HOW FILMS DIFFER FROM WRITTEN STORIES

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

www.thearthousemovie.webs.com

laurapv.wordpress.com

www.diseasedetective.com

                                               

The leap from prose writing to screenwriting can be weird and difficult because the two media begin in a similar place but end up looking very different. Both films and short stories, for example, begin with words written on paper maybe in the form of a plot summary. But a film ends up as a string of visual images, while a story remains in the form of words on paper.

A filmmaker must think about the juxtaposition of scenes. While a short story could exist entirely in the head of a librarian sitting at her desk, observing her weird patrons, a ninety minute film likely would not take place entirely indoors or entirely from the perspective of the librarian.

Films need to jump between images, from outdoors to indoors, from present to past, loud to quiet, in a way that keeps the audience interested. The director must set the stage and the setting through images, often called “establishing shots.” Films need to tell the audience where they are in an instant and then keep moving.

Of course there are exceptions. My Dinner with Andre notoriously broke all the rules by filming two guys talking in a restaurant for the entire movie. Their conversation was so interesting and funny that it carried the story.

As a beginner, I can’t take that chance. While writing the screenplay version of Bermuda, it would be tempting to keep Mildred seated around a swimming pool, talking to her daughters the entire time. That would be fun. I might try it. But the dialogue would have to be firecracker-snappy. Never monotonous.

The better choice would be to use some flashbacks, Mildred bothering Little Willie, Mildred and her daughters at work, getting fired, selling guns on the street, and then Mildred landing in Bermuda, where she meets and has dinner with Hamilton, the little guy. Since it’s a comedy, we’ll end with a wedding. Hopefully the action and the change in setting will keep the audience interested.

Writing this tale down as a short story, I might do it differently beginning with Mildred living in Bermuda successfully, or traveling to India for a grand tour with friends. The story might work backwards. The suspense would be more cerebral and ask – how did Mildred get here? Rather than the more nail-biting – what’s going to happen to her? How will she survive?

This is why it helps to plan a narrative film out with moveable index cards, white for outdoors and blue for indoors. Making the scenes interchangeable somehow makes the film easier to visualize. When the time comes for editing, that’s how the film will actually fit together – as a series of scenes pasted together, deleted, and rearranged on the computer.

HISTORICAL FICTION’S CROSS-CURRENTS

By Bonnie Stanard

BruceHolsinger wrote, “If you choose to write historical fiction, you will constantly be treading that fine line between the true and the plausible.”  We discover what’s true (or at least verifiable) with research, and from that we imagine what is plausible. We create scenes and give words and thoughts to characters based on our research. Unlike other genres, ours deals with the “burden of truth.” As long as we respect the truth, historical fiction has the advantage of combining education with escapism. When done well, our novels help us “see ourselves as historical creatures... shaped by large forces and currents.” 

A contemporary market, driven more by a demand for fast-moving entertainment than by a desire to learn, is having an impact on us. As Colson Whitehead said at USC in Columbia when questioned about fabrications in The Underground Railroad, “It’s fiction!” Obviously fiction comes first, but what is our relationship to the truth or at least the historic record?

No reader is going to mistake us for historians (though historians are suspected of fictions, but that’s another blog). We claim poetic license for inaccuracies that range from trivial to profound. You don’t come away from reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel or Shogun by James Clavel thinking either writer’s historical exceptions jaded our view of a given person or time period.

Thomas Mallon claims to act within “the situational ethics of my chosen genre” when he changed history to make Maj. Henry Rathbone complicit in the assassination of President Lincoln (Henry and Clara). And when he made Pat Nixon a fictional adulteress (Watergate).  What do we think of this reader’s reaction to Mallon’s novel Finale: “I had a tough time separating fact from fiction on numerous occasions”? (Amazon comments).

According to writer Helen Dunmore, novelists are “straying into ‘dangerous territory’ when they fictionalise the lives of real historical figures. However, numerous 2018 novels feature well-known historical persons, e.g., Sarah Grimke (Handful by Sue M. Kidd); Anne Morrow (The Aviator’s Wife by Melanis Benjamin); Jefferson Davis’ wife Varina (Varina by Charles Frazier) and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont (A Well-Behaved Woman by Therese Fowler).

