Writer (and Reader!) Wednesday - Peeves and Quirks

I have a simple topic for Writer Wednesday today, and I'm hoping those of you who are readers only will add your opinion. We writers need all the help we can get!

First, as a reader (and all writers must be readers as well as writers), what are your pet peeves--things that writers do that annoy you? Is it grammar and punctuation? How about certain dialog techniques? Authorial pet phrases?

And if you are a writer, what are your writing quirks? Things you do unconsciously and know you must edit for afterward?

I'll post my own answers in the comments.

Writer Wednesday - Setting

This post was delayed by three weeks. Many apologizies.

For me, setting is a huge part of what brings wonder to a novel. Even a gritty novel could be tempered with a bit of wonder. Within the past year, the novel with the strongest sense of wonder for me was The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V. S. Redick. And that was mostly because of the setting on board a singular, mighty ship.

The first contemporary fantasy I ever read stuck with me through the years largely because of the wonderful setting of its very first scene. Imagine a tree as large as a redwood, with limbs that spread as broad as an oak. And then imagine, nestled in the arms of that tree, an inn:

It was getting harder to keep up the old inn. There was a lot of love rubbed into the warm finish of the wood, but even love and tallow couldn't hide the cracks and splits in the well-used tables or prevent a customer from sitting on an occasional splinter. The Inn of the Last Home was not fancy, not like some she'd heard about in Haven. It was comfortable. The living tree in which it was built wrapped its ancient arms around it lovingly, while the walls and fixtures were crafted around the boughs of the tree with such care as to make it impossible to tell where nature's work left off and man's work began. The bar seemed to ebb and flow like a polished wave around the living wood that supported it. The stained glass in the window panes cast welcoming flashes of vibrant color across the room.

From this,  the second paragraph of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first volume of the Dragonlance Chronicles, the authors established a sense of wonder in their setting. And they didn't let up throughout the entire trilogy.

Upon the next page comes the reason for the tree being built in the inn:

The Inn of the Last Home was built high in the branches of a mighty vallenwood tree, as was every other building in Solace, with the exception of the blacksmith shop. The townspeople had decided to take to the trees during the terror and chaos following the Cataclysm. And thus Solace became a tree town, one of the few truly beautiful wonders left on Krynn.

Which is a lie. From Prayer's Eye Peak to Godshome and the Dark Queen's temple in Naraka, it's hard to find a trilogy with so many imaginative settings. Lots of people like to deride the Dragonlance Chronicles. Say what you will, but the authors did at least two things very well: they created lovable characters, and they created wonderful settings.

Other memorable settings come from novels I keep mentioning again and again. The forest in The Once and Future King. The cave in Clan of the Cave Bear. New York City at the end of the nineteenth century in The Gaslight Mysteries. The Shire, Rivendell and Minas Tirith in Lord of the Rings. The Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride.

One real-world sight that inspired me was the Luxor in Las Vegas. There is a light that shines from the top of the pyramid straight out into space. It's arrogant and it's so very American. The entire hotel inspired a setting in my epic fantasy, which I'll share in the comments.

Please share any settings that have inspired you and, if you wish, allow us to read some of the settings you have written. As ever, please place your comments and your excerpts in separate posts, and keep any excerpts to 300 words or fewer.

Writer Wednesday - Your Favorite Characters

We've discussed bonding with your own characters, and that's all well and good. And it's easy, because they are after all, your own darlings, begotten in your own head. What's more difficult is to get others to love your characters. Which you have to do pretty dang early in the story, or why would the reader read any further?

Here are a few of my favorite characters in literature, and why:

Ayla from Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel. Ayla kept me reading the Earth's Children series four books in. After that, I lost interest mostly because everything that the author did right with Ayla, she did horribly wrong--at least for me--with Jondalar. But back to Ayla. Who could not feel sympathy for a five-year-old child that lost her entire family to a disaster, and then who was reluctantly adopted by a clan of neanderthals? And then right away, Ms. Auel set up this conflict between this young girl and a powerful young man (very young) of the tribe. It was a winning formula.

