Karen Sandler

Category: Strongly Held Beliefs

  • RTW – Writing Books & Writing Advice

    This week,  YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday asks us to Share your most inspiring and/or motivational video, book, or quote on writing. All those NaNoWriMo participants out there nearing November’s half-way point could probably use an extra push toward the finish line.

    I have not read very many “inspirational” writing books. Back when I was just starting out, I tended to buy the nuts-and-bolts how-to books, read partway through, or just bits and pieces, then set them aside. I did read The Elements of Style (by William Strunk & E.B. White) cover to cover many years ago (it’s a real hoot), and back in 2000, I devoured Stephen King’s On Writing. I highly recommend both of those.

    There are a couple of inspirational/how-to-write books that most people rave about, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and Story by Robert McKee, that I started but couldn’t finish. I’m a severe plotter who does lots of advance prep. Then when I finally start chapter 1, I switch gears and become a very instinctual writer. Lamott’s and McKee’s books just made my eyes glaze over. However, many, many people have recommended these books, so I’m sure they have much of value in them. Just not for me.

    Now on to some writing advice. The first is from romance goddess Nora Roberts, and came to me via a talk given by the incomparable romance author, Anne Stuart. Back when I was writing romance, I belonged to Romance Writers of America, and Anne came to speak to our local chapter. She quoted something Nora Roberts had said: I can fix a written page. I can’t fix a blank page. This one piece of advice has pushed me through book after book, shutting up the little editor in my head with the clear knowledge that I can fix it later. Nothing is set in stone. Nora said so.

    As a companion bit of advice, Anne herself said something that night that has bolstered me many times when I have struggled to write even one page, when the words sit sullenly at the back of my head and refuse to step into the light. Anne said (and I paraphrase here), If you look the pages that were like pulling teeth to write and compare them to the pages that just flowed easily and beautifully, you won’t be able to tell the difference between them. In other words, even though you’re certain that pages you struggle to write are awful crap, they’re not. They’re just as good as those breeze-to-write pages and just as ready to be “fixed” as advised by Nora.

    If I may, one bit of my own advice. As I mentioned, neither Bird by Bird nor Story resonated with me. By the time they came along, I already had a methodology that worked. I’ve tweaked my writing method over the years, but the basic system has remained the same.

    If you’re just starting out as a writer and checking out various methods/structures to find what works, that’s great. But every writer is different. Some things you try will not work for you. Other methods that you find are perfect for you won’t work for others. Never judge yourself because you’re, for instance, a pantser, when everyone else in your critique group insists you should always plot first. Don’t freak out when you go to a conference workshop and the speaker tells you about a work style that doesn’t sync with yours. You’re not necessarily doing it wrong just because you’re doing it differently. The only real must is to continually improve the quality of your writing and storytelling.

    So how about you? What books or advice have inspired you?

  • RTW – What Makes a Book a Movie?

    This week, YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday offers up the blog prompt What is it that makes some books ideal for a film translation? I feel a little like that kid in class whose teacher finally asks a question she knows the answer to. The kid who suddenly wakes up and waves her arm, praying the teacher will call on her.

    Well, okay, I’m not that much of an expert on books being adapted into movies. But I have written a half-dozen or so screenplays and have written and produced a few short films. My book Tankborn and its sequels Awakening and Revolution were all adapted from a film script to books (so I’m hoping they can some day go the other way too). So I’ve actually thought a lot about what kind of books make good movies.

    IMHO, the one quality that makes a book most adaptable into film is a high concept premise. What’s high concept? I define it as a premise that can easily be described in one sentence. I’ve also heard it defined as a premise for which you can immediately imagine its movie poster. Hunger Games is an excellent example. In the future, teens are chosen in a lottery for a fight to the death with other teens. Jurassic Park–scientists recreate dinosaurs using DNA and the dinosaurs fight back. I think Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies books, in which “ugly” children are converted to “pretties” at age 16, but there’s something rotten at the core of the process, is pretty high concept and would make a fantastic film franchise.

    But not every movie is high concept, nor is every book that’s adapted to film high concept. Another crucial quality is that the book is very visual. There’s plenty of action on the page as opposed to lots of internal dialogue or long descriptive passages. There’s a whole lot of the novel Pride and Prejudice that’s left out of the movie because it just doesn’t translate into the visual medium of film.

    A third quality of a filmable book is that its story already follows a three act structure. I bet if you analyzed the movies you’ve seen, you’ll see the three act structure in most of them.

