Oddball Observations about Writing

Thought I'd share some odds and ends about writing that I've learned over time.

One of the pitfalls of switching back and forth between stories: mixing up character names between stories. I suppose that might hold true for reading as well.

Whenever I hear the term "creative non-fiction," I'm immediately skeptical that there's any truth to be had.

I'm not a big fan of audiobooks--unless I'm on a road trip. Nothing better to make long trips through boring scenery pass painlessly. The one thing I won't listen to is romance (unless I already know the book doesn't have detailed sexy bits). There's just something icky about someone reading those out loud to me while I'm driving. No. Just no. Favorite authors for audiobooks? Harlan Coben and Jennifer Crusie.

You don't always have to kill your darlings. Sometimes you simply need to spread them thinner. I like running gags in my stories, but they can be overwhelming if I play them one right after the other. Instead, I took a lesson from stand-up comedians. Hit the first mention of the running gag hard enough to make it memorable, then move on. Then later, when the audience/reader has forgotten about it, hit them with it again (briefly) as the punchline to another situation.

Fleshed-out villains are important. What J. Nelson Leith said about the archetypical hero/damsel/villain paradigm brings that home: the primary relationship in this triangle, the one that makes it work and allows it to exist at all, is the relationship between the Damsel and the Villain. Without a Villain, in fact, there’s no need for a Hero because the Damsel isn’t a Damsel-in-Distress.

Strong verbs make for vibrant writing, but they can be overdone. If a character is always leaping, springing, and spinning, etc., they can start to look like a whirling dervish and the writing begins to feel melodramatic.

What tidbits have you learned over time?

Next Up? More McKnight Fun

So Liar, Liar, Heart's Desire is off to the editor, which means I'm done with it until it comes back. It also means I'm thinking about the next project.

So what's the next project? Frankly, I'm not sure. I'm trying something a little different this time, seeing if I can find a way to be more productive. You see, a lot of my writing is done somewhere besides the keyboard. At least, that's how it works when things are going well. I think things through or come up with a snippet of dialog and a goal for the conversation, and then I start writing it. If I have to do that at the keyboard, it starts to feel like pulling teeth. Working away from the keyboard seems to allow things to bubble up from my subconscious better, and I've learned my subconscious is where my muse resides. It can be a slow process sometimes. So that's why I'm working on two projects. I'm hoping that while I'm working on one story, ideas for the other will be percolating down below and that will keep my momentum going. Sooner or later (probably later), I expect one of the stories will take off and become The One. Until them, I'm in the Fun-and-Games portion of writing where I'm less concerned about how to resolve the story than I am with just playing with scenes. This is the part of writing I love.

So which stories are on my plate?

Both of them are McKnight stories. White Knight is Ezra's story. He's the McKnight sibling who lives in New York City and works at his Aunt Esther's modeling agency. Hard to imagine one of the McKnight boys living in NYC, isn't it? There's a really fun scene where he gets sucker into a charity bachelor auction. Yup. Catnip for the ladies.

I don't usually share first drafts with anyone, but I wrote this yesterday (which means it's very rough-draft.) It's a scene from after the bachelor auction. Ezra is at a friend's house for their monthly poker party.

   “You’re late,” Keith said when he opened the door. “We been waiting on you.”

   “I got hung up running an errand for Esther,” Ezra said.

   “Come on back. We’re in the kitchen.”

   He couldn’t be too late then if they were still beering-up. Julian “Jules” Cohen, Leon Sutton, and Reginald “Heck” Heckly—all regulars—were all strategically clustered around the island in the center of the kitchen where small bowls of mixed nuts, chips, and olives sat next to a silver platter that held alternating rows of sliced salami and cheese and Ritz crackers. Half the tray was already empty and Heck’s shirt was dusted with cracker crumbs.

   “Wanna beer?” Keith asked, his head in the fridge.

   Silly question. “Sure,” Ezra said. “What’s the flavor of the month?”

   “Harp.” Keith handed him a longneck.

   “Great,” Ezra said. Keith was a premium beer connoisseur. The last time he’d hosted the poker party, they’d all been drinking Löwenbräu. Ezra liked the Irish beers better. Not that he’d admit any of them were better than a Lone Star. But they didn’t share his bias; Lone Star didn’t taste like home for any of them.

