Plot Line for Doubts, Hopes, Fears

By Bonnie Stanard

Point of view (POV), like other literary devices, changes fashion as the art of writing explores new territory. The omniscient POV, which prevailed in the 19th Century with authors like Dickens, Poe, and Hardy, has given way to first person POV popular today.

Many critics claim that first person POV began as interior monologue, historically used by playwrights (i.e., soliloquy) and poets. It came to the novel in a big way with James Joyce’s Ulysses, an entire book written as the stream of consciousness of the narrator. Not many novels today are as immersed in first person as Ulysses, in which the narrator’s ramblings fail to identify other characters or places, leaving the reader to pick and sort for himself.

I am reading The Zahir by Paulo Coelho, which is a first person narrative, further defined as stream of consciousness POV. It is heavily invested in one man’s ruminations. The plot simply sets up the situation that the main character meditates on at length. In fact, aside from minor activities as a novelist (the main character is an author), the only plot so far is his wife's leaving him. From that event, the writer ponders his relationships with his ex-wife and current lover, his own sense of worth, his future without his wife, etc. He has just met the man who stole his wife, and I'm hopeful that something will happen.

Not long ago, I read Shantaram by Gregory Roberts, a very different first person narrative. This book, given from the POV of a character named Lindsay, is plot-driven. We follow Lindsay as he arrives in the slums of Bombay where he falls in love, is imprisoned and rescued by a mafia don, and goes to work (and war) for him. The author introduces numerous other characters, and the interaction that results fashions the plot. Though we get some insight into Lindsay's thoughts, the book is driven by the events of his everyday life. Needless to say, this type of story can only succeed if the life is exciting.

Very close to the first person POV is third limited. This too is a popular device for delivering a story. In fact, the main difference between first person and third limited is the choice of pronouns for the narrator, whether “I” or “he/she.”

A number of contemporary writers are experimenting with POV. You can find books in which POV shifts from one character to another and from first to third person limited. Stef Penny, as an example, employs first person and third person limited POV in her novel The Tenderness of Wolves. What each POV character doesn’t know is revealed to the reader by other POV characters until the reader has more information and can solve the mystery before the “I” narrator who tells the story. Tension arises when the first person narrator makes mistakes because she doesn’t know what the reader knows.

The changes in POV technique are moving toward greater intimacy. The narrator is less likely to be the bard standing aloft his audience and describing the world as it is. He has morphed into a character in the story, one who experiences the plot and feels the bullets, if vicariously.

Niffenegger!

By Laura P. Valtorta

It took me three readings to understand how Audrey Niffenegger took a vain protagonist (Claire Abshire) dropped her into a completely implausible situation (time travel backwards and forwards) and made a wonderful book out of it. The answer is depth.

The main character in The Time Traveler’s Wife, (2003) who also narrates the story along with her time-traveling husband, is a beautiful, charming redhead with a pencil thin mouth (she describes it “like a geisha” in order to make a thin mouth attractive) who sounds a lot like the author. Claire first meets her husband, Henry, when she is 6 and Henry is 36. Henry has time traveled backwards. He has no control over his chronological fits.

Claire comes from a wealthy family. Like Audrey, she earns her living as an artist. But Audrey Niffenegger the author is not married. Both main characters, Henry and Claire, are grossly good looking and nauseatingly sexy.

What makes this story readable and irresistible is that it contains meaningful questions about chaos, determinism, the effect of time on personality, Patty Hearst, picking locks, running from the law, love, art, music, and books. These questions form the heart of the book.

If I met Claire or Henry in real life, I would run the other way. The characters are slop and the story is ridiculous. The author, however, has something important to say.

The Latest Addition

Meet A New Writer

SHANN FOUNTAIN CULO

Born in South Carolina, Shann Fountain Culo has been traveling all of her life. She studied abroad in both Spain and Germany and has visited 26 countries—many of them before age 21. She speaks Spanish, Croatian, and rapidly declining French.

After graduating from Sweet Briar College, Shann owned a multilingual staffing company, tried her hand at corporate gifts, and taught Spanish (with occasional travel sabbaticals in between) before becoming a writer. Now a full-time freelance writer, she is a frequent contributor to Travel + Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler, and her articles have also appeared in Hemispheres, Four Seasons Hotels Magazine, and several other publications.

