I’m an ecologist; I study environmental relationships. Something you’d think is easy to learn and very accessible; we’re surrounded by it, after all. We live, work and play in it. While I learned about environmental relationships with my eco-minded parents, I didn’t learn it or experience it in my school growing up. With the exception of some indigenous schools (which teach respect for the spirit of wildness), most of us certainly didn’t learn about environmental relationships in our schools.
Earthstar sits on moss-covered rotting cedar log as new cedar roots take hold, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Most Canadians live in a city; we don’t really understand what the natural environment is. Many of us have learned to ignore it, stop recognizing it, pocket it away as we go about our busy lives in the city. A park is a bit of greenery. A tree is a decoration that provides shade. Shrubs border a mall.
Walk through urban forest along the Credit River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
But if we can’t even recognize the natural environment, how can we understand its functional role in the intricate well-being of this entire precious planet and ultimately ourselves?
It is no wonder then that most Canadians—though we may intellectually accept climate change and its effects on this planet (because we’re smarter than some)—likely do not viscerally understand or appreciate why and how it will drastically change our lives. For most of us, climate change—as with Nature—is something that is happening to someone else, somewhere else. From those far away calamities to the quiet struggles no one talks about. We hear and lament over the flooding in Bangladesh or the Maldives. Or the wildfires in northern British Columbia. Or the bomb cyclones of the eastern seaboard.
Meanwhile, the polar bear struggles quietly with disappearing sea ice in the Canadian arctic. The koala copes quietly with the disappearing eucalyptus. Coral reefs quietly disappear in an acidifying ocean. Antarctic penguins silently starve with disappearing krill due to ice retreat. And while jellyfish invade the Mediterranean, UK seas and northeast Atlantic, the humble Bramble Cay melomys slips quietly into extinction—the first mammal casualty of climate change.
Yellow Creek flows through an urban forest in the heart of Toronto, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
So, those of us who are enlightened speak of climate resilience and adaptation. We talk of arming our cities with words like green infrastructure, stormwater management, urban runoff control, flood mitigation. Ecological literacy. But what are these things to us? They are tools, yes. Good tools to combat and adapt to the effects of climate change. But will they create resilience? I think not.
I’m a limnologist and I’ve consulted for years as a scientist and an environmental consultant. I played a role in educating industry, in the use of mitigating tools, in changing the narrative even.
Trail through urban forest on a foggy winter day in Peterborough, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
But I’ve come to realize that resilience comes only from within and through a genuine connection with our environment. Tools, no matter how proficient, are only as good as how they are used based on intention from a deep understanding. It isn’t enough to achieve the HOW of things; we must embrace the WHY of things. And that comes from the heart. We must feel it in our hearts. Or it won’t work. And we quite simply won’t survive.
Various flowers and trees of Ontario (photos by Nina Munteanu)
Canadians celebrate our multi-cultural heritage. We pride ourselves in our tolerance and welcoming nature. Our national anthem speaks of our land. Our national symbols embrace nature with the maple, beaver, caribou and loon. Yet who of us knows the habitat of the loon—now at risk, by the way (climate change will impact much of its breeding grounds). Who knows what the boreal forest—which makes up over half of our country—is? How it functions to keep this entire planet healthy, and what that ecosystem needs, in turn, to keep doing it? How to help it from literally burning up?
Ecology isn’t rocket science. Ecology is mostly common sense. Ecology is about relationship and discovery. Ecology is a lifestyle choice, based on respect for all things on this planet and a willingness to understand how all things work together.
Various mushrooms in Ontario forests (photos by Nina Munteanu)
Here’s what I’ve learned to keep me caring and remain positive and not become apathetic or fall into despair:
I’ve learned to open myself to discovery. To find Nature, even if it is in the city. To connect with something natural and wild and to find and savour the wonder of it. All that matters will naturally come from that.
Become curious and find something to love.
When you do, you will find yourself. And that is where you will find resilience. What colour is it? It doesn’t need to be green…
Throughout this article I’ve shown you some of my colours…
Red fox skull emerges on a leaf-strewn icy bank of Jackson Creek, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Here are the steps I taught myself toward healthy resilience (the first two steps are both the hardest and the easiest):
Step 1:Slow down, pay attention. Give yourself the time to relax and look around your local surroundings. Until you slow down to actually look, you will not really take in your surroundings. You need to be in the moment. Only then can you take the time to use all your senses to take in your environment. Try to look at it from a different perspective. Notice the light, the smells and sounds. What is different? What is the same?
Step 2:Lower your guard, open yourself to curiosity. Rely on as many senses as you can (sight, hearing, smell, texture, taste) to sample your environment and show some humility to ask questions. Whenever I go out, particularly in Nature, I make a point of coming home with three gifts, discoveries that make me smile or think and wonder. I’m hardly ever disappointed.
Step 3: Process what you’ve seen and discovered. Do some follow-up research to questions that may arise. Look at consequences. Share with others, discuss. From there it will be easy to ‘take responsibility’ for some section of nature that you really like; perhaps a particular tree in a park or a short path through an urban forest or stretch of urban stream. This can easily lead to good stewardship.
Step 4: Take responsibility for your chosen part of Nature. Get to know it well, how it works, what it needs, what’s right and what’s wrong. Do something about it and share with others.
Step 5: You’re there. You are resilient.
Barred owl hiding in plain sight in an urban forest near Peterborough, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
It started with a simple tweet of mine on X regarding doing research for one’s writing projects. I’d met Isabella Mori a few years ago, when we both contributed to an ekphrastic anthology of flash fiction, inspired by Group of Seven art. We met again when she submitted a story to an anthology I was editing for Exile Editions. After my tweet on research, Isabella and I traded brief stories about rewrites based on research findings and ‘mistakes’ and the arcane revelations in the creative process that may result. I was intrigued by her recounting and asked her to share it with you; so here it is:
“Synchronicities And The Sea”by Isabella Mori
(Trigger warning: Substance use and suicide)
This is about the magic that comes to pass when we let the Muse guide our work and consent to synchronicity. Here is what happened:
When I go away on vacation, I try to visit the local library, and always make sure to check out the community announcements. On one of those forays, I came across a notice of a project that teamed up visual artists with writers for a short story or poem. I love these types of collaborations and immediately jumped on it. Max was the artist I paired up with, and we hit it off right away. After a few conversations, we settled on the painting below, for which I was going to write a story. As you can see, it had a moody, dark feeling. I drafted this text as a response:
The memory of a map showed her the way as she wandered, blinded by the night, along the shore. Numb with cold, her bare feet dug into the wet sand. She could not see that she left no tracks. There was something in her searching; she felt it in the deep pit of her stomach but there was no image in her mind’s eye of what it was, no tinkling that alerted her, no smell, no taste. A sense of despair drained the blood from her heart and tugged at her from the right, where the forest rushed. Foot-dragging ennui invited her onto a soft-moss carpet to the left, and thoughts of numbers, cars and cash register receipts tried to wrangle her back to where she came from. She was near giving up. But at that precise moment there tracked the light only she of the searching could see—a light bigger more forceful than giants could ever imagine; all-embracing, all-revealing, all-nurturing just like the frothy ocean beneath it, just like the sand with its fierce sparkle, each grain a diamond just like the heart-bud that could not help but open under its rays, under those rays that only she of the searching could see.
