I recently took an online class taught by Margie Lawson that specifically focused on how to write body language and dialogue cues like a psychologist.

One of the first exercises that Margie asked us to do was to run a search on how many times the characters in our WIPS nod, smile, frown, look, blink, purse their lips, burrow or knit their brows and so on. Overall, I didn’t have that many smiles (apparently my Merry Marxists are not very cheery), but the smiles I had were rather blah or cliche. As for the frowning, furrowed and knitted foreheads, pursed lips and whatnot, I had too many and again used in a way that was unimaginative.

With numerous examples of how we could make our characters’ body language sizzle, but also reveal the scene’s mood, the character’s motives, Margie asked us to go through our WIPS and select certain scenes that needed to be powered up. Each of us had editing partners and we would email our selections and analyze the before and after. Here are some of my before and afters that I randomly picked from Julius and involved lip(s) and mouth:

Before:

“Excuse me.” I sidestepped to get by her. Allison followed and stood in front of my desk; her lips pursed together forming a little spout; she planted her gnarled hands on her round and wide hips, and she shape-shifted into an old teapot.

After:

“Excuse me.” I sidestepped to get past her. Allison followed and stood in front of my desk. Her lips pursed, and as if an invisible string pulled them, formed a little spout. She planted her gnarled hands on her round, wide hips, and shape-shifted into an old teapot.

Before:

Allison’s little wart-hog eyes narrowed into slits. The inside corner of her eyes oozed a black, gooey venom. Her top lip curled, exposing long yellow teeth, and receding gums.

After:

Allison’s little wart-hog eyes narrowed into slits. The inside corner of her eyes oozed a black, gooey venom. The corner of her top lip curled, exposing a long yellow bicuspid and a sliver of receding gums.

And the last one…

Before:

His mouth hovered over mine, his lips almost brushing mine. “Say it, Corinne,” he whispered.

After:

His mouth, like a sweet and succulent plum, hovered over mine. He whispered, “Say it, Corinne.”

These exercises were fun to complete, but as we delved more and more into the nitty gritty of body language we all discovered that we had yet another round of revisions to make. And this was with the first two lectures. We still had touch, tone, inflection, pitch, volume, and much, much more.  Unfortunately, I fell behind with the exercises due to work and a personal problem. Now I am going through the lectures and beefing up the dialogue tags when there’s a need for it. And let’s not forget those lips,  smiles, stares, looks, gazes, touches and whatnot.

Overall, the class was worthwhile. I especially liked the idea of working with editing partners. The two women who partnered with me were great and we’re moving forward to continue working on other Margie Lawson packets.  And now back to my Merry Marxists and adding some oomph to their body language.

Now that I have my trusty new Mac it’s time to get back to work on Julius. I recently gave a sample to a writer friend and even though she liked what she read, she suggested I try writing in the third person. This was the second person who recommended this. Now there’s that old saying that if someone calls you an ass, he’s being mean, if two people call you an ass it’s a conspiracy, but is three people call you an ass, you’re an ass.

I don’t want to venture into the ass territory so I thought I would give this third person point of view a try. There are certain issues about switching point of view, the biggest one is that it’s told strictly from Corinne’s perspective and she has a certain way of expressing herself that I personally like (of course you like it, you ass, she sounds like you). Well, not really. But after all these years of fooling around with the first person, I’ve become attached to her voice.

Now here’s a true confessions moment. I’ve attempted to write with an omniscient narrator before and had a whole megillah of problems–mostly committing the serious transgression of switching point of view in a paragraph. So the confession is that I’m afraid to venture into this territory. However as a very wise man said to me about this time last year, don’t be afraid what you need to do. Now obviously I don’t need to do this because it’s my bloody book. But there’s always the question of “what if.” What if the story flows better in the third person. What if you get more into your character’s heads with the third person. What if an agent says I like it but I want to see this in the third person.

Ack. I don’t know.

There are sections that push me to keep it as is, especially the sections that deal with Corinne’s feelings about the Spanish Civil War, her miner, and her thoughts about Alvah Bessie. Yet, maybe it would be more literary if I changed the point of view.

Ack. I don’t know.

So fellow readers, maybe you can help me. I’m inserting the two versions of the the first chapter. Tell me which one you like and why you think it works better.

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Version 1: First Person POV

Westchester County, 1978

I first saw Sing-Sing on a cold, gray-white February Sunday. I was only ten.

