Acquiring New Techniques Part 2 - The Almighty Paragraph by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Acquiring New Techniques
Part 2
The Almighty Paragraph
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

To find examples of current news Headlines you can rip for your next novel, you may want to follow my magazines on Flipboard:
https://flipboard.com/profile/jacquelinelhmqg

Part 1 of this series on acquiring new techniques is about how I dared to attempt the writing of a joke using a pun. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/acquiring-new-techniques-part-1-pun.html

Nobody can "teach" you to write.  It's a craft.  You don't learn it, you train in it.  It's an apprenticeship process.  The part of your mind that masters all this is the subconscious.

So any methodology that you've developed over your lifetime that works to train yourself in a new process will work just fine for most writing craft skills.

And this one - the structure of the paragraph - is no exception. 

Teaching yourself to write and self-edit, to rewrite and improve each draft is not a random undertaking.

There is a system to teaching yourself, and to training yourself.  Your system may differ, but the essential elements will be the same. 

Once you've figured out exactly what market you want to sell into, here's a system for studying that market and getting the hang of producing your own, personalized and quirky, stories to be gobbled up by that market.

I wrote the following in response to a question that someone asked on Google+ --

---quote-------
Are there any good tools that could help me edit? My paragraphs feel choppy...
---end quote-------

And here's what I answered.

For the rule of thumb you need, find some books from the publishing company you are aiming at, in the genre you are writing in, and preferably edited by the editor you want to sell to (sometimes an author includes a thank you to their editor or agent which gives you this clue).  FIND TWO OF THOSE BOOKS.  Read them BACKWARDS (so you aren't influenced by story or content).  LOG (on a piece of paper or some people love spreadsheets) the length of paragraphs in lines, in words, and in sentences.

Analyze those paragraphs for structure.  Look at subordinate clauses, at dialogue included, at the shift within a sentence from description, narrative, dialogue, exposition (in Kindle you can highlight with different colors each of these 4 essential components).

Now that you have the PATTERN you need to master in your head, sit down with a book you REALLY LOVE and can't stop re-reading (hopefully from the genre and editor you want to sell to) and COPY-TYPE THE ENTIRE NOVEL.  (It's not stealing.  You just discard the copy you make.)

This will train your mind on a level no amount of mere thinking can ever reach.  It is training, not learning.  Turn your mind off and just let your fingers TYPE.  Don't worry about this ruining your 'style' or 'voice' -- it actually sharpens and focuses your personal art.

Now go back to your manuscript and RETYPE IT FROM SCRATCH -- copy type it making a new copy, but letting your new rhythm make changes in the words, parts of speech, dialogue, and especially transitions from exposition to narrative to dialogue to description.  Be sure to include all 4 components in each sentence, mostly by deleting words that don't say anything and finding words that convey exactly what you mean.

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Given that "the paragraph" is a quirky thing in itself, that differs from genre to genre, there's almost no way to teach it.

If you took Literature in college, you read a lot of books with paragraphs as long as a page.

If you paid attention in High School, you learned that a paragraph is a complete thought, but of course nobody ever defined what that is. 

The world of commercial fiction writing is totally different from Academe.

In publishing, a paragraph and a page is a visual, artistic LAYOUT problem, not a grammatical one.

So your aim is to keep your reader glued to the page using every bit of artistic LAYOUT talent, skill, ability, and Rules that you can grab.

The best way to internalize such rules is just what I said above, learn by analyzing with the mind, then DOING by copying.

Since we focus on this blog on Science Fiction Romance and Fantasy Romance, Paranormal Romance, and Action Romance, the rules for ROMANCE (longer paragraphs, wandering internal ruminations, speculation about what the other characters think or feel, self-criticism about emotional responses) have to blend into and modify the rules for Science Fiction or Action-Adventure.

And then that resulting blend has to be reconfigured for today's impatient readership that skims or page-flips.  This is the era of lack of concentration, so page layout tricks have to carry the impatient reader through the necessary story development.

