The Trouble with Real Life by Diana Flegal

Truth is often stranger than fiction.

I have received countless promising submissions that I end up turning down for this reason; the character encountered a situation, and dealt with it in an unbelievable manner.

When questioning the writer about this part of their story they often tell me, “But it really happened like that!” I have no reason to doubt them. My own personal story holds many such incredible circumstances, but they would not come across as believable by any stretch of the imagination to a reader of fiction.

“It’s no wonder truth is stranger than fiction, fiction has to make sense.”― Mark Twain  

A writer must be willing to edit out the unbelievable. And for some, that feels like they are being untrue to themselves. But if their personal life experience brought them to a good story, it has served a grand purpose and the writer needs to be content with this.

Cardinal Rule: A good writer must keep their reader in mind.

“Sometimes the truth isn't good enough, sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded”. – Batman-The Dark Knight

Remember: ALWAYS keep your reader in mind. And be willing to cut those unbelievable segments of your story out.

Here is a list of articles a Google search supplied on writing believable characters.

Read through a few when you have the time. There will certainly be a nugget or two here that might, when applied, strengthen and enrich your story and characters.    

And be encouraged, Spring is around the corner!

Write Like You by Andy Scheer

There’s nothing like your own voice.

I just spent an hour in a tire store, having my snow tires installed and getting reacquainted with an old friend.

A gifted storyteller from rural Idaho, Steve kept me captivated in the busy waiting room while the technicians changed my tires.

I’ve not seen or talked with Stephen Bly for years, but thanks to his 1994 novel It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own, I felt like I was again talking with Steve, as well as visiting 1882 Arizona.

Steve put a lot of himself into his stories. Not just his values, imagination, and expertise in things western, but also his voice.

I’ve never experienced his novels in audio format, but I had a lot of conversations with Steve. As I read his character’s words and the narration, I could almost hear Steve speaking. The pacing, the vocabulary, everything sounded like him.

Nobody else writes like Steve, and I’m grateful he didn’t try to write like anyone else.

9 Dialog Tags for Unlikable Characters by Diana Flegal

Recently in a local monthly women’s publication I read an article written by a business life coach that mentioned certain words you shouldn’t use in negotiating a promotion.

I realize the dialog she suggests avoiding is also dialog to avoid in novel writing. Unless you are going for an unlikable secondary character. If you are, here is the way to have your reader cringing in no time.

Have your character:

•  apologizing or saying “I’m sorry” often.
•  “I feel …” this and that
• “You always…” or “You never…”
• “Well we all know…” or “The fact of the matter…”
• “To be honest with you…”
• “Yes but…”
• “Don’t misunderstand me…”
• “Oh, by the way…”
•  “This is not personal…” (yeah, right!)

What faults do you give your unlikable characters? Remember, you must show the miserable ones in your book, not just tell us they are unhappy, or a know-it-all. Dialog is a good way to paint us a picture.

 

 

 

5 Mistakes Authors Make When Writing for the Young Adult, Teen, or Middle Reader Market

The reason many submissions are rejected by agents and editors is due to the writer not understanding their true audience. Take a look at these very common mistakes that often cross our desks in relation to writing for the younger audience.

1) Label your novel as targeting the age of your main character.

Young readers ‘read up’. Readers want to read about characters that are older than they are. If your main character is 14 your reader might be 8-12. Incorrectly labeling your reader market is a common mistake our agents see all of the time in submissions of this type.

 

Wikipedia says: The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) of the American Library Association (ALA) defines a young adult (reader) as someone between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Authors and readers of young adult (YA) novels often define the category as literature traditionally written for ages ranging from sixteen years to the age of twenty-five, while Teen Fiction is written for the ages of ten to fifteen. [2]

 

Think of your widest possible audience. The protagonist is usually on the older side of your readership. That means a 12- or even 13-year-old hero for MG and a 17- or 18-year-old for YA. If you have a college age protagonist, this pushes you into the New Adult category. (In the general market this means ‘very sexy’.)

