by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Let's continue with proportion. This does not mean that your work is textureless. There is always room for philosophical sidetrails that reveal the narrator's character, subplots that may resonate with the main plot, or forays into odd corners of background that make the fictional world more three-dimentional.

The trick is telling the difference between digressions that harmonize with the story (even in odd and mysterious ways) and those that hang on the story like fungus!

How do you tell...walk away from it for a week or so, and then reread it...or get a critique partner. Once you have trained yourself to see how changes in proportion affect your story, you can begin to use proportion to shape your reader's response to your plot.

Example: If you have some plot development that you want to come as a surprise, spend less space on it before you spring it on your readers. Or you could spend as much or more space on similar plot elements to mask the really important one.

CHECKLIST:

Take a look at your descriptions. Are the details you give the ones your viewpoint characters will notice?

Reread your first fifty pages, paying attention to what you spend your time on. Are the characters you develop most fully important ot the ending? Do you use the locations you develop in detail later in the story? Do any of the characters play a surprising role in the ending? Could readers guess this from the amount of time you spend on them?

Do you have tanents...little supplots or descriptions that don't advance the plot? If so, are all of them effective? If you don't have any, should you add some?

Are you writing about your favorite topic or hobbies? If so, give careful consideration to how much time you spend on them.

Next we will move onto Dialogue Mechanics!

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Let's continue with proportion, and the problems that arise from taking seemingly small details and devoting excessive amounts of time to them.

This sort of proportion problem has exactly the same effect on readers as excess description. When you fill in all the details and leave nothing to your readers imagination, you're patronizing them.

This is even more true now than it was a few decades ago, when generous, detailed descriptions were the norm. It's the influence of movies and TV...readers are used to jump-cuts from scene to scene rather than long transitional shots.

Fiction writers, in turn, are much freer to use ellipses, to leave more of the mundane, bridging action up to their readers imagination. Of course there are other things that can throw your proportions off besides simple misjudgment. Sometimes proportion problems arise when a writer is writing about his or her pet interests or hobbies.

And yes, one of the joys of reading comes when a writer takes you through some little back alley of life that you never knew existed. But when we reached the three pages of how to kill and field-dress a beaver, the writer has gone too far...LOL!

So how do you avoid proportion problems. In most cases, it's quite simple: pay attention!

Most larger proportion problems can be avoided if you pay attention to your story. After all, if you spend a great deal of time on a given character or plot element for whatever reason, your readers naturally assume this element plays an important role in the story.

So if the character you spend time on turns out to be insignificant or if you never follow up on the plot element you set up in such detail, readers are going to feel cheated.

Continued tomorrow...

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Let's continue with Point Of View.

Okay, so what happens when you have to shift your point of view for the sake of the plot? If say, your writing from the cop's point of view and you need to add in the burglar? How do you change the POV without jerking your readers around?

It's quite simple: end the current scene, insert a linespace, and start a new scene from the POV you need. Linespaces prepare readers for a shift( in time, place, or POV), so the change in the POV won't catch them by surprise.

Once you've mastered your control of narrative distance, you can use it for some stunning effects. Of all the means available to you for crafting your story, POV is one of the most fundamental. It is how you show who your characters are. It allows you to convey emotions that often can't be put across in any other way.

POV is a powerful tool! Master it!

CHECKLIST:

Which POV are you using and why? If you want continuing intimacy, are you using the first person? If you want distance, are you using third person, or omniscient?

Do you move from head to head? If so, why? Would your story gain power if you stuck with a single POV character or broke your scenes up at appropraite places with linespaces to make this possible?

Take a look at your language. Is it right for your POV character? If not, should it be?

Look at your descriptions. Can you tell how your POV character feels about what you're describing?

Next we'll start on Proportion...

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Let's continue with Point Of View.

The day before yesterday, we were talking about first-person POV, now we're moving to the other end of the spectrum to the omniscient POV. Instead of being written from inside the head of one of your characters, a scene in the omniscient point of view is not written from inside anyone's head.

So you can see the whole scene from the sidelines. Note that with the omniscient voice what you gain in perspective you lose in intimacy.

then there is third person. If a first person invites intimacy and the omniscient narrator allows for perspective, the thirsd person strikes a balance between the two! Actually it can strike any number of balances...it's the attempt to define precisely these various degrees of intimacy versus perspective that leads to describing twenty-six different flavors of POV.

It's much less complicated to simply treat the third-person POV as a continuum, running from narrative intimacy to narrative distance.

Okay...so what the devil does that mean...I ask myself?

It means that when you describe your settings and actions using only words from your POV characters vocabulary, you're not only telling the readers the facts, but but you're running those facts through your POV character's history and sensibility.

On the other hand, when the voice of your descriptions is more sophisticated, more verbose, perhaps more acutely observant that your POV character can manage, you've put distance between the two!