    What does that structure look like? The first act sets up the characters and their story dilemma, then there’s an inciting incident at the end of the first act that sets the hero/heroine on his/her way to their goal. The stakes continually rise in the second act, and there will be a turning point in the middle that changes everything, then a dark moment at the end of the second act. Then there’s the third act’s climax and denouement.

    Think about some of the books you’ve read, and I’ll bet many of them use this three act structure. Maybe the author made a conscious decision to write their book that way, or maybe the book ended up with three act structure because it’s a great way to write a story.

    So think about your own book, or if you’re not a writer, think about a fiction book you’ve recently read. Is it high concept (can you describe it in one sentence)? Is it extremely visual? Is it already written in a three act structure? Then you might have a very film adaptable story. I hope Hollywood comes knocking.

  • From Zero to Rage in a Millisecond

    Twenty-plus years ago when my two sons were quite small, I had a very upsetting experience while waiting in a Costco parking lot for my husband. It was night time and it was just the three of us. A man in a big pickup pulled up next to where we were parked and when he opened his door, it banged into the side of my car.

    Not long before this, my younger son had carelessly done the same thing and made a ding in a lady’s car door. We had to go in search of the owner, do the whole exchange of insurance and contact information. I’d impressed on my son that he had to be more careful opening his door.

    So when this man banged our car, I got out to say something to him. The moment I said the words “You hit our car,” he exploded verbally, spewing out obscenities, his sudden anger at me (when he was clearly at fault) unexpected and frightening. I’m sure he saw me as vulnerable–a woman alone with two small kids. I certainly felt that way. In any case, I immediately backed down, scared but seething inside. The man went on his way.

    This incident came to mind because something similar happened today. I don’t want to say where it happened. It’s a place where I’m the customer, and I was unhappy with something that had happened, something that should have been done differently. My first impulse was to call the person’s boss to complain, but I thought instead that I would just talk to the person directly.

    I told the person all this, that I wanted to avoid calling his boss. As I spoke to him, yes, I was ticked, and I probably sounded irritated. But when I told him what I wished he’d done differently, he immediately pulled out the big anger guns. He used the f-bomb and made it clear he thought the fault was mine and not his that the mistake had happened.

    I walked away and told him I’d take it up with his boss. He threw out, “You do that,” then followed me, carping at me some more. I tried again to get my point across, but kept walking until I got in my car to leave.

    Unlike the experience with the guy in the pickup truck, today’s was more unpleasant than scary. But to have a near stranger blow up at me like that was kind of shocking. Even if you think a customer is annoying (and yes, I can be annoying sometimes), you smile and apologize. In this particular situation, I had a valid point to make, but he wasn’t having any of it.

    What’s also interesting is that the same person was around the day before when my husband and another man were working on a project. I introduced myself, talked to him, made some suggestions about the work he was doing, and he took my requests with equanimity. So what was the difference today? Was he having a bad day? Or was it that I was a woman by herself, without two other men within earshot?

    Unexpected explosive anger isn’t restricted to men. I’ve known women who respond the same way to get the upper hand. And truly, there’s nothing else you can do in these situations but back down and walk away. But the next call you make should be to someone who can do something about it.

    So I called his boss. Which I now wish I’d done in the first place.

  • Why I Can’t Write Your Story

    I got another one of those e-mails the other day. If you’re a published author, you’ve probably received one or two. It always starts out with some variation of “I have the most incredible story to tell, and it’s all true.” Or the writer will state, “It’s like a cross of Popular Book A and Popular Book B, except better.” And somewhere in there it will say, “I’m not a very good writer, so that’s why I’m contacting you.”

    Even if they don’t spell it out, the intention of the person who sent the e-mail is clear. They think their idea is so terrific that they want me, Ms. Published Author, to write it as a book. They believe their idea is so great that they’re sure I will jump at the chance to write the book on spec (i.e., with no payment) for the opportunity to make big money down the line.

    I usually ignore e-mails like this one because it’s never something I want to pursue. There’s never anything in the e-mail that tells me the person is a fan of my work. They just found me on the web, or in a listing of authors somewhere and threw out an e-mail to me.

    In the case of this particular e-mail, I did respond because of one line: “I am completely clueless how to get started, or where to go with this.” That meant to me that although she claims she’s not a very good writer, she was open to information. And it turned out I was right. When she responded to my e-mail, she was grateful for the information I’d passed on.

