Making the Reader Drunk on Words

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“My arms ached, my back was cramped and I was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall. Besides this, the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes. The air was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft.”
THE TIME MACHINE – H.G. Wells

In March, 2012, there was an article in The New York Times – Sunday Review by Anne Murphy Paul, titled, Your Brain on Fiction.  Now, isn’t that a great suggestive title? Fiction as a mind-enhancing drug, one that evokes images of the brain drunk on words. So, what does it mean? Well, I recommend you read the whole article, because it is not only fascinating information (and Knowledge is Power), but to a writer, it can also be used as a guide to improving your own writing. (Click Here for Link to Article)

The excerpt above of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (which I recently re-read and was delighted to see it still held my interest) gives us a example of how to stimulate the reader’s brain with its emotional “actions.”

There is a feeling of movement to the words, texture and emotions of terror.

Ms. Paul’s article talks about research by a team out of Emory University about how the reader’s brain actively reacts to descriptions with textures, touch, a sense of movement and smells. We can truly live vicariously through fictional characters and their longings, frustrations and trials and tribulations. As writers, we need to remember to be conscious of this fact when we are “moving” our characters through the interweaving fabric of our stories.

According to the Ms. Paul’s article, a team of Emory University researchers also reports that …metaphors like “The singer had a velvet voice” and “He had leathery hands” roused the sensory cortex while phrases matched for meaning, like “The singer had a pleasing voice” and “He had strong hands,” did not.

Which brings me to one of my favorite use of a metaphor by an author. It comes from a John Irving’s book, Prayers for Owen Meany. Read it and weep all you writers, for this has to send your sensory cortex into overdrive!

“You’ve seen the mice caught in the mousetraps?” she asked me. “I mean caught – their little necks broken – I mean absolutely dead,” Grandmother said. “Well, that boy’s voice,“ my grandmother told me, “that boy’s voice could bring those mice back to life!”

Obviously, there is only one H.G. Wells, and one John Irving, but we can tear a page from their fiction on how it should be done. I will leave you with an excerpt of a story I’m working on currently. I can only hope it tickles your brain, too.

Big Doofus is usually right, since his coon dog’s snout knows what curdled fear smells like, and surely those escapees stink from it as they push through the brambles, crawl over rocks, twist an ankle in shallow holes and get bitch-slapped by low-slung tree limbs. They always lose their sense of direction, all the time going deeper and deeper into Catalysta Woods. Wheezing hard and bloodied from their efforts, the prey arrives at the Clearing. There is no getting out of the woods.

If you want, please use the comment section to give me a brief example of your own efforts to engage the reader’s imagination.

Writing Advice from Stephen King and Oscar Wilde

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Imagine being in a writing class with Stephen King and Oscar Wilde. What a class that would be….  To get the unique flavor of this unprecedented class, here are some quotes from these authors.


“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde

_____________________________

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing

“This morning, I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.”
― Oscar Wilde

_____________________________

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

_____________________________

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”
― Stephen King

“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”
― Oscar Wilde

_____________________________

“His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.”
― Stephen King

_____________________________

“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”
― Stephen King

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”
― Oscar Wilde

Prototypes and Tributes

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Prototypes for fictional characters come to a writer in many ways. The man who became the basis for Sherlock Holmes was Dr. Joseph Bell, a distinguished Scotch surgeon. Sir Arthur Doyle was a student of Dr. Bell’s at the Edinburgh University school. It was there that he became impressed by Dr. Bell’s remarkable powers of observation and deduction, through which he could diagnose illness almost on sight. Sir Arthur transferred these same abilities to Sherlock Holmes when it came to solving crimes.

We bring all this up because back in December, we did an interview with Naomi Hirahara, author of the Mas Arai series. (click Here for interview) 

The character, Mas was based on her father, who was a gardener, like Mas, (and in fact, his name is her father’s spelled backwards).  Isamu (“Sam”) Hirahara sounds like a remarkable man. He was born in California, but taken to Hiroshima, Japan as an infant. He was only miles away from the epicenter of the atomic-bombing in 1945, yet survived. Shortly after the end of WWII, her father returned to the States, where he went into the gardening and landscaping business in Los Angeles area.

