Wordplay

This week’s shows how you can follow Charles Dickens’s example in Little Dorrit to strengthen your theme by layering it throughout your subplots.





Video Transcript: Since theme is often something that arises organically from a story, without much initial conscious thought on the author’s part, it can sometimes be a tricky aspect for writers to get their heads around. One of the keys to creating a story with deep thematic resonance is creating subplots that can thematically mirror and reinforce the main plot’s theme. As an example, consider the ever-complicated Charles Dickens and his classic Little Dorrit. This book is brimming with unique characters and interesting moral conundrums, but one of the primary themes is that of hypocrisy, particularly as it applies to parents and their children.

In Little Dorrit, no fewer than five characters have to deal with parental hypocrisy. The main thrust of the story revolves around, in the first place, Amy Dorrit and the attempts of her father to pretend his days in a debtor’s prison never existed and, in the second place, the other protagonist Arthur Clenham’s struggles with his pious but cruel mother. In these characters and these relationships, Dickens gives us the primary plot. He could easily have left his story at that, and readers still would have gotten the point and come away from the story with plenty to chew on. But Dickens took his theme much further by illustrating various other aspects of hypocrisy in the relationships of other minor characters. None of these relationships were extraneous or repetitious in comparison to the primary characters. Rather they serve to reinforce, contrast, and expand upon the main theme.

So think about your work-in-progress. What’s your main theme and how is it illustrated in the lives of your main characters? Then think about how you can illustrate other aspects of this theme via your minor characters and subplots. In the end, you should come away with an intricately woven theme that will stick with readers long after they’ve closed your book.


Tell me your opinion: How are you reinforcing your theme through your minor characters and subplots?


Related Posts: The All-Important Link Between Character and Theme


Strengthen Your Story With Symbolism


5 Steps to Dazzling Minor Characters

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Let’s say your story is a precision machine. If we were to take the shiny cover off the back of this machine, what we would find inside would be an intricate mess of nuts, bolts, gears, and an engineer only knows what else. At the heart of it all, we’d find two huge pistons running the show. One of those pistons is Action. The other is Reaction.

There are only two things your character can do at any given point in a story. He can either act. Or he can react. Those are the only choices. Within those two choices, the variables are endless, of course. But it’s vital that the author understand the differences between the two, so he can identify which course is preferable at key moments in the story. So let’s take a closer look at how these two pistons chug along in sync, taking turns powering the story forward.

What’s the difference between action and reaction?

At first glance, action and reaction don’t seem to need much in the way of explanation. We all know what they are. Action is when your character does something. Reaction is when he does something in response to something that has happened to him.

Consider an example from the classic musical Meet Me in St. Louis:

Action: Esther and Rose take action by filling a dance card with the names of all the most undesirable young men in town and give it to Lucille Ballard, who refused to go to the dance with their brother Lon and went instead with Rose’s boyfriend Warren.

Reaction: When Lucille makes up with Lon, Esther reacts by trading dance cards with her, so that Esther herself ends up with the undesirable dancing partners.

In a sense, of course, Esther’s action in filling the dance card is a reaction to Lucille’s supposed jilting of her brother. And her reaction to Lucille’s turning out to be super nice has her taking action in deliberately trading dance cards.

Action = control

If you over think the differences between action and reaction, it can get confusing fast. The important thing to remember in telling the two apart is identifying who is in charge of the scene. The character in charge is the one doing the acting. When Esther is plotting revenge against Lucille, she’s in charge and Lucille is at her mercy. When Lucille arrives at the dance and insists on making up with Lon and helping Rose and Warren do the same, she effectively takes control of the scene, leaving Esther with no choice but to react.

Action and reaction are linked dominos

Actions and reactions never happen in a vacuum. Authors can’t arbitrarily choose one or the other for any random scene. We have to deliberately pair these two powerhouse pistons. They must work in tandem, or they won’t work at all. A continual onslaught of actions, with no alternating reactions, will result in a scattered plot that not only barrages the reader with an unvarying and exhausting pace, but also one that features scenes with no visible connections to one another.

Back to the old domino illustration: Action dominos can’t knock into action dominoes, and reaction dominoes can’t knock into reaction dominos. Actions knock into reactions, which knock into actions and so forth—until you have a perfectly balanced, perfectly paced, perfectly connected story.


Tell me your opinion: Is your character acting or reacting in your latest scene?