Should we worry about reader reactions such as this: “[Einstein] is portrayed as quite an ass!” and “[the novel] will change your opinion of Albert Einstein forever”—Amazon comments on The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict. Is it asking too much to expect readers to know which parts are pure invention, which speculation, and which based on history?

Perhaps our equivocal perspectives are bringing about more genre subcategories, such as alternate history; historical fantasy; Regency romance; and speculative fiction. And there are more. 

This leads us to a question posed by Georg Lukacs: “How does a historical consciousness become embodied in a work of art?” With respect to novels, is it by imitating recorded history? By challenging it? By exploring it? Or as some of our writers are doing, by repudiating it?

WHAT'S in YOUR VISION?

By Raegan Teller

This week when I went to spin class at the gym, it was packed. The “regulars” were far outnumbered by the “resolutioners”—people who resolve each January to exercise and get fit. While I applaud these new folks for making the effort, I know many of them will fade away after a month or two and abandon their resolutions. It happens every year.

Sadly, the same thing happens to writers. Starting off the new year, we commit to writing every day or to other goals “they” tell us we must do to be a successful writer. And then, we drift away from those goals because we’re too busy, or other priorities present themselves. Success stories of writers who make lofty goals and achieve great results inspire and excite us. At least, in the short run. We ask, “Why do they succeed, but we can’t?”

I am not at all suggesting that you give up on writing, or losing weight, or exercising, or whatever your intentions may be. But, if you haven’t achieved what you wanted to by now, instead of setting the same goals, year after year, step back and ask yourself some key questions. For example:

·         Why do I write?

·         What does success look like for me?

·         How can I incorporate writing into my life in a way that will bring me joy?

·         How much of my life do I realistically want to devote to writing and related activities?

·         Am I focused on the right things for me?

·         If I haven’t achieved what I wanted to by now, what’s holding me back?

For years, I struggled to make myself sit down and write regularly. I told myself I was too busy, didn’t have the “right” idea for a book, and so forth. While some of those excuses were partially true, I knew they weren’t really holding me back. Then one day, I decided to visualize what success would look like for me as a writer.

At first, letting go of my preconceived notions of writing success was hard. Bong! Then it hit me. I realized I was holding onto someone else’s definition of a successful writer, and it was hindering me. That lofty goal of becoming a NYT best-selling author that I had held onto for years was turning me off. That wasn’t the life I wanted. Every time I thought of traveling around the country, living in a suitcase, I cringed. While the odds of my becoming a national best-selling author were remote, just the thought (or threat) of it held me back. When I replaced that vision with me being a successful Southern writer, talking to local book clubs, do signings at regional events and festivals—doing all the things l love—I was then able to write the first book, then the second, and now a third. Never underestimate the power of visualization. It can work for or against you.

What’s in your vision?

SAME TIME NEXT YEAR

kasie

By Kasie Whitener

Writing during the holidays is hard. It may be that we have less time at home because there are more parties and special events to attend, or road trips to take. It may be because we have less time to ourselves when children and spouses are on vacation and relatives are in town.

Maybe it’s difficult to write during the holidays because we feel that end-of-year drawing near and start looking back at what we’ve been able to accomplish. There may be a sense of urgency toward finishing something that’s been lingering. Maybe the weight of unmet goals. Sometimes the end of the year brings with it a kind of momentum, a rush and hurry that can rob us of the quiet reflection we need for creation.

The holidays also carry the weight of memory. Like a scent we’ve forgotten until it wafts into our nostrils, the holidays can force us to recall traditions, images, sounds, and lights. The carols and the performances are heady experiences, thick with prior years’ joy. It can be difficult to feel original when everything seems soaked in ritual.

For me, writing over the holidays is challenging for all of these reasons. The days are filled with task lists I don’t usually have, errands I don’t normally run, people I don’t often see. The plans we make dominate the season, and I’m on an adjusted schedule consisting of kid-home-from-school, visiting relatives, and special-occasion meals.

I often reflect at the end of the year on what I’ve been able to accomplish and start making plans for the next year’s efforts. This process puts creation of new stories in a kind of limbo where they don’t count toward last year’s tally but they aren’t quite next year’s work.

My writing is most often a victim of nostalgia. Since achieving certain milestones in life, I have become more nostalgic in general. But the holidays put a magnifying glass over that habit. In the weeks surrounding Christmas, I have perfect specimens for comparison. What kind of tree did we have last year? When did we put it up? What did we watch on TV while we did it?

I keep a Christmas Journal, have since Charlie and I were married in 2001, and in its pages are the specifications of every Christmas for the last 17 years. Where we went, who we visited, what we gave, what we received. It’s both a wonderful scrapbook of family memories and a terrible albatross. In it I can read the varying shades of joy, excitement, and gratitude. But threaded in there, too, are the traces of hurry and obligation and disappointment. This year the entry is particularly soaked in loss and grief.

I’m glad for the start of the new year. A chance to refocus my writing life on goals and achievements in 2019. A chance to go back to the beginning instead of being trapped in the end, that familiar dance of ritual and memory, that weighs December down.

THE LOGIC OF FICTION

By Sharon May

Almost 40 years ago, workers in a small town in Kentucky uncovered human bones. The next day, a retired sheriff confessed to the county attorney that he had buried a teen-aged friend near that site during World War II. Carbon dating revealed the bones were of Indian descent, and thus, could not be those of his friend. The former sheriff then recanted, stating that he was drunk when he confessed and probably was retelling bits and pieces of cases he worked.

I heard the recording of his confession, and to this day remember his excitement as he described the car in which he rode to the bootleg joint. His voice cracked with fear as he recounted the walk up the riverbank at gun point as he was forced to bury his friend. I heard the truth of his words, and felt compelled to tell his story.

All would have been fine if I were a journalist. Then I could have just reported the facts, and my job would have been done. But I wanted to write a novel about the sheriff and tried numerous times to find the narrative voice and the plot to tell the events of 1943 along with those of 1987.

A few years ago, I wrote a novella-length draft of the “truth.” But the sheriff I discovered in that draft wouldn’t have recanted once he took the risk to tell. The fear that quietened him at 16 was as real 35 years later. If Lafe had faced that fear and confessed, there would have been no going back. He was a man of his word. The conflict for him was whether to confess at all. To make the best story, my novel could not rely totally on the events as I experienced them.

How can something taken from reality not work in fiction? I mean, it’s real right? William Dean Howells, in the late 1800s, argued that realistic fiction is not only possible but that it required of writers. He believed reality could be captured by relying on the five senses and focusing on the ethical and moral dilemmas of the characters. But the Realistic movement gave way to Modernism and Post-modernism, both of which recognize the artifice of fiction.

Just because fiction is artificial doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work logically. Even Magical Realism and science fiction have physical and metaphysical rules that operate in the story.  

Readers expect a world that makes sense no matter how bizarre that world is. The story needs logic so that readers can envision and believe the plot. Characters’ actions and motivations have to be plausible. Conflicts need to be tangible and create angst and fear of the unknown for the reader as well as the characters. All of that creates a world with meaning, one a reader wants to visit.

After years of rumination and revision, I realized fiction doesn’t have adhere to reality, but it does have to ring true.

 

  

The Latest Addition

Meet a New Columbia II Blogger

NICK ROLON

I dedicate my first blog post to my mother, Teresa, who has been battling brain cancer for nearly  three years. She has been an inspiration as she has hand-written over 3,000 cards during her life with notes of hope, thanks, and goodness to others.

I earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from John Jay College, New York City, and was a staff member of its newspaper The Lex Review. I have spent over 30 years in the retail industry. Sharon, my supportive wife, and I have two adorable dogs, Tucker and Madison. In addition, I have been active in many charities during the last 35 years including the March of Dimes, St. Jude's Children's research hospital, Adam Walsh Center, DARE programs, Kiwanis club, and many local good-news community initiatives. My favorite book/movie is The Natural starring Robert Redford.

Nick's first blog post on this page follows.

THE GIFT OF WRITING

By Nick Rolon         

Writer Somerset Maugham, once said “If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion…It doesn’t matter dammit how you write.”

At 50 years old, I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to re-new a passion I left behind in college over 31 years ago. I had spent a majority of my life dedicated to my career, leaving little time for the important things in life. I hope this blog post will inspire others to “Just Write” – cards, letters, short stories, blogs, social media posts, novels, even a simple post-it note. 

I had been a member of our college newspaper staff and enjoyed contributing articles of social issues, school events, and our sports news. I had always enjoyed writing since elementary school but after college I stopped. That passion was replaced with the fast moving train of life we all experience.

