An Expert’s Guide to Character Building Essentials, By Michelle Rebecca

A good writer knows more about her characters--and the world they inhabit--than she ever tells her readers. The more you know about your character--likes, dislikes, habits and history--the better. Character building rounds out your story's main players. 

What's the Point?

The reader may never learn the taxi driver who dies in Chapter 2 has three children, or the talking dormouse who helped your hero traverse the Desert of Failings has an addiction to cauliflower. As such, you may wonder if character building isn’t a waste of time. 

A well-developed character comes across stronger in a story. You understand her motivation, her reasoning, and that understanding seeps into how you describe her. Besides, as you explore your characters they can surprise you, adding elements to your plot and atmosphere you hadn't realized were missing.

Getting the Whole Picture

Take our dormouse as an example. He's a minor character who only shows up for one chapter, but he plays an important role in the hero's journey, teaching the hero to face his fears and feelings. 

How can he do this? Because the dormouse experienced his own failings. He's felt the sinful allure of forbidden cauliflower. He's stolen and lied to obtain the vegetable. And he only recovered because someone cared enough to get him into drug rehab (well, veggie rehab I guess).

You might hint at this in the story. You might decide it requires more explanation or simply use it as part of the story's larger backdrop. Either way, the character seems more real to both you and your reader, because you took the time to develop his history and personality.

The Importance of Backstory

Writers such as J.K. Rowling are masters of character development and backstory. We never learn whether Professor Snape likes his steak rare or well done, but it's a good bet that Rowling knows. Her notes on the world and her characters are, by all accounts, voluminous.

Only a tiny portion of Rowling's character development makes it into her books. She may have map of Hogwarts and a list of every headmaster ever to preside over the school, but readers don’t need that information. Instead, she uses such facts to keep the school--itself as much as character as any wizard--consistent in tone, history and construction.

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Byline: Michelle Rebecca is an aspiring writer with a passion for blogging. She enjoys writing about a vast variety of topics and loves that blogging gives her the opportunity to publicly voice her thoughts and share advice with an unlimited audience. Read her blog at Social We Love.

Taking Steps -- Setting a Story Into Motion, A review of the opening chapter of Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn

by Bill Johnson

Good stories create a journey a story's audience can share. One aspect of creating a journey is taking a first step. When the first chapter of a novel takes that first step, the storytelling demonstrates an ability to create a story journey. Some writers struggle because a first chapter is not a step forward, but an introduction of characters, settings, and plot. I'm going to use several paragraphs from The Last Unicorn to demonstrate how Peter Beagle created a compelling, engaging first step in a story journey.

The title of the novel raises several questions: why is there only one unicorn left? Will it survive? A good title can raise or suggest a dramatic question that draws in readers.

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.
 
This first sentence suggests a story about being all alone in the world, an issue that resonates with many people.

She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.
First the introduction of an issue for the unicorn, then a lyrical physical description. Some hunters pass through the unicorn's forest, and from evesdropping the unicorn learns that she is probably the last of her kind. This sets up in her a state of narrative tension, as she wonders if she is indeed the last unicorn, of if the others were waiting for her?

But when she stopped running at last and stood still, listening to crows and a quarrel of squirrels over her head, she wondered. But suppose they are hiding together, somewhere far away? What if they are hiding and waiting for me? From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her; from the time she first imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else. She trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel the minutes crawling over her like worms. "I will not go. Because men have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean they have all vanished. Even if it were true, I would not go. I live here." 
 
A character is in a state of narrative tension when he or she feels compelled to act, but with compelling reasons not to act, and acting increases the tension. A novel with a main character who is not in a state of narrative tension risks not being dramatically compelling.

Continuing,

Under the moon, the road that run from the edge of her forest gleamed like water, but when she stepped out onto it away from the trees, she felt how hard it was, and how long. She almost turned back then; but instead sh took a deep breath of the woods air that still drifted to her, and held it in her mouth like a flower, as long as she could.

The unicorn has taken the first step of her journey. She doesn't just make the decision, but takes that step. Many stories have both this physical journey and a journey toward the resolution of an issue of human need, or the illumination and exploration of ideas.

On her journey, the unicorn meets a man who confuses her for a horse.

Sometimes she thought, "If men no longer know what they are looking at, there may well be unicorns in the world yet, unknown and glad of it." But she knew beyond both hope and vanity that men had changed, and world with them, because the unicorns were gone. Yet she went on along the hard road, although each day she wished a little more that she had never left her forest. 

This raises the stakes in the story, that what's happening is not just about a solitary unicorn, but about the larger world; that if this last unicorn is lost, something fundamental about this world will be lost. Some writers struggle because they don't set up something to be at stake in the larger world of their stories.
And, the narrative tension continues to increase for the unicorn.

The unicorn meets a silly butterfly who sings silly songs, but just before leaving, the butterfly reveals to the unicorn, 

"You can find your people if you are brave. They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them and covered their footprints. Let nothing dismay you, but don't be half-safe." His wings brushed against the unicorn's skin.

Now the unicorn knows what happened to the other unicorns, but not where to find them. She now has a clue to what happened, but the clue frames larger questions: Where did the Red Bull take the other unicorns, can she find them, can she defeat the Red Bull?

