What is My Book About?

If you are having trouble figuring out what your book is about and what your main characters' goals are, I have several suggestions to help you clarify your thoughts.

One is to write a description of your novel as I do when I write a novel blurb description for a query letter or the back cover copy of the novel.

In a short romance, I usually use two paragraphs to describe the book, longer or more complex books three to four paragraphs. If some important point fits one paragraph better than another, don't feel as if you must follow my structure. Put it where it fits.  Interior and exterior conflict, especially, can be switched.  

First and second paragraph: Introduce hero and heroine and give simple plot set up.  What is the interior conflict of the novel? (What tears the hero and heroine apart emotionally?)  Examples are from my unpublished novel, THE LORD OF THUNDER.  Examples are bracketed.

KATE GRAEME, a professional landscape painter, has been hurt by a man who used her love to manipulate her, but she still retains her romantic ideals about love and marriage.  MORGAN DESART, however, has turned his own emotional hurts into a coldly cynical attitude.

Enthralled with each other, Kate Graeme and Morgan Desart want a permanent relationship but can't agree on the ground rules.  Kate seeks a loving romantic marriage, but Morgan demands a marriage of convenience with a prenuptial agreement.  Neither will bend emotionally.

Third and Fourth paragraphs: What is the exterior conflict of the novel?  What must both must achieve or defeat and what do they have to lose? This can include plot set up, place set up, the important secondary characters, and the villain. 

When they become trapped alone together on Morgan's island estate for a week, open conflict erupts as they seek to convert each other to their own viewpoint.  Morgan tries to entice her into a loveless marriage with his sexual mastery, but Kate resists this ploy and tempts him with romance and samples of a life together rich with love. 

In this war of sexual desire versus emotional need, both know one of them will have to give in before the week is out because the magic between them is impossible to withstand.

If you'd like more examples or your book isn't a romance, read my article on writing back cover blurbs.

If your book is still pretty vague in your thoughts, I suggest you try the Bova method for firming up your characters and plot.  Ben Bova's method is described in his THE CRAFT OF WRITING SCIENCE FICTION THAT SELLS. Yes, it's about science fiction, but it works with most popular genre fiction.  (More on Ben Bova’s method.)

The Bova book explains the dynamics and interrelated nature of plot, character, conflict, and background.    

The most important thing Bova explains is how character and plot interact with each other, and how character creates plot.  (Plot as a characterization device.)  He believes that the writer must examine her character and find his one glaring weakness and attack it through plot.  

The protagonist should have a complex set of emotional problems where two opposing feelings are struggling with each other--Emotion A vs. Emotion B.  (guilt vs. duty, pride vs. obedience, fear vs. responsibility, etc.)  

This conflict should exist on many levels.  In other words, the character’s emotional struggle should be mirrored in the action of the novel.  

In classic STAR WARS, for example, Han Solo’s cynical selfishness wars with his unselfish love for idealistic Luke.  Han’s ready to leave with his loot when the Alliance attacks the Death Star, but he risks everything to save Luke.  That emotional conflict is mirrored in the struggle between the two political factions as well as in the thematic two sides of the movie--the good and dark sides of the Force.

Bova's ideas have proven useful to me, not only in creating my novels, but also as an aid when I'm stuck during a novel.  When I can't decide where I'm going or have terminal writer's block, I reexamine my main characters’ Emotion A vs. B and realize where I've made a plot error so I'm able to start again in the right direction.  

I hope these ideas can help you focus your book.

How Long Should a Chapter Be

QUESTION: How long should a chapter be?

There is no "official" length for chapters.  Most run around 15-20 manuscript pages in genre.  I’ve seen chapters that are one page long to longer than 20 manuscript pages.  Category romances run a bit shorter.  Harlequin/Silhouette seems to prefer that all the chapters be the same length.  

The best rule of thumb is to end the chapter at your strongest hook/cliffhanger so the reader can't resist reading a few more pages to see what happens next.

The worst place to end a chapter is after solutions have been found, and the next disaster hasn’t started happening.

Formatting Interiors

 QUESTION:  I have a query about the correct way to convey internal thoughts and sounds.

According to the Chicago Manual of Style:  "11.47 Unspoken discourse: Thought, imagined dialogue, and other interior discourse may be enclosed in quotation marks or not, according to the context or the writer’s preference."

I gather whether quotation marks are used and which type varies from publishing house to publishing house. Is that correct?