Related Posts: Use Motion to Spice up Your Scenes


Bring Character Emotion to Life Through Action


The Perils of the Passive Protagonist
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Before we jump into today’s post, I have a favor to ask: Last year, Wordplay was chosen as one of Write to Done’s Top 10 Writing Blogs of the Year. How much fun would it be to go two in a row? If you feel Wordplay is worthy, would you consider leaving a comment with a short blurb? On the eve of Thanksgiving, I also want to take a sec to say how thankful I am for all of you fabulous Wordplayers! You guys bless my life every single day with your enthusiasm, kindness, and faithfulness. I hope your holiday season is as wonderful as you deserve!




This week’s video discusses some of the do’s and don’ts of character descriptions, including how much description you should include and where to include it.





Video Transcript: Perhaps the largest limitation of the written word is that it offers no visual picture. Unlike the viewer of a movie, a reader is entirely dependent upon the author’s descriptive skills for his ability to visualize the characters. Luckily, most authors have a vivid picture of their characters in their minds. All they have to do to help the reader share their vision is to slap a few descriptive details down on the page. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, in that writing a list of physical descriptors is relatively simple. No, in that there are actually quite a few pitfalls to be avoided.

The first question is: How much description should we include? How much is too much, how much is not enough? We’re not going to find a concrete answer to this, since it will vary from story to story and character to character. As a caveat, I’ll caution that we definitely don’t want to bore readers with a description that details our character’s every facial feature, every freckle, every scar. Readers only need enough to get the gist, from which they then fill in the blanks on their own. However, it’s also important that we don’t err on the side of not enough description. Saying our character is tall and has brown hair and brown eyes doesn’t really give our readers much to work with. So you’ll want to hunt for the features that make your character unique and that build a complete overall picture.

The second important question is: Where do you include the description? The short answer is better sooner than later. You want to guide the reader to a visualization of your character before he comes up with his own and is then jarred by your incongruous description later on. However, you also have to be clever enough to describe the character without violating POV—since few people will describe themselves in detail to themselves. Descriptions can be a lot of fun to write, but we also have to make sure they’re a lot of fun to read!


Tell me your opinion: How soon after you introduce your protagonist do you describe him?


Related Posts: Describing Characters


Why One Descriptor Is More Than Two


How to Bring Adjectives to Life

If I tell you should copy another writer, would you call the plagiarism police and poke me in a padded cell? If so, get your cuffs and straitjacket ready, because that’s exactly what I’m about to tell you.

Of course, copying doesn’t have to mean stealing. Copying another writer boils down to nothing more or less than mimicry, and mimicry, as we all know, is one awesome compliment. It’s also a gift that just keeps on giving, since in mimicking the masters of the craft, we’re not only paying them homage, we’re also gaining untold benefits for our own writing. Let’s take a look at what successful mimicry is and is not.

What Mimicry Is

• Setting High Goals. By desiring to write as well as our favorite authors, we’re forcing ourselves to set the highest of goals for our own writing, instead of settling for any ol’ drivel that dribbles from our pens.
• Achieving Good Taste. In choosing to mimic a particular author, we’re establishing a definitive statement about our taste as readers. We’re deciding what makes a good writer and, therefore, what kind of writer we want to be.
• Studying the Techniques. We can’t mimic unless we first study another writer. To be able to achieve the same desirable effects in our writing, we first have to be able to identify and understand those effects.
• Achieving Growth. The very act of mimicry means our writing will be moving ever upwards and onwards. Even a failed attempt of mimicry is one that will help us understand ourselves and our craft better. 

What Mimicry Is Not

• Plagiarism. Mimicry may be a compliment, but stealing someone else’s words or ideas is most certainly not. Aside from the fact that it’s unethical and illegal, plagiarism will never be able to give you much in the way of satisfaction or artistic growth.
• Laziness. The desire to be able to write like another author does not give us the excuse to use their stories as half-baked starting points for our own. Fan fiction aside, writing a story that is a feebly disguised copy of Star Wars or The Hunger Games means you’re missing the point—and the benefits—of using another artist’s genius to launch your own unique story, style, and voice.
• Giving Up. Sometimes the attempt to achieve the same effect as a masterful author can leave us feeling like we’ll never measure up. Don’t forget that even the masters had to start somewhere, had to be inspired by other artists, had to grow into their own place of excellence. 

How to Mimic

So how do you successfully mimic other authors in a way that will help you learn their secrets while aiding you in discovering your own unique and personal artistic nuances?

