All posts by Jordan

Technique

Setting with distant POV

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This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Power in settings

It’s a lot easier to create an emotional response in readers by using your characters’ emotions. But not every scene and not every description is going to lend itself to a character’s viewpoint. Often we see scenes (or books) that start with an almost panoramic view of the setting, as if we’re sweeping through the scene with a movie camera. There aren’t any characters in view, or no characters who can make emotional and perceptual judgments to guide our readers’ responses.

However, we can still use the setting to establish the emotional tone. Instead of relying on a character’s emotional responses and filter to create the tone, we can try to evoke the same emotion directly with the imagery from the scene.

While this technique can be more direct, it can also be a bit more difficult. Manipulating readers’ emotions directly—without getting caught—is a tricky business. (Or maybe I’m just too sensitive—I even resent TV commercials for emotionally manipulating me.)

Obviously, one of the methods you can use to set the emotional tone is imagery. Picking the right image is key, too: focusing on a gray bunny hopping along the forest trail instead of the finger-like, grasping shadows of the trees will undermine the scary tone you’re shooting for. Even if the bunny is important—a “clue,” something you need for later—we have to frame that in the right emotions. Perhaps it skitters nervously down the path, fleeing something unknown, or perhaps we only perceive it as a rustling in the leaves.

Personally, I still prefer using characters as a vehicle for this: by giving them the emotional responses we desire in our readers, we can create those responses more subtly and more easily. But maybe using our characters just helps us to focus our emotional effects, and with care, we can create a tone just as powerfully as we can through our characters.

What do you think? How can we set an emotional tone with a setting, and without characters?

Photo by Hamed Saber

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Technique

A quick tip on setting (from someone other than me)

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Power in settings

I’m not the only one who thinks setting and emotion should go together. Last week, Nathan Bransford linked to some writing tips from author Janet Fitch. And what should we find but this (emphasis mine):

6. Use the landscape

Always tell us where we are. And don’t just tell us where something is, make it pay off. Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character. Look at the openings of Fitzgerald stories, and Graham Greene, they’re great at this.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that every scene has to begin with six sentences detailing the room, or that a book has to start with a chapter overview on the city it’s set in. It does mean to pay attention to how setting is conveyed. (Like I did with The Cruelest Month, but really, it was unavoidable in that book.)

And I think that using character emotions and perceptions to help set that emotional tone is going to be one of the fastest and easiest ways to create it.

What do you think? How else can we establish the emotional tone through setting?

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Technique

Setting is about people

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This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Power in settings

Sometimes a setting is so vivid and so involved in the plot—sometimes even becoming an antagonist—that we say the setting is a character in the story. And that’s actually very close to what I think is the truth. No, settings are probably not going to be as dynamic or as influential to a story as your characters will be—but it’s the characters that make the setting.

Last time, I mentioned The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny, and a haunted house setting she uses. She sets up some facts and background: people had been murdered there, it stood vacant, they were about to hold a séance there. But those facts aren’t enough to create the chilling haunted house she’s going for.

It’s more than just empirical facts that imbue a setting with a sense of place or make it come to life. Penny also uses emotion to flesh out her settings. To paraphrase characters in The Cruelest Month, this house

  • is the focus of local evil and ill-will, offsetting the good spirits of the bucolic, idyllic village
  • inspires dread
  • has a powerful draw on the characters, despite their dread
  • is the perfect setting for an effort to raise the dead
  • um, is a murder scene. and abandoned. (because the facts do help a little 😉 .)

Describing a decrepit old house won’t be enough to inspire a specific response from your characters or your readers. Powerful settings actually have less to do with the location itself, and more to do with the psychological and emotional effect these places have on the characters. As writers, we can almost always access our readers’ emotions best by using our characters’ emotions. Settings won’t have an impact on the reader if they’re not having an impact on the characters.

Tapping into character’s emotions allows us to connect with our readers. In some ways, the setting’s best use can be to create those emotions and set the mood for a scene, drawing your readers in by inspiring those same feelings in them as they see the setting through our characters’ eyes.

What do you think? How else can setting connect with readers’ emotions?

