Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 17: Curses, Foiled Again!

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 seventeen:

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 17: Curses, Foiled Again!

You’ve probably heard the old Chinese curse (maybe from me), “May you live in interesting times.”

Interesting times — war, famine, storms, earthquakes — are terrifying to live through. However, within the framework of a novel, interesting times are wonderful to write about and to read about.

(Photo, public domain)

I purposely set my first trilogy (The Ivory Carver Trilogy) just prior to, during, and shortly after a large volcanic eruption that rocked the Aleutian Islands thousands of years ago. According to archaeological and geological studies, this eruption left a very clear ash layer, which is relatively easy to date within plus or minus 50 years. I chose a date (7056 B.C.) within that time frame for the first novel of the trilogy, and that allowed me to enhance the realism. These “hey-this-really-happened” moments add definition and believability to a novel. In the case of a volcanic eruption, it also serves as an effective external conflict — man versus nature.

Although many wonderful novels are based only on internal conflict, you are more likely to please your readers if you use both internal and external conflicts.

External conflicts include man-against-man (wars and rumors of war, revenge, arranged marriages, blackmail); man-against-nature (earthquakes, storms, famine, plagues, animals); man-against-machines (robots, razor sharp pendulums, crazed vehicles); man-against-spiritual beings (devils, angels, gods); man-against-entity (governments, corporations, alien civilizations).

The most important thing to keep in mind as you develop external conflicts is to keep your characters in-character. In other words, a man who hates kids probably won’t fight a government entity to protect them. Of course, wouldn’t it be a great story if he did? If he does, however, be sure you give him proper motivation for doing so. Why the change of heart?

Another thing to remember about external (and internal) conflict is that if a conflict does not pierce the heart of your character(s), your readers will be yawning. How do you pierce the heart? Here’s a few ideas:

1. Use your conflicts to test, grow, or destroy your characters.

2. Use conflicts as foils to highlight your character’s desires, strengths, and/or weaknesses.

3. Use conflicts to force your character into rip-out-the-heart choices.

4. Use conflicts to grow your main character’s problems into something larger than his or her daily life.

5. Use conflicts to make your character suffer — mentally, spiritually, or physically.

These techniques help you touch your readers’ hearts, and that’s how writers build their reading audiences.

What types of external conflicts do you like to read about?

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 July 24, 2014, for part 18.

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

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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*

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.

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

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