The Art of Re-Vision: Part 5 - Retooling sound and sense
Think of it as Dickens vs. Shelley. It should come as no surprise that there is more poetry in Dickens than there is in Shelley. Does that make Charles more the poet than Percy Bysshe? Perhaps so. Poets are raw souls looking into their spleens for passion, while novelists use poetry as catgut to string their violins for playing their own special concerti.
A novel without poetic sound and sense is an advertisement on the back of a box of Captain Crunch. When revising your novel, you will find sections that “do the job,” but somehow lay on the page like over-steamed broccoli. It might be edible but on the whole, it’s mushy and stinks.
There are many poetic devices that can be employed to restore the dish to interest — too many to discuss here, and many of which should be a part of your palette, such as metaphor and simile. Here I want to reference seven techniques that may help a sagging section. These are:
- gravity
- anapestic
- rush and full stop
- cadence
- bridge
- coda
- echo
1. Gravity is the stuff that keeps us from floating into outer space. It’s also the stuff that makes us age, but that’s another matter. In the case of writing, gravity is the universal well of water that we draw upon that’s specific to an individual work. It means that when we describe stuff or narrate, we should be drilling on relational vocabulary — words that reflect our subject, or situations that repeat by degrees. This creates a solid weave to the work, one that defines overall sound and sense.
Draw on words that you have used before and are pertinent to the characters or the settings. If a character has a scar on their cheek and weeps, don’t describe the tears rolling down the cheek, but “do” describe them runneling over the scar’s arroyo. Factually, you are describing weeping, but poetically you are drawing on a metaphor for running water, and since it comes across a terrain that’s marred, gravity dictates that it should be likened to a wadi or an arroyo.
Gravity also means repeating situations in layers for credibility. How many times does Tolkien give us an image of “farewell” as a person wreathed in golden shimmers fading into the distance? Goldberry, Galadriel and Arwen on three different occasions. Another example of gravity is to create doppelganger characters to ground each other, like Dickens’ Cherryble brothers or King’s multiple Jakes in multiple worlds.
2. Anapestic is a rhythmic device. It’s the gallop we all know from the William Tell Overture, where the stress comes on the third syllable. Ta-ta-dum, ta-ta-dum, ta-ta-dum-dum-dum. It spices things up when things get dreary and too grammatical. It’s effective in getting the reader’s attention at the beginning of sections.
BEWARE: It can also highlight an amateur writer for acquisition editors. Therefore, use it with definite and understood effect.
Here’s an example:
Flat
In the apple tree’s shade, she ate a peach tart.
Spicy:
She sat in the shade of the old apple tree eating her peacherine tart.
With the second version we could start an epic poem. Most anapestic can be formed by transforming a possessive into the more rhythmic “of the.” Let’s face it, would you be more inclined to read “Lammermoors’ Bride” or “The Bride of the Lammermoors” (great Scott). In order to get the anapest, I had to add the adjective “old” and transform “peach” into “peacherine,” which is not any word in my or your dictionary. As a writer, you must be prepared to invent new words that have meaning outside the dictionary. A peacherine tart is a wonderful thing to behold and eat, I tell you.
Then, get on with your story. Don’t turn the rest of the paragraph into a limerick, or you’ll be the only one reading it.
3. Rush and full stop. This is a rhythmic device born by breaking a style rule — that series need to be separated by a comma, the last of which needs the conjunctive “and” and then a full stop. For the most part, you should follow this rule, BUT if you want to pick up the pace and create a frenetic or enthralled sense, forget the commas and use the “and” incessantly.
Boring:
She saw the feast spread before her, roast beef, potatoes, gravy and cream. Each place was set with silver plates, cutlery and cups. Every imaginable flower wreathed the candelabras. Her stomach rumbled.
Exciting:
She sucked in the aromas of the feast — roast beef and gravy and new potatoes in parsley sauce and almonds winking in cream and set on silver plates that shimmered in the candlelight; and around those candles were roses and ivy and sprays of lilac, all conspiring to draw her away from the wonders of the bounty and the rumbles of her tummy. Heaven.
