Story Sensei

Each character in your book will have a different way of describing things pertaining to themselves and the world around them. It’s no less for their emotions. Your manly ex-Navy SEAL isn’t going to describe his surprise as a gasp and a fluttering in his chest. He’s going to feel like a hollow-point copperhead has slugged him in the gut. Likewise, your small farming town preacher’s daughter isn’t going to describe the heated family argument as the headache-inducing staccato clamor of Chinese grandmothers at the San Francisco Chinatown fish market. She’ll describe the sounds as the fierce pelting of hailstones echoing in an empty barn, resonating in her skull as if they were falling on her head instead of the roof. When describing your character’s emotions, think about their gender, backgrounds, experiences. Make the emotions you describe specific and unique to that character’s personality and backstory.

Actions and body language are terrific tools for showing character emotion. When coupled with dialogue, physical reactions, and thoughts, the reader gets a complete picture of what the character is feeling, and better yet experiences those feelings with the character. First off, don’t resort to cliché actions like running a hand through his hair, or throwing a glass/vase/figurine at the fireplace. You’re a writer, be creative! Think of things more unique, and yet suited to the particular character. Also, make sure you go in order of how a body would react. Usually it’s physical reactions and thoughts first, then dialogue, then actions and body language. Scarlett O’Hara didn’t stamp her foot first and then feel her head sizzle with anger. She had a physical reaction first and used her foot stamping to punctuate her emotions. It’s not always this order of events, granted, but this is the typical order of things according to inertia—it takes more effort and more neurons firing to speak a

Dialogue is one of the best ways to reveal emotions, but it can also be overused. Just dialogue: If you only use dialogue to reveal emotions, the reader doesn’t quite get into the character’s head. They’re an audience at a play, not inside the character’s skin. Use dialogue in conjunction with thoughts, physical reactions, and actions in order to give your reader the full effect of the character’s emotions. Subtexting: Many times, the greatest emotion is conveyed by what the character doesn’t say. This is called subtexting or “cross-talk.” Sometimes it is also referred to as “off the nose” dialogue. Sometimes, you read dialogue and can take it at face value. Other times, there are subcurrents under the actual words said, meanings deeper and perhaps even the opposite of the dialogue. Those subcurrents make for juicy, conflicted, tension-filled dialogue. For a good example of subtexting (with commentary), read the Advanced Fiction Writing Ezine September 2006 edition . One of the best

Your characters are thinking all the time. You want to filter out all but their most important thoughts to convey to your reader. Those thoughts should be the ones that will specifically move your reader’s emotions. Thoughts are related to the writing craft topic of point of view. If you get deep into your character’s point of view, then his/her thoughts enhance the scene emotionally. The key here is that your character’s thoughts tell the reader how the character feels about the events happening, other people, or the surrounding area. Compare these two: Andrea O’Malley paused on the threshold of the Chinese restaurant. She wasn’t sure if she liked the exotic smells that teased her nose—spices she couldn’t name, as well as nutty sesame oil, salty-sweet oyster sauce, pungent soy sauce. She patted her French twist, which didn’t need fiddling with. She couldn’t help it—she was a golden-haired alien in the midst of these black-haired party guests. At least she hadn’t dressed inappropriate

Psychiatrists agree that we, as human beings, copy others fairly easily. We copy other people’s emotions or physical sensations, even though it’s all in our heads. It forms the basis for many psychological abnormalities. However, you as a writer can use this psychological phenomenon to your advantage. “When you understand the feelings of one of the characters in the moving picture, you are copying his tensions. You are feeling in yourself something of what he feels in the fictional situation. You are understanding the story with your own muscle tensions and with the spasm of your intestines and with your own glandular secretions. Without these reactions, the show would have no meaning.” –Psychiatrist David Fink, Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain We can apply what happens to people in a movie to what you want your reader to feel as he/she reads. Describe your focal character’s emotions on a physical level. Make your reader really understand what the character’s body is g

Readers read because they care about the story. Let me repeat that—they care about the story. Caring involves emotions, which is why powerful stories evoke reader emotions. So how do you get your reader to care about the story? “You give them a stake in what happens.” –Dwight Swain When you start a scene, first of all pick a focal character for the reader to follow. This is also why one-point-of-view-per-scene has become more preferred by editors. When there’s one person for the reader to follow, it makes it easier to engage that reader’s emotions. The focal character doesn’t have to be the protagonist. It can be the antagonist, or it can be a secondary character. It can be someone the reader likes or someone the reader hates with a passion. Regardless, pick one person as the focal character for the scene. Then, give your focal character something to win or lose in that scene. Give them something at stake in that scene. The reader will have someone to root for or against for that sce

Certain words tend to evoke very specific and universal emotional reactions from people. For example, “jumped” is a rather neutral emotional word. However, “bounded” tends to denote more excited spirits in the person doing the bounding. “Stomping” tends toward anger. Other examples: “Protector” triggers a warmer emotional reaction when you read it than “Guardian.” “She swept the room with a piercing eye.” Versus “She swept the room with a piercing glare.” Versus “She swept the room with an observant eye.” Dwight Swain wrote: “Pay attention not just to words as words, but also to the feelings they mirror when people use them.” When getting into a character’s point of view, utilize specific words to draw out your reader’s emotions. That way, they’ll feel your character’s emotions with more intensity.

This is a fabulous article by Pat Holt which gives easy fixes for writers doing revisions. What’s even better is that she discusses these fixes so that a writer who hires an editor doesn’t pay the editor to do these fixes for him/her. Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do)

When your characters speak, worlds should move. Well, okay, not that dramatic. But pretty darn close. --Every word out of your character’s mouth has to mean something significant. Don’t let him or her say something that doesn’t have some kind of meaning, whether spoken or unspoken. --Use double-entendres, also called cross-talk or subtexting. Let them say more than (or the opposite of) what’s actually said. --“Dialogue is WAR.” – Randy Ingermanson, Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine. This is totally true! Your characters should be at odds with each other every time they talk. No, they don’t need to have shouting matches. However, they should each be fighting for or against each other in some other way. Fighting to keep a secret, fighting to get the other person to tell them something, fighting to know what to say, fighting to make themselves stop saying something. Conflict, conflict, conflict, baby! --Don’t let their conversations just serve to reveal their personalities. The conversatio

About ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, authors would write a story about a character responding to all the terrible things that happen to him/her. That was fine for twenty years ago. These days, the reactionary character is BORING. Your character shouldn’t simply react or respond to the horrible situations she finds herself in. Your character should be actively working toward a GOAL (uh-oh, Camy said the G-word). Your character should be PROACTIVE. For example, Parson’s daughter Eleanor is invited to her rich cousins’ house for the summer. She has grown up in poverty, and she only vaguely knows her aristocratic distant family. Various things happen that distress Eleanor. Her clothes are laughed at, the servants ignore her, her uncle tries to marry her to his horrible curate, her aunt falls deathly ill, and the boy she loves is in love with her selfish, spoiled cousin Agatha. This version of the story has Eleanor simply reacting to the bad things that happen to her. We don’t know what sh

One great way to make your characters sympathetic is to make them be lonely, abandoned, or rejected. Even a villain suffering from loneliness will evoke empathy (which can be a good thing, since villains should be both detestable and interesting to the reader). Lonely/neglected Most people don’t like being alone and will sympathize with a character who is. Why else do you think bad boy loner types are so popular? Readers love Harry Potter partly because he’s being shamefully neglected by his aunt and uncle. So make your character alone. Maybe they’ve pushed everyone away from them for some deep dark reason of their own. Maybe their personality makes them alone. Maybe they don’t know how to relate to people. Maybe they’re afraid. Abandoned Readers will often sympathize with someone who has been abandoned. This is a good way to make a villain sympathetic. This is a great place to dig deep into your writer’s emotions and project your own fears, doubts, anger, and hurt into a character w

In Tip #11, I mentioned to cut dialogue in a synopsis. However, sometimes there are conversations in a synopsis that are just like dialogue, only without the quotation marks. These conversations can be cut or condensed just like dialogue. For example: Duke tells Shelley he loves her. She denies it, saying she’s not worthy of love. He doesn’t understand and asks her why. She explains how her father was never there for her, how his job was more important to him than she was. Duke asserts she’s beloved by her Heavenly Father, and that his love for her mirror’s God’s love for her. versus Duke tells Shelley he loves her, easing her feelings of unworthiness by explaining the boundless love God has for her. Camy here: Look for these conversations in your manuscript and see if you can cut and condense. You don’t need to tell entire dialogues for a synopsis.

When writing a synopsis that has two protagonists—such as a hero and heroine, for example—make sure you separate different points of view with separate paragraphs. This helps the reader more easily and quickly differentiate between the two points of view. Easy and quick are the key words here, because an editor or agent skimming your synopsis is going to want to be able to most easily and quickly figure out what’s going on. And don’t kid yourself—they don’t have much time and they usually do skim that synopsis, so it has to be as clear as possible. For example: Shelley is run off the road by the men who want to kidnap her for ransom. She evades them on foot and runs to a darkened farmhouse at the top of a hill. Duke is sure there’s a burglar in his house, and heads to the basement with his rifle. versus Shelley is run off the road by the men who want to kidnap her for ransom. She evades them on foot and runs to a darkened farmhouse at the top of a hill. Duke is sure there’s a burglar

When I took a seminar taught by New York agent Donald Maass, the one thing I took away was that most of the manuscripts he sees don’t have enough Conflict with a capital C. There are lots of ways to increase conflict, but the biggest is to make it the climax of your story. It’s easy to do—ask yourself, what’s the absolute worst thing that could happen to my character? Then have it happen and ruin your character’s life right at the climactic moment near the end. I can see you cringing, but it must be done. Grow a backbone. Sock it to your character. If your heroine is afraid of death, have it stare her in the face in the climax. If your hero wants to save his ranch, have a tornado destroy it. If your heroine needs a heart transplant, have her donated organ arrive unviable. If your hero is trying to catch the serial killer, have him realize he’s been after the wrong suspect the entire time. Be brutal! Be ruthless! Be evil! You’ll discover how absolutely GREAT your book’s climax can be if

