Category Archives: Writing

Books, Writing

Lessons from a Reader: Faith is Tricky

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Another lesson I learned from Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer is that tackling faith is tricky. And this comes from someone who writes for religious audiences for a living and has read quite a lot of Christian fiction.

One of the secondary characters in Life As We Knew It is a Christian. She’s preachy, self-righteous and irritating. Now we can argue about whether or not that’s a stereotype. But I can live with it—Christians often come across that way. But you have to make it believable. It doesn’t help that you’re already going off on politics, now religion too?

What sunk this sub-plot for me was the stilted dialogue when the main character and this preachy Christian interacted. They were supposed to be long time friends, but every time they talked the dialogue suddenly became stiff and memorized and the Christian character preached to her friend and urged her to come to Jesus. Now maybe those conversations are stiff and memorized. But they’re also awkward and difficult and have a very realistic quality to them. Even a Lifetime special has more realistic conversations about serious, weighty topics. People get flustered. They don’t know what to say. They’re passionate, but never perfect. It should move in fits and starts. And if you’re going to use cliches (people use them when they talk, so that’s fine in dialogue), you have to poke holes in them (because that’s what people do in real life).

The worst mistake in handling faith came later in the story when [SPOILER ALERT] the Christian character had died and the main character was confronting the reverend who inspired the Christian character’s stiff faith. While everyone else is starving to death (including the now-dead Christian character), the reverend was plump and healthy. Here we go: The age old bad preacher bit. This is such a tired stereotype. Once again, I get it. It happens in real life. But give it a purpose in your story. In Life As We Know It it didn’t seem to have a greater purpose. It was just a swipe at religion.

As a writer, you should be better than that. If you don’t like religion, that’s fine. But write a real diatribe against it. Don’t set up straw men you can knock down.

Books, Writing

Lessons from a Reader: Don’t Be Dumb

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One of the most frustrating things as a reader is when I watch a character make dumb mistakes for no reason. Now maybe they’re a dumb character so they’re going to make dumb mistakes. That works if you know they’re dumb, like Joey on Friends. But for most characters if they make a dumb mistake, it’s because the writer is being dumb.

Case in point: Trapped by Michael Northrop. Seven teens are trapped in their high school when the mother of all snowstorms blows through, dumping more than a dozen feet of snow. After an appropriate amount of time the students realize they’re trapped, alone and rescue isn’t coming. They need supplies: Light, heat, food. They raid the cafeteria, so food is covered. They find blankets in the nurses office. A radio in the office. Eventually they’re forced to create a fire barrel using material scavenged from metal shop.

But that’s it. No flashlights. No candles. No extra batteries. The students never bother to scour the rest of the school for supplies. They can’t even get all the food out of the cafeteria because it’s too dark and the cell phones they’ve been using as flashlights are all dying. There should be a flashlight in every teacher’s desk. Somebody surely has candles. The home economics room should be a goldmine. The janitor’s closet and boiler room, normally off-limits to students should be tempting and well-stocked. And when it gets really bad, they could start breaking into all the lockers. Surely they’d find more winter gear, batteries, flashlights, lighters, snacks, medicine.

But no. Rather than thoroughly scavenge for supplies, they huddle around the second story windows desperate for light.

But they’re not dumb students. That’s dumb writing.

(I feel a little bad calling a professional writer’s work dumb. Northrop told an otherwise solid and gripping story. I give him props for that. But this oversight crippled the reality of the situation. And it’s an easy fix. I’m just calling it like I see it as an annoyed reader, in hopes that I don’t make the same mistakes.)

Books, Writing

Lessons from a Reader: Resolve Relational Tension

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What I’m going to call ‘relational tension’ is at the center of just about every story. It’s the conflict between two characters where you can’t tell if they’re going to be friends or enemies, lovers or acquaintances. It’s usually romantic tension, but not always.

If you’re using that kind of tension in a story, you need to resolve it by the end. You can’t just leave us hanging.

This isn’t a TV series where that tension is the heart of the show and you can let it stretch on forever. And in most cases, when that tension is resolved the show loses it’s heart and flounders for something new (see: Buffy and Angel, Lorelia and Luke, Jim and Pam, Castle and Beckett [they haven’t resolved it yet, but you can tell that’s their struggle], Mal and Inara, Angel and Cordelia [Joss Whedon is good at relational tension]).

If it’s a love story they get together at the end. If it’s a tragedy they split at the end. If it’s horror one of them gets killed. That’s simplistic, but the point is something happens by the end.

