Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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PianoTuna

Re: Punctuation

Sorry about the delay. Something came up over the weekend that needed a truck.

"Punctuation tells us when to breathe." is what I need. I have trouble with the rules. A comma is a pause, but not every pause gets a comma, and some commas come where there isn't a pause, like "Hartford, Connecticut". Good so far. It's the commas for grammar and logic where I get into trouble. I can't tell how far to believe the books. That's not my usual. I like to read up on things. Best thing I ever learned is if you want to find out about something, there's probably somebody out there who wants to tell you all about it. Usually they wrote the owner's manual. It makes me nervous to be disagreeing with reference books when I'm just starting out.

For instance, "His wife Sharmayne up and left him, taking his truck and heading for New Jersey." The books and I agree that there has to be a comma after "left him", because otherwise you'll think she left him while he was taking his truck, and you won't be sure who's heading for New Jersey. Some people have told me that there should be a comma following "truck", which is wrong because "taking his truck and heading for new Jersey" is one action not two. But what gets me is saying that there should be a comma on either side of "Sharmayne" because an appositive. That's just plain wrong. If you said "His wife, the Mayor of Casterbridge, up and left him, taking his truck and heading for New Jersey," fine. That needs commas. But what about "A week after Frank lost his lucky penny, his dog died, his truck spontaneously combusted, and his wife the former Miss America runner-up left him for a local TV news personality"? Commas after "wife" and "runner-up" ruin the whole thing.

Here's another one. "He hit a good line drive but then he ran towards third base, so we could see he had a ways to go before he made it into the Major Leagues." How important is it to have a comma following "drive" because you have two independent clauses separated by a conjunction? Is it a clear mistake not to have one? Or is it that most independent clauses separated by a conjunction naturally have more of a pause than that?

How about "Sharmayne of course had no idea how to open the tool chest, so she just parked the truck in her cousin's back yard until the smell faded." Is it a mistake not to have commas on either side of "of course"? The books say "of course" is an interruption in the main thought, but it seems to me that sometimes it isn't. They also say that "for the life of me" is an interruption in the main thought, and logically maybe it is, but in real life no one ever pauses before and after they say it: "I cannot for the life of me see what Sharmayne thought she was doing with that swimming pool repairman." I wrote something out that had those commas in it and tried it on some readers. They were all confused and said I'd done the commas wrong.

I thought about sending a letter to the author of that punctuation book asking how many books he buys per year. If it isn't too many, I'm willing to risk losing him.

Semicolons are a longer pause. I think it's the kind where the voice in the part just before the pause ends by dipping down very briefly, then curling back up again and stopping short. Before colons, the voice makes one sharp drop at the end, and the pause is longer. This is probably an inadequate rule, but so far it's working.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Punctuation

Um, what was the question?

Generally speaking, once you have a minimal competency in punctuation, it doesn't really matter.

Avoid total howlers. That's all you need do.

If you can tell a story, the pubisher will hire a copyeditor to fix your punctuation. You'll read over what the copyeditor did, pull out your "STET dammit" rubber stamp, and remove those "corrections" you don't agree with.

It's a non-problem.
 

James D Macdonald

Punctuation

Let me expand a bit.

Remember, while you're writing every day, you're reading every day, too. Professionally, traditionally, published works.

The best you can get your hands on. (Life is short -- too short to read another Xanth novel.)

You'll be seeing sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, storytelling, in action on a daily basis. You'll learn how it all fits together -- more so since now that you're writing you'll be more attuned to notice all the technical bits and pieces that make up the written language.

Do your reading, do your writing, and let nature take its course.
 

Chris Goja

36 hour days

Jim,

if a person is not (yet) a pro writer, I don't really see how you can fit in two hours of BIC, plus revising and reading, plus the time it takes to send out manuscripts to agents and publishers, plus (hopefully) dealing with other small, writing-related matters such as cashing in all those royalty checks, et cetera, et cetera, EVERY day.

Any advise on this? I am lucky in that I have a good job with decent working hours, but even I struggle and fail to meet these requirements, so unless you happen to be a millionaire with all the time in the world, I would have thought that the equation would be impossible unless oyu take the plunge and actually quit your dayjob?