First, the enthralled sense is created by the implosion of the “rule.” Your computer’s spell and grammar check will be barking at your “long sentence – consider revising,” to which you might consider telling your word process to go #$%@ of . . . well… too poetic. The first “boring” example lacks exciting description and lacks aroma. It’s “food” after all. It also begins with a passive sentence, which fights any sense of enthrallment. The flowers are relegated to “every imaginable flower.”
Now we kick it up. Because the reader expects the sentence to end, we don’t end it, which creates mental breathlessness. We don’t even stop when the clause calls for it, something my fifth grade teacher would call “a run on sentence.” Call the fire brigade Miss Gibbs. Then, here’s the trick — full stop. A one-word sentence, which could be any word. I choose “heaven,” but we could have said “Yum,” or “Amazing.” The word doesn’t matter. It’s punctuation, that’s all.
An important use for rush and full stop is in sequeling, when the protagonist is reviewing crisis’ and issues in rapid succession, summarily raising the reader’s blood pressure.
4, 5, 6 & 7. Cadence, Bridge, Coda and Echo. These four devices are important to ending chapters, sections, sub-chapters or even the book. Because they come at the end, they must be memorable. These are the techniques that help you acheive that.
Cadence is a sentence that dovetails all the emotions of the preceding section and delivers it into the reader’s heart. These take real practice to write. There’s no formula, just remember that it needs to conclude things on a soft note that tears the reader up. It could be a simple, “She breathed no more beneath the willows she loved.” Or “He gazed across the sea, the sail disappearing over the horizon. He wept.” The test of true cadence is when the phrase kicks the author in the belly. If it doesn’t, then it’s not a true cadence. Remedy — get cracking and revise.
Bridges are easier endings. They are single sentences that “bridge” to the next section. They could be as elaborate as the one’s found in Ming Chinese novels, when the narrator stops and says, “stay tune reader, because in the next chapter Shao Lin-fa will meet his long lost daughter, but not before sleeping with her three times and” (to paraphrase Outlaws of the Marsh), “thereby several thousand people died in the blades of a thousand swords.”
More often, the bridge is a simple continuity sentence. “He turned toward the Conservatory, his watering can in hand.” It gives a sense of anticipation, and should never reach cadence. It could be a cliffhanger, but too often these are poorly handled and modern readers find them clichéd (and acquisition editors find them as an excuse to return your manuscript to the slush pile).
Codas are “add ons,” but ones that go beyond cadence. They leap forward in the story and reveal an important piece of information that keeps the reader alert. Favorites are “The bells sounded, just like the one he heard on his death day.” OR “He left her standing in the garden. He would never see her again.”
Echoes are just that — a word or catch phrase that plays throughout the entire novel, and each time it appears, either retains its meaning or gathers additional shades. When it arrives as a closing element, its meaning is weighty — usually enough to jerk tears or at least provoke an aha! These can be, words casually bantered by lovers in their prime, that become heart-wrenching torpedoes when delivered poetically as deathbed echoes.
One echo I used in my novel The Dragon’s Pool is “Wham! Bam! Boom!” which when introduced expresses the protagonist’s jealousy that he cannot write an academic paper, while his best friend is able to do it in a comic book, with dialog bubbles (Wham! Bam! Boom!). The phrase gyrates throughout the entire book, each time taking on subtle shades of meaning. Then, after a frenetic action sequence, which devastates most of the principle characters, I use it an echo to great effect and “gravity.”
In short, you the novelist can be a poet. Must be, in fact. If your writing lacks poetry, you’e writing cereal boxes. When it comes to poetry, I am moved by:
“Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!”
HOWEVER, I am devastated by:
“‘Tis a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. ‘Tis a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
Now that’s one Carton that Dickens did proud.
Happy revising and “God bless us, every one.”
Edward C. Patterson.
