It has been a whirlwind two weeks of guest posting!
I hope you will come visit me at Warren Baldwin's blog to share some reflections on Thanksgiving.
I'd love to hear what you have to say about
Thanking God for the Dark Parts
Monday, November 22, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
So You Want Your Novels to Change the World
So do I. Which is a pretty ambitious statement for a writer of historical romance, so I’d better explain before I sound like a total fool.
But today, I'm guest posting over at Wendy Paine Miller's blog, All in a Day's Thought.
so click here and please join us!
But today, I'm guest posting over at Wendy Paine Miller's blog, All in a Day's Thought.
so click here and please join us!
Monday, November 8, 2010
What Makes a Novel Feel Real? Part 2
Do you ever think the best compliments to authors come from ordinary readers without professional jargon?
I got one of those compliments the other day. I have a friend who is a math and analytical whiz rather than a literary type. She was reading the manuscript of Fairer than Morning.
She texted me while reading to say she liked it, and then added at the end of the text, "I can hear you speaking when I read it."
Oo! Cool! So, she was describing something very specific, what writers call among ourselves authorial voice, right? We will twist ourselves in knots trying to explain it, and rhapsodize when we find a voice we like in a new writer. So one of the best compliments we can get is that our reader can hear a certain sound in our work, and likes it.
But I started thinking more about this, and it got interesting and veered towards the subject of this week's post.
ON ONE HAND, we talk about how our characters should not all sound the same, and they should have their own distinctive personalities and voices.
ON THE OTHER HAND, we refer to an author's unifying voice as the elusive final touch of the writer's craft.
How do we reconcile these two ideas? How does authorial voice unify a novel without making everyone sound the same and think the same?
I'm going to use Meredith Efken's novel Lucky Baby to answer that question, because she has such a powerful, almost entrancing voice, even though her novel is told through the point-of-view of two very different characters.
Lucky Baby, like other books I love, feels REAL. I believe in Meg, the protagonist, and all the other characters involved in this very moving story of an unusual Christian woman who pursues the girl she thinks of as her daughter through a complicated adoption process, despite all obstacles. This is not a sanitized story: it includes messy issues of international adoption as well as the pressures it can apply to a marriage and an extended family. And because it's not sanitized, it's more beautiful.
When I was groping for words to explain why Meredith's voice is so fantastic, I came up with this explanation. When we read Lucky Baby, we hold a firm belief in the reality of the characters but the whole time, we also sense the author's presence, the guiding spirit of HOW the story is told. Not being a psychologist, I can't explain this twinning of our reading consciousness so we can both think something is real and also appreciate the art behind it. Which is it? Is it art, something created, or is it real? In the best work, we can only say BOTH. Art happens when we take what is real and make it REALER by telling it in language so perfectly suited to the story that the story and the way of telling it blend, and can't be extricated from one another.
Have you ever seen a play by Shakespeare retold as a comedy, using contemporary, slangy language? I have. The humor of the experience comes from the shock of separating Shakespeare's beautiful poetry from the stories it tells. Romeo says, "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." If instead we hear him say: "Dude, that is a seriously hot chick," we laugh, because we know what we are hearing is an outrageous violation of great art. The story is not the same when separated from its authorial voice.
I can imagine other authors using this plot that Meredith uses in Lucky Baby, or at least some generic similar plotline like: Woman seeks to adopt from China despite serious obstacles.
But no one else would tell it the way Meredith tells it. Lots of writers have excellent craft: few move beyond craft to art. But Meredith is one of those few who can have your heart in the palm of her hand in the five sentences it takes to get from the beginning of a paragraph to its end.
I'm not going to quote from the novel just yet because I'm no expert in fair use law, and whether it's OK for me to quote a paragraph without the publisher's permission. But if I do receive permission or more information on that, I'll type a few lines here so you can see what I mean for yourself. But until then, I highly recommend that you click
here
for the Amazon link to her book
and then click the "search inside this book" option to read the first chapter. It's a treat, and it just gets better from there.
