Think like a Bird?

Once a young marsh hawk apparently considered an open garage part of the skyline and flew inside, perching on the metal rafters controlling the sliding door. Fine. Until it couldn’t escape. The woman, nature lover that she was, told the neighbors she’d free it right away. No problem.

First at the front door, then just inside, then closer to the rear, she offered the bird raw hamburger, cooked hamburger, a chicken leg, canned and dry cat food. No dice.

Still undaunted, she got a broom and gently chased the confused stranger toward the front. Over and over it flew maniacally forward, only to reclaim its original post. She became increasingly afraid—she and the hawk both. It clung, fluttering frantically, piteously opening its golden beak to emit silent cries more taxing than a howl ever could be.

The bird had done her in. Or had it? “Think like a bird,” she chided. “Think like a bird,” she barked and began searching the yard for a something natural enough to represent escape. The woman took her time arranging the branch, altering its position, attaching more sticks, setting it up to imitate exactly what it was supposed to be. And, lo, this time when the broom urged the prisoner forward, the raptor found the tree, hesitated, circling for relentless moments until its back leg briefly touched the tip of the facsimile tree and it zoomed away.

For novelists, it doesn’t matter that this woman sank to the driveway gravel and wept for some time. It matters that she thought like a bird.

Tip: Enter the mind of every living being in your novel, whether child, wizard, cat, or grandpa.

After all, if you want every character to feel real for readers, first every character must feel completely real to you. In a short story titled “The Remobilization of Jacob Horner,” John Barth wrote: “In life there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction and biography, and most historiography, is a lie. Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”

Your story or novel should have neither characters too minor for dimension, nor snapshots that reduce some players to heroes, others to reprobates or scoundrels. 

How do you think like each of your characters?

~ Explore desire.

Nothing reveals a person (or a bird) as well as a burning obsession to change the

external or internal territory.

~ Brainstorm.

Let your subconscious roam free. How are you like a goat? A chancellor? A seer?

~Cheat a bit. 

For a while, choose a hat to wear each time you switch to a different head.

~Empathize deeply.

Use your own emotions, uncomfortable or embarrassing as that perhaps seems.

“Take Your Characters to Dinner.”

Mentally interact with them outside the format of your story.

You needn’t rescue a hawk, or, before the last page, anyone else. But your readers expect that if you include one in your book, at least epiphany occurs, you penetrated that avian mind.

What Can Dogs Teach Novelists?

Most of us love dogs for attributes equally delightful in fiction writers. It’s easy to love someone who only wants to please, who would do most anything for most anyone. Novelist Nora Roberts claims that “Everything I know, I learned from dogs.” Perhaps not, but here are some canine secrets, anyway:

~ Tenderness

Charles Baxter was 100 % correct when he observed that “Hell is story friendly.” Kindness to readers involves unkindness to characters—often and viciously. This doesn’t mean that writers are cruel-hearted. If you want readers to bleed emotionally over these beings you’ve sent into their lives, the creator of those characters must bleed emotionally as well. 

This discomfort comes in two flavors. It’s painful to watch your good guys in trouble, yet also painful to sorrow over the pain your villains bring on themselves. Whenever this seems unendurable, contemplate the stoicism of dogs.

~ Loyalty

Even if punished, banished, struck repeatedly with a rolled up newspaper, they never give up on those they love. Don’t give up on your characters, however confusing, exhausting, or mortifying Don’t give up on making your novel everything it could be, either—no matter how many years that takes.

~ Passion

Consider how canines greet other canines, not to mention live or dead anything-in-motion, and definitely not food. Food!!! Everything, then, is delicious, captivating, magnetizing, and always new. What a terrific way to move through the world. What an even more terrific way to write about the world. Invite passion, whether about storms, ice hockey, or the bulging contours of a ripe tomato. There’s no better antidote for dismissing boredom, in your readers or yourself.

~ Shamelessness

Yes, naughty dogs droop their necks so they can look abjectly at you through half-raised eyes. It’s mostly show, however. Reach your hand down for a forgiving pat, and all’s forgotten. The next hamburger at the edge of the table will meet the same fate as those preceding it. You left it there. Do you truly expect the dog to ignore it?

“Dogs act exactly the way we would act if we had no shame,” Cynthia Heimel believes, and shame has no place in the novelist’s toolkit. Dogs teach us that having sex with strangers in broad daylight is no cause for chagrin. Neither is sniffing the foulest leavings that came from the foulest places. Don’t disrobe in public or play in the cat box. Please. Do probe humanity’s darkest places. That includes your own history, your own heart.

Tip: Dogs can be role models for the treatment of characters—and readers. 

Here’s Charles M. Schulz about being too hard on yourself: “All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog.”

What Can Cats Teach Novelists?