This is the final article in Ed’s series for Font, The Art of Re-Vision. We thank him most sincerely for his contributions and hope to draw on his generous expertise again in the future. You can find out more about Ed, his novels and other writings on: http://www.dancaster.com
The Art of Re-vision: Part Four: Ending Well
By Edward C Patterson
If there is one subject in creative writing that has been exhausted, it is THE OPENING. The hook. Sucking the reader in (as opposed to reading the suckers in). Novelists spend a good amount of time crafting, re-crafting, and re-re-crafting their opening paragraph, assessing the perfect first line and modus operandi. Do we begin with an environmental statement? In MediaRes? Arcane? Wistful?
However, how many times have you heard a reader say, “It was a good book, but I didn’t like the way it ended?” They might as well have said, “That author saw me coming. I invested my time in their work and, in the end, they let me down.” From that, we can infer, “I’ll be careful next time I come across that author’s work.”
Ending your novel is more important than beginning it, despite the reasoning that the opening entices the reader into the work. Both are skills to master. However, fixing a problematic opening in a revision is simple compared with fixing a befuddled ending. Traditionally, endings are viewed as “happy”, “sad”, “pensive”, ”surprise”, ”abrupt” and the rest of the gamut. However, it really doesn’t matter “how” your novel ends, it’s “where” your novel ends that is critical.
Novel endings can suffer from a number of issues. Here’s are six that I’ll be referencing:
- Anti-climax
- Runaway train
- Contrived
- Developmental
- Dribble out
- Epilog
1. Anti-Climax endings are usually recognized by their failure to please, surprise, or even keep the reader’s attention. It is generally caused by having a more powerful scene a few chapters from the end, which “peaks” your novel too soon. It’s downhill from there. This is corrected by toning down the zenith chapter, although it might break your heart. Usually, the culprit scene and the final scene have similar settings, characters and tone. Change the earlier scene’s intensity, setting and character mesh. Intensify the last scene. The last scene must be the most important and memorable scene in the novel or why should the reader even bother to make the journey?
2. Runaway train endings are recognized when your pacing is too fast. Your ending comes up suddenly, catching the reader off-guard. “Is that it?” It usually stems from a writer’s “need to finish.” That motivation lends itself to “flat” writing and slipshod parascaping. In my experience (and I mean, my experience), these endings need a complete rewrite. Think about when your “ending” begins. If it starts in the last two chapters, back up and rethink. The earlier your novel’s ending begins, the stronger and firmer paced the ending is. Most novel endings begin in the middle of the work and some in the first paragraph of Chapter One. You must be continually building toward the end. You use this to ground the whole work. Gravity wins in the end (and with endings). A runaway train ending usually means extensive revi sion. You must find that crucial end-start point and rework everything in between — sometimes subtly, but reworked it must be.
3. Contrived endings are grafted onto the novel, and usually because the author is using a strict outline. The stronger the outline, the more constraint there is for character development. Characters are forced to say and do things that the author wants them to say or do. That’s not good novel writing. When the work concludes, the end is usually contrived. Readers will say, “What? He rammed his fist into the airplane propeller because his Uncle Fitzgerald cut him out of the will and he needed to get money from his health insurance to bury his long estranged and tubercular wife?” ‘nuff said.
4. Developmental endings are common. Authors sometimes fail to recognize that their beloved, well-honed style must change as the novel progresses. Expositional styles in the first third of the novel, work less and less as the work progresses. Developmental devices stop working by the last third. Too many times last scenes are a suite of settings, flashbacks, hula dances, complex actions requiring science degrees and the like. Endings can be action scenes, but simple ones, with intensely short sentences, devoid of metaphors and similes. Extensive movement should be simplified and clear. Character activity and dialogue should be emphasized. Build, build, build to a climax, and never introduce a new character in the last twenty pages. There’s no time to develop such characters. That doesn’t mean you can reveal a character physically that has been aforement ioned in the body of the work, but too many developments make for a confused ending. My personal preference in my own novels is to introduce the necessary mechanisms for the ending in preceding chapters, and then punch through them at the end. You send the reader to class early enough, they are trained to operate your ending better than you. J. K. Rowling uses this technique, so by the time the reader reaches that intense last sequence in The Deathly Hallows, they already are adepts at the mechanisms that rule the sequence. Rowling needn’t explain a thing. Her readers all have degrees in Harry Potter by that time and the end has all the gravitas of a graduation ceremony.