Continuing, a carnival carvan led by Mama Fortuna, a wise woman, happens upon the sleeping unicorn. Knowing what she has found, she has a cage built around the unicorn to trap it. The first chapter ends with the unicorn waking. This sets up a powerful question, will this help or hinder the Unicorn in her quest?
The end of the chapter also suggests that the Magician, who is in conflict with Mama Fortuna, might become an ally of the unicorn.

To get the answer, a reader must turn the page and keep reading.

If Peter Beagle had started with an introduction of the unicorn, an introduction of the old man who mistook her for a horse, an introduction to the butterfly, and Mama Fortuna's carnival, then brought these characters together in the second chapter, that kind of first chapter would have been dramatically static. He choose instead to set the Unicorn on a journey where she meets characters who impact that journey.

The Last Unicorn is a great example of how to introduce and set a story into motion in one chapter.

Indie Author Riley Hill and Riverhouse Lit Launch Mystery Thriller About Sauvie Island

"Split River," authored by Riley Hill, a former Sauvie Island resident, provides a chilling dip into fictional happenings on the island. Published online through Amazon by Riverhouse Lit, the novel is available in e-book and soft cover, and available to libraries and bookstores beginning August 17, 2012.

The dark moon of August 17, 2012 lights the way for Riley Hill's tale of mystery and suspense, Split River. Set in the lush countryside of Sauvie Island, the novel invites readers to probe deeper—beyond the Rockwellian glow of pumpkin farms and wholesome children. Into the minds of a serial killer, and the woman whose life was ruined by him.

Jeroen ten Berge, a New Zealand artist who designs covers for notables, including J.A. Konrath, created the cover for Split River.

The author, Riley Hill, previously lived on Sauvie Island. Inspiration for the book came from the stripping of sand from under the trees along the riverbank, after the flood of 1996, combined with the history of the Warrior Rock Lighthouse. Interviews with local Fish and Wildlife officials, Deputy Larry Weaver, and residents provided additional realism to the fictional tale.

Ms. Hill says "Split River carries the reader through an idyllic world of abundant vegetation, wildlife, and island people, as a young woman struggles to channel her fractured life streams and wash clean the mystery of Warrior Rock."

As Cayenne Jensen, the protagonist, seeks to resolve the reason she was abandoned in a boat on the Columbia River at four years of age, she discovers truths about herself that make her a good match for the serial killer. The story setup contains fairy-tale elements, then quickly plunges the reader into adult themes and occasional dark humor. Combined with CSI-style macro views, lovely description, and character-driven plotting, this thriller's pace encourages page turning to find the clues.

About Riverhouse Lit and Riley Hill:

Riverhouse Lit is a subsidiary of House of Lit, an independent electronic book formatting and publishing intermediary company, located in Dewey, Arizona. Riley Hill plans another book with Riverhouse Lit later this year.

Contact:

Yoly Fivas, Owner

House of Lit

houseoflit@gmail.com

http://houseoflit.com

Self Awareness/Directed Awareness

by Bill Johnson

For people, self-awareness has many facets. People in general need brain power to filter out much of the information their senses collect. I think self-awareness for particular people can end up running in channels, so that we can quickly assign meaning and values to people and relationships in our lives and not get bogged down/drown in processing details. Relationships can also be symbolic, in the sense that a symbol can stand in for a relationship, a kind of short hand code.

The problem arises when a new writer doesn't realize their particular short hand code (a dark-haired woman with thick glasses could be a symbol for an abusive parent) doesn't evoke anything for a reader. The job of our brains to filter out details or shape our reality to a particular design can lead to a kind of neutered, thin writing that fails to ring true. Except for the person writing in their particular symbolic code.

Directed awareness, however, is a choice about where to focus awareness. Cynthia Whitcomb, the President of Willamette Writers, has had a long career as a successful screenwriter. When she began focusing more on writing plays, she read a play a day for a year. That was one way she assimilated a deeper understanding of what makes for a good play.

I find students in my screenwriting classes who don't like or watch movies. They simply want to imagine an idea of theirs turned into a Hollywood film, or imagine their life being turned into a major motion picture, with the money involved. I sometimes lose 50% to 70% of my students in a particular class. I suspect when I try and teach them directed awareness about storytelling -- consciously learning the craft -- they aren't ready for the work involved, or they come to realize the work involved.

About directed awareness versus intuition, recent brain scan studies have shown that once people have assimilated understanding (gained understanding about some facet of writing like plot, for example), when a problem arises, the subconscious can take that assimilated understanding of storytelling and find a solution to a particular plot problem. Then pop the answer in to the conscious mind.

Which some people interpret as intuition.

The catch is, the subconscious can only present that answer to the conscious mind when that mind is not preoccupied with a particular problem. Being preoccupied with a problem blocks the subconscious mind from accessing the conscious mind and providing an answer.

I go over this more in the latest version of my book, and reference some of these new scientific studies. I find it fascinating that brain scans give a more accurate representation of how the brain works and functions.

Many years ago I was in a state of deep meditation where I could see the flow of my subconscious thoughts/feelings/awareness welling up into my conscious mind; be aware of thoughts before they became conscious thoughts. Odd, enchanting process to observe.

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A fifth edition of my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling, is now available for $2.99 from Amazon Kindle.

Power Networking for Writers: It is About Who You Know, by Julie Fast

It's very exciting to finish a writing project. This requires time and diligence and is a true accomplishment. Unfortunately, some of the most talented writers work for years to sell a project, be it a book or a screenplay and wonder why the success they crave remains elusive.