Cat tales arrive as Puss in Boots or Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat, along with a presence in romance, mystery, fantasy, and mainstream. This collection purrs, speaks, intimidates, and remains aloof. But do the cats teach? As they themselves might say, this depends on how you look at it.

Cats either represent or illustrate attributes useful to every novelist:

~ Curiosity 

If there’s a box—they’ll test it; a drape—they’ll climb it; a noisy thing that moves—they’ll chase. While their owners prefer to have the drapes left alone, as a novelist, it’s a fine idea to contemplate everything. And then? Catlike, you decide it isn’t actually all that interesting and move on to the next possibility. What better way to uncover the ultimate entertainment? What better way to discover what’s worth pursuing?

~ Mystery

Part of feline wisdom is awareness that everything’s rich with possibility, potential hiding places, and relentless struggle between predator and prey. Have you left enough to your reader’s impressive imagination? Do your characters reveal what you never consciously imagined? Does your plot surprise? As the great mystery master confessed, “I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.” - Edgar Allan Poe

~ Solitude

Critique groups and writing partners are great: they provide the objective feedback every novelist needs. In the end, though, it’s just you and a blank sheet or screen. Cats understand that many magical moments occur alone, in covert crannies where no distraction can touch you. It’s just you and your own world, whether that’s beside the fireplace, under a blanket, or inside the one your own mind created.

~ Patience

The scent of a mouse, however long-gone, can keep a crouched cat eyeing the tempting territory for hours, returning to check over and over. After all, anything there once could return!  Tenacity helps you continue revising until the page does what you intend—no matter how long this takes. Tenacity fortifies through the long process of completing a novel that meets very high standards. The kind cats would impose if they chose to read.

~ Sensuality

When fiction works, it’s as luxurious as a cat stretched full-length, purring softly because its this moment offers the perfection every cat expects as an inherent birthright. If novels aren’t sensual, what are they for?

Cats charm not only as companions, but as symbols. Inscrutable and self-contained, yet within reach. As Ray Bradbury observed, “That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.”

Tip: Not every novelist needs a cat. But every novelist needs the best qualities of cats.

Taste the Sauce

The best cooks know that a recipe is only the start. Unless you check the final blend of flavors, how will you know if that “pinch” of salt is heavy-handed or lightweight? What if the vinegar is less tangy than bitter, or the flavor of the pepper flimsy or fiery? 

Great cooking is an art. So is great writing. Every novelist can acquire hundreds of recipes for plot, dialogue, characterization—all the way down to the structure of the sentence. But don’t stop there.  

Tip: Recipes are an indispensable starting point, but you still have to adjust the seasoning.

Even the finest, most tried-and-true recipes won’t achieve the following without your personal touch:

~ Plot that feels organic.

Hundreds of plot recipes exist, everything from the Aristotelian arc, to John Truby's 7 Key Steps, to Jack M. Bickham’s Scene and Sequel, to Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method. You can structure plot using templates, sequences, caves, psychological baggage, and pressure or plot points. The terminology differs. But all of these trace the movement from terrible trouble to some sort of climax, usually involving a happy ending, usually produced by the protagonist’s own choices and actions. 

You can construct a solid foundation using any one or any combination of these plotting options. In the end, though, a completely credible plot can emerge only from a completely causal one, where every choice inevitably results in the next outcome, right up to the end. 

Without that? It all feels at least slightly contrived. It’s not entirely believable, and not at all organic. You’re not done until you apply the taste test.

~ Dialogue that propels.

Consider all those dialogue “rules.” Never go too long without some dialogue breaking up the narrative; gradually build every exchange to a climax; insert speaker attribution or stage business every ____ number of lines, and so on.

But doesn’t every single dialogue exchange differ from every other? You can’t plan in advance when or how long characters will speak. Adhere too closely to any recipe or formula, and your dialogue won’t reflect character struggle authentically.

The best dialogue advice is fairly general. Sol Stein reminds of the need to give each character “a different script.” That will always summon a genuine exchange, as will this advice from Robert McKee:

Learn to judge you dialogue by listening past the words and sensing the harmony or disharmony between cause and effect. Dialogue rings true when a character’s verbal actions resonate with his motivation, when his inner desires and outer tactics seem to complement each other.

~ Characters that breathe.

Whether Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet, or Toni Morrison’s Sula, no single technique evokes emotion in every reader. The further you stray from prescriptive methods that tend to oversimplify, then the happier your readers will be. 

For example, Dara Marks is absolutely right that the past controls us. Her title, “The Fatal Flaw - The Most Essential Element for Bringing Characters to Life,” offers an excellent recipe. Yet it’s neither the ultimate one, nor the only route to creating character arc. The observation by Heraclitus that “Character is fate” is another recipe, but again, one among the many, many ways to develop complex character and plot. You’re not done until, like a great chef, you add the personal touch.

