Category Archives: Technique

Successful techniques for powerful writing

Technique, Reading

The ethics of beta reading

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I don’t know if it’s just the circles I’m in, but I’ve noticed a large number of authors who’ve suddenly had trouble with beta readers, who read a book and offer feedback before publication. Even experienced betas have been doing things that are frankly unethical, so I thought perhaps we just need some guidelines on what is appropriate and not for a beta reader.

The ethical beta

3726858061_8c21ebdc63_mYou have been taken into a position of trust. The author has helped you to make their book better before they publish it. The ethical beta reader understands that they are reviewing a book in a prepublication format. Errors, typos and room for improvement are to be expected. The ethical beta reader gives feedback to that effect—as complete and detailed as asked for & warranted.

Unless the author instructs you that they would like to drastically change their work, the ethical beta reader does not demand the author change the voice or style or entire book to suit the reader’s vision. The ethical beta reader only makes suggestions that they believe will make the author’s book stronger from a “neutral” standpoint, not change it into something different the reader would prefer personally.

Although it may not be mandatory, the ethical beta reader should also try to point out positives in their feedback. It’s not your job to stoke the author’s ego (unless you really love the book 😉 ), but letting the author know what does work is not only helpful but encouraging. A list of entirely negative feedback is likely to be discarded in anguish. Note that the term “textbook,” even when meant as praise, sounds like an insult, especially if that’s the closest you can come to positive feedback.

The ethical beta reader does not use abusive or insulting language about the author’s work. All original novels require a lot of effort and the author has taken you into a position of trust. Insulting their work or them as a writer/person shows a total lack of not only professionalism but also common courtesy.

The ethical beta reader makes clear the issues they have with your book in their feedback to you, not through a public review after the book has been published. Not only is your feedback of no help at that point—when that it exactly what the author asked you for, prepublication help—but it’s unethical to withhold your real feedback from the author, especially if you’ll turn around and publicly attack the book for it.

The ethical beta reader only reviews a book if they have read the version that’s being sold (or are pretty darn sure the author made the changes necessary to the book). The ethical beta reader does not mention the issues that the book had prepublication if they are resolved. If an author has told you that they have addressed a concern such as citing sources or a particular subplot, it is unfair and unethical to publicly air your complaints about their inferior quality work, which they asked you for help with and which they (may have) improved before publishing.

Now, to be sure, if an author doesn’t take your advice, you can mention the perceived weakness/fault in the review, but there’s also no cause to say, “I warned her not to do this,” or anything of the kind. (Who do you think that reflects upon?)

The ethical beta reader has absolutely no reason to create a profile for an unpublished book on a site like Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, etc. When the book is ready for publication, the author may create a profile—or you might even do that, but again, it is unethical to air your grievances against an earlier version of the book.

The ethical beta reader does not use the author’s other books as a platform to review and attack a different book or the author. The ethical reader shouldn’t do this, and as someone who has been accepted into the author’s confidence, you have an even greater responsibility.

If the ethical beta reader realizes the book is plagiarized from another book s/he has read, the beta reader says something. This might include notifying the plagiarized author or the plagiarizing author, or both. (Note: if a beta reader comes to you to report your book has been plagiarized, do not share their name with the plagiarizing author!)

Note to authors

The term “beta reader” means different things to different people—and often it means nothing to people outside of the writing industry. Be sure to clarify what level of feedback you need (general plot notes, characterization, logical flow, wording & line editing, etc.) when you send the file.

What do you think? What else do ethical beta readers do/not do?

Photo credit: Tim

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Technique, Publishing

Critique partners vs. editors

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So earlier this month, we talked about what a difference critique partners make. And they do—mine routinely suggest the exact thing I needed to fix a plot line, a story arc, a scene, a character. They are truly amazing.

But even amazing critique groups are probably not acquisitions editors. They may not think like acquisitions editors. As Alicia Rasley has blogged before, sometimes your editor hates what your CPs love, for myriad reasons. It seems sad and counterproductive to think that a book you’ve spent six or twelve months with in critique group may now spent that long in editing because it fundamentally doesn’t work.

Part of that, as Alicia mentions, is the protracted reading your critique partners must do. In a standard critique group format, the group reads a scene or a chapter at a time (or perhaps isolated scenes), while an editor is trying to whip a whole book into shape, hammering out those overarching problems of plot or arc or character that a critique group who reads the book in a drip at a time just can’t see.