By contrast, Tom from Tom Sawyer is never a character you feel sorry for. Instead, you marvel at his audacity. He has chutzpah, he is never daunted, and he always has something handy in his pocket. He is the original MacGyver at twelve (or so) years of age. He doesn't hesitate to kiss the girl. He doesn't hesitate to throw a punch. He doesn't hesitate to take on his brutal schoolmaster. And that den of thieves? They never had a chance.

I could go on with a bunch of other favorites, but you get the idea. What are your favorite characters--from any genre--and more importantly, why?

Also, I'd like to do a post on building tension, but I think we should have an expert for that topic. What author can you recommend to me who is especially good at building tension?

Writer Wednesday - Researching for Fun and Profit

For this week's Writer Wednesday, I thought I'd explore a topic that didn't require the posting of excerpts in order to draw out those of you who prefer not to post excerpts. Since I'm in the midst of writing a historical novel, I also thought I'd blatently use this blog in an attempt to discover all of your favorite research methods. Here are a few of mine.

I am a master of Google Search. If it's on the Internet, I can find it with my Googlebar. I'm really good at figuring out the perfect search term to get the info I need. Maybe it's because I just love research and the Googlebar was something I just adored from day one. Privacy concerns? Bah. It's worth the loss of privacy. :)

Wikipedia is also a wonderful resource, especially when the article you are looking at has lots of citations that you can explore as well. I found some great Rosie the Riveter sites through Wikipedia. One thing I love is plugging in a date and seeing all the information that appears. Want to know the major news stories in 1924? Just plug "1924" in your Googlebar, and Wikipedia will be the first entry that pops up. Click on it, and you will see a comprehensive listing of everything that happened in 1924, along with a bunch of internal links to stuff like film, literature, sports, television--you name it. It may not be a definitive source, but it is a comprehensive one.

But the problem with Google and Wikipedia is you have to know what you're looking for. You can get lucky and have one page lead to another and eventually to a gem, but it takes a lot of surfing to find those.

But what about when you don't know what you are looking for?

What I really want to do one day soon is spend an afternoon at a library looking through microfiche. Those of you who are younger may not have any clue how fun microfiche is. It's so cool, even if it's low-tech. Imagine a bunch of newspaper pages placed side by side, zipping by you in the viewer. Unless they've changed these viewers considerably, you actually use a dial to control how fast the pages fly by. It's so 1970! If they duplicated this with computers, it would take forever to load!

What am I looking for? Nothing in particular. I'll know it when I see it. I want to look at the microfiche for the local papers in the early 20s, and zip through them. I'm looking for culture, for atmosphere. I'm looking for things like ads (and prices!), for portraits, for fashion, for cars, for sports, for buildings, for anything that catches my eye. Newspapers are a slice of life from that particular day in time, and I just want to browse through them.

To this end, I love Shorpy Photo Archive. I look at Shorpy's photos every day. If you are a history lover, you will love it as well. At least a few time a week, they post a street scene from the 20s. These are invaluable to me. You can zoom in on the photos and examine them in detail. When they post scenes from the interior of drugstores, I can get the prices on common goods. A milkshake? Fifteen cents. They had soda subscriptions. Buy a card for a dollar and you can redeem it for ten sodas. That sort of stuff didn't make the history books.

Your turn! What are your favorite research sites and methods?

Writer Wednesday - Dialog

The art of writing dialog is a tough skill to learn. We learn all the basics. We punctuate properly. We avoid excessive dialog tags. We avoid modifying our dialog tags with adverbs. We read it aloud to make sure it flows right. And we never make our characters give long speeches unless they have a damned good reason.

But still, we get told our dialog is stilted.

Joining us today as Featured Writer is Lisa Shearin, a master of witty dialog. She is the author of Magic Lost, Trouble Found, Armed and Magical and The Trouble with Demons. Her books have consistently been available on the shelves of bookstores everywhere since she was first published, and her books are notable for their laugh-out-loud dialog. It's a real treat to have here here today. She provided two excerpts from The Trouble with Demons to give us some discussion fodder. I had a really hard time choosing between them, but here it is:

~*~

Piaras wasn’t having a good day; yesterday had started off the same way and by last night, it had slid downhill into a cesspool.  Today was showing all the signs doing the exact same thing.  

