Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 16: Conflicted!

Welcome back! 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 sixteen:

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 16: Conflicted!

Conflict stands as the quintessential lifeblood of a novel. To pull your readers in and keep them involved in your story, you have to walk a narrow path between too little conflict and too much conflict.

Too little conflict will start your readers yawning. Too much conflict will rend the “veil of disbelief” and pop your readers out of the story. (As in, “Give me a break nobody suffers that much angst over a piece of burnt toast.”)

Toast burned and photographed by Sue.

Let’s simplify by dividing conflict into two broad categories — internal and external. Today, we’ll talk about internal. Next month, we’ll discuss external.

Internal conflict is all about what’s going on inside your character, mentally and emotionally. Internal conflict is vitally important because it builds a bridge between your character and your reader. Readers relate to strong emotions. We all know what it is to love, hate, feel jealous, be afraid, and experience all those other potent feelings. It’s the “do I love him or hate him” anguish of the romance novel (Jane Eyre, right?). It’s the “who am I and why are they trying to kill me” of suspense novels (Jason Bourne). I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

Of course, these emotional connections lead us back to the “show don’t tell” admonitions of so many how-to writing books and articles. Just to remind all of us (including myself) how “show don’t tell” relates to internal conflict, I’ll pull an example from one of my current manuscripts.

This quote is from BONE FIRE, a novel set in ancient Europe. The main character, Rose, has been kidnapped and is traveling North with her abductor. Rose grieves so much for her lost home and family that she would rather be dead than go peacefully with the kidnapper, but she is pregnant, and she wants the baby to live.

Now I could throw the above paragraph — with a few tweaks — into the middle of the novel and be done with the matter, but that won’t create an adequate bond between Rose and my readers. Instead, in a series of scenes, I illustrate her internal conflict through her actions. Here’s one short example:

“…that part of Rose which lived inside her head traveled back over the trails to the Mother River until she reached her village. There she floated over the deserted houses, looking for Kittle, and the grandmother, and the old man Dat. When she did not find them, she came back to her own body and slept, and in the morning, when Villr [her kidnapper] offered her food, she ate.”

The best internal conflict isn’t only about choices, it’s about choices that carry immense emotional baggage. Your character has to bleed (really or figuratively) no matter what choice he or she makes. Rose’s choice is between death and life, but, if she chooses life, she is choosing to leave behind who she is, who she loves, and all that she knows. If she chooses death, she is also choosing to kill her own unborn baby. Either way, she’s hurting, big time.

Thank goodness that for a novelist, the choice is a bit easier. Choose internal conflict. Choose to pull your reader in with difficult choices and strong emotions.

What’s your main character’s name? What kind of internal conflict does he or she face?

Strength to your pen!

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 26, 2014, for part 17.

Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 15: Tools of the Trade

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 15: Tools of the Trade

In the second grade, my classmates and I learned to write paragraphs. To ease us into the task, our teacher, Mrs. Stockinger, wrote a paragraph on the blackboard and told us to copy what she had written. Although the paragraph was only two or three lines, I remember that assignment as grievously laborious. I’m glad I didn’t know then that we would soon have to compose our own paragraphs and even write a whole story full of paragraphs.

Good grief, whatever was Mrs. Stockinger thinking?

She was thinking that the ability to write a viable paragraph would be a useful tool during our academic lives and beyond.

If you’re writing a novel, then it’s safe to bet that someone at sometime showed you how to write paragraphs. You were probably taught that a good paragraph begins with a topic sentence and goes on to explain or develop the premise set by that sentence.

That’s a great place to start, but, because we’re writing novels, let’s consider a few more novel-pertinent ideas about writing paragraphs.

1. Most of the time, you should keep your paragraphs relatively short. Readers today grew up with television, and, therefore, with stories conveniently nipped into bite-sized pieces. Unlike our ancestors of the 1800s, we’re used to ideas presented succinctly. To modern readers, long paragraphs are akin to a monotone speaker.

2. Unless the reader is enjoying an audio edition or using Braille, the act of reading is a visual experience. Even before a reader delves into the words or the story, the page imprints on the brain — white space versus black letters. I used to keyline page layouts for a small university press. You’d be amazed how much time we spent considering column widths, margins, photograph placement, and caption sizes. Odd as it sounds, readers drift away when a page doesn’t contain enough white space. Ebooks have introduced a whole array of new possibilities, but still, as a writer, don’t be afraid to chop up your chapters with a few one-sentence or even one-word paragraphs. They rest the eyes, and they add pleasing visual variety.

3. Paragraph lengths impact the Voice or Voices you have chosen as the vehicle to carry and tell your story. You can test this for yourself. Read aloud a page of your manuscript. Now rewrite it with longer or shorter paragraphs. Read it aloud again. The difference is amazing, isn’t it? And that’s what I want to get across. The lengths of your paragraphs make a difference, and knowing that fact places a very useful tool into the hands and the mind of a writer.

4. Long chapters are discouraging to many readers. I love to insert a couple of one-page chapters in my suspense novels. That bit of choppiness ramps up the tension — another tool to add to your collection.

So there you have it. Writers can use chapter and paragraph length as tools to tweak their novels.

What’s your tendency? Short or long paragraphs? Short or long chapters? Which do you prefer to read?

Strength to your pen!

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 22, 2014, for part 16.

News about best-selling author Sue Harrison’s Alaska books! (Interview)

Today I’m doing things a little differently. For those of you who haven’t made this discovery yet on your own, I have an exciting announcement about Sue Harrison’s Alaska novels. Now you can purchase them for yourself for your electronic reader! Instead of a book review today, the rest of this post is a sort of interview and is dedicated to Sue for her relating of her e-book experience. Links are included to make it easy to find where you can purchase copies – if you are so tempted and just can’t resist. 🙂

My question to Sue was: Sue, I haven’t yet mentioned on my blog about your books becoming available as e-books. Do you have information for me regarding that? The following is her reply.

Lynn has asked me to share about the story of the ebook release of my 6 Alaska novels, so this is a story about a little dream becoming a lot bigger than I ever thought it would.

In August 2012, my husband Neil mentioned that we really should look into my old contracts and see if we could get the ebook rights assigned to us by the publishers of my Alaska books, Doubleday, William Morrow, and HarperCollins. We weren’t all that motivated, thinking that it might take us a long time to jump through all the necessary hoops, but we dug out the contracts and were met with a very welcome surprise. We already owned the rights! The literary agent who represented my Alaska novels, Rhoda Weyr (now retired), had retained those rights – way back in the 1990s before ebooks were “invented,” and I am extraordinarily grateful for her foresight and wisdom.

My husband set to work finding a company that would scan my novel MOTHER EARTH FATHER SKY in preparation for us to self-publish the novel in ebook format. We found Golden Images LLC, and Stan Drew and his people did a super job for us. However, our plans did an abrupt turn around when I received an email on November 7, 2012, from Maggie Lichota Crawford. Maggie was the Avon paperback editor for my first two Alaska books, MOTHER EARTH FATHER SKY and MY SISTER THE MOON. Maggie wrote that she was now working at Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher based in New York City. She told us that Open Road publishes many distinguished authors digitally, including James Joyce, Pearl S. Buck, Pat Conroy, William Styron, Anne Perry….

And they wanted MY novels? Wow, serious happy-dancing.

The next few months were filled with fun activities like updating and submitting my biography, reviewing cover artwork, and posing for new author photos. (Thank you, Erin Johnson!) The six novels were released in May 2013, and are available from Open Road and all ebook retailers. What a dream come true!

These are links to each novel (click link to see where to purchase book):

Mother Earth Father Sky

But wait, we weren’t finished. Open Road decided to send producer Corey Maloney and cinematographer Luke Locurcio to our house to shoot a publicity video. Here’s the finished product:

Meet Sue Harrison <– click here to watch the video

For those who are wondering, most of the video was shot here at our house and on our beach and surrounding woods. The hand hefting the axe is my husband’s. And no, we do not have that spectacular waterfall in our backyard. That is Tahquamenon Falls, located about an hour and a half drive northwest of us, and is one of the most recognized landmarks in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Open Road had another big surprise for us in September 2013. It was a Tuesday, and I had begun the mundane work of washing bedding, cleaning, and generally getting back into a routine after a three-day weekend of company. I sat down at the computer and buzzed through the emails that had accumulated and just happened to notice that one of them was from my aunt, Ruth Danner. Ruth’s message said that she’d turned on her Kindle and up popped a very nice advertisement about my novel MOTHER EARTH FATHER SKY.

I immediately did a little sleuthing, found an email from my publicist Laura at Open Road and discovered that MEFS had been selected as the Kindle Daily Deal. Wow! Was that a shocker.

The rest of the day, I was pretty much involved in watching the numbers. (I know that’s vain.) Wednesday was more of the same. Although my novel was back to normal price, people were still buying it. During those two days, MOTHER EARTH FATHER SKY rose to #3 nationwide for Amazon ebook sales, and my author ranking rose to #4 nationwide . That author ranking lasted only a few hours, but I have to admit that it was heady to see myself ranked higher than Stephen King and Clive Cussler.

Despite all this talk about fame, please know that I know fame is a very brittle, unstable foundation for life, for self-worth, or for happiness. I’m so grateful that I don’t need accolades to tell me that I’m loved. My Bible tells me that. My family tells me that. My friends tell me that. I don’t need high author ranks to motivate me to work each day in whatever way God intends. But I did enjoy my 15 minutes of fame, and this is my opportunity to thank all of you for your support, for your help, for your kind words, and for reading my books.