Sam Hirahara knew his daughter had based a character on him. Recently, he passed away peacefully on January 18, 2012 after an prolonged illness at the age of eighty-two in his home.  But thanks to his daughter, he will live on through his daughter’s tribute to him, in Mas Arai, a character who exhibits quiet strength and grace.

Be sure to check out the Mas Arai Facebook page, as we extend our sympathy to Naomi and her family on their loss.

Nancy Ellen Dodd: author of The Writer’s Compass

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A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.
Michelangelo Antonioni

Lazy minds are like Jello, they need a mold for structure and to avoid brain spillage on the floor.
A Writing Primate

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In a few days, the New Year will be upon us: 2012. This is the time for resolutions, right? So, here is an interview to help you with your creative efforts. I’ve asked Ms. Dodd for the interview, because structure has always been a elusive goal for many writers, including myself. Structure as in discipline (write, write, and write), and structure as in building upon an idea into a complete story.

Nancy Ellen Dodd is a writer, university instructor,and an editor with two master’s degrees in writing from the University of Southern California. She currently teaches screenwriting at Pepperdine University and has studied with a number of award-winning authors. Back in May, 2011, she did an interview with Writer’s Digest Magazine. (Click here).

She is the author of The Writer’s Compass: From Story Map to Finished Draft in 7 Stages, which gives ideas/insight on mapping your novel from idea to final draft.

Nancy Dodd

Tell us what you mean by developing a “mind-set” for writing, and how important is it to the creative process?

Sometimes it’s difficult to shut out the rest of the world. The problem for too many of us is that we let too many other things interfere with our writing. Without a discipline or a mindset, we find that day after day goes by and we aren’t accomplishing what we wanted to in our writing because we haven’t prepared ourselves to see it as important as other things that we allow to interrupt us. 

Getting into a creative writing space, or really any type of writing space, usually means preparing yourself, your mind, to sit down and start working. For many of us just saying it’s time to write, then doing it, isn’t how it works; we have to prepare our “mindset.”

One of the ways to do this is to have a consistent time to write so that your mind and body rhythm knows that every day, or whatever days you choose, at this time you will write. Another way is to have a certain place you write or certain music you write to or certain writing implements just for this type of writing. Again, when you get into that place or use those implements, your mind knows that it’s time to be creative. The more disciplined you are about writing, the more your mind will know when it’s time to focus on just writing and to let everything else wait.

You equate story-telling with building a house: foundation, adding structure of walls and roof, the flooring, painting and adding designer touches. Elaborate for us the use of the 7 stage process described in your book which maps out the writing of a story with beginning, middle and end.

Through years of studying writing I found that there were many questions a writer should ask themselves to help them develop ideas, character, structure, and so forth. I began to organize these questions and tools into stages that would help to build a story organically and more efficiently, much like a house, and in ways that you see the details as you need them.

I recently watched a show in which the contractor finished the walls in the kitchen and was getting ready to put in the cabinets when he realized he had overlooked allowing for the electrical and venting components of the range hood—something he should have done before dry walling. His comment was that even the most experienced sometimes overlook an important detail. The same is true for writing, when you work in stages it can be much more effective, and helps you not to overlook so many details. I suggest the following stages:

Stage 1 – Developing Ideas
Stage 2 – Building a Strong Structure
Stage 3 – Creating Vibrant Characters
Stage 4 – Structuring Scenes, Sequences, and Transitions
Stage 5 – Increasing Tension and Adjusting Pacing
Stage 6 – Enriching Language and Dialogue
Stage 7 – Editing the Hard Copy and Submitting

As you develop your story, in some ways you will be working on these simultaneously throughout the process, you create and introduce new ideas and you work on language. However, by focusing on what a particular stage requires, you address the particular issues for that stage. How I do this is when I feel I have enough ideas for a story in Stage 1, I create a story map and then I work on structure, going from the beginning to the end of the material I have.

