by

Mary Deal

A scene ends when the action ends or the conversation can add no more to that part of the story. Maybe one scene is in the grocery store; the next scene is outside on the docks. Usually when a huge shift in location happens, you begin a new chapter.

(Don’t try to write a sequel to “My Dinner with Andre” which happened totally in one scene at the dinner table. It’s been done and was successful because the actors were good.)

When you end a scene, leave the reader wondering what could happen next and wanting to read further. It’s called a cliff hanger. Leave something unfinished, like a threat of action yet to happen and we can see one character gearing up to do some dirty work. The reader wonders what could possible happen next? And so they keep turning pages.

Or maybe it’s a romance and you end the scene with two people simply staring into each others’ eyes wondering if they could work as a couple.

When you move to the next scene, jump into the middle of it. Use very little narration to set the scene. Best is to knit the action, narration and dialogue together.

Depending on how you present your story, you do not need to have each new scene be a result of another. In other words, that cute couple I just mentioned are staring into each other’s eyes. You wouldn’t and shouldn’t start you next chapter with them in a new location, still cuddling up to get to know each other. Once you introduce that they are mutually attracted, the next scene (the whole story middle) should have action that pulls them apart. Every couple has baggage to air before they become a couple. Regardless what background or location you place them in, the action must be lively.

Keep the idea of a cliff hanger in mind when you finish your chapters.

Cliff hanger = An exciting hint of things to come; something to make the reader want to know more.

Please visit Mary Deal’s website for more wonderful articles like this one: Write Any Genre.

Repetition Offends Your Reader

by Mary Deal

When descriptive words are used repetitively in writing, it makes the reader wonder why they have to be told something they’ve already learned earlier in the story. Repetition can kill your reader’s interest.

On Page 2 of my new novel, River Bones, the reader learns that Sara, the protagonist, is blonde when the real estate salesman describes her to someone else:

“Some middle-aged blonde woman—a real looker out of Puerto Rico—just bought that damnable eyesore down along the river.”

On Page 9 I say,

“The breeze whipped her hair across her face and wrapped it around her neck.”

I had originally written that sentence like this:

“The breeze whipped her long blonde hair across her face and wrapped it around her neck.”

Because I mentioned Sara’s hair color on Page 2, no need exists to mention the color again anywhere else in the book, with rare exceptions, of course.

Notice, too, her hair length was not mentioned on Page 2, but on Page 9 if her hair is long enough to whip across her face and around her neck, no need exists for the word “long” to describe it. Surely from reading that one corrected sentence, a reader knows Sara’s hair is not cropped off at the nape of her neck.

The word “long” was not needed due to the description of how the hair reacted in the wind.

To further prove the point, read the sentence from Page 2 with the correct sentence from Page 9. Then go back and read the sentence from Page 2 with the incorrect sentence from Page 9.

Analyze your sentences for superfluous words. Cut ruthlessly, or improve the action in your sentence to show what you mean. Your readers will love you for it.

You may recall my interview with Mary on November 18th.  Here’s a link to her original interview if you’d like to go back and read it: A Good Deal, Mary Deal, That Is, Guest-Blogs With Mike Angley Today

Mary’s website is chock-full of great articles like the one that follows, so please be sure to visit her at: Write Any Genre

Thanks, Mary!

Foreshadowing

by Mary Deal

Foreshadowing gives the reader a sense of participation in the story, through anticipation….

Throughout all stages of writing development, foreshadowing gives the reader a sense of participation in the story, through anticipation.

One of the best tips for writing a story, whether short or book length, is to introduce certain plot action early in a composition. That early action, or the action sequences, should quietly suggest what’s to come later. This applies across the board to multi-genre writing.

Great foreshadowing ties all the way down to the ending, through the great writing and grammar, into the story climax and denouement.

Avid readers, especially, are wise to plot action. They can spot foreshadowing without having to go back and read the sequence again. They can sense it in the set up. They want it!

Subconsciously, a few readers may not realize foreshadowing has prepped them. However, on a subconscious level, tight pre-planning keeps them wrapped up in the story.

Whether on a subconscious level or consciously, you want your readers to carry a feeling of anticipation as they read through the stages of writing development that you have so adeptly woven. The reader won’t be aware of writing rules and writing procedures. But foreshadowing keeps them turning pages.

The way I write is to finish a chapter, that one scene, with all that I can allow myself to put into it…for the moment. As I write the next succeeding chapters, I may think of something new to include in the story that needs to be foreshadowed earlier. So I go back and add a tease in a preceding chapter or other chapters before that one. I continue this process throughout the book. No chapter is really finished till the book is finally polished.

