Reality vs. Fiction

Granny Kat says fiction is lies. Okay, well not lies, exactly, but it's not true. Granny Kat's older daughter used to ask "Why would I want to read about things that are not true?" Good point. So, why do we read fiction? Why don't we just read fact-based books like a how-to on golf, a fascinating mathematical book on Fibonacci sequences, or great time-saving tips on sewing? If we're really desperate to read about people we could always read biographies, right? So, why do we humans like to hear stories, and why do we seem to particularly enjoy reading stories about heroes, conflict, battles, fantastic worlds, amazing feats, and bizarre occurrences? Because they seem real to us? Or maybe because we have imaginations? What use is imagination? Dogs don't have imaginations. They live in the moment. Sure, they are pretty clever, they can learn lots of things: they learn commands and tricks, respond to our emotions, they can even anticipate events based on previous experiences. But they don't sit around contemplating the past and imagining the future. We do. We can project the present reality forward or backward. In fact, while we're at it, what is reality?

 In philosophy there are two views on reality. On the one hand reality can only be perceived through our senses. Whatever we cannot see, hear, or touch is not real. The other view is that our minds create what we hear, see, and touch and therefore everything we perceive is an illusion created by our minds. In essence, nothing is real. Both views are interesting and if you combine either of them with the concept that we can think ourselves into the past or into the future all while living in the present, reality becomes a vast playing field. And I haven't even mentioned emotions!

How can we use this information as storytellers and authors? We must realize that we are playing with reality. Playing. Keep that in mind. Your story's reality is created entirely by you. Or is it? You are presenting story details, but your reader is reacting to them. Some readers will like your stories and want to read more. Other readers may not like your stories and may put them aside. This does not mean your stories are bad or unworthy, it only means that not all readers will connect with your story. Have you ever gone back to re-read a story that you read when you were a child? Try this exercise. Go to the library children's section, or young adult section, find a book that you know you read as a child, or one that was read to you. Sit in a quiet place and read it again. Does it seem familiar? In what ways? Does it seem different? How? My best guess is that it will feel somewhat familiar, but that you will interpret things in the story differently now that you are older. You may not remember some parts at all. Other parts you may re-read and say to yourself "I didn't realize the author meant that." It's not because you've forgotten parts of the story (even though you might have), or that you remember the story differently. It's that you are a different person now that you've read that story and many others and have had many experiences since then. And it's also because our memories change over time, but that's a topic for another day.

As a writer who plays with reality you are going to connect with some readers, but not all readers. I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who wrote, "“You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time." Granny Kat's question to you is: How can you maximize the number of readers you please? Granny Kat's Answer: By making your story world's reality vivid, engaging, and compelling. How do you know it's compelling, especially after you've read it so many times you can practically recite it? You can send it to some critique partners and see what they say. You can also put it aside yourself for a time and come back to it. Or at least move on to writing new chapters so that some time passes between when you drafted chapter one and when you come back to revise it. And, of course, you can submit it to agents and editors and see what they say about it. If your writing is coming along nicely, and your ideas are interesting many editors and agents will give you specific feedback rather than the disappointing form-letter response. Keep trying!

Here are some ideas about fictional reality to keep in mind as you present readers with your story world.

Reality doesn't have to make sense, but fiction does. In our real world the way people behave, the events that happen, the results of actions we take, etc. often do not make sense, or may take many, many years to figure out. This is not acceptable. However, in our own lives there's not much we can do about it except carry on. In fiction, however, this is plainly not acceptable and if it is allowed to go on unchecked, readers will generally be dissatisfied with the story. Your fictional story may have mysteries, questions, and possibilities, but by the time your story ends, all of these should be resolved (except in the case of a continuing series where some questions may remain open).

