Leveled my gaze? Narrowed my eyes? Eye-action clichés

Help. I'm up to my eyeballs in eye-action clichés (pardon the cliché).
No matter what I'm reading, everyone is "leveling their gaze" or "narrowing their eyes" at someone else on the page.

From Janet Evanovich to Andrew Davidson (who couldn't be less similar--literarily speaking), I'm encountering these same phrases.

Are you as tired of them as I am yet lacking a substitute, continue to use them?

So all writers are challenged with how to describe this phenomena that we all want to include in our novels when one character is sufficiently frustrated, piqued, annoyed, and has to look in the direction of the character doing the annoying.

Should we avoid this action completely? Should writers focus on individual parts of the eye, as in, "Her irises intensified in color as I told her it was over between us?" Or "His retina reticulated after I shot him in the shoulder."

Your thoughts?

Reincorporation: Surreal suppers and a lesson in storytelling--a guest post on 'Scrivengale'

Author and secretly bestselling ghostwriter Roz Morris

Today, I'm pleased to welcome a guest post from author, editor, and blogger Roz Morris. Roz wrote an ingenious craft book called Nail Your Novel and is the host of a blog of the same name. It was through reading her blog (which I'm highlighting this month on "Scrivengale") that I was introduced to the concept of reincorporation. With Roz's permission, I am republishing her post on this technique, which has the potential to enrich your storytelling and keep your reader engaged.


Readers love it when you use reincorporation. Here’s what it’s all about.

The 15 guests had to be at a secret location in east London at 8.13. No earlier, no later. They entered through a doorway fringed with yellow flippers and feathers so they had to, er, duck. Fizz was served in teacups with sugar cubes, by a lady who would later dress up as a cat. There was no alcohol licence, so guests were given crayons and told to draw artworks, which they sold to each other, each ‘sale’ earning a free glass of wine.

Food was similarly witty. An amuse bouche of praline served in a paper cake case tethered to a helium balloon. Eat the praline and the case floated up to the ceiling, to gasps of delight. Japanese fish was served in tin cans. Between courses, the guests split into teams to play a consequences storytelling game. After pudding (a suitably surrealist baked Alaska) they took turns to read out the resulting literary lunacy – while breathing in the helium from the starters.

Isn’t there something amazingly right about this reuse of the balloons? We’d forgotten about them in all the other charming strangenesses, but they were up there on the ceiling all the time, bobbing there, on the periphery of the story.

In storytelling this ‘bringing back’ is called reincorporation. It seems to hit the audience’s satisfaction centres to a primeval degree.

When you’re tempted to invent more stuff to put in a story, it’s always worth seeing what you can bring back in. It could be a throwaway remark like a random thing you decided the character was doing the other night. Or it could be an anecdote you used early on for character building. Push something to the audience’s peripheral vision – or make it look as though you have finished with it. Then bring it back in and audiences will love it, as if you just performed a conjuring trick.

So, you introduce the helium balloons in the first course, have a little episode with them that is fun and charming, and let them drift away. It looks like they’ve played their role and the audience doesn’t give them another thought. And just when the story has got a lot further, and people have forgotten about them, you blend them back into the main story to do something even funnier.

I didn’t make this up, by the way. This delightful evening was the brainchild of ‘Sue Dinner-party’, a supper club in east London. My thanks to them not only for surrealist inspiration but for a nugget of storyteller’s gold.

* * *

You can read a fifteen-page sample of  Roz's craft book Nail Your Novel here.

The single best writing tip ever . . .

No build up. Just going to come right out with it. Today's post has one purpose only: To pass along the best single piece of craft advice I've ever gotten.

It actually comes from Kevin Oderman, my creative non-fiction teacher in the Wilkes University Creative Writing Program, and an outstanding craftsman himself.

In response to one of my assignments, Kevin said something like, "Everything you do must serve the story."

Basically, what he was saying was that writers must control their impulses to use a piece of dialogue or add a character or go off on a tangent or employ a certain phrase and ask themselves, "Does it serve the story?" It amounts to making good choices--intentional choices--to advance plot, character, and all the other fictional elements comprising your story.

