Trick . . . or Treat . . . ?

It's easy, right?  Just treat your readers with your tricks.  We beat ourselves up and rack our crazy writer brains trying to come up with the latest wowing trick.

Writer, Merrill Markoe says she struggles with her tendency toward “contrarianism”.

“If I know there’s something I’m supposed to be doing or saying or wearing, I feel compelled to resist—particularly with creative endeavors like writing.  If I see an obvious punch line or plotline driving toward me, I can’t help but make a sharp left turn into the unexpected.  I don’t like to replicate what I’ve seen done before—I don’t like to give people what they expect.  I think it’s my job to come up with a surprising angle or add some personal twist.” –Merrill Markoe

She made me think about how some people are trying to follow the market and write what they think is “hot” or selling right then.  Of course we all want to sell our work, but if we aren’t writing from our gut and our heart, it shows in our work.  It ends up feeling derivative.  We need to make our work our own, with our original, distinctive voice.  

In comedy, I think one of the reason’s that David Letterman has had such success, even early on in his career, is that he felt a strong rapport with his audience, making them feel as if they were in on the joke.

As a fiction writer, that’s exactly what you are doing.  You are making the audience feel as if they are in on the story.  –You are sucking them in without their even knowing it, from the very first page—even the very first line.

Nobody likes to feel as if they are on the outside, looking in, and not a part of things.  Remember how you felt as a kid, or even as an adult, when you were at a party, or on the playground, and you weren’t included in a conversation.  Or you felt as if you had entered in the middle or towards the end and you didn’t have the details to jump in.  Sometimes, the people were doing that on purpose, hoping that you would go away, or wanting to control the group, giving them the upper hand.  When this happens in a story, the reader never gets a chance to connect with the characters, and may, in fact just put the book down.  

One of the ways you can include your readers in your story—letting them feel as if they are “in the know”—is to give them things to which they can relate.  You have to dig deeply in order to do this.  This doesn’t always happen for me until I’m heavily into my revision process.  Again, you have to climb into the minds of your characters—not just your main character, but all of your characters—and figure  out how they would feel and react to each situation in which you put them.  What you are shooting for is for your readers to think, “I’ve felt like that, too.  That’s just like me, or that’s just like when I …”

So dig to the bottom of that plastic pumpkin.  That's where the best treats are hiding out--waiting to be discovered.

Things I Probably Don't Want to Know

There's something about relaxing with a good book at the reading table that makes a first grader tell all.  But there are some things I probably don't want to know.

You might think a non-fiction book about buildings would be dry--just plain boring.  But not to a first grader.  We turned to a building with pillars and a statue.  One boy said, "Hey--that looks like a courthouse.  My grandma's been to a courthouse, because my cousin was standing up in the car."  My advice to myself at that point was to ask no questions and turn the page.

His friend couldn't have cared less about the courthouse or the kid standing up in the car.  He was busy examining his arm.  "I'm sort of Italian," he blurts out.  "Because Italian people have skin like mine.  I'm like my brother--he's half Italian."  He pauses for a second and looks up at the ceiling, as if he is searching his brain.  "My dad is....what's that language they speak in Pennsylvania?"

"English?"  I ask.  (I should know better than to get into this conversation.)

"No.  That's not it," he says (with a disgusted you-should-know-'cause-you're-the-teacher-tone.)

"You know," he says.  "The people we had a war with?"

Another thing about six-year-olds is that the line between fantasy and reality can be very hazy.  Eight-year-olds aren't much different.  I had the King of the Liars in my class when I was teaching third grade.  He was great.  Everyday he had been on a different adventure.  If he didn't catch my attention on the first go around, he upped the ante.  "I went down in a volcano in a helicopter," he told me one day.  Then, of course he had to add, "...while it was erupting."  

My friend told me to start calling him on it.  "Ask for proof," my friend said.  

So the next day he tells me he has a skeleton.  "I found it in a swamp," he says.  (Seattle is pretty wet, but there isn't much swamp land that I know of.)  

I remember my friend's advice.  "Bring it," I say.  "Bring your swamp skeleton to school."

The next morning I am working at my desk and I hear a knock on the window behind me.  

There is the King of the Liars, holding up a not-all-the-way-decomposed cat skeleton.  

I guess the line between truth and fiction is a hazy one.

Grown-up Geeks

My friend, Margaret, and I are nerds--dorks, if you may.  We always have been. We grew up three thousand miles away from each other, on opposite coasts, but we didn't need to go to junior high school together, to know what each other's childhoods were like.  I was never a popular kid.  I got to be a cheerleader for a few months, because they made a special rule that year that you couldn't try out if you played any sports.  So they were basically left with me--along with a few others.  But then the other cheerleaders, who were much better versed in popular-mean-girlism, were horrible to me, and I could never crack their secret code, so I quit.  I did get to be the Christmas dance queen, because my calculus class (the only 13 kids of my high school that still took advanced level math) nominated me.

So back to Margaret and me.  What do adult geeks do?  Do they still enjoy solving math problems? (okay, yes...)  Adult nerds still want to be daring.  They still crave that devil-may-care attitude of the popular kid.  Margaret and I would never actually do anything daring, because we might get in trouble.  There's that extra-strong, automatic damper we put on ourselves.  We can't help it.  It's built in.  

But then there's this scary thing that happens when two adult geeks become friends.  They dare each other to do risky things.  Margaret and I like to explore old houses.  I can't tell you where, of course.  Because we could get in trouble.....Margaret and I both love anything old or used--abandoned things have so much character.  She's got a really good eye, too.  She's the one that discovered that the basement door hatch for the abandoned house (slated for demolition) was unlocked.  I'd like to tell you that she went down the stairs first--but I can't--because we might get in trouble.

At the top is a picture of the cup that Margaret found.  She took it home and boiled the decades of dirt and grime off of it, and then she gave it to me.  It's your muse, she said.  That's how the real daring part gets to come out.  Margaret is a writer, too.  We get to make things up.  That's how we are allowed reprieve from our geekdom.  Who doesn't love some good fiction?