Avoid the boring aspects of life. Do not fall into the trap of providing a blow-by-blow setting description of everything the character does during his day. Skip the shower, breakfast and commute to work unless something important happens along the way. Don't mention how people living in the woods manage to go to the bathroom, or how they take care of their other bodily needs unless it is central to the story. Readers will not give it a second thought if you don't mention it. Along with this is the caution that characters are not people, so don't treat them as people. You will want them to be well-rounded of course, but you do not have to explain every aspect of their lives or recount, or even summarize, their whole previous experiences. Mention any part of their background that is necessary to move the story along and to provide a sense of where they fit in the story world and no more. You do not need to explain the circumstances of their birth, their heritage, their childhood, career training, etc. Present those setting details only as needed to set the stage or to fill in a detail needed for the reader to understand the characters thoughts or actions.

Above all, entertain and give an emotional experience for the reader to enjoy. The reality you create for the reader should feel real as the reader lets himself slip into the story world. Feed him small bits of setting detail that helps him feel the real experience of the characters. But don't load him down with so much detail that he's distracted from being entertained by the story itself.

For you to work on: Try to look at your words from a reader's point of view. Will they understand the reality you are presenting? Will they connect emotionally to what is happening? Will they be entertained?

Granny Kat

Tension School

Hello and welcome to Tension School. Most of you writers reading this post have an undiagnosed condition that I like to call Tension Deficit Disorder or TDD. This condition frequently occurs with new writers, writers who are struggling to move beyond the basic levels of writership and for some of you it also occurs when you are writing for your own enjoyment rather than the enjoyment of readers. Now, before you get your hackles up, let me explain. New writers do, can and should write in whatever way they best can. I am not here to judge, only to assist those who are willing to reflect on their efforts and work toward improvement. If you already think your writing is perfect, then you don't need me to help you with it. If you are looking at trying to work beyond the basic levels of writing, then you might benefit from reading some of my blogs. I tell it like it is, but most of the time I do it in a kind, thoughtful way, free of judgment. If you are writing for your own enjoyment, or for some kind of personalized therapy there is nothing wrong with that. Granny Kat has done the same thing. I'm just pointing out that along the way you may have developed TDD without realizing it.

Fortunately, Granny Kat has no problem with tension. In fact, she would consider it a dull day indeed if she faced no tension whatsoever. Tension brings out the best and the worst in all of us, and if that is true of real human beings, it should also be true of characters. Now, if you have developed TDD you may experience such symptoms as difficulty plotting your novel-length stories, struggles to write scenes where anything of actual story-worthiness happens, worries about the pacing of your drafts and a general reticence to put your characters into hot water. You created your characters, your darlings, your babies and of course you want them to be happy, fulfilled, loved and successful in their story world lives. That is what all parents want for their children. All well and good, but that recipe makes for rather dull reading. If you truly love your characters you will want them to suffer. But this suffering is not without its merits, because through their suffering they will become better people and when they succeed in their post-suffering world (also known as the end of the story) readers will be delighted.

So, now to the cure for TDD. In a phrase the cure is "ramp up the tension". How do you do that? Try to get some tension on every page. I know, it's tough to do and it's a lot of work. Start with making sure you have tension in every chapter, then when you go back and re-read scenes, see where you can add tension, or revise to bring out the tension that's already there. Here are some ideas for ways to bring out tension. Start with some very broad ideas for your characters and their situation:

Conflict of backgrounds

Conflict in values/ideals

Conflict in long term goals

Conflict in short term goals/quests

Conflict in loyalties

Now work at a narrower level:

- make the goal harder to reach (put up roadblocks, red-tape, new rules, more opposition)

- set a clock ticking (time is running out, something must be done by Monday or else...)

- put a character in jeopardy (threaten the character's job, home, family; threaten his life, threaten to expose the character's personal secrets)

- pose a new question (introduce a plot twist, old girlfriend, twin brother, skeleton in the closet, secret, past he thought he got over, show that this character isn't everything he/she seems)

- keep secrets from the reader (tease the reader by withholding knowledge the character has; tell the reader the character has it, but don't tell the reader what it is)

- foreshadow (hint that something bad is going to happen)

At the very narrowest level you can use tone and mood in your grammar:

Use an authoritative tone to build tension. There's something tense about being under the thumb of an authority figure. It's an automatic reaction to check your speed when a police car is behind you, or close your internet browser when your boss walks by. Any sentence or paragraph that uses an authoritative tone or any character that speaks authoritatively will automatically raise tension. Passive voice sentences work very well with authoritative tone.