Pretty simple test. If it doesn't serve the story, it has to go.

I actually used this test to evaluate a piece of stage business in a performance I was reviewing. It didn't serve the story. Not only was it extraneous, it detracted from the story. One piece of stage business weakened an important plot point. And it smacked of indulgent stage direction as a result.

Whatever story you tell, in whatever form (play, screenplay, prose), I challenge you to ask yourself whether the device you've employed or the scene you just added serves the story. The story is master--ironically, not you--and you need to pay slavish attention to it.

If you don't put your story first, who will?

How about you? Does this tip work for you? What is the single best piece of writing advice you've received?

Ten quick craft tips learned in online writing groups

Today I'm sharing ten tips I've picked up from other writers in online writing groups or from their critiques of my work. I don't do online groups anymore (that's a whole other post topic).

 

But I've never forgotten some of things I learned from other writers I encountered online.

1. To make your prose more graceful, in a series of items, put the longest item last.  Example: wide eyes, a pert nose, and lips as tempting as a ripe peach.
2. In describing someone follow the natural path of the eye (unless of course your viewpoint character has a strange optical tic) from top to bottom, bottom to top, near to far or vice versa.  Example: She wore pink lip gloss, her curly dark hair fell to her shoulders, and a low-cut cashmere shell showed just enough cleavage to distract any man she happened to want something from.
3. Lighten up on the -ing verbs and the participial phrases.  Example: Crashing into the Christmas tree, she began spinning around the room. It would be better to say: She crashed into the Christmas tree and spun around the room.
4. Drop "began" and "began to" phrases wherever possible (see previous example). People don't "begin to." They just do.
5. Most adverbs can and should be written out of your prose. Look for -ly words: hauntingly, hurriedly, calmly, briskly, etc. Only keep an adverb if you'd pay $100 for it.
6. More than one or two adjectives (modifiers) weakens rather than strengthens the writing. It dilutes the power of all the others. Example: The sad, tired, old woman rested on the park bench. Now none of the modifiers--sad, tired, or old--makes an impact.
7. Description can be too lush. If you describe every detail in a scene, there's nothing left for the reader's imagination to fill in.  Painstaking description can be painful. Example: The quarter inch gold plated locket on the 20 inch 14-karat gold chain with feather weight links was perfect for a cameo about the size of a small child's middle fingernail. Aren't you in pain already?
8. Adjectives, if used, are always stronger without qualifiers. Forget the really happy's, very well-off's, too beautiful's.
9. Most writers have habits or idiosyncracies such as overusing one or two words. I slip the word "just" into many sentences. Now I use the find function in word processing software to take them out.
10. Words are diamonds. Showcase their beauty by sloughing off the carbon around them. Or as one of my writing teachers put it, "Words are stones. Feel the weight of them." Diamonds. Stones.You get the idea.

If you have a quick craft tip to share, feel free to leave it as a comment. And thanks to a whole host of online writers who shared your wisdom with me earlier in my career. 

Take a writing lesson from the B-I-B-L-E

Yesterday, I told another creative writer who'd stopped in my office that I'm ruined when it comes to reading books.

He stared at me quizzically.

I went on to explain that now that I've studied and aimed to be a practitioner of creative writing, I can no longer experience a book the way I used to--innocently, wholly, naively. Now, anything I read is interpreted through the gimlet eye of the writer searching for craft.

If no longer reading thrillers for sheer enjoyment weren't bad enough, now I can't even participate in readings from the Bible during a church service without examining the craft evident in the text.

Maybe that's because the Bible is so well crafted, especially when it comes to the use of fresh, figurative language.

Last Sunday, the first reading was from the book of Isaiah, chapter 35. Look at the first several verses through the lens of a creative writer:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.

(skip to verse 5):

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy,
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

First, I really responded to the personification in the passage: desert rejoicing; crocus rejoicing with singing; the land shall be glad.

Next, I love the comparisons that are fresh and unpredictable: the lame shall leap like a deer; the tongue of the speechless sing for joy; burning sand shall become a pool; haunts of jackals shall become a swamp.

