by Lynne | Oct 10, 2016 | Crafting Characters, Dialogue, Writing, Writing Tips
One of the major characters in my book, “Time Exposure” is Alexander Gardner, a famous, and real, Civil War photographer. Gardner hailed from Paisley, Scotland and arrived in Washington, D.C. in 1856 with a thick Scottish accent. How was I to handle dialogue? I wanted to make sure that the reader knew Gardner was from Scotland. So, I added a bit of dialect. Check this out:
“I must speak to ye, Joseph.” Gardener took a deep breath. “I’ve had a special offer I must consider. Mind ye now, it doesna preclude my maintaining an association with Brady. But, I want ye to be part of me decision.”
I also sprinkled in lots of dinnas, shouldnas, couldnas, ayes, me for my, etc. Ugh. The reader couldn’t possibly forget that Gardner was from Scotland. Or care. He’d already given up on the book.
Thanks to my critique group my eyes were open to this dialect dilemma. I began to notice it in other novels. Too much of an accent: “How vould you vant me to wote?”
Or overuse of slang: “He needs to mellow out, he’s bonkers and that’s too dicey for this girl.”
Or clichéd idiomatic expressions : “Once in a blue moon, we see eye to eye, but you’re usually on the fence, which only adds insult to injury.”
Eeek. The use of “casual” spelling such as lemme, or gimme, can be used . . . sparingly. Dropping “g” for a word ending in “ing” gets tiresome too if used every other sentence. We have to give the reader credit and assume that by dropping a slang word, accent or expression in, they’ll get the point and as they continue to read that character’s dialogue, they’ll naturally hear the dialect.
Some of the worst examples of overusing dialect can be seen when characters have southern or New York accents. Like the use of “Ah” for “I” or “y’all for, well, you know. Then there’s the exaggerated Brooklynese – “toidy-toid and toid street” or “poils for the goils.” (These may actually need translation!) I grew up in Brooklyn and, frankly, you do hear this. It’s one thing, however, to add it to a movie, where you can hear the character say it. It’s another to read it in a book ad nauseum.
So how do you get the character’s geographical location, or educational background across? The best way is through the rhythm of the dialogue and the words you choose. One “aye” from my Scotsman and the reader hears his accent through the rest of the dialogue. To portray a well-educated German you might avoid contractions and use the full words to make the speech more formal sounding: “I should not bother with that if I were you. Do you not think so?”
In the end, you need to do your homework. Learn the true dialect, accent, slang expressions of the region your characters come from, both geographically and historically. Depending upon the time period, speech was often more formal than we’re used to today.
Practice on yourself. Once you know how the dialect really sounds have your character try it out in dialogue in a scene. Read it aloud. Very important, to really hear the effect, you must read it out loud. You’ll find you will most likely want to eliminate all but a smidgen of the dialect. What will be left is the essence of your character.
Then fuhgeddaboudit!
by Lynne | Oct 3, 2016 | Crafting Characters, Writing, Writing Tips
Writing mysteries is an exercise in pitting bad characters against good.
There are degrees of bad and good, of course, but in compelling stories, the bad character is often seriously, diabolically, dangerously bad. He (or she) will certainly have good points. He may be charming, clever, handsome, sympathetic, and have superior interpersonal skills–think Ted Bundy–but the reader learns soon that these are just a cover, enabling him to get close to people in order to do his dirty work.
I have used individuals in my books to play the villain. An art critic, a factory owner, a southern sympathizer, a rich landowner. In others, I have used a group (or blast, or den, or herd, or flock, or conflagration—see my last blog on word play) of baddies, ie: Nazis, where most folk will agree that it’s easier to count the good ones than the bad.
A “collective” villain makes for an interesting read.
The Nazis, the hedge fund crooks, the greedy corporate thieves, the Republicans, the Democrats, the tax collectors, the CIA, the FBI, the police, lawyers, politicians, doctors . . . all can play the role of collective villains.
In the case of the Nazis, you expect evil. In the case of doctors, you may not.
Anyone can be a villain.
If your experience tells you Nazis are bad, a good Nazi will be an interesting character. Same is true in reverse for a doctor. Then you have the Nazi doctor and you won’t know what to believe. But I digress.
A good writer will build each character with good points and bad points that the reader will both admire and loathe. It’s a fine line to walk. If your reader loathes your character too much, he (or she) might put the book down. 
In the case of the Nazis, there is, built-in, a sense of evil, danger, and villainy. And because Nazis were historically real, readers will have an innate sense of foreboding right from the first page.
Hence, my next book will return to the Nazis and World War II. The theme will be not be confiscated art . . . but stolen music.
by Lynne | Sep 26, 2016 | English language play, word play, word play, Writing, Writing Tips
I got a great response from my last blog on word play so I thought I’d try another!
Collective nouns are names for a collection or a number of people or things. For example, some common ones are group, herd, flock, or bunch.
I browsed the Net and found these great ones from various sites. Many of these make a welcome change from the ordinary ones we usually see. As writers, these can enrich your story and even add a chuckle or two. Enjoy.
A bask of crocodiles
A shrewdness of apes
A shush of librarians
A shuffle of bureaucrats
A flight of refugees
A bevy of ladies
Or how about . . .
An aurora of polar bears
A prickle of porcupines
A surfeit of skunks
A siege of bitterns
A cry of hounds
A lounge of lizards
A stud of mares
A troop of dogfish
A shoal of minnows
A flotilla of swordfish
A pack of perch
A pandemonium of parrots
An amble of walkers
Think you can use some of these?
by Lynne | Sep 19, 2016 | Writing, Writing Tips
Chapter endings are as important as beginnings.
Read the endings of your chapters. Go ahead. Are they riveting? Are you anxious to turn the page? Will your readers be? Take a closer look at the ho hum ones and begin to focus on endings that would compel a reader to keep going.
I skimmed through some books to see how those authors ended their chapters. Here’s one from Deception Point by Dan Brown. “Rachel felt weightless for an instant, hovering over the multimillion-pound block of ice. Then they were riding the iceberg down – plummeting into the frigid sea.” The reader is not likely to put the book down at this point, at least until they find out what happened to Rachel and her friend. Brown could have ended with something like: “Rachel stood motionless on the block of ice and prayed the block wouldn’t fall into the sea.” Nah.
Here’s another.
“Emergency Room. Code Blue. Susan ran for the elevator.”
This is from Chelsea Cain’s The Night Season. What if Cain had stopped at Code Blue? Would it have the same impact as her running for the elevator?
I believe this idea of compelling endings is not only important for fiction but for non-fiction as well. Take Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: “Sometime that day, or perhaps the day before, he had taken off his uniform, picked up a sack of rice, slipped into the Naoetsu countryside, and vanished.” Vanishing, dying, running, falling, are all great ways to end a chapter on a high, cliffhanger note.
How about this from my mystery, Time Exposure: “As he sank to his knees, he lifted his head to gaze up at the Blackhawk. Captain Geoffrey Farrell smiled down at him. A boot to the head put him out.” 
Or this from Pure Lies, in the form of dialogue: “Well, you may be nuts and I wouldn’t testify to this in court, but between you, me and the microscope, honey, these signatures were all written by the same person.”
Scene endings can follow this rule to some extent, but it might get tiresome if every scene did.
I think you have to let the reader rest once in a while and catch up with the action.
Not all chapter endings must end on an action note either. Many can end with inner conflict or conflict between characters. Gives the chapter tension. What happens between these two people next? Does Anna May leave her husband? Does mom throw Maynard out of the house? Does little Davey start to cry? Is Barbara in danger of being fired, of losing her health insurance, of missing a plane to an important event? If you care about the characters, you will turn the page.
