Over the month of January, I collected the stories I found on Twitter and in my feeds that were just too good to miss and put them together for you! Welcome to “Thinky Links“!

Author Janice Hardy offers some good advice on how to cut a scene without hurting your story

Kristen Lamb gives a really good example of how to start in medias res.

The Editors’ Blog looks at the use of coincidence in fiction, why it’s bad—and how to fix it.

I’ve been working hard on revising my Nano novel, so I’m really far behind on my feeds, but I did happen to see two good posts on EditTorrent recently, the kind that make me want to run around telling people “I’ve been vindicated” in an imaginary battle I was having with no one. The first covers showing versus telling in an interesting way (i.e. not writing 101), including that was is not always bad and is not the same thing as passive voice, and the role of telling in exposition.

The second is how to avoid that obnoxious “As you know, Bob” (or Alphonse) dialogue by slipping in backstory, characterization and other information through subtle cues. I LOVE working on this, and Alicia gives great examples!

Although I’m now with a traditional, regional publisher, I still find self-publishing very interesting. So for two different perspectives on that this month, Daniel J. Friedman takes a hard look at the numbers behind self publishing: what they make, what they’re worth, and what they’re selling. On the other hand, Joanna Penn interviewed Adam Croft on How To Sell 130,000 Books Without A Publisher. And for some perspective on both sides, Future Book looks at Why Amanda Hocking Switched, with some interesting notes on how her publishers are working for her.

And to close, here are a few of my favorite posts on this blog from Januaries past:

• A perennial favorite of mine, how to spot and avoid the most common (empty) gestures in writing
• Another one I still use extensively, creating and editing with a scene chart
• And a few from the series on tension, suspense and surprise:
  • Choosing whether plot elements should be set up strongly to create suspense, or should remain a surprise
  • One I should probably study a little more: creating suspense in Act I
  • What creates tension and suspense?

What’s the best writing/marketing/publishing advice you‘ve read lately?

Photo by Karola Riegler

We’ve all met people with funny names. I have a friend whose mother-in-law’s name is Lynn Lynne. I played a prank on a friend once, claiming I was going to marry someone with the last name Gordon (and my first name is Jordan, remember?). And of course, my father shares a name with a very famous early US statesman.

In real life, these humorous names often happen by accident (especially if you’re a woman). My dad’s mother, for example, had already picked out Dad’s name before she met my grandfather and thus learned what last name her children would have. (It was the name of her favorite mule…)

In fictional worlds, we get to pick all our characters’ names—so hopefully, we get to avoid these embarrassing “nom” pas . . . but only if we’re really thinking.

Sometimes we choose funny or odd names on purpose. I chose the last name of Saint for one of my characters because it set up a number of jokes. I named another character Molly Malone for the same reason. (Poor characters…) Of course, for Molly, I had to explain how she came to have that unfortunate name. Same went for the tongue-twistery Cora Warren.

And sometimes . . . well, we’re just not smart enough to realize what we’ve done at first. For example, I once had a character with the first name Kent. I needed a nice strong surname for the guy, so in the next scene, he became Mr. Clark. It was a little while before I put the names together.

Kent . . . Clark.


Uh. Yeah. (His last name became Thornton soon thereafter. Borrowed from someone I knew IRL.)

And my most recent character naming accidents came in my Nano novel. Just before another book was accepted, by coincidence I wrote one of my villains sharing a surname with my editor. (It was not a coincidence that another villain shared the same editor’s first name. I changed that.) But the biggie was the hero—and you know how hard it is to change the hero’s name!

Most of the time, it wasn’t a problem. He went by Jack, a nickname from his last name, Jackson. (Which set up some jokes, too, of course. This trend is becoming disturbing.) It was a great name for him.

And I thought his first name was perfect, too. Kerr. (It was a drug store and a lake where I grew up, and my dad had a friend named Kerr when he was a kid. Not that I ever knew him, but I knew it could be a given name.)

If you haven’t seen the problem yet, let me tell you: when his real first name came up, this character often had specify either the spelling or the pronunciation. Let me treat you to a now-defunct conversation from the novel: in this scene, their car has been reported stolen and is about to be towed.

