Grundy told us in sixth grade not to repeat words?

A dismaying proportion of the saidisms used by novice writers are information that
-- does not need to be conveyed,
-- or can be revealed another, better, way,
-- or is exaggerated or inappropriate.



When you use a saidism, what you get, a lot of times, is:

"I'll tell them to leave the mayo off your sandwich," Maurice stated . . . (or declared, cajoled, promised, expostulated, argued, complained, opined, or maintained.)

Really.  No.
Don't use that saidism.  Use 'he said.'
Maurice didn't promise or declare.
He just said it, for Pete's sake.


Before we use a saidism, we assure ourselves the saidism is logical and necessary and not exaggerated and we're dealing with information the reader must be told.


Even if this is necessary information -- is a dialog tag is the best way to get it across to the reader??

The brute force way to determine this is to try out a couple different techniques that convey this necessary and exciting information.

One way to convince ourselves we don't really need to tell the reader that Maurice is asserting and maintaining and cajoling about mayonnaise is to drag those saidisms out of the dialog tag and put them into action or internals.  That's when we suddenly realize that Maurice ain't doing any such thing as cajoling, nohow.

Anyhow . . . let's say we got this character is whispering.

First we satisfied ourselves that the character is really whispering
and not just 'saying'.  

We also decided we need to tell the reader the character is whispering
and we have decided that the nature of the dialog itself and the surrounding action does not at this time make it clear this is all in whispers.


Ok.  So, having got those questions out of the way, we look at our saidism as a dialog tag --

She whispered, with a child’s simplicity, “I do not need to see your face, Citoyenne Finch.”

We change it around a bit. Take it out of the dialog tag and put it into action or description or internals.

They could only speak in whispers. She said, with a child’s simplicity, “I do not need to see your face, Citoyenne Finch.”

We convey it in Internal Monolog.

I must not be overheard. She said, with a child’s simplicity, “I do not need to see your face, Citoyenne Finch.”

We drop the information into description.

“I do not need to see your face, Citoyenne Finch.” The words snaked out from under the rain; words made of cool wavery sounds.


When we look at these couple alternatives, the simplicity of simply laying out the whisper as a dialog tag is obvious.
We place the saidism in this sentence and we know it's right.
We can break that 'no saidisms rule' and still sleep easily at night which is nice.

Speaking generally, it has been my experience that verbs in the class of saidisms that relate to the actual mouth-moving action of speaking,
like whispered, murmured, muttered, yelled, spat out, grated under his breath, and so on
 are the most apt to become elegant and thrifty dialog tags.

They are simple, straightforward actions that lend themselves to expression as simple action verbs.

Having determined that we should tell the reader about the mouth movements, we may often do this with a saidism.


Moving along -- there is a much larger class of saidisms that show intent and emotion. Avowed, complained, averred, promised, guessed, questioned, concluded, wished, harassed, rejoiced, mourned, remembered, and so on.

These are the saidisms that end up getting latched onto sentences that do not deserve them.
What we tend to forget is that these are powerful words. You can't just drop them down anywhere.

This is where we get the infamous:

"I'll tell them to leave the mayo off your sandwich," he promised. Or avowed, stated, maintained, declared, cajoled, expostulated or stone-walled.

All those words are too important and exciting to get attached to a sentence about mayo.  They are BIG.  In this case, he didn't promise or declare.
He just said it, for Pete's sake.


Speaking very generally again,
these saidisms that carry intent and emotion are full of complex information and abstract concepts.

The concepts are so big and floppy they want to spread out comfortably in Internal Monolog, in other internals, or in the dialog itself, or in really sneaky and significant accompanying action.
 The information -- and we are assuming it is vitally necessary information and relevant and all that -- doesn't like to be crammed into a dialog tag.

Let's say we have something to say about Hawker's state of mind.

“You don’t eat your own donkey. And you don’t use your own woman as bait,” Hawker complained. "That’s one of those delicate distinctions gentlemen make.”


or

“You don’t eat your own donkey. And you don’t use your own woman as bait,” Hawker said sarcastically. "That’s one of those delicate distinctions gentlemen make.”

But let's put it into action instead.

“You don’t eat your own donkey. And you don’t use your own woman as . . .” Hawker kicked a loose chunk of cobble in the gutter. It rolled end-over-end and rapped up against a wall. “bait. That’s one of those delicate distinctions gentlemen make.”

The action carries the big, complex emotion in a way the dialog tag can't.

 If we have an emotion to convey, we take it out of the dialog tag where it is all cramped up and simplified. We stop trying to compress big important emotion into the tone of a voice. In IM, in action, in description, we can use more words, basically.
And it lets us pull in some images we got lying around in our brains doing nothing in particular.

The final class of saidism is the fairly innocuous
replied, answered, repeated, interrupted, cut off, and so on.

These talk about the mechanics of the dialog train. Useful friends of the writer, this lot, but only if the answering or repeated or interrupting is significant.

We don't use them when it is obvious that one line of dialog is in answer to the other. (Well . . . duh.) We don't use them when the act of answering or repeating is not in itself important.

