Info Dumping and Modern Technology

I read a novel recently where characters researched other characters by using their smart phones to check out places like Facebook and the use the search engines for links.

To a certain extent, this worked.  The information was given in a tidy manner without some character thinking about his past or offering way to much information via dialogue, and these days, it’s a very common way to check someone out so it was realistic.

On the other hand, the writer went overboard with this technique by giving way too much time and attention to facts in a massive info dump at the very beginning and stalling the story for pages.  He also spoiled the reader’s fun of figuring out what makes this character tick and wondering about the dark hint some other character gives by mentioned the hero’s final Superbowl game.

Sure, the hero is a former NFL player, but the YouTube video of him accidentally killing another player during a tackle doesn’t have to be presented immediately if that information doesn’t inform the reader of what is happening at the present time.  Later, when the hero makes a comment about this moment changing his life, another character can watch the moment of YouTube.  

Just because information is easy to get for modern characters doesn’t mean that the reader needs all of it at the beginning of the story.   

Links of Interest

USE THE FIVE SENSES TO LIVEN UP DIALOGUE:

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2012/07/guest-author-jodie-renner-appeal-to.html

YET MORE FIXES FOR MICROSOFT WORD:

http://chiseledinrock.blogspot.com/2012/07/ms-word-common-mistakes-fixes-2.html

INTERNAL DIALOGUE, TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE?

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2012/07/internal-medicine-how-much.html

PROMOTING YOURSELF AT A CON:

http://blog.liviablackburne.com/2012/07/how-to-market-your-book-at-cons.html

WHAT TRADITIONAL PUBLISHERS DO AND DON’T OFFER:

http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-traditional-publishers-offerand.html

25 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE ANTAGONIST IN YOUR STORY (READ THE ENTRIES COMPLETELY.  THEY’RE FUNNY.) BAD LANGUAGE WARNING:

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/07/24/25-things-you-should-know-about-antagonists/

MARKET NEWS, MAINLY ROMANCE:

http://cindimyersmarketnews.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/romance-poetry-and-more-calls-for-submissions/

THE PITCH VERSUS THE QUERY:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-pitch-is-pitch-is-pitch.html

THE PICTURES YOU USE AS A BLOGGER CAN GET YOU SUED:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2012/07/blogging-authors-beware-you-can-get.html

TEN BAD WAYS TO START A STORY:

http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/2012/07/unhook-me-ten.html

MARKET NEWS, MAINLY SF/FANTASY SHORT STORIES:

http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/2012/07/sub-ops.html

Making Dialogue Work

QUESTION:  My critique partners say most of my characters sound alike in dialogue.  Help!

Cast all your characters with actors you are very familiar with so you can hear their voices when you write dialogue.  Unless you have a tin ear for speech, you will rarely have two characters sound alike.

Also, consider what part of the country or country of origin they are from.  Make sure their voices reflect that.  

Writing dialogue as what it sounds like rather than the proper spelling is frowned upon these day unless used very sparingly so don’t go overboard with phonetic spelling ("Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay.”--from HUCKLEBERRY FINN) or apostrophes to show words that are slurred together. (“If’n you think, I’s stupid.  You be wrong!”)

If you aren’t that familiar with a region’s speech, be very careful how you write it because it’s easy to stereotype or get it wrong.  For example, most of us in the Southern US don’t use “y’all” that often, and when we do in very informal speech, it’s plural meaning more than one “you.”   (Jennifer turned to her cousins and smiled sweetly, “Y’all come home with me and have some supper.”  Her voice turned frosty as she glared at her brother.  “You don’t come, period.”)

You should also consider social class and education.  Someone with a college education and an upper middle class background won’t sound the same as someone who never finished high school whose parents never finished high school.

Read your dialogue aloud or in your head to see if you’ve got different voices, or ask a few friends or family to read your dialogue like a play to see how it sounds.  

Another good test is one line of dialogue that isn’t attributed to who is saying it.  If a reader can tell who is saying it by how and what is said, then you’ve succeeded at your task.

Links of Interest

RESEARCH ARCHIVE INCLUDING PULP GENRE MAGAZINES:

http://www.unz.org/

WHAT THE READER WANTS FROM A STORY:

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2012/07/guest-author-lisa-cron-channeling.html

COMMON PROBLEMS WITH MICROSOFT WORD MANUSCRIPTS AND HOW TO FIX THEM:

http://chiseledinrock.blogspot.com/2012/07/ms-word-common-mistakes-fixes-by-terry.html

HOW TO KNOW WHEN AN IMPORTANT SCENE NEEDS TO BE CUT:

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2012/07/kill-what-what-to-do-when-you-need-to.html

WHEN THE EDITOR REJECTS YOUR CONTRACTED BOOK:

http://www.rachellegardner.com/2012/07/back-to-the-drawing-board/

REMOVING THINGS TO FIX A PROBLEM SCENE:

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2012/07/when-less-is-more-taking-away-elements.html?

USING QR CODES (THOSE LITTLE BOXES READ BY SMARTPHONES) AS ADDED CONTENT TO STORYTELLING:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/qr-codes-as-storytelling-tools_b54506

RESTARTING A STALLED PROJECT:

http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com/2012/07/starting-projects.html

Choosing the Traits of Traditional Monsters

When you write a story about monsters, legends, and myths, you have to decide whether you’ll use the traditional information or not.

Part of your decision will be determined by the choice of magic or reality.  Are your creatures real in the sense they make scientific sense and follow the rules of the real world, or are they magic based so they can break all the laws of science and the real world?

Another part of your decision is whether you embrace all the “facts” about your creature or not.

Take vampires.  Some of the common folklore traits are

• They are undead humans.
• Bright sunlight kills them.
• A stake made of a specific wood will kill them if it goes through their heart.
• They prey on humans by drinking their blood.
• They have fangs.
• They turn into bats or some other creature.
• Their reflection can’t be seen in a mirror because they have no soul.

In a reality-based story, some of these facts can be worked with.  Vampirism could be a type of blood virus, for example.

Other facts like shape changing won’t work without some serious fudging of science, and the matter of changing mass must be considered.  If a vampire can change into a bat, the bat must weigh the same as the vampire so the bat would need wings as big as a small plane’s to get off the ground.  

And then there are facts that make no sense whatsoever in the real world or a world with magic.  

If a vampire can’t be seen in a mirror because it doesn’t have a soul, does that mean that your clothes, toothbrush, and the wall behind you in the bathroom mirror have souls?  

I don’t think so, either.  

In defense of those who came up with this silly vampire notion, until the last two centuries, most people didn’t have a mirror, and the mirrors that were around were tiny and blurry.  

If you decide to change any of the important facts about your vampire or other creature, you need to give the reader some reason for your decision.  Your vampire can tell his new ladylove that he’s perfectly capable of walking in the sunlight, and the belief that he can’t has been a standard misinformation campaign by vampires for thousands of years so they can walk among humans without discover and can take prey during the day without the prey being aware of the danger.

Whether you use the traditional traits or not, be sure to think very carefully about them so they make sense within the world you have created for your creatures.

Links of Interest

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, SCOTLAND POST OFFICE DIRECTORIES (MORE USEFUL FOR GENEALOGY RESEARCH THAN WRITING BUT CHECK OUT THE REST OF THE SITE):

http://researchbuzz.me/2012/07/05/national-library-of-scotland-post-office-directories-collection

WRITING DIALOGUE:

http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/2012/07/can-we-talk.html

THE SOUND OF KINDNESS, (THE INFO ON LISTENING TO FIREFIGHTERS ONLINE IS OF MOST INTEREST FOR RESEARCH.):

http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/2012/07/normal-0-microsoftinternetexplorer4.html

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, AMERICAN REVOLUTION DOCUMENTS:

http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0076

CHECK LIST OF WEAK AND TROUBLESOME WORDS TO LOOK FOR IN FINAL EDIT:

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2010/02/re-write-wednesday-spit-shine.html

THE SMALL THINGS CAN GIVE YOUR STORY THAT EXTRA SOMETHING:

http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com/2012/07/mystery-in-everyday-miraclesguest-post.html

YET MORE FILTER WORDS TO AVOID:

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2012/07/youll-have-to-go-through-me-eliminating.html

THE ELLIPSIS:

http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/2012/07/style-maven-pucker-up-your-ellipses.html

FREE SOFTWARE FOR WRITERS, MAINLY PC:

http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/2012/07/zero-cost-ten.html

REMOVING THE USELESS STUFF FROM YOUR WRITING:

http://scotteagan.blogspot.com/2012/07/eliminate-useless-stuff-from-your-story.html

FIVE WAYS TO FIGHT EBOOK PIRATES:

http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/how-to-save-your-ebook-from-pirates_b24489

MARKETING TIPS FROM THE SENIOR EDITOR OF MIRA:

http://chiseledinrock.blogspot.com/2012/07/sr-editor-with-mira-erika-imranyi-talks.html

MARKET NEWS, MAINLY ROMANCE:

http://cindimyersmarketnews.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/calls-for-submissions-new-paranormal-romance-magazine-and-more/

Who Is the Main Character?

