Upmarket Your Fiction

By: Deb McLeod

I have the first step to all writing, all marketing, and all book-selling problems! And I'm going to give it to you right here....

Write a story worth reading!

Sounds facetious, doesn’t it? With the advent of self-publishing, standards are slipping. It’s too easy to publish without editing so that’s what a lot of writers are doing. Somewhere along the line a fantasy developed around self-publishing and it’s now deemed a fact. According to the fantasy, all you need to do to make it as a self-published author is to put out more content.

But I’d challenge you to find self-published authors who are making any kind of real sales who have simply slapped up a quick drafty-draft and written another. The exception is erotica. Erotica audiences don’t appear to be too discerning.

While it is important to feed the reader pipeline as quick as possible, what will really make a writer successful is a readership who will not only buy your books but who will become rabid fans. And the key to that is to write a book worth reading. My definition of that is a novel that is both well-written and contains a good, juicy story.

To be really honest, even the writing doesn’t have to be all that great. It’s the story that has to work.

Case(s) in point, among many others: “Fifty Shades of Gray,” “Bridges of Madison County,” Dan Brown’s novels, etc. Just looking at these three, you can note that while the writing isn’t great, the story touches some primal element in a large number of readers. The stories are compelling and that’s what sold these books and built up rabid fans.

I’m a story developer, not without some skill. I’ve been working, studying, teaching, and writing stories for a long time so I know a thing or three.

Recently I was asked what advice I’d give to a new-er writer. Learning story development has to be my first and best advice to any writer.

What is story development?

Story development is a practice based on understanding the dramatic elements of plot and how they work together to create a satisfying and well-paced story. Taking story development one level deeper means understanding the relationship between the structure of a particular story to its content, then letting the content dictate the form.

The three types of fiction: Commercial, literary, and upmarket.

Commercial fiction contains all genre fiction. Its focus is entertainment. Literary fiction strives to make sense of the human condition. It’s focus is generally language. Commercial fiction reads faster than most literary fiction. Commercial fiction generally has a stronger plot element. Literary fiction tends to focus on the quality of the writing over plot elements. Commercial fiction is an easier sell and appeals to a wider audience. Literary fiction is a harder sell and appeals to a narrower audience.

Upmarket fiction holds court somewhere in between. Upmarket fiction contains both excellent writing and a story that appeals to a wide audience. It often genre bends or combines genres. It's new, fresh and sells well.

I teach all my clients, whether commercial or literary, to shoot for the upmarket section on the fiction continuum. If they’re writing in a commercial genre, and they focus on language and the human condition a bit within their genre, is it possible they’ll float to the top of their category? I think so.

Recently a first-time romance author (formerly a literary author) published her book and shot to the top spots on Amazon. She wasn’t even sure when she was writing it if it could be classified as romance. It’s a good story and it’s well written. Now she’s being rewarded for that.

One of my clients last year happened to be someone in my MFA program. She’d written a literary novel but was told by an agent that it would be too hard to sell, unless my friend could rewrite with a tighter plot and some of commercial fiction elements. Basically she would need to bring it closer to Upmarket Fiction. So my friend sent it to me. It was beautifully written but the plot didn’t hold and the character development wasn’t what it could be.

I did a story edit for her. She rewrote it and contacted the agent again. The agent signed her and sold her right out of the gate. It’s difficult to place literary fiction, but my friend had a leg up with that book when she began to understand the plotting elements she needed to change. That will stay with her the next time she writes a novel. And I bet she’ll aim for Upmarket.

But don’t listen to me.

I’m writing this today because I just got off the phone with a new-to-me-client. I don’t do much book doctoring these days. It’s a bit frustrating when someone is already finished with their manuscript before they send it to me and then they find out they have to rewrite. So nowadays, I like to work with people when they’re in the thick of it, as they’re creating the draft or working on their first revision. It saves so much time!

But this person had a draft already done. She knew there was something not quite right with it and she contracted to have me read it and provide advice.

She's multi-published; she’s a literary women's fiction author who was writing a sequel to a novel that was already out there. She had traditionally published that novel and had some success with it.

Before I got the manuscript I read the first book so I could familiarize myself with the story and be ready when it was time to dive into the second. I read the manuscript, made my recommendations and sent it off to her. I always include a section to be sure and call with questions, or to talk about solutions I posed or to brainstorm new ones. I love to do that!

Unfortunately, the manuscript she sent does not work. In my reply to her I used her first story to illustrate why book one works and book two doesn't. She did call that analysis brilliant. And understood a bit of what she had to revise.

After all my work with story these past three years her problems were clear as clear to me. What she needed to consider in order to fix it was also clear to me. She emailed me and thanked me for my comments. Two days later, she emailed again and asked if we could set up a phone appointment.

