The Fantasy Adventure of Aaron Pogue
Author of the Dragonprince's Legacy, the Godlanders War, and the Ghost Targets mysteries
Somebody made a news article about the backstory in my NaNoWriMo book:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117082425.htm
I’m at 45,000 words now, or about 180 pages. I’m aiming for 60,000, but the official NaNoWriMo goal is only 50,000. I should easily hit that before we head to Little Rock for Thanksgiving.
Happy Hallowe’en!
That’s right, I used the apostrophe. Deal!
And, jeez, E– sure got caught up on her blog, huh? Wow.
Yes, I’m putting off journaling. It’s been a rough week. I’m still sick. Managed to have a decent evening last night, despite, by staying home and playing computer games all night. T– made up some steaks before she took AB trick-or-treating at OC. D– came over and we played WoW until 10:30. Any other details I could give, you don’t want.
I did spend a lot of yesterday getting ready for National Novel Writing Month. I start writing tomorrow, and it’s everything I can do to make myself wait until then. Don’t expect journal entries next month (aside from the occasional gloat or lamentation over my word count). Like last year, I’m not even going to try to keep up daily posts.
I’m doing a Law and Order-style murder mystery set in a utopian future where ubiquitous databases are replacing human religion. Should be good.
Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.
Well, the first Pogue Family Writer’s Conference is come and gone.
My dad, my sisters and I were the participants (thus the name). A little over a month ago, we each submitted an original novel for everyone else to read. My task was made a little bit easier because, as I’ve chronicled here, I spent most of the last six months reading and reviewing their submissions. The versions they submitted in September were generally rewrites of the ones I marked up back in May, or whatever, but close enough that I’d already done all the heavy lifting.
I hadn’t actually gotten much in return, though, so I picked my least-revised and least-reviewed novel, King Jason’s War (which only T– had read, to date), and sent that one off to finally get some feedback on it.
Friday morning I had to come in for work, but I had the afternoon of my RDO off. Before I left town, I met with T– and her parents for lunch at Steve’s Rib up by K– and N–‘s house. It was fantastic.
Then I picked my little sister up right around 1:00, and we headed to Branson. She actually drove for the first leg of the trip, and I took over when we stopped in Tulsa. I’d planned to get a lot of reading done on the way, but I managed to get most of it taken care of on Wednesday and Thursday, so we spent more of the trip talking than reading.
I’d also expected it to be a 6-hour drive, and it came in right at 5, so that was a pleasant surprise. We got to the cabin in Forsythe, just outside Branson, around 6:20 Friday evening. My older sister was already there waiting for us, and she informed us Mom and Dad were about an hour out.
That gave us time to bring in all our stuff, pick our rooms in the cabin, and not call our families to let them know we’d made it safe. That last because it turned out there was no cell phone reception for any of us, anywhere near the cabin. Joy. Also, contrary to our expectations, there was no internet connection. For three days. It was like a preview of hell (in that regard, anyway).
I mean, I’m just assuming there’s no internet connection in hell. I can’t actually quote scripture or verse in support of that, but it seems logical….
As soon as Mom and Dad were moved into the cabin, Mom started putting together a chips-and-dip spread for her hungry family, while the rest of us all started talking about the materials we’d brought for the weekend. Heather kept saying, “No, wait, we’re not talking about that until tomorrow!” (she had a whole agenda scheduled for Saturday), but she needn’t have bothered.
Saturday morning I woke up last, around 9:30, and Mom greeted me with a hot ham and swiss breakfast croissant, which was damn awesome. Then I sat down at the big conference table and joined in the conversation critiqueing Dad’s book. We told him to turn it into two books (that was mostly my suggestion, but the girls got on board with it pretty much right away). Then we told him how, and I think by the end of the conversation he was actually okay with the idea. It took about an hour to get to that point, though, which had Heather pretty concerned, because her agenda only called for 90 minutes total to get through all of our books.
We segued to my little sister’s book then, and spent an hour and a half on that. We only quit because we had made arrangements to meet Mom in town for lunch, so we had to break up the discussion. We took a moment partway through that critique, though, and all agreed that really this was the main thing we’d hoped to get out of the weekend, so we took all the other discussion topics for the weekend, labeled them “As Time Becomes Available” and made critiques the sole agenda for the rest of the day.
