Is it Wrong to Expect Readers to be Active Participants in the Story?

Happy Thursday! Today, we're gonna talk about description, how it might impact the reader, and what authors might or might not expect from the consumer. Ready? Grab your coffee or tea, and let's get going!

So, I'm on the phone yesterday with an author friend of mine, and we got into talking about what we expect from our readers. Both of us agreed that we write with the assumption that the person picking up the book has a brain and understands the basics of the world they live in.

For example: If you say someone walks into a bedroom, do you need to write out to the reader that there's a bed, or is that something you can expect them to infer by telling them it's a bedroom?

Several writers will go into great detail about the room's furniture, but those machinations are usually reserved for the times that it matters, right? Say, if there's something "off" about the decor, or if the bed is an antique and should be admired for a moment. Even if the scene calls for a description to tell the reader it's a male's room or a sex cave, that's okay. But if the character is just walking into a bedroom, is it really necessary to bog the reader down with minute details right off the bat?

Here are some other ways to work those details into the story without having an information dump--again, unless the character is actively admiring, or scrutinizing, the decor:

• As the person is active in the room, they run their hands over things like the brocade on the chaise lounge.
• When they tell someone else to sit, it could be noted they made the choice of where to place the person based on potential comfort level.
• If the character lies on the bed naked, the satin sheets could feel cool on the skin.
• While they're being made to wait, they can then notice one thing about the room and scrutinize it to give their brain a distraction.

There are several ways of describing a room's contents without going into infodump mode, as you can see above. Unless you're actively trying to slow the story down, is it really necessary to tell the reader everything that's in a common room (bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen, etc...)?

I think, perhaps, we should give our readers a little credit and assume they have brains in their heads. If I read that someone is sitting at the bar in the kitchen, I have a pretty good idea of what that room will look like.

I've gone into description and when it's useful in this post, and I went into how to paint the scene in this post. If you're looking to heighten tension with description, here's a post I wrote a while back that breaks it down (this post also compares showing and telling).

What do you think? Do you expect a more active participation from your readers, or do you spoon feed them all the things?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Shying Away in Your Writing

Happy Wednesday, good people of the blogosphere! Wow! It's hump day. We're halfway to the weekend and have a ton of awesome stuff done already, right? Well, you have just two more days until you get a couple off to lounge around and soak up some sun (don't forget your sunscreen!). Today, I'm gonna be talking about those hard to write scenes and why you should write what you feel; not what you think your readers want to read. Ready? Grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going.

As you probably know, I review a good number of books here on the blog (at least twelve a year by Indies, and that number tends to go up as my favorite authors - both Indie and Traditionals - release new works). One thing I notice in the books I read is the author holding themselves back from writing a scene that may seem too graphic for their audience. No, I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about violence, gore, and death.

If you're writing Young Adult, you do have to keep it toned down. That's not the genre I'm talking about here. However, you may reconsider your target audience if you come upon a scene you know will launch your story into a whole other realm. You feel me?

Most writers I know see the story take shape in their head as they put the words on the page. Things happen, characters act in their own way, and unexpected situations arise. Remember: A book isn't prime-time television, and you can write what you're seeing in the moment.

Let your fingers communicate what's in your head. If you see it on your inner-movie reel, put it on the page.

I can't stress this enough.

Here's some examples of lead-ups to scenes that you may shy away from writing:
Tiffany spun around the dark room; her eyes searching in the inky blackness for a visual to accompany the sounds her ears were picking up. Shuffling, grunts, and heavy breathing assaulted her most active sense. Arms out, she waves her hands through the air like she's swimming. Her heart is pounding, and she can smell metal. Something hard, cold, and rough is found. A wall. It must be a wall. Feeling her way along, she finds what she hoped for and pushes the switch to the on position. As the light fills the space, and her eyes adjust, her hands fly up to cover her mouth and muffle the scream building behind her lips.

Now, this can be a myriad of things:

• People being eaten
• A group of men ready to attack her
• A group of women ready to attack her
• Zombies
• Vampires
• Rats
• Giant spiders
• Clowns

I think you get the idea. Whatever happens next, you've built up that tension for a reason. Readers are waiting for what Tiffany is surprised by. Give it to them, and don't be shy. Go into detail about what she sees, smells, hears, feels, and tastes. If she's murdered, go into how. Torture? Give it raw. Write it exactly as you see it in your head.

Clark walked through the flower field, letting his hands graze the soft tops of the tall blooms. A breeze tickled the back of his neck and caused the tiny hairs there to stand on end. He's lost with thoughts of Delia to pay too much attention to the fact that the sun is setting, but the clearing is getting brighter by the moment. His ears pick up a whisper on the wind, and he freezes in place. Delia fades from his mind as a beautiful woman steps from the treeline and holds out her arms to him. Icy puffs of breath come from his mouth as it falls open. Heat spreads through his body as he takes in her form, and his fingers twitch to touch her alabaster skin--around which long, black hair twists and flows like a silk sheet in the breeze. Red lips that need no lipstick, blue eyes the color of the clear sky, and a Romanesque nose sized to perfection all beckon to him with promises of fantasies come true. If only he'll step into those open arms.