5. Dribble out endings are evident in works that do not have an ending. They have no impact. The reader is supposed to ponder the ending — the metaphysics and philosophy that should keep them awake a night wondering, “just what happened, anyway?” This is the “forgettable” ending, because the author “forgot” to write one. You ride the train with no destination and are abandoned in the desert to play tennis with the prairie dogs. How to fix this? Have the train go to Las Vegas and end with a jackpot.
6. Epilogs are good. I use them all the time (not that that a justifies them), but there are always details beyond the ending. The reader wants to know if Sarah Brown married Sky Masterson, and whether or not they have children. The issue with epilogs are that they are sometimes incorporated into the last scene or hover beyond the back cover like a bad hangover. Epilogs are “not” the ending. They just come “at the end.” In my own work, The Jade Owl, my climatic scene occurs twenty pages before the end of the book. The book ends in that scene. However, using internal dialogue and sequeling, the protagonist is allowed to settle some details and, in a small “coda” scene, he hero performs a character-defining “heroic” act. THEN, I have an epilog, which is in a different m ood and style, as if I was writing another novel. It’s that taste of sherbet between courses, “your novel” and “the reader’s exit to the real world.” Epilogs settle details in a satisfactory way, leaving something open for perhaps another “book” in a series, and makes the reader feel better for reading your work. Sometimes it contains a memorable last line, from the Brontean “sleepers in the quiet earth,” to the Tolkien, “I’m back.” Who can forget, “Tomorrow is another day?”
Be assured that when you revise your novel you “will” rewrite your ending. You should, just as you should craft a dozen openers. Be resigned to it, but don’t regard it as a chore. In fact, it is the one stroke of revision that will transform your novel from a barnyard into a palace, unless you’re writing “The Egg and I.”
The Art of Re-Vision - Part Three - Logic vs. Illogic
Logic vs. Illogic: Lessons on Hanging the Lanterns.
by guest blogger Edward C. Patterson.
So you’ve finished your draft and have all your ducks in a row. You’re ready for the revision and, as you do your read-through, you begin to second-guess the logic of specific elements in your work. These logic flaws sometimes sneak up and stymie when you least expect them. Some are easy, continuity problems and relatively routine to fix. However, others are like quicksand. The more you try to resolve them, the more damage control you need to apply.
To my mind, there are four categories of logic lapses:
Continuity
Poor Research
Counter-active
Global
Continuity and Poor Research are the easiest to fix. They are also the elements most evident to editors, long before readers get their mitts on your book. Continuity is a lapse in memory. Simply put:
Paragraph one:
Tom inherited his wonderfully green eyes from his mother.
Paragraph two-hundred and eighty:
Suddenly, Tom’s eyes changed from blue to gold signifying the presence of Sydney’s spirit.
You might laugh, but I have in one of my novels a possession sequence, which has a blue-eyed character possessed by a green-eyed character. The effect was perfect, except I had the eye coloring wrong at two ends of the novel. Now because the continuity error was separated by nearly 200 pages, the reader may never had noticed, but never underestimate the reader.
The simpler paragraph-to-paragraph continuity lapses scarcely need mention. We all know that things that a pocketed are suddenly out in the open or pocketed twice. Characters leave twice, or never enter. However, in my opinion, the worse logic lapse is ignorance — the lack of proper research. Many times, we will make it up as we go along, and many times, we can get away with it. However, even if it is for short stretches, we, as authors, owe our readers a proper look and feel.
For example:
Sergeant O’Hara finished relieving himself in the muddy ditch, and then zipped up his fly.
Considering the above sentence is extracted from a Civil War novel, and the zipper wasn’t invented yet, it is anachronistic slop, which could have been avoided if the writer had taken some time to research Civil War uniforms in all their richness.
Thus:
Sergeant O’Hara finished relieving himself in the redoubt, buttoning up and fastening his buckler.
I once spent two weeks cooking Tuscan cuisine to learn local ingredients, aromas and textures for a scene in my novel The Third Peregrination. I savored my research, not to mention putting on a pound and a half. Results: two well-researched, logically correct paragraphs tucked away as background to an important scene. The research gave the background authenticity, but like the meal ingredients, didn’t overpower the main course — my story.