P.S. Someone has advised me that I'm probably OK quoting a short passage, so here it is, the first time we see Meg with her critical and controlling mother. Every time I read it, it gets me. As for what happens next...click on the link!
My mother eased open the door and watched Lewis and me make our way up the brick walk to the trilevel suburban house where I grew up, her smile so warm and hospitable, I once again believed in it for a second. For one blinding, glorious, faith-filled second the world in my heart seemed to match the world outside.
"Meggie!"
She waved at me and I headed for her warmth like a kid goat tottering toward its dam. My Mom. Mine, mine, mine. Finally, I was close enough to touch her. I leaned into the doorway to fill my arms with mother love.
I got one of those compliments the other day. I have a friend who is a math and analytical whiz rather than a literary type. She was reading the manuscript of Fairer than Morning.
She texted me while reading to say she liked it, and then added at the end of the text, "I can hear you speaking when I read it."
Oo! Cool! So, she was describing something very specific, what writers call among ourselves authorial voice, right? We will twist ourselves in knots trying to explain it, and rhapsodize when we find a voice we like in a new writer. So one of the best compliments we can get is that our reader can hear a certain sound in our work, and likes it.
But I started thinking more about this, and it got interesting and veered towards the subject of this week's post.
ON ONE HAND, we talk about how our characters should not all sound the same, and they should have their own distinctive personalities and voices.
ON THE OTHER HAND, we refer to an author's unifying voice as the elusive final touch of the writer's craft.
How do we reconcile these two ideas? How does authorial voice unify a novel without making everyone sound the same and think the same?
I'm going to use Meredith Efken's novel Lucky Baby to answer that question, because she has such a powerful, almost entrancing voice, even though her novel is told through the point-of-view of two very different characters.
Lucky Baby, like other books I love, feels REAL. I believe in Meg, the protagonist, and all the other characters involved in this very moving story of an unusual Christian woman who pursues the girl she thinks of as her daughter through a complicated adoption process, despite all obstacles. This is not a sanitized story: it includes messy issues of international adoption as well as the pressures it can apply to a marriage and an extended family. And because it's not sanitized, it's more beautiful.
When I was groping for words to explain why Meredith's voice is so fantastic, I came up with this explanation. When we read Lucky Baby, we hold a firm belief in the reality of the characters but the whole time, we also sense the author's presence, the guiding spirit of HOW the story is told. Not being a psychologist, I can't explain this twinning of our reading consciousness so we can both think something is real and also appreciate the art behind it. Which is it? Is it art, something created, or is it real? In the best work, we can only say BOTH. Art happens when we take what is real and make it REALER by telling it in language so perfectly suited to the story that the story and the way of telling it blend, and can't be extricated from one another.
Have you ever seen a play by Shakespeare retold as a comedy, using contemporary, slangy language? I have. The humor of the experience comes from the shock of separating Shakespeare's beautiful poetry from the stories it tells. Romeo says, "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." If instead we hear him say: "Dude, that is a seriously hot chick," we laugh, because we know what we are hearing is an outrageous violation of great art. The story is not the same when separated from its authorial voice.
I can imagine other authors using this plot that Meredith uses in Lucky Baby, or at least some generic similar plotline like: Woman seeks to adopt from China despite serious obstacles.
But no one else would tell it the way Meredith tells it. Lots of writers have excellent craft: few move beyond craft to art. But Meredith is one of those few who can have your heart in the palm of her hand in the five sentences it takes to get from the beginning of a paragraph to its end.
I'm not going to quote from the novel just yet because I'm no expert in fair use law, and whether it's OK for me to quote a paragraph without the publisher's permission. But if I do receive permission or more information on that, I'll type a few lines here so you can see what I mean for yourself. But until then, I highly recommend that you click
here
for the Amazon link to her book
and then click the "search inside this book" option to read the first chapter. It's a treat, and it just gets better from there.
