This week’s prompt on YA Highway‘s Road Trip Wednesday is What images inspire/ represent your WIP or favorite book? This one is pretty easy because my publisher, Lee and Low, hired an artist to draw some of the creatures and flora that appear in the Tankborn series. So while I’ve been working on Awakening, book 2 of the Tankborn series, I’ve had these images swirling around in my head (bhimkay, seycat, rat-snake, and sewer toad):
This week, YA Highway asks Who has helped you on your reading/writing/publishing journey? I’ve given that considerable thought (at least the last five minutes) and as is often the case, I can’t come up with just one. There have been many. But there are two I’d like to mention, a Ghost of Writing Past and a Ghost of Writing Present. If there’s a Ghost of Writing Future, I guess I haven’t met you yet.
My Ghost of Writing Past was Mrs. Luckensmeyer in 10th grade English. The best thing she ever did for me as a writer was the weekly composition book. We were to fill two pages in one of those small gray composition books every week and turn it in on Thursday. We could write our own original material in those two pages, or we could copy something from someone else (as long as we attributed). I think that dispensation to just put pen to paper and write was such a liberating experience for me. Also, she gave us the choice of whether we wanted her to read what we’d written. If we wanted her to read it, we wrote “Please Read” across the top. If we hadn’t given that permission, she would just glance at the pages to make sure we’d done the assignment. It was very cool.
Here is a my artistically decorated cover and the first page of my 10th grade composition book. If you can read the enlarged version of the poem I wrote, you’ll see some very topical references to what was going on in the late ’60s. I mention the musical Hair because I’d gone to see it at the Aquarius Theater down in L.A. Me and my sisters had done the groupie thing afterward, and hung out with the cast in a seedy hotel room.
My Ghost of Writing Present is my good friend and romance author, Barbara McMahon. Besides supporting me through those pre-published years when I’d be moaning and groaning about yet another rejection letter, she taught me a key lesson–conflict. We were attending RomCom in Reno, Nevada, sharing a room and enjoying the conference together. I was so chuffed to have a multi-published friend to hang out with. We were taking in the sights one night and I got to telling her about a book I was working on. She stopped me dead with one question–But what’s the conflict? I had no clue. I stuttered something, possibly hated her for a Reno second, then started thinking. From that moment on, that question has never far from my mind when I’m writing. Barbara’s voice is still whispering in my ear, What’s the conflict?
So who’s important to you in your writing life? How did they help you? Let me know in the comments.
There’s a concept I’ve mainly seen in screenwriting called “on the nose” dialogue. That’s dialogue in which there is no subtext, in which a character baldly says exactly what they’re feeling inside.
What’s the problem with this? First, in the real world people almost never say what they’re really feeling. Emotions make us feel vulnerable. If we admit we like someone, we risk hearing back that the someone doesn’t feel the same way. If we tell a friend a secret, like how terrified we are of tiny little dogs, we risk being ridiculed.
Second, in fiction, if the dialogue is “on the nose,” it deflates the tension between our characters and in the story. We expect to be told all sorts of lies in the course of a story. Or maybe not so much lies, but we expect that the realization that a character has early in the book, or half-way through or three-quarters of the way through might not actually be true. People and characters don’t even tell themselves the truth most of the time.
So, like real people, our characters should hide what they really feel. They should nibble around the edges of expressing their true emotions. Maybe they invite the special someone over for dinner, but make sure he knows he’s just one of several guests. Or he admires her new smart phone and asks all about it because he’s been thinking about buying one like it.
Here’s a hastily written example of dialogue that is thoroughly on-the-nose. Boyfriend and Girlfriend are talking on the phone:
Boyfriend: Okay if I bring Spot tonight?
(Girlfriend smiles happily)
Girlfriend: You know I love your dog.
Boyfriend: And we’ll need to stop by Mom’s on the way to the restaurant.
(Still smiling, Girlfriend nods)
Girlfriend: Your mom is great. I’m always glad to see her.
So here, “You know I love your dog” means “You know I love your dog.” And “Your mom is great” means “Your mom is great.” Girlfriend is saying exactly what she means. It’s pretty boring and doesn’t say much about the characters.
Here’s an example where the action gives the dialogue a little bit of subtext:
Boyfriend: Okay if I bring Spot tonight?
(Girlfriend sticks a finger down her throat & mimes gagging)
Girlfriend: You know I love your dog.
Boyfriend: And we’ll need to stop by Mom’s on the way to the restaurant.
(Girlfriend screams silently while pulling at her hair and kicking her feet)
Girlfriend: Your mom is great. I’m always glad to see her.
Now “You know I love your dog” means “Your dog disgusts me.” And “Your mom is great” means “I hate her, she drives me crazy.”
So think about what you say to your spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, parents, particularly if there are emotions at stake. Are you speaking on the nose, saying exactly what you feel? Or is there subtext?
And as you write your characters, make sure there’s a message under the dialogue that doesn’t necessarily match what’s being said. That’s subtext. And subtext will amp up your writing.
Today, my guest blog post went up over at Ellen Oh’s blog, Hello Ello. She’s doing a series on What Diversity Means to Me. As I was brainstorming about what I wanted to write in answer to Ellen’s questions, I was inspired to compose a list of reasons why I enjoy writing a multi-cultural cast in my books. I had originally intended to use this list somehow in the blog post for Ellen, but instead I went another direction (as you’ll read if you pop on over there).
But I thought it might be fun to post the list here on my own blog. Why I enjoy writing multi-culturally:
Certainly not all-encompassing. So how about some more reasons? Let me know in the comments.
Back around October 2009, I finished work on a manuscript titled GENeration, a young adult science fiction book. I knew it wasn’t finished finished. I didn’t yet have an agent or editor for the book, but I knew that when I did, they would have their say in further re-writes. But I thought the book was ready enough to start querying agents. It turned out I was deluding myself, but I nevertheless e-mailed out my first query on October 13, 2009.
I’d been sending out queries for about a month and a half when it occurred to me that having a beta reader look it over would be a really great idea (gee, ya think?). Luckily, I could keep the read in the family via my younger son. He wasn’t exactly swimming in spare time (he was in the third year of his PhD in economics), but he’s a fast reader and brutally honest. He got back to me at the end of November 2009 with suggestions for some pretty extensive changes.
Of course, I’d already sent the complete manuscript out to a few agents, including the agent who eventually took me on. Hindsight being what it is, this was when I realized I really hadn’t been ready to start querying. Yes, I wish I’d thought to send the book to my son before that first query. But water under the bridge and all that.
In any case, those agents who had the manuscript were happy to replace it with the new and improved version. I eventually got offers from two agents. The agent I signed with asked for another major re-write before he sent it out. Then the book sold to Lee and Low/Tu Books, and required even more changes including a title morph from GENeration to Tankborn. Tankborn was released in Sept. 2011.
Along the way, what with all this re-writing and editing, by necessity a lot of material got deleted from the manuscript. As part of the various and sundry editing, there were four quite sizeable chunks that ended up on the cutting room floor. Each of them was at least a few pages long and the content in them was fairly significant. They offered some pretty cool perspectives of life on the planet Loka, where Tankborn is set. Unfortunately, these scenes didn’t do anything to move the story forward. They didn’t “earn their keep” and had to go.
But I thought it would be fun to put them up on my website, part of some exclusive material that will only be available there. So if you’d like to read what might have been in Tankborn, take a look here. If you haven’t yet read the book, there is some spoilerage, but it is clearly marked. So it’s safe for all to take a peek.