Pleased to meet you, ma’am.

When a character first makes an appearance in a story, the writer really ought to call upon good manners and introduce the character to the reader. It’s awkward when a stranger appears in a small gathering and, while everyone else seems to know her and interact easily, I’m distracted from the action, trying to figure out who she is.

If she’s going to be around a lot, I’d like a memorable introduction, something that makes her stand out so I’ll recognize her when we meet again. If she’s a minor player, it helps if the meeting is in keeping with her role in the story, either by putting her in a setting where her role is obvious or by explaining. For example, in a scene with a man in a restaurant, you might have the new character come in with a tray of coffee. Readers will understand that she’s some kind of server. However, if she’s not, her role or relationship should be explained so the reader won't be jarred later when the impression is corrected. Elwood continued to read as his niece  Leona came in with a cup of tea. Otherwise, if, in the middle of a scene, Leona comes in and spills tea or starts talking, the reader will be thumbing back through the pages trying to figure out who Leona is. It’s jarring.

What do you think? Does it bother you when someone walks in and you have no idea who he or she is or why they're there? Do you have any memorable examples?

Incidental Characters and Walk-Ons

Incidental characters are like walk-ons in a play—they enter, perform some brief action, and then exit. Walk-ons aren't in the story long enough to develop character or, in many cases, to have names.  But the reader must be able to distinguish one from another, so the writer often gives them physical characteristics or mannerisms that can be described in a few words for a quick reference.

For example, the hero might be stuck in a grocery store line behind a bubbly girl who's chatting with the cashier, a tall, thin fellow. After the reader has "seen" them, if the hero is talking or thinking about them, he might begin referring to them as Bubbles and Stretch. This gives the reader a much better picture than repeating the girl and the boy. It also helps the reader identify them, especially when the walk-ons are the same sex: the first girl with a phone, the second girl with a yellow bag, the girl at the cash register, the girl in the line. 

Give these characters some feature that can be described simply: one might have impossibly red hair (the red queen), another might wear a hat (blue hat) or have brown eyes. An lumpy-looking, deeply tanned character might remind the point-of-view character of a twice-baked potato and become “the potato” in future references.

Limit these names to characters who are involved in enough action that they need to be distinguishable and whose names would not naturally be given. Too much of a good thing isn't always wonderful.

If this sounds like a lecture, it's because it is. :) It's from one of my classes. I love to hear what you think. Any ideas or suggestions? Examples, good or bad?

Resolution: Nap More?

The Answer--Napping

New Year’s Day, and what are my resolutions? Only one I’ll seriously work at. That’s to organize my time better so I can write regularly. It seems to me that having a consistent time every day trains your brain. After a few days, things start to flow more easily at that hour. Since I’m a morning person, I’ll wake up thinking about the book. If I can write for an hour or so every day before work, I can probably keep it going and get a little more done at lunch. Not much in one day, I know, but it adds up. And then there are weekends. Maybe a little time out for this blog and Facebook, but once I’m into a story, the words come more easily. It sort of runs through my head in the background, like a softly playing radio.



Young Winston



When I write, I see the scenes like a movie. Directing’s kind of fun. If it’s not working, I can have the characters do it again another way.

What I really want is to get more out of each day, but how? Winston Churchill, whom I admire tremendously, took a short nap every day and found it refreshed him so much he could accomplish almost two days work in one. That’s an idea worth trying. But when to work in the nap? I have a friend who naps for thirty minutes after supper, and then he’s good for another four or five hours. I’d have to set a mighty alarm to wake up that soon, but maybe I’ll try it. On a Friday, so if it doesn’t work as I hope, I’d have a day to recover. That’s my only idea. Have any to share?

My friend Maryn Sinclair is a nighthawk. She’s sharp and thoughtful late in the day and likes working into the wee hours. (Must be a good plan—her sizzling new book is coming out from Loose Id this spring.) I don't think she naps at all.

After dark I’m more like a denizen of Helm’s Deep. Of course, Aragorn could probably wake me up.

How do you do it? Any magic formulas?

Those Deadly Pronouns

The use of pronouns came up on a list I read. As always, they’re viewed with mixed opinions. My main concern is that the antecedent be clear. I really hate to stop and have to figure it out or wonder who “she” is.

Overuse of proper names is equally distracting. You just have to read your work carefully and make sure it’s clear. If not, look for an interesting way to fix it.

When two or more persons of the same sex are present in a scene, the pronouns are difficult. Try to use descriptions to identify people or use the names more often. The tired waitress, the frazzled customer, the girl. Use dialogue instead of narrative so it’s clear who’s doing what. Review scenes with a number of hes or shes and see if the writing can be made clearer and more vivid at the same time.

Pronouns modify the last stated noun. Example: I found a book in the store. It was old. This sentence means the store was old, not the book, because store was the last stated noun. Use care with pronouns.

Personal pronouns modify the last stated name. Be certain pronouns modify the intended proper noun. Joe and Bill raced around the track. He longed to leave him in the dust. Technically, this means Bill yearned to leave Joe, but the reader may have doubts, and it may not be what the writer intended. Try being a little more creative. Bill’s big Nikes kicked dust in Joe’s face. Joe hated coming in second—he yearned to leave the older boy in the dust, and one day he would. The context makes this clear, even with all the pronouns.

What are your pet peeves on pronouns? Do you have any good examples?

Celestial Events? Not.

Eclipse of the Moon, image credit David Lee, NRC--
no, I didnt' see it.