Photo by Shane Gorski

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Technique

Setting: it’s not about places

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This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Power in settings

I’ll be honest: setting is one of my weak points as a writer. Sometimes I don’t see settings as I envision scenes at all; other times, I don’t transfer enough of the settings I see in my head to the story on the page. (One of the many reasons I need critique partners!) And when I read, I seldom envision more than just a rough outline of a setting, no matter how much square footage the author devotes to the subject.

In fact, the more time an author spends describing the setting, the less likely I am to 1.) be able to picture it or 2.) settings coveractually read paragraph upon paragraph detailing the historical and architectural details of a location that will never pertain to the story. (Pointed look at a deceased author who shall remain nameless.) (10 brownie points to anyone who guesses who it is.)

On the other hand, I can’t (and won’t) deny the potential power of settings in storytelling and writing. Recently, I read a book that reconverted me to the power of settings, The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny.

The particular setting that she used so effectively was a house rumored to be haunted. The characters hold a séance there, and they reflect on the people who were murdered there. While those creepy details set the stage for a truly chilling setting, they are not enough to create the full effect on their own. (And we’ll finish that thought next time.)

What do you look for in a setting as you’re reading? How do you convey setting as you’re writing?

Picture by Lauren

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Publishing

The ideal e-reader

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If you haven’t heard, e-readers (eReaders, if you prefer) are the wave of the future in publishing. With the same experience as reading from paper, e-readers take e-books to the next level (and reduce eyestrain FTW).

I’ve accepted that an e-reader is probably in my future—but suddenly, I realized that future is now: I’m in the market for an e-reader.

I actually had planned this post before I began shopping. I was planning to hold out until my “ideal e-reader” became a reality. (In short, it would be a cross between a Kindle and an iPad, with a touchscreen that could be LCD or e-Ink as needed. Don’t look at me that way—I’m not a hardware person! I don’t know/care if that’s impossible!) But I don’t have to hold out until my iRead dream becomes a reality—I have the money for an e-reader right now.

So if we’re shopping for an e-reader now, the main contenders are the Barnes & Noble NOOK and the Amazon Kindle. It doesn’t hurt that they both just dropped their prices under $200.

Here are the basics: they’re both about the same size. They both use e-Ink for an awesome reading experience (I’ve heard). They both wirelessly download books, including many free books in the public domain. They can both take notes on your books, and can hold about 1500 books, they say.

The Kindle is tied to Amazon. It reads mainly Amazon-tied formats, though you can email some types of files (like Word documents) to a Kindle account and have them converted. (I hear they’re free if you have them emailed back and put them on your Kindle through your computer; there’s a nominal fee if you want it delivered wirelessly to your device). Amazon has an awesome selection and on average, slightly lower prices on e-books. It also has a bubble button “hard” keyboard and can read your books to you with text to speech software.

The Nook is tied to Barnes & Noble. In addition to the e-Ink screen, it features a smaller LCD touchscreen. This is where you find your library as well as a virtual keyboard, and even email and some games. For a few select books, you can loan a book one time to another Nook owner for two weeks. The Nook supports more e-book formats—but not Amazon’s proprietary format. You can take it into B&M B&Ns and sample books for free, up to an hour a piece per book, I think. It also features a replaceable battery and a memory card, so you can expand your library even more, should you ever own more than 1500 e-books.

I still have to try out the gadgets in person (Kindles are at some Targets and Nooks are obviously at B&Ns), but I think I’m leaning toward one right now. Still not totally committed.

What do you think? Would you choose the Nook or the Kindle? What would your ideal e-reader look like?

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Technique, Publishing

Sorry, this idea’s taken

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As you know, there are only fill-in-the-blank number of plots. Millions of novels have been written in the last few centuries, and before that, there were stories and plays and operas and songs and poems.

Face it: even your zombie-vampire-werewolf-romance-action-horror-tragedy isn’t really new or original. (Though it does sound very tragic.) All the ideas ever have already been thought of. They’re taken.

There are a few things we can do with this news. We can worry about trying to prove it wrong and come up with something so completely new and original and unheard-of that people will stop and stare (and probably run away, because that’s what happens). We can hang our heads and trudge off in defeat. Or we can learn to stop worrying and embrace the idea that there may not be anything new under the sun—but we can certainly put our own spin on it.