Chris
 

James D Macdonald

Re: 36 hour days

Modify it according to what's possible, for your situation, Chris.

You know yourself and your situation, best. For me, self-discipline is important.

I've already mentioned setting the alarm clock two hours early to make writing time. There's the lunch hour for reading a paperback. An hour of revision in the evening instead of TV. Saturday afternoon down at the seashore reading a chapter aloud to the gulls and waves. Make something you can live with.

Please, don't let anyone tell you that this isn't hard work. I'm sure you've heard that before, I tell you again that it's true.
 

reph

Re: Punctuation

Piano Tuna, that's a lot of detail. I'll address a little of it. If you wanted answers only from Uncle Jim, then skip this post.

"His wife the former beauty queen ran off" is a lot like "My son the doctor says to take two aspirin." The whole thing is a unit. In the context you provided, the woman's status as runner-up to Miss Whatever is essential to the meaning, for reasons of humor or irony. That makes the phrase restrictive in spirit, if not restrictive by a strict interpretation of grammar books. So you can leave out the commas.

I still want commas in "His wife, Charmayne, left him."

My internal sense of changes in pitch with semicolons differs from yours. I hear a drop just before a semicolon, as the clause preceding the mark ends. (A period causes a stronger drop.) A semicolon replaces "and." I hear a rise before a colon, or maybe I want to inhale there. A colon replaces "namely" or "that is" or "What did I just tell you? Here's the proof."
 

Fresie

36 hour days

Another good thing is, after some time writing becomes an addiction. And then it'll force you to find time.

Like a closet alcoholic who will always find a way to spend a few hours getting drunk in total secret, a writer may start to invent clever excuses to be left alone and just write... How do addicts find time and money for their addictions? Writing is probably the best (and least costly) of them.:ha
 

maestrowork

Re: 36 hour days

I still want commas in "His wife, Charmayne, left him."

Me too. However, in the following case, I won't:

"Despite his brother Hector's objection, Paris took Helen to Troy."

(Of course I can write it other ways, but I'm here to illustrate a point).
 

PianoTuna

Re: Punctuation

Jim, the question I forgot to put in was "Where am I going wrong here?"

So that's it? That's all? Just play the music by ear? Dang. Now I'll have to stop being sloppy and pay attention. Between you and my new screen, I may get civilized yet.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Punctuation

Well, here's what you can do. Drop by a bookstore and pick up one of the high school Grammar Review workbooks with lots of sample problems in them. The SAT Prep books might do you. Find one that you like, read it, take the sample tests, review what you got wrong.

That's really all you'll need.
 

Jules Hall

Re: 36 hour days

The way I see the difference between these two sentences is this: Paris might well have more than one brother, so "His brother Hector" is specifying which brother.

The anonymous character in "His wife, Charmayne, ..." is highly likely to only have one wife, so we're providing additional information about her.

I think the "beauty queen" sentence is hard to understand without commas, personally.
 

Sonic

Another apple

MacAl Stone wrote
Thank you. You donate a huge amount of time, thought, and dedication to the cause of struggling new writers. You demonstrate a generosity with your time and experience that overwhelms me. You certainly could choose to spend this time you spend helping us, somewhere more likely to be of personal benefit to you and yours. I like to think I'm speaking for pretty much all of us--but whether or not that's true, I am definitely speaking for myself.

I agree wholeheartedly. Fortunately there's at lest some personal benefit for you, Uncle Jim. I don't read much SF, and most of your books aren't available in Swedish bookstores, but this thread made me buy a copy of The Apocalypse Door. That was my way of leaving an apple for you, I guess. It was a win-win deal since I got some good entertainment (I kept flippin' those pages :) out of it. Keep up the good work, and thanks for sharing your knowledge.
 

Euan Harvey

Characters and Empathy

Hi all,

I've been working my way through the enormous mass of information on this thread, and I just wanted to say thanks to Jim MacDonald for all his help. Some of the comments were *really* useful, especially the ones about the relative importance of character, plot, and prose.