There was no easy way to ask what I needed to ask.  Sure, I could just come right out and say it; it was a simple enough question, but the words just refused to come out.

“You and Katelyn like each other, right?”  Yeah, I know, it was the cowardly way in, but at least it was a related topic.

Now the kid was completely confused.  “Yes, we do.”

“A lot?”

“Yes, a lot.  Why do you ask?”

“The two of you haven’t . . . done anything about really liking each other, have you?”

Now he was confused and concerned.  “Not yet.  I . . . that is, we want to . . . we think . . . but . . .”

“But what?”

“Before I came to class, the archmagus and I had breakfast together.”

I pressed my lips together so wouldn’t snicker.  Oh, I knew what was coming.  Uncle Ryn had done the same for me.  Any boy—or a couple of years later, any man—who wanted to see me socially had to go through The Talk.  One of my hopeful suitors said going through The Talk was like being forced to walk through fire, except without the fun parts.  You tried to get through it as quickly as possible and told yourself the pain would be over soon.  To the best of my knowledge, Uncle Ryn had never actually laid hands on one of my suitors, but he’d always made it plain and clear what behavior he expected, and what actions would be taken if he was “disappointed” that the boy/man’s behavior fell short of those expectations.  Needless to say, I didn’t date all that much.

Piaras was looking at me.  “What?”

I swallowed a snort.  “Nothing.  Go on.”

Piaras glanced at the door; it was closed, but he lowered his voice anyway.  “Archmagus Valerian said he would know if Katelyn and I . . . you know.  Raine, I’d like to live long enough to graduate, or at least graduate in this form.  He can’t really turn me into a squid, can he?”

“Is that what he told you?”

“And a couple of other things.”

“He can’t do it, at least not the squid part.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Piaras let out a relieved breath.  “That’s good.”  His look turned suspicious.  “Why are you asking about me and Kat?”

I really didn’t want to come out and say this.  “I need to find the Scythe of Nen.  And by the way, you weren’t too far off the mark.  It is a dagger.”

“What’s it look like?”

I told him what my dad had told me.

“Something that small won’t be easy to find,” Piaras noted.

“No, it’s won’t.  And apparently a certain type of person is helpful for finding this kind of thing.”

Piaras’s eyes narrowed.  I had a sinking feeling he’d figured out where I was going with this.

“What type of person?” he asked.

I winced.  “Uh . . . a virgin type of person.” 

His lips narrowed into a thin line to match his eyes.  “And when you found out you needed a virgin, you immediately thought of me.”

“Not immediately.”

“What, so you had to wait two seconds?”

“More like five actually.  Don’t feel bad about it.”

“You think I’m the only virgin on this island!  How’s that supposed to make me feel?”

I grinned hopefully.  “Special?”

Piaras gave me a look.  You know the one.

I threw my arms up.  “Okay, I’m sure there are other virgins on this island, but I don’t have time to find them.  I was pretty sure you were qualified—”

Piaras glowered.  “As a virgin.”

I held up a hand.  “No, no.”  I was just getting myself in deeper.  “I knew you were qualified in other ways to help.  Level headed, good in a fight, that kind of qualified.”

Piaras arched an eyebrow.  “Nice try.”

I hung my head and sighed.  “Kid, just help me out here, will you?”

Silence.  I looked up.  Piaras was grinning.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked. 

I told him.

“One question,” he said when I’d finished.

“Shoot.”

“This virgin thing, does thinking about it count?  Just because I haven’t done it doesn’t mean I don’t think about it.”  He lowered his voice again.  “A lot.”

~*~

As usual, please keep your excerpts to 300 words or fewer, and please put your excerpts and your critiques in separate posts.

And let's have some fun!

Writer Wednesday - Writer's Voice

Today's topic -- by request -- is a writer's voice. Voice is an elusive thing. When submitting to agents and publishers, among their guidelines, you often read that they want "an engaging voice." But how do you achieve that?

