Do Broken Hearts Equal Good Writing?

I had lunch the other day with a very dear friend of mine who is a smart, talented writer and a scientist, who recently had her heart broken by her boyfriend of 11 months.  She rightly feels betrayed.  I was so saddened that the best I could do was listen.  There was really nothing I could do to help, even having been in the same situation myself one time.  There's nothing that can make a pain like this dissipate, except for time and maybe Scotch. ;-) But then I got to thinking: do broken hearts equal good writing?

My friend has no mind to write right now and I can understand that. Some pains are just too personal to run right out and start putting to paper. But many writers have turned romantic misfortune into valuable art.  The wonderfully talented Adele turned her broken heart into an awesome album and something like 7,291 Grammy awards (I lost count).  Yes, she is a singer/songwriter and not a story writer but the creative arts are the creative arts and songwriting is really a form of poetry in many ways. 

I have found that sadness and part memories have fueled some of the best poetry I've ever written.  In fact, I'm often more prolific when I am sad.  (When I'm happy, I tend to catch up on the house cleaning I don't do when I'm sad...)  Unlike short stories and novels, which I feel are open to audience interpretation, poetry is a more personal art form and it lends itself best to the chronicle of the heart.  The short, curt sentences.  The crisp meter.  The words that have multiple meanings.  The almost musical quality of the rhymes and word choices.  Put together, it's emotion on paper and who can say if my emotion is right or wrong? 

For us writers, like many other artists, it may be that getting our feelings on paper is the best form of psychiatric therapy when are lives are in low tide, not to mention that apart from the cost of paper and pen, it's the cheapest therapy out there.  Maybe we need the pain to open us up to tell the true stories inside of us, the ones we like to normally keep in the dark.  Even if broken hearts don't equal good writing necessarily, can it be said that broken hearts at least equal honest writing?  And as artists, what we do with that honest writing is what makes all the difference.

Creating Memorable Characters

Last month, I went to the movies to see Sherlock Holmes twice in three days. I love Holmes and the gorgeousness of Downey and Law didn't hurt but it did get me to thinking about what makes a memorable character. Holmes and Watson have been loved by readers for almost 130 years while other characters are hardly memorable at all. What's the difference?

It's the balance of Everyman and HeroAnti-Hero. Not to get too lit class on it, but I feel these are two basic types of characters that are easily identifiable to readers. This person can be any age and gender (Holmes, Watson, Harry Potter, Miss Marple, Percy Jackson) as long as the balance is there. The reader needs to be able to both identify with the character (being a child, wanting to solve a mystery, having a secret) AND be able to be amazed at the character's abilities, choices, or morales (he figured out the puzzle, he knows magic, he was merciful). The goal is to allow the reader to see both himself as is and the self he wishes he could be all in one. It's a way of creating "just like you, only better."

How does one achieve this balance?

First, make the character approachable. Harry knows magic, but he's still just a scared boy who gets bullied and makes mistakes. Holmes is a genius, but he also has addiction problems and a great need to be needed. Percy is the son of a Greek god, but he also has a bad home life and difficulties in school.

Secondly, make the goal big enough. Saving the world works nicely, but can't be the only thing characters have to do. Saving themselves, protecting family, bringing a criminal to justice, writing a wrong, solving a mystery all also work nicely. I recently read "All the Lovely Bad Ones," by Mary Downing Hahn. Her protagonists wanted to right a 100 year old wrong and bring peace to the dead. That works too. Anything the reader would love to do if he/she had the same awesome chances that book characters get.

Thirdly, despite his/her approachability, make the character special. Smart is just fine (Holmes), but outspoken also works well (Elizabeth Bennett of "Pride and Predjudice" fame). Magic and special powers are perfect (Harry, Percy) and so is deduction and common sense (Marple, Poirot, Katniss from "The Hunger Games").

Lastly, never let your character be too pompous. The students at Hogwarts learn lessons from their teachers, Elizabeth Bennett found via Mr. Darcy that she didn't know everything, Katniss misjudged people, and even my beloved Holmes was sometimes wrong. He once asked Watson to remind him of his error whenever he got too pompous about his own abilities. Good idea. A reader wants the "just like you, only better" characters to be role models, not lecturers or bullies. You want to leave the reader saying, "I wish I was that character" and not, "I never want to read more about that jerk."

Now it's my time to return to my own writing and follow my own directions.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:WDC

Procrastination and the Joy of Deadlines

I'm a master of procrastination. I can find a million things to do before writing. The biggest problem with that is how much I love writing and want to be doing it all of the time. But for me, it comes down to a guilt issue. I feel guilty about spending too much time writing, despite my obsessive love for it. It really isn't about writing after all.  It's about me.  I feel guilty for spending too much time on me. That's why I love deadlines. With a deadline, I can bypass some of the guilt about me time. Writing without a deadline may result in a finished product but there was no real reason for this finished product to exist, except that I wanted it to be.  A deadline, on the other hand, is like an order.  I have to finish my project by this date imposed on me. I'm not doing something I enjoy just for my own amusement anymore. I'm doing it because I was told to. Deadlines are a joy to me.  I don't always make them, but I try, and any written word is better than none at all.

2012 - the year of the writer and that writer is me...I hope.

Yes, it's been a year since I last blogged on this site, which is funny since I am a writer and I didn't find the time to write here in 16 months. Well, truth be told, I had cancer and all the related treatments and that had the annoying side-effects of being both tiring and tiresome, as well as a real time killer. But I'm moving forward now. :-)

What I really need is a deadline.  I've found over the last year that my best work was done under pressure. I don't like the pressure but I do like the deadlines. I think because it reminds me of being in school and I was one of those kids that looooooved school.  Not just loved it, looooooved it. Well, not math class and usually not science class.  I knew I wanted and was destined for a career involving words, not numbers. But I always had my homework done ahead of time because I refused to miss a deadline.  As a writer now, I'm much the same way.  I can procrastinate my way into making procrastination a stunning new art form and I can use those excellent procrastination skills to never get a writing project done but give me a deadline that I can't fudge and I am ON it.  So now all I need is somebody to give me a deadline.  Please.  It doesn't work when I impose them on myself. If it did, I would never be a procrastinator.

So blogs full of tips, hints, and markets open to submissions are forthcoming.  Right now I'm just trying to calculate the appropriate length of a YA novel (I'm hearing 50-65K) and how long it will take me to reach that.  In my current Work-In-Progress (WIP), I am at 8100 words. So somebody throw me a deadline to reach 65K and I'm going for it.  Just as soon as I finish the laundry and update my Facebook.  LOL

Speak Loudly - Let's ban book banning

So I log onto the internet after a slow-paced casual Sunday, thinking I'll just post a few tweets and move on and what do I come across?  Freaking book banning  and book censorship. Seriously? This is ridiculous.  I am all in favor of banning book banning.  No one has the right to dictate what someone else's children read. I am all in favor of standing up for Laurie Halse Anderson's "Speak." You can find out more about Laurie here: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10003.Laurie_Halse_Anderson , then follow the link to her blog to find out more about her book.

Back to book banning: it's a small-minded action. Most of the classics, including the Bible, have shown up on banned book lists through the years.  While children should read books that are somewhat age-appropriate (i.e. save the truly adult titles for teens instead of the wee ones), just like with movies, there should be no books that are not allowed in school libraries.  Books like "Speak" and others that give a voice to abuse victims should be put ON school reading lists.  While we are at it, let's not forget to keep books like "The Diary of Anne Frank" ON school reading lists too...please.

I went to Catholic school all of my life and it was, for me, a tremendous experience. I loved it. I always remember the Sisters I had teaching my English classes in middle and high school. They gave us banned books. They told us to read everything. They put "Catcher in the Rye" among other banned books on our mandatory school book list.  One Sister when I was in 6th grade, applauded my love of reading by giving me free books, including science and supernatural YA fiction titles, saying, "These look fun." That's how children should be encouraged in the school system.  Let's tear down these bigoted people who want to ban books and instead encourage kids to read all types of titles about both fun and serious topics.  Now that sounds fun.

Two thumbs up for YA lit

The increase in YA titles out there lately has me so excited...as both a writer and a reader.  Now, there are a lot of excellent adult titles coming out - of course - but it's the YA stuff that I particularly like.  I think it has a lot to do with the following:

A. YA books shape minds. I will always remember the books that made me, as a child, want to be a writer and the ones that made me want  to read more about a specific topic. These are the books I'll keep forever and I'll crave to read over and over.  There aren't many literary titles I read as an adult that have the same oomph.

2. In YA books, writers can concentrate more and character and plot that on pretty literary topics. I once knew a writer, who aspired to be a "true writer" in that she only concentrated on manuscripts that were all cerebral and literary. She looked down her nose at genre writers. A lot of the publishing world agrees with her. Except when it comes to YA books. Kids want the unbelievable. They find beauty in the escapism of it.  That's one of the things that makes writing YA so fresh and fun.

3. Less explanation is necessary. Telling a story to adults often requires so much set-up. Why do these supernatural beings exist? How did they get here?  In YA books, there is more imagination and less set-up. Scary things just are.  Let's get to fleshing it out and dealing with it, instead of thinking it to death.

4.  Writing YA makes me feel younger than I am. I become the kid in the story and I love it.  Reading YA makes me feel younger than I am.  I become the kid in the story (again) and I still love it.

A-Z: Dialogue

DIALOGUE
    Remember that good fiction reveals the plot to the reader, it doesn’t explain the plot to the reader like a parent talking to a child.  You need to reveal your characters through their actions.  Don’t just say what the protagonist is doing, show what the protagonist is doing.  That makes all of the difference.  Use your dialogue to reveal the characters and what they are thinking and feeling.
    If your character is of a certain ethnic group or occupation or he/she hails from a particular region, have the character use words or terms that would be indicative of this background.  If your character is a child, don’t have him or her talk like an adult -- unless the point you are trying to convey is that this child is smarter than peers or wise behind his years.  Otherwise, it will just appear as if an adult who doesn’t spend a lot of time with children wrote the piece and that can cost you some credibility.   Likewise, if your character is poor or from a bad neighborhood, he is less likely to order items by their brand names.  A young man with an inner-city background will more likely call wine ‘wine” than ask for it by a type or region.  A burgundy is more often the order of a character with a bigger bank account or more worldly travels.
Please don’t go overboard with accents, however.  Nothing is harder to read than a mish-mash of accented words.  Hint at the accent and the reader will catch on quickly enough.
Also, try to see how far you can go without using the word “said.”  It’s not needed in every line or every time a character talks.  Instead, try out some variations or better yet, just let sections of dialogue flow without these markers.   Just make sure it’s clear enough for the reader to be able to attribute the correct lines to the correct speakers. 
Lastly, let your dialogue flow. Edit at the end, not during the process.