writing craft – Page 4 – Flights of Fancy

REVISION: Is your bowl of porridge too cold, too hot … or just right?

(Or: How do you know when your story has reached the “Goldilocks Zone?”)

Components of a bowl of porridige — *Photo credit: Cleanlight Photo*

When is a story good enough to stop working on it?

This is one of the most pressing questions facing the author of a revised manuscript (correction: a revised-and-revised-and-revised-to infinity manuscript). If you’re a conscientious and possibly obsessive writer who wants to produce the best possible experience for your reader, you won’t stop after the first couple drafts, regardless of how much organization and preliminary revision effort you’ve already put into them. You’ll keep re-visiting it, at first maybe making sweeping changes, followed by smaller and smaller alterations, sending it out to alpha readers, beta readers, critique groups, and paid professionals. Even after you’ve ceased finding anything wrong with it beyond an occasional typo, the people you solicit to look at it will make suggestions for improvement, every single time.

After looking at your manuscript so much that you no longer have any idea whether it’s good enough, and in fact might be getting worse with all the attention, I recommend a very simplistic formula to figure out the answer, which will place your work in one of three categories. It relates back to—big surprise here—going for a walk.

1. Your story’s too cold: Readers can’t connect to the unfeeling, underdeveloped, or commonplace characters, the plot meanders without actually going anywhere, the world lacks the spark of details. This is me when I first step out the door to go on a walk at dawn. The purplish air, even if it has the promise of heat in a few hours, turns my fingers to ice and my hands and forearms to the texture of cold marble. I’m so immersed in trying to stay warm that I enfold myself in my hood and pockets and trudge along looking only at my boots. I could be walking to the end of the driveway or I could be climbing Mt. Everest. How would I know? I’m too sunken within myself to notice.

Dog wearing 2 jackets — *Because of his short fur, Tock, too, wears a jacket when the temperature dips below freezing . Sometimes two jackets, if it gets down into the teens*.

2. Your story’s too hot. You have so many characters and plot lines that readers can’t keep track of them all. Reviewers suggest that perhaps you have more than one book within your pages. The scenes overflow with backstory, info dumps, unnecessary dialogue, or superfluous adjectives. This overheated state creeps up on me about ten minutes into my walk. I find myself ripping off my gloves and wiping my sweaty hands on my pants. The sun hasn’t yet made its appearance and probably the air temperature hasn’t begun to change, but internally, I’m beginning to feel insufferably warm. My gaze jumps from one rock or tree or viewpoint to another, and I struggle to focus.

Dogs in a stream — *On hot, dry days, dogs need plenty of water breaks. Here, Tarzan & Tenzing take refreshment during a long-ago hike.*

3. Your story’s just right. I prefer this phrase to “perfect.” Words, phrases, scenes, and stories are subjective, and every reader is going to like and dislike different things about them. Our stories won’t ever be perfect, because that state simply doesn’t exist. They’re not mathematical formulas. But readers will be most likely to enjoy them if there’s a nice balance of characters and plot, a thoughtfully paced mix of dialogue, interiority, and action, if there are enough details to see the world and understand why the characters do what they do, and if the character and plot arcs resolve themselves in satisfying ways. For me, this Goldilocks Zone on a walk happens most often on a calm, sunny-but not-too-hot day after I’ve reached a ridge or a lake basin. It’s a place where I can walk on mostly flat ground, still getting some brisk exercise in the invigorating fresh air, but not so much that I’m out of breath.

Author and dog at a lake — *An alpine lake: my personal Goldilocks Zone*

At some point during the revision process, it’s up to us writers to decide when we’ve gotten into the “just-right” zone. Any more tinkering beyond that point might start to suck the life out of our story, because we’re so far past that first euphoric flush of actually writing it. Yet I feel I’m a bit hypocritical to talk about this happy zone because I often have trouble turning off the self-editing mode for my own manuscripts. Even after I’ve reached the point where I have to re-visit my premise just to remind myself why I wrote the darned book in the first place.

Maybe I struggle with putting an end to revision because I hardly ever reach that state of satisfaction with the clothes on my back. Here’s my excuse: I live in the Rocky Mountains. Morning air is cold and often breezy, especially in the winter (wanna come for a walk with me at 12 degrees F—not counting wind chill—anyone?). Hills are steep and plentiful. Flat sections of trails are rare, especially near my house where I mostly walk. So no matter the season, I start out with multiple layers of clothing. Even in mid-summer on a warm morning, I need a little brisk exercise before my hands lose their chill and regain their function. And when it’s far below freezing in the winter, I’ve been known to wear five layers on my torso and two on my legs. Still, I’ll warm quickly and feel the need to tug my arms out of my sleeves, ending up at a single layer.

Suited up for a cold walk — Ready to brave the wintry woods

My husband says I have poor temperature control. I say I’m being smart. Secretly, I know he’s right … to some extent. My body temperature seems to fluctuate a lot more widely than his, and my extremities routinely segue from frozen and numb to overheated and sweaty, over and over during the course of a walk, depending on whether I’m walking up or down hill. I envy him for only having to wear one or two layers, every time.

I’m even more jealous of my dog. Sure, he wears coats because I put them on him and he jumps into lakes because I throw sticks for him, but he’s pretty much always in the Goldilocks Zone. His fur coat, though short, is quite suitable for a range of temperatures. With the thick undercoat he grows in the winter, he probably doesn’t need a jacket nearly as much as I think he does. If Tock were a writer, he’d compose one, two, maybe three drafts … and be done. No more nitpicking and dithering; he’d be happy with what he produced and move on.

I can’t help but think about wild animals in this context, too. They don’t have owners to dress them and care for their every need. What if the summer is especially hot and dry, or the winter is filled with unpredictable and severe storms? What if animals can’t adjust to these changes in their environment in time? Evolution of adaptations is a long, slow process—far slower than the current pace of climate change. Most creatures have evolved to survive perfectly in the Goldilocks Zone of their current habitat, and they lack the ability to strip off their layers, or flee to a place with more shade, water, or warmth. Or less of those things. If they were writers, forget the revisions. Their stories might end before they finish the first draft.

polar bear — *Polar bears are the most famous of the many species that are running out of time, living on a planet with an ever-shrinking Goldilocks Zone for their particular needs. Photo credit: Peter Neumann*

Astronomers are on a quest to find other planets with the same large-scale Goldilocks Zone as Earth, where temperatures allow the existence of liquid water. This is primarily part of the effort to search for extraterrestrial life, but I suspect many people think the hunt is valuable for another reason: as a way to find other places humans might relocate to when we’ve outgrown our home planet. To me, this is akin to throwing your story in the trash and starting over. Similar to Planet Earth, populated with almost nine million species, a draft is an incredible accomplishment, filled with thousands of words that have been organized to work in harmony. Let’s keep these stories, no matter the scale, and figure out how we can make them “good enough” for everyone to enjoy.

Porridge ready to eat — *Photo credit: Klara Avsenik*

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!

Writing is Just Another Trick!

When most people think about dog training, they think “tricks.” Dogs doing sits, downs, and stays, rollovers, high-fives, and sitting up on their haunches. There are books about the 101 tricks you can teach your dog to do with a carboard box. And the beauty of these tricks is that they’re not hard to teach, as long as you have a reward your dog really likes, a way of marking the moment they do something right, the patience to teach the trick in small, incremental steps, and the wisdom of when to raise the bar and ask for your dog to do something a little bit harder. Keep upping your criteria and bingo, you have a fully trained behavior that your dog will perform after a single command.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could write books that way?

Impossible, you’re probably thinking. Writers aren’t dogs, or monkeys, or seals with balls on our noses! We’re artists. Creatives. We write when the muse calls, through a magical process that’s known only to us. Other writers might have the tiniest glimmer of understanding of how it works—but they’ll have trouble describing it if pressed.

I disagree. Now, I appreciate my muse as much as any writer ever does. I know all too well that glorious feeling of urgency when I’m in the throes of a work-in-progress—when I must simply write rather than think, when my soul pours into the words flowing off my fingertips and onto the page. But this sort of writing is the end result of study and planning. I know it’s good writing because I’ve spent years teaching myself all the writerly tricks of the trade. I’ve studied premises, first pages, inciting incidents, plot arcs, character goals and development, dialogue, voice, pacing, show versus tell, world-building, how to use backstory effectively, and on and on. Most important of all, I’ve come to appreciate that these components of writing—these “tricks,” if you will—can be synthesized into something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. The humongous, artful, creative, and tricky masterpiece of a good story.

Story Genius book cover — *One of my favorite books on the craft of writing*

It’s possible I think about writing this way because of my background as a dog agility trainer. I still remember the epiphany I experienced when I learned from another trainer that agility is nothing more than a series of tricks.

Whoa, you might be saying. Aren’t all dogs agile until they get old? Why would you need to train them in something called agility?

You’ve probably caught a glimpse of agility on television or in someone’s back yard, or you’ve glazed over when a dog-owning friend of yours complained to you about how expensive their agility classes have become. But on the chance that you haven’t heard of it, dog agility consists of directing a dog through a course filled with obstacles. These include fun things such as jumps, tunnels, tire jumps, weave poles, and giant painted structures (teeter-totter, A-frame, and a long, skinny plank called a dogwalk). In competition, two courses are never the same, and each run is timed so that dogs are judged both on speed and on whether they run the course without accruing any faults (knocked bars, wrong courses, refusals, and many, many more).

Dog about to jump — *Tock’s departed “brother” and BFF Tarzan navigating through a minefield of jumps in a competition.*

Just as people don’t need to come from a particular background or level of education to learn to write effectively, dogs don’t have to be innately “agile” to participate in the sport of dog agility. Sure, some dogs are better at it than others (okay, a lot better), but this mostly has to do with motivation and not with any genetic differences that predispose them to the skills.

Dog on teeter — *Tock demonstrating his motivation to bang the teeter to the ground!*

Lest this lead you to think that agility is easy, I can assure you that it’s not. There are invariably students in beginning agility classes who assume that all they need to do is clip a leash on their dog and cajole them over the jumps, haul them onto the contact obstacles (the A-frame, teeter, and dogwalk), and stuff them into the tunnels. They’re certain that they’ll be doing a full course by the end of the first class.

But I forgot to mention that there are no leashes. And dogs need to learn how to run through courses they’ve never seen before without any mistakes. At full speed. An inexperienced handler attempting to achieve all this in one evening is akin to a novice writer whipping out a captivating, error-free book on the first try. I suppose it could be done (in a parallel universe?), but the chances are infinitesimally small.

This is why my beginning students don’t start on the obstacles. They get foundation training, in which they learn how to shape their dog’s behaviors into lots of little tricks. Because the foundation I teach is specific to agility, the tricks dogs learn all lead to something they eventually need to do. Some are so basic that the dogs may already know them, like sit, down, stay, and recall. Others are a bit more advanced, like learning to “go on” to some distant point away from their handler, or learning to move by their handler’s side at a walk or a run, stopping when they stop, and switching to the other side when signaled to do so. They’ll even get to start learning how to interact with the obstacles—the ends of the contact equipment, the openings of tunnels, the standards of jumps (but no bars!).

Dog catching pinecone — *Tock learning what he has to do to get his pinecone reward.* *Training agility foundation is similar to attending writing workshops or reading books in which you learn the basic components of writing craft.*

Similar to writing a book, agility training happens in many stages. After dogs learn how to work and move with their human handlers, they need to become comfortable with the individual obstacles. Once they’re performing an obstacle correctly and confidently, they’re ready to learn its name, so they can run to it when they’re commanded to do so (beware of assigning names to things too early, or you’ll end up having to say “tunnel” five times while your dog runs around it or stares cluelessly at you). Finally, dogs have to learn how to string obstacles together into sequences and to understand both verbal and body language signals in order to know where to go next on course.

After lots of time learning the little things, Moth & I became a team

The main point I’m trying to make here is that for agility dogs and writers both, it takes time and lots of patience to learn the craft. But as you master the tricks of your trade, you’ll be able to string them together into an entire manuscript. This masterpiece is the most tremendous trick of all—and only you will know just how much work went into it.

Happy Tales!