Tag Archives: emotion

More resources on gesture crutches

gesture crutchesLast week, I gave a class at the LDStorymakers Conference on gesture crutches. You can find my presentation here, but today I’m sharing the resources I cited in class!

Books on the topic

Blog posts on gesture crutches

The bulk of my presentation came from my own blog posts, especially my series on gesture crutches: finding gesture crutches (the macro code), tracking & changing gesture crutches and strategies to fix the top 10 gesture crutches.

You can find John Gilstrap quoting his editor, Michaela Hamilton, here.

Other resources

Courses by Margie Lawson including Empowering Characters’ Emotions and Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues opened my eyes to gesture crutches and started me on the path to take my writing to the next level!

Gesture crutches presentation

Saturday at the 2014 LDStorymakers Conference, I got to present on gesture crutches! So many wonderful friends turned out at 8 AM, or sat on the floor or even stood to listen to this presentation—thank you! IF YOU WERE IN THE CLASS AND DID NOT GET THE EMAIL SIGNUP SHEET TO RECEIVE CLASS FILES, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW!

So, what are gesture crutches?

Smiling, nodding, laughing, sighing, frowning—they’re all the little gestures we use every day to convey meaning, and they can creep into every page of our writing. These overused actions quickly become flat clichés, sapping your story’s power. Come learn how to find these common “gesture crutches,” discover new strategies to fix them, and use the smallest gestures to personalize your characters.

How do we do this? Check out my presentation to learn more, and be sure to stay tuned for more resources tomorrow!

Secret sauce: emotion

This entry is part 11 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

Emotion is vital to fiction. Without emotion, our books can read like bad history textbooks: a log of who did what, where, and when. Some history stories are moving enough to catch our imagination, but those are rare.

If we want our readers to care about our stories—our characterswe have to grab our readers (and our characters) by the emotions.

This is something I’ve had to work hard on in my fiction. I’ve usually run under the assumption that my readers could infer how my character felt. Until I got that dreaded feedback: “This scene drags. It’s boring.”

Boring? Boring?! I thought. Can’t you see the emotional turmoil she must be in? The moral dilemma this puts her in?

Um, no, they couldn’t—because I didn’t put it in there. For all they could tell, the character didn’t care. She was impassively watching the scene unfold, or participating without any trouble. Setting up a situation just isn’t enough: you have to show how that situation affects the character as it unfolds, or we’ll have to assume it’s not.

Compare:

Andrica grabbed the rope with both hands. She stared at the ground thirty feet below her. Her palms slipped a little.

She looked up. Above her, footsteps echoed across the rooftop she’d jumped from. They were going to come after her any minute.

But she could get out of this. She had to. She just needed to think.

No, she needed to act.

She’s in a pretty precarious situation—but do we really care about the outcome?

Andrica grabbed the rope with both hands. Her heart beat in her throat, but the thrill of triumph quickly faded. She dared to peek at the ground below. It should have been only thirty feet down, but her vision swirled dizzyingly. Her stomach plummeted and her clammy palms slipped a fraction of an inch.

She willed herself to look up. Above her, footsteps echoed across the rooftop she’d jumped from. They were going to come after her any minute. Adrenaline sang in her veins, making coherent thought impossible.

But she could get out of this. This time, she had to. Andrica forced a deep breath into her lungs. She just needed to think.

No, Aryn needed her—he needed his mother. She had to act. Now.

Now, not only do we watch what she experiences, but we know what she feels. And if the author does it right, we feel what she feels. And that‘s the way to creating powerful characters and stories.

More emotion resources

I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of getting emotions right in fiction. My top eight reads on emotion in fiction, from blog posts to books:

Even more resources on emotion!

Emotion is how we get into our readers’ hearts. Emotion can take our book from “well written” to “captivating.” We read for an experience, and emotion is the best way to convey that experience. In fact, it is the experience.

What do you think? How do you like your emotion in fiction? Come share!

Photo by Steve Ventress

Fixing the Top 10 Gesture Crutches!

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Gesture crutches

We’ve looked at multiple ways to find your cliché gesture crutches . . . now what? How do we fix these little gestures that creep into our conversations and our manuscripts—eventually weighing down every single scene?

gesture crutchesWe use crutches when we’re lame. Gesture crutches? They’re often a symptom of writing that’s limping along. Don’t let your writing limp! Make it run, jump, dance and sing!

