Marjorie Johnson, standing at far left, reads to the workshop from her book, All About Animals, which she compiled for the Friends of Cedaredge Animal Control

The workshop was filled to capacity and beyond both Saturdays. Carole spoke on the first Saturday about writing and self publishing and Betty McKinney spoke about submitting manuscripts.

This last Saturday, the second of the event, once again found overflow crowds. I spoke about marketing on the Internet, and intend to put the information in my presentation into posts here. This was followed by a panel discussion (I was on the panel), and the afternoon saw a reading by 20 local authors (including me) and the opportunity to sell books (I sold 16). I also donated a copy each of Broom 1 and Broom 2 to the Montrose Public Library, so stop by and check one out!

My many thanks to Carole for organizing the event!

Your outline (you do have an outline, don’t you?) says that Jack, Mary, and Jane meet each other at the Post Office. Jane is excited about her new movie role. Mary is upset because she didn’t get the role. Jack is courting Mary, so wants to advocate for her. The scene begins stiffly as Mary offers her grudging congratulations to Jane. Jack tells Mary she should’ve had the role. Mary starts to cry. Jane, embarrassed, tries to leave but Jack starts explaining why Mary should’ve won.

Okay, how can you describe this? I can think of three ways. You may think of several more (if so, please comment and describe them). First, you can play the scene live. You set the scene and record each line of dialog just as it was spoken. Second, you can summarize the scene with exposition. Third, you can have a character describe what he or she remembers; in fact, this could be interesting. Each character can remember it differently.

We’re usually tempted with option 1. Spell it out. Lay on the dialog. Create the dramatic tension. Make Mary angry. Jane looks for an exit. Jack is assertive.

Jane jumped when she saw Jack and Mary in line behind her. The noisy Post Office lobby was crowded with the lunchtime crowd.

“Well, I guess I should offer congratulations,” murmured Mary.

Jane knew how badly Mary wanted the role. And she needed the money, too.

“I’m sure you could’ve done as well,” said Jane, looking at her feet. “In fact, I’m surprised they didn’t pick you.”

“You’re right about that!” snapped Jack. Mary swiveled to face him. “Mary was made for the role. If you were any kind of friend, you’d go back and tell them Mary should have it.”

That’s certainly okay. And your readers expect crisp dialog (remember, every line of dialog should push the story along). But what if the things needing said make for an endless scene? The dialog above could stretch on for pages.

So you can try option 2.

Mary and Jack climbed the steps slowly as Jack reassured her that her audition was great and that the casting director was a biased, red-necked jerk. Without taking in their surroundings, they joined the long queue to see the lone clerk. But fate was not in their favor that day, as they found themselves in line behind Jane. The temperature dropped a good ten degrees. Mary blushed as she offered her reluctant congratulations, but Jack was intent on a scene. And a scene he got! Within 15 minutes, three burly policemen hustled a handcuffed, struggling Jack into a patrol car as both Jane and Mary stood crying.

Ok, so maybe you want a little bit of dialog, but the point is you can summarize when you need to.

Now here’s a third. I use this in About Dan (see here). I thought through the scene several ways and decided it would take too long to include all the dialog. And anyway I wanted to show Dan’s reaction. So we see the scene through Dan’s retelling to a rather skeptical friend.

“Well,” he began, “I decided I’d take Tania up on her offer.”

Peter groaned. “I was hoping you were joking!”

“I couldn’t think of a way out of it! I forgot all about it until after school today. Tania reminded me. She was talking so fast I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Then she ran off. I mean, she literally didn’t give me a chance to say no. She gave me a map with directions to her house and everything. She swore her brother and her folks would be there.”

Peter rolled his eyes. Jesse and Marilyn merely bent forward.

“She lives up in North Boulder, about a mile from my dad’s condo. It’s a nice neighborhood, you know, big houses and all. Her folks must be rich. The house has a circular drive. The grass is really neatly trimmed and there are flowers out already. They must have a gardener because everything looks so pretty–.”

“Moving right along,” said Peter.

“Yeah. Anyway, my first clue should have been there were no cars in the driveway. So I park right in front, on the circular drive. It’s just barely starting to snow. I ring the bell, but at first it seemed like no one is home…”

“So you left? Tell me you left right then!” interjected Peter.

“Shush, Peter!” said Marilyn. “He’s telling his story.”

“I think…” started Peter.

“Shush!”

