Are You Ready?

This phrase is one that a lot of dog owners know well. They’ll ask their furry companions this question before tossing a frisbee, or heading out for a walk, up to bed, or in and out of the car. Really, they’ll ask it before any sort of change in their dog’s routine from one activity to another. It’s a fabulous way to get a dog’s attention and motivate them to start paying attention and get moving, or do whatever it is you want them to do next.

Dog standing on hind legs with his eyes on a ball held right in front of him — *Tock is definitely ready for this ball!*

Those of us who participate in dog sports know the phrase even better. I learned it when I first took an agility class, and it became part of the “rev-up words” that I’d teach my beginning students to use before beginning any training activity.

Boy restraining dog at the start of the teeter — Here is Tock learning the teeter. My faithful assistant (and son) restrains him while I rev him up from the other end. This is a great way to get a dog excited about tearing across a noisy, tippy board (as long as it’s raised incrementally to full height).

Are you ready? In an excited voice, we handlers will ask this of our dog, who is lying, sitting, or standing, maybe in front of an agility obstacle like a jump, or maybe not, if the goal is to train something else, like a recall. It’s an invitation to our dog to get ready to do something fun with us.

Handler & dog crouching together at the start line of an agility course — *Moth & me at the start line, getting ready to run*

Are you steady? We’ll follow up with another eager phrase if our dog still seems a bit distracted and not bursting at the seams to do what’s coming. And hey, rhyming phrases are easy to remember, so why not?

Handler has led out from dog in an agility course, and dog is sitting waiting to be released — *At this point, Moth has received her rev-up words and is anxiously waiting to be released.*

Okay! When our dog can barely restrain itself from a rocket launch (i.e., is quivering, salivating, or possibly bug-eyed with anticipation), we’ll at last use our specially chosen “release word.” Note: it’s always best to rely on a release word that can’t be mistaken for something else and is unlikely to be used for some unrelated purpose. I was taught to use Okay and kept it up with successive dogs out of habit, but my students and many others have more wisely chosen a less common word such as Break! This is because it’s all too easy to release your dog accidentally from a start line in an agility competition while saying “okay” to the judge or some other official. And then your dog is racing off through the ring, leaving you standing there, completely unprepared.

Border collie galloping unrestrained through an agility field — *Tarzan, galloping free! (full disclosure: Tarzan never actually had a release-word accident at the start line. This picture was taken by Sneed B Collard III for the cover of his wonderful MG novel,* The Governor’s Dog is Missing.)

Because everything in my past life seems to parallel things in my present, I can’t help but think of these rev-up words in the context of writing. One of the most essential things we learn as new writers is that our story must hook the readers. The obvious hook, of course, is a line at the end of the first chapter that compels us to keep reading. But the hook itself isn’t analogous to the rev-up words. No, the hook is the same as the release word in the doggy world. It’s the thing that gives the reader permission to zoom off into the rest of the story. Before the hook can make any sense, your readers need to be revved up. They need to understand the context for the hook: why should they care about your character and the situation the character has found themselves in? The “rev-up” material in your early pages can present the character in all their misunderstood (or misunderstanding) glory—quivering with desperation for something to happen. Once this foundation is laid, the hook makes total sense.

Person walking with a book draped over their face — *This reader appears to be fully hooked. Photo credit: Hosein Ashrafosa*

Another writerly use of the rev-up—and this time it’s the actual words—comes once you’ve written something. Humans are social creatures who secretly crave to share their work. This is true even if they’re cave-dwelling introverts (speaking from experience). Readings by an external audience will likely result in some pleasant and self-affirming compliments, while at the same time providing us writers with valuable editorial feedback. So why not let others—family, friends, critique group partners—read our pages before they’re in publishable form? Isn’t it terrific to get feedback at every stage, whether it’s an idea for a premise, a first page, or a first draft?

An enthusiastic crowd, one member of which is making the "heart" symbol — *Every writer’s dream: an appreciative audience. Photo credit: Anthony Delanoix*

Not necessarily. Here’s where the rev-up part comes in. I feel strongly that we need to ask ourselves in a firm voice: Are you ready? Have you thought about your story on your own enough that input from others isn’t going to strip your own writerly essence away from it? Are you steady in your ideas, your voice, and your determination to say something in particular, so that now all you need are some nudges from others to catapult you in the right direction—whether that’s writing an outline, or that first page, or what comes after the first page, or draft two, three, four, etc?

I personally never share a single thing about my stories until I’ve written and self-edited Draft 1. Sometimes I don’t show them to anyone until after Draft 2. At that point, if someone asks me about my premise, I have a pretty solid idea of what I’ll say. I also think I get why I’ve started the story in a particular place, I think I’ve gotten to know my characters better than my own family, and I think I understand how I want the journey to unfold. Note: I’ve prefaced all these statements with “I think” because I’m often wrong. Editorial feedback will be crucial to point me in the right direction. Probably many times over.

But this isn’t an essay about the value of critical feedback. It’s about how to maximize that value by asking for it when you’re truly ready for it. Depending on your writing process, this point may happen at a different stage for you than for other writers you know. J.R.R. Tolkien, for instance, was an extremely thorough and careful writer, who took seventeen years from when he first started writing the Lord of the Rings to its completion (and that’s not counting the forty years he worked on the Elvish languages!). He wanted things to be as perfect as possible before revealing them. Though I have nowhere near his skills, I think of myself as that type of writer. Tolkien’s methodical nature contrasts with his pal C.S. Lewis, who met in the same weekly literary group and wrote much faster, without Tolkien’s level of revision (thanks to John Hendrix’s The Mythmakers for these insights). Both of them, of course, were brilliant writers. I bring them up simply to point out that neither approach is right or wrong.

The real question is: what is right for you? When will you submit your premise, hook, first pages, or manuscript for review? When are you ready to gallop into the ring and show your writing to the world?

Border collie leaping over a double jump

Happy Tales!

Inseparable

I had to take our car in for service this week. A mundane task, right? Well, I was dreading it. Not because of the hour-long drive in frozen weather, nor because the appointment was scheduled to take all day for some inexplicable reason. I was even willing to put up with the insipid pop music blasting without cease into the waiting room.

My view of the inside of a Tesla service station waiting room — *The endless wait*

No, the main reason I was so reluctant to go was because I couldn’t bring my dog.

Pathetic? Maybe.

Weird? Yep.

True? Definitely.

Dog returning to me on the beach with stick in his mouth — *He’s like a boomerang, always coming back to me.*

In my defense, I’d better back up. I’m sure I’m not the only one for whom 2024 was a super tough year. For me, it was the toughest year on record (in my admittedly privileged life)—and that’s not even counting the usual pitch and query rejections that continue to chisel away at my sense of writerly worth. I won’t dwell on the chaos my family experienced because I’ve written about it plenty already. Let’s just say that while this past year was sometimes exciting and possibly character-building, it’s also been exhausting and downright scary.