But there’s another issue at work, too. In many groups, critique partners’ job is to work with what you’ve got. It’s hard to suggest overarching changes without a high-level vision of the novel, so they do what they can: work on polishing the prose you present. You have to really develop trust in addition to fiction-vision to suggest (and take) the major changes that will make your story deeper, more engaging, more complex (in a good way), more coherent, more resonant.

But those changes are an editor’s job, her wheelhouse. She works not to be your friend but to make your book everything it can be. Her job is to knock it down and make it better.

Your critique partners may be right: your book may be great. Or they may be biased (by incomplete information or lovin ya, goshdarnit). The point isn’t that they’re wrong, but that it’s often beyond their purview—or perhaps beyond what you want them to do—to spot and fix the large-scale problems that an editor will home in on. Your editor’s job isn’t just to be right: it’s to make your book absolutely all that it can be. For the best book possible, use both!

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Technique

Picking the perfect name for your character

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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, in her 30s, 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 the top ten from 1997 to 2013, the most recent data available now.

So what, you ask? Well, those statistics mean that the vast majority of girls named Madison is fifteen or younger 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!

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

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Mechanics, Technique

Fix-It Friday: watch those prepositional phrases

Prepositional phrases can be tricky. I’ve found a few ways they can really trip up writers and change the meaning of otherwise fine sentences. One of those ways: the simple order of prepositional phrases. When they become misplaced modifiers, prepositional phrases throw a money wrench in your sentence’s meaning. fif

What’s wrong with these sentences?

Why would she share the secret he’d confided in her in the hall with her parents?

He remembered the dog he’d found as he was walking in the apartment across the street.

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

A man was bitten by a bat walking down the street on his thumb.

She couldn’t believe he was standing there after their conversation yesterday on the sidewalk.

Notice that often the problem is using multiple modifiers or more than one prepositional phrase. As we stack the phrases, we have to be sure the meaning doesn’t get lost, or we’ll leave our readers like these characters from Clue:

So how would you fix them? Next week!

Photo credits: tools—HomeSpot HQ

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Technique, Works

Why Character Sympathy

heart COVER 300I began researching character sympathy years ago when I struggled with it myself. A shocking number of writers and resources suggested “fixes” and sources of character sympathy that are little more than gimmicks. The effective advice I found was piecemeal at best: a chapter here, a section of a book there, an Internet article. There was NO comprehensive resource on the why and especially the how of creating character sympathy.

Five years ago, as I was first studying the topic, many people gave advice like “give the character a tragic backstory—abusive parents!” or “make the character painfully shy” or “make sure the character is likeable” or even “make the character resemble the reader.” But any or even a combination of all of those isn’t enough to create true reader sympathy.

As I studied the topic at the time, I came up with a theory (and made up the alliterative phrase I used to describe it): that character sympathy is based on both strength and struggles. Characters must have both to generate true sympathy instead of merely creating pity or worse, turning the reader off the character altogether.

After five years, there was still no writing craft books focused on this topic. When I decided to publish nonfiction on writing craft—a subject I blog about, teach, and love—I knew I needed to address this gap in technique teaching. As with Character Arcs, I had to pull together many concepts and lessons that were highly disparate, even tangential (and a couple even contradictory). Even a phrase, otherwise unrelated, could inspire insight on the subject.

As I assembled my previous writing on the subject, I realized that one more aspect I’ve blogged about before was also crucial to getting readers on your side: the noble goal. While James N. Frey’s books first taught me that lesson, through the years I’ve applied, analyzed and reanalyzed it. I drilled down into the inherent reason why a noble goal helps generate sympathy. At its heart, I think it’s because the noble goal embodies sacrifice, the third crucial tenet of my theory of character sympathy.

Like all theories, mine is built upon the efforts of previous thinkers. Einstein built upon Ricci-Curbastro’s work, who built upon Newton, who built upon Euclid. Without the efforts of those who’ve gone before, we’d have to start over in each generation for math or physics or literary analysis. I’m not Einstein, but I built upon what I’d read before, just like Frey built upon the works of Lajos Egri

To give the reader as many tools as possible, I even distilled one or two of the more helpful models of creating character sympathy I’d found. However, these models only comprised short articles or at most a chapter in a longer work studying a number of topics. Until I wrote this book, there was no full-length resource available that focused solely on the subject of character sympathy. Obviously was also the first place my personal thesis, that characters gain reader sympathy through a balance of strengths, struggles and sacrifice, was published.