My father and I were heading back home to Chappaqua when we drove through the Hudson River town of Ossining. From the passenger side of the car, I admired the old architecture of the Ossining Municipal building.

“It’s pretty here,” I said.

My father pulled at his graying beard with his long, slender fingers and muttered, “If you like prison towns.”

We continued forward and passed the train station. My father pointed to a concrete wall topped with coiled barbed wire and a pair of tall watchtowers loomed on the other side of the barrier. “Remember the movie we watched the other night, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing with Spencer Tracy? This is it.”

I unbuckled my seat belt and turned for a better view.   A moment later he added, “Miserable town, and its electric chair.”

My head snapped around and I gaped at him. Electric chair? A few weeks earlier in the study, I had discovered Dear Dead Days, a macabre picture book that captured my attention for hours. Among the numerous pictures, one ink etching stood out—a man in dark prison garb with a black hood over his head. He was strapped in an early model of the electric chair and his legs and ankles were clamped down on a high, narrow ottoman. From the hand switch that would turn on the electricity, a wire snaked across the wall to a mounted box. The other end of the wire was attached to a metal ring at the hood’s tip. The executioner sported a bushy mustache and wore a black boxy suit. His hand grasped the over-sized handle;  his face registered no emotion. Beneath the picture it said: “Execution by Electricity—the Chair and Apparatus Used in Producing Death. 1889.”

I had memorized the details of the sketch: the insipid expression on the executioner’s face, the prisoner’s heavy-heeled boots, his turned out ankles and his knotted, fisted hands resting on his belly. The image flickered and faded when my father pulled my down jacket’s sleeve. “Corinne, honey, turn around and put on your seatbelt.”

I sat back in the seat and tugged at the belt. “Do they still use it?”

He shifted to fourth gear and accelerated, putting more distance between us and the prison, he said,“No. It’s gone now.  I came here a long time ago to protest. A month later I left for Paris and tried to forget what happened.”

The car seemed to have gotten colder; I leaned closer to the vents and rubbed my mittened hands together to generate more heat. “Protest what?”

“An execution,” he said.

“Who got executed?”

He turned his head to face me and the heavy, lost look in his brown eyes made me wish we had not driven past Sing-Sing. “Two people on the same night—a man and his wife.”

I swallowed hard. “What did they do?”

“The government accused them of giving secrets to the Russians. The wife’s brother betrayed her.”

I mulled over this information, and stared at the red, yellow, and purple stripes of my mittens. It was bad to give up a secret, but tattling was worse–at least that’s what my mother believed. She always said, “Never, ever, point your finger at someone and name them.”

We drove in silence and few a moments later we were on our secluded street. Our mailbox with its painted red star stood out in defiance from the rest of the ordinary gray tin mailboxes.

“Why did the lady’s brother tattle on her?”

My father’s fingers made their way back to his beard, twisting and pulling at the bristles, a habit he had when he wanted to avoid an explanation. “It’s complicated. They were scapegoats . . . like so many others.” He approached our driveway and flicked on the turn signal.

“Did you know them?”

“No, but they shared the same beliefs as your mother and me.”

He turned left, and the sound of gravel crackled and popped beneath the tires. My father switched off the headlights and ignition. He stepped out of the car, and stared at the sky. The gray-white afternoon had turned to a deep purple, velvet night.

I climbed out of our old, blue Peugeot and slammed the door. “What were their names?”

His kept looking up and didn’t say anything.

“I want to check if they’re in the encyclopedia. I won’t bug you about them any more. Cross my heart.” I motioned, making the sign.

“Rosenberg.”

“And their first names?”

“Ethel was the wife … Looks like snow.”

The sky’s color was now a lighter violet cast. I clasped my mittened hands, pressing them hard against my chest and crashed down to my knees. Squeezing my eyes shut, I mouthed a prayer for no school, and finished it with the monotone “Snow, no school” mantra.

After a deep breath of cold air that caused a coughing fit, I dropped my hands to my sides. I opened my right eye first, then the left one. My prayers were answered.  Plump snowflakes floated down from the heavens as if God had gotten into a pillow fight with his angels. I pumped my small fist, cheered “Yes!” and continued to celebrate with a clumsy pirouette, stumbling over the gravel while trying to catch the frozen fluff with my tongue.

My father climbed up the stairs to the front porch and shouted, “Come inside before your mother starts moaning about pneumonia.”

“Hey! You didn’t tell me the man’s name,” I yelled back.

He stood on the top step and leaned against the white wooden railing; his hands shoved deep inside his coat’s pockets and said, “His name was Julius.”

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Version 2: Omniscient POV

Westchester County, 1978

Corinne Sand first saw Sing-Sing on a cold, gray-white February Sunday. She was only ten.

Her father and she were heading back home to Chappaqua when they drove through the Hudson River town of Ossining. From the passenger side of the car, the little girl admired the Beaux art architecture of the Ossining Municipal Building.

“It’s pretty here,” she said.

Her father pulled at his graying beard with his long, slender fingers and muttered, “If you like prison towns.”

They continued forward and passed the train station. At the southern end, her father pointed to a concrete wall topped with coiled barbed wire. On the other side of the barrier stood a pair of tall watchtowers. “Remember the movie we watched the other night, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing with Spencer Tracy? This is it.”

Corinne unbuckled her seat belt and turned for a better view.  A moment later her father added, “Miserable town, and its electric chair.”

Corrine’s head snapped around and she gaped at him. Electric chair? She thought. A few weeks earlier, while recuperating from a head cold, she had wandered in her father’s study and discovered in the massive built-in oak bookcase a copy of Charles Addams’ Dear Dead Days, a macabre picture book that captured her attention for hours. Among the numerous grotesque pictures and photographs, one ink etching stood out—a man in dark prison garb with a black hood over his head. He was strapped in an early model of the electric chair. His legs and ankles were clamped down on a high, narrow ottoman. From the hand switch that would turn on the electricity, a wire snaked across the wall to a mounted box. The other loose end was attached to a metal ring at the hood’s tip . Off to the side stood the executioner sporting a bushy mustache and wearing a black boxy suit. His hand grasped the over-sized handle;  his face registered no emotion. Beneath the picture it said: “Execution by Electricity—the Chair and Apparatus Used in Producing Death. 1889.”

The sketch had made an impression on Corinne, and she revisited the world of Charles Addams often. She even commented one evening, while her father worked on an economic analysis of a labor dispute between the electrical union and a large real estate developer, that she had a difficult time tearing herself from the book and couldn’t fathom why she was fascinated by these dark images.

Her father, in his typical dry and succinct manner, said, “Morbid curiosity.”

She had accepted that response, and now in the car recalled all the details of the drawing: the insipid expression on the executioner’s face, the prisoner’s heavy-heeled boots, his turned out ankles and his knotted, fisted hands resting on his belly. The image flickered and faded when her father pulled her red down jacket’s sleeve. “Corinne, honey, turn around and put on your seatbelt.”

She tugged at the belt and asked, “Do they still use it?”

He shifted to fourth gear and accelerated, putting more distance between them and the prison. “No. It’s gone now.  I came here a long time ago to protest. A month later I left for Paris and tried to forget what had happened.”

The car seemed to have gotten colder; Corinne leaned closer to the vents and rubbed her mittened hands together to generate more heat. “Protest what?”

“An execution,” he said.

“Who got executed?”

He turned his head to face her, A heavy, lost look in his gray eyes made Corinne wish they had not driven past Sing-Sing. She hated to see her father sad. “Two people on the same night—a man and his wife.”

Corinne swallowed hard and thought of her own parents when they were arrested at a recent protest. “What did they do?”

“The government accused them of giving secrets to the Russians. The wife’s brother betrayed her.”

She mulled over this information, and stared at the red, yellow, and purple stripes of her mittens. It was bad to give up a secret, but tattling was worse–at least that’s what her mother believed. She always said, “Never, ever, point your finger at someone and name them.”

They drove in silence and soon they were on their secluded street. The Sand’s mailbox with its painted red star stood out in defiance from the rest of the ordinary gray tin mailboxes.

“Why did the lady’s brother tattle on her?”

Her father’s fingers travelled back to his beard, twisting and pulling at the black and white bristles, a habit he had when he wanted to avoid an explanation. “It’s complicated. They were scapegoats . . . like so many others.” He approached their driveway and flicked on the turn signal.

“Did you know them?”

“No, but they shared the same beliefs as your mother and me.”