During that stage I’m adding more material and ideas to develop the structure of Stage 2. Once I’ve gone through all the work I have, answering the questions and filling out the story, I then go to Stage 3 and work on developing my characters, getting to know them, again filling out the story with more details that focus on characterization.

When in Stage 4, I tear apart the story and develop each scene, determine where I have left out scenes that would add to the story and condensing what I thought was a scene, but really doesn’t have all the components of one, and I make sure all of my transitions are clear and won’t lose the reader. Then by State 5, I go back through the story and I look at tension and pacing and increase it or slow it down as needed.

Now I’m ready to do work on the language and dialogue and by the time I’ve gotten to Stage 6, my story should be well-developed and nearly complete. Finally it’s a matter of printing out the hard copy and editing, then submitting or prepping for publication Stage 7.

What recommendations can you give to a writer who is blocked about writing a certain idea, but can’t seem to get a handle on it?

Understanding what you are writing about, what the theme and/or dramatic question of your story is, can help with getting a handle on an idea. Having a clear theme really helps in making decisions about the story and can help to overcome being blocked.

Along completely different lines, finding what inspires you to write the story, what event, idea, activity, image, music, or whatever stimulated writing this story, then going back to that source, can help get the writer back into the story.

Another method would be to ask yourself, “What if it didn’t happen that way, what if it happened this way?” and seeing if changing direction can get you excited again.

What if you already have a rough draft or even a completed manuscript, how can your book, The Writer’s Compass help the writer?

Having a rough draft or completed manuscript means that you can skim through the questions to see what you may have missed or what you can add to further develop the story. The questions will help you to see where you might have problems you can fix. Using the story map at this stage is a tool that helps you to see where there might be holes in your story. I create a new one after every stage to see what I should change to make the story more dynamic or if I can’t answer a particular element on the story map, then I know precisely where I have a weak spot or a hole.

Building tension is important to any story line. What tools/ideas would you recommend on how to do this naturally in developing this sense of urgency?

People often confuse tension and pacing. Pacing is created by moving things quickly, putting in fewer details, making dialogue shorter, using less narrative. However, this may or may not increase the tension. Sometimes tension is better served by adding details and slowing down the pace. Which is more frightening: running through a haunted mansion, or going slow and being forced to see every shadow, hear every creak. In my book I give an example of a knife fight and how by showing each individual’s movements versus, just getting stabbed increases the tension in the scene. It also helps when the reader is going to guess the outcome. If the reader knows you probably aren’t going to kill off your protagonist halfway through the book, then showing how the protagonist feels and his or her fears, helps draw the reader into the tension of the moment. When you shorten it to something like, “…then he stabbed him.” The sentence goes by so quickly the reader may not catch the significance of what just happened.

Tell us a little about what you are currently working on?

I always have too many projects I’m working on. Three of the areas I’m pursuing include: how using storytelling tools to create ideas helps businesspeople to develop business ideas; how ministers can use storytelling tools in developing sermons; and using story telling techniques to develop case studies.
In my creative writing I’m working on prepping a screenplay for pre-production about a minister whose son is murdered, forcing him to reconcile his own past as a boxer who killed a man in a prize fight; the screenplay has already received awards. I’m also doing a final draft on a play about a clueless father whose wife leaves him and he has to raise their autistic child alone. I’m also trying to finish the final draft of a coming of age manuscript called “Wake-Up! Henny.” And I’m working on a creative nonfiction story on how my friend had to be smuggled out of the mid-east to escape execution for a crime he didn’t commit.

Please give us an eight-word description of your life.
God, family, writing, surviving, and learning to live.

Nancy Ellen Dodd / Facebook Page

Check out 1st 50 pages of

The Writer's Compass

Naomi Hirahara, Author

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“What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions.”
Margaret Atwood – The Handmaiden’s Tale

Naomi Hirahara, Author of Mas Arai Mystery Series

Naomi Hirahara is the author of a popular mystery series involving a complex and wonderfully human character named Mas Arai. Mas was “born” out of the author’s desire to “shed light on is Japanese American culture and history”, and is based on her own father, who survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshema in the basement of a train station. Her father Sam, is also a gardener like Mas Arai. What makes these mysteries go beyond the genre is the perspective they are told from: an older gentleman who has gone through much in his life and yet, still has an active curiosity about his surroundings. The writing is well-crafted and takes you into a Japanese-American culture which looks to its past and present to shape a future.

