About Opening Scenes

One of the most common pieces of writing advice you'll hear today is "hook them on the first page". In fact it's often phrased as "hook them with the first line". This is why writers often spend so long labouring over their first lines, because they know you have to catch the reader early or they'll close the book and move on to the next one.

However it is important to note we writers sometimes worry about it far too much. A great first line is a good thing, but it's no good if you don't follow it up with a strong first scene. And a weak first line may well be forgiven by the browsing reader if the rest of the first scene delivers on the tension. I know we live in the sound bite generation, but even today most potential readers will skim at least a couple of pages before deciding (or at least that's been my observation in bookshops).

So I think that when thinking about your opening it's more important to think about the first scene and the reader hook holistically rather than just focusing on the first line. If you can pull of a brilliant opening the first line should take care of itself.

And of course concentrating on the scene should help with avoiding first lines that are supposed to be hooky but come off as contrived. I'm sure we've all seen some of those before now.

But all this is by the by. How do we make our opening scenes hook the reader?

Well I've come across several suggestion - all of which can work solely or in combination.

1. Open with a bang. Many thrillers do this literally. They open with someone in mortal danger. The theory is it hooks you, because you want to know if the person lives or dies. However you have to make the reader care you have to get them to empathise very quickly. If they don't they won't be anxious and will shut the book. But if you do it too well then kill said character they may be disgusted and shut the book instead of reading on to find out who did it. It's even worse if the dust cover tells you the person dies. It makes it hard to get attached if I know the outcome (for me anyway - people's reactions vary).
2. Open in a moment of change. The theory here is that change, even good change makes us anxious and so opening a story in a moment of transition will hook the reader. Of course again this depends on building empathy for the viewpoint character. If you don't why would they feel anxious about the change in the character's life?
3. Open in a moment of unease. Maybe nothing changes per se, but the character still feels uneasy about something. This should also hook the reader for similar reasons to points 1 and 2.
4. One of the most common pieces of first line advice is to give the reader a question to ask. Make the reader read on to find the answers. This is good, but as I said it only works if you follow through on it.
   

In fact most pieces of advice I've read about about opening scenes involves getting the reader to empathise with the character. Give the reader someone they can care about and something to care about and write it well, and they'll read on to find out what happens. Even with the question raising one the reader isn't going to stick around to find the answers if they don't care about the characters. It's characters that make us care. Which makes sense in the end, but like most things it's easier said than done. It's all about practice, practice and more practice like any art.

Links

• A Manuscript's Opening Scene - How to Use the First Five Pages to Sell your Manuscript
• Opening Scenes: An Overview This one is a book excerpt.
• How to Start Your Novel
• Writing a Great Opening for Your Novel or Screenplay
• How to Start Your Novel (Different article, same title as number 3)
  

About Writing First Drafts

So you want to write a story. It can be a novel or a short story or anything in between. You've done your research, you've made an outline if you're using one, and your world is built if needed.

What do you do now?

You write it of course. We're writers (even those of us - like me - who aren't published yet), that's what we do.

Somehow we manage to make it more complicated than that but it really isn't.

There is however some advice which can help (well it helps me, I hope it'll help you).

1. Get anything you need notewise together, grab your pen or keyboard, and do battle with the sea of whiteness. Believe the first line is the hardest - once screen or page has words on it it no longer seems so intimidating.
2. And in this vein never end your days writing at the end of a page - make sure when you start again the next day the page you start on is already sullied by words. It'll make it easier.
3. Don't edit yet. Editing and writing are psychologically different processes. First draft is a heart thing and editing is a head thing. Most people can't pull them off at the same time. Just keep writing - yes, it's a mess. You can sort it out later. (Note I said most - a few people can pull it off and find it impossible to seperate the two)
   
4. Again in this vein. Don't reread - if your notes are good enough you shouldn't need to fact check, and you reread you'll notice how bad it is and either start tweaking what's already written and never move forward, or worse become despondant and stop writing.
5. Know that it is the nature of first drafts to be lousy - almost anything is fixable with rewritting and editing.
   
6. Set yourself a daily goal in wordcount, but don't beat yourself up if you miss it. Just make sure you write something every day.
   
7. Have fun. You're creating art here and that should be fun.
   

Links

• Powering Through the First Draft
• Writing First Draft? Forget Looking Good. Make Messes
• Writing a Novel First Draft
• The First Draft of Everything is Shit
• Write that First Draft First
  

About Showing and Telling

Oh my goodness it's the mother of all writing topics this week.