Here are my top ten gesture crutches that I either write or see too often, and how I fix them. Note that the top ten will vary from person to person. I do not eliminate these words completely from my manuscript, but I try to make sure that I don’t use them too often or too close together, and when I do use them, they should be as fresh and unique as the scene can handle.

How do I tackle all this?

First, in a paper edit, I use one of the techniques from Wednesday, writing down the body parts/action in the margin, then reading those notes aloud for pattern and repetition. I make notes and adjustments based on that.

Later, I use a macro to “harvest” all the sentences containing those terms from my WIP. Rather than using find thousands of times, I go through that new document and make a note of a few things in the document:

  • patterns (she smiled in joy, she smiled in gratitude, he frowned in disapproval, etc.)
  • echos (“my heart kick starts” and “my pulse jumpstarts,” especially fairly close together)
  • uses too close together
  • uses that don’t make sense (could be the lack of context, but I made a note to check)
  • uses that aren’t necessary
  • uses that are awkward
  • uses that could be fresher
  • uses that are “bare” and could just be filler action tags: i.e. Jimmy frowned. “What do you mean?”—punch up, freshen, replace or cut. (Gasp! You could use a dialogue tag!)

On my first pass, I’m only marking the things I want to look at, unless inspiration for a rewrite strikes. Then I go back through and make the changes in the manuscript.

Fixing those crutches!

As I go through each set of sentences, I look at those notes and strategize how to make my changes. Here are some of the alternatives I’ve thought about for the following 10 gestures. Note that a lot of these strategies can work for all body language cues, so there’s a bit of repetition between the lists.

Nods

Characters who nod too much are liable to have their heads fall off, or at least sound like bobbleheads.

  • Give a character (most likely just one) a unique, character-specific gesture—I used eyebrow-nods (it only happens 2-3 times).
  • Change to just “agrees.”
  • If the character is complying with a request, cut the nod altogether and just have them obey.
  • If they were just nodding at something/someone, consider using gesturing, pointing, indicating with eyes, jerking head, tapping, etc.
  • Convert some nods to dialogue: “Yes/yeah/sure.”
  • Cut anything unnecessary.
  • Punch up ones that remain, as much as you can in their context. A few examples of fresher nods to get your juices flowing:
    • a single, decisive dip of the chin
    • a yeah-sure-we’ll-see-about-that nod
    • “The receptionist smiled and nodded in that way people do when they aren’t listening.” —Harlan Coben, No Second Chance

And remember: you don’t ever have to say a character nods her head/up and down/yes. They are all redundant. What else do you nod? How else do you nod? What else does a nod mean after a yes/no question?

Head shake

Again, we’re in danger of losing someone’s head due to stripped out cervical vertibrae. Just don’t.

  • Convert to dialogue! From a flat-out “No” to a muttered “unbelievable,” dialogue can not only carry so much more impact than shaking one’s head, it can also make your meaning clearer without resorting to a pesky adverb.
  • Use another gesture to portray the meaning: a sigh (if you haven’t already overused those!), a tongue-cluck, a wagging finger, etc.
  • Use another verb for “shake”: wag, . . . . uhhhhh . . .
  • Cut.
  • If a lot of your head shakes are being used to convey the same message (other than no—maybe disbelief or disappointment), then take a little while to sit down and think about all the ways you can convey that nonverbally. Watch people, watch reality TV, watch well-acted movies, and see how those people look when they’re experiencing that emotion. Look for subtle and unique tells. Check out The Emotion Thesaurus, or this writers’ game, where you pick the body part first for more ideas.
  • Try “disagrees,” “demurs” or other d words. I mean verbs of disagreement.
  • If you have to have to have to keep it, punch it up! Maybe your character shakes his head like a dog getting out of the washtub, or like he’s afraid it’ll fall off, or like he’s wearing a neck brace.

Smiles

I swear, sometimes my characters sound like grinning idiots. Smile at this; smile at that. Save the smiles for when it counts, not just as a conversational smoother.