Here's a place to start as you rewrite your manuscript.  Remember, you can change what you drafted into this pattern, then go over it again and change it to something else.  It is a multi-step process, not something you just do -- at least until you've practiced this a lot.

Set your page layout for a 60-character line, 25 lines per page.

Break up every paragraph that runs more than 7 lines (even if there's a one-word fragment on line 8, put a paragraph break in the middle.)

Read it over and see what you need to change to make it a literary paragraph (complete thought) rather than a graphic paragraph (something a reader might actually finish before answering the phone.)

Check the page for paragraphs that are more than 3 sentences long.

Any important (critical to understanding the plot) information must go in LINE 1 of a paragraph, or in the last line.

Skim readers are taught to SKIP THE MIDDLE SENTENCE OF A PARAGRAPH.

So if you're working up a sneaky mystery plot, a suspense line, or foreshadowing a twist due later, bury that in the middle-sentence of a 3 sentence paragraph.

You want to use graphic layout to control the eye-movements of the reader, just as an artist drawing a picture does.

Now look over the page you've rewritten to break up paragraphs.  No three paragraphs in a row can be three sentences long.

In between the long, 3 sentence, 7-line paragraphs, you intersperse with 1 line dialogue.  (not 7 line dialogue speeches).

Last week in Dialogue Part 7 we did a bit of dialogue rewriting on some excellent published dialogue.  Re-read that and do some of that kind of rewriting.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/dialogue-part-7-gigolo-and-lounge.html

Now you've got your page looking "right" -- you have to make one last pass through.

Because you broke paragraphs and rearranged, no doubt changing some words, and weren't reading the page as a whole, errors have crept in that you would never have made on first draft.

So re-impose the rule that no two paragraphs in a row can start with the same word, preferably not with the same LETTER.

Delete any "And" or "But" at the beginning of a sentence, especially at the beginning of a paragraph. 

Delete all the adjectives and adverbs.  ALL of them. (don't fret; you get to restore some)

Re-read the page -- this is the polish re-read, so check for spelling, homonyms confused, malapropisms not intended, etc.  Check for rhythm, for clarity of thought, for organization, for pacing. 

On this last re-read, find the VERBS and NOUNS that had modifiers and check to see if they convey what you intended without the modifier.  If not, spend some time looking for the exact VERB or NOUN that should be there.  If such a word does not exist (actually it does, but you haven't found it), then insert the modifier. 

Only use adverbs and adjectives where the word they modify requires it because the word does not mean what you want to say.

That's your PAGE SETUP draft.  Do that process with all your pages.  Don't worry if it takes a long time to do this editing pass -- on your next first-draft you will have acquired most of these habits on an unconscious level.

NEXT - as you are editing, check the LENGTH OF YOUR SCENES.

No scene should be more than 700 words without a character entering or exiting (the "scene" definition is enter, exit, change location).  A scene with entrances and exits within it should run no more than 7 pages (25 line pages as above).

If your scenes are too long, go back to structure and check each scene's structure for how it advances the plot, advances the story, and changes the Situation.

If that gives you a problem, read these two blog entries:

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

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

One of the biggest problems I'm seeing in self-published Romance novels these days is SCENE STRUCTURE.

I can't emphasize enough how vital scene structure is in novels. 

Here's the scene structure trick that will affect your paragraph structure.

Long, wandering paragraphs seem to pour out of a writer when nothing is happening in the story or plot.

When you see you have produced long paragraphs, consider deleting that entire section.

The error beginning writers fall into is knowing what the characters do, and just following the characters through everything they do.  That's not a story, and it is not a plot.

The technique you can look up in writing books is not called Scene Structure.  It's called Transitions. 

Smooth transitions are a result of tight scene structure -- they happen because the story springboard is properly wound up.

The index to the series on Story Springboards is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/index-to-story-springboards-series-by.html

In brief, cut all the paragraphs that chronicle the movement of characters between scenes, all the journeying, the traveling.

Cut the part where the character wakes up, brushes teeth, gets dressed, gropes for coffee -- and then the phone rings with a shocker.