Active voice sentences also work.

* Active: Employees must wash their hands before returning to work.

* Passive: This paperwork must be completed by 5pm.

An authoritative tone builds anticipation of action because we wonder what will happen if/when the rules are broken. It's the most basic of moral levels.

Don't miss out on opportunities to build tension in the novel. One place that is overlooked is character meets. You can build tension by preparing the reader ahead of time for the meet. Drop hints that the characters have opposing viewpoints on an issue, and then the reader will want to see what happens when they meet. Have characters be worried about the meeting, or excited about the meeting, and then have the meeting go all wrong for one of the characters. Mention the upcoming meeting a few times in different scenes, if possible. Be sure to follow through and make the meeting scene memorable for the reader. If you've built anticipation and tension for the reader, make sure you don't disappoint the reader by giving them something slap-dash and ordinary. Either give them what they were expecting, or surprise them with an unexpected twist.

There's hope for TDD! You don't have to suffer any longer. Your job is to make your characters suffer, not you! Don't fall into the lull of low tension scenes where all goes well. Put your suffering into your novel and save the joy and happiness for your own life.

See you in print!

Granny Kat

The push and pull of conflict in a transformational character arc

Hi! My name is Jodi. You can call me Granny Jo. I always thought I was the strange, kind of backwoods granny without a filter, sort of like Duck Dynasty does Granny Clampett, but I suspect I’m more of the geeky, weird granny who runs around in Crocs and writes on her arm with sharpies.

Recently, I got out of a workshop on advanced alternative GMC where I had the pleasure of talking to Janet again. Janet has a mind like a steel trap and calls me out anytime I weasel word something. Lucky for me, she had a question about Hague. I’m not sure if it means this particular section of the workshop needed to be reworked or if it was just a question and I’m over-thinking it. I’d asked if she could see the events between pt. A (the way a character starts out at the beginning of the transformational point) and pt. B (how they change)?

I can see some of them (the really big ones) but I'm not sure how much change the character needs to show in the first half of the story between the inciting incident and midpoint

Michael Haigh in his Identity to Essence lectures says the character shows a significant change at the midpoint stepping into his/her "essence" before one last reversion to identity, but it's the part up to the midpoint that I'm not sure how to plan.  He mentions the character glimpsing his/her essence early on before the midpoint but he didn't say any more than this.

True, he doesn’t say much more, but I’ve always had the feeling he kind of assumed there was going to be a push and pull of conflict as the character races toward the transformational point.

Kim’s arc is to let go of pain and open up to love again, a statement which really doesn’t spell out what needs to be in the story or how much of it there needs to be. However, you might say Kim’s essence (who she really is on the inside) is an open, loving woman with no pain, and she first glimpses that when she goes over for the first dinner. 

“Oh...” she thinks to herself, “this is what it would be like if life was different, if I could let go of my pain and accept love back into my life. It’s so warm and…I really want it.”

But she can’t, because she’s got a lot of trauma and guilt (her subconscious conflict) Her conscious conflict (she just doesn’t have time for a man in her life, especially not with the B&B getting ready to launch and staying true to her husband’s dream) tells her to push Jason away (in the process she’s also pushing away Tyra, a total win-win). Consciously, she’s just trying to stay on track, while subconsciously she’s afraid of pain, and suffering from “I can’t love this child, that’s a betrayal of Cleo’s memory. I killed Cleo. I let her down. I can’t let her down again.”

However, her essence (the open, loving woman without pain) is pulling at her, forcing her along the path that leads to Jason and Tyra. It’s her subconscious goal.