It is the mantra that everybody quotes, but very few explain. This is quite amusing since telling is all about explaining what happened in the story instead of illustrating it. It's also understandable because it's bloody hard to explain.

What it actually means is that you should evoke what's happening without needing to explain.

Yeah that's about as much use as telling you to show, don't tell isn't it?

One of my favourite online articles (linked in the link section below) calls it Seduction, not Instruction - and yeah that works too.

But in the end "Show, don't Tell" is best illustrated by Showing rather than Telling.

Telling

It was Linda's birthday party. Her classmates were there with gifts and everyone seemed friendly - but her low self-esteem insisted they were really there for the chocolate cake.

Showing (warning - written off the top of my head)

"Happy Birthday, Linda!" Sarah said. A brightly wrapped parcel was pushed under her nose. "Open it! Open it!"

Linda began to peel back the sellotape until she heard a snort.

"For goodness sake stop fussing!" her mother said.

"But it's a waste to tear it."

"You're keeping everyone waiting."

Linda looked up from the parcel in time to see Sarah's eyes flick towards the table with the food on it. She swallowed back tears. Typical! Her classmates weren't here for her, just the chocolate cake.

The second example isn't high art by any stretch - in fact it's pretty damned bad (as I noted I wrote it off the top of my head and it therefore comes with a dire punctuation and first draft crap warning) but it shows better than the first example which is pure telling. As a basic rule any time you summarise an event instead of writing it as a scene you're telling not showing.

That's large scale telling.

There's also small scale telling. This is things like using adverbs and adjectives instead of evoking what's happening. Now adjectives aren't always bad - if it's absolutely necessary that the reader knows the coat is brown (maybe the colour is a clue that will help solve the mystery once someone says it was blue and thus reveals they weren't there or something) then just say it's brown. But most often they are just not needed. Adverbs on the other hand are probably best avoided. Lot's of novels use them but saying something in a way that avoids them is usually stonger.

Take the following:

As Linda fell she desperately reached for the nearest branch and almost reached it.

and compare it to:

Linda 's arms flailed around her as she fell - her fingertips brushed the bark of a branch and she strained towards it, but her fist closed on nothing.

Again not high art at all(I should have written up some examples a few days ago but I've been busy outlining), but I think the second is a bit more evokative. The first bit needs more work to capture the desperation. I wanted to use blindly or wildly but those are adverbs too.

I can see myself editing this with a very red face in a few weeks, when it's rested long enough for me to edit those passages, and make them better.

Anyway Links that probably explain this better than me:

1. Seduction, not Instruction Part 1
2. Seduction, not Instruction Part 2
3. Show, don't Tell (apparently it's the first rule of writing).
4. Show, don't Tell, the story
5. Learning as we go - article one (you'll have to scroll through the introduction to get to the article but it's worth it)
   

About Dialogue

Dialogue - the bit where your characters talk to each other. It's important. It's also kind of hard to do right.

The thing is that dialogue in fiction has to read and sound like real conversation without being like real conversation.

Real conversations are confusing things full of interruptions and elisions that would make a written conversation unreadable. So - as I've said before - you are trying to catch the essence of speech without its confusion.

In practice what this means is there are two common mistakes authors make with dialogue.

1. They make it too formal. The character's say things no one would - which removes transparency of writing. Not a good thing.

or

2. They try and making it authentic and fill it with pauses, interruptions, repetitions, missing bits, slang and dialect to the point it is unreadable.

The best way to get round this is to read it aloud - if it sounds stilted it's probably got problem 1. If it's impossible for a single person too read it aloud it's probably got problem 2. Try to write dialogue that is both comprehensible and sounds natural when read aloud.

Once you know what's wrong with it you can start to fix it. It's one of those things you just have to keep plugging away at until you get it right. I still get it wrong sometimes (probably a lot of the time).

And now the useful links on the subject:

1. Does Dialogue Require Good Grammar in Fiction Writing?
2. Writing Natural Dialogue
3. Top 8 Tips for Writing Dialogue
4. Writing Compelling Dialogue in Fiction
5. Writing Effective Dialogue
   

About Antagonists

I was going to do "Show and Tell" as my resourse topic today, but I'm feeling a bit off-colour, and my attempts to write some examples failed totally. I'll try again when I have more time.

So instead I thought I'd talk about a sister topic to Characterisation.