I thought she wanted to talk about solutions I had posed or to do some brainstorming. But what she really wanted to do was to defend her work to me. I tried hard to stay in observer mode and watch the writerly machinations to prove that the story works (when it doesn't). It so reminded me of being in a critique group. I know I have done this myself so I don't really fault her. It's hard to hear that a piece of work you think is done, really isn’t done. And not only not done, but if there are story problems, that means that down at the bones it doesn't work. This is the exact reason I developed the writing program I have so I’m not trying to convince someone “after the fact” that the story doesn’t work. Because by then, they’re invested in the way they told it.
So, while she talked, I tried hard to bite my tongue and listen, to not get into an attitude of "I'm right" even though I am, but to stay in compassion-mode when what I really wanted to do was to tell her to stop being so obtuse and wasting all that time, effort, and hope on something that could be fixed if she was merely open enough to hear solutions.

Let me digress for a second and remind you she’s a literary writer and her criticisms of my suggestions had to do with the fact that they were “commercial fiction” suggestions about plot.

If you knew me from the old days of writing (the 90s), you would know how frustrating I find the literary vs commercial issue. Each camp could learn a boatload from the other. I know I have. I have a formal literary creative writing education and an informal commercial self-study education.

When I write, I try to be right in the middle between the two. I want to focus on character and language and be respected for my literary prowess. But I want a story that works and one that sells, too. I think I'm smart. I want to be Andre Dubois III when I grow up. He writes in the middle with a nudge toward literary. But his stories are good stories. His novels have plot. I write with nudge toward commercial. When I'm rich and famous I'll lean in his direction. But for now, I've got a plan.

So back to my client. She kept dropping names of people she's studied with and giving their blanket statements about writing. NEVER plot was one of the maxims. How do you fight that ridiculousness?

I let her wind down, tried to tune out and let her defend a turn of her plot that took her heroine out of the story, breaking all forward momentum and basically caused the story to fall apart. As she defended her decision, I typed up her bill.

When we were finished, I began to think about why that conversation had to come into my world. And why it wouldn’t leave me alone. I kept thinking about what she said. So, as with all things in my world, I had to reframe it so I could let it go. And as I thought about it, I began to be grateful for the conversation. I believe in the way I write and what I teach.

I can’t connect with everyone and I’m not right all the time, but I was pretty sure I was right in this case. So after thinking about it, I’m grateful for the conversation, because I came up with a new tagline:

"Work with me and write a book worth reading."

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fourteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, see www.debmcleod.com.

90-day Challenge: Not a Pantser, Not a Plotter

By: Deb McLeod

If you saw my previous post, you know I created a challenge for myself to write a romance in ninety days. Nowadays writers need a way to put out content fast. So, as a writing coach with years of experience studying and honing the writing process for myself and my clients, I decided we were all taking far too long to finish. Especially me!

So I selected a genre I wanted to write in and outlined a process using all the tools I’ve collected or created in my career. The process broke down like this:

30 days to plot
30 days to write
30 days to revise

30 Days to Plot

Part of my process for plotting uses Blake Snyder’s beat sheets to plot the story arc and the character transformation. I wanted to write a dual narrative, so I did a loose beat sheet for each character to track how the plot will challenge and change their character flaw and allow them to seek out and accept love. This is a romance so that arc is the driving arc of the story. And for me, plotting the internal change is far easier to plot than the external challenge that weaves around the two protagonists and keeps them together long enough to fall in love.

Discovery: I work best when I pace my plotting and weave it during the writing phase.

I learn about character through writing scenes. By the time I plotted to the midpoint, I felt I didn’t know enough about each character to pull me through the hardest section to plot - the second half of the second scene.

I learn about plot through the ideas that come to me when I write scenes. As I write and the scene surprises me it might suggest a way to play something out later or the need to set up something earlier. This affects both the plotting and the revision.

I really like to plot in chains. I like to figure out a section at a time. Then write it and ride the riff so to speak to see what comes up as I’m writing. Then the next section is easier to figure out rather than trying to plot it cold.

Originally I’d thought I’d plot the entire book out and then go back to write it. But for me, the second half of the second act is where it gets always gets hard. And writing scenes contain so much discovery of both character and plot that it felt a waste to force the plot that might change as soon as I started writing. So I shifted gears.

It made sense to plot through the midpoint so I would know what I was writing towards. And by the time I caught up to the plot, I might know better what I have to work with in the second half of the second act when the characters begin to be squeezed.

So I stopped plotting at midpoint and started writing. I continued plotting between times as I got an idea or as one of the characters revealed something useful. When I caught the writing up to the midpoint, I took a day to plot out the rest.

Now that I’m there, I’m changing the plot as I go. Like this morning. My characters took over yesterday. What was supposed to be a kiss scene turned into something much hotter and more involved. Then today I had to rework the last scenes – I have 12 more to go – in order to figure out a way to keep them apart till the end of the book.

Discovery: Not a pantser, not a plotter. I can use the best of pantsing and plotting to reach my goal.

Does that make me a plotster? A panter?

30 Days to Write

I am shooting for a 60k word novel so during the writing month I would need to write 2000 words per day.

That’s not that big of a deal any more. I’ve started pushing my daily word counts the last few years. And I write more than 50,000 words for NaNo month every year. If you’ve succeeded during NaNo, you can see that every year you win, it becomes easier to win the next time.

But for this challenge, I deliberately worked against the NaNoWriMo adage I’ve always used – just get the words on paper. When I do NaNo each year, I plot, I write, I develop character and I count all those words toward my 50k.