Recently, a group of friends gave me a list of organizations and associations in South Carolina including music, photography, athletics, cooking and then I spotted the South Carolina Writers Association (myscwa.org).   I went to the website, signed up, paid my annual dues, and began attending the Columbia II workshops in November 2018. 

As a novice, I was nervous about attending my first few workshops as I listened to the readings of outstanding writers.  I was amazed with the talent and creativity of the members.  But I heard a common message from everyone around the table, “Just Write.”

The group echoed “We all started writing at some point and it will become easier over time.” Their words of encouragement motivated me and on my second workshop meeting I was able to write six pages of a story about my dogs Tucker and Madison. I received constructive feedback from Ginny Padgett and the Columbia II writers that attended the November 19^th workshop. This motivated me to continue writing and writing without fear.

I was fortunate to have had Flora Rheta Schreiber as my college English professor. She was a writer and author of several books including the non-fiction book, Sybil, which covered the treatment of Sybil Dorsett (a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason) for a dissociative identity disorder (up to 16 different personalities). After spending seven years writing the book, she was published in 1973 and soon the book became a best seller and a TV movie.

I remember Mrs. Schreiber emphasizing the importance of keeping the writing simple to help readers understand the story.  She would walk the classroom aisles, look you in the eye, and say, “Writing is a gift everyone can give; empower yourself with the ability to positively impact the lives of others through your words.”

This holiday season make time to write a note of thanks to someone you love; write a story you always wanted to share; partner with your spouse or child and write what brings happiness to the home; or just doodle on some scrap paper. As J.K Rowlings will tell you, maybe someday that scrap paper will wind up in the Smithsonian Institute.

Several great examples of writing this holiday season include the poem, “The Night Before Christmas” which was published anonymously in 1823 and the letter written by 8 year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, to the editor of the New York Sun on September 21, 1897 titled “Is there a Santa Claus?”

I wanted to provide the letter to the Sun editor and the response to show the compassion and positive influence the gift of writing has on society:

“Dear Editor

I am eight years old – some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.  Papa says If you see it in the Sun it’s so.  Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

115 W. 95^th Street”

Please open the link to see the original response from the Editor of the NY Sun in 1897.

PROPPING UP the MIDDLE

By Kasie Whitener

On last week’s episode of Write On SC, we discussed the challenge of writing the middle of the story.

Often, as writers, we are inspired to write the beginning when some specific inciting incident catches our interest. My vampire novel begins with Lord Byron being rescued by a vampire. My GenX novel begins with Brian learning his best friend is dead. I’ve started short stories with a character recognizing a high school classmate in a magazine, making eye contact with an old lover across a lobby, and pulling into the driveway of a ski cabin on a summer night.

The beginning sometimes feels easy. Or sometimes we draft the beginning and decide during revision to start the story earlier or later. The beginning answers specific questions like, “What makes this day significant?” and “Why are we seeing this character now?”

Sometimes it’s the ending that comes easy.

The inevitable outcome of the vampire novel is that the protagonist will murder the woman he loves. Brian must return to San Francisco after burying his friend. And in the short stories: a football game ends in defeat, a couple agrees to stay committed even while the woman takes an overseas assignment, and power is restored to a community after a Derecho allows an old woman to relish the freedom of being alone.

The ending is where we’re headed and usually writers know where we’re going before the story even begins. The ending can feel inevitable, can feel like closure, and can feel satisfying.

But what happens in between?

What happens between rescuing Lord Byron and killing his sister? Between learning the best friend is dead and letting him go?

The middle of the story is where a lot of writers get stuck. We struggle to line up a good progression of action and settle for a series of conversations. We fail to escalate the action and settle for a series of events that all have the same ebb and flow. We fail to select the most relevant scenes and cut the superfluous chatter from the story.

The middle is also where we lose momentum. We know the beginning is compelling and we know where want to go, but the middle may sag or stall.

What I loved about that Write On SC episode was all the different suggestions for how to prop up the middle of the story. I found this resource and this one, too. Both offer advice for adding the necessary action, tension, and escalation you need to drag the reader through all those long pages before the climactic end.

I immediately went home and looked at each of my stories with a more critical lens. Specifically, I applied these actions to the short stories:

1) listed each scene by what action occurred in it;

2) evaluated whether the actions got progressively dramatic;

3) re-organized the series of actions to ensure they were progressing, and

4) raised the stakes in each scene.