   “Where’s ZZ? Out with the girls?”

   “No, she’s at the hospital. She said—and I quote—‘Working the ER on a full-moon Friday night is better than listening to you and your yahoo friends belching and telling dirty stories.’”

   “Wow. I didn’t realize she knew us so well,” Leon said with a grin.

   “I don’t belch,” Jules said. “It’s unladylike.” He followed the statement with a loud burp that cracked Leon up. Jules pressed his fingertips to his lips and said, “Excuse me,” in an exaggerated fussy tone. Leon laughed even harder.

  Ezra sometimes wondered about the two of them. Like so many men who worked in fashion, Jules was apologetically gay. He flaunted an effeminate manner that he made Jack from the TV show Will and Grace look butch.

   Leon was Jules antithesis. A big, black man with massive shoulders and biceps, he looked like the poster boy for construction work. He had, in fact, walked steel girders for ten years before deciding to specialize in demolition because he liked making things “go boom!”

The first time they’d met, Jules had dropped his keys and asked Leon to “be a dear and pick them up for me.” Leon had scowled before bending over slowly to retrieve the keys, but before straightening, he’d wiggled his butt which had sent everyone there into hysterics. It had been the beginning of a close but sometimes bizarre friendship.

   One that didn’t amuse Jules boyfriend Peter.

   “Everyone ready now?” Heck asked.

   “Hold up there a minute, Pigpen.” Keith grabbed a handheld vacuum from the broom closet. “ZZ will kill me if you leave a trail crumbs through the house.” The vacuum came to life and Keith ran it down the front of Heck’s shirt. When he was done, he slapped Heck’s cheek lightly. “Now you’re good to go.”

   “Aw,” Leon said with mock admiration. “You’re going to make a wonderful mother someday.”

   “You wanna change my diaper, too?” Heck asked.

   “I told you to go before you came over,” Keith said.

   “Oh, man. He really does sound like someone’s mama,” Leon said.

   “Y’all are gonna need a mama,” Ezra said, giving his Texas twang free rein. “Coz I’m gonna take all your money and send you home cryin’ like a redheaded stepchild.”

   “Whoa,” Keith said. “That’s big talk for someone who lost his ass last time.”

   “I didn’t lose my ass. I gave y’all early Christmas presents.”

   “And you’re gonna give us another one tonight,” Leon said.

   “When y'all are done trash talking, maybe we could move to the poker table,” Jules said. “Because Daddy needs to buy his sweetie something pretty for his birthday, and I’m counting on you guys so I can make it something nice.”

And then there's Knight Vision. That's what I've been working on today. You may remember my hero Gideon from A Dark & Stormy Knight. He's the brother with a touch of the second sight. He's also a farrier, so he spends a good part of his weeks traveling around. He's a bit more reticent than his brothers, but in his own way, he has a wicked sense of humor.

It's really more of a snippet. Keep in mind, it's severely stripped down, which means it's nearly all dialog. Gideon is shoeing a horse at the horse rescue where his sister Daisy volunteers when she stops by to chat with him about a woman (Skyler) who owns a horse barn.

  Daisy plopped down onto a bale of hay. “Skyler seems nice,” she said a little too casually.
  “Yup,” Gideon said as he aligned the iron shoe on the horse’s hoof.
  “Her sister too.”
  “Yup.”
  Daisy pulled a straw from the bale of hay and started chewing on one end. “You courtin’ her?”
  “Now what makes you think that?”
  “Well, you don’t offer to paint all your customers’ houses. Seemed like you’re kinda goin’ that extra mile for her.”
  “She needed help.”
  Daisy grunted softly. That was one of the things Gideon liked most about her. She could be girly sometimes, but mostly, she was as down to earth as any of his brothers.
  “Well, I think you’d make a handsome couple. And she likes horses, so she’d fit in good with the family.”
  “Yup, she would.”
  She breathed out loudly through her nose. An exasperated sound. Gideon kept his head bent to hide his smile. Daisy was the most direct of his siblings. She didn’t have the patience to beat around the bush for long. Any second now, she’d change tactics. Three . . . Two . . . One . . .
  “Gideon, are you listening to me?”
  He wiped the smile off his face before he looked up. “Sure am. Skyler’s nice. So’s her sister. She likes horses.”
  “Then why aren’t you courting her?”
  “Since when are you so concerned about my love life?”
  “I’m not.”
  “Coulda fooled me.”
  “It’s only . . . It seems to me someone needs to take an interest because you sure don’t seem to be.”
  “Don’t seem to be what?”
  She made a noise that seemed to come from deep in her chest. It sounded like she was hacking up a lugee. “Taking an interest in your love life.”
  “Trust me. I take an interest.”
  “Not so’s anyone would notice. I’ll bet Skyler doesn’t even know you like her.”
  “Did I say I liked her in a love life sort of way?”
  “Ha! You can deny it all you want, but you ain’t foolin’ nobody.”
  “Didn’t you just say I was being so obscure no one could tell?”