Antagonists

In general - unless you're pitting your protagonist against nature in some way - your antagonist is a character. In fact they are the second most important character in your story because without someone to get in the way there wouldn't be a story. Therefore they come with the same need for development as any important character.

When developing your antagonist you need to consider the following things:

1. Motive. Why does your antagonist get in the way? No one thinks they are evil. Your antagonist needs a reason that makes some sort of sense. It can be twisted but it should be comprehensible. BTW if your antagonist's motive is immortality - think very carefully about it. Why does he do things no right minded person would do for this goal? In short why does he want to be immortal? It's not even impossible for the antagonist to be right - though this can lead to a total downer ending if handled badly (unless you want a downer ending which is perfectly valid).
   
2. What are their good points and how can you show them off? Unremitting evil is boring - and in humans at least unrealistic. If your antagonist is Satan, Great Cthulhu or similar then okay its fair that there are't any, but if you do have a supernatural big bad consider keeping him or her in the background, and having them make their presence known through their human servitors.
   
3. What is their inner conflict? Just like your protagonist your antagonist needs inner conflict.
   

I'll probably be back to edit this post when I'm feeling brighter. I know there were more points I wanted to make - but right now I can't think of them.

Links

1. A Winning Antagonist
   
2. Antagonist in Fiction
3. Writing Believable Antagonists
4. Writing Antagonists With Depth
5. Sleeping With the Enemy
   

About Writing Fight Scenes

Back in May I made a post about how I dreaded writing fight scenes. Since then I've spent some time reading up on the subject to see if I can begin to get a handle on it.

I think I'm finally getting somewhere.

Firstly from the amount of stuff out there it seems this is a common problem writers have. Maybe it's just that misery loves company, but it always feels good to know that other people have the same problem you do.

Secondly I've picked up some good tips which explained why I found the process of writing fight scenes so frustrating. These can be distilled down to the following three tips.


1. Write don't Choreograph. I tended to try and describe the fight I could see so clearly in my head and I ended up telling not showing. They ended up reading like stage direction. Something I'd never do if I had a dance scene in a story. Sometimes the problems are really obvious when someone points it out.

2. Make sure you're inside the Point ofView character's head. An omniscient PoV will create too much distance from the fight. The reader needs to be right there with the character. A fight is an emotional thing even if you're just watching it. You should always watch your PoV carefully in a scene - but in a fight scene it's extra important. There's so much going on that multiple PoV's would confuse the reader. It's generally not a good idea to confuse the reader.

3. Emotion! Obviously this connects directly to point 2, but I felt it deserved it's own point. In many ways capturing the emotiveness of the fight is more important than the action. And the action? Imagine how the PoV character would perceive what's happening, how they'd react to it. You're in their PoV, so that's what you write.


I think this is why The fight scene in "Moonlight and Memories" actually worked for me. It was written very intensely in one character's point of view and concentrated on the emotion rather than the action per se. It still needs some editing, but it's heading in the right direction, I think. It also gives me some idea how to sort out some other fight scenes.

Links to helpful articles bout fight scenes.

1. Does Your Fight Scene Pack a Punch? Awesome article. I think this is the article I learned the most from. Especially the "write don't choreograph" one.
2. How to Write Fight Scenes into Your Manuscript. Full of useful tips that ought to be obvious, but probably aren't - like "fight scenes must make physical sense".
3. Best Ways to Write a Fight Scene. Another good set of advice. Especially the bit about avoiding monotony - another problem with choreographing fights. They tend to be boring.
4. Creative Writing - How to Write Fight Scenes. Another good one, that again mentions the monotony problem and talks about how to balance the needs of action and description in the fast and furious reality of a fight.
5. Five Ways to Write Sizzling Fight Scenes (Superhero and Fantasy) - Given my pechant for writing speculative fiction this one is especially useful to me, because obviously extremely improbable things can happen in fight scenes, and that can raise a whole different set problems.

If you found this post helpful, or have any feedback please comment. Thanks.

About Overcoming Writer's Block

We've all had it - that moment when you sit down to write and the words just won't seem to come out onto the paper. There can be a number of reasons for this. Sometimes you've got a plot hole that needs fixing before you can progress. Sometimes You're tired - it's hard to be creative when you're exhausted. Sometimes you're just stressing too much about it. There are other causes too - and the best solution is to work out why you have block and deal with that.