Before, I talked about left and right brain roles for writing . Left brain is more analytical, right brain is more creative. For some people, it's very difficult to switch between the two completely. Usually when I switch from analytical to creative, I'm not 100% into my creative mode--there are vestiges of analytical thinking going on. That's why for some writers it's difficult to be as creative when you switch between editing and writing, editing and writing. The analytical side--editing--doesn't fully relinquish brain energy to the creative side for writing. However, switching quickly--and more importantly, more completely --between sides can be trained, to an extent. This is especially important for busy writers who juggle different duties and tasks. Set an alarm clock (your watch alarm, phone alarm, PDA alarm) at odd hours during the day. When that alarm goes off, drop everything and write for 8 minutes. Grab whatever's handy--pen and paper, computer

Ooooh, that’s a nice description. Oh no no no, that’s a terrible way to put it. Oops, you wrote a passive verb. Hey, you just laid down three adverbs in a row! The right word just isn’t coming to me . . . Sound familiar? That pesky internal editor. Most writers say to lay down a bad first draft and edit later. There’s actually scientific reasoning behind it. Right brain is creative stuff like writing prose and brainstorming. Left brain is editing your prose and sifting through which brainstorm ideas you should keep or chuck. When you use both at once--like brainstorming and editing at the same time--the brain can't keep up with the switching back and forth. Your creativity can stall or your analysis can be way off. This is why many writers recommend turning off your "internal editor" when writing the first draft. Don't correct, don't second-guess that word, don't fiddle with that phrase, don't decide that action is too bland, don't stop and do

Sometimes called “off the nose” dialogue, subtexting is a character saying what he wants to say without actually saying it. It’s when characters talk about one thing, but they’re really talking about something beneath the surface—sometimes fencing with their words, or avoiding the subject while yet hitting it dead on. One of the most recent and more memorable instances of subtexting was a scene from near the end of the movie Serenity . (Don’t worry, I’ll try not to spoil anything, but if you haven’t seen Firefly and Serenity , go rent it now! Great instances of characterization and innovative dialogue.) Mal is talking to his first mate Zoe, and the actual dialogue is discussing the ship and how she’s taken a few knocks, but she’ll run true. In actuality, they’re discussing the hard knocks the crew has gone through in the movie, but that they’ll still fly true. Subtexting adds depth to your dialogue. Is there a scene where the characters are just explaining things to each other? Or may

The writing book, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King (second edition), suggests eliminating dialogue tags in favor of action beats. For example, instead of he asked, she said, he demanded, replace the dialogue tags with action beats whenever possible. I've mentioned this before, but I thought I'd use a few more examples. Sometimes we writers go overboard on the action beats. For example: “How have you been?” He tucked in his tie. “Fine. How are you?” She fidgeted with her necklace. He sipped some water. “Work’s been busy.” “How’s the new manager doing?” She wet her lips and glanced around at the other diners in the restaurant. He looked up. His eyes pinned her to her seat, while his smile reminded her of Hannibal Lector. “He’s doing fine, just fine.” Only keep in the action beats that do something for the scene. If an action beat indicates emotion, or if you’re trying to convey a character’s personality in the beginning of the manuscript, then le

Kaye Dacus interviewed me about writer’s voice. The interview is below. You can also go to her blog for more answers on writer’s voice by Gail Martin and Shelley Bates . Kaye: How did you find your unique writing voice? Did you struggle to find it or did it come easily to you? Camy: Both, actually. When I first started writing, my voice was very muted because I didn't understand what a writer's voice was. Then I started to realize that each writer needs to let her natural "voice" come out in order to distinguish herself from every other writer out there. If you pick up an Amy Tan book, you can tell the writer's voice is very different from Helen Fielding's (Bridget Jones). You'd never mistake one for the other. I wanted my voice to be distinctive like that. Once I figured that out, I let go of all inhibitions and wrote exactly how I wanted to write, regardless of rules, etc. I fixed things up in revisions, but my voice was there on the page, uninhibited an

ATTENTION: UNPUBLISHED MYSTERY/SUSPENSE & ROMANTIC SUSPENSE AUTHORS The Kiss of Death Chapter's 2007 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense is rapidly approaching, and although the body count is adding up, there's still room for yours! Look what New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan has to say about the Daphne … "In 2003, I finaled in the Single Title Daphne and came in second. While I didn't sell that book, the editor and agent comments were invaluable in helping me figure out my writing strengths and weaknesses. As a result, the next year I found an agent and sold THE PREY to Ballantine." -- Allison Brennan, author of SPEAK NO EVIL, out now!!! So pull those manuscripts out of the crypt and send them post haste. Why? Because the deadline is March 15, 2007. What happens if you don't? It frightens us to say. The Daphne has enlisted the help of some acquiring editors and agents as final round judges who rarely judge contests.