  • Try other words, like beams or grins—but these are easy to overuse, too! I try to check these one after another.
  • Give the character a particular type of smile. Maybe he smiles like a feral dog or a jack o’lantern, or a presidential candidate.
  • Use subtext or dialogue to convey approval, gratitude, or other messages.
  • Write it fresh! Give it a message, or use a simile to compare it to something (that isn’t a cliché). Some fresh smiles to get you thinking:
    • “‘They’re all in there waiting for you,’ she said, flashing an I’m-glad-I’m-not-you smile.”—Angela Hunt, The Note, via Margie Lawson.
    • From my WIP: “He orders two coffees with his I’m-so-charming-you-should-throw-in-something-for-free smile.”
    • My favorite smile in all literature (can we say amplified?): “He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Raised Eyebrows

One raised eyebrow. Two. Three. It doesn’t matter. The gesture can mean anything from surprise to disbelief to sarcasm. It’s too generic and overused to mean much of anything these days: a classic cliché.

  • Think about the underlying emotion and find other gestures that might convey it more clearly, especially since “he raised his eyebrows in confusion” becomes not only a cliché but also telling. Watch people, watch reality TV, watch well-acted movies, and see how those people look when they’re experiencing that emotion. Look for subtle and unique tells. Check out The Emotion Thesaurus, or this writers’ game, where you pick the body part first for more ideas.
  • Cut.
  • Use dialogue to convey the response or emotion.
  • Write it fresh! Use a unique verb, describe their movement in a unique way, or show the message you’re trying to send. A few of my quick, fresh eyebrows:
    • His eyebrows jumped to meet his receding hairline.
    • “Uh huh,” he said, his eyebrow propped up an inch.
    • She raised her eyebrow, nailing him with that patented mother-knows-better-than-you look.

An exception to the rule: most of the time, you don’t have to eradicate these words, but I think I’ll be eliminating the majority of my plain eyebrow raises.

Glance

It’s like my characters can’t look at anything for very long. Focus, people! You do not have ADH—squirrel!

  • Use another verb. Be careful not to overuse synonyms or use words so unusual that they call attention to themselves.
  • If it’s the POV character, just show what s/he saw and skip the filter word.
  • If the glance is less to see something and more to convey a particular message, spell out the message in a fresh or funny way.
  • Ooor use dialogue for that fresh, funny message.
  • Write it fresh!

Furrowed brow (or eyebrows drawing together)

In my latest manuscript, the only time I mentioned “brows” was when they were furrowed. Which makes mine furrowed, too.

  • Use a simile. Lots of things are wrinkly: pugs, my laundry, septuagenarians. Note: are stormclouds overused in this context?
  • It seems like this expression rarely occurs in isolation. Focus on another part of the face or the body language. As always, this is best with a gesture or body part that’s specific and unique to the character.
  • Watch either of these in the POV character. Both can sound like an external visual instead of the character describing his/her own conscious movements.
  • Write it fresh! Some fresh eyebrows & brows to get you rolling:
    • She looks like Our Lady of Perpetual Solemnity.
    • His eyebrows pull together in knit two, purl two ribbing. (Want to get uberjargony? Say “k2p2 rib.”)
    • The gray caterpillars above his eyes lean in for an intimate moment.

Eyes widen/narrow/light up

I make my characters’ expressions while writing. . . . I probably look like I have crazy eyes!

  • Find another body part or part of the expression to highlight. I’m searching for a good way to write the feeling of your scalp tightening when you’re surprised.
  • Use a simile. Can her eyes light up like a firework or narrow like a camera lens?
  • Go for dialogue instead. In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Brad Pitt’s character tells Angelina Jolie’s that when he first saw her, she looked like Christmas morning. A kid’s eyes lighting up on Christmas morning would have been a cliché; instead the writers used a metaphor an narrowly avoided the tired phrase.
  • My favorite way to write it fresh: Find a character-specific situation to describe in a simile. What would make her eyes narrow? A lying ex? A too-good to be true sale? A delinquent teen? What makes his eyes light up? Hot girls? A challenging math puzzle? The latest FPS video game?

Laugh

I’ve written whole conversations where the characters just take turns laughing. But laughing is one of those things: if the character laughs, the reader doesn’t have to.