So that's what the first draft of my scenes looks like. Not that it will make one iota's worth of difference (because it's really up to my muse), but which one appeals most to you?

And what do your first drafts look like?

Larry Brooks on Writing

Larry Brooks is an author and writing coach. If you haven't read his fiction, take it from me, he knows what he's talking about. Though I don't agree with everything he says (he's a huge proponent of pre-plotting the story), most of what he says is worthwhile.

The book he's talking about here is his novel writing book Story Engineering.

The Pope in the Pool

I've raved about Blake Snyder's Save the Cat before, mostly because it's the best book about story structure out there. But that's not all it has to offer. One of the screenwriter's tricks he discusses is the Pope in the Pool.

This tactic was developed to deal with the problem of exposition. In case you're unclear about what exposition is exactly, Snyder defines it succinctly as: backstory or details of the plot that must be told to the audience in order for them to understand what happens next. 

The obvious problem is that when there's a lot of information to give to the reader, the scene risks being dull. The Pope in the Pool, so name by Mike Chedar, is based on a screenplay by George Englund where to counter the boredom that comes with lengthy exposition, they set the scene at the Vatican swimming pool and put the Pope in swim trunks, thereby giving the audience something interesting to focus on. Dull scene rescued.

I recently wrote a scene where my two MCs are interviewing a third character. There's lots of information I needed to have come out in the scene, but when I finished the first draft, the scene was flat and, frankly, dull.

To fix the problem, I used my own version of the Pope in the Pool.

On a whim, I'd given the third person a lap dog, so I went back and allowed the dog to become "affectionate" with the hero's leg. The heroine discreetly rescues the hero by picking up the dog. It was a start, but it wasn't enough. The scene still felt flat. So I decided the heroine is allergic to dogs.

Now there are several things going on in the scene and it's far more interesting. There's conflict and something that each character wants [u]right now[/u]. Even though it has nothing to do with the main plot of the story, the immediate wants give the scene life it didn't have before. Plus, I've just opened up some intriguing possibilities now that I know the heroine has a dog allergy. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with the information, but the possibilities are fun to play with.

How do you rescue boring exposition?

Need Help Determining the Viewpoint Character?

Most of the time when point of view (POV) comes up, a discussion of first person vs. third person follows. Every writer (and some readers) seem to have an opinion about which they prefer, but for the most part, I think it's a topic that once you've explored it, doesn't need to be dissected over and over.

What interests me more is the best way to decide which character’s viewpoint is best for any particular scene. That isn’t discussed all that much and it's a decision that does need to be made with every scene you write. Generally, when it is discussed in writing books, the "wisdom" is that you should write from the viewpoint of the character who has the most at stake. Maybe I’m a rogue, but I’m not convinced that’s always true, so I decided that it's a good topic to explore.

Most books have one main character, which makes it easy to decide whose viewpoint to use: the main character (aka the protagonist) because everything in the story is in some way relevant to their problems. (If it isn’t, it doesn’t belong in the story.) He (or she) is the one you want the reader to relate most closely with so, barring scenes where the protagonist isn’t present,  it makes sense that you would use that character’s viewpoint in most scenes.

What do you do, however, when you write romance, where you have, in effect, two characters who have near equal importance? Do you always choose the one who has the most at stake? I’m not always even sure which of them has the most to lose in every scene. I've been known to change viewpoint characters simply because I've "run out of gas" with one character's viewpoint. I'm not sure that's the best reason to switch to a new character, but sometimes it's all I've got.

So how do writers make the decision? Well, I could toss a coin, but that seems rather haphazard. Or I could write it both ways and see which one works best, but I'm essentially too lazy to do that every time. I do have a few things I look at though that help me decide, so I thought I'd share them.

• Hidden motivation

If you have a character who has a hidden motive that you don't want revealed, it makes sense not to have them be the viewpoint character. "Tells," a term that poker players use to describe those little nervous tics that reveal when an opponent is bluffing, come in handy when writing a scene with a hidden motivation, and writing from another viewpoint is the best way to describe those tells to the reader, to give them clues that things may not be what they seem on the surface. These clues can be great ways to increase the tension because readers are intuitive about body language. They know that if you've written these clues into the story they mean something, but they're also familiar with those tricky writers who throw in red herrings. If you want to be sure the reader doesn't miss it, you can have the viewpoint character wonder about what they're observing, or you can choose to have the viewpoint character make note of the activity but not place any importance on it, which gives the reader one more thing to worry about.

• Who comes out of the scene most changed?

Sometimes you have to choose the character who is going to come out of the scene changed simply because you need the reader to understand the mental journey they took to get from point A to point B. Entire plots can hinge on the reader understanding a character's motivation and that motivation needs to be clear. For instance, if the character needs to be angery about something, you cant afford for them to look like they've blown some small incident out of proportion because you don't want the reader to lose sympathy for them, but if the character is responding to something that pushes one of their personal buttons, particularly if they've experienced some past trauma that makes them sensitive to certain behaviors or attitudes, what would seem to be an unreasonable response becomes not only understandable but adds sympathy for the character. To achieve that can require the reader being privy to their thought processes.

• Who isn’t saying what they think?

This is the flip side to hidden motivations above. If you have a character who isn't saying what they think, but the reader needs to understand what's going on under the surface, you need to choose to deliver the scene from that character's viewpoint. This is especially true if what the character is doing or saying might be misconstrued. For instance, if they're being "mean" but that's not their motivation. You actually see this a lot in romance: the hero has emotional scars, so he's mean to the heroine because he wants her to keep her distance. He's protecting his heart. As the writer, you have to let the reader see that and it's easiest to do this from his viewpoint.

So basically, I make decisions based on who isn't "what you see is what you get." Since I lean heavily toward characters and situations that are multi-layered with emotional subtleties (because they're so much fun to write) that plays a big part in my decision making.

Of course, as much as I wish they did, not every scene includes the hidden undertones mentioned above. Here are some other considerations worth pondering.

• Surprising reveal

If you have a scene with a reveal in it, consider picking the character whose reaction will mirror the readers'. For instance, iff the reader will be surprised by the reveal, aligning them with the character who is also surprised works well. But if the reader already knows the secret, you're likely better off choosing the character who already knew the secret, especially if they're going to have strong emotions (embarrassment, shame, etc) about the other character's reaction.

• Insider knowledge

Sometimes it's worthwhile to let the reader feel like they know something the viewpoint character doesn't know, particularly if they know the character will have an emotional response to that knowledge. Suddenly, the reader is an "insider" and they become invested in the secret and the eventual reveal. They'll want stick around to see how things play out when the knowledge comes to light.

So there are some of the things I consider when I have a scene between viewpoint characters. How do you decide whose viewpoint to use?

Thursday Writing Quotes

“I felt so guilty about how badly I treat my characters, that I wrote myself into a story and let one of my character’s kill me.” – Mickey Spillane

The Effect of Story Telling Ot How to Make a Swashbuckler Boring

At my day job, we have United Way events, one of which is our annual used book sale. With 600 people in our building, we generally have a pretty good selection of books, so last year, I pick up Zorro: A Novel by Isabel Allende. She’s a well-known, widely-respected, main-stream writer. Probably considered a literary writer. I’m not a big fan of literary books, but the idea of a story that starts with Zorro’s parents and presenting his growth into the legendary hero appealed to me.

I’m on page 95 and have been for more than six months. The book has been sitting beside the stairwell, waiting for me to pick it up again. I intend to. Really. Some day.

So why am I not engaged? It’s certainly not the concept of the book. That’s plenty intriguing. Nor is it the story events. It’s the way it’s told.

Actually, I should use capital letters there.

It’s the way the story is TOLD.

An example (chosen at random):

During those five stormy days the governor’s wife had refused to see anyone, including her three-year-old son. The teary-eyed child was sniveling, curled up on the floor outside her door, so frightened that he wet himself every time his father beat on the door with his cane. The only person allowed to cross the threshold was the Indian girl who carried in food and carried out the chamber pot. However, when Eulalia learned that Alejandro de la Vega had come to visit and wanted to see her, her hysteria disappeared in a minute. She washed her face, put up her long braid, and dressed in a mauve-colored gown, with all her pearls. Pedro Fages watched her enter, as splendid and smiling as on her best days, and he entertained a hope for a steamy reconciliation….

As one would expect from a writer of Allende's stature, that’s not badly written. There are good details here, and if the entire book wasn’t written like this, it would be okay. After all, you can’t show every detail. The problem is that this paragraph goes on for nearly a full page (and we’re talking trade paperback pages.) Flipping through the book (384 pages), it’s not hard to find plenty of examples where a single paragraph fills the entire page. Dialog is scarce, often no more than half a dozen lines, and pages of dense paragraphs separate these brief exchanges.

The Telling holds me at arm’s length and keeps me from feeling engaged with the characters.  I don’t actually care that Zorro’s mother seems to regret marrying his father. I don’t feel for his father who doesn’t understand why his marriage isn’t what he’d hoped it would be. And the child who will become Zorro. Meh.

White space? Compelling pacing? Close POV? It’s as if the author has never heard any of these concepts. She’s managed to take a swash-buckling, larger-than-life, classic, heroic figure and make him . . . well, boring. I couldn’t have imagined that in a million years.

Maybe this is one of the reasons I don’t like literary works. Writing in a more popular genre, one hears “Show, don’t tell” all the time.  While not every little thing needs to be shown, Zorro is an excellent example why one should strive for the showing to outweigh the telling by a significant margin.


The book isn't a total waste of time since it's a forceful reminder that I need to apply those methods that make the reader engage with the characters. Now if I can just convince myself to finish the book before it starts decomposing . . .


What books have you been disappointed in?

Has Your Story's Emotional Momentum Stalled?

So I've been reading Karen Marie Moning's fever series. Great series, BTW. I recommend it highly. It's also teaching me things about how NOT to drag out tension.


The first four books are fabulous. I devoured them like I'd win the lottery if I finished and the size of the pot was based on how fast I could read them. Then I got into book 5 (Shadowfever). Almost 600 pages. For the most part, still good. Big climax looming on the horizon. And yet... I'm getting impatient with it.


Here's the thing. Mac, our heroine, is having an identity crisis. Turns out she's not who she always thought she was. She may in fact be the worst thing that could possibly happen to the world. So says the prophecy. She may actually be the source of the world's current ills. Or not. But the evidence is mounting. And mounting. And mounting. And mounting.


Yeah, okay. I get it. Let's get on with the damned story.


But wait... Shouldn't I be sitting on the edge of my seat? Isn't this what all the writing wisdom says, to keep ratcheting up the threat? Yeah, it does. Except this is the same threat over and over. Mac's been fretting about this for awhile. More evidence comes in. Mac frets. Another layer of evidence is added. Mac frets. The evidence gets still stronger. Mac frets. One possible out gets closed, making the worst all the more likely. Mac frets some more. All the angsty fretting starts to feel very been there, done that.


I'm bored with it already.


A terrible thing to say about a series that is, in so many ways, utterly fabulous.


So what's going wrong for me? It's not like things aren't happening. They are. Big things. Things that move the story forward. Is it that there's too much fretting in between those events? 


Well, yes. And no.


The first four books contain a lot that's unexplained, but that's okay. All good books are part mystery.  The Fever series has mysteries galore. Who killed Mac's sister? Why can Mac see through Fairy glamor? Why are parts of Dublin disappearing off the maps and from people's memories? Who is Jericho Barrons? What is Jericho Barrons? (Besides hotter than hell.) We read to discover the answers to those mysteries.


Through the first four books, progress was made toward figuring out those answers. Each small clue was intriguing enough to keep me savoring them. If Mac fretted in those books, I didn't notice. So why now? Is it because Mac has stopped looking for the answers? She has a possible answer to one of the important questions: Who is she? It's not an answer she likes, so instead of trying to find answers, she's now in denial, looking for reasons why the answer isn't true. I think that's okay. It's a valid character response, but it also feels like a roadblock. Wallowing in denial kills the story's emotional momentum.


I find I don't care as much about the story events if the emotional momentum is stalled. I think everything else could be resolved, but I still wouldn't care until the emotional pacing starts moving forward again.


So yes, emotional momentum is one more thing to worry about. Like good story telling isn't a big enough balancing act. But at least knowing it's an issue give us a shot at getting it right.



And yes, book five eventually recovers it's momentum, so I still recommend the series. 

Economics 101 for Writers

I’ve blogged before about things that turn me off in novels, but I ran across a new one last week while reading the latest book from a very popular romance author. In this book, the heroine finds herself without funds and tries to skip out on her hotel bill. She’s forced to choose between working off her debt as a hotel maid or going to jail. Not a tough choice, really. And the hotel seems to have trouble staffing their housekeeping department. 

Except, the author makes a point of mentioning that lots of people in this town are unemployed. 

Do you see the disconnect here? The failed logic?

Now I’m a self-admitted economics junkie. I’m thrilled to find clips of Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell and Dambisa Moyo on youtube. I think it’s tragic that most people are economically illiterate because nothing—absolutely NOTHING—effects every aspect of your life like economics does. For me, it’s a no brainer that, in a town with high unemployment, there would be people lined up for any job they could get.  Instead, the hotel owner hires illegals and deadbeats (to whom she pays more than minimum wage) rather than employing her neighbors who need a pay check.
And no one in town resents this.

It’s completely illogical.

Is it enough to ruin the novel? It wouldn’t be if I liked the characters more. Or if I’d liked the author’s last book (I didn’t.) But even if I liked the characters, this would nag at me. My trust in the author is shaken.

Authors are amateur psychologists. They have to understand what motivates people. They have to take that knowledge and craft viable backgrounds and thought processes for their characters that feel real. Since economics is really about the decisions people make in given circumstances, an understanding of economics should be a logical outgrowth for an author. If you understand the basics (and youtube can give you a first-rate crash course), you won't embarrass yourself when you write your character's environment. As an added bonus, you'll be taken in less often by your government's B.S.


Any other economics junkies out there? 

10 Pet Peeves I see in stories

Like many of you, I've been an avid reader all my life. I've actually thought that one of the worst things about dying someday would be all the wonderful books I would be leaving behind unread. At one time, a good story with good characters was all it took, but once I learned how to write effectively, I became much pickier about what I read. This isn't always a good thing. I love the first six books of the Drangonlance series--I even own the annotated versions--but I can't read them now. It's too distracting because I so badly want to edit the writing. 


Of course, different things annoy different readers, so I thought it might be educational to learn what annoys you, so to that end, I've made a list to share of the things that annoy me. Here's my top ten. What can you add?


1. When character change/growth occurs without any trigger for the change. I'm not just talking about the Main Character (MC). I've seen the MC's problems get resolved because secondary characters suddenly "see the light" and change their ways. Without something motivating the change, it just pisses me off. (Not only should you be able to point at the change and answer the question of "why" the change occurred, but the question "why now?")


2. Mary Sues. I hate when a character is "the most" or "the best" anything. If you're heroine isn't Sophia Loren or Catherine Zita Jones or Angelina Jolie (or whoever does it for you), she is simply NOT the most beautiful woman walking. Nor is your hero the most handsome, most Alpha, sexiest, most drool-worthy, most anything who ever lived. I have zero interest in MCs who can do no wrong and never fail at anything. I want MCs who are flesh and blood. Yes, the heroine's lover should see her as sexy as all get out--where he's concerned, she may even have a Glittery Hooha--but if every man in a hundred miles is lusting after her, I'm going to find her boring and unrealistic. And unless she's put in the time and effort and sacrifice to become "the best" at something, I'm not going to buy "the best" tag either. (How to tell if your character is a Mary Sue)


3. When a story and its characters are torn right from the tabloids (with the exception of non-fiction True Crime obviously). So yes, I'm tired of reading about Jennifer, Brad, and Angelina already. I don't need fiction from an author I regularly read rehashing that triangle--but I got it anyway.


