Tag: fiction writing techniques

Novel Basics Online

The online version of my Novel Basics class starts here and on Facebook tomorrow, March 27, 2020.  Here’s an introduction.

 

Novel Basics Online Class
How to Brainstorm a Novel with 20 Index Cards

I know you’re out there. I’ve met you in some way or another.

Maybe you’re the less than confident young woman in an online group I belong to who wants to start your coming-of-age novel about growing up in the Ozarks amid the opioid crisis, but you don’t quite know how to do that.

You could be a short story writer intimidated by the sheer size of a novel.

Or maybe you’re the man I talked to at a local authors fair who always meant to get back to that novel you started twenty years ago, but now it sits hidden in a drawer at home.

Perhaps you tried to write a 50,000-word novel during a National Novel Writing Month event, but you didn’t make it all the way through.

Or you did finish and now you have the diploma declaring you a NaNoWriMo winner, but you don’t know what to do next.

Let’s say that you’re the author of a brilliant, well-received first novel who can’t get that sophomore effort together.

You could be a best-selling author on a tight schedule who needs to get cracking on the next book in your series.

Or you’re the author of a best-selling series for which you still have a ton of ideas, but a notion for a brand new book or series has crept into your head, and it’s so strong that it wakes you up in the middle of the night. Still, before you commit, you’d like to explore it.

Maybe you’re writing a nonfiction book about yourself growing up or a shocking event that happened in your hometown, but you’re thinking the book might be better as a novel, so you can distance yourself from the material emotionally and have more latitude with facts.

Maybe you’re like me. You have several completed novels in your file cabinet that you could never get an agent or publisher interested in, so you gave up on those projects. Possibly taking a little time to explore one of those will help you decide if it’s worthwhile for you to go back to it.

Or maybe you don’t fit into any of these slots I’ve mentioned, but still you’re like the rest of us. You’ve got an idea sparked by that powerful question “What if?” that keeps bugging you, an itch you’d like to scratch at least a little bit.

Maybe you’re not a writer. Instead, you’re an avid fiction reader who would like to learn more about the novel so you can sharpen your insights into the selections you discuss at your book club.

Regardless, I’m thinking that my method using twenty 3” by 5” index cards will help you to brainstorm your novel or study someone else’s. There’s no time like the present . . . So get your cards and join me here tomorrow or on Facebook at http://facebook.com/JulietKincaidauthor2016

If you prefer to go faster than a card a day, you can buy the Novel Basics book available in print from Amazon and as an eBook for only $2.99  at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K2LXFRP

Helen MacInnes’ Snare of the Hunter

Classic Romantic Suspense

I can in no way fault Helen MacInnes’ Snare of the Hunter, originally published in 1974 and republished last year along with some of her other spy thrillers.

Though forty years old, the book doesn’t feel dated. Sure, characters must drive to the nearest village to make critical phone calls instead of whipping out their mobile phones. But cells probably wouldn’t work in the Swiss Alps which provide a majestic setting and challenging winding roads to Irina Kusak, who has escaped Czechoslovakia and her ex-husband Jiri Hradek, an ambitious official in that country. He has let Irina go, so she can lead him to her father. A renowned writer who defected to the West some time before, Jaromir Kusak now has written a novel that threatens to reveal Hradek’s most guarded secrets.

David Mennery, an American music critic with a good excuse to be in the neighborhood, agrees to help Irina escape to the West. Years before, Irina and he met in Prague and fell in love, a match thwarted by Irina’s mother, then a high official in Czechoslovakia.

This novel has well-drawn, realistic characters and a well-paced, plausible plot. No 007-style goons or high speed chases here, but the suspense kicks in at the end of Chapter 1 when someone who has helped Irina leave her home country dies. The suspense remains pretty constant throughout the book.

Besides getting caught up in the story, I admired MacInnes’s deft management of viewpoint. Though MacInnes presents much of the story from Irina and David’s perspectives (fairly standard in romantic suspense), she also incorporates the perspective of several other characters. In my own fiction, I tend to play it safe with point of view by sticking to one narrator, whether by the intimate first person perspective (“I”) or by the more removed third (“he” or “she”) throughout a story or book.

When I taught Creative Writing, I used to warn my students about “head hopping,” that is, shifting abruptly from one character’s perspective to another. I also advised them to place any shift at the start of a scene or chapter. MacInnes does that when she ends the first chapter in Irina’s perspective and opens the second chapter from David’s perspective. But in Chapter 4, inside the third paragraph, MacInnes slips out of David’s head and into the head of the flight attendant taking their drink orders. I didn’t get at all lost, though, or even jarred because of MacInnes’ smooth, skillful transition.

What does MacInnes accomplish by doing this? Well, it’s awkward to have a character describe himself. (He knows what he looks like.) So handily, the flight attendant observes David and speculates about him. We readers can feel smug because we know the answers to her silent questions. This immerses us farther into the story.

Later in the plot when the perspective shifts occasionally into a bad guy’s head, we feel the suspense a great deal because we know the dangers that lie in front of Irina and David as they flee through the towering grandeur of the Swiss Alps.

(I really liked the setting cluttered with the tourists, oblivious to the perils around them, who innocently visit those ruined castles and picturesque views.)

Even after the forty years since it first appeared, Snare of the Hunter still thrills.