I was reading Enclave by Ann Aguirre and [SPOILER ALERT], they never resolved this tension. Now it wasn’t central to the story. But two characters were forced together. They were navigating a post-apocalyptic world and facing death side by side. Their relationship was developing, but it was undefined. Then a third character was introduced and suddenly this relational tension developed. The dreaded triangle.

But the story ended before it was resolved. The girl didn’t pick one guy over the other. She didn’t choose to be alone. She didn’t even decide not to choose. It just ended with her clearly attracted to both guys, having developed connections with both of them, but nothing happening.

It was a good story. Unique and compelling with interesting twists and turns. The writer was even brave enough to abandon one world and introduce a new one halfway through, which is no easy feat. But the unresolved tension left a bad taste in my mouth. The central question of survival for any post-apocalyptic story was answered, but the remaining tension didn’t make for a satisfying ending.

Give us a satisfying ending. I don’t care if we cry or cheer, but give us closure.

Books, Writing

Lessons from a Reader: Make Science Believable

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The greatest sin in science fiction is when your science isn’t believable. Yes, it’s science fiction, so it doesn’t have to be true, but you should at least make it believable. It doesn’t have to be possible, but your job is to make me think it’s possible.

My current example for this is Ashfall by Mike Mullen. A super volcano has erupted, covering Iowa in a foot or two of ash. It’s also been raining, turning the ash into a wet slurry. But suddenly that wet ash is causing buildings to collapse. Not one or two, but almost every building collapsing under the weight of a few feet of ash.

Huh? Is ash really that heavy? We easily had two feet of accumulated snow last year and roofs weren’t collapsing. I have a hard time believing that ash is that much heavier than snow.

Now I’m just a dumb reader, what do I know? I didn’t do the research: Apparently ash is heavier than snow. But you have to make it convincing. Give me reasons to believe the science (especially if your science is indeed fiction). In this case it could have been a simple comment comparing ash and snow. Or a little more variation on which buildings collapsed (my take on the research suggests that in an area with heavy snowfall like Iowa, more of the buildings would have survived).

In the end you want your reader thinking about your characters, in this case worrying how he’s going to make it and if he’ll be reunited with his family. You don’t want your reader focusing on something silly, like whether or not ash could collapse roofs.

Books, Writing

Lessons from a Reader: Keep Your Opinions Out Of It

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I’ve been reading a lot lately. I’m currently on book number 18 of 2012. With all that reading there are some things I like and some things I can’t stand.

One thing I’ve always wished I was better at was taking lessons from what I read and applying that to what I write. Being a writer you’d think that would be obvious, but it never is. I’m the kind of reader that wants to know what’s going to happen next, so I usually fly through the text and don’t slow down enough to learn some lessons as a writer.

So I’m going to start posting these notes to myself, these lessons from a reader so maybe I can start saving some of this insight.

Keep Your Opinions Out Of It
When you’re writing fiction, I don’t care about your politics. In Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer the character’s mother (Who also happens to be a writer—oh my gosh, stop making your characters writers, it comes across as lazy! Research another career.) goes off on Fox News and the president encamped at a Texas ranch. Gee, which president could that be?

Obviously the author is not a fan of George W. Bush. But who cares? It doesn’t help the story. You just turned your character into a stereotype and needlessly annoyed half your audience. And for what? Nothing.

There are times when political opinions are necessary in fiction, but make them necessary. They should make the character three dimensional, adding intrigue and depth, not cardboard flatness.

Business & Marketing, Employment, Writing

5 Minutes a Day

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I recently read Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination by Hugh MacLeod. I mean, why wouldn’t you read a book called Evil Plans?

It’s another book about creativity and striking out on your own, written by a guy who made a name for himself by drawing cartoons on the backs of business cards. That’s all well and good, but sometimes I think these kind of screeds are a little too niche. Some people like having a 9-to-5 job and working for an employer and that doesn’t make them brainless schlubs. Maybe more people can and do have their Evil Plan side projects today than ever before, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everybody.

But that’s my own rant on rants like this. What I really wanted to talk about was one of the brilliant thoughts that stuck with me from the book:

“Like a very talented pianist once told me when I was a boy, it’s better to practice a musical instrument for five minutes a day than to practice for two hours once a week. It’s something I never forgot.” (page 39)

Five minutes a day is better than two hours once a week. If you’re serious about anything, if you want to get good at anything, if you want to tackle a tough project, you need this advice (read: I need this advice).

It’s the consistency that wins over time, not the herculean effort.

And really, if you love it, you’ll find those five minutes are never enough and you’ll start to make more time. But at least take those five minutes.

(My problem is I can never stick to just five minutes and it turns into two hours and the next day I can’t afford to dive in so deeply, so I don’t. I need to learn some self-control. Or I need an egg timer. Or maybe a real egg timer.)

And yes, this is just a gimmick. It’s like all the other ideas, techniques and tricks out there to get you to do something: National Novel Writing Month, inbox zero, pick your favorite Lifehacker gem. But let’s call them what they are: gimmicks. Designed to get us to accomplish a task we can’t otherwise seem to do. Another comment MacLeod makes is that we’re just primates, and like primates we need to be tricked into accomplishing something.

War, World News, Writing

Libyan Tunnels: Fredd & I the Spies

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As the Libyan rebels raided Colonel Gaddafi’s compound this week I was reminded of a story I wrote in fourth grade: Fredd and I the Spies. The basic plot is that President George H.W. Bush asks me, a 9-year-old boy, to make a friend in Italy (the oddly spelled “Fredd”) and spy on a chemical weapons plant in Libya.

Why a 9-year-old spy?

“If we sent a grown-up man then it would be more obvious.”

As you can imagine, it’s pretty incredible.

Incredibly painful.

One of my favorite moments is that they give me a car that converts to a submarine and that’s how I get to Libya. I drive across the Atlantic Ocean:

“It took me a few hours, but I finally made it.”

Awesome.

We did much of our spy work by reading a newspaper article in a McDonald’s which laid out Libya’s plans to attack the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (yes, that’s what it was called when I was in fourth grade) with chemical weapons.

A less ludicrous plot point in the story is that we discover a secret tunnel that gives us access to the chemical weapons plant. Fast-forward 20+ years: This week the Libyan rebels discovered a secret network of tunnels under Tripoli.

But my life as a spy was not meant to be. When President Bush asked me if I’d like to be a full-time spy during a press conference (!) announcing the success of our mission, I declined.

“I’d rather have friends than bullet holes.”

After 36 hand-written pages of James Bond-inspired (i.e. heavily borrowed) violence, I suddenly became aware of the potential for harm.

(While the story is packed with James Bond references—this was 1989 and the height [and end] of the Timothy Dalton as James Bond resurrgence—I was pleasantly surprised to see a reference to the “pocket grenades used by Leonard (in Leonard Part 6).” If you’re not familiar with it, Leonard Part 6 is a 1987 Bill Cosby spy spoof so bad that Cosby himself urged people not to see it. He went so far as to buy the television rights so it would never appear on TV. My 9-year-old self disagreed. I still remember a spectacular scene where Cosby fended off man-eating lobsters using their natural enemy—what else?—melted butter [surprisingly, the clip doesn’t hold up as well on YouTube]. I also remember wishing I could watch the five previous installments that surely existed. Ah, to be 9 and have such low expectations. Despite Cosby’s efforts, Leonard Part 6 is available on DVD and Amazon’s Instant Video.)

Writing

What to Do About Back Story

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For some odd reason I’ve found myself editing one of my old novels lately. I guess it’s time to actually finish something.

But I’m stuck.

My story is full of back story. It’s probably half back story. The main character is fixated on what happened in the past, so there’s a lot of talking about the past. However, popular writing wisdom says not to dump lots of back story on your readers in the beginning. I love the first couple chapters, but they were specifically engineered to efficiently dump back story. That’s strike one.

I also introduce a new character in the each of the first two chapters, a character that’s less than minor and plays no significant role in the story. In a short novel it seems ridiculous to start out with characters that don’t matter. Strike two.

So I’m stuck.

Do I give in and just let the story start with lots of back story? It has to come in sooner or later, so as long as the story keeps moving and we’re not stuck in flashback mode forever that’s OK, right?

And what about the characters? Should I ditch these minor characters and find a way to introduce the story with characters that actually matter? Or am I worrying too much and should just use these characters for what they’re for? Use ’em and lose ’em?

Clearly I’m thinking too much and just need to vent. But if any readers out there have opinions, I’d gladly hear them.

Books, Family, Writing

Looking Back at 2010

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It’s New Year’s Eve and nobody’s really working today, so it’s time for a little 2010 recap. Thankfully my wife did a full recap in photos, so I can skimp a little.