In my coaching practice, my clients learn to challenge their process – or change the challenge. In our freewriting practice, for instance, once a 30-minute timed writing is easy, then the idea is to challenge yourself to do forty-five, or twenty. It’s the change that keeps the writing fresh.

So with my 90-day challenge I decided to count only finished scene words. I wanted my scenes to be like the ones I might take to a critique group. Not the slap-dash of a first draft or what I produce during NaNo. Because plotting days and revision days are part of the challenge so wherever I can cut time out of the process, I need to try.

Discovery: With the 90-day public deadline and the need to get the scenes down right the first time in order to save time on the revision, my scenes are coming in cleaner on the first try.

Writing really is exercising a certain kind of muscle. And it’s trainable.

30 Days to Revise

I’m not at the revision stage yet, but I’m already jotting revision notes at the top of scenes I already wrote. When the plot veers I go back to the pertinent scenes and make highlighted notes at the top of the scene so I can revise later.

Then, just today, I found “Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels” by Gwen Hayes. So I’ve taken the entire day to look at the plot and rework scenes that don’t fit into the beat structure she lays out. My plot did fit Snyder’s Beats, so I’m not that far off, but I can see now I was drifting to focus on the external arc and letting the romance arc slide. After comparing what I had to what she lays out for a romance, I’m with her on her beats.

I haven’t attempted romance in years. It was great to find out that I’m good on the beats until almost midpoint. Then… So it’s back to the plot for a bit while I figure this out. But I’m ahead of schedule and this will save me time in the revision stage.

The takeaway from the challenge so far

My clients, who are watching and cheering from the sidelines, are beginning to look at their own process. They know that this will be my next course offering and I’m going to challenge them to try it. So I’ll issue a challenge here to you – how well do you know your process? How much have you challenged your process and tried something new?

Here are my stats at day 36 so you can see where I spent time and what I achieved:

• Total days spent on the project so far: 36 days
• Average time spent per day: 3 hours
• Exclusive days spent on character development: 3 days
• Exclusive days spent on plotting the arc: 9 days
• Plotting scenes and writing: 24 days
• Word total for finished scenes: 39,444
• See you next month when I’ll be in the middle of the revision.

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fifteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, 

Forty Minutes to Reach the Bridge

By: Natalia Brothers

I confess: I’m obsessed with spooky, atmospheric settings. When I travel, I’m on lookout for places full of eerie charm, intensity that would stir my imagination and inspire a new story. One of such spots is a pastoral village where I spent my childhood summers.

The settlement has changed over the years. A new highway slashed the sprawling fields behind the gardens. Beavers moved in, built dams, altering the flow of the river, and disappeared, leaving behind dozens of downed willows.

But other things remain the same. In May, nightingales’ intricate whistles fill the night and the orange full moon peeks through the birches before beginning a hurried journey across the black sky. The cemetery on top of a hill grows, but its crawling edge doesn’t affect the aura that lingers under ancient lindens, where the rusted fences guard abandoned graves, and forget-me-nots and lily-of-the-valleys are lovely against the thick carpet of moss.

An avid photographer, my childhood friend Olga wants pictures of the church in the soft light of the setting sun. Alex, my cousin, gives us a ride on his lovingly restored 1976 motorcycle. The old machine grumbles and sputters but makes it uphill. Alex offers to wait and bring us home. We ask if he’d like to join us on a walk. He glances at the graveyard and shakes his head.

He knows what kind of stories I tell. He doesn’t understand why my genre is dark fantasy. I smile. He’s proud I took the picture for my book cover on one of our motorcycle rides.

Our homes are just across the river, but I warn Olga that the rains have damaged the bridge. We have forty minutes to reach it before dark. If we don’t make it, we’re in trouble: there are no shortcuts through the overgrown meadows peppered with hidden waterholes, curtesy of the beavers. And I’m not ready to walk back through the cemetery long after sunset. Thin trails zigzag among the plots, some of which are well maintained but others neglected. It’s easy to end up in a dead end between fences.

Alex leaves. As Olga and I take pictures, the approaching dusk changes the quaint atmosphere. The shrubs, heavy with moisture after a recent shower, and blue columbines blooming by a tiny abandoned house seem too quiet. Someone dumped discarded wreaths onto the dilapidated porch. I check my watch. Olga turns off her camera.

We leave the church yard, cross a stream, and enter the labyrinth of graves.

“Fifteen minutes till darkness,” I tell Olga. “We must hurry.”

Except, we lose our way. We left the main trail too early, took a wrong turn, and now every path we try leads us to an older part of the cemetery, under the canopy of the old lindens, away from the bridge. It’s hard to see the deep-green ground. I trip over a border stone of a forsaken grave and realize I’m still wearing my dark glasses. Olga giggles nervously. She looks around. “I know where we are,” she says and points at another grave. I recognize the picture. We used to play together when we were children. Olga and I bow our heads and stand in silence. Then she leads me out of the maze.

We pause on the hilltop, the darkening sky and the cemetery behind us, the river below, and the vast fields ahead, framed by a forest on the horizon. The slope under our feet is covered with lupines that will soon burst in bloom. In a week, the landscape will look like a colorful painting.

