Emoting for others. Not easy

Although I'd been told, twice, that my fiction continued to sound like a journalist wrote it, I could not figure out exactly what that meant. And if you can't identify a problem, it's near impossible to address it.

I'd heard: tell us what the character is feeling. and Ramp up Alexa's attitude.

But actually accomplishing that had remained elusive.

A girlfriend of mine from my years in New York City, a published author and illustrator (of children's books) visited with me and my husband last week.

Finally, from what she said, I got a clue. Cecile wrote some suggestions in the margins of a printout. I saw them, understood why she wrote this or that. However, that didn't mean I felt like I could replicate what she did on the rest of the manuscript.

I even said to her, "It's like a gray box where I need to put in the character's feelings. And I can't find the door, or figure out how to pry my way into it."

She's known me for 20 years. She said, "Yes you do. You have understood the subtleties of my feelings, and known how others are inside. I've heard you."

Just by someone I could trust telling me, yes, you can do this: That cracked open the gray box.

I think. I hope.

Now feel I'm working on the third draft, the prose is so different -- what with all that emotion flowing all over the place.

Thank you, Cecile!

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Beats, Telling, and Point of View

Okay, my beta readers are sounding happy. No snoring from behind the screen, er, page.

But, I think I'm gonna have to do some changing.

Beats in dialogue: A beat in dialogue is that short or long pause that allows the reader's brain to keep up with the action. It avoids the machine-gun feeling of one line of dialogue after another, after another, after another.

Actually, I think I may generally get this into my dialogue.

Perhaps I learned about beats as a high school flute player. Keeping time with the tubas and the drums -- even when marching around on the football field in a too-big uniform -- may have stuck with me during the decades after. The ballet teacher in the loft at Broadway and 74th Street in NYC thought so. I was abysmal at doing the right steps at the right time. But I kept on the beat, every time, with SOME kind of step. The teacher's comment that I must have played an instrument (since I was hitting the beat) was small consolation for the looks of pity from the experienced dancers around me (since I was missing almost every type of step).

Anyway. Beats in dialogue: got it.


Telling vs. Showing: Now, I thought I was doing pretty well with this. But from reading "The First 50 Pages," by publisher Jeff Gerke, I'm thinking I'm gonna need to do some revising. Dang.

In particular, Gerke recommends absolutely no flashbacks in the first 50 pages. Agents and editors, supposedly, are likely to fling said manuscript across the room and then go over and jump up and down on it. And then, of course, reject it.

I'm guilty: The story has at least two flashbacks (Chapters 2 and 3), to a scene when the item that brings onto my heroine all the story's trouble is handed to her. Oy. Not sure what to do about this.


Point of View: In this second draft, I am introducing and fleshing out an important character much sooner. Essentially, the romance. This adds much-needed drama early on in the story.

I wrote the scene where the heroine meets the romance interest in alternating Points of View. I thought I got each part of the scene clearly separate. Actually, I was kind of proud of my cleverness.

But, supposedly the rule of thumb is: One Point of View per scene. All my pretty efforts, slashed and changed. Again, dang.

But this is the Writer's Way.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Second Draft on Two Stories

So, now there are two. Two stories, one a followup to the first, to be whipped into second draft.

In my imagination, pitching the first or second story to an agent, I realized I am waaayyyyy far from a good short summation.

Reason: characters, in particular the main protagonist, needs to be sharpened.

After considering for a couple of days, I've realized that the protagonist I began writing as a reflection of myself (something that probably every newbie fiction writer does) should REALLY be a "princess."

For the endings of both stories to make sense, the protagonist needs to begin as a bit of a "maiden" or "princess."

I am so NOT a princess, that this will prove to be a nice challenge.

It also gives me a clue on how to inject a good dose of drama into the first third of the first story.

NaNoWriMo: 3000 words behind

This is a blog about writing about Enlightenment developing via a life of adventure.

I just returned from a four-day trip, to teach a course of the Transcendental Meditation technique, arguably an activity that has everything to do with the development of Enlightenment.

In my excellent adventure, I fell behind in my writing.

My husband drove the two, five hour trips to Kansas City, where I've been teaching TM for seven and a half years (>250 trips during those years). And I wrote in the car, both ways. We stayed four days and three nights, and I wrote in the odd 10 minute spaces between various meetings, or shopping, or visits with friends.

We did this trip in about the shortest amount of time possible. And I still fell behind by about 3000 words.

I admit that when I'm at home, I have a rather flexible schedule. I now am REALLY impressed with anyone who accomplishes the NaNoWriMo goal and also has a full-time job. Whatever those people are doing, they are way ahead of me. More power to them. They're also probably way closer to Enlightenment than me....

Today is November 19. I have until November 30 to complete the 50,000 words.

I remain optimistic. Maybe that's an enlightened outlook?

How the heck to make "Enlightenment" engaging?

The title of this blog starts with the word "Enlightenment."

But I, as of yet, have not really referred to that concept, or even something related to that concept. I have, instead, been concentrating on the more traditional aspects of adventure fiction.

In the story, Alexa was brought up in a family that understood and valued the concept and the experience of growing in that direction. But at age 16, she lost her mother to a fast-acting cancer and just six months later she lost her father to a freak storm that capsized his boat in the Caribbean. The daily activities within this lifestyle continued for her, as much as they could considering she was no longer living within a supportive cocoon. But even for children whose lives have not been so catastrophically altered, it is not uncommon for them to develop a certain amount of rejection of all that goes with a concious growth toward Enlightenment.

Thus, in this first part of the trilogy, Alexa meditates, because it generally feels good -- or at least, not bad. And it certainly helps with handling the stress of her life.

But the bliss she remembers from her years before losing her parents hasn't been available since that loss. So, an unconscious yearning for that bliss is the basis for the Numero Uno story line.

Searching for a story about the growth of consciousness is, actually, the very reason I decided to try my hand at fiction. I just can't find what I'd like to read.

I realize there is probably a very good reason for this. It ain't easy to write engagingly about such a quiet and intimate experience and process -- particularly within an Adventure.

But I persevere: inserting small references along the way, moving that story line along with the adventure part and trying to keep them relevant to each other. All the while trying to avoid off-putting jargon.

For Alexa, at first the silence that once was so available, and has been so NOT available for so long, is missed. Incrementally, as she draws closer and closer to the climax, she begins to find herself and her depths more easily, step by step.

Which, is pretty much how I experience life. No surprise I'm writing about it, eh?