CUT from the end of the previous scene (before the falling into bed exhausted) directly to the PHONE RINGING -- or even into the middle of that shocker-phone-call. 

CUT the stuff BETWEEN SCENES.  Every beginner writes thousands of words of what happens or is done between scenes and fails to cut that material before submission, then wonders why they are rejected without even a rejection notice.

LONG PARAGRAPHS of characters moving between scenes are the hallmark of the unprofessional writer who can not take editorial direction.

If your character is TRAVELING (driving, riding the subway, walking through the woods -- when nothing is changing the SITUATION, when the CONFLICT is not advancing toward RESOLUTION --) then CUT ALL THAT.

I can hear you screaming right now, "BUT BUT BUT that's when he thinks of this brilliant idea, or when I tell the reader all about what the character knows."

Aha, that's why I said learn to do this by deleting all your precious adverbs and adjectives.  That deleting and restoring of adjectives and adverbs trains your subconscious to trust your judgement so when you do this harder exercise, your subconscious won't balk.

When you delete the material (usually identifiable as it comes in long, chunky paragraphs) between scenes, there will be some vitally important items that get deleted.

Those items have to be moved INTO SCENES.

In fact, you may have to insert a scene to convey that material properly, but the inserted scene has to be well structured.

Scene structure and placement is like the percussion-section of a symphony orchestra, it sets the BEAT, the pacing.  A scene is like a 'measure' in music, it has an internal structure set by the "Key" or genre.

So delete all the material between scenes throughout the manuscript, collect the items that must be conveyed to the reader, ponder where in the structure those REVEALS have to be placed, and insert a well-crafted scene to convey just the barest hint of the information as SHOW DON'T TELL.

That's what scenes are for - to SHOW rather than TELL that information that you told the reader in the between-scene segments where the characters are traveling from scene to scene but nothing is happening. 

In a scene, SOMETHING has to happen that changes the SITUATION of the main character.  The plot must advance -- i.e. someone has to do something.  The story has to advance - i.e. someone has to learn something, feel an emotion that causes them to do something. 

To figure out what to keep and what to toss, keep going back to your one-line explanation of what this story is.  "This is the story of Ralph's downfall." 

On your final draft, you'll throw out anything that's left that does not explicate the theme.  "Great Fame can crack any character's integrity." 

All of these techniques are based on the redefining of "The Paragraph" from a literary thought-block to a graphic attention-grabber.

Master the Paragraph, and you'll master The Scene, as well as pacing and style.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Amateur Goes Professional

The Nanowrimo exercise always has beginning and professional writers talking all over facebook and twitter about how many words they produced in a day, or week, and declaring failure and dropping out of the race if they can't produce words by the yard.

Measuring of success at writing as a number of words has two sides to it:

a) many markets do pay by the "word" so the faster you produce the more money you make.  Words/day = $/day = professionalism

b) but novel markets don't pay by the word but by the well turned, completed, plot with all supports in place to make it fun to read without much editing.

And then there's the non-fiction markets.  Newspapers, print and online, pay by the article -- with a total subject covered within a specified number of words, K bytes, or space (lines, whatever). 

Good writing is not measured by the number of words you produce -- if it were, then only short words would be professional.  (one could argue that's the trend!)

However, there is something to be said for professionalism being measured in SPEED of production. 

This measure is entirely market driven.  Novels usually produce an advance against royalties and after the book has earned the advance, the author gets a little bit each time a copy sells.  But that business model is dying very quickly. 

The e-book market pays no advance, but a bigger royalty per copy sold.  And books don't go out of print in a couple of weeks. 

The e-author's business model then is not to write quickly, but to write something that will be talked about, tweeted about, commented on, and recommended on goodreads etc.  The author's objective under the new business model must be to write solidly.

But there are bills to pay now.  You can't mount a social media campaign if you can't pay your internet connection bill.  So you must produce quickly, but also solidly.

This is a dilemma brought to my attention by the following tweet.
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SheviStories 11:44am via Tweet Button

Improv for Writers, Part 3: Speed Writer--learn to write FAST! shevi.blogspot.com/2011/11/improv… #litchat #kidlitchat #YALitChat #WritersRoad #NaNoWriMo
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Improv and Nanowrimo have something in common - training.

