What I’ve Learned About Writing, Installment #3, by R. Clint Peters

As I previously reported, I am participating in the 2013 edition of NaNoWriMo.  As of earlier today, I was at 6273 words, slightly under the daily target to reach 50,000 words by Nov 30, 2013.  When I finish with this blog, I will jump back into the saddle on Second Cousins.

Now, back to what I’ve learned about writing.

I have started reading one of the books my friend suggested, Characters, Emotion, and Viewpoint, by Nancy Kress.  So far, it’s been interesting to go back into Prerogatives and Second Cousins and see what I did initially and compare the first draft to the things Nancy Kress has suggested.

I have begun to see what my friend was talking about when she suggested if readers can’t connect with the characters in a book, the book isn’t going very far.  And Ms. Kress amplifies the need for character development.  I think Ms. Kress asks one question that explains it all:  Am I interested in this character?  Do I treat this character as if he or she is the hero in my book?  Or is he or she an incidental character, simply tossed into the soup for flavoring?  How do I know what character I have developed?

Through the extent of the character development.  A character with nothing remarkable or memorable is not going to connect with the reader.  I have learned that I have created secondary characters, the ones without something to connect to, rather than primary characters, the one the reader can grab on to and feel their pain.  Now, the goal is to give my characters some dimension.

I have also followed the second suggestion my friend gave me:  read someone else’s books. The book of the week has been Regret by Michael Robertson, Jr and Dan Dawkins.

Regret is an interesting story about an author who has written a dark tale and slowly becomes the subject of his novel.  However, this blog is not a book review.  I picked the novel because I wanted to see how other authors write.

First, the writing style goes mostly against everything I have learned about Show, Don’t Tell.  The book is written from the first person, and it could only be written from the first person, but there seems to be page after page of telling.  It might be possible to break up the telling with a little showing.  Bring the author’s thoughts into play, as if he was having a conversation with himself.

Second, much of the dialogue was sandwiched in between actions.  One paragraph might contain three pieces of conversation and three more actions.  One of the things I read during my research was that dialogue should not be sandwiched between actions.  Dialogue and associated actions should be distinct from the adjacent activities.

As I looked at the process, it just did not seem to be effective.  What did I learn?  I won’t put four dialogues and three actions that should be distinct sentences into one paragraph.

Finally, I found several sentences of thirty or more words, some sentences of forty words, and even some with fifty words.  The number one rule I learned from my research is keep the sentences under twenty words.  Why?  I had to reread several of the longer sentences to discover the meaning of the sentence.  And some of the longest sentences seemed to bog down in the overuse of verbiage.  I will confirm I looked for ways to reduce the word count, and in every instance, it could be done.  And, I think the results would make the book flow a little easier, at least for me.  Of course, I am not an editor.  But I am a reader.

So, what have I learned?  1)  Keep the word count below 20.  2)  Don’t make five activities and three remarks into one long paragraph that should be no less than five sentences.  2)  Show, don’t tell.  Use conversation between the characters or a conversation in the head of the hero to show what is happening.

NaNoWriMo has given me the chance to focus on a few new things I have learned.  If you have learned anything about writing, please send me an email at reviewersandauthorsclub@gmail.com and let the rest of the club know what you have learned.  Remember, we are not competing with each other, we are competing with ourselves.

#RClintPeters #TheAuthorsClub