Naomi was a reporter, and has written non-fiction books before venturing into the world of fiction.  Summer of the Big Bachi (Bantam/Delta, March 30, 2004) is Naomi’s first mystery. The book, a finalist for Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize, was also nominated for a Macavity mystery award. Gasa-Gasa Girl, the second Mas Arai mystery, received a starred review from Booklist and was on the Southern California Booksellers’ Association bestseller list for two weeks in 2005. Most recently Snakeskin Shamisen, the third in the series, was released in May 2006. In April 2007 it won an Edgar Allan Poe award in the category of Best Paperback Original.

She has short stories published in a number of anthologies, including Los Angeles Noir (Akashic, May 2007), A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir (Busted Flush Press, December 2007), and The Darker Mask (TOR, January 2008). In the summer of 2008 her first middle-grade book, 1001 Cranes, was released by Random House’s Delacorte imprint in hardback and came out as a Yearling trade paperback in June 2009.

Naomi Hirahara’s latest novel in the Mas Arai series, Blood Hina, was published by St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne Books. Mas’ best friend Haruo is getting married and Mas has grudgingly agreed to serve as best man. But then an ancient Japanese doll display of Haruo’s fiancee goes missing, and the wedding is called off with fingers pointed at Haruo. To clear his friend’s name, Mas must first uncover a world of heartbreaking memories, deception, and murder. You can read an excerpt here.

Below is an interview with Naomi Hirahara.

I know you were quite close to your father with the character of Mas being based on him (Mas is your father’s name spelled backwards). Did he  get to read any of your series, and if so, what did he think of them? If not, what do you believe would have been his reaction?

When two of my novels were finally translated into Japanese (a direct result of the Edgar nomination), my father finally had an opportunity to find out who Mas was. “Hey,” he said after he had read the books, “you wrote about me!”  ”But Dad,” I explained, “you knew that the main character was based on you.”  He had, after all, taken me to places that gardeners had frequented in past (like the racetrack during the rainy season!).  He followed me out to the porch when I was leaving my parents’ house.  ”Hey,” he called out to me, “my friends are waiting for the next book.”  That’s the biggest and perhaps best endorsement from my parents — that their friends like them.

A number of the characters in the book speak a mixture of Japanese and English, and you do a beautiful job of capturing this without it being distracting. Do you make a conscious effort to balance the accents/and or Japanese words as you write? Can you suggest ways of doing this to help other writers who would like to emphasize another language and culture?

This is perhaps the most “controversial” aspect of my series — the use of dialect or vernacular.  It’s taken me a while to understand what I’ve been trying to do.  First of all, I’ve been impacted by dialect since I was a small child.  I was a huge Lois Lenski fan and if you look at her children’s books today, such as her Newbery Award-winning STRAWBERRY GIRL, it’s filled with strong Southern dialect.  I love that.  Being from a bilingual household and as a result, serving as an interpreter of the outside society for my parents, I understood from a young age what is being said in certain homes does NOT sound like the standard English dialogue on the page.  If Mas or his other peers suddenly speaking in standard English, it would be absolutely bizarre.  Language serves as an integral part of them as characters.

That said, dialect is sometimes a barrier for certain readers.  One group of female readers said that they thought it was disrespectful that I had my elderly characters speak in dialect.  So interesting!  I guess some folks believe that accented English is evidence of a lack of intelligence.  My intention was quite the opposite: that having an accent is absolutely not a reflection of how smart someone is.