I’d love to hear some chapter endings you think are great . . . or terrible. When we can recognize what works and what doesn’t, our writing benefits in the long-run.
by Lynne | Aug 31, 2016 | Writing, Writing Tips
Words are my business.
I love them dearly, but sometimes, they can be perplexing, confusing, and downright ornery. Here’s one word, a tiny one, that conveys my meaning with its myriad meanings. The tiny word is UP. And it has more definitions and uses than a giraffe has spots. In the dictionary it takes UP, ahem, half a page to define. Let us count the ways UP is employed.
We wake UP in the morning, go outside and look UP at the sky.
We stand UP. We sit UP.
We speak UP at meetings, write UP reports.
We can be UP to a task or not.
We warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.
UP can be an adverb, an adjective, a preposition, a noun, or a verb. See if you can pick those out.
We dress UP for an occasion, lock UP the house and walk UP the street.
We call UP our friends, fix UP an old car, brighten UP a room with flowers.
We can stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite or think UP excuses.
We open UP a drain that’s stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning and close it UP at night.
It can cloud UP and rain, then clear UP for the sun to shine.
When it doesn’t rain, the earth dries UP. When it does rain, the earth soaks UP the water.
A candidate can be a runner-UP in an election.
We can pick UP a box, or move UP a ladder.
Then there’s that great animated film, UP, about a flying house and . . . well, never mind.
I think you get the idea. If you have more definitions for UP that I missed here, or, perhaps other similar words, please share!
by Lynne | Aug 8, 2016 | Writing, Writing Tips
One of the first things I learned in writing classes was the importance of giving your characters flaws as a way of making them distinctive and memorable. Your characters, particularly the main character, need to stand out from others in your book. They also should stand out from characters in other books.
However, the more books that are written in similar genres, the more difficult this becomes. How do you make your character stand out? Are more “flaws” the answer?
We humans all have a variety of flaws and quirks. (Animals do too, although often not as fatal as their two-legged counterparts.) As writers, we sprinkle our characters with obvious imperfections. They bite their nails, wear lopsided glasses, eat too much Hagen Daz. They dress funny or cut their hair weird or paint their bodies with tattoos. Then there are the stereotypical attributes we’re all tired of. Cops who drink too much and lawyers who work twenty hours a day, both to the detriment of their family life. Women who have an ordinary job during the day but have a secret life at night. I’m sure you can name many more.
I just finished a mystery about a woman cop who was so tough and hard-boiled, she was blinded by her obstinacy. So much so that she wasn’t even close to being real to me. I stopped reading John Grisham when I had enough of his characters’ bleeding-heart liberal attitudes. And I’m a liberal. Enough is enough.
Cops, lawyers, streetwalkers are humans too. Why not give them more realistic qualities? Don’t get me wrong. Characters need to stand out or we will forget them the minute we put the book down. Here’s an example of a character I think could be a role model for all characters. She’s from a movie, so think screenplay not book, and drawn so artfully that I think the title will become part of our lexicon. “Blue Jasmine.” Writer: Woody Allen.
Jasmine is a woman having a really hard time. She married a rich man, but he’s cheating on her. I don’t want to give away any more of the plot than that but suffice it to say she’s freaking out in her new life as a no-longer rich woman. Cate Blanchett is stellar in this role and we feel her pain, her anxiety, her angst, right down to our core. She has the jitters, she has the dropsies, she talks to herself. She’s deeply blue. And, although we don’t always sympathize with her, we feel her blues.
Woody is a master at character development (in all his works.) Sure he exaggerates the flaws, but we all know so well the person he is describing. The characters resonate with us because we’ve met them in real life. Maybe not exactly like the movies, but close enough. “He’s just like my uncle Joe. She’s like my best friend, Susie. He’s like the grocer on the corner.” Damn, he’s good.
How does Woody do it? If I knew, perhaps I’d be selling more books. He is a superb teacher.
There are many writers who can help us hone this skill. If only we would listen.
