Working a Book Scene - #AfricanAmericanromance #Blackwomenauthors #readingblack @LaylaWritesLove

By Lyndell Williams (Guest Blogger)

Original post: Layla Writes Love

Scene troubles may involve persistent issues with the plot's structure, or they may be thematic and restricted to one manuscript.

Author Achilles Heels

Narrative building in genre fiction is more than writing words. Generating a story idea and its execution involves applying numerous literary tools, following conventions (which differs between genres), and knowing when to break them. Some plot points may be easier for authors to draft.

A writer may fly through the beginning of the plot structure only to consistently stall in the middle. A weak middle can cause some execution stress when writing chapters and scenes. It's called sagging middle syndrome for a reason. Tension building can be arduous and traumatic, which is not good. The characters should be getting all flustered from drama, not the author.

Giving characters a satisfying resolution may be a problem in every project. Characters achieving their story's goal is only part of providing a gratifying end. I often read authors expressing that they don't want the story to end because they are so in love with the characters. The infatuation is sweet and common, but come on. Readers want an ending scene where those lovable protagonists find some level of equilibrium and contentment (or not), and antagonists get their comeuppance. It is the stuff that makes storytelling great.

Authors may have no trouble with the mayhem and solutions. For them, reaching the inciting incident and climax is a problem. Exposition is critical to grabbing readers and getting them vested in the characters. The opening scene needs to have a balance of description, characterization, and exposition that pulls readers in and hooks them into turning those pages or swiping that screen—not an easy feat.

Theme Issues

There are millions of journals and computer files with story ideas left unfinished for want of a scene that eludes or traps an author. The characters of my first (attempt at a) story are still in a damn hotel room. I tried to get them out, but no. They are just sitting there.

Maybe I will liberate them one day. Today is not that day. Authors get stuck in a scene for many reasons. Part of a story may not be flowing. The execution—getting the characters to do and say what you want—could be off. The scene's subject may be difficult to address.

Love scenes baffle a lot of writers, mainly the level of intimacy and description. My readers know I have no problem with turning up the heat.—

If the content is new or something that makes a writer uncomfortable (i.e., violence, abuse, etc.), it will affect the ability to write a scene. I had the hardest time with a domestic abuse scene in one of the Brothers in Law manuscripts. I was a little too comfortable describing the violence and heartache from the victim's point of view. I kept reining myself in for fear of being too graphic, and my writing faltered as I struggled between what I expected readers to handle and the character's experience.

I also had to tackle with my visceral responses to the pain and trauma. Scenes involving Toni and Marcus Kent’s struggle with infertility in my new release, Sweet Love, Bitter Fruit were very challenging, especially when Marcus had to carry Toni into the emergency room after a bad reaction to the in vitro medication. I shared his heartbreak. Check out an excerpt of the scene below.

If an author doesn't have any while they are writing, then there is something wrong. On top of the mental blocks I set up, I had to contend with shaky hands and a racing heart.

Struggling with scene content is more than writer's block. The writer may know what to write—the words and tools are all there—but the emotional toll may prevent completion. Talking it out and recognizing the reason that the keyboard remains silent for a particular scene helps.

Story writing is ripe with challenges, but none of them are insurmountable. So, stretch, grab a water bottle and dig in to give readers one.

Sweet Love, Bitter Fruit

By Lyndell Williams

Available at Amazon

Blurb

Harlem lawyer Marcus Kent fights for justice while preserving a stable, passionate marriage with wife, Toni. Smart and confident, he has it all together—that is until his world turns upside down.

Not only is someone stalking his sister, but an intern at work is also getting too close for comfort.

On top of all of that, Toni’s renewed infertility obsession causes them to continually argue, adding more strain and cooling off their steamy union.

Struggling with insecurities and yearning to have a child, successful psychologist Toni Kent looks to her husband for support. Unfortunately, relentless distraction and stubbornness prevent Marcus from being there when she needs him the most and jeopardizes their happy home.

After multiple failed in vitro attempts, Toni is ready to try again, but Marcus is done. He doesn’t want another headache or more heartache.