It is worth noting that, because the emotional connection between your reader and your POV character builds slowly, it's usually a good idea to establish the POV as quickly as possible...in the first sentence of the scene if you can manage it.

When you make the POV clear at the beginning of a scene, you get your readers involved right away and let them get used to inhabiting your viewpoint character's head.

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Let's continue with Point Of View.

Some writing books distinguish as many as twenty-six different flavors of POV, but there are really only three basic approaches: first person, third person, and omniscient.

The first person is the "I" voice, where all the narration is written as if the narrator were speaking directly to the readers. ("I knew as soon as I entered...")
Note that in first person the narrator is one of the characters, not the writer.

The first-person POV has a number of advantages, the main one being that it gives your reader a great deal of intimacy with your viewpoint character. When you are writing in the "I" voice, your main character effortlessly invites your reader into his or her head and shows them the world through his or her eyes.

Of course, in order to succeed in first person POV, you have to create a character strong enough and interesting enough to keep your readers going for an entire novel, yet not so eccentric or bizarre that your readers feel trapped inside his or her head.

But realize, what you gain in intimacy with the first person...You lose in perspective! You can't write about anything your main character couldn't know, which means you have to have your main character in the spot whenever you want to write an immediate scene...This can limit your plot development possibilities!

Also in one POV, your readers get to know only one character directly. Everyone else is filtered through your viewpoint character. One way around this is to write in the first person but from several different viewpoints...With different scenes done from inside the heads of different characters.

This technique can be highly effective in the hands of an experienced writer. For example, over the course of Sol Stein's The Best Revenge, first-person sections are written from the POV's of six different characters. And Mary Gordon devotes the last section in the Company of Women to first-person accounts by all the major characters in turn.

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Let's continue with exposition.

Everything we've said about characterization applies to exposition as well. Backgroung, backstory, the information your readers need in order to follow and appreciate your plot...all these should be brought out as unobtrusively as possible.

The most obtrusive type of exposition is, of course, a long discourse in the narrative voice. The same thing holds true for interior monologue.

Perhaps the toughest expostion challenge is introducing your readers to a new culture. This could be something as simple as conveying everyday life in rural Tennessee to readers who may live in Palm Beach (or visa versa). How do you transport your readers to strange new worlds without loading down your opening with a lot of expostion?

Bear in mind that this kind of background is really characterization, only what's being characterized is a culture rather than a person. and as was the case with characterization, readers can best learn about your locations and backgrounds not through lengthy exposition but by seeing them in real life.

CheckList:

Look back over a scene or chapter that introduces one or more characters. How much time, if any, have you spent describing the new character? Are you telling us about characteristics that will later show up in dialogue and action?

How about character histories? How many of your characters' childhoods have you developed in detail? Can some of these life stories be cut?

What info (technical details, past histories, backgrounds) do your readers need in order to understand your story? At what point in the story do they need to know it?

How are you getting this information across to your readers? Have you given it to them all at once through a short writer-to-reader lecture?

If the exposition comes out through dialogue, is it through dialogue your character would actually speak even if your readers didn't have to know the information? In other words, does the dialogue exist only to put the information across?

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Let's continue with characterization.

Some writers take a more subtle approach than simply describing a new character's personality...they describe each new character's history. In the course of the story, they may even trace theri characters' ancestry back two or three generations. It is perfectly understandable that a writer should undertake this sort of historical characterization.

Delving into a character's past can be a good way for you to understand the character in the present. but htough it may have been helpful for you to write a character's history...it may not be necessary for your readers to read it!

One you understand a character well enough to bring him or her to life, we don't have to know where the character came from.

So how do you go about establishing a charater gradually and unobtrusively? This topic could make a book in itself, but there are some techniques that fall within the area of fiction mechanics.

Have one character characterized by another instead of by the writer.
Develop your characters through dialogue.
Another way is to develop a character is to write not about the character directly but about other matters from that characters viewpoint.

Next we'll start on Exposition.

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Today we're going to work on characterization and Exposition.

A lot of writers seem to feel they have to give their readers a clear understanding of a new character before they can get on with their story. They never bring a character onstage without a brief personality summary. Or else they introduce their character with flashbacks to the childhood scenes that made them who they are...In effect, psychoanalyzing the characters for their readers.

It's often a good idea to introduce a new character with enough physical description for your readers to picture him or her. As with describing your settings, all you need are a few concrete, idiomatic details to jump-start your readers' imagination. ("A good-looking man in his fifties," for instance, is too vague to be interesting.)

The show-and-tell principle underlies many of the self-editing points we'll talk about from now on!

Another reason to avoid thumbnail character sketches is that the personality traits you tell us about when you introduce a character will (we would hope) eventually be shown by the way the character behaves in the story.

Also when you sum up your characters, you risk defining them to the point that they're boxed in by the characterization with no room to grow. You may be setting boundary lines that your readers will use to interpret your characters' actions through the rest of the book.

But if you allow your readers to get to know your characters gradually, each reader will interpret them in his or her own way, thus getting a deeper sense of who your characters are than you could ever convey in a summary.

Finally, for today...Sketching out your characters for your readers is just plain obtrusive. It's a form of telling that is almost certain to make your readers aware that you the writer are hard at work!

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Yesterday I left you with the phrase, "Remember to R.U.E."

Up to this point we've been talking about showing and telling on the large scale, about narrating what should be shown through immediate scenes. But even within scenes there are ways in which you may tell what you should show!

From the Gatsby: The three Mr Mumbles leaned forward "eagerly", that one girl spoke with "enthusiasm", that a man nodded "in affirmation".

Granted, stylistic conventions have changed since 1925, but even so, the telling detracts because it's not needed. We've already been shown what the writer proceeds to tell us.

Telling your readers about your characters' emotions is not the best way to get your readers involved. Far better to shoe why your characters feel the way they do. Instead of saying "Amanda took one look at the hotel room and recioled in disgust," describe the room in such a way that the readers feel that disgust themselves.

You don't want to give your readers information. You want to give them experiences.

It's more work that way, of course. It's easier to say, "Erma was depressed" than to come up with some original bit of action or interior monologue that shows she's depressed. Like if you have her take a bite of her favorite cake and push the rest away...or polish off the whole cake. Everyone has a unique way of expressing emotion.

It's nearly always better to resist the urge to explain. Or as editors so often write in the margins of manuscripts, R.U.E.

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

This is the second lesson of two days of Show and Tell. Blogger ate this post on Friday!

We left off talking about using action rather than narration. Of course, there will be times when you need to resort to narrative summary, especially if you're writing a historical novel or science fiction, both of which usually require conveying a lot of information to your readers before you can touch their emotions.

Even though immediate scens are almost always more engaging than narrative summary be careful when self-editing not to convert all your narrative summary into scenes.

Narrative summary is used to vary the rhythm and texture of your writing. Scens are immediate and engaging, but scene after scene without a break can become relentless and exhausting, especially if you tend to write brief, intense scenes. Every once in a while you'll want to slow down to give your readers a chance to catch their breath.

Narrative summary can give continuity to your story on a larger scale. It is also useful when you have a lot of repetitive action. For example, your writing about a track star participating in several races. If you show all of these races as immediate scenes, they all start looking alike! But if you summarize the first few...have them happen off stage...then the one you eventually show as a scene will have real impact.

CheckList:

How often do you use narrative summary? Are there long passages where nothing happens in real time? Do the main events in your plot take place in summary or in scenes?

If you do have too much narrative summary, which sections do you want to convert into scenes? Does any of it involve major characters, where a scene could be used to flesj out their personalities? Does any of your narrative summary involve major plot twists or surprises? If so, start writing some scenes!

Do you have any narrative summary, or are you bouncing from scene to scene without pausing for breath?

Are you describing your characters' feelings? Have you told us they're angry? irritated? morose? discouraged? puzzled? excited? happy? elated? suicidal? Keep an eye out for any place where you mention an emotion outside of dialogue. Chances are you're telling what you should show. Remember to R.U.E.

What is that? R.U.E. Okay...so I'll add that part in...tomorrow! Mhwahaha!

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are starting editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but skipping a lot of good stuff!

This first lesson is going to be two days of Show and Tell.

What exactly makes a scene a scene? For one thing it takes place in real time. Your readers watch events as they unfold, whether those events are a group discussion of the merits of Woody Allen flicks, or a woman lying in a field pondering the meaning of life. In scenes, events are seen as they happen rather than described after the fact. Even flashbacks...Don't cringe...Sometimes they're necessary...Show events as they unfold, although they have unfolded in the past within the context of the story!

Scenes also contain action, something that happens. Of course anything that can go into a scene can also be narrated. And since scenes are usually harder to write than narration, many writers rely too heavily on narrative summary to tell their stories.

The result is often page after page, chapter after chapter of writing that reads clearly, perhaps even stylishly, but with no specific setting, no specific characters, no dialogue.

Since engagement is exactly what a fiction writer wants to accomplish, you're well advised to rely heavily in immediate scenes to put your story across. You want to draw your readers into the world you've created, make them feel a part of it, make them forget where they are.

And you can't do this effectively if you tell your readers about your world secondhand! You have to take them there. 'Showing' your story to your readers through scenes will not only give your writing immediacy. It will give your writing transparency. One of the easiest ways to look like an amateur is to use mechanics that direct attention to themselves and away from the story.

Of course there will be times when you need to resort to narrative summary, especially if your writing a historical novel or scifi, both of which usually require conveying a lot of information to your readers before you can touch their emotions.

We'll talk more about this in the next chapter, but you'd be surprised at how much exposition can be converted into scenes...right Mimi?

That's it for today, except for the quotable quotes below! Join us again tomorrow for More Self-Editing for Fiction Writers