Go Ahead . . . Try It!

It’s not that bad, right?  Some people just want to do it and get it over with.  Some look forward to it eagerly.  Adding details to our writing is like decorating for the holidays.  Once you immerse yourself into it, you are hooked – and so will be your readers. 

 C.S. Lewis said,  “Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we ‘ve read the description.  You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

 

If you add the right detail, just a tiny word or two, you can make the reader laugh, or cry, or catch their breath.

Finding those perfect details isn’t as hard as it sounds.  Try to notice the little things around you.  What is that man doing in the car next to you?  Is he texting?  Is he weeping?  Is he picking his nose?

When you add details to your story, it becomes personal.  It goes from being any old story to being personal.  That’s when it becomes real.  

Maybe you are writing about the lady next door taking her garbage out in the morning.  Get nosey with those characters.  Ask yourself those impolite questions.  What’s in that garbage and why does she have to take it out every morning?  What’s that stain on her robe?  Are her curtains open or closed, and how come she keeps her curtains closed in the daytime?

Try to notice those little details—I call it thinking like a poet.  My favorite poets use very spare language to make the story come to life in the poem.   They make every word count.  They pay attention to subtle things, like the way someone’s voice goes up or down a little when they say certain things.  Or the way their voice catches. 

Don’t be afraid to channel Gladys Kravitz.  Spy on those people in their stories.  What’s out front of the house?  Why are all those cars in the driveway all of a sudden?  What’s going on over there?

Is there a death?  A birth?  

The cars are coming and going at all hours of the night.  Are they drug dealers? 

Don’t be satisfied with just steps.  Make them creak.

Don’t be satisfied with just a classroom.  Jazz it up.  Put some contraband in there.  Make someone throw up or want to throw up.  

Details can be deceptive, too.  They can trick us—they can trick the reader.  You can drop a tiny detail in and see if the reader notices—a bit of foreshadowing.

 

I leave you with some holiday cheer from Mark Twain:  “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning-bug.”

Now get back to your decorating!

Elaborate Elaboration

It's in my head, and I know what I mean, so why do I need to elaborate?  I have a love/hate relationship with revising.  I need to, once again, follow the example of my first grade writer friends and do some elaborate elaboration.  

We were reading a book that had a boy in a wheelchair on the front cover.  "Why do you think that boy is sitting in a wheelchair?" I asked.

An adult would probably have responded, "I don't know"....or..."maybe he was born that way?" 

 But I asked my favorite first grade writer friend.  (You may remember her from a previous blog--she was the one who wrote about her sister who was 50, but she got tired of her and killed her off a couple of days later.)  She responded, "Maybe he's in the wheelchair because he broke his toe and he had to get it cut off and now he has to wear special shoes." 

 Wow.  Did we really need to even open the book after her explanation?  

Elaborate elaboration.  I'm going to try it tomorrow.

The Call

Rejection and Revision are two words that cannot be avoided when you are a writer.  By last year, I had developed a pretty thick skin with my writing and had gotten relatively comfortable with rejection.  (By comfortable, I mean, the mail carrier could stop wearing full body armor when delivering the mail to my house.)  I tried to tell myself everyday,  These are manuscripts.  They are words you have written.  They are not your children that you are trying to sell.  If one person doesn't like it, you move on.  (Wayyyy easier said than done, by the way.)

So after reading an impressive agent interview in a market newsletter, I decided to send my middle-grade manuscript to the amazing wonder-agent, Daniel Lazar, at Writers House.  I braced myself for the standard thanks-but-no-thanks-not-right-for-us response.  So when he showed interest, I had to shift gears.  We had some e-mail correspondence and I did some revising for him.  I probably should have been prepared for his call, but you'd really have to know my close friends and family.

My brother, Tim, can do dead-on-Saturday-Night-Live-quality impressions.  And it wouldn't have been beneath him to call me, posing as an agent/editor/media mogul offering me a multi-book contract.  My friends, Margaret and Eileen, have also been known to play a very convincing phone joke.  If any of those people called me asking if my refrigerator was running, I'd probably go look.

I didn't even have the opportunity to check the caller ID when the call actually came, because my youngest daughter answered the phone.  When I asked her who it was, she said (impatiently, of course, because she was watching some Disney Channel episode for the millionth time), "I don't know.  It's some guy.  Dan something, from Writers House?"  

Okay, here's where I confess to Dan.  I was playing cool, but I was really hyperventilating.  Could he actually hear me jumping up and down?  

So...I guess the moral of my story is...relax, revise, and don't ever give up.

Also Known as Harper...the Backstory

Welcome to The Backstory where I'll be blogging about beginnings, middles, and the details that fuel our stories.  

Backstory is pretty much hindsight without the 20/20 vision.  I think, breathe and live backstory when I'm revising and building the lives of my fictitious characters.  I am constantly thinking about what drives and motivates them. 

When I create my characters, there is usually something real that makes them come into being.  A situation, a place, an actual person.  It was a feeling I got from a person that made the characters take shape when I began writing ALSO KNOWN AS HARPER.   I had been volunteering at my local soup kitchen. I was standing behind the serving counter and I couldn't stop wondering about the backstories of the people making their way into the line.  Did they have a home or a job?  Was the dinner we were serving their first meal of the day, or of the weekend, possibly?  And then came the children.  I wanted to follow them home with a bag of groceries and make sure they had a clean, warm place to sleep.  I didn't see the defeat in their eyes that I saw with some of the adults.  The hopefulness hadn't yet disappeared.  There was shyness, but there was also a streak of strength and stoicism that seemed to be carrying them through their day.  That crept into my mind and took hold of me until Harper's story began.

So...what is your backstory?

Next week...by special request:  The Call