However, there’s a condition to the way Kim’s conflict works to show change in her arc. Her change needs to happen in feasible increments. She can take one step back and one step forward, or three steps forward and a gigantic step back, but the progression of her change has to work for the story and projected word count. Kim simply can’t go from “I’m hurting and messed up,” to “Aww…I luv you.” She has too much baggage.

The events you pick as the starting and change points of your character predetermine how much change needs to happen between the start of the arc and the final wrenching struggle where the character fights change (the black moment). Kim can’t be healed in a short story because people don’t easily toss years of painful baggage aside. She needs space to show the progression of her arc, which means the amount of change to show before the black moment depends on two things; the events you pick as the starting point and point of change, and word count.

Because I picked such a difficult arc, more change needs to happen in a way that’s believable for a reader. However, if I were to pick a shorter arc (maybe from the death of her husband due to natural causes until her realization love can happen twice) there’s less to show.

In this part of the story how aware will the character be that s/he is changing?  Will s/he realise at all (and maybe rationalise it away with an external reason for acting in a different way) or will it just be the reader who can see it and maybe the catalyst character?

The reader is usually aware of what’s going on because they can see into the character, feel her thoughts and hear her self-talk. In many stories, the point of change happens when the character becomes self-aware and starting acting on their subconscious goal. Kim has been trying to change ever since that first dinner with Jason and his kid, but until she realizes pain and self-hatred are standing in her way, she can’t release them and step into her essence.

If she realizes she’s changing, it probably happens in flashes of “I really want this” only to be rationalized away by “I must be tired and maudlin” or “I just don’t have time for this.”

I think the hero sees it on a certain level, although subconsciously. It’s the intangible that gives him the faith to keep going, even when Kim is fighting herself. So yes—in flashes for him too, complicated by his own internal conflict.

Head Hopping

Most complaints Granny Kat hears about head hopping happen because the reader is pulled out of the story. If you can be more subtle about it, then it's usually not a problem. New writers often head-hop without realizing it and once they understand what it is, they can work to avoid it. An example of blatant head hopping would be:

Anticipating a kiss, Jane sighed and looked up into Joe's handsome face. He'd never seen a more beautiful smile in his life.

In the first sentence we are clearly in Jane's point of view (POV) as she sighs and admires Joe's handsome face while anticipating their kiss. In the second sentence we have head-hopped to Joe who is, in turn, admiring Jane's smile.

A possible fix:

Joe took Jane into his arms. Anticipating his kiss, Jane sighed and looked up into Joe's face. He'd never seen a more beautiful smile in his life.

These small changes (above) have muddied the waters for that (now second) sentence. This could all be in Joe's POV. If we do a solid job of keeping the scene in Joe's POV, then we have achieved limited 3rd POV. That is, Joe is telling us the story and along with that we are getting his thoughts and feelings. What we know about the other characters is limited to what Joe can figure out from their body language, hear in their words, or find as far as facts.

Joe can also interpret those facts for us in subjective or objective ways. For example, he could say, "Jane seemed relaxed and comfortable." (objective observation), or "Jane was relaxed and comfortable." (subjective opinion). If Joe's limited 3rd POV becomes too subjective, it may seem as if he actually knows what's in Jane's head, which morphs us into the omniscient 3rd POV. Omniscient means that the narrating character knows what is in every character’s head at the same time and it is shared with the reader as needed. By the same token, if Joe's limited 3rd POV becomes too objective, it may seem as if he's distancing himself (and the reader) from the intimacy of his narration, which also morphs us into the omniscient 3rd POV.

The differences are subtle and often interpreted differently by different readers. Generally, if a writer starts out with the intention of using omniscient 3rd, the narration is more objective and more psychologically distant (i.e. light on the deep inner thoughts and emotions). Are you having trouble with head-hopping? Ask Granny Kat a question and she’ll be happy to reply with helpful comments.

See you in print!

Granny Kat