They hurried across the street, Jack trying to compose his thoughts so he could pull this off. The stunned disbelief and confusion wouldn’t be too tough, but the innocence would be a stretch. [They have something stolen in the trunk. Which, sadly, will also end up on the cutting room floor.]

“Whoa whoa whoa,” he said, jogging up to the officer. “Is there a problem here?”

“Is this your vehicle, sir?”

“Yeah. Did I park illegally? The sign says no parking Monday to Friday.” Jack pointed to the sign. [It's Sunday.]

“No, sir. This car has been reported as stolen.”

“No, no—no. This is my car. It has been for seven years.” Unless his brother had changed the registration into his name when Jack left home—but still, it should all check out.

The cop raised an eyebrow and read something off the clipboard in front of him. “License plate 267 VAP?”

He nodded. “All me.”

“Registered to Kerr Halsey Jackson.”

“It’s pronounced ‘car.’ As in, ‘This is my car.’”

The cop folded his arms. “I’m going to need to see some ID.”

So what’s the problem?

His name is Kerr Jackson. Pronounced Car Jackson. Let me try that again: pronounced CAR JACKson.

I realized this two days before I finished the novel. He got a new first name—but I’m definitely going to reuse Kerr. Maybe with the last name . . . Hop?

All right, top my stories: what are the craziest, funniest or silliest things you’ve named characters, on purpose or by accident? Did you change them?

Photo credits: Superman by Greenog; car jack by Cameron Flanders

An earlier version of this post ran in September 2009.

What’s in a name? Well, as it turns out, it can be quite a bit. I recently read a couple contemporary works where the heroine, aged 20-30, was named Madison. Madison is an adorable name—in fact, a little too adorable. It was the 538th most popular first name for girls in the 1980s. It climbed to the top 100 in the 1990s and has since soared to #8 for girls in 2010, the most recent data available now.

So what, you ask? Well, those statistics mean that the average girl named Madison is less than five years old right now. When I read these, I couldn’t help but thinking of the curly-haired toddler down the street. Although a strong, androgynous girls’ name is awesome and Madison hits all the right notes with parents and authors alike today, that’s exactly what makes it all wrong when naming a character who’s supposed to be an adult today.

Personally, I love naming characters. I’ve spent considerable time searching for just the right name for each character, making sure their names fit their ages, backgrounds, and characteristics. Here are a few of my favorite resources for finding the perfect name. (Note: some of these resources are US-centric, but I’m sure that you can find similar data for other countries.)

Character Naming Books

The links to books are affiliate links

The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg. I picked this up while pregnant with my oldest, even though my husband and I had the names of our first four children already picked out (three down, one to go).

Why I like this: It give little profiles outlining why and when each name was popular, as well as assigning names to groups according to style and popularity, and lists similar names. (That’s especially good when you have a name you really like but it happens to be your brother-in-law’s name.)

The New Baby Name Survey Book by Bruce Lansky and Barry Sinrod. The authors of this book surveyed >100,000 parents about 1400 popular names to see what perceptions and connotations the names carried. I picked this up (again, while pregnant) at a thrift store for $2, and I was a little hesitant at first to spend that much (no, seriously), but it’s definitely paid off. In fact, it’s paid off so much that several years later when I found the above-listed new edition, I sprang for it.

Why I like this: Seriously, where else will you find someone to tell you that a female Jerry calls to mind “a friendly, fun-loving brunette who enjoys being the life of the party” while some see the male Jerry as “likely to wear flashy gold chains and may come on a bit too strong.” Those are from the previous edition, which brings me to the drawback: The 1992 Baby Name Personality Survey, with Barry Sinrod, is a little out of date (I mean, seriously, were you naming your character Jerry?). And it’s a penny for the 1992 OR the 2007 version (used on Amazon)—so why not?

Character Naming Websites

BabyNames.com. I use this to look up name origins and meanings. Why I like this: I like to be able to search by meaning and/or culture of origin. Um, duh.