The one constant through all the turmoil, the one warm fuzzy creature by my side has been—you guessed it—my dog. He gets up when I do from his bed next to mine, he crunches his kibbles while I work on my cereal, he gets dressed (with help) in his fleece jacket right before I pull on my down one, and he strikes out on the trail while simultaneously leaping in my face to remind me how wonderful an excursion together will be. And so we walk, for two hours every morning and another half hour in the afternoon, despite horizontal rain, branch-snapping winds, and cold that freezes the sheep farm’s trickling faucets into lumpy white shrouds.

*Could anyone avoid binding to this fellow? I think not. (True with or without the platypus.)*

But my dog’s proximity doesn’t end with feeding and walks. He lies on the rug outside the bathroom while I shower, he sleeps in my office while I write, he sprawls at my feet while I cook, and he hops in the car to attend any errand with me, whether it’s a quick trip to the store or a multi-hour excursion to a distant town. Wherever we go, he usually gets an outing, even if only a brief stroll around a parking area or a game of frisbee in a small patch of grass by the hospital. (In the interest of dog safety, I feel it’s important to note that our car has a Dog Mode, in which the battery keeps the car at an optimal temperature no matter how inhospitable the weather is outside. Bringing a non-service dog along for errands would otherwise be impossible).

Border collie lying on kitchen floor — *Tock is excellent at performing the dual functions of kitchen rug and auxiliary garbage disposal.*

I’ve always kept my dogs close, but this year and this dog more than any other. He has become part of me, as inseparable as a limb from my body. On the rare occasions when he’s not with me, I feel his absence like a gaping wound that will never heal. Dramatic? You bet. True? Well, my arm has never actually been ripped off, so probably not, but you get the picture. My dog is part of my essence—that indefinable aggregation of things that makes up a person’s personality and convictions. My sense of self. My soul. I can’t picture myself without him.

This gets me to wondering: are there other things from which I am inseparable? That is, if they were taken away, I would feel as though I’m no longer me.

Short answer, yes. Some of these inseparabilities (is that even a word?) are vain and trivial. I can probably quickly get over them. My hair, for instance. I’m scheduled for surgery this week for skin cancer on my scalp. Though the doctor is hopeful they’ll be able to suture the area closed, it’s possible the removed section will end up large enough that they’ll have to do a skin graft and then I’ll end up with a bald patch on the top of my head. I’ve been trying to envision myself either wearing a hat or wig to cover it for the rest of my life or going the other route and shaving my head entirely. I know people routinely lose their hair for all sorts of reasons, so it’s totally selfish that I find this upsetting. I don’t know why my view of myself in the mirror is so strongly tied to my sense of who I am. I have to remind myself that at least my dog won’t care.

Author with small bandage on top of head — *Breaking News: Surgery #1 (of 2) is done, with sutures!*

Then there are the bigger things, like my human family. Son, husband, parents … all of them hold a part of me within them just as I do of them. Work is another big one. Though I’ve never had a steady, traditional, well-paying career, I seem to have spent most of my life working in one way or another. For whatever misguided reason, I’ve chosen to grind away at things that take a long time to learn and perfect, and I’ve invested years of passion in each. Music first: giving that up due to injury was traumatic and required a lot of internal rewiring of my sense of self. Next ecology, then dog agility training, then writing. I’ve now spent so much time studying the craft of writing middle-grade fiction, specifically, that it’s become a huge part of my identity. Even if no one but my husband and my critique partners ever read my finished works, writing these novels occupies an important part of every one of my days. I love being part of the writing community, and experiencing the pleasure of crafting a phrase, a scene, a story.

Hands typing on computer keyboard — *Photo credit:* *Glenn Carstens Peters*

At this point in my life, if anyone asked me who I am, I’d say: children’s book writer and dog / nature lover (those last two things go hand in hand for me, because how can you have a dog if you don’t like to get outside?). Of course, this is but one moment in my existence. Maybe by next year, I’ll have added another inseparability to my list.

How about you? What are those things so intrexicably tied to your being that you can’t imagine existing without them?

Writer standing facing her dog in an alpine meadow

Happy Tales!

Getting Back in the Game

Have you ever felt as though you’re floundering, uncertain what to work on next? Perhaps (1) you’ve finally finished that first draft after months (years!) of effort, let it sit for weeks (months!), and now haven’t any idea what to do with it. Or (2) you’ve perfected your story (Seven revisions! Countless brainstorming sessions with critique partners!), to the point that you know if you work on it any more it’s only going to get worse—but the thought of querying is enough to freeze you from the inside out. Or (3) maybe you’re lucky enough to have moved past those hurdles and you’re actively querying, negotiating, revising (again!), publishing, or marketing, but everyone* wants to know what’s next and your muse isn’t merely hiding, it seems to have jumped off a cliff and swum out to sea. *By “everyone,” I mean you, plus at least one other person, if you’re lucky.

mossy tree limb stretching over a creek — *Photo credit: K Mitch Hodge*

Never fear. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if you haven’t experienced at least one of these gut-wrenching dilemmas, you’re not a writer. In fact, I might as well wobble my way to the end of that bouncy branch and say that if you haven’t experienced this in any pursuit you love, then you haven’t lived.

So … let’s address Dilemma #1, when you’re stymied after finishing your first draft. Well, I have a little confession to make. I never succeed in letting my story sit for long before transitioning into Editorial Mode. I have such an over-zealous work ethic that I can’t help but jump almost immediately into revising what I wrote, the same way I feel compelled to walk my dog every single day despite rain or shine, wind or blizzard.

Dog waiting for me on snowy walk — *Tock and I enjoy our walk no matter the weather.*

Though my turnaround from writing to editing is quick, the process I use is gentle. This is because my revisions don’t begin with actual changes. Instead, I start with something that is so fun I want to do it. I look forward to it, the same way Tock faceplants into his bowl of breakfast or dinner kibble.

And what is that super fun step? Kind of like a dog sniffing where they peed the previous day, I get to read what I wrote. At last, I can see my story as a whole piece rather than merely a painful collection of sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. With sort-of completed arcs of character and plot, my story sort-of resembles what someone might want to read someday. It shows me that though I may yet have lots of work ahead, I wrote a story. I did it! Hooray for me! It’s a major confidence booster—and we introverted, insecure writers need all the ego boosting we can get. Most importantly, I make notes as I read on where the world and characters need development, where the plot drops into sinkholes, where the pacing sags or speeds too fast, and where things simply don’t make sense. These notes, in turn, give me a launching point from which I can step into real revisions. And after this full immersion in my manuscript, I not only can revise it, I want to!

a mysterious hole in the water, into which the water is plunging — *Spotting holes in the plot is the first step. Photo credit: Simon Hurry*

But what happens once you’ve revised so much that you’re sick of it? I realize that I’ve gotten to this point when I start to question why I wrote the darned thing in the first place. It’s best if you don’t nitpick at it quite that long. Before all pride and joy in your creation vanishes, accept that it’s time to move on. Assuming you want to publish traditionally, this brings us to Dilemma #2.

Querying.