However, for reasons we have both forgotten, Max decided to lighten the colours, and the dark mood of the first draft didn’t fit anymore. This is the version we ended up with:
Walk With The Angels
The ocean has known her share of angels over the eons. They come and go but the tide is older. When an angel appears in a cloud of glistening light, beats its wings and brings out the trumpets, little humans fall to their knees and beg for mercy and miracles.
But the water stays still.
Great mother ocean has seen it all.
She waits until the angel grows tired, then she takes the worn-out wings and heavenly body into her arms and carries them into her depths. Brings the apparition to visit kelp, salmon, starfish, barnacles, otters and crabs. Anemones. Killer whales. A visit one by one, under the summer sun, beneath the light of the Hunter’s moon, when the snow falls, with the Easter rains. The angel leaves a bit of themselves here, a bit there, a gift everywhere, until only the tiniest of diamonds are left.
And that’s the sand.
Walk with the angels.
There were a few tweaks before we arrived at this text, the major one being that in a previous version, I referred to ‘angel dust’ for the sand until the editor pointed out that that term refers to a street drug, PCP. In my enthusiasm I had forgotten that.
The change away from ‘angel dust’ was very important. When Max read the new version, they called me, their tone of voice both moved and perturbed.
“When I read this,” they said, “it feels like you channeled what happened with my cousin last year, not far from the place that inspired my painting. She had had problems with drugs all her life, and one day she just walked into the ocean. Her body was found a day later.”
Under those circumstances, we definitely did not want to refer to drugs.
That story stayed with me for months until one day when I was listening to one of my playlists of Latin music. I lived in Paraguay and Chile 1977-1980, and often enjoy the nostalgia of the music I listened to back then. The first song that came on was one of my all-time favourites, Alfonsina Y El Mar – Alfonsina And The Sea. Now I have to confess, I am terrible with lyrics, no matter what language, whether it be my native German, English, or the Spanish I was fluent in for quite a few years. For some reason, I really listened to the song last summer, and then looked up the lyrics. That’s when it hit me – was it possible that the lyrics of that song had subconsciously influenced me to write the second text? Or was it one of those Jungian collective conscious moments?
Alfonsina And The Sea
(Music: Ariel Ramirez. Lyrics: Felix Luna)
In the soft sand Licked by the sea Her small footprints Don’t return. Just one path Full of pain and silence Led to the water, Deep water, And one single path of unspoken pain Led to the foam.
God knows what sorrows accompanied you, What old suffering shut down your voice That made you lie down and nestle into the songs Of the sea snails, The song that sings in the deep dark of the sea, The sea snail.
There you go, Alfonsina, with your loneliness, What new poems did you go find? An old, old voice of wind and salt Sways your soul and carries it And you go there dreaming, Sleeping, Alfonsina, clothed in the sea
Five little sirens will carry you Through passages of algae and corals And glowing sea horses will dance Around you And all the creatures of the sea will soon Play at your side.
Turn down the light a little more, Nurse, let me sleep in peace. And when he calls tell him I’m not in, Tell him Alfonsina won’t come back. And when he calls don’t ever tell him I’m in, Tell him I’m gone.
There you go, Alfonsina, with your loneliness, What new poems did you go find? An old, old voice of wind and salt Sways your soul and carries it And you go there dreaming, Sleeping, Alfonsina, clothed in the sea.
(Used with permission, my translation.)
Alfonsina ended up in the ocean just like Max’s cousin did.
With some research, I found out that the story was about the Argentinian poet Alfonsina Storni who, after a difficult life that included poverty, questions she had about gender identity, and breast cancer, one night wrote a last poem to her son and then let herself fall into the ocean amid torrential rain. (An apocryphal version has her just walk into the ocean, and that’s the one the lyricist chose.) Some of that last poem was incorporated into Alfonsina Y El Mar – the nurse who is asked to lower the light, and told to tell ‘him’ that she won’t come back. Nobody seems to know who ‘he’ is.
The other research that had to happen was to find who the inheritors of Felix Luna’s estate were to obtain permission should I tell the story that you have before you. It turned out to be his daughters. Then I had to sleuth out their contact.
Felix Luna, the lyricist, imagined Alfonsina’s death not only as the terrible tragedy that it was but also as a mystical transformation into a sea creature that nestles into the songs of the sea snails. She finds new poems and sleeps clothed in the sea. She is embraced by sirens and wanders through algae and corals. She dances with sea horses and plays with all the other sea creatures.
I definitely cannot compare myself with a great poet like Felix Luna but notice with humility the similarities of my transformed angel who sinks into the embrace of mother ocean and also visits the more-than-humans of the sea.
I went pregnant with the idea of writing about the experience of Max’s and my collaboration for half a year when in February, I chanced upon a tweet by Nina about research for writing. I met Nina through submitting a story to an anthology she was editing. I told her about needing to tweak the angel story so that it does not talk about angel dust and ended up telling her the outline of what happened. She invited me to write a guest post about this, and here we are.
So many synchronicities. I could have not gone to that library. A different artist could have been paired up with me. Max could have wanted to stay with the original painting. Or they could have chosen a painting that would not have reminded them of their cousin. They could have opted not to share that sad story with me, or they could have been paired up with someone who doesn’t understand suicide as intimately as I do (I look back on a 30+ year career in social services.) I could have heard Alfonsina Y El Mar and still not really listened to the lyrics. There was no guarantee I could have managed to find out from whom to get permission to quote the song. I could not have submitted a story to one of Nina’s anthologies, and could not have followed her on Twitter. Coming across the particular tweet that prompted the publication of this story was like chancing upon a needle in a haystack. All this, and probably more, had to come together for this magical synchronicity to happen.
Thank you, Muse.