The only times I’ve ever seen quotation marks used for interior dialogue in popular fiction is along the lines of -- 

“Brilliant move,” I said silently to myself.  

The standard method is to italicize the thought--  

The bell slipped out of my fingers and clanged loudly as it hit the floor.  I winced. Brilliant move, Byerly.

Some publishers, particularly of nonfiction, will state the stylebook they prefer, but most fiction publishers don’t.  In the case of no stylebook mentioned, use grammar correctly and be consistent.

In deep third POV, it’s quite common to have a fair amount of interior dialogue.

I ask myself whether the person is asking themselves a specific question or stating some fact to themselves. If they are asking a specific question, I put the question in italics; otherwise, I don’t.

I tend to avoid italicized internal dialogue because it breaks the reader’s rhythm, particularly if it’s done too much or too little.  Instead, I write so that I remain deep in POV.

For example, to remove the internal dialogue of my earlier example, I’d write: 

The bell slipped out of my fingers and clanged loudly as hit the floor.  I winced at my clumsiness.  

QUESTION CONTINUED:  I also have problems with the verb’s tense in internal discourse.  

She loosened her grip, so the rope slid through her hands and let her feet slide over the knot. Shit – rope burn. Her feet reached another knot. She clung to the rope, her body shaking, her palms sweating so hard they felt cold. This wasn’t working.

Should the last bit be This isn’t working?

ANSWER:  If  “This isn’t/wasn’t working” is deep POV, the sentence would use “wasn’t.”  If it’s internal dialogue, use “isn’t.”  

If you’re confused about the tense, pretend the internal dialogue is regular dialogue and speak it aloud to see if it sounds right. 

If it’s a thought, the tense remains the same as the rest of the narrative.

QUESTION CONTINUED:  If you’re trying to signify there is a sound made, does it go inside single or double quotes or can you use italics? 

ANSWER:  If the sound isn’t dialogue by a human or other living creature, it is italicized.

The cow said, “Moo,” and its bell went clank.  

No One to Talk to

 Last week, I wrote a post on characters having conversations with themselves so I thought I’d talk about similar situations in my own writing.

In my novel, STAR-CROSSED, my hero has no one but the heroine to talk to in the first part of the novel.  To cover topics he wouldn’t discuss with her, I didn't want lots of internal monologue or flashbacks which tend to be boring.  

What I ended up doing was letting him have imaginary conversations with his best friend.  Since he was also stuck in one place, I put these conversations at interesting locations from their shared past that showed more about the hero and his past.

The first conversation, for example, was in a bar on a Wild West style planet after the two friends rescued a sweet young thing during a bar fight.  The two characters shared a beer, talked a bit about the good ol' days, and the hero spilled his guts about what was bothering him.  

At other times, the best friend was the devil's advocate for one side of a choice that the hero was trying to make.  

If you do something like this, it needn't be as elaborate as an entire scene.  It can just be the mental presence of someone whose opinion the character either values or can't escape. Most of us, for example, can hear our mom or dad in our head reminding us to do or not do something.  

I’ve also had a character talk things out aloud to a horse he was grooming or a cat she was stroking.  The animal’s actions, as if commenting with a purr, a snort, or the shake of the head, gave a nice light touch as well as making the scene more interesting than internal dialogue.

If you want the hero himself as the other character, you should choose some aspect of him you want to emphasize. Say Dr. Indiana Jones--the scholar versus Indiana Jones--the adventurer.

Set up the use of the mental dialogue/scene fairly early in the novel or story so that the important scene when the character finally must make the big decision won't make the reader go "huh?" when the other side of his personality or an imaginary character shows up to discuss the matter.

In other words, have the mental character show up a few times so the hero can tell his other side to shut up or whatever.

Internal Dialog

QUESTION:  I am trying to write a dialogue scene in which a character is arguing with himself yet it seems that there are two distinct persons talking, almost as if the good side of him is arguing with the bad side.  What is a good way to show this?

You could do it like regular dialogue between two people.  The "real" character could give his better self some kind of snarky nickname which you could use as a dialogue tag.

Jon sneered as his other self.  "Why don't you shut up, Angel Fart. I stopped believing in virtue and nobility years ago."

"If you stopped believing, why am I here?"

Or you could do it like normal internal monologue but with the good Jon’s comments underlined/italics.

Jon fought to ignore his inner voice.  He knew what he had to do, and he'd do it.  He'd stopped believing in doing the right thing years ago.

If you stopped believing, why can you hear me?