The Author's Guide to Avoiding Pesky Pitfalls
Part I
Have you ever slogged through the opening pages of a manuscript or novel laden with background and wondered what the story is about and when it will finally take off before you quit reading? Your self-appointed pitfall detective has spotted this malady in more manuscripts than he cares to recount; so it seems only appropriate to address it as the first pitfall in fiction writing.
Pitfall No.1: Selecting a Starting Point for your Novel that Is too Early.
Nothing will make a reader or agent give up on a manuscript faster than an ill-conceived starting point. Instead of filling the opening pages with background information guaranteed to turn readers off, start as close to the end of the story as you can. Put another way, start a novel the way you pick up a cat: as far forward as possible.
You have probably heard the term in media res bandied about. That simply means to start in the middle of the action. In other words, start the story at a crucial point. The manuscript should open with the inciting incident, i.e. the event or decision that begins a story's main problem or conflict. Everything until that moment is backstory; everything after is »the story.«
You only have a few paragraphs to hook the reader. Don’t miss the chance by leading with background information. You will have plenty of opportunities to fill in crucial background in bits and pieces in subsequent chapters. But even then, write only backstory that is essential to the reader's understanding of plot or motivations.
See Part I of How Not to Write a Novel, by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.
Pitfall No. 2: Using Adverbs to »Explain« or Punch up Weak Dialogue.
While some insist there are no ironclad rules when it comes to fiction writing, explaining dialogue by way of adverbs that modify tag lines comes close in my book. Dialogue must stand on its own and any attempt to explain it will weaken your writing. For a thorough discussion of why the professional writer is wise to avoid explaining dialogue, see chapter 5 of my favorite »how-to-book« Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King.
On pages 86-87, you'll find these examples:
»Don’t worry, the radiation level isn’t very high,« Tom said glowingly.
»Keep scrubbing until you’re finished,« she said harshly.
An accomplished writer would replace the adverb modifying the speech tag with a beat, which results in showing in lieu of telling.
She pointed to the dirty floor. »Keep scrubbing until you’re finished.«
Pitfall No. 3: Using both a Tag Line and a Beat for Dialogue Attribution.
To use both a speech tag and a beat is redundant and overly wordy. Which of the following do you find preferable?
»See for yourself. You won't find what you’re looking for in there,« he said as he placed his briefcase on the table.
He flung the briefcase across the table. »See for yourself. You won’t find what you're looking for in there.«
In deciding whether to use a tag line or a beat, the issue is really showing vs. telling. For example, which one of the following do you find more interesting?
»Let's go,« Mary said.
Mary tore open the door. »Let's go!«
Or less demonstrative: Mary grabbed the car keys. »Let’s go!«
Or even less: Mary stood. »Let’s go.«
The beats allow you to show Mary’s mood. The tag line does not, even if you add an adverb, trying to explain dialogue. Not only will that weaken your writing, but you risk having the adverb police come for you. See pitfall No. 2 above.
Pitfall No. 4: Information Dumping
The surest way to bore a reader and make her skip paragraphs is to dump information in one fell swoop. Never stop the story cold to supply backstory. Instead, look for creative ways to insert the information in small doses so it organically flows from the action. You’re wondering what I mean by »creative ways,« aren’t you? I’ll take that as a yes. The possibilities are endless and limited only by the author’s imagination.
For instance, during an interaction between two characters you can slip in essential background that shows the reason for one or both characters’ action or behavior. This can be done via dialogue or narration, or both.
Or insert backstory through a character’s indirect thoughts or direct thoughts a/k/a interior monologue while coping with a crisis, an emergency, a threat or similar conflict. In that instance, the character might reflect on an earlier experience to help him get through the current predicament.
By supplying background information in stealthy ways, the author feeds the reader crucial backstory without stopping the action. On the other hand, some bestselling authors get away with littering the opening pages with exposition like the book whose first two pages consisted entirely of backstory. I closed the book when I came across a sentence similar to this:
Amos Counsellor's rise to the top of the legal profession was the stuff that legends were made of.
Pitfall No.5: Physical Description of Characters.
Avoid a laundry list of physical appearance and clothing. My suggestion is to describe a major character enough for the reader to picture the character in her mind, but not so much as to stifle the reader's imagination. For minor characters, it's best to pick out one distinctive trait and describe it in as few words as possible, unless more is needed for the plot.
Avoid the cliché of a character observing herself in the mirror, but see my example from The Stasi File below.
I have found two methods of character description, which are effective.
The first is to describe a character as he is observed or remembered by another. Here are examples from my novel Red Romeo:
Example 1:
While the two men shook hands and exchanged greetings, Sabine took in the stranger’s features. Dark hair, olive complexion, maybe early forties, a few centimeters taller than she—it all added up to a handsome Mediterranean type. She almost fell over when her boss introduced him as Horst Kögler. About as German a name as there was.
When Kögler turned his attention her way, a bright smile lit up his broad face and played in his dark eyes. »Good to meet you, Frau Maier.«
No trace of an accent. So much for Mediterranean type.
Example 2:
The dull Plexiglas rendered Sabine a fuzzy image, but anchored in his mind were her dark eyes sparkling with energy, her auburn hair, and the figure even a gray business suit couldn’t hide.
The second effective method is to show how a character interacts with the environment in a particular manner that conveys a physical attribute.
Example 1 (from Kiss of the Shaman’s Daughter):
He slips a braided headband over his black hair and climbs awkwardly down the ladder, leading with his bad leg, one rung at a time.
Example 2: (from The Stasi File):
Colonel Heinz Dobnik leaned against his fourth-floor window, observing the Friday evening exodus of the workforce from the Stasi headquarters in East Berlin. The figures below huddled against a stiff November wind that whipped through Normannenstraße.
. . .
With darkness setting in, his reflection in the window supplanted the view of the street below. He did not like what he saw: a short, stubby figure, bloated face, heavy pouches, double chin, and a receding hairline. He looked a decade older than his forty-four years. Years of being a workaholic had taken their toll, not only on his body, but on his marriage as well. Of course, in light of the precarious nature of his current undertaking, he considered himself fortunate to be free of family responsibilities.
Admittedly, this scene of the spy observing activity in the street, when his reflection shows him what he’s become, comes close to a character describing his appearance while looking in the mirror, which I labeled a cliché. However, for this writer there is enough of a difference to justify writing the reflection-in-the-window scene. The reader is likely to see through the author’s artifice if a person looks in the mirror for the express purpose of describing himself. By contrast, the spy is actively engaged in monitoring the activities in the street below and does not expect to see his reflection in the window showing him how the events in his life have left their mark on his appearance. Is this a distinction without a difference? Readers will be the judge.
Pitfall No. 6. Interior Monologue.
If written clearly, there is no need for tag lines or italics to indicate direct thoughts or interior monologue.
See the example from Red Romeo in pitfall No.5, above: »No trace of an accent. So much for Mediterranean type.«
Neither italics nor a tag line such as »she thought« are necessary to communicate to the attentive reader that those are the character’s thoughts. Trust your reader’s intelligence by not following the practice of authors who use italics in this situation.