In terms of writing in dialect/vernacular, I would not recommend that writers use it unless they are very familiar of how the intonation/language sounds.  There’s a wonderful literary anthology called ROTTEN ENGLISH, edited Dohra Ahmad.  She explains that vernacular (her favored term) is spoken, so transferring it to written form immediately changes it use/purpose.  In a sense, when you write dialect, you are in essence creating your own language, kind of like that movie AVATAR.  It’s not just mimicking sounds, but making decisions on what kinds of words/sentence structure to use.  Of course, I’m not only using dialect but actually foreign words.  What helps is that Japanese, like Spanish, usually has a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel word structure and American English readers can somehow get the general gist of how something may sound.  Tonal languages like Chinese is quite a different story.

Sorry that this answer is so long, but it is one of my passions.

Mari, who is Mas’ daughter, is a Gasa Gasa Girl (which happens to be the name of your second book). This means she is a restless person, not one to stand still for very long before moving on. Do you see yourself as a gasa gasa personality? How did you fill out her personality in the book to make her what I call, “a touchable character,” someone we can believe in? Do you think hard about your characters before you write them, or do they evolve as you write the book?

There’s another Japanese word, “guzu-guzu,” which means lazy, laid-back person.  My husband says “guzu-guzu” fits me more than “gasa-gasa.”  Actually I’m very “guzu-guzu” about household chores, but more “gasa-gasa” when it comes to meeting friends, participating in events and travelling.  My goal is to go to all 50 states and I think I’m at least up to almost 35 states.

In terms of building characters, I need to figure out the character’s name before I can get that deep in who they are.  I’m currently developing a new mystery series and I’ve thought long and hard about what to name her.  Figuring out a series character’s name is crucial.

Developing Mari was not that difficult because I knew who she was in reference to her father, Mas.  I know that Mas had not been an emotionally available father and as a result, she was scarred and jaded.  I will say that I’m not Mari and my father is not Mas in terms of their emotional development.

I don’t need to know all the facts about a character before I start writing, but I need to know some basics facts about them.  Most important, perhaps, is their outlook on life, because that would determine the tone or voice of the book.  Voice is really everything.  You can have the best plotted book in the world, but if you don’t have the voice down, forget it.

In Snakeskin Shamisen, you emphasize relationships between men: brothers, father and son, etc. Did you find it hard to write in the male perspective? What helps you to keep focused from a male’s POV?

I really adore men.  I played organized sports as a young age, and appreciate some the rules and behaviors of men in group contexts.  I’m old enough to have worked in a once male-dominated profession (journalism), and I’ve spent a lot of time with men.

I actually had problems writing from a female perspective (I have issues!).  I attempted to write parts of GASA-GASA GIRL from Mari’s perspective, in fact, and it just didn’t work.

Writing a middle-grade book from a 12-year-old girl’s perspective (1001 CRANES) was actually extremely helpful for me creatively.  Around the same time I wrote three short stories from a female POV.  My new series will most likely be from a female POV and so will be next middle grade book.  As I get older, I really appreciate women.  I don’t think women reveal their secrets as readily as men.  In some ways, they are an enigma, but I think that I’m slowly figuring them out!

 Do you outline your books before you write them? Has your background in writing non-fiction books been helpful or a hindrance to you in writing fiction?

Lately because of the more competition nature of the publishing business, I’ve had to write outlines, at least for my Mas books.  For other projects, I prefer not to write outlines and let the story organically lead me to where it wants to go.  Writing nonfiction has helped in that I steal research from myself constantly.  I think at times you can get buried in research and forget what you are trying to write.  Journalism is good in that you learn to adhere to deadlines and be very self-motivating.  It’s not good in that all that so-called objectivity needs to be shed.  Fiction is all about being subjective.

How do you know when the rewrite is done?

When you can’t make the book or short story any better.  I’ve a big believer that an author can over-rewrite.  The initial energy of a piece can get snuffed out by a writer pushing their material too hard.  Writing a book is a delicate business.

What tools do you use for research? I understand you are researching for you next book, could you give us an idea of that process? (Also, any hints on what the new book will be about?)

In terms of research, some of it has to be experiential.  For me, something magical happens when I’m actually standing in the place where my characters are standing.  Photographs and site visits are important.  I try to be open to new experiences, even those that don’t seem like they will help me.  Of course, I also use Google maps and the all the resources the Internet provides!  Academic papers available on Google books and other sites are helpful, too.