Sue Harrison

Thanks, Sue, for this fabulous and thrilling story of the revival of your books!

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 14: Ready, Set, Go!

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 14: Ready, Set, Go!

I have a terrible time making a good first impression. I either come off looking stuck up because I don’t say anything at all, or like an idiot because I talk way too much.

The good news is that most people are willing to overlook that first sentence or two that does (or doesn’t) come out of my mouth, but, when we shift our focus from social situations to novels, that first sentence becomes all important. For many people, including editors and agents, the first sentence is all they need to determine whether or not they read the book.

So let’s discuss two important things you need to learn about writing a first sentence.

1. The first sentence doesn’t have to be written first.

Duh. Of course, you don’t need to write it first. But seriously, you don’t. Since that first sentence is so important, it sometimes stands like a wall, blocking off every strong intent, every beautiful word, every delicious story that could follow, because the writer chokes.Trust yourself, go on with the novel. Start the marathon, but, when you return to that first sentence, consider your prime target.

photo credit: Neil Harrison

Strangely enough, your prime target isn’t craft or artistry. It isn’t even voice, although all those things are important.

2. Your prime target is your reader.

Allow me to share the first sentences from three very different manuscripts that I’m working on. (The titles are “working titles,” which means they’ll probably be changed.)

1. From TAIL FEMALE, “I’ll be fifteen next apple harvest and I got me a baby girl one years old and she’s named Chinaberry Scott.”

2. From WISH, “If you pace it off, the cement floor measures six feet wide and nine feet long, and the ceiling stands high enough that I can’t reach the camera mounted in the corner, even with a running jump.

3. From BONE FIRE, “The morning the giant walked into the village, Rose was stirring a bag of stew that hung over the outside hearth.”

Whatever weaknesses these first sentences contain, each carries one important attribute. It targets the reader, because most readers are going to stop and say, “What?”

My best advice about your first sentence? Write a sentence that holds a bit of mystery in its gut, so it pulls your readers forward into that story you can’t wait to tell them!

Strength to your pen!

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 April 24, 2014, for part 15.

Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 13: Where are you?

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 13: Where are you?

Magicians and novelists have something in common. They must learn “sleight of hand.” You know, the old smoke-and-mirrors deal. Magicians pull rabbits out of hats. Novelists pull their readers into landscapes and time periods.

If we’re out in the audience, we probably don’t have a clue how that rabbit got into the magician’s hat, and, in a really well-written book, we don’t quite understand how the author so successfully plants us into a time and a place. For magicians the secret is often roomy sleeves and quick hands. For novelists, the twin secrets are subtlety and visualization.

Let’s take a look into a novel that does a great job of transporting us into time and place. That novel is FALL OF GIANTS by Ken Follett. In the hardcover edition (page 31) Follett describes a gray house. He doesn’t come right out and say, “The house was gray.” That’s too easy, and more importantly it doesn’t touch a reader’s soul. Instead he tells us that the house is named “Ty Gwyn.” He says that Ty Gwyn is Welsh for White House (aha! we’re in Wales), but he then tells his readers that the name is ironic, because the house is covered with coal dust. It’s so dirty that it discolors the long skirts of women (time period hint) who brush too closely as they walk by.

Follett knows his readers well. They’re the folks who love big fat thick historical novels packed full of story and facts. In this paragraph, those readers receive a visual image of a dirty gray house, but they also see women in long, full skirts, they learn two words in Welsh, and they discover that this particular house is located in Welsh coal country. Now that’s the way to write setting.

So we’ve seen the fantastic finished product, but I still haven’t addressed the how-to angle. Here’s a few ways that I help myself write settings.

1. I watch a video or a movie set in the area I’m writing about.

2. If possible, I visit the location.

3. I talk to/interview people who live there or who have visited the area.

4. I read travel books and magazine articles about that particular location.

5. I look up statistics on Wikipedia or in my handy old-fashioned set of Encyclopedia Britannica.

6. I purchase maps and study them ardently.

7. I pinpoint the location on a globe. My globe has raised areas where mountains and highlands are located. I love the tactile aspect of exploring my setting with my fingertips.

All of those ideas will help you, but here’s the best-kept secret about performing the magic trick of producing an effective setting — or any visual image — via words. Before you write it, see it in your mind. Close your eyes and imagine that place until you feel as if you were there. If you the writer have a fuzzy image in your head, then it will also appear “fuzzy” to your reader. I don’t know why it works that way, but it does. (I told you it was all about smoke-and-mirrors!)