Shann is the author of Moon Croatia & Slovenia (Avalon Travel Publishing, 2009, www.moon.com) and keeps her readers updated on the region on her Facebook page.

She also writes fiction and hopes to get published in that genre in the near future.

Shann's first posting follows.

Creating Setting

By Shann Fountain Culo

I suppose it’s my background as a travel writer but I love settings. I’ve also been known to love a movie mostly for its setting; films like Out of Africa, The Lover, and Children of Heaven are three that automatically come to mind. Done well, a setting can add to a story or a film, in addition to serving the purpose of grounding the reader in the story.

But without film or the luxury of nineteenth century writers to ramble for paragraphs about our setting, how do we convey a sense of place economically?

Travel writing has taught me a lot about techniques to convey a lot of feeling in a few words. Most of my assignments are short 150- to 200-word pieces where I have to describe a location, tell why the reader should go there, where they should have lunch, dinner, and stay the night, and give pertinent information (websites, phone numbers, names). I’d better be short.

When describing settings it’s important to use details a reader can resonate with. Most people haven’t lived in Mongolia but a boiling kettle over hot stones, dusty roads, and horses are all details your readers will relate to. Then you can add in a detail they don’t, like Airag, the national drink of Mongolia, describing its bitter, acrid taste.

It’s best to use a quick checklist of the senses when describing your setting. You don’t have to employ all of them, but maybe you never use taste or smell, for instance. Particularly useful are adjectives that employ a sense combined with an attribute like chocolate-box, gingerbread, sleepy, or buzzing.

Try using fresh methods for describing colors. We’ve all heard beet red or fire-engine red, but what about tin-roof red or crazy red. In one of the Harry Potter books, author J.K. Rowling describes green eyes as the color of “fresh pickled toad.” Amazing, I think. She not only uses an unexpected metaphor but one that adds to the character and theme of her book.

Using sound adjectives is helpful as well. We’ve all heard ‘the party was hopping’ but think about other sounds to describe a lively get-together. What about the vodka splashing against ice, the swish of a dancer’s hips, or the crackle of a stereo?

Foreign words can be tricky to use but quite effective under the right circumstances. An easy way to use them without being pretentious or confusing is to employ familiar words or words that can not be mistaken for their meaning by the average English-speaking reader. French words like fatale or succès or Italian words like bella or conforti come to mind.

Last but not least is to remember to use setting precisely and usually, sparingly. Exceptions to these rules would be when setting is integral to the plot (a terrible storm conceals a murder), the setting is important to reveal character, or the setting is a character itself.

Wherever you set your scene, have a journalist’s perception of the place. How would you describe it? What strikes you first? If you can see it in your mind, it’s likely the reader will as well.

Get Your Story Out the Door!

By Lisa Lopez Snyder

It’s easy to be daunted by the task of searching markets for your work. For sure, places such as Writer’s Digest offer great links to literary magazine Web sites, and there are probably more than a few services that you can pay to help you find a market to submit your work.

But if you’re looking for an economic alternative, let me suggest Duotrope.com. Listed among Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers” (http://www.writersdigest.com/article/101-websites-2009-markets/?print=1), Duotrope.com is a free, easy-to-use online submission tracker that I discovered through a writing friend. Check it out:

1. Go to Duotrope.com. You don’t need to sign up for an account to try it (but go ahead and sign up; it’s free, after all!).
2. Search for your market on the Home page: For example, if you’re writing historical fiction, in the Genre box you’ll click on Historical Fiction; if you want to search for literary markets, click on Literary, etc.
3. Go down and click through the options in the remaining dialogue boxes (eg., poem/short story, simultaneous submissions/submission via electronic or postal, etc.), or leave them empty if not applicable or you want to broaden your search. You can even search publications that accept submissions online, which saves trees, time and money, and who isn’t for that?
4. At the end, click Submit.

You’ll get a list of markets, along with titles and links to a Duotrope.com page that summarizes the publication, along with links to the publication’s official Web site. Once you’ve signed up and submitted your work, you can log onto Duotrope and add the stories or poems you submitted to the various publications. Just click Add Submission. It tracks all your submissions, which you can review all sorts of ways, such as by story/poem title and date of submission.

