The A to Z of Writing Fiction: X, Y, Z…

May 5, 2024January 23, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*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.

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: Get Published, Write Now! (Starfire World Syndicate) May 2009. Nominated for an Aurora Prix Award. Available through Chapters/Indigo, Amazon, The Book Depository, and Barnes & Noble.

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)*

Click here for more about my other guidebooks on writing.

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.

The A to Z of Writing Fiction: W…

April 28, 2024January 23, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

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.

“…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

Click here for more about my other guidebooks on writing.

The A to Z of Writing Fiction: T, U, V…

April 21, 2024January 23, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*Light snow falls by the river, 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.

T is for Don’t Tell; Show

While telling may be more direct and economical in words, showing is more evocative, more vivid, more cinematic. And, ultimately, more engaging. This is what showing does; it engages the reader by luring them into the experience of the story. Telling simply imparts information to you without engaging your emotions. Showing, by its very nature, invites you to experience the event being described. Showing also reveals something about the narrator (usually the main POV character) through their observation.

Novice writers (and some professionals) often fall into the trap of info dumping instead of presenting information dramatically (i.e., showing it). Unless you’re Gabriel García Márquez, who can write superb exposition for pages, the best way is to dramatize your description. It takes courage and confidence to say less and let the reader figure it out. Exposition needs to be broken up and appear in the right place as part of the story. Story is paramount. Telling is one of the things beginning writers do most and editors will know you for one right away. Think of the story as a journey for both writer and reader. The writer makes a promise to the reader that s/he will provide a rip-roaring story and the reader comes onside, all excited. This is done through a confident tease in the beginning and slow revelation throughout the story to keep it compelling. Exposition needs to be very sparingly used, dealt out in small portions.

Telling has its place in narrative. Telling is very useful when you need to let the reader know about an event or action that you do not want to describe in vivid detail; for instance, a scene that isn’t critical. For example:

Sally raced to the airport to catch the plane.

Simple and succinct telling works effectively as transitional narrative. Instead of spending time with this rather mundane journey through city traffic, we can move forward in a sentence to where the action on the plane—the next critical scene—will occur. Telling sentences serve as bridges for critical showing scenes.

When you show your work to editors, agents and fellow writers and they describe it as “evocative”, “cinematic” or “vivid”, take heart—you are showing. If, on the other hand you receive a response that uses the word “padded”, you know you’ve been telling a bit more than you should.

U is for Unclutter Your Writing: Less is More

“Fiction by new writers often suffers from excessive length,” says author Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff. “Inflated prose is frequently a contributing factor. Too many words are devoted to recounting basic events.” She’s talking about telling versus showing and info-dumping with description that slows action.

One of the best ways to unclutter your writing is to simplify it. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be a Spartan and write sparingly like Hemingway. The model of achieving “simple” within “complex” is as hard to understand as chaos theory and autopoiesis. So, I won’t bother. But I will talk about various writing components that would benefit from simplification.

Fluid writing lies at the basis of uncluttered prose. Here are a few suggestions:

Cut down extraneous words: when constructing a scene, it is wise to pay attention to cadence, rhythm, number of phrases or clauses and general length of sentences. Sentences in early works tend to be full of extra words (e.g., using “ing” verbs, add-ons like “he started to think” instead of simply “he thought”) that slow down narrative. Try reading your sentences out loud; this practice often helps you to find the clutter.
Use active & powerful verbs. Active verbs are the key to vivid writing; and, ironically, to uncluttering your writing.
Cut down the words in your paragraphs: pay particular attention to your intro chapters and cut down your words by at least 20%. Be merciless; you won’t miss them, believe me, and you will add others later in your second round of edits. Find the most efficient way to say what you mean. You are guaranteed to achieve this if you follow suggestion number 2.
Reduce redundancy: a common phenomenon with many writers, including those who write nonfiction, is that the introductory sentence of a narrative paragraph is often paraphrased unnecessarily in the very next sentence; as though the writer didn’t trust the reader to get it the first time. Lack of confidence and experience is common with novice authors and is something that you must learn to combat. Say it once and say it right the first time.
Show, don’t tell: Embracing this way of writing may be the single most effective way to reduce clutter and enhance the vividness of your writing at the same time. While showing may in fact add more words than simple telling, the way it is read (mostly in the form of action) makes up for the added words.

V is for Voices in Your Head

Your voice and story is expressed through tone, perspective, style, language and pace. All of these reflect your intent and are ultimately expressed in the story’s overarching theme. The overarching theme is ultimately the author’s theme, the “world view” of the story. The principal character and minor characters will carry variations on the main theme, each with his or her unique voice.

It’s important to give each character a distinctive “voice” (including use of distinct vernacular, use of specific expressions or phrases, etc.). This is one way a reader can identify a character and find them likeable — or not. In a manuscript I recently reviewed, I noticed that each character spoke in a mixture of formal and casual speech. This confuses the reader and bumps them out of the fictive dream. Most people’s speech is more consistent. Consistency is very important for readers; it helps them identify with a character. They will abandon a story whose writing—and voice—is not consistent. So, my advice to this beginning writer was to pick one style for each character and stick to it. Voice incorporates language (both speech and body movements), philosophy, and humor. How a character looks, walks, talks, laughs, is all part of this.

The story’s viewpoint can be told from several perspectives and which one you choose can be critical to how your story comes across. Different stories lend themselves to different narrative styles and points of view (POVs). David Morrell, author of First Blood, warns that some writers may “select a viewpoint merely because it feels natural, but if you…don’t consider the implications of your choice…your story might fight you until you abandon it, blaming the plot when actually the problem is how you’re telling it.” (Fiction Writer, April 2000). The choices are several:

• omniscient

• third person limited

• first person

• second person

When telling a story through the eyes of a single viewpoint character, it makes most sense to tell it through the main character, the protagonist, around whom the story usually revolves. She is the one who’s going to be chiefly affected by the events of the story.

The use of multiple viewpoints is common among writers and adds an element of richness and breadth to a story. With each added character’s POV, readers are more enlightened to the thoughts and motivations of characters in a story. When you have several characters telling the story, this is called a rotating viewpoint. A few points to follow include:

• Alternate or rotate your differing viewpoints clearly (scene by scene, chapter by chapter, or part by part)

• Don’t change viewpoints within a scene

• Separate different POV scenes within chapters with extra white space or some kind of graphic (e.g., ****)

“…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

Click here for more about my other guidebooks on writing.

The A to Z of Writing Fiction: Q, R, S…

April 14, 2024January 23, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

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.

Q is for Queries & Other Quests

A query letter is your letter of enquiry to a publisher/editor or agent regarding the possible publication or representation of your work. “It’s a writer’s introduction, our calling card and, hopefully, our foot in the door,” says Lynn Flewelling, author of Luck in the Shadows. “Some agents and editors glance at the letter but read the chapters first,” she adds. “Others read the query and reject the chapters unseen if the letter doesn’t sing. You never know, so write the letter like it’s the one thing standing between you and success. It just might be.”

In her book, The Sell Your Novel Toolkit, Elizabeth Lyon dissects the query into:

Lead: using a creative hook (direct immersion in the story; discussion of the period, setting or milieu; or presentation of the theme of the book) or business hook (with particulars about the book, comparisons with others, and author’s credentials and awards)
Body: short synopsis, either story- or characterization/theme-focused; brief biography with credentials, etc.
Conclusion: closing sentences; the “handshake”

Polish and be professional:

Ensure that there are no spelling or grammatical errors
Make sure your editor’s name is correct as well as the publication name and address
Use standard letter format and standard paper (keep it simple and professional) and stay away from fancy patterns or coloured paper
Keep the letter to one page if possible
Include a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) for mailed queries
Include your name, postal address, email address and phone number

John Hewitt provides a good list of what NOT to do in a query letter. Here are a few:

Don’t mention who has rejected the piece before
Don’t apologize for any weaknesses
Don’t ask for advice, comments or criticism/analysis
Don’t gush about how excited you are about being published
Don’t go on about this being your first
Don’t include a lot of personal information about yourself
Don’t provide several projects in the same query, unless they are related and part of a series
Don’t query the same editor twice
Don’t discuss copyright information, or payment
Don’t include inappropriate off-subject samples

R is for How to Reject Rejection Letters

In a 1999 article in Writer’s Journal, Dennis E. Hensley, associate professor of English at Taylor University Fort Wayne and author of Writing for Profit, told the story of when his writing teacher in college tried to console him after a short story of his had been rejected for the umpteenth time. “Listen,” she had said, “you weren’t rejected, your manuscript was.” He didn’t quite see it that way. “It was my title, my lead, my characters, my plot and my ending,” he’d responded. “No one else had anything to do with it. If the story was rejected, then let’s face it: as a writer, I was rejected.” Rejection is still rejection. Thirty years later, Hensley adds that he still gets rejection letters and he is still not overjoyed to receive them. As time goes on and you become a more seasoned writer, you develop a business-attitude and an objective way of viewing rejection letters. The irony is that it is the beginner writer who is more likely to get rejections.

Think of rejection as part of a road to success. The bottom line is that if you have never been rejected then you haven’t really tried, have you? Rejection really is the first step toward acceptance. With anything that is worth doing, there is risk and there is vulnerability. So too in writing. In order to publish, you have to risk being rejected. In fact, count on it. YOUR WORK WILL BE REJECTED. The good news is that at some point your work will also BE ACCEPTED; count on that too.

My Bus-Terminal Approach: One way to see your way through rejection is to find ways to distance yourself from your story once you’ve sent it off and to see the whole process of submission-rejection-acceptance as a business. The very best way to do this is to submit lots of stories and to keep submitting them. With novels, this is a little harder to do but you can certainly be working on the next one once you’ve submitted the first. When I was writing short stories, I kept a list of what and where I submitted, along with the most important item: where to submit NEXT. At any given time, I made sure that I had at least x-number of submissions out there and each story had a designated place to go if it returned. As soon as a story came back from magazine A, I simply re-packaged it and sent it to magazine B. The critical part of the list was to have a contingency for each story: the next place where I would send the story once it returned. I was planning on the story being rejected with the hope that it would be accepted; that way, a rejection became part of a story’s journey rather than a final comment. I ran my submissions like a bus terminal. A story was in and out so fast it never had a chance to cool off. And, since I had five other pieces out there, I could do this with little emotion. I was running a fast-paced “story depot”, after all. All my stories had to be out there as soon as possible; if they were sitting in the terminal, they were doing nothing for me. This approach really worked for me.

S is for Get Sensual

Writers can provide readers with a rich spectrum of sensuality such as what a place smells like, the texture of an object, the taste of a food, as well as the nuances of light and sound. Readers don’t just “watch” a character in a book; they enter the character’s body and “feel”.

So, how do writers satisfy the readers’ need to experience the senses fully? Description, yes. But how cold is cold? What does snow really smell like? What colour is that sunset? How do you describe the taste of wine to a teetotaler? Ultimately, literal description doesn’t quite cut it. To have the sense really sink in and linger with the reader, it should be linked to the emotions and memories of the character experiencing it. By doing this, you are achieving several things at the same time:

• You’re describing the sense as the character is experiencing it—emotionally

• You’re revealing additional information on the character through his/her reaction

• You’re likely creating a more compelling link for the reader’s own experience of the sense

There are several tools a writer may use to achieve this. Here are a few:

• Use metaphor to describe the sense

• Link the sense to memories

• Use synesthesia (cross-sensory metaphor) to describe the sense

• Link the sense psychologically to an emotion or attitude

• Relate to the sense in a different way (e.g., a visual scene from the point of view of a painter)

The use of metaphor when used to describe an object or place through one or several senses adds a dimension of emotion, tone and direction. While all five of our senses can be linked to memories, two of them stand out. Smell and taste let us sample the chemicals around us for information.

“Memory lies coiled within us like a magician’s trick handkerchief, and a simple smell or taste can pluck the tiniest corner and pull out the world,” says Fitch. “Smell is different from all the other senses in a very special way. A smell from your distant past can unleash a flood of memories that are so intense and striking that they seem real,” says Dr. Karl (Kruszelnicki), author of Great Moments in Science (1984). “This kind of memory, where an unexpected re-encounter with a scent from the distant past brings back a rush of memories, is called a ‘Proustian Memory’”.

Ironically, smell, along with taste, is often neglected in our own overt observations and in writing. By consciously attending to these two senses alone, the writer is assured of engaging the reader’s more deeply rooted sensuality.

“…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

Click here for more about my other guidebooks on writing.

The A to Z of Writing Fiction: P…

April 7, 2024January 23, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*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 plot “begins” long before the story
Foreshadow all important elements
Keep in mind the kind of story you’re telling
Ironic plots subvert their surface meanings
The hero must eventually take charge of events
Plot dramatizes character.

“…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)*

Click here for more about my other guidebooks on writing.

The A to Z of Writing Fiction: M, N, O…

March 31, 2024January 23, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*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.

“…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)*

Click here for more about my other guidebooks on writing.

Ecology of Story: Place as Metaphor

June 8, 2019April 22, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Birds flying over Deer Lake, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Ray Bradbury once told me that everything in story is metaphor. That is no more apparent than in setting and place, in which a story is embedded and through which characters move and interact. Metaphor is the subtext that provides subtleties in story, subtleties that evoke mood, anticipation, and memorable scenes. Richard Russo says, “to know the rhythms, the textures, the feel of a place is to know more deeply and truly its people.” When you choose your setting, remember that its primary metaphoric role is to help depict theme. This is because place is destiny.

Metaphor provides similarity to two dissimilar things through meaning. In the metaphor “Love danced in her heart” or the simile “his love was like a slow dance”, love is equated with the joy of dance. By providing figurative rather than literal description to something, metaphor invites participation through interpretation.

When I write “John’s office was a prison,” I am efficiently and sparingly suggesting in five words—in what would normally take a paragraph—how John felt about his workplace. The reader would conjure imagery suggested by their knowledge of a prison cell: that John felt trapped, cramped, solitary, stifled, oppressed—even frightened and threatened. Metaphor relies on sub-text knowledge.

This is why metaphor is so powerful and universally relevant: the reader fully participates—the reader brings in relevance through their personal knowledge and experience and this creates the memorable aspect to the scene.

Russo tells us that place is crucial to human destiny and the formation of human personality. “The more specific and individual things become, the more universal they feel,” says Russo. This is not an oxymoron, but an example of the principle of a truism that primarily comes to us in the form of paradox (like all good truisms). Detail provides the color and texture of your story and helps it resonate with a sense of place. This does not necessarily translate into a lot of exposition; but it does require creative choice of words. So, instead of “He took a drag from his cigarette as he drove his sports car along a winding road in the country”; (twenty words) try something like “Vinnie sucked on a Camel as his red Corvette careered the hair-pinned curves of Hell’s Gate.” (seventeen words).

Place Personified

Old yellow birch tree in Little Rouge woodland (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Personification is powerful metaphor that gives nonhuman things human qualities. It personalizes, energizes and emotionalizes. Place described through personification can illuminate both characters and their environment in compelling ways. By giving an object, place, or animal the qualities of a person, personification provides subtle aspects of mood and links the reader to a cocktail subtext of human feelings and struggles. Personification can connect the reader to “lifeless” objects such as water, soil, rock, the sun, moon, planet, concrete, paper, etc., to map the larger meaning of the story. Putting a character’s feelings into the objects around her—as POV character—creates a subtle but deep connection with the reader: “The darkness embraced her”; “The open-throated roar of the river pulled her near.”

D.H. Lawrence’s creates strong personification of Thomas Hardy’s Egdon Heath in Return of the Native:

…Egdon, whose dark soil was strong and crude and organic as the body of a beast.

In The Handmaid’s Tale—a dystopian tale of oppression and intrigue—Margaret Atwood writes:

There is something subversive about this garden of Serena’s, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard, though silently … Light pours down upon it from the sun, true, but also heat rises, from the flowers themselves, you can feel it: like holding your hand an inch above an arm, a shoulder. It breathes, in the warmth, breathing itself in.

Martin Nolan’s Still Point creates powerful imagery of a storm aftermath through an abandoned old shed and contrasts its loneliness to the half-wild woods nearby:

A deserted shed by the road, buckling under its roof, kneels into the tall grass. The woods beyond it hide the river … I turn back to the half-wild woods. These trees speak to each other, are wild enough for that. They live together, holding the riverbanks in place.

Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem—set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution—follows Wenji Ye, disillusioned by the massive environmental deforestation in the labour camps she is sent to work:

Her company wielded hundreds of chain saws like a swarm of steel locusts, and after they passed, only stumps were left. The fallen Dahurian larch, now bereft of branches, was ready to be taken away by tractor. Ye gently caressed the freshly exposed cross section of the felled trunk. She did this often, as though such surfaces were giant wounds, as though she could feel the tree’s pain …

Clearcut in Gordon Valley, British Columbia (photo by T.J. Watts)

In Memory of Water, Emmi Itäranta personifies this life-giving substance whose very nature is tightly interwoven with her main character. As companion and harbinger, water is portrayed simultaneously as friend and enemy. As giver and taker of life.

Water is the most versatile of all elements … Water walks with the moon and embraces the earth, and it isn’t afraid to die in fire or live in air. When you step into it, it will be as close as your own skin, but if you hit it too hard, it will shatter you … Death is water’s close companion. The two cannot be separated, and neither can be separated from us, for they are what we are ultimately made of: the versatility of water, and the closeness of death. Water has no beginning and no end, but death has both. Death is both. Sometimes death travels hidden in water, and sometimes water will chase death away, but they go together always, in the world and in us.

Personification of natural things provides the reader with an image they can clearly and emotionally relate to and care about. When a point-of-view character does the describing, we get a powerful and intimate indication of their thoughts and feelings—mainly in how they connect to place (often as symbol). When this happens, place and perception entwine in powerful force.

This article is an excerpt from “The Ecology of Story: World as Character” due in June 2019 by Pixl Press.

From Habitats and Trophic Levels to Metaphor and Archetype…

Learn the fundamentals of ecology, insights of world-building, and how to master layering-in of metaphoric connections between setting and character. “Ecology of Story: World as Character” is the 3^rd guidebook in Nina Munteanu’s acclaimed “how to write” series for novice to professional writers.

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” will be released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in 2020.

Nina Munteanu Writing Coach

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Ecology of Story: Place as Metaphor