“So, anyway, finally Tania comes to the door. She’s wearing a long gown of some sort, like a house dress. It covers her from her neck all the way down to her feet, with long arms. Maybe it was pajamas, I don’t know. It’s not what I expected. She invites me in.”

Peter closed his eyes in disbelief. “You went in,” he said quietly. Marilyn pushed Peter’s shoulder hard, knocking him over.

“Yes, I went in. The house is full of the smell of Mexican food. I was hungry, you know. Come to think of it, I’m still hungry. You’ll see why.”

That’s just an excerpt, but you get the idea. The bottom line is you have options. Mix them around to best effect.

When you think about your next novel, you start with a hazy picture in your mind. In fact, the conflict may be the first thing you see: a couple loses their only child because of a doctor’s (perceived) incompetence. With that you can construct characters. Clearly you need a man and a woman. And maybe a boy or girl. Oh, the doctor. Maybe a lawyer or two. Throw in a judge. Starting with the conflict opens up whole new vistas.

Ah, but perhaps you’re writing your next romance novel. The characters are standard: a (few) women and an irresistible man (or two). But hasn’t every possible romance novel been written? Hmph. You’re stumped for an appropriate conflict. After all, the whole point of a novel is to watch your characters interact as they deal with (and hopefully resolve) the conflict. Sometimes there are multiple levels of conflict. Perhaps the background setting is World War II—a gigantic conflict. Inside that might be a conflict between resistance groups in Vichy France. And so on. You can’t solve the WWII conundrum, but you can focus on your resistance fighters and (perhaps) keep them from killing each other (or worse, ratting them out to the Vichy government).

Here are a few ideas. As you read through these, think of more (and put them in a comment).

Between your character and him- or herself:

• Cancer
• A miscarriage
• Overcoming debilitating shyness
• …or a stutter
• A deep look into the character’s past
• Man vs Nature—plane crash or car wreck or sudden snowstorm while hiking, etc.
• Sudden change in circumstances (house burns down, husband dies, swindled)
• Finding religion
• Losing religion
• Mental illness (I know about this one: I’m bipolar)

Between two people:

• Two decent, honorable people who misunderstand each other’s intentions (crotchety old farmer vs up and coming real estate agent)
• Evading an assassin
• Being the assassin
• Stingy father vs vagrant son
• The usual marital problems, although this has probably been worked over pretty thoroughly
• Two middle-aged spinster sisters at each other because one thinks the other destroyed an opportunity for marriage
• All sorts of gay and lesbian stuff, although this is perhaps a little too politically correct these days. You need a twist. Instead of a college student coming home and outing himself to his parents, have the father out himself to the children while his wife struggles to keep the love they’ve developed during 25 years of marriage
• People operating on different information (the old proverbial blind men describing the elephant). Naturally, they have to work at cross purposes.
• Busybodies and gossips
• Ah, the root of all evil: the love of money! So wonderfully corrosive. Follow the relationship between a high-achieving father and his studious, contemplative son (or daughter).
• Here’s a topical one: an honest mutual fund manager finds himself inexorably drawn into creating a Ponzi scheme. (Madoff, move over!)
• A desperate government employee is driven to accept a bribe and someone blows the whistle

Mysteries (not my forte, but some possibilities):

• Four rather nasty kids stand to inherit millions. Which one killed Dad?
• An art theft (you’d better know your stuff for this one!)
• Police procedural: finding a gang member’s killer when your hero cop thinks the killer did the world a favor
• An old widow vs an identity thief

Now those above all deal pretty much with novels set in our time and day, but you can easily adapt them to fantasy:

• The starship discovers a new planet full of hostile and well-armed crazies
• The old witch casts an evil spell on the young prince
• A mystery disease slowly turns people green
• Suddenly no one on the planet can have a child and everyone grows too old to care for themselves
• White supremacists succeed in taking over Idaho and keep the Federal forces at bay
• A woman that our hero killed comes back as a ghost and taunts him into madness
• War in the heavens: the angels revolt! (Check Revelations 12:7 for this one).
• A child leads armored knights into battle and outwits the evil King Gruesome
• The King wants his second son to have the throne and tries to kill his firstborn (and the firstborn is already scheming to off his brother and his old man)

It goes on, doesn’t it! Pick a few and jot down what characters you might need to make the conflict really sizzle.