Voice to a writer is like light is to an artist. For an artist, skill is one thing, but the paintings truly come alive in in how you see -- and reproduce -- the light on canvas. It can be taught, but only to an extent. It's really something that must grow. The same goes for writing. When I first started writing, my voice was obscured by whoever my favorite writer was at the moment. As time went on, I started sounding more and more like myself. Nowadays, my writing sounds like "me" no matter who I'm reading at the moment.


Nathalie Mallet will be joining us for today's discussion. Her novels, The Princes of the Golden Cage and The King's Daughters, feature the voice of Prince Amir. Here are her thoughts on a writer's voice:

Finding one's voice is a term that one hears frequently in writing courses. But although one may know about the elements that make up voice—diction, syntax, tone and dialogue—it does not guarantee success. The way I do it is to simply assume the voice of my protagonist. And usually the tone of the narration comes from whichever details of the main character’s personality speak the loudest to me. In Amir’s case, it was his overly careful nature and his strong desire to remain anonymous.

Here’s an excerpt from The Princes of the Golden cage that best exemplifies this:

Being noticed meant having your potential evaluated. Never a good thing when one lived caged with so many power-thirsty brothers. To say that you didn’t want to become the next Sultan, that surviving was enough for you, was useless, even if true. For many of my brothers, only dead princes posed no threat. I counted myself lucky for being of average size, for having the dark hair and brown eyes shared by most of my siblings. Because of this I could blend easily in their midst. With its high cheekbones, square chin and short well-groomed beard, my face was one of many alike—unremarkable. I cultivated every bit of this blandness. I slumped whenever I was with shorter brothers, tried to sound dull when with dimwitted ones, and mimicked the affectations of my high-ranking brothers when near them. Even in my choice of clothes, I was careful. Blue and green were the predominant color of the palace’s walls, and therefore of my kaftans. Even my name, Amir, was common. There was at least four or five other Princes Amir still alive—a real blessing. 

I liked this excerpt because it really captured Prince Amir's personality.

Please join in with your own comments. Remember to keep any excerpts to 300 words. Please post replies and your own excerpts as separate comments, to make for easier reading.

Thank you for joining us, Nathalie!

Writer Wednesday - Bonding with your Characters

We all love to read books where we bond with the characters. Where we don't want the story to end, because the characters are so wonderful. I've watched The Princess Bride dozens of time because I loved the character Inigo Montoya. He stole the show from the Dread Pirate Wesley. Fezzik was great as well, and together, they just made the best duo. I didn't want the story to end. So I bought the novel, which was even better--and funnier!--than the movie. I've owned two copies of that novel and have read it multiple times.

Another character that I absolutely loved was Paksenarrion from The Deed of Paksenarrion. Paks had some interesting flaws. She was sometimes slow-witted, and she was completely asexual. But she was also completely likable. Elizabeth Moon put the reader so firmly in the character's head that before the end of the trilogy, you may be shedding tears over her.

But how do we, as writers, establish such lovable characters? I'm not sure I know the answer, but it makes sense to me that first, we must love our characters, ourselves. One thing I do to bond with my characters is write scenes that enable me to get to know my own characters. I consider these scenes disposable. I call them pilot scenes because they work like a pilot chute. A pilot chute is a tiny parachute that draws out the big parachute. A pilot scene draws out the larger story.

Here is a pilot scene for my WIP, which is a time travel historical. In this scene, the character--Mike--is walking around town, getting to know the 1920s. Ashley is his sister. They are from the present day.

Passing gentlemen tipped their hats--whatever they had, be it old derbies, cowboy hats or fedoras. They eyed him as they said good morning, and his hatless head started to feel naked. When he saw an store ahead of him, he decided to go in. The name of the store, F. W. Woolworth Co., looked familiar.

He found himself something that looked like a drug store. He wandered up and down aisles, his eyes leaping with fascination from one object to another. Toward the back of the store, he found inexpensive men's clothing. He picked out a fedora, took it to the counter, and paid for it. It was $3.50.

