Zipping it, and Listening - working out Character traits

Using Listening Skills in order to Write in Unique Characters

Some people talk a lot. Others listen a lot. Most people are mainly one or the other. Both traits have their attraction. Usually opposites attract - as always, but as always - not for long. They can get bored of each other, and quickly go their separate ways.

But if you are looking for a way to learn about real life characters. Read on.

In communication, we need both in more-or-less, equal measures. Some say you have one mouth and two ears, and therefore we should use them in the correct proportions. There is some value in that advice, though hard for the natural talker. Because that would require more listening than talking ...which is near impossible.

I'm a talker on balance. But one of the benefits of age combined with intelligence, is that we learn as we mature. And I have learnt the value of listening more than talking. Although it is no easy feat, as talking comes naturally for me. Listening is hard work ....and could become a tad boring.

But for some years now, I have had some breakthrough, allbeit gradual. And I am pleased to have made any  improvement in any area of life.

However, I have another motive for listening.  

It has to do with writing.


Looking for character traits, in order to write in unique characters.

When you talk without listening, you don't usually learn anything new. I like to learn new things. Learning from books, other written material, films are all ways. But they are secondary ways. Not first hand.

Listening in conversation is not just another way of learning, it is primary and first hand. 


Learning directly from conversation is most valuable. It is holistic. And organic, in that we sift and add naturally while processing the information. In conversation, we are learning directly from another person, who is not a tutor. Not an academic. Not a professional.

The information in conversation is fresh. It is new. It is first hand. It is naturally monitored by our own brain processing the information. That makes it full of our own natural input, because we may knowingly or unknowingly, sift out what we don't like.


Ok, it has bias. And that can be a flaw in this method of gaining information.

But wait! There is purpose to this.

What is the difference between our own bias and that of some academic? There will always be some bias in information we get...from whoever. The thing is, in crafting a novel, we are the creator of that work, and the creator of our characters.

Therefore our own bias is allowed. Why should we have the bias and prejudice of any other? 

To this end, bias in conversation can be positive and beneficial.

If we give good feedback to the person we are listening to, and positive body language, we gain so much from the talker. Just by our listening in this way, the talker talks. They tell you more. And you form a rounded view of this character.

I am not saying that we should make a habit of treating everyone we meet in this way. Not at all. But how else can writers create interesting characters if not based on a combination of characters we come across in life?

We want our characters to be rounded. Three dimensional and human. Mind, body and spirit. Even paranormal, supernormal characters are based on very human characteristics, although exaggerated.

Which is why, listening is so important. We pick up not just information and chatter, but character traits, which help us to form our rounded, three dimensional characters. And they are not that easy to form in a whole novel. Beware - half formed characters can be most annoying to the reader. I run a reading group, and I know the annoyance.

For this end, when we listen, we should listen actively. The talker needs it in order to progress a  conversation of value. We need to respond actively and positively. Both are important.

Any form of body language - legs crossed towards the talker, smiles, nods, eye contact,
as well as small verbal interjections and hums of agreement - are all positive and active.

When we do this, we get the best from the talker, the informer, the person from whom we are learning about character. If we don't, we thwart our own learning process about unique characters. Because there is nothing more soul destroying to an intelligent talker, than a passive listener. Bored listeners are a no-go anyhow! The conversation withers.

The talker wants some response from them to know that their streams of words are not falling on dumb, or deaf ears.

If you have read this post, let me know what you think! Leave me a comment. 

Are you a talker or a listener? 


Are you one of the flexible few who are able to do both as the situation arises?

PAINS OF EDITING - Fixing the Story

Tightening the Structure 

My Distraction -
So far, I am not doing that well with the editing of The Jeweller's Daughter! I'm getting distracted with personal matters, family matters, domestic chores, and other "important" things...

My lovely son just got married - still on honeymoon, and I'm just about returning to a normal state of a balanced mind and body. It was a fantastic day though!

So! To date, I have done pretty poorly - got up to pg 48 out of 396.

But I must have edited the first few pages a dozen times ...Can't seem to leave it alone.

My Resolve and Focus for Draft 2 -
I have decided that in this draft, I will concentrate on the STORY. 

Fixing the story is crucial, before doing anything else, like sorting out character development, improving dialogue, working on language, even imagery, and historical content.


Here is my focus for the duration of this draft :-

1. Fill in the Plot Holes. 


As I already have subplots, I will not be looking to write in any more of them. Besides, I am already too close to the maximum words (now 114,758), so I don't want to add many more.

What I will be concentrating on, is reading and looking out for anything that seems incoherent, unbelievable, unexplainable, too good to be true, impossible, too bad to have happened, sudden goings on that need prior introduction - and fixing those.

