Holly Bodger

The first chapter of a novel is supposed to establish the following:

1) Character: who is the story about?

2) Setting: where does it take place?

3) Goal: what does the main character want?

4) Conflict: who or what is going to stop them from getting #3?

5) Stakes: what will they lose if they don’t get #3?

I used to think the order in which these appeared was irrelevant, so when I wrote the first chapter of my latest novel, I started with character, then established the conflict and setting, and then ended with the goal and the stakes. Presto bingo, I thought I was done. But then the feedback starting coming in. One reviewer said she completely missed the stakes. I left them where they were but added more emphasis. Done again. But then some other reviewers told me that my main character wasn’t likeable and I was honestly shocked.  To me, the stakes justified her attitude and thus I couldn’t understand why anyone would think this.

That’s when a brilliant freelance editor pointed out my problem: my stakes were too late. According to her, I should have established character first, setting second, goal and stakes next, and conflict last. Why? I will try to explain by example.

Sarah works at an investment firm in Boston. She walks to work every day. She wakes up one morning and sees that it is pouring rain. She realizes that she forgot her umbrella at work. She has an important meeting that day and can’t show up looking wet.

What is wrong with the scenario? The stakes (important meeting) come too late. In order for the “she forgot her umbrella at work” to make you say “oh crap,” you need to know about the meeting first. Otherwise, the “oh crap” is coming as a flashback after the goal/stakes and thus has less effect. This is less obvious when the two are literally next to each other, but imagine that you have several pages in between. You read pages and pages about the rain and Sarah’s job and you’re just thinking, “Just get a damn umbrella woman!” You may not even finish the chapter because you think Sarah is a twit and the new episode of Glee is on. If you do finish it, by the time you get to the forgotten umbrella, you are probably thinking, “Well, you should have told me that FIRST!” In the reverse, if you knew about the missing umbrella before the rain or the important meeting, you might actually care how Sarah is going to make it to work without getting wet. And that would be your hook.

I love the Thesaurus but it is a dangerous weapon. For example, if you look up alternatives for the verb look, you will get gaze, stare, glance, glare, glimpse, peep, peek, and ogle. While all of these words are reasonable alternatives for look, they don’t mean the same thing. Some refer to a quick look while others refer to a long or continuous look. Some are just an action while others imply a meaning or attitude with the action.

I never really thought about this until I found too many occurrences of the word glance in my novel. As I was searching for alternatives, I noticed that I had occasionally used glanced where I should have used looked, gazed or stared. So I decided to look up the definitions for all of these alternatives in that wonderful thing they call Google and this is what I found:

look – directing your eyes toward something and perceiving it visually
glance – a quick look
glimpse – a brief or incomplete view
peep – look with quiet, caution and secrecy
peek – a secret look
ogle – look at with amorous intentions
gaze – a long fixed look
stare – fixate one’s eyes
glare – an angry stare

As you can see, glance and glimpse are probably interchangeable, as are peek and peep, or gaze and stare, but despite what Microsoft may tell you, you cannot replace look with just any one of these words.

What’s next? Now I need to search for each of these words and make sure I am using the correct choice.

I love Donald Maass. I don’t mean that in a romantic way. I’ve never even met the man. Then again, I also haven’t met Chace Crawford…

Okay, I’m done thinking about Chace. The way I write changed dramatically after I read Donald Maass’s books, The Fire in Fiction and Writing the Breakout Novel. One of the things I loved most about the latter were the specific exercises. I thought it would be fun (as in compared to gauging out eyeballs with bendy straw, not as in compared to looking at Chace Crawford…)

Where was I? Oh yeah. I thought it would be fun to try some of Maass’s exercises on my blog. The first is the “Who are your heroes” question. The idea is that you name one, write out the qualities that make him/her a hero, and then assign some of these qualities to your protagonist. So here we go:

1) Name of hero: Mother of friend I’ll call Mrs. G

2) Qualities that make me look up to her: she will do anything for the people she loves. If someone is in the hospital, she is at their bedside all day and spends the night cooking their family meals. If someone needs a place to stay, she practically sleeps on her own sofa so they will be comfortable. I once threw a party for her daughter and, not only did she take care of the guest list, invitations, chairs, tables, liquor and food, she also brought over her own potted flowers so my walkway would be pretty.

3) Qualities of hers I gave to my protagonist:  When I created Blythe (the protagonist for my current book and its sequel) I wanted her to be the kind of girl who would do anything for her friends, to the point of hurting herself.

How about you? What heroic qualities have you given your protagonist and why?

I’m an “edit as you go” kind of writer. And an “edit later” writer. And a “send out manuscript but keep editing anyway” kind of writer. I can’t stop. It’s like the way some people are when they open a bag of chips. They start with a few, but before they know it, they realize they’ve eaten half the bag and figure they might as well finish it. Except in my case, the bag keeps refilling. Just when I think I’ve perfected every single thing I can, I see a post like this one and realize I have more to do.

One of the most recent “ah-has” in my editing was identifying my overused words. Initally, these words were “just” and “that”. Then a crit partner pointed out that (oops) I used “was” too much so I went through and eliminated 1/3 of those uses as well.

Tip: If you want to know how often you use a word, run a Find & Replace in Word where both the find and replace are the same word. This will give you a count of the number of times you’ve used it.

Back to me, because seriously, isn’t blogging all about me???

After the “was” debacle, I thought I was done. Then I read an article about overusing “smirked” and this made me search for similar words such as smiled, frowned, glared, nodded… Well, holy crap! It was like the characters in my novel just stood around making facial gestures all day. I fixed this by first eliminating the ones that weren’t necessary. Then I made a list of my characters and gave them more interesting quirks. For example, one of my characters didn’t smile–she “flashed her dentures”. Another didn’t frown, she “crinkled her nose”.

After the frowning-smiling-sighing incident, I figured I was REALLY done. That’s when I discovered another reviewer who told me I had too many adverbs (a no-no in writing). I was surprised until I searched for “ly” words and discovered I had 100’s! It was as if every single verb was done slowly, carefully or gently. I think I even found one that said, “She quietly tiptoed up the stairs.” I mean, can you tiptoe ANY other way? No, I think not.

So now, I REALLY REALLY am done. Well, as long as I never look at the Internet again. So how about you? Can you walk away from your manuscript and call it done or do you edit it into the ground?

Let me start by saying that this is not an anti-agent rant. It’s also not an agent suck-up rant, but that’s only because I know those don’t work. If they did, I’d write an entire blog called, “100 Reasons to Love Kristen Nelson.” But then she’d probably get a restraining order against me and, well, my lawyer is sick of dealing with those. Ha ha. I digress.

When I woke up this morning, I found a “Thanks, but this isn’t what I’m looking for right now” rejection in my Inbox. I scrunched up my forehead (see how I did the showing not telling right there?). I didn’t recognize the agent’s name as one I had queried for my latest novel. So, I scrolled down and read the original query. It was from the last book I wrote. The one I queried in August of 2008 (no, that’s not a typo….I mean 2008!)

This made me think: shouldn’t there be a Best Before Date on queries? I realize that agents are really busy and I’m thinking that we can all agree that, if they don’t respond in say 12 weeks, they should just delete the query. That way, we would know not to keep waiting. We would know that it’s time to walk away from our email. We would know that it’s time to get dressed. And maybe shower.

So, what do you think? Would you like an expiration date on your queries or would you rather wait, even if it takes 18 months?

So I was reading this book the other night and I noticed that the writer did something that normally makes my skin crawl. No, she did not insert a picture of me with my 1992 perm. What she did was start her chapter by naming the characters in full. For example:

John Coal picked up the banana and slammed it on the desk. He hated bananas. But not as much as he hated Robert K Jones.

While there is nothing wrong with this opening, it still grates on me. I like to figure out the character details as I go along. Give me a weird quirk first like the kind of shoes he is wearing or what he likes to eat. Yes, I want to know his name eventually, but I want the writer to show it to me. For example:

The banana sprayed across the desk the moment John slammed it down. He didn’t care. He hated bananas. But not as much as he hated that jerk Robert who sat in the next cubicle. Was it really that hard to remember a last name like Coal? You’d think not, but Robert was always calling John “Cale” or something else, equally ridiculous.

In the second example, we still discover John’s surname, but we have to put it together ourselves. I like put-it-together. Well, unless it’s from IKEA.

So, what do you think? Do you like to get the full names up front or do you like the put-it-together method instead?