It’s nearly dark when we reach the bridge. We tread carefully on the rickety structure.

I’m a dark fantasy writer. I better take more pictures.

About the Author:  Born in Moscow, Natalia grew up with the romance and magic of Russian fairy tales. She never imagined that one day she’d be swept off her feet by an American Marine. An engineer-physicist-chemist, Natalia realized that the powder metallurgy might not be her true calling when on a moonless summer night she was spooked by cries of a loon in a fog-wrapped meadow. What if, a writer’s unrelenting muse, took hold of her. Two of her passions define her being. Natalia is an orchid expert and she writes dark fantasy.

​The 90-day Genre Series Project

By Deb McLeod

For as long as I’ve been a writing coach I’ve been focused on the novel-writing process. I’m always looking for new ways to produce work faster. For me and for my students.

If you know me at all, you know I’m a hard core Blake Snyder fan. I use his methods to create my structure, to revise against, and even when I’m story editing someone else’s work.

Since discovering Snyder’s Beat Sheets, I get story in a way I never did before. And, because I analyze published novels for their beats, I am improving my screenplay-to-novel understanding and finding my personal differences with using a screenwriting tool for novels.

Recently, I launched a pilot program called the Genre Series Project with two of my students. The three of us are working on launching a genre series. I’ve chosen to write a romance that ties into one aspect of my sci fi/ fantasy, The Julia Set. As we’re working on our projects, we’re studying and perfecting our process so we can turn out series work faster.

My goal is to write a 60k book from idea through revision in 90 days.

The plan:

• 30 days plotting and character work
• 30 days writing scenes
• 30 days revision

So far, I’m on track. Sort of. I spent the first 30 days getting to know my characters and setting up the situation that would keep them in the same place so they’d have time to fall in love. I plotted using Snyder’s beats and got through to Midpoint, some of the second half of Act 2 and the last few scenes.

I had planned to plot the entire book and then start writing, but I discovered that as a former pantser, I still rely pretty heavily on the discovery process in the actual writing to figure out the plot. I’m working on changing that. For me pantsing adds too much time to the equation.

But I am having a hard time seeing the second half of the second act where things start to fall apart and get serious. It’s as if that late second act is too far out for me to be able to see. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed that so I know it’s an area I will work on.

So, yesterday, since the first 30 days were up, I altered course and even though I wasn’t finished with the entire plot, it was time to start writing. So I did.

The best thing about planning is that when you start to write, it just pours onto the page. I just love that. I can handle the 2500+ words a day I’ve assigned myself. And, the 5-point scene arc I created helps me plan out the scene before I write, should I need it. So, for me, the writing month feels like it will be the easy month. It’s early, of course, but I’m loving the story and loving this process.

Since the first 30 days are over, I thought I’d do a recap after each 30 days in the hopes that my process might give you something you can use in your process. You’ll recognize some of this as Snyder and some as me.

Transformation and Growth Periods

I like Snyder’s way of looking at story as a character transformation. One of the ways I differ from Snyder is that I think each of the major characters is the star of their own story. And everyone is transforming all the time. So each of my characters gets their own beat sheet that tracks what they need to learn and where they are in their life, transformation-wise, while the story is taking place. Then I weave the two beat sheets into one that creates the story beats.

Story may be the record of a process of transformation. In fact, I think life itself as one great big transformation. One of the ways to get really good at recognizing transformation is to start to look at your own life as a series of growth periods. A growth period is when you are playing out some sort of event as a healing or a learning experience. In real life, we’re always in the midst of a growth period, or several overlapping ones. We face and master challenges and grow. If we don’t learn and change, we get the opportunity to face the same lesson one more time. And sometimes, that lesson is bigger and the consequences more dire.

As a writer, seeing life in growth periods has been an essential skill for me to learn. Sometimes it’s easier to look at someone else and identify what growth period you think they might be in. Or, if you have one of those friends who’s always getting into the same jams, or attracting the same guy, can you see what her growth period or lesson might be? If so, you can write a story about it. And show how it might transform if it was a story and not the sad shape of someone’s real life.

All transformation, both real and imagined, comes in three acts. There is an early period or preparation to any process. There’s the long hard middle where transformation is shaping or the lesson gets imparted. Then there is the painful part at the end when the character has to change. Or doesn’t. If they do change and master the growth period – there’s a happy ending. If they don’t master the growth period, it’s a tragedy and the energy of that end is that while this growth period is over, there’s more on that to come.

Spence and Lila

So when it’s time to look at the character arc I ask a few questions. To use an example, I want to talk about a book that has stayed with me a very long time. It’s called “Spence and Lila” by Bobbie Ann Mason. It was published in 1989. I’m pulling this from memory as I don’t think I have this book any longer - it was given to the library in “Deb’s Great Book Armageddon of 2004” when I gave away a pickup truck full of my books. But here’s what I remember:

The story is a quiet one about an older couple in the Midwest. It’s from Spence’s point of view. He’s a curmudgeon. That sour old man, a farmer who’s tired and cranky. His wife, Lila, has to go the doctor to have a lump tested (or maybe removed, I don't remember). Through the course of the story, Lila may or may not be sick, but the experience forces Spence to stop being so sour, to unfreeze and face the fear of death that has been plaguing him. He learns to appreciate the love he has, and has had, with Lila for however long he can still have it. The story brings Spence into the gratitude of the present moment.

