Leave Loose Ends Looser

Some novelists struggle most with the ends of their books, writing multiple drafts—all of which turn out just as crappy as the first. The good news is that the Bests have this same problem. The bad news is that you’ll never finish your book unless you stop trying to make it perfect.

All your creative writing teachers—not to mention your impossible-to-please critique group—have told you once if not a hundred times that you need to tie up those loose ends. And while, for the most part, they’re right, if your readers stick with you till the end, you better give ‘em some answers!

BUT, don’t worry about delivering absolute resolution. If you want readers to be thinking about your message after the last page, then you have to leave them with something to wonder at. Happily Ever After is nice for Disney, but it’s the death of your characters. Readers can easily shelve your novel, and walk away with the empty satisfaction of seeing something to its end.

I’m not saying happy endings can’t be brilliant ends, but Happily Ever After can't. It says “the most important part of my characters’ lives are over and they will do nothing else challenging for the rest of their lives, but they’re happy forever, so it’s okay”. No. That is not okay.

If your book is to have any lasting impact, those loose ends have to be tied with room to slip. Perhaps the bad guy still has too many followers; perhaps the protagonist’s brother died, leaving emotional struggles for him to work through; perhaps they’re still not over what happened in the book but they’re moving on to the best of their ability.

In all of these scenarios, the end of the book is more like the end of a chapter in the protagonist’s life. But what if you don’t want to write a sequel? Okay, don’t. Really, it’s not necessary as long as you've written and ended your story in a way that leaves the reader feeling confident in the protagonist’s ability to handle that future.

Readers want to know that your characters have conquered what they set out to conquer, and that they will be able to take on whatever may come beyond the back cover.

Photo from http://will.koffel.org

The Fine Line

There’s a fine line between telling your readers too much and not enough, and your publisher won’t ask you to pick a side; he’ll tell you to tightrope the thing over Niagara Falls and back.


So how do you, you know, do this impossible task?


Well, you need to take a good hard look at the scene you're writing and ask yourself: If the vein is pulsating visibly in Jack Rager’s head…do I reallyneed to say he’s angry, too? Can’t they see that? Haven’t I shown them enough?? He just punched a mirror for goodness sake! He has shards of glass poking out of his knuckles!—Get the point?


The best way to assure that you’re not explaining too much and your readers can still understand the scene is to describe the physical details vividly. Yes, add some key commentary into the scene, don’t lose your protagonist’s viewpoint, but show, show, show!


If Rager’s pulsing veins and bloody fist aren’t enough, then nothing will satisfy the reader.


Most importantly, remember not to underestimate your reader. Our brains naturally fill in details between the lines. If you tell them Jack Rager was leaving footprints in the dust of the foyer of the abandoned house of St. Holy Lane, then they’ll already be creating the rest of the picture for you. They’ll see the dead rat in the corner, the eerie moonlight exposing a broken chair by the wall and the scratches disappearing beneath the basement door.


Read back through some of your favorite books and see how much detail they provided and compare that with what you were imagining. It’s quite different, you’ll find, and it’s the reason why when we watch the movie interpretations of these same books, we don’t always understand the director’s choice in sets. “Where’s the broken chair?” we ask. “And there shouldn’t be a hallway there; that’s where the hairless cat painting hung!”


In the end, if there’s something we should’ve said or said too much about, it’ll be someone else that catches it. After all, we knew all along that the reason why Jack hated everybody and everything to do with art was because his mother never liked the finger paintings he brought home from preschool, but sometimes we forget that the reader doesn’t also know this, too, and that’s okay.


Leave it to your trusted first reader to pick out these things. By all means, be as proactive as possible. Make checklists and charts and sticky-note reminders, but make sure you let someone else (preferably someone with a background in writing) read it before you waste your time and money on stamps and SASEs.


You can’t catch everything, but two heads are, most certainly, still better than one.

Photo from http://www.abandonedonline.net

Our So-Called Social Life

“Thank God for social networking,” a writer friend said to me recently. “That’s about all the social life I can handle!”

I’m sure your first thoughts were like mine…Oh how sad…Social networking doesn’t really count…SO GLAD I’m not like that…

But if you’re in the midst of writing a new book, as I am, then chances are that you are “like that”. At least for the time being.

To others, it may seem like you’re sacrificing your relationships for a dark room and a laptop. But those of us that write know that that’s not true at all—sometimes we like to write in bright rooms, too!

And even then, we may be spending less time with friends and family, but it’s for their own good!

Imagine, you’ve just stopped in the middle of a chapter—just as your juices were really starting to flow, too!—because Michael and Sally wanted to grab lunch and catch up. This is a hypothetical situation that won’t end well for anyone involved.

You, as the author, will invariably have your mind off in your book, with your characters, in their current predicament, trying not to lose the emotion of the scene or forget to add in that detail you just thought of and—does anyone have a pen? What? No, I just need to make a note on my napkin…What were you saying?