Want to cook up a great novel? Read a lot of writing recipes. Familiarize yourself with those suitable to you, and you’ll make the place where you create a comfortable and stimulating hangout. 

But not everyone enjoys the same dinner. Or novel. As you put the finishing touches on an offering that’s entirely your own, picture whom you’re serving. That’s the way to perfect the seasoning.

Hush, or Understatement, Subtext, and Whispering

Let’s start with a picture. After all, aren’t novels one picture after another of characters—both inside and out?

What do you see? This Bernini sculpture, which you can view in Rome’s elaborately decorated Santa Maria della Vittoria Church, has a story behind it.

The title, “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” clarifies that it’s a male angel, and that his hand, yes, indeed, is exactly where we suspected but were reluctant to admit. Is the angel really doing that? Yes.

Here’s a closer look. 

What captures the ecstasy? The Saint’s flung-back head, the arched body, the open mouth, the foot bodiless enough to seem devoid of bones. The sculpture melds earth and heaven—keen awareness of body with the ultimate transcendence of it. The sculpture conveys all this with such subtlety that without the tantalizing suggestion, much of this might go unnoticed. What a terrific recipe for fiction.

Tip: The more readers discover emotion, rather than being bludgeoned with it, the happier they'll be.

How does that work?

~ Understatement.

Intense emotion, such as tragedy, disaster, euphoria, or ecstasy needs implication. Because readers already know how they feel about such events. The more you “tell” them then, particularly with judgments like “horrible,” “painful,” “terrifying,” or joyous,” then the less readers can feel what they already do without your help. Abstract words, especially over-used ones, separate readers from plot, much the way adding the word “rapturous” to Bernini’s title would only interfere. Just as he uses the subtle folds of the marble—and what that implies—to make his point, use the events—not the descriptions—in your novel to make yours.

~ Subtext.

Literally what’s “beneath the words,” subtext involves what characters say indirectly.  A wife reluctant to confront her husband overtly might observe, “You needed another fishing rod?” A father might freak at his daughter’s low-cut, skin-tight tank top, and mutter, “Is that all you’re wearing? “Meaning implied but never vocalized both mimics real-life interaction and leaves readers free to interpret. This resembles the way one can scrutinize Bernini’s sculpture and infer the feelings of the angel and the saint.

~ Whispering.

With rare exceptions, the more intense the emotion, then the more subtly and quietly you ought to describe it. Defy this rule of both craft and psychology, and the likely result is melodrama, or a portrayal that feels sensational rather than emotionally gripping. Neither reader nor writer wants a novel to read like a tabloid.

How do you whisper? 

• Use concrete language that evokes one of the five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, or smell.
• Avoid judgmental conclusions like “anguished,” “devastated,” or “heart-stopping.”
• Focus more on what happens than how scary or wonderful or terrific it is.

Here’s the ultimate understatement: trust your audience. Bernini did.

Wrong Turn, Right Result

Maybe you were booked for Capri and wound up on the Amalfi Coast instead. 

Or perhaps a visit to the Uffizi paintings became a tour of Renaissance Florence. You could fret, weep, or storm. But wouldn’t you rather appreciate what turned out, instead of what you planned?

You could be pleasantly surprised. This pertains to fiction, as well.

~ Wrong Turn with Your Characters

Don’t save every minor character you introduced just because they’re now “alive.”

Do seek ways to make three minor characters into one. 

Do add unexpected discoveries, which are nearly always the best ones. Did you accidentally discover that your Georgina enjoys Brussel Sprouts or Latin dancing? Who knew that Hector excels at chess, Judo, or solving the Rubric Cube?

~ Wrong Turn with Your Plot

Don’t keep broadening or, worse, repeating.

Do dig deeper. There’s no better antidote for nothing happening. Seek innovative solutions to stagnation. This might be another source of tension (as opposed to yet another character), or what Noah Lukeman calls “a ticking clock,” or an archetypal struggle, such as honor versus expediency.

Do think in terms of causality. How does this event or emotion yield? If your protagonist refuses to confront another character about betrayal, what is the result? And, as Don Maass instructs, avoid picking the first possibility that comes to mind. It comes first to everyone else’s mind, too.

~ Wrong Turn with Point of View

Don’t jump on the easiest solution.

Do use physical behavior or setting to convey the character thoughts that go beyond the scope of your chosen perspective. You might look up how Edith Wharton accomplishes this at the beginning of “The House of Mirth.”

Do pursue an alternative direction. What’s another way to communicate what your point of view can’t legitimately capture?

~ Wrong Turn with a Scene’s Opening

Don’t follow Alice into a nightmarish Wonderland just because you started that way.

Do start every scene with a hook. That’s a great way to know where you’re going before you get too far.

Do start the scene later. You’ll often speed momentum and raise tension by deleting the first few paragraphs.

Do experiment with variations. How else could this happen? Again, focus on cause and effect.

~ Wrong Turn with an Entire Scene

Don’t feel you should keep it just because you wrote it.

Do look for opportunities to collapse entire scenes into a paragraph or so of summary. When you do that, be concrete and explicit. Character emotions are a terrific way to collapse time, plot, or both.

Tip: Like most things in life, fiction benefits from making lemons into lemonade.

To Violate or Not to Violate

That’s the question for fiction writers. And it’s both complex and crucial. What we call "point of view violations" affect credibility and thus reader response from the first sentence to the last.

Tip: Anything perceived as a point of view violation is one, and anything not? Isn’t.

Individual readers will be more or less tolerant. But to avoid Hamlet’s indecision and the contamination of “something rotten" in the state of your fiction, accept that certain violations are just violations. If this seems harsh, I’m “cruel only to be kind.”  Watch out for these:

~ Switching from one point of view character to another without justification.

Most readers cheerfully accept consistent and graceful use of two or more perspectives. But abrupt or unwarranted shifts are impossible to hide: they feel like violations.

~ Using 3rd person (“he,” “she,” “it”) and first (“I”) interchangeably. 

Every reader will squirm at “Ali loved barns. I’d love to inhabit a converted one, she thought.” That second sentence requires italics or quotation marks. Better yet? The consistency of “Ali loved barns and dreamed of inhabiting a converted one.”

~ Offering inauthentic observations.

Characters can’t explain what they never saw, can’t possibly know, or wouldn’t admit.

But characters can guess. and readers delight in watching them do so. How does that work?

* Let characters infer from physical cues.

    If Marcy tells readers what Alain thinks, that's a violation. If Marcy observes that he draws close, pulls away, and repeats this over 

    and over, this is more an accurate assessment that he's ambivalent about kissing her than a violation.

* Clarify the distinction between narrator and character.

    Start a new paragraph. To make the shift from close to the character to further away, use a transition to bridge the gap. Here's an

    example:

        Sam hated snakes and knew that numerous species inhabited every continent.

       Kenya, where Sam was stationed, was home to five of the deadliest vipers in the world.

* Expand point of view restrictions consistently rather than inadvertently.

    Is whatever sleight of hand you want to execute legitimate? If so, make readers believe it.

In the end, point of view resembles every other aspect of fiction. Set things up meticulously, and you’ll surprise readers so much that you can get away with a lot.  Not everything, though.

Characters with Character

We call oddball eccentrics “characters.” Yet character is also the possession of attributes, often moral, and characters are the individuals enacting a plot. Compile all these definitions, and you get—story.

Story harnesses entertainment to make morality easier to swallow. Based on that, your characters need equal parts moral fiber and zany individuality.  Those are the building blocks for making characters more “real” than real people.

In The Art of Fiction, John Gardner reminds us that “The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.”  The more your plot delivers that, then the more complex emotions your readers will experience. So you need conflict—big conflict, even the danger is exclusively psychological.

Adversity tests a character’s character. Will you answer the quest? Continue despite seemingly insurmountable odds? Earn the love, happiness, respect, honor, or victory that the antagonist mercilessly struggles to rip from you?

Robert McKee has said that the pressure the antagonist exerts brings out the best in a character. It also brings out the best in the reader, who begins wondering, “Would I fight that hard?” “Are my own struggles as weighty as those the protagonist faces?” “How can I not feel empathy for a battle of this magnitude?” How come the great human issues never change?

Your readers respond that way because of the emotional, causal, and moral nature of fiction. As Robert McKee put it in Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting:

A character is no more a human being than the Venus de Milo is a real woman. A character is a work of art, a metaphor for human nature. We relate to characters as if they were real, but they're superior to reality. Their aspects are designed to be clear and knowable; whereas our fellow humans are difficult to understand, if not enigmatic. We know characters better than we know our friends because a character is eternal and unchanging, while people shift - just when we think we understand them, we don't.

Creating characters who are metaphorical works of art is a tall order. What makes that happen?

~ Breed empathy.

Your antagonist(s) can help.

~ Emphasize resilience.

            Who loves a whiner?

~ Celebrate morality.

Life is unfair. Should fiction be?

~ Liberate your characters.

            Unless you set them free, how can they surprise you or anyone else?

Tip: Don’t just incorporate tension. Use it to reveal and build character.

The Kingdom of the Narrator

When someone says, “Tell me a story,” is it “tell,” “show,” or both?  And who delivers that story to children aged one to one hundred? The narrator, of course. Who, of course, sometimes “tells.”

It matters only to novelists, but the combination of characters and narrator keeps readers satisfied. Yet narrators often lapse into “telling,” which is indeed a terrible thing.