Primal

Blake Snyder refers quite a bit to creating a “primal” connection with your audience. Your character needs to be going through something primal. But I want to be sure you understand that this doesn’t mean drama, drama, drama, or the biggest drama you can think of. It merely has to be relatable to your audience on a primal level.

Look at Spence and Lila. That’s primal. This couple is getting old. Death is coming for us all. So while the story is one that takes place over a short amount of time, and concerns one man's life and his love for his wife, it's primal.

Stasis = Death

Another caveat Snyder talks about is Stasis = Death. What he’s referring to might be a literal death, but more often it refers to the death of some part of the character’s life. Maybe the death of a dream or a relationship, or their self-respect, etc. Some sort of death is on the line in a primal way.

Stasis means “things staying the same.” And death means death, as in, if things keep on keepin' on like they are, some part of somebody is going to shrivel up and die. And even though the protagonist doesn't really want to get up off the couch and fix it, the story is going to make that happen.

So here are some questions to ask while you’re in the character planning stage:

Where is your character in the beginning of the story? – In “Spence and Lila,” Spence is busy. He’s annoyed at his wife’s doctor’s visit and the implications of it. Annoyed to think that his wife might really be sick. So he doesn’t think of it. Doesn’t face it. He just grumps about everything else.

What is the stasis? - Spence is frozen in fear and doesn’t even know it until later in the book.

What is the death? - Since he and Lila are getting older, death is a reality. Since Lila is sick, death is coming. So if Spence continues to do what he’s doing, he will waste whatever time he has left with his wife. When she dies, he will be sorry.

Where does the character end up? - Spence resists but finally thaws and the story ends on a beautiful note of love.

This is one of the tools I used for my character work this past month. When I had the answers to those four questions, I was on my way to developing the story my characters would live through and grow from. Can you answer these questions for your novel? And, please, if you have anything to share about your process, chime in on the comments. I’m always learning and sharing. Writing doesn’t have to be a solitary occupation.

Stay tuned for my analysis next month on how the writing month went. Can I finish this book in the next 30 days? That’s the goal.


About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fifteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, 

The Drive to Write: Do you have what it takes?

By: Deb McLeod

Image courtesy of Flickr: Nicolas A Tonelli

My husband, John, and I watched the movie “Whiplash” a few days ago. If you haven’t seen it, you must.

Short synopsis that only includes what I need for this article: A young drummer at a premiere conservatory is pushed to excess by his teacher. But the drummer wants it so he takes the abuse until he snaps and attacks the teacher and the teacher ends up getting fired. Student and teacher meet later at a jazz club and over a drink the teacher confides the following: (Note – the F bomb has been edited out – a few times.)

Truth is I don’t think people understood what it was I was doing at Shaeffer. I wasn’t there to conduct. Any moron can wave his arms and keep people in tempo. I was there to push people beyond what’s expected of them. I believe that is an absolute necessity. Otherwise we’re depriving the people of the next Louis Armstrong. The next Charlie Parker.

The story rests on the fact that Charlie Parker was laughed off stage in his young career but that only made him more determined. The teacher, Tucker, cites the logic that if Parker’s teacher hadn’t humiliated him and Parker hadn’t gone back to practice and practice and practice so he would never suffer that humiliation again, there would have been no “Bird.”

Tucker, expresses his frustration at the students who give up, who don’t take it seriously, who don’t practice. The students who have no drive.

As a writing coach I understand the frustration. I have had clients whose voices could make you weep – there are scenes I still remember hearing in my writing circles that I can almost quote. What really makes me weep is that many of those incredibly talented writers aren’t writing any longer.

The hardest part of my job is to fan the passion and drive in the writers who cross my path. Generally they come to me with the passion already lit. But, many of them prove they don’t have the drive.

Since I saw “Whiplash” I’ve been wondering how you fan that drive. What makes one writer slink away after a humiliation or a rejection and another try harder? Why is it so hard for most writers to close off the noise and focus on their work? Because that, my friends is the number one reason the clients who stop writing, do stop writing. They cannot or do not want to close off the noise and focus on the work.

I used to tell clients if you can live without writing then you should. I’ve mellowed on that a bit, but maybe that needs to be resurrected again. Writing is hard. The apprenticeship is long. It may not ever be financially or critically rewarding. Is it ethical of me to encourage writers without sugarcoating the conditions?

Here’s an informal quiz you might take before you embark on this long journey into yourself. Answer these questions and see if you have what it takes:

• Do you enjoy life in your head?
• Do you have a knack for figuring out the plot in a movie or a book? 
• Is reading a fact of life? 
• Do libraries and bookstores make you feel warm and fuzzy, like long days with a fireplace, coffee, a pen and paper and no one home for hours? 
• Do you enjoy working in solitude – I used to say, pile on more work than I can get done and close the door on your way out. 
• Do you read with a deep purpose? 
• Does approaching a writing project excite you for the discovery of the project and not the result (fame, fortune and other fairy tales)? 
• Can you stomach the rejection? The criticism? The loneliness? The fact that an acquaintance and a worse writer than you has success first? 
• Can you close it all out and get lost in your stories? Do you want to? 