(Note: Since this is a sensitive topic, the artist’s name and some of the circumstances of my collaboration with them have been changed. However, the artist has consented to using their images.)
Boat wharf at sunset in Ladner Marsh, BC (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Clones Jordan and Lincoln are chased as they seek their sponsors
From its metaphoric title to its powerful end, Director Michael Bay’s 2005 The Island had me fully engaged. Told in the genuine style of great science fiction commentary by screenwriters Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (in 2005), The Island reflects the escape-from dystopia films of the 1960s and 70s such as Fahrenheit 451, THX 1138, and Logan’s Run. This elegant story examines a full range of human foibles—consumerist greed, racism, fascism and isolationism—through a premise that is as frightening as it is possible.
Announcer talks about ‘the Island’ lottery to the world of Lincoln and Jordan
In the near-future, Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) live in an isolated rather sterile community where behaviour is governed by a set of strict rules. This includes the avoidance of too close contact. Everything is the same; residents all wear the same white uniform and carry out simple duties. They’ve been told that the outside world is too contaminated for human life with the exception of one island. Everyone lives for the weekly lottery, where the winner gets to leave the compound to live on the island.
Jordan and Lincoln discuss theday over drinks in the facility’s lounge
It’s a simple and banal existence. We glimpse a scene of adults reading Dick and Jane out loud. When in the opening scene Lincoln Six Echo finds a shoe missing in his provided wardrobe, this becomes a major focus of his day (when greeted by a colleague with, “How are you doing?” he responds with, “I’m missing a shoe.”)
Lincoln can’t accept this mundane existence. In an interview with Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean), the scientist who runs the compound, Lincoln naively unleashes a tirade of items that frustrate him, like why everyone wears white, who determined tofu Tuesday, and then ends with: “I want to know answers and I wish there was more than just waiting to go to the island.” He also suffers from dreams about a life he doesn’t understand—they are, in fact, memories of his ‘sponsor’, the original man (Tom Lincoln) that he is a clone copy of. When he discovers a moth and follows it, he stumbles into the hidden part of the compound. There he witnesses what really happens to “lottery winners”: they are killed and used for organ harvesting, surrogate motherhood, etc. for each one’s sponsor.
Lincoln finds a moth that he releases and follows into forbidden territory
Lincoln is just an insurance policy. An ‘agnate’ according to Dr. Merrick, who describes them as in a “persistent vegetative state that never achieves consciousness” to clients, willing to pay millions of dollars for a second chance at life—and blithely unaware that ‘agnates’ are alive and fully formed with thoughts and feelings like them.
Doctor Merrick oversees the indoctrination of the clones in the giant lab facility
When Lincoln learns the truth, and knowing that Jordan just “won” the lottery, he convinces her to escape with him. During their escape through the bowels of the facility, they discover the atrocities of cloning in the giant labs and that the clones are living in a giant silo controlled by massive holograms to simulate the ‘contaminated’ outside.
Clone lab where newly created clones receive implanted memories and instructions to seek the island
Jordan and Lincoln watch the subliminally-fed imagery for clone indoctrination
Merrick hires Albert Laurent (Djimon Hounsou), a mercenary and former GIGN veteran, to find and dispatch Lincoln and Jordan. And so begins an incredible action-packed chase through the city of Los Angeles, where Lincoln and Jordan have traveled in search of his sponsor.
Mercenary Albert Laurent takes chase after the two clones escape the facility
After escaping the facility, Jordan sees an ad that features hersponsor, now in critical condition after an accident and in need of organ donation
In an awkward moment, Lincoln meets his sponsor who is not too happy to discover of his existence
The Island received mixed reviews from critics, with a 40% “Rotten” rating, based on 185 reviews. Variety’s Justin Chang called the film an “exercise in sensory overkill.” Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek lamented that when the film got really interesting, Bay seemed to think he needed “to throw in a car crash or round of gunfire to keep our attention.” If these critics found fault with this elegant action-thriller, I hate to see what they make of 90% of the so-called SF movies out there today. Unlike them, The Island provides a refreshing meaningful face to action-adventure that elegantly and skillfully balances incredible action scenes with characterization and evolution of the two naive characters.
Jordan dangles precipitously from a huge building sign as the two clones are chased by Laurent
Roger Ebert suggested that The Island missed the opportunity “to do what the best science fiction does, and use the future as a way to critique the present.” Again, I disagree. The Island does what the best science fiction does well: it examines the nature of our humanity through the choices we make in adversity within a future world and premise that provides great opportunity for abuse.
The theme of this parable is carried evocatively by Steve Jablonsky’s score. Like a swelling tide it sweeps us on a journey to some distant shore. From the melodic strings and yearning chorus, the music builds to a powerful conclusion at the film’s end, when it lifts us to victory, resonating with our divine evolution.
Laurent stands among the hundreds of freed clones, smiling in triumph
I was particularly struck by the timing of the strings and chorus with the appearance of Albert Laurent, walking among those he had just liberated. It is a pivotal and powerful moment that escalates into a resonating vibration of liberty and victory as his eyes meet briefly with Lincoln and Jordan, reunited, and he smiles—for the first time. A beautiful smile of inner joy. It is the smile of a man who has “come home” and is finally free.
Laurent’s subplot is particularly compelling and carries one of the principle elements of the film. In some ways, Laurent represents you and me, caught up in our societal ‘duties’, seduced by self-serving entrapments only to awaken to a path of courageous compassion for all of humanity. Laurent’s journey from jaded mercenary to liberating hero begins when he notices Jordan’s skin branding and, recognizing a connection with her plight, helps her free the mass of ‘defective’ lottery winners about to be incinerated. We learn that his father had been killed as a rebel and Laurent was ‘branded’ as less than human. So, there he walks, brilliantly black among the white-clad ‘agnates’ who slide down the hill after emerging from the underground bunker in which they were incarcerated.
This motion picture is ultimately about finding dignity in the face of adversity and ridicule. It is about confronting the bully and gaining victory over one’s own barriers of fear and doubt toward compassion. It is about the power of love and connection with humanity. It is about retribution and finding one’s true path through the knowledge that we are all one.
“I am you; you are me. You are the waves; I am the ocean. Know this and be free, be divine.” Sri Sathya Sai Baba
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
My short story Robin’s Last Song was selected by the NYC Climate Writers Collective as part of an exhibition in the Climate Imaginarium on Governors Island in New York. The exhibition, starting May 18, will run throughout the summer of 2024.
