Presently Tense

Does anybody really like fiction narrated in the present tense? Apparently, to my bafflement, many people actually do, since that device seems to be a currently popular fad. Not only do authors write it, lots of editors accept it. Of the two most recent Ellen Datlow anthologies I read, each contains multiple present-tense selections. The January-February issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, which I just finished reading, includes twelve stories, of which five are told in present tense. To skew the balance further, one of those is the longest piece in the issue. Only one story strikes me as possibly justified in its narrative choice, being framed as a sequence of day-by-day news-as-it-unfolds reports.

Many years ago, I read a horror novella that enthralled me except for one feature: It was written in present tense and second person. "You walk to the top of the barren hill and find the ruins of an ancient stone circle. . . ." kind of thing. (Just an example, not a quote. The bizarre narrative style is the only specific thing I recall.) I've seen second-person-present-tense work very effectively in an occasional short story. At novella length, it was excruciating. An author I follow on Facebook dislikes present-tense fiction so thoroughly that it's an automatic downcheck for her. While I don't go that far, in my opinion present tense has only a limited justifiable use. It works well in the aforementioned rare short stories in second person. And if an author wants to leave open the possibility of a first-person protagonist's death, present tense can discourage the reader from meta-thinking along the lines of, "He can't die, because he's telling what happened in the past." (Only in a short story, though, not inflicted on us for the length of a novel or even a novella.) There are few other circumstances in which present-tense narrative doesn't annoy me. Sometimes it makes sense when used to distinguish current action from flashbacks, as Stephen King does in his recent thriller BILLY SUMMERS. I didn't mind it too much in that book, although I don't think it was necessary.

Why do fiction writers use present tense? I assume the idea is that telling the tale as if it's happening at this moment is supposed to enhance suspense or create a feeling of immediacy. It's probably meant to give the audience a sense of being immersed in the action. In my experience as a reader, that style has the opposite effect. Present-tense narration draws attention to itself and away from the story. It most often generates distance rather than emotional involvement. Conventional past-tense storytelling is "transparent" because it's what we've been conditioned to expect. When reading, we look through it, not at it. My advice, for what it's worth: As a writer, don't mess with what traditionally works unless you have a strong, specific reason for the change.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Survival Through Storytelling

Recently I came across an ad for a book subtitled something like, "How to survive hard times by telling stories." I can't find it again, so I don't know the title, author, or specific subject matter. (Google and Amazon didn't help because the terms are so general.) Not knowing leaves me free to speculate about what that phrase means. To me, it suggests that we cope with difficult experiences by shaping them into narratives that discover purpose in the seeming randomness of the ups and downs of our lives.

We human beings are storytelling creatures. We share jokes, urban legends, and episodes from the daily news. If we're enthusiastic about a book or movie, we often can't wait to rave about it to fellow fans. Think of a small child trying to recite the plot of a film, each sentence starting with "and then. . . ." Everybody enjoys telling others about experiences they've lived through, good or bad, although some people do it more skillfully than others. Every family has tales passed down from parents, older siblings, and other relatives. Memories get polished into anecdotes retold and embellished over the decades and generations. Two of the world's major religions, Judaism and Christianity, have their roots in stories (the Exodus from Egypt and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, respectively).

As C. S. Lewis mentions somewhere, we can find "escape" in literature by reading even the most depressing or tragic work of fiction, because it provides a temporary distraction from our own mundane troubles. Moreover, stories impose order on the untidy incidents of everyday life, in which no sequence of events has a definite beginning or end. Narrative makes sense of the world. As writers are often warned, the argument "but it really happened" can't justify a farfetched scene in a novel. Reality doesn't have to be believable or logical; fiction does.

I'm reminded of my favorite Terry Pratchett passage, this often quoted dialogue between Death and his granddaughter in HOGFATHER:

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

Off topic, RE Halloween: Vampire fans might enjoy my duology TWILIGHT'S CHANGELINGS, starring a vampire-human hybrid psychiatrist:

Twilight's Changelings

Another good introduction to my vampire series is the stand-alone romance EMBRACING DARKNESS:

Embracing Darkness

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

No Time Like the Present?

What accounts for the current fad of present-tense narrative in fiction? Most of the time, it makes my teeth grind with annoyance. Even a recent urban fantasy novel by Charles de Lint veers onto that strange byway. The traditional convention of writing fiction in the simple past demands no mental contortions from the reader. Its familiarity makes it "invisible," allowing the story to come through unfiltered from the author's mind to the reader's, or at least producing the illusion of unfiltered immersion in the story. Present tense draws attention to itself and away from the characters and plot, until the reader manages to shift mental gears and adjust to that technical oddity.

Now, the writer might have an artistic motive for purposely directing the audience's attention to the narrative technique itself. Even so, in my opinion, doing this for a longer span than a short story is usually so off-putting as to defeat any such purpose. I can think of a few circumstances when present-tense narrative serves a legitimate function: In the case of an experience told in the first person by a protagonist of horror or suspense, writing it in the present could avoid the near-certainty that the narrator will survive until after the end of the adventure. Unless he's speaking from the afterlife, the reader will assume that if he narrates in the past tense, he lived to tell the tale. Another reason for the use of present tense by a first-person narrator might be that the narrator's mind is somehow clouded or she has some other cause for extreme confusion. Present-time narration could give the impression that she's groping her way through a strange environment. Also, I've read a few novels with lots of flashbacks that distinguish in-story past and present by alternating the verb tenses accordingly. And, of course, if a text is framed as a diary or series of letters, parts of it might legitimately consist of a stream of consciousness in the present. In the case of the rarely used second-person narrative voice, past tense—a blow-by-blow account of what "you did"—might sound peculiar unless (as in an effective horror story I once read) the "you" has amnesia and the story is telling the protagonist about his or own past experiences in an attempt to awaken memories. Present tense therefore has some advantage in a second-person narrative.

Fiction written in the second person, however, foregrounds the narrative technique itself so emphatically that it seems to me suitable only for short stories. At novel length, I'd think it would be intolerable. Many years ago, I read a horror novella I liked very much, except that the whole thing was told in second person, present tense. That choice still puzzles me, unless the author hoped it would draw the reader into the deepest possible intimacy with the protagonist. It seems to me that the writer was taking a serious risk; readers might be repelled by the narrative voice, viewed as an annoying gimmick. I was enthralled enough by the plot that I stuck with it despite the odd style of narration, which combined two distracting techniques in one story.

What do you think of present-tense narrative? Legitimate writing tool, a pointless variation from the norm that hampers suspension of disbelief, or something in between?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Bait-and-Switch Book Beginnings

Stephen King's latest novel (which I consider one of his best recent works), THE INSTITUTE, starts with a long section from the viewpoint of a secondary character (who doesn't reenter the story until close to the end). It then switches to the protagonist, a 12-year-old boy with a slight degree of psi power who gets kidnapped by the titular Institute. Both characters are deeply engaging, and their separate stories end up skillfully meshed. It's Stephen King, so it works! Nevertheless, spending that much space at the beginning of a novel on a secondary character before even introducing the protagonist is definitely not what most readers expect.

What I think of as "bait-and-switch" narrative is common enough, in a modest way, with suspense and horror fiction. Such novels often start with a brief introduction of a character whose main purpose is to get killed. (A regular reviewer of the SUPERNATURAL TV series used to call this type of victim "doomed teaser guy.") Even in those novels, however, I feel sort of cheated if the author allots too much wordage (more than a few paragraphs or at most a couple of pages) to a doomed character. The writer has fooled us into mistaking this short-lived person for the protagonist, luring us into an emotional investment in her or him, after which we have to start all over getting engaged with a new character.

The sense of being "baited and switched" can pose a difficulty with prologues. If the prologue focuses on a character other than the protagonist of the main text, we may feel as if the author has started the book twice. We get all excited about the prologue's main character and may feel let down when he or she disappears or fades into the background in favor of a different focal character for the story as a whole.

Some readers may feel "baited and switched" by the entire opening volume of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. While I wouldn't say I felt cheated, I was certainly shocked by that first exposure to his "anyone can die" authorial strategy, when the man I assumed to be the protagonist of the entire series didn't survive to the end of the first book.

Assuming this kind of shift at the beginning of a book is sometimes justified, how can an author pull it off so the reader won't feel tricked? Or lose interest when the focus switches to a different viewpoint character after the opening scenes have lured us into caring about the character first introduced? It's a little different, although still potentially tricky, when a narrative repeatedly switches perspectives throughout, presenting scenes through the eyes of two or more equally important viewpoint characters, as Martin's series does. In reading such a text, I sometimes have trouble getting back up to speed, emotionally, after each switch.

