December 2016 - Ann Henry Editor and Author

Know Where You’re Headed

London, Sydney, or Tokyo? As we stood by this directional sign on a small island in the middle of the South Pacific, my husband and I chose Sydney, by way of Noumea, as we were sailing. But we did not wait until we were in Apia, the capital of Samoa (formerly known as Western Samoa), to decide on our final destination. We had spent months planning this voyage across the South Pacific before we ever left Mexico, and so, even though our plans were of the type that welcomes deviation, we knew that we would generally head in a southwesterly direction and that we expected to wind up in Australia.

This is how I like to write fiction. No matter what sparks my interest in writing the story or where, if anywhere, on the plotline that spark might land, I find a beginning point from which to spin the tale and know, usually before I begin writing it, just how it will end. In fact, I find that knowing the ending before writing the story is even more important than knowing the beginning. You can always go back and find, or add, the beginning, but it is difficult to write a story if you don’t know where it is going.

When my husband, Jim, and I decided to buy a boat and sail across the Pacific, we did not know whether we would be starting out on the voyage from California, Mexico, or perhaps Panama, but we knew what ocean (Pacific) and what main part of that ocean (South Pacific) we wanted to cross and where (Australia) we wanted to end the journey. This meant that we would want to begin the voyage from the west coast of Southern California, Mexico, or Central America and that we could plan what islands we might want to visit, beginning with those in French Polynesia, no matter the specific location of our jumping off point.

The middle of the journey would work itself out, with many variations possible within the general geographic area through which we would be traveling, because all those possible way points lay between our starting point and our final destination. Our plans for the middle of the trip could be determined or revised at will as long as we did not veer too far off the route to Australia. In other words, we would probably need to stop in Fiji, but whether to sail into Vanuatu was entirely up to us, the wind, and the weather. Vanuatu could be considered a minor plot point, one we could easily do without, whereas Fiji was an important one for the story and Sydney, of course, the climax.

Think of it this way: You can fiddle with the middle, but it’s hard to bend the end.

Oahu is a beautiful island, but one would hardly consider it en route from San Diego to Sydney. If your final destination for this journey is Australia, then save Hawaii for another voyage. You can always write another book.

Book

Once Upon a Time…

Remember what it was like when you were a child and heard those magic words, Once upon a time…? It was like a switch was flipped in your brain, and suddenly every cell in your body was straining toward the storyteller, waiting for what would come next. In fact, if you were seated, your body most likely did indeed strain forward while your mind churned with anticipation.

Why? Would you have had the same reaction if someone had begun with Yesterday… or Last year… or even Centuries ago…? Probably not. And again we must ask, “Why?” After all, what does once upon a time mean except sometime in the past? Are those four words, once upon a time, strung together in exactly that order, truly magical?

In a way, yes. The phrase once upon a time is, in a sense, a magic carpet that transports us out of ourselves into a world of fiction where we may kill a fire-breathing dragon, save a beautiful princess, defeat human-eating alien invaders, save a younger sibling from drowning, win the annual spelling bee, make friends with a mermaid, or successfully stand up to the school bully. And that’s just for kids.

Stories for adults seldom begin with those golden words, once upon a time, but that doesn’t mean we grown-ups don’t become just as enthralled as children with the announcement of an impending story. My all-time favorite opening line for a work of fiction is the following:

Born at sea in the teeth of a gale, the sailor was a dog.

Yeah, I know. The Sailor Dog, by Margaret Wise Brown, is a children’s book, but whenever I read that opening, I know I’m in for a good ride.

Now consider the following story opening, intended for us “more mature” folks:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….

Charles Dickens has taken no more than twelve words and three seconds to pull us into A Tale of Two Cities. Already we want more.

Why? Why do we care? Whatever Dickens is talking about here is obviously in the past and has nothing to do with us or our current situation in life. So why do we yearn to hear more?

Because we can’t help it. It’s in our genes.