 

2) Write a 100,000 word literary novel for a MR audience.  Generally a Middle Reader novel is between 30,000 to 50,000 words and a YA between 50,000 to 75,000 words.

While fantasy fiction can be the exception to the rule, you better write like J. K. Rowling if you are going to present a debut novel that large. And every word needs to count. Edit out all unnecessary words, and tighten the writing. This audience is a digital sound bite one. Think instant messaging and Tweeting. Write to them in shorter, no fluff sentences.

 

3) Forget the age of your reader and use throw back cultural language they will not get. Example: “Laverne and Shirley aren’t capping bottles in Detroit anymore, if you get my drift.”  Total disconnect. And while they might know what an Elvis impersonator is, you would have to make it relevant to the reader. Perhaps they ran away, and took a bus to Vegas when an Elvis Impersonator conference was going on. What a nightmare for a child! Or the protagonist’s grandfather is raising him/her and they have to tag along when he works the stage as one. J    

 

NOTE: There is a huge difference in interests between a 5^th and 10^th grader.

 Many retired school teachers have a heart for the young reader BUT are two generations separated from them in culture. It will take some serious research for them to catch up enough to be relevant when writing to that audience.

4) Use a lot of slang that will quickly outdate your book. Trying too hard at being hip and cool can backfire. It is best to stick to words that never go out of style. Cool, sweet, awesome, and phenomenal might work. Hip and cool are back, so one might use them as well. A good publishing editor will know and guide you. I cannot see one or two mischosen words causing a rejection, but beware; overuse of them absolutely will.

 

5)  Bypass the parental preferences or library gatekeepers and offer your reader inappropriate material. You know better how mature your reader is and what their emotional needs are. Go ahead and write inappropriate material.

Keep in mind the book buyer. MR’s do not generally purchase their own books. Their parents do. Over use of swear words, violence and sexuality will not fly. Good literature is not smutty.

 

In contrast; it is not a good thing to preach at your reader. A good story can awaken a God consciousness in a reader, and introduce a reader to biblical principles, but do not sneak in, or brow beat the reader with your doctrinal preferences. Leave that for the parent and Sunday school teacher, unless you are writing a bible study or a themed workbook. Author Jill Marie Richardson did an outstanding job of taking a cultural hot topic and relating it to our faith.  In Hobbits, You, and the Spiritual World of Middle-Earth, published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, Jill overlays the Bible with the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, giving us a peek into God's world of wonder and awe. This book guides readers in discovering the deep spiritual truths found in J.R.R. Tolkien's classic characters and shows how they might apply them to their own epic tale. A great book for use by families or youth groups. NOTE: This book is upfront about its mission. Nothing sneaky about the way it approaches the subject.    

  

TIP: Find a group of unbiased test readers of the age in your market. Prepare a list of questions for them with a YES or NO they can circle. This makes it easier for them to critique.  

• Did you want to keep reading after the first two pages? YES or NO
• Did you feel like the situation was believable? YES or NO
• Was there any place you got bored while reading? YES or NO
• Where did you get bored if you did? PAGE _________ and PAGE _______
• Was the main character likable? YES or NO
• and Could you relate to his or her troubles? YES or NO

Getting this kind of feedback will help you become a better writer and nail your target audience. Adding the results from research like this into your proposal is very helpful info.

INTERESTING STAT: 40 % of Young Adult readers are adults.

Write Like Yourself by Andy Scheer

I thought I’d done him a favor. But his email made me wonder.

I’d recently edited his manuscript. The book was powerful, especially for only his second novel. But he’d come to the task well prepared. And he was exploring themes that held his passion.

Now he was asking me about future novels. The next would be a sequel. But for the third, he was weighing a new direction. Rather than a novel set in familiar territory, he’d “like to move toward an international mystery/drama.”

After suggesting how he might take his main characters to an appropriate setting, I unintentionally planted seeds of doubt. I recommended he read a general market bestseller: The Columbus Affair by Steve Barry.

Since an international drama would be new to him, I thought he’d benefit from reading a stand-alone by a master of that genre. A co-founder of the thriller writers group, he sets the bar high for both story and craft.

That was the problem. “I’m about half way through it,” my friend said. “It’s a super fast paced read. It’s a great book.” Then he asked, “Do you think I have the ability to write something with that kind of pace and creativity?”

Time for some damage control. I suggested he view the Steve Berry novel as more than just a recent international thriller. It’s also Berry’s eleventh published book, created after he’d been writing fiction for twenty years. A well-practiced effort, it’s stronger and more complex his earlier novels.

My friend would be setting himself to fail if he tried to write like Steve Berry, James Rollins, Dan Brown, or anyone else. Yet if he wants to get published in that field, he’d be wise to consider what elements in their approaches might also make sense for him.

I suggested he learn what he can from masters of in the genre, especially where it stretches him. In his case, especially consider how these writers plan a complex plot, depending less on seat-of-the pants spontaneity.

But there’s a limit in reading top writers. Learn what you can from them. Incorporate what make sense. But don’t try to let another writer squeeze you into their mold.

If he learns from the best, rather than try to imitate them, the result will be a stronger story—that still sounds like him. And because it will spring from his deep faith, the story will resonates with themes often absent in international dramas.

Can you write like that? Don’t even try. Yet by learning from them—and incorporating your unique skills and perspectives—you may be able to write even better.

You Can’t Quote That by Andy Scheer

Page 174 stopped me cold. Unless the novelist wanted legal trouble, something had to change.

In editing the novel, I’d already checked the copyright and permissions page. I saw the usual boilerplate acknowledging use by permission from several Scripture versions. But nothing about song lyrics.

Ideally, the author would have two choices. But this project was on a tight deadline. So page 174 had to change.

A character had just turned on her car radio, and it scanned to an oldies station. Suddenly she was back with her boyfriend in 1965 at their senior prom, hearing their favorite song.

A natural segue for a brief flashback. With one problem: the author quoted the song’s entire chorus.

Enter the copyright police. While lawyers struggle to define exactly how much of a copyrighted work an author can freely cite, printing the full chorus of a recent song (and 1964 is still considered recent) is clearly too much. Opinions vary about whether quoting even a line is kosher. But mentioning the title is safe.

I confirmed the author had neither the time nor the inclination to track down the song’s copyright holder. So now, readers will be told that Grace smiled when the radio played “Chapel of Love” by the Dixie Cups. The next paragraph will say they had expected that soon, they would go to a chapel and get married. And a paragraph later, the sweetheart will paraphrase a line of lyrics about loving until the end of time.

In the story, the former sweetheart had done four years in prison. I wouldn’t want the author to share a similar fate.

Can we write ourselves into our fiction? by Terry Burns

I don't think we can write credible fiction without it.

We can't write a character without getting inside their skin and imagining what they would do and say in the situation we are putting them in. That means our own experience and history, our own dealings with other people in our life come into play in fleshing them out.

Does that go for the antagonist too? Oh yes, even more so. No hero can be stronger than the villain or situation they are up against. Captain America called in the find out who is stealing someone's newspaper would be a very small story no matter how strong a hero he is.

For a writer this is rather like "going to the dark side." It doesn't mean we have done wicked things we can call upon to write about, but we can imagine them. Sometimes it can be scary how well we can imagine them.

I hear writers all the time talking about "I cried when I wrote that," or "I scared myself with that scene." I've done that. But it's a good thing. How can we expect to raise emotions in someone else that we haven't experienced ourselves? We have to be writing our own emotions into the piece.

So we are drawing on our own experiences, on our own emotions, and we are probably drawing on our own friends, family and acquaintances as well as those we come into contact with to flesh out characters and give them life. I know a number of authors who like to go the the mall or airport or some other public place just to watch people and get ideas for characters.