Again, you can take this in a million directions:

• Death by haunting vixen
• A quest
• Ghostly encounters
• Witches
• Vampires
• Myth and Lore

You get the picture, eh? Again, this is a tense scene. You've told your reader something big is coming because you've painted with your words. Bring it on. Don't leave them hanging and frustrated. Go where the wind takes you (hey, there's another idea!).

What I'm trying to get across here is: Don't let the audience dictate what you put on the page. If you end up with a novel geared toward an older, more mature audience, let it go. However, if you think Clark will end up whisked away to a land of fantasy and the story is supposed to start there, let it be so. But if another idea strikes you, let it come out. Write it two ways if you must and choose your favorite.

Whatever you do, don't shy away from the gore, death, or violence if the story calls for it. I'd be willing to bet that your YA brain already went with a quest (if that's what you write). Listen to your inner writer.

Have you ever ended up with a book totally different from the idea you began writing?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

On Writing Scenes

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! Today I'm gonna talk about writing scenes. If you remember, a while back I wrote a post on Showing vs Telling, When Telling is Okay. If you haven't checked that post out, I invite you to do so now. One of the comments that popped up on that post was a question by another writer about specific examples of how to use this technique. Well, grab your pens and notebooks and let's get going!

A collection of scenes in a novel are what bring the story together. Image a spiderweb where each thread is heading toward a central location (your epic ending). Choose one or two of those threads and follow them inward. Now, everywhere they meet at a cross-thread is where a scene occurs. Notice how those scenes gain in number as they reach the central core.

As your characters meander toward that center, there are what I'll call sections of Getting There Prose. These sections aren't intense and the reader gets a good sense of who your character is by what they're doing between scene A and scene B. Sitting and drinking coffee, for example. In these scenes, you're giving your reader a little break from the tension and action. They're also commonly used to lead into the next rise in momentum.

Here's the key: Leave out description. Dull down the five senses ever so slightly.

If Joan is sitting and drinking coffee with her bud Lisa, Joan can look over and notice the girl appears tired without going into a long description of how she looks tired.

Example of telling:
Joan blew the steam off her coffee and looked at Lisa, noticing the dark circles under her eyes. "Girl, you look exhausted."
"I am." She nodded and slumped.

That's dialogue to cut out description and give a coasting feeling to the scene. Your reader expects light conversation to follow and friendly terms.

Let's go the other way. Say this coffee scene isn't what it appears to be. Joan is poisoning Lisa.

Example of showing:
Joan blew the steam off her coffee, inhaling the heady scent of the special Colombian beans she ordered for this encounter, hoping it was strong enough to cover the distinctive almond of the arsenic. She tilted her head up slowly, peering over the rim at her adversary, noting the dark circles under Lisa's eyes and the way she gripped her cup with both hands. "Girl, you look exhausted." It was difficult for Joan to keep her tone light because of the nervous energy radiating through her limbs. Blinking rapidly, she gave a wan smile.
"I am," Lisa croaked out, slumping in her chair and letting out a huge breath in a whoosh. She pushed her too-hot ceramic cup back and stood.

Now, you've engaged all the senses. Smell: coffee, Sight: Lisa's dark circles, Sound: light tone and whoosh, Taste: almond, Touch: too-hot and nervous energy. This is also a place where you don't want to describe the room around them. You should've already put that picture in the reader's head before the ladies ever sat down. When you use description leading up to a tense scene like this, use short sentences. It indicates something's coming.

You've pumped up the scene and the reader expects what?

Either A) For Joan to go bananas because Lisa didn't drink the poisoned coffee, or B) For Joan to pretend to be friendly and hide her anger while trying to get Lisa to drink the coffee.

Either way, it's gonna be a tense situation. We've made it so. Can you cut a lot of that description and get to the same place? Yeah, but the tension is lost.

Example:
Joan blew on her coffee, waiting for Lisa to take a sip of the arsenic-laced concoction. "Girl, you look exhausted."
"I am." Lisa slumped and let out a breath before pushing her cup away and standing.

Same outcome. You know something should happen afterward but the resulting action won't have the same punchy effect on your reader. You haven't built up the tension quite enough.

To fill your novel with scenes that show everything all the time, you're reader will either get too hyped up or they'll start skimming. Skimming is bad. It means your reader has disengaged from your story. Very few writers can pull off a book like Dean Koontz's Intensity.

Remember to vary your sentences and your word usage. Not sure how to do that? I wrote a post on Variation, too. If you missed it, check it out.

Don't forget to pay my featured author of the week a visit! N.L. Greene, author of the highly rated book Twisted, graced me with an interview. You can find that post here.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Are you familiar with this writing technique?

Next week, I'm going into how to use MS Word to rate your book's tension. Betcha didn't know you could do that, huh? So, come on back for that.

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo