Here are a few writing tips. This is what I’ve learned about the writing craft from books I’ve recently reviewed.
Characterizations
Put a new spin on the unreliable narrator trope.
Throughout the book, Cecil addresses the sentencing panel who will determine how much prison time he will receive for his crime. (This isn’t a spoiler; the device is clear from page one.) At one particularly low point, he falls off the wagon, drinks, lands in a heap of trouble. As he looks back in hindsight, he is aware of being unreliable as a narrator:
From this point on, Your Honors, I was in the country of painful rage, everything I say here cannot be said to be true, because at that point my mind was not in alignment with accurate recollection but only with finding our girl. Baby’s First Felony, page 149
Also put a new spin on teenage group dynamics.
Masters uses multiple points of view to reveal the group dynamics. Jealousy. Tension. Misunderstandings. Coupling off. Nothing unusual in these dynamics, as any teenager could tell you. But Masters puts a fresh spin on them:
- Rupesh and Jen couple off, but must contend with her parents’ bigotry. Their closet relationship is dependent on being able to meet at Steve’s house. If they lose that, they lose each other.
- Will is strange, as is his friendship with the older male neighbor, but are the others misinterpreting his actions? Is it an abusive relationship or not?
- Steve is the alpha male (I wanted to say “queen bee”!) who plays architect of their summer, creating an unusual–and vicious–scavenger hunt, resulting in an increasing tension that threatens to break apart the group. (That scavenger hunt is an ingenious plot device, by the way. There’s nothing like competition to reveal the nasty side of anyone.)
Things like jealousy and misunderstanding are normal human conditions. But that doesn’t mean you can’t dream up a fresh way of looking at them.
Descriptions
Understated prose can work as effectively as long descriptions
- From Trigger, by David Swinson
I particularly appreciated how Swinson handles women’s appearances. Over the years, I’ve read many male cop/investigator type novels where the male narrator has to describe a female character’s appearance in a little too much detail. (Especially if he’s attracted to her.) We get to read about her hair, her face, her body (or certain aspects of it). This has improved (I think) over the years, but it still pops up too much for my taste.
Frank doesn’t do this. When we first meet Leslie, his ex-girlfriend, Swinson writes,
Leslie steps out (of a cab), carrying an expensive-looking teal-colored briefcase and sporting a gray three-button overcoat. Damn, she looks nice. (page 13)
Her briefcase and an overcoat. That’s it. Not exactly symbols of sexuality! Swinson doesn’t focus on her face or body, so Frank doesn’t come across as lustful. But this one-sentence description still conveys that Leslie is an attractive woman in professional attire, and that though they’ve been broken up for a while, Frank is still attracted to her.
You do NOT have to describe the physical appearance of a character.
- From Deception Cove, by Owen Laukkanen
This goes against a lot of traditional build-a-character advice, but here it goes:
If the physical appearance of a character plays no significant role in the story, you do not have to include it. Same goes for their favorite color, food, television show, childhood BFF, or (fill in the blank). I’ve been in writing workshops where the leaders passed out long lists of character details that I “needed” to help create my character. But, really, unless it’s somehow relevant, unless it helps build the character in significant ways, who cares if they prefer Star Wars over Star Trek or like 95% cacao dark chocolate or have green eyes or skin the color of (whatever)?
Laukkanen gives little-to-no physical description of either Mason or Jess. The only thing he mentions is that Mason is muscular. We’re given more physical description of sweet floppy-eared Lucy the rescue dog than our human protagonists! Yet my imagination filled in that gap and I had a distinct mental image of both Jess and Mason. I bet that if I compared mental descriptions with other readers’, our ideas would be different but they’d all be equally valid.
I like this technique. It’s refreshing not to have a female protagonist’s appearance described in detail, and it’s refreshing to see both genders treated the same in this regard. (Thank you, Mr. Laukkanen.)
Their appearance simply doesn’t matter for this story; their personalities and characters do.
There are exceptions, of course. My WIP involves two major characters, one biracial (Caucasian/black) female and the other an African-American male. It’s a major aspect of the book, because so many people are against their romantic relationship and because racial tension after a police shooting is crucial to the narrative. But if I were writing a different story where race was not an issue, then I wouldn’t include those details. (Or at least I’d describe both people’s skin color, not just the minority character’s.)
Plot
- From Trigger, by David Swinson
Foreshadow the ending, but don’t be obvious.
As always, I read the ending first. (Sorry, authors, but you can’t control how I read your book!) I knew what “really” happened, and I saw Swinson foreshadow this revelation throughout the novel in subtle ways. Key word: subtle.
Swinson works in this foreshadowing through ordinary-seeming exchanges between characters. They seem ordinary because they are; in this novel’s world, these types of conversations/actions are accepted and normal. The unsuspecting reader breezes right by them, accepting them without thought.
It’s only in retrospect that these jolt us with the knowledge that we should have, could have, realized all along. This isn’t easy to do, but Swinson does it well. It’s worth reading the book just to see how he did it.
World-building
Be consistent in the “rules” for the world of your setting.
I don’t think this applies only to fantasy/SF, either. Usually historical novels shouldn’t have anachronistic details, though some authors will note (and justify) anachronistic use of minor details. Contemporary novels should be consistent, too: if the novel’s set in Italy, I doubt the characters will be eating cheese-puffs and drinking Pepsi for dinner. And so on.
The world of Gnosis has a complicated premise. Alexander (Sam’s virus) not only hops from head to head, but he also “watches” Sam’s memories and her world from inside a (fantasy) treehouse in her head. Sam can simultaneously watch the inside of the treehouse and the external world she lives in. At points, Melvin, their ally (who does not have a virus and is not telepathic), also appears in the treehouse, and Alexander pops into his head and hunts around in his memories, too. At times, all three are speaking to one another. When Gabi (another telepath) and Victor (Gabi’s virus) come into the story, things become even more complicated. (Two viruses, three humans, multiple mind-readers.)
But it’s never confusing. I never had to wonder who was speaking or who could or couldn’t hear their words. In the fantasy world Hall created, the rules of communication may be different from in our real world, but they are still consistent.
The environment and its “laws” are also never so complex that I struggled to understand what was going on. (This has been an issue for me in other fantasy novels and is one major reason why I dislike the genre.)
I suspect Hall’s background as a game designer helps with the vivid nature of his fantasy world. (See his recent blog post on the “active environment” in storytelling. It’s a must read for all fiction writers.)
Whew, I’ve already learned a lot this month, and it’s only half over!
What writing tips have you learned? Share in the comments. And as always, if this is useful for you, share with your writing communities online.
Talk to me! What do you think?