P.S. Someone has advised me that I'm probably OK quoting a short passage, so here it is, the first time we see Meg with her critical and controlling mother. Every time I read it, it gets me. As for what happens next...click on the link!
My mother eased open the door and watched Lewis and me make our way up the brick walk to the trilevel suburban house where I grew up, her smile so warm and hospitable, I once again believed in it for a second. For one blinding, glorious, faith-filled second the world in my heart seemed to match the world outside.
"Meggie!"
She waved at me and I headed for her warmth like a kid goat tottering toward its dam. My Mom. Mine, mine, mine. Finally, I was close enough to touch her. I leaned into the doorway to fill my arms with mother love.
Monday, November 1, 2010
What Makes a Novel Feel Real?
I read plenty of novels that could be called page-turners. When I read one, I turn pages so rapidly that I only read about half the novel. :-)
I skim novels because they don't feel real to me. For whatever reason (and usually several), I cannot completely enter into the imaginative world of the novel, and so I wind up studying its construction instead of believing it.
I freely admit that I am a picky reader, and studying the craft of novel-writing has made me more so. Many writers have this problem. We've trained so extensively in how to edit our own work and improve our style that any violation of the rules of style can set off our blaring red DISTRACTION alarm. This is not always true, of course. We all know some writers whose style is not great, but who are still fabulous storytellers.
However, I've recently read a couple of novels that kept me up late, turning pages without skipping any at all.
The novels felt real.
One of them was Allison Pittman's For Time and Eternity. In addition to being a fantastic read, I think it's a valuable example of how we can make our novels feel real to most readers, even the picky ones.
1) Employ our style so well that there are no distractions. Allison is an expert here. Her style is clean and elegant. Not once did I stop over a sentence and think: "Oh, the author used some no-no words there (you know the words I mean: 'felt, wondered, thought', adverbs, passive voice, etc.) It's possible that a few of those words may be in there, but if so, they are rare enough that they blend in.) There's no wordiness or clunky phrasing to shove me out of the story and make me remember it's all made up. The rhythm of the sentences is fantastic. Allison Pittman knows that good writing sets up a rhythm so the reader's mind rolls effortlessly across the page, carried along by sentences like a raft over rapids.
2) Write characters who are specific and motivated by their life circumstances. For Time and Eternity features a protagonist, Camilla, who is a teenager when the book opens. She does some things I think every woman will recognize as absolutely true for a girl of that age. Yet her relationship with her mother and father is so well-drawn and so specific that Camilla never even comes close to being a generic teenager. We understand perfectly why Camilla behaves in certain ways because we see the seeds of her decisions in her relationship with her parents. It's clear the author drew her character not from a general idea of 'how a teenager would act' but instead 'how a young person who grew up with this set of life experiences' would react. Character is defined by how we react to events, and our characters become more real when their actions have an eminent logic of their own when seen through that character's POV. This is why we so often find that a "feisty heroine" of a formula novel leaves us cold. It's not enough just to be feisty. We have to see WHY. If I read about a gentlewoman from the mid nineteenth century who happens to be unconventional and smart-mouthed, I had better have some seriously believable, specific reasons to back up those unusual character choices for a woman of her circumstances!
3)Don't get so focused on a slamdunk pace that we leave out the everyday moments, the normalcy that makes the novel feel real. This is a lesson I learned when I began the rewrite of my 1855 novel. Sure, that novel (the first I ever wrote) flew along at a breathless pace and there was never a dull moment. But in my first draft, the action moved so quickly that I did not allow not enough time to delve deeper into my characters' thought lives. Our plots may be exciting and full of action, but it means nothing if the reader doesn't believe the characters are real. For Time and Eternity captures the subtle everyday drama that allows characters to develop and reveal themselves. Tension and pacing often come from a character's bad predicament, which might not be obvious to a casual observer. Not every real-life predicament springs from a burning building or a runaway horse. Readers can find it more interesting to have a church elder show up on a character's doorstep than to watch that character get stuck in quicksand out in the marsh. I'm not saying we should never have burning buildings, but unless we balance those events with the more mundane dramas that fill most of our lives, novels feel fake.