The logic lapse that can prove most frustrating is the Counter-active. You have an important plot development or a character following a specific arc, then — wham. You begin to second-guess it, because might be alternative courses of action that are just as logical. You know that the reader will question your twists, and, if questioned harshly, you will earn the dreaded label: Contrived. In addition to the developmental counter-actives, there are other points of question that the reader could contest, such as, How is there light in a tomb that hasn’t been explored in a thousand years? Little things like that. There are two solutions for these common second-guessing points. Remember that whenever the reader second-guesses you, they are thrown out of the story. Reader off track = story flailing (as opposed to story telling).
The first method is to handle logistics appropriately. If a cave will be dark, be sure that your spelunkers are fully outfitted with every prop necessary to light the way. You can’t start producing ropes and riggings, spikes and flashlights mid-scene without tracking, or at least nodding to their origin. Also, be sure that your characters are properly trained to use their props. If there’s an escape using a motorboat, account a reason why the protagonist is to drive the damn thing to chug away from the villain. The protagonist may not be an expert at watercraft, but he/she could have watched ten hours of Sea Hunt as an unwitting preparation for the sequence.
We walk a tight-rope here. Be careful not to over-emphasis logistics. I once spent so much time explaining why a tomb had lighting that my surprise ending was no surprise. In that case, I rewrote two chapters to undo my over-emphasis. I just hung a lantern on it and moved on.
Hanging a lantern. This is an old movie expression that every writer should now. When you reach a counter-active point, hang a lantern on it, before the reader does. This means a short brake in the flow — an aside or some otherwise witty and well-conceived comments that says, what was just said doesn’t really make sense, but that’s the way it is folks. Here’s an example from a novel I’m currently writing — Surviving an American Gulag.
****
Avila shook his head and followed. A cricket chirped. Odd and out of season. Perhaps it was some rare Georgian variety bred on mess hall muck. Its chirp did not go unnoticed. Gibbs halted.
“Just the stars singing, Winslow.”
Frank hummed his grandmother’s song.
*****
The lantern is in italics, even in the context of the work. It is important that these men hear a cricket. The sequence is an echo from a previous section and the effect is powerful in context. However, we are I Georgia in February, and crickets don’t chirp in Georgia in February. Therefore, I had a counter-active moment. By hanging a lantern on it, I acknowledge that it’s an odd (illogical) thing to say, because we are out of season. I then add my own take on the science of the comment. Does it change the course of cricketdom in Georgia? No. However, the reader will not stop here and kvetch. They will stay in the story.
Other species of this chameleon happen when characters are trying to solve a problem, choosing a course of action. They choose the one that’s most interesting for the story and befits the character arc; however, easier courses cannot be ignored. In these cases, I generally have a character say, “Wouldn’t it be better if we yatter yatter yatter.” A brief discussion ensues, steering the logic to the chosen course of action. Doing this constantly can become tedious. Therefore, sometimes we hang the lantern latently, during a character’s internal sequeling. This helps demonstrate that the character isn’t so shallow to follow the author’s will without question. In the sequeling, we firm up elements, while becoming the reader’s advocate for alternative solutions. I’m always reminded of that scene in Indiana Jones, when Indy is preparing to sabre-duel the thu ggish giant and opts to shoot him instead. This is a hanging a lantern moment. The only issue in that instance is that Steven Spielberg is winking at the audience, which breaks the fantasy, something we ought not to do. Hanging a lantern is an art akin to prestidigitation.
Finally, there are Global logic flaws. These are so big they are generally missed. And they should be. These are the great logic flaws that if corrected would shatter the work. These are elements like Shakespeare’s setting Bohemia on the Adriatic, or Frederick’s leap-year birthday in The Pirates of Penzance. The first act of the beloved G&S opera takes place on the sunny Cornish coast, complete with a bevy bathing beauties. However, the plot turns on Frederick’s birthday being on February 29 in leap year. Have you even been in Cornwall in February? Sunny? Bathing? I think not. I mention Th e Pirates of Penzance to demonstrate how W.S. Gilbert manages to pull the wool over our eyes. It is the juxtaposition of facts. The illogical facts precede the logical premise. Thus, this is how you hang that particular lantern. If the reader believes you in the first place, you do not need to correct logical lapses in the second place. This is how J K Rowling manages the twisted logic of the elder wand; so much so that readers may go scrambling back to retrace who has which wand. Still, the story is finished by then.