The number of times I’ve left my warm bed at some wee hour to witness a celestial event . . . well, more than I care to count. Last night was typical—solid cloud cover, not a glimpse of the eclipse. My alarm went off at 2 and I grabbed coat, camera, and binoculars and went outside to a starless, moonless fuzzy sky. At about 2:30, without seeing a flicker of anything interesting, I caved. I did get a picture of the sky (lightened as much as Picasa allows) and a shaky picture of my neighbor’s Christmas lights.

Neighbor's Christmas Lights

I’ve spent hours lying on my back in a cemetery, watching clouds in the dark of night. Sometimes all I get is bug bites or frostbite. I am not lucky in these matters. A few years ago, a friend and I drove into the mountains looking for a dark spot to watch the Leonids. We took the inevitable  thermos of hot chocolate, a couple of lap robes, and wandered around till we found a dirt road leading into a dark field. After we’d sat in the car for an hour, a fist knocked on the car window--some guy with a gun over his shoulder wanted to know if we had a problem. After we wiped up the chocolate that went all over the blankets, we explained about the meteor shower (news to him). He seemed skeptical but left, back to his warm bed no doubt. For our sins, we saw lots of clouds. Not a single shooting star.

When my son was small, there was a time with lots of reports of UFOs in the area. He and I got up at two and sat in the back watching for them. We lit three candles, hoping to entice them to our yard, which wasn’t that big—certainly not big enough for the mothership, but we thought maybe a scouting party in a smaller craft might come by. After a while, Johnny suggested food. They might like cookies, he said, only we didn’t have any. All we found were saltine crackers, but he added a glass of tea. The aliens never showed.

My usual view

That was long ago, but I’m an optimist, at least about some things. So I woke my grandchildren and two dogs in the middle of the night, and, miracle of miracles, my husband, and set out on another celestial hunt. It was freezing cold, but we had hot chocolate and blankets, drove into the mountains, and spread out on the ground. We saw maybe three shooting stars.

The most (and possibly only) successful night came when Hale-Bopp passed over the mountains around Clyde. I drove out with my cat in the car (what can I say? I like company), found a dark mountaintop, and waited. And there it was, right on time, right where it was supposed to be. I even have pictures, if I could find them.

Really, the return on investment is out there with sending query letters.

                                                 

So, what are you doing January 3?

2011 Meteor Showers,

The next meteor shower is the Quadrantids on the night of January 3. The shower has a sharp but brief peak, with few meteors on the nights before and after. The Moon is new, so it won’t interfere with the shower’s fireworks.

Name / Date of Peak/ Moon

Quadrantids/ night of January 3/ New

Lyrids/ night of April 21/ Rises after midnight

Eta Aquarids/ night of May 5/ Sets in early evening

Perseids/ night of August 13/ Full

Draconids/ night of October 8/ Sets around midnight

Orionids/ night of October 21/ Rises after midnight

Leonids/ night of November 17/ Rises around midnight

Geminids/ night of December 13/ Just past full

NOTES These are approximate times for the Lower 48 states; actual shower times can vary. Bright moonlight makes it difficult to see all but the brightest meteors.

Rules or No Rules?

A few truths pop up in most commercial fiction. Does that make it formulaic? I don’t think so. People read fiction for entertainment or escape. Happily-ever-afters make me happy. Life has enough tragedies—I don’t need any more. Crime fiction does have some bad scenes and a few murders; but the main characters usually win in the end, and the bad guys get what they deserve, so it’s satisfying.

What about the “rules”? Don’t kill children or dogs, at least not if they’re major characters, and definitely not “on-screen.” That’s an understandable guideline, one that suits me. A child murder in backstory is usually acceptable though, something that happened before the main story begins and is only referred to, not seen.

Rules are only guidelines, and they shouldn’t stifle creativity. Sometimes they even make you stretch to come up with an interesting twist on an old theme.

Rules can always be broken, and it’s easy to come up with successful examples, but seriously breaking them makes the book a harder sell, particularly if you’re not an established writer. The rules are there for a reason—they’re proven to make books more interesting and help them sell. But it’s still tough sometimes.

What do you think? Do you find them constraining? Do you ignore them or try to work with them?

Clowns—no, it’s not about politics

It’s about the papier-mâché clowns I used to make. Most of them became lamps, and they all found homes. Papier-mâché means chewed paper, but I wasn’t that authentic. They were entirely handmade though. I made coat-hanger frames, tore newspaper into small pieces, and soaked it in a mixture of flour, water, and Elmer’s glue. Each clown took close to 40 hours to make , counting the drying time. The clothes were paper too. The oven was always on and steaming. Definitely a winter event. But it was fun. It did destroy the kitchen while I was doing it though. I can’t even write on a computer and be neat. My kitchen table was under this mess for weeks at a time.

The clowns were unique and most represented something or were doing something, such as napping. One was a boxer, one a cowboy, a baseball player, but all had clown faces and feet.

Later I tried using dolls for the base to save time, but they weren’t as interesting.

All this was many years ago, when our son was in middle school. One day he asked if I could pretend to be normal for a while and bake cookies or something that smelled good instead of paper. Since then we’ve come to appreciate that neither of us will ever be “normal.” He’s a musician, so he can’t say much.  

From now until Thanksgiving, I doubt if I’ll get any writing done. Maybe I’ll post about cooking—it’s better than cleaning.  I’d like to paint a couple of rooms, but I doubt I’ll have time. I don’t want just plain color, I want faux finishes. Nothing’s ever simple.

What do you do? Do you cultivate messy, impractical activities?