It's easy to feel that authors who are published know something secret. And they often do. They understand that who you know is sometimes as important as the project itself. They understand the power of networking.

Networking takes confidence, research and planning. But it can make a huge difference in your conference experience.

My best advice is to take advantage of every networking opportunity you can find. Scope out the agents and publishers you want to meet and take their classes. You can then hear their special offers. Talk with people in the café and sit next to the person at lunch who has something you want. Yes, it's Machiavellian, but if you want to get published, this is often what it takes.  

I've taught ePublishing classes at the conference for seven years. I always say, "Let me know your topic and I will point you in the right direction of an agent or my agent." Guess what? About 10% take me up on the offer. Five of my students are now published and one worked with my agent. As a teacher, I'm impressed by networking. So don't be shy about networking. They weren't.

You are no different than writers who seem more successful than yourself. They wrote well (as I hope you do!) and then knew how to relentlessly network to get what they wanted. I've been in the publishing world for ten years and I know the big secret. Agents and published writers have to network as much as you do. So get out there, network at the conference and sell your project!

I hope to see you in class.

Julie A. Fast

 

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Julie is teaching a class at the Willamette Writers conference, August 3-5th in Portland, Oregon.

http://www.willamettewriters.com/wwc/3/

About Doubt, by Molly Best Tinsley

  Writers hear voices--a provocative sentence or two bubbling up in the mind’s ear; a created, or remembered, character beginning to speak autonomously.  These are gifts of the creative process to be cherished.  Then there are the other voices, the ones that chime in when we’re mustering the energy to get started on a project, or when the first burst of energy has been spent and we’re trying to figure out where to go next.  “Why bother?” these voices ask.  “You’re not a real writer.  That was a dumb idea.  You’ll never get it  to come out right.  What’s the point of going on?”

 

These doubts are the legacies of childhood, when parents and other adults defined who we were and decreed what we had to do.  Back then, writing meant navigating a tangle of rules—spelling, grammar, and “what the teacher wants.”  There is safety in all these obsolete limitations; they maintain the status quo.  But they have nothing to do with our creative abilities or the vitality of our writing.  We must laugh them off our mental stage, embrace the freedom, and forge on. 

 

No one ever postpones or stops writing because of lack of talent or technical expertise.  The talent is always there to be tapped, and solutions abound for any technical writing problem.  There’s only one thing that can stop us from writing if we let it, and that is self-doubt.

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Molly Tinsley left the English faculty at the US Naval Academy to write full-time.  Her story collection Throwing Knives won the Oregon Book Award; her most recent release is the memoir Entering the Blue Stone.  Three years ago she donned the editor/publisher hat, co-founding the small press Fuze Publishing (www.fuzepublishing.com).  She facilitates the workshops, Crafting Lively Dialogue and The Second Draft.

For more information about the conference, visit http://www.willamettewriters.com/wwc/3/

Graph Your Novel (Seriously!) , by Amber Keyser

If writing a first draft is like trying to out-run an avalanche, revision resembles digging out with a shovel.  Any tool that can cut through the details and provide a panoramic view of the shape of our story is useful.  Try a graph—seriously! 

Pick 1-3 things that you want to focus on and that you can rate on a 1-10 scale.  Some examples include voice, pace, likeability of a character, emotional intensity, conflict, fluidity of language, narrative coherency, moving plot forward, or a character’s transition from one state to another.  If a critique partner is doing this for you, asking if s/he’s “lost” will help analyze backstory components.  One of my critique group members analyzed the “turn the page factor” on a scale from 1, completely uninterested, to 10, can’t stop to pee.

Next make a graph that has all the chapters of your book on the X-axis (that’s the bottom line) and the numbers 1-10 on the Y-axis (vertical line).  Read each chapter and try to give a gut-level rating for each of your factors.  Connect the dots with a different color pen for each factor (e.x. red for conflict, blue for emotional intensity). 

Patterns will emerge.  For example, if properly plotted, conflict should trend upward (zigging and zagging a little on the way) toward a peak at the climactic chapter and then resolve downward quickly to the end.  One recent novel analyzed this way showed three distinct peaks at the end.  The author gave equal weight to the resolution of three major plot lines.  The book felt like it didn’t know where to end.  A line tracking reader’s involvement of the story will identify flabby chapters. 

Graphs like these can be powerful tools to help writers identify the parts of their manuscript that aren’t doing enough work or aren’t doing the right work.  They help you see where to focus your revision work.  And they’re pretty cool—seriously!

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Amber Keyser is the author of five books for young readers, including a picture book, three nonfiction titles, and a forthcoming novel that is part of Angel Punk, a transmedia storyworld.  At the conference, Amber will teach Creating Transmedia: Big Stories, Collaboration and Cross Pollination and Using a Critique Group to Enhance Your Writing Life.  More at AmberKeyser.com and VivaScriva.com.

Low Cost Book Publicity

by Bill Johnson       

As the office manager for a writers group with over 1,750 members, I'm often asked by newly published or self-published authors, what do I do to promote my book in my local area?


First, it's easier to get an announcement about a talk into a local newspaper than a lone author doing a book signing. Many authors have some lifetime experience they can speak about at a local library. And some libraries also allow book sales for a nominal commission.