• Read Widely and Deeply. Start by reading everything you can get your hands on. When you find an author who makes you go I want to write like that!, read everything he’s written, both the good and the bad.
• Read With Attention. We’ve all heard the phrase “read like a writer,” but what does that really mean? It means reading with eyes that see beyond the story, behind the scenes to the techniques that make it work. Once you’ve cracked an author’s code, you can apply his secrets to your own work.
• Copy out Passages. Sometimes it’s helpful to take the above step a little further by actually copying out excellent passages from your favorite books. The act of writing each word down can make us understand the choice of language and the structure of the sentences and paragraphs.
• Experiment With Similar Styles. Mimicry only works if you put what you’ve learned into practice. Did you enjoy the first-person present tense style in that last Margaret Atwood novel? Why not give it a try in your next book. Did you love the rapid-fire action scene in that latest Brandon Sanderson book? Try throwing your characters into the midst of a mano-a-mano duel in the next chapter. 

In a nutshell, mimicry is nothing more than reading, appreciating, and learning from the masters. As artists, there is no better way to improve our own craft than to fall in love with the excellence of someone else’s.


Tell me your opinion: Who's the last author who made you think I want to write like that?


Related Posts: Why You Should Read the Type of Stories You Write


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Why You Should Steal From Other Authors
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This week’s video uses William Faulkner’s The Town to show how the choice of POVs will influence and ultimately control your story.





Video Transcript: How do you decide which characters should be your point-of-view narrators? This is one of the most important decisions an author can make in planning his book. The characters who narrate will largely control the flow, tone, and focus of your story. Change the POV characters, and you’ll likely change the entire story. And yet this is a decision we often devote very little thought to. We just do whatever feels right. Usually, we’ll give the POVs to the main character, the antagonist, and maybe a few minors who are present in important scenes in which our story’s big shots are not.

As far as it goes, this isn’t a bad way to choose POVs. A lot of books follow this formula, and it works well in carrying the reader to the places the author wants him to go. But, aside from the fact that it can sometimes lead to a haphazard “loose” feel, it overlooks one of the most powerful facets of the POV. And that is the POV’s ability to control the story. POVs shouldn’t be just about giving the reader eyes through which to see any old action. They should also be about structuring the story itself. William Faulkner’s The Town gives us an excellent example. His book offers three widely varied points of view: a young boy, an idiosyncratic entrepreneur, and an educated lawyer.

As much as his story is about these characters—and as much as their POVs tell us about them—a careful reading shows us that Faulkner chose these POVs not because of the characters themselves, but because of the juxtaposed views they presented of the story. So when you’re choosing your POVs, consider how each POV will add to the tone of the story as a whole. Don’t choose a POV just because it can show the reader things the other POVs can’t. Choose it because this character’s voice and viewpoint can bring a unique and important thematic layer to the story.


Tell me your opinion: How do you choose your POV characters?


Related Posts: How Many POVs Are Too Many?


Bring Your POV Characters' Voices to Life


Introduce Important POVs as Soon as Possible

Writers are no exception to the “artists are rebels” stereotype. We’re rogues and rule breakers—and proud of it, thank you, ma’am. The only teensy little problem we have is that we’re not always certain which rules to break. Tongue in cheek, I often say writing has only one rule, and that’s “break all the rules.” That’s great fun, as far as it goes. But taken at face value, it won’t get us published or read.

The rules of writing are really more conventions than rules: long-held traditions that have become popular and effective ways of communicating our stories to our readers. There are no Writing Police (gatekeepers aside) who will slap you into cuffs for bucking those traditions, anymore than there’s a guarantee you’ll be published if you obediently follow all the rules. Writing isn’t a dot-to-dot puzzle that must be constructed formulaically. The best of art is all about experimentation and growth. That’s why we get to be wild and break a few rules.

Which rules should you break?

Popular advice says writers should “learn the rules, follow most of them, and break a few.” But which few? Are there certain rules that are concrete and others that aren’t? Are there certain rules that should be broken? It’s all so doggone confusing. We want to be breakout writers. We want to follow enough rules to get past the gatekeepers. But we also want to break the right rules to make our art unique and, yes, we admit it, think-outside-the-box brilliant.

So when the writing gurus tell you to be brave and break some rules, for crying out loud, which rules are they talking about? Because heaven forbid we choose the wrong rule to break and end up in the writer’s equivalent of solitary confinement.

This is where I tell you the million dollar secret. I am about to reveal the answer to this much pondered question. I’m going to unveil the veiled, unmask the masked, and just generally give it to you straight.

The right rules to break

The “right” rules to break depend entirely upon you as a reader.

Think about your own reading experiences. As a highly trained author, you no doubt read with one eye on the plot and the other on the craft. When an author strays from the beaten path and starts taking a baseball bat to the rules/conventions/traditions of the elders, which cracks of that bat make you cringe and which surprise and delight you?

Listen to your gut

Trust yourself as a reader—especially if you’ve educated yourself enough to read like a writer. When your gut tells you something works, even if your internal editor starts carping, pay attention.

Likely, the reason whatever author you’re reading is able to break this particular rule is because he’s doing it purposefully and skillfully—and brilliantly. Just because he’s pulling it off doesn’t mean you’ll be able to run over to your keyboard and be equally rebellious and brilliant. But if you understand and like what he’s doing, don’t be afraid to give it a little experimental whirl.

On the other hand, if your broken rule! broken rule! klaxon starts screaming in the middle of a good book and, instead of invoking an awed How’d he do that?, your gag reflex starts hopping, don’t you dare try to break that same rule in your own writing. Listen to the gut. It’s a better writer than the head. It knows which rules need to be broken to further a story—and which rules, if broken, will only nauseate your readers.


Tell me your opinion: What "rules" have you deliberately broken - and which are you adamant about keeping?


Related Posts: Rules? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Rules!


The Best Writing Advice


The Worst Writing Advice
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This week’s video analyzes the pitfalls of repetitious action beats and offers suggestions for keeping your actions fresh and interesting between lines of dialogue.




Video Transcript: Even the most scintillating dialogue scenes require more than just dialogue to stay afloat. We have to pad the characters’ speech with dialogue tags (he said, she whispered, etc.), internal narrative, and body language and action—otherwise known as action beats. Often action beats will flow naturally from the characters. Maybe they’re beating each up while they talk, or maybe one of them is packing for a big trip, or maybe another is trying to figure out how to skin a whole chicken. In these instances, the actions usually pop right out between dialogue lines and are naturally varied and interesting.

But sometimes our characters are just sitting around talking. In these kinds of scenes, authors can be hard pressed to come up with enough actions to keep their scenes from suffering from “talking-head” or “white-wall” syndrome. As a result, we can sometimes end up recycling the same action beat over and over. For example, in a historical novel I read recently, the only action beats to break up a lengthy dialogue scene were the characters fiddling with their cigarettes. They lit them, puffed on them, stubbed them out in the ash tray, relit them, puffed some more, stubbed them out again—and again and again. What started out as an effective action beat illustrating the characters’ nervousness ended up feeling like rehashed hash browns.

If your dialogue beats start to repeat themselves, take a step back from the scene, delete every third beat, and start thinking of new, fresh replacements. Internal narrative can often take the place of an action beat, and, if your character doesn’t have something to do with his hands, be sure to utilize his facial expressions and body language. That said, the easiest way to avoid this problem is to simply set up your scene to begin with so your characters do have something to do while they’re talking.


Tell me your opinion: Do you ever run dry on action beats?


Related Posts: Who Said What? - Identifying Dialogue Speakers


How Not to Use Speaker Tags and Action Beats


The Cure-All for Long and Boring Narrative

The wrong choice of just a single word can be enough to give readers a completely different (and, from the writer’s viewpoint, wrong) perspective of a character. Despite the fact that we often see our characters in crisp, glorious, mega-wattage detail, we sometimes have a difficult time sharing those details with our readers. We want readers to see our characters as vulnerable but strong, imperfect but brave, haunted but smart. We want readers to see our characters from every angle, so they can also see in our characters a wonderfully human mix of good and bad, strong and weak, perfect and imperfect.



Achieving Balance


So far, so good. But few writers are able to achieve this balance the first time they release their bucking bronc of a story out of the chute. Too often, we accidentally pile too much weight on one side or the other of the scale—and end up giving readers a skewed perception of our characters.

Let’s say your character is an average Joe, a cop who’s devoted to the badge, but who struggles to balance the tough realities of his job—particularly one failed assignment that got him shot and his partner killed—with the demands of his wife and kids. Now, you, as the author, know Joe is a very realistic, likable guy. He’s occasionally heroic, but also occasionally scared. For every day he’s sad about his partner’s death, he’s also hopeful about his son’s future. He’s sometimes angry with his wife’s inability to understand his job’s stress, but he’s also aware it’s his responsibility to be there for his family.



