Making readers feel

So I had this epiphany.

It was too cold for me to work up the nerve to get our of bed to write, so I lay there, not thinking about my WIP, but thinking about a novel I'm reading for my work's book club. This isn't something I normally would have chosen for myself, but it was the first non-nonfiction book they'd chosen AND it was YA. As I lay there, analyzing it, I started to think about this one point where the main character is really just a jerk to the love interest. He doesn't intend to be--he's dealing with his own feelings about what's happening to his love--but he's being a jerk nonetheless, and he's really making me not like him.

I began thinking about why I felt so strongly against him. Here was a character that had been engineered for readers to like, and up until this point I had. Then I got it. It was because his girl needs him, and the more she needs him, the more he backs off. He can't deal with the stress--I get that--but that doesn't mean I need to like it.

Usually, when I read while I'm writing, I go through this phase of hating my own writing, a phase of insecurities so large that it backs my own manuscript into something black and deep. But then it hit me. I want my readers to think my main character is a jerk, too. I've always known this, and just yesterday I was speaking with someone about how I feel my WIP is falling short in this way. It's not as powerful as I want it to be.

So ready for the epiphany?

I could use this author's technique, tailor it to fit my novel, and make my readers feel the way I want them to. Why hadn't I thought of this before? There are a million excellent novels out there. Instead of letting them make me feel insecure, I should really focus on how they make me so invested in their characters.

I'm not talking about mimicking them or turning my novel into something tropey. The last thing I want is a pile of pages about mysterious boys and average girls. I'm talking about really discovering what these successful authors do to make their readers feel, analyzing it, and then looking for that thing in my novel, the thing that will make my readers feel, too.

On Seeds of Ideas and Outlines

This weekend, I was asked, "When you started writing LitD, did you do any prewriting or note taking or any system for organizing your ideas first? Or did you just jump write in and start writing? I only ask because...I started getting little seeds for a novel...trying to figure out a way to develop turning those seeds into a basic plot line is sort of tough right now. So I just wondered how you started out initially in the planning/writing process."

This is actually something I talked to the hubby about recently. Those of you who follow me on twitter and Facebook know I've been working on another novel, which I have tentatively titled WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL. It's a **very** fictionalized version of my life growing up on the farm. I was telling  my hubby that I'm having a harder time plotting it than I did LitD. His response was, "Well, LitD was inspired, right? This one is more...work." And it's true. LitD was the story I had to tell because it wouldn't leave me alone until I told it. I did minimal plotting. My characters introduced themselves to me and--it sounds cliche--they made everything in my novel happen.

That's not to say there wasn't any pre-writing. It took me a wicked long time to learn my MC Celia. Unlike the other characters, she had to spend much more time explaining herself. It look me somewhere between 3,000 to 5,000 words (which eventually all got cut) so I could get to get to know her. You know, this. I already wrote about it here.

The funny thing is I hadn't a plot in mind when I started writing LitD. I had a setting. I knew I wanted Celia in the Woods, but that was it. To me, the Woods would be where Celia came of age. So at first there was this big empty gap from the first fifteen pages until she got to the Woods. It wasn't until she spent some time in the Woods that I finally figured out a way for her to get there.

I tend to be organized. I like lists. Except, none of those propensities came out when I wrote LitD. I never once thought I'd be a "pantser" when it came to writing a book. Even by the time I got to the final chapters of LitD, I hadn't known exactly how it would end. When I wrote the last page, I was in disbelief. Could LitD possibly be over?

Now that I'm working on WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL, I'm finding that each time I attempt to plot, it gets lost, and the writing doesn't come as naturally. I've got about 20,000 words written, but right now their basic sketches of the characters instead of plot. My working outline has changed a lot since I originally started it. It's still very much taking shape.