I know I often come across the seed of an idea and quickly reject it because it’s been done before. But honestly, some of the most popular and best literature we read today isn’t “new”—it’s an unapologetic take on something that’s been done before, and done really well the first time.

For example, it is a truth universally acknowledged that works like Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Jane Austen’s Emma and Pride And Prejudice are classics, or at least fairly well known. Students and scholars alike study these works centuries after their original publication.

And yet we see “retakes,” adaptations and riffs on these works all the time. And they’re not relegated to the rubbish bin, or automatically rejected because “That’s been done before.” If anything, drawing on those classics seems to have helped The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Clueless, Bridget Jones’s Diary and most especially Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

All of those stories use classics as their models, often taking their full plots from the original and simply updating or adapting them. And yet all of those stories stand on their own as well, with new elements and a fresh take (usually) from the author. Just because something has been done before doesn’t preclude you from doing it again with a new spin.

What do you think? Have you ever discarded an idea because it had been done before?

Photo by Thomas Levinson

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Technique, Reading

What makes you put a book down?

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So I’m undertaking a major reading project right now, since I don’t want to push myself to write in the midst of some other project. (What was it again? Oh yeah, Operation Make-Rachel-Stop-Crying. It’s a full time job.) I picked probably twenty or so books that have been nominated for various awards in my genre or published by my target presses (and that were available at my library) and have plowed my way through several.

But not all. Maybe I’ve gotten a little burnt out on reading (is that possible?), but in the last week or two, I’ve suddenly had a hard time sticking to a book. This week, I tried two novels where the writing was so bad, I had to skip half the book or more. (I still wanted to know how it ended, though that was at least partially so I’d never be tempted to pick up the book again.) Telling vs. showing was the main problem. I said it was like the author was standing in front of me, holding up a curtain as he dictated the action on the other side.

Although bad writing is always a turn off, it’s not always enough to make me give up on a book, or at least half of it. Some of the books I just couldn’t not put down lost me in character soup. In one case, the story was told from one character’s POV, but by the end of the first chapter, we’d met so many people I couldn’t remember which character that was. And I kept forgetting in subsequent chapters.

I think it all boiled down to a basic factor: I just couldn’t get involved in the characters. Something about the narration style (telling) was too distant or confusing for me to make an emotional connection and sympathize with characters. And I’m realizing that life’s too short for boring books (or boring novels, anyway), so I’m not willing to persevere through a hundred pages to see if I suddenly start liking a character.

(And since life’s too short for boring books, I’d better work twice as hard to make sure mine aren’t boring!)

What do you think? What makes you put down a book?

Photo by Wade Kelly

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Technique

Creating characters

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I’m gearing up to write something new—you know, when life with a new baby and adjusting to three children all settle in. But even the gearing up phase is going slowly, because I’m feeling like I have to get to know the main character inside and out before I start writing. Before, we’ve looked at creating sympathetic characters, but now I’m just thinking about creating characters themselves.

I know some people do just that—spend hours, days or even months designing a character and bringing him or her to life, tweaking every last nuance of his or her backstory, weaving it into the plot outline, crafting quirks, homing in on weaknesses—all before they start writing a word of the first draft.

And then there are people like me, who outline characters in broad strokes and then launch into a draft. I edit and add to my characters’ life stories as I draft—and often don’t actually create those histories until I have something come to me in a stroke of genius, which usually requires some rewriting of the draft to that point.

Then I get to the end of the draft and have these characters that have evolved over the course of the draft. Even their voices have developed and been refined, until at the end of the draft, they have more distinctive voices, and going back to the beginning, I find bland, voiceless narration.

“Fixing” all that, and further refining and defining my characters, can be a lot of work. That’s part of the reason I wanted to try to get all that figured out in advance. And while I’ve definitely worked to develop my new character, her life story and her personality (with some ideas from The Power of Point of View by Alicia Rasley), I’ll find most of who she is and how she sounds in the writing, and for me, can’t be found any other way.

When do you do most of your character crafting—before, during or after drafting? What are your favorite ways to get to know your characters? (Warning: awesome responses to the second question just might be “foreblogged”!)

Photo credit—Michal Zacharzewski

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