This let-down feeling doesn't have to result from a change in viewpoint characters. Long ago, I read a book intriguingly set in an alternate present where supernatural creatures exist openly, and social and economic structures are accordingly different from those in our primary world. The protagonist is a private detective who works with supernatural-related cases. (At that time, this worldbuilding concept was new and uncommon, not a familiar trope as it is nowadays.) In the first chapter, the protagonist deals with a vampire in a very funny scene. "Oh, goody, a cool vampire novel," I thought. Alas, nary another vampire in the entire book, although it wasn't a bad story on its own terms. Granted, this kind of problem isn't necessarily the author's fault. Other readers less vampire-focused than I might not assume from the first chapter that the point was to launch a vampire plot rather than (as it actually was) to introduce the protagonist's profession. Still, in my own case, I approached the rest of the story with a negative bias as soon as I realized my initial assumption had been mistaken.

Then there was the bait-and-switch of a successful chick-lit novel called MUST LOVE DOGS, whose inciting incident has a friend persuading the protagonist to place a personal ad in a dating venue. The friend gets her to include "Must love dogs" as a way of attracting nice guys, although the heroine doesn't have a dog and knows almost nothing about the species. Between the title and the inciting incident, I was expecting a romance with, you know, lots of dog content. Nope. The story soon leaves that premise behind. Maybe I would have felt less cheated by the plot if the inciting incident hadn't been combined with the title and a dog-centered cover (neither of which might have been the author's fault, admittedly, especially the cover illustration).

Do you feel "baited and switched" by these kinds of abrupt turns in a novel? And, as an author, how do you handle them if you have reason to write them?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Cozy Science Fiction Part 2 - Style and Voice by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Cozy Science Fiction

Part 2

Style and Voice

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Last week we introduced the concept of "Cozy" Science Fiction - a broad category to which Science Fiction Romance might belong.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/cozy-science-fiction-part-1-by.html

I pointed at a series of Cozy Mysteries -- a mixture of Mystery and Romance with emphasis on Mystery, by Debra Burroughs, The Paradise Valley Mysteries.

These are very good reading!

Woven of the same, "What is really going on here?" plot dynamic is Gini Koch's Alien Series (read them all even though they are very long).

Both pit worthy heroic Protagonists against impossible odds in a bewildering situation with cross-currents of the emotional dynamics of human (and non-human) relationship.

And we ended up at an Israeli (English subtitles) TV Series, Srugim, which is essentially Prime Time Soap -- somewhat like the TV Series Dallas, but without the ultra-rich tycoon and morally questionable wheeling/dealing.

I postulated that while Brian Aldiss may have been correct about "Cozy Catastrophic Science Fiction" in British Science Fiction of the 1840's, he completely missed the vast potential of the "Cozy" concept in genre fiction.

Now we're going to delve deeper into defining exactly what "Voice" and "Style" really are and how to perfect your own.

Lately, you've seen the emergence of the Cozy Mystery via Amazon -- and if you are an inveterate mystery genre reader like I am, you notice a wonderful difference between your standard Detective or Amateur Sleuth or Police Procedural, open or closed form, and the "Cozy" mystery.

The difference is not the presence of sex or romance or even just Relationship.  The "Cozy" dimension is much more complex, and thus has vast potential because so many aspects of "Cozy" have not yet been fully explored in novels.

The advent (in 2014) of the surprise hit series, Srugim, illustrates that modern audiences are ready for "Cozy" to spin off sub-genres from every genre, including TV Soap.

Cozy is not the same as Intimate.  An Intimate Relationship is based on knowledge about each other that is not shared with anyone else -- in other words, on Privacy.  A Cozy Relationship requires the dimension of relaxation.  There might be Intimacy (with or without sex or romance), but there might not.  A Cozy feeling is a "warm" feeling, positive emotions flowing freely at the surface, such as approval, admiration, bonding.

Cozy implies no need to be defensive - so it is a "barriers down" or "unguarded" relationship.

"Unguarded" is the Relationship the writer of a Cozy variant tries to create between the Reader and the Characters.  There can be conflict, surprise, even shock, plot twists gallore, threats, and overwhelming odds, and the adventure can still be Cozy if the Reader can feel the Characters affirming the Reader's personal traits that the Reader admires most.  In other words, the Characters validate the Reader's Self.

