Tete a tete, Part I: Head Hopping

Some writing crimes are misdemeanors. In fact, whether or not these two peeves of mine count as actual no-no’s is open to discussion. I hope you’ll share your opinion.
This post is about peeve # 1, Head-hopping. Changing the point of view (POV) within a scene confuses the reader.

Go ahead. Create ambiguity and tension about the plot and the characters’ motivations and perhaps their well-hidden pasts, but not about who’s telling the story and whose eyes the reader is “seeing” through.

Some well-known and popular writers switch point of view from paragraph to paragraph and get away with it. One way to do this, if you must, is to give a little clue that you’re about to, or have just, changed POV. You can use some sort of action to indicate you are now in the other person’s head, or maybe a simple tag, like “Jessie thought.”

Here's an example:
Bonny walked into a kitchen that reeked of cooking oil and fried fish, saw the burned frying pan and a sink filled with dishes. Heat careened through her body as if she’d been in that damn pan. She slammed her purse to the table, heedless of the damage to its contents.
The comforting smells of cooking always reminded her of home. Delilah hated that her roommate had so little patience with the children. She wished she were their mother.

Trouble is, it takes a while to figure out who is the mother in the scene, because the writer cut so quickly to Delilah’s point of view.

Here’s one repair approach:

Bonny walked into a kitchen that reeked of cooking oil and fried fish, saw the burned frying pan and a sink filled with dishes. Heat careened through her body as if she’d been in that damn pan. She slammed her purse to the table, heedless of the damage to its contents.
Bonnie’s roommate dashed to the table in time to catch the purse before it tumbled to the floor. She wondered why Bonnie always stressed at mess, always insisted that tidy homes are happy homes. Weird, because the comforting smells of cooking always reminded Delilah of home. Delilah hated that her roommate had so little patience with the children. She wished she were their mother.

The device of adding “she wondered” tells us whose eyes are seeing the scene, but it’s still confusing. Far better to show the scene and figure out a way to show the other character’s emotions, staying in the original character’s head.

Bonny walked into a kitchen that reeked of cooking oil and fried fish, saw the burned frying pan and a sink filled with dishes. Heat careened through her body as if she’d been in that damn pan. She slammed her purse to the table, heedless of the damage to its contents.
Bonnie’s roommate dashed to the table in time to catch the purse before it tumbled to the floor. She spun to the stove, flipped on the fan, and trotted to the window to open it a crack.
“You’re home just in time for dinner,” she said, one of her annoying, welcome-to-my-world smiles pasted across her face. “The kids and I had such fun making dinner for you.”
“Burning dinner?” Bonnie asked.
Delilah’s eyes filled with tears (we’ll work on cliches another time!). “I’ll clean up, I promise.” She went to the refrigerator and snatched two pieces of juvenile scribbling from the crowded door front. “Aren’t these terrific? One of those kids is bound to be an artist, just like you.” She forced them into Bonnie’s hands.
Bonnie took a quick scan of the papers. Not bad, actually. Which of course made it worse. “Maybe you’re planning on paying for art school. I work damn hard just to get enough to pay for fish for them to burn.”

What’s your take on shifting point of view?

Next post: Whose head is it, anyway? Talking heads.

Character Sketches

These two photos, both taken at the same time in my front yard, show two ways to paint your characters for your readers.
You can start with the bare limbs, as in the top picture. Spare, perhaps defining the gender, maybe the body type, maybe one or two specific details, including where they live, maybe whether they thrive or shrivel in that environment.
You might instead paint a colorful, splashier image, describing clothes, status, hair color, personality type, intimate friends and acquaintances, likes and dislikes.
Either method allows you to show precisely as much as you want about your character and how they interact with others in their environment. With either method you, the writer, are in charge of doling out just enough details to intrigue, but not bore your reader, to perhaps hint at the roots that lie underground. Shallow roots that will lead to your character’s downfall, or sturdy, deep roots that provide strength in stormy times, or maybe invasive roots that threaten neighbors or entire communities.
Guess that leaves you, the writer, more powerful than pruning shears. Or a load of fertilizer.
What’s your approach to defining and describing the characters in your writing?

If you want to see some truly wonderful tree images, head on over to Lynda Lehman's post today on Peripheral Vision. Serendipitous.

Do As I Say

…”Not as I do.” Your mother, father, or other caretaker must have told you this so many times your ears flapped closed and your brain took off to Never Never Land. Mine did.

Now I’m forced to suggest to my readers who are writers that you do just that. As I say, not as I do.

Here’s “I say” Number One: Before you begin your novel, should you decide to do so (and what more appropriate month than November, the month of NaNoWriMo), have the end in mind. In fact, write that chapter first, if you can. Write an outline, as sketchy or as detailed as your personality type and writing style allows. If you protest that you’re a pantster who writes by the seat of your pants with your imagination guiding, and simply cannot create an outline, I suggest that you write down and know well the major plot points of the book and how you, your protagonists and the entire supporting cast of characters might possibly make it to the Promised Land that is the climax and the ending of your novel.

Some people use storyboarding, little boxes with scenes in them. Some people draw the three or four main sections of the novel (acts) on a large sheet of paper, with a line that dips and peaks with the action, and the scenes that lead to those peaks jotted beneath the line. Some people make note cards with each scene, with a different color for each character.

“I say” Number Two: Have in mind a reasonable word count for your novel and STICK TO IT. You know how long your chapters generally run. Utilize those math skills and multiply. Especially if you write genre fiction, length counts. (And I’m not talking erotica!)

Do not, alas, be faced with serious reconstructive surgery just when you think you’re nearing the end of a long, tedious, yet joyful process.

That is what I’m undergoing with my current novel. This novel has been a learning journey, where I have learned to add emotional complexity and tension to each page. That also adds words. A better plot outline, referred to more often, would have helped me “avoid the knife.” And saved time and emotional energy.

How do you plan your writing? Have you ever encountered a problem similar to mine, needing serious revisions? What did you do?

Cliffhangers...The Train's Coming!

Last week while visiting my daughter I read a thriller by a first time novelist. I enjoyed it but once I finished it, I concluded that it had a surfeit of cliffhangers. I don’t have it at hand at the moment, but at least from the mid point on, I doubt there was a chapter that didn’t end with a shotgun being pumped, a man clutching to a beach cliff while his attacker sought him (a real cliff hanger!) or another suspenseful moment. Please, don’t make me stay up ALL night. Give me a chance to catch my breath, to take a potty break.
Nothing wrong with cliffhangers, but like any literary device, and like seasoning, they need to be used with a light hand and with thought to the impact you want to have. Too many, and people begin to expect them, rather than be surprised or held in suspense.

What’s your take on cliffhangers?


P.S. If you like the suspense of online auctions and the satisfying feeling of contributing to a good cause, check out http://auction.greatoldbroads.org/. Yeah, yeah, I'm a great old broad and proud of it!

One Lovely Blog Award

Conda of Conda's Creative Center recently (okay, not that recently!) awarded me the One Lovely Blog Award. Thank you, Conda! Her site won from another blogger, and it was well-deserved. Her posts are insightful and inspiring for the creative mind, ranging from theory to musings on creativity to some great recipes. Her October 11th post musing about the definition of success moved me.

The rules for accepting the award are simple:

1) Accept the award and don't forget to post a link back to the awarding person.
2) Pass the award on.
3) Notify the award winners.

I'm passing the award on to Helen Ginger of Straight from Hel. I recently found her site, and it's chock full of information on the publishing industry and writing, with book reviews and MORE. Helen's site is a fast way to stay up with changing industry trends, and I'm learning a lot from it. Thanks, Helen.

By the way, the other icons I've added recently to my site are from an award passed on to me some months back. I forgot to put them up. But I hope it's never too late.

Next post...cliffhangers. Stay posted!

Different People, Different Reactions

Quick. If you see someone dumping their cigarette butts in the grocery store parking lot, what do you think? How do you feel? Do you wonder how they can still be smoking, with all the evidence of its damage? Or hate that they’re mucking up the environment? Or are you sad for them, that their parents didn’t teach them to take responsibility for their own trash? Perhaps you feel sorry for the store employee who gets to clean up the mess.

What irks you may only amuse me. What enrages me may make you weep.

Same with our characters. When you write a scene, consider the character’s personality, values and biases. And write the scene that way. Would your protagonist stride up to that car, grab the window frame and say, “Get out here and clean up your mess”? Or would he scrabble in his trunk for a plastic bag and clean it up?

I’m annoyed when characters in a book do something “out of character.” Donald Maass asks “what would your protagonist never ever do? Have them do it.” He suggests that it takes away the sense of the predictable, and creates tension. My feeling is that if you choose to have your character do something out of character, then it had better make a good point and you’d better recognize within your plot that he or she is leaping out of the comfort zone.

What do you think?

Lessons in Stone

This is my non-writing, non-editing summer project. It’s done and it looks pretty good. Woo hoo! I’m proud of myself and my work.

When I started, I thought building a flagstone patio would be challenging, but do-able. I had no idea how challenging and how much doing it would take.

As work and the number of stones I hauled increased, I realized that it is an art. And art takes lots of practice. Each time I bought more stones, one of the people who helped me load them into my car would give me a useful tip that made laying the stones go, if not smoothly, at least a bit faster, a bit easier. And by the time I laid the last flagstone, I felt more comfortable with the task. (Not to mention my arms were better muscled!)

Fortunately (or perhaps not), I’m a stubborn woman. So I finished, on Labor Day. And even repaired an aluminum bucket fountain that had been out of use for several years.

Care to jump with me to my analogy? Whether positioning flagstones or words, you don’t start an expert. Listening to the experts helps, so does a lot of practice. Some learn fast, some take more time and practice. Some have a natural eye and a great imagination. Some work from a detailed plan, others (like me) start with a vision and end of moving up a lot of stones to get to it. At some point, you stop and say “good enough.”

My patio has bumps, lumps and spaces that an expert would never leave. But I started, and I finished. If this were my career, I’d take my photo and move on to the next project, taking the lessons from this one. (For example, triangular stones fit together better).

So why do we think writing should be easy, fast, and not require training, advice, and lots of practice?