Tense, dirty soldier hiding in the grass — *Photo credit: Sander Sammy*

To me, this is the most terrifying, blood-shedding step in a writer’s life. You only get one chance with most literary agents to put your stuff in front of them, and if they reject you, you can never again try to persuade them to take on that particular manuscript. Even the rejections themselves are hard to bear – mostly form letters or no response at all. I don’t know which is worse: knowing with certainty that it’s a brutal “no thanks,” or not knowing and thus retaining some hope until, months later, you finally have to mark it down as a rejection by default.

I have nightmares about querying. I think it’s safe to say that prostrating myself in front of an agent is my least favorite activity on the planet. So what do I do? As so often is the case with me, I look to my dog for inspiration. He’s always been a scaredy-pup, startling at big birds flying overhead, or a skunk waddling out of the bushes like happened last week (did Tock investigate and get sprayed? Thankfully, no. He scurried past it and waited for me a respectful distance away). He used to worry about swimming, standing for minutes on end gazing forlornly at a stick in the water just out of his reach. He still takes his time, studying the stick for a few seconds to a minute before paddling out to it. But he’s learned to swim farther and farther these past couple years, and eventually retrieves the sticks, every time.

dog staring at stick in water a few feet away

dog has swum to the stick and captured it!

The most frightening thing that Tock recently experienced was when a large unleashed dog charged down the trail toward us and jumped on him. Not in a friendly way. In a split second, the dog had my poor puppy on his back and was standing over him, snarling and lunging at Tock’s neck. In the next split second, I got over my shock at what had just happened and called for Tock to come to me. He wriggled out from beneath the dog, ran to me (fortunately uninjured), and we hurried away. I was so anxious to make his experience seem less stressful than it surely was that I didn’t even stick around to chastise the aggressive dog’s owner, but walked briskly away, rewarding Tock with treats all the while for his smart decision. But I worried that now Tock would view meeting new dogs the same way I view querying: One hundred percent terrifying, one hundred percent something to be avoided forever.

a yellow-eyed, prick-eared beast stares at the viewer from the dark

Still, I knew that Tock didn’t want to give up his daily walk due to fear of a savage beast, the same way I don’t want to abandon my dream of becoming traditionally published. We headed out the next morning—a little more watchful, a little more careful (I leashed Tock when we saw another dog approaching in case he’d developed fear aggression as a result of the attack, and kept his voluntary encounters very short). Tock was tentative that day, meeting dogs with his tail at half-mast rather than upright, silent rather than emitting the tiny happy whimpers he usually produces. By day two, his tail was back up, and by day three, he was whining with excitement again. He did it! He overcame his worries about another random attack. Hooray for Tock!

And if my darling boy can put himself back out there despite his fear, so can I. No matter how many rejections I’ve suffered in the past, I simply need to pick out my preferred agents, organize and tailor my queries to them, and hit send. It’s a psychological hurdle that I must overcome—will overcome—for my latest manuscript if I ever want a shot at publication in the traditional way. The worst that will happen is another form letter. It’s not like I’m going to get bitten in the neck by some long-canined, drooling, bloodthirsty monster.

Right?

Happy Tales!

Note: Since I’ve already addressed Dilemma #3—writing something new—in a different post, I won’t address it here (see Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone, https://substack.com/home/post/p-137672913e).

Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

Yesterday, I was walking up a trail when I encountered a person who asked me to hold my dog so she could pass. “Sure!” I said, and called Tock away from a bush he was sniffing about twenty feet off the trail. Once he got to my side, I snapped on his leash and held him there until the woman had hurried by.

Now, this was not a trail with a leash requirement, nor was my dog exhibiting any sort of alarming behavior toward others on the trail (complete disinterest, in fact). But from the woman’s rather unexpected request to the nervous way she went past my dog, she was clearly feeling out of her comfort zone. Though I was surprised at seeing a person with such a fear of dogs on a path where dogs often outnumber humans, I’m impressed that she was brave enough to visit it, and to take the action she needed to get past her fear.

Person running down trail — *Photo credit: Jakub Kriz*

Like a dog-anxious person on a very doggy trail, we all have to do things we’re not comfortable with or not used to doing if we want to make any forward progress. It happens to me on narrow trails that cut into steep, treeless slopes, where vertigo literally causes my feet to freeze in place. And as a writer, it happens to me every single day.

Trail along a cliff — *Photo credit: Michael Loftus*

No time is more difficult than when I sit down to write the first couple chapters of a new novel. No matter how many weeks I’ve already spent outlining the story, developing the characters, and researching the setting, I still feel a pretty big mental block at actually starting to write. I’m overwhelmed with the thought that whatever I do is going to have huge implications for the rest of the story. I’m overcome with doubt that I’ll have the talent to create entirely new characters in a brand new world.

Woman in fantasy world — *Photo credit: Evgeni Tcherkass*

So if I’m to take inspiration from the worried trail-walker, I need to come up with a plan that’ll get me past my writing roadblock. For some writers, this might consist of simply waiting, putting the writing off for another day or week or month until their story starts to flow into their fingertips.

Not me. If I did that, I’d probably never write another word. I’d turn into a mummified husk of a writer staring at a dusty black screen, fingers permanently frozen to the keyboard. Ugh. I’d rather end up petrified while sitting on a sun-warmed rock by an alpine lake, thanks very much.

Couple & dogs enjoying an alpine lake — *Now this would be a terrific place to remain stuck forever!*

My plan for stepping out of my comfort zone happens in two steps:

(1) Akin to the dog-fearful person planning in advance to ask for help from those hikers who are crazy enough to own such slavering, vicious creatures, I seek help from my main characters so I can get as close to their eventual voices as possible. I do this by writing some first-person “prequel scenes,” which take place long before the story will occur, and in which my MC’s basic misunderstanding about the world develops (thanks to Lisa Cron’s Story Genius for this brilliant idea). There’s a lot less pressure in writing these scenes than in composing the actual story because they’re not the actual story. Not yet, anyway (full disclosure: I often end up incorporating bits and pieces of them into flashbacks).

(2) After playing around with character voice and motivation in this way, I’m ready to walk past the metaphorical scary dog. I open the document to the blank page and force myself to write. Word after word after word. I’m not saying this is easy for me. It’s terrifying and often feels painfully slow compared to writing later in the story, when I’m comfortable with all the of the character voices and how they relate to one another. But it gets my feet moving along the trail to a place where I feel much safer and happier.

Snarling dog — *Photo credit: Nick Bolton*

This combination of preparation and a little bit of sheer will power goes for any fear I might have. But what if you just can’t muscle your way into writing? Or what if the stranger-dog situation is reversed? What if it’s the dog that’s scared? I actually have a particularly fearful dog who gets nervous when he encounters “unfamiliar” things. I put that word in quotes because something that’s unfamiliar to him is generally not at all unexpected to me, from a visit to the vet to having to enter a barn through a large sliding door. Occasionally, a previously visited stump in the trail that’s turned extra black from rain or extra visible from lack of leaves will cause him to leap back in surprise with a little growl. Oh my goodness, it might attack us!