Our brains are wired for story. We learn from story, and our brains are always seeking new information to help us survive. With story, we can hear about what tragic happenstance befell the man who went hunting in the jungle after dark or tried to cross the railroad tracks in the path of an oncoming train. We can imagine ourselves in this situation and, with our brain’s guidance, decide that we had better not do the same thing ourselves, thereby living to hear another story another day.

But if the storyteller is masterful enough to transport us with zir story, then by the end we will have experienced adrenaline flow, sweaty palms, and increased heart rate, all without having to put forth the physical exertion of actually trying to outrun the tiger or the train.

And why is “transportation,” that act of “losing” oneself in a story, so pleasing to us? Because, according to a study conducted by Dr. Paul J. Zak, founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and Professor of Economics, Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University and Professor of Neurology at Loma Linda University Medical Center, when we are “transported” by story, our brains release oxytocin, a chemical that makes us feel empathy.

Humans are social animals, and empathy helps us to connect with others. Stories encourage us to do this – but only if we are transported by the story. We must be emotionally invested in the story in order for it to have this effect on us. We must suspend our disbelief and go along with the knight in shining armor as he rides off to fight the dragon. Or, to be even more specific, we must not just go along beside the knight, we must become the knight in our minds, and then our brain will take care of the rest.

In his 2015 book, The Irresistible Novel, Jeff Gerke tells us, “The secret to irresistible fiction is to do whatever it takes to gain the reader’s interest and hold it to the end of the book.” In other words, he adds, “You must engage your reader from beginning to end.”

And so when you begin your next story, think about how you will entice the reader to merge with your main character and thus jump gleefully (or slide gracefully) into your own magical realm of fiction. Keep that oxytocin flowing, and you’ll keep your reader happy.

And now come sit with me and let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time….

Creative Writing

A Rose by Any Other Name

According to Shakespeare’s heroine in Romeo and Juliet, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” And I think most of us would agree, especially in reference to an actual rose. However, would you be as tempted to lean down and smell such a flower if you encountered it for the first time after being informed that its common name was nasty, short for its (obviously fictitious) Latin name, nastismellicus? Maybe not.

The same holds true for fiction titles. Of Mice and Men is a far more intriguing and alluring title for adults than, say, Lennie and His Mouse, which sounds like a children’s story. In my opinion, John Steinbeck’s title Of Mice and Men is exemplary in that it fulfills all of my criteria for a good title:

1 – It is significant in relation to the story

2 – It reflects the mood of the story

3 – It is not overly long

4 – It is intriguing in itself

Other excellent titles include Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe; Islands in the Stream, by Ernest Hemingway; Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell; and The Perfect Spy, by John LeCarré. On a slightly different note, I would also include Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen; Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett; Extreme Measures, by Michael Palmer; and Killing Floor, by Lee Child.

The title of Anne Tyler’s novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is a bit long but otherwise fits the criteria beautifully. I think it’s a great title and would not advise changing it. But even if you love a good adventure story, how likely would you be to peruse a novel entitled The Long and Arduous Journey of Aloysius Herschfelt Katzenbach? Henry Fielding may have gotten away with it in his most famous novel, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (no wonder we just call it Tom Jones!), but we’re not in the 18th Century anymore, gentle writer. Time has moved on, and the taste, not to mention patience, of our readers along with it.

Although I consider title length to be the least important of my criteria, I nonetheless think it deserves our attention. Even a simple edit, such as changing The Tail of the Dragon to A Dragon’s Tail, can be an improvement.

I recently read an interview with a noted author who, when asked what she found most difficult in the writing process, said it was coming up with a good title. I know how she feels. As I was writing my first novel, A Bit of Sun, I was clueless as to what I should name it until one of my character’s gave me the answer in a bit of dialogue. With my second novel, Sailing Away from the Moon, I had the title (thanks to my husband’s sailing experience) first, then built the story around it.

It wasn’t until I was writing the The Novel Pitch that I came up with the above criteria for fiction titles. Since I was discussing the elements that should be included in a fiction pitch, obviously I needed to address titles. So years after I had named my own novels, I finally gave it serious thought and came up with the aforementioned requirements.

Now I find writing titles to be much easier. I hope you will, too.