What might not work? Here are some possibilities: A character is out of character, for example old miser Don suddenly becomes a delightful counselor and a shoulder to lean on. That doesn’t work. Maybe the setting is wrong: you want a sunset on the beach but your story is set on the East Coast. Or your hero, who has a serious heart condition, is throwing things in a screaming rage, but his heart attack doesn’t come for another 100 pages.

If you keep honing that scene you’ll get an ever-more lovely description of a scene that doesn’t work. Poetic even! To make the scene work, you may need to try something entirely different.

If you’re writing in the first person, you have to view the scene through the narrator’s eyes, ears, nose, etc. This limits your options somewhat. But…give your character the stomach flu. Your poor, miserable narrator will certainly garble the scene, giving you some liberty to sneak in a necessary plot element that your narrator is too sick to understand. Or, instead of sitting in the narrator’s head during the difficulties, let the narrator sum things up afterwards. Or maybe your narrator isn’t even there; she hears about the blow-up via a friend. Or reads it in the newspaper. Or on a blog. The difficulty you had forcing the plot now becomes much simpler.

These days, writing in the third person omniscient voice isn’t used much. If you’re using it, you must describe things as they really were, plus your reader is expecting you to reveal every character’s thoughts. But, more commonly, the third person voice is a “close” third person, meaning you follow one character and generally reveal what he’s thinking without getting into the minds of the others too much. If this isn’t working for you, try switching into another character’s mind. Perhaps this new character gives you a better point of view to explain the scene. Or, let your character sum up the (unseen) meeting to a friend over dinner—this way you can add some errors in description because your character’s memory is fallible.

There are other possibilities. Is a key character defined improperly? I ran into this problem in the third Flying Broomstick book with Reggie Baker, a character who’s never seen because he died before the narrative starts. When I began writing he was a retired Oxford history professor. But…certain scenes cried for something different, so I made him an M.D. with a military background. This sharpened the narrative, so I went with the flow and rejiggered his backstory. End of problem.

Or, perhaps one of your characters should really be two characters? Perhaps instead of Don the Miser as the bank manager, you ought to let Don go live in a cabin in the woods and create Inholst Sheridan, a haughty dude with an affected English accent (even though you know him to be descended from Mayflower stock). Ooh…we have a delicious character here, proud to a fault, perhaps hiding his failed career as a New York securities lawyer. I can just see Sheridan creating all sorts of mayhem: Fraud? Usury? Theft? A suspiciously missing wife?

You might go the opposite way and combine two characters who ended up having the same worldview. Sure, one’s a Harvard graduate and the other’s a trash collector, but if they’re contributing about the same thing to the story, dump one and keep the other, who might now have only a community college degree and really can’t read all that well.

You could also change the setting. Let the electricity fail for a moment. There’s a bit of confusion, and when the lights come on only a few seconds later, one of your characters is clear across the room, notably closer to Countess Daviess’s purse. Or, if they’re on that beach enjoying the sunset, let it rain! Let the wind blow! Or, if you’re all gathered at the decedent’s home, perhaps someone rummaging in the fridge can uncover a handwritten will with no date.

Remember: If you keep trying the same things harder, you’ll get more of the same results. You’ve got to do something different. Perhaps some of these ideas will help.

The way I know it is that I write out a complete bio for each of my major characters. In fact, I do the bios before I finalize the plot! Why?

To me a novel is a story about people and how they change under stressful circumstances. I have a vague plot line in mind. I make a list of characters that might figure in the story and give them each a biography. Where they grew up. How old they are. Where they went to school. What their favorite color is. All that sort of thing. As I do this, these characters become real to me.

The point of all this is that I throw these characters into my plot outline to see how they behave. Each character is different, and each must behave differently in the book. How will I know how to make them behave if I don’t already know them exceedingly well? The answer, of course, is that I can’t unless I’ve studied each one and tried to crawl inside his or her head.

Reggie Baker, a major character in Broom 3 (although dead), went to school at Eton and Cambridge. He retired as a history professor at one of the colleges at Oxford.

Again, none of this is mentioned. But it does give me a feeling that he was quite intellectual. As I wrote the book, I changed his background to Sandhurst, service in India and Singapore, all as an MD. Why? Because as I got to know him and his family, that seemed to fit better. It gives me a little twist on the plot–his wife dies of breast cancer that he himself didn’t catch in time, and he blames himself for this (and so do others). But I couldn’t have done that had I not thought about him before.

In a future post I’ll talk about how a character’s reaction to circumstances can cause change (and sometimes even growth).