Stories are not compelling without action, tension, and escalation. The middle of the story is where these progressions occur. Taking care to craft the middle of the story can help you ensure your reader’s journey is as compelling at the protagonist’s.

For more craft talk and South Carolina writers, listen live on Saturdays at 9 a.m. at makethepointradio.com or visit our podcast channel on simplecast.

ESCAPIST LITERATURE SHOULD BE MOSTLY ESCAPISM

By Rex Hurst

Now while this statement seems almost self-evident, it’s practically a tautology, I’ve noticed a current trend in the traditional genres of escapism (Fantasy, Superhero, & Science Fiction) have become more and more preachy, as if they’re using the medium to talk down and “educate” the idiot masses. Sometimes it’s a smug little quip about some “social justice” issue. More and more it’s been almost feature length “messages” horned into previously popular franchises.

For me the breaking point was a recent episode of Dr. Who. The new Doctor, in a female incarnation, meets Rosa Parks- not so bad in itself – but most of the episode, 55 minutes in length, was spent of lecturing the clueless companions (and through them, us the idiot audience) all about the Civil Rights era – a lot of which was incorrect or way too condensed. The actual “story” took up about fifteen minutes of time and revolved around some racist from the future coming back in time to knock Rosa Parks off before she could sit at the front of the bus. Not an alien who happened to be around at that time, maybe trying to get home, maybe dealing with similar issues on their own planet. No it was some cookie-cutter red-faced racist who wanted to destroy Rosa Parks. Why? Because he’s evil, that’s why. What more do you need to know, you racist! The entire endeavor was as subtle as a sledgehammer.

The purpose of these escapist genres was to allow the reader to cast their minds away from the nonsense of the world. For the reader to believe that the biggest evil in the world could be cured by throwing a magic ring into a volcano, that there was no problem too big for Superman to handle, that only a spaceship ride away was a world of adventure and beautiful green-skinned women. The escape from reality is why all of these genres became popular in the first place. People want to leave the world and have fun.

That isn’t to say, you cannot talk about social issues in your story. Take a look at any issue of the X-Men from the 1980s (the Claremont era for those in the know) and you will see a message of tolerance for those who are different from you. Somehow this straight, white, male author managed to place this message without disrupting the story or being preachy.

How did he do this? By putting the escapism and story first. If you are working in the fantasy, science fiction, horror, or superhero genre and the purpose of your tale is to push forward an ideological message, then you have a clunker on your hands. Stick to being outraged on Twitter. In escapist genres, the world, the oddity, the break from reality, has to come first. People don’t want a lecture, they want to see something beyond the norm. If you can’t deliver then, more onto a different type of writing.

LEARNING to BE the “OTHER” PERSON

By Raegan Teller

At a recent signing event, another author said to me, “Selling books is hard.” When he walked away, I felt a bit overwhelmed. Would I ever master the marketing skills I need? And then I remembered saying to myself about five years ago, “Will I ever master the skills I need to write a book?”

If you are writer, you know there’s a long list of skills you must have, whether you’re producing a book, short story, or poem. Even if you know how to write a decent sentence, you must learn structure, pacing, and storytelling, to name a few. The list of required writing skills is long, but that isn’t all.

Sometime after my first book was published, I realized that I’m expected to be two, totally different people: an accomplished writer and a marketing genius. On top of that, the skills and behaviors needed to master each role are opposites in many ways. Yen and Yang. How could I become proficient at both?

To confront my being-two-people dilemma, I recalled Martin Broadwell’s four stages of learning I had used often in my consulting practice. When I began writing my first novel, I was at the level of “unconscious incompetence”: I didn’t know what I didn’t know. After writing that book for the next three years, I reached the next level of learning: “conscious incompetence.” I was beginning to realize what I didn’t know—and it was scary. As they say, “Ignorance is bliss.”

While writing the next two books, I honed my writing skills through continuous studying and feedback. Now, I’m able to write at the level of “conscious competence.” But while I have the skills, writing is still hard work and requires a lot of mental energy.