Be sure to also sign up for the weekly newsletter (see link at top of web page) and you’ll get a weekly email update with new market listings and re-opened submissions and upcoming deadlines for publications that have themed issues. This email does on occasion ask for donations to help keep the site up and running (it’s operated by a few published writers and former editors—see the About and FAQs links at the bottom of the site). It’s optional, but after the rush of excitement you get from having your own submissions tracker page and, you’ll want to send these folks a donation.

There are other search functions in the database too numerous to discuss here, so the best way to find out is to simply pull up the Web site and check it out yourself.

What you won’t find on Duotrope, however, are contests, and I welcome any feedback on this blog from someone who knows of a contest submission tracker.

Happy submitting!

Male Writers

By Laura P. Valtorta

Men. What are they seeing? What are they feeling? Why is Woody Allen a sports fan? They act so bombastic and inscrutable that I must read their fiction to understand them. Here are three of my favorite writers:

RICHARD FORD. For the past 20 years he has led us through the life of character Frank Bascombe, the hero of the books The Sports Writer, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land. He won the Pulitzer Prize. He also has written several short stories, some of them in collections. His latest short story appeared in The New Yorker magazine about a year ago.

When Richard Ford came to speak at USC as part of the Jeanette Turner Hospital program, I wondered if he would be snobby after so much success. He is a Louisiana native who writes about New Jersey, a child dying, two divorces, and growing old in the real estate business. Funny and poignant. I thought maybe he wrote about himself. Turns out, Frank Bascombe is not much like Richard Ford, who has been married to the same woman for many years, has no children, and divides his time among homes in Colorado, New Jersey, Ireland, and Louisiana. His talk was entertaining and never condescending. He seemed happy with himself and his life.

Richard Ford is short and compact, unlike his writing which is sprawling and unedited. He is about 60, has clear blue eyes and is part Native American. He talks to his fans; he talked to me! As the studio executive once said about Carole Lombard: “Me likee.”

HARUKI MURAKAMI (say it fast) is the master of existential fiction. I can’t get enough of him. Luckily, all of his novels and short stories have been translated from Japanese to English.

The best way to meet Haruki is through the short story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Reading and re-reading the same stories. They draw the reader along. The characters are rich, the metaphors come to life. The intrigue is that these stories are difficult to understand. "The Poor Aunt" is a good place to start. The narrator doesn’t just feel like he has a poor aunt on his back. He actually does, which makes life cumbersome. I see the poor aunt as a metaphor for depression. The other stories are more complex. What happens in “Birthday Girl?” What does “The New York Mining Disaster” have to do with New York? Why the obsession with cats?

Haruki Murakami has written an autobiography called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which doesn’t shed much light on his stories but says a lot about being Japanese and loving jazz.

TOM PERROTTA. This writer is not someone I want to meet. He is too preppy and reminds me of the frat boys in college. He probably drinks beer and uses pick-up lines. He might think he’s good-looking. Maybe he is.

What strikes me about Perrotta’s writing (Election, Joe College, Little Children, The Abstinence Teacher) is that he has mastered the art of creating characters through alternating points of view. In The Abstinence Teacher, he writes from two minds: a woman, a sex education teacher, who wants to be able to teach freely about birth control in public schools, and a man who has been “saved” by a fundamentalist Christian Church. The characters clash. Perrotta makes them both likeable. How does he do this? He understands how women think. How? Maybe men and women are not so different after all.

The Thing

By Brian Butler

How many times have you sat down to write with that blank receptacle before you and yet nothing to plug into it? A common occurrence for many of us, I am sure, yet the passion to write continues to lure us. The void stares back at you, emotionless and cold, but still begging for input, silently crying for existence. And you possess the power to grant it, to create something out of nothing. Much like mad scientists, we as writers are drawn by the ability to conceive our own Frankensteins, giving birth through our fingertips.

When words are put to the page, the creature begins to take on unique characteristics, traits only this monster owns. As days pass and it is fed more and more words, it begins to stand on its own. It grows from its barren space to a starving infant craving nourishment and attention. It feeds relentlessly. Spawned from the depths of our brain, it becomes one of our offspring, developing a distinct personality blended from our experiences and imagination. We start to care for this…thing.

The monster continues to grow and becomes its own entity, gorging on our time. Its greedy voice speaks to us on an unconscious level as it evolves. We respond with all the love such a child needs to develop into a healthy adult. But soon, it becomes too large to contain.

To retain command, we assign schedules and ration its intake to keep the beast from spinning out of control.

The creature rebels.