2010 has been insane.

Bigger Family
The biggest moment, of course, was welcoming a preteen into our family, along with all the Hannah Montana and Justin Bieber and sparkly pink that comes with a pre-teen. It’s been quite a ride with Yeshumnesh and we’ve got a ways to go. I’ve never felt so old—and at the same time so young. I did manage to welcome Yeshumnesh into our family with a new haircut. First time in three years I paid for one. The mohawk made our Christmas card.

Writing Wins
I also published three books:

Addition by Adoption, is my book of tweets about raising kids and bringing Milo home from Ethiopia. A portion of the proceeds go to clean water in Ethiopia, and in September we hit the $5,000 mark and raised enough to build a well in Ethiopia. The book is also just barely turning a profit, which is exciting.

Then there’s Open Our Eyes, the book that supports homeless advocate Mark Horvath. If you want to know more about what Mark does, read Ka’e k’e‘s story. It’s been a big year for Mark. We also helped him win $50,000. The book has all kinds of big names contributors, like New York Times best-selling author Chris Brogan. All profits from the book go to support Mark’s work with InvisiblePeople.tv. The profits aren’t much—I send Mark his first payment yesterday ($226.56), but he won’t be retiring any time soon. Knowing Mark he’ll be spending it on someone else.

I also published a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel. More for fun than anything and to give self publishing a try (works nicely, crappy cover and all). The post-apocalyptic fun continued all year as I kept diving into more post-apocalyptic literature (hmm… maybe I should have reversed that order).

For all the writing success, I also had a big failure. My fourth attempt at National Novel Writing Month fell flat. I gave up after two weeks when the story wasn’t coming together and I realized my life was too busy.

Giving Back
With building a well in Ethiopia and publishing a book to fight homelessness I’ve done a lot of giving back this year. But it started even earlier when we responded to an earthquake by coloring. Lexi’s pictures ended up raising $675 for Haiti. Other folks got in on the action about the time the idea fizzled out. I’d love to do more with it, but I think I have enough charity cases on my hand.

Writing

NaNoWriMo FAIL

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Mold-a-Rama Gorilla from Como ParkIt turns out that I’m crazy.

I dove into National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the fourth time this year and it’s not meant to be. I had this grand plan of linking the story to Como Park and publishing the story with lots of help and Como Park goodies for everyone. It’s not going to happen.

I stopped writing last Friday, just shy of 20,000 words.

It really came down to two things:

  1. My life is crazy right now.
  2. The story wasn’t working.

My life is crazy right now: Work is both slow and busy (if you’ve ever been self-employed you might understand that predicament). Lexi stopped napping. Milo screamed more (didn’t think that was possible). We have a pre-teen in the family. Evenings have all but disappeared. We launched a book last week.

I’m not sure crazy does it justice.

When my wife started commenting about how stressed I was, I realized NaNoWriMo wasn’t a good idea this year. It didn’t help when I had to break out my brace to fight wrist over-use syndrome (yes, that’s what a doctor diagnosed it as a few years ago—shut up).

The story wasn’t working: I could put up with all of the above if the story were working. But it’s not. My characters feel flat. There is no plot. It feels like I’m trying to force reluctant people on a tour of Como Park, and that’s not what it’s supposed to be. Getting up an hour early every day to work on this just isn’t worth it.

NaNoWriMo is supposed to be about slogging through all that, but this year if I’m going to be that stressed I should at least be paying the bills.

Lessons from Failure
So I failed. I’m both sorry and grateful to my backers and cheerleaders. But sometimes I think we need to try crazy, ridiculous ideas and fail. I have a lot of crazy ideas, and they wouldn’t be so crazy if they all worked. And it’s not really failure if the idea sits in your head and you never try it—it’s something worse. So as scary as it is and as much as my Midwest work ethic says “Never give up!”, I’m giving up.

And it’s not a total loss.

  • I loved writing about Como Park. I loved diving into the history and story of the place. I will come back to that. Some day.
  • A few scenes and moments and ideas in the story did work. There are places that I really like, even if the rest falls apart. And that’s really what NaNoWriMo is about—finding some treasure in the trash.
  • I also learned the ins and outs of Kickstarter. I love the idea behind this site, the way creatives can pitch ideas and people can step up to make them happen. Go find some ideas and support them. Make a record with Shaun Groves. Help a photographer create street galleries in New York. Find a project you like and help it become a reality.

And there it is. Thanks.