writing the heart of your story (7 page)

Because theme is such an important part of the heart of your story, I am devoting a whole section of the book to it. Although it is not mentioned on the First-Page Checklist, it is an essential element that should be present throughout your novel, and should be at least hinted at in some way in your first scene.

Watch Your Tone

Since you need to establish the tone of your book right from the start, I want to spend a little bit of time discussing this element. Tone is a subtle thing, and it overlaps sound, style, and voice (which I’ll explain after this part on tone). Whereas voice is really generated and inspired by your characters, tone is something more consistent and covers your whole book. Kind of like icing spread over the top of a multi-flavor cake—the voice of all your characters being the different flavors.

Give a Feel for How You Feel

Tone really has nothing to do with how you construct a sentence, paragraph, or even chapter. Think of tone as your (the author’s) overall opinion or feeling about your story. Maybe this is confusing, but when you think of the story you are writing, what emotional attitudes come into play? Sarcasm, humor, cynicism, anger, jubilation? If you’re telling a story about oppression and cruelty, is it because you feel passionately about this topic and want people to be moved to take a particular stand? Your tone should reflect this.

Of course, this doesn’t mean your tone should be inciting a riot. What it does mean is your writing style will convey this feeling you have. Your sentences and scenes will have an undercurrent of seriousness, poignancy, or perhaps intensity. In contrast, if you are writing a lighthearted adventure story, your tone may express humor, flippancy, even a bit of obnoxiousness. What you want is to give a feel for how you feel.

Tone is subjective. It may seem like it’s the same as voice, but it’s not. When I think of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, I can sense his cynical tone splashed with outrageous humor as an undercurrent beneath his voice. Same with Tom Robbins. So, since tone is subjective (implying there’s an author out there with an opinion), you do want to be careful your tone doesn’t come across haughty, know-it-all, pompous, etc. It’s fine to have a character who is pompous, but you don’t want the tone of your novel to be pompous.

I hope you can see the difference. I see some first novels in which the author has worked really hard to use as many fancy, eccentric, and never-used words as they can in order to impress their readers (sorry, they’re not impressed—just irritated). In those cases, the tone of the book gets in the way of the story being told.

Separate Your Tone from Your Characters’ Voices

Now, if you write a book in the first-person POV of a brilliant statesman and he’s telling the story, even though his voice will sound pompous (perhaps), the tone of the book should not. In his thoughts and speech he may use big words, but you as the writer would construct your sentences without all those flowery words. You would build your sentences influenced by how you feel about this character and the story you are telling. That way the tone of that novel will be your subjective tone—not the character’s. If this character is a dark, evil man who did horrible crimes against humanity, your tone will be serious, intense, maybe even a bit objective to give distance and let the reader feel what she may. I hope the tone of this section reflects my interest in giving you insight and writing skills!

Where’s My Voice?

So, if that is tone, what is an author’s “voice”? This term is discussed in countless books, websites, and anywhere writing is taught. It seems like a nebulous thing. Just what is voice? How can you tell when an author “has it” and when she doesn’t? What should a voice sound like as it relates to the novel you are writing?

I don’t want to go into a lengthy thesis about voice, and there are so many schools of thought on this. So, I’ll just focus on two key points that make the most sense to me.

* Be honest and courageous: The more you try to copy books that are out there and sound like authors you are trying to emulate, the more derivative you are going to sound. There’s something forced and phony that comes across when you try to write like someone else and not yourself. So part of what voice is is a measure of honesty and a courage to be yourself as you write. Okay, that sounds vague too, but over time, the more you write, the more you will find your voice coming out and asserting itself. I think the whole topic of voice is very subjective, and all I can tell you is what I really like in a novel (as far as voice goes) and what works for me as I write (in terms of developing a voice for that particular book).

* Think more about giving your characters voice rather than trying to come up with an author voice: If you are writing in first person, this is really essential and obvious. You are going to be in that one character’s head the entire novel, and so you want to spend time getting to know your character. How does she think, talk, respond to others? Where did she grow up and when? All the factors of a character’s background affect how she thinks and reacts to her world. And this comes out in voice as she internalizes and processes things that happen to her from one scene to the next. In third person, you can do pretty much the same by using a deep POV that feels a whole lot like first-person POV.

Try Writing As If You Were a Dog

If you don’t really get how you can come up with a unique voice that fits your story, try writing some thoughts or create a little scene, but take the point of view of a dog. Garth Stein did this beautifully in a novel that’s one of my all-time favorites: The Art of Racing in the Rain. I love Enzo and feel he is a very human character with a truly human voice even though he’s a dog. Maybe you can rewrite one of your scenes from the mind of a cat, having the cat tell what’s happening and remarking on how he feels about the way those humans are behaving around him (I’ve edited two great novels from cats’ POVs). Okay, if you’re a chicken lover, go with the chicken voice. I actually have a number of friends who are in love with their pet chickens. Go figure. (And these last few sentences should give you a good feel for both my tone and my voice in this passage of the book.)

If you play with voice like this, it might help you realize that each character will have a personality that comes out in and by their voice. And that voice becomes the voice of your novel. If you have multiple POV characters, they should each have a different and unique voice.

Voice is really about letting your characters loose. Let them emote and react and tell you how they feel about what’s going on. If you get out of the way and let them take center stage, I think you’ll find the voice will present itself. That’s been my experience.

Think about
. . . taking a look at the tone of your novel so far and see if you are getting across the subjective mood you intend. Take a look at some other novels and see if you can determine what the tone is. For fun, try writing your first scene in the point of view of some other character or animal. If you are writing in third person, try first person for your protagonist. Or put the scene in a secondary character’s POV and hear how she talks as she sees the scene unfold.

Getting (Honest) Feedback

Hopefully by now you’ve written that first scene and you really like it! If you feel you’ve polished it and it now has every essential element present, you’ll want to give it to some people to read. No, not your mom or spouse or best friend. You need to find some other authors, and preferably ones with some editing chops. Or if you want to be sure you’re getting really helpful feedback, hire a professional copyeditor and writing coach. I edit and judge (for contests) a lot of first scenes, and I’ve yet to read one that doesn’t have me writing extensive comments on just about every page. That doesn’t mean I’m so picky and critical I can’t give praise. What I’m saying is that it’s really hard to see if you’ve covered all those bases and created a riveting first scene that will stand out from the piles of manuscripts competing for an agent’s attention.

I know you’re probably thinking I’m only trying to drum up business for myself here, but I try to get my manuscripts critiqued and read by readers who have these chops and will spare no barbs. I don’t want to put out a weak novel, and I’d rather have my test readers tear the thing apart and catch every mistake and plot hole now so I don’t have to cringe once the book is in print and I find I did some stupid stuff (or have readers point them out, which some are most glad to do).

So, even if you’re happy with your critique team, consider running a few chapters by a professional writing coach with experience in critiquing novels. After that, you can certainly hire a proficient copyeditor to correct your spelling and grammatical mistakes. But don’t just send your novel out on submission or self-publish it without putting it through a bit of fire. Fire serves some good purposes. When you put impure silver through the fire, all the scummy dross rises to the surface. That’s a good thing, because you can then skim it all off and you’re left with something in its purest, finest state.

Critiques May Hurt for a Moment but . . .

If you can get past the ego and insecurity issues tied up in having others critique your work, your manuscript will be better for it. And you’ll be much happier with it once you make the needed changes. It doesn’t mean you have to make every correction an editor suggests, but if you take to heart all that’s said and be teachable, you will grow as a writer and write better each year. There’s nothing more satisfying than holding your published novel in your hand knowing you polished it; had it critiqued and edited; and wrote a beautiful, coherent story.

And this wraps up our look at first scenes.

Think about
. . . going over the First-Page Checklist and see if you’ve left anything out. If you feel your chapter (or novel) is done, consider having a professional take a look at it and give you feedback. Or have the first fifty pages critiqued. Believe me, once you get those pages critiqued, you will have a whole new, clear focus and understanding of the big picture. Talk to friends who’ve hired editors and get recommendations.

If you’re not ready, gear your mind and heart to accept that at some point it might be a good thing to let someone else look at what you’ve written and give you advice. We can all improve, every one of us—best-selling author, writing teacher—everyone.

We have now covered all the basic elements on the First-Page Checklist, but there is more—so much more—that has to be present and aiming at the heart of your story in your opening pages. And the greatest tool needed to mine the heart of your story is your characters.

Part Two: The Heart of Your Characters

Chapter 9: Characters Are Everything

“Action, reaction, motivation, emotion all have to come from the characters.”

~Nora Roberts

Since this book is all about helping writers get to the heart of their stories, there is nothing more important than character, for your protagonist is at the heart of the story. Yep, that’s my opinion, and you are free to disagree. There are plenty of readers and writers out there who believe plot is the all-important consideration. They feel if a plot is terrific and compelling, the characters can be weak, superficial, stereotyped, and uninteresting. They feel the plot will be so engaging—yes, even riveting—the reader won’t care a hoot who populates their story. And maybe there are a bunch of novels selling well (praised by a myriad of faithful readers) that really are structured like this.

Fine, I say. But I’ll add this: I doubt any of those novels have heart or speak to the reader’s heart in such a way to move them emotionally or affect them or their lives in any significant way. And the writer of that type of book may say, “So what?” They aren’t intending to reach the heart. But perhaps you are—that’s why you are reading this book. Because you don’t want to write a forgettable book.

I will be so bold as to say that the only way you are going to write that powerful, memorable, breathtakingly beautiful book is if you have terrific complex, rich, and unique characters. Creating such characters takes work, and these chapters will show you how to get to the heart of your characters.

Yes, a great plot is essential to a great book, and I can’t stand plot holes and loose ends in the novels I read and edit. Plot is important—you’ll get no argument from me on that issue. But a plot without great characters is like . . . well, a book with blank pages. You get to the end and feel nothing. And when I read a novel, I really want to feel something—a lot of things. I want to be moved emotionally, and the way that happens is by being pulled into the characters in the story and made to care what happens to them. Author Jeffrey Deaver sums it up this way: “My books are primarily plot-driven, but the best plot in the world is useless if you don’t populate them with characters that readers can care about.”

So, with that said, let’s dive into the heart of your characters—see what makes them tick . . . and laugh and cry and yell.

Ordinary People Are Just Plain Boring