Ok, I have a question for Jim MacDonald; if you can help, I'd be very grateful :grin

I have finished a novel, and taken it to the stage of a second draft. My beta readers have said they felt as if they didn't know the characters by the time they finished the book. One of the main characters gets killed about halfway through, and a couple of the beta readers said they didn't feel anything when it happened.

So how can I create more empathy between my readers and my characters?

:shrug

All suggestions gratefully received.

Cheers,

Euan
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Characters and Empathy

Euan, without reading your work I don't have a clue.

Here's something that you can try, yourself, though.

Do you have a favorite novel, where you have great sympathy with the characters?

Read it with an eye toward how that author did the trick.

Hmmmmmm.....

Do your characters have lives? Perhaps you won't put those lives in your book, but do you know them?

The fellow who got killed. Who was his first girlfriend? Why did they break up? Where was his favorite vacation place? Did he have a pet when he was young?

Tell me more about your book, okay?

<hr>

Oh, yeah, one more thing: When readers tell you that there's a problem, they're almost always right. When they tell you how to fix the problem, they're almost always wrong.
 

Yeshanu

File Cards

Uncle Jim,

About 13 days and 7 pages ago, you said that someday soon you should talk about the use of file cards.

To paraphrase my kids on long car journeys, "Are we there yet?"

Ruth
 

maestrowork

Re: Another apple

If your betas think that way, you need to examine your characterization. Are you sacrificing characters in favor of plot? Are your characters caricatures or cliche or flat... just to propel the plot, but not themselves fully developed, 3-dimensional "real" people? Do they act, feel and sound like real people? Like Uncle Jim said, do they have lives outside of the main story/plot? If they're out drinking, do they each have a favorite beer, and why? Do they have hidden emotional scars that you can reveal to your readers? Do things happen to them before you even know them or have an emotional attachment to them?

"The building fell, and Jack died" is the kind of "who cares?" scenarios. But if you can build Jack up as a full, flesh and bone characters that a reader can relate to (through his relationships with the people he loves/hates; through his own idiosyncracies, etc.), then when Jack dies, the readers would feel something.
 

James D Macdonald

Filecards

Now: On using filecards.

Take a stack of filecards. Number them (I use upper left-hand corner) 1, 2, 3, ... and so on. These are chapters. They're major divisions. They're scenes. They're whatever you want them to be. You may have only two at first, 1 and 2, the opening scene and the climatic scene, only a sentence on each. It's okay, doesn't matter. You can ignore dialog at this point. You can ignore setting.

Now, between these cards, put other cards, numbered 1.1, 1.2, and so on. You put intervening scenes on these. Things that must happen after one event but before another.

Between 1.2 and 1.3, if you think of something that has to go there, put 1.2.1, 1.2.2 .... To any level you want. You will have the whole of your novel there, though you may not know all the details until the second or third drafts.

You are answering questions here: What happens next, and what does the reader need to know so he won't be confused?

One of the smartest editors I know says "Never tell the reader anything before he cares!"

Too much outlining can take the fun out of the writing. Too much outlining can substitute for writing. Only writing is writing. Thinking about writing isn't writing, talking about writing isn't writing, planning to write isn't writing. Outlining isn't writing.

After you're happy with the overall shape of your plot, that you've got the characters entering, doing things, and leaving, now's the time to type up a strong outline.

A strong outline may be dozens (if not scores) of pages long, and can resemble you telling a friend about a book that you read or a movie that you saw. You'll include the major scenes, and sparkling bits of description, you'll start to fill in dialog.

From this strong outline, write your novel. Some people, having written an outline, put it aside and write their books from memory. I can't say that's a bad thing.

After you're done writing of your novel comes revision. This is the smoothing, the sanding, the staining, the waxing, and the polishing of this thing you've created.

Here you do the Agricultural Work. If you have something in your climax, you need to make sure it was properly planted in the beginning. You add foreshadowing to the start and middle of your book.

You read your opening. If you have something planted in the begining that didn't sprout by the end, you need to root it out.
 

