Pump Up Your Writing

 

 

You’ve finished your rough draft and now it’s time to go in and pump it up with details to turn it from good to unforgettable! Yet…you pause because this task either seems overwhelming or tedious or both.

 

Take a deep breath, snuggle into your favorite writing space, and pump up your writing one detail at a time.

 

Start with your opening scene. Read it out loud. Does it hook you? Are you intrigued? If not, do you have a wow scene you could make the opening scene? Is there a wow scene you could add to hook your readers?

 

One author I go to for inspiration on opening scenes is Julie Lessman. Most of her books are free on Kindle Unlimited and her opening scenes always hook me with either intrigue or laughter. I would recommend her Love’s Silver Lining or Love at Any Cost.

 

Next, I like to read the ending of each chapter and ask, does this end with a cliff hanger that keeps me wanting more? Sometimes this is fixed by simply changing where one chapter ends and the next begins. Whatever you choose to do, make sure it keeps your reader wanting more! An author I recently read did a great job of ending each chapter with a cliff hanger. Check out Lynn H. Blackburn’s books for some inspiration!

 

After that, dig into your sensory details. I know most of you are groaning at this point and I’m with you. This is one of the most tedious parts of revising. Read each scene and put yourself in your characters shoes. What are you seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or feeling that effects your words, thoughts, and actions? This part takes a lot of time, but it brings depth to your setting, plot, and characters.

 

There is far more you can do to revise your writing, but I hope this gives you a place to start. Keep plugging away and your details with draw your readers in!

 

 

Until next time, happy and blessed writing!

"Your Book's Plot Doesn't Matter"

That YouTube heading caught my attention, and Abbie Emmons’ accompanying blog challenged my thinking about plot construction. (You can read the entire post here.) She said:

Your plot doesn't matter; only your characters do…

In fact, the characters--more specifically the protagonist--are your story.

 

Most writers think that…the most important part of your story is the plot. They think the plot is what drives the story and the characters are just along for the ride. Actually, it's the other way around. I've said it before, but it bears repeating a thousand times: Story is not about what happens; it's about how what happens affects and transforms the characters.

 

This is the backbone of story. It's the foundation, the life blood:  Characters and how they change as a result of their journey.

 

My first impulse was to brush this aside, but the next day I came across this passage in the autobiography of best-selling Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope: 

I have never troubled myself much about the construction of plots…The novelist has other aims than the elucidation of his plot. He desires to make his readers so intimately acquainted with his characters that the creatures of his brain should be to them speaking, moving, living, human creatures. This he can never do unless he know those fictitious personages himself, and he can never know them unless he can live with them in the full reality of established intimacy.

They must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them. He must argue with them, quarrel with them, forgive them, and even submit to them. He must know of them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate, whether true or false, and how far true, and how far false. The depth and the breadth, and the narrowness and the shallowness of each should be clear to him. And, as here in our outer world, we know that men and women change—become worse or better as temptation or conscience may guide them…

Twice challenged, I reflected on several novels I had read and movies I'd seen. I could recall the overall theme of each story, and I could visualize the protagonist of each one (at least the image I had constructed in my own mind). I also remembered a few major events that revealed the character qualities of each person. Beyond that, Abbie and Anthony were right: A novel's characters took center stage, while its plot became their background.

I’ve often spent painstaking hours trying to construct a plot worthy of my characters. But didn't that simply confirm that my characters drove the plot? On the other hand, when I became familiar with my characters, they told their own stories.

I'm curious to know your experience. Which do you develop first, character or plot? Do you agree that your plot "doesn't matter" if your characters are engaging enough?

Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth.

Writing IS Teaching

I have spent nearly my entire life in classrooms. From my earliest attempts at finger painting in nursery school to running a recent workshop, my time in school is like a duck paddling around in its favorite pond. I’m home.

Because I love learning and because I love teaching, I waited a long time before taking the jump to concentrate on writing instead of lesson plans.

You know what I found out?

Writing IS teaching.

It doesn’t matter if I pen an informative blog or create a scene with my characters. With both projects, I use my life’s experiences to share a topic worth learning. The manuscript becomes my lesson plan, and the best lesson plans connect with my students, in this case, my readers.

I’m giving a book talk at a local school today. As I planned for what I would say, I became more and more enthused. I’d be back on old stomping grounds. I outlined my lesson plan (the book talk). Effortlessly, I slipped on my teacher persona and came up with a great “anticipatory set,” or as writers say, a great “hook.” I raced through the rest of the outline, knowing how I would move from one concept to the next. I am teaching again. About writing!

Scene by scene, my novels teach lessons on a theme.

As I learn a little more about writing craft each year, the sense of teaching via the written word has become stronger and stronger.

My World Without Sound series teaches loyalty and family love. The first of my Cracked Quartet series teaches the consequences of misplaced guilt and shame and offers the solution for peace in a person’s soul.

Many of you in ACFW Indiana are teachers or have been teachers.

Have you made the same connection between teaching and writing? Do you get excited about a story as you see how the plot is aimed toward a specific outcome? And how your characters are going to discover the beauty of that outcome? I hope so.

Recognizing that I am still a teacher feels so good! That realization solidifies the purposes God has for me. I may not choose to be in the classroom every day, but I can see I’m at the center of His will. I am content.