But what about becoming the “other” person I mentioned earlier? Could I also become a marketing genius? Even now, I’m still at the lowest level of learning for those skills: unconscious incompetence. Every day, I learn something I didn’t even realize I was supposed to know. Things like learning how to navigate through the behemoth Amazon maze seems like learning to fly a fighter jet. Slowly, I’m beginning to figure out what I don’t know when it comes to marketing books. While I might be approaching conscious incompetence, I’m nowhere near the final level: unconscious competence. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to achieve that level of mastery. I may not live long enough to see that day, but one can hope . . . and keep learning.

All of this is to say, yes, you can be two different people with different skills and behaviors. One role may be easier and more natural than the other. You’ll learn those skills quicker. But on a parallel learning track, it may take you a bit longer to acquire the skills and assume the behaviors you need to become the “other” person. That’s okay. Just remember, the learning process is the same: one level at a time.

WRITING A MEMOIR

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

www.thearthousemovie.webs.com

laurapv.wordpress.com

                                               

Three women presented memoirs at the November meeting of Dinah’s Writers’ Group: two were children’s books, and one was an outline of the writer’s life that could be turned into a complete autobiography.

Memoirs can take many forms. I appreciated hearing about the warmth of Dinah’s father and grandfather in a picture book designed for two-year-olds. The story had a surprising amount of depth.

Likewise, the autobiography was extremely poignant because it highlighted a lifetime of pain and the insight that came from overcoming mistreatment. Serious abuse can land a person in jail, or it can propel them to the top. The outcome depends on the stuff that person is made of.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to weave the peaks and valleys of my life into a manual for indie filmmakers. I think this is appropriate. Dinah’s group suggested I rename it Autobiography of a Filmmaker.

As writers, we don’t create stories out of nothing. Art stems from experiences, like a lunch in Newberry followed by an evening Durga Puja ceremony. A trip to Cuba.

I create art, both films and stories, in order to communicate a message that could be the color of a conversation or an outright lesson on decency. These messages come from my family life, my friends, and my work as an attorney.

Judges and courtrooms don’t matter. The day I quit enjoying my clients will be the day I quit practicing law. Their lives are art; their faces are beautiful. My sisters, parents, husband and children are what make life meaningful. Or extremely frustrating. I hope my autobiography will do them all justice.

What I Learned at the 2018 SCWA Pawley’s Island Conference

By Kasie Whitener

I co-hosted the Open Mic on Saturday night at the Pawley’s Island Conference with my friend Mary Sturgill. What I learned was that people are skeptical of Peter Pan and ready for a new interpretation of him. Also that most writers don’t perform their work, they simply read it. And that an open mic should be fun and treated as such if you want people to stay.

For me, the open mic was the highlight of the conference: a chance for writers to come together and read and perform and listen and appreciate the work others put into the craft.

I’m a fiction writer, so I attended the sessions on character development and point of view. These were led by Dr. John Kessel and Therese Anne Fowler respectively. I enjoyed Kessel’s session although it was more lecture style and instructive than interactive and discussion-based. I like instructive because the session leaders are why I’m there. While amateur attendees’ opinions might be interesting, the session leader has the knowledge to apply to the discussion while many attendees’ have only experience or opinion.

What’s the difference?

 Leader (Kessel for example): lose the driver’s license descriptions – hair, eyes, weight
 Attendee (justifying his/her own work): you need to help the reader picture the character.
 Leader: you mean picture what you think the character looks like.
 Attendee: I created the character.
 Leader: then what role does the reader play in creating the character?

When the attendee doesn’t know how to answer, because the attendee (writer) hasn’t considered the reader’s position in the existence of the work, then I know we’re seeing a gulf between the literary folks (Kessel) and the storytellers-who-want-to-be-writers (attendee).

So I learned I’m still in between those. I’m trained as a literary person, meant to understand the nuance of giving vital stats of character (trust the reader to infer necessary character traits from the details I give) and the reader who enjoys a good tall, dark, and handsome protagonist.

Therese Anne Fowler talked about choosing a point of view as a matter of distance. How close does the reader need to be to understand and appreciate the story? How close is too close?

So I learned that the focus on the reader is a big deal. What is the reader’s experience? Is it the kind of experience people buy?

As a voracious reader, I can separate the experiences I’m willing to pay for from the ones I’d rather borrow from the library. And THAT is how you know you have the kind of book agents and publishers want.

Is this an experience the reader will pay for? Gladly?