Excerpt

"Hi"—Marcus hovered over the nurse panting—“my wife is very sick,” he said over the sound of gurneys rushing behind him. He tightened his grip around Toni’s waist, his muscles burning as he strained to keep her from crumpling to the floor. He hefted her up further against his body, her head rolling against his chest. The emergency room sliding doors ground closed, drowning out her soft moan. “It’s gonna be okay, Sweetness.” He barely got the words out of his closed throat. They hadn’t been okay since the morning.

Toni had begun the day getting out of the bed and vomiting. He went for his run and returned to sounds of her retching over the toilet. She assured him it was a passing thing and insisted that he go to work. Her clammy skin and cold hands told him otherwise, but he left and spent the morning worrying and blowing up her phone. When she hadn’t answered a string of calls, he headed home and found her lying on the bathroom floor.

Her arms fell away from his neck and her body started jerking. “Oh, no,” he groaned. She couldn’t possibly be vomiting again. He pushed back the wet tendrils from her forehead and cupped her chin. Her mouth opened, releasing a rancid smell that reminded him of putrid meat. The drugs were rotting her away from the inside. He met the nurse’s stoic gaze. “Please, help her. She’s on fertility medication.”

“All right, just calm down.” She passed him a clipboard. A blank stare fixed behind her leopard print glasses, red lipstick on her thin lips made a thin line across her pale face. “Have a seat and fill these out.” She turned in her chair and started talking to the security guard standing over her.

He took it, resisting the urge to hurl it across the room, and struggled with Toni along a row of vinyl seats, mumbling “excuse me” as they bumped their way through outstretched legs. The scent of tobacco, alcohol and vomit sent his stomach reeling. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to be throwing up next. He flopped down and tugged her pants up her hips before pulling her onto his lap. There was nothing left that really fit her after weeks of weight loss. “I got you,” he grunted and shifted on the padded seat. The corner of the chair’s arm dug into the elbow he propped on it for support. He widened his legs and sank into the chair. Her staggering breath rushed against his neck. His head throbbed in rhythm with his pounding heart. Things were the worst they had ever been.

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The Hook - #beginnings #amwriting #authorcraft

 Image by Elien Smid from Pixabay

If you don’t grab your readers’ attention in your first paragraph, you’ve lost them.

Well, that’s what the experts say, at least. Like all absolute statements, this one awakens my critical side. Certainly, I’ve read, and enjoyed, many books that began with a whimper rather than a bang. On the other hand, an effective, engaging opening can make the difference between someone buying your book or moving on to the next author.

Here are the first two paragraphs of one of the best books I’ve read in the past decade, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern:

The circus arrives without warning.

No announcements precede, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

I had heard nothing about this novel. Seeking a birthday gift for my husband, my attention attracted by the dramatic black and white cover, I picked it up from a bookstore table. As I often do, I read the first page to gauge the style. I was hooked. I had to know more. Later, I bought several other copies as presents for friends and relatives. I’ve recommended it to many other people.

An author’s dream. All because of that dynamite opening.

Of course that’s not strictly true. If the rest of the book had not been as amazing as its first page, I would not be singing its praises to all and sundry. On the other hand, without that hook, I might never have read it at all.

This incident occurred in a bricks and mortar bookstore, but the same phenomenon can occur online. Amazon and Smashwords both allow you to sample the first ten to twenty percent of the books they sell. I don’t know how often people flip through my first few pages on Amazon, but Smashwords gives you these figures. Many more people have sampled my indie books than have bought them.

Maybe I need better openings. Maybe I shouldn’t be giving you advice at all. On the other hand, I do feel that I’ve learned a few things since my first novel (which has a rather awful first sentence, based on my current evaluation).

So how can you hook your readers? How can you write more effective initial paragraphs? Here are some suggestions.

Stimulate the reader’s curiosity. 

Your first page can and should raise questions in the reader’s mind. What’s going on? Where are we? Who are the actors? What are their relationships?

Here’s the start of my short story The Last Amanuensis:

My hands no longer tremble when I pierce his papery skin. I've learned how much force to apply, how to tilt the hollow needle just enough to fill the tiny wound with color without blurring the line. I know what he can bear. I can read the change in his breathing that tells me he needs a break.