Figuring out who the main character is in your novel is often hard for the romance writer when both the hero and heroine are strong personalities. 

The simplest way to find out is to ask yourself who has to change the most in very important ways to reach her/his goal.  That person is the main character.

The main character should act to reach that goal, not have it happen to him/her as a matter of events.  

Why do you need to know? If you know, you can make the novel stronger by emphasizing that character’s changes. 

And when it comes time to market that novel to a publisher or the reader, you’ll know who to emphasize when you describe your novel.

Links of Interest

WHAT KILLS A SHORT STORY?

http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/2012/06/short-story-sins.html

DORCHESTER UP FOR AUCTION, AUTHORS MAY BE PAID:

http://ereads.com/2012/06/want-to-buy-dorchester-bid-against-amazon.html

HOLOCAUST RESEARCH RESOURCE, VIDEO, TRANSCRIPTS, ETC.:

http://dornsife.usc.edu/vhi/

THE PROS AND CONS OF WRITING A SERIES:

http://www.genreality.net/the-pros-and-cons-of-writing-a-series

THREE REASONS WHY A PROLOGUE WON’T WORK (VIDEO):

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2012/06/fridays-with-agent-kristin-episode-8.html

A QUICK LOOK AT THE TAG (LOG) LINE:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2012/06/quick-look-at-taglines.html

FORENSIC DENTISTRY RESOURCES:

http://writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/guest-blogger-jennifer-vishnevsky-forensic-dentistry-bite-marks

OUTLINING THE PLOT, NOT THE CHARACTERS:

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2012/07/going-both-ways-outlines-for-plot.html

MARKETS, MAINLY ROMANCE AND SCIENCE FICTION/HORROR:

http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/2012/07/sub-ops-ten.html

WHAT IS HIGH CONCEPT?

http://scotteagan.blogspot.com/2012/07/question-from-writer-what-is-high.html

PROMOTION, ANATOMY OF BOOK DISCOVERY:

http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/372-anatomy-of-book-discovery-a-case-study

WHY YOUR FIRST IDEAS ABOUT THE STORY AREN’T ALWAYS THE CORRECT ONES:

http://betweenfactandfiction.blogspot.com/2012/06/allow-yourself-to-think-of-alternatives.html

GETTING YOUR FACTS RIGHT:

http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com/2012/07/check-your-facts-maam-guest-post-by.html

RIGHTS VERSUS COPYRIGHT:

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2012/07/rights-vs-copyright.html

THE DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR:

http://www.alanrinzler.com/blog/2012/07/03/what-should-you-expect-from-a-developmental-editor/

How You Describe

I've written several blogs on how viewpoint affects what you description in a scene. For example, a character who is analytical will view a room differently from a creative person, and a cop walking into a room looking for a gunman will see it differently from an interior decorator.

The type of viewpoint character also affects how you describe what the character sees. In one of my novels, the main character is a professional landscape artist. I kept a list of paint colors beside me as I wrote her viewpoint because she'd be precise about color variations. She'd see another character's eyes as cerulean blue, not blue. 

If that viewpoint character had been an expert on antiques, the other person's eyes might be the color of Delft blue china. 

Using this kind of description also makes writing love scene description, particularly evoking the intense emotions of sexual pleasure, a bit easier and less cliche-ridden. I've used space imagery for a heroine who was an astrophysicist, shapes and forms for an architect, and colors and textures for that landscape painter. 

An expert will also see something differently than the rest of us. Imagine a mechanic looking at a car engine, now imagine someone who knows nothing about engines looking at it. The terms used to describe the engine in viewpoint will be as precise or imprecise as the character's knowledge. 

Always remember that description is as much about the viewpoint character as it is about creating a picture in the reader's head.