He turned the steering wheel to the left; the sound of gravel crackled and popped beneath the tires. Her father switched off the headlights and ignition. Stepping out from the car, he stood erect and stared at the sky. The gray-white afternoon was now a deep purple, velvet night.

Corinne climbed out of the old, blue Peugeot and slammed the door. “What were their names?”

He kept looking up and didn’t say anything.

“I want to check if they’re in the encyclopedia. I won’t bug you about them any more. Cross my heart.” She motioned, making a swirly sign on her chest.

“Rosenberg.”

“And their first names?”

“Ethel was the wife … Looks like snow.”

The sky’s color was now a lighter violet cast.  Corinne clasped her tiny mittened hands, pressing them hard against her chest and crashed down to her knees. Squeezing her eyes shut, she mouthed a prayer, and finished it with the monotone “Snow, no school” mantra.

After a deep breath of cold air that caused a coughing fit, Corinne dropped her hands to her sides. She opened her right eye first, then the left one. Her prayers were answered.  Plump snowflakes floated down from the heavens as if God had gotten into a pillow fight with his angels. She pumped her small fist, cheered “Yes!” and continued to celebrate with a clumsy pirouette, stumbling over the gravel while trying to catch the frozen fluff with her tongue.

Her father climbed up the stairs to the front porch and shouted, “Come inside before your mother starts moaning about pneumonia.”

“Hey! You didn’t tell me the man’s name,” she yelled back.

He stood on the top step and leaned against the white wooden railing; his hands shoved deep inside his coat’s pockets. Corinne saw the sad, faraway look in his eyes, staring into the dark distance. And although she was only ten, she sensed that maybe it was best not to know the man’s name. But it was too late. Her father straightened up, walked to the front door with the painted red star, and said, “His name was Julius.”

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Obviously there’s little I’ve changed, just added more description and changed the chapter’s ending. I like the second ending better. And to be honest, I like how it sounds to my ear, but….

Ack. I don’t know.

I’ve been obsessed with my characters’ body language. They smile, frown, chew their lips, blush, roll their eyes, glance, look from the corner of their eyes, purse their lips, curl their lips up in a smile, wrinkle their nose, eyes crinkle in a smile, flash smiles, chuckle, sigh, sigh in frustration, sigh with desire, sigh in exasperation, shout, mutter, mumble, rest their elbows on their thighs, on the table; hold their head in the hands in despair, stare…oh you get the picture, don’t you?

It’s all cliché, cliché, cliché! And that has been on the Internet Writing Workshop’s Writing List’s sujet du semaine. A lot of back and forth about expressions that have turned into clichés like “wag the dog” or “mountain out of a molehill” or “the shit hitting the fan.” My favorite one is “going to hell in a hand basket ” because it just hits the nail on its head. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Back to body language…I’ve given myself the assignment to go through Julius and look at all the beats, tags, and cues that mention some form of physical movement, and choose language that is more dramatic and that better conveys the character’s mood, tone, and the scene’s setting. No easy task, but it has to be done.

To facilitate this project, I was fortunate to have stumbled upon Margie Lawson’s website and blog, thanks to fellow IWWer and friend, Carol Kean, and saw that Margie had an online class, “Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist.” Unfortunately, no information of how to sign up or the cost. However, you can purchase and download the two week lecture and try your hand with the exercises she provides.

Although I downloaded this last night and skimmed the first lecture, I see that I have a lot of work ahead of me. Margie provides a sample and then breaks it down in an analysis of the setting, the mood, the character’s personality. Here’s an example she provided in a guest blog post on Routines for Writers:

Writers need to consider the EMOTIONAL SET of their characters, the SETTING, and the SITUATION.  Those three dynamics impact the SPEED, TONE, QUALITY, VOLUME, and PITCH of dialogue.

Let’s check out how authors capture Dialogue Cues on the page.

Here are some DIALOGUE CUES from HARLAN COBEN’s 2009 release, LONG LOST.  For this section – I selected dialogue cues that all speak to TONE.

1.  I expected Jack to give an “awww, Mom,” but maybe he heard something in her tone too.

2.  I had thought about the strange tone in his voice, near panic.

3.  “Must be divine,” Win said in a voice richly marinated in sarcasm.

“Oh, it’s nothing special,”  Paintball said, not picking up on Win’s tone.