US baby name popularity from 1880 from Social Security records. You can look at the popularity of a name over time, or popular name lists by birth year. Why I like this: This is the best way to find age-appropriate (American) names for characters.

Nymbler from The Baby Name Wizard website. Like the book, this helps to find similar names. Why I like this: It makes it easy to find names by “style,” including origins, popular time period and the more subjective “feel.” I do still prefer the book version, but the website is also fun to play with.

The Baby Name Wizard’s Name Voyager, which generates graphs of name popularity over time. The data is based on the SSA. Why I like this: It’s a visual representation of popular names over time, which is a little more accessible than just the lists from the SSA. (The blog also talks about naming trends.)

The US Census Surname Distribution to find last names, and to check if the sometimes crazy last names I want to use are really last names. (Real names include Police, Outlaw, Saint, Notice, Justice and Riddle. Only one of which I’ve actually used.) Why I like this: when I’m stumped on a last name, reading through the list or using a random number generator can help me finish my character’s name.

Real life, of course!

I seldom name characters after people I know—it’s kinda weird for me—but the people around us every day are a great source for character names. In fact, one of my writing friends actually keeps a name data bank—whenever she meets someone with an interesting name, she makes a note of it and puts it in her data banks on her computer. She also collects names from newspaper articles, especially foreign names—and she stores those by nationality (and surname/given name). When this friend uses names from her list, she marks them with different colors for passing mentions, minor characters (both recyclable) and major characters (one-time use).

And of course, there’s the old standby: the phone book! (Whatever will we do when they stop printing them?)

And always double check

I always Google a character’s name before I settle on using it, just to make sure there isn’t a famous person I’ve forgotten/have no reason to know about with the same last name. On the other hand, if there are a lot of (moderately) famous people with that name, I figure it’s fine to use it again, right?

Of course, Google isn’t a foolproof measure against choosing a bad name. If you’ve ever given your characters a supremely bad name—and despite all the resources I have, let me assure you you’re not alone—be sure to come back Friday! (And save yours for then, too, so we can all have our catharsis at once )

How do you find your characters’ names? What are your favorite or least favorite character names? Would you comment on a character’s name in critique?

Photo credits: Name tag—Henk L; Jim—Deon Staffelbach

Confession time!

I totally use a thesaurus. Even while drafting. If I’m repeating a word too much and I just know there’s an easy synonym (it’s that tip-of-the-tongue syndrome!), words that are so quick and easy that they’re in the standard word processor thesaurus, I look them up. And if you’ve got a good thesaurus, it’s fun to gambol in the Word Nerd-ery sometimes.

But I’ve also seen thesaurus use gone bad, and I’ve learned the hard way that the thesaurus isn’t always your friend. (Seriously, scarred for life. I was like 11 and it’s so embarrassing, I still can’t share it.)

Thesauruses: the good, the bad and the ugly

With my affection for thesauruses, I was excited to read Arthur Plotnik’s Spunk & Bite [affiliate link] chapter reveling in thesauruses. He gives some excellent tips on using thesauruses wisely:

• Understand Roget’s’ possibilities. Use a thesaurus to
  • discover more fitting or more forceful words;
  • find those good words you can’t quite recall [hello!];
  • avoid repetition of words [oh yeah];
  • escape clichés and worn modifiers;
  • help describe the so-called indescribable;
  • refine your intended meanings (via related concepts); and
  • simply luxuriate in the plenitude of language.
• But understand Roget’s‘ limits
• Before embracing an unfamiliar word, look up its definition and usage in a good dictionary.
• Don’t fish in the categories, swim in them.
• Don’t grab all the words that fit.
• Search your brain as well. [He recommends flipping to a section that has nothing to do with the subject at hand, like describing light using words from the "Violence" section: savage, brutal, etc.]
• Use new and/or older editions.
• Take chances.

(77-78)

What’s my favorite thesaurus? I happened to find an Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus [affiliate link] at a local thrift store (I agonized over the $3, but it’s so worth it!). It’s got fun little asides by famous authors for some of the words, fantastic breadth—I love this thing.