Can you live without writing? If you can, maybe you should. I really mean that.

I teach with positive methods rather than the negative of intimidation. I had teachers like that. The ones that signaled there was a club I didn’t belong to. And yes, to a certain extent, it made me try harder, if only so I could go back and thumb my nose at them when I had a NY Times bestseller. Well I haven’t had the bestseller yet and they have long since left the building. I write now for me. I write because it’s the thing I love most in the world.

As a coach and a teacher I happen to believe everyone has a voice and all voices should be heard. But does that encourage someone who doesn’t really have the chops?

When I think of what encouraged me, I can honestly say that it wasn’t a teacher at all. It was the fact that I can’t not write. I can’t live without books and movies. I love getting lost in a project. I love getting up at 4:30 and heading out to Starbucks to work on my novel for the next 5 hours. I love my client’s projects too. Many times more than they do.

It’s January. Time to reassess. What’s it going to take for you get in the chair, dig into your soul and pour it on the page? 

When you’re done, send it to me and we’ll celebrate it together. Then sit down and do it again.

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fifteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, see www.debmcleod.com.

Short Stories are Haunted

By: Deb McLeod

I’ve heard some new novelists say they want to practice writing by trying their hand at short stories before they dive into writing novels. Usually it’s a matter of time investment on their part. A novel takes a whole lot longer to write than a short story. Most, anyway.

While it is true both novels and short stories contain similar craft elements, and it is great that short story land presents a practice ground: Short stories are not mini-novels.

The most obvious difference is length. Shortened length means tighter focus. Tighter focus means deliberate selection. Deliberate selection and tighter focus bring short stories closer to poetry than to novels. Successful short stories rely on elements that are elevated beyond the craft basics.

Let’s start with the timeline

The timeline of a novel might encompass the time between birth and death; it might cross generations; or it might just cover a few important days in a life. Sometimes a short story’s scope can be as large as a novel’s, but usually the scope is shorter and only hints at the larger picture outside the story. The larger the scope the more finesse you must use in a short story to include it.

Novels often include back story, contain historical detail, plot lines and subplots that weave in and out. A novel might be told from different perspectives as it creates an entire world and invites you to explore. Novels are broad and question-answering. They transport you to a time and a place; hold you by the hand and say to you: What about this? Here’s why that. Here’s how and when.

Short stories can attempt the same, yet they are different. And not just shorter. They are the significant moment in the entire timeline of a story.

Joyce Carol Oates says short stories are haunted. They imply more than they explain. They are subtle and force the reader to infer. They are tight. And tighter still.

Think of “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. “How Far She Went” by Mary Hood and any story by Alice Munro. If you’re a short story reader like me, some of your favorites have haunted you forever. I just reread “How Far She Went” again and I felt the last image in my gut.

So how do you achieve the haunting in a short story so well that the story lives on in your reader for years to come?

Some of the craft elements that play a part in effective short stories and those short story writers need to master are:

• Tone
• Image
• Rhythm
• The objective correlative

Tone

At its core, what is the story about? How can you get that core meaning or question into every single word on the page? In the dialogue and the narration? Into the sentence length and paragraph break? The short story doesn’t have time to develop a feeling in the reader. The short story must contain the feeling in every single word.

In “The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot” by Charles Baxter speaks about tone as a matter of inflection.

Inflection is an alteration in tone or pitch of the voice. Alteration in tone can be the difference… between fighting words and a statement of love, using the identical phrase “You’re really something,” a completely meaningless statement without a tone or context to support it.

Shifts in tone alter the meaning, from sincerity to irony or exasperation to incredulity. Given sufficient urgency, our disbelief is suspended. When someone grabs you by the lapels, you tend to listen to what he says.

That’s what the tone in a short story needs to do. It’s the writer’s job to understand the story at its core and then deliberately pick each and every word to contain the emotion.

Image and Rhythm

The opening sentence of “How Far She Went” by Mary Hood is:

They had quarreled all morning, squalled all summer about the incidentals: how tight the girl’s cut-off jeans were, the “Every Inch a Woman” T-shirt, her choice of music and how loud she played it, her practiced inattention, her sullen look.

Right from the start we see image of the girl in the description. We understand where things stand between her and the unnamed narrator, someone of authority against whom the girl is rebelling. The image is clear in the sentence. The tone is disapproving. The conflict is there and hint of history is there as well. They squalled all summer.

If you read that sentence aloud you will also hear its rhythm. Look how long the sentence is. Doesn’t that match an entire summer of struggle?

Here’s the rest of the opening paragraph. In it you will see more images, more of the same tone and how the author uses rhythm:

Her granny wrung out the last boiled dishcloth, pinched it to the line, giving the basin a sling and a slap, the water flying out in a scalding arc onto the Queen Anne’s lace by the path, never mind if it bloomed, that didn’t make it worth anything except to chiggers, but the girl would cut it by the everlasting armload and cherish it in the old churn, going to that much trouble for a weed but not bending once—unbegged—to pick the nearest bean; she was sulking now. Bored. Displaced.

