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

Portal website is up: StorySilence.com

Besides my own fiction, I'd like to interact with readers and writers about what interests me the most: those moments of transcendence, the Aha! moments when all becomes clear.

That's really why I'm writing fiction.

The new site is live: www.storysilence.com

Quite basic. And probably will continue that way until I meet my self-imposed deadline for Seeking Sirius (lots of SS's)

On the StorySilence site (ssssss), I finally got up a way for people to share their favorite books or stories or movies or music, that include strong moments of silence.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Integrate wisdom from the editor, and keep marching towards publish date

I received feedback from an editor (I paid him), who is a published author with a "shelf full of books." And the verdict is: a saleable novel.  (Wheeeeee!)

I asked for what would be necessary to take the story to its next level. And the gentleman provided me with basically, these suggestions:

Give the protagonist more attitude. so the reader can know what she's thinking and feeling

Also for the antagonist, (though in the 17 chapters I sent in, the REAL bad guy is not yet clear)

More description of the characters, then include periodically as markers along the way

At the beginning of each scene, give the reader more of a clue, where is the action and what's going on

Can do this, with more description -- include random but specific details (but not too much)

Use more of the senses (but not too much)


In a scene: first three paragraphs, establish the setting
then the meat of the scene, with minimal frills, except more experience through the senses


Dialogue: give the reader some anchor, especially in a long dialogue, by a note of how the speakers are interacting or reacting -- other than what they're saying.
IE: Run hand through the hair  
caress the stone column
gaze out over the ocean


I've been working like that irritating bunny in my garden, integrating all this. And no doubt, it makes the story come alive. Someday, I'll get to that bunny.

Still have a ridiculously close publishing date (to self-publish). But this is an "auspicious time." So, it's worth it to push.

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

Beta Readers; Learning from the pros

In searching around for how published authors run their websites and blogs, I came across a woman who invites most anybody to be a beta reader -- to read the first or second draft simply by signing up on her website (also a nifty manner for accumulating an email list).

I'm not that brave, yet. But I do, now, have a few trusted friends reading the chapters almost as I produce them. I am keeping a few chapters ahead.

I am working on the first story, "Seeking Sirius," which was badly in need of a rewrite in the first part, because of the risk of people dying of boredom.

The rewrite is moving along nicely, I think. No beta readers have perished.



Something I like about this whole fiction-writing experience is all the generous support of other writers available. Some free. Some paid. But all offered. Not hoarded, so that only their books get published.

I've learned a huge amount -- all the easier because I made the mistakes, so can recognize when an answer comes my way.

One example is a recent decision to move a scene. Actually, kind of turn it into a spoiler.

But by moving this one scene, from right after the climax, to comprising the whole of Chapter 1, I think -- I hope -- the tease will make readers want to read on, to find out HOW did that happen.

I learned about this technique from a book by James Scott Bell ("Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, 2nd ed").  And was prompted to use this particular technique, out of the many in his book, by my father, who read in 2012 about 300 novels. He's retired, and a speed reader. And he's also a pretty good judge of what works.

He will be a beta reader for me, at some point. We've agreed to be gentle about that, me being his daughter, and all that. But, Dad, I heard you, and I acted on one of your comments.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

NaNoWriMo: No Idea if this will flow

NaNoWriMo: 50,000 words in 30 days = first draft of a novel

Being a perfectionist, I find a nagging worry that the scenes I keep throwing at the page (gotta get those 1666 words/day done) may end up producing -- just a series of scenes. Will they flow, keep the reader engaged from one scene to another, wanting to find out what happens next, all the way to the end? (oh, please, oh, please)

I read to my husband. He loves it. Of course, he has no bias, at all.

I take the, probably stupid, chance of reading to someone out of the family. My question: "Does it sound like a book? One you'd read off the bookstore shelf?"

I even offered to read a scene at my husband's birthday party. Yes, I did. Pity me, please.

Nobody took me up on my offer. My husband has very wise friends.

As a journalist, I'd produce 1666 words in a day, in a finished news piece, easy. Of course, when one has an editor yelling "where is that quote!" you find the way to locate the data, to fit into the sentences, to tell the news, to make the editor happy, to keep your job.

Now, I pick up a pen and notebook, during the 15 minute break in a performance. Or I sit down, open the computer and try to figure out what NEXT should I do to my protagonist, because I now realize there needs to be SOMETHING happen, before I can get her to that next important turning point.

It's harrying. It's exhilarating.

5000 words out

This is my first effort with fiction. Journalism I know: Fiction was a complete mystery.

Until I got about half-way through the first draft.

Then, the flow began, and my completely uncritical spouse began to say, that sounds great! (always good to have a completely uncritical listener, at first) Even considering the source of this input, my gut says the story became, by the end, way better than the words I put on the screen early in the process.

In my own life, I work to keep everything smooth and drama free. And that's pretty much how I wrote that first third of the story. Now in the second draft, even I am scanning over vast tracts of boring verbiage. Ergo, 5000 words are exited from the manuscript, all from the first third of the story.

Now, I must figure out how to make the first third of the story as interesting as the last third.

Drama. More drama. And not just any drama. The kind that builds into the fascinating stuff near the end.

Perhaps introduce certain concepts/people earlier in the story -- or if I must, smooth in new ideas -- to produce the surprises at the end.

And those fascinating details I thought would be really cool to include but just didn't make sense later? Tickle them out so no one is the wiser.

Like weaving a tapestry, and go back to add new colors at the beginning to predict those that appear by the end. Also, extricate useless colors all along the way, one stitch at a time.

Home stretch to the Climax!

Alexa is back on Earth, and racing to the climax. And I am scrambling to find that perfect wave to carry her -- and the reader -- to the pinnacle.

Very exciting. Yes, it is just the "crummy" first draft. But this is the FIRST instance for me to approach completion of the "crummy" first draft.

Whereas on the space station the workings of the scene came down to physical placement (rock-outcropping post), in this scene or series of scenes the element of urgency comes down to timing of events. The situation that creates the pressure is an event that will happen in x days, then only x hours, then only x minutes: i.e., time.

The setting is in India, basically because India is timeless. One of the main characters is Indian. But the country also provides a fairly predictable societal location in the future, more so than, say, the ever-changing society of North America. If the India of now is very much like it was  hundreds of years ago, it will probably have very similar recognizable elements even many years into the future.

I have been to India twice. My second visit included a race to get somewhere before a certain event, and I admit to borrowing elements from that visit (just like I may someday include memories of Paris, London, or Sao Paulo, or even Bartlesville, Oklahoma).

Anyway, I began this journey for Alexa about two years ago, and she and I are finding our way together to the ordained climax. I don't know how ordained is my own path, but whatever it is, I'm having a rollicking good time discovering it.

Fully Into the Chase; On Alexa's way back to Earth

Alexa Jane just took off from the space station, above Earth, barely in time to avoid the bad guys. And she's finally about to return to her home planet, though 950 years after she left it.

The story is now fully into the Chase Scene, rushing toward the climax, and finally finding out why the heck the tiny little crystal is so important.

As part of the process of writing for the first time a book-length story, getting to this point is truly exciting. (I still avoid defining this as a book, until it's at least through the second draft.) In addition to reading to my husband each new scene that rushes onto the page, I have also taken to getting certain friends on the cell phone and reading to them. Sometimes they are appreciative, sometimes not.

One sticking point that had to be solved; where on Earth should she go? I mean, as the writer I can give her any clue/indication I want. I just have to decide where to put her.

This involves:
Are some candidate cities under water, at this point, because of global warming?
What countries/cities would be important enough, 950 years from now, to harbor the people involved?
Where could a so-called space-port be located?
How far from the landing pad, to the action, do I settle this space-port?
It probably shouldn't be in the middle of a metropolitan area -- of now or the likely future.
But I've got to get her into action PDQ

I have some ideas, on each point. And if the rest of the story is any indication, more details will present themselves as they appear on the page.

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?

Into the Fire

Alexa, the heroine of my story, may have thought life on the space cruiser was like a frying pan. But that was nothing compared with how things are shaping up for her on the space station above Earth.

To keep the reader's interest, it makes sense to me to ramp up the action -- or suspense, in that kind of story -- as you near the climax, which will take place on Earth in this instance.

Before Alexa gets off this station, she will be running -- maybe while floating -- for her life. 
She has pinballed from one suitor, to a bad guy, to a bad guy masquerading as a suitor, to yet another suitor. Or is he also a bad guy? That's not clear to her yet. (I know who/what he is, but she will still be wondering at moments even in the third part of this trilogy.)

I have a general plan for her on the station, with some details I'd like to include. It is delightful to see how including a detail at one point sometimes sets up another detail -- previously thought to be unrelated -- at a later time in the story.

It really does feel like the story seems to be writing itself, almost. So different from reporting on the movement of equities or the fine points of the latest corporate tax law.

More like in the Flow, than into the Fire.