What’s a novelist to do? Accept that like any good character, the narrator has flaws and assets. In this sense, omitting essential narration is like refusing to grow roses because they have thorns. Your clumsy movements won’t hurt you, but so much gets lost. So much. Because the narrator contributes everything that characters can’t provide, essentials like:

~ Straightforwardness.

            Characters rarely tell it like it is. They rely on the narrator to do it for them.

~ Segue way.

Fiction jumps around. Readers can’t follow unless someone offers transitions for time, place, and focus. That someone is the narrator.

~ Significance.

            How can characters interpret what’s happening as it happens? That’s the narrator’s job.

~ Setting.

Characters know where they are. But like real people, characters don’t necessarily assess the environment or its impact. Don’t make readers miss out on that.

~ Secrets.

            If characters don’t know what they don’t know, how can they hide it from readers?

~ Synthesis.

            Characters are too busy thwarting obstacles to note how those interweave.

~ Synchronicity.

            Characters rarely look for the kinds of patterns that make novels cohere.

~ Symbolism.

To the character, a stain might just be a stain. The narrator, though, can suggest the meaning of this stain, or Soldier’s Moon, or chewed fingernail.

Tip: Don't let the narrator "tell" any more than necessary. Do let the narrator mortar the bricks the characters build. Novel readers need a narrator.

Oooh—Taboo: Rectitude versus Risk

Serious writers are usually seriously familiar with all the things they’re forbidden to do: Always “show.” Don’t let your character study herself in a mirror and report what she sees. Avoid anguish, yearning, stormy nights, flimsy nightwear, and rippling muscles. Never start a chapter with dialogue or a sentence with “and.”

Of course taboos originate with good reason. Members of a society agree that a particular behavior—even with language—is so sanctified or appalling that it’s forbidden. People don’t do it. Often, they won’t even mention it.

But what if you judiciously turn a prohibition on its head? One result is a fragrance from The House of Dana, marketed as “Tabu, the forbidden fragrance.” The ad showed a violinist interrupting his performance to bestow a passionate kiss on his accompanist. Pretty sexy, right? 

Follow every rule and you won’t evoke much passion. “She had provided her services as head librarian of the village for nearly five decades.” That’s very sound grammatically, but more fun to mock than to read.

Aside from the stiff formality unsuitable for contemporary fiction, there’s something tantalizing—for both author and reader—about breaking rules. Consider some of these.

~ Sentence fragments.

“It is possible to overuse the well-turned fragment …, but frags can also work beautifully to streamline narration, create clear images, and create tension as well as to vary the prose-line.” — Stephen King, On Writing

~ Weather.

Be careful. It’s easy to lapse into the painful personification of the smiling sun or the equally painful revisiting of the full moon, the rumbling thunder, the unforgiving sky. But make the familiar unfamiliar, and you have a warm, sunny winter day.

~ Dreams

This, too, is quite dangerous, and “It was only a dream” possibly unforgivable. But if a brief, vivid dream lyrically foreshadows, it can add texture, perhaps even humor, irony, or drama.

~ Backstory.

A little goes a long way. But none at all? That thins plot.

“Telling.”

            “Show everything” and it might never be clear where your 5000- page novel is set.

Exclamation points!!!

            This one’s for real. Don’t.

Tip: Know the rules so you can choose when to follow and when to flirt.

Taken by Surprise?

What astonishes you enough to stop and notice your world? It could be the ivy shadows on the bricks at dusk. Or a shining moment of generosity from your cheapskate brother. Or a hideous smirk of jealousy in this woman who’s always kind. 

Surprise happens when the outcome contradicts the assumptions or expectations. Who knew that evening light could make the house look so exquisite? Or that Mike could be so great, or Eve so naughty?

Aristotle said that “the secret to humor is surprise.” It’s also the secret to momentum. If readers can anticipate everything ahead, why continue reading?

Forward propulsion depends on wondering what happens next and worrying whether the character who magnetizes you will make the right choice. Surprise intensifies both wondering and worrying.

According to Dr. LeeAnn Renninger, co-author of Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected, “Research shows that surprise intensifies our emotions by about 400 percent, which explains why we love positive surprises and hate negative surprises.”

Whenever you astound your reader, you intensify emotion. Astound your character also ramps up emotional response, in turn, eliciting an even greater emotional response from the reader rooting for—or against—that character.

But why limit surprise to plot and characterization? Why not startle readers by planting it everywhere?  In your syntax, your imagery, what you omit and what you include.

For example, here’s Richard Powers from Galatea 2.2 on a highly advanced computer attempting to grasp human communication:

She balked at metaphor. I felt the annoyance of her weighted vectors as they readjusted themselves, trying to accommodate my latest caprice. You're hungry enough to eat a horse. A word from a friend ties your stomach in knots. Embarrassment shrinks you, amazement strikes you dead. Wasn't the miracle enough? Why do humans need to say everything in speech’s stockhouse except what they mean?”