Because The Jeweller's Daughter is set before memory of most alive today, 1918 Trinidad, a country and culture that most of my readership will not be familiar with, I will focus on enlightening them without teaching them. I will check that I am drip feeding information and facts, or showing it through one of my characters in their thoughts or dialogue. But I will not ignore the narrator's voice. My narrator will be doing some telling too, to provide some relief from continuous dialogue. After all, my narrator is the oracle - she has the last word where necessary. I have decided on that. And my personal preference as a reader, is a good narrator, one that fills in the blanks, fleshes out the backdrop, and puts things in context.

2. Pruning.

This has to be the hardest for me. I am a hoarder by nature. I don't give away my creations that easily, and I certainly don't like to discard anything....as it might be useful one day!

But, I will be strict with myself, and be on a permanent lookout for any piece of script that diverts the attention from what is important, what is useful, meaningful, and what is getting carried away or just going off on a tangent.... We are not playing psychological word association!

So there will be much cutting and pruning, and maybe burning of dead wood. (I might keep a few bits that seem genuinely useful for later in the plot).

My main focus here is to make sure that the plot deepens.

3. Lengthening and Shortening.

This is paradoxical, as I have already said that I will not be looking to lengthen the script. But some bits inevitably will have to be expanded on, whilst I prune away the weeds ...(and non flowering, non productive plants).

So as I edit, I will be on the lookout for any extra twists that are needed, and improving those that are not working well enough. I will also be looking at any description of scenes, background, and characters, that would develop, deepen, and sharpen the story.

I will let you know how I'm doing!

Thanks for stopping by.

Please leave me a comment. Would love to know what you think as a writer, or a reader.

Question to readers - What annoys you most when you read? 

My Editing, and Goals of the Opening Chapter

After 3 weeks of finishing the first draft of The Jeweller's Daughter, I started the first edit. It is amazing how each time I read the same paragraph I was able to change something. Something didn't seem right.

The next day, if I re-read the same paragraph, I could change it again. And again. And I did. This is not what I wanted.

So, I got fed up of it, and left it for another week, while I got on with some other writing, short stories, and two other novels I made a start on...different genres.

After a week, I returned to editing The Jeweller's Daughter, and the same thing happened! However, I persevered and got to pg 30 out of 361, before I stopped and started to look again at the beginning again. I don't know why I do that sometimes, but I fiddled and tweaked at it, as if I only had one chance at editing it.  I suppose it felt like scratching an itch.

Sometimes, you just have a feeling that something isn't reading right. And if you have that feeling, you worry. I felt that if I felt something was wrong with it, the chances are, that someone else might see it. And there could be some huge blaring mistakes and awkwardness in my writing.

In the end, I decided to search the internet for advice on editing. There is so much free advice and information thanks to Google, that it wasn't hard to come by.

Fortunately, I found some advice. It seems like good advice. And I have a gut feeling that it is good. Here it the gist of it ...

Goals of the Opening Chapter -

1. Grab your reader's attention in - 3 - 4 SECONDS.

2. Ground the reader in the setting - IMMEDIATELY.

3. Intrigue the reader with a character ...IN THE FIRST 5 PAGES.

4. Give the reader a puzzle to solve - ON PAGE ONE

5. Start with a SCENE, unless the novel is definitely about a character.

6. NO BACKSTORY in first scene, or first chapter.


So I decided to test my work to see if it passed this test, and read 5 pages of my work. It did not fulfill the above criteria,and included much backstory in Chapter One.

Conclusion - I am re-writing the first three chapters, incorporating this advice.

I will let you know how I got on!

THE END

Yesterday, after another 3,300 words, I got to the end of The Jeweller's Daughter!! Hurray! Couldn't believe it. But it was not exactly as I had planed either. The characters took over and and took it to where it should stop. In fact two of them changed the ending slightly. And I think it is probably right.

Of course this is not really the end. I know that. This is just the end of the first draft. But it is where I take a breather. Where I can do something else. Make bread. Do some gardening. Help out with my favourite charity. Write a short story...something I don't do much of, but should. Or, start on the next book...

Good News!! ...Recently I entered a short story competition and a few days ago I got short listed! That is a first. Will not know for another month how that goes. So that has given me some incentive to do some more short story comps.

The next stage after I put it away for a couple of weeks, will be to start the editing. I am trying to look forward to this part. I need to layer my writing with historical happenings to make sure it looks and sound authentic to its time - 1918-1919 Trinidad.

Must go! Thanks for reading my post. Drop me a comment!

Bye for now
Marilyn x

A Thought about Endings

WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING AS I TRY TO WRITE THE END

For the last few weeks I thought that I was close to writing the last scene of The Jeweller's Daughter. Today, I still haven't finished it. And it is not for laziness. I have been writing between 1,500 to 3,000 words a day for 5-6 days a week. What happened, was that I seriously underestimated writing the end.