The Cozy genres don't require the reader to hatch an ambition to become a 'better' person -- to be tougher, smarter, faster, more self-reliant, more heroic or dominating.

Any personal growth a Reader covets after a Cozy novel will come easily, without sweat and strain -- easy and natural.

So how does a writer induce this feeling of unguarded emotion in a Reader?

The technical mechanism that sets the tone of a novel is actually inside the details of things like word choice, syntax choice, pacing, sentence length, and the rest of the components of Style.  But Cozy is not just Style, but also "Voice."

A lot of beginning writer essays have been published about how urgently necessary it is for a beginning to "Find Your Voice."  These articles don't define Voice because, though every reader can hear it, few writers have any idea what Voice is or where it comes from.

It is often assumed that Voice is a property of the writer, personally, not a learned skill.

Well, just like a singer's training, a writer's Voice is innate and trained.  Within each range of Voice, there are levels of training to strengthen and project that Voice.

In learning to sing, "voice" exercises to strengthen the vocal cords start right at the beginning -- but after puberty.  During and before puberty - before maturity - the training is more about notes, scales, tempo.

It works that way with writers, too.  You start reading lots of novels, maybe in a lot of genres, and coming back to favorite authors or genres.  You start to sing your own song, maybe with fanfic, or poetry, or just recounting funny stories over the dinner table.  Many writers start by drawing pictures with crayons when they are maybe 5 years old - telling a story in pictures before they have the words.

Sometimes a writer has had several novels published before they "find their voice" -- because it does take practice, exercise.  Voices strengthen with time.

As with a singer, the writer's voice is formed of many components.  Each component has to mature and strengthen.

When the writer is ready to master their Voice and find the Style best suited to that Voice, there is an exercise that works.

It is very simple.  Go back to the youngest reading years, find (maybe in your own library, boxes in the back closet, books you kept all this time) the novels or stories you loved the most, re-read the most, reveled in the most.  Make a pile of books that gave you the feeling that you want your readers to garner from your work.

Style and Voice are very personal -- but just as with a singer, the difference between amateur and professional is the ability to de-personalize the skills.  If you are to give, you must give-up what you are giving.  Oddly, after you've given it, you end up having more, so it is not something to worry about.

So find copies of your favorite novels -- cheap reprints, copies you are willing to ruin.

If you can't acquire paper copies, you can use e-books because color-marking words is possible in the Kindle versions.

There are two parts to this exercise workout.

1) take 4 colored highlighters and mark each sentence, each word in your favorite novels with one of the 4 colors:  

A) Description
B) Dialogue
C) Narrative
E) Exposition

STYLE is the pattern that will emerge as you color in page after page.

2) Set the book up beside your keyboard and copy-type the whole book.  Keep your eyes on the printed words, and type them into your Word Processor.  Just type your favorite book.  (note you can't SELL this copy -- you have to destroy it once you're done -- but the objective is not to make a copy, but to connect your eyes, brain and fingers in a living rhythm, choice of words, sentence length, an intangible vibrancy.

VOICE is that vibrancy - that timber and tone that transports you into the fictional world.

Characterization, worldbuilding, plot, story, theme, and all the elements we've discussed as being part of what the writer's mind does before the idea for the story pops up, all combine to create STYLE and VOICE.

That's why it is not productive to start searching for your Voice before you've plumbed the depths of these component techniques.  A level of maturity and facility with handling yourself has to be achieved before Voice Training can produce commercial grade results.

Any child can SING -- in fact, infants sing!  But that's not the same as playing Carmen in the eponymous opera!

So if you have done these classic exercises of highlighting the components of sentences in your favorite books, and then copy-typing a few books, then when it is time to "find your Voice" or develop your Style, or perhaps change Voice and Style to launch a new byline in a new genre, you just do the exercise again.

If you are looking to create a new byline in a contrasting genre, you will use a different stack of books.

One way of identifying Voice is to contrast two different authors.  I recommend using Andre Norton's YA novels for one of the pair, and contrasting her novels with any other writer you are studying.

Voice will become instantly apparent when you compare against Andre Norton.

Here is one of my favorite novels by Andre Norton:

https://smile.amazon.com/Star-Rangers-Central-Control-Bk/dp/0449240762/

I read STAR RANGERS 16 times before I lost count, and reread just parts, trying to figure out how to get that effect.

