How to “Go There” and Not Lose Your Readers: Writing Difficult Topics in Fiction by guest blogger Felicia Ferguson
Happy Friday, Seeker villagers! Carrie here, with a wonderful post from author Felicia Ferguson on writing those difficult topics in fiction. Felicia is an award-winning fiction & nonfiction writer; in fact, her novel The Choices She Made just won the silver medal in Illumination Book Awards’s General Fiction category! Welcome, Felicia :)
How to “Go There” and Not Lose Your Readers: Writing Difficult Topics in Fiction
By Felicia Ferguson
The Christian life isn’t all sunshine and roses—sometimes it can be even more challenging after we’ve decided to walk with God. How do we authors craft authentic stories of the Christian life that don’t sugarcoat the struggle, but do keep the reader turning pages and the focus on God’s love?
I believe we start by making and keeping five promises to our readers.
When a reader picks up a book, nine times out of ten they want to be entertained, to escape into another world for a while. But if you’re going to write about difficult subjects well, then I’ve discovered there are five promises which must be kept for the reader to ultimately feel satisfied by the book.
First, readers will expect an emotional journey. Difficult topics like sexual assault or mental health issues are rife with heady and heavy emotions to probe. But addressing them should not be an avenue to push an agenda. If what you’re really hoping to do is preach to them about their own bad choices and tell them you have the right answer that will fix everything, please put down your pen or step away from the keyboard. Message-driven fiction is manipulative and not authentic. No matter how you personally feel about a topic, focus on the characters and their experiences. Take readers on an emotional journey and let them decide what to take away from it. Besides, preaching is telling rather than showing, and we all know telling in fiction is not a good thing!
How do you avoid preaching but still provide emotional impact for readers? That’s where the second promise comes in. Your character will use practical methods to resolve whatever trauma/tragedy/heartbreak they’ve experienced. Whether in first or third person, writing in deep point of view is perfect for amping up emotional impact. I liken deep POV to the first-person-shooter video games where the player is completely in one character’s head. They see only what he sees, hear only what he hears. Reality is almost fully enmeshed with the virtual world.
The third promise an author needs to make and keep is being true to the character’s emotions as she faces her past woundings. If you’re going to do the hard work of researching and building an authentic trauma, heartbreak, or tragedy, then don’t shortchange the character or the reader on the emotions that result from them. If you don’t know how the character would feel, then ask someone who does. I have never been pregnant, so I asked my writers’ critique group members who have been to describe what my character would feel during different stages of her pregnancy. If your character has panic attacks, dissociations, or any other trauma-induced experiences, find out what they feel like. Fudging on or glossing over the internal sensations will irritate people who do experience them and could lead to negative reviews.
The fourth promise goes hand-in-hand with the third: you will NOT miraculously make everything better for the character nor will they out-of-the-blue decide to take an action they’ve fought for roughly 200 pages. A deus ex machina may make it easier on you as the author, but miraculous resolutions in fiction do no one any good. Readers need to see how the character moves through her healing process—or at least starts out on the road toward healing. In showing this, readers can appreciate how difficult or even scary that process can be, which creates empathy—and is a perfect take-away.
Finally, by the time they reach the end of the book, readers have invested hours and possibly days with this character. If you’ve done your job well and they’ve bonded with her, they’re going to want and, in reality, need to have hope she will heal. Leaving the reader with hope is the fifth promise to make and keep. Writing from a Christian worldview is all about hope so make sure hope is woven in. It will be not only believable, but will encourage the reader. And who couldn’t use a little encouragement these days?
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Felicia Ferguson achieved master's degrees in Healthcare Administration and Speech-Language Pathology, but has known she wanted to be a writer since the fifth grade. An award-winning fiction and non-fiction freelance writer, she writes strong female characters who work through their baggage and don’t just repack it. The Choices She Made, her first contemporary women’s novel with End Game Press, released in 2022 and recently won the silver medal in Illumination Book Awards’s General Fiction category! When Secrets Come Calling will release in 2024 also with End Game Press. When she’s not glued to her laptop, Felicia enjoys hiking, meandering with her twelve-year-old Frenchie, and looking forward to the next story.
Connect with Felicia at her website (and sign up for her quarterly newsletter), Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
What about you, dear writers? What is your takeaway from Felicia's great post? Which of her five promises resonates with you most?
A World Within a Book
(Long post warning...and giveaway) :)
A few months ago I just finished reading an Amelia Peabody book (again) and I am (again) completely captivated by the world Elizabeth Peters created. Now, I only picked it up as research for a book I wrote, but from the first chapter, I was drawn into the setting of Cairo and the arid environment in which Egyptologists and archeologists saturated themselves to uncover ancient relics.
Elizabeth Peters’ book was thick with a world I’d
never experienced, but through her story, I traveled to Egypt, felt the busy-ness
of Cairo’s streets, and even delved into an ancient mystery.
Last night, I finished reading Laura Frantz’s newest
book, The Rose and the Thistle, and I got to traverse the beautiful world of lowlands
Scotland (not too mention the darker and stinkier 18th century
Edinburgh).
How did Laura and Elizabeth help me travel those
places?
And how do we make that happen in our stories?
One of my favorite things in writing (besides
developing characters! I LOVE creating characters!!) is helping my readers get
a sense of place in the storyworld they’ve entered. I adore bringing the
readers into Appalachia or Bath, England, or even my endearing made-up island
of Skymar.
I could really write three separate posts on this
issue, one on each of my points, but I’ll try to sum it up 😊
1. Know
your setting
2. Take
the Organic Approach
3. Move
the senses
First things first, get to know your
setting. Of course, this is for obvious reasons –
if you don’t know your setting, how on earth are you going to describe it for
others?
There are different ways to do this:
A. Traveling
to the places
B. Massive
research
C. The
Author’s own imagination
D. Taking
stories from others and fictionalizing them/or incorporating them into yours
E. All
of the above (or a mixture of a few)
E would be the usual answer 😉
It takes a blend of experiences, knowledge, and
imagination to bring a setting to life in the best ways. But what do we need to
know to impact the setting’s creation?
Oh goodness, I don’t have enough space here to go into
all the possible information, but here are a few questions to ask while shaping
your story world.
What does the place look like? (duh, right?)
What’s the mood of the place? How does it feel? – for
example, in Lord of the Rings, Mordor has a very different “sense” and
weather to it than the Shire. Even the weather sets a tone for the setting in
those two places.
What sort of people live here? Is it a mix of
cultures? Agrarian? A city? The smells, sounds, even the accents are going to
be different, depending on what you choose.
What are the jobs in this setting? A fishing village
by the sea is going to have a different style, flavor, and feeling than an
upscale, city street. A rural area is going to give off a different vibe than a
suburb – not only in what we see, but in what people wear, the way they talk to
each other, and even the pace of life.
What traditions influence the setting and the people?
What is the history of this place? Has it been there a
long time? Were there any significant historical events that took place there? Will
these influence the setting of your story or the people within it?
How about the geography? Having an ocean nearby is
going to create a different culture than being surrounded by mountains. In my
book, The Heart of the Mountains, the culture of the Appalachian
people – isolated within their mountains with limited options for making a
living – are naturally prone to developing and drinking alcohol because the
nature of their environment sets them up for it. So then, how will this
‘culture’ impact my story?
The creation of a world comes from a big pot of
possibilities, and each author attempts to evoke a reader’s imagination in
different ways.
Second (and as important as the first) take
an organic approach to revealing your setting
This may seem a no-brainer, but it’s definitely a shift in writing styles from the 1800s to now 😊 Charles Dickens could spend an entire page describing a cobblestone sidewalk, but readers nowadays are going to skim over that type of intensive detail.
You do NOT have to tell everything you know about this
setting in your book. In fact, please DON’T!! Highlight the best parts
of your setting to build a sense of place, but not bog down your readers with
details. Make the important stuff count.
The best way to do this is weave the setting into the
action of the story, not use it as bookends to a page.
Master storyteller, Jerry Jenkins gives these two
examples:
London in the 1860s was a cold, damp,
foggy city crisscrossed with cobblestone streets and pedestrians carefully
dodging the droppings of steeds that pulled all manner of public conveyance.
One such pedestrian was Lucy Knight, a beautiful, young, unattached woman in a
hurry to get to Piccadilly Circus. An eligible bachelor had asked her to meet
him there.
I get the sense of setting, don you? It works, right?
But…Jenkins gives us an even BETTER way 😊
London’s West End, 1862
Lucy Knight mince-stepped around clumps of
horse dung as she hurried toward Regent Street. Must not be late, she told
herself. What would he think?