If you can't arrange a talk through a library, local community colleges often rent rooms on weekends for a small fee, and such locations generally offer easy parking and access.

Using a space at either a library or school also lends some status to your talk.

If these spaces aren't available to you, many communities have arts organizations, some that meet in publicly subsidized spaces. They can also be a resource for renting a room to hold a talk.

Retirement communities also will host speakers (or performers in general).

My most dependable resource for getting the word out about these kinds of events has been a local alternative weekly (most major cities have one). These weeklies generally have a bulletin board in their print editions that anyone can put notices in for .95+ cents a word. (Online bulletin boards are vastly cheaper, but you get what you pay for).

If you have an event, always keep fliers about it in your car. Bookmarks and post cards are also good resources that you can distribute; Avery provides templates for creating them. There are online services that will print small quantities of inexpensive business cards that can include the cover of your book and info about an event.

If you are near a community college, see if they have a continuing education program that offers non-credit classes. Such programs are frequently open to instructors with new class ideas. Teaching a workshop at a community college will help raise your newsworthy standing.

If you are determined to do a book signing at a book store, I suggest you set up a signing with at least three other authors who write in a similar genre. I've known authors who banded together to set up a signing at a table in a mall during a literary-themed time (like a national poetry month).

I advise new authors to think long and hard about putting down money for table space at another author's book fair, unless money is not an issue. If you choose to be involved in a book fair, look for one that is part of a larger event that generates foot traffic.

If you do want to do a book release party, contact a local book store and see if they can accommodate you. Many book stores are set up to handle authors giving short presentations. This is where a well-designed media kit can make a great first impression.

Prlog offers a free service for sending out PR announcements. I've never had great success with these kind of announcements for local author events getting picked up for distribution, however. Some of these services send announcements to link farms that are set up to automatically post every announcement received, so don't be fooled by promises of wide distribution if you'll just sign up for a service that costs hundreds of dollars.

If you can't get a response from a major newspaper in your area, contact someone at your local neighborhood paper. I've known a number of authors who have been interviewed and featured in smaller, community papers.

Does your town have a local public access radio station called Golden Hours? See if you can get interviewed about your book.

Whatever kind of event you set up, NEVER depend on anyone else (including book stores, loved ones, friends, or fellow authors) to send out your event/meeting/workshop PR. Always do it yourself to be sure it gets out. And if you send out notices to local papers or magazines, make the effort to read their submission guidelines. A third of the PR notices I receive are deleted because the authors didn't bother to find out my guidelines, like someone sending me a website link and telling me I can go there and write an announcement for them.

Ask your extended family if anyone has any media contacts or would be willing to do a book review and post it online. In general, the more relevant links you have on the web, the higher your search engine rating (some search engines discount links posted on link farms).

Authors Den now offers contacts for people who do inexpensive book reviews.

Writing a book is a creative process, but marketing a book requires a different kind of mental focus, determination and planning. But if you put yourself out there in the world, you'll come across avenues to promote your book you never knew existed.

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To read some of my longer reviews of popular movies, visit my website or check out my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise, available on Amazon Kindle. Or, find me on Google+ and tell me what you think.

Writing the Emotionally Resonant Character, by Rosanne Parry

One of the pleasures of great fiction comes when a character you love takes an action that you didn't foresee and yet is so right for the character that it feels inevitable. You find yourself saying, "Of course! That's so like her!" The flip side of the experience is the character whose action so surprises you that you scratch your head and flip to the cover just to make sure you're still reading the same book. That's emotional resonance at work (or not at work in the second example.) Character interviews and charts listing personal appearance and habits are an excellent beginning, but how do you move into the realm of what makes a character internally consistent and emotionally true? To get at the deeper character, a writer has to ask herself deeper questions. Here are two to get you started.

What is the virtue that my character's family or friends or community values most highly? What is the worst sin this character could commit in his social circle?

For example, soldiers don't leave men behind. They will risk everything to bring the body of a fallen soldier home. This has been true since Hector and Achilles were fighting at the gates of Troy. The worst shame and guilt that a soldier suffers is from a failure to protect his men, even in death.

This question gets at the heart of what motivates your character's choices, and gives you a basis for escalating the conflict in your story. The more you put a character at odds with his personal moral compass, the more tension you will have in your scenes. It also protects you from unintentionally making a character choose something that is inconsistent with his values. For example a good soldier may well leave bodies on the field in retreat, but he would never do so without exhausting every option and suffering remorse. Having your character's core virtue or sin firmly in mind helps keep that character consistent and emotionally resonant.

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Author Bio: Rosanne Parry

If you are interested in exploring these ideas further, please consider taking Rosanne Parry's conference workshop Character and the Seven Deadly Sins. Rosanne is the award-winning author of Heart of a Shepherd and two other novels. She has taught workshops at Fishtrap, SCBWI, NCTE and numerous schools and book festivals across the country. She lives in Portland. http://www.rosanneparry.com

Jessica Morrell Hosts Summer in Words (Oregon Coast)

Writers of all levels can be inspired from some of the best in their field at the 5th annual Summer in Words Writing Conference.

Dates: June 15-17, 2012 in Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Theme: Refinement, Resonance & Renewal.

Keynote speaker: best-selling author Chelsea Cain.

Her Heartsick series is now in development with FX Network.