As for Michael and Sally, well, they’ll be having lunchtime conversation with only half of your conscious mind. It’s just not fair to you or them.

Don’t completely shun everyone and lock yourself away until you’re work’s complete—seriously, don’t—but a few lunch dates will have to be surrendered.

True friends and family will still be there at the completion of you book or project, I promise! But for now, thank God for social networking!

Photo from http://www.123rf.com

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The Morning After

(Originally published on July 7, 2012)


Some days we get on a roll, and not the good kind. We put down new scene and dialogue and plot twists and catch phrases and, before we know it, we’ve lost sight of our original story altogether.


Now, I’m not suggesting that your initial vision for your book should or will be exactly what you end up with. Because it shouldn’t and it won’t.


I’m talking about the days when your story starts to head in an entirely different direction, which is completely perfect and just what you’ve always dreamed it would be, until the next morning. And, unfortunately, there’s no morning after pill for a night of bad writing.


So what are you left with? A bright, beaming bundle of “who the heck authored this??” And the worst part? You start getting attached to it. You even kind of love parts of it!


It’s not that you want to keep it. You don’t. But you’ve already put so much time into it and it would really be a shame to erase it entirely. And you know what? I agree.


Something led you to make these changes, to deviate from your original plan. Don’t just ignore them—dissect them! Figure out what prompted you to move away from that plan. How well or not-so-well do these changes fit in with the rest of your book? Which ones have to go? Which ones can still be incorporated?


You’ll never get past your mistakes unless you try to learn from them. Go back and work with this section. Cut and add things until it’s cohesive with the writing so far and consistent with the plot to come.


You can’t discount a single day of work, not when they’re all worth something.

The Double Standard

(Originally published on June 30, 2012)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the double standard in book sales lately. Does it matter whether the protagonist is male or female to you?


There’s nothing strange about a woman reading a novel from the perspective of a boy or man, but suggest a guy read a novel about a girl and expect to receive an insincere promise to “check it out” when he gets the chance. And don’t hold your breath. He probably won't.


A close friend tried to explain it to me, saying “men have different roles then women; they can’t get anything out of a novel by a woman, because it’s not shaped to fit their specific purpose as men.” Well said, I thought, but I had a few questions.


Like isn’t every man’s purpose in life different? And then, could a book be tailored to every man’s different purpose simply because it’s told by a man? And don’t women have specific purposes in life, too? And how, then, are they able to enjoy or learn from any novels about males?


The most respected works of all time (respected by bothsexes) are invariably tales of men. You might disagree, thinking “What about Austen? What about AUSTEN??” But, honestly, how many men have you caught nose deep in Sense and Sensibility or Emma? Very few.


But why should men be interested in the escapades of strong women? I guess, it’s only fair to ask then, why should women care about the battles of brave men?


For a novel to have a shot at reaching the minds of men and women of all ages, does a protagonist need facial hair, or the promise of it?

Photo from http://www.care2.com

Unprofessional Formatting

(Originally published on June 27, 2012)



Now, strictly speaking, formatting doesn’t have an effect on whether a publishing house decides to take on your novel or not. But I’m speaking loosely today.


Submitting an oddly formatted manuscript is a kind of subconscious first strike against you in the evaluating process, while the assessor might deny any conscious disapproval.


Let me be clear, though. I’m not saying that a manuscript in size-eleven font is going to be thrown directly into the no pile. I’m not even sure if there is a physical “no pile” in this digital age.


No, what I’m warning against is putting your entire book in 18-point font, bolded, and italicized with you own page numbers, randomly spaced line breaks, and double spacing your own lines by leaving a blank line between them (as opposed to using the handy-dandy double space tool… which was made for that).


In case you’re wondering, yes, I have actually received a manuscript that looked like this. Still, I didn’t immediately discount it. But did I have a low expectation for an author who couldn’t even keep a consistent font style throughout the entire novel? Certainly.


After adjusting the size, font, and reversing the bolding and italicizes, I finally got the book to the point where it was at least readable. By this time, I have to admit I was slightly put out with the author, but I tried my best to go into the story with an open mind.

It was difficult.


But eventually, I got past the authors specialpagination, which had sentences cutting off erratically, and was able to glimpse a pretty good story and fairly capable writing. I couldn’t recommend the author for traditional publishing, but I suggested the house offer her one of their other publishing options.


The moral of this story isn’t that publishers will pick apart books based on their formatting before considering the actual writing—the truth couldn’t be more opposite. Publishers are looking firstfor potential in debut authors. Although, as an evaluator, I’m asked to consider the professional nature of the submitted work and, for me, wildly altered documents factor into that (at least a smidge).


What I want to impress on you is the importance of keeping the formatting of your manuscripts standard and simple. Let your words and characters speak for themselves. Don’t hide them under special fonts and strange page layouts!


The last thing you want is for an evaluator to have to “get past” your unique idea of a manuscript design in order to unearth your story. Present it to them as a cleanly wrapped gift.

Photo from www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com