She carefully navigated the cobblestones
as she crossed to hail a Hansom Cab – which she preferred for its low center of
gravity and smooth turning. Lucy did not want to appear as if she’d been toseed
about in a carriage, especially tonight.
“Not wearin’ a ring, I see,” the driver
said as she boarded.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nice lookin’ lady like yourself out alone
after dark in the cold fog…”
“You needn’t worry about me, sir. I’m only
going to the circus.”
“Picadilly, it is, Ma’am.”
Do we still get the same sense of setting? Yes, but we
ALSO experience the story moving forward AND we get a little character
introduction along with a tinge of suspense for icing on the cake.
Now there is nothing wrong with beautiful
prose and descriptions, but they need to have meaning
for your story, not just be words on a page, so they don’t feel like a list of
details. Also, if you’re going to give a longer, meaningful description, try to
alternate it with some action or dialogue.
Thirdly, don’t forget the five senses.
When describing your setting, find ways to incorporate
various types of senses so that the reader can experience the environment too.
Of course, there’s an emotional feeling the setting can create, but there’s
also sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. We usually don’t use them all at
one time in a description, but it’s fun and interesting to try and find
different ways to use them throughout the story.
Here’s an example from my novel, Laurel's Dream(a descriptive paragraph set within the center of a
chapter).
Laurel hesitated only a second longer
before she headed out the door and down the steep mountain path toward the
church schoolhouse. The trees were only beginning to shift into autumn colors,
with hickory and beech displaying their golden glints first. She breathed in
the earth’s fragrance, still fresh from morning rain, a mixture of wild rose
and moss. Sunlight created a patchwork against the leafy trail as it slit
through the mature forest and led the way down the mountain. Small glimpses of
horizon showed between the trees and offered an endless view to uncharted lands
of colleges and city streets and millions of other things she’d only seen
through the pages of books.
The important things about incorporating the senses is
to keep it organic and relevant to the rest of the story.
As we need to do with almost everything else in story 😊
What are some books you’ve read lately that really took you to a different place? Where did you visit?
Leave your answer in the comments below for a chance to win a paperback copy of my upcoming release, The Cairo Curse (U.S. entrants only).
*********************************************************
Pepper Basham is an
award-winning author who writes romance “peppered” with grace and humor.
Writing both historical and contemporary novels, she loves to incorporate her
native Appalachian culture and/or her unabashed adoration of the UK into her
stories. She currently resides in the lovely mountains of Asheville, NC where
she is a wife, mom to five great kids, a speech-language pathologist, and a
lover of chocolate, jazz, hats, and Jesus. Her novel, Hope Between the Pages,
was a finalist for the prestigious Christy award. Pepper loves connecting with
readers and other authors through social media outlets like Facebook
&
Instagram.
You can learn more about Pepper and her books on her website at www.pepperdbasham.com
Finessing a Story
Even as they change, your characters will remain true to their essence.
And if you’re writing for the Christian market, don’t forget about their spiritual journey.
Writing a book is a process. All of the elements have come together for a story to be successful. Taking the time to finesse will help ensure the finished product is the best it can possibly be.
Now it's your turn. Readers, in your opinion, what makes a good book great? Writers, how do you know when your manuscripts are ready to submit?
One Thing That Works for Me with guest Kristi Ann Hunter: Rewrite the Book
Good Monday morning, Seekerville, and Happy Valentine's Day! I (Carrie) am here to introduce today's guest for this month's 'One Thing That Works For Me' series. Please join me in welcoming author, podcaster, and all-around super-cool person Kristi Ann Hunter to share about an editing trick that works for her. By the way, if you haven't yet checked out her books, I can't think of a better day than one dedicated to romance!
Edit. Technically speaking, it’s a four-letter word, but for some writers it’s an agonizing chamber of never-ending torture as you comb through the sentences looking for the right place to add a word here or change a phrase there or enhance this sensory detail or remove that unnecessary description.
Allow me to make it worse. At least it’s going to sound that way at first. For some of you, though, it will be the best editing advice you’ve ever heard. How do I know? Because it’s the best editing advice I’ve ever heard and the person I learned it from claimed the same thing.
We’re talking about a very particular stage of edits today. Some people call them substantive edits, others call them high-level, and still others refer to them as rewrites. For this article we’re going to use the term rewrites. One, because it’s shorter, and two, because, well, you’ll see in a minute.