Sharing my personal thesis on character sympathy and giving readers a resource that fully addressed the topic, focusing solely on the why and more importantly the how of effectively evoking character sympathy, is why I had to publish Character Sympathy.

What do you think? What do you want to learn about character sympathy?

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Technique

Upping your tension, scene-by-scene

In my presentation on structural self-editing, I mention that one column of the scene chart in particular helped to make my story better: the tension column. So when I stumbled across a post on how to use that tension column in my archives, I knew I had to share!

When you’re editing yourself, it can be hard to see which of your scenes are low in tension. For tension, a scene-level edit is a definite must. For each scene, ask yourself:

  • Character’s goal: Is it clearly stated or irrefutably implied? (That scene goal in the scene chart thing? Yep. Plus, a scene chart and/or spreadsheet is a really convenient here.)
  • Bring on the conflict: Can/should I cut to where the conflict for that goal starts? Is that the worst conflict I could use here?
  • Bring out the conflict: Have I stated why this is a difficult/delicate situation?
  • Length: Is the scene an appropriate length for its significance? (That applies to both word count and the passage of time in the scene.)
  • Setting: Could another setting lend more tension to this scene?
  • Purpose: Does this move the story forward? Is my reason for having this scene good enough to justify this scene, or any scene at all?
  • Ending: Does the scene end with a disaster for my POV character’s goal? Do we cut away at the worst possible moment, something that will induce the reader to find out what happens next?
  • Finally, rating: as Noah Lukeman recommends in The Plot Thickens, rate the scene tension on a scale of 1 to 10.

Another method here is to read the story backwards, scene-by-scene. Or, I guess, you could jump around as long as you made sure you covered everything. That way, you know each scene will stand on its own—but if you change anything important, especially near the beginning, you’ll just have to go through and fix all that again. (Which can cut both ways, of course.)

Of course, this whole method requires brutal honesty. No rating a scene higher because your heroine gets off a few zingers, no keeping a scene that doesn’t serve any real purpose because it has that beautiful paragraph that it took you a month to write. Cut and paste your favorite parts (or the whole scene) into another document and you never have to actually “lose” anything.

Finding and fixing low tension scenes is just the beginning of making sure your story keeps your readers hooked. Tomorrow we’ll look at finding problems with the overarching suspense in your story. (Gulp!)

What do you think? What do you look for to find low-tension scenes?

Photo credit: Samuraijohnny

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Technique, Reading

Becoming a better writer: READ

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I’ll admit it: I love to read, but when I’m writing, I don’t do a lot of reading. (Oh, crud, there’s a secondary confession in there: I typically don’t write [i.e. write brand new material in a first draft] every single day. Gasp.) There are a couple reasons for this. (The reading, not the writing. That’s another post.) When I am writing a book, it usually consumes every second of “free” (read: writing or reading time) time I have for those weeks. But don’t worry—I still get my (non)fiction fix in! Here’s how!

Research!

Occasionally, I can work in a little bit of reading while drafting. For me, nonfiction research reading can often feed my creative beast muse—very important when you push it as hard as I do (we’re talking anywhere from 4000 to 8000 words/day while drafting).

I have to do a lot of research anyway (since I’m a little obsessive), and research reading is a great source of new ideas.

Fiction, however, is another story for me. When I read fiction while writing, the voice or style of the book I read often bleeds into the book I’m writing. That usually isn’t so good. So let’s just assume that we’re not going to be reading fiction while drafting, but we definitely can’t take off all our time from reading. What’s a writer to do?

Take a reading break

One thing I try to do periodically, especially when trying to get necessary distance from my book, is to take a break from writing/revising/editing altogether and just read. It’s a good time to catch up in your genre, explore another, try something new or completely different, or just enjoy yourself. Reading breaks are also a great place to find ideas. Way back when I wrote three books in one year (before I did crazythousand-word days!), the thing that got me writing that third book (insanity!) was an idea I just couldn’t resist after reading a fantastic book.

Read carefully while editing

Reading while editing will vary from writer to writer, but for me, I think I actually benefit from reading writing that I . . . don’t care for, we’ll say. If you’ve been editing your own work long enough, you probably rewrite sentences in published novels at least occasionally. (Admit it, we all do!) When you feed your editing habit, you may look at your own writing with a more critical eye.

I’ve also found it helpful to read really, really good novels while editing, giving me a mark to shoot for.