SarahjaneinNZ

Re: Filecards

Uncle Jim, this post on how to go about constructing a novel from raw materials is brilliant. I can't wait to get home to try it out. <img border=0 src="http://www.ezboard.com/image/posticons/pi_bigsmile.gif" />
 

Euan Harvey

Re: Characters

Maestrowork and James MacDonald: thanks for the replies. Much appreciated. :thumbs

>Do you have a favorite novel, where you have great sympathy with the characters?
>Read it with an eye toward how that author did the trick.

I remember really rooting for Pug in the first Raymond E Feist book I read (Magician?), so I'll go back to that one. As you suggested upthread, I typed out a first chapter from another one of his books (among others), so maybe I'll have to go through and highlight everything he does in the first few chapters, then retype those. OK, thanks for the suggestion.

>Do your characters have lives? Perhaps you won't put those lives in your book, but do you know them?

Um, I know all the details of my main protagonist's life, but. . .

> Are your characters caricatures or cliche or flat... just to propel the plot, but not themselves fully developed, 3-dimensional "real" people? Do they act, feel and sound like real people? Like Uncle Jim said, do they have lives outside of the main story/plot? If they're out drinking, do they each have a favorite beer, and why? Do they have hidden emotional scars that you can reveal to your readers? Do things happen to them before you even know them or have an emotional attachment to them?

. . . I'm not sure if I've done this. Or at least, I know I haven't done it for a couple of them, but I did do a lot of this for my protagonist. But maybe not enough. Hum.

OK, thinking about it, I only really sketched out who they were in relation to the plot (the plot came and seized me by the throat and shook me, yelling 'find some damn characters and make it quick!').

:smack

>But if you can build Jack up as a full, flesh and bone characters that a reader can relate to (through his relationships with the people he loves/hates; through his own idiosyncracies, etc.), then when Jack dies, the readers would feel something.

OK, I think I understand. If I can establish my characters as people: so I know the things they do when they speak, what they do when they are feeling nervous, what they feel about their mothers, how they feel about power, what their prime drives are and so on, then the readers will empathize with him/her.

So empathy for a character is a result of seeing that character as an individual, and being shown the motivations for their actions?

>Tell me more about your book, okay?

It's set in an analog to medieval South-East Asia. The main character was sold into a boxing stable (kinda like a group of gladiators/mercenaries) working on a cooperative basis by his parents when the rice harvest failed and they couldn't afford to raise him (he was 3 when this happened). His best friend in the stable is another young man about the same age, but this guy was sold at a much later age (12). The boxers are kept in isolation, and most of their life is spent either training or fighting. So the main character is fairly dangerous in terms of physical ability, but very naïve and ignorant about how the world works outside the stable.

The stable has a feud with another boxing stable on the other side of the city. One of the boxers from the other school sneaks in and defiles the shrine of the main character's school. The main character finds out who was responsible, challenges them, and kills them in the arena in the centre of the city. A nobleman is watching the fight, and he decides to use the protag in his scheme to take over the city. Basically, he hires the protag and his friend from the stable (buys their freedom), and puts them in his guard. Then, after some time has passed, and he is assured of the protag's blind loyalty and naiveté, he engineers and incident in which the protag gets blamed for an assassination attempt. In the incident his friend is killed. The protag is sent to the central jail, from which the nobleman springs him. The nobleman tells the protag (through a letter given to the person who springs protag) that he can't help him directly, because other nobles would use it as ammunition against him. He then points the protag at another nobleman, an enemy, and watches as the protag goes off to kill this guy.

He has basically used the protag as a deniable weapon against one of his enemies. He can deny that he had anything to do with the assassination attempt that the protag is going to do (reason he needs deniability is given earlier in the book). He understands what makes the protagonist tick (an unrealistic code of honor, loyalty, and the use of violence as the solution of first resort).

The protagonist duly kills the target. He thinks he has done his duty, but then a demon appears and starts chasing him. He runs from it, just escaping, and sees it disappear in the sunlight. The next night it appears again, and he has to take refuge in a temple. Finally he finds out that the demon is not tracking him per se, it's bound to an object that he is carrying. Usually this is a scrap of parchment with the spell written on it, and the demon then kills the one carrying the parchment. In this case, it turns out that the spell has been tattooed on him by the nobleman (the reasons for this are explained).