Pitfall No. 7. Overexplaining.
Don’t deprive your reader of the enjoyment of drawing her own inferences.
See the difference between allowing the reader to infer something and telling the reader something. Which do you find preferable?
From Red Romeo:
She parked close to the door and tossed her cap onto the passenger seat. She ran a comb through her windblown hair, grabbed the straw-covered bottle of Chianti, and climbed from the car. Normally, she wouldn’t close the top on a mild evening with no rain forecast, but the weather could change by morning.
What does the last sentence tell you?
Trust your reader by not explaining: She planned to spend the night so she closed the top in case it rained later on.
As you know, this does not exhaust the list of pitfalls by a long shot. Stay tuned for more to come.
Peter Bernhardt
http://sedonaauthor.com
http://tinyurl.com/a7rnpql
The Stasi File: Opera and Espionage—A Deadly Combination [2011 ABNA Quarter Finalist]
An American lawyer and his former lover, an Italian opera diva, are drawn into an assassination plot by a Stasi General desperate to prevent the collapse of the East German police state after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Kiss of the Shaman’s Daughter [Sequel]
When a Washington trial lawyer and a budding opera diva are pressed into searching for a missing archaeologist in the Santa Fe Hills, they not only encounter ruthless antiquities traffickers, but find their fates intertwined with that of a shaman’s daughter, who centuries earlier played a crucial role in the Pueblo Indian Revolt that drove the Spanish from New Mexico.
Red Romeo: At the height of divided Germany’s fierce cold-war espionage battle, the Stasi spymaster unleashes his army of spy gigolos on lonely women working in the West German government's most secret divisions.
E-Books & Paperbacks at Online Retailers
Resources
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King.
The Chicago Manual of Style.
How Not to Write a Novel, by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.
The Internet Writing Workshop - http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/
The Author's Guide to Avoiding Pesky Pitfalls
Part II
As you’ve surmised, the flaws pointed out in part I of this article did not exhaust the subject. Far from it. Your self-appointed pitfall detective has tracked down a few more.
Pitfall No. 8: Frequent Switching of Point of View (POV).
Frequent POV switches or head hopping may not only confuse the reader, but keep her from identifying with a character. There is nothing wrong with changing POVs within a chapter if that is the best approach to telling the story. However, make sure each switch is clearly delineated. I recommend the use of asterisks as dividers (centered as a separate line to distinguish them from hiatuses). Publishers frequently insert a blank line to indicate a switch in POV. Since opera is a recurrent theme in my novels, I use musical note symbols.
If you’re wondering how many POVs your novel should have, my answer is however many will tell the story most effectively. Don’t let your creativity be stifled by naysayers who proclaim a novel should have very few, or even just one. I wrote my novel Kiss of the Shaman’s Daughter, which features intertwining stories three centuries apart, in six POVs. My spy novel, Red Romeo, contains eight.
A tense action scene is one example when multiple POVs in a chapter are not only appropriate but often essential to enhance the story. For instance, my novel, The Stasi File, features a tense escape scene from the East Berlin opera house in the POV of five different characters and switches between them fourteen times.
Pitfall No. 9: Mundane Dialogue about Everyday Chitchat that neither Reveals Character nor Advances the Plot.
»Hi, how are you?«
»Just fine.«
»How are you?«
»Okay, I guess. I got my kitchen cleaned this morning.«
While we all speak like that in everyday conversation, that kind of exchange has no place in fiction, unless it is employed to heighten the shock value of a sudden or violent act. Generally, unless the dialogue advances the plot and/or reveals character, don't write it, cozy mysteries notwithstanding.
Pitfall No. 10: Ping-Pong Dialogue.
Lines of dialogue without beats become tiresome like talking heads. Instead, engage the reader by showing a listener’s reaction, or some gesture or facial expression by the speaker.
Pitfall No. 11: Expository Dialogue.
Avoid dialogue in which a character verbalizes and explains his actions, or you as author impart background information by having characters tell each other things they both already know.
»You were wearing a blue sweater when we met in economics at Brandenburg College in November 1984,« Sara said.
»Yes, and we skipped biology and went to the movies,« replied Paul.
»And a week after graduation we got married at our Lady of the Eternal Sorrows Church in downtown Brandenburg,« said Sara dreamingly.
»Then we rented a one-bedroom apartment on Main Street,« remarked Paul.
Pitfall No. 12: Myth that the Tag Line »Said« Is Invisible.
Far from being invisible, the tag line »said« is downright intrusive when it follows every dialogue line. To this reader it indicates lazy writing, a refusal to take a little time to think of a more expressive beat.
However, it’s best to avoid the following tag lines, because by calling attention to themselves, they take the reader out of the story:
He opined, offered, inquired, mused, stated, countered, intoned, exploded, fumed, roared, interrupted (show interruption instead with an m-dash).
I consider the following tag lines borderline and have used them occasionally:
He asked, whispered, hissed, probed, demanded.
In my view, the following tag lines should never be used, because it is impossible to actually speak in that manner. Of course, they can appropriately be used as beats.
He grimaced, smiled, chuckled, sighed.
See Chapter 5 of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.
Pitfall No. 13. Clichés and Overwriting.
Resist the temptation to insert a simile or metaphor on every page. If you do, you are trying too hard and the writing calls attention to itself, getting in the way of the story. Avoid purple prose like the plague (cliché intended). In the words of Elmore Leonard, if it sounds like writing, rewrite it.
Pitfall No. 14. In First Person POV, Avoid Starting Every Other Sentence with »I.«
If you litter the page with sentences that begin with »I,« not only do you tax the reader’s patience, but distance him from the story. If written clearly, the reader will know it is the narrator who is feeling, thinking, doing. Dispensing with the »I« will enable the skilled author to write in »Deep POV,« letting the reader experience the character’s thoughts and feelings.
Pitfall No. 15. The »But this Is how it Happens/Happened in Real Life« Defense.
A defense one sometimes hears from newbie writers when a critique group member points out that the story lacks conflict, or tension, or action is: »But that’s how it really happened.« While the author is free to use real-life events, his job in writing fiction is to dramatize, engage the reader, not to give a literal description of them.
Pitfall No. 16. Filter Words that Distance the Reader from the Story.
Avoid taking the reader out of the story by overuse of these filter words: to see, hear, think, touch, wonder, realize, watch, look, seem, feel, can, decide, sound.
When she heard a fierce knock on the apartment door, she froze at first, then ran into the bedroom to get her gun.
A fierce knock. The apartment door almost caved. Her stomach lurched. She jumped to her feet and ran into the bedroom. Where in the hell had she left the gun?
Pitfall No. 17. Passive Voice—Making the Object of an Action the Subject of a Sentence.
While the majority of fiction writing is best done in active voice, there are occasions when the passive voice is preferable. For example, when the identity of the actor is withheld for suspense or because it is unimportant, passive voice is called for. The same goes when blame is to be diverted.