Notice also how much Hood gets into that one long, dissatisfied and grumpy paragraph from Granny’s point of view. Notice the voice says “unbegged.” Granny isn’t going to ask and she chastises the granddaughter for not offering.

I don’t know about you but I recognize the relationship a young girl has with the unwritten rules of behavior that many of us girls faced in our early life. By the end of the first paragraph I’m already feeling something. I’m identified with the girl who must be visiting her granny for the summer in what feels like some farm-like or rural setting.

Granny calls her ‘the girl.’ Granny boils dishcloths. She has beans to pick. She resents pretty much everything about her granddaughter, who doesn’t know the difference between a flower and a weed. Note the conflict and how much is contained in that first paragraph.

Read the paragraph out loud for the rhythm. Notice the image of the Queen Anne’s lace that is treasured by one and a useless weed for another. Two characters who will never see eye-to-eye. Until the end of the story, of course.

The Objective Correlative

Short stories gain a lot when they make use of the objective correlative. T.S. Eliot defined the objective correlative as a set of objects, situations or events which contain the formula for a particular emotion. One of the artist’s jobs is to find that formula that best expresses the emotion, but resists moving into cliché.

Think of the movie “Castaway.” Remember the painted volleyball, Wilson? And what it symbolized when it floated away at Tom Hank’s character’s lowest point while lost at sea? Think of Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and what he represented. Or, if you’ve read the Hood short story, think of the dog and what he represents. Each time the objective correlative comes in to play, and each time it’s combined with other symbolic elements in the piece, it is shorthand for the emotion the reader is to feel. Rain at a funeral brings up an emotion but is mightily overused.

Spoiler alert! In the Hood short story, the narrator uses an objective correlative throughout. Take the title of the work “How Far She Went” add to that that the granddaughter does try to leave but the roads are all too short. In the granddaughter’s point of view, she thinks there are no roads long enough to get far enough away. Add to that that her father has dumped her there with her grandmother not just for the summer but for school in the fall, too. The symbols of the road, of dead ends and the granddaughter vaulting over the chain link at the end of the driveway to run away. Then there’s what the grandmother has to do to save her (I won’t spoil this one). All of these are symbols add up to a formula that produces an emotion in the reader.

Then like the excellent writer she is, Hood closes the story with the grandmother walking back to the farm, measured and slow, like she does everything, and this sentence: “The girl walked close behind her, exactly where she walked, matching her pace, matching her stride, close enough to put her hand forth (if the need arose) and touch her granny’s back where the faded voile was clinging damp, the merest gauze between their wounds.”

This story started with two characters as far from one another as can be and ends with the granddaughter not fighting any longer, but emulating. So what is the objective correlative here? Read the story and see if you can identify it. What are the images, the plot twists, the sentences that produce the emotion the reader feels throughout the story? And how does Hood turn that in that last sentence?

A Process

I challenge my clients who want to write short stories, especially if they are novelists, to write everything out first. All the backstory, all the history, all the world, and more. Write until they understand the story and what they want to say. Then cull or rewrite the instants that absolutely need to be included. When that’s done, focus on the language, the symbols, think about the objective correlative and play with the music of the story. How can everything in those few words reflect what the story is about at its core?

To some, this kind of writing might sound like the most awful of chores. But to those of us who love short stories, the challenge to be brief and deep and musical is enticing; to study how each word plays off the previous and the next and how all of it might add up to a reader’s experience of the truth we’d like to leave behind; for those of us who are intrigued by that, there is nothing more rewarding than the challenge of writing a short story.

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fourteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, see www.debmcleod.com.

Bring Beth Back: The Walking Dead Conundrum

by Deb McLeod

I'm a Walking Dead fan. Also a writer who can't stop analyzing other people's stories. So I love the fearless writing of the Walking Dead series: the surprises and twists and how each and every character is fair game to die. In a story situation where the unthinkable has happened and life is raw and brutal, both hope and despair contain an element of desperation. Such is the stuff of rich drama.

For those who don’t know the series (spoilers ahead!) Beth, the reigning symbol of hope in a dark, dark world, was killed in the midseason episode of Season Five. That has spurred a fan petition and lots of media attention as desperate fans want the writers to bring Beth back. The National Report wrote that they were bringing her back, but The National Report is a satire site. So it’s anyone’s guess whether they really would reconsider resurrecting this character or not.

But there are some lessons in the situation for us writers:

1. How do you make the decision to terminate a major character?
2. The absolute importance of the quality of the “big” scene.
3. Written into a corner, is there any way out? 

Why did Beth die?

As a writer I can understand the decision to terminate this character, hard as it was for the fans. This is a world where naiveté and innocence can get you killed. And where one mistake has dire consequences. But this is also a world where the darkest dark gives rise to the brightest hope. Beth was the brightest hope on the show, but she died committing an impetuous action that the previous scenes did not support.