 

 

The Hunger Name Games

Naming Characters Can Be Hard

When I joined an online fiction writers group some time ago, the current topic of discussion was naming characters. I identified with this since I had a terrible time naming a set of characters in Walls, a Cinderella, P. I. Novel. I won’t say who they are precisely but here’s a hint: there are seven of them and they’re all extremely short. Initially I gave them names that alluded to these characters as presented in the first Disney full-length animated feature. But I worried through several drafts that the Disney lawyers would not consider this fair use and would sue me up side and down the other for copyright infringement. So I finally decided I had to revise the names and also the characters of my little seven.

But how?

Suzanne Collins supplied the answer to my question in the thoughtful, systematic, evocative way she named the places and characters of The Hunger Games. Character names also suggest things about the nature of the characters and often hint at the roles they’ll take in the plot.

Effie Trinket, who escorts Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark to the Capitol for the games, has a downright satirical name that reminds this English major of Mr. Thwackum and Squire Allworthy of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. She could hardly be more aptly named. Doll-like, superficial, and artificial with her pink wig and heavy make-up, she counts for very little in the overall world of the Hunger Games.

Overall, the names of girls and women in The Hunger Games resonate with meaning and portent. And often they arise from nature. In our world the plant katniss doesn’t exist, but in the world of the Hunger Games, it’s a healing herb. The last name Everdeen reminds us of evergreen, a kind of tree that’s always alive and green. What better name than Katniss Everdeen for the savior of her world? Katniss’s little sister Prim’s name evokes that character’s innocence. Her full name of Primrose evokes her sweetness. The tribute from District 11 is named Rue, which is a healing herb in our world, but the character’s name also evokes her rueful end.

The names for men are evocative, too, especially that of Katniss’s fellow tribute from District 12: Peeta Mellark. Presumably Peeta is derived from Peter, but it’s pronounced “pita” as in the Greek bread. Peeta is the son of a baker who earlier saved Katniss’s life by letting her have some bread when she and her family almost starved.

Katniss and Peeta’s mentor, the drunken Haymitch Abernathy, doesn’t have an out and out symbolic name. Yet his name evokes the strong Scots stock that populated Appalachia in the 18th century. And as a West Virginian born and bred, I must remind you of my home state’s motto: “Montani semper liberi.” Mountaineers are always free. Take that, you decadent Capitol citizens.

Many of the men from the Capitol have names that allude to ancient Romans, for example, Seneca Crane, the game designer, and Caesar Flickerman, the television host. (His last name perfectly evokes the flickering screen images that Panem citizens watch during the games.) These names make us recall ancient Romans with their cruel and bloody gladiatorial games. At least Roman gladiators were grown-ups trained to fight instead of children aged 12 through 18 chosen by lottery without consideration of their abilities to defend themselves and survive.

Speaking of Panem, I’ll do a little riff on place names. “Pan-” as a prefix means “all,” suitable for a nation’s name, but in The Hunger Games series, Panem is a country in which the individual identities of its states and regions have been replaced by nondescript Districts and numbers, from the rather privileged District 1, source of luxury goods, through the ill-fated District 13, destroyed many years earlier. Panem also alludes to “panem et circenses” or the bread and circuses with which the leaders of ancient Rome soothed the populace.

Coriolanus Snow, President of Panem, is very aptly named for the ancient Roman leader accused of robbing the populace of their bread. And while his last name comes from nature, Snow is a cold, mindless, harsh force.

You probably thought I’d forgotten Gale Hawthorne, Katniss Everdeen’s fellow hunter and confidant. But really his name provides an excellent example of Suzanne Collins’s systematic and thoughtful naming of the characters in The Hunger Games. His last name evokes one of America’s greatest writers, but also the sweet-smelling flowering shrub hawthorn, that has lots of thorns. Furthermore, his first name Gale evokes another mindless, powerful force. As you read Catching Fire and Mockingjay, you’ll be wise to keep an eye on Gale Hawthorne.

And so, with Suzanne Collins’ excellent examples in mind, I finally resolved my difficulties naming my short characters in Walls, a Cinderella, P. I. Novel.

Seven? I asked myself. What else has seven? I wondered. Well, duh, the days of the week. And for that–oh joy! We have a popular nursery rhyme. And so my little people became members of the same family, got names or nicknames and at least one character trait apiece. The oldest is Moon, “fair of face” in spite of being extremely overweight. Next comes Toot, “full of grace,” especially with his hands. Wednesday’s child, “full of woe,” is Mopey, an epic poet always moaning and groaning about his work. (As a writer, I really identify with Mopey.) Thursday’s child is Thor, who has “far to go” because he’s completely deaf. His twin sister Frieda, the tiniest of the seven, is “loving and giving.” Saturday’s child Whip “works hard for a living.” As the mining company foreman he makes sure the others work hard, too. And finally Sunny, born on the Sabbath Day, is “bonny and blithe and good and gay,” that is, he has a really sunny, upbeat personality.

You can get to know these characters even better by reading Walls, a Cinderella, P. I. Novel now available through Amazon.com as a Kindle eBook (www.amazon.com/dp/B00FQLQ2WI) or a trade paperback (ISBN 978-0-9899504-1-1).

And I’m very pleased to announce that Cinderella, P. I. and Other Fairy Tale Mystery Stories is now available as a Kindle eBook featuring Cinderella, P. I. in SIX NEW STORIES, twelve stories altogether, “twenty years, three kids, and a few extra pounds after the ball.” Buy it for only $2.99 at www.amazon.com/dp/B00GMMUSTI.