In short, logic lapses may not be a novel’s downfall if we excel in the author’s finest attribute — telling the good lie, one that’s credible, real and hung with enough lanterns to decorate a Chinese garden party.
Edward C. Patterson
The Art of Re-Vision - Part Two: POV
Maintaining POV: How to detect, correct and violate the Golden rule.
by guest blogger, Edward C. Patterson
Are you revising a section of your novel and something doesn’t seem right? Have you checked all aspects and still it isn’t anchored to the rest of the work? Have you tested for POV inconsistencies?
Many rules just beg to be broken in writing, and we should all try to break them (even this one), but the most consistent and stalwart of them all is maintaining the correct point of view (POV). If you jump from one character’s head to another’s in any particular chapter, your reader must constantly hold on their seats trying to figure out where the heck they are. For working purposes, hare’s my take on this golden rule:
For each chapter, you should select one character’s the point of view character. All things are seen, sensed, ruminated, vibrated, reciprocated and deliberated in that character’s mind. If your novel is in the first person, this is a no-brainer. If you are writing in the third person (limited), you have a choice at the beginning of every chapter or sub-chapter. If you are writing in second person, you’re writing the Bible, so don’t worry about it. The reader will put down your book as often as they put down the Bible or the Silmarilion, whichever comes first.
Whenever you change POV, you should change chapters or use the infamous double space and asterisks (****) as you would in scene changes. (Scenes never really change, by the way. POVs change. Think about it).
Most writers know these rules from their first short story in Mrs. Palmerton’s entry-level creative writing class. Still, POV violations sneak up and bite every writer in . . . well, it bites. Example:
Samuel knew that the bee would sting him. He just knew it. He sensed it. Prunella also sensed it. She tried to swat it away, which only made it worse. Bees anger when confronted with swat-currents.
Now this represents the most common error. We are in Sam’s head (POV). His companion (Prunella) also senses the bee’s impending action. However, by saying so, we are now in her head. It ends with a complete shift in tone from third person to second, which is legal, and might have obfuscated the POV violation. This amplification of sensitivity to the point of sharing, is easy to rectify by including a probability element or an element of logic. In the above, the logical element is already evident: only made it worse PLUS the closing sentence in second person voice. We’ll correct this with:
Samuel knew that the bee would sting him. He just knew it. He sensed it. Prunella probably sensed it too, because she tried to swat it away. It only made it worse as bees anger when swatted.
By adding the probably, we stay in Samuel’s head, as he can observed Prunella and could justify her actions with the logical extenders. Of course, for flow and rhythm, other things are revised also. The last sentence now is attached to the logical extension, therefore comes out of the second person, and as such we remove second person vocabulary, which always borders (and needs to) on the pretentious. What are swat-currents anyway? A type of berry.
This seems to be simple fix, but the word probably after its tenth use becomes a writing flattener. Boring. It doesn’t fall into the background like the dialogue tag said. Therefore, you need to vary that word and the approach. How else can Samuel tell that Prunella senses his danger? She could say it.
Samuel knew that the bee would sting him. He just knew it.
“Watch out, Sam,” Prunella said, snapping her fan toward the bee.
Bees however are rarely deterred by gentle threats and Prunella only made it worse — an angrier bee.
Another common POV violation is, what I call, character walk-away. Your POV character has the reader firmly in the scene. Suddenly they walk off (exit stage right), but the scene continues in another character’s POV. This transference appears natural to a writer, but can be disconcerting to a reader, especially if the POV reader returns. Here’s an example:
Sam watched Luke’s eyes. They were poker eyes, protecting his hand. Sam had nothing — this evening was a bad poker dream, especially since he had a dream like this two days ago.