  • Is it really that funny? “LOL” really means “I found that amusing” these days. Don’t overuse laughing with your characters that way.
  • Is a response necessary? Sometimes you can cut the laugh altogether.
  • Use dialogue, and if you’re already using dialogue, drop the laughter.
  • Consider a synonym for laugh, but most chortles and guffaws draw attention to themselves.
  • Describe the laugh to make it pop. Write it fresh!:
    • A suuuure-you-can laugh.
    • Her laughter was bright and thin and , like the sound of cheap jingle bells you buy one year—and the next find inexplicably silent.

Sigh

Okay, I’m being sarcastic about the other gestures, but I really did once write a scene where a character decided not to sigh, thinking everyone else was doing enough moody exhaling for them all.

  • Especially watch for clichés like “a sigh of relief.” Write it fresher!
  • If they’re not absolutely necessary, delete!
  • Look at the underlying emotion. How else might it be manifest? Vocal tone? Shoulders, fists,
  • Look at another narrative mode. Would it be more powerful to describe the reason for the sigh in thought, or better yet, dialogue?
  • If you must use several sighs, you might consider finding a way to punch them up systematically. In Paranormalcy by Kiersten White, one of her characters is introduced early on as speaking a “professional sigher.”
  • Kiersten White goes further than that, describing those sighs with the message they send:
    • “This was more of a sympathetic, I know what it’s like to be a human wrapped up in all this non-sense, but if we didn’t do it, who would? kind of a sigh” (12).
    • “Raquel gave me her best why is it always me that has to deal with these things sigh (one I was well familiar with at this point), then patted me on the shoulder” (20).
    • “She gave a can I just start shocking him into submission now sort of sigh” (25).

Gaze/Eyes

Aside from the eyes widening, narrowing or lighting up, they tend to do a lot of other things to convey meaning. Although I would NEVER recommend cutting all the eyes (ouch!), watch out for using too many eyes in one scene. Even alternating them with gaze might not work if that’s overused, too.

  • Track the usage: are those gazes/eyes, meeting, avoiding, lowering, falling, etc. too much or in too close proximity?
  • Alternate gaze/eyes—within reason! Don’t describe a gaze with the color of the eyes, etc. (A blue gaze? No.)
  • Try an alternative noun, as long as they’re not overused, too (many of these are on my watch list!): stare, (fixed) look, scrutiny, inspection, regard.
  • Or, if it’s a verb, try an alternate verb (again, many of these are also on my watch list): stare, look (fixedly), gape, goggle, eye, study, scrutinize, ogle, eyeball, observe, view, contemplate, regard, survey, consider, watch, check out, size up.
  • Use a nickname for the eyes, or bring out a character description or personality with them. Perhaps a flirtatious character bats his baby blues.
  • Maybe being more general might help, using the word face or expression.
  • As always, look at the underlying message. How else can you portray that in body language? Hands touching/not touching/pulling away? Physical proximity? Turning toward or away?
  • Consider whether the message might carry more power as a thought or dialogue, if appropriate.

In conclusion

Is this hard work? YES! Is it worth it? We can—well, actually, we probably can’t cite examples of less-than-engaging writing in published books: unless they’re book-throwing bad, we tend to gloss over this boring body language just like we do a lot of other unstellar examples.

I can’t help but believe this level of care, attention and effort pays off in your writing.

Final note: Let me say again that I don’t feel compelled to change every use of everything. I left my share of nods, smiles, and eyebrows in my latest manuscript. If we didn’t use these body parts and actions, our writing probably wouldn’t feel realistic. But now I feel my writing is more engaging because I’ve eliminated the superfluous, meaningless, confusing and repetitive.

What do you think? How do you fix these gesture crutches? Is this worth it?

Photo credits
crutches on orange backgroundChristian Guthier; “smile”—Andy Hay;
crutches through window—Amy van der Hiel; sigh—Lucy/squacco

Writing crutches: How to avoid overusing the most common gestures!

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Gesture crutches

This is one of my favorite, most useful posts. Since we mentioned editing gesture crutches recently, I wanted to share it again!

I’ll admit it: I’m addicted to gesture crutches. I use them over and over again throughout a book or chapter or sometimes even scene. It’s like I can’t stop, especially when I’m drafting!

gesture crutchesWhat are gesture crutches, and why should we avoid them? As editor Michaela Hamilton said in an revision letter:

Don’t resort to overused gestures such as shrugged, nodded, sighed, shook his head. These are ok occasionally, but in general, seek more vivid gestures that tell more about a character, help set a mood, and create visual dimension in the scene.

Guilty as charged [author John Gilstrap writes]. My problem here is that the ones she notes are the only conversational gestures that I know of. I stipulate that I overuse them, but if anyone has other gesture arrows that I can add to the quiver, feel free to speak up.

I, too, am guilty as charged. It’s tough to come up with original gestures, and sometimes distracting to the reader. (Think we’re alone in struggling with this? Check out this thread on Nathan Bransford’s forums.) While critique partners and editors are pretty much a must-have for the ultimate solution, I’ve found a couple ways to check myself on gestures.

Using character-specific, unique gestures

A couple weeks ago, I finished Brandilyn Collins’s Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors. Her very first secret, “Personalizing,” describes the process of finding a unique gesture for a character. Her example is of a rich, insecure woman who dislikes her hands, but wants to show off her ring, a symbol of her wealth. Can’t you just imagine how a woman like that would hold her hands? (It’s a conflicted gesture!)

Writing simple gestures more creatively

my cousin and her friend collect pictures of themselves shruggingI also heartily recommend Margie Lawson‘s course on Empowering Character Emotions, which covers these repetitive gestures and how to write them “fresh” and “empowered,” when necessary—and how to tell when they’re not necessary at all. I also have her lecture packet on Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist, which I’m sure builds upon those same principles (but I haven’t chiseled out the time to read it yet. Shame on me!). Margie teaches Empowering Character Emotions online in March (it was $30 last year) and the lecture packets are available year-round ($22—both are a great deal!) (and I only wish I were affiliated with her 😉 ).

Come up with a stable of original expressions

This is also from Margie Lawson (with a little interpretation from me). I realized I have a lot of sarcasm in my MS (which I love), and there were only about five gestures of sarcasm (folded arms, rolling eyes, one raised eyebrow, scoffing, pursed lips, if I remember correctly). Since I already knew the emotion I was going for, I set out to write some original, creative gestures that conveyed sarcasm. Then I had a collection of gestures to draw on and even extrapolate from further. I also found The Bookshelf Muse’s Emotion Thesaurus super-helpful!

Pick the body part first

You could do any of these by picking a lesser-used body part. I once played this writers’ game where two members of the group had to act out a scene and the rest of us had to write about their emotions using assigned body parts. I had wrists and heels. It was awesome! One character stomped around hard enough to leave half-moons in the cement floor. Another offered apologetic wrists. Another had her arms fly open like windshield wipers. Will I ever use those? Maybe not. But that kind of vivid, imaginative imagery can help you create better, more appropriate images.

Monitoring your gestures

I’m proudest of this one because I came up with it myself (extrapolated from Margie’s EDITS system). When editing a scene, make a note of what body part/area is used in the line: hands, eyes/eyebrows, shoulders, lips/mouth, etc., in the margin. Then read the list aloud for the whole scene/chapter. This helped me pinpoint repetitive or too-similar gestures in close context as well as look at the gestures themselves. If I found I had ARMS too close to one another, I could look at those two gestures quickly and easily to see how similar they were.

Pull out the sentences en masse

New to the 2012 edition! I wrote a bit of code to make Word pull out all the sentences that use these gesture crutches, and you can customize it to your word list (there’s also a great version by Paul Edelstein for code-o-phobes!). I’ll probably still use the monitoring technique above to make sure I’m not using any one body part too often in a scene, but now I can focus on just my use of smiles or nods throughout the book to make sure they’re necessary, not repetitive, and fresh.

What do you think? How do you keep yourself from repeating the same conversational gestures?

Photo credits: crutches on orange backgroundChristian Guthier; my cousin’s Facebook.

How to Avoid Nine Ways to Ruin Your Novel

Oh, you don’t want your book to totally suck? Huh. Well, maybe this is the right post for you—how to avoid those nine ways to ruin your novel.