I loved the book so much that on one visit to Andre Norton's home, I challenged her to write the sequel, but she insisted she didn't intend to do that and told me to write it myself.  That story is in the introduction dedication to the first novel in my Dushau Trilogy.  You can read it using Amazon's Look-Inside feature, or read the whole novel free on KindleUnlimited.

With LOOKINSIDE -- click the look inside logo, then scroll UP to read the Dedication.

https://smile.amazon.com/Dushau-Trilogy-Book-1-ebook/dp/B002OSXNM8/


Use Amazon's "smile" feature to direct a few cents to your favorite charity without paying more for the Amazon product!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Depiction Part 3: Internal Conflict by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction Part 3
Internal Conflict
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

That saying is a nutshell statement of what we're discussing in this DEPICTION Series.  Listen to the arguments in the world around you, especially politics, to see if you can determine whether they are arguing about WHO is right, or about WHAT is right.  Which argument makes a better Romance Novel?

Part 1 of this series:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

Part 2: Conflict and Resolution
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

Many romance writers resort to "internal dialogue" (usually done in italics, first person instead of quotes, but it's still dialogue) to try to depict what is going on inside of a character.

This is not an incorrect approach and it is very popular with Romance Readers.

However, the repeated use of a single tool to illustrate a single point soon begins to impart a monotonous undertone to the Author's Voice.

By varying the tools used, the writer can create the illusion of a real character.

The 4 main tools a writer has were mentioned in Part 2 of this series, Dialogue, Description, Narrative, and Exposition, are the tools that can be varied to depict internal conflict, and thus give your character depth and his/her point of view a sense of reality.

Prior posts linked in Part 2 lead into the detailed discussion of these 4 basic tools, which most new writers have a fair grasp on.  The one most often abused is Exposition, leading to the dreaded Expository Lump. 

An "expository lump" is a long passage, a whole paragraph or sometimes several pages in a row, of the author telling about the environment of the story, the character's situation, ancestry, attitudes and preferences. 

A good writer will grab the other 3 tools in quick succession, most often within a single sentence, to convey this information to the reader.

Beta Readers will complain the story is "slow" or "boring" or "incomprehensible" -- Amazon comments will bitterly point out that it wasn't worth what they paid, even if it was free.  And all of them are actually reacting not to the information being conveyed in the expository lump, not to the exposition itself, but to the LUMP. 

The issue that readers who aren't writers react to without knowing its source is the LUMP not the exposition.

One way to break up a LUMP is to use the other three tools - Dialogue, Description, and Narrative.

The best way to approach a long, intricate and abstract "lump" of information to be dumped on a reader is with Narrative.  TELL THE STORY.  That's what narrative is -- the narrative are the words that convey the story. 

Narrative says, he went here, met her, they went there, found a dead body, called the police, -- narrative fleshes out the Plot Events into scenes.

Here is a post about scene structure with link to previous part:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

And here is part 8 on Dialogue with links to previous posts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/dialogue-part-8-futuristic-and-alien.html

So one way to break up that deadly-dull introductory expository lump which we discussed in Depiction Part 2 is to vary the tool you are using.

Take all that information that the reader must know before the actual story starts and cast it as scenes.

But the rule still applies that page 1 must depict the conflict, so you can't just make up more scenes to go before the story starts.  You have to find a way to integrate that opening scene stuck on page 25 into your newly made up scene with all the expository information in it.

This process reformulates your outline, changes the plot, may change the antagonist's identity, and well, change everything.  But while you do this process, you will suddenly find yourself feeling like a working professional writer -- you will know this will sell because it fits the paradigm of well known books that have been published. 

So you take your laboriously created expository lump, and cast that information in scenes.

In that new scene, there have to be characters, and the characters have to be in conflict -- not necessarily with each other.

Everything might seem calm on the surface, while the conflict the reader sees brewing seethes beneath the apparently offhand dialogue.

Ah, yes, you have written pages of block paragraphs of exposition, and now you must cut that information, cast it into scenes, and now you pick up the dialogue tool you worked so hard to master.

You can start your scene with a line of dialogue, without even the tag of "he said" -- just a statement or question can do it. 

"Where did you get that old spaceship!"

Wouldn't that line open a grand romantic battle-of-the-sexes novel complete with aliens aforethought?

With a line of dialogue like that, you are depicting the internal conflict of the person being addressed -- not the person speaking! 

You have used SHOW DON'T TELL to convey information about a character who hasn't even appeared yet.

Now pick up another of the 4 tools, Narrative.

He kicked at the metal side of the cylinder sitting in his garage, but his eyes were on his erstwhile wife of three days.  Before his boot made contact with the metal, she grinned in anticipation.  Then his foot went right through the corroded metal plate and sparks flew.

That's NARRATIVE.  It's what happened.  But it contains single words of description (metal, cyclinder, garage, corroded, sparks) -- "erstwhile" is depiction which indicates there's some irregularity involved here so the reader is invited to "fill in the blanks."

She laughed at him.  "I found it when we moved in.  It was under that heap of bags of Stardust."

"She laughed at him" is narrative, but since it's a slightly inappropriate response to his "accusation" implied by using an ! instead of a ? in his question -- it shows rather than tells there's buried conflict.  I might have written, "She recoiled from his accusation" but that would have weakened her character -- so instead she uses inappropriate aggression.  But the DIALOGUE she chooses is DEFENSIVE, so we know she feels attacked by his !-style question. 

Now pick up another tool, Description.

The detached garage sat on the surface of the asteroid they had won in a card game, right over the pressurized apartment.  The garage could be evacuated, but if they did that to bring their ship in, they'd lose all the drug money that Stardust represented.

EXPOSITION: It had been her idea to avoid evacuating the garage to bring their ship inside.  (SEE? ONE LINE, NO LUMP.)

Wrenching his foot free of the hole, he turned hands on hips.  "Maybe I will actually marry you after all."

"Over my dead body!" 

NOTE: that is a line of narrative followed in the same paragraph by a line of dialogue.

Look that over again.  Start with a line of Dialogue, then Narrative, Dialogue, Description, Exposition, Narrative, Dialogue, Dialogue. 

EXERCISE: Go find a copy of your favorite novel and go through it with highlighters coloring each word to tag it as dialogue, description, narrative or exposition -- note the rhythmic alternation and then write a piece of your own with that SAME RHYTHM of tools. 

Now go back over what I just wrote here and look at the characterization.

Find the external conflict -- there they are on an asteroid they won (note the ABSENCE of an explanation of what card game, how they partnered, why they ended up co-owning the asteroid, whether they own equal shares, or why they were both playing that game), and they HAVE FOUND a pile of drugs of some colossal value if sold to a trafficker (note the absence of narrative of poking around their new place and her discovering but not mentioning the space ship, of any reason why she didn't mention it -- NOTE WHAT IS LEFT OUT).

Find the internal conflict -- they are partnered but not exactly married. Neither really knows if this is Love or what.  They've got worries (lots of money involved; someone probably wants that Stardust; can they trust each other?)  They are hip-deep in a Situation and they disagree what the Situation actually is, except that it's changing by the moment. 

He accuses, she counter-attacks -- that's the surface or external conflict.  It shows without telling what the shadowy-lurking-shape of the internal conflicts must be like.

Now, the actual story starts when SOMETHING comes after that drug-dump of Stardust, and all this about the garage might have been cast as an expository lump.

Three days after Marla and Tip got to the asteroid, Tip discovered that Marla had been hiding a space ship in the garage.  He was mad at her for that but she just mocked him and flounced off.  So he chased her down and proposed marriage again, as a solution to the legal problem of joint-ownership of all that wealth.  Two days later, while they were eating dinner (separately), something hit the asteroid.

BORING.

Where's the story?  Where are the characters?  Where's the action? 

Or you could make it worse with a long technical description of the size of the asteroid, the make and model of the artificial gravity machinery, the orbit, and speculation about all the things that could happen but didn't.

You, as writer, know all that -- all of it, every single bit.  But the reader, as a reader, doesn't need to know, and more than that doesn't want to know.

Your job as writer is to get the reader wanting to know long, long before you "reveal" without TELLING.

Let the reader figure it out, then confirm their suspicions. 

That's a major key to how a reader "gets into" a book and "identifies" with a character.

In Part 2 of this series on Depicting, we used a political example, so let's use another one from politics.

You see on the TV News how commentators on one network point the finger at commentators on rival networks, trying to make a story out of one calling the other names.  Yes, it's pathetic, and one big reason nobody watches TV news anymore.

But there's a lot to be learned from watching stuff like that.

Every once in a while, when they know the listening audience is very small (like Friday night for example), they will reveal by offhand reference just how these pieces are generated and why some Events get covered and others don't.

1) The Narrative
2) Optics
3) Resonance

"The Narrative" -- the news is not what's new, but the next development in a story-line that doesn't exist in reality.  This is a story that is being invented much like a Parable or a story-with-a-moral -- a story that is designed to get viewers to draw certain specific conclusions and thus act on those conclusions as if they were fact based.

"The Optics" -- referring to an entire PR discipline dedicated to figuring out what conclusions the majority of a certain demographic will draw from certain images.

"Resonance" -- referring to retweeting. Will this story go viral.  Will you hear this installment of the story and hasten to tell your friends on Facebook or Pinterest?  Will they in turn tell all their friends?  Does anybody care?  Do they "relate to" this story?

How do people come to "relate to" a story?

The same way they come to "relate to" the characters in a novel.

Yes, fiction and news are on convergent paths. 

In fiction, Literature Professors study how readers "identify with" an "objective correlative" -- and in film, Blake Snyder formulated a category of deeds that CAUSES viewers to "identify with" a protagonist.

Drawing a reader/viewer into a story is a science these days.

You get drawn into a story when you see something in a character in the story that you either see in yourself or want to see in yourself -- something you aspire to be (Superhero) or actually are (angst-ridden).

You get drawn into a story when you identify with the protagonist (or antagonist).

That's why there is so much  tear-jerker coverage of news stories about tragedies -- repeated interviews with the survivors or victims.

It's the people that make it REAL. 

In fiction, it's the characters that make it realistic.

The same principle is used in politics to collect loyal followings of Democrats and Republicans (in the USA; elsewhere different parties, same principle).

You hear stories on the news about this politician and that, about Congress and the TITLE of a bill, and the Senate and which senators are for or against the Congress Bill with that TITLE.

Now we all know the title of a bill rarely has anything at all to do with the content, and amendments can reverse the entire thing, distort it, or maybe add a new topic entirely.  To be AGAINST a Bill is not necessarily to be against achieving what the Title says.  It may be merely to be against some other topic that got tacked on by amendment.  It's horse-trading.

However, the way we barely scan the surface of the news these days, all we know is the TITLE and whether it's supported by Republicans or Democrats.

Those OPTICS are managed by PR experts to lead people to "identify" with Republicans or Democrats, and it's a war-for-eyeballs.  They want you to SEE (show don't tell) how all Republicans are against Women's Rights, or all Democrats don't value Life.

PR experts create these "narratives" with words, optics, and topics personified in characters.  They draw people into identifying with one or the other label.

This is exactly what a writer does to draw a reader into the story.

Once a viewer has Identified with a Republican, that short-cut thinking described in Part 2 cuts in, and in that viewer's mind "All Republicans Think Like Me" becomes an unassailable axiom of existence.  Any attack on any Republican is taken personally -- which is why Politics is an explosive subject.

Prejudice, you recall from Part 2, is all about that short-cut thinking that lets us fill in the blanks of a depiction -- so we see a few sparse lines, and our minds insist the whole, full-color image is in 3-D right there.  We see a person with dark skin and insist we're looking at a "bad person."  That irrational conviction is absolute because it is based on what we know about ourselves, not on what we know about the person before us.

It works the same way for Democrats -- just find one Democrat who seems like "my kind of people" and suddenly all Democrats firmly believe what you, yourself, believe.

The truth is, some do, some don't, and no two are alike. 

But our brains can't handle that much data, so we use our short-cut thinking and just know that all those nasty accusations against the Party we identify with are untrue because those accusations are untrue of us.

You know who you are; you know what you believe; you know what you are for or against, and you Identify with this or that person or sub-group of a Party, and impute the certainties you cherish to all members of the larger Party.

Knowing that mechanism is operating in most voters, the political PR machine uses it to get you to "Identify" with a Candidate.  They believe that if they can hook you, they have you. 

You know if you can hook a reader on Page 1, you have them at least until the Middle, and if the Middle doesn't sag, you have them to the End.  And you'll likely be able to sell them another book with your byline. 

You can learn to induce Identification in readers by studying the Political PR Machine creating a fictional character out of each and every politician running for office.

Students rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt taking courses to become experts in PR (Public Relations - Google it, see how many schools there are and what it costs).  You can learn all you have to know about how it's done by watching political commercials and scanning the News.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
https://flipboard.com/profile/jacquelinelhmqg