Character Accuses Author of Bad Storytelling

My protagonist, Michael “Neruda” Flynn, is upset with me. He saunters in as I’m working on my next work in progress and pounds on my desk. “How badly did you tell my story in THE LANGUAGE OF THE SON?”

I look up. “What do you mean?”

He throws his hands in the air. “You sold a bunch of copies, but nobody is reviewing it!”.

“Oh. That.” I take a sip of tea. “Maybe people are afraid of hurting my feelings if they hated it.”

He scoffs. “You have no feelings! Writers are soulless creatures who devise more ways to torture poor, innocent characters like me.”

I squint at him. “Have you been reading my browsing history?”

He crosses his arms and slumps back in his chair. “No, but I survived all the knives and arrows you flung at me in a three-book series.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, but readers want you to suffer. Otherwise there’s no story.”

“But why must I suffer so much?”

I shrug. “You don't think  I suffered too as I was writing your tale? All those endless revisions and scenes to make the story work!”

He points a finger at me. “Just you wait. I’ll write my own story and base a character on you. I’ll send her into a field of dragons and snakes, and believe me, it won’t be pretty.”

“I guess turnabout is fair play.” I take another taste of my tea and raise my fingers above my keyboard. “Now can I get back to my next novel?”

He glances at my screen. “That poor girl. What did she and her family ever do to you where you have to cause her so much grief?”

“They visited my imagination.”

If you’ve read THE LANGUAGE OF THE SON, Michael and I would appreciate an honest review.

Thank you! 

Happy Reading!

Characters vs. Author: The Battle Ensues

When BREAKFAST WITH NERUDA came out in 2016, I thought I was finished with the book..But my imaginary friends had other plans. Shelly and Michael appeared in my dreams with more scenes, locations and plot ideas. They have tortured my imagination, so now it's my turn to torture them back with more conflict, obstacles, and antagonists.

Yet with each arrow I sling at them, they exact revenge by taking the plot wayyyyy off course, causing me to write thousands of unnecessary scenes. Why did I like these people in the first place?

Each day I face the computer I think, I have no idea what I'm doing. Yet I pound the keys anyway. I tried taking the advice of planning things out, but I'm a 'pantser,' through and through. However, I do have a log line, which acts as a beacon. So I'm not paddling a canoe in the ocean. More like a tub boat low on fuel.

Friends don't let friends write novels.

Enter to win a FREE autographed copy of Breakfast With Neruda.http://janetleecarey.com/dream-walks/plotter-or-pantser-with-laura-moe/

Happy Writing.

It's Always Sunny and Warm For My Imaginary Friends

It was -8 this morning, with twenty five below wind chill factors. No, I don’t live in the Arctic; I live in southeastern Ohio.

The winter of 2015 has been endless for those of us east of Kansas: sub zero temperatures, blizzards every other day, and just plain cold. I've never been a fan of winter, but this frigid season hit an all time low, figuratively and literally. Occasionally in January and February our mercury dips to below zero, but rises back up to the normal twenties and thirties. Not this year. We've had weeks where the thermometer didn't rise above freezing, and many days in a row where the wind chill factor kept us in the single digits and lower.

Yesterday, as I sat in Starbucks bundled in three layers of clothes, two scarves wrapped around my neck and finger-less gloves on my hands I wrote my protagonist into April. The scene originally took place in October, but I couldn't bear walking into winter, so along with Michael, I smelled the edge of warmth in the air, saw the daffodils and crocus erupt from the earth, and anticipated his upcoming summer.

My strategy for not sinking into the abyss of the remaining weeks of tundra climate is to immerse my story inside spring and move with it through summer.

There s foot of snow piled around my house, but not inside my novel. For a few hours a day, as long as I don’t venture outside, I can forget I’m actually in Ohio.

Happy Writing, and stay warm.

One of the marks of a good novel is its ability to make the reader wonder if the story is true.  The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman contains enough historical accuracy and detail to make me believe it. Protagonist Lillian Dunkle, nee Malka Trynovsky, a child of a hustler for a father and am embittered mother, arrives with her family from Russia to live in squalor in the lower east side. Her father runs off shortly after their arrival, and Malka suffers a crippling injury after being hit by an ice cream vendor. Abandoned by her mother, Malka faces being sent to an orphanage, but the Italian ice cream vendor, Salvatore Dinello, brings her to live with his family, where she takes the name Lillian Dinello. The Dinellos use her as a laborer for their business, her limp causes her to be bullied, and her looks do not turn the heads of possible suitors. Until she meets fellow immigrant Albert Dunkle, for whom she is hired to transcribe letters.

Like Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes, Lillian does not play the pity party, yet the reader wishes people treated young Lillian better. But the abuse and betrayals she suffers only foster Lillian’s tenacity, allowing Lillian and her hapless husband to become ice cream emperors in the highly competitive world of confections. Over the years Lillian morphs into a cross between Leona Helmsley and Joan Rivers, and in business and her personal life Lillian is often ruthless and conniving, yet the reader still roots for her. Her relationships with her Adonis handsome husband, her pot smoking grandson Jason, and her purse-sized dog reveal Lillian’s soft spots, and by the time Lillian’s empire collapses around her, the reader wishes for the best possible outcome.

Told in first person, Lillian’s voice drives The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street with frankness and humor, provides the reader with insight into the ice cream business, entertainment industry and lifestyles of the rich and famous. This would make a good book club book, so set your calendar for June 10, 2014 to get your copy.

Why is the Big Bang Theory important for Novelists?

My name is Laura M and I am addicted to the Big Bang Theory, or as we seasoned viewers call it: TBBT.I have seen every episode more than once, yet I laugh at the same lines  every time. It’s a sickness. Or is it?

Some of my non=addicted friends have criticized the show as stereotypically portraying the quartet of guys as nerds, with Penny representing the token "normal” person. But it’s comedy; it’s supposed to be exaggerated. One of the elements of comedy writing is exaggeration. And Penny is not “normal”. Nobody, from Sheldon and Leonard’s moms or Will Wheaton, and even Stan Lee, gets off that show Scott-free. The characters on TBBT represent human foibles common to most of us.

Okay, at this point, if you are still reading this post, you may be asking, WTF does a silly sitcom  have to do with writing a novel? TBBT is about character, and writers take a full blown character, and mix him or her with another character or situation, place them in peril, and they react. In the case of TBBT, the reaction is funny. Comedy writers take our human frailties and spin them to make comedic magic.

This show has earned its huge success from exemplary writing. After six seasons, (and renewed for a seventh!) the characters, situations and dialogue are still fresh. Like a novel, more than one character’s story is fully developed, and the audience finds surprises throughout the journey. TV, theatre and film are collaborative efforts, and it takes actors, set designers, and directors to produce it, but the story begins (and thrives) with the writing.

In all tales, the audience needs to fall in love with at least one character a little. Even the bad guy. (Who doesn’t love a good villain? Without Beatty, Montag’s quest in Fahrenheit 451 would be beige. And who can’t love a conflicted character like Frankenstein, who is both protagonist and antagonist? When we engage in stories, we hold up a mirror, and someone we know well is one (or more) of those characters.  We watch TBBT to laugh at ourselves and our friends.

Like Sheldon, I like to sit in the same spot on my couch, and tend to gravitate to the same restaurants where I order the same things from the menu. As I write this I am munching on lunch at a local deli where the staff knows my nakme.) I don’t wear ‘bus pants’, but I am cognizant of where I sit in public; I prefer seats that can be wiped down to upholstered ones. You never know what is on the seat of anyone’s pants.

I wipe silverware down with the napkin in restaurants (trust me, I have worked in restaurants; you WANT to do this), and I over-sanitize my hands, likely eradicating any resistance to disease.  While I do not obsess over scientific formulas, I obsess over words. It can take me days before I am satisfied with a sentence or a line of poetry, (and still, it will never be right.)

Like Leonard I over think things, and often say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  Can’t let it go. I blame my dad. My father was literal, much like Leonard’s mother. He said what he thought when he thought it, because it was without malice., If my mother or one of us kids did something like pull a sixteen pound turkey out of the oven and drop it on the floor, he’d glance up from behind his newspaper, and say, “Why’d you do that?”

Some of his favorite expressions, said without malice, were , “Have you always been stupid?” and “People have the right to be stupid, but they also need to know when they are being so.”  So yeah, I have some Leonard in me.

I’m a little like Raj, too; I don't like spiders and Indian food, either. My family spent three years on the Indian subcontinent, where, “it’s so hot!”, and I never developed a taste for curry or cardamom. I do like Bollywood movies, though. (I am listening to Indian music in my headphones as I write this.)

And then there’s Howard. Hmmm. No, I’m not like Howard. I don't think there is anyone like Howard. But Bernadette loves him. And so do I.

.I worked as a snarky waitress for awhile. Also like Penny my house often looks like it was recently burglarized, and I have dated a succession of Mr. Wrongs. I’d like to say I am hot like Penny, but that was many, many moons ago. Now I’m tepid. I’m more like a less smart version of Amy Farah Fowler without the sweaters.

But this isn't about me. It's about all of us, and how each of us finds ourselves inside a fictitious character.  I will agree that on the surface each character fulfills a broad stereotype; the guys have advanced degrees and love gaming, and Penny, a junior college dropout, is a shoe obsessed dreamer. But under the layers, each of these people is unique and interesting, just as good characters (and real people) are.

That’s MY story and I’m sticking to it.

Happy Writing.

How to Love a Book

This book may shock you, will make you laugh, and may break your heart, but you will never forget it. 

Shortly before we moved back to the United States from East Pakistan, on the precipice of undergoing a revolution to become Bangladesh, we were frightened by an event that made my family and I pack our bags for flight. We had been in Dacca three years, and for the first two, life had been sedate, albeit not normal. Nothing on the  Subcontinent appears normal to westerners. But we felt safe. We were Americans after all,  the White Gods, impermeable .

This past year, however, our status as rich foreigners made no difference to the rioters and demonstrators. Because I was young, fourteen, and lived a privileged lifestyle rendering me immune to local politics, I didn't pay much attention to outside forces unless they inconvenienced me. My brother Paul and I attended the American School, and began missing school at least once a week because of  strikes and curfews. Phone service grew sketchier, and power outages occurred almost daily. Still, I had my books. I read by lantern light.

Our house had a flat roof, perfect for watching weather or surveying happenings in the neighborhood. One  spring evening my father and i stood rooftop after supper and noticed a trail of light snaking its way in our direction. "What is that?" I asked.

Dad squinted, and said, "I don't know. Go get the binoculars."

I returned with the field glasses, and my father stared at the light, now much closer and brighter. "Jesus," he said.

"What is it." He handed the binoculars to me. A crowd of men, perhaps a hundred, carried lit torches. They were shouting, waving the torches, and heading toward our street.

One of our servants stood in the doorway at the top of the staircase. "Sahib, it is not good what is happening."

“What are those men saying, Kardir?"

"Death to the governor, Sahib."

The governor's daughter lived in a large new home caddy corner across from our compound.

My father hustled us downstairs, shouting for my mother and brother and I to pack a bag. "We may have to get out tonight."

I retrieved my blue suitcase from the godown (closet) and flung it on my bed. This bag had seen me through several trips across the United States and overseas. The suitcase was blue, yet covered with decals and stickers signifying various places i had journeyed.

"We might not be coming back," my father had said. "Take what you need,"

I gathered up my favorite books, records, my diaries, yearbooks, and a few souvenirs and dumped them inside the bag. I threw in a few clothes and sat on the case to close it.

 My father came in to get my luggage. "What the hell?" He set it down and opened it. "You can't take all these books,"

“But you said take what's important to me."

He sighed. "We can buy you new ones when we get back to the states. Now pack some more clothes. "

 

After quick negotiations, I was allowed to keep my yearbooks, diaries, a few record albums, a couple of souvenirs and one book. I filled the rest of suitcase with clothing and a pair of shoes. Dad and I dashed to the back fence where my mother and brother waited in the dark.

 

The solitary book was a paperback copy of Catcher in the Rye. The book had leapt into my hands one day when the book wallah, a man who sold books from his bicycle, every Saturday, visited our house when riots didn’t keep him away. The cover bore a picture of a young man wearing a brown coat, backwards red cap, and a red scarf. He was illuminated by lights from a strip club at night as he held a battered suitcase littered with stickers, much like my own. 

 

The text on the cover read: “This book may shock you, will make you laugh, and may break your heart, but you will never forget it.” How could I resist that?

 

I fell in love with crazy old Holden Caulfield on the first page."If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

 Having recently turned fourteen, I identified with his disenchantment with school, parents, peers and life in general. Catcher in the Rye is the first novel I read more than once, the first novel that made me laugh and cry sometimes simultaneously, such as a scene in Chapter 25, when Holden takes his little sister Phoebe to the park and tries erase all  the graffiti. He resigns himself to, "That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact."

As a toddler  before I could read the words myself, I tortured my parents  to “read it again!”  and in elementary school I repeatedly recited lines from The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. What kid didn't?  But the Catcher in the Rye is the first story I lived within; I was Holden Caufield, even though I was not a seventeen year old boy living in New York City. It didn't matter.  His voice lived inside me, and I became part of the story.

It's been years since I have read the book, but subconsciously I channeled Holden when I wrote my first novel, Parallel Lines. The lead character, Nick Verseau, unintentionally bears a similar voice, so Holden still lives inside me. I'm oldish now, yet perhaps still a rankled teenager at heart.  Maybe someday I will be promoted to tell you all the “David Copperfield kind of crap” about my life.

This morning I thought about how there are no original stories. All the major themes in life can be placed written on one 3 x 5 card. Yet every  new novel, memoir or book of poems released is original because each of us experiences the universal themes  uniquely. So even though all the stories seem to have already been told, there are still some great tales yet to be written. Write one.

 

What is YOUR favorite all time book? If you were being evacuated to a new planet and could only take one book, which would it be and why?

Happy Writing.

"Don't Be Crazy," editor Martha Mihalik

[Here are my first day notes from the OCCBWW conference, but I am saving them to now because before you send out to an editor or agent, you ned to get the writing done right first. If you are a memeber of Writers Speak, this is a repeat.]
-Martha Mihalik, Greenwillow Books- editor

When she gets a mss, she asks. Do I want to keep reading or watch TV?
Do I like this?
Most importanmt considerations:
Voice
Character
PlotAll three must be supported by strong writing
Pay attention to language, sentences, pace
SHOWing not telling

Good voice is the way to tell your story. Language, structure
Picture book voices are sincere and silly, not sing song rhyme. Subtle, not forced. A comfortable voice.

READ as much as you can in the genre for which you work!!

Voice has an opinion and a perspective for the story being told. Voice is what makes this story unique. If it can be told by anybody, the manuscript goes into the reject pile.

Character Do we see him/her? Does this person have flaws? How is “character” revealed? Through the objects around them? Actions? Opinions? If a character has a quirk it’s ok to use surprising detail to reveal this

Plot internal and external. Something must be at stake internally . Plot is driven by the character, and not predictable. Should be age appropriate- something the kid should be attracted to. Should NOT be message driven. There should BE a message, but simmering beneath the surface.

Picture books
Are under 1000 words, 32-35 pages. Should get to the conflict by or on the 3 rd page.

Novels should have conflict by the 3 rd chapter, but you want the reader to keep reading beyond the first chapter

Authenticity- stories should have a ring of authenticity.
Read it out loud!!
Does the voice sound authentic? Age level appropriate? Do not let the adult voice leak in.

MarketingWho is your audience?
What is the hook?
Is there anything else like it out there?
Why? Or why not?
Does this book fit the Greenwillow (or whatever publisher you send it to) list?
Is the writing sharp? Is this a different spin on an existing idea?

AcquisitionsAn editior she prioritizes mss, looks at profit and loss. Publishing is a business, not an art. Ms Mihalik often does not read the cover letter. Letter should be SHORT.
Don’t be crazy.


Happy Writing.