In the open mic when I detailed Peter Pan getting aggressive with a mermaid, when I made it clear that he was entitled, selfish, and probably psychotic, I learned some people would pay to read that version of the boy who refused to grow up. So, yeah, let’s pitch that.

UNRELIABLE NARRATOR

By Bonnie Stanard

When I was in college I wrote a story in which a girl talked to the reader about her life in a vague and unexceptional manner. In the end, she saw a rat and scurried after it, intending to eat it, at which point the reader realizes the narrator is insane—my attempt at an unreliable narrator.

To get a better idea about the unreliable narrator, I looked it up in dictionaries.

1. A character whose story cannot be taken at face value.

2. A narrator who holds a distorted view which leads to an inaccurate telling of events.

3. A character who cannot be trusted, either from ignorance or self-interest.

First of all, a reminder that the narrator is the character who tells the story. An unreliable narrator, then, tells lies. (I was going to add partial lies, but I don’t believe in partial lies.) Oh, you say, that sounds simple enough. But wait. Who reads a paragraph in a novel, stops, and wonders: “this says it is raining, but I wonder if it really is raining”? Our assumption is that the character telling the story is laying it on the line, giving us the facts (and only the facts, even if it’s fiction) and usually they are.

Since it is the narrator experiencing the action who gives us a false interpretation of the events, the obvious choice of point of view (POV) is either first person or third person limited.

GIRL ON THE TRAIN

I always become suspicious of a story (or movie) that features a character who has lapses of consciousness for reasons such as fainting spells, memory loss, drug or alcohol abuse. These are easy tropes for establishing an unreliable narrator.

SHUTTER ISLAND

The narrator that is insane, deluded or impaired may give you a distorted picture. If you figure that out on the first page, the author is an amateur. A good writer will string you along for pages until you figure out that you’re reading a story told by a deluded or crazy person (the most extreme of unreliable).

ATONEMENT

In more subtle instances, a rational narrator puts forward a view that is corrupted by bias, hatred, or naïveté. You, as the reader, will only be able to pick up on this by comparing the given narration with other verifiable evidence, whether it be from other characters or reality itself.

The purpose of an unreliable narrator is to deceive the reader about a story’s actual facts. Given that our stories are fiction to begin with, this makes for a fiction within a fiction. The more shrewd the deception and the more mystifying the story, the more gratifying for us when we figure it out.

If that isn’t confusing enough, here’s a conundrum for you. One www source lists as an unreliable narrator Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye). Because, says the source, Holden calls himself “the most terrific liar you ever saw.” When events prove he is honest in telling us he is untrustworthy, is he reliable or unreliable?

TRY SCIENCE BABBLE IN YOUR SCIENCE FICTION

By Rex Hurst

For the three of you who know who I am, then you also know that one of the two genres I write in is science fiction. Aliens, lasers, beehive hairdo’d women saying “Show me more of this Earth thing called kissing.” This is my playground. The problem? Well, I don’t actually know much about science and what I do know all tells me that the stuff I write about in “the future” is completely impossible, or unlikely, or ridiculous. One of those.

Of course, this might not be the impediment that it appears on the surface. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, science fiction is easier to write if you don’t  know any science. Then you aren’t limited by all sorts of nasty facts and figures, and are only hampered by a lack of imagination. Most writers aren’t big on hard science, and despite what some might claim, most science fiction readers just want to explore the fantastic without a trip back to their high school science class.

But if you want the illusion of hard science, there is a way to fake it. As science today is expanding at an incredible rate, imagine how much it will continue to do so in two to three hundred years from today. Therefore, it would be perfectly believable for new scientific terms, devices, and jargon to come into being. This is something I observed in old school episodes of Dr. Who. I’m talking about the good ones from the 1970s starring Tom Baker. In these they simply invented techo-babble to cover the fact that most of what they were doing (time travel not the least part) was preposterous. The entire series was rife with such talk and I drank it all in. If it's presented in a straightforward manner, people will instantly believe.

Science today tells us that most people’s organs would be liquified if they tried to accelerate out into the planetary orbit. Well good thing they invented the Corvala Anti-Gravity Pump or the Gravtic Analysier or the Spacio-Cotray Junction, all of which allows people to zip away into space. Try it out. Make up your own. If you get stuck, take a current product and make an anagram of that. You will surprise yourself with what you can come up with.