He settled it on its head as he walked out the door, as he had seen men do, and he resumed his stroll. He started wandering up and down random streets. It was impossible to get lost for long. Too far north, and you hit the trolley line. Too far south, and you reached a golf course. Too far east and west, you hit water. He wandered for hours, taking it all in, wondering if Ashley would worry, and smiling when the thought hit him that she would have surely called his cell phone by now.

Her company was never onerous, but he had not felt so free since he was a boy.

Not a lot of action, just introspection. I'm not sure if I'll keep it but for now, it's still in my manuscript.

How do you establish a bond with your characters? Please share in the comments. Please keep any excerpts to 300 words or fewer.

Writer Wednesday - The Dreaded Opening

Openings! As readers, we love 'em. They suck us right into the story. As writers, we hate 'em because they're so hard to write! Well, we don't actually hate them, we love them too. Because, after all, we're readers as well.

If only we can get our own openings right!

Joining us as Featured Writer this week is Kristy Baxter, the recently-agented author of a YA/Contemporary Fantasy called Grim Light. Her agent is Marlene Stringer. I'm going to turn it over to Kristy as she gives us her take on openings. I am lucky enough to have Kristy as my critique partner, and I read an early draft of this novel. I only mention this because she refers to me quite a bit.

~*~

Openings
by Kristy Baxter

I love starting a new novel.

I hate starting a new novel.

On the one hand, you have this joyous new creation to begin, and you don't know what it'll look like when you're done...but you know the ride's going to be awesome and terrifying and awesome all over again.

But on the other hand...argh. Openings! That first sentence is so incredibly important that you could spend weeks trying to make it perfect. And then all you're doing is waiting in line as you imagine what fun that roller coaster will be.

For my most recently completed novel, Grim Light, I decided to dive right into the action. My heroine foresaw a sad event coming, and then a moment later she saw a boy who would be very important to her, although she didn't know it yet.

The problem, as Tia pointed out: the reader didn't have enough time to get to know my protagonist, even a little bit, before these things happened. I needed to develop a little bit of sympathy, give the reader at least a little bit more about my protagonist, before I enmeshed her in all this emotional turmoil.

I stared at my opening paragraph. I loved that paragraph! It had been there since the beginning, the one that started it all. Every time I got other ideas or tried to start other novels, I read that opening and was sucked back in. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized Tia was right. Who cares what happens to this girl if they don't know who she is?

And as much as writing a novel, a short story, or anything at all is a roller-coaster ride, it's also a tightrope walk. I wanted to give the reader interesting action, but I also wanted to give her a smidgen of character development. So I pulled on my sequined leotard and grabbed that long stick-thing for balancing, and I hopped on the tightrope.

In order to compromise, I made the first sentence foreshadow what was to come. Then I made my heroine happy, because if we see her happy then we know how hard that fall will be. And I made sure that fall came within the first page or so, in an effort not to bore the reader.

I won't deny that it was tough. I'd never imagined Grim Light opening any other way. But when I saw the end result, I was very satisfied. I felt like I knew my protagonist better, even after spending months in her head already.

How about you? How do you manage to walk the tightrope? Have your openings all been picture perfect? Did you start too soon, as many do, or start too late, as I did? And how does your opening shape your view of your protagonist or narrator?

~*~

It's Tia again. I'm blushing. Thanks, Kristy.

Personally, I start too soon, but I'm always prepared to delete with impunity. I'm also prepared to offer up one of my own openings for your critiquing pleasure. This is from a lighthearted spy fantasy, which I call a mashup of Jane Austen and James Bond.

I hurried up to the embassy as if I belonged there. A bakery coach had pulled up near the side entrance where the kitchen chimneys were, so I headed that way. I searched around for someone who looked like a butler. He soon emerged to direct the unloading. I went up to him and curtsied. I was careful to make it a quick bob, rather than the genteel swoop I had learned during my youth. It was difficult to unlearn what had once been drilled into me.