The whole -- 'when do we use saidisms' question -- is like talking about anything else in writing.  You read the advice in the writing books.  Take some.  Leave some.  Some gets rained out.

Technical Topics -- Secondary Character POV

I posted this over on Absolute Write in response to a question about when to go into the POV of a secondary character.

Being thrifty, I'll post it here too.

************
Going into the POV of a secondary character --

There are no 'rules'
(--that should be in neon somewhere--)
but you should have a good reason for going into a secondary character's head.

The good reason should be something more than just ...
-- this is an easy way to tell the reader where the cookies are hidden, or
-- neither of my POV characters are in this scene but I want to write it anyhow.

You might consider Omniscient Narrator in those cases. Or write around the problem.

I go into secondary characters' heads three times in two books.
(I think that's all.)

In two cases, this is a single excursion into their heads.
In none of the three cases does this POV choice
-- solve a plot problem or
-- convey information to the reader or
-- put us in a necessary scene we would otherwise find hard to enter.

I go into the secondary heads
to show something important about the secondary character and the way he sees the world.

In two cases, I want to put the reader 'outside' the main protagonists at a particular moment for complex reasons having to do with how the reader is emotionally connecting with the ongoing story.

When I went into the secondary POV, it was because this gave
(a) a refuge from involvement with the two protags,
(b) a new coign of vantage, and
(c) an insight into the minor character.

***************

Talking about two scenes here ...

First Scene:
The scene where Galba plays chess with Annique is an example of using secondary character POV as a refuge from the two protags.

How secondary is Galba?
Galba is sooooo secondary! He is so bloody secondary he could get a medal for it. Galba appears on stage only a half dozen times, all in the last quarter of the book. If you look at him objectively, he doesn't actually do anything.

So, leaving aside Galba's insight into Annique, which is fine and wise and all that, his POV scene is not to talk about any of the characters. It's what you might call constituent. It's there to serve a structural purpose.

Look where I've put his scene.

We got a big scene of Annique betrayed, on every level, by those she loved and trusted.
Ouch. ouchouchouchouchouch.
Grey has to watch her hurt and he can't do anything about it.
Ouch again.

Now we want to get on with action of the story because there's not much more to say about that emotional topic right there and, anyhow, the world hasn't stopped even though Annique is in pain.

But we don't have to skip directly from
Annique- (or Grey-) POV-in-pain to
Annique- (or Grey-) POV-getting-on-with-life

So we put in a Galba-POV to give a buffer and 'tell about' the transition period.
If I were a better writer I'd have put in a riveting scene of Annique's acceptance and recovery instead.
But I'm not. (pooh)

We could do the same buffering with a good long passage of description or something in Omniscient Narrator. But I like Galba and I'm glad to have a chance to crawl into his head.


Ok.
Second Scene:

Look where I gave us a scene of Adrian POV.

He is almost a third protag. Now contrary to what you might think, this does not make me want to fill the story up with his POV. He diverts attention from the H&H, which is not good.

So we keep his little POV scene short and simple.

This is Adrian swimming out to the smugglers' boat.

How is this constituent?
That scene falls at that halfway division in the story where everybody's crossing the Channel.
(I mean, just everybody.)

The Adrian-POV scene is a buffer between Annique's emotional experience on one side of the Channel and the other. It's there for structural reasons.

Anyhow ....
speaking generally,

what we have in those two scenes above is what I consider a good reason for switching into secondary-character POV or Omniscient Narrator POV.

Not so we can reveal information.
Not because it's the only way we can talk about this scene.
But for structure and pacing.

This 'secondary POV-ing' is a technique that lifts you out of the protags' emotional journey and forms a buffer when you're transitioning from one emotional place to another and you, like, don't want to do it too fast.

Spymaster's Lady detail

Wonderful reader Eva writes to ask ..

haven't found anything to help me understand how Grey & Adrian were captured and put in that French prison with Annique. I feel like it was something with Adrian's injury but I'm not sure why I believe that. I think I just get so lost in the story I forget to look for those missing pieces of information. Is it written somewhere?

Ah. Here we have wandered out of Annique's story and into the edges of Adrian's story.

In the weeks before Spymaster's Lady opens, Adrian is on assignment as the key element of a large operation. It's an important op indeed, since Grey is in France, in person, directing, and ready to pull Adrian out if it all goes south.

Spying his merry way through the operation, Adrian has the misfortune to run into an old adversary. Old adversary, old friend, old lover, old rival ... anyhow, she knows him very well.
It's just bad luck she's there. Sometimes, on an operation, you run into bad luck.

Covers are blown. Carefully laid plans go awry. Plots unravel. Adrian gets shot when he's naked in bed with his old lover.
She shoots him. Talk about your wake-up calls.

Our lad is out the window, grabbing his clothes on the way.

Adrian's done this much . . . the op can be salvaged. Grey and Doyle step in to do that. But Adrian's on the streets, running.

When Grey goes to scoop him up, they're both captured.

This all happens outside the bounds of Spymaster's Lady, though. We catch only the merest whiff of it there.

ETA in July 2010:  When I actually sat down to write the JUSTINE story, I decided to do things somewhat differently.  So this is not what happened.
Just forget about all this part . . . okay?