Ashwin Sanghi observes that “Surprise is when a prime minister is assassinated during his speech. Suspense is when an assassin lurks while the prime minister speaks. Balancing surprise and suspense is the job of the thriller writer.” Absolutely. Except that the principle applies not just to authors of thrillers but to every novelist.

In the reality, there’s no correlation between surprise and causality. In fiction, though, set up makes surprise plausible.  Prepare the stage for surprise so readers can simply enjoy that 400 % increase in emotion without feeling manipulated by the improbable, convenient, contrived, forced, or false.

Tip: Readers adore surprises, but only if they never feel like cheating.

Are You Omitting Someone from the Conversation?

Could be, unless both narrator and characters participate in dialogue. Why the narrator? Because despite substantial overlap in first person point of view, the narrator’s always a step ahead of the character. As storyteller, the narrator already knows the ending, and describes the trouble, rather than enduring it. Finally, the compassionate, insightful, charming, witty narrator can accomplish many things that characters can’t. Like speed up dialogue.

In rare instances, the tension soars and the dialogue is pitch-perfect. Then the narrator summarizing or describing would damage that white-hot pacing. Usually, though, you achieve optimal grounding, momentum, and insight when the narrator and characters create the illusion of conversation, which isn't much like an actual conversation. In this example from Saturday, Baxter and his accomplice Nigel hold an entire family hostage, including pregnant young Daisy:

Baxter puts his right hand in his pocket again.  “All right, all right,” he says querulously.  “I’ll kill you first.”  Then he brings his gaze back onto Daisy and repeats in exactly the same tone as before, “So, what’s your name then?”

          She steps clear of her mother and tells him.  Theo unfolds his arms.  Nigel stirs and moves a little closer to him.  Daisy is staring right at Baxter, but her look is terrified, her voice is breathless and her chest rises and falls rapidly.

“Daisy?”  The name sounds improbable on Baxter’s lips, a foolish, vulnerable nursery name.  “And what’s that short for?”

“Nothing.”

“Little Miss Nothing.”  Baxter is moving behind the sofa on which Grammaticus is lying, and beside which Rosalind stands.

Daisy says, “If you leave now and never come back I give you my word we won’t phone the police.  You can take anything you want.  Please, please go.”

Even before she’s finished, Baxter and Nigel are laughing.  -- Ian McEwan, Saturday

What if each character talked constantly instead of the narrator paraphrasing? What if you cut what the narrator adds to this passage? No, the narrator and characters must hold their own dialogue, with the narrator speeding, hinting, developing.

At the opening of Alice Hoffman’s Here on Earth, the mother and daughter have a brief exchange about being in a strange place, mired in the mud in an unpredictable car:

“We’re going to get stuck,” March’s daughter, Gwen, announces. Always the voice of doom.

“No, we won’t,” March insists.

Three paragraphs of narrator summary bring readers to the climax, omitting the obvious or redundant.

“We’ll get out of here,” she tells her daughter. “Have no fear.” But when she turns the key the engine grunts, then dies.

            “I told you,” Gwen mutters under her breath.

Tip: In dialogue and elsewhere, the narrator and characters must fulfill their respective roles.

A Gift or To Give?

Today’s a time of chocolate, roses, expensive jewelry and store-bought poems. But in either real or fictional worlds, how much love do these offerings convey? Is there something a bit facile about 77% cocoa or a new watch?  What’s the best way to express any emotion, including love?

“All human happiness and misery take the form of action,” Aristotle said. It’s easy to buy carnations, say “I love you,” or keep repeating, “I’m sorry.” Why is the quote that “actions seem louder than words” so famous?

Because it’s true. The opening of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory illustrates:

Mr. Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder: out into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. A few buzzards looked down from the roof with shabby indifference:  he wasn’t carrion yet. A faint feeling of rebellion stirred in Mr. Tench’s heart, and he wrenched up a piece of the road with splintering finger-nails and tossed it feebly up at them.

Yes, Greene comments by mentioning “indifference” and “rebellion.” Yet the memorable part is the protagonist’s behavior: braving the heat, tearing at the road, taunting the buzzards.

In Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones, she captures atmosphere not by describing it but “showing” hope and connection, however inhuman:

 And then a cat, its belly sagging with young, ambled over and brushed her leg with its tail—the one warm gesture in a cold country.

Marshall needn’t explain that no amount of frustration will make this protagonist give up; the cat conveys this for her. Through action.

Like the cat, characters must do something. Otherwise, the writer forces readers to accept narrator claims about emotions, decisions, and options.

Jonathan Franzen often comments on his characters’ emotions—but only to add depth and insight. These few sentences capture a range of emotion through the behavior of Pip and her boyfriend:

Pip shut the door again, to block out the words, but even with the door closed she could hear the fighting. The people who’d bequeathed a broken world to her were shouting at each other viciously. Jason sighed and took her hand. She held it tightly.