Kristy's take:
I like the pacing of your opening a lot. Most of your sentences are short and choppy, which conveys the urgency of the situation while staying true to how Tory [the protagonist] would think in that situation. The first sentence grabs you right off, because you wonder, "Why doesn't she belong there?" and that tension pulls you along. It also gives you a great idea of Tory's more analytical thought process.

The only thing I would change: sentences three through five are all roughly the same length, and while choppiness is great for that opening, you want to avoid establishing a lulling sort of rhythm. I would insert a longer sentence in there, or possibly combine parts of two sentences, just to avoid that. Read it aloud and you'll probably catch my meaning.

I guess I'll do that. What did you think? Feel brave enough to post your own opening for general feedback? Got any questions? Comment away!

Writer Wednesday - With Featured Writer Jennifer Estep!

Welcome to our first Writer Wednesday, a comment chat that will last as long as we all care to stick around. Joining us today and tomorrow is the fabulous Jennifer Estep, author of Karma Girl (multi-part review), Hot Mama and Jinx. Each title links to my review of each novel, with all the usual links. Be warned, Jennifer is the victim of a cyber-attack, so don't visit her site at the moment.

Anyway, Jennifer's upcoming novel, Spider's Bite, is an urban fantasy featuring Gin, an assassin. Such a character fits right in with our first featured topic:

Unsavory Protagonists and Assorted Bad Guys

We'll let Jennifer begin with a short excerpt from Spider's Bite.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

With his free hand, Caine reached inside his jacket pocket and drew out a pair of silver-stone handcuffs. He tossed them on the balcony between us. The metal clinked to a stop at my booted feet. “Put those on.”

“Handcuffs. Kinky. But I prefer to have a bit more freedom during sex. Don’t you?”

Caine jerked as though I’d yanked the gun out of his hands and shot him. His eyes flicked down my body, going to my breasts and thighs, before coming back to my face. Yeah, he was thinking about it. All the distraction I needed.

“There’s no need to bother with those because you aren’t taking me in, detective.”

“Where are you going to go?” Caine asked. “You’re trapped.”

I smiled. “Me? Trapped? Never.”

I turned, leapt up onto the balcony wall, and launched myself over the side into the darkness below.

Here are a few ground rules. Please limit any excerpts to 300 words. Yes, I know that isn't a lot, but that's 300 words, plus any introductory material you may write. So the result can be a very long comment. Even Jennifer's excerpt is way below that. We need to keep each excerpt short to keep the comments page from getting miles long (wishful thinking here, I know). Just include enough to give everyone an idea of just why the character is so bad. Tantalize us with your best stuff. Don't overwhelm us. I'll try to lead by example with the first comment.

UPDATE! Also, please offer a bit of commentary on one of the excerpts that is posted before yours. Make your commentary and your own excerpts separate posts. This will help when the comment thread starts getting long.

Keep any critiques constructive. I probably didn't have to say this because this is such a nice crowd, but it can't hurt.

And that's it! Jump right in with your excerpts and commentary. This should be fun!

Jennifer Estep - Featured Writer for Writer Wednesday!

This is cool--Jennifer Estep has agreed to be our featured writer for Writer Wednesday. She wrote an upcoming novel that has the perfect character for our discussion on Unsavory Protagonists and Assorted Bad Guys--an assassin. She is also the author of three Bigtime novels, all which I've reviewed here. I'll give you the full info on Wednesday but if you can't wait, here's her website.

If you're a writer, please help me spread the word, and be sure to stop by on Wednesday!

More on Writer Wednesday

I'm trying to refine my "Writer Wednesday" comment chat idea. (Or should it be "Writer's Wednesday"?) I came up with something called a Featured Writer, and I just invited someone to be that writer for our first week. My only problem . . . what should a Featured Writer do? At first, I thought it should be someone agented or published, but I'm not sure if I want to go that far because then I'd have to define "published" and what a pain that could be. So I'm just thinking about letting the concept evolve however it wants. For now, I'll just invite people who 1) I think will participate and 2) who I think have something to offer.

A. Gray thought of a good first subject--a story where the main character is not necessarily of sterling moral fiber. She also expanded it to include bad guys in general. I love my bad guys so I think that's a great topic.

Any other thoughts?