    Here’s a little of what I told her, and a few other points:

    • Professional writers don’t work for free. If we don’t charge for our work, we can’t make a living.
    • I have no shortage of ideas. I’m not looking for ideas from other people. In fact, I wish I had the time to write all the ideas that are floating around in my own head.
    • Ideas are actually the easy-easy-easy part. Constructing a novel-length story around that idea is what’s really hard and time consuming.
    • Sometimes people’s life stories aren’t as interesting as they seem to the person who lived it. Not to mention you will have to fictionalize parts of it to make it fit into the above mentioned story.
    • If your life story truly is that interesting, you ought to be the one to write it. Because you are the one most passionate about it. Because you’re the one who really cares about it.
    • Sometimes people say they’re not very good at writing when they really mean they don’t like to write. And maybe they don’t like to write because they were never properly taught how. The best solution to that is to take a class–at your local community college, online, at the library, wherever you find one offered. Learn enough to see if you actually do like writing, then you can write your story yourself.

    What if this person does learn the craft of writing, writes her life story, and it turns out to be so fantastic she gets a giant book deal? I will be thrilled. I’ll be proud that I might have had a tiny bit to do with that. But truly, it will be her own hard work that got her to bestsellerdom. And that will make the victory all the sweeter for her.

  • Dialogue vs. Scene

    When does dialogue constitute a scene? If two or more characters are talking to one another about elements of the story they’re featured in, is that a scene? And if it is a scene, how much of it can we include on the page without interspersing it with action?

    To me, a scene is where something is happening. It’s a visual depiction of that something. It must be pertinent to the story and move it forward, but if there’s something important to your story, I fervently believe it should be shown and not talked about.

    Of course, dialogue does have its place. I recall learning (back in the Dark Ages when I first started writing) three rules about dialogue. Dialogue should do one or more of the following:

    •     Convey character
    •     Reveal information
    •     Move the story forward

    So, yes, you could have some number of characters in a room talking, characterizing themselves with their word choices or tone (e.g., using plenty of slang & f-bombs, or more erudite language), revealing information (e.g., that they saw Col. Mustard in the library with a hammer), and moving the story forward (e.g., I’m pregnant, and you’re the father). But if it’s just folks talking in a room, is that really the best way to use dialogue?

    The issue is really how much of your book is dialogue in a static place and how much is action that either leads into that dialogue, or action that follows that dialogue. If your story is fast-paced, with your characters constantly in peril, it’s great to have scenes in which they can take a breather, to sit together and just talk and regroup. James Rollins Map of Bones is a good example of that. Rollins places his characters in one dire situation after another, but there are revelations that they have to have time to chew over. So they get to safety and work out what those revelations mean, providing the reader with information, characterizing the characters, and moving the story forward.

    Here’s a dialogue example from my book, Tankborn. I’ve taken most of the action out of the exchange between Kayla and her nurture brother, Jal:

    “Tala’s out,” Jal said, “cleaning Spil and Zeva’s flat.”
    “Then we have time to change and get the river sludge out of our clothes.”
    “What about this?”
    “I’ll doctor it. If she asks, you slipped climbing down the riverbank.”
    “If she’s tired enough,” Jal pointed out, “she might not even
    notice the scratch.”
    “She’ll notice. She just might not have the energy to push it.”
    “Tala shouldn’t have to work so hard.”
    “You volunteering to stop eating? We could save plenty of dhans not paying for the kel-grain you inhale.”
    “I mean, the trueborns should give her a new baby so she won’t have to clean flats.”

    As written above, it’s not really a scene at all. It’s just two talking heads. Here’s the same excerpt with the action included:

        When Kayla slipped into the twenty-ninth warren, Jal was waiting for her by the stairs. “Tala’s out,” Jal said, “cleaning Spil and Zeva’s flat.”
    Kayla brushed past Jal and up the stairs. “Then we have time to change and get the river sludge out of our clothes.”
    “What about this?” Jal tapped the scratch on his cheek.
    “I’ll doctor it. If she asks, you slipped climbing down the riverbank.”
    “If she’s tired enough,” Jal pointed out, “she might not even notice the scratch.”
    “She’ll notice. She just might not have the energy to push it.”
    Jal crowded up past Kayla and walked backward up the stairs. “Tala shouldn’t have to work so hard.”
    Kayla slanted a look up at him. “You volunteering to stop eating? We could save plenty of dhans not paying for the kel-grain you inhale.”
    Jal gave Kayla a poke. “I mean, the trueborns should give her a new baby so she won’t have to clean flats.”

    With the interspersed action, the dialogue becomes a scene. Not so much a whizbang high-action scene, but we get a sense of place, and a sense of the relationship between Kayla and Jal, as well as revealing information about their nurture mother, Tala.

    If you’re a writer, how do you handle dialogue to avoid the dreaded Talking Heads Syndrome? If you’re a reader, what do you think of dialogue that’s independent from action? I’d love to hear others’ opinions.