No conflict

Even in literary fiction (actually, especially in literary fiction), we read to experience life through the characters. There really is no better way to relate to a character than to root for them, to really understand what they want and need and hope that they’ll get it, to feel defeat at their setbacks and catharsis at their final victory.

They need to want something, and that something needs to be worthwhile, worth struggling for 300 pages. Conflict is necessary, on every level. Your characters should want something (“even if it’s only a glass of water,” to quote Kurt Vonnegut) in each scene and in the book overall.

Need more conflict? Read more about plotting to add it on a macro level, or tension & suspense to add conflict to each scene and page. Or skip straight to 37 ways to add tension & suspense to your book!

No Emotion

I’m going to be saying this a lot, but readers read to connect with someone else’s life experiences. Humans are emotional creatures, and tapping into those emotions is almost like a powerful short circuit button for authors: show your characters’ emotions so vividly that your readers can’t help but experience those feelings themselves, and you’ll have your readers laughing, crying—and hooked.

Need more emotion? Read more about adding emotion to your novel!

No Effort

Like most people, I can be pretty lazy. Sometimes I hate hate HATE editing, especially the drudgery of scouring my work line by line for every little “JUST.”

Yeah, that’s lazy. Lazy writing can go even beyond that, though: not just using but relishing cliches, the automatic, trite phrases that have been used so often that we don’t think about them and they barely retain their meaning anymore.

Another culprit in this area can be telling—rather than digging in deep to really show what the character’s feeling and thinking and doing, we deliver a distant summary, holding our readers’ at arm’s length (when, once again, they want to experience this character and his life and his feelings!!)

Ready to put in more effort? Learn the difference between showing and telling (or bad telling and good telling)!

Too Much Effort

Wait, what? After she tells us to put more effort into our writing, now she says that too much will kill it? Crap for crap.

Okay, chill. When I say “too much effort,” I mean trying too hard to look like a good writer. Instead, you just end up sounding writerly. Or as agent Ann Collette tweeted in her Today’s Twelve roundup of queries:

And what does that mean? Ann elaborated a little:

Get it? Get it?

How can you make sure you’re not overwriting? Um, some no-nonsense critique partners? (Sorry I’m not more help. It’s a toughie!)

Starting Too Early

Beginning your book long before you begin your story is a major problem. (Beginning too late is less common, but it can be as difficult to overcome. Or not.) Without the conflict to help readers develop that emotional connection to the characters, readers are left floundering, frustrated and . . . bored.

There will be a lot of events that impact your story that happen before the story actually begins. This is called backstory, and you have to be very careful about how you place it in your present story, to inform without bogging the reader down.

Want to get your story going? Be sure to start in the right place, and brush up on backstory!

Not Trusting the Reader

You don’t have to overexplain everything every single time you introduce a new concept (everything) or character or setting or . . . or . . . or. Resist the urge to explain! The exposition of explanation bogs you down, and constantly re-explaining things is frustrating to your readers.

Not everything requires two paragraphs of explanation. Some things are better left mysterious, drawing out the reader’s curiosity. Other things do require a short, simple, direct explanation. And once you’ve explained something, you don’t have to rehash it every two chapters. If you’ve taken such a big detour that readers need the reminder that Agatha was killed and pretty much everyone suspects Agamemnon, your book has gone off the rails (or just gotten on them).

Explaining everything multiple times, constantly bringing the readers (via the characters) up to date on events they’ve already witnessed, and other failures to trust the reader are annoying. Repetition repetition repetition…. See what I mean?

This is a fine line for me, and I have a tendency to go too far the other way. I have a good memory (in general), so pulling facts from several chapters back out of my brain isn’t too hard. That might be a bit much to ask of everyone though.

How can you learn to trust the reader? Again, outside readers are often the best gauge!

Characters We Don’t Care About

Coincidentally, the first syllable of “characters” is “care.” Readers don’t have to love or even like your characters—but they do have to care about what happens to them. For the kabillionth time, we read to experience. Underpinning that experience is caring. Even if we’re rooting for the character to die a thousand deaths, we care. We want to read on. We want more.

But if we don’t care about the character? We don’t really care about finishing the book.

Want to get readers to care about your character? Read more about creating sympathetic characters—even unlovable ones!