THE INS AND OUTS OF DIALECT

By Sharon May

So you are interested in dialect. You must be one of those writer fellers, trying to figure people out so you can create a believable character. Using a dialect is a great tool for making characters different from each other. Writers often spell words phonetically to capture the pacing and cadence of a character’s speech or thinking. This is generally what we think of when we say dialect. But remember vocabulary builds dialect too.

The use of dialect by American authors primarily came out of the Realistic period, particularly the Regionalism movement in the late 19^th century. Realists were dead set to record to the nth degree how a person spoke. At times, these writers were indeed making fun of the characters who were markedly different from themselves. “Funny” spellings and enunciation, miscommunications, and misunderstandings added humor. Think of the Northerner in the south in the 1800s.

I come from a region known for its mountain speech. Some folk say its roots are in Elizabethan English. That’s them people who believe it has some linguistic worth. Then there’s folks who make fun of hillbilly speech. “You talk funny,” “What’d you say?” or “Where you from?” are their usual responses when we open our mouths. They think we are dumb, stupid, ignorant, uneducated just because of our dialect. Ironically, we have lots to say about their dialect too, but they are so egotistical or ignorant they think they don’t have a dialect. Remember, everyone has one, some closer to Standard English than others. If you use the dialect of one character, why not depict the dialects of all characters?

Don’t use dialect in a way that insults a character. I write mostly in Appalachian dialect, particularly that of the hills of Eastern Kentucky. Yes, each region of Appalachia does have its own dialect. I don’t use phonetic spellings because they tend to dumb down the characters, making them appear less educated and less intelligent than they really are. I’ve known lots of very smart hillbillies who couldn’t come close to speaking the King’s English if they tried. If your point in using dialect is to dumb down a character, you might want to find another way to depict intelligence rather than risk insulting readers who speak that dialect too.

Also, make sure you actually understand the grammar of the dialect you are working with. If you don’t speak the dialect you plan to depict, then study it first. Additionally, you have to decide if it is important to be realistic with phonetic spellings even if they confuse your audience. Think James Joyce or William Faulkner.

Know the purpose of using a dialect before you start. Some writers of disenfranchised groups use dialect to mark separation from mainstream society and to explore their heritage. This use of dialect is related to theme, a purpose the reader can understand. Dialect for showmanship may be interesting, but may lead the writer down the primrose path.

The FEAR of WRITING: Three tips to overcome the beast

By Jodie Cain Smith

I believe fear is healthy, for the most part. Fear prevents us from petting poisonous snakes, hugging sharks, and driving blindfolded over bridges. Fear tells us to read the expiration date on the milk carton and to put down the big, metal stick in the middle of a thunderstorm. Any fear that keeps me alive, physically intact, and free of food poisoning, I’m a’keepin’. However, one fear I must get rid of is the fear of writing.

What? Wait. Fear of writing? That’s dumb. Yes, yes it is, but it is an emotion I’ve experienced quite a bit recently.

My fear song plays out like this:  I get an awesome idea, a premise that sucks me in. For a couple of days I bask in my brilliance. I research the heck out of it, ensuring every detail is accurate, plausible. I imagine the cast of characters and setting. After all of this, there is only one thing left to do – write the story. This is when fear grips my throat and the lightning that is anxiety pulses through my veins. My idea is too complex. My writing game is subpar. If I attempt to write this and fail, my whole career is over. My fraud as a writer (yep, we all feel this at some point) will be revealed.

Over the course of the last three months, as I have pushed to finish two current projects, I’ve experienced this fear time and again. Through this experience, I was forced to design ways beyond it because, well, my fear of failure beats all other fears. So, if you find yourself in a secluded corner hiding under a blanket sure that the blank screen boogeyman is coming for you, here are a few defenses I have deployed to beat the monster that is performance anxiety. (Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about writing, perv.)

1. Listen to your character even if that little tramp has ideas that in no way fit into your original plot scheme. It’s her story. Let her be a part of it. Let her tell it.

2. Just write. Everyday. (Well, at least Monday through Friday. Even creative genius needs a day off.) If the words are awful, write them anyway. Tomorrow is for fixing. Today we write!

3. Don’t be afraid to abandon a story and move on to a new one. They’re not all winners. Sometimes “killing your darlings” means abandoning the whole thing.

Now, don’t we all feel better? And, no one had to pay a therapist.