Have you read any novels that felt real lately? Why do you think they felt real?
Next week I'll use another example, Meredith Efken's Lucky Baby, to discuss a few more ways we can make our novels feel so real that readers can't bear to put them down.
I skim novels because they don't feel real to me. For whatever reason (and usually several), I cannot completely enter into the imaginative world of the novel, and so I wind up studying its construction instead of believing it.
I freely admit that I am a picky reader, and studying the craft of novel-writing has made me more so. Many writers have this problem. We've trained so extensively in how to edit our own work and improve our style that any violation of the rules of style can set off our blaring red DISTRACTION alarm. This is not always true, of course. We all know some writers whose style is not great, but who are still fabulous storytellers.
However, I've recently read a couple of novels that kept me up late, turning pages without skipping any at all.
The novels felt real.
One of them was Allison Pittman's For Time and Eternity. In addition to being a fantastic read, I think it's a valuable example of how we can make our novels feel real to most readers, even the picky ones.
1) Employ our style so well that there are no distractions. Allison is an expert here. Her style is clean and elegant. Not once did I stop over a sentence and think: "Oh, the author used some no-no words there (you know the words I mean: 'felt, wondered, thought', adverbs, passive voice, etc.) It's possible that a few of those words may be in there, but if so, they are rare enough that they blend in.) There's no wordiness or clunky phrasing to shove me out of the story and make me remember it's all made up. The rhythm of the sentences is fantastic. Allison Pittman knows that good writing sets up a rhythm so the reader's mind rolls effortlessly across the page, carried along by sentences like a raft over rapids.
2) Write characters who are specific and motivated by their life circumstances. For Time and Eternity features a protagonist, Camilla, who is a teenager when the book opens. She does some things I think every woman will recognize as absolutely true for a girl of that age. Yet her relationship with her mother and father is so well-drawn and so specific that Camilla never even comes close to being a generic teenager. We understand perfectly why Camilla behaves in certain ways because we see the seeds of her decisions in her relationship with her parents. It's clear the author drew her character not from a general idea of 'how a teenager would act' but instead 'how a young person who grew up with this set of life experiences' would react. Character is defined by how we react to events, and our characters become more real when their actions have an eminent logic of their own when seen through that character's POV. This is why we so often find that a "feisty heroine" of a formula novel leaves us cold. It's not enough just to be feisty. We have to see WHY. If I read about a gentlewoman from the mid nineteenth century who happens to be unconventional and smart-mouthed, I had better have some seriously believable, specific reasons to back up those unusual character choices for a woman of her circumstances!
3)Don't get so focused on a slamdunk pace that we leave out the everyday moments, the normalcy that makes the novel feel real. This is a lesson I learned when I began the rewrite of my 1855 novel. Sure, that novel (the first I ever wrote) flew along at a breathless pace and there was never a dull moment. But in my first draft, the action moved so quickly that I did not allow not enough time to delve deeper into my characters' thought lives. Our plots may be exciting and full of action, but it means nothing if the reader doesn't believe the characters are real. For Time and Eternity captures the subtle everyday drama that allows characters to develop and reveal themselves. Tension and pacing often come from a character's bad predicament, which might not be obvious to a casual observer. Not every real-life predicament springs from a burning building or a runaway horse. Readers can find it more interesting to have a church elder show up on a character's doorstep than to watch that character get stuck in quicksand out in the marsh. I'm not saying we should never have burning buildings, but unless we balance those events with the more mundane dramas that fill most of our lives, novels feel fake.
Have you read any novels that felt real lately? Why do you think they felt real?
Next week I'll use another example, Meredith Efken's Lucky Baby, to discuss a few more ways we can make our novels feel so real that readers can't bear to put them down.
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