Once you have succeeded in placing that image in your mind, then you are ready to write it for your readers.

How do you help yourself visualize settings for your stories or novels?

Strength to your pen!

Sue

Thanks for joining us! Please feel free to leave your questions and comments. We invite you come back March 27, 2014, for part 14.

Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 12: Whose Eyes?

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 12: Whose Eyes?

Here’s what I love about reading novels. They give me the opportunity to see the world through another person’s eyes. For a novelist to provide that great joy to his readers, he has to develop full and believable characters and then choose how to convey the thoughts and ideas of those characters on the written page. That choice is all about point of view (POV).

In determining POV, every writer has two main options, first person or third person. We’ll talk about variations, like second person, in a later blog post, but today let’s keep it simple.

First Person POV: I went for a nice walk, and I saw a pretty flower.

Third Person POV: She went for a nice walk, and she saw a pretty flower.

I know, I know, the two sentences above deserve trashing for multiple reasons, but let’s not complicate matters. Two choices. That seems pretty straight forward. So how do you decide which is best for your novel? Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you how I decide which POV is best for my novels.

I consider these four things:

1. The usual POV in which my genre is presented.

2. My preference.

3. The strengths and weaknesses of each POV.

4. The unique characters in my novel.

So let’s talk about #1 – the usual POVs for some common genres. In my next “Writing the Third Dimension,” I’ll discuss numbers 2 through 4.

Historical fiction is usually presented in third person POV. That’s because historical fiction often paints on a wide canvas, and most authors prefer to open the minds of many characters to their readers. Multiple third person POVs are less awkward and, to most readers, more “believable” than multiple first person POVs.

Mysteries and Who-Done-Its boast a wide variety of sub-genres. Because of the differing requirements in each of these sub-genres, readers will find some novels presented in first person POV and others in third person. If the novelist wants the main character to be as stumped by the mystery as the reader, she will often choose first person POV. If the writer wants to present what happened from multiple viewpoints, he will often choose third person POV.

Romance novels are built on a foundation of strong emotions. They are often presented in first person POV, which is able to convey emotions at a very intense level.

Young Adult novels are often told from first person POV because of that same strong emotional bond the writer is trying to forge between a main character and the reader.

Action-Adventure is another genre that is split between both POVs, but if the novel has only one main character, authors often choose first person POV.

Children’s novels, those first chapter books, are also usually written in first person POV, and that is done to help young children bond more easily with the main character.

Feel free to add to our genre list. Do you have a reading preference for POV?

Enjoy the Journey!

Sue

Thanks for joining us! Please feel free to leave your questions and comments. We invite you come back February 27, 2014 for part 13.

Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 11: Break Dance!

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 eleven:

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 11: Break Dance!
I don’t hear much about one of the major rules for novelists. SCHEDULE BREAK TIMES!

Yes, you DO need to schedule definite writing times. Once a week or three times a week or every day, whatever works for you. Maybe you write for an hour or three hours or eight. (Don’t burn yourself out, by the way!) Some of my writer friends give themselves a goal of words written rather than time spent writing. The important thing is to establish a definite writing schedule. Maybe a dentist appointment will intrude but definitely not laziness or the dreaded “I’d Rather Not” Syndrome. That’s a novel killer for sure.

However, writers do need breaks.

If you’re reading the “Writing the Third Dimension” posts as I write them, that means that we’re closing in on the December holiday season.

(This is a photo of my daughter, granddaughter, and my mom!)

I usually don’t write the last two weeks of December. During the rest of the year, I also break for Sundays, vacation trips, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Thanksgiving weekend, and a few other odds and ends along the way, including a week between finishing one book and starting the next. The important thing is that these are SCHEDULED BREAKS. I’m not cheating on my writing time. Once you begin to cheat on your writing time, it’s very difficult to get back into a disciplined routine.

Novelists function like marathon runners. Sustained discipline is often the only difference between success and failure. For the novelist, failure doesn’t have anything to do with publication or lack thereof. Failure is failing to finish when you suspect the book you’re writing is good enough to merit completion. (And I’m assuming here that your life situation and your health remains stable.)

In honor of the holiday season, and with Lynn’s agreement, I’m taking a December break from “Writing the Third Dimension” and will dedicate most of my December time to preparing for the holidays: sewing dresses for my granddaughter’s dolls, baking, cleaning, practicing songs for Christmas performances, wrapping gifts, writing holiday cards, having a houseful of guests and, and, and…

Meanwhile to all of you, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year! I’m looking forward to connecting with all of you again on January 23rd. Holidays are fun but it’s always great to get back to writing!

What breaks do you schedule in your writing time?

Happy Writing and Many Blessings!

Sue

Thanks for joining us! Please feel free to leave your questions and comments. We invite you come back January 23, 2014, for part 12.