Other instructors: Sage Cohen, Jessica Glenn, Jessica Morrell, Naseem Rakha, Bruce Holland Rogers Discount room rate at the Hallmark Inn is available through 5/17.

Enjoy an intimate conference experience overlooking Haystack Rock. SIW provides aspiring and established writers the opportunity to hone their writing skills, hear inspiring advice, and network with fellow writers.

Cost for all three days is $265.00; single day pricing is also available. For information contact conference coordinator Jessica Morrell at 503 287-2150 or jessicapage@spiritone.com

Registrations can be mailed to Summer in Words, P.O. Box 820141, Portland, OR 97282-1141 or
 PayPal.

Website: http://summerinwords.wordpress.com

Conveying a Character's Journey on the First Page of a Novel

Notes on Good Grief, a novel by Lolly Winston

by Bill Johnson

I teach that a story creates movement and the movement transports an audience. In many of the unpublished novels I read, I'm often 40 pages into a manuscript before I have any idea of a main character's journey. In some cases, I have to read to the end of a novel to understand that journey. This puts me (and readers) in the unfortunate position of needing to keep track of all the details about a character while I wait for some sense of purpose to become apparent. This makes reading a novel work.

Lolly Winston's novel Good Grief has a structure that clearly conveys the stages of grief that a young woman goes through when her husband dies and leaves her a widow. This external framework communicates that the novel has a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. From its opening lines, the story has a destination.

Each stage of the main character's journey is divided into sections. The chapters in Part One are about denial, oreoes, anger, depression, escrow, and ashes. Each chapter that follows is about the main character's journey in dealing with her grief over her husband's death. The title, Good Grief, speaks to the narrator learning that there can be good grief (which revolves around passing through the stages of grief) and bad grief (getting stuck on the journey).

A review of the opening of Good Grief conveys how a main character's journey is set out.

The opening line:

How can I be a Widow?

The answer to this question comes in the opening paragraphs as the narrator sits in a grief support group. In a few paragraphs, the narrator explains why she's in the group.

My name is Sophie and I've joined the grief group because...well, because I sort of did a crazy thing. I drove my Honda through our garage door.

What's important about these lines is they show the narrator is not only in grief, she's being overwhelmed by grief. What set up the garage accident was an irrational thought that she needed to get into the house quickly to tell her husband something. Except he's deceased. She's in denial.

Continuing in a few paragraphs:

Maybe later I'll tell the group how I dream about Ethan every night. That he's still alive in the eastern standard time zone and if I fly to New York, I can see him for another three hours.

The narrator tries to deal with her grief by going back to work, but she quickly finds herself overwhelmed. In the past, when she felt overwhelmed, she called her husband. The chapter ends with these lines.

The cursor on my computer screen pulses impatiently, and the red voice mail light on my phone flashes. My stomach growls and my head throbs. But I can't call my husband. Because, here's the thing: I am a widow.

She has started to come out of her denial about her husband's death. The first chapter is a clearly defined step on her journey through grief.

Each chapter continues that journey until the narrator has passed through good grief to being whole again.

Highly recommended for writers who want to learn about structure from reading a well-written novel.

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Bill Johnson is the author of A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling. Promise is about the mechanics of telling a story, Deep Characterization (a section of the book) is about how the mechanics break down when people write stories to process their personal issues in life). The Spirit of Storytelling is about how great storytelling relates to the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious minds. Available at Amazon  and Smashwords.

Jim Fergus Interview on Author's Road

Despite the successful sales of his book and novels, and his widespread fame in France, this is Jim Fergus’ first American interview – and we are so proud to share it with you.

It is also one of the most fun interviews we’ve conducted. Jim was spending the month in Southern Arizona, living in his Airstream trailer tucked in a horse pasture high up a desert mountain. He was using the time and quiet to work on the film script adaptation of his award winning, bestselling novel, One Thousand White Women, when we caught up with him. As we interviewed him, two horses moseyed over curious about what we were doing, and willing to offer their opinions. We won’t share with you their whinnies, neighs and stubborn head nods in the hope that you’ll allow your own tastes to judge the value of this insightful interview.

Jim tells of his upbringing and long desire and effort to become a novelist, a process that took much longer than he expected. For years he supported himself as a tennis pro and freelance journalist, and finally managed the time and focus to write his first book, a nonfiction work called, A Hunters Road. He also shares stories about how he has been treated as a writer in France, the increasing difficulties of publishing, and insights on the writing of his last American novel, The Wild Girl, as well as his latest novel, Marie Blanche, so far published only in France.

We are certain you’ll enjoy his candor and insights shared with us on a lovely day in the high Sonoran desert.

The Authors Road


George & Salli

http://www.authorsroad.com

Writers on Writing: Carolyn J. Rose

Books That Inspired Me: A Story Is A Promise by Bill Johnson


Several years ago a writer friend mentioned Bill Johnson’s A Story is a Promise, describing it as “the missing link” needed to take her work to the next level.

It’s in my nature and background—25 years as a TV news producer—to be suspicious of claims about product benefits. But I didn’t want my friend to get to the next level without me, so how could I not check out that book?

I bought a copy and plowed through it, underlining, highlighting, and making notes in the margin about the human need for stories in order for people to feel engaged by and connected to life, for them to feel that living has meaning and purpose. Readers, Johnson contends, gravitate toward stories that promise to meet their particular needs—to experience, in a fictional world, things like redemption, justice, courage, love, and honor.