Robin’s Last Song
Robin’s Last Song first appeared in the #128 Issue of Apex Magazine in 2021. It tells the story of Robin, a blind elder whose digital app failed to warn the world of the sudden global loss of birds with disastrous ecological consequences. After years of living in self-exile and getting around poorly on sight-enhancing technology, a discovery gives her new hope in rekindling her talents in the field of Soundscape Ecology.
In a recent interview with writer Simon Rose, I described my thoughts in writing Robin’s Last Song:
I wanted to make “Robin’s Last Song” a realizable work of fiction in which science and technology play both instigator of disaster and purveyor of salvation. Our biogenetic technology comes to us as a double-edged sword in the form of gene-editing, proteomics, DNA origami, and CRISPR—just to name a few. These biotechnological innovations promise a cornucopia of enhancements: from increased longevity and health in humans to giant disease-resistant crops. But, for every ‘magic’ in technology, there is often unintended consequence. Unforeseen—or even ignored—casualties and risks. I suppose my ultimate question with this story is: will synthetic biology redesign Nature to suit hubris or serve evolution? Science doesn’t make those decisions. We do.
Anyone living in or visiting the NYC area is welcome to the Climate Imaginarium launch on May 18 on Governor’s Island. Check this Eventbrite link for details. The exhibition will continue throughout the summer of 2024 and will include: climate storytelling and poetry by Climate Café, the Sixth Festival, and the Climate Writers Collective; opening exhibition of “What is Environmental Art?” by Forest for Trees; artwork from the Climate Imaginarium community and Climate Writers exhibition; “Eye of Flora” virtual reality exhibition by Synphisica Collective; and more.
Here’s what they say:
Come to Governors Island for the grand opening of our Climate Imaginarium house! The Climate Imaginarium will serve as a community center for climate and culture, with galleries and spaces for exhibitions, performances, film screenings, and events that respond to the climate crisis with solutions and visions for hope and justice. Join us at Building 406A on Colonels Row for a lively celebration of climate art, storytelling, and community.
Exhibitions will be open to the public at noon, and the party will officially start at 2pm. All donations will support programming in our community space.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Snowy marsh in spring, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In this series of articles, I draw from key excerpts of my textbook on how to write fictionThe Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! whose 26 chapters go from A to Z on the key aspects of writing good and meaningful fiction.
X is for Use eXceptional Language … but Don’t Overdo it
What makes some writing stunning and other writing lackluster? Mostly, it’s the language—the words—you use. And, it isn’t just what words you use; it’s how you use them. Here are a few things you need to consider when translating your work into something that sings:
Use active verbs and reduce modifiers: many writers, not just beginners, slide into the pattern of using passive and weak verbs (e.g., were, was, being, etc.). Then they add a modifier to strengthen it. It doesn’t. Actively look for strong, vivid verbs. This is a key to good writing. I can’t emphasize this enough.
Avoid using excessive prose: novice writers often use too many words to describe an event, action or scene. An overabundance of words slows down the story and obscures plot and action.
Use alliteration, metaphor, simile, personification (but don’t overuse): these devices bring lyricism and cadence and powerful imagery to your prose. However, as with anything powerful, you need to use these judiciously. Use them where you wish to convey a strong image and to punctuate your prose.
Be mindful of word-accuracy: more often than you might think, a writer inadvertently misuses a word to convey an idea or emotion.
Read your writing aloud & punctuate your pauses. Reading out loud helps define cadence, tone and pace of your prose and streamlines your writing. When you read aloud, pay attention to where you naturally pause. You may wish to put in a comma, semi-colon or period there.
Size your paragraphs: paragraphs are visual elements that help people read; they break up text on a page in logical places to provide white space for reader ease. This is one of the reasons some passages are harder to read than others; long paragraphs are more tiring to the eye. Find those logical breaks and put them in.
Size your sentences: as with paragraphs, overly long sentences can try a reader’s patience and you may lose them entirely. Too many short choppy sentences can also reduce your prose to a mundane level. Varying your sentence length in a paragraph creates the lyricism and cadence that makes prose enjoyable to read.
Y is for Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Have you taken the time to consider tense in your story? While most stories are told in the past tense (e.g., Vinnie ran out of the house), I’ve seen many written in the present tense (e.g., Vinnie runs out of the house). You see the latter more in literary and esoteric works, where the immediacy and dream-like quality of present tense is in keeping with the kind of story being told. I write mostly genre fiction (e.g., science fiction, SF thrillers, historical fantasy, etc.) where the story-telling is normally fast-paced. These read better in the past tense. Stories which follow a more reflective tone can be quite powerful in the present tense.
In her series The Dragon Quartet, Marjorie B. Kellogg alternates from past tense to present tense as she hops from one protagonist’s point of view to the other’s. This deliberate shift in tense between sections works very well. The key is that she is consistent.
In the manuscripts that I read for novice writers I often find what I call uncontrolled shifting of tense within a sentence or paragraph. OWL provides these hints:
Use past tense to narrate events and to refer to ideas as historical entities.
Use present tense to state facts, to refer to perpetual or habitual actions, and to discuss your own ideas or those expressed by an author in a particular work; also to describe action in a literary work, movie, or other fictional narrative.
Future action may be expressed in a variety of ways, including the use of will, shall, is going to, are about to, tomorrow and other adverbs of time, and a wide range of contextual cues.
Z is for The Zen of Passionate Writing
Ralph Keyes, author of The Courage to Write, admits that “what makes writing so scary is the perpetual vulnerability of the writer. It’s not the writing as such that provokes our fear so much as other people’s reaction to our writing.” In fact, adds Keyes, “the most common disguise is fear of them, their opinion of us, when it’s actually our own opinion of ourselves that we’re worried about.” Keyes suggests that ultimately “mastering techniques [of style and craft] will do far less to improve writing than finding the will, the nerve, the guts to put on paper what you really want to say.”
Welcome to the threshold of your career as a writer. This is where many aspiring writers stop: in abject fear, not just of failure but of success. The only difference between those that don’t and those that do, is that the former come to terms with their fears, in fact learn to use them as a barometer to what is important. How do you get past the fear of being exposed, past the anticipated disappointment of peers, past the terror of success? The answer is passion. If you are writing about something you are passionate about, you will find the courage to see it through.
This is ultimately what drives a writer to not just write but to publish: the need to share one’s story, over and over again. Some of us only have one story we need to tell (Margaret Mitchell only needed to tell one, Gone With the Wind); others of us have many to tell. Either way, what is key here is that to prevail, persist, and ultimately succeed, a writer must have conviction and believe in his or her writing. You must believe that you have something to say that others want to read. Ask yourself why you are a writer. Your answer might surprise you.