Although this one paragraph reveals a great deal, it also makes the reader wonder about the scenario. Clearly the narrator is creating a tattoo, but who is the subject? Who is speaker? He or she seems to have done this many times—why?

Provide a lightning introduction to your characters. 

We all know that great characters are the key to keeping readers’ attention. One way to open a tale is let your characters immediately speak up, so readers get a sense of their quirks, personalities, and motivations.

This is how my erotic suspense novel Exposure begins:

I strip for the fun of it. Don’t let anyone tell you different. It’s not the money. I could make nearly as much working at the mill and keep my clothes on, but then I’d have to suck up to the bosses. Here at the Peacock, I’m the one in charge, and I like it that way.

Only five sentences, but already we know quite a bit about Stella. She’s opinionated and self-confident, the total opposite of a doormat. She doesn’t care must about society’s judgments. She’s probably not highly educated, given her short sentences, colloquial vocabulary and marginal grammar. And she’s a stripper—a fact relevant to both the noir suspense and erotic aspects of the story.

Dump the reader into the middle of the action.  

I learned this from one of my colleagues, Kathleen Bradean. Years ago she critiqued a short story of mine. I knew something about the piece was not working. It felt leaden and plodding, especially at the start. However, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

Kathleen suggested that I throw away the first couple of paragraphs, starting the story smack in the middle of a scene. I followed her advice. The story gained new energy and with it, new interest. I found the change wrought by a relatively minor edit quite astonishing.

One way to get the reader involved in ongoing action is to begin with a line of dialogue. I’ve been using this technique quite a bit recently.

“Haley’s back.”

Suzy might as well have stuck my finger in an electric socket. I forced myself to breathe.

(From The Late Show)

“Ginger? Do I taste ginger?”

“Uh—yes, that’s right, sir…”

“Ginger in coq au vin? That’s practically sacrilege, Ms Wong.”

(From Her Secret Ingredient)

“On the desk, Miss Archer. Arms out, palms flat.”

I should have realized Greg had something up his sleeve. Normally he hates big parties. His work requires him to interact with all sorts of people, but I know he finds it stressful. To relax he prefers more—how should I put it?—intimate gatherings. So I really should have understood he had some deviant plan in mind when he told me about the Halloween masquerade.

(From Coming in Costume)

Okay, so maybe I’m overusing this device!

Use short, direct sentences and pay attention to the prosody.  

Readers have limited attention spans, especially nowadays. Hence, all else being equal, you should keep the sentences in your first paragraph as short and direct as you can manage. I’d never recommend that you dumb down your English to increase the size of your market, but first sentences are almost like advertising slogans. They should be brief and catchy.

To enhance the impact, take advantage of the fact that repetition and rhyme stimulate parts of the brain not involved in the literal interpretation of words. These elements of prosody give sentences more impact and make them more memorable.

Consider the example from The Night Circus. The first sentence —the first paragraph—is a mere five words. The paragraph break provides a breath, a beat. The next sentence is longer, but the repetition carries it forward: “No announcements... no paper notices .... no mentions.” The next sentence also uses parallelism: “It is... it was...”.

Here’s the first sentence from one of my personal favorite stories, Like Riding a Bicycle:

My wife is on her knees.

Okay, I’m probably my own biggest fan, but I get a little chill when I read that, especially when it becomes clear that this is not (at the moment!) a BDSM scene. The stress patterns (three iambs) seem to me to perfectly fit the meaning.

So, in addition to the recommendations above, is there anything you should avoid in your openings?

Well, there’s Elmore Leonard’s famous advice: “Never open a book with the weather.” I’ve broken that rule a few times, deliberately, when the weather was an essential aspect of the plot or the setting, but in general I tend to agree. Perhaps I can restate it more generally: do not begin with a long description of things that are tangential to the story.

Of course there are always exceptions. One opening strategy mimics the common cinematographic technique of the wide pan over the scene, focusing in on a character. For instance, you might show us a narrow country lane winding between hedgerows, the sun setting behind the purple hills, the freshening breeze starting to stir the trees. Then, as we look more closely, we notice a lone figure just coming over a knoll, trudging along, weighed down with what seems like a heavy knapsack. We cannot see his face at first, but as the walker approaches, we realize it’s actually a young woman, dressed in jeans and a ragged jacket, a tight cap crammed over her lank brown hair....

This approach works well with an omniscient point of view, when you want to keep some distance between the reader and your characters.

I have a rule of my own, born of reading a lot of romance: never begin a book with your character’s name. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read that start something like this.

“Anna Wilkins shut off her monitor, leaned back in her office chair and closed her eyes. If she had to review one more report, she’d scream.”

“The clang of an alarm woke Reggie Borden from a restless sleep. He was on his feet, pulling on his work pants, before he realized it had been a dream.”

This is a personal peeve, but I find this sort of opening (which is very common) really annoying. It’s even worse when the author feels inclined to tell us, in the very first paragraph, about the characters’ occupations, appearance, relationships, and so on.

“Anna Wilkins, CEO of Anastyle, Inc, shut off her monitor, leaned back in her office chair, ran her fingers through her blond curls, and closed her sapphire blue eyes. If she had to review one more report from Mark Reynolds, her ambitious Director of Sales, she’d scream.”

“The clang of an alarm woke veteran fire fighter Reggie Borden from a restless sleep. He was on his feet, pulling on his work pants and slipping the suspenders over his broad shoulders, before he realized it had been a dream—a dream about Linda and that terrible day two years ago.”

Rather than making the reader curious, authors who start their books like this seem to feel the need to convey as much information as they can, as early as possible.

Resist the urge to explain, especially in the first few paragraphs of a story. Make the reader wonder who these people are, what they are doing, and why. The reader doesn’t need to know, right away, your characters’ names or what they look like!

I’ve counseled brevity, yet here I am on the fifth page of the essay. Guess I should stop!

In fact, I often have trouble with endings. I’ll talk about that some other time!

Patterns in Time: Character Lifelines and Story Structure - #amwriting #craft #storystructure

 Image by Jakub Luksch from Pixabay

When I’m reading or critiquing fiction, I find myself particularly sensitive to the temporal structure of the story—the flow of events through time. Effective structure provides a feeling of unity, even if the story does not follow Aristotle’s strict definitions (one action thread, one location, a time span of no more than one day). In a well-structured tale, each event links strongly to the others. Each scene contributes to the whole. Characters grow and change according to organic, believable trajectories. The plot may be intricate and complex, but the resulting impression is one of satisfying coherence.

In contrast, poorly structured fiction may include unexplained gaps, extraneous events, unsettling jumps from one time to another or one character to another, shifts of perspective that don’t tie back into the overall narrative. Another characteristic that reflects poor structure is a story that continues long after it should have ended, dawdling along when the conflicts have already been resolved and the outcomes are no longer in doubt.

The skill with which an author structures her work has a major impact on my enjoyment. Yet this is an aspect of craft not often discussed. In this post, I want to consider some of the different patterns a story may take through time, suggesting when or why you might want to adopt each one. I’ll also consider the potential pitfalls in each approach.

Let me begin by defining story structure. In my view, story structure is the ordering of events that affect characters, as they are presented in the story. This includes potential shifts between focus characters. Two stories might have the same basic plot and characters but employ very different structures. Consider, example, the ever-popular fairy tale Cinderella.

Structure 1: Cinderella’s father remarries, then dies. Cinderella’s step-mother and step-sisters relegate her to the role of kitchen slave. A herald arrives at the door announcing the Prince’s ball. The evil step-family heads to the ball, leaving the ash-smeared girl crying at home. Cinderella’s fairy godmother appears to comfort the girl and provide the necessary fashions and transportation for Cinderella to attend the ball, where the Prince is smitten and waltzes with her all evening. At the stroke of midnight, as the enchantment dissolves, Cinderella flees, but leaves her glass slipper behind. The love-lorn Prince appears at Cinderella’s home, searching for the mysterious beauty by trying the slipper on each young woman in the kingdom. The shoe fits and Cinderella’s identity is revealed. She marries the Prince and they live happily ever after.

