Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 5: CRASH! SMASH!

Welcome! Over the next many months we invite you to return here, specifically on the fourth Thursday of each month for the newest installment of Sue Harrison‘s teaching: Writing The Third Dimension. You can read all the segments by clicking on the page title WRITING THE THIRD DIMENSION, found under Writers’ Helps & Workshops on the drop-down menu. Please feel free to ask questions and leave comments for Sue. Now for the topic for month five:

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 5: CRASH! SMASH!

When my oldest brother was in grade school, he discovered the delight of racing little plastic cars on a miniature track. He and my dad would each take a car and a controller and race and race and race. The winner was always elated, but I think they had the most fun when one of the cars would accidentally fly off the track, crash into the other car, and carry it off across the room, plastic parts flying.

If you are a writer, there’s a lesson to be learned in the art of crashing. Novelists need to be experts at destruction, specifically, the destruction of their main character’s heart. We touched on this subject in my first Writing the Third Dimension post, but we need to dig a bit deeper into the process.

If you have a good understanding of your main character’s self-image issues (See Part 1 of Writing the Third Dimension: Heart Breaker), it’s time for you to take that wonderful person (or horrible person, if we’re talking about the villain) and rip his or her world apart. You have to grab whatever that person loves most and smash it to smithereens. If you have a complex novel, with several main characters and a villain or two, you need to do that smashing stuff with every one of them.

Here are a few tips about smashing:

1. Your character’s central self-image can be smashed at any time in the novel, or even before the novel begins, but I’ve found the most effective smashing usually occurs within the first few chapters.

2. If you destroy your main character’s self-image BEFORE the novel begins, avoid the temptation to TELL the reader all about it in the first chapter. Or in the second chapter. Or ever in the novel. Feed it to your reader in small tasty bites. (We’ll discuss how to do this in a future post.) Your reader wants to guess a bit about why the main character acts, talks, and defines the world as he does.

3. The most effective smashing occurs after the reader has bonded with the character. Your reader will best bond through emotions. In the first few chapters, the reader wants to know what your character loves, what your character enjoys, what your character hates. Let your reader see your character’s heart. Then SMASH! In my novel, Mother Earth Father Sky, I dedicated the first chapter to opening the main character’s world to the reader. It is a world foreign to most people because the novel takes place thousands of years ago in Alaska, but, by the end of the chapter, the reader knows that the main character, Chagak, is a young woman in love with the man who has just arranged to marry her. The reader learns that Chagak holds a place of respect in the village and is close to her parents and siblings. Then SMASH! Her whole world is destroyed by marauders, and she is the sole survivor. Which brings us to point number 4.

4. Smashing hurts your heart. Be ready for that. If you don’t shed tears for your characters, your readers won’t shed tears either.

5. In longer, more complex novels, your main character may experience several SMASH situations in his or her life. A good example of this is the classic novel, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane’s world crashes when, as a child, she must go live with her self-serving aunt and wicked cousins. It crashes again when she loses her best friend at boarding school, and it crashes yet again when she uncovers the great secret hidden by the love of her life. Charlotte Bronte was a master at pulling her readers in by destroying her characters’ worlds.

Likewise, your novel will pull in your readers when you make judicious use of the art of crashing.

How do you feel about smashing? Are you good at destroying your characters’ worlds, or is that difficult for you?

Blessings and Happy Writing!

Sue

*Writing the Third Dimension, copyright, 2010 Sue Harrison*

Bestselling author, Sue Harrison, has written two Alaska trilogies: The Ivory Carver Trilogy and The Storyteller Trilogy, and a middle readers’ book SISU. Prior to the publication of her novels, Harrison was employed at Lake Superior State University as a writer and acting director of the Public Relations Department and as an adjunct instructor in creative writing and advanced creative writing. For more information, click here. To inquire about booking Sue for workshops or speaking engagements this year, click here.

Thanks for joining us! Please feel free to leave your questions and comments. We invite you come back June 27, 2013 for part 6.

Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 4: Fatal Flaw

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 4: Fatal Flaw

When I was in college, I overheard a young woman say to a friend, “Well, I can be friends with a girl who is smart, and I can be friends with a girl who is beautiful, but I just can’t stand a girl who’s beautiful and smart.”

That’s a very good summary of how your readers are going to feel about your main character if he or she is too perfect. We know our own vulnerabilities only too well. When we meet someone who is too talented, too beautiful, or too smart, all that perfection eats away at our self-esteem. So, unless you’re writing a spoof, please give your characters vulnerabilities. Your readers need to identify with the main character. Character flaws pull your reader into your novel, make that reader stick with you through 400 or more pages of story, and – best of all – inspire your readers to buy your next book. Perfection just doesn’t cut it!