Dog running past stump — *Racing past a scary stump.*

I jest, but these are very real terrors to my dog. And since he’s pretty much joined at the hip to me, going wherever I go, I must own his fears and find ways to mitigate them. If you’ve read one of my previous posts, Backstory’s Bad Rap is Underserved, you’ll already know that I deal with Tock’s fear of the vet in the two-step manner I’ve described above. But for most of his fears, I have the option to replace that second step with an alternative that is always, always better for getting a dog over their terror: (3) the use of reverse psychology, or more generally, thinking outside the box.

For the scary barn door, for example, I found another entrance into the barn through a much smaller door. Tock was perfectly fine with going in that way. And once he did, he had no problem exiting—and then re-entering—through the big door. For a suspicious stump, I wait for him to take a single step toward it, and then reward him far away from it, so he realizes that doing one tiny difficult thing reaps great rewards in a safe place. Incidentally, this reverse psychology is the same approach I use for agility students’ dogs who are terrified of the teeter.

Some dogs are born scared of the teeter’s sudden tip, or the banging noise it makes when it hits the ground, or the height they have to ascend before the board tips. Others become scared due to a frightening experience, such as using a teeter that tips much faster than the one they were used to. Either way, asking for a tiny approach to the teeter, followed by a fun reward elsewhere works wonders (thanks to Leslie McDevitt’s Control Unleashed for this method).

Just as the second step of my Two-Step Approach needs gentling and modification to help dogs overcome their fears, it may need tweaking for you, too. If the setting of the new world causes you to stop and puzzle about it excessively, skip it for the moment and move straight to interiority or dialogue. This allows you to get directly into your character’s head in a manner that you’re already comfortable with (remember those prequel scenes?). Another way to sneak words out of your mind and onto paper is to write more prequel scenes that get closer and closer to the time the story takes place—until they are the story.

What techniques do you use to step out of your comfort zone, past the danger, and into a brave new world?

Happy Tales!

Upping the Ante

How to boost your confidence en route to your goal.

I don’t speak in superlatives very often, but the absolute best way to train a dog is through a process called shaping. The basic idea is that you don’t tell your dog what you want, but you reward them for doing it anyway.

Dog getting treat reward — *Tock gets a treat for doing something I wanted.*

“Hold on,” you’re probably saying. “Why would a dog do something for you—a trick, a recall, a stay, whatever—if you never tell them to do it? Let alone how to do it.”

Thank goodness I’m here to tell you. The trick to shaping is that you start small.

Of course, I don’t mean small in the physical sense, but in terms of easiness. The same principle holds for writing. If you’re like most people, you’re not gonna sit down and write a novel on command when someone hands you a pen—especially if you’ve never written anything beyond a high-school essay until this point. No, you’ll start with something easier—a paragraph, a journal entry, a page.

As for your dog, let’s say you want him to stand in a tiny cardboard box. Collect (1) a box that’s not tiny, but is roomy enough for him to fit inside comfortably, (2) a bag of treats, and (3) your dog. An optional item you can bring to the training session is (4) a clicker (I’ll explain more about that in a moment. For now, all you need to know is that it’s a handheld button that emits a loud click when pressed).

Box, treats, clicker, dog — *All you need to train a dog to get in a box.*

The second thing you need to do is very simple: put the box down near the dog. Unless your dog is totally distracted* or terrified of boxes,** he’s gonna check it out. The second he looks at it or sniffs it, press the clicker (if your dog has never experienced a clicker before, you should start by simply pressing the clicker and rewarding, over and over, until the dog has learned that the click means “you’re gonna get a treat!”). Instead of or in addition to the clicker, you can say a one-syllable word like “Yes!” or “Good!” Whatever sound you choose, you’ll use it to mark a behavior, the same way a camera click takes a snapshot to preserve the perfect pose.

*The solution for a distracted dog is to do your training in a boring room with no distractions.
**The solution for a terrified dog is to start with something that doesn’t resemble a box. A piece of cardboard, for instance.

Dog touching piece of cardboard — *Photo credit: Sam Williams*

In my parallel writing universe, I’d guess that this external marking of a dog’s behavior is analogous to making the conscious decision to write about … something. To sit down (click) and scrawl or type (click) with a purpose other than exercising your fingers. At the start, when you’re terrified that you cannot possibly write a single thing, just a bullet point for an outline or a sentence for a story will do.

Back to dogs: immediately after clicking, reward your dog with a treat. You can then either pick the box up and put it down again, or simply wait for the dog to do something with it again (either look at it, sniff it, or walk toward it, depending on the dog). After about five times, assuming your dog is hungry, he’ll have caught on that interacting with the box is quite valuable to him.

Dog sniffing box — *Tock checks out the box when it’s put down near him.*

Clearly, writers aren’t going to stuff themselves with a piece of chocolate after every sentence. But when I’m finished writing my sentence, paragraph, page, or chapter, and I know I’ve accomplished a small goal of sorts, I allow myself to read what I wrote. Seeing that my labors produced a tangible result—no matter how much fixing or replacing will be necessary later—is the perfect reward for a writer.

Pile of chocolate — *If I rewarded myself with my favorite treat every time I wrote a sentence, I’d no longer be able to move—or sleep. Photo credit: Taisiia-shestopal*

Once a dog has caught onto the game of doing-something-for-a-treat, this is where shaping gets fun. Now you’re going to raise your criteria for the click. Rather than stagnate at that one level of behavior, you’ll expect further progress. If your dog was looking at the box for a reward, wait until he sniffs it to mark the behavior. If he was sniffing it, put it a little farther away and wait until he steps toward it. If he was already stepping toward it, wait until he paws at it. Then until he puts a paw inside the box. Then two paws, then … you get the idea.

There are two important things to remember about this stage of shaping: (1) it requires great patience to wait for your dog to try something new, and (2) if your dog gives up or goes into mental meltdown, you’re raising the criteria too fast.

Dog lying down near box — *Tock tries a different trick in the hopes that it’ll earn him a treat. It doesn’t.*

If you’re a writer, these things might sound familiar. You know the tremendous patience and dedication that it takes to craft a story. You know just how much you can push yourself toward your goal without becoming overwhelmed and demoralized—and stop writing altogether (like 99% of people who say they’ve got a novel inside them to write, but then never end up writing it). You learn your craft in stages, you write some, you learn how to read your material critically and perfect what you’ve written. Eventually, you will write a complete work and be able to type THE END. Only now can you label it for what it is: a story!

Likewise, a trick that a dog learns through shaping only gets labelled once it’s complete. Your dog not only hops eagerly into the box, but stuffs himself into successively smaller and smaller boxes until he’s performing the behavior you had in mind all along. “Box!” you might call it, or “Get in!” You’re ready to ask him to repeat the performance in other places, with other boxes of various shapes and sizes, and you’re reasonably confident that he’ll do what you ask.

Best of all, shaping has created a thinking dog, who voluntarily offers harder and harder behaviors all along the way to the finished product. He knows that when you get out your clicker and your treats, all he has to do is start offering behaviors and he’ll figure it out. Training him to do other tricks becomes an easy feat.

Though the book we want to write is bound to take longer than the trick we teach a dog, we too can use the principle of shaping to simplify the process. All we have to do is start with an easy goal, accomplish it, and move on to something harder. We’ll learn how to write the first description of setting, dialogue, backstory, action … and keep upping our skills so we can write more. We’ll knock off the first page, first chapter, midpoint, climax, book. And because we’ve taught ourselves how to do it, why stop with one book? We can do it again, and again, and again…

Pile of books — *Photo credit: Debby Hudson*

Happy Tales!

The Hardest Part of Revision

(and how your dog can help you)

Kill Your Darlings! All of us writers have heard the phrase countless times. It refers to one of the primary steps of revision: trimming the excess away from your manuscript, getting rid of unnecessary dialogue, long descriptions, excessive “telling” (rather than “showing”), superfluous scenes, redundant characters. Eliminating these things is fantastic because it helps you tighten your plot lines, increase clarity, and reduce word count, all at the same time.

But it’s hard. These sections that you wrote are called “darlings” for a reason. You’ve possibly spent hours tweaking a particular phrase to get it perfect, so its lyricism and insight will reverberate through your readers hearts and minds for eons to come. Or perhaps a section came to you all at once in a moment of genius inspiration. And it’s gorgeous. Profound. It’s everything wonderful—except that your editor or beta readers or critiquers think it’s in the way. It slows the pace. It’s inconsistent with everything else that’s going on in the story.

When I wrote my first Middle-Grade manuscript, it was far too long. 138,000 embarrassing words long, in other words! But even more embarrassing was that I wasted time lamenting to other writers and even professionals that there was no possible way I could shorten it. I’d already gone through multiple drafts, scouring for places that didn’t feel like they belonged. In what alternate universe could I ever whittle the thing down to the 50-65,000 word maximum expected for an MG fantasy? J. K. Rowling wrote long books—why couldn’t I?

Answer 1: Sorry, you’ve only got the one universe, as far as we know. And you’re not J. K. Rowling. You’re gonna have to deal with it.

Milky Way Galaxy — *Photo credit: Greg Rakozy*

Answer 2: If you’re a debut author trying to publish traditionally in this universe these days, you might be able to break a couple tiny rules, but not the Word Count Rule. Not until you’re superhero famous and people will greedily buy everything you write, even if it’s longer than Encylopedia Britannica.

Ah, if only I’d thought to look to my dog for answers. Dogs are absolute masters at killing their darlings. Think how many fluffy squeaky toys you’ve purchased over the years for your canine companion. And then think how many you’ve purchased again because the first one got destroyed. Sometimes I think dog behaviors have evolved purely to speed up the rate at which they can find a squeaker and eviscerate a toy to get it out. This also goes for the tag on the back of a toy, in my dog’s case (his favorite predatory activity, however, is giving the “death thrash” to his Bungee Ball).

Dog with destroyed toy — *Tock is quite proud of this pig that’s been de-fluffed, de-squeaked, and de-tagged*. *Though in fairness to him, his former siblings were responsible for the first two things.*

As a long-time dog owner, I’ve at last come up with some strategies for how to part with those ill-fated “toys” of yours (i.e., the parts of your story that people you respect have circled with a red pen, scrawling next to it either DELETE, Consider removing, or Necessary? depending on how tactful they felt like being).

1. INCINERATE. Sometimes there’s no hope for these toys because they’re so utterly torn apart. You have to throw them in the trash. This is akin to a phrase, scene, or character in your book that truly deserves to be deleted forever. Maybe you once thought it beautiful, but upon further examination you discover it’s actually full of cliches, stereotypes, repetitive language, and boring verbs. It’s so bad it’s not even fixable. Select and delete, the sooner the better. Like ripping off a band-aid. It can actually be fun, if you channel the joy your dog obviously feels in yanking out the stuffing and flinging it all over the living room. Does he show remorse? Generally not—merely satisfaction at a job well done.

Collection of toy remnants — *A few of the toy remnants in Tock’s collection*

2. RETAIN HOPE / SAVE FOR LATER. Some toys might survive the onslaught. Maybe they only have a tiny tear in them, and if you hide them for a little while, your dog will forget that he initiated the supernova process once long ago. I frequently snatch a toy from the jaws of death and hide it in the bottom of my dog’s toybox. Sometimes he ferrets it out again right away, but often he forgets about it for a while, allowing both of us to pretend it’s still alive, somewhere. This is similar to taking your lovely snippet of writing and storing it in its own little file. Call it Precious Fragments, Scenes for the Sequel, Deleted Info that I Cannot Bear to Part With, call it what you will, but something about knowing it’s still out there can make the process less painful.

Dog with toybox — *Tock’s toybox (Note: most of these toys were prizes from agility competitions, not purchases!)*

3. FIX? I put a question mark here because I’m a terrible seamstress. Sometimes I’ll try to handstitch toys back together, but they never last very long. As for writing, fixing can work well if the extent of the damage was small and only requires some re-wording for better clarity, or a little bit of reduction to avoid repetition. But in my experience, large-scale fixing almost always shows up in the story as a patch job. If you have a character that’s not needed, for instance, no amount of alteration to their personality is going to rectify the situation.

4. USE ELSEWHERE. Occasionally, a toy survives against all odds and finds a new life—not as the toy it once was but as something new. My dog, for instance, has a particular talent for recycling squeaky balls that long ago lost their squeakers and are so broken they resemble nothing more than a tattered piece of plastic. He’ll mouth them back into a rough ball shape and hold them carefully so as not to destroy their faint likeness to a toy—even though he knows he can no longer play with them in any way but a gentle game of tug (note: I would never let him do this if he had any inclination to ingest bits of plastic). Just as I love how Tock can recycle his toys like this, eking every bit of life out of them, I adore finding a new home in my story for those favorite-but-dysfunctional phrases. With careful insertion into just the right place, whether it’s one or ten chapters later, you may be in luck at saving some of your darlings from annihilation in this way, too.

Broken squeaky ball — *Tock’s beloved Bone Ball – broken but still gently used*

5. REPLACE WITH SOMETHING SHINY & NEW. When more than half of my dog’s squeaky balls have reached the broken-plastic phase, I take pity on him and get him a new one. Or two. Or three. This doesn’t stop him from playing with the bits of plastic (unless I subject those to Strategy #1), but he plays with the new ones more. This goes for writing, too. You can re-use phrases in different places all you want, but what do you do with the gap they left behind? Sometimes simple deletion doesn’t work. You need to come up with a new gem to put in its place. Just make sure to run it by your critiquers to see if they think it’s a keeper this time.

Dog with new toys — *New squeaky balls!*

The final word of wisdom I’d like to part with is that nothing lasts forever. Not toys, not pet phrases. And the more you look at a selection of your writing, the more you or someone else is going to find wrong with it. Revision is a terrific tool—my favorite part of writing, actually—but there is such a thing as too much of it. Give your specially crafted phrases a round with your most trusted critique partners and professionals, and at some point … make the decision to accept that final version. Then there’s nothing left but do query / publish (topics for another day), and sit back and enjoy it!