Structure 2: Cinderella scrubs the pots in the scullery. She hears the royal secretary knock on her step-mother’s front door and announce the Prince’s search for the mysterious beauty who fled from him at midnight. Cinderella remembers in wistful detail her triumph at the ball, the thrill of dancing in the Prince’s arms and the terror at having her lowly identity revealed at midnight. She listens at the kitchen door as the step-sisters fail to fit the slipper. Gathering her courage, she emerges and requests a chance to try on the shoe. Her lovely little foot slips into the crystal slipper, the Prince claims her as his bride and they live happily ever after.

Structure 3: It is the day after the ball. The Prince muses in his room, refusing to eat, remembering the gorgeous young woman who fled from him at midnight. A retainer arrives, telling him about finding the isolated crystal slipper on the road leading away from the castle. Meanwhile, Cinderella is scrubbing pots in the kitchen, sighing at the recollection of her prince, sadly sure she will never see him again. She hears his voice outside in the parlor as he arrives at her step-mother’s home with the shoe. Gathering her courage, she emerges from the kitchen and asks to try the shoe. The Prince recognizes her immediately, before she’s even made the attempt. He sweeps her into his arms for a kiss, claims her as his bride, and whisks her away to the palace where they live happily ever after.

The three examples above represent three frequently-encountered temporal patterns. Structure 1 is linear. The events are presented more or less in the order they occurred. Furthermore there is a single focus character, Cinderella.

Structure 2 is what I call a loop-back. The story begins part way through the temporal sequence of events, then via a recollection or a flashback, recounts earlier events that led up to the present, before moving on. Once again, there’s a single focus character.

Structure 3 illustrates a parallel structure, in addition to a loop back. There are two focus characters. The narrative shifts from one to the other and back. In this example, the events experienced by each character are concurrent (that is, they cover the same basic stretch in time), but parallel structures can also be used for temporally disparate events, as long as there’s a strong logical or emotional connection between the two event streams. For example, my novel Incognito uses a parallel structure in which Miranda’s sexual adventures in the present time mirror the confessions she reads in Beatrice’s Victorian-era diary.

Even given the mere outlines above, a reader gets a different feeling from each structure. The first follows the simple, traditional course of a fairy tale. Each event triggers the next in a sequence. The second, in contrast, feels more modern, and perhaps, more interesting. If one were not already familiar with this plot, this structure might generate more suspense. The third structure produces a major shift in intent. The Prince changes from a mere appendage to the plot, the medium for realizing Cinderella’s dreams, to a character in his own right. The parallel time streams, if implemented with skill, could have the reader wondering whether, in fact, the two characters’ goals and desires will converge. (If, like me, you’d recently enjoyed the film “Into the Woods”, you’d recognize that this convergence might not be inevitable!)

These three basic structures can be combined and ramified, especially in longer work. In the hands of a skillful author, temporal patterns can become very complicated indeed (consider Audrey Niffenegger’s astonishing novel, The Time-Traveler’s Wife). On the other hand, playing too fast and loose with the ordering of events can produce a narrative disaster, confusing your readers and diluting the impact of your stories.

When might you want to use each of these basic structures? The comments below are suggestions, not rules, and represent my personal observations.

Linear structures work well for shorter work, for instance stories in the 3,000 to 5,000 word range. In these cases, you usually don’t have the word count to get fancy with time. Your focus is on your characters, their crisis and its resolution. Furthermore, in this sort of work, it’s often best to take Aristotle’s advice in stride and keep all the events within a relatively short time span—an evening, a day, a week at most. Short stories where there are large temporal gaps between scenes often feel awkward to me. The breaks in the action dissipate the story’s emotional intensity. What’s happening to the characters during those lapses in time? Has the crisis been somehow suspended?

Linear structure can also be applied in novel-length work, especially when maintaining suspense is important. If you write a novel in the present tense (difficult but something I’ve attempted several times), linear (or parallel linear) structure is the only possibility, since readers are experiencing the events at the same time as the character(s).

A linear structure offers the overarching advantage of clarity. It’s also simple to construct and to implement. Most novice authors intuitively use linear patterns when they begin writing. This is the structure most often found in oral storytelling, part of our ancestral roots.