Rewrites come after you’ve written and worked through the first draft. The story is completely written and you’ve passed it through a critique group or a couple of beta readers, maybe an editor. You’ve read through it yourself and now you have a stack full of notes and now it’s time to take your book to the next level.What works for me at this stage of editing is to rewrite the book.
Literally.
I open the existing manuscript on one side of the screen and a blank document on the other. Then I start typing.
I retype every single word of that book. Does it take a while? Yes. Do I occasionally copy and paste a couple of sentences or even a paragraph? Yes. Do I think it’s worth it? Thirteen books later, I’m gonna have to say yes.
What is the benefit of rewriting you may ask? Well, when you are already retyping every word of the book, you lose any hesitation to change something. It can be easy to let something okay stay in the book instead of replacing it with something great, just because it’s already there and it works. When you are going to retype it anyway, there’s no reason not to tweak a sentence’s phrasing or switch out one word for a slightly better one.
I find when I rewrite, I make small changes, add tiny details, and find a better rhythm for the story in general because all I’m having to think about is the phrasing on the page. The plot, characters, twists, and turns have already been set. I can bring all my creative energy into the words themselves.
Interested in trying the rewrite everything method for yourself? Here’s a few things to keep in mind:
- Large or double screens make this easier. I have a double wide screen on my desk but you can also hook a monitor to a laptop and get the same effect.
- You will add words. Lots of them. Make sure you leave room in your word count to add the little details and enhancements. I typically add 20,000 words to a full size novel during this pass, so I try to size my first draft accordingly.
- While you will type this faster than you wrote the first time since most of the creative direction decisions have already been made, it will take time. Build that into your schedule.
- This is a lot of typing. A lot. I used to have to break out the wrist braces until I got an ergonomic keyboard. Take care of yourself.
If you try this and find it to be the best editing advice you’ve ever heard, I’d love to hear about it. Unfortunately I can’t pass it along to the original advice giver because it was a screen cap of a tumblr post that I came across on Pinterest.
Inspiration is everywhere, people. Don’t be afraid to use it.
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A lover of stories from before she could read, Kristi Ann Hunter is the award winning author of sweet regencies written from a Christian worldview including A Noble Masquerade and her upcoming novel, Enchanting the Heiress. She functions on a steady diet of chocolate, Chick-fil-a diet lemonade, and swoony visits with her book boyfriends. When she isn't writing or hosting her podcast, A Rough Draft Life, she spends time with her family in Georgia playing board games, being a dance mom, and living her own happily ever after.Connect with Kristi at her website, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.
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What questions do you have for Kristi Ann Hunter about her rewriting everything method?
Deciding What Setting to Use, Part 1
Where does your story take place? Is the setting of your story real, imaginary, or somewhere in between?
1. Real Settings
There is a distinct advantage in using a real setting for your story. You can go there. Walk the streets. Smell the wind. Listen to the traffic – or non-traffic – noises. You can stop by the local diner and try the daily special. Or if traveling there is impossible, you can do a virtual visit using Google Earth or Google maps street view.
But the disadvantage to using a real place as a setting for your fictional story is that your perception of the area might not match up with someone who actually lives there. Every place is someone’s hometown, and you run the risk of getting some little detail wrong.
It’s a little easier if you’re writing an historical story, since you don’t run as big of a risk of a reader having intimate knowledge of the setting you’re using – especially if your story takes place in an earlier century.
I breathed a deep sigh of relief when I got a letter from a reader after I published my first novel, The Prodigal Son Returns. I had set a few of the scenes in the real town of Goshen, Indiana, in the 1930’s, using my memories from the 1960’s and my dad’s descriptions of his memories of the town from his childhood to add details. But there is always the fear that the descriptions don’t ring true – until I received that note saying that the town I described was just the way this reader remembered it, down to the location of the barber shop on Lincoln Avenue.
Whew!
2. Imaginary Settings
The advantage to creating an imaginary setting completely out of your head is that it’s yours. You get to decide what the weather is like, who lives in this fictional place, and what happens there.
The disadvantage with a setting like this is that you have to create an entire story-world out of your imagination (which is the main attraction for some authors!) Tolkien did this with his Lord of the Rings trilogy. He was so successful in bringing the reader into his story-world that millions of people felt like Middle Earth was a real place – even before the movies were made!
I’ve never written a setting like this. These are usually reserved for science fiction or fantasy stories, but it’s intriguing, isn’t it? To create that perfect world where imaginary beings live and breathe? I might have to try it sometime.
3. Somewhere in between
I have to confess that this is my favorite setting for my stories. This where you take an imaginary setting – a town, ranch, neighborhood – and nestle it into an existing real place.
The advantages of this kind of setting are huge. For instance, in my current Work in Progress, a contemporary cozy mystery, my setting is in the Black Hills. I’ve created my fictional town of Paragon and placed it in a particular spot. Of course, there isn’t a town there. Or even a crossroads. But it is in the middle of the Black Hills National Forest, which satisfies the requirements for the stories in the series.
However, the surrounding area is real. So, my characters can have lunch at Armadillos (my favorite ice cream shop,) or drive into Rapid City to buy groceries at Sam’s Club. And since I live in this real setting, I can be sure that my descriptions of the climate, traffic, the change in the atmosphere when the tourists arrive on Memorial Day weekend, and the EVENT that is the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally are all accurate. When Emma walks out of the Sweetbrier Inn on a late April morning and encounters snow – that’s reality. In a fictional setting.
Another way to use this kind of setting is to set an historical story in a real place. My series, The Amish of Weaver’s Creek, takes place in the very real Amish settlement of Holmes County, Ohio. One reader who had grown up there told me that he felt like he was visiting his childhood home because my descriptions were so accurate.
But Weaver’s Creek and the Amish community surrounding it in a corner of Holmes County is all fictional. I set it a certain distance from Millersburg, Berlin, and Farmerstown – all real towns of the area – and used historical maps to make my descriptions of those towns fit my story setting of the 1860’s. Then I created my own map of the Weaver's Creek area - the farms, the houses, the roads, and where each family lived. The result is a small area my readers can become familiar with inside of a larger area they can visit.
Populating Your Story with Background Characters
We all enjoy the secondary characters in stories, right?
The heroine’s best friend, the hero’s fun younger brother, the sidekick, the pal, the mentor.These characters are necessary to your story. They provide someone for your characters to confide in and someone to push your hero or heroine to make the move toward romance or toward the next plot point in your story.
But what about the background characters?
First, let’s define what a background character is.
These are characters who populate the third circle of your cast. They are more than a part of the community, but they don’t have as much of a relationship with your hero/heroine as your secondary characters.
But what purpose do they serve?
Unlike the secondary characters, background characters aren’t there to influence the story or your main characters. They provide a balance, a mood, or sometimes a way to ease or increase the tension of a scene.
They can also be a vehicle to give your story a reason to progress through the next scene, like an older couple in my Christmas novella, “An Amish Christmas Recipe Box.”
Let’s look at a couple background characters from fiction as examples.
First, there’s Rosie Cotton from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you’ve read the books or seen the movies, you know Rosie. Sam is in love with her – we know that from the beginning – but he doesn’t feel that he can “speak” for her quite yet. Her character is part of the community, and yet a little bit more. She doesn’t influence the story like a secondary character would, but she influences Sam. In a very subtle way, we know that she is his unstated and secret motivation to come home from the quest, and his hope for the future.
Another one is Mrs. McGregor from Peter Rabbit. She doesn’t play an active role in the story, but she is there. She is pictured in the third illustration in the book, along with Mrs. Rabbit’s ominous warning to Peter: “Your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.” That seemingly innocent act of fixing dinner for her family immediately cast Mrs. McGregor as the accomplice to murder! From that point on she isn’t mentioned again, but she is there, symbolizing the fate of careless rabbits who wander into the wrong garden.
I’d like to introduce you to a background character in my Work-in-Progress, the second installment in my Sweetbrier Inn Mysteries. Her purpose in the story is simple – I have two artists who are at odds with one another as secondary characters, and neither one is very likeable. This character, Debbie, is also an artist, but I made her the kind of person you could sit down and enjoy a cup of tea with. She’s the counterbalance to the other two characters.
Here’s her introduction in the book:
“Good afternoon,” I said to the older couple. “You must be Rick and Debbie Harris.”“That’s right.” Rick smiled at me, his graying beard unable to hide the friendly gesture. “We’re sorry we’re late, but we hadn’t expected the Dignity statue in Chamberlain to be so captivating.”“Have you seen it?” Debbie asked. When I shook my head, she went on. “You have to. It is so beautiful and conveys the dignity of the Native Americans perfectly in the graceful lines of the woman. Like a dancer captured in motion.”Her hands fluttered in the air as she spoke as if she was trying to express the movement that the statue could only represent. Her gently curled silver hair with strands of gold lowlights added to the ethereal quality of her description.“I’m sorry.” She laughed as her hands dropped to her side like birds coming to roost on a branch. “I get carried away sometimes.” She shook her head as she laughed again.