And in terms of the next Mas book, it will be on strawberries!  I’ve actually worked on a nonfiction book on strawberries, so, again, I’ll be stealing from myself.  I also have that middle-grade project–steampunk set in California–and a new series that I’m still developing.  I’m very excited about that project.

 Please give us an eight-word description of your life.
pnuema
shedding of old skin, every seven years

Blood Hina

Links

Naomi Hirahara Website

Non Fiction Books

Mas Arai Facebook Fan Page

Ode to Smith Corona and Underwood

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No. 5 Underwood American Standard Typewriter -photo by D.S. Renzulli

I’m feeling a bit sentimental tonight. Very recently, I upgraded my Apple OS to Lion (a belated hear me roar! to Steve J.).  That’s when I discovered that I could no longer use my trusty Microsoft Word, version 10 or thereabouts!  You have to understand that I’ve been using Microsoft Office software since 1989, first at work, and then at home. I’ve written reports, done graphs in Excel, setup PowerPoint slideshows, written books (yes, completed and whole and not published), short stories (some published), letters, and this particular blog: A Writing Primate.  I loved Word, although I never upgraded after the 10.1. Once I left the working world, I only needed a word processor for my writing, and I was quite happy with the version I was using, thank you very much. After all, you don’t want something too complicated to interrupt the muse at her literary efforts. But, when I went to write after installing Lion, well, the big cat bit me in the ass by telling me that it wouldn’t open this particular Office software version.

Now, I could get an upgrade to Office 2011, but I had Pages on my computer, and I made a life changing decision to try it out. Pages (an Apple program) has been on my Macbook Pro for a few years, but I never got into using it. After all, I had the Word and the Word was all I needed, but sometimes you have to try something different, to make sure your brain cells don’t calcify or dribble out your ears (which can be quite messy). So, this blog is being written on Pages, and after it is done, I will uninstall the Microsoft Office with a ceremonial piping generally used for retiring admirals.

Which brings me to Smith Corona and Underwood. For you youngster, these are typewriters. What are typewriters, you ask? Ah child, they were used before the computer came along, and they were glorious machines. They made clackety-clack noises as you pressed down on the keys, and if you made a mistake, shame on you, you either used “white-out” to cover over the mistake, or start all over again, which, when you think about it, really made you think first about the words you were laying down on that pristine sheet of paper.  My mother gave me her Underwood typewriter when I was ten years old and the thing had to be thirty years old then. It was a huge, hunk of metal and I loved it. At a later Xmas, I got a Smith Corona that purred like a kitten because it was electric. The clack wasn’t quite so clicky any more, but there was still a noise. (When I write on my Macbook Pro, all I hear is my brain yelling, “THINK, THINK, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO WRITE NEXT, DUMMY?”, so I do miss the noise of a typewriter.

The concept of a typewriter dates back to at least 1714, when an Englishman filed a patent for an artificial machine to impress or transcribe letters singly or progressively one after another. The first typewriter built was for a blind Countess in Italy, so she could write letters, and that was in the early 1800’s. The first successful for the public typewriter (1870) looked like a pin cushion with a writing ball above the paper. Others soon followed, looking more like the typewriters we remember, and one in particular, Sholes & Glidden became popular, because it introduced the QWERTY keyboard (a layout we still use on our computers), although it only typed in capital letters. In the 19th century, the cost of a typewriter was $100. The typewriter also helped our grandmothers and great grandmothers find respectable jobs in office around the country, typing away at business letters written by men. Times have changed our perspective, haven’t they?

I miss my typewriter, and I miss my Word, but you know what? I kind of like this Pages software, too. Whatever tool you use to express yourself, it can only be good, whether using a pen or pencil, or typewriter or laptop, or iPhone, or iPad. It’s awesome to think of all the machines I’ve used to write. What fun, it’s been, and will continue to be. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Quick! What was the first published novel written on a typewriter?
If you are interested, check out the Comments section below for the answer…