Even without reading this extraordinary novel, you know that the overheard accusations are unbearable, that Jason wants to support her but is helpless to help, and that she clings to him because he’s there and that’s all she has. The physical responses capture this with active verbs: “shut,” “block,” “closed,” “shouting,” “sighed,” and “held.” Something happens.

Something happens with a gift, too, of course. Who wouldn’t want a carefully chosen one? But loving acts exert greater power. And in fiction? Store-bought expressions of love, pain, fury, or terror can only “tell.”

Tip: Nothing conveys emotion like behavior or action.

“V” Is for “Vivid”—Not “Verbose”

The internet revolutionized our assessment of “vivid” versus “verbose.”  

Do you ever skip description in a novel? I do, too. Obviously, merely describing how things look, sound, taste, feel, and smell is not, by itself, going to bring a location to life. Something more is required…Only through the eyes and heart of a character does place come truly alive.”  — Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction

Neil Gaiman illustrates this in American Gods:

The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.

That works. This does not: “The house smelled of must, dampness, and the sweetish smell of rot.” What makes one “vivid” and the other “verbose”?

1. Originality.

Particularly when dealing with anything familiar—like a decaying house—transcend same-old, same-old. What’s the best source of that? Your character’s perception.

2. Comparison.

This could be a metaphor, simile, symbol, or analogy. In all of these, successful comparisons arise from “an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar” — Aristotle, The Poetics.  Does the resemblance resonate at the deepest level? If so, readers instantly sense that a mockingbird or white whale or scarlet letter represents not only the literal but also a meaning beyond that.

3. Insight.

Setting becomes meaningful when it reminds readers what they didn’t know they knew.

4. Tension.

Setting should set up what’s ahead, and without “telling.”  In Kraken, here’s what China Miéville does with the sky:

The light was going: some cloud cover arriving, as if summoned by drama.

And Amy Tan with war in The Joy Luck Club:

But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people—men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.

Images of “clouds” or “war” abound on the internet. So even incorporating all five senses won’t necessarily produce something “that readers will not skim,” as Maass reminds. Unless setting intensifies response to plot and character, it often feels “verbose.”

Tip: Setting becomes “vivid” only when it’s as integral to a novel as its plot.

Deal Breakers and Deal Makers

Beginning to read the next novel isn’t like buying the a house or car. And yet…

A novel is a commitment.  So many novels to choose from, so little time. No one wants to waste it on the book that never deserved to be a bestseller, the dud your formerly favorite author must’ve completed over a weekend, or the unwanted gift of ungainly fiction from your least favorite sister-in-law.  You’d prefer to choose your own books, thank-you-very-much, and your choices depend on avoiding the following mishaps.

Deal Breaker: Predictability.

She doesn’t want him. He doesn’t want her. But if there’s lots of emphasis on their apathy, you know that they must want each other by the end. Yawn.

Deal Maker: Readers are positive the plot’s headed in a certain direction and—wham—it’s as much a twist as it is credible.

Deal Breaker: Repetition.

Sam tells Nancy he’s leaving her. But Nancy needs Roger, who’s madly in love with her, to know about Sam’s bittersweet surprise. So the novelist blithely reiterates the conversation to Roger. No. No, no, no!

Deal Maker: Once readers know it, only repeat it if it adds tension.

Deal Breaker: Impossible sentences.

There’s more than one kind. Unable to break free, she hissed and then she bit him and before long she spit at his eye and she and oh! Please! And that’s more than enough. Or. The boy who is the leader of the student council elected in an unprecedented vote because the preppie got kicked out of school for drugs is known for discarding girls even the prettiest and most popular ones, like Kleenex.

Deal Maker: Clean sentences are inviting sentences.

Deal Breaker: Point of view irritants.

It felt like roving or omniscient, but now suddenly it’s limited to a single character. Or we’ve heard only from Prudence for ninety-six pages, but here’s Roderigo. What’s up? Not enthusiasm for the next page.

Deal Maker: Point of view is always and only in the eye of the reader. If it kinda feels like a violation, then it unquestionably is. What’s “legal” doesn’t apply.

Deal Breaker: Disastrous dialogue.

Does the dialogue reveal pertinent information that’s meant to inform the reader and isn’t even vaguely credible? Does the dialogue sound exactly like real life? Are the dialogue passages long and tedious rather than snappy? Do the characters shout exactly what’s troubling them, or do they use subtext?

Deal Maker: Great dialogue only resembles people talking. Because that’s tedious to read.

Tip: If you’re a novelist, you’re a reader. What breaks a deal for you? Your readers feel the same. 