4.  I was about to crack wise—something like “tell all your friends” or “sigh, another satisfied customer”—but something in her tone made me pull up.  Something in her tone overwhelmed me and made me ache. I squeezed her hand and stayed silent and then I watched her walk away.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Note the Stimulus and Response pattern above.

5.  I made eye contact with the man I’d fought with in Paris. I kept my tone even, controlled.

 

Moving onto:

Looks and Gazes and Glances and Facial Expressions

C.J. Box, THREE WEEKS TO SAY GOOD-BYE

1.  Garrett looked at me blankly. Something in his eyes disturbed me.  It was as if he saw me as someone who couldn’t possibly understand him, and I was not worth an explanation.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Fresh and amplified interpretation of a look.

2.  Then he smiled outright, and something danced behind his eyes.  I felt a chill roll down my back.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Stimulus/Response

3.  And I caught the “See?  What did I tell you?” look Garrett gave Luis after she was gone.

4.  He locked eyes with me, and I felt a chill that made the hair on my arms rise.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Stimulus/Response

5. On the sidewalk, he paused, and I caught up with him.  I’d never seen him so furious.  The skin of his face was pulled back, slitting his eyes and making his mouth a snarl.

Brad Meltzer, THE BOOK OF LIES

1.  On my left my father stares at Ellis, then Timothy, then back at Ellis.

Then he looks at me.

I see desperation every day. For the homeless, it overrides despair, depression, even    fear.  But when my dad’s wide eyes beg for help . . . I’ve seen that look before—all those years ago when the cops came and they arrested him.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Using an amplified internalization about a look – to slip in backstory.  Powerful.

2.  To be honest, I thought my dad was bullshitting when he said he didn’t know what was in the truck, but from the confusion on his face, this is news to him.

3.  Most people turn away when you ask them a hard question. Serena continues to look straight at me, and her yellow blue eyes . . . I hate to say it . . . there’s a real depth to her stare.

4.  She looks at me in silence for what seems like a full minute.

5.  “And stop giving me that my-boy’s-become-a-man-look!”

Now to critical readers and writers the samples Lawson provides might raise a skeptical eyebrow, but it certainly is better than my rolled eyes, countless sighs, staring into space and whatnot. I am anticipating that this will be a challenge and hard work, but I am prepared to put in the time and make Julius even stronger.

For the past few days I’ve been in editing mode. I’ve taken my sharp eye and sharp pencil and read through the first seven chapters of Julius, and cut, cut, cut.

A lot of what I’ve taken out is back story. I know. It’s surprising that I, lover of back story, decided that it should go out with the rest of the garbage. But I’ve seen the error of my ways, and I discovered in this past reading marathon that backstory, indeed, slows the narrative down. So one issue has been put to rest.

Unfortunately, however, Julius has many other issues and I have to tackle them all one by one. The first part of the book sets everything up for the second and third parts, so that means I really can’t move forward until Part One is perfect. It’s  frustrating, but it has to be done. In the meantime I can start outlining the second and third parts when I need a break from the editing.

Back to the salt mines…

I thought it would be useful to share some of the lessons I’ve learned so far during this ongoing thirty day challenge, and the first one is all about the outline.

I’ve written countless of posts of why I don’t outline, what software will help me with outlining, why I still don’t outline, why I should outline, but can’t bring myself to sit my butt down and just do a preliminary outline, ad nauseaum. I finally had accepted that I just don’t outline that’s not how I’m wired. Once I get an idea, I write it in one long session, and see where it all goes, and that’s that.

Yet, with The Wilde Solution, I’m seeing the merits of outlining. When I started the project, I pretty much had an idea of how it would start and end. The middle was a bit of a toss-up, as middles usually are because that’s where all the conflict should happen, and I had a vague notion of what that conflict would be. But the story has gotten away from me, and it’s time I rein it in.

How? Well, I am starting some index cards, and jotting scene notes that may or not make it into the story, and I’m back to my character bios and fleshing them out more. In Scrivener, it’s fairly simple to do this in an organized manner. Write one or sentence summary on the index card then in the notes section flesh it out more. So when I actually have my chapter, I have a nice foundation (or idea) of where I want this to go.

The mistake I’ve always made with the concept of outlining is that it should take no more than a couple of days to do it. Now I realize that outlining (like the endless research) is like writing a novel–you don’t rush it. For some people it can take a week, for others a month.