If the author’s promise is kept and the reader’s need is met, he said, then readers would want to re-experience that story.

And maybe, I thought, they’d want others to experience it, too. That might create the word-of-mouth ripple effect all writers long for. That might give a book staying power.

Since I read Johnson’s book, I’ve put more effort into thinking about the core human needs of the characters I create, how they’ll seek to fulfill those needs, and the way in which those needs will be met—or not—in the course of the plot. I’ve given more thought to how story (what the novel is about on a deep thematic level) and plot (actions and events) weave together and support each other. It’s tough, because I’m more of a seat-of-the-pants writer than a planner.

Have I reached that next level? I don’t know. Maybe. The novels I’ve written since I read Johnson’s book are selling better than previous ones. And last month a reader told me she read one of my novels twice. So thank you, Bill Johnson, for writing A Story is a Promise.

Link to A Story is a Promise

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Carolyn J. Rose is the author of a number of novels, including recent indie titles A Place of Forgetting , An Uncertain Refuge, and No Substitute for Murder. She grew up in New York’s Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, logged two years in Arkansas with Volunteers in Service to America, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, and her interests are reading, gardening, and not cooking.


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This blog appeared at http://parlezmoiblog.blogspot.com/

Posted by Kathleen Valentine

Kathleen's bio on Amazon.

Reposted by permission of Carolyn J Rose.

Diana Gabaldon Interview on Author's Road

Too often science and art are classed as two different worlds, distinct from one another.

We are pleased to introduce you to someone who doesn’t recognize this distinction, but rather sees these endeavors as two sides of the same coin. And she has the credentials to assert this since she’s both an accomplished scientist and a successful novelist of the bestselling Outlander series and the Lord John series.

In this intriguing and lively interview, Diana Gabaldon shares her understanding of how the artistic process and the scientific process are similar, and how crafting a novel is like solving a scientific riddle.

But that’s not all that Diana offers in this amazing interview. She also does something that no other writer we’ve spoken with has attempted: she demonstrates how a written scene is crafted, reshaped and refined into a fine literary image. It’s a magical scene that writers and artists, and no doubt scientists, will find illuminating.

Each of Diana’s many novels and novellas her multiple genres, and her insights about writing are some of the most unique we’ve encountered as we’ve traveled the Authors Road. We believe you’ll find her interview an inspiration, whether you’re a writer, a reader, or simply a lover of clear thinking.

George & Salli

http://www.authorsroad.com

http://www.authorsroad.com

Putting Into Practice the Essential Elements of Storytelling

To set a character into a world where their desire for redemption or courage or healing or understanding is tested cues an audience to pay attention to a story’s promise. As plot obstacles grow larger and strike characters with more force, they compel deeper revelations about what drives characters to resolve what’s at stake.

In this workshop, you’ll learn how storytelling is a promise and how to uphold this important commitment to your story readers; create a powerful dramatic truth for your characters; and to create and transfer narrative tehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnsion to your readers.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Without these elements, a novel risks being an account of events, and not a powerful story that compels readers to keep turning the pages.

This workshop is designed to help both beginning novelists and writers who have felt 'stuck' at learning a deeper sense of the craft of writing a novel.

Cost of workshop, $50. It will be held in West Linn. Email Bill at bjscript at teleport.com to register or for details.

Date: Sunday, March 18th; Time: 3-8 pm

http://www.storyispromise.com/wolclass.htm

Notes on the Film A Dangerous Method - Ideas in Conflict

by Bill Johnson

This movie about Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Sabina, a patient of Jung's, illustrates that conflict in a film does not have to revolve around action. Here the most heated conflict revolves around ideas.

Jung is a disciple of Freud, who has invented psychoanalysis. Freud's goal is to ensure that psychoanalysis be taken seriously as a scientific method of understanding people through an understanding of the subconscious and the unconscious. When Jung begins to express an interest in a collective unconscious and mysticism, Freud sees this as something that will undermine his life's work.

Each man is committed to his ideas and their primacy. Neither can walk away from the conflict between their ideas.

When Jung begins to treat a young Russian Jew named Sabina with the new talking cure, he finds himself attracted to her (as he is not to his wealthy, genteel wife). When Jung and Sabina become lovers and rumors about that begin to surface, Freud now has a weapon he can use to discredit Jung, and by discrediting Jung, his ideas as well.

But he does not.

A thoughtful, intelligent film directed by David Cronenberg.

Years ago I reviewed a generic action film. The Big Bad in the film had hired mercenaries, some right-wing idealogues and some professional soldiers for hire. I pointed out he could develop conflict between these two groups based on their different mind-sets. A small point, but it would have given what was generic characters some flavor.

When characters embody powerful ideas in conflict, and a storyteller finds a way to bind those characters together, that kind of conflict naturally and forcefully comes off the page.

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A fourth edition of Bill Johnson's writing workbook, A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling, is now available for $2.99 from Amazon Kindle.

