Your First Novel Page 9

  The Invisible Said

  Another substitute for the word said is an action that implies who is speaking. For example:

  "Are you all right?"

  Frank stood up and rubbed his head. "I'm not sure."

  And:

  "Give me a hand." Greta balanced a birdcage on each palm. "Take the lovebirds, will you?"

  Name-Calling

  Do not keep forcing characters to call each other by their names every other line. It's unnecessary, unrealistic, and annoying—it smacks of inexperience.

  "Holly, I told you I'm not well."

  "But Ian, it's Papa's birthday. You want to be left out of the will?" "Please, Holly," he said, "I've got a fever. A hundred and one." "I knew you were going to pull this again, Ian. I felt it all the way home." "Come on, Holly. I'm not faking."

  No matter the content, making characters say each other's names when they wouldn't do so naturally is bad writing.

  ACCENTS AND DIALECT

  Dialogue printed with a character's accent spelled phonetically, so the reader can painstakingly sound out every word, is a story-killer. It not only slows down the action, it irritates the reader. The reader wants to concentrate on your plot, not decode words like govnuh (cockney for governor) and eesta wabbut (baby talk for Easter Rabbit). Instead use syntax—word order—and semantics—word choice—to give color to the dialogue of a character who has an accent or speaks a dialect.

  In these lines from Alice Walker's The Color Purple, it's easy to understand exactly how Celie's voice sounds by the words Walker uses and the ones she leaves out:

  Don't cry, Celie, Shug say. Don't cry. She start kissing the water as it come down side my face.

  A certain formality gives the dialogue in Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha a sense of otherness and realism:

  "Certainly it is your robe," she said. "But you are the daughter of the okiya. What belongs to the okiya belongs to you, and the other way around as well."

  We hear the accents of the Price girls, in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poison-wood, Bible, through their syntax and semantics:

  Ruth May: Mama Mwanza almost got burnt plumb to death ...

  Rachel: I didn't see there was any need for them to be so African about it.

  Leah: His tone implied that Mother failed to grasp our mission, and that her concern with Betty Crocker confederated her with the coin-jingling' sinners who vexed Jesus till he pitched a fit and threw them out of church.

  "I KNEW HE WAS GOING TO SAY THAT ..."

  Beware of cliches in your dialogue. If the reader thinks to herself, "I knew he was going to say that" too often, she will lose respect for your writing. Find a fresh way to get around the cliches, but make sure they fit the character and the situation. Steer clear of exchanges such as the following:

  Villain: Is that a threat? Hero: No, it's a promise.

  Boss: You're fired.

  Employee: You can't fire me! I quit!

  Antagonist: I'm going to call the mayor! Protagonist: You do that.

  Here's an example, from Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty, of something we don't expect to hear:

  Harry: You gonna get rough now, threaten me? I make good by tomorrow or get my legs broken?

  Chili Palmer: Come on, Harry—Mesas? The worst they might do is get a judgment against you, uttering a bad check.

  Here's another unexpected comeback, this time from William Goldman's The Princess Bride. What we expect:

  Inigo: I hate to have to kill you.

  The Man in Black: Let the best man win!

  What Goldman gives us:

  Inigo: You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you. The Man in Black: You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.

  SETTING__________

  Choose interesting settings for your novel. That being said, know that any setting can be interesting if described in an interesting way. The trick is to choose settings that work well with your plot, characters, and theme. For example, one of the important bonding scenes in Lauren Mechling and Laura Moser's novel The Rise and Fall of a 10th-Grade Social Climber happens when several high school girls are crammed into one bathroom stall. In Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, Deanna and Eddie make love inside a huge hollow log. In Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby, two characters have a

  conversation while wandering through a maze of towering antique furniture, and later have sex levitating near a chandelier that's in the ceiling of an empty house.

  The ordinary setting of a mobile home is described in an extraordinary way by Dean Koontz in One Door Away From Heaven:

  Acoustic ceiling tiles crawled with water stains from a long-ago leak, all vaguely resembling large insects. Sunlight had bleached the drapes into shades no doubt familiar to chronic depressives from their dreams.

  Settings can be literally matched or symbolically matched to the story.

  Premise: a woman trapped in a bad marriage

  Literal Setting: the home they share

  Symbolic Setting: she works in a pet store full of cages

  Premise: a trucker can't find his long-lost son Literal Setting: his rig and the motels where he stops Symbolic Setting: roads that are "closed" or dead-ends

  SETTING AND PLOT

  The setting has to work with your plot, of course. You can't have a trial in a legal thriller happen in a Laundromat. But, in the same way that the character and the plot either mirror or contrast with each other, the settings and plot need to be somehow complementary.

  • A setting that mirrors the plot: A doctor is going blind and he lives in Alaska, where night can last for months.

  • A setting that contrasts with the plot: A woman who has amnesia works in a scrapbooking store crammed with ways to celebrate and display your memories.

  SETTING AND CHARACTERS

  The same is true for the way your characters and your setting match. They should either mirror each other or contrast with each other.

  • A setting that mirrors the character: Your protagonist is a kid at

  heart but going nowhere with his life—always going in circles, and he works at a miniature race car course.

  • A setting that contrasts with the character: Your protagonist is homeless but lives in the vast gardens of a billionaire's estate.

  SETTING AND THEME

  The theme must also be enhanced by the setting.

  • A setting that mirrors the theme: The theme is that humans must protect the environment, and the setting is a recycling company.

  • A setting that contrasts with the theme: The theme is that true beauty comes from within, and the setting is a cosmetics store.

  THE LONG AND SHORT OF DESCRIPTION

  Some writers will take lots of words to describe a setting, and some will paint the picture of our surroundings with very few brushstrokes. Either style can work for you. Match the length of your descriptions to t he tone and style of your storytelling—who is telling the story? How would your narrator describe the setting?

  Here's an example of concise description from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. At 36 words, it's one of two paragraphs describing the edge of a lake.

  They made their beds on the sand, and as the blaze dropped from the fire the sphere of light grew smaller; the curling branches disappeared and only a faint glimmer showed where the tree trunks were.

  Now here's an example of lengthy description from Stephen King's Bag of Bones. It's 110 words in length and only one of a half-dozen paragraphs describing one house.

  Beyond the house, the lake glimmers in the afterglow of sunset. The driveway, I see, is carpeted with brown pine needles and littered with fallen branches.

  The bushes which grow on either side of it have run wild, reaching out to one another like lovers across the narrow gap which separates them. If you brought a car down here, the branches would scrape and squeal unpleasantly against its sides. Below, I see, there's moss growing on the logs of the main house, and three large sunflowers with faces like searchlights have grown up through the boards of
the little driveway-side stoop. The overall feeling is not neglect, exactly, but forgotteness.

  If your protagonist is a woman of few words and her story a hard-boiled detective mystery, the descriptions will probably work best if written concisely and with wit. If your protagonist is a poet and his story a sweeping historical saga, the descriptions will probably work best if written in rich and insightful detail, like you were painting portraits of the events and characters. If you aren't sure what length of description best fits your novel, try writing the same scene twice, once with short descriptions and once with long. Your preference will surface.

  RECOMMENDED READING

  Steering the Craft, by Ursula K. Le Guin. This entire book is very helpful, but you might especially find chapters three through five useful (sentence length, syntax, adjectives, adverbs, subjects) while describing your settings.

  The Writer's Guide to Places, by Don Prues and Jack Heffron. If you don't have the time or money to visit every city in your story, try this reference book—it includes not only the local food, climate, and landmarks but also the most loved and hated aspects of, and the most shameful bits of history from, dozens of potential settings.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  being unforgettable

  DETAIL_

  It's the little things that make your writing come alive. The more vividly you paint the picture of your story, the more powerfully you'll affect your reader.

  PROJECTING REALISM

  Details can make your novel more real. If you can give the impression that your story actually happened, the readers' investment will be deeper and they will keep turning the pages. Notice how the two examples below are made real with a few vivid details.

  NOT THIS

  She looks from the crypt to the speakers where music comes down from the ceiling.

  BUT THIS

  She looks from Crypt Number 678 to up at the ceiling where the music comes down from the little speakers next to the painted-on clouds and angels.

  —Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk

  NOT THIS

  But Rafael Gordon carried a knife in his sleeve, and he always had a chain in his pocket.

  BUT THIS

  But Rafael Gordon carried a cork-hafted black iron fishing knife in his sleeve, and he always had a few feet of tempered steel chain in his pocket.

  —White Butterfly, by Walter Mosley

  PROJECTING TRUTH

  Details can also push your prose past realism into truth. If the details with which you dress your story are chosen with care, they can resonate subconsciously with your readers—your novel will not only ring true to their left brains, it will ring of truth in their right brains.

  The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw.

  In the first line from Janet Fitch's White Oleander, the author doesn't just tell us that the weather turned hot, she goes into detail: The wind has killed the grass. But the detail isn't simply accurate, it's allegorical—she chose the word whiskers carefully: The innocent blades of green have not only been blasted to death by the shift in the winds, they have become the sensitive feelers of cats—like abandoned daughters, cats scare easily, keep to themselves, watch the world mutely, and are left to fend for themselves in the margins of life. This is, of course, what White Oleander is about.

  In Stephen King's The Body, a boy who has been physically abused by a father whose image he protects with a series of lies cannot sleep one night and watches the moon off-center in a pane of glass as he struggles with the mystery of this relationship. It is not just including what the boy is staring at that makes the detail meaningful; it is the way King matches the detail to the mood of the scene. That child will never be able to make his father love him any more than he can move the moon in the sky to fit into the center of that window.

  IRRELEVANCY

  The trick is to avoid irrelevant detail. You don't want to slow down your story with details that don't matter. I use White Oleander as an example again because Fitch is a master with detail. Notice how in these two versions of the same passage, in which Astrid goes through the garbage of the fascinating woman next door, the choice of details makes all the difference.

  THE WRONG DETAILS

  I found a broken comb under a mound of coffee grounds, an old stocking with a wadded-up tissue stuck to it, a soap box torn and empty, various bottles, old cigar butts, the ones thick as your thumb, not the slim as pencil kind, lolling at the bottom of the can, their burnt ends gray and papery, their chewed ends wet and dark.

  THE REAL THING

  I found a wide-toothed, tortoiseshell comb from Kent of London, good as new except for a single broken tooth, and a soap box, Crabtree & Evelyn's Elderflower. She drank Myers's Rum, used extra-virgin olive oil in a tall bottle. One of her boyfriends smoked cigars. I found an impossibly soft stocking, the garter kind, cloud taupe, laddered, and an empty flagon of Ma Griffe perfume, its label decorated with a scribble of black lines on white. It smelled of whispery black organdy dresses, of spotted green orchids and the Bois de Boulogne after rain, where my mother and I once walked for hours.

  EXERCISE YOUR ORIGINALITY_

  What is different about your story? It might be your unusual voice, your quirky characters, your intricate plot, or your brilliantly mapped settings. Or all of the above. But something about your work needs to be like no one else's. Use these exercises to discover what is unique about your novel. Be aware of what sets you apart from the crowd. Later, this will be important when you compose your query letter and synopsis.

  • The Original Plot. Write down the premise of your story (the basic idea) and then think of several other novels (or plays or movies) that have a

  similar premise. Now make a list of all the things that are different about your story. After you've made the list, order the items in that list with the most significant at the top. Now look at that list. These are the things that set your book apart and make it original. For example:

  YOUR PREMISE

  • Hero faces off with Evil to better the world.

  OTHER STORIES WITH SIMILAR PREMISES

  • Lord of the Rings trilogy

  • Harry Potter series

  • The Exorcist

  DIFFERENCES

  • uses first-person present tense

  • takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma

  • the hero is in a wheelchair

  • it takes place in the late 1970s

  • the hero is a murderer released from prison

  • the Evil is in the form of a television psychologist

  REORDERING OF DIFFERENCES

  • the hero is a wheelchair-bound released murderer

  • the Evil is a TV shrink

  • 1977 Tulsa

  • first-person present tense

  Looking over the last list should make you feel confident that you've found a fresh take on a classic premise.

  If the differences you list are not this clear, answer the following questions:

  • What is my favorite moment in my story?

  • What is the best thing about my hero?

  • What is the most interesting thing about my villain?

  • What is the best sentence or paragraph I've written so far?

  • Where in the story is the deepest sorrow, fear, or anger?

  Here—what you love, what drew you to choose your story—is the core of your originality.

  • The Original Protagonist. Answer the following questions for your protagonist:

  • Compared to other characters in fiction who have the same occupation, how does your protagonist do his job differently?

  • Compared to other characters with the same family makeup (married/single, parent/childless, big family/orphan), how does your protagonist handle his family relationships differently?

  • Compared to characters of the same sex, age, and ethnicity, how does your protagonist differ in attitude, behavior, appearance, or philosophy?


  • Compared to other characters facing the same plot problem, how does your protagonist handle it differently?

  • What is atypical about your protagonist's personal phobias, dreams, pet peeves, or turn-ons?

  • Compared to other characters with the same religious background, how does your protagonist express his beliefs?

  • In what way is your protagonist different from the typical character of his same gender and age when it comes to romantic and sexual interests?

  • The Original Villain. Play the "what if" game with your villain. Make a list of circumstances under which an antagonist might do a protagonist wrong. Make note of how your villain would handle the situation. How is this reaction different than other villains' reactions?

  • What if your hero is broke and your villain has money?

  • What if your hero is drowning and your villain can hear him calling for help?

  • What if your hero is hanging from a cliff and your villain has a rope?

  • What if the hero is freezing and your villain comes by in a heated car?

  • What if your hero asks for advice and your villain knows what's about to happen to him?

  • What if your hero is feeling emotionally broken and asks your villain for comfort?

  • What if your hero is running from the police and your villain finds him hiding?

  READING ORIGINALITY

  To get inspired about creating your own original story and characters, read how these authors took the road less traveled:

  Examples of Original Plots

  • Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

  • Fluke, by Christopher Moore

  • The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

  • The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold

  Examples of Original Protagonists

  • autistic teenager from Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

  • the young beast Grendel from John Gardner's Grendel

  • a little boy with a high purpose in John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany