Writing - when to leave a scene

There are no rules, really, but sometimes we writers insert more words than are necessary to convey the scene; indeed, we have been known to linger too long in a scene. It can help to study modern films, where scene shifts are generally slick and move the story forward, and no time/words are wasted.

Take, for example, this snippet from a book I read recently. (Names have been changed).

Jackson nodded. 'Okay,' he said. 'First, I'll send you up to Records. Third floor. Ask for Janine. She's the chief paper-pusher up there. Tell her I sent you.'

'Thanks,' Mike said. He walked to the elevator and took it two flights up.
                                                                    ***
Janine glanced away from her computer screen as Mike entered her office.

'Mr Jackson sent me up,' he said. He took out his identification. 'Mike Shaw.' 

Janine looked at the identification for a moment, then glanced back up at Mike. 'What can I do for you?'

'It's about a woman...'

Now, there's nothing wrong with this. But if you're visualising it as a film director, you'll probably see how the scene could shift earlier and the new scene could start that fraction later, without losing anything except time/words. Something like this:

Jackson nodded. 'Okay. First, I'll send you up to Records. Third floor. Ask for Janine. She's the chief paper-pusher. Tell her I sent you.'
                                                                    ***
Janine studied the identification for a moment, then looked at Mike. 'What can I do for you, Mr Shaw?'

'It's about a woman...'

So, it has become shorter, tighter.

It's obvious Jackson is speaking, so we can drop 'he said'. The phrase 'up there' is fine, colloquial, but the word 'up' tends to get overused (three times in this short piece); so that's one less!

We don't need to know Mike took the elevator - unless the elevator is going to figure in a later scene (which it isn't). Taking the elevator can be a given - or he could take the stairs; it's not relevant.

The reader already knows Janine is in an office, so there's no need for the computer to be described here. Also, it's repetition to say 'Mr Jackson sent me up'; it's filler. Move directly to the purpose of the visit.  We don't need to see Mike introduce himself; she's got his name from the ID, anyway. 'back' is another overused word, not always necessary.

We've got 'looked at' and 'glanced back up at' in the single sentence. A glance is ephemeral, a brief but not a studied look. 'Gaze' might work better, but seems to my mind inappropriate. Maybe it could have been worded as shown above, replacing 'looked' with 'studied' (which then drops one 'at'); and inserting 'looked' instead of the dubious 'glanced'.

We can all benefit from self-editing, and later publisher's or a professional editor's input. By editing as above, the scenes are tighter and nothing is lost.  The first example was 93 words; the revised version was 48 - almost half.
                                                                               ***
I discuss opening and closing scenes in my book Write a Western in 30 Days (pp 142-144).


 

Writing - Resources - Master Lists for Writers

MASTER LISTS FOR WRITERS

Bryn Donovan (2015)

Whether a writer is attempting to tackle her first novel or his twenty-fifth, they should be keen on making the work as readable as possible – and that means injecting variety, meeting intriguing characters, travelling to exotic worlds, revealing universal truths, creating visual descriptions that enter the reader’s mind’s eye, to name a few goals in the quest for enjoyment.

Striving to write elegant prose, captivating stories that entertain and perhaps educate a little is no easy feat, so it’s always helpful to obtain guidance whenever it’s available. There are a good number of books that guide writers – some specific about character emotions, plot or a particular genre (see my own Write a Western in 30 Days). There are several offering lists for the writer – and these have their place too, as tools.

This book falls into that last category.

Bryn Donovan has worked hard to provide a fascinating and useful compendium of words, phrases, and triggers to help the writer. It may not make the actual graft easier, but if used sensibly, this book can improve that work immensely. I don’t regard these lists as ‘cheat sheets’ because you still have to put in the effort, to create the plot, define the characters and to imagine their fictional world.

What’s on offer, then?

The section on descriptions of facial expressions is useful, because it’s so easy to fall back on ‘he smiled’ or ‘she grinned’. The human face is capable of manifold aspects, some quite subtle; choose the most apt for the scene or emotion.  Body language speaks to us with subtlety too, and yet as writers we tend not to employ the richness that is visible to the discerning eye – again, conveying a character’s mood. Naturally, we have the usual eye, complexion, face, body, mouth, hair and body descriptions – try to vary the characters in the story so they’re not all similar.

One section of particular interest is that concerning ‘evocative images’ – a single feather or a rainbow in an oil slick can provide a telling image in a scene, put the reader there in the character’s point of view. Other lists provide sounds and scents for settings – again, putting the reader in the story.

There are lists for plotting: romance, high-stakes, twists, humour, motives for murder etc. I’ve got more than enough plots going on for my various projects, I must admit, though it’s conceivable that some of the suggested plots could be opted for a short story or three.

Dialogue can be a trial for some writers. Make it real without being boring or slowing down the story. Here we have lists showing how people say ‘no’, ‘yes’ or ‘verbalize positive (or negative) feelings’ and so on.

There’s a good selection of character names and character traits, too.

The book ends with an important list: ‘10 reasons why you should write that story’. I endorse all ten and particularly commend #7: Because it doesn’t have to be perfect. Whatever your hang ups, get the story written. ‘It’s the final draft that counts.’ And this book will help you polish your novel to get there.

Recommended.

Her website is www.BrynDonovan.com

Writing - self-edit - repeated words

My latest ‘completed’ book hit a little over 126,000 words. 
 

[I’ve put ‘completed’ in quotes because a book is never finished, it’s abandoned after you’ve done all you can to polish it. Looking at it again after even a small gap of time, you’ll always find the need to change things. This constant pressure to perfect the work will mean it will never see the light of day. Be bold. Do the necessary re-reads, self-edits and then let it go.]

Part of the self-edit process is to identify commonly repeated words; these may differ for every writer.

The words I’ve noticed I’m prone to over-using are listed below. They’re not exhaustive, naturally. The number of times the words appeared in a search of the text are shown (and in brackets the number they were reduced to after checking); I never blanket change, that can lead to nonsense words cropping up.

The reduction of repetitions can be processed in various ways: often, the word isn’t necessary at all; sometimes the dialogue is sufficient; if repetitions are close together on the page then I find a new word.

I've made additional comments at the end.

My repetition word list

Smiled – 55 (invariably overused) (15)

Nodded – 115 (again, overused, often close together on the page!) (44)

Laughed – 24 (this is good, I made a conscious effort while writing to avoid using this!) (14)

Grinned – 27 – (not bad, either, since it is very common usage) (11)

Sighed – 11 (again, I was on the look-out for this while writing so they are few) (7)

Looked – 48 (35)

Moment – 81 (45)

Glanced – 61 (30)

Few – 84 (53)

Down – 163 (103) (e.g. why use ‘sat down’ when ‘sat’ works as well?)

Up – 255 (horrendous! Search entails a space in front of and after this word) (163)

Out – 252 (same applies as above…) (176)

Back – 105 (ditto) (91)

Just – 70 (an insidious word, but often used in speech so many retained) (45)

Called – 52 (45)

Saw – 23 (21)

Walked – 41 (0)

Ran – 52 (35)

Pointed – 45 (0)

Suddenly – 15 (not bad, but probably too many) (3)

Seemed – 122 (86)

Felt – 77 (often the feelings can be conveyed without using ‘felt’) (49)

Thought – 60 (50)

Though – 101 (I've noticed in other books that sometimes this is used when the writer meant 'thought' and vice versa) (84)

Shrugged – 25 (again, while writing I tried to avoid using this, but it can still be reduced) (15)

Stepped – 60 (surprised at this, but this number was reduced) (36)

Turned – 103 (far too many!) (82)

Shook – 58 (not a big reduction, but I validated them all) (46)

Appeared – 27 (25)

Peered – 37 (32)

Some – 139 (another insidious word!) (77)

Abruptly – 29 (used instead of ‘suddenly’ sometimes) (17)

Eyed – 30 (instead of ‘looked at’ etc) (27)

Gazed – 3 (2)

Comment

In the scheme of things, very few of these repetitions are too bad when you consider the total number of words is in excess of 126,000. But the process serves to validate the text from a different perspective.

Naturally, there’s a need to be careful about substituting with a new word only to find that the ‘new’ word is a repetition you’ve already reduced!

This is only one strategy in the self-edit process. I normally do this after the final read-through. That read should concentrate on the narrative flow, the internal logic of the story, and detecting any inconsistencies.

Earlier read-throughs or self-edits will have considered point-of-view aspects, emotional content in a scene, character motivation and visualisation of a scene, to name a few.

Happy self-editing!

Writing – research – Writers’ Forum

On 8 September I looked at sources of advice for budding writers and mentioned the UK’s Writing Magazine. The other major periodical in the UK for writers is Writers’ Forum.  This is a monthly glossy also. Their strapline is ‘How to write; what to write; where to sell it.’ Its cover price is £3.60 (12-issue UK subscriptions are available; also elsewhere, varying for Europe and rest of world).

In the 68 pages of a recent issue (October) you will find articles from published authors, writing groups, writing exercises, insight into aspects of the publishing industry, freelance markets, a story competition and results of an earlier competition, readers’ letters, and a competition calendar, among other things! So there’s plenty to peruse and much that can offer advice, solace, encouragement and even target markets.

I have had a couple of articles accepted in the past, though the majority of features are provided by regulars; still worth a try, though.

Also, if you send them short news items for their pages, either researched directly by you or sourced from press released or publications and rewritten for the magazine, and in return you’ll get a byline and the best will win a free year’s subscription. Items should be under 200 words, useful, interesting or amusing to writers: news@writers-forum.com.

The featured author interview is with Tarn Richardson who, after 20 years of trying, finally found his voice with his horror novel, The Damned, selling it to Duckworth Overlook, an independent publisher of long standing. Worth bearing in mind that Duckworth published World War Z, which was made into a riveting movie starring Brad Pitt.

There’s advice on polishing your work. Believe me, many writers spend too little time on self-editing. Some simply expect that the publisher’s editor will do that editing bit; well, only if there are no glaring errors or inconsistencies in the original submission, otherwise that will get rejected.

Another writer explains that when writing his pocket novel, the last part to be written was the beginning. Note that he wrote this under a female penname. This is a useful tip: don’t get bogged down with your beginning – it just might change or be shunted into chapter two once the book is finished! I’ve written often about beginnings as they’re important. The primary purpose is to hook the reader; how you do that will depend on the type of story you’re telling.

Yet another article tackles ‘how to break into vampire tales’ and the writer talks to three authors about this: Suzanne McLeod, Mark Jackman and Amanda Grange. A while back, the same writer asked me how I broke into westerns, along with two other authors.

 
Della Galton, a highly respected multi-published writer of short stories and novels runs a regular advice page; one of her tips to a writer is: read the target magazine you’re aiming at. She also pines for the old marketplace, when there were about 80-plus women’s magazines featuring fiction; now, there are about seven open to the freelance!
 
The short story competition is not expensive to enter: £6 or £3 per story for subscribers. The prizes are £300, £150 and £100. Enter by going to www.writers-forum.com or post a coupon from the magazine. The three winning stories are all published in a subsequent magazine with the judge’s comments on the winners.
 
There is also a poetry workshop and a competition - £4 per poem. Regular contributor Phil Barrington always ends the magazine with a first-person piece from a writer – ‘Where I write’.

More than enough to get your teeth into every month!

Good luck with your writing.

 

 

 

 

 

Writing - beginnings change

Recently I was tagged by a FaceBook friend to produce 7 lines from page 7 of my Work In Progress, To Be King.  I managed that, but it set me to thinking, as you do.

The original beginning of the WIP is actually now Chapter 2! The point of this post is to highlight that while writing a novel you do not have to feel that you must stick with the beginning you created. There may not be anything wrong with it, but it is always possible a better alternative may present itself as the story evolves. And of course it’s all subjective anyway. Be flexible.

Here is a snippet from the original beginning.

As you will observe, it is fantasy, set in mythical Floreskand, being the second chronicle after Wings of the Overlord:

CHAPTER 2: Contenders

“To see what is right and not to do it is to want of courage.”

– Dialogues of Meshanel

 
Lord Tanellor draped his once-magnificent scarlet cloak on top of the overseer’s bloodied mutilated body, and then raised himself into an upright position. He glanced to the crest of the steep, striated Oxor Rift. Through a thin miasma of blue dust, the sun flared dazzlingly, casting various shades of mauve and purple for a brief instant, and then it dropped out of sight behind the jagged rock ridge. He ran the back of a hairy hand across his creased brow, tired and sickened by the senseless death that surrounded him. Death in war he could understand, and even condone, but this, this made his blood boil. Negligence killed these men. And, by his insistence that the miners worked longer shifts during the Kcarran carnival, Saurosen had murdered them as surely as if he’d struck them down himself.

            A few marks away, the towering broad-shouldered Aurelan Crossis busied himself counting corpses. Beyond, Bayuan Aco, the sergeant of the palace guard and ten of his men hauled bodies from the gaping maw of the mine. At the entrance shrine, the Daughter of Arqitor prayed intermittently and also offered a pitcher of water to the men.

            “What’s the tally now?” he asked in a weary voice.

            Aurelan did not raise his flinty grey eyes from his grisly task. He jotted figures in his dog-eared tally book. His voice boomed, a deep bass: “Seventy-four.”

            “So many?” he whispered, in despair. “I fear there are more to be recovered yet.”

            Aurelan shut his book. “Sadly, these are not just numbers in a tally book. I know these men. Two of them even have brothers in my palace guard.” He eyed Tanellor. “Lord, we do not have the time to dig out any more.” Aurelan then stepped over the corpses and moved to Lord Tanellor’s side. His hair was short, cropped, and coppery, the lobe was missing from his right ear, the mouth a cruel line in a pitted face. An old scar ran along the left side of his neck, one of many tokens from his fighting days, Tanellor surmised.

***

And so on…

As a beginning, I think it worked, thrusting the reader into a situation that raised a number of questions. I haven’t shown Tanellor arriving with his men, or the actual explosion. It is colourful, intense with imagery, and reveals tragedy and character. But I felt that here was a missed opportunity; I wanted to study the miners before the tragedy; and I perceived that by doing so there would ultimately prove to be a link to the arcane Underpeople my co-author alluded to frequently… So, the new added beginning starts thus:

Chapter 1: Dust

“Everything in the past died yesterday;

everything in the future was born today.”

- The Tanlin, 204.10

Caged purblind birds sang, their high-pitched tones echoing through the maze of the Oxor cobalt mine tunnels. A mixture of tree trunk and hartwood props groaned as they supported the rocky ceilings.

            “The king can’t deny us our festival,” growled Rujon Sos. His words echoed in this small underground amphitheatre that joined several tunnels. His bare muscular torso gleamed with a sweaty sheen. Though this section only accommodated twelve miners, all of whom now stopped hammering at the rock walls, there were six other dark shadowy entrances to tunnels where more men hacked at the rock and sweated, their implements echoing along the passageways.

            “Like the rest of us, you’re just a miner, a vassal of King Saurosen,” snapped Dasse Wenn, his rat’s nest of a beard dust-covered. His beefy features twisted in distaste, grey eyes full of hate. Sos suspected that Dasse was a weasel – albeit a short brawny weasel – and regularly reported to the king’s minister anything that might earn him a few base coins.

            Saurosen IV had persistently deprived his people of their little pleasures; and now he had banned their annual Carnival. Considering these festivities had taken place without fail annually for 1062 years, commemorating the crowning of Lornwater’s first King, Kcarran, Sos thought the people had taken the edict commendably well, though he doubted if they’d abide by it, merely paying lip-service. He couldn’t comprehend why Dasse was so passive about the king’s contempt for his people.

            “We must withdraw our labour, teach Saurosen a lesson!” Sos’s strident voice echoed through the smalt mine. The tunnel to his left went quiet, save for the chirping of songbirds.

            “The king doesn’t take lessons from minions like us!” Dasse said in a guttural tone.

            Everywhere glimmered with a blue-tinged buttery glow as the candles flickered. Most candles were placed on rock ledges, but a handful of miners wore cloth caps with wax candles fastened to their brims. Each man simply wore a breach-cloth and thick, boiled leather boots, as the temperature deep in the mine was so intense that any clothing would become sopping wet and prove cumbersome and heavy.

            “You miss the point, Dasse,” snapped Sos. “Hear that silence? Most of our shift has downed tools already.”

            “The overseer and his men won’t stand for it. He’ll send for Lord Tanellor, who will bring troops, and they will force those fools back into the mine. We should have no part in that!” Dasse coughed on fetid air that was tainted a faint blue. “The vent shafts are next to useless!” His thin lips curled back in a sneer, revealing buck teeth. “I don’t fancy my head on a spike, Rujon Sos.”

            “That’s often the fate of Saurosen’s spies!” Sos riposted, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his square jaw.

            The others audibly gasped.

            “You’ll regret those words, Rujon Sos!

            “I have witnesses, Dasse. If you’re threatening me…”

            Dasse laughed, arms gesturing. “I’d rather work down here than die. Saurosen can have all the smaltglass goblets he wants, so long as I have a full pewter one in the Pick and Shovel when our shift’s done!”

            “That’s defeatist talk.” Sos ground his teeth together, turned and, gripping his hammer and chisel, scanned the ten other miners. “What say you all?”

            Only murmurs reached him, the whites of the fearful eyes of his fellow miners gleaming. He knew the majority agreed with him; but they also knew that Dasse wasn’t to be trusted.

            He jabbed his chisel at the nearest wooden prop. “Look, at this cankered wood, it’s not fit. We’re working in a death-trap. Lord Tanellor’s begged and pleaded for new material, but Saurosen won’t countenance it!”

            “He’s always been mean with his money, that one,” said a miner on Sos’s right.

            “Aye, and with his favours, as well,” said another.

            “What favours?” another demanded, derisively.

            Sos nodded, and persisted. “Despots like Saurosen can’t be allowed–”

            “Allowed?” Abruptly, he was barged by Dasse, shoved to the rock-strewn floor. He felt a stinging sensation across his cheek and brow and stared up into the hate-filled visage of Dasse. His hand came away covered in blood. Dasse brandished his chisel, sitting astride him.

            Sos twisted and heaved before Dasse could deliver another blow, thrusting Dasse off him. Most of the others shouted encouragement to Sos, though not all, he noticed.

            He scrambled to his feet, gripping his hammer; his chisel was discarded somewhere.

Now he felt his back starting to sting: his left shoulder-blade, which broke his fall.

            The pair circled one another. The first heavy impact had loosened Dasse’s long jet-black hair and it now trailed over his massive shoulders.

            “Sweet Arqitor, stop!” called one man.

            “Stop it before someone gets hurt!” another shouted, but neither Sos nor Dasse listened.

            Suddenly, Dasse rushed him, shrieking unintelligibly, wielding his chisel.

            Sos side-stepped smartly, and then slammed his hammer into the side of Dasse’s shoulder as he passed, and swiftly leaped onto the man’s back as he tumbled against a pit-prop.

            The wooden post groaned and the rock above crumbled, small pebbles skittering to the ground.

            “Stop it, both of you!” a man shrieked. “You’ll bring the whole mine down on us! Daughters of Arqitor preserve us!”

            Snatching, grasping, clawing, the pair rolled, hands slipping on sweaty skin, slicing with hammer and chisel, crying out in shrill tones as the tools sank into flesh. Then, within seconds, they both rolled against a small open conduit that collapsed at their pressure and it created a wide entrance that sloped down into blackness.

***

And so on…

One of a variety of hooks a writer can employ for the reader is conflict. In this case I created conflict between Sos and Dasse, which will worsen until they become trapped after the explosion. The scene also contains action, to move the story faster. I touched upon affairs pertaining to Lornwater, its citizens and their ruler, King Saurosen IV. Here, too, a little further in, I could introduce Tanellor and hint at other happenings and intrigues. All before Tanellor walks among the dead (now Chapter 2).

Significantly, these events begin on the same day as the beginning of Wings of the Overlord. It is a parallel separate storyline (as Wings is a self-contained tale that has links and threads to be developed later, some in To Be King, others in subsequent books).

Writers spend a lot of time on the beginning of their novels. It makes sense, to draw in the reader. Beginnings are fretted over more than any other part of a novel – more than the ending, even; because that beginning has been there to tinker with for the duration of the book.

My advice is: ‘…beginnings and endings are very important. But don’t fret over them too much – at least until the book is written. Then you can decide how you want to shape the beginning and ending.’ – Write a Western in 30 Days (p142).

 
As you can see here, an original beginning was eventually replaced (but not discarded). Now that I have the shape of the book planned and I’m 68,000 words into it, it is unlikely that I will alter it again; but it’s always a possibility.

Wings of the Overlord – by Morton Faulkner, hardback (paperback due in December)

 

Amazon COM here

Amazon UK here

Write a Western in 30 Days – by Nik Morton, paperback and e-book

Amazon COM here

Amazon UK here

Some other posts on writing beginnings:

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2015/01/writing-beginnings.html

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2013/09/beginning-hook_16.html

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