4. When the author has a character ignore something because it's inconvenient for them to notice it. I can buy that MAYBE in the heat of the moment, but once the character has time to reflect, they should be able to piece things together. I can name some fairly popular authors who've done this (but I won't), and they've done it in books I've otherwise liked a lot, which sets up a serious internal conflict about whether I should continue to read that author.


5. When the viewpoint character knows something or has a flash of insight and it's not shared with the reader. I'll forgive it if it they don't keep me in suspense for more than a few pages, but any longer and I get ticked off. It's an artificial way to inflate the tension. In short, it's a cheat.


6. Author intrusion.The flip side to #5 is when an author intrudes and tells me something is going to be important. They might as well have a big neon sign pointing at the line that says "This will come back and bite the MC in the butt." I hate that. I'm at least as smart as the average bear. Don't condescend to me. It's insulting.


7.  Details that have no reason to exist. I love when an author hides clues in plain sight but that require you to be on-the-ball to catch them. When an author describes something in detail, I tend to pay attention because I expect that, sooner or later, a clue will be placed in just such an innocuous place. So when a writer continues to describe things in minute detail, but there's never a clue to be found, I get annoyed. This is something I might not notice unless I go on an author-binge, but if I do (and I've been known to), trust me, I'll notice.


8. Characters who never grow. Stephanie Plum & company. Need I say more? (Of course I bought about 15 books before I'd had enough.)


9. Openings that include a bunch of obvious back story on page one. I tend to put these books down without ever getting to page two. That said, some authors have a knack for doing this in ways I not only don't mind but that suck me in, forcing me to bond with the character. Harlan Coben is an absolute master at this, but even he uses it judiciously--which is probably why it works for him. If your name isn't Harlan Coben and you info dump on page one, don't expect me to read your book.




10. Excessive head hopping. I start to feel like I'm on a whirly-gig and I don't know who I should care about. In romance, I don't want to see much more than the hero and heroine's viewpoints and even in other genres, it's annoying. I have a list of authors I absolutely won't read because of this, even though they write otherwise good stories. I have another list of authors who walk the tightrope. Their books tend to keep getting moved downward in my to-be-read stack.


What do you see in books that annoys you? Any deal breakers?

To Write or Not To Write, That is the Question

                   I saw another blog recently where the question was asked "Is it time to give up?" The question had been posed to the blogger by someone who had been working at it for a decade and had gotten nowhere.


The blogger, a published author, said the question deserved a serious answer instead of just the typical rah-rah, never-quit, never-say-die cheer. Then he proceeded to give that never-say-die answer he'd just decried.


Frankly, the question is legitimate and it does deserve a serious answer. The problem is the only people who ever answer this question publicly are those who've succeeded or those who still have hope of succeeding. The first bunch--the published author--is of course going to think it was worth it. The second bunch--the hopefuls--doesn't dare entertain the idea that it's not.


But I've known people who quit. At one time, there was an amazingly talented writer in my face-2-face critique group who quit. Why? Because his wife was tired of how isolated she felt when he wrote. She was jealous of the things he shared with the writers' group that he didn't share with her (don't know if that's so but it's how she saw it). She gave him a choice. His family or his writing. He chose his family.


Does he regret it? I don't know. I imagine he regrets having to make the choice in the first place, but I suspect he'd have regretted losing his family more than he regrets giving up writing.


So I'm hesitant to act as a cheerleader when the question comes up. It's a struggle to get where we want to go, and we can sacrifice so much and still never get there. Is it worth it? If the answer depends on whether we succeed or fail, then there's no way to know until you're on the other side. If you reach the end and you've never published, will you regret what you've given up?


I don't think this isn't a question someone else can answer for you.


Have you wrestled with this dilemma? How did you make your decision? And what do you say when someone asks you "is it time to quit?"