If you’ve read any of the TWILIGHT series, you know that the main character Bella is a total klutz. She’s also not aware of her own beauty and not very popular. Those flaws help make Bella a very loveable character. I have to admit that nothing makes me ‘forgive’ a gorgeous Hollywood starlet more readily for her beauty than her sincere lament about her squinty eyes or crooked teeth.

Let’s face it. We all tend to romanticize life. In mid-winter we dream of life on the beach – warm sun, snacks and cold drinks in the cooler, family time… But in real life, beach days also include ants, sunburn, and sand – all over our hands, in our food, and in our bathing suits. Even the most romantic of readers want their novels to include a bit of sand in the beach scene and, more importantly, imperfection in their main characters.

One caution – be careful with character flaws. Don’t make them so terrible that your reader turns away in disgust. For example, it’s probably not a good idea for your protagonist to be mean to children or dogs.

We all have character flaws. I, alas, like Bella, am a klutz. I also have a tendency to talk too much when I’m nervous. The main character in my current WIP (work in progress) is drop-dead gorgeous, except that her face is plastered with freckles. She’s also made some very unwise life choices. Are you working on a novel or short story? What’s your character’s flaw? Let’s share some ideas by composing a list.

What character flaws have you used within your writing, noticed in your reading, or put up with in real life?

Any questions for me? Please feel free to ask!

Blessings and Happy Writing!

Sue

*Writing the Third Dimension, copyright, 2010 Sue Harrison*

Thanks for joining us! Please feel free to leave your questions and comments. We invite you come back May 23, 2013, for part 5.

Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 3: The Boyfriend List

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 3: The Boyfriend List

When I was twelve, I wrote a Boyfriend List. My list included all the dream qualities I considered ideal in a boyfriend. Most of it was very superficial: blue eyes, good athlete, smart, cute, and nice. Cute and nice? Ah well, I was only twelve.

Writing that list didn’t help me much during the angst years of junior high; however, it was the first indication that I would take after my maternal grandfather and become a list writer. I live on lists. Grocery lists, lists of goals, book idea lists, books I’ve read, housework to-do… I could go on, but I’ll spare you. If you are a list-maker, you’re going to like what I have to say next. If not, please give my suggestions at least a bit of consideration. I think they will be helpful for you as you write your novel.

You’ve been fostering a friendship with your main character. You’ve been carrying this brand new person in your head, having conversations with him, asking questions, getting to know her. That’s the creative Right Brain part. Now comes the Left Brain stuff. You need to write everything down. If you’re a “fly by the seat of your pants” kind of writer, you might resist doing that, but sometimes creativity has to bow to analysis. Your novel will have a much better chance to make it all the way to publication if you know your character so well that you convey his motivations and reactions so that they make sense to the reader throughout the novel. (And you also want the blue-eyed girl in the first chapter to still have blue eyes in the last chapter.)

Most of you have done a character sketch, maybe when you were in junior high or high school. A character sketch? Yes, all this has been leading up to that old standard, the character sketch. (No histrionics, please!)

My usual character sketch includes these items: name, age, race, birth date, nationality, birthplace, hair color, eye color, skin color, facial characteristics, body type, unusual physical characteristics (tattoos, birthmarks, freckles and so on), weight, height, body language/mannerisms, voice, speech quirks (clichés, catch phrases), time period in which she/he lives, favorite food, favorite animal and television show and movie and book and music, favorite person, his/her parents, siblings, relatives, pets, jobs held, and schooling.

The list could be almost endless, and I’m sure that you’ll think of characteristics that I haven’t included. Your character sketch will vary, novel to novel. A character who lives in the 1800s will not have a favorite television show, of course, but he may have a favorite saddle. In my Alaska trilogies all characters have brown eyes and dark hair, so that was easy, but I needed to use other physical characteristics to help me – and my readers – differentiate one character from another. That was a little more complex.

You’ll need a sketch for each main character and probably for your primary villain. You may find yourself changing things in your character sketch as you progress through this novel, so an area for “additional notes” is a good idea. Don’t be afraid to throw in MORE than you probably need to know. Even though these facts may never come to light within the novel, the more you understand about your character, the better job you’ll do writing about him. Also, you never know when an unexpected twist may change the course of your novel. Characters do have a tendency to wrestle the keyboard away from the writer. That’s when I benefit from re-reading my character notes.

My character sketches get pretty messy by the end of my novel and often degenerate into layers of sticky-notes, but at least I have a reference to what I’ve done, changed, thought, and decided during the weeks and months of writing.

What works best for me is to keep two ring binders for each novel I’m writing. One binder is for the chapters of my current draft. (You’ll need a four- or five-inch binder for this.) I use dividers between each chapter for easy reference. The other binder is for my research notes and also includes my character sketch notes and good stuff like the people to include in my author’s acknowledgements, reviewers who may want to read an ARC (advanced reader’s copy) of the novel, and maps.

It comes down to this. You don’t need to keep all the little stuff in your head. Make lists, fill notebooks, write character sketches. That will leave room in your brain for the muse to stretch out and get comfortable!

(And as for me, it turns out that a writing a Boyfriend List was good preparation for creating novels. Who knew?)

My question for you: Are you a left-brained, analytic person or more of a seat-of-the-pants kind of writer?

Any questions for me?

Happy Writing and Many Blessings!

Sue

Bestselling author, Sue Harrison, has written two Alaska trilogies: The Ivory Carver Trilogy and The Storyteller Trilogy, and a middle readers’ book SISU. Prior to the publication of her novels, Harrison was employed at Lake Superior State University as a writer and acting director of the Public Relations Department and as an adjunct instructor in creative writing and advanced creative writing. For more information, click here. To inquire about booking Sue for workshops or speaking engagements this year, click here.

Thanks for joining us! Please feel free to leave your questions and comments. We invite you come back April 25, 2013, for part 4.

Sue Harrison’s “Writing The Third Dimension”- part 2: Cut the Puppet Strings!

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 2: Cut the Puppet Strings!

One of my little life treasures is a slip of paper from my uncle that is filled with handwritten notes about characterization. Uncle Bill was a composer, symphony conductor, and concert pianist, very eccentric and very brilliant. When I was in college, I worked up enough nerve to begin sending him some of my short stories. He became my coach, cheerleader, and harshest critic, exactly what I needed at that time. I finally wrote a novelette and sent that 40,000 words of drivel to him.

Uncle Bill wrote a critique of my novelette, and, when he was at the post office to mail that critique to me, he ripped a deposit slip out of his checkbook and wrote this on the back: [his words and spelling] “Your characters must be so real they even defy the author. They wake you up in the middle of the nite and spit right in your eye. You are not creating puppets that do what you want but live living beings that act their life right in front of you. You will do well to write it down fast enough when this happens.” In the critique, one of his sentences reads: “I know more about the sidewalk [in your manuscript] than I do about your main character.” My manuscript had a fatal flaw. I had managed to write 40,000 words without allowing any of my characters to step off the page and assume three dimensions. I’d written a whole novelette about people who were merely puppets, and their strings were showing.

In my first “Writing the Third Dimension” post here on Polilla Writes, we talked about carrying your characters around in your head until you know them well enough to understand what will destroy them. That’s identifying the huge center of your character, but you also have to know all those quirky little things that will make your character real and loveable and irascible, those attributes that will make your character memorable to your readers.

If you are just beginning your novel, or if, in rereading your manuscript, you feel that your characters are stiff and fake, buy, beg, or scarf up a three-ring binder. Fill it with lined loose-leaf paper, or, if you’re a techie, start a file on your computer or iPad. As you carry your main character around in your head, take notes about him or her. Don’t try to get too organized about this. Right now you’re a hunter-gatherer. Hunt for the stuff and jot it down. When you’re answering the telephone, stop and think how your main character would answer the telephone. When you’re ordering pizza, decide what your main character would like on his pizza. If you’re clicking through the channels on your television, figure out what your main character would watch. What would he read? What car would she buy? Where does he like to vacation? If you’re writing about a different era than modern times, what horse would she ride? What fabric would she choose for her new dress? What did he name his spaceship? Write it all down.

Cut out photographs from magazines or eZines and save them until you have a composite picture of what your main character looks like. Here’s a huge secret about writing that I’ll tell you now and also tell you again in later posts. If your visualization of your character (or a setting or an item) is fuzzy in your mind, it will be visually fuzzy to your reader. That’s one of the few rules of writing that’s pretty much set in stone. Learn to see your character in action in your mind. How does he run? Like Harrison Ford? How does she smile? Like Julia Roberts? Close your eyes and visualize until you see that character so clearly you could be watching her on television.

Last month, we were looking at the big picture – the center of your character’s being, his self-esteem, her reason for living. This month, we’re talking about the details, figuring out all the small stuff that makes people real. Next month? The whole picture. Remember, the stronger your characters, the better chance you’ll have to be published, which means that I’ll get to read your books. I can’t wait!

My questions for you: What color is your main character’s hair? What does your main character love to do in his free time?

Any questions for me? Please feel free to ask!

Blessings and Happy Writing!

Sue

Thanks for joining us! Please feel free to leave your questions and comments. We invite you come back March 28, 2013, for part 3.