The first step is to acknowledge your passion and own it. Flaunt it, even. Find your conviction, define what matters and explore it to the fullest. You will find that such an acknowledgement will give you the strength and fortitude to persist and persevere, particularly in the face of those fears. Use the fears to guide you into that journey of personal truths. Frederick Busch described it this way: “You go to dark places so that you can get there, steal the trophy and get out.”
Every writer, like her protagonist, is on a Hero’s Journey. Like the Hero of our epic, we too must acknowledge the call, pass the threshold guardian, experience the abyss and face the beast before we can return “home” with our prize.
The Fiction Writer is a digest of how-to’s in writing fiction and creative non-fiction by masters of the craft from over the last century. Packaged into 26 chapters of well-researched and easy to read instruction, novelist and teacher Nina Munteanu brings in entertaining real-life examples and practical exercises. The Fiction Writer will help you learn the basic, tried and true lessons of a professional writer: 1) how to craft a compelling story; 2) how to give editors and agents what they want’ and 3) how to maintain a winning attitude.
“…Like the good Doctor’s Tardis, The Fiction Writer is larger than it appears… Get Get Published, Write Now! right now.”
David Merchant, Creative Writing Instructor
Otonabee River glistens under a spring sun, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Snowy marsh in spring, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In this series of articles, I draw from key excerpts of my textbook on how to write fiction The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! whose 26 chapters go from A to Z on the key aspects of writing good and meaningful fiction.
W is for Who, Where, When and Why of Doing Research
Research is something many writers dislike and find daunting or even intimidating. In truth, as a writer, you are doing research all the time: when you’re riding the bus or train to work, when you’re traveling on vacation, when you’re having a lively discussion—or better yet an argument— with a friend or colleague. Everything you experience and observe is research. This is what I call non-directed research. It’s also called living. Writers, like all artists, are reporters of life, actively participating and passively observing. A writer is an opportunist, gathering her data through her daily life experiences. Writing fiction draws on this but also on much more…
When writing about a realizable and believable world, whether it takes place in contemporary New York or far future planet Zero, you will need impeccable world building (which includes setting, circumstances, surrounding characters and events) and that will always ultimately require research. you will find very quickly that in order to build a consistent world (even if it’s mostly from your own imagination), you will need to draw upon something real to anchor your imaginary world upon. Whether this reflects a powerful myth or forms an alternative version of a real society, you will still need to apply some rules to follow, so you don’t lose your reader.
With so many useful internet sites and search engines, research has become far easier. But there is also more risk. Finding and confirming information as reliable is an important aspect of doing research. When doing research, particularly on the Internet (but anywhere), you should do several things:
• Use more than one source, particularly for important things; this will give you a wider range of material from which to discern accuracy and reliability.
• Verify your sources and preferably cross reference to measure out objective “truth” versus bias.
• Try to use primary sources (original) vs. secondary or tertiary sources (original cited and open to interpretation); the closer you are to the original source, the closer you are to getting the original story.
• When going to more than one source, try to get a range of different source-types (e.g., conservative newspaper versus blog versus special interest site, etc.) to gain a full range of insight into the issue you’re researching.
Don’t forget that highly valuable and satisfying research can take on the form of interview. You can gain incredible insight into the subject of your research by using a live expert. The advantages he or she has to a book or online database is that they interact with you and may give you something you didn’t even know you needed. Experts include people in your community, your neighbors and friends, professionals in business and in the universities and other educational facilities. Special interest forums and sites can be used to access people to interview.
I keep a journal or scrapbook for every novel I write. This permits me to do several things:
1. Organize relevant research material into one place for easy access (which makes up for my appalling note taking practices).
2. Satisfy my inclination for info dump and expository back-story by providing a place to house it—in my journal, where it belongs, instead of in the story.
By the time I was through with it, the journal I’d kept of my last book—a historical fantasy set in medieval Prussia and modern-day Paris—was its own rich compendium of interesting information, lovingly put together with photos of Paris, drawings and sketches of castles, armour, and long swords, maps of great battles, spreadsheets of timelines and family trees and, of course, commentary on all the great cafés and patisseries in Paris between Rue Princess and Boulevard Saint-Michel.
The Fiction Writer is a digest of how-to’s in writing fiction and creative non-fiction by masters of the craft from over the last century. Packaged into 26 chapters of well-researched and easy to read instruction, novelist and teacher Nina Munteanu brings in entertaining real-life examples and practical exercises. The Fiction Writer will help you learn the basic, tried and true lessons of a professional writer: 1) how to craft a compelling story; 2) how to give editors and agents what they want’ and 3) how to maintain a winning attitude.
“…Like the good Doctor’s Tardis, The Fiction Writer is larger than it appears… Get Get Published, Write Now! right now.”
David Merchant, Creative Writing Instructor
Otonabee River glistens under a spring sun, ON (photo and renditionby Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Snowing in cedar forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In this series of articles, I draw from key excerpts of my textbook on how to write fiction The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! whose 26 chapters go from A to Z on the key aspects of writing good and meaningful fiction.
P is for Plotting with Purpose
“Plot is the things characters do, feel, think, or say, that make a difference to what comes afterward,” says Ansen Dibel, author of Elements of Fiction Writing: Plot. I’ve also heard authors describe plot as all the nasty things they throw at their main character to stop them from getting where or what they want or need. Plot is motion. “Plot is a verb,” says Dibell. “For a reader to care about your story, there has to be something at stake—something of value to gain, something of value to be lost.”
Although plots will vary as much as individual stories, there are some basic elements and forms. Here are some:
• Cause and Effect: this is simply when one event leads to another. Many writers talk about scenes and sequels when constructing stories (see below).
• Thematic: this is where events are tied together by a thematic thread, a common relationship, a central event, place, character or theme.
• Lyric: this is when plot is organized like music, with a cyclical return to key images, events or themes that grow deeper each time (Finnegan’s Wake, by James Joyce, for example.)
• Hero’s Journey: this plot approach follows the mythic steps of the hero’s journey.
Plot structure generally follows a progression from scene (action) to sequel (reaction) and back to scene again. A scene has the three-part pattern of: goal, conflict, disaster. A sequel follows with this three-part pattern: reaction, dilemma, decision. Plot structure generally follows a thematic story arc. A seven-point plot structure goes like this: hoot, problem, backfill, complication, action, the dark moment, resolution. This step-wise plot approach reflects the three act elements of the “hero’s journey”.