Dialogue: Animosity or Virtuosity

Consider Nancy and Kevin. This brother and sister mostly got along, though it’s years since they’ve been close: marriage, kids, careers—they drifted. But neither Kevin nor Nancy predicted that dad’s death would endanger their relationship.

Unless you’re related to Nancy and Kevin, why would you care? Because the demise of Kevin and Nancy illustrates how dialogue works. Or doesn’t.

Kevin’s fury might launch a scene. After all, he maintained Dad’s hardware store, plus keeping his lawn mowed, snow blowed, and roof repaired. Nor was Kevin’s schedule exactly overflowing with spare time for someone else’s life.

“Your life? What about mine?” Nancy wants to know when she adds her lines to the script.  Hardly her fault that Kevin took years getting Dad’s house in shape to sell. Especially since her husband graciously took Dad into their home. Of course Dad didn’t intentionally torment every member of Nancy’s family (even Rover). But his dementia irritated, exhausted, and freaked them all. Every day. For years.

Who’s right? Nancy. And Kevin. Life has enough actual bad guys. Fiction shouldn’t. Readers must believe both stories. That promotes dilemma—the most genuine source of tension. Make dilemma drive the script characters play out when they interact.

Tip: Good dialogue comes from a forceful, credible, well- justified script for each character.

You get there not by replicating reality, but simulating it.

~ Brevity.

In the real world, Kevin and Nancy might shriek, accuse, and bellow. Or bicker twenty-nine separate times over a four-month period.  That won’t propel fiction.  Their conversations need to be short, snappy, and subtle. And two or three times beats twenty-nine.

~ Subtext.

Kevin might actually scream, “If you can’t understand what this cost me, I never want to speak to you again!” Makes sense. A bit tepid, though. Why read on, when we can predict what’s next. Besides, wouldn’t it be more fun (not to mention more accurate) to wonder if Kevin’s rage disguises hurt? There’s greater ambivalence in “I can’t believe you’d say that,” or “I don’t even recognize you.” Cliché, yes, but reflective of complex emotion. That’s how they became cliché.

~ Equality.

In real life, courts determine guilt or innocence. In fiction, everyone’s both. If you despise Nancy or Kevin so piercingly that you can’t design two defensible versions of the so-called facts, you have no business telling their story.

Want virtuoso characterization and dialogue? Handle animosity not as if it were a heat-seeking missile, but a feeling we all experience at least occasionally. Emotion is intricately complex: rage mixed with pain, greed laced with regret, righteousness tempered by anxiety about never speaking to your sibling again. Make sure all your characters can justify themselves. Because each person both believes his or her story—and doesn’t. Unless dialogue reflects that, it won’t infuse the depth, intricacy, and credibility your story deserves. Because your readers do.

Types: Stereotype, Archetype, Trope

Archetypes, stereotypes, and tropes are about equally elusive and significant. Does it matter if you’re sure which you use?  Classification’s unimportant. What matters? Lay a foundation with archetype; use trope to speed pace; avoid stereotype whenever possible.

~ Stereotype.

The etymology says it all. The word comes from the mold that made identical copies of the original. In life or the novel, stereotypes feel clichéd—uninspired. Worse still, generalizations about ethnicity, religion, size, education, hair color and so on ignore individuality. Stereotypes are misleading and harmful. How useful can they be in fiction?

Stereotypes are contrived writing solutions, while archetypes are the platform that tradition offers.

~ Archetype.

The archetype is the original mold used for the stereotypes that follow it. According to Carl Jung, roles like the Hero originate in the “collective unconscious.” We’re all in it together. (For more on this, check “The 12 Common Archetypes,” by Carl Golden.)

In The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler analyzes archetypes as a source of plot from inciting incident to climax. Archetype underlies the classic plot: coming of age, abuse of power, love changing identity and history. Yet without your own original twist, the situation and its characters will seem stereotypical.

If the distinction between archetype and stereotypes is a bit fluid, trope is even more so, because it’s used in several different ways.

~ Trope

It can be a symbol (a rose equals love), a genre convention (“once upon a time”), a shortcut conveying plot or character (a stranger came to town), or an over-used device (the bossy, bespectacled librarian). Tropes range from very, very useful and efficient to very, very the opposite. While archetypes are universal, tropes often refer to a particular genre, like YA, Horror, Cozy, Western.

What does all this boil down to?

Tip: Tradition can both bring forth the richness of allusion—or the poverty of cliché.

How to know the difference? The easy answer is to solicit feedback. A wise, objective reader will let you know if you’ve united the benefits of both convention and innovation.

The harder answer lies in the details. Obviously, the over-familiar is tedious, manipulative, or facile. The “novel” part of the novel demands “something new under the sun.” Build on the conventional: archetype, trope, allusion.  Add to that dimensionality, mutability, individuality, and universality. You’ll have something good—maybe even great.