Craft Book of the Month:The Fire in Fiction

Week 2:  From Chapter 3: Outer and Inner Turning Points

Let's say, very unoriginally, that writing a novel is like running a marathon. (Disclaimer: I have never run a marathon. I wouldn't like to run a marathon. I'm not keen on driving 26 miles, let alone running 26 miles. But I digress.) You start your marathon (or novel) fresh-legged, the wind at your back, your carbo-loaded tank nice and full.

And then, you hit the dreaded wall. "The muddle in the middle," some call it.

In Donald Maass's words:

Middles are tough. Too many middles in manuscripts and published novels are routine, lackluster, just there, nothing special.

Maass has an opinion about why this happens. (I love his image of the weakly beating heart!):

Sagging middle scenes slump... because their purpose hasn't yet emerged. Authors, as they plow through the middle portion of their manuscripts, tend to write what they think ought to come next; furthermore, they write it in the first way it occurs to them to do so... The push to rack up pages, to meet self-imposed or actual deadlines, makes it easy to avoid tearing apart a scene to find its weakly beating heart and surgically open it.

So, what can one do to improve? Maass has the following prescription:

Look away from the page and look toward what is really happening. What change takes place? When does that change occur (at what precise second in the scene)? In that moment, how is the point of view character changed? The point of these questions is to find the scenes' turning points.

What are turning points? In Maass' definition, they are the times in each scene when 1) things change that everyone can understand; 2) the way in which the scene's point-of-view character also changes as a result. He labels them outer and inner turning points. As Maass always does, he uses published examples to demonstrate what he means. [In this chapter, the examples he uses are Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006), and Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007).] In conclusion, he asks

What about your scenes? Does every scene of travel, arrival, aftermath, investigation, meeting--all the business of getting your character from beginning to end--capture a sharply defined turning point and reveal its inner meaning? Are you sure? What if you were to do a scene draft of your novel? Suppose you broke down every discrete unit of the story, pinned down its turning point, and measured in words the change it brings to each point-of-view character? Would your story get stronger?

See why I love this guy? He's down-to-earth, and he challenges each of us to do better, and to spend time on scene-surgery. Writers always say that writing is essentially rewriting. If you have The Fire in Fiction as your novel's marathon coach, it will help immeasurably.

Next week: "Striding Forward, Falling Back."

Microfiction Monday: Noreen's Lucky Number

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.

15 was a sign, Noreen just knew it. After 14 long, lonely years with Joe and his tirades, the #15 would take her where he couldn't find her. (140 characters)

Hope there are no Noreens in your life; if there are, I hope they find their "#15." Have a great week, everyone.

A poem for Banned Books week

I saw this poem in the display window of my wonderful local indie bookstore, Annie Blooms. It brought me to tears. (Particularly the final two stanzas.)

Manifesto

To you zealots and bigots and false
patriots who live in fear of discourse.
You screamers and banners and burners
who would force books
off shelves in your brand name
of greater good.

You say you’re afraid for children,
innocents ripe for corruption
by perversion or sorcery on the page.
But sticks and stones do break
bones, and ignorance is no armor.
You do not speak for me,
and will not deny my kids magic
in favor of miracles.

You say you’re afraid for America,
the red, white and blue corroded
by terrorists, socialists, the sexually
confused. But we are a vast quilt
of patchwork cultures and multi-gendered
identities. You cannot speak for those
whose ancestors braved
different seas.

You say you’re afraid for God,
the living word eroded by Muhammed
and Darwin and Magdalene.
But the omnipotent sculptor of heaven
and earth designed intelligence.
Surely you dare not speak
for the father, who opens
his arms to all.

A word to the unwise.
Torch every book.
Char every page.
Burn every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.

— Ellen Hopkins,
bestselling author of Crank and newly published Tricks

Craft Book of the Month:The Fire in Fiction

Donald Maass is brilliant. (Perhaps this is what happens when people use only three letters to make a five letter name?!) He's the author of the must-read Writing the Breakthrough Novel and Workbook, both of which I found enormously helpful. The Fire in Fiction was published in 2009, but just like the previous book, it shows Maass to be incredibly widely read and to be an astute critic of what he reads.

The first topic of the month could be titled "What kind of writer are you?" No, I don't mean "do you write sci-fi or mysteries or full-blooded bodice-ripping romances?" The question, as Maass poses it, is "are you a status seeker or a storyteller?"