I've made this point many times in this blog - you don't "learn" to write, you "train" to write.

As I was taught when I was in elementary school, by the professional writer, Alma Hill, "Writing is a performing art."

This is also true of journalism where one must go out, get the story, come back and type it up for publication within the hour.  The words have to be there, making sense, covering the entire topic with all the facts straight, and most of the spelling correct. 

There's a college degree in journalism that gets you started, but nothing except practice actually brings that skill online for you.

And the same is true of fiction writing.  Fiction is a performing art.  Fiction writing is brought to professional levels and standards only by practice against a clock, against a deadline, or in competition.

That's the good thing in the nanowrimo exercise.  Many people need "pressure" in an open forum, a classroom atmosphere, a newspaper's bullpen, or a filmmaker's pitch session to perfect these skills.  Others master the skill set faster in private, and alone. 

Most fiction-writer personalities actually do better in solitude -- at least up to a point.

So we are seeing a variety of these online open, public forum exercise halls appearing where creative people practice their skills.  This crop of online trained writers will be the top tier of the profession within then next 20 years or so, the core of their career building years.

But the participants in such open exercises where they obsesses on words-by-the-day output as being "writers" will also be the occupants of the bottom tier of always-rejected writers.  Those will be the folks who practiced their errors until their brains had literally incorporated the errors into their synapses and no further lessons can fix their errors.

Since the measure of professional success is $$$ income, which is caused by words-by-the-day output goals being met, and all the books on writing craft come to the same bottom line -- a million words for the garbage can before you produce anything worth selling -- how do you avoid ingraining errors?

I've seen careers go both ways -- each successive published novel a vast improvement over the last, or each successive novel repeating the same errors. 

What can a beginning writer learn that can prevent that from happening to them?

That may be the wrong question.  Let's phrase it another way. 

Where can a beginning writer find out how to write fast?  And just how fast is the right speed?

Back to the model of writing that Alma Hill taught me.  Writing is a performing art.  So look to the training processes in performing arts to find the best model for mastering novel writing at the professional level.

Look at the training of little girls in ballet class -- then look at a Master Class at the New York Ballet.

Look at a little boy's first violin lessons -- then look at the "lessons" taken by a member of the Philadelphia Philharmonic.

Look at piano lessons for 6th grader -- then look at jazz pianists jamming.

Is the measure of professional ballet dancing how fast you can dance?  Well, yes and no.

Must a violinist play fast to earn money at it?  Yes, and no. 

What makes the difference between the amateur performer and the professional? 

It's not the actual speed with which they do the performance but how fast they are able to understand instructions and produce what is required on the first try.

A professional actor comes onstage with a troupe from a High School, knows the whole play from having done it dozens of times, looks around the stage, sees the taped on marks for the actors, asks the director a few questions, listens carefully, then just does the performance -- with precision, effortlessly.

"Effortlessly" is the key -- as I learned from Robert Heinlein's characters, sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation.

How do you get to where you can project the seemingly effortless performance of something which is inherently difficult?  Repetition. Practice.

But what exactly do you practice and how?  Does just doing it over and over produce that ability?

Think of the ballet mistress drilling a professional troupe.  She walks among them as they do routine stretches and moves, jogs an elbow here, prods a knee there, lines them up, pokes a chin, scolds for a sour expression -- correcting and correcting their errors and never letting them practice an error, not by a fraction of an inch.

That's what editors do for writers. 

It's feedback.  Writers can't get it from readers because "the book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote."  Reading is a very personal experience, a creative experience, a unique experience.  A good story can be reread many times, and become a classic down the generations, because if there are none of those "errors" the ballet mistress corrects, the performance is "effortless" and the reader can't see the writer at all.

Each time the reader reads that book, the book is different because the reader has changed. 

The editor, on the other hand, is not reading subjectively but objectively.  The editor's job is to judge the work by how well it conforms to its trope, to its genre signature. 