In writing my first mystery, I thought my story was finished, but realized one bit of action that should have been foreshadowed earlier. Then, it is a matter of choosing which chapter to go back to, the most likely place, to insert the hint of what was to come.

Those hints must be so innocent that they do not tell exactly what’s to come. Yet, when you read what happens later in the story, you remember the hint of it mentioned earlier.

For instance, in my mystery/thriller, River Bones, when I planned my notes for Chapter 4, I wanted to give a credible reason for my character to accept two pit bull puppies. Yet, I have her so busy she doesn’t have time for dogs. It’s unlikely she would take on responsibility like that. But the plot required that she take these dogs.

So I went back to an earlier chapter, where the protagonist is talking to her little sister’s headstone at her gravesite, sort of updating her sister about her life. My character hasn’t been to her sister’s grave in years, so she’s real emotional, with jumbled thoughts, and she’s just tossing out important events. In the dialog, I added that she said, “By the way, Mandy died. But you know that, don’t you?” As if her sister in heaven watches over her and already knew.

The reader will know that because this is a fiction novel, soon enough, they will learn who Mandy is. Since this is a suspenseful mystery, the mention of a death early in the story is just another incident to tweak the reader’s interest and keep them reading. When they get to the part where the protagonist tells a friend she once had a Yorkshire terrier named Mandy, that she loved dearly, the reader then understands the emotions and motivation that make the woman innocently accept the two pit bull puppies.

I say innocently accept because her doing so out of love for the dogs is a pivotal point in the story that should not feel contrived, especially when the plot action requires the dogs be with her and no one else. To make the story credible, I had to foreshadow a reason why the character would so readily accept the pups. Without having inserted that one line of dialog into the scene at the gravesite, the fact that the protagonist later readily accepts the dogs becomes nothing more than a crutch to help solve a crime.

Foreshadowing gives the reader a sense of participation in the story, through anticipation, and is necessary to make the plot action of any story cohesive.

Several of his short stories have been published and one, A Fish Story, is included in the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books, Chicken Soup for the Fisherman’s Soul, now available in book stores everywhere.  His short story, Duty, appeared in the December/January 2006 issue of the Pensacola Today magazine.  Feature articles of his have been published in various magazines about the USS Oriskany, an aircraft carrier sunk in the Gulf of Mexico in May of 2006 in the Navy’s artificial reef program, and Survivors a human-interest story about a Pensacola military family that survived Pearl Harbor, World War II, Hurricane Ivan and 70 years of marriage.

He has published five novels, Civil War II, (2004), The Blue Heron (2005) and The Killing Zone: Evil’s Playground (2007), Jugs & Bottles (2009) and The Sin Slayer (2010).

Nelson founded Pen WISE Poets (Writers in Service to Education), a literary arts outreach program in the schools of Northwest Florida, which he managed from 1994 thru 1998, and in 1995, he was cited by Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida for this work.  In October of 1995, he received a fellowship for his writings, and in August of the same year was appointed by Florida’s Secretary of State to the Directory of Visiting Artists to lecture in Florida schools about poetry, only one of five poets throughout the state to be honored so.

He holds a Bachelor of Business Degree in Operations Management and a Masters of Business Administration Degree from Western Illinois University, Macomb, Illinois.

A former native of northwestern Illinois, he now resides in Gulf Breeze, Florida.

Okay, that was a mouthful! Tell us how you began writing novels, because it seems like you wrote a lot of poetry before this.

NO: I wrote poetry for over 7 years and had 40 poems published, 28 of them I actually received compensation, but the highest payment I ever received for a poem was $35.00.  In the late-90s, I came to the conclusion I was wasting my time with poetry and began writing novels. However, the poetry writing experience taught me to express my thoughts in a more concise manner and greatly improved my sentence structuring.

MA: Tell us about your novels, and did any real-life experiences inspire them?

NO: My first 2 novels are action adventure novels with political overtones and loosely based on my military experience as an Army officer.  Almost all of the main characters in my novels are based on people I know or have met in a professional working relationship in some way.

Here’s the list:

Civil War II – My first published novel, action/adventure (2004) – A story of coercion, bribery and a military coup, overthrowing a sitting President of the United States, the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court.

The Blue Heron - An action/adventure (2005) – A story about a U.S. military covert operation and coup to overthrow the Cuban government.

The Killing Zone: Evil’s Playground – Police thriller/mystery (2007) – Police Detective Daniel Patrick O’Malley is called out to investigate the death of a young woman in what appears to be an apparent suicide, but he soon discovers she is a victim in a series of bizarre murders.

Jugs & Bottles – Police thriller/comedy (2009) – A woman deaf since birth, is targeted for murder after witnessing a Mafia style execution then identifying the two hit men to the police.  She, along with her dog become involved in a series of chaotic events as two brothers attempt to silence her with their bumbling, comedic ways.

The Sin Slayer – Police mystery/suspense thriller (2010) – For thirty years, a self-ordained church leader has convinced his small congregation to secretly kill dozens of people after hearing an inner voice, whom he believes to be God, telling him to cleanse the world of chosen sinners.

Flowers, Love & Other Things (2005) – A collection of poems and short stories by Nelson O. Ottenhausen published in other media from 1994 through 2005.

MA: That’s quite an assortment! Are your heroes based upon real people you’ve known?

NO: Protagonists, as well as the main characters in all of my novels, are mirrored after someone I knew, both relatives and friends.

MA: I’m intrigued by Jugs & Bottles because your protagonist is not human. Tell us more.

NO: My hero in that story is a dog. His strong points are; he is loyal, obedient and lovable, and will face danger without hesitation to protect his charge.  His biggest weakness; he tries to befriend everyone because of his lovable attitude.

MA: I take it you have many different antagonists in your stories?

NO: Each novel has a strong “bad guy” and all of them are a little whacky.  In Jugs & Bottles, there are really 2 “bad guys” and 2 good “bad guys” (2 brothers wanting be major criminals, but just don’t have the smarts nor ability to become so).

MA: As prolific a writer as you are, I assume you are working on something new?

NO: I’m presently working on two novels, Black Mist of the Trinity, a story of terrorists, nuclear warfare and black OPS; and Auggie, a historical novel about a young Russian girl growing up in Japanese occupied China during World War II, based on the true life experiences of a long time acquaintance.

MA: Anything else you’d like to add?

NO: I am President and part owner of Patriot Media, Inc., a small independent publishing company in Niceville, Florida.  We are a traditional publisher in the sense we do not charge authors to publish their work.  We are specialized and publish only military theme books, both fiction and non-fiction.

MA: Nelson, thanks for your service in the Army, and thanks for being my guest today. Folks, please visit Nelson’s Patriot Media website, as well as his personal site:  www.booksbynelson.com.

by

Mary Deal

Let’s say your story is being told from Sadie’s point of view. She’s your main character. As the story progresses, you have her friend approach and you write it like this:

Jeremy walked straight toward her. “Great to see you, Sadie.” His words couldn’t express what he was thinking. She had lost all that weight and bordered on having a model’s figure. Now he really wanted to bed her. He decided he’d treat her real sweet this time.

Notice that the above paragraph tells us what Jeremy is thinking. He is not the main character. Sadie is the main character. She cannot possibly know what Jeremy is thinking, so you cannot include it written that way.

You can, however, have Sadie read Jeremy’s facial expression and mannerisms and react to it from her point of view. She can show the reader what Jeremy does that will tell the reader what’s on Jeremy’s mind. What Jeremy may think and feel doesn’t have to be spelled out. It can be interpreted by the main character. Like this:

Sadie watched Jeremy walk toward her. His sauntering gait gave him enough time to notice her new figure and to feel his glands working as he eyed her from head to toe and back again. She knew him. He’d always made innuendoes about wanting to hop in bed again and renewing their sorry relationship.

“Great to see you, Sadie,” Jeremy said. His eyes had that hungry look. He always looked that way, as if sex was the only thing her image triggered in his mind. Maybe it was, but being used and cast aside was no longer part of her new image of self-respect.

Sadie stepped away when he reached for her. “Don’t try to touch me, Jerry. We washed up a long time ago and you’re still trying to own me.”

Jeremy’s expression went hollow. “You got me all wrong,” he said. The corner of his mouth twitched. That always happened when he was faced with the truth.

Staying in the POV character’s head gives you a chance to create a character with some smarts, at least, enough to intuit other characters’ actions and thoughts. It also gives you a greater chance of added detail and some interesting fleshing out of your prose that makes the action come alive. Notice that in the above short paragraphs, Jeremy actually confirms what Sadie has interpreted from him. It’s much more interesting.

Please visit Mary Deal’s website for more wonderful articles like this one: Write Any Genre.

by

Mary Deal

When you write your first draft, perhaps you simply write whatever comes out just to get the ideas onto the page. You know you’ll go back time and time again to get it polished just right. Maybe you polish your sentences or paragraphs before going onto the next one. Then, after all your editing, you feel something is still lacking. Maybe it’s the way you phrase the action. Maybe it’s a simple matter like your choice of words.

To help you make your prose as descriptive as possible without sounding flowery, read your composition again and look for specific words that could be replaced with descriptive VERBS that zero in on the exact action taking place.

I’m no stranger to getting the first word out that comes to mind and then needing to go back and clean up my grammar. Here are some samples from the novel I’m presently writing. I first wrote this:

Afterward, she went on her way.

If you write a sentence like this, ask yourself, How did she go? Instead of went describe her movements or gait:

Afterward, she sauntered away.

Afterward, she slipped away

Read this phrase:

Danced across the floor

Danced is a descriptive word, but it’s also a little common and could refer to many, many ways of dancing. How about…

Did a two-step across the floor

Waltzed across the floor

And this:

She felt around the floor of the car, trying to find the cell phone

Felt is also quite common.

She groped around the seat and on the floor of the car…

She slid her hand between the seats

Although a lot of emotion can be stirred just reading certain words they, too, can be made more descriptive. Replace this:

The thought of dying came to mind.

…with something like this:

The thought of bleeding to death came to mind

The thought of succumbing to coma, never to wake again, came to mind.

The above has two words to watch. We could have used:

The thought of slipping into a coma… instead, succumbing is more dramatic than gently slipping into a coma. Slipping hints at the character gently fading. Succumbing tells us she would put up a gallant fight to stay alive until, perhaps, more powerful forces overtook her. It’s more dramatic.

Here’s another sentence with two words:

The fireman holding up her head managed to get his upper body through the open windshield space.

More exciting:

The fireman supporting her head managed to squeeze his upper body through the open windshield space.

All of the words replaced above, and many, many more, are common words. The actions need to be exactly defined, made more exciting with better, more descriptive verbs and adverbs if your grammar is to stand out.

Your prose must sing and dance off the page. Anytime you describe what a character does, always check to see if a more descriptive word might apply. Using words that better show the exact actions that your character performs helps your reader become the character. That’s exactly what great prose does.

Please visit Mary Deal’s website for more wonderful articles like this one: Write Any Genre.

by

Mary Deal

When promoting your books, you will need to create a Logline. Specifically, that is 25 – 50 words that describe your story without giving away the ending.

A logline describes the main thread of the story action. It does not include anything happening in the subplots. Your main character carries the main story line; any subplots feed into and enhance the main character and story line.

Depending where you promote, some logline requirements can be as brief a 5 words, or 10 words.

This is great practice for writing lean.

The way to cut the verbiage down to logline potential is to write your description. You may use your brief synopsis instead. When you have a sense of the detail that you convey in that bit of writing, see how much you can cut. Keep in mind the overall meaning of your story. Once cut, anything left should relate to the main story line.

When cutting, keep whittling till you’ve got your descriptions down to several different lengths. You will use different lengths occasionally.

Something to help you is a site I found that will tell you whether you’ve written a statement that delivers impact. Once you have your loglines completed, enter them on this site and see how you fare.

http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

The words you use are important. You will need words that carry a lot of impact. Once you receive your rating, it may also help you to see how you might improve your logline.

Please visit Mary Deal’s website for more wonderful articles like this one: Write Any Genre.

by

Mary Deal

As a writer, you may find that TV characters can be emotionally flat time and again. What sets them apart, even what gets the viewer to like them, is that we can see them. We see their facial expressions and how they react to other people and occurrences. We see their actions, which express motivations and emotion. We see the background scenery and how they act and react in such a setting.

What we see on TV or in a film is exactly what many writers fail to include in their stories. What we see in a picture doesn’t have to be explained because we see it. When writing our stories and books, we have to describe most of this for the reader.

A simplified example: If the reader doesn’t know the character is caught out in a rainstorm, how will the reader know anything except that the character is walking down a street?

We must describe the setting. If it was raining, don’t stop there.

Was it a thunderstorm or simply sprinkling?

Did the character get caught without a raincoat and umbrella?

Was the sky dark, or was the sun shining through the rain?

Was the wind blowing?

Who else was nearby and how did they react to the rain?

We writers have to include in our written works anything that might otherwise be seen when viewing the same scene on TV or in a film. Yet, we cannot over-do the details by stopping the story and describing the background.

Every detail necessary should be woven into the action. Which do you prefer?

The sky was dark. Lightning lit up the distance sky. Thunder rolled. The wind was fierce. It bent her umbrella backwards. She discarded it. Rain pelted down. She wore a raincoat but was still caught in the rain.

Or this:

When lightning flashed and thunder rolled again and the deluge came, she grabbed the collar of her raincoat, drew it up around her neck, and began running. Her umbrella bent backwards as the wind tore it from her hands. Her hair hung in loose wet ringlets as water streamed off the ends and ran down inside the coat. How did she ever let herself get caught alone on a dark street with wind strong enough to blow her over the side of the bridge? And why had that dark sedan slowed its speed to keep pace directly behind her?

The rule is never to stop the story to describe the background or scene, but to include the surroundings among the action performed by each character and as it affects that character.

Please visit Mary Deal’s website for more wonderful articles like this one: Write Any Genre.

Child Finder: Revelation, the third in award-winning novelist Mike Angley’s Child Finder Trilogy, lives up the promise of its two predecessors and then trots another mile down the road. Back are the protagonists readers have come to know and love―synesthetic psychic Pat O’Donnell and family, John Helmsley, General Swank, and Woody Davis. This time, the good-guy cast includes such luminaries as the President of the United States and the Pope. The antagonists aren’t just any old kidnappers or run of the mill psychopaths. Lurking stage left is North Korea’s Dear Leader and his minions. At stake are the lives of two precocious, psychic little girls―twin daughters of the US Ambassador to South Korea.

Like Angley’s prior volumes, Revelation is filled with secrets―codes, equipment, paint, airplanes, weapons, abilities, and adventures. The characters are both tough and sensitive. Their stories explore the usual thriller theme―good and evil. Their battles are cataclysmic, their issues primeval. It’s the stuff of superhero action movies with dark undertones.

Don’t let the drama fool you.

Angley’s story explores politics and religion with the same sense of fun and what’s-under-the-lid excitement as Steven Spielberg did with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. Who are these girls? Why do they matter so much that the President is willing to risk Pat―an important resource for the US (and all mankind)? Why do they matter so much that the Vatican gets involved?  They are so cute, so sweet―so adorable. But they are just little girls―aren’t they?

Readers are seldom treated to such a clever, thoughtful and intriguing tale. The suspense takes two forms―action and philosophy.  I mean it―philosophy.  Not just the who, what, when and where of things, but the why. For those of us who seldom go through a day without pondering the mysteries of life, Angley’s sojourn into alternate possibilities is delightful. In particular, I love the short discussion about fiction toward the end of the piece. I have always found fiction to be the more eloquent genre―because the author is free to interpret his message―and to offer his version of the world to the reader as entertainment.  Angley’s coy suggestion that the classified Level 4 secrets revealed to Pat O’Donnell are really true makes the reader chuckle but five minutes after finishing the book, persistent thoughts tease the cerebellum like feathers tickle the nose. Could it be? Let’s see what Google does say about The Speech of the Unknown….Hmmm.

by

Mary Deal

All of us perceive and interpret information predominantly in one of three different ways. They are seeing, hearing and feeling.

If you’ll notice the speech of others, three people may receive information and respond to it differently.

I see what you mean.

I hear you.

I feel I know that.

When having your story characters use any of those three verbs, it is advisable to have them stick with the same one throughout the story unless a particular situation demands else.

If your character first says, “I see what you mean,” try not to have him or her later say something like “I feel I already know that.”

When being told something, the sight-minded person will respond, “I can see that. Yes, I saw that.” They may not have actually seen the action being described but they visualize it in their mind and respond with sight-related words.

The hearing-related person perceives better through hearing, as in a lecture as opposed to quiet reading. Have you ever told a person to do something without saying why? Then that person’s response is “I hear ya’.” That person is actually telling you that he heard the unspoken meaning.

When someone feels something, they are kinesthetic. That is, they feel the effect of what is being said or shown. Whatever they perceive causes a “felt sense,” albeit known only to them at the moment, unless they say something like, “I feel you’re right about that.” Or, “I feel it in my gut.”

All of us use any of the three senses at different times, but we specifically use one most of the time. For example, I can listen to a lecture or read a text and understand, but I will better understand what is being taught if it comes with pictures and diagrams. I am visual.

If you did not realize these habits about yourself, you may be creating all your characters in your likeness. When reading your work, look for these traits in your story people. Did you use only feeling words for your characters? Or hearing words? Or seeing words? Where these characteristics are concerned, you may have passed on the predominant way you perceive the world to ALL your characters. However, all characters should be different. One may see, one may hear, one may feel.

When you establish your characters predominantly using one of these three traits, see that you carry this usage throughout the entire story. This is yet another bit of fine detail behind the scenes that helps add cohesiveness not only to your characters but to your prose as well.

Please visit Mary Deal’s website for more wonderful articles like this one: Write Any Genre.