The protag then has to flay a portion of skin from his belly, sneak into the noble man's house, and get the skin into the his food. The protagonist is caught just as he is attempting to leave. He is hauled in front of the nobleman, the nobleman eventually eats the skin, the sun sets, demons appear, rip the bad guy into small strips and our hero just escapes.

That's pretty much it, although I realize I haven't mentioned one of the main characters at all. Oh, well.



The comments I've had with it about non-prose problems fall into two categories:



1 - the problem a couple of people had is that the story didn't really begin for them until halfway through. I guess this is because the nobleman is plotting and trying to maneouvre the protagonist to where he wants him. I tried to hint what he was doing but not make it too blatant. But another reader said he spotted what was going on, so I don't know who to believe there. I guess I could switch the order of the book around, but I do think the plotting needs to be shown. Maybe I'm wrong.

2- the problem with characterization I mentioned in my first post. A couple of people have said they didn't really feel like they knew who the characters were, and they didn't really care about them.
 

maestrowork

Fixing problems

Just a couple of thoughts, based on my own experience. I'm sure Uncle Jim and others have better suggestions.


1 - the problem a couple of people had is that the story didn't really begin for them until halfway through. I guess this is because the nobleman is plotting and trying to maneouvre the protagonist to where he wants him. I tried to hint what he was doing but not make it too blatant. But another reader said he spotted what was going on, so I don't know who to believe there. I guess I could switch the order of the book around, but I do think the plotting needs to be shown. Maybe I'm wrong.

I had the same problem with my earlier version. My ms started well enough, then the plot kind of just stopped because I was spending too much time developing the relationship between the protagonist and his love interest. Too much "superficial" character building, if you will. Once I cut the first few chapters and started the story close to the main thing, the plot moved along. Backstories can then be integrated into the rest of the story, here and there. I also restructured the chapters, interpersing scenes and flashbacks to create some suspense, which, together with momentum, move your plot.


2- the problem with characterization I mentioned in my first post. A couple of people have said they didn't really feel like they knew who the characters were, and they didn't really care about them.

One way to give your characters depths and create empathy is via dialogues and actions. Not just any actions to move the plot, but actions that develop the characters. Dialogues can reveal a lot -- personalities, emotions, relationships with each other, etc. Also, it makes the reader feel like they're watching and hearing real people. If you find your dialogues and actions only serve to move the plot along, slow down and do some character-driven actions and dialogues. Talk about their families? Children? Your story seems to lend to a lot of personal anecdotes, stories, pain, etc. that can enrich these "gladiators." Each of them has a history, pain, and a reason why he is there. What are their dreams, hopes and desires? If you explore those and put them in actions and dialogues, give them some internal conflicts, I bet the readers will start to root for them.
 

Jules Hall

Re: Filecards

the problem a couple of people had is that the story didn't really begin for them until halfway through

Have you considered adding a subplot to the start of the story to keep the readers involved while this develops? If you choose it carefully, it should be able to show the two characters well. You should, of course, consider how it ties in with the main story, and it should certainly have some bearing on how that procedes -- maybe you could show how your character learns something that he needs to know in order to fulfil his part in the main plot?
 

James D Macdonald

Minor characters

Your minor characters are characters.

That is, they have hopes, dreams, plans. When they die, those plans are cut short.

They are each the hero of their own stories. They don't know that they aren't the main character and are only there to move the plot along.

They also need to be motivated by something other than "the author said so."
 

Yeshanu

File Cards

Thanks for the file card tips.

Having written the first draft without file cards or outline, it is now time to do the "agricultural work," as you call it. :ack This is where your file cards might help -- if I put all the scenes on file cards, and then rearrange/add/subtract using the cards, it might seem a little less overwhelming than using the entire first draft. (As well as a lot lighter to carry around.)
 

SRHowen

Grammar help

One of the best sites for grammar, without spending a dime is <a href="http://www.dailygrammar.com/" target="_new">www.dailygrammar.com/</a>

A daily grammar lesson sent in your e-mail or you can go to the site and just open the lessons you need.

Shawn
 
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