Giving Up

The worst mistake you can make with almost any novel is to give up. Your book will never match the glorious vision in your head if you give up. If you want to let little black marks on the page defeat you, give up.

But if you want to be a writer—an author—this is the one weakness you can’t afford. You can fix everything else on this list—I know, I’ve done them all!—but there’s no way to fix giving up.

Just say no to giving up.

Is your persistence flagging? Read more about perseverance in writing and just keep swimming!

What do you think? What are the best ways to ruin your novel?

Photo credits: book heart—Jennuine Captures; baby with book—David Wuertele

Nine ways to ruin your novel

Some books totally suck. Here’s how to make sure your book is one of them.

No Conflict

There are people out there who’ll tell you that you need tension on every page, or tension in every scene.

They’re wrong.

The less tension, the better. Conflict is for aggressive people, and passive-aggression sells books. Besides, everyone knows people read just to enjoy the words you put on the page. Give them more words to mull over, less forward movement and action. If your character wants something, either have him/her give up, or give it to them quickly. Nobody wants to feel compelled to keep reading that way.

No Emotion

All emotional writing is purple prose and should be eradicated. The stark contrast between the words on the page and what the character is most obviously feeling will not only move your readers to tears, but it will probably also win the Pulitzer. No, they’ll have to create a whole new award for your awesomeness, and name it after you.

If at all possible, convey emotion by naming the emotion. If not, assume your reader will understand.

No Effort

True genius springs forth whole from your Zeus-like mind, after all. Editing is for lesser talents. Rewriting? Only if you wanted to feel the genius of your words flowing through your veins again.

Remember that every word you type, write, say, breathe or think is holy. Anyone who attempts to defile your glorious paean with “suggestions” or “critiques” is beneath contempt. Crush them with your superior intellect.

Too Much Effort

If one adjective is good, why not three? Five? Seven? Description is what brings novels to life, so we’ll need reams of it, as florid as possible. You should be the next Shakespeare, so try to emulate his style (except for the blank verse bit). You should be inventing new words every few pages, scouring thesauruses so you never repeat something so common as “said,” and giving your characters vocabularies to rival Noah Webster’s. People read to learn, don’t they?

Starting Too Early

The birth of your main character is probably too early. Nothing before age five or so, but from there, just pick up wherever it interests you. I mean, if you find it interesting, you know all your readers will. They’ll be just as riveted by those opening scenes of first-grade follies in your thriller as you are.

Not Trusting the Reader

Every time you introduce a new concept or setting or character, make sure you take a minute to explain as much as you can about this person. Their life histories, current relationships, current SO’s opinion of them (especially if that SO is too far to bring him/her on the scene), home, hobbies, pets, etc.

But readers don’t have great memories, we know, so be sure to remind the reader of two to three of those facts every time we meet this character/setting/everything again.

Characters We Don’t Care About

We have got to have more avant garde literature out there. Blah blah blah sob story blah blah blah orphan—whatever. Let’s get really experimental. What about a character everyone will hate as the main character? People will sing your praises for decades. Nobody could ever come up with something so original. Again with the new award to honor your awesomeness!

Give Up

The best novels are the unfinish

 

 

 

What do you think? What are the best ways to ruin your novel?

Photo credits: Why did you do this to me look—Julia Roy; Cat asleep reading—Gerry Brague

New PDF Guide: Emotion: it’s tough

This entry is part 14 of 14 in the series Emotion: it's tough

When I figured out which series were the tops in 2011, I suddenly realized how long it’s been since I put together one of my series into PDF format (hint: years). Plus, it’s my husband’s and my second anniversary of our first kiss. I wanted to celebrate, but I can’t really take you all to dinner. So I made you something instead. (Ten guesses what it is!)

I’m starting with the most popular of last year’s series: Emotion: it’s tough. Portraying emotion in fiction isn’t easy—but an emotional experience is exactly why readers buy and read books. Using that emotion makes your writing more powerful—when it’s done right.

Emotion might be a double black diamond ski slope, but it doesn’t have to be treacherous terrain in your writing. Hard work, perhaps always. But impossible? Nope!

So check out the free PDF version of the series Emotion: it’s tough!

More free PDF writing guides.

Photo by Peter Dutton