See my series of 7 posts on editing.  Here is #7 with links to the previous ones.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

Training in writing as a ballet dancer trains in ballet, or a violinist, pianist, actor, singer, football player or martial artist trains, will allow the writer to produce product at an optimum rate to allow the product to change with the reader.

The trick is to train under supervision, not just do the same thing doggedly over and over. 

What Events like nanowrimo and the "games" suggested on the blog entry I found on twitter lack is that kind of feedback from supervision that a ballet mistress or voice coach provides, immediate correction, immediate discipline.  The immediacy, the interruption of the move to reposition precisely, causes the training to be effective.

Haven't you wondered why working professional actors go to "voice lessons"?  Surely after all these years, they don't need "lessons."

They aren't "lessons" -- nothing to learn.  They are training, with instant correction of errors to prevent the ingraining of the error. 

"But," you may be thinking, "there is no wrong way to write, no wrong way to tell a story!"

That's true.  There is no wrong story, and no two writers achieve their end-product via the same path.  In fact, any given writer will choose a different path for different works. 

But just as music has a structure which is innate in the structure of the universe, so too fiction has a structure which is innate in the structure of the universe -- which is fine, because each human being is a unique bit of the structure of the universe (very possibly containing the whole universe, too).

Yes, Chinese musical scales differ (markedly) from European scales - mid-Eastern scales - etc.  But each scale works in its own way from the mathematics behind sound. 

Many musicians grow up playing and then composing music "by ear" -- having internalized the scale they're familiar with so they create with it.  Many writers, likewise, fall right into storytelling effortlessly, by sheer talent.  Emotion is to storytelling as sound is to music.  There are 7 cardinal emotions behind the structure of fiction, just as there are 7 tones in an octave (two do's, different but the same).  Some of us are born with a Talent for seeing those 7 emotions, others not. (this is a sub-set of the Chakras and we have to talk about Chakras and Cardinal Emotions together with how a writer can use language to stimulate the reader's Chakras, but that's a tiny bit off topic today.)

Other writers have to learn, and then train, to be able to produce their stories for a wide market.  Even the talented have to train to make the top tier of worldclass performers in the scales of emotion.

So how do you train? 

#1) you learn - you find out what you must do, get it into your head what the objective is.

You do that by reading blogs like this one, lots of books on writing, reading about writing, and then reading a whole lot from the field you want to write in and analyzing as I've shown you in previous blogs.  And of course, you construct your business model.

#2) you practice - you train in your dojo every day, morning, noon, and night, and in between. 

That means you write, just as a would-be violin soloist for a Philharmonic orchestra or a beginning opera star would practice. Six to eight hours a day, you practice. 

And just what is the secret to practicing an instrument?

Tempo.  That's it in a word, tempo.

First you go very slowly, striking each note with careful, precise deliberation.  But not unevenly -- in tempo.  The spaces between the notes, the silences, are as meaningful as the sound in forming the ultimate product, the song, the poetry of emotion.  So you start by striking those notes.

In fact, you learn to touch-type and become speedy at it the same way.  Careful, singular, deliberate strikes, one plodding strike at a time, but in the correct rhythm.  Go slowly enough that you can do it accurately.

Once you have the basic process down, one note after another, you do it again and again, nice and even, but with a relentless BEAT -- you make a mistake, you don't stop, you just plonk right onwards.  Next time through, you focus on that missed-spot and you hit it, staying in tempo.  And then again, and again, until you get it right.  If you stop every time you make a mistake, you learn to make a mistake right there and stop.  It ruins the performance.  So you play through the mistake, and plod on. 

If you try the nanowrimo too soon in your mastery, you'll fail because you aren't ready for full speed.  It's just like martial arts training - you get fast by going slow. 

Gradually, you pick up the tempo, but not so much that the speed makes you make mistakes.  And you do it at that speed until you don't make mistakes.  Then you pick up the tempo, and do it again and again.  Then faster.

Once you've learned a number of songs that way, you begin to find that the next one you learn is easier to learn.