It is used to over-indulging, taking all we can give. It has had no set of laws to follow to this point. With a life of its own, the progeny stops communicating, punishment for the application of rules. Alone, we slump into a state of apathy. The roles have reversed, and now instead of us being the care-giver, we look to our creation to fulfill our needs. We look for it to give in return.

But it doesn’t. It won’t. It can’t.

It is up to us to continue the relationship, to reconnect and finish what we started. Without us, creations such as these will never reach maturity. They will sit dormant in drawers and in closets and in dead computer memories. They will become abandoned orphans whose creators were too cruel to put them out of their misery.

Be a good parent. Stay in touch with your brood. Feed them incessantly at birth to bring them to a healthy life. Then mold them with subtle refinements. Yes, rules are necessary, but do not let them confine you or condemn your offspring. Instead use them as guidelines to bring your creations to success, where they can survive on their own, and be introduced to the world, not as a monster, but as a beautiful work of art for all to adore.

A View Point on Point of View

By Alex Raley

Just when I think my brain has finally gotten a grip on writing, something jars the hold. Early in my writing attempts I heard repeatedly that writing in the first person, especially long pieces like a novel, was so difficult as to be avoided at all costs. You know the problems – how do we avoid portraying only one dimension of a situation? whose head are we in? how do we give the reader a glimpse into the feelings of the various characters?

While on vacation recently, I read five novels which were published within the last five years. All of them used the first person singular. In each case, there was a hint of memoir, but you knew that this was not the recounting of facts from someone’s life. There was a compelling story to be told and enjoyed. The story was filled with interesting descriptions of places and events. Most remarkably, “I” appeared just often enough to remind you of who was telling the story and, in at least one case, a principal character was not the narrating “I”.

At our state conference last year a reviewer told me that my short story was about the male character and not the female character. I had tried to make the female the main character. While the reviewer did not specifically tell me to let the male tell the story in first person, I said, “Umm.” The rewriting is going smoothly with the fearsome “I” occasionally presenting problems. Now if I can just write with a minimum of “I’s”, I may be able to make the story what I want it to be.

Another dictum for us as writers is to make sure that the reader knows who is your main character. That does not seem too complicated, but I have found myself trying to write a novel in which several characters are “main.” It was important to me that the reader know the feelings and thoughts of several people who were affected by the story. Letting the principals each have a section of the book in which they were portrayed seemed like a reasonable solution. I was well into the process of redirecting the novel, when I read Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital. In that wonderful book, Hospital even helps the reader by giving chapters the names of characters so that we know the seminal person or event.

We are always told that writers learn by reading. This summer I have reaffirmed that notion. Looking for help? Read, read, read.

First Impression (Why I Wish I Could Write My Life)

By Celinda Barefield

OK, I was originally going to write a follow up to my last article about how to integrate a good writing guide into your work, but in light of recent events, I’m changing my topic. I will do the follow-up at a later date. Instead, I’m going to write about meet-and-greets.

The big challenge here is: How do you get your main characters to meet? This is where setting, motive, and actions come into play. There are many types of meet-and-greets ranging from preplanned stalkerish to randomly weird and everything in between. Maybe one of the characters sets it up. Maybe it’s an act of fate. Sometimes it can be pure coincidence. It is up to the writer to decide. The point is that they eventually do have to meet.

My favorite type of meet-and-greet is the Meet Cute. If you are familiar with old romance comedies, you know what I’m talking about. In a Meet Cute, two people are looking for similar things. For example, a girl and a guy are in the men’s suit center. The girl only needs a jacket, the guy just needs a pair of trousers, but the clerk has to sell the set. They both blurt out their requests at him at the same time and realize that they can solve their problem together. This is a Meet Cute, a random act that leads two people to meet, and in most cases fall in love.

Another type is the Serendipity meeting. After spending a large amount of time almost side by side, two individuals finally encounter each other via a random act of fate, most often years later. An example is a guy and a girl live in the same apartment building but on different floors, they work in the same office building again on different floors, and they frequent the same deli for take-out but at different times. It is not until they are both on vacation in Maui that they run into each other waiting at a taxi stand in the middle of a thunderstorm. They fall in love and realize that they were close for years and never knew it.

As writers, we do not have to write a good first impression. Take Pride and Prejudice for example. Here we have a great meet-and-greet in which the two lovebirds get the totally wrong impression of each other. Mix-ups like this make or break some stories. So choose your first words with care. The thing to remember is until it’s published you can always write a new first impression unlike in real life when you’re stuck with the ones you make.

