Photo by Cara Lopez Lee When novelists speak about their craft, I feel like a voyeur - because what is more intimate than storytelling? Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro recently told me that he drafts novels long-hand, partly because writing at a keyboard feels "like a performance." Actually, he said this to about a hundred people, but he was looking right at me! I had the privilege of listening to Ishiguro answer questions from fellow authors during his recent weekend with Denver's Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Ishiguro is the author of six novels, including The Buried Giant, Never Let Me Go,  and The Remains of the Day, which earned him the Mann Booker Prize. His comment that typing feels like a performance influenced me this past week as I faced a daunting rewrite. I chose to forego the intimidating task of typing-and-deleting, typing-and-judging, typing-and-regretting perfect little letters into my manuscript. Instead, I used a pen to slop whatever came into my head i...

February is the month of “Love” and we’ve been discussing this theme in our writing all month. Love is an emotion. I have found that emotion is the KEY to rounded character development. If you write Sean loved Mary with all his heart , do you “feel” that love? Do you identify with him? Empathize? No? How can you “show” emotion without “telling” your reader what to feel? Here’s an exercise to put yourself “in the mood,” so to speak: • Close your eyes and think of the word Love and remember a time when you felt that emotion. • How is your body reacting? What are some of your physical reactions? • What are you thinking? • What do you see? Any specific colors? What color is love? • Is there a certain smell that goes with the feeling? (lilacs, Old-Spice aftershave, Neco Wafers?) • A taste? What does love taste like? (cinnamon, licorice, scotch?) • A sound. What does love sound like? Write for ten minutes based on your feelings without using the word “love”. Here’s an exce...

Sometimes novels come up short. It may happen to you. Before beefing up the story with new characters and subplots, however, make sure you’ve tended to its depth. You might want to follow this simple plan: Seek out the “hot” story moments worthy of further mining (they will look suspiciously like emotional turning points). Apply added word count there.  We readers want to linger in emotionally rich moments. Such turning points are the purpose of the fiction—we've suffered along while extreme pressure is brought to bear on the protagonist, and reveling in her moments of indelible change, both small and large, is our reward. To make that change believable the reader needs access to the inner torment of the point-of-view character. Real change never results from hasty decisions—the protagonist needs to be wrestling with some big issue that will ultimately reveal her true character. In the gothic novel The Thirteenth Tale , here’s how author Diane Setterfield pulls off a lon...

Photo by Will Scullin Did you ever consider the correlation between building a house and writing a book? This year, we’ll explore those similarities, one each month, taking the book-writing process from blueprint through construction to sale. Beginning writers, I invite your questions and comments. Contractors (published writers) and subs (editors, proofreaders, book and cover designers, marketers, etc.), I invite you to share your expertise. We’ll explore the writing process from the first budding idea to the marketing of a published book, perhaps even diagramming a few sentences. Does anybody remember doing that in high school English? Our topics will include • Drawing the blueprint – creating outlines and character sketches, • Excavating – researching (essential for fiction, too) • Pouring the foundation – solidifying theme, • Laying the subfloor – determining timelines, • Framing walls – structuring story, • Constructing trusses – writing effective sentence...

To deepen your characters, enrich your story, and engage your readers more deeply, be sure to show your characters’ internal and external reactions to everything that’s happening to them and around them. Start with their visceral reaction. That’s the involuntary physical reaction we have no control over, that just happens despite all our best efforts to suppress it or hide it. These reactions occur immediately, before any thought processes or deliberate actions, so it’s important to show your character’s visceral reaction first, to mirror reality and put your readers inside the character’s skin, feeling the fear or embarrassment or shock or anger right along with them. Next, show an immediate thought-reaction, like Ow, or Oh no, or Damn, or Omigod, or That can’t be. Note that these sudden, short thought-reactions are usually italicized, both for emphasis and immediacy, and to indicate a direct thought. See my related blog post here on BRP, “Expressing Thought-Reactions in Fiction...