Putting ourselves into our characters shoes to imagine what they would say or do, the operational word is "ourselves." No matter how much we are trying to be someone else, it's still us. And when we are writing some character doing some really wicked things, you may stop as I have and say to yourself, "Wow, where did that come from?"

Put Yourself in Your Book by Andy Scheer

I've spent much of my free time the past several days visiting with my old friend Stephen Bly. Yes, Steve graduated to Glory a few years back, but he left much of himself behind – in the form of his writing.

A weekend ago, while investigating the book department in the new Goodwill thrift store in Monument, Colorado (they even serve fresh, free coffee) I stumbled upon all three volumes of his “Austin-Stoner Files” from the mid 1990s.

My collection was missing book two, The Final Chapter of Chance McCall, so I snapped it up. Back home, I put my feet up and began visiting once again with Steve.

Rodeo cowboy Brady Stoner is not Steve. The author and pastor from Winchester, Idaho, was much too good a writer to create a protagonist who completely mirrored himself. But Steve did put a lot of himself into Brady: his interests, his speech patterns, and especially his values. There's even a lot of Steve – primarily the values – in big city book editor Linda Dawn Austin.

I miss Steve. But I'm grateful that anytime I want, I can visit with him. After finishing The Final Chapter of Chance McCall, I jumped back to book one, The Lost Manuscript of Martin Taylor Harrison. With no big projects this weekend, I look forward to the time with my friend.

Having spent years in the business, I've been privileged to work with many authors, and become friends with some. Any time I want to refresh that friendship, all I need do is take a book from my shelf.

Speaking Your Language by Andy Scheer

Besides English, how many languages do you speak? Likely more than you suspect.

One guest at our Super Bowl party works as an electrical engineer. Because he is fluent in a technical vocabulary he shares only with those who work in his field, I asked if he could interpret the title of a job description I'd recently stumbled on: a “mixed signal design verification engineer.”

As someone who works with words, I had my own understanding of “mixed signals.” But to Dan, the title made perfect sense. The meaning has nothing to do with conflicting messages, but to input from both analog and digital sources.

If your novel ever includes someone who works in electronics, I hope that character talks something like Dan. Even if your readers don't catch half the jargon, it provides a sense of authenticity. And that, every reader can understand.

I've never done any fly fishing, but I sure know that Keith McCafferty, the author of the novels I'm reading, has. His protagonist works as a Montana fishing guide. Every page offers a richness of details that ring true: about trout flies and fishing techniques, the geography, plants, and wildlife, the people and their way of life.

While I've never done more than just drive through Montana, after reading The Royal Wulff Murders I felt I'd spent considerable time there. A visit I enjoyed so much, I booked a return trip – in the form of the sequel: The Gray Ghost Murders.

After reading those novels, I don't pretend to know what kind of trout fly to use in different conditions. But I know there's an important difference and that a good guide – or a good author – can inform me.

Do that well and you won't send your readers any mixed signals.

All-Star Jazz by Andy Scheer

Any pantster novelists at the traditional jazz festival this past weekend in Evergreen, Colorado, would have liked the performance at 7:15 Saturday.

Pianist Jeff Barnhart had come primarily to play solo or perform duets with his flute-playing wife, Ann. But for this hour he was asked to pull together a full ensemble.

From all the other bands with that slot open, he picked the best to play not only the front line of trombone, trumpet, and clarinet, but also the supporting rhythm section of drums, bass, and banjo.

Those choices made, most of his work was done. No rehearsal needed.

All he had to do was name each tune and its key. The performers took it from there, playing in unison for the opener, then trading off improvisational solos until the time to wrap. The notes arose spontaneously from each player's experience and personality.

I'd witnessed each perform in their own bands, but in this combination they played even more like themselves. Just the way Jeff Barnhart wanted.

Much like a novelist who assembles the characters, places them in an interesting situation, and lets them run with it.

There's nothing like an all-star cast.