Happy Tales!

What Do Literary Agents Really Want?

My dog agility students know the answer to this one!

When I take on a new dog-handler team to teach them the sport of dog agility, I start by describing some different scenarios and posing the question: Which of the following dogs do you think is most ready to compete?

(1) A dog who moves at a medium pace through the course, mostly doing the obstacles in their correct order, but who keeps putting its nose to the ground to sniff things and trots right past some obstacles.

(2) A dog who’s super eager to work with its handler, though so quick to make decisions about where to go that it occasionally knocks a bar or has a wrong course (i.e., an obstacle inserted incorrectly into the sequence)

(3) A dog who’s even quicker than #2, but so fast that it flies off the teeter without waiting until the teeter touches the ground (thus breaking a safety rule), after which it zooms around the perimeter of the ring without taking the rest of the obstacles.

(4) A dog who takes all the obstacles in their correct order at a slow trot and wins the blue ribbon for having a clean run.

If you answered #4, you’re not alone. Most of my students give this answer, too. But in my view, you’re wrong. The correct answer is #2—the eager dog who makes mistakes. Here’s why: that dog exhibits a motivation to do what its person wants that none of the others has. It might make some mistakes, but it possesses a spark of life that not even the slow, accurate winner of the class displayed. It has drive.

It’s my firm belief that the agility teams who end up being happiest doing this sport—whether or not they ever compete—are the ones who’ve been trained in what I call the DASH principle. This is a simple acronym in which D = Drive, A = Accuracy, S = Speed, and H = Habitat, and it embodies the essence of dog agility. Drive gives you a motivated, happy dog. Accuracy gives you a dog who can do all the obstacles in correct order without knocking bars, jumping off teeters, refusing obstacles, taking incorrect obstacles, or accruing any of the many other possible faults. Speed gives you a dog who zips through the course well below the time limit. And habitat means you have a dog who can generalize and perform obstacles in different locations with all sorts of distractions around the ring (other dogs barking, children running, food everywhere, you name it). Learn the components in the proper order, and you’ll have a fun canine partner who loves bounding through a ringful of obstacles as much as you do (note: you don’t actually get to do the obstacles).

But this bears repeating: you must learn DASH in order. Train your dog to do simple tricks with drive before you do anything else. Soon you’ll be able to raise the difficulty level of the “tricks,” and voila, you have a dog who can accurately perform the weave poles, or the teeter, or any of the other obstacles. As your dog gains confidence, so will its speed. And finally, you’re ready to take your dog on the road and test its skills in new habitats.

Now, back to the question that has plagued writers through the ages (or at least as long as agents have been a necessary part of the traditional publishing process): what do those agents want, anyway?

After attending more query, pitch, and submission workshops than I can count, and after celebrating friends and colleagues who have managed to land an agent, I think the answer lies within the principles of good dog agility training. Agents are looking for drive. They’re looking for a premise that is so motivating to them personally that it stirs their soul. Sure they appreciate a writer with excellent (i.e., accurate) technique who has clearly spent years studying the craft and has polished their submission materials to a brilliant sheen. Sure, they respect a writer who’s got the speed of mind to have other projects in the works. And of course they like a writer who has the potential to show their book to as wide an audience as possible (i.e., many habitats).

But an agent needs that drive above all else. Without the spark of a premise that interests them, they’ll never read past the query letter to the first page. And with it, they’re willing to overlook a lot of mistakes. They know they’ll enjoy the story so much that they won’t mind working with the author as long as it takes to make it as good as it can be. Their goal? A book that wins the blue ribbon not for plodding correctly through all the steps of Writing 101, but for its heart, its intrigue, its fascinating portrayal of life in all its messiness.

If we compare the agility dogs that have the D in DASH to the books that are lucky enough to obtain an agent, they have one thing in common. They’re fun! Not in a comedy sense (unless the book is a comedy, of course), but in the sense of having heart and soul. They’re fun to watch run at an agility competition, or fun to settle down with on the couch and read. They’re not always error-free, but they’re as enthralling as a musician who sings or plays their heart out, not caring about the occasional wrong note. To me, they’re like the opera tenor Placido Domingo, who sings with a fervor and intensity that stirs my heart even more than the pure and perfect tones of Luciano Pavarotti.

If I raised a few brows by daring to elevate any singer above the great Pavarotti, I meant to. That’s because the appreciation of drive in someone else’s work is subjective. Very subjective, especially when it comes to the creative arts (books, music, etc). One agent might be completely unmoved by your work, while another is almost instantly ready to fly with it to the moon and back. But your chances of finding any agent are going to increase enormously if you revisit your premise, your query, and your characters and look for heart, passion, and purpose every step of the way. Something that elicits those feelings is gonna be far more stirring and memorable than a perfect performance.

And I’m fairly certain a lot of those agents might just happen to agree with me.

Happy Tales!

A Character is More than the Clothes on their Back!

You might think I’m a fashionista based on how much I like to dress up my dog. Trust me, his clothing is for functional purposes only. Tock has short fur and in below-freezing and snowy conditions, he starts lifting up his paws from the cold if he’s not wearing a jacket. And as for the fact that he currently owns five jackets, this is because all but one were inherited from the dogs in our household who came before him.

But when I think of Tock, I don’t consider what jacket he’s wearing, or if, in fact, he’s wearing anything at all. Instead, I recall the intent expression in his eyes as he switches his gaze back and forth between me and the object he wants me to throw. I think of his confidence when his ears and tail are upright, or his fear when he runs up to me, ears pressed back, tail between his legs. His boastfulness (and naughtiness) when he leaps up on me to show off the latest pinecone in his collection. His happiness to see me when he “grins” as I come in the door. His obsessive desire for toys exhibited by pawing at something, though often the thing he’s pawing isn’t the thing he actually wants. His desire to be as big a pest as possible and get me to pay attention to him either by standing at my elbow while I’m typing, or by diving between my legs while we’re on a walk. I’m not sure what he’s thinking when he sings along to my son’s clarinet and saxophone, but he’s adorable nonetheless.

Dog Baring Teeth in a Grin — *“I’m so happy to see you!”*

In short, my dog is way, way more than just a jacket. He’s got more aspects to his personality than he has nicknames (thirteen at last count, way too corny to share). All of his actions and feelings add up to make him who he is: the incomparable, totally unique Tock.

I hope all this talk of Tock has got you thinking about the characters who are important in your own life. Of course, if you’re a writer, this includes the cast of people, animals, and possibly other creatures that occupy your stories. By making them unique, you’ll turn them into personalities that readers will fall in love with and will never forget.

When I reflect on the book characters who are most memorable to me, certain aspects of their natures stand out. The spirit and love for family that young Joseph Johnson displays in Dan Gemeinhart’s Some Kind of Courage. The courage and resourcefulness of the “skinjacker” Allie in Neal Shusterman’s Everlost. The loyalty of Tock in Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. (Yes, I named my dog after him.) I could go on and on about characters in lots of Middle-Grade books (the genre in which I write), but it’s true for all the other genres I enjoy reading as well.