The Latest Addition

Meet A New Writer

David Sennema


Dave was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, graduated from Albion College, and then spent the next two years at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, courtesy of the U.S. Army. He met his wife Marty on the stage of the Town Theater in Columbia, where he got his start in arts administration as the first director of the Columbia Music Festival Association.

He became the first director of the South Carolina Arts Commission in 1967, and in 1970, went to Washington, D.C. as associate director of the Federal/State Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1973, he was invited to Springfield, Illinois to become the founding director of the Community Arts Management Program at Sangamon State University, and later returned to Columbia as director of the South Carolina State Museum.

In his retirement years Mr. Sennema has taken up short story writing and was announced as one of twelve winners of the S.C. Fiction Project in June, 2009. His short story, “Harley Takes a Chance” will be published in The Charleston Post and Courier newspaper in September of 2009. Mr. Sennema and his wife Martha are also authors of the book, Columbia, South Carolina – A Postcard History, published by Arcadia Publishers in 1997, and can be found in bookstores in the Columbia area.

Dave's first blog entry follows.

Planning to Improvise

By David Sennema

As a barbershop quartet singer one of my favorite things to do is what barbershoppers call “woodshedding” a song. No printed music is used. The “lead” sings the melody, and the tenor, baritone and bass improvise in an effort to create four-part harmony.

Many years ago I played the trombone, and during my college days I jammed with a small ensemble. Jazz groups are known for improvisation and that’s what we were doing, although I must admit that it was at a very basic level.

And then there’s theater. One of the methods that drama teachers use in training actors is to give them a topic and have them improvise a scene.

So what does all this have to do with writing? I started writing short stories before having had any formal, or even informal, training. I just sat down at the computer with the grain of an idea and started typing. I was improvising and the computer keyboard was my instrument. I finished a few stories that way, but in the meantime I began to read about how one is supposed to write short stories.

“You must have a plan before you sit down at the computer,” I read. “I always write the ending first so I know where I’m going” some authors wrote. “It’s best to outline the entire story before proceeding,” others suggested.

Such pronouncements gradually wore me down, and I began to feel like an undisciplined clod, so I started following their advice. I made lists of characters that would appear in stories, noting some of their distinguishing features. Then I either made an outline or wrote a narrative summary of the entire story. And only then did I sit down and start writing.

I have been writing short stories for only about a year, and so I make no pretense of having any expertise whatsoever. I can only say that having tried two different approaches I prefer the “improv” method and I think I’ve had better results going that route. However, I am loathe to completely ignore the advice of proven authors, so as I move forward I will probably experiment, trying different combinations of the two approaches.

Writing as Catharsis

By Ginny Padgett

I think many writers benefit from the catharsis of writing. In fact, it’s probably a driving force for some. Recently, I made an interesting discovery about myself.

An upsetting incident presented itself to me; a dear family member was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. I couldn’t seem to tame the raw emotions that continued to wash over me. I hate being in that kind of emotional state and I wanted relief. My Muse spoke to me! Go write about it…in a POEM. I didn’t question the directive, but I was surprised because poetry is not my preferred writing genre.

I sat down at the computer and an hour later I had a poem I called “Elastic Love,” and I had left all the emotion on the page. I’m not saying how good it was, but it did the trick for me.

A few weeks later, another situation arose carrying the baggage of unpleasant emotion; a frustrating conversation with a friend who continually spouts a negative outlook. This time I didn’t hesitate. I felt a poem coming on. Again I had success…restored equilibrium and a poem I dubbed “Human Appliances.”

This is what surprises me. I don’t derive the same kind of catharsis from writing prose as I do poetry. I guess if I were to analyze this I could come up with a hypothesis to explain this phenomenon, but I don’t care. It works for me. I probably won’t submit these poems for publication, but I do enjoy reading them occasionally.

I am curious to know if you’ve discovered unexpected benefits from your own creative endeavors. Leave a comment.

What I've Learned So Far

By Deborah Wright Yoho

What goes through your mind, Gentle Reader, when I tell you that I teach adults to read? How can an adult not know how to read in this day and age, in this country? Oh, maybe she works with retards, or welfare mothers, or rednecks?