I'll let Maass tell it his way:

For thirty years I have observed fiction careers. I've seen them succeed and fail. The more I see, the more I feel that novelists fall into two broad categories: those whose desire is to be published, and those whose passion is to spin stories. I think of these as status seekers and storytellers."

He makes the following comparisons between the two:

On Breaking In:

The majority of writers seek representation or publication years too soon. Rejection slips quickly set them straight. How do they respond? Some cleave to the timeless advice get it in the mail, keep it in the mail. The more thoughtful pull their manuscripts and go back to work.

At Writing the Breakout Novel workshops:

A storyteller...is more concerned with making his story the best story it can be, with discovering the levels and elements that are missing, and with understanding the techniques needed to make it all happen. Status seekers rush me fifty pages and an outline a few months after the workshop. Storytellers won't show me their novels again for a year or more, probably after several new drafts.

Maass contends that things get worse for the status seekers once they've landed an agent. They are anxious for validation, so they make constant inquiries about submissions. Once under contract with an editor, they focus on what they are getting (or not getting) by way of cover, copy, blurbs, or promotion. As for storytellers, they "have a more realistic grasp of retail realities. They may promote, but locally and not for long. They'll put up a website, maybe, then it's back to work on the next book..."

In mid-career, according to Maass, status-seekers "go full time too soon." They rely on advances, the size of which becomes critical. Maass has them crying out, "I am working too hard to keep getting paid fifteen thousand per book!" All the while, storytellers are working on delivering yet more powerful stories for their readers. (It sounds like something out of Aesop's fables!)

In advanced stages of their careers, status seekers "grumble about publishers...change agents, obsess over trunk projects, write screenplays." Storytellers, meanwhile, "look not to publishers to make them successful, but to themselves...Their grumbles are not about getting toured but about getting more time to deliver. Storytellers take calculated risks with their fiction. Mostly they try to make their stories bigger."

I admit that, when I read this, the angel and the demon on my shoulder got into a spat. One of them (I'm never sure which is which) roundly declared I was a storyteller. The other harrumphed with a "get real! You're just as much a status seeker as the rest of them." Most writers, if honest, probably have a bit of both. And it's probably easier for the unpublished writer to get sucked into status seeker mode, because "the clock is ticking, gentlemen!!!"

It is salutary, then, to view all this through Maass' long-time agent's eyes: storytellers may start slow and spend more time on trying to perfect their craft, but they are winners in the long run. And the long run is where we writers want to be, isn't it?

So, for now, I'm shelving those dreams of cruising the Caribbean by yacht, installing the home champagne fountain, and ordering the Bentley. It's back to work on those stories, status be damned!

Next week: Scenes That Can't be Cut

Microfiction Monday: When You Wish Upon a Star

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.

The wishing star was so literal. Pam had wished for a LUCKY flutter on the ponies. But flying on Pegasus? (The lucky part was the prince.) (138 characters)

(N.B. In Brit. English, "having a flutter" means "betting on".)

The Boys and the Banned Books

Yes, Virginia, boys do read.

They read a lot... and banning a book won't slow them down either!

(Books featured: Harry Potter 1, 2, and 7; A Wrinkle in Time; Northern Lights; The Color Purple; Captain Underpants.)

What we're actually reading when not posing for Banned Books Week:

Son 1: Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry
Cricket Man by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Point Blank by Anthony Horowitz
sundry gaming and wrestling magazines

Son 2: The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket

Son 3: Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs by Giles Andreae

Dad: The Monster's Ring by Bruce Coville

October's "Craft Book of the Month" Revealed

Ere I became the charming and sophisticated blogger who brings you the delectable "Craft Book of the Month," I was the charming and not quite as sophisticated non-blogger who merely read craft books.

I used my trusty hi-liter, of course, to make visible all the important nuggets I gleaned from said books. I tried to put same nuggets to work in my writing. But, without the impetus of blogging and putting out into the world all this wisdom, I perhaps did not inwardly digest all that I read.

Which is a highfalutin' way of saying that this "Craft Book of the Month" series is as valuable for me as I hope it is for you.

And now, without further preachifying and ado, I can reveal that October's "Craft Book of the Month" is (drumroll):

We'll start next Wednesday, October 6th, and post comments about parts of the book on each Wednesday of the month. Till then, adieu.