Too Good to Be True


There are many ways you might write Joe. At one extreme, in your attempt to show his heroic, devoted public servant side, you might leave out some of the weaker, less likable details of his personality and end up with a less than relatable, possibly even laughable version:

Joe put the good of the city ahead of everything else—always. He was just that kind of guy. He never complained, because he knew he had nothing to complain about. He’d capture the bad guys, save the world, and be home in time to tuck in the kids.

Too Bad to Be Bearable


On the other hand, you might be worried about Joe coming across as too good to be true, so you decide to focus on his problems, in order to make him more relatable to readers. This is an excellent plan. But you have to be careful not to turn him from relatable to pitiable. We want to present our character’s faults, but if we dwell on them too much, we end up with a character who screams “oh please, oh please, everyone throw a pity party for poor little ol’ me!” For example, if we were going to don our party hats and throw confetti in Joe’s honor, we might end up with a celebration that looks something like this:

Joe nursed the day’s fifth round of coffee and donuts. It was tough being a cop in NYC—and didn’t he know it? Or maybe it was just that he didn’t measure up. Why didn’t the commissioner just fire him and get it over with? He was a pathetic excuse for a cop. Pa-thet-tic. Hadn’t he already admitted to everyone that he was responsible for his partner’s death? While he was at it, he should probably admit he was also a pathetic excuse for a father. Of course, he didn’t have to tell his wife that. She already knew.

Now if you’re using this paragraph to introduce a severely depressed character, this internal whingeing might not be such a bad thing. But what this paragraph does not do is give us a balanced character. This isn’t an average Joe struggling onward to be the best man he can be in spite of his circumstances. This is a man who’s blubbering hot, salty tears into his coffee.

When you write your story, but particularly as you revise, be on the watch for the balance that emerges about your character from the details you present—particularly his internal narrative. Balance means you present just as much good about the character as bad. Readers like characters with problems (yes, even the occasional blubbering cop), but they also like characters who climb to their feet after being knocked down instead of lying on the mat with their eyes rolled back in their sockets.



This is the eleventh post in the Most Common Mistakes Series, inspired by the prevalent slip-ups I run across in editing other people’s work. Don’t worry: I don’t use any names or specific examples from my clients’ stories. I hope the series will prove helpful to you in nabbing these mistakes in your own work—before an agent or editor nabs them for you.


Tell me your opinion: Have you ever gotten feedback that indicated a reader thought your character was more pathetic than you wanted him to be?


Related Posts: Keep Unlikable Characters From Alienating Readers


Are You Sabotaging Your Own Character?


Love Your Characters - Or Else!
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This week’s video explains why you should consider utilizing an out-of-the-ordinary narrative form in your book—and why you shouldn’t.







Video Transcript: For the most part, when a reader opens a book, he knows what he’s going to be getting. First- or third-person narrative voices, told in the past tense, in a linear timeline, are the most common narrative forms. Readers are familiar with these forms and comfortable with them, and, because these forms allow a nice blend of flexibility and stability, they unquestionably top the popularity scale for good reason. Likely, most of us will never stray from this model no matter how many books we write. But does that mean we can’t or shouldn’t use unusual narrative forms?

We find unusual forms in many popular and respected works—everything from Audrey Niffenegger’s non-chronological double 1st-person present tense narrators in The Time Traveler’s Wife to William Faulkner’s script-like presentation of dialogue in Requiem for a Nunto Jay McInerney second-person narration in Bright Lights, Big City. All of these books, and many more, break the wall of reader expectations by taking risks with style and format—and, for the most part, readers will agree they do it successfully. But how can you tell if breaking the rules and straying from the beaten path is something you should attempt in your story?

Experimentation in art is important to our growth as artists. But we have to realize that only the best of experiments deserve to be shared with our readers. Only when we’re absolutely confident that a) an unusual form is the best way to tell a particular story and b) we’re capable of mastering that form in a way that will enhance rather than take away from the reading experience should we attempt it. In other words, when in doubt, don’t. But if you’re convinced an unusual format is right for your story, don’t be afraid to give it a whirl. Just remember you have to be brilliant!


Tell me your opinion: Have you ever used an unusual format in any of your stories?


Related Posts: 10 Stylistic Mistakes Sabotaging Your Story


Bring Your POV Characters' Voices to Life


Is Authorial Voice Different From Character Voice?