My personal solutions to writer's block:

1. If the problem is with the plot I'll work out what I need to do to fix it and make notes but not rewrite it at this point. Then I'll carry on as if I'd already made the changes. This can make the first draft a bit confusing to anyone who isn't you - but this is why I don't show people my first drafts (well that and the fact they're awful)

2. If I'm tired I do the obvious and get some sleep. I get some of my best inspiration from dreams anyway and lack of sleep isn't healthy.

3. If I'm stressing I do something distracting - in my case that usually involves reading, listening to music, or some combination of the two.

4. Write something else. If I really can't work on the project I had in mind I'll write something else instead. Sometimes leaving a project for a few days. This can be good with plot problems because it can take a few days to be ready to analyse the problem

5. Take a bath - always good for stress.

6. Go somewhere else to write. I've mentioned this one before - it really works for me. Get out of the house go to a coffee shop, the park or anywhere you like where you can sit and write. A change of scene can really help.

And here are some other people's tips. There will probably be some duplication here as other people have found the same tricks.

• 5 Ways to break through a Fiction Writing Block
• The Writer's Block Page - yes an entire web page dedicated to writer's block.
• How to Deal With Writer's Block - very tongue in cheek, but it amused me.
  
• Ten Tips to Trounce Writer's Block

About Research

I feel a bit odd writing about research. I hate research. Well hate is too strong a word, but I'm not very comfortable with it - mostly because I'm not very good at it.

I mean if it just involves reading up on a subject I'm fine. I can find and read a book, article or Wikipedia entry no trouble. If someone I know knows about it I can ask them. If I actually need to find someone new who knows the subject and ask them questions I run into trouble. The thing is I'm a little shy and the thought of contacting total strangers and asking them nosy questions about it makes me feel ill.

As of yet I'm still trying to find a way past this hang up of mine, because research is important if you want to your fiction to have that element of versimilitude.

Anyway I've been researching research so to speak, and here are the links I've come up with so far.

• Research is Just a Roadtrip is about research in general.


• On Writing - Research is specifically about SF.


• Writing 101: Research that Novel


• How to Research Your Novel on the Internet
  

About Characterisation

It's very important for characters in fiction to be three dimensional, and it can be very confusing when your critical readers tell you that they aren't.

One of the reasons this happens - as far as I can tell from my own writing - is too much focus on a character's primary trait. Real people tend to be living breathing bundles of contradiction. A kind person might well be cruel if stressed. A tolerant person may have a secret hatred for something. Human beings often think one thing and do another without even realising it. Cognitive dissonance is part of the human condition.

But if you make your characters too contradictory they'll be too confusing for the reader. Random personalities, like coincidence, are perceived as unrealistic in fiction even though both are common in reality. Characters, like dialogue, need to capture the essence of reality without the confusion of reality.

They also need to be likable without being perfect, or unlikable without be irredeemable - if a character isn't a mix of good and bad people will find them shallow.

All this can be bloody hard to balance.

The other reason it happens (again my opinion) is that I know my characters and their quirks, foibles and negative traits so well that I don't always notice when they're missing from what is written. It's just so obvious to me. Putting too much emphasis on certain behavorial traits like tongue tapping or a certain turn of phrase can also be an hindrance. They'll make a character recognisable - but that's not the same as deep.

So what to do?

One good piece of advice I've found in several places is 'inner conflict'. That is the character should want two mutually exclusive things. The things can be external - they can even be part of the external conflict, but they must have an internal effect. The internal conflict comes from the character's reaction to their dilemma.

Another good thing (also from multiple places) is to list the character's various traits - both good and bad - somewhere and what sort of situations are liable to trigger them. Then make sure that you write a scene for all of them at some point. In the end not all such things will be suitable for the plot, but if you've got them you can sort in the suitable ones and cut the rest. As long as you keep a balance.

Resourses:

1. Writing Fictional Characters defines the above in terms of commonality, originality, dichotomy, desire, and peculiarity. This is a very good way to put it. Though I think the explanations could be a little more engaging.


2. How to Create a Character is an interesting approach. It's not the one I use - but I do see where it can be useful and starting with what your character wants is certainly a good point.


3. Building Fictional Characters. The chart and questions she's created are useful, and she has a load of helpful links.


4. Character Development in Fiction is very detailed and goes beyond simply developing characters. It's interesting reading, and amusing for the author's comments on their first published novel and how bad it was.

Well that's my twopenneth about characterisation. I hope you find it helpful.

Oh and if you're wondering I did manage to write a little over my 250 word target before bed last night.

About Worldbuilding

I love worldbuilding. I don't always take the most systematic approach to it, but I love developing worlds in my head. I think I've been doing it since I was a little girl. In fact I've probably created more fantasy worlds than I've ever written stories in. I create worlds in my head for fun, and them some of them generate plot bunnies. Fortunately I'm pretty good at remembering details and making sure new additions to the setting gel with what I've come up with previously. Coherency is important in worldbuilding.

When I do start trying to create a world using a more systematic method I tend to end up a little frustrated. Most worldbuilding methods seem to assume you already have a story in mind and start asking questions about mood and things. I tend to get mood for my stories from the setting rather than the other way round. I guess that's my fault for being all topsy turvy in the way I do things.

It gets more interesting when you're writing Contemporary Fantasy and similar. If your fantasy is set in the real world (or more accurately an approximation there of) then you'd think there's not a lot of worldbuilding to be done. Hum - wrong. You may not have to create Britain (or wherever you're setting your story) but if you have speculative elements you need to work out how they fit in. Secret cabals of psychic, werewolves, wizards, vampires, purple people eaters or whatever need coherent explanations of their subcultures and explanations of how they remain secret. Now these may never make it into the story (just like research and backstory you include only as much as is needed) but they are necessary so you know what's going on.

The Links:

• Contemporary Fantasy: Setting the Fantastic in the Everyday World is an interesting article about the advantages and pitfalls of writing Fantasy set in the real world.
• Fantasy World Building Questions - an excellent starting place for developing a brand new world from scratch.
• 30 Days of Worldbuilding - I tried this once. Got flu in the middle and kind of let it slide. Got a lot of good stuff out of the exercises I did do though.
• The Rules of Quick and Dirty Worldbuilding - Exactly what it says. Five quick rules to bear in mind if you need to throw together a world quickly.
• Virtual Verduria - A exhaustive example of of a Worldbuilding Project with hints on map making and conlanging. Sometimes just looking at a good example is the best way of learning.
  

About Outlining

I never used to outline my stories. I've always liked writing by the seat of my pants and not knowing where I'm going to end up. Trouble is I usually ended up nowhere, hopelessly confused or up the creek without a paddle.

Eventually I realised that if I was ever going to finish a story I was going to have outline at least the basics of the plot.

The thing was I didn't have the faintest idea how to write an Outline and, to be honest, a lot of writing books gloss over that bit. I tried writing my story in the present tense in a page or two of A4, which was what most of them seemed to suggest. It just didn't work for me. I tried writing single paragraph summaries of each chapter - that was a little better, but not good enough.

So I threw myself on the mercy of the Internet and consulted the great oracle Google. What I found was that there are a great many ways of outlining and while all of them suited some writers none of them suited every writer.

Yay! I wasn't a failure I just needed to find the right method or methods. So I set out to try and find a method of outlining that suited me - and in the end I did. More than one actually.

It's probably significant that all the stories I have finished have been the ones I outlined. I've come to think of outlining as important this last couple of years.

Having said that I don't write super-tight outlines even now. There'a lot of wiggle room and the characters still slip the leash and surprise me sometimes. That's part of the fun for me though. What they don't do is suddenly throw up roadblocks to story progression that rival mount Everest any more.

However I'm not going to sit here and tell you how I outline, it's someone elses method and they deserve the credit. So without further ado here is a list of links to helpful sites about Outlining methods - not all of these methods worked for me, but that doesn't mean they won't work for you.

• Notecarding - This is absolutely my favourite method of outlining - and it works just as well with postit notes on a wall as it does with notecards on the carpet. :-)
• Outline Your Novel In Thirty Minutes - I like this one too. I use it for outlining more character driven stories and you really can get a basic outline writen in thirty minutes to an hour.
• Snowflaking - I've never actually been able to pull this one off. I like it in theory, but somehow I never quite get it to work. It's a good method though and a lot of people swear by it. I'm going to give it another go when I outline my Nano 2009 novel in September.
• It's Just a Phase - To be honest I don't really get on with this one, but it works for its creator and a lot of other people. It's just matter of taste and it might be more to your taste than it is mine.
• Novel Outlining 101 - This looks like a form of the chapter summarising method to me. As I said it'd never really worked for me, but again it works for a lot of people. And I love the way the creator actually demonstrated it by outlining her post first.

Five links. That's probably more than enough to get you started. Hope you found this post helpful.