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

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?