Bill Johnson said that every story makes a promise at the beginning to the reader. Those promises, says Dibell, are mostly unspoken ones. And some are made indirectly through pattern. As the journey continues, problems build on the previous ones, always moving the main plot toward the final crisis. “The job of a middle,” says Dibell, “is to build toward and deliver crisis.”
“Detail on detail, incident on incident, character on character, the pattern(s) begin to form,” says Dibell. “…they’re what hold your story together, give it both diversity and unity.” Dibell describes plot as a tapestry of pattern, form, shape and color that share recognizable meanings. Which brings me to subplots, the threads that make up the story’s fabric.
Subplots are more common in long fiction, where they are used to deepen a story and add layers that make it more intriguing and tease out more depth to the story. Subplots may provide varying aspects of a theme, from community to individual as played out by different characters. Ultimately, subplots and how they are crafted, provide the writer with the means to transcend plot into what Dibell calls pattern.
Dibell describes “braided” plots, in which two or more subplots are woven together, and parallel plot lines, in which two plots share almost equal footing. This happens when strong protagonists carry each plot. Parallel plot lines often run counterpoint to each other in pace, tone and colour. Each plot becomes richer and stronger when contrasted with the other. And they are always connected in some way, in many ways. In Matrix Reloaded, Neo’s introspective and thoughtful plot with the architect of the matrix runs counterpoint with Trinity’s action plot as she sabotages the matrix and battles an agent. Both demonstrate conflict and tension but the tone and pace are opposite. This contrast only heightens each plot line. Notice also how the two plot lines are connected and eventually converge in the final scene where Neo saves Trinity’s life by restarting her heart. Earlier on, while Trinity is totally engrossed in her problems, Neo becomes aware of her struggle through the architect’s artful hint; this prompts Neo to choose his path to join her plot. His awareness is the bridge between the two plot lines. If you look carefully, you will find many other ways the two plot lines are connected, visually, mentally and viscerally and how they inevitably draw together in that riveting last scene; “how thoroughly,” Dibell says, “the story belongs to itself.”
Crawford Kilian, SF writer and author of Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, set down these ten commandments:
Nothing should happen at random
Plot stems from character under adversity
Give each character an urgent personal agenda
The plot of a story is the synthesis of the plots of its individual characters
The Fiction Writer is a digest of how-to’s in writing fiction and creative non-fiction by masters of the craft from over the last century. Packaged into 26 chapters of well-researched and easy to read instruction, novelist and teacher Nina Munteanu brings in entertaining real-life examples and practical exercises. The Fiction Writer will help you learn the basic, tried and true lessons of a professional writer: 1) how to craft a compelling story; 2) how to give editors and agents what they want’ and 3) how to maintain a winning attitude.
“…Like the good Doctor’s Tardis, The Fiction Writer is larger than it appears… Get Get Published, Write Now! right now.”
David Merchant, Creative Writing Instructor
Light snow by the river, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Snowing in a cedar forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In this series of articles, I draw from key excerpts of my textbook on how to write fiction The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! whose 26 chapters go from A to Z on the key aspects of writing good and meaningful fiction.
M is for Master the Metaphor & Other Things
During a brainstorming session, my business partner quizzed me on the major problems that writers face: “What are their Waterloos?” She was using metaphor to make a point. You don’t have to look very far to find examples; everyday speech is full of them: like “raining cats and dogs; “table leg”; and “old flame”.
Metaphor directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is, therefore, considered more powerful than an analogy, which may acknowledge differences. Other rhetorical devices in the ‘metaphor family’ that involve comparison include metonymy, synecdoche, personification, simile, allegory and parable. While these share common attributes with metaphor, each compares in a different way.
The term synecdoche substitutes a part for a whole or a whole for a part (e.g., the expression “all hands on deck” refers to the men; or the expression “use your head” refers to your brain). Synecdoche is a common way to emphasize an important aspect of a character.
Metonymy uses one word to describe and represent another (e.g. the suits from Wall Street). Metonymy works by association whereas metaphor works through similarity.
Personification gives an idea, object or animal the qualities of a person (e.g., the darkness embraced her; the creek babbled over the rocks).
Similes can imply comparison (e.g., His mind is like a sword) or be explicit (e.g., His mind is sharp like a sword). This is what makes the simile such a useful tool to the writer: you can choose to be vague, letting the reader infer the relationship, or be direct.
Simile: His love was like a slow dance
Metaphor: Love danced in her heart
Allegory is an extended metaphor in which an object, person or action is equated with the meaning that lies outside the narrative. In other words, allegory has both a literal and a representative meaning.
The kinds of metaphor you use (extended metaphors particularly) rely a great deal on your narrative voice, the type of story you’re telling, and the language you’re using. Here are two from Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye:
His hair was bone white.
I got the drunk up [the stairs] somehow. He was eager to help but his legs were rubber.
The metaphor is often tied in to the overall theme or plot line of the story, providing tone to the story and sometimes foreshadowing.
N is for Now It’s Time for Revision
Ten things you should consider when revising your first (and subsequent) draft(s).
1. Let your work breathe: once you’ve completed your draft, set it aside for a while. This lets you make objective observations about your writing when you return.
2. Dig deep: now that you have the whole story before you, you can restructure plotlines, subplots, events and characters to best reflect your overall story. Don’t be afraid to remove large sections; you will likely add others. You may also merge two characters into one or add a character or change a character’s gender or age.
3. Take Inventory: it’s good to take stock of how each chapter contributes to plotline and theme; root out the inconsistencies as you relate the minutiae to the whole.
4. Highlight the Surges: some passages will stand out as being particularly stunning; pay attention to them in each chapter and apply their energy to the rest of your writing.
5. Purge & Unclutter: make a point of shortening everything; this forces you to use more succinct language, replacing adjectives and adverbs with power-verbs. Liken it to writing for a magazine with only so much space (check out Chapter U for more ideas). Doing this will tighten prose and make it more clear. Reading aloud, particularly dialogue, can help streamline your prose.
6. Point of view: this is the time to take stock of whether you’ve chosen the best point of view for the story. You may wish to experiment with different points of view at this stage and the results may surprise you.
7. Make a plot promise: given that you are essentially making a promise to your readers, it is advisable that you revisit that promise. Tie up your plot points; don’t leave any hanging unless you’re intentionally doing this, but be aware that readers don’t generally like it. Similarly, if you’ve written a scene that is lyrical, beautiful and compelling but doesn’t contribute to your plotline, nix it. But keep it for another story; chances are, it will work elsewhere. The trick is to file it where you can later find it.