 

Linda Sammaritan writes realistic fiction, mostly for kids ages ten to fourteen. She has completed a  middle grade trilogy, World Without Sound, based on her own experiences growing up with a deaf sister. Book One, Reaching Into Silence, was an ACFW Genesis Contest semi-finalist and a First Impressions Finalist.

Linda had always figured she’d teach teens and tweens until school authorities presented her with a retirement wheelchair and rolled her out the door. However, God changed those plans when He gave her a growing passion for writing fiction. In May of 2016, she blew goodbye kisses to her students and dedicated her work hours to becoming an author.

A wife, mother of three, and grandmother to eight, Linda regales the youngest grandchildren with “Nona Stories,” tales of her childhood. Maybe one day those stories will be in picture books!

Where Linda can be found on the web:

www.lindasammaritan.com

www.facebook.com/lindasammaritan

www.twitter.com/LindaSammaritan

www.instagram.com/lindasammaritan

 

Stating the Obvious

A beagle sits atop his dog house, head tossed back, ears dangling, eyes closed in intense concentration. A burst of inspiration pitches him over his typewriter and he composes the first line of his novel: “It was a dark and stormy night…”

Our comic strip shows him stuffing a padded envelope into the corner mailbox. Soon after, he receives a letter congratulating him on the publication of his novel and containing a fat royalty advance. The next frame shows him atop his dog house again, staring at a blank sheet of paper in his typewriter. Then another surge of inspiration prompts him to write: “It was a dark and stormy night…”

The canine author is Charles Schulz’s Snoopy. He’s using the first line of an 1830 novel by Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a line notorious for describing the obvious. (What sort of night was it? Dark. What sort of weather suited a mystery? Stormy.) 

Lord Lytton's opener has become such a running joke that an annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest invites authors to create an opening line for the worst of all possible novels. This usually turns out to be an overwrought description of what need not be described at all, such as this:

It was a dark and stormy night, made darker still by the melancholy that gripped the drainpipes of my soul in a plumber's wrench of despair...

Stating the obvious--even stating it elaborately--is what Jerry Jenkins calls "on the nose" writing. It doesn't gain the trust of our readers. In fact, it's laughable. We want a story that hooks our curiosity and teases us with the unexpected.

In fairness to Lord Lytton, he gave us more than a trite opening line. He also originated this one: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Indeed it can be, especially if we write with insight and originality.

Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth.

 

Epistolary Novels--Not What They Used to Be

 Since I will not be able to attend our informal Zoom meeting on February 21—yes! It’s on for tonight—I wanted to toss around ideas about a little-used subgenre in today’s fiction. The epistolary novel. 

The epistolary novel (emphasis on the second syllable):

“a novel told through the medium of letters.”

For the record, I hated them. As a kid, I refused to read them voluntarily. In junior high, I had no choice. The first epistolary novel written in western civilization was Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740). I had to look that up for this article. I have no idea if Pamela was the novel I read in eighth grade. At that point, it was: read the book, take the test, throw out the knowledge to make room in my brain for something more worthwhile. I never read another epistolary novel, never changed my mind until—last week.

Along came Pepper Basham’s 2022 epistolary novel, Authentically, Izzy, on my library’s “New Fiction” shelf. Pepper is a member of ACFW, and can she make romance and wit zing off the page! She performs her magic via emails and texts flying between main character Izzy and the people in her life. I’m guessing ninety percent of the four hundred-plus pages is based on written communications and only contains standard prose for key scenes when the two heartthrobs are together in person.

I’ve begun to appreciate the healthy exercises epistolaries provide to writers.

1. Our main character, or whoever is writing the letter, naturally has a subjective point of view. There is no way we can fall into the head-hopping trap.

2. We are forced to write inner monologue as the character shares thoughts and feelings with the recipient of his/her letter.

3. Author intrusion is impossible.

4. Written communication between characters automatically allows for more than one point of view within the novel unless the person who receives the letters never responds. (That would make for a boring and depressing book!)

5. We have to move the story without benefit of dialogue.

The major pitfall to watch out for is this:

The characters must be able to psychoanalyze themselves as they pour their hearts out to a friend. They have to recognize their own virtues and vices. How many of us can do that in real life? So, the writer has to figure out how their characters can be so talented at introspection without stretching the reader’s suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

Which is why epistolary novels fell out of favor by the turn of the nineteenth century. Readers wouldn’t take them seriously.

Writing Challenge

When you find the time (am I hearing hysterical laughter?), try your hand at an epistolary short story. Submit it to a literary magazine. Who knows? You may be ACFW Indiana’s next award-winning author!

Linda Sammaritan writes realistic fiction, mostly for kids ages ten to fourteen. She has completed a  middle grade trilogy, World Without Sound, based on her own experiences growing up with a deaf sister. Book One, Reaching Into Silence, was an ACFW Genesis Contest semi-finalist and a First Impressions Finalist.

A wife, mother of three, and grandmother to eight, Linda regales the youngest grandchildren with “Nona Stories,” tales of her childhood. Maybe one day those stories will be in picture books!

Where Linda can be found on the web:

www.lindasammaritan.com

www.facebook.com/lindasammaritan

www.twitter.com/LindaSammaritan

www.instagram.com/lindasammaritan