During the Iran-Contra Affair, President Reagan didn’t say, »I (or we) made mistakes.« Instead he apologized by saying, »Mistakes were made.«
In the following example, the identity of the actor is unimportant. Therefore, the passive voice in the second sentence is preferable.
The medical examiner performed an autopsy on the victim to establish the cause of death.
An autopsy was performed on the victim to establish the cause of death.
Some writers mistakenly think that a »to be« verb always indicates passive voice. It ain't necessarily so. Not every sentence containing »was« or »were« is passive.
Both of the following sentences are in active voice:
He is tall.
He was contemplating suicide.
Pitfall No. 18: Littering the Page with »Was« and »Were.«
The desk was located in the corner and was the area where the secretary worked. The files and books were located along the wall. A hallway was located outside the offices and a kitchen was located on the far side of the building.
I have patterned the above passage after a paragraph in a novel that won a writing contest, but changed the details. It may be difficult to believe, but the »was,« »were« and »located« are all in the published novel. Do you think it ever suffered an editor’s pen?
A professional writer spends the little time necessary to think of a strong verb instead of »was« or »were« and does not repeat the same word ad nauseam.
Pitfall No. 19. Grammar and Spelling.
a) its vs. it’s; your vs. you’re – possessive vs. contraction.
b) affect vs. effect – »affect« is mostly used as a verb, »effect« as a noun. When used as verbs: affect means to influence something; effect relates to something that was influenced or to succeed in doing something.
That will affect my decision.
The opera affected him greatly.
The opera had a great effect on him.
They effected their escape through the rear window (MSWord spellcheck is wrong).
c) that vs. who – inanimate objects vs. people. However, much to my chagrin, Webster’s has now declared the use of »that« in reference to persons as acceptable.
d) further vs. farther.
Think of farther as physical distance and further as an abstract distance.
The farther we run, the more tired I get.
He moved farther away.
I won't belabor the point any further.
He's only interested in furthering his career.
The further we read, the more interesting the story becomes.
I'll suspend him for his behavior but go no further.
e) less vs. fewer – is it quantifiable?
Roger Federer made fewer errors than Rafael Nadal.
The less you think, the better you play tennis.
Unfortunately, it is common to hear a television sports broadcaster announce, »The Patriots had less penalties than the Seahawks.« I hope you cringe along with me upon listening to that kind of commentary.
f) Subjunctive – if I were you . . . not: if I was you . . .
g) Exclamation marks – use sparingly!!!!!
Don't shout at the reader or poke her in the ribs with exclamation marks. Their frequent use indicates an insecure writer. The author who overuses this punctuation mark for emphasis achieves the opposite result by weakening his writing. Instead, look for strong verbs and vivid images that will strengthen your writing, i.e. you will show rather than tell.
However, sometimes telling is preferable, such as when collapsing time, moving a character to another location, or in case of a description. Ken Follett’s masterful telling at the beginning of chapter 5 in The Eye of the Needle makes a location a character in his novel.
In short, don’t adhere slavishly to the mantra »show, don’t tell.«
h) Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive clauses (that – which). See The Chicago Manual of Style §§ 5.202 & 6.38.
Restrictive clauses limit the possible meaning of a preceding subject. Nonrestrictive clauses tell you something about a preceding subject, but they do not limit, or restrict, the meaning of that subject.
Appreciate the different meaning of the following two sentences:
Restrictive Use:
The store honored the complaints that were less than 60 days old.
Nonrestrictive Use:
The store honored the complaints, which were less than 60 days old.
http://www.kentlaw.edu/academics/lrw/grinker/LwtaClauses__Restrictive_and_Nonrest.htm
In two articles, I’ve covered a plethora of pitfalls, but as you suspect, there are plenty more. What to do? Become your own pitfall detective.
Peter Bernhardt
http://sedonaauthor.com
http://tinyurl.com/a7rnpql
The Stasi File: Opera and Espionage—A Deadly Combination [2011 ABNA Quarter Finalist]
An American lawyer and his former lover, an Italian opera diva, are drawn into an assassination plot by a Stasi General desperate to prevent the collapse of the East German police state after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Kiss of the Shaman’s Daughter [Sequel]
When a Washington trial lawyer and a budding opera diva are pressed into searching for a missing archaeologist in the Santa Fe Hills, they not only encounter ruthless antiquities traffickers, but find their fates intertwined with that of a shaman’s daughter, who centuries earlier played a crucial role in the Pueblo Indian Revolt that drove the Spanish from New Mexico.
Red Romeo: At the height of divided Germany’s fierce cold-war espionage battle, the Stasi spymaster unleashes his army of spy gigolos on lonely women working in the West German government's most secret divisions.
E-Books & Paperbacks at Online Retailers
Resources
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King.
The Chicago Manual of Style.
How Not to Write a Novel, by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.
The Internet Writing Workshop - http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/
Structure: A Novelist’s Best Friend
(This article first appeared on February 10, 2012 on Debi O'Neille's blog: http://debioneille.blogspot.com/ )
You wake up in the middle of the night with this brilliant idea for your next novel and feverishly scribble it on a notepad kept on your bedside table for just the occasion when your muse strikes. When you make it to your computer during your regular writing time, you input your handwritten notes and then sit there, fingers poised over the keyboard, but not typing. What’s the matter? You still think the inspiration is great, but how do you get a novel out of it? It’s a daunting task, isn’t it? Where do you start? Where do you want to go, and how do you carry your readers all the way to the end? Endless questions every novelist has faced.
Can you say “structure” without images of constraint and limitation flooding your mind? If so, you’re on your way to writing a novel that follows a natural progression and is easy to follow. Proper structure does not stifle creativity but enhances it. You object: all this is rather abstract. All right, bear with me as I dig up examples from my two novels.
When I became serious about writing a novel a few years ago, I had to confront every writer’s fear: what could I possibly write that others would want to read? To a wannabe like me, the mantra“write about what you know” made sense (though now I subscribe to the notion,“write about what interests you”). For my first novel, The Stasi File [Stasi], I cooked up a plot featuring an American lawyer (Rolf) being sent on a spy mission to his native Germany. While I’ve never been a spy, I certainly know a lot about the other two areas. Problem solved, right? Little did I know that was the first of hundreds of baby steps that finally brought me to the overall story idea: a thriller detailing a Stasi plot to prevent German unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now how could I make it interesting, distinct from other spy stories of that era? I drew upon my passion for opera and invented an aspiring opera diva (Sylvia) as a co-protagonist. I had to give her a past, both with Rolf, and with a terrorist organization. And I had to have at least one interesting subplot.
So how do you weave all these strains together in a plot complex enough to captivate readers yet not so convoluted as to confuse them? This is where the author needs to make several structural decisions. For this blog, I’ll focus on four: (1) whether to write significant backstory in a prologue or insert it in small doses throughout the main plot; (2) the number of POVs that will best tell the story; (3) the best way to write climactic chapters; (4) whether to switch tenses between story lines.
(1) Significant Backstory: Both my novels have backstories that greatly influence the main plots. In Stasi, Sylvia’s betrayal of a terrorist boyfriend and Rolf’s abandonment of Sylvia drive the events of the main plot twelve years later. In the sequel, Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter, Rolf’s role in the expulsion of a fellow law school classmate comes back to haunt him nine years later. Neither novel features a prologue. While I never drafted a prologue for Stasi, I did write two drafts for Kiss of Shaman's Daughter, but put them in the outtakes file. After consulting an excellent article on the subject, see http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/prologue.shtml, I concluded that the structure would be better served by a strong first chapter followed by incremental insertion of crucial backstory throughout the plots.
(2) Number of POVs: There are those who proclaim that a novel should be written from very few POVs, some insisting few means one. By paying such an arbitrary rule any mind, you jeopardize the structure of your novel and stifle your creativity. If you lay out your story in the best possible way, the number of POVs required will reveal themselves. You would be a fool to reduce them based on someone’s rigid pronouncement. My thriller detailing a Stasi plot to prevent German unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Stasi agent trying to defect with secret documents, a West German terrorist group’s involvement, and Sylvia and Rolf’s running for their lives in communist East Germany required no less than twelve POVs to tell the story in a compelling and understandable way. Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter is not as complex, but with the intertwining story lines that are three centuries apart still demanded six POVs. If you have done a good job outlining the structure of your story, you will know how many POVs will serve you the best, and you won’t be tempted to let someone talk you out of your well-grounded decision.
(3) Climactic Chapters: Conflict is what drives most novels. The question is how to best write tension-filled chapters and scenes. In some novels the best way is to write a climactic chapter from the protagonist’s POV. Others are better served by switching POVs, perhaps between the protagonist and the antagonist. In Stasi, I chose a different approach: numerous and rapid POV shifts in a climactic chapter featuring an escape scene in the East Berlin Opera House. The POV switches no less than sixteen times among six different characters. I chose that structure to keep tension at the highest possible level throughout the chapter.
(4) Tenses: As the muse whispered the story idea for Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter into my ear, I shuddered at the challenge of writing two plots separated by three centuries and having them converge at a crucial plot point.Moreover, how could a German white male possibly write convincingly in the voice of a thirteen-year old Pueblo Indian girl who would play a crucial role—in the author’s imagination—during the Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1680 that drove the Spanish from New Mexico? How to write the two stories side by side in a way that would keep the reader engaged?
Going against convention and well-meaning admonitions, I wrote the current (1990) plot line in past tense and the 1680 story in present tense. The only novel I’m aware of that has used a similar approach is Anita Shreve’s, The Pilot’s Wife, but if I may say so, it’s not nearly as daring. Her back story in present tense involves the same two characters as the current story in past tense while in Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter, the two story lines feature completely different characters. I believe my adhering to a logical structure was a key factor in pulling this off.
In these and other instances, I found that far from hemming me in and restricting my creative juices, a well-thought-out structure freed me to let my imagination guide me to a unique creative endeavor. It can do the same for you.
Peter Bernhardt
Guest Blog: Is 'The End' Really The End?
(This article first appeared on htttp://rickbylina.blogspot.com on March 10, 2012.)
Query, Synopsis, Pitch, Logline: Essential Elements and Differences
The novel written, you take a deep breath and stare in disbelief at the words on your computer screen:The End. Perhaps you reward yourself with a drink or a cup of tea. You deserve it. Many wannabe writers talk about wanting to write a novel, few have the courage (or are crazy enough) to type ‘Chapter One,’ many will run out of steam by page one hundred, but you have persevered. Go ahead, enjoy the feeling of accomplishment, because what writers dread most lies ahead. Can you say query, synopsis, pitch, logline, and not shudder?
Actually, I’m here to tell you that those four writer’s tools have gotten a bad rap. So relax while we examine together what they are, and what each should contain.
1.Query: There is plenty of information on this subject, and much conflicting advice. Let’s sort it out. First, do not overthink; use the inspiration and writing skills that make your novel shine. Since you only have a few seconds to grab the agent’s attention, open with a powerful hook. Of course, if you have a strong personal referral or have met the agent, by all means mention that right away. Follow this with four succinct paragraphs that cover: (1) why you chose this agent (e.g., she specializes in your genre); (2) the story line (only the highlights—this is not a plot summary), including the protagonist’s goal and the main obstacles to reaching it; (3) your potential market and/or comparison with successful books; and (4) your credentials, focusing on any prior publications and your motivation and qualifications for writing the book.
2.Synopsis: How do you distill the essence of your full-length novel into a one- or two-page synopsis? The temptation is to summarize the plot as if in a book report, which is guaranteed to make an agent’s eyes glaze over. Concentrate on the arc of the story, the main events upon which the plot turns, shedding details of settings and other things that do not entice the agent to read the manuscript. Make your synopsis a vital selling tool. In your best writing style let the reader feel with your characters and their conflicts. And you must reveal the ending, at least in broad terms.
3.Pitch: This is the blurb you’ll find on the inside flap of a hardcover’s jacket or on a soft cover’s back cover. It must compel the reader to ask for more. Think of movie trailers that give you enough to whet your appetite but not so much as to satiate it. Therefore, the pitch should end with a strong hook that begs the story question without revealing the ending. For examples check out my pitches for The Stasi File and its sequel, Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter, as entered in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) in 2011 and 2012, respectively on this site.
Logline: In addition, your promotion tool kit should include a one-sentence logline a/k/a elevator pitch or book concept. Here is mine for The Stasi File:
An American lawyer and his former lover, an Italian opera diva, are drawn into an assassination plot by a Stasi General desperate to prevent the collapse of the East German police state after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
And here is the one for Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter:
When a Washington trial lawyer and a budding opera diva are pressed into searching for a missing archaeologist in the Santa Fe hills, they not only encounter ruthless antiquities traffickers, but find their fates intertwined with that of a shaman’s daughter, who centuries earlier played a crucial role in the Pueblo Indian Revolt that drove the Spanish from New Mexico.
5.Differences:
(1) Query - Its purpose is to capture an agent’s interest so that she will request additional materials like a synopsis, the opening chapters, or even the full manuscript.
(2) Synopsis - It must represent your best writing style so as to wow the agent to where she will want to read the manuscript.
(3) Pitch - You will most likely use your pitch at a writer’s conference or in a contest like the ABNA. For an oral pitch, be sure to memorize your three-hundred-word version so well that you can recite it not verbatim but in a way that feels as if you were making it up on the spot. In other words, you fake spontaneity.
(4) Logline - It should be short enough to enable you to spout it off even if awakened from a deep sleep.
You can appreciate the impossibility of covering these essential sales tools in detail in this short article. I hope you’ll find what I’ve stated here useful to get you started on your road to publication. But no matter what happens, don’t forget to congratulate yourself on the accomplishment of writing the novel you always wanted to.
Peter Bernhardt, Author.
Short Bio: A naturalized U.S. citizen who emigrated at age 23 from Germany, the author served as editor-in-chief of the Tulsa Law Journal. He graduated first in his law school class. His 25-year legal career included 18 years with the Department of Justice as the Civil Chief in a U.S. Attorney's Office. Writing has been a lifelong passion.
Part I
Have you ever slogged through the opening pages of a manuscript or novel laden with background and wondered what the story is about and when it will finally take off before you quit reading? Your self-appointed pitfall detective has spotted this malady in more manuscripts than he cares to recount; so it seems only appropriate to address it as the first pitfall in fiction writing.
Pitfall No.1: Selecting a Starting Point for your Novel that Is too Early.
Nothing will make a reader or agent give up on a manuscript faster than an ill-conceived starting point. Instead of filling the opening pages with background information guaranteed to turn readers off, start as close to the end of the story as you can. Put another way, start a novel the way you pick up a cat: as far forward as possible.
You have probably heard the term in media res bandied about. That simply means to start in the middle of the action. In other words, start the story at a crucial point. The manuscript should open with the inciting incident, i.e. the event or decision that begins a story's main problem or conflict. Everything until that moment is backstory; everything after is »the story.«
You only have a few paragraphs to hook the reader. Don’t miss the chance by leading with background information. You will have plenty of opportunities to fill in crucial background in bits and pieces in subsequent chapters. But even then, write only backstory that is essential to the reader's understanding of plot or motivations.
See Part I of How Not to Write a Novel, by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.
Pitfall No. 2: Using Adverbs to »Explain« or Punch up Weak Dialogue.
While some insist there are no ironclad rules when it comes to fiction writing, explaining dialogue by way of adverbs that modify tag lines comes close in my book. Dialogue must stand on its own and any attempt to explain it will weaken your writing. For a thorough discussion of why the professional writer is wise to avoid explaining dialogue, see chapter 5 of my favorite »how-to-book« Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King.
On pages 86-87, you'll find these examples:
»Don’t worry, the radiation level isn’t very high,« Tom said glowingly.
»Keep scrubbing until you’re finished,« she said harshly.
An accomplished writer would replace the adverb modifying the speech tag with a beat, which results in showing in lieu of telling.
She pointed to the dirty floor. »Keep scrubbing until you’re finished.«
Pitfall No. 3: Using both a Tag Line and a Beat for Dialogue Attribution.
To use both a speech tag and a beat is redundant and overly wordy. Which of the following do you find preferable?
»See for yourself. You won't find what you’re looking for in there,« he said as he placed his briefcase on the table.
He flung the briefcase across the table. »See for yourself. You won’t find what you're looking for in there.«
In deciding whether to use a tag line or a beat, the issue is really showing vs. telling. For example, which one of the following do you find more interesting?
»Let's go,« Mary said.
Mary tore open the door. »Let's go!«
Or less demonstrative: Mary grabbed the car keys. »Let’s go!«
Or even less: Mary stood. »Let’s go.«
The beats allow you to show Mary’s mood. The tag line does not, even if you add an adverb, trying to explain dialogue. Not only will that weaken your writing, but you risk having the adverb police come for you. See pitfall No. 2 above.
Pitfall No. 4: Information Dumping
The surest way to bore a reader and make her skip paragraphs is to dump information in one fell swoop. Never stop the story cold to supply backstory. Instead, look for creative ways to insert the information in small doses so it organically flows from the action. You’re wondering what I mean by »creative ways,« aren’t you? I’ll take that as a yes. The possibilities are endless and limited only by the author’s imagination.
For instance, during an interaction between two characters you can slip in essential background that shows the reason for one or both characters’ action or behavior. This can be done via dialogue or narration, or both.
Or insert backstory through a character’s indirect thoughts or direct thoughts a/k/a interior monologue while coping with a crisis, an emergency, a threat or similar conflict. In that instance, the character might reflect on an earlier experience to help him get through the current predicament.
By supplying background information in stealthy ways, the author feeds the reader crucial backstory without stopping the action. On the other hand, some bestselling authors get away with littering the opening pages with exposition like the book whose first two pages consisted entirely of backstory. I closed the book when I came across a sentence similar to this:
Amos Counsellor's rise to the top of the legal profession was the stuff that legends were made of.
Pitfall No.5: Physical Description of Characters.
Avoid a laundry list of physical appearance and clothing. My suggestion is to describe a major character enough for the reader to picture the character in her mind, but not so much as to stifle the reader's imagination. For minor characters, it's best to pick out one distinctive trait and describe it in as few words as possible, unless more is needed for the plot.
Avoid the cliché of a character observing herself in the mirror, but see my example from The Stasi File below.
I have found two methods of character description, which are effective.
The first is to describe a character as he is observed or remembered by another. Here are examples from my novel Red Romeo:
Example 1:
While the two men shook hands and exchanged greetings, Sabine took in the stranger’s features. Dark hair, olive complexion, maybe early forties, a few centimeters taller than she—it all added up to a handsome Mediterranean type. She almost fell over when her boss introduced him as Horst Kögler. About as German a name as there was.
When Kögler turned his attention her way, a bright smile lit up his broad face and played in his dark eyes. »Good to meet you, Frau Maier.«
No trace of an accent. So much for Mediterranean type.
Example 2:
The dull Plexiglas rendered Sabine a fuzzy image, but anchored in his mind were her dark eyes sparkling with energy, her auburn hair, and the figure even a gray business suit couldn’t hide.
The second effective method is to show how a character interacts with the environment in a particular manner that conveys a physical attribute.
Example 1 (from Kiss of the Shaman’s Daughter):
He slips a braided headband over his black hair and climbs awkwardly down the ladder, leading with his bad leg, one rung at a time.
Example 2: (from The Stasi File):
Colonel Heinz Dobnik leaned against his fourth-floor window, observing the Friday evening exodus of the workforce from the Stasi headquarters in East Berlin. The figures below huddled against a stiff November wind that whipped through Normannenstraße.
. . .
With darkness setting in, his reflection in the window supplanted the view of the street below. He did not like what he saw: a short, stubby figure, bloated face, heavy pouches, double chin, and a receding hairline. He looked a decade older than his forty-four years. Years of being a workaholic had taken their toll, not only on his body, but on his marriage as well. Of course, in light of the precarious nature of his current undertaking, he considered himself fortunate to be free of family responsibilities.
Admittedly, this scene of the spy observing activity in the street, when his reflection shows him what he’s become, comes close to a character describing his appearance while looking in the mirror, which I labeled a cliché. However, for this writer there is enough of a difference to justify writing the reflection-in-the-window scene. The reader is likely to see through the author’s artifice if a person looks in the mirror for the express purpose of describing himself. By contrast, the spy is actively engaged in monitoring the activities in the street below and does not expect to see his reflection in the window showing him how the events in his life have left their mark on his appearance. Is this a distinction without a difference? Readers will be the judge.
Pitfall No. 6. Interior Monologue.
If written clearly, there is no need for tag lines or italics to indicate direct thoughts or interior monologue.
See the example from Red Romeo in pitfall No.5, above: »No trace of an accent. So much for Mediterranean type.«
Neither italics nor a tag line such as »she thought« are necessary to communicate to the attentive reader that those are the character’s thoughts. Trust your reader’s intelligence by not following the practice of authors who use italics in this situation.