WINTER was similar to what the person who asked me this question posed. It started with two sentences; I started to explore them. That's how I discovered Sarah (although, I might change her name). I took the two lines--"She rolled over to check if the milk was frozen. It was."--and played with the scene the two lines offered me. After I had about 3 pages typed, I changed it to first person and saw what happened. I liked it better. I had to alter some things, but it felt more genuine. Then I wrote some more, and as I kept writing, I kept slipping into first person present. So I went back and changed it to that. 

Each time I did this, I'd get this little nubbin of an idea of who Sarah is and what her world entails. I keep getting a better sense of plot. My current manuscript has all those pieces scattered between paragraphs and chapters and added to the end. Sometimes they're just lines that I've since elaborated upon, and sometimes they're tiny bits of plot. 

I wrote this way with LitD, but with LitD it felt more organized, less fragmented. I'm definitely not organized with WINTER, and it's certainly fragmented. I only have a couple scenes that have transitions into other scenes. I'm still learning about Sarah's life. I've got a good idea what I want to have happen to her, but I haven't made it "fit" yet.

I guess the whole thing I've learned so far is that I'm a pantser. I can't seem to stick to an outline; I prefer to let my characters decide what's going to happen. When I do that, the writing feels more natural. And hey, if it feels that way, it's gotta come across that way in my writing, right?

#6 Critique Partner Series - Author's Voice

I am in no way a professional.  I don't have a fancy education to back up writing (that is reserved for mathematics), but I do know what I like to read and I do know when I read something that doesn't quite jive for me.  So WELCOME to my CRITIQUE PARTNER SERIES!  It is minus the partner, because I don't actually know any of the writers whose work I am reading, but here I will offer my advice.  Much of my advice you can find everywhere else on the internet.  None of it is professional.  All of it is...I can't think of anything to finish this sentence with.  I liked the whole "Much of it, none of it, all of it" thing I had going on at the start of each sentence, but I'm far too lazy to spend time thinking how to end that sentence, especially when this is only a blog developed for my personal enjoyment.  Tally ho!


#6 Critique Partner Series – Author’s Voice

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.  It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex (Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre, Chapter XII).

Why you may ask—or maybe you don’t—do I begin this week’s post with a quote from Jane Eyre?  Those who know me also know this is my favorite novel.  They know I have read it nine times and that throughout high school and college I continuously chose to write papers on it.  And those who know me even better, they know I incorporated a passage of it into my wedding vows.   But as much as I love Jane Eyre, I do not love this passage.

Wait!  Before you shoot me and claim all sorts of feminist claims, and before you hate me forever, listen!  It’s not that I don’t like the message.  It’s a very fine message.  Power to women and all that.**  What I don’t like is that this passage is about Brontë and not about Jane.  Think of where we are in the story:  Jane has just entered Thornfield.  She barely knows Mr. Rochester.  She’s seen so little of life.  In fact, Jane is just too naïve at this point in the novel to be this angry.  Brontë breaks into Jane’s character.  She has a message for her readers, and she uses Jane as the podium to relay that message.

It’s going to happen.  As writers, we pour so much of ourselves into each page that, eventually, part of ourselves seeps into our characters as well.  The trick is to make certain when we do it, we do it true to the character.  I know, I know.  It’s presumptuous of me to speak of Literature (with a capital L) in this way, but if Brontë had just waited until after Jane spent some time with St. John—enough that Jane could get good and suppressed—I’d say, “Go ahead!  Preach away, sister!”  It wouldn’t stand out to me as Brontë’s words.  I wouldn’t feel as if I’d been swindled into reading propaganda.

Be aware of your own voice when you write.  If you have a message, go ahead and write it, but only write it if your character is ready for it.  Only write it if it fits in with what your character thinks.  If you don’t, readers (I) will humph and think thoughts like, “Does Brianna really feel this way about the rebel attacks in Alpha Centauri, or is that how you feel?”

**I admit one of my papers was about how Jane needs a man in her life, only she needs one on her own terms.

My question for you:

How do you feel when you recognize the difference between a character’s thoughts and the author’s?  Does it matter to you?