I became the director of a non-profit adult literacy program in 1994, after I left my job as the principal of a rural South Carolina high school - straight from three years of dealing with kids who lived on dirt roads and showed up in August barefoot or with lice. One student asked permission for dismissal at noon so he could pick cotton to earn a few dollars for his family. Another forgot to leave his loaded shotgun at home. He parked his truck, unlocked, on school grounds with the evil thing still mounted on a gun rack behind the front seat.

So when I accepted the job as an adult educator, I thought the guy at the “fillin’ station” on The Andy Griffith Show, Goober, probably represented the typical adult who struggles with reading. That is, until I met James Lazarus.

I had been on the job a week when a newspaper reporter with The State called me asking to interview an “adult illiterate” for a feature story about the United Way campaign. “Sure!" I answered, eager to grab the media spotlight. "I have someone here right now. If you have a close deadline, you can come right over."

"I'll be right there," Bill McDonald said, delighted to get this chore out of the way. I gave him directions and waited impatiently for him to arrive.

It never occurred to me to ask the adult learner and his tutor if they wanted to be interviewed. When Bill arrived, I escorted him to the classroom and introduced him. I also had to introduce myself. I had never met either James Lazarus or the lovely elderly lady who volunteered to tutor him. Luckily, James didn't care about my presumption or my rudeness.

Bill posed his first question. "Tell me, Mr. Lazarus, what do you do for a living?"

"Huh?" asked James.

"Your profession."

With immense dignity, this quiet middle-aged man stated, "Oh, I'm a pastor."

"A pastor?!" Bill's jaw dropped only slightly lower than mine.

"Yes, I have a congregation of about 300 souls just outside of town. Preaching is my profession. But I also work for the county painting playground equipment."

"What does your church think about their pastor not being able to read?"

"Well," said James. "They don't know." There was a pregnant pause as James drew a breath and then grinned. "But I guess they are about to find out!"

James Lazarus understood his secret was about to be divulged to the whole world while Bill and I never considered that he may not have wanted his face plastered six inches high on page one of the Metro section. But that is how his congregation found out their pastor couldn't read.

As for me, I learned something about stereotypes, dignity, patience, consideration for others, and plain good manners from a gentleman. To this day, I am very proud to call James Lazarus my friend.

Writing Stories That Fly, Part I

By Celinda Barefield

Lately as I have been in the middle of a writer’s block, one question has been plaguing my mind. How do you write something?

I know from my own experimentation in picking up a pen and putting something down on paper that it is not an easy task. Nor is it a straightforward one. Personally, I have read a number of self-help writing books to push me along towards the answer to this question. There are crazy amounts of these books, so the question then becomes, how do you pick a book from all the others? That’s what this post is about: types of writing books - genre specific, style specific, general self-help.

This is what I look for in a writing book. First, how old is it? If it is over 20 years old and isn’t in a second edition stay away from it. Writing, like any occupation, changes. It would be like picking up a 20-year-old science book and expecting it to be up to date. It might have some good tips, but most likely it will lead you in a bad overall direction.

Second, look at the topic; a number of these books are genre specific. They have multiple books for different genres. Therefore, if you want to get to know a certain genre, like science fiction, fantasy, romance, western, Christian, or others, there are books specifically dedicated to work with that area. Just make sure you really want to associate with a particular genre before going towards a genre-writing book.

Third, make sure you peruse the book before you commit yourself to reading it. Time is precious and so is money. You don’t want to invest in a book and find out afterwards that it doesn’t talk about point of view when all you needed was help on that topic. This is where you may run into problems with general self-help books. They might not give enough help on the subject you need. That is why style-specific point books are useful; identify what you’re really trying to correct and read before committing yourself to a 400-page horror.

Lastly, I’m going to leave you with a writing exercise. Many self-help books have them. They are meant to get us writers writing, and I’m hoping it works for me. Why don’t you give it a shot?

Try this. Choose a work that you have already started. Now, look at it again, and write a new beginning from a different point in the timeline, either before or after your original beginning.

How does the story change?

Look back at both beginnings. Which better fits your story? Why?

Next time you are stuck in your writing, think about the beginning. Maybe what you really need is to jump-start the front of your story, not the back.

Flashback or Not?

By Beth Cotten

A fellow writer, who admitted to being new at the game of novel writing, asked a group of our members how to go about properly using the writing technique known as the “flashback.” Several opinions were rendered by those present about whether flashbacks were the way to go. Of course there were varied opinions. One mentioned that it was probably not the best technique to use although many writers have used it and have been published. The conversation left me curious about what actually were the disadvantages, technically speaking, of using this method of writing.

I had purchased the book written by Chris Roerden Don’t Sabotage Your Submission: Save Your Manuscript From Turing Up D.O.A. and thought it might cover this subject. It does. Roerden dedicates eight pages to “Fatal Flashbacks.” Since the space available for this blog is much less, I will try to shrink that information to fit the requirement.

Correctly used, a flashback makes the present story clearer in a significant way. The technique is tempting, but the publishing gurus highly suggest that new writers stay away from using it as “even experienced writers have problems with it.” Why? Roerden gives eight objections to using flashbacks which I have paraphrased below.

1. A flashback requires the writer to make a shift in time which is challenging to every writer.
2. It not only stops the story’s forward motion, it actually reverses it which can be fatal to the storyline.
3. Often it inspires writers to include information that adds no value to the story.
4. Less history is needed by the reader than many writers think and can be presented in the current story in a less disruptive manner.
5. Longer flashbacks cause a greater risk of damaging the forward thrust of the plot.
6. A flashback from within a current scene is hard to segue into and then smoothly return to the action.
7. When some readers detect an impending flashback they simply jump ahead in their reading.
8. Many writers like to use flashbacks for their own convenience and not for its primary purpose.

Roerden goes on to explain in detail and through example the ways in which flashbacks and what are called mini-flashbacks can be used effectively. He cautions writers to avoid taking readers into the past if a way can be found to include “brief…selected highlights from the past” in the current action.

I highly recommend this book to anyone hoping to be published (aren’t we all?) and especially to a newbie like me.

The Latest Addition

Meet a New Writer

Suzanne Gwinner

I have spent a career working with dyslexic students, students who learn differently, call them what you will. Whatever the label, they are bright students who have difficulty with our language – most commonly written language. One of my high school boys remarked recently that I must be crazy to enjoy writing!

I have written for pleasure since high school, but I have just recently gotten serious about attempting to write a book. As a newer member of the SCWW, I am finding the feedback and comments at our meetings most beneficial. I’m extremely excited about the conference in October!

As for my student’s comment – there are days when I consider him a most insightful young man!


Suzanne's first posting follows.

Summer's Gift

By Suzanne Gwinner

At the end of May I gleefully waved goodbye to my cherubs at school as they scrambled into an assortment of cars, SUVs, and minivans waiting to whisk them away to the beaches and mountains of our fair state and beyond. Don’t get me wrong. I love my work, but teaching bright dyslexic and ADHD children is an adventure not meant for the timid. Summer break is a well-deserved respite for a veteran teacher.

Early in June I spent ten days exploring Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. The summer crowds had not yet descended, cool weather prevailed, and wildlife roamed unperturbed. Attaining one of my life goals – observing wolves in the wild – made me tingle. On three separate occasions I watched different wolves interact, undisturbed by humans. My spirit rejoiced.

Now, school is out, vacation is tucked away in my mind’s eye, and summer has delivered her most precious gift – the gift of time.

Seated at my computer, refreshed and rested, I make plans for my gift.
Time.

The lack of it seems a constant theme in American life, but for the next eight weeks time will be my friend. I’m giddy at the prospect of unstructured time. This year I will put writing high on the priority list, schedule time for it instead of giving it the leftovers. In the past it has been buried under home improvement projects, golf, and travel. Like an artist molds clay, I can shape time into forms that appeal to me. Most likely I’ll carve it into big chunks. That’s the kind of time I like. I’m not good at doing a little here and a little there. Multitasking? Not my strong suit. When writing, I like to lose track of time. It’s a luxury, I know. Sometimes I skip meals, or work late into the night. I like that kind of time. I love the surprise when I turn off my study light to go to bed, and darkness envelops the entire house. Only then do I realize the late hour for the lamp timers have all clicked off. Even the dog has curled up in his bed to chase dream rabbits. That’s the kind of time I cherish. And it is to be cherished, for off in the distance I hear a little voice whispering, “Eight weeks! You only have eight weeks!”

I admire people who write books while they toil at demanding jobs; I just don’t know how they do it. Finding big chunks of time during the school year is almost impossible. So, now that summer has delivered her gift, I can work on another of my life goals - to write my book. My materials are in order, the outline is complete, and the story plays like a movie in my head.

All that’s left now is to put the words on paper.

The Latest Addition

Meet a New Writer

Marissa Burt

I am an unabashed lover of all things book-related. Like most avid readers, I've tried my hand at writing. Short stories, poetry, novels - you name it, I've probably tried it. My most recent project: The Tale of Una Fairchild: The Beginning, the first book in a middle-grade fantasy trilogy, is currently on submission to publishing houses via the hard work of my agent Laura Langlie. Please visit my blog for more details. http://www.marissaburt.wordpress.com

When not writing, I enjoy time with my husband, two sons, and the clowder of cats that surround our house. I like to bake (mostly sweets), garden (any plant that survives my meddling), read (of course), and act (the more dramatic, the better). I'm thrilled to be a part of the Columbia Writers Workshop and appreciate the encouragement of such a great group of writers.

Marissa's first posting follows

Writing Like an Actor

By Marissa Burt

I recently saw an interview with a well known actor who described this approach to his film roles: for each take of a scene, he would adopt a fresh angle. The lines were the same. The setting was the same. But he always tweaked his delivery, just to see how it could be different. The end result was that he thoroughly explored his character and gave the director a whole slew of different options for the final film.

Are you stuck on a scene? Do your characters feel wooden? Or maybe something’s just not right, but you can’t put your finger on it. Try writing from a fresh angle. Play around with your characters. Give them a stance, a voice, or a motivation you haven’t seen before. Make adjustments to the setting. What would change if the scene took place in the middle of the night? During a busy workday? First thing in the morning? Or pick a side character – maybe someone who merely passes through a scene – and explore her backstory. Tweak her delivery, just to see how it could be different. You may be surprised by the end result.

Some writing friends I know have done this as a group. Everyone hands off a chunk of a current work in progress to someone else in the group. Then they each write the next scene of their partner’s work. It’s a challenging exercise for a writer. On the one hand, you must try to enter into another author’s world and continue the story. Writing in an unfamiliar voice, exploring a different genre, tackling the type of writing you might never do on your own – all of this is great practice. And, on the receiving end, you get fresh insight into your own work. Perhaps your partner will take the story in an unpredictable and interesting direction. Perhaps these new ideas will reveal the weak spots in your plot or setting. If nothing else, the combined effort should get your creative juices flowing.

As writers, we can often be so motivated to print off that fat draft of our manuscript that we focus primarily on productivity. Of course, this is important, or we’d be stuck in endless cycles of revisions. But sometimes it’s worth it to playfully rewrite our work in progress, even if it doesn’t seem very productive at the time. At the very least, our writing skills will improve, we will explore our characters in greater detail, and we will give ourselves a whole slew of different options for our final draft.

Untitled, Part I

By George Newport

Life consists of:
What you want.
What you need.
What you deserve.
What you end up with.
What you do with what you get.
I have been writing most of my life, I wrote stories in school and it seemed to be popular from the early grades, in our one room Vermont schoolhouse, with one teacher for all eight grades, on up to college, in college my classmates encouraged me to write more, I took more than one Creative Writing Class and you were only allowed one as I passed each one with a high grade, I wrote about my journal events, my dysfunctional and abusive childhood, the deaths of three of my younger siblings from abuse, I held Rhonda Jeans hand in the local emergency room as she bled to death internally from a beating, I tried to prevent Elaine Louises sexual abuse from one of the older adults and was unsuccessful, she ended up in a semi coma and died in her sleep one night, I saw William George run over, by Pop, because he would not stay out of the road on our little traveled, rural, backwoods, Vermont country road and Pop was trying to teach him or scare him to keep him out of the road, I drove, one at a time, four of my younger sisters over to New York state from Vermont, for abortions, from sexual abuse, as they were illegal in Vermont, these events were added to my daily journal, I drove tractor trailer coast to coast over the road, starting at age fourteen, for my Dad in his truck, a 1964 Mack cab-over with the largest turbo charged V-8 Mack engine and twenty speed transmission, when my Dad got me a license that said that I was ten tears older than I really was, I would drive the truck to high school on Friday and park in the school bus line, then I would try to get back for my classes on Monday morning, some of the girls in high school wanted to see my one stack Mack with the bedroom on the back, and some rode with me, more journal events of my life on the road,


To be continued next week