Karen Sandler

Category: The Writing Life

  • Kill Your Darlings

    When William Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings,” the darlings he referred to were those elegantly composed sections of prose you adore beyond reason. They do nothing for the story, they stick out like garish jewels on an otherwise humble hand, and they must be killed (i.e., deleted). It’s difficult to say goodbye to those intricate metaphors and precious phrasing, but they have no business being in your manuscript. Sorry, gotta go.

    There are other kinds of problem children that we sometimes insert into our prose, that also have a bad influence on our work.  For instance, words we have a compulsion to use often and liberally (redundantly even) in our books. Punctuation we have a special affection for. Turns of phrase we throw in at every opportunity.

    Since confession is good for the soul, I’ll reveal mine here. I love em dashes. You know what they are–those long dashes that break up two clauses. When I do a final edit of my book, I search for all the em dashes and in most cases, I can either replace them with a comma, or separate the two clauses into two sentences. I also have a particular fondness for ellipses (also ruthlessly squelched), and am a recovering semi-colon-aholic. In the word choice department, adverbs are my bad actors. Really.

    In other authors’ work, I’ve seen overuse of the word mumble (a very useful word that loses its power when utilized too often), nervous characters chewing their lips so often it’s surprising their mouth is not in shreds, and the italic overload (IMO, italics are hard on the eyes and should be used sparingly). The exclamation point is also a travesty, although its overuse seems to be limited to newbies.

    The nice thing about all these pecadillos that creep into our writing is that once we recognize the problem, we can fix it on that final edit. I’ve acknowledged to myself that em dashes and ellipses are part of my process, how I get the words down on the page. I know I can take them out later, but in the draft process it works best to just let myself put them in. Same for my adverbosity. I’ll trim those back in a later draft.

    So what are your problem children? Metaphors you overuse, that character action you repeat ten times too many in your manuscript? Feel free to share.

  • Programming DNA

    In the world of my book Tankborn, Genetically Engineered Non-humans (GENs) are controlled via electronics installed in their nervous system and brain. I read an article this week which describes an intriguing study whose results I might just have to steal for a future book. The researchers have actually managed to program DNA itself.

    Stanford post-doc Jerome Bonnet worked with graduate student Pakpoom Subsoontorn and assistant professor Drew Endy to induce the DNA in microbes to switch direction so that they would glow a different color under an ultraviolet light. After three years of work getting the correct balance of enzymes which control the orientation of the DNA, they were able to create the equivalent of a bio data storage unit. They call the device used a “recombinase addressable data” module, or RAD. They’re only able to store one bit of “data,” but have plans to expand their research to an entire byte.

    While the scientists engaged in this study expect that this data storage ability would be used for worthy efforts such as studying cancer, my writer’s mind can’t seem to help going in an entirely different direction. If we could store data in DNA, couldn’t we pass ultra-secret messages that way? Or maybe it’s not just data, but actual programming in the brain that affects behavior. Maybe in a future world, it could heal a mental illness or something could go awry and the treatment would create someone with extraordinary mental powers.

    Okay, I’m letting my imagination get the best of me. These are all fictional scenarios. The actual science will take years to reach fruition. And in the real world, it will likely provide benefits, like to signal that cells are splitting too rapidly. Catch that early and we can prevent cancer.

    Still, it’s fun to take this intriguing study and run with it as an author. After all, who doesn’t want mental superpowers?

  • 3 Tricks to Energize an Expository Scene

    Has this ever happened to you? You’re working on your manuscript and you’ve come to a point where you need to reveal information to your reader. It might be something crucial to the plot, or a vital revelation about your main character. You start writing the scene, but somehow it’s flat and boring. It sounds like a couple of talking heads. You start to feel completely blocked.

    If it hasn’t happened to you, you’re lucky. I’ve experienced this scenario any number of times writing my 20+ books. Early on in my career, I would flounder for a solution, but now I rely on a few go-to methods to freshen and energize the scene.

    1. Change the setting

    If it’s not working to have your characters sitting in a restaurant while they hash over their next step in defeating the alien zombie-vampires, get them up and moving. Your characters can walk through a park, or drive in a car, or climb up the hill to where they think the talisman is hidden. Sometimes an intimate, static setting is appropriate—in her room, or hidden in the cave safe from those AZVs. But if the scene is coming off too blah, get your characters up and out.

    2. Change the POV

    If you’re using the point of view of more than one character, sometimes all it takes to brighten up a scene is to switch to another character’s POV. That other character will have an entirely different perspective on the situation. That perspective might generate more conflict, which is exactly what will keep your reader reading.

    3. Do it with action

    This is a step beyond just getting your characters moving. Write your expository scene as an action scene. They’re fighting those AZVs, and in the process shouting out to each other what the reader needs to know—that he’s the one who left her that love note in third grade, or she stole from the church donation box to post his bail. Or you reveal information with the action itself—that AZVs have to be staked, beheaded, and tasered to be destroyed.

    So if your expository scene is lying there deader than a staked-beheaded-tasered AZV, give these tricks a try and get your book moving again.

  • Brain-Digital Interface

    Sometimes science is stranger–and creepier–than fiction. In my young adult science fiction book, Tankborn, genetically engineered non-humans (GENs) are grown in a tank with circuitry implanted along their nervous systems, including within their brains. An interface installed on their cheek (in the form of a tattoo) allows a trueborn to upload data and programing into a GEN and download the contents of much of their brain.

    In the realm of actual science, author Jonathan D. Moreno discusses in his book Mind Wars potential use of using the human brain for military advantage. For instance, he ponders the ethics of using oxytocin to induce a sense of trust and well-being in someone to enhance interrogation. Or the use of an “anti-sleep” pill to allow soldiers to continue fighting without the need for sleep.

    But it was the discussion of the brain-digital interface that caught my eye. Science hasn’t advanced to Tankborn’s level of circuitry implanted within a subject’s nervous system. But scientists have already used the brain-digital interface for prosthetic limbs, and there’s even potential to allow paralyzed folks to control robotics with their minds. These are far more positive uses for the technology of interfacing with the brain than in Tankborn’s world.

    Moreno proposed two guiding principles for use of the brain-digital interface: “First, the individual should have control over the contents of his or her mind. Second, the individual gets to decide who gets access.” In my fictional world, GENs never have complete control over the contents of their minds, nor do they decide who gets access.

    But that’s part of what makes for an interesting story–characters with seemingly insurmountable obstacles (in this case, both physical and mental slavery) who fight against their oppressors. I have to hope that in the real world this type of technology will only be used for the best purposes, and will be beneficial to all.

  • Give Every Scene a Purpose

    The other day, I gave a talk to a high school class about how I did the world-building for my SF book Tankborn. This was a creative writing class, and the students were very motivated to learn more about how I wrote Tankborn and about the writing business in general.

    During the talk, I brought up an essential fact about writing fiction: that although real life is full of the trivial and mundane, there’s no room for the unimportant in fiction.

    In real life, all sorts of things can happen. You try to start your car and your battery is dead. So maybe you’re late for work and get a chewing out. Or you happen to meet a friendly stranger at the supermarket and you chat for the few minutes you wait together in line. Or when you get home from the market, you discover you got regular coffee when you meant to get decaf. Or perhaps you spend days at your father’s care home (as I did earlier this year) as he’s dying.

    Could these things happen in your fiction story? Of course they could, whether you’re writing a realistic or speculative story. But here’s the big difference. All of those events, from the mundane (chatting up a stranger) to the life-changing (the death of your father) would have to have a purpose in your story. They should not, must not be there just to fill space on the page.

    For instance, the battery going dead might mean that your main character gets to work late and discovers a police cordon around her office building. Then she sees the bodies wheeled out, including that of the mass murderer who just killed her boss and several co-workers.

    That stranger your character chats with in line could be a harried single father in desperate need of a nanny. Perhaps your main character is in desperate need of a job and she agrees to watch the father’s three unruly kids. This would lead to true love and the taming of the kids (yes, I used to write romance novels).

    That accidentally purchased coffee could have scrawled across the bottom a message that leads the main character to a factory where the employees are victims of a human trafficker. If the character had grabbed the decaf instead of the regular, she might never have seen the message.

    So think about your own story. Does every scene count for something? Are your characters finding clues, are they revealing information, are you raising the stakes for them in ways that moves the plot forward? It’s pointless to have the heroine narrowly avoid being run over by a car (as nail-biting as that might be) unless the person driving the car (or the person who hired them to drive the car) is crucial to the plot. If she slips and falls down a cliff, she’d better find a secret cave or a dead body or a treasure chest. And if she doesn’t get herself out of that fix, the person who does rescue her had better be the love interest.

    If you’re sure every scene in your manuscript does have a purpose, let me up the ante. Find a way for at least some of those scenes to do double or triple duty. Have the scene reveal not only information, but character. Have it expose a character’s weakness and also set up a crucial plot point that will be paid off later. Use that scene to not only describe the setting, but how that setting impacts your character.

    Nearly every scene can do double duty. Many can do triple duty. Your goal is to give the reader aha moments, when she or he realizes, “Oh, that’s why that was in there.”

    Because here’s the thing, here’s the reason every scene must have a purpose. It is the nature of books and stories that as a reader reads, they are accustomed to noticing what happens to the characters. They are used to tucking away unusual events and to consider them important. If you describe your character brushing her teeth every morning, but that never factors into the plot, it will irritate your reader. Brushing teeth is trivial…unless it’s not. Unless that’s how our character is poisoned. Or that’s part of her OCD routine (maybe she has to do it at a set time and for a set number of strokes each day).

    Your reader is going to notice those little details. She’s going to want her payoff later in the story. Make sure she gets it–or hit that delete key.