Cover of "The Phantom Tollbooth" — *My favorite kid book ever, largely because of its extraordinary characters*

One thing is constant. Even if I last read a book years ago, the thing I remember most about its characters is their temperament: those parts of their nature that make up their identity. I have no recollection of what they looked like (well, except for the dog with a giant clock embedded in his side. Kind of hard to forget that). I don’t remember what sort of clothing they wear, the color of their eyes, the length of their hair, the shape and size of their body—unless these things featured in some important way in the plot.

NOTE TO WRITER SELF: Avoid description of what a character looks like unless absolutely necessary! If you must, include the briefest possible mention of it. Concentrate instead on how a character acts and speaks.

To be fair, I must return to the subject of dog jackets. Tock’s puffy red one, for instance, has special significance to me because it used to belong exclusively to his older sister Moth. By the time she died, the zipper was broken and the whole thing really wasn’t functional anymore. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out because it made me feel as if I were losing Moth all over again. Not only is it quite useful for Tock as an inner layer when the temps dip into the teens, but putting Tock in it made me feel a lingering connection to my dear departed girl. And who knows, maybe he retains some fleeting memories of her every time he wears it, too. So when my husband (a master sewer in addition to being a master engineer) replaced the zipper and gave it to me, it was the best present I ever got. That jacket is much more than a jacket. It’s a symbol.

3 dogs; one in red jacket — *The red jacket reminds me not only of Moth, but of a time when all three of my dogs walked the woods with me.*

SECOND NOTE TO WRITER SELF: Symbols can include items of clothing, along with many other things.

Oh, come on, you might be thinking. Do dogs really understand symbols? Now that Moth’s scent is long gone from that jacket, Tock may not think of her anymore when he wears it—but I sure do. And be assured that Tock has plenty of other symbols in his life that he does understand. His pinecones, tennis balls, frisbee, and sticks all symbolize “work.” His rubber chicken, squeaky balls, and fluffy toys symbolize “play.” His bedtime racoon squirrel symbolizes “comfort,” as do the pillows he likes to rest his head upon. His button board represents a selection of the words that are most important to him (note: the ”Love You” button is wishful thinking on our part, as Tock only likes to engage in affection for about five minutes per day, total). As a whole, these things represent Tock and his world, and if I think of any one of them, I immediately think of him.

Dog lying on pillows with fluffy toy — *Here reclines the “Prince of Pillows,” along with Racoon Squirrel and its less successful replacement, Rocket Racoon.*

So when you craft your characters, make special note of the things that are important to them, of the physical mannerisms they engage in when they’re feeling a certain way, of the way they speak to others and the way they think to themselves. To quote Salman Rushdie, characters are “inexhaustibly interesting.” But it’s up to us to write them into a three-dimensional reality that’s as full as it can possibly be.

Dog Sleeping with Pillows — If my dog yips or twitches when he’s got his eyes closed, I can be fairly certain he’s dreaming of chasing something. Other than that, I have no idea. Thank goodness I have the power to reveal this sort of interiority in my characters.

Happy Tales!

Backstory’s Bad Rap is Undeserved

Dog hurdling a jump — Tock navigating the triple jump

My dog does lots of things with confidence. He performs agility obstacles at high speed, he races through the woods and leaps in the air after pinecones, he willingly meets people and most other dogs—especially old border collies, and he’s only a little bit scared of sheep (okay, I know that’s weird for a herding dog). But there’s one thing that fills him with absolute terror. When subjected to this particular thing, he can think only of his need to escape, to the point that I use two leashes hooked to both collar and harness to make sure he can’t make a quick getaway.

What is this awful thing and why would I make my dog endure it? If you’re a dog owner, you might have guessed already.

The vet’s office. Yep, that super friendly place where dogs get treats and the staff is interested in nothing more than Tock’s health and well-being. Lots of dogs dislike going to the vet, but why does my dog go into mental meltdown over it? I’m a dog trainer, for goodness’ sake. How come I can’t seem to train him out of it?

This description I’ve presented of my dog could remain just that—a mystery—if I didn’t fill you in on some crucial details from Tock’s past. In other words, I need to provide one of the crucial backbones of any story to this situation: the use of backstory.

Backstory has a pretty bad reputation in the eyes of editors and critiquers, but not because it’s unnecessary. In fact, it’s an indispensable tool that helps writers flesh out characters and explain character motivations—their desires, hangups, fears, and needs. The problem with backstory isn’t in using it, but in misusing it. Beware, writers, of succumbing to the temptation to give your readers every little detail about your characters’ former lives in the early chapters of your story!

The best backstory doesn’t all happen right away, but in small doses that leave you wanting more. You can drop clues into dialogue, into the way characters react to external situations, and within their thoughts. I love presenting snippets of interiority right before or after my protagonist says or does something that needs further explanation. But again, I keep it as brief as possible to avoid unnecessarily slowing the pace and leaving the reader feeling as though they’ve become mired in a swamp of information.

If Tock were my main character, I might show him trying to slip his leash in front of the vet’s office, followed by him thinking: This is the home of that evil microchip. Must flee before it attacks me again! Then I’d continue on with the early events of the story without dwelling further on Tock’s evasive action until he again does something that requires a little more insight.

A scared dog--crouching, ears back, tail down — *Terrified Tock. I’m way too pre-occupied to get a picture of him entering the vet’s office, but this is what he looks like when scared (here by the sudden motion of a kinetic owl sculpture).*

Another scene I might write in the early pages to develop my main character is one in which Tock emits a hopeful little whine when he sees an old border collie. The sweetness of this sound would give the reader some early empathy for Tock: a true “Save the Cat” moment, as recommended by writing craft expert Jessica Brody. Tock’s interiority for his action and “dialogue” would read something like: Moth, is that you? Tarzan, I miss you.

Young dog looking up at older dog — *Further reveals in Tock’s story would show his former relationship with Moth and especially Tarzan, the old dog who remained Tock’s BFF until the day he died.*

So at this point you have enough information to understand why Tock loves old dogs so much—especially ancient border collies. The ghosts of our past pets drift through our thoughts forever, as well as through the minds of other animals in the family who knew and loved them. It’s terribly hard to say goodbye to a departed dog’s story, but one thing that makes losing them easier is seeing their memories and spirit carried on in the next generation. When Tock plays gently with an old dog, I’m reminded of Tock as a puppy, running circles around and beneath Tarzan, while old Tarzan gently waved his big white plume of a tail.

But what about the vet? If I were writing a story of Tock’s life, I’d eventually show him in a scene where he’s especially fearful—perhaps startled by the owl in the picture above, and ideally by something related to the story’s inciting incident. As the scene develops, darker thoughts of Tock’s former fears would begin to surface. Fear of his new owner (me), taking him away from the ranch where he was scared of the sheep. Fear of ravens circling overhead that made him want to run inside, fear of entering a big barn door at his first agility competition, fear of entering a dog crate even though it was exactly the same as his much-loved crate at home. And then the culmination … fear of a big fat needle, plunged into the formerly happy-at-the-vet puppy in order to insert a microchip.

The problem, you see, stemmed from the extremely strong fear periods that Tock exhibited until he was at least two years old. None of my other dogs had them, or had outgrown them by the time I adopted them. I didn’t even fully comprehend what was going on until after the fearful incidents had passed (bad, bad dog owner). But subjecting a dog to that needle when he was in the middle of a fear period made him certain for life that the vet was out to kill him. Gradual reintroductions to the vet “just for fun” all backfired, resulting in him refusing even to get out of the car. At this point, I only take him in, double-leashed, for his annual shots and whisk him out fast, in order to keep his terror to a minimum.

Dog eating lots of treats — *Tock getting a “jackpot” reward after surviving another round of shots at the vet’s*

Whew. That little demonstration of backstory is my embarrassing admission for the day. But examining my life as a dog owner gives me a free tutorial in backstory’s value in explaining why characters do—or won’t do—various things (never do something scary with a dog during a fear period!).

Perhaps it can help us learn from our mistakes on a more global scale as well. As a scientist, I know full well the importance of developing one’s hypotheses and experiments based on the research that came before. And as writers, of course, we can’t help but be influenced by the wealth of wonderful stories that have already been written. But there are lots of things we humans could keep expanding our knowledge, some more desperately needed than others. My personal favorites include (list warning!): reducing air and water pollution, supporting alternative energy in order to mitigate climate change, managing natural resources so they can sustain plant and animal biodiversity, and reducing the use of non-biodegradable products. But caring enough about these issues to take even a single step towards their solution requires us to know what’s already happened—both the good and the bad. Like fleshing out a character in a story, revealing the facts of our past—our collective backstory—will help us build a stronger future on this planet we all call home.

Happy Tales!

What’s in a Verb?

Ask any dog for the answer…

Even though they don’t speak, dogs have an incredible ability to understand language. I can hardly think of a dog who doesn’t get excited when they hear the words “walk,” “dinner,” or “get it!” Conversely, they’ll put their tails between their legs when they hear words like “no,” “bad dog,” or “leave it.” And if they’ve been trained well, they’ll respond quickly and correctly when they hear “come,” “sit,” or “down.” They demonstrate that they can distinguish between these words through their appropriate responses to each one.

Dog with toy — *Tock fetches his rubber chicken when asked, even if it’s hidden in a pile of toys in another room*.

Naturally, this canine affinity to words is super exciting to someone who writes. I can spend enjoyable day upon day searching for the perfect words for my stories … and I like to give my dog that opportunity, too. In agility training, I invest a lot of time in deciding which words to use for commands—for my students’ dogs as well as my own. Our time running a competition agility course is short—from thirty to sixty seconds, usually—so we don’t want to blather on, using three words when one will do, or hollering out a word that’s difficult to enunciate or one that could be confused with other commands we’re also using. We need the right word for each situation, telling the dog exactly which obstacle to take, how to take it, or where to run.

Tock responds to the “Dig” verbal cue. My dogs learn 4 commands for different turns, which they receive as they commit to an obstacle, alerting them to collect their stride so they’re ready to turn. “Right” means turn 90 deg to the right, “left” is 90 deg to the left, “dig” is a tight righthand wrap (much more than 90 deg), and “tuck” a tight lefthand wrap. The prefix “Go” before any of these words tells my dog that I’ll be crossing behind him as he takes the jump ahead of me.

Humans are intensely verbal creatures, and the more our dogs can understand us, the happier we are in our interactions with them. From the dogs’ perspective, words provides them with a way to learn and grow even as they age. You may have heard of the border collies who’ve mastered 200 to 1,000 or more words for their toys. Even more impressive, though, is the latest evidence that shows dogs have the capability to learn new contexts for words, and to put words together into novel (and appropriate) phrases that they’ve never heard before. And the coolest thing is that dogs can learn to communicate using these words, rather than simply hearing them as commands.

Book cover for "How Stella Learned to Talk" — *Thanks to Christina Hunger’s book, Tock is learning to use his knowledge of words to get what he wants.*

Dog pressing a "talking" button — Tock mastered his first “talking” button within a week, though at eight years old, it’s taking him awhile to understand that he can ask for things whenever he wants and not just when I expect him to.

If you’ve read my previous posts, you’re probably wondering how I’m going to tie canine word use to some sort of writing advice. I will not disappoint, so here goes: I think that the satisfaction gained from the ideal word has a positive effect on the relationship not only between humans and dogs, but between writers and readers. As my critique groups know all too well, one word I write quite a lot in my comments for other people’s writing samples is “vague.” It almost always applies to word choice. Verb choice, in particular.

This attention to verbs is probably no coincidence for me. In the dog world, I’m constantly looking for new verbs to describe actions my dog uses that I, in turn, could put to use in agility or on Tock’s button board. But I’ve found that many writers get lazy when employing verbs, saying things like “she came forward,” or “he moved across the room,” rather than a more descriptive verb that gives us additional information. How do these characters come or move? Are they skulking, trotting, hurrying, bounding, or stumbling?

Another problem that brings out my metaphorical red pen is when writers employ boring verbs to describe characters engaging in the repetitive motions that we all do a million times in a day. These include words such as “looking,” “staring,” “gazing”, “turning,” or “pointing.” Now, I’m the first one to admit that finding substitutions for these words isn’t easy. How can we show what our characters are seeing without using them? My first choice for a solution is simply that: show it. Just describe the thing they’re looking at, and the word “looked” is implied. The reader knows the character had to look at it in order to see it, and thus the verb itself isn’t even necessary. My second choice is to find a more interesting way to describe those actions. You could describe a character’s eyes, and then we know that another character is staring at or gazing into them. You could use a verb phrase, such as “he spun on his toes,” or “she prodded his chest with her finger,” to indicate turning or pointing.

Border collie staring — *Stemming from their sheep-herding history, border collies are famous for giving “the eye*” *at something they want. Tock uses this technique at least fifty times a day. Probably a hundred.*

I need to digress here with an important note: verbs for written dialogue are the one exception you’ll want to make to the use of “interesting” words. This is because dialogue tags (such as “said,” “shouted,” and “whispered”) ought to remain as invisible as possible so our brains can simply read the spoken exchange without interference from the tags. Words such as “whined,” “snapped,” and “interrupted,” tend to distract readers too much from the characters’ back-and-forth. Also, a lot of verbs are mistakenly used as tags that aren’t in fact dialogue words at all. It’s best to save actions such as “smiled,” “giggled,” and “sobbed” for complete sentences separate from the dialogue.

So as usual, my advice is pretty simple. The next time you’re writing an action scene, remember your dog! Think up bright, memorable verbs or verb phrases that encapsulate the situation in the most concise but appropriate way possible. Your dog will get a clearer understanding of what’s going on … and so will your reader.

Dog in extension over jumps, heading away from camera — *Here,* *Tock has been given his “Go On” command. Can you tell what that means?*

Happy Tales!