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The inspiration for my fictional Sweetbrier Inn |
Have you given a thought to the background characters in your story?
Tell us about your favorite background character, either in your own work or in a favorite book or movie in the comments.
One commenter will win a copy of “An Amish Christmas Kitchen,” the collection of novellas that includes “An Amish Christmas Recipe Box.” That’s the story I mentioned earlier where I use background characters to move the story along. You’ll have to see if you can spot them as you read the story!
Leslie Gould tells the story of how, in the wake of a heartbreaking loss, a young Amish woman finds unexpected comfort and hope in a yearly baking tradition surrounding the local Lancaster Christmas market. Jan Drexler offers a sweet tale of a shy Amish woman who decides to use her gift for sweets to woo a local Amish boy with her beloved Christmas cookies. And Kate Lloyd offers a heartwarming tale of a woman's unexpected discovery about the truth of her past, and the warm and welcoming Amish family table she finds herself invited to on Christmas.
Increasing My Daily Wordcount
You need to understand two things about me:
A. I used to be a slow writer. I liked to take the time to read and re-read what I had written, revising as I went. On a good day, I would write 1000 words. Not bad, but I wasn't reaching that milestone every day.
B. My goal is to be a productive writer. Writing isn’t a hobby for me, it’s my full-time job. So I need to keep producing stories.
Do you see my problem?
A doesn't lead to B.
If I wanted B, then I needed to up my game. I needed to change my writing habits. I needed to not only increase my daily word count, but make it a regular, every day thing.
I’ve been working on that this year. It’s been a slow process, but the change is happening.
It’s a lot like climbing a mountain.
When I start on a book project, I have the story in my head. Not complete, but the big picture. The long view.
I'm learning how to achieve my goal of several thousand words per week. But to get to that goal, I need to use some tricks and tools.
Call it an outline, or a storyline. Sometimes it looks like a stack of index cards. Sometimes it looks like a story board. Whatever method I use, the story goes a lot better when I know the beginning, middle, and end before I begin writing.
Not every chapter will flow easily. I know that. I also know I’ll be revising these first few chapters several times before the end of the book. But writing these opening chapters quickly, even before my story plan is complete, gives my characters a chance to stretch a little bit and let me get to know their voices.
They require me to navigate their Lies, their Greatest Dreams, and their Dark Moment Stories. Sometimes I must investigate every nook and cranny of their lives before they reveal their secrets. Sometimes they don’t reveal their inner selves to me until we’re negotiating a particularly difficult part of the story and they let something slip out.
But do I let that slow me down? No! The story must go on. When this happens, I make notes (I keep a pad of paper by my computer to jot these items down,) but I keep on writing. I know I can come back to incorporate the stunning secret that the heroine just revealed!
4. Sometimes, even with all my story planning and plotting, I come up against a stone wall.
I have to try one way, and then another to get back on the trail. But just like this tree sending out roots, I persist until I find that way and continue on. One step at a time.
Am I heading in the direction I thought I would at the beginning? Do I need to make some adjustments? This evaluation is satisfying – even if the only landmark in front of me is the half-way point.
What will my character do now? Where is the bad guy? Is the baby awake or asleep (a big problem if one of your characters has a young child!) Did anyone feed the dog? A quick look at the map and a few steps along the trail solves the problem!
By the way, the best way for me to get past a writer’s block like this is to WRITE! I let my characters go, and they usually find their way back to the story.
But the end of the trail is only a new start. It’s time to retrace my steps, revising and editing the story. However, going down the mountain is a lot easier than the climb up. There are still some tricky spots to negotiate, but the big job - the first draft - is done.
Writing Scenes that Match Your Genre
by Jan Drexler
One of the first things I learned when I became a Seekervillager ten years ago was that the scene is the building block of the book. A writer uses scenes to progress through the story, building tension and raising the stakes along the way.
For my first several books, I used a method for writing scenes that worked very well. But then I started writing in a new genre and a new point of view. Those major changes made me realize that the way I had been writing scenes wasn’t a “one size fits all” method!
Let me explain…
Writing Historical Romance
In my historical romances, I change the point of view character with every scene. In my Love Inspired books, I use two POV characters, and in my longer, trade-length stories I use multiple POVs (the hero, heroine, and two or three secondary characters.)
I structure my scenes like a mini book, with a beginning, middle, and an end. I plot the scene with a Goal, Motivation, and Conflict for the POV character, and create the scene with rising tension that comes to a resolution (although not a complete resolution) at the end of the scene. (You can click on the graphic to enlarge it.)
Writing a Cozy Mystery
When I tried using my scene-building technique in my cozy mystery, I ran up against a brick wall! What was wrong? Why didn’t it work?
I think the main reason was because of the mystery genre. A mystery requires a limited point of view to keep the reader in the sleuth’s mind. For the first time, I decided to write in first person instead of third person.
When we write in first person, the POV character never changes. We are in Emma’s POV all through the book. This limits the amount of information the reader receives, but it also limits the number of characters we can use to tell the story. I was accustomed to letting my POV characters react to each other as I switched scenes, but with a single POV, I only have Emma’s experiences and reactions to work with.
So, I went to my craft books for help.
I decided to try a method that Dwight Swain recommends in his book, “Techniques of the Selling Writer,” the scene/sequence method. According to Swain, the scene contains the conflict, and the sequel is the transition between the scenes.
“There was a time when aftermath passages were considered essential to a novel. Even today, some fiction instructors preach the pattern of scene-sequel-scene. I do not believe in aftermath…I find that most aftermath is the easiest material in any manuscript to skim. It lacks tension.”
Hmm….
I decided to try it out and see what happens.The result? I disagree with Maass’s opinion – at least in this case.
The way the scene-sequel-scene pattern works is straight forward.
The Scene is full of action, rising tension, and conflict. It moves the story along with big things happening – things that cause the character to fight for what she believes.
So, how do we keep the tension high in an aftermath or reaction scene?
Let me show you with this example from my cozy mystery. The setting is a B&B where Emma is working for her Aunt Rose. It is the first day of the season, and the inn is full of guests.
I end one of the early scenes with this disaster:
A man was sleeping on the floor, on his side, facing the wall.
“Hey!”
He didn’t move. Was he passed out? Drunk? And why was he in my room?
I circled the sectional thinking I would shake him awake, but when I touched his shoulder he rolled from his side onto his back, his eyes open and staring at the ceiling. I leaned over him.
“Are you all right?” I said it again, louder. “Hey, are you all right? Sir?”
That’s when it struck me. He wasn’t asleep.
The challenge is to keep the tension high in the reaction. The next chapter starts with the sequel and Emma’s reaction to the disaster.
“Rose.” I put my hand on her arm. “I have something to tell you.”
As she turned toward me, Sam and Nora came down the stairs dressed as if they were planning to party the night away. Annie and Roger were behind them, their casual clothes a contrast to the other couple’s. Finally, Montgomery descended the stairs, pulling on leather driving gloves.
“Good night, ladies,” he said.
“That’s all of them,” Rose said as Clara joined us. “It was a successful first afternoon, don’t you think?”
“Except for one thing.”
“What’s that, dear?”
I took a deep breath.
“There’s a man in my room. He might be dead. I think.”
The police come, Emma becomes the prime suspect, and the mystery is on its way.
This scene-sequel-scene method won’t work for every genre.
Or a romance, where the stakes need to continue to rise, but there also needs to be a scene here and there where the tension is released, and your characters have a chance to fall in love with each other.
But for the cozy mystery (and other stories with a single main character,) this scene-sequel-scene is perfect. The stakes and tension are raised in the scene, the tension remains high in the sequel, then raise again in the next scene.
What do you think? Let us know your favorite method for writing scenes in the comments!
Back to Basics: From the Seekerville Archives: Battling Through Your Manuscript...One Scene at a Time
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Battling Through Your Manuscript...Once Scene at a Time
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Photo credit: Bigstock/Yastremska |
After more than 10 years of pursuing her dream of publication, Missy Tippens, a pastor’s wife and mom of three from near Atlanta, Georgia, made her first sale to Harlequin Love Inspired in 2007. Her books have since been nominated for the Booksellers Best, Holt Medallion, American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award, Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, Maggie Award, Beacon Contest, RT Reviewer’s Choice Award, and the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award. Visit Missy at www.missytippens.com, https://twitter.com/MissyTippens http://www.facebook.com/missy.tippens.readers.