In the book of Isaiah, the writer takes us places we don't expect to travel. Forget the lame merely walking. No, they're going to leap like deer! How powerful is that? Plenty powerful.

The the speechless won't just recover their speech. They'll sing for joy.

The burning sand doesn't cool down. No, that's not potent enough to express what God's chosen people can find once God leads them out of exile. The sand must become a pool to be impactful.

The language "the haunts of jackals shall become a swamp" is evocative. A few well-chosen nouns (haunts, jackals, swamp) and a clear image forms in the minds of readers!

The other piece of craft worth noting is the prophet Isaiah's attention to audience. He is writing to a people who have been in captivity in Babylonia for so long--for generations--that they are past hope. His language must capture their imaginations, and in describing how their homeland will transform so completely to welcome them, he captures our imaginations, too.

If you're looking for a new source of craft, try reading passages from the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, which is laden with powerful and lovely prose. It couldn't be more instructive--in more ways than one.

The Enneagram: It's great for dialogue and swell for pick-up lines

The Enneagram suggests people fall into nine
possible personality types.

Would you like a model for crafting stronger characters and better dialogue in your fiction, in addition to a chance to know yourself better? Of course you would. That's why you're here!

As I mentioned earlier this week, while writing my first novel, I realized my dialogue needed to be stronger. So, I picked up a book by Gloria Kempton that introduced me to the Enneagram. It's one of the newer personality systems in common use and emphasizes psychological motivations. Primarily a diagnostic tool of one's emotional outlook on life, it also may help point out fixations undergirding them--unless of course one has no fixations.

The Enneagram is also useful because it helps you see more clearly how other people see the world very differently from you. For that reason, it has become particularly popular within the self-help and personal growth movements, but other professions use it as well -- therapists, teachers, psychologists, managers, and writers. When I wonder why I behave the way I do, I reflect upon my Enneagram number (#4), and the reason is readily clear -- that's how #4's roll!

Kempton suggests using the Enneagram as a tool to help develop characters. Rather than creating a complex personality chart for characters, which some writing coaches advocate, she advises writers settle on a personality for a character (ideally, your characters should be well differentiated) go to an Enneagram chart, and pick a number. You'll know your character, where she comes from, and can write more authentic dialogue as a result.

Here are personality types in the Enneagram, which also can be found at http://www.9types.com/.

#1 Reformer - I do everything the right way.
#2 Helper - I must help others.
#3 Motivator - I need to succeed.
#4 Romantic - I am unique.
#5 Thinker - I need to understand the world.
#6 Skeptic - I am affectionate and skeptical.
#7 Enthusiast - I am happy and open to new things.
#8 Leader - I must be strong.
#9 Peacemaker - I am at peace.

Each of the types has a link to a more complete description in case you already recognize yourself as one of those types. You can also take a short test at http://www.9types.com./newtest/ if you'd like to be sure of what type you are.

by Leonid Afremov

I'm #4, the Romantic, sometimes called the Artist, who is motivated by a need to experience her feelings and to be understood, to search for the meaning of life, and to avoid being ordinary. Bingo. C'est moi.

I knew as much immediately upon reading Kempton's book, and the 36-question Internet test confirmed it. I also learned that I was somewhat a #3, a bit of #7, and because I was a middle child, I have a pinch of #9 in me as well, which hasn't yet been drummed out by the callous and cruel workaday world.

In fiction, a #4 is good character choice because he or she always adds conflict. Let's face it, who doesn't tire of the drama queen? Though entertaining,  #4's can also be annoying.

Another type that drives conflict is the Skeptic (#6), also called the Questioner, because questions can ratchet up the tension in any scene. Imagine a boss character as a questioner: "Who gave you the authority to do that?...Where were you?...Why were you late this morning?..." You get the idea.

I'd love to know what number or numbers are dominant for you? And if your dialogue needs work, I heartily recommend Kempton's book called, Dialogue: Techniques and exercises for crafting effective dialogue.

"Hi, there. What's your Enneagram?"

Prefer to be more organic about your character development and not corralled by numbers and types? It's a free country. At the very least, I've given you a new pick up line next time you're looking for love in a fern bar.