We had a fifteen minutes drive to lunch, and I spent it making everyone name favorite aspects of the others’ books, because most of the two-and-a-half hours of critiques had been, “It’s a good book, but here’s the parts I didn’t like, and how you can improve them.” Generally the good stuff just works, and keeps you reading, so you don’t make note of it. I asked everyone to name a favorite scene in Dad’s book or a favorite character in Heather’s, stuff like that. I think that helped get everyone into a little bit better frame of mind for the rest of the day.
Anyway, lunch was at a steak place, and we sort of took a break from the writing talk. The girls talked about Mom’s morning shopping trip (and, I’m sure, other things, but I didn’t really hear much of it), and Dad and I talked about the economic crisis in a historical context, and how best to profit off of it. Oh, and OU football.
Then we drove back to the house, and Heather and I discussed my book, but the other two hadn’t really had a chance to read it all the way through. Dad spent the time writing and my little sister spent the time reading. Still, the feedback I got from Heather was amazing, and really encouraging.
We probably spent an hour on that, even though it was just the one reviewer, and then we turned to Heather’s book and all of us had read that one, so it was another shouting match (in a good way, I mean). My little sister followed that up with a brief exercise she’d concocted, in which we explored the history and background of characters within our stories — first a major one and then a minor one. While the former was probably the more useful, we all had a lot more fun with the latter.
Dinner finally interrupted us. Mom made some garlic chicken, with potatoes on the side and bruscetta as an appetizer — it was all good. While we ate, we went through another of the postponed activities, with everyone discussing two of his or her favorite story ideas. We weighed in with our opinions of them, and I think with the feedback everyone was pretty much able to pick one of those stories to focus on for NaNoWriMo this year.
Then Heather had an activity for us that turned out more like a game. We each wrote down a one-line story idea for each of the other three. The example she gave (and her story idea for Dad) was “A girl who sees doors where there are no doors.” The one she gave me was, “Trees take over the world and solve global warming in their own way.” Then we were each supposed to flesh out the three ideas we were given, building a one-paragraph synopsis of a book. Afterward we read them all out loud, with all the entertainment value of a game of Balderdash.
That was our last event for the weekend. Afterward we settled into separate conversations, many of them follow-ups on earlier critiques. Dad and I spent a while working out the plot arc of his upcoming novel, which had him stumped somewhere around the middle. It was that sort of thing.
Then around 11:00 everyone finally got to bed. I meant to get up early on Sunday, but didn’t quite manage what I’d hoped for. Still, after all the goodbyes and the final conversations, and packing the car and all, we got out around 10:00. Once again we stopped in Tulsa, but that was only a brief stop, and I dropped my little sister off at her place right at 3:00. We spent the whole drive talking, mostly about Social Constructionism (so, yeah, I had a good time).
Then I got home and watched the Cowboys game on my TiVo, and spent the rest of the evening in a deep melancholy. Ugh.
D– came over, and we had leftover pizza for dinner, and he and I spent most of the evening playing WoW. T– eventually joined us in the office, and we watched some more Get Smart, and far too soon it was an hour past my bedtime. I sent D– home, and went to bed around 11:00.
Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.
So, we have the Pogue Family Writer’s Conference this weekend, and as part of the project, everyone submitted a manuscript that everyone else is supposed to read (before the conference) and critique on Saturday morning.
I think we all feel pretty far behind on the reading part. I read all three books earlier this year, as part of a markup, but I haven’t read the rewrites, so I feel like I should go back through them. I also just realized last weekend that the book I submitted is one I haven’t looked at in over a year, so it’s one I really need to reread in order to get much value out of the feedback I’ll be getting. So my week is pretty much booked solid, as far as personal time goes.
In spite of that, when I got home from work yesterday I took a nap. I haven’t been feeling well lately. I don’t know if it’s something physical or psychological, but either way it’s got me down. I woke up about 6:30, had dinner with T–, and then watched AB while T– went to the grocery store. Afterward, we put AB to bed and then I locked myself in my office to spend the rest of the night reading Dad’s book.
I didn’t finish it, which puts me in a pretty tight spot for the rest of the night. Tonight T– will be taking AB to church, and tomorrow night they’re going to a church picnic, and I plan to skip both so that’ll give me a little extra reading time. I’m not totally confident it’ll be enough, though.
Anyway, that was my evening, and probably will be going forward.
Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.
At this certain time in the future, I will go to such and such a place and do this or that….
Sorry, I’ve been working with my budget lately, and it always gets me thinking about that.
Umm…last night, we had K– and N– and D– over for dinner, which consisted of three giant Jersey Mike’s sandwiches, split five ways. It worked out pretty well. I had the Italian for the first time, and it was delicious.
Afterward, D– and I stayed home to rebuild my computer while the rest of them went to church. Actually, D– worked on my computer and I worked on submission packages for all three of my books. I came up with these:
Anyway. D– took my computer apart and put it back together, and for the first time in three or four weeks, I have a PC running in my office (and access to all the stuff on my file server). That will be nice. It took all night to get it up and running and work out all the driver issues, though. I didn’t get to bed until right at midnight.
Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.
Yesterday, I made a To Do list, and crossed everything off it.
The most important items were synopses for each of three finished novels that I have ready to submit, and generic cover letters to go with those. I finished that over lunch yesterday, although the King Jason’s War synopsis still needs to be redone.
That’s a pretty big deal, though. I think the Taming Fire one turned out best, and that’s where I’m going to focus my main efforts to start off.
I got home and played with AB a bit, chatted with T–, and then sat down to work on the prologue to Sleeping Kings: Golden Age. Obviously, it’s going to be part of any submission package, and there was one thing I’d decided I really didn’t like about it. When the sleazy reporter goes to Chicago for the prankster’s funeral, he meets with the prankster’s stoner college friends, gets them all drunk, and then they take him to the prankster’s old apartment and he’s able to get the scoop he needs to write his bogus story that turns Hiz’ammat into a real thing.
Problem is, the book is all about a tight-knit group of college friends, and I never really intended to have that parallelism in there (and I didn’t much like it). I already had him meet with the prankster’s parents before the funeral, arrange an interview, and then go meet with them (off-camera) in the middle of his getting the college kids drunk. I think at the time I was working on it, I wasn’t prepared for the emotional aspect of that interview (between the reporter and the parents). I’ve had some time, though, and decided that was exactly what I wanted to do.
So I dismantled everything after the funeral, took out the college kids completely, and put the parents into that role (including the bit where they get manipulating into opening up their son’s sordid life to a reporter). I didn’t bother being maudlin with it, but if you take the time to think about what’s going on there, it’s much sadder this way. I think it works better, though.
I was working on that until 9-ish, then I spent a little time poking at Chapter 1, but without much enthusiasm. I need to get the first three chapters of all three books spic and span before I can start submitting them, so that’s my short-term goal. I also still have to get Golden Age down on paper, but the work on the synopsis will give me good direction, I think, and help make that happen.
Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.
What a game….
Yesterday afternoon I got home from work, took care of some chores around the house, and returned some borrowed lawncare items to the neighbor across the back fence. He, in turn, gave us a gift for AB that he and the wife had found while out shopping. It’s a pretty cool little alphabet toy. Noisy, but cool.
Then T– and I packed up the baby (with her new toy, to keep her happy) and headed to K– and N–‘s place for dinner. N– made Polish sausage and veggies, and T– brought pulled pork sandwiches, and it was a delicious meal. Then afterward we retired to the living room to watch the Cowboys/Eagles game.
It was spectacular. If you didn’t see it, you missed a good one.
I also got Julie’s wedding poem done yesterday, which is a pretty big deal. I’m closing out items on my To Do list, and hope to keep that up this week, by putting together submission packages for three of my novels and preparing some material for our writing convention next week.
Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.
I just finished reading my little sister’s novel. It, like my older sister’s and Dad’s, was much better than I ever expected. I feel a little bit less special every day….
I forgot to post yesterday, so I need to go back to Tuesday night, when T– was in Tulsa for work. She stayed the night, so I was on my own for an evening. D– was (and still is) out of town on business. Luckily, after spending all day watching my baby, N– invited me over for dinner, so I didn’t have to find a way to take care of myself.
We had meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner, and watermelon for dessert. It was delicious, and N– sent the leftovers home with me for a delicious lunch on Wednesday, too. Afterward I hung out for a little while, but eventually had to rush AB home because she was in need of a diaper change and I’d left her bag at home.
After she went to bed, I watched Old School and worked on my markup of my sister’s novel. B– called, too — a situation I’d arranged beforehand, when I learned he, too, was stuck at home watching a baby, so we couldn’t really get together. Anyway, we talked for half an hour or so, and it was good to catch up. I hope to get over there sometime soon.
Wednesday morning I stayed home to watch AB until T– got back from Tulsa, right around lunch time. As soon as she got in, I had my leftovers, and then headed up to work. Afterward, we met K– and N– (along with N–‘s parents) at Jason’s Deli for dinner. Then T– dropped me off at home while the rest of them went to church.
I spent an hour and a half working on my stricken computer, but I gained almost nothing. Alas. It needs money, and I’m not in a spending mood. I only have nineteen days before it needs to be operational, though, so I had better get in gear.
Anyway, when T– got home I gave up on the computer repair, kissed AB goodnight, and then got back to work on my sister’s novel. It’s a powerful story with engaging characters. I’m impressed.
That took me to bedtime and, as I said, I finished it up over lunch today. I also finished reading The Cat Who Went Bananas, which puts me quite near the end of that series.
Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.
I didn’t mention it in the weekend wrapup, but Sunday morning I wrote some on my Sleeping Kings story. I did a page sometime last week, too (which may have made it into the blog — I don’t feel motivated to do the necessary research).
Anyway, yesterday over lunch (and sitting in the waiting room at the chiropractor’s office), I finished up the new chapter I’m injecting into the middle of the already-finished-in-longhand novel, and then went ahead and typed it up, so now I can resume typing up the rest of my draft, and that will give me a finished draft of Golden Age. I think it’s going to be about 30 pages short, and I don’t know yet how I’m going to fix that, but I need to just get it down on paper first. And I’m now a major step closer to that goal.
So that’s exciting. After work, I played with AB some and T– made some really delicious chicken parmesan with pasta, and then D– came over and we played Civ until way too late. That was my whole evening, really.
This morning I got an email from my little sister, asking me some general questions because she’s wanting to try her hand at writing, too, and she hasn’t been part of any of my earlier correspondence. She asked me a handful of questions that lent perfectly to the sort of information I’d been providing Heather and Dad since last fall, and in the process of just answering them, I hit all the basics of the ideas in my little How To book.
I felt like it was such a good overview that I wanted to share it here. This is, in brief, everything you need to know to get started writing a novel.
1. Do you write your novels straight through or do you jump around writing the scenes that are most clear to you then going back and tying them all together?
I generally imagine my books in something of a random order, scenes jumping out to me that would be AWESOME, or whatever. When I sit down to write, though, I almost always write from start to finish.
That’s not to say that it’s the best way, it’s just the way that has worked best for me. A lot of writers will say that if you’re having problems with a particular scene, leave it and go work on a scene that you’re more excited about. I’ve never really experienced that. If I’m having a problem with a scene, it’s basically because I’m having a problem with the overall story, so I have to either force myself to work through it (which is the real trick), or just switch to another book altogether. I usually have 2 or 3 books active at any given time, so that’s always an option for me.
As for what a good chapter should contain, that’s a kind of complicated answer. An easy way to deal with it is to write a full scene in every chapter. A scene consists of narrative (that is, stuff actually happening, not just the writer telling the reader about something, which is called “exposition”), generally occurs in a single place (just like a theatrical scene), and progresses the plot. A plot consists of a series of obstacles that the protagonist must overcome, usually in escalating difficulty and usually in a linear order, so that resolving one obstacle reveals the next, harder obstacle, but also often provides the tools that the protagonist will need for the next challenge. So, given that, in order to progress the plot, a scene should either show the protagonist encountering a new obstacle, or overcoming the one he’s currently working on. You could probably also spend a scene setting up an obstacle that’s going to come later, like showing the villain placing an elaborate trap.
Anyway, I think a chapter should cover a single, whole plot element, just like a sentence conveys a single, whole idea. You could write one obstacle per chapter, or one scene per chapter (where there’s usually 2-3 scenes per obstacle).
Of course, many writers never think about any of this at all. They just put a chapter break wherever the story seems to call for one. Some people try to put breaks at moments of conclusion, so the reader can conveniently put the book down. Others deliberately avoid that (trying to keep their readers enthralled) so they only put breaks at cliffhangers. And, of course, some don’t use chapters at all. As with most things, I say go with your gut instinct for any first draft, and if you want to follow a particular scheme, wait until the rewrite to set it in place. In keeping with that, I usually don’t do any chapter breaks at all in a rough draft.
Instead, I will put section breaks (3 blank lines, to create a gap on the page) whenever I skip time or change the character I’m focusing on without stating it explicitly in the text. Usually, when I’m doing the rewrite, I’ll just pick one of those section breaks and make it a chapter break.
3. What is a good word count for a chapter?
Word count is useful to publishers because it’s consistent from one page size to the next, so that’s why you’ll hear serious writers talking in word count. No matter that your font or font size, double space or single, it always comes out the same.
If you’re using a standard font, double-spaced on an 8.5x11in page, you’ll get right around 300 words per page. Interestingly enough, the industry standard fonts in publishing are smaller than 12 point Times New Roman, and the pages are, of course, single-spaced, and the page size is smaller, and magically it still comes out surprisingly close to the same 300 words per page (in both cases, it’s a little bit over).
So, if you want to, you can just write a book in 12 point font, double-spaced, and compare your page count directly with the page count of one of your favorite books. It’s going to be match up within about 5-10%.
All of that is just an effort to explain why writers use word count, and why it may or may not be useful to you. It is a direct stand-in for page count, though — it’s just more accurate. So when I answered your previous question, “15-20 pages,” that’s exactly the same thing as multiplying it by 300 and saying, “4500-6000 words.”
I could have just typed that sentence in answer to this question, but I thought you might want to know why we sometimes use one and sometimes use the other.
My preferred answer is that every story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s pretty much my definition of a story.
Another set of elements, and a more popular one (because it’s less vague), is character, setting, and plot.
Both of these sets work well together. You use character, setting, and plot, to create the story. It’s not a complete story, though, until it has a beginning, middle, and end.
Let me explain all of those bits.
Character describes all of the active agents within the world. Usually people (but, obviously, not necessarily). A lot of time, we’ll say that the setting became a character, when a stormy moor interacts with the other characters and essentially expresses emotion and seems to have an agenda, or something like that. Usually, though, characters are straightforward. You have dynamic characters and flat characters. Dynamic characters undergo a fundamental change to who they are, during the course of the story. Most of the time, in today’s literature, you want the protagonist to be dynamic. Maybe he starts out as a zero and then he becomes a hero. Maybe he starts out idealistic and full of hope and, even though he wins, he ends up burnt out and jaded. That’s called a character arc. Flat characters, on the other hand, stay the same. These are usually characters with quirky personalities who are just in the story to keep it moving, like sidekicks and comic relief characters, but there have been plenty of flat heroes over time (like Superman, for an easy example — the only way his character could change would be for him to become less good, and nobody wants to see that). There’s lots of examples of very dynamic supporting characters, too, of course. Think Urkel from whatever show it was Urkel was on. Of course, as he changed more and more, he eventually became the main character, but initially he was just comic relief. Also…and this is mostly academic, but many people forget that the narrator is a character, too. Some writers take advantage of that, giving the narrator a distinctive voice or maybe making his description untrustworthy in some way, but most of the time he’s treated as a perfect, impartial historian relating the events of the story. By default, it’s safe to assume that, but that’s still a character description.
Setting describes the place(s) and time(s) in which the story happens. If it’s different from the present-day, real world (such as a fantasy novel or alternate history), setting includes any changes that the author makes. If it does take place in the present-day real world, setting is the individual bits of the real world that the author chooses to put scenes in (and, I suppose, any other things going on in the world that have an impact on the story).