She acted out of character and when the shock of her death was over, the trust between the show and the fans was broken. I contend that the buildup to this twist was not properly in place for us to accept the situation that got her killed. It might have been, but it wasn't written well enough.

Beth was the character whose arc moved from a shy, innocent, but despondent girl, who tried to commit suicide, to the girl who was the face of optimism and hope. In Season Five her arc was supposed to move to blind rage at the injustices committed in the hospital where she was held captive. But the buildup was not there. And the action that got her killed just didn't jibe with who she was.

In one episode during that season, she gets angry and follows an evil doctor, ostensibly to attack him with a pair of surgical scissors because she knows what he did. But the rage she shows is cold and calculated (and outside of her character, too). They don’t develop the scene and her rage gets turned when she finds one of her group, Carol, being wheeled in, injured, on a gurney.

When Beth finds out that the leader, Dawn, is not going to help Carol, she doesn't go into a rage as some of the other characters on the show might. Instead she talks Dawn into letting Beth take care of Carol herself. And Dawn gives her the key to the narcotics cabinet to do so.

When Dawn insists that the boy Beth previously helped escape be returned in exchange for letting Beth go, Beth’s rage surfaces and she says “I get it now,” and stabs Dawn. Dawn reacts reflexively, shoots and kills her. Darryl, true to his character, instantly shoots Dawn dead. In one brief moment everything has changed. But I had to watch Beth’s death scene more than once to make sure I really saw what I saw. And I didn’t buy it.

Writing into a Corner

I think it’s great advice to write yourself into a corner and stretch yourself to get out of it, though I see from my research for this blog that many writers advise how to avoid writing yourself into a corner. But how will you know what you can handle if you don't?

Instead of taking the safe way, let’s look at the challenge of the follow up to this midway episode. I doubt they will bring Beth back for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the second half of the season has already been filmed. But what if they wanted to? Is there a way to write out of that corner?

What if you have done the unthinkable and written yourself into an impossible situation? What do you do? Do you rewrite the whole lead up to the dramatic scene that got you stuck and jettison that dramatic idea that got you there? Or do you try to salvage it in a way that will surprise and delight your readers?

Remember the character Misery Chastain from Stephen King’s Misery? Author and character, Paul Sheldon, brings Misery back to life by showing she wasn't quite dead but was buried alive. (Probably believable, she’s character in a romance novel that “died” giving birth and the father of her child is the question of the book. I would say she would have had to come back.)

The TV series Dallas had a character dream the whole previous season so they could bring a major character back to life. (Not at all believable, but created a media buzz for a long time, though it ruined the trust of the fans.)

So what do you do?

The Process

1. Analyze who your character really is.
2. Really know the arc of that character and the subplot you've created to get them into that corner.
3. Look at the assets of the plot and the situation where you left them.
4. Brainstorm possibilities for the future. 

For The Walking Dead

The character, Beth, had an arc that moved from despondence over the loss of her world through numbness to hope and she was able to give that to other people. When they wrote her into a hospital that will only save those that can earn their keep and pay back the effort to save them, her character arc was supposed to develop rage and that’s why she stabbed Dawn and subsequently died. She didn’t handle the attack on Dawn very well, which makes sense, since rage was a foreign emotion to her. New skills require baby steps. But remember, in this world there are dire actions to the most innocent of mistakes.

So let’s ask some questions:

• What do they gain by letting her stay dead?
• What do they gain if they bring her back? 
• What are the assets of the situation? 
• If she stays dead, how will her death affect the other characters? 
• Is there anyone on the show that can take over the role she had? 
• Or is this the season where the group continues to fall apart? 

Online, many possible solutions are being bandied. One has it that Carol will simply have dreamed it. Another is that Beth will come back after aliens take over her body.

But for our purposes here, what is the most likely way to write out of this situation? Should you let Beth stay dead? Or bring her back in an attempt to balance out the dark with the light? If the decision is to bring her back, then how to do that?

If they want to bring her back, I contend that since she’s in a hospital, it’s possible to use that asset and have someone save her. The evil leader is now dead and the hospital will be manned by more humane people. The doctor she accused and might have attacked could save her if she wasn’t yet dead. Perhaps this is where the group will find a sanctuary like they had in the prison. Until something goes wrong, of course. And they meet an even eviler evil up ahead. If she can be saved, Darryl’s trajectory will continue along the hopeful line she brought him to. But where will her character go if they bring her back?

What if you leave Beth dead but use the death to bring the people from the hospital to merge with the group, thereby creating another group where hope exists. They can’t keep running into other groups who are purely evil, not unless there’s some balance. (They've had Woodbury and Terminus already.)

Or, they take her body and leave and the whole group succumbs to the rage she didn't quite feel. They might start a war with the hospital, vanquish it and take over themselves. (But they did that already with the Governor.)

Because my solution states an obvious way to bring her back, do my writer friends and fellow Dead fans have a more imaginative solution to bring Beth back to the show? And not as a zombie, a dream of Carol’s, or an alien being? Or should she stay dead?

(PS: If you’re not watching The Walking Dead and you can get past the squishy guts everywhere, as a writer, I highly recommend watching to see some daring and mostly successful story lines.)

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fourteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, see www.debmcleod.com.