Mark Twain, by Robert H. Hirst Interview on Authors Road

To our knowledge, no author in history has managed to write and publish new, best sellers that span a career of nearly a century and a half. But Mark Twain has. His first short-story (1865), The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, is still read in schools today. And in 2010, the UC Berkeley Mark Twain Papers & Project published the first of three volumes of Twain’s critical edition autobiography – a monumental work that Twain embargoed from publishing for 100 years after his death. Granted, there have been several autobiographies published before this, but the materials those were drawn from were abridged and censored.

No one anticipated what would happen with this first volume. Initial plans were made for a print run of 2,000. Before a year was up over half-million copies were sold, and world demand was still going strong.

And for good reason. Critics and scholars may argue over who is the most important American of letters, but the world knows who is the most endearing and original. Years ago, when we were in Mumbai, India we were constantly reminded by excited residents that Mark Twain had spoken there long before our arrival.

We are so very pleased to have had the opportunity to meet and talk with Robert H. Hirst, General Editor of the Mark Twain Papers & Project. For nearly half a century Hirst has devoted his professional life to the phenomenon of Twain, a history that continues to grow with the discovery each week of yet new letters and papers.

We know you’ll enjoy and learn from this remarkable interview.

George & Salli

Author's Road

Northwest Author Series Features Bill Johnson

Bill Johnson offers a presentation based on his writing workbook, A Story is a Promise, for Christina Katz' Northwest Author Series in Wilsonville on February 26th. The fourth edition of his book offers new, unique tools for creating vibrant story characters that he'll explore in his presentation.

The Northwest Author Series is an educational series of author workshops put on for the benefit of aspiring writers of all levels from Wilsonville, Oregon and the surrounding areas. All of the authors who present for us are:

* residents of the Pacific Northwest
* traditionally published authors
* experienced writing workshop teachers


The Northwest Author Series is sponsored by The Wilsonville Public Library and The Wilsonville Friends of the Library and hosted by Christina Katz.

Christina's first book, Writer Mama: How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids, was sold at the Willamette Writers conference in 2005 and published in 2007. Her second book in 2008, Get Known Before the Book Deal, was the first book to break down the steps of platform development for aspiring authors, a topic that has become extremely popular in the past few years. Her third book is The Writers Workbook.

http://northwestauthorseries.wordpress.com/about/

More about Christina.

A Bridge from Facts to Fiction, By Stephen Gallup

Story ideas come from real life. Even when we are inventing new worlds and new dimensions, the events we set forth in words follow recognizable logic and have their origin in lived experiences.

Many writers feel drawn to subjects that are obviously autobiographical. As a memoirist, I think that’s fine. But over time that kind of writing can create a very deep groove. Here’s a suggestion for venturing out of it.

If you feel that the character you are writing about is too familiar, stop and make a list of descriptive phrases about yourself. Then pick a feature and change it. Make that new trait central to your character.

For example, I love music, but due to a few poor decisions along the way I cannot with any honesty call myself a musician. The phrase not musical showed up in my list. So I tried my hand at writing about a violinist. As sometimes happens, this character began to take charge of his story. I was pleased to see that he had the wisdom to decide differently when faced with pressures that might have pulled his career off track.

Encouraged, I tried again, this time writing from the perspective of the opposite gender. That seemed to turn out even better than the first try.

These exercises were my first step in returning to the craft of fiction, which I had set aside for many years while doing another kind of writing. And I believe in their own way they contain as much truth as anything else.



Stephen Gallup is the author of a memoir, What About the Boy? A Father's Pledge to His Disabled Son (2011). He blogs at fatherspledge.com.

Author's Road Interview Features Verlena Orr

We’re pleased to bring you the first author interview with one of our favorite poets, Verlena Orr.

Verlena grew up on an Idaho wheat farm where she learned to recite Shakespeare while driving cattle on horseback. Twice nominated for a Pushcart, she’s published three chapbooks, two full-length books, and her work has appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies. She has lived in Portland since 1963, and received her MFA from University of Montana.

We interviewed Verlena on a rainy afternoon in June. She was patient while we set up, warmed up and moved around, chatting easily about life, writing and the many paintings friends have made of her.

She nestled in front of her computer in her cheerful Las Vegas tee shirt and wrapped in "Aunt Eunice's Writing Stole," and then we began.

We hope you will be as patient with our first efforts as Verlena was. We learned a lot, and Verlana gave a great interview. What she has to say more than compensates for our sometimes bumbling efforts.

Click on this link to view the interview.

Story Notes - The Hunger Games

by Bill Johnson

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins offers an example of how to tell a story about a familar if alien world, here a future United States divided into mini-states and ruled with an iron fist by the Capitol. This kind of story requires raising questions and introducing information about this new world that draws an audience forward to want to know more. This is easy to do, hard to do well. The following is a review of the opening pages of the novel.



In the beginning...

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.


The novel starts rooted in the POV of Katniss, a young girl. The opening conveys subtle information about the world, waking up cold, a mattress with a canvas cover, the question, what is the reaping? It also raises character questions, who is Prim? Why is she having bad dreams? What do her dreams have to do with the reaping?

Next...

I prop myself up on one elbow. There's enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim's face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.

This conveys a stronger sense of place, but more questions. Why does the mother appear 'beaten-down'? What happened to the once beautiful mother? Who is this 'they' who commented on the mother's former beauty?

Continuing...

Sitting at Prim's knees, guarding her, is the ugliest cat in the world. Mashed in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash.

This conveys a description of a cat, but also a subtext about this world, that pets fend for themselves in a harsh world. There's also the subtext here that the narrator does not like this cat.