Of course, we all know the difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug—and thesauruses alone can’t tell us if a word is truly the right one. But relying on Plotnik’s tips is one good way to make sure we get a good start from thesauruses.

The Naming of Things
Plotnik also recommends another way to find the perfect word: finding the right name for things. Visual dictionaries and word lists are the best tools for these things, with terminology for very specific things arranged by subject. If you need to set a scene or use industry-specific terms, check out one of these resources that Plotnik recommends:

• Random House Webster’s Word Menu
• Descriptionary: A Thematic Dictionary
• The Describer’s Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations
• The Firefly Visual Dictionary

The “Right” Word
But as with thesauruses, just knowing the “right” word doesn’t necessary make it the right word (tautology FTW!). When we look up an obscure term for our research in our setting, it might be right in the sense that it describes it accurately—but even if it’s right in that sense, if your audience doesn’t know the term, it won’t help them visualize it. Then is it “right”?

In a day of instant information, readers really do put down books to look stuff up. I even documented a time I did that here on the blog: a novel I was reading named an obscure medical device, as if that would be enough for us to picture it being used as a weapon. It was not, I opined, the right word because I couldn’t visualize the pivotal weapon throughout the scene and, frustrated, put the book down to hop on the Internet. (And being me, it was some time before I got back to it, most likely.)

As a writer, I went through this with the word “inveigle” in one manuscript (okay, since we’re confessing: I’ve been through it a lot in pretty much every manuscript, but this is one of my stories). I found it in a thesaurus and the definition looked right.

I decided to ignore the fact that pretty much everyone I had read it—intelligent, college-educated people who really like me—tripped over that word and pointed it out. It was Capital-R-Right and nobody was going to convince me otherwise. After all, isn’t reading how we grow our vocabularies? Didn’t I see, like, one blog comment once where someone said they liked a book to teach them some new words??

If the logic sounds tenuous, it was. Finally, after yet another friend mentioned that word, I went on a hunt for that word in the wild. This is something you should always do with new words. (Google, how I love you.)

And what did I find? It seemed to have a connotation I definitely didn’t want there. It hurt, but I cut that word—because it wasn’t as right as I thought. And since then, I’ve cut a few more words that might send readers running for their dictionaries—because I don’t want to pull them out of the story, but mostly because they weren’t in the characters’ voices anyway.

I’m getting better about this: in my current WIP, the characters use a tombolo to get to the final confrontation spot. Oddly enough, tombolo is one of the examples of obscure, precise terms that Plotnik uses in the visual dictionary chapter of Spunk & Bite (page 210). I felt pretty chuffed to know the term already (and was even able to list an example!).

And that’s one of the dangers of using these kinds of terms. If you know this secret, fancy argot, you get to sound smart and feel self-satisfied. Otherwise, you’re probably thinking: A whatsiwhato? Plotnik defines the term in his book, but most novelists don’t send their characters running for a dictionary or factual lesson/as-you-know-Bob in mid-story. (And aren’t you glad?)

And you’re probably still not sure what a tombolo is, huh? If you’ve gotten annoyed enough to go look it up—well, thanks for coming back. That’s more than most readers would probably do, especially on the Internet.

A tombolo is a sandbar that connects a former island to the mainland. Yes, it’s one word that can elegantly replace a somewhat awkward, 9-word explanation. But when that one word doesn’t illustrate, only obfuscates, your meaning, is it “right”?

(I should note that I’m definitely not fully cured: I’m looking forward to bringing out a high-falutin’ voice in a 19th century character in my current WIP. )

Naturally, you can go too far with this. My best friend was critiqued in a college class and one member of the class took issue with a word he didn’t know in her manuscript. This critiquer was convinced she should take it out because that word took him out of the story and frustrated him as he read. The word? Betrothed.

Not exactly an astrophysics term. Similarly, I’ve had readers have a problem with “C.I.” (confidential informant, used in a police procedural mystery), “frosted” referring to highlighted hair, and the adjectival drawn. I think they’re fairly transparent. We don’t have to write for the lowest common denominator—as long as we don’t write over the average readers’ heads. (As for determining who’s average in your audience . . . sorry, that’s up to you!)

To sum up, the right word:

• has the right definition (denotation)
• is as vivid, powerful and succinct as the context needs
• carries the right connotation
• is right for the character’s voice
• is right for the general reader

You can get away with breaking maaaybe one of those axioms with a word, and even then, you shouldn’t do that too frequently—so choose carefully. And remember that every time your reader has to set your book down to look up an obscure term to try to picture what you’re writing, there’s a better and better chance that he won’t pick it up again, frustrated that you keep talking over his head and make it impossible for him to visualize your story.

What do you think? What does it take to make the “right” word Right?

Photos by Harry, noricum, and Greeblie, respectively

And I don’t mean getting published

This time of year is ideal for thinking of our resolutions. But we’re not the only ones who should be working (or autopiloting) toward a goal: in fiction, characters should have a goal, too. Characters’ goals affect their stories from beginning to end, on multiple levels.

Sometimes, we hear “goals” harped on so much that it gives us a complex. I had one: I used to think my characters didn’t have good enough goals. Beyond the scope of the plot, I couldn’t think of what their goals might be.

Plot-level goals
I used to think that characters had to have goals in their lives aside from the ones that get thrust upon them at the beginning of the story. While that’s true, I doubt the hero’s goal of retiring in Hawaii or the heroine’s dream of owning a bed and breakfast in twenty years plays heavily into their story. (It can help to make the characters richer, of course, but that’s just not what Goal-Motivation-Character is all about.)

Finally, I realized because of the types of stories I write, the plot did contain the characters’ goals, and that was okay. In romance, the characters’ goals often are to find someone. In mysteries, the characters’ goals are to find the killer/perpetrator and bring him/her to justice. There’s something wrong in the world (the character is alone; someone has been killed, etc.), and it’s their job to right it. And that’s OKAY.

The character’s plot-level goal is controlled by the story question. In a romance, it’s “Will they get together?” In a mystery, it’s “Will they catch the bad guy?” In other genres of fiction, of course, the variety of questions might be wider, but it might be “Will Jenny find healing?” or “Will Harry triumph over his awful, lonely roots?”

The answer to all of those story questions is yes. (You could phrase them other ways to get a no, like “Will the murderer get away with it?” or “Will Jenny’s past ultimately defeat her?”) The characters’ external, plot level goals relate directly to these questions. In a romance, with “Will they get together?”, the characters’ goals are to not be alone, to be with someone who understands them, to find someone who will love them in spite or even because of their peculiarities. (These might double as internal goals, too.) In a mystery, the characters’ goals are to serve justice.

Plot level goals are SIMPLE. I worked myself up overthinking this level of goals, worrying that my characters had to have a grand life plan in place and they were on step 27-B section ii-c when suddenly STORY CRISIS comes along. Not necessarily. What does your character get in the end? Is the story about the character’s journey to get that? There’s your goal. (And if your story isn’t about your character’s goal, take another look at your story.)

Internal goals
It was much harder for me to identify characters’ internal goals: until I looked closer at their internal conflicts. Just like the external plot conflict, I found the characters had goals inherent in their conflicts already. I just hadn’t fully expressed those goals to myself. And when I did, I was able to tweak their character arcs ever so slightly to make the characters even stronger.

For example, let’s say your character struggles with being disrespected. (Kind of external, but we’ll go with it.) The story follows their internal journey, from disrespected to respected, or maybe from disrespected/low self-esteem to high self-esteem. Their internal goal is right there, inherent in that starting point: gain respect.

To find internal goals, look at the character’s arc. Where does she start from, emotionally? What does she gain or how does he change in the course of the story? Voila.

Internal conflict adds a necessary dimension to characters. Making sure that internal conflict is clear and expressed in a character arc adds a necessary dimension to good fiction.