8. Deepen your characters: the revision process is an ideal time to add subtle detail to your main characters. A nervous scratch of his beard, an absent twisting of the ring on her finger, the frequent use of a particular expression: all these can be worked in throughout the story, in your later drafts. Even minor characters can shine and be unique. When you paint your minor characters with more detail, you create a more three-dimensional tapestry for your main characters to walk through. This heightens realism in your story and involvement of your reader.
9. Write scenes: use the revision process to convert flat narrative into “scene” through dramatization. Narrative summaries read like lecture or polemic. They tend to be passive, slow, and less engaging. Scenes include action, tension and conflict, dialogue and physical movement.
10. Be concrete: Rosenfeld describes your novel as a world in which your reader enters and wants to stay in for a while. You make it easy for her by adding concrete details for her to envision and relate to. Ground your characters in vivid setting, rich but unobtrusive detail. Don’t abandon them to a generic and prosaic setting, drinking “beverages” and driving “vehicles” on “roads”; instead brighten up their lives by having them speeding along Highway 66 in a Mini Cooper, while sipping a Pinot Noir.
O is for Outline or Synopsis?
A synopsis is NOT an outline. Both are useful to the writer, yet each serves a very different purpose. An outline is a tool (usually just for the writer) that sketches plot items of a book. It provides a skeleton or framework of plot, people, places and their relationships to the storyline. It permits the writer to ultimately gauge scene, setting, and character depth or even determine whether a character is required (every character must have a reason to be in the book, usually to move the plot). To put it basically, the outline describes what happens when and to whom, while the synopsis includes why.
Elizabeth Lyon, author of The Sell Your Novel Toolkit, suggests that a synopsis should usually include these seven items:
• Theme
• Setting and Period
• Plot summary
• Character sketches
• Dialogue
• Emotional turning points
• Subplots
The theme, explains Lyons, “provides a rudder for an entire novel.” She suggests condensing it into one sentence or phrase: to have a friend you must be a friend; cooperation lies at the heart of evolution; love is the true source of human wealth; there’s no place like home. You can also portray your theme in a single word (e.g., forgiveness, revenge, trust, prejudice, evolution).
Lyon suggests that the plot summary is like a skeleton upon which to flesh out character and theme. Two things you need to consider are that 1) you must summarize the complete novel (beginning, middle and end) and 2) you should not confuse a plot summary (essentially an outline) with a synopsis, which incorporates more than plot. “The best-written and most impressive synopses,” says Lyon, “are those that make it clear that a story is character driven.” Lyon recommends that you limit your sketches to the main characters that drive principle theme in the story.
The first sentence of my synopsis of Collision with Paradise focuses on the main character:
When Genevieve Dubois, Zeta Corp’s hot shot starship pilot accepts a research mission aboard ZAC I to the mysterious planet Eos, she not only collides with her guilty past but with her own ultimate fantasy.
While the sentence conveys information about the plot, it is given from the viewpoint of a character’s motivations and feelings. The reader is informed at the outset that character development is at the heart of the story.
The emotional turning points are the focal events that are directly linked to the theme of the story. These are the “so what” parts of the story plot—where the character reaches an epiphany and, as a result, changes—and are ultimately linked to the climax of the story.
The Fiction Writer is a digest of how-to’s in writing fiction and creative non-fiction by masters of the craft from over the last century. Packaged into 26 chapters of well-researched and easy to read instruction, novelist and teacher Nina Munteanu brings in entertaining real-life examples and practical exercises. The Fiction Writer will help you learn the basic, tried and true lessons of a professional writer: 1) how to craft a compelling story; 2) how to give editors and agents what they want’ and 3) how to maintain a winning attitude.
“…Like the good Doctor’s Tardis, The Fiction Writer is larger than it appears… Get Get Published, Write Now! right now.”
David Merchant, Creative Writing Instructor
Light snow falling by the river, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Snowing in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In this series of articles, I draw from key excerpts of my textbook on how to write fiction The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! whose 26 chapters go from A to Z on the key aspects of writing good and meaningful fiction.
G is for Defining your Genre & Going Beyond It
Although genres are not precisely definable, genre considerations are one of the most important factors in determining what a person will see or read. Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites.
For a long time people considered that books and movies that are difficult to categorize into a genre were likely to be less successful commercially. This is no longer the case, thanks to online bookstores like Amazon, that are able to ‘shelve’ books under multiple categories for people to find. In fact, having your book cross several genres (called “cross-genre” or slipstream) may even provide an advantage in that your book will occupy not just one but several niches—akin to placing your bets on several horses rather than just one.
So, if you haven’t figured out what genre your writing falls under, start figuring it out now; your future publisher and marketer will want to know because they, in turn, have to tell their distributor and bookseller where to shelve the book. This is why you need to do this, no matter what you think of categorizing your work; the alternative is leaving it to Jack in the marketing department who may not have even read your book, but used the cover picture to figure it out. Yikes!
The key to this exercise, whether your work falls under one or more categories, is to understand your work well enough to be able to categorize it. And, by all means, break the rules of categorizing—just know why you are.
H is for House or Home…Creating Memorable Settings
Setting fulfills most of the core aspects of a story. Without a place there is no story. Setting serves multipurpose roles from helping with plot, determining and describing character to providing metaphoric links to theme. Setting, like the force in Star Wars, provides a landscape that binds everything into context and meaning. Without setting, characters are simply there, in a vacuum, with no reason to act and most importantly, no reason to care.
Settings can not only have character; they can be a character in their own right. A novelist may often find herself, when portraying several characters, painting a portrait of place. This is setting being “character”. The setting functions as a catalyst, and molds the more traditional characters that animate a story. Think of any of your favourite books, particularly the epics: The Wizard of Oz, Tale of Two Cities, Doctor Zhivago, Lord of the Rings, The Odyssey, etc. In each of these books the central character is really the place, which is inexorably linked to its main character.
Settings depict the theme of your story through metaphor. The setting and all the objects in it are described to your reader through your POV character. This gives you an excellent opportunity to show the mood, temperament, judgment and bias of your character and their place in their world.
I is for Interviews and other Weird Experiences
As a writer of either fiction or non-fiction, you will at some time require information from a real person. Depending on the nature of your research and its intended destination and audience, you may wish to conduct anything from a casual phone or email enquiry to a full-blown formal face-to-face interview. This will also depend on who you are interviewing, from a neighbour to a government official. The pillars of good journalism include:
thoroughness
accuracy
fairness and
transparency.
Here are some tips on what to do:
Do your research ahead of time: read up on your subject and include both sides of an issue (if that’s relevant). This helps you to respond intelligently with better follow-up questions.
Ask open-ended questions: avoid yes and no questions and get them to elaborate. Asking “why” solicits explanation, which will give your article depth.
Ask for examples: this provides a personal aspect to the article that gives it warmth and makes it more interesting.
Ask personal questions: what’s the worst thing that can happen? They can simply say no; the up side is you may get a gem. The personal angle from the interviewee’s perspective gives your
article some potential emotional aspect that gives it human-interest.
Ask the interviewee for any further thoughts to share: it’s an innocuous question, but can offer-up more gems. What it provides you with is the possibility of getting something you might not have thought of, sparked by your conversation.
Here are some tips on what NOT to do:
“There’s no rush.” Never reveal your deadline. Think about it; what do you normally do when there’s a deadline? Right…say it’s sooner than it really is.
“I’ve never covered this topic before.” This kind of information is inappropriate and may make your interviewee uncomfortable (worrying about your unproven abilities to properly interview her instead of focusing on her). Besides, it’s not what you know but what you learn that counts.
“I’ll be using what you say extensively.” Don’t assume and make promises you may not be able to keep, until after the interview.
“I don’t get it.” If you don’t understand something, get clarification rather than make a negative remark that tends to stop them dead in their tracks.“You can review the piece before it’s published.” This is something that can be dealt with over the phone to confirm facts; the source doesn’t need to see the whole piece before it’s published.
“This is going to be a fantastic article!” Keep your tone professional; there’s nothing wrong with being positive, but you should maintain a professional attitude that inspires confidence in the interviewee.
The Fiction Writer is a digest of how-to’s in writing fiction and creative non-fiction by masters of the craft from over the last century. Packaged into 26 chapters of well-researched and easy to read instruction, novelist and teacher Nina Munteanu brings in entertaining real-life examples and practical exercises. The Fiction Writer will help you learn the basic, tried and true lessons of a professional writer: 1) how to craft a compelling story; 2) how to give editors and agents what they want; and 3) how to maintain a winning attitude.
“…Like the good Doctor’s Tardis, The Fiction Writer is larger than it appears… Get Get Published, Write Now! right now.”
David Merchant, Creative Writing Instructor
Snowing in cedar forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Country road in early spring, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In this series of articles, I draw from key excerpts of my textbook on how to write fiction The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! whose 26 chapters go from A to Z on the key aspects of writing good and meaningful fiction.
D is for Get the Dope on Dialogue
One of the most important devices to spice up narrative and increase pace is the use of dialogue. There’s a reason for this: we read dialogue more quickly; it’s written in more fluid, conversational English; it tends to create more white space on a page with less dense text, more pleasing to the reader’s eye. Dialogue is action. It gets readers involved. Good dialogue neither mimics actual speech (i.e., it’s not usually mundane, repetitive or broken with words like “uh”) nor does it educate the reader through long discourse (unless the character is that kind of person). Good dialogue in a story should be somewhere in the middle.
While it should read as fluid conversation, dialogue remains a device to propel the plot or enlighten us to the character of the speaker. No conversation follows a perfect linear progression. People interrupt one another, talk over one another, often don’t answer questions posed to them or avoid them by not answering them directly. These can all be used by the writer to establish character, tension, and relationship.
E is for Exposition
In fiction, exposition breaks away from the ongoing action of a scene to give information. It can be one paragraph or go on for several pages. Exposition often provides contextual information critical for the reader to buy in to character-motivation or the ideas promoted in the story. It gives a story its perspective and larger meaning by linking the reader with the thematic elements. If scene is action and plot, exposition feeds reflection and theme. Exposition can appear in the form of background, setting, back story or overview. It is most often expressed through a POV character’s reflection and observation.
Exposition is something every writer grapples with in a story. Where to put it? When to add it? How much is too much? How little is too little? Working out when to explain the plot and when to leave the reader to draw their own conclusions can be tricky for even experienced writers, says author Elsa Neal. Ansen Dibell, author of Elements of Fiction Writing: Plot, describes exposition as “the author telling the reader something—telling, rather than showing.” Telling is much less effective and interesting than showing. It follows then that exposition is much less dramatic and less vivid than a scene. This is why you need to break exposition up into small bite-size pieces rather than a huge caloric meal of information. A good rule to follow is to minimize exposition as much as you can.
Okay, it’s good to add exposition. But there is a way and a time to do it. You need to balance the show-and-tell part of your narrative and to maintain a rhythm in your pace and tone. This means doing several things:
restrain yourself and keep your notes to yourself
arouse then explain
build exposition into the scene
put exposition in between scenes
let the character explain—but be careful!
Use interior monologue
F is for Finding Your Muse
In over twenty years of writing both fiction and non-fiction I really hadn’t given much thought to writer’s block until recently, when I was challenged on it. This is not to say that I never experienced it. I did; I just kept on writing. “What?” you say. “Then, you didn’t really have writer’s block.” Well, I did, but only for that particular project, and only for one aspect of that particular project. The key is to have multiple projects and recognize that each of these has multiple tasks aside from writing (e.g., editing, research, discussion, etc.) that you can work on.
For instance, besides Novel A, whose plot had me stumped, I was working on two short stories and a non-fiction article. I was also actively posting science articles, essays and opinion pieces on my blog. In addition, I was writing news articles for an online magazine and doing my regular stint at the environmental consulting firm, writing interpretive environmental reports. I kept on writing.
I let the plot of Novel A sit for a while as I continued to write. That didn’t mean I couldn’t work on Novel A in other capacities: copy editing or polishing language, for instance. The point I want to make is that it’s helpful to have other things on the go mainly because this will let you relax about the project that has you stumped. And you need to relax for it to resolve. It’s a little like looking for the watch you misplaced; it will find you once you stop looking for it.
The Fiction Writer is a digest of how-to’s in writing fiction and creative non-fiction by masters of the craft from over the last century. Packaged into 26 chapters of well-researched and easy to read instruction, novelist and teacher Nina Munteanu brings in entertaining real-life examples and practical exercises. The Fiction Writer will help you learn the basic, tried and true lessons of a professional writer: 1) how to craft a compelling story; 2) how to give editors and agents what they want’ and 3) how to maintain a winning attitude.
“…Like the good Doctor’s Tardis, The Fiction Writer is larger than it appears… Get Get Published, Write Now! right now.”
David Merchant, Creative Writing Instructor
Snowing in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach 