Wednesday's Writer's Tip - What is a story? #MFRWauthor #Story #Swain

For the next few weeks I'll be using Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain to share some tips. This was the first book on writing I discovered many years ago when I decided to write novels. This book made sense to me.

Mr. Swain says, "A story is experience translated into the literary process."

But learning how to do this is a process. Mr. Swain believes you can learn to write and sell stories. Will you make the big time? Maybe or Maybe not.

I agree and what you need to learn first are the techniques of writing a story. But will they make you a best-seller. That takes a special talent. Things like intelligence, passion, determination and how you can manipulate the language. Also how you put your feelings into the work. Those rules you've learned while studying to become a writer are subject to interpretation, Yours.

Twenty writers could be given the same situation and the same characters and in the end there would be twenty different stories.

What really helps you learn what a story is , is to practice, practice. Slowly the elements will make sense and suddenly you have a story. Maybe not a great one but the next one will be better. So learn the elements of a story and then practice employing them.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Characters Coming Into Being

After looking at the structure of a novel using Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain the pieces have been gathered. The next thing to develop is the characters. Now separating the two isn't usual, at least for me. The plot and structure of the story and the characters usually come together but what I'm looking at here is how to make those characters ones the reader will love or hate, as in the case of the villain.

Mr. Swain talks about five questions a writer should ask when developing a character. The first one is "How does a character come into being?" Are the characters in your story real? In a way yes, and in another way no. Real people have dozens and maybe even hundreds of nooks and crannies. A fictional character is hones so their nooks and crannies are just a few. Making the character too complicated can be confusing. What needs to be done is to select a few traits to develop and give the fictional person life within boundaries. What the character needs is just enough stuff to fit into the development of the story.

Characters develop gradually and they change and in changing the story may change or deepen. A fellow writer told me on her current WIP suddenly she learned things about her hero that didn't change him exactly but added to his reasons for acting the way he has chosen to act. This bit of information brought more life to a character who started out as hero and then the layers build. So all the parts of the character begin to coalesce and to the writer, the character becomes a person facing a particular situation with particular actions, reactions and motivations. Thus the fictional character becomes real to the writer. The more real to the writer, the more real to the reader.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Still In The Middle

When re-reading Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V Swain, I've been exploring what to do when the middle lags, sags or pulls me to a halt. This quote made me sit up and say OH, yes.

"Drop a corpse through the roof."  Does this literally mean throwing a body into the story. Then it came to me. What Mr. Swain means is throw in something that's totally unexpected. Of course, this shouldn't be completely something new to the author but a new reason to drive the story forward.

This is the moment, for me when I'm thinking the story is losing steam and suddenly a twist on one of the elements arises. I think, oh, yes, this has to go in. This is the reason to move to the next peak in the story. For me this often happens when I'm telling myself the story by writing what I call is the chapter synopsis, a guide to keep me moving forward to the end. Sometimes what happens surprises me but I know this is what will help me drive the story to the end.

What sort of things does this mean? The arrival of someone with some information the hero or heroine needs to know. The sight of something startling that drives the story toward the end. Such a moment occurred when writing Code Blue. I was chugging toward the end and the villain is waiting for the heroine. He ahs been leaving her gifts as each person she knows is killed. They seem innocent but of course they're not. Then she comes home from her three to eleven shift at the hospital to find a nightgown hanging on her porch, swaying in the breeze. Then she knows and she is terrified. That nightgown drives the story to the climax.

So don't be afraid to throw in something unexpected, something that changes innocence to danger. "Drop a corpse through the roof."

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Beginnings - The characters

Here we have more on the beginnings of a story. I'm re-reading Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V Swain, a book I've found most helpful in my writing career.

Now about characters. Every story needs people unless you're doing something experimental. I once wrote a story with a park bench as the main character. Needless to say this story never went anywhere but I had fun with the attempt.

When introducing characters into the story, one thing to remember is not to introduce casts of thousands in the first few pages. Too many characters makes the reader wonder who the story is about. In the beginning there are a few characters who need to be seen. These include the hero, heroine and the villain. Now they don't have to be shown in action during the early pages but showing them doing something to or about the heroine or hero can add a punch to your story. "Code Blue" opens in the villain's viewpoint and introduces the heroine quickly. By the second scene, the hero is at least mentioned by name.

An impression of the character needs to be shown. Show them in action. Show them through a description that allows the reader to know why they are and what they are doing. Be realistic here. Little bits of description to show who they are. In "Shattered Dreams, the heroine is shown entering her medical office and getting ready to see patients. She is late because of an emergency that kept her at the hospital. The hero is sort of mentioned. All we know about him at this point is that he is a new hospital hire coming in for a physical and her secretary/nurse can't reach him to reschedule his appointment.

Of course, one has to thread in some hints about the back story. This can be difficult to bring into view. Long passages aren't needed. Just a few lines can often do the job. Be careful to keep the back story in the present through a piece of memory. Something in the present that triggers a memory of what happened in the past. In "Prescription For Love." The heroine is introduced to the hero, a new doctor on staff. In a short passage, she recalls their first meeting, one that didn't go well.  Just remember to keep this short and simple. Nothing pulls a reader out of a story that a going back in time for pages and pages. Remember the impact on the present is what is important.

Wednesday's Writer"s Tip - Elements of a story

I am on my second copy of Techniques Of The Selling Writer by Dwight V Swain and there is one thing I've done as I plan my stories that he suggests. I highly recommend this technique. This is something I sit down and do with every new story I write. There are times when I don't do this when beginning a rough draft but by the time I end this phase of the story, I know I have to go back and do this.

Recently I started a story and was six chapters into the rough draft and suddenly I realized there were dozens of contradictions in the story and there were plot holes that would need a lot of work to plug. After hitting myself upside the head, I grabbed Techniques of the Selling Writer and the book opened to what I needed to do.

Mr. Swain speaks of the 5 elements needed for a story. Character, Situation, Objective, Opponent and Disaster. Then there is the way to look at these elements to make the story work. He also speaks of the focus character. Remember this doesn't mean the Viewpoint character but this focus character can have viewpoint scenes. The method involves making the five elements into two sentences. One is a statement, the other a question. Sounds simple and it is and isn't. What this does is make you think about your story.

For the story I was having trouble, here is what I finally came up with. Finding exactly what to put took a day of study and a lot of torn up copies of the sentence/question idea. The good thing is once I had this down I was able to really roll on the story and it's moving rapidly toward conclusion.

Ten years ago, Jules Grayson vowed never to return to the town where he'd learned not to trust and had been falsely accused of theft, but business and a friend's wedding bring him back. Can he learn to trust again when the only girl to turn him down wants to help as he faces a second accusation from the past that will force him to take a step that will change his life forever?

The five elements are there. The situation is the vow never to return. Jules Grayson is the character and the objective is the business and the wedding. The objective is learning to trust again and the disaster is the second accusation.

This wasn't an easy one to write. I had also tried to use the girl, Grace Sutton as the focus character and what I learned was Jules had the most to lose and win from the events in the story. I will admit to writing this two prong attack probably 20 times before I found the one that brought all the elements of the story into focus so I could write the story.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Motivation and Reaction

Took me a long time to understand this bit from Techniques of a Selling Writer by Dwight V Swain. It's not that I didn't use this technique when writing my stories. This was one of the books I read early on in my writing career and I always regretted coming to the fiction world when I was a wife and mother and never had a chance to attend a course given by the author of this book on writing. Years later I'm still using what's taught in this book but now it's become rather automatic and while reading this again, I really had to think.

We all know characters are motivated by many things. Some of them stem back to their early days. When I first began to write I looked at motivation as belonging to the large picture. Why did they choose a particular goal? What motivated a character to act in a certain way? I selected a motive for each of the major characters in the story and went on from there, not bothering to look at what motivated them to react to each small thing to enter their environment. This worked early on but then there are the small reactions that add meat to the story.

What I read in this great book taught me how to look at each reaction to some stimuli. Then what I was writing became confusing since I'd forgotten one thing. Each scene in the story has a focus character. I was doing this for every main character in a scene and muddied the waters. While reading this section of Techniques of the Selling Writer, I realized that while two or more of the main characters were in a scene, only one could be the focus character for that scene. So here goes what I learned to steer me into making the right choices for the action.

The first sentence in the sequence does not have the focus character's name, description, or any element of them. For example - A shot rang out. Tamara slid to the floor.  Or something like this - Jim's mouth made promises. Sally's body trembled as she wondered if she wanted to accept. These simple sentences can be broken apart into showing the sequence step by step and enhancing the story. Doing this often enough and mastery happens. Suddenly what was muddy becomes clear and the reader will learn a lot about the focus character. Move to the next scene and choose another character for the focus of that scene. The story builds and the emotional impact increases.

Wednesday's Writing Tip - On emotions

Still gleaning tips from Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain and this time it's on emotions. Building emotions into the story is important. Emotions are what draws the reader to continue to read on. We all have emotional reactions to things that happen in everyday life. So do the characters in our stories. Someone says or does something to the focus character of the story or of a particular scene, The main character sees something that is our of place in his or her orderly world. They react with emotions. Maybe they don't react as you would or your neighbor or friend or even a stranger reacts. The character must react in a way that is true to his or her nature.

As the writer, you can't just say. He or she saw the body and felt sick. That's telling the reader and not showing the reader what happened. How does the character react to this event. Does he or she laugh, cry, scream. There are many ways but the reaction must be true to the character.

In real life these emotional responses happen in a clump but trying to do this in a story can confuse the reader so the reactions must be spaced in a sequential patters. The same goes for bit action scenes. Jumping from one character to another can bring confusion. So the big action is shown through just the focus character's eyes with him or her taking the feature role. Theirs are the emotions that should matter to the reader because the focus character is the one they want to care about and to see either win or lose in the story.

So when you're writing decising what emotions a main character will feel must remain true to the character you have chosen to portray. Sometimes their actions won't be what you would do. While writing this bit I thought of Katherine Miller in Murder and Mint Tea and her discovery of the body or her nasty tenant and how she reacts and then what action she takes. Not what I would do but because of her protective nature, it's exactly what she would do.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Story World

When reading the next little section of Techniques of a Selling Writer, I learned how some things stick in your mind. My copy iof Swight V. Swain's book had been loaned out and never returned. I was doing a talk at NJRW about World Building For All Genres. I really remembered all the points in this book when it had been five or six years since I'd had a copy of the book in hand. So look at what these are.

Unfamiliar world. Whether you write contemporary, historical, paranormal, fantasy or science fiction, the reader doesn't know your world. As the writer, you need to draw them into the world. That was his first point. So you really need to know your world to draw the reader inside.

How does one do this? Through the senses is the second point Mr. Swain made. This is something I need to go back and remind myself of so many times. When I write about a hospital, how do I bring the chaos this world seems to the reader into focus. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch are essential to making the world become one the reader can enter.

For a time, while re-reading this section, the third point puzzled me.  The world you're creating is subjective. Finally I realized what this meant. The focus character must interact with the setting and his or her actions and reactions to the world are what makes a reader believe in the story world you've created.

What I'm saying is often just a few pages you've read stick with you and soom become an automatic writing response.

Wednesday's Writer's Tips - Words Glorious Words

A bit of a take off on a sonb but words are the food of the writer. I'm re-reading Techniques of The Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain and he devotes an entire chapter on words, choosing the right words, making the words vivid. This is something as a writer you should pay attention to. Without words there can be no story. Whether printed on paper, uploaded into an ereader, or spoken by a story teller, words are what creates the world and what the reader experiences. The words invite the reader to share the world.

How are these words used? To create characters, to show the setting and to advance the plot. Sometimes finding the right word is hard. When first starting a story, the words seem to flow rapidly or slowly depending in the writer's habits of writing. Often the first words put on the paper aren't the right words. They're almost right. My take on this is not to fret over every word but to get the ideas on paper. Finding the right word, the vivid word, the invitation word is better left to the revision phase.

Once I have the rough draft down and know where the story is going, I begin to look at particular areas. Dialogue. By now I know my characters since I have lived with them for a time. Dialogue is often written over three or four times. In the description areas of the story, choosing the words can bring the setting, the character to life. Becoming specific instead of generic is a good ited. What's the difference in the reader's mind between he drove a battered crate of undetermined origin or he drove the sleek silver power car destined to show his importance. Makes the hero a different person in each case.

Too many words can bog the reader down. I've read descriptions of a setting that detail every nook and cranny of a room. What I'm not sure of is what the writer wants me to notice. A few details allows the readerto fill in the blanks. This gives the reader a chance to engage their imaginations and enter the story as a silent participant.

So choose your words with care. Revise to find the exact right one. Revise to find the vivid one. Revise to bring the reader into the story.