What does that mean for The Wilde Solution? It means that at the end of the month, I’ll take those 50K words, dissect them word-by-word, salvage what I can, but most likely trash 3/4 of the work. Then I’ll do what I should have done in October–write a detailed outline, and start all over again.

Yesterday I received The Writer’s Portable Mentor and I started with one of the exercises in the first chapter. It consisted of writing continuously without stopping. There were ten questions or prompts that helped you formulate the foundation of a story. The fun part was creating a scene of confrontation, and I was actually surprised what came out of my character’s mouth!

Overall it was a great exercise that I found very illuminating. The next chapter is all about word choice or lexicon. I’ve just scanned the chapter, but I know the exercises will be incredibly important. One of my stumbling blocks is that I personally feel that I lack a rich vocabulary. That doesn’t mean that I want to use fancy words to convey a thought and that has everyone running to the dictionary, but it does mean that I want to be more poetic with language, and play with the sounds and rhythm of words. What Priscilla Long recommends in this chapter is a Lexicon Practice–where you gather up in a notebook words and phrases that catch your fancy.

This is what Priscilla writes about the Lexicon Practice:

There are two parts to the practice.One is to make your own Lexicon (word book) and the other is to collect words and phrases in a list that pertains to the piece you are  currently working on. I call this second part the word trap, because trapping words is like trapping fish in a net.The words are out there. Time to bring them in.

That’s such a simple exercise, and I know it will be very worthwhile, especially for HAND/EYE articles.  Long suggests getting a nice bound notebook (I love pretty notebooks. I’m such a sucker for beautiful writing accessories) and give each word that you want to own a half page with a definition. In other words two words per page. The key is to put in words that really catch your attention, that are juicy, that resonate with you. For example: when I lived in Prague, I ‘d always would walk by the old town square and when it started to get warmer there was little old man with five little dogs that performed tricks–I’m talking real acrobatic stunts. Before the show would start, the little old man would announce in German, Achtung! Achtung! Hundeausstellung then he would switch into Czech and say Pozor! Pozor Výstava. For some reason the word Pozor, which means Attention or beware struck me as one of those words I had to possess, plus I thought it was the perfect name for a dog. So I made that word mine and it ultimately became the name for my first Jack Russell terrier ((suited him beautifully).

I’m looking forward to this ongoing exercise. It will be fun and it will improve my writing. And who knows, I just might find another name for another dog.

One of my writing buddies, Beth Camp, asked on her Facebook page what we’re doing to prepare for NANOWRIMO, so I figured this would be a good post and detail what I’m doing (or not).

Right now I feel like my dogs before I let them loose for a run. If you have a dog or dogs, you’ll understand what I mean. The anticipation to be released from the leash is too much. They’re whining, straining, and pulling. They’re muscles are so tight with joy and excitement of running free. They’re besides themselves. Once you let them go it’s Whoosh! They run, and run, and run. For the first five minutes it’s nothing but action, then they stop and piddle about with intermittent chasing, but mostly it’s sniffing and exploring with an occasional roll in deer droppings or a fox turd.

Well, I’m experiencing that ready to run bit. And as much as I want to start outlining, and getting reading for that big, first day, I’m keeping everything in my noggin. Why? First off, I don’t want to duplicate efforts. I’m waiting for Scrivener (eight more days!) to come out with its Windows beta version. In fact I am so obsessive about this program that I check their Facebook page everyday, and their forums with the hope that they release it sooner than October 25th. No chance in hell, according to their last forum post. I just have to tick off the days on my calendar, and wait patiently.

Nonetheless, I do have plans on how to plan The Wilde Solution so I thought  I would share them. Feel free to pop in with your comments, I’m always looking for ideas. Okay here goes . . .

• As I mentioned, I’m waiting for the Windows version of Scrivener to come out so I can get familiar with the software and not stumble around wasting time during NANOWRIMO, but this time my approach to writing this story is very different. In what way? I’m going to outline. Yes. Me. Outline.  I never outline. This should be relatively easy because I know that The Wilde Solution is a three act story. I figure each section will have at least five chapters, so a total of fifteen chapters. Two, maybe, three scenes per chapter. So what I’ll do is breakdown the chapter with a title, and each scene with a subtitle. For example: Chapter One: The Dissertation. Scene One: Cyprian meets Hal, her dissertation chair.

• Fleshing out my characters. I usually have a pretty good idea of who my characters are in my head, but this time I plan to write character bios and CVs, and I mean for all of them, including the minor ones. And I will try to find photos of who they resemble to better describe facial and body features. This is new for me. I mean I know what they look like, and I give readers pieces of those features then let them form their own pictures of the characters, but sometimes that doesn’t work. For example: When I gave the old, first chapter of The Wilde Solution to my friend Carol, I described Hal as paunchy. Now in my mind, Hal looked like the late actor Ron Silver. The way I described him was bearded and a bit paunchy . Yet, Carol read more into it and thought he was this fat, flabby, bald and a completely unattractive man. So this time, I plan to show a better picture of the character.

• Although the story doesn’t require any research. In the sense that none of it has any historical context, I still have to some do some locale research. This story takes place in Berkeley, California. It’s been years since I used to hang out there, so I’ll need to use Google maps and photos to describe some of the places. Same with San Francisco.

• I already have a good idea of the major plot points, but the subplot is a little iffy. Of course, this appears in the second half of the book where a lot of the action is supposed to take place. So instead of crossing that bridge when it happens, in my outlining mode I will stipulate where the sub-plot rears it’s head, where the confrontation occurs, and when it’s resolved.

• The question of point of view was brought up by Carol, and she suggested I switch off between Hal and Cyprian. I originally wrote it with Hal POV, with the idea that the readers discover the mystery of Cyprian along with Hal. So do I keep it strictly from Hal’s perspective or do I switch off? Questionable. I’d love to write it as an omniscient narrator, but that’s hard to pull off, and sometimes it comes out stilted.  So it most likely will be third person, switching from Hal’s and Cyprian’s POVs. I’ll have to figure out how to drop hints along the way so the story isn’t given away in the first three chapters.

That’s about it for the time being. I’m sure along the way other things will pop up that I’ll need to think about.

Okay, so sometimes I read shooting scripts instead of actually going to the movies. And I suspect since I’ve read so many screenplays that it’s influenced my writing style. I like chatty novels. I just finished reading Joseph Kanon’s Stardust, which is about the movies, and there’s a ton of dialogue. Some reviewers on Amazon disliked this commenting it read like a script (it didn’t), but I think using a lot of dialogue for a book about the movies make sense.

So . . . I confess that for the past few months I’ve been contemplating of using a style that Alvah Bessie used in Inquisition in Eden. He opens the scenes of his story with camera instructions like INT./EXT.  CAR  - AFTERNOON, WINTER , 1978, and proceeds to describe himself as the narrator. I personally like this and it works for Julius because there are many references to films, that Bessie is a character, and that the movies is another of Corinne’s obsessions.

Another tactic that I like is when the main character/narrator steps out of the story and addresses the audience. I mentioned in a previous post that John Burdett and William Goldman used this in The Bangkok series and in The Princess Bride, respectively. This makes the narrator seem more personable to the reader, as if he or she is actually confiding to that person.

But I’ve been battling the issue of backstory. At Writer Unboxed Anna Elliott writes in Backstory Blues that it’s okay to know more than the reader. I don’t think in the case of Julius that works. Apart from the movies, history plays a very large role in the narrative. Yes, the reader doesn’t need to know the minutiae of Corinne’s life, but her backstory is a key part of what shaped her psychologically. And although some people who have critiqued my work say the back story bogs the story down, they need to understand that Corinne (and the author) feel you if you don’t have the background the pieces of the puzzle won’t fit. The challenge, though, is how to include it so that it doesn’t slow down the actions of the present.

So what to do? Follow the advice of the experts or go with your gut? I’ll let you know how it all plays out.

I’m borrowing from Alexis Grant’s recent post about story arc, which I highly recommend if you’re scratching your head of what it’s all about. Alexis sums it in a very user-friendly manner. After I read what she wrote, I finally had one of those Aha moments of now I get it.

Although I already got it, but I just couldn’t visualize of where the story arc should take place and how long it should be, but to see her nifty little illustration helped a lot. Does it mean I can finally get myself out of that corner? Yes.  Do I have a new idea that will bring more conflict into the story? I have a few up my sleeve.

Now instead of offering some nebulous smattering of what I’ve written so far, I’ll give you rundown of Part 1 of Julius that sets up the adventures for my merry Marxists.