The main risk in using a linear structure is boredom on the part of the reader. To avoid this, it’s important to select and describe only the events that truly contribute to the story, and to continually build tension toward the (narrative) climax. With a linear story, it’s also critical to recognize when to end the story, as noted above. Once the main conflict has been resolved, end quickly. You do not necessarily have to tie up every single loose end.

The loop-back pattern works really well in short fiction because it immediately throws the reader into the action. The initial scene, which needs some dramatic intensity to be effective, can snag the reader’s curiosity and trigger her questions, questions which will be resolved during the loop back to explain the genesis of the situation. I use this pattern a lot in my own work. For example, my story The Last Amanuensis, begins as follows:

My hands no longer tremble when I pierce his papery skin. I've learned how much force to apply, how to tilt the hollow needle just enough to fill the tiny wound with color without blurring the line. I know what he can bear. I can read the change in his breathing that tells me he needs a break.

He's reached that point now. I straighten from my awkward position, crooked over his bared buttocks, and set the gleaming apparatus down on the bedside table next to the flickering candles. With Preceptors on patrol twenty-four hours a day, we dare not risk the gas lamps.

“Some water, sir?”

Moving with care so as to not to smudge my work, he twists to take the glass from my gloved hand and drains the contents. “Thank you, Adele.” The weariness in his voice sets up an ache under my sternum. Seeing what it costs him, I would dissuade him from this endeavor if I could. I've also learned, though, that it is useless is to argue with the professor when he has set his mind on something.

Hopefully, at this point, I’ll have the reader wondering. Who are these characters? What are they doing and why? Who are the Preceptors?

In this story, I use about 1000 of the 5000 words in the first scene. The next 2000 words explain the genesis of this relationship and situation, bringing the narrative up to the present (the time when the story starts). The final 2000 words move the tale forward toward its climax and resolution.

However, there are a variety of potential pitfalls in using this pattern. Balancing back story with forward action is probably the most serious problem. If the loop back takes too long or involves too much detail, the reader may lose the sense of immediacy evoked by the initial scene. One solution is to use multiple, shorter loop backs. This can work but risks confusing the reader.

Novel-length works frequently include loop backs/flashbacks to provide background on events or characters. The impact of these backward-looking sections depends on their frequency and length, but the same caveats apply. It’s important not to lose forward momentum. A novel usually has a more complex and detailed plot, so narrative trips back into the past may not have as much of a noticeable effect on structure or the corresponding impression of the readers, but there are exceptions. John Le Carré’s book A Perfect Spy, which I recently finished, flits back and forth across a period of about fifty years in the life of the main character. This could have been extremely confusing, but Le Carré made it work, gradually revealing the experiences that had brought his protagonist to his present state. 

 

Parallel structure is most effective in longer works, depending as it does on the existence of at least two focus characters or subplots. Usually (though not always), one of the event strands will be primary, while the other will provide a mirroring or contrasting perspective. Parallel structures are fairly common in romance, with alternating chapters offering the heroine’s and hero’s points of view. Books that provide contemporary plus historical narratives (like Incognito) offer another frequently encountered example.

What are the problems with writing parallel structures? Consistency can be one issue, at least in stories where two characters experience the same or related events. (Of course, a skilled author might deliberately introduce inconsistencies in order to reveal certain aspects of the characters.) Balance is another potential problem. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, parallel narrative threads do not necessarily have to have equal weight—length or thematic importance—but once the author has made a decision about the intended weight, she needs to be careful that one thread does not assume more importance than planned. In traditional romance, for instance, the heroine’s perspective tends to be more emphasized than the hero’s, even when the narrative alternates between them. If the hero’s story begins to take over, this may weaken the book.

One of my goals in writing this article is to point out how important it is to understand the temporal patterns we authors choose, not just in order achieve the effects we want, but also so we can recognize when we’re violating our own decisions. Extraneous scenes, time gaps, unmotivated shifts of focus and similar issues become easier to detect when we have some idea of the pattern we’re aiming for.

I don’t mean to suggest that story structure is always the result of a conscious decision. However, I’ve learned that when a story feels somehow wrong—awkward, flat, without a clear point—the structure is often to blame. Sometimes, playing with patterns in time, experimenting with a different structure, can dramatically improve the impact of your writing.