“I’m out,” he said.
“Then get some more chips,” Luke snorted. Sam shuffled off. Luke glanced at Cory. “I raise you.”
“Five-hundred?” Cory said. “Too rich for me.” He folded.
Luke scooped the pot to his chest. This would pay next month’s rent, he thought. Wide grin.
This poker example starts out in Sam’s head. We see Luke’s eyes and hear Sam’s thoughts. Luke’s dialogue would suffice if Sam didn’t leave the table, because when he does, the POV shifts to Luke. The logic is violated. Sam is no longer there to tell the reader what the reader is learning from Luke.
This is fixed easily enough by having Sam stay put. However, if the plot has Sam grab a knife instead of potato chips, so his return precipitates a fight over Luke’s winnings, then some other fix needs to be found. There are two solutions.
When Sam leaves, we have a chapter break (space and **** or whatever is your pleasure). The dialogue can then continue and should be elongated. Luke’s POV now prevails, and when Sam returns and stabs Luke in the jugular, we can experience the pain first hand.
When Sam leaves, we leave the poker table with him, and the ensuing the dialogue. Sam (now in the kitchen) is torn between the chips and the knife. We have the opportunity to get Sam’s inner perspective on the bad dream and how that dream is goading him to his next psychotic action. This squealing is in Sam’s POV. When he returns to the table, we can sense Luke’s win and elation through Sam’s eyes. Stab. Screams. Blood. General mayhem.
In general, when correcting some POV issues, think of the development and creative opportunities you have overlooked. You will be surprised.
Another way to fix character walk away is to have the POV character within earshot. Dialogue can be overheard and people shout. However, you must underscore this fact so it isn’t lost on the reader.
As promised, here are two ways to VIOLATE POV legally:
Begin a chapter in your third person POV and withhold POV for the first few paragraphs before anointing one character as the POV vessel. Try it. You’ll like it. The only transference of POV that the reader will safely tolerate is from the Author third person to a character third person, and only at the top of the chapter.
This second one is sneaky, but I’ve used it in my epic novel series The Jade Owl. It has a specific requirement — two characters that are telepathic. Since there’s transference of thoughts between them, they both can have the POV at any given time. It is a tap dance, and can become messy, but since it is logical, readers are tolerant of it — for short spurts.
In short, POV is a bulwark of fiction writing. Like most bulwarks, the reader only notices it when it’s out of order. When it is, it exhausts them. They’ll put your books down nary to drink there again.
Edward C. Patterson
Edward C. Patterson writes novels, short fiction, poetry and drama. His eighth novel, The Jade Owl, explores his lifelong devotion to China and its history. He has an MA in Chinese History from Brooklyn College with further post graduate work at Columbia University. He won the 1999 New Jersey Minority Achievement Award for his work in corporate diversity. You will find his work at http://www.dancaster.comThe Art of Re-Vision: Part One
Font is delighted to welcome guest blogger, Edward C Patterson, for a five-part series on the mechanics of revision. We know that many of you are in the process of revising your stories and Ed has a wealth of advice to offer.Part One: The Horror of Stage Directions.
by Edward C Patterson.
Revising your novel’s draft can be stressful — paying attention to minutia and balancing your global struction. However, nothing spells ruination more than entering a scene and tripping over the furniture.
As writers, when we settle into the zone and get on a roll, we tend to visualize things in progression. A character moves from point A to point B. Simple enough. However, we over-manage the maneuver by having that character stand, raise his left hand, scratch his ass, take three steps to the right, hop-scotch over the coffee table, crack his knuckles, and then dust the table with a big feather poised in his right hand. An over-statement, or course, but we somehow feel that our characters need to act through a logical chain of actions. So, they stand and throw — walk and sing — crouch and warble.
This creates multiple focal points, which is an oxymoron, because you can only have one focal point. When a character stands and throws, we must assume that the throwing needs the standing and that our reader is not so stupid to be told that the character is standing. By introducing the ancillary action, the throwing ceases to be the focal point, and the active becomes passive. This does not mean we cannot have two actions, but they must be crafted sequentially, using the comma-and-then construction, creating a progression:
Thomas stood, and then threw the stone like Paris tossing the golden apple.
Pruning these stage directions helps tighten your sentence sculpture, creating a paragraph landscape. I call it a parascape. We don’t write sentences. We craft them; sculpt, if you like. .
Never write a sentence that sags, even if you need to resort to a single-word fragment. Therefore:
Morton stood, reached up and twisted the light bulb
should be:
Morton reached up and twisted the light bulb
better sculpted as:
Morton twisted the overhead light bulb.
Applying the playwright’s craft in the novelist’s domain forces us to set the furniture. It’s just the way we tend to think when we write. A room’s contents may or may not be critical to the story. If it sets the atmosphere or helps the characters to assume a specific mood, please, set the furniture, by all means, but not like this:
The room was wide and had two chairs, a cabinet and a table. The table had a full service setting for five stacked on a lace tablecloth. The dark wood was polished and the floor was parquet with inlayed tiles.
I have encountered such set design instructions in plays, and unfortunately, in novels also. If there is an important piece amongst the stage set, i.e. the butter knife that gets plunged into the baron’s wicked heart; or the salad cruet that harbors the arsenic (forget the old lace), surely mention these. However, to set the stage, think more in terms of tightness and tone. The above sprawl could be re-written thus:
Baron de Guise kept an unusual dining room. It had the typical complement of chairs and tables, but set with China from a Romanian kiln — one that specialized in dark, mottled sheen and the crimson De Guise crest. Spread about a dark leather runner, these plates winked in the dim sunlight that streamed across the mealscape beneath a ballet of late afternoon motes. Drapes shut. Light shunned. The Baron’s footsteps apparent now across the Romany floor as he awaited his guests to trespass across his threshold.
Of course, I’m making the above up on the fly, but notice that the room should reflect the character and the ultimate action. We know more about this room than we do about the first room, because each reader will imagine a different place with a similar tone, much more in keeping with their own experience.
Moreover, when do we set a stage without lighting? I could add some aromas as well, though here, the absence of aroma helps foster a sterile tone.
Another tip on stage directions pertains to redundant kinetics. Some actions are married to colloquialisms. Writers, particularly amateur writers, plop them square into their narratives, overlooking them even in revision. Here are a few examples:
He kicked the door with his foot
should be:
He kicked the door. (Unless there’s a focus on a silver spurred cowboy boot).
She clapped her hands
should be:
She clapped.
I shrugged my shoulders
should be:
I shrugged.
You get the idea. Test these redundancies by asking the question Is there any other way to perform this act other than with the available anatomy. In dialogue that is colloquial, of course, you can have such redundancies — they flavor the stew.
If you overlook such matters things, will your novel fail? Not necessarily. However, Acquisition Editors look for such things as an excuse to close your manuscript. We should never knowingly give them an excuse to flip us back into the slush pile.
The other issue with stage directions are the props themselves. This is a matter of how we visualize people and things. It has been my experience that by describing things and people in detail, we rob the reader of the opportunity of partnering with us. Novels are suppose to begin with us, the writers, but not to end with us.
If we want a reader to buy a set of steak knives on eBay, we take a photo, and then describe every blasted tooth in the serration. However, if the steak knife is needed to kill the Baron De Guise, we can describe its relative place on the table and its apparant sharpness. If its just going to be used to cut steak, it probably shouldn’t be described at all.
We must assume that our reader knows that steak is cut with a steak knife. The phrase they ate steak should surfice as a stage direction, unless they suddenly toss the A-1 away, plow their faces into the plates and attack the steak doggie-style, which would indeed be worthy of detailed description.
In short, only dwell on objects of importance and let the reader set the stage in the comfort of their imagination, where our words must trickle down, reaching the heart and, if we succeed, the soul.
Edward C. Patterson writes novels, short fiction, poetry and drama. His eighth novel, The Jade Owl, explores his lifelong devotion to China and its history. He has an MA in Chinese History from Brooklyn College with further post graduate work at Columbia University. He won the 1999 New Jersey Minority Achievement Award for his work in corporate diversity. You will find his work at http://www.dancaster.com
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