Plot I referenced briefly earlier. A plot starts with a premise, and then immediately adds a major obstacle, which changes the protagonist’s world in some way. This can be good or bad (a death, or a marriage proposal), but it’s got to be significant. People inherently resist change, so as soon as the obstacle is introduced, the protagonist will want to undo it — he wants to find some way to restore his world to the way it was before, so he goes on a sort of quest. There must, naturally, be obstacles in the way. How many times have you watched a movie and thought, “You know, if he just didn’t answer the phone, none of that would have happened.” Well, that’s an obstacle, and without it you don’t have a whole plot, and without a plot you don’t have a story.
Anyway, you generally want the plot to have a story arc, which could be graphed as an actual arc. It’s not symmetrical, though. Usually it starts off with a big jump (that is, the main conflict of the story) then rises gradually from start to climax, then drops off pretty sharply as soon as the climax is resolved (and, with it, the last major obstacle is overcome).
That provides your beginning, middle, and end. The beginning is the part where you introduce the setting, the protagonist, and the conflict that changes the protagonist’s life. The beginning should be short. The phrase we use is “Get in late, get out early.” Start telling the story as late in the process as possible, and stop telling the story as soon as you finished revealing everything needed. The middle is the series of obstacles that the protagonist overcomes along the way, and the climax is the end of the middle. During the climax, the detective solves the murder, or the bride says “I Do” — or, maybe, kicks her cheating fiance to the curb — either way, the conflict is resolved and life can get back to normal. Then comes the end. The end, technically named the “denouement,” is the part where life actually does get back to normal. You can tie up any loose ends, but there’s not really obstacles being overcome or anything — it’s just information dump. Like the beginning, the end should be as short as possible.
5. What could a book do without?
In the same way, don’t spend a ton of time on tying up loose ends. Don’t make a bunch of loose ends. Your only goal in the book is to tell a single story. Keep to that story. Yes, all the minor characters have interesting, rich, full lives of their own, but we’re not talking about that right now. We’re talking about their role in this story, which has nothing to do with who forgot to get the shopping done and whether or not someone’s mother-in-law is a jerk. You can add those sorts of things to “increase the realism.” Don’t. Just tell the story you’re telling.
Personally, I also avoid spending a ton of time on descriptions — of characters or settings. I try to give all the important details (and give it early — there’s nothing worse that reading on page sixty that “she ran her hand through her bright red hair” when I’ve been picturing her as a brunette since page four), and nothing else. People have a natural talent for imagining scenes and people, and that’s most of the pleasure of reading a book. You do need a certain amount of description to set characters apart. Making all the Weasleys redheads was incredibly effective, because it made it easy to remember which characters were Weasleys. And if a character hadn’t been seen in several chapters (or books), she could always say something about Percy ducking through the door, his flame-red hair mussed by the wind, and you remembered instantly who Percy was. (Not that anyone ever forgot Percy, but you can see how it could be useful).
Now, that whole bit is my personal opinion. There are writers who are famous for their incredibly rich, detailed descriptions of scenes and people (Stephen King and Robert Jordan are two obvious examples), and there are fans who love the level of detail they give. Readers vary greatly on this, so I recommend using whatever level of detail in your writing that you prefer in your reading. I prefer only the necessities, so that’s all I write.
Some technical things a book should do without:
“Very.” Never, ever, ever, ever write “very” in text, unless it’s in dialog. Psychologically, “very” has the opposite of it’s desired effect. If you say, “She was beautiful,” the reader thinks, “Hmm. She was beautiful.” If you say, “She was very beautiful,” you see, “very” doesn’t actually add any specific information, so it makes the reader think, “Wait, how beautiful.” Without the “very,” the reader never asked the question — he just accepted the information. But once he’s asking, “How beautiful is ‘very beautiful,'” you pretty much have a reader who no longer trusts the narrator, and that’s the opposite of what you want.
“He Spoke,” “she declamed,” “he roared,” “she questioned,” “he wondered aloud,” “she hollered.” Don’t use those when attributing dialog. Use “he said” and “she said.” When readers read dialog, they skip over the bits that aren’t in quotes. You can pack all kinds of information in there, but readers barely even glimpse it. It’s just the way they work. So all the time you spend coming up with the perfect synonym there just gets in the way. It’s in the writer’s best interest to just go with the reader’s instinct and say “he said” and “she said,” and leave it at that. It looks boring when you glance at the page, and it feels boring when you type the same word over and over again, but to the reader, it’s actually a whole lot easier.
And, finally, helping verbs. Most of the time, when you find a helping verb (or a verb that ends with “-ing”), you’ve got a weak sentence. “She was going to the store” is not as strong a sentence as “She went to the store.” In the same way, “She started shooting some Nazis” is not as strong as “She shot some Nazis.” Of course, there are times when weak verbs are necessary — generally when setting up a strong verb, as in, “She had been going to the store, but then she shot some Nazis.”
6. What is a simple way to make sure my novel doesn’t suck?
Everything I said here. Have a clear, focused story, and tell only the story (not a bunch of extra information), but do make sure you tell the whole story: beginning, middle, and end. Evaluate and control your story arc so that it keeps rising toward an exciting climax — that will keep the readers involved. Use strong verbs, and focus on narrative instead of exposition.
Hmm. I mentioned those two earlier, but they’re pretty crucial in answering this question. Narrative is telling the reader what happened. Exposition is telling the reader about what happened. You could say, “She was kind,” or you could tell a short story showing her being kind. The second is far more powerful. You can say, “Then he went to the store, bought all of the supplies he needed, drove to the bank, and stole a bunch of money.” That’s exposition. Or, you can say, “Sweat stood on Henry’s forehead in spite of the cool afternoon, and he couldn’t stop himself jerking his head at any sound, eyes darting. The cashier watched him, and that only made things worse. Henry took a deep breath, held it for a second, then forced it out slowly and turned down the aisle, searching for something he could use to hide his face. A ski mask, pantyhose, anything. Even makeup would do. This stupid little convenience store was all candy and chips, though, and when he glanced up, Henry caught the cashier watching him in the big round mirror. He bit back a yelp.”
It’s a lot more words, obviously, but it’s storytelling. That’s your goal. And that’s what writer’s mean when they say, “Show, don’t tell.” Focus on narrative instead of exposition.
And finally — and this is of utmost importance — rewrite. Honestly, you can ignore every single piece of advice I gave above, for your first draft. I recommend it. When you sit down to write a story, your only job is to get the story on paper. It doesn’t need to be good. In fact, your first draft will suck. There is no simple way to avoid that. There’s no way to avoid that at all. My first drafts suck. Dad’s first draft sucked. I’m sure Tolkein’s first draft was garbage, and those eleven years Rowling spent trying to get her first book sold, I guarantee you she was rewriting it.
If you try to make the first draft good, you’ll never be able to get it down on paper. You will never finish it. I promise. Get over that right now, before you even put pen to paper. Accept that you’re going to have to rewrite, and just write down the story.
Now, after that’s done, all you’ve got is a sucky first draft. Then you have to have the discipline to actually do the rewrite. It’s fun, though. You can see the change, on a daily basis. When you rewrite, you make your story not suck. You may not have a clear, focused story when you first sit down to write your rough draft. You might not have anything other than a handful of characters, some without names. That’s fine. Once you’re done, you can reread what you wrote, and find out what the story is. So when you go to do a rewrite, that’s when you make sure that you have a clear, focused story. That’s when you make sure that you tell only the story, but do make sure you tell the whole story. That might sound like impossible advice, but once you have the first draft in front of you, it’s a simple matter of pruning the stuff that shouldn’t be there, and filling in whatever holes aren’t covered.
You can do the same for everything else I mentioned, in the rewrite. You don’t have to avoid helping verbs in your rough draft, but when you get to the rewrite, you can look at every sentence and make sure it has a strong verb. Sometimes, in a rough draft, you just can’t make yourself write a scene so you say, “Then he went here and did the next thing, and once that was done, he could finally head to Rio, where the cool stuff happened.” Okay, fine. That’s exposition, and you basically skipped a chapter. During the rewrite, you can fix that. Actually, that’s kind of fun because it gives you an opportunity to do some creative work in the midst of an otherwise mostly technical process.
So, yeah, I’ve given you some specifics, but the real answer to this question, is “rewrite.”