Pitfall No. 7. Overexplaining.
Don’t deprive your reader of the enjoyment of drawing her own inferences.
See the difference between allowing the reader to infer something and telling the reader something. Which do you find preferable?
From Red Romeo:
She parked close to the door and tossed her cap onto the passenger seat. She ran a comb through her windblown hair, grabbed the straw-covered bottle of Chianti, and climbed from the car. Normally, she wouldn’t close the top on a mild evening with no rain forecast, but the weather could change by morning.
What does the last sentence tell you?
Trust your reader by not explaining: She planned to spend the night so she closed the top in case it rained later on.
As you know, this does not exhaust the list of pitfalls by a long shot. Stay tuned for more to come.
Peter Bernhardt
http://sedonaauthor.com
http://tinyurl.com/a7rnpql
The Stasi File: Opera and Espionage—A Deadly Combination [2011 ABNA Quarter Finalist]
An American lawyer and his former lover, an Italian opera diva, are drawn into an assassination plot by a Stasi General desperate to prevent the collapse of the East German police state after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Kiss of the Shaman’s Daughter [Sequel]
When a Washington trial lawyer and a budding opera diva are pressed into searching for a missing archaeologist in the Santa Fe Hills, they not only encounter ruthless antiquities traffickers, but find their fates intertwined with that of a shaman’s daughter, who centuries earlier played a crucial role in the Pueblo Indian Revolt that drove the Spanish from New Mexico.
Red Romeo: At the height of divided Germany’s fierce cold-war espionage battle, the Stasi spymaster unleashes his army of spy gigolos on lonely women working in the West German government's most secret divisions.
E-Books & Paperbacks at Online Retailers
Resources
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King.
The Chicago Manual of Style.
How Not to Write a Novel, by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.
The Internet Writing Workshop - http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/
The Author's Guide to Avoiding Pesky Pitfalls
Part II
As you’ve surmised, the flaws pointed out in part I of this article did not exhaust the subject. Far from it. Your self-appointed pitfall detective has tracked down a few more.
Pitfall No. 8: Frequent Switching of Point of View (POV).
Frequent POV switches or head hopping may not only confuse the reader, but keep her from identifying with a character. There is nothing wrong with changing POVs within a chapter if that is the best approach to telling the story. However, make sure each switch is clearly delineated. I recommend the use of asterisks as dividers (centered as a separate line to distinguish them from hiatuses). Publishers frequently insert a blank line to indicate a switch in POV. Since opera is a recurrent theme in my novels, I use musical note symbols.
If you’re wondering how many POVs your novel should have, my answer is however many will tell the story most effectively. Don’t let your creativity be stifled by naysayers who proclaim a novel should have very few, or even just one. I wrote my novel Kiss of the Shaman’s Daughter, which features intertwining stories three centuries apart, in six POVs. My spy novel, Red Romeo, contains eight.
A tense action scene is one example when multiple POVs in a chapter are not only appropriate but often essential to enhance the story. For instance, my novel, The Stasi File, features a tense escape scene from the East Berlin opera house in the POV of five different characters and switches between them fourteen times.
Pitfall No. 9: Mundane Dialogue about Everyday Chitchat that neither Reveals Character nor Advances the Plot.
»Hi, how are you?«
»Just fine.«
»How are you?«
»Okay, I guess. I got my kitchen cleaned this morning.«
While we all speak like that in everyday conversation, that kind of exchange has no place in fiction, unless it is employed to heighten the shock value of a sudden or violent act. Generally, unless the dialogue advances the plot and/or reveals character, don't write it, cozy mysteries notwithstanding.
Pitfall No. 10: Ping-Pong Dialogue.
Lines of dialogue without beats become tiresome like talking heads. Instead, engage the reader by showing a listener’s reaction, or some gesture or facial expression by the speaker.
Pitfall No. 11: Expository Dialogue.
Avoid dialogue in which a character verbalizes and explains his actions, or you as author impart background information by having characters tell each other things they both already know.
»You were wearing a blue sweater when we met in economics at Brandenburg College in November 1984,« Sara said.
»Yes, and we skipped biology and went to the movies,« replied Paul.
»And a week after graduation we got married at our Lady of the Eternal Sorrows Church in downtown Brandenburg,« said Sara dreamingly.
»Then we rented a one-bedroom apartment on Main Street,« remarked Paul.
Pitfall No. 12: Myth that the Tag Line »Said« Is Invisible.
Far from being invisible, the tag line »said« is downright intrusive when it follows every dialogue line. To this reader it indicates lazy writing, a refusal to take a little time to think of a more expressive beat.
However, it’s best to avoid the following tag lines, because by calling attention to themselves, they take the reader out of the story:
He opined, offered, inquired, mused, stated, countered, intoned, exploded, fumed, roared, interrupted (show interruption instead with an m-dash).
I consider the following tag lines borderline and have used them occasionally:
He asked, whispered, hissed, probed, demanded.
In my view, the following tag lines should never be used, because it is impossible to actually speak in that manner. Of course, they can appropriately be used as beats.
He grimaced, smiled, chuckled, sighed.
See Chapter 5 of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.
Pitfall No. 13. Clichés and Overwriting.
Resist the temptation to insert a simile or metaphor on every page. If you do, you are trying too hard and the writing calls attention to itself, getting in the way of the story. Avoid purple prose like the plague (cliché intended). In the words of Elmore Leonard, if it sounds like writing, rewrite it.
Pitfall No. 14. In First Person POV, Avoid Starting Every Other Sentence with »I.«
If you litter the page with sentences that begin with »I,« not only do you tax the reader’s patience, but distance him from the story. If written clearly, the reader will know it is the narrator who is feeling, thinking, doing. Dispensing with the »I« will enable the skilled author to write in »Deep POV,« letting the reader experience the character’s thoughts and feelings.
Pitfall No. 15. The »But this Is how it Happens/Happened in Real Life« Defense.
A defense one sometimes hears from newbie writers when a critique group member points out that the story lacks conflict, or tension, or action is: »But that’s how it really happened.« While the author is free to use real-life events, his job in writing fiction is to dramatize, engage the reader, not to give a literal description of them.
Pitfall No. 16. Filter Words that Distance the Reader from the Story.
Avoid taking the reader out of the story by overuse of these filter words: to see, hear, think, touch, wonder, realize, watch, look, seem, feel, can, decide, sound.
When she heard a fierce knock on the apartment door, she froze at first, then ran into the bedroom to get her gun.
A fierce knock. The apartment door almost caved. Her stomach lurched. She jumped to her feet and ran into the bedroom. Where in the hell had she left the gun?
Pitfall No. 17. Passive Voice—Making the Object of an Action the Subject of a Sentence.
While the majority of fiction writing is best done in active voice, there are occasions when the passive voice is preferable. For example, when the identity of the actor is withheld for suspense or because it is unimportant, passive voice is called for. The same goes when blame is to be diverted.
During the Iran-Contra Affair, President Reagan didn’t say, »I (or we) made mistakes.« Instead he apologized by saying, »Mistakes were made.«
In the following example, the identity of the actor is unimportant. Therefore, the passive voice in the second sentence is preferable.
The medical examiner performed an autopsy on the victim to establish the cause of death.
An autopsy was performed on the victim to establish the cause of death.
Some writers mistakenly think that a »to be« verb always indicates passive voice. It ain't necessarily so. Not every sentence containing »was« or »were« is passive.
Both of the following sentences are in active voice:
He is tall.
He was contemplating suicide.
Pitfall No. 18: Littering the Page with »Was« and »Were.«
The desk was located in the corner and was the area where the secretary worked. The files and books were located along the wall. A hallway was located outside the offices and a kitchen was located on the far side of the building.
I have patterned the above passage after a paragraph in a novel that won a writing contest, but changed the details. It may be difficult to believe, but the »was,« »were« and »located« are all in the published novel. Do you think it ever suffered an editor’s pen?
A professional writer spends the little time necessary to think of a strong verb instead of »was« or »were« and does not repeat the same word ad nauseam.
Pitfall No. 19. Grammar and Spelling.
a) its vs. it’s; your vs. you’re – possessive vs. contraction.
b) affect vs. effect – »affect« is mostly used as a verb, »effect« as a noun. When used as verbs: affect means to influence something; effect relates to something that was influenced or to succeed in doing something.
That will affect my decision.
The opera affected him greatly.
The opera had a great effect on him.
They effected their escape through the rear window (MSWord spellcheck is wrong).
c) that vs. who – inanimate objects vs. people. However, much to my chagrin, Webster’s has now declared the use of »that« in reference to persons as acceptable.
d) further vs. farther.
Think of farther as physical distance and further as an abstract distance.
The farther we run, the more tired I get.
He moved farther away.
I won't belabor the point any further.
He's only interested in furthering his career.
The further we read, the more interesting the story becomes.
I'll suspend him for his behavior but go no further.
e) less vs. fewer – is it quantifiable?
Roger Federer made fewer errors than Rafael Nadal.
The less you think, the better you play tennis.
Unfortunately, it is common to hear a television sports broadcaster announce, »The Patriots had less penalties than the Seahawks.« I hope you cringe along with me upon listening to that kind of commentary.
f) Subjunctive – if I were you . . . not: if I was you . . .
g) Exclamation marks – use sparingly!!!!!
Don't shout at the reader or poke her in the ribs with exclamation marks. Their frequent use indicates an insecure writer. The author who overuses this punctuation mark for emphasis achieves the opposite result by weakening his writing. Instead, look for strong verbs and vivid images that will strengthen your writing, i.e. you will show rather than tell.
However, sometimes telling is preferable, such as when collapsing time, moving a character to another location, or in case of a description. Ken Follett’s masterful telling at the beginning of chapter 5 in The Eye of the Needle makes a location a character in his novel.
In short, don’t adhere slavishly to the mantra »show, don’t tell.«
h) Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive clauses (that – which). See The Chicago Manual of Style §§ 5.202 & 6.38.
Restrictive clauses limit the possible meaning of a preceding subject. Nonrestrictive clauses tell you something about a preceding subject, but they do not limit, or restrict, the meaning of that subject.
Appreciate the different meaning of the following two sentences:
Restrictive Use:
The store honored the complaints that were less than 60 days old.
Nonrestrictive Use:
The store honored the complaints, which were less than 60 days old.
http://www.kentlaw.edu/academics/lrw/grinker/LwtaClauses__Restrictive_and_Nonrest.htm
In two articles, I’ve covered a plethora of pitfalls, but as you suspect, there are plenty more. What to do? Become your own pitfall detective.
Peter Bernhardt
http://sedonaauthor.com
http://tinyurl.com/a7rnpql
The Stasi File: Opera and Espionage—A Deadly Combination [2011 ABNA Quarter Finalist]
An American lawyer and his former lover, an Italian opera diva, are drawn into an assassination plot by a Stasi General desperate to prevent the collapse of the East German police state after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Kiss of the Shaman’s Daughter [Sequel]
When a Washington trial lawyer and a budding opera diva are pressed into searching for a missing archaeologist in the Santa Fe Hills, they not only encounter ruthless antiquities traffickers, but find their fates intertwined with that of a shaman’s daughter, who centuries earlier played a crucial role in the Pueblo Indian Revolt that drove the Spanish from New Mexico.
Red Romeo: At the height of divided Germany’s fierce cold-war espionage battle, the Stasi spymaster unleashes his army of spy gigolos on lonely women working in the West German government's most secret divisions.
E-Books & Paperbacks at Online Retailers
Resources
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King.
The Chicago Manual of Style.
How Not to Write a Novel, by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.
The Internet Writing Workshop - http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/
Structure: A Novelist’s Best Friend
(This article first appeared on February 10, 2012 on Debi O'Neille's blog: http://debioneille.blogspot.com/ )
You wake up in the middle of the night with this brilliant idea for your next novel and feverishly scribble it on a notepad kept on your bedside table for just the occasion when your muse strikes. When you make it to your computer during your regular writing time, you input your handwritten notes and then sit there, fingers poised over the keyboard, but not typing. What’s the matter? You still think the inspiration is great, but how do you get a novel out of it? It’s a daunting task, isn’t it? Where do you start? Where do you want to go, and how do you carry your readers all the way to the end? Endless questions every novelist has faced.
Can you say “structure” without images of constraint and limitation flooding your mind? If so, you’re on your way to writing a novel that follows a natural progression and is easy to follow. Proper structure does not stifle creativity but enhances it. You object: all this is rather abstract. All right, bear with me as I dig up examples from my two novels.
When I became serious about writing a novel a few years ago, I had to confront every writer’s fear: what could I possibly write that others would want to read? To a wannabe like me, the mantra“write about what you know” made sense (though now I subscribe to the notion,“write about what interests you”). For my first novel, The Stasi File [Stasi], I cooked up a plot featuring an American lawyer (Rolf) being sent on a spy mission to his native Germany. While I’ve never been a spy, I certainly know a lot about the other two areas. Problem solved, right? Little did I know that was the first of hundreds of baby steps that finally brought me to the overall story idea: a thriller detailing a Stasi plot to prevent German unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now how could I make it interesting, distinct from other spy stories of that era? I drew upon my passion for opera and invented an aspiring opera diva (Sylvia) as a co-protagonist. I had to give her a past, both with Rolf, and with a terrorist organization. And I had to have at least one interesting subplot.
So how do you weave all these strains together in a plot complex enough to captivate readers yet not so convoluted as to confuse them? This is where the author needs to make several structural decisions. For this blog, I’ll focus on four: (1) whether to write significant backstory in a prologue or insert it in small doses throughout the main plot; (2) the number of POVs that will best tell the story; (3) the best way to write climactic chapters; (4) whether to switch tenses between story lines.
(1) Significant Backstory: Both my novels have backstories that greatly influence the main plots. In Stasi, Sylvia’s betrayal of a terrorist boyfriend and Rolf’s abandonment of Sylvia drive the events of the main plot twelve years later. In the sequel, Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter, Rolf’s role in the expulsion of a fellow law school classmate comes back to haunt him nine years later. Neither novel features a prologue. While I never drafted a prologue for Stasi, I did write two drafts for Kiss of Shaman's Daughter, but put them in the outtakes file. After consulting an excellent article on the subject, see http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/prologue.shtml, I concluded that the structure would be better served by a strong first chapter followed by incremental insertion of crucial backstory throughout the plots.
(2) Number of POVs: There are those who proclaim that a novel should be written from very few POVs, some insisting few means one. By paying such an arbitrary rule any mind, you jeopardize the structure of your novel and stifle your creativity. If you lay out your story in the best possible way, the number of POVs required will reveal themselves. You would be a fool to reduce them based on someone’s rigid pronouncement. My thriller detailing a Stasi plot to prevent German unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Stasi agent trying to defect with secret documents, a West German terrorist group’s involvement, and Sylvia and Rolf’s running for their lives in communist East Germany required no less than twelve POVs to tell the story in a compelling and understandable way. Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter is not as complex, but with the intertwining story lines that are three centuries apart still demanded six POVs. If you have done a good job outlining the structure of your story, you will know how many POVs will serve you the best, and you won’t be tempted to let someone talk you out of your well-grounded decision.
(3) Climactic Chapters: Conflict is what drives most novels. The question is how to best write tension-filled chapters and scenes. In some novels the best way is to write a climactic chapter from the protagonist’s POV. Others are better served by switching POVs, perhaps between the protagonist and the antagonist. In Stasi, I chose a different approach: numerous and rapid POV shifts in a climactic chapter featuring an escape scene in the East Berlin Opera House. The POV switches no less than sixteen times among six different characters. I chose that structure to keep tension at the highest possible level throughout the chapter.
(4) Tenses: As the muse whispered the story idea for Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter into my ear, I shuddered at the challenge of writing two plots separated by three centuries and having them converge at a crucial plot point.Moreover, how could a German white male possibly write convincingly in the voice of a thirteen-year old Pueblo Indian girl who would play a crucial role—in the author’s imagination—during the Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1680 that drove the Spanish from New Mexico? How to write the two stories side by side in a way that would keep the reader engaged?
Going against convention and well-meaning admonitions, I wrote the current (1990) plot line in past tense and the 1680 story in present tense. The only novel I’m aware of that has used a similar approach is Anita Shreve’s, The Pilot’s Wife, but if I may say so, it’s not nearly as daring. Her back story in present tense involves the same two characters as the current story in past tense while in Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter, the two story lines feature completely different characters. I believe my adhering to a logical structure was a key factor in pulling this off.
In these and other instances, I found that far from hemming me in and restricting my creative juices, a well-thought-out structure freed me to let my imagination guide me to a unique creative endeavor. It can do the same for you.
Peter Bernhardt
Guest Blog: Is 'The End' Really The End?
(This article first appeared on htttp://rickbylina.blogspot.com on March 10, 2012.)
Query, Synopsis, Pitch, Logline: Essential Elements and Differences
The novel written, you take a deep breath and stare in disbelief at the words on your computer screen:The End. Perhaps you reward yourself with a drink or a cup of tea. You deserve it. Many wannabe writers talk about wanting to write a novel, few have the courage (or are crazy enough) to type ‘Chapter One,’ many will run out of steam by page one hundred, but you have persevered. Go ahead, enjoy the feeling of accomplishment, because what writers dread most lies ahead. Can you say query, synopsis, pitch, logline, and not shudder?
Actually, I’m here to tell you that those four writer’s tools have gotten a bad rap. So relax while we examine together what they are, and what each should contain.
1.Query: There is plenty of information on this subject, and much conflicting advice. Let’s sort it out. First, do not overthink; use the inspiration and writing skills that make your novel shine. Since you only have a few seconds to grab the agent’s attention, open with a powerful hook. Of course, if you have a strong personal referral or have met the agent, by all means mention that right away. Follow this with four succinct paragraphs that cover: (1) why you chose this agent (e.g., she specializes in your genre); (2) the story line (only the highlights—this is not a plot summary), including the protagonist’s goal and the main obstacles to reaching it; (3) your potential market and/or comparison with successful books; and (4) your credentials, focusing on any prior publications and your motivation and qualifications for writing the book.
2.Synopsis: How do you distill the essence of your full-length novel into a one- or two-page synopsis? The temptation is to summarize the plot as if in a book report, which is guaranteed to make an agent’s eyes glaze over. Concentrate on the arc of the story, the main events upon which the plot turns, shedding details of settings and other things that do not entice the agent to read the manuscript. Make your synopsis a vital selling tool. In your best writing style let the reader feel with your characters and their conflicts. And you must reveal the ending, at least in broad terms.
3.Pitch: This is the blurb you’ll find on the inside flap of a hardcover’s jacket or on a soft cover’s back cover. It must compel the reader to ask for more. Think of movie trailers that give you enough to whet your appetite but not so much as to satiate it. Therefore, the pitch should end with a strong hook that begs the story question without revealing the ending. For examples check out my pitches for The Stasi File and its sequel, Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter, as entered in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) in 2011 and 2012, respectively on this site.
Logline: In addition, your promotion tool kit should include a one-sentence logline a/k/a elevator pitch or book concept. Here is mine for The Stasi File:
An American lawyer and his former lover, an Italian opera diva, are drawn into an assassination plot by a Stasi General desperate to prevent the collapse of the East German police state after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
And here is the one for Kiss of the Shaman's Daughter:
When a Washington trial lawyer and a budding opera diva are pressed into searching for a missing archaeologist in the Santa Fe hills, they not only encounter ruthless antiquities traffickers, but find their fates intertwined with that of a shaman’s daughter, who centuries earlier played a crucial role in the Pueblo Indian Revolt that drove the Spanish from New Mexico.
5.Differences:
(1) Query - Its purpose is to capture an agent’s interest so that she will request additional materials like a synopsis, the opening chapters, or even the full manuscript.
(2) Synopsis - It must represent your best writing style so as to wow the agent to where she will want to read the manuscript.
(3) Pitch - You will most likely use your pitch at a writer’s conference or in a contest like the ABNA. For an oral pitch, be sure to memorize your three-hundred-word version so well that you can recite it not verbatim but in a way that feels as if you were making it up on the spot. In other words, you fake spontaneity.
(4) Logline - It should be short enough to enable you to spout it off even if awakened from a deep sleep.
You can appreciate the impossibility of covering these essential sales tools in detail in this short article. I hope you’ll find what I’ve stated here useful to get you started on your road to publication. But no matter what happens, don’t forget to congratulate yourself on the accomplishment of writing the novel you always wanted to.
Peter Bernhardt, Author.
Short Bio: A naturalized U.S. citizen who emigrated at age 23 from Germany, the author served as editor-in-chief of the Tulsa Law Journal. He graduated first in his law school class. His 25-year legal career included 18 years with the Department of Justice as the Civil Chief in a U.S. Attorney's Office. Writing has been a lifelong passion.