Set a reading goal

And make it public!. I pledged to read 50 books in 2011, and I thought that wouldn’t be too hard. I’d read 40 the year before (um, including a 6-week leave from all writing while I read [and had a baby]), and even very long books seldom take me a week to read. You know, except for the weeks I can’t, when I’m consumed by my own books (or, heaven forbid, the humans with whom I cohabit).

That public pledge ended up pushing me pretty hard, especially since I did NaNoWriMo, too. It came down to the wire, but I got in my 50 books, even if a couple were rereads of some classics of writing craft.

What do you think? Can you read while you write? If not, when do you read?

Photo credits: reading a book—Kendra; glasses on book—Antonio Mantero

Adapted from a post from May 2012

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Technique

Varying the tension level to keep your readers’ interest

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This entry is part 25 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

Or, How writing is like spicy mac

A couple weeks ago, my family went out to lunch. We got a side of macaroni and cheese that was advertised, correctly, as having a little kick to it. The spice was too much for the kids, so my husband and I ended up eating almost all of the macaroni and cheese.

Macaroni and Cheese @ Seersucker RestaurantThe first few bites were really tasty (and I’m really picky about mac’n’cheese). Within a few bites, the spice began to set in. It wasn’t too spicy—no tears, no runny noses—but I could see why my kids needed water.

But once we were halfway through our meal, my husband and I both realized that we weren’t really tasting the mac or the cheese. After a while, all you could taste was the spice.

Early on in our writing, we usually learn early on that we need tension and conflict in our scenes. Tension, suspense and conflict are vital, and few people will read fiction without that “spice.”

However, sometimes it’s easy to go overboard on this vital element. At the climax, we’ll probably have a long passage of high-tension scenes, but if every scene of the book features world! threatening! consequences!, all you can taste is the spice—and the book feels just as one-note as if every scene had no tension at all.

Spice isn’t the spice of life—it’s variety. So change up the tension levels in your scenes.

Ten ways to change up the tension in your scenes

Flatline1. Use humor. A joke can reduce the tension in a scene, or just give the readers a break from unremitting THE WHOLE PLANET WILL DIE!!! drama.

2. Switch storylines. Changing to another group of characters doing something else often helps to vary the tension level. This also works in reverse—if the tension gets too low in one storyline, switch to another, then change back to a point where something more interesting is happening.

3. Bump up your character’s proactivity. Maybe your characters aren’t facing chase scene after chase scene, but they’ve been kidnapped and they’re being dragged around the country, and they’re freaking out the whole time. That level of tension, that helpless response, makes the tension (and the characters!) seem one-note. Don’t let your characters just wring their hands and whine. Do something!

4. Change your character’s goal. If we’ve had five scenes in a row of your characters trying to do the exact same thing, and encountering the same problem, or the same level of problems, something’s got to change. (You know what they say about the definition of insanity?)

5. Change the source of the threat. Maybe your last eight scenes have been at a 7 on the tension scale. You might be able to bump some of them up

6. Use dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something the characters don’t, usually something that will pull the rug from under the characters. If you have scenes from the antagonist’s POV, for example, you can set up dramatic irony (and switch to that storyline to intercut the tension).

7. Have your characters reach a goal. Throughout the book, we mostly try to frustrate our characters’ goals because it increases the suspense and tension. To change things up, have them accomplish something—it could be something small, like retrieving an important artifact, or it could be something major, like defeating the bad guy (who turns out to be only a minor villain).

8. Give us a campfire scene. Let the characters celebrate and relax, if only for a minute. Especially good after a victory that turns out to be false.

9. Use a sequel. You may not have the time or place to have a celebration scene right now, but if your character has a minute, he or she might be able to go through the stages of an emotional reaction to the action, naturally a bit lower in tension.

10. Show the recovery. You’ve got hearts racing, stomachs clenching and palms sweating (dude, gesture clichés). But do your characters ever stop doing those things? Do they strive to (or just naturally) get their visceral responses under control? Take a deep breath, take a look around, take a minute to reorient your goals before you plunge in again.

Again, tension is absolutely vital to a novel—but having all your scenes with equally high tension is just as stultifying as all scenes with low tension. We don’t want every bite of our meal to taste like plain noodle or like plain spice. Vary the tension of your stories to create a truly engaging taste reading experience.

How else can you vary the tension in your scenes?

Photo credits
Macaroni and cheese by David Berkowitz
Flatline by Myles Grant
both via Flickr/CC

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