Prologue:

We meet Corinne, age ten, with her father. They’re driving through the village of Ossining and Corinne sees for the first time Sing -Sing Prison. Her father makes a comment about the prison that used to have executions and this is where the seeds of her obsession with the Rosenbergs starts.

Part 1

Flash forward twenty-eight years, Corinne and Jake, her significant other, hate their respective jobs, and dream of quitting to start a political/literary journal. However, Corinne is hesitant to quit because of the money she earns, and something from her past that’s holding her back. After a death in Jake’s family where the couple learn of another Rosenberg connection, and an unpleasant event at work finally pushes Corinne to quitting and to return to her leftist roots.  The couple, with their retirement accounts cashed out, move forward with their plans. Via backstory readers learn Corinne was raised by Marxists and her beliefs are shaped by the historical events like Spanish Civil War, the blacklist, and the Rosenbergs. Now as they prepare for the launch of the magazine that they call Julius, after Julius Rosenberg, she has returned to her roots. But conflicts arise and Corinne battles with Jake who still thinks more as a capitalist. Although the couple are financing a good portion of the magazine, Jake decides that they need investors and recruits a group of elderly men who were former volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, CPUSA members, and labor activists. With a small staff, and investors Julius is ready to launch, but everything seems too be falling into place too easily. Corinne has her doubts which manifest into dreams where her hero, blacklisted screenwriter, Abraham Lincoln Battalion veteran Alvah Bessie appears and offers her unsolicited advice about the magazine and about the trials and tribulations of a fellow traveler. Part one ends with Corinne questioning her sanity

So that’s the set up. Part 2 is where all the confrontation/conflict occurs. According to the diagram Alexis posted, the story arc should look like this:

Makes sense, right? So far I have nothing, but a number of scenes, and the more I stare at this diagram, I’m seeing that I have to chuck out a few of them. I hate to do it because I have quite a bit of backstory that I think is pretty good, but it bogs down the action.

So as things stand Part 2 looks pretty much like this:

Garbage. With the exception of the first two chapters. And this is where I need to spend the next few months working out the kinks of the story, but before I can do that I really need to reexamine Part 1 and start chucking out some scenes, and reworking others.

Will it ever end? I hope so.

]]> http://www.rebecaschiller.com/craft/story-arc-in-julius/feed/ 0 http://www.rebecaschiller.com/craft/a-dissenting-voice/ http://www.rebecaschiller.com/craft/a-dissenting-voice/#comments Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:52:06 +0000 RS http://www.rebecaschiller.com/?p=737 Tweet

I’m trying to figure out how to create more conflict in Julius. Where things stand at the moment everything is going well for my Merry Marxists.  So I’m fooling around with the idea of having one of the minor characters, Craig, play a bigger role in the story.

Craig is Corinne’s old high school boyfriend. He is mildly obsessed with her. For him, she is the one that got away. The problem I’m having with this role expansion is how can he stir up some trouble for Corinne and Jake. It took me a couple of days to figure how Craig could create some conflict, and after knocking around a few ideas I decided to have him be the dissenting voice.

For those who’ve been following my trials and tribulations with Julius, you all know that it has a Marxist bent, but I felt the story would be so much better if I ruffled a few feathers within the narrative. So that meant back to the research. Since Corinne is obsessed with early and mid-20th century events that involved the CPUSA, the Spanish Civil War, the Rosenbergs, HUAC and the Hollywood Ten, I thought that it would be best to have Craig equally involved in mid-century conservatism. So after some digging around I came across Russell Kirk’s Canons (which I’ll list momentarily).

Kirk was known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. From Wikipedia:

His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post-World War II conservative movement. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. Kirk was also considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism.

Kirk developed six “canons” of conservatism they are:

1. A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
2. An affection for the “variety and mystery” of human existence;
3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize “natural” distinctions;
4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.

Kirk said that Christianity and Western Civilization are “unimaginable apart from one another” and that “all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief.”

Apart from what I found online this is as much as I know about Kirk and I went ahead and ordered from Amazon The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot. I suspect this will be scary reading. But research is research, and if it helps tighten the story then so be it.

Nonetheless, I think that Craig advocating Kirk’s canons will make him into a fleshier character. And the conflict? Well, just as Julius launches, a snarky little blog will also see the light of day and will be Julius’ major enemy, causing problems for the Merry Marxists.