Some time ago I realised that the last few chapters were probably the most important, and would be the part of the novel that would leave the reader with the biggest impact. I came to this conclusion after reading so many reader reviews on Amazon, and getting the impression that their star ratings were often dependent on what the reader was left with at the end - the feeling, the thoughts, the satisfaction, the turmoil, the disappointment, the joy. When the reader was disappointed at the end, they seemed to give low star ratings.

Whilst beginnings are important for the purchase decision of a book, and the middle is important to keep the reader sustained in anticipation of better things to come, the end is the pinnacle of expectation.

As a reader, I feel that a poor ending, a poor last few chapters causes many poor reviews. Readers don't like writers to rush the end, or to leave it too predictable without enough twists and turns to what is a predictable end. They want the writer to be the writer, and not leave it up to the reader to have to anticipate too much of what is to come. i.e. doing the writer's work for them.

Oddly enough, I think that a slow and disappointing beginning can be changed with a good, and substantial ending. Even a drawn out one where the twists exceed the reader's expectations. And clever. The reader is impressed by the clever writer who writes something they would have never anticipated.

So I have come to the conclusion that when I thought I had come close to the end - another two or three scenes to go, that I was wrong. But learning is lovely! It has taken me weeks of extra writing to come to the point again where I think I have another 2 or 3 scenes. I hope I'm not wrong this time! I thought my novel would end at 70,000 words. But today it is at 105,156 words, and still not finished.

The characters speak. This can be a problem too. Although I like to give them a voice and the freedom of expression, they can take privileges. But in my view, the privilege is theirs. However, when they behave in an unpredictable manner, and I am unable to stop them, all I can do is follow them, which makes the story and the twists even longer.

I hope that my characters have enough life and personality by the end of the book to go the way that will take the reader to places unexpected, as they do to me. And in the last few weeks this has happened many times. I'm hoping it will soon come to an end and the novel will also come to its natural ending. If not, I will have to take a firm hand and put a stop to it.

Now I must get back to work.

Was lovely of you to drop by!

Don't forget to leave me a comment! x

ENJOYABLE WRITING = HAVING A PLAN

I feel I have discovered something. That the more I write, the easier it becomes. And the easier it becomes, the faster I write. And the faster I write, the more I write. And the more I write, the more I enjoy writing.

That is a bit of a circle, but it isn't a vicious one. It is positive.

It may sound very simple, and I'm sure that any good writing textbook will say this somewhere and in some form. But it is like a lightbulb moment when it actually happens and you see it in motion.

So far this year, I have written 51,000 words - since the 4th January...
Which is double what I achieved in the previous 7 months, last year.
That means that I actually wrote in 2 months what I wrote in the previous 7 months.
That means that last year, I wrote an average of 7,300 wds per month,
Whereas this year, I have been writing 25,500 words a month.

That means that I have more than tripled my output in January and February. 
3.5 times to be exact.
Or 349% more.


How did I do that?


I think the factors are these :
1. I had a target per month.
2. I had a goal to finish.
3. I had actually figured out the plot.


That must mean that planning works better, and wastes less time. All you do is write. 


So now I plan to plan as much as is possible, before beginning to write. But I will not let planning to get in the way of writing either. If the planning isn't complete, I will start writing. 


That is my plan for the next book.  TO PLAN. 

STIFF TARGETS

Sometimes it is useful to have targets. 


Mostly it is good to always have targets .... 


but sometimes it is more effective. 

How else it is possible to almost double my word count of 7 months, in 2 months?

Here it is -

May - December 2011 = 51,777 wds
January 2012 - February = 95,236 wds total


Here is how I did it - Easy 


Objective - to finish the book. I wanted it to be approx 70,000wds complete. 


1. Target for January - 20,000 wds 
2. That is a break down of approx 5,000 wds a week.
3. I write mainly during the weekdays, so that is a definite 1,000wds per day.
4. Going over the daily target makes up for the days I am not able to achieve the 1,000wd target. 
5.  By the end of January, it was not finished. Characters were taking over...
6. February - I estimated 2 weeks to finish. That meant another 10,000 wds.
7. End of two weeks into Feb - still needed another 10,000 wds in my estimation (wd count = 79,000)
7. Repeat - another two weeks  to end. End of February wordcount = 95,236 wds.

Today, 2nd March 2012 - I am writing the last chapter of The Jeweller's Daughter,
another 3,000 - 4,000 wds.

Targets work. 

Deadlines work. 

The adrenaline to achieve makes it work. 

Competing with oneself works.