Scene-level goals
Characters have even smaller goals, of course, than living happily ever after or ridding the world of the threat. Characters should have goals in (almost) every scene. In fact, in Scene & Structure, Jack Bickham says that our POV characters should state their goals for that scene fairly early on.

The prototypical scene begins with the most important character—invariably the viewpoint character—walking into a simulation with a definite, clear-cut, specific goal which appears to be immediately attainable. This goal represents an important step in the character’s game plan—something to be obtained or achieved which will move him one big step closer to the attainment of his major story goal. . . . (24)

The scene begins with a stated, clear-cut goal. (25)

Scene goals are fantastic for structuring fiction at this level because they tell us, the writers, what needs to happen. Our character arrives at the car dealership with the mission to buy a car/talk to his ex-girlfriend/flirt with the new salesguy. (It sets up the “scene question,” if you will: will s/he get this goal?) The character works toward that goal, until the disaster, as Bickham calls it. We answer the scene question with, most likely, a “no” or a “yes, but [complication].” (Just plain yesses should be reserved for false victories, lulling characters into a sense of security, and, of course, the finale.)

But scene goals aren’t just for the beginning and end of scenes. You can use them to keep the tension high in a scene. By reminding the readers what the character is after—and showing the growing disparity between her goal and reality—we can draw the reader along through the scene. As always, we don’t want to harp on anything too much or be repetitive.

Scene-level goals drive the story forward through each scene. Keeping those goals clear helps to keep our characters—and our readers—oriented in the story.

Occasionally, we’ll have something unexpected befall a character in a scene. The POV character may not always have a goal at the beginning of a scene like this—but try to use this technique sparingly, or your characters might seem directionless and as though they’re not taking charge in their life.

Goals and character sympathy
Another role that goals can play in fiction is to help develop character sympathy. How? When readers support a character’s goal, they want the character to succeed. They care.

What does it take to get our readers on board? According to James N. Frey, it takes a noble goal. They can be a really detestable person (Frey’s example is of a convict who wants to break out of prison), but giving them a goal that we can all believe in helps us to believe in the character, too (Frey’s example, IIRC, is that the convict wants to get out of prison to help a family member). And this really works: I felt it happen to me while watching a game show.

What’s noble? Something that’s self-sacrificing, something that benefits another person more than it does the main character, something that helps the general populace (but that can be too vague: helping one concrete person, such as the character’s child, can actually be more effective as a character goal than trying to better the whole world).

Goals and characterization
Our characters sometimes do have life goals other than the plot-level story goals—goals that may or not play into our story, and goals that may or may not be fulfilled in the course of the story. The bed-and-breakfast, a job at the FBI, the private island in the Bahamas.

While these might not really influence the plot, they can still have a great effect on the story: adding layers to your characters. Like real people, our characters can have life goals and dreams. These goals help demonstrate the character’s depth, to round them out.

These goals can manifest in little ways: the FBI job is one of my character’s ultimate goals that doesn’t play into the plot of the story. That goal manifests in her hobbies: spy movies and spy novels. They can also come in handy when they play into the character’s motivations. (I’ll spare you the convoluted explanation of how this happens in my story.)

The biggest caution here: make sure this goal doesn’t upstage the main plot. We’ll see how this works out in edits, but I’ve had a little mixed feedback about my character’s dream. Some readers think it’s so important it needs to be mentioned in the very first chapter. And even though that chapter won the contest, at least one judge complained that the very same character didn’t have any dreams or aspirations. (Why, exactly, they thought she needed to think about those dreams and aspirations when dealing with the murder of her priest, I’m not sure.)

However, adding that to the first chapter might make readers think it’s an important part of the plot. It’s not part of the story question for this book. Our first chapter offers a promise of things to come, not a synopsis of the characters’ lives. If we make a promise of this character’s dream, and especially if it’s not fulfilled in this book, we’re setting our readers up for disappointment.

Instead, use goals and dreams to add depth to the characters and the story—from the hobby on up.

How can you better use goals in your writing?

Photo credits: climbing the mountain—Ben Rohrs;
my life in 10 years—lululemon athletica; grab the brass ring—Foxytocin