Continuing...

Prim named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. He hates me. Or at least he distrusts me. Even though it was years ago, I think he still remembers how I tried to drown him in a bucket when Prim brought him home.

Again, another question: why did the narrator feel compelled to kill the cat? With the title, Hunger Games, the reason is implied; one more mouth to feed.

Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed.

That confirms the why the narrator wanted the kitten dead, but raises another question: why is she responsible for feeding her mother and sister?

But Prim begged so hard, cried even, I had to let him stay. It turned out okay. My mother got rid of the vermin and he's a born mouser. Even catches an occasional rat. Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.

This conveys the narrator's desire to make her little sister happy. That a pet is fed entrails and not cat food again suggests something about this familiar yet alien world.

Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

There's a subtext here that in this harsh world, accomodations are made, but only grudingly.

This is the first page of the book. It continues with the narrator getting up and ready to go out hunting, and relates that she lives in District 12 that is crawling with coal miners. Again, questions are raised that will soon be answered, and the answers will raise new questions.

The author next relates that District 12 is surrounded by an electrified fence to protect the inhabitants from wild dogs and other wild animals. District 12 is sounding more like a gulag, which it comes out that it is for most of its inhabitants, but the narrator is willing to go beyond that fence.

Suzanne Collins demonstrates a deft touch in introducing thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhis narrator in a harsh world, but also showing her inititive to not be fenhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifced in. Novels that lack this clearly defined, carefully crafted character and plot and scene development from their opening lines risk being static and dramatically inert.

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To read some of my longer reviews of popular movies, visit my website or check out my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise, available on Amazon Kindle. Or, find me on Google+ and tell me what you think.

Quick Cuts - Story Notes on the Movie Take Shelter

This movie demonstrates a central issue of storytelling, narrative tension. I define narrative tension as the tension a character feels to resolve or fulfill some issue, and the tension that increases as that character takes action. Romeo in Romeo and Juliet is a great example of narrative tension, because everything he does to act on his love for Juliet puts him in deeper conflict with his clan.

Novels that lack a main character in a state of narrative tension are often episodic, a series of events but lacking a clearly defined central conflict.

In Take Shelter, the main character is a blue collar worker of 35. The film opens with him standing outside in the rain, but the rain drops include oil. As the film continues, he has nightmares about a powerful, deadly storm, and also attacks on himself and his six year old, deaf daughter. But then he has a nightmare while awake. Are the nightmares a premonition of something looming or symptoms of mental illness? At 35, his mother began to experience the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

To save his family, he excavates around a tornado shelter using equipment he's borrowed from his job. This gets him fired, just before his deaf daughter is slated for an operation to restore her hearing. But he can't stop what he's doing if it means the safety of his family.

This film's main character is always in a state narrative tension that is accessible to the audience. He fears he's descending into mental illness, but if he's not, how does he save his family? But his actions to save his family threaten to tear his family apart and seem to prove he's mentally ill to those around him.

When he confesses what's happening, his loving wife helps him get through the aftermath of a storm, and they take a family vacation to a beach before he'll be put on a regime of drugs and institutionalization. While the father is on a beach with his daughter, the fear in her eyes causes him to look up. The monster storm he's seen in his visions is now approaching. As his wife comes out onto a vacation rental deck, she realizes the rain is mixed with oil.

That ends the film and answers the central question of the story, but raises more questions about how and why he was having these premonitions and why they manifested as nightmares about him and his daughter being attacked.

This film also demonstrates the difference between horror and psychological terror. In a typical Hollywood horror film, there are often a series of 'boo' moments, where some sudden action is designed to scare the audience. Here there's a creeping sense of terror that is transferred from the main character to the viewers of the film. I found the film much creepier and more horrifying than most of the horror films I've seen in the last ten years. A well-made, well-acted if unsettling film.

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A fourth edition of my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling, is now available for $2.99 from Amazon Kindle.

Author's Road Features Lawson Inada

Lawson Inada
Writer # 10

Happy New Year!

We are so pleased to start the new year by sharing with you an inspiring interview with poet Lawson Inada, Oregon’s 5th poet laureate who proceeded Oregon’s current poet laureate, Paulann Peterson.

Our interview with Inada is proof of how a good poet can make lemonade from lemons. Whatever could go wrong the day of his interview did, starting with giving wrong directions and his getting lost, having to change venues, unusual and disruptive road noises and a blazing sun.

The quality of the resulting film from our interview may leave a lot to be desired, but we think you’ll agree, nothing stops or even slows Lawson down as he finds joy and meaning in every nuance and around every corner, and how his voice weaves wonderful stories.

Lawson is a Sensei, born in Fresno, California in 1938, and four years later he and his family were confined to concentration camps until the end of the war. After the war and following his college career he began teaching poetry at Southern Oregon University in 1966. In 2006 he was named Oregon’s poet laureate and won Willamette Writers' Lifetime Achievement Award.

Like the other poets we’ve interviewed, Verlena Orr and Paulann Peterson, Lawson is hypnotic to watch and listen to as he and they speak, often using their hands to orchestrate the music of their words, and always using their minds to paint the vivid colors of a good and universal story. They are our bards, the people entrusted with the art of storytelling since our earliest times on this earth.

George, Salli & Ella



The Authors Road