Now a "song" in music is like a "genre" in fiction -- a song, a piece, a symphony, a quartet, and so on -- each has a structure, a protocol, an appeal based on expectations.  In dance, choreography has "composition" -- (competitive figure skating too) -- each type of artform has its "rules" comprised of the elements that have been successful with large audiences.

Becoming a professional writer is just like becoming a professional musician able to play "requests" at a party, or an audition for a movie, or to be in the orchestra at a circus performance.  Yes it takes practice, but you must not practice your mistakes.  Speed is not the objective.  Just because you can play it fast doesn't mean you played it well.  The "speed" the professional has that the amateur doesn't have lies in the ability to do new things as easily and proficiently as doing old things. 

That "speed" comes from spending one's whole work-day on just this one skill, acquiring, practicing UNDER SUPERVISION so errors get corrected before they get ingrained, teaching, and performing -- a whole life focused on this one skill. 

That's why you must get paid for your work -- because there's no time to do anything else, no strength or attention.

To get paid, you don't write a certain quota of words per day, you write the appropriate amount at the appropriate tempo for this performance.  Professionalism allows you to judge what is "appropriate" in each instance and be right -- because your very life depends on that judgement.  If you're wrong, you don't get paid and can't buy food.

Trust me, money sharpens the judgement remarkably.

Look at the career of Johnston McCulley -- historical yes, and in an era with a slightly different business model than we can use today -- but well worth learning from:




----------FROM "Tales of Thubway Tham" Wildside Press 2011 on Kindle ----------

Johnston McCulley will be forever famous as the creator of Zorro, the Robin Hood-like hero of old California. But few realize how truly prolific and creative McCulley was throughout his long career as a writer. McCulley (1883-1958) made first true specialist in pulp-fiction periodical, Detective Story Magazine, a special home for his work. In its pages he launched series after series . . . The Avenging Twins (who appeared in a series of eight adventures between 1923 and1926), the Black Star (fourteen stories from 1916-1930), The Crimson Clown (seventeen stories from 1926-1931), The Man in Purple (three stories in 1921), The Spider (eleven stories between1918 and 1919), Terry Trimble (four stories between 1917 and 1919), The Thunderbolt (three stories between 1920 and 1921) but most especially Thubway Tham (who appeared in more than one hundred and eighty stories between 1916 and 1948, at first in Detective Story Magazine, but later in such places as Thrilling Detective, with later reprints in The Saint Mystery Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and others). The Thubway Tham series, you will note,starts before and lasts longer than all of McCulley’s other mystery series combined! Clearly Tham was a favorite character, one to whom the author returned time and again.

Thubway Tham is a small, short-tempered gnome of a man, a professional pickpocket with an annoying lisp. But he is no mere thief . . . he is the king of his chosen profession, a master “dip” who works only in the subways of New York City. Like all such villains, he faces a cunning adversary in Police Detective Craddock, who is always half a pace behind. Craddock has sworn to put Tham behind bars, where he belongs. But Tham is clever enough to always remain one step ahead of Craddock and everyone else.

Johnston McCulley; John Betancourt. Tales of Thubway Tham (Kindle Locations 48-50).
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There are echoes of the pulp era business model with the advent of e-publishing, Indie publishers and self publishing.  The similarities may far outweigh the differences, so study the careers of famous writers of that era for how they learned and honed their craft.

Nanowrimo is trying to simulate that pulp era honing, and may just be the tonic you need to get you going and keep you going.  But remember the ballet mistress training already famous professional ballerinas, pounding her cane and shouting ONE-TWO-THREE-ELBOWS OUT CHIN IN - FOUR FIVE!

Improv has a lot to be said for it, but as with acting, it's more a matter of with whom you improv than what you improv.

If you can find an elderly Johnston McCulley to watch you write, smack your jutting elbows and elevate your chin and remind you to smile while you type, you may find these online exposures to writing/pacing well worth while.

Just remember success isn't counted by a certain number of words per day but by the appropriate number of words per project.

You want to earn the title true specialist in the e-book world?  Practice, practice, practice performing your art.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com