Uncertainty/risk in terms of focus

I read something quite a while ago, and I’m sorry but I can’t recall where, so I can’t link to the original… but it was an article about WW1.

It was about all the young Canadians who served in the trenches, and the question was, how did they convince wave upon wave of young men to pull themselves out of the trenches and run forward towards the enemy, and get gunned down?

How come the men in the trenches didn’t watch that first wave of men get gunned down and go, “heck no, I’m not doing that”?

And the answer was something along the lines of:

If you tell a group of one hundred young men that, out of all of them, one will survive the battle, every single man in that room will completely believe that they are that 1% who will survive.

The key being, these are/were all young men.

These guys were young teenagers, none had any experience with war, with extinction/death on a huge scale, with pain, disease, fear, or killing other people, many of them also young men. They did not have the experience to recognize/manage risk. Just like in the example I used yesterday about the teenager driving in the rain for the first time, they know rain makes the road slippery, they would have had to learn that in their drivers test, but just because you ‘know’ something, doesn’t automatically make it a ‘risk’.

I think the main difference between risk and uncertainty is the idea of focus.

Humans are bombarded with information/stimuli, and over time we learn what’s important and what we can safely ignore. We can either focus really well on one thing, or we can step our perspective back a little and focus at a wider range, but we lose the specifics that we would get through focusing on a single thing.

Like with a camera lens. You can focus on a person’s face, and everything around it will be blurry, or you can focus on the ocean/sunrise, where nothing specifically in the frame is intensely sharp nor blurry.

So, when it comes to risk/uncertainty, ‘risk’ would be something we have in our viewfinder because we have experience, so we know it’s important to pay attention to. We keep those in our peripheral vision, aware of them, but not focused on them… but we can quickly switch focus because we know they are there. Like, while driving, we are aware someone is beside us and behind us, but we mostly focus on the person in front of us unless, say, the person beside us starts swerving into our lane, then our focus shifts to the side.

If we’re using the camera lens again, ‘uncertainty’ are things not visible in our viewfinder. They exist, but maybe they’re behind the camera, or too high/low to be in the frame. Going back to the driving example again, we’re aware of drivers behind/beside/in front, but we pay no attention to what’s above us. That is out of our frame of focus. This is also why a lot of accidents happen at intersections. We are so focused on the light in front of us, we fail to give proper notice to what might be coming at us from the side.

We can’t focus on everything all the time, it's impossible, but as we gain experience, we are better able to position ourselves to react when hit with the unexpected, hit with ‘uncertainty’.*

Which is why I think understanding the terms is the first step in widening that focus. If we can’t tell the difference between risk and uncertainty, we aren’t able to adapt or make choices that will position us to adapt in the future. In other words, we are more likely to rationalize/blame others instead of accepting that uncertainly is a reality which happens to everyone.

If we believe it's someone else's fault, it'll remain an 'uncertainty' for us instead of a 'risk' we could manage better in the future. So we're less likely to learn from it and less likely to anticipate a similar situation happening in the future. History repeats itself, yes?

So what does this have to do with us, as writers?




* If I was mean, this is where I would have included some stuff about Gadamer's Hermeneutical Horizon theory, but I figured this was nerdy enough.

Uncertainty/Risk

I always feel like I should put a giant blinking “warning!” sign up when I click into over-analytical-mode.

These posts never get many comments, but I do get more emails than normal. Please, as always, comment, question, criticize, or throw ripe fruit in my general direction. Go all out, and if you send me an email, I will answer.

And the disclaimer: these nerdy posts are 100% opinion, please read all instructions carefully, keep away from small children, and have Poison Control on speed-dial.

I was nearly positive I’d already written a nerdy post in the past about uncertainty/risk, but searching my posts for the words turned up nothing.

The difference between uncertainty and risk is super interesting to me, and I think quite relevant to writers.

So let’s start off with how they’re different?

Risk is something you can manage. For example, if you get in your car when it’s pouring rain, you will mentally tell yourself, “The roads are slippery, my control will be less than normal, so if I slow down by 10km (or 5 miles for you Americans), I will be better able to react if the car in front of me slams on their brakes.”

That’s risk. Weighing the boundaries of what could go wrong and where the safe zone is. Those boundaries are things we learn through experience, either our own (slamming on the brakes, but going too fast to stop properly and hitting someone/etc) or through other people’s experiences (watching that happen to someone else, or having a friend/family member tell you).

We learn what those boundaries of safety are through experience, which means the younger you are, the less experience you have, therefore the younger you are, the less able you are to judge the safety/success of something.

This is why we get more conservative as we get older. We understand risk, and we manage it by slowing down 10km in the rain.

Uncertainty is when something unexpected slaps you in the face. This is the teenager driving in the rain for the very first time and maintaining the usual driving speed/distance as if they were driving on a dry/clear road. The car in front of them slams on their brakes, the teenager slams on their brakes… and someone behind rear-ends them.

Uncertainly is something we don’t have experience to plan for/manage. It’s something hypothetical that could happen, but is so unlikely we don’t even consider it possible.

Like, we take out house insurance for flood/fire, but we don’t take insurance for an asteroid striking the earth and obliterating our new above-ground pool.

Depending where we live, depending what our everyday lives and experiences are like, risk vs uncertainty can be very different things.

For example, I live in Vancouver, BC (Canada). Something that I would think so unlikely that I don’t consider possible would be a massive terrorist attack, like missiles crashing down on the street 50 feet away. For me, this falls into the ‘Uncertainty’ category. I would have no idea what to do, no past experience to draw from, no plan of how to manage this.

Now, if I lived in a different part of the world, missiles falling in the street might not be an uncertainty, they could be a risk. It’s a very real possibility when most people would have experienced it or heard about it happening to someone else. They would have a plan, they would know how to better manage this kind of event.

This is why we have fire drills and things like that, to gain experience for an unlikely situation.

Another example would be the terrible tragedy that happened almost 10 years ago in New Orleans. Yes, there was the potential of the entire city flooding, but it seemed so unlikely that no one had a plan for it, no one knew how to manage it. It wasn’t a ‘risk’, it was an ‘uncertainty’.

Now, the funny thing about uncertainty is that people generally deal with it in two ways.

1) They rationalize it. If we think back to the New Orleans tragedy, how many people after-the-fact said, “I knew that would happen.” That is them rationalizing the situation. Yes, the information was there, yes, people knew there was a possibility of flooding, but because it was unlikely, they did nothing about it and then it slapped them in the face. The teenager in the car knows rain makes the road slippery, but still doesn’t slow down/manage the risk because they feel it’s unlikely to happen, and doesn't consider that someone behind them won't be able to stop very well either if they unexpectedly slam on their brakes.

2) They blame someone else. When surprised, one of the most natural things is to look for a scape-goat. New Orleans? I’m sure you can think of a dozen people, maybe more, who were blamed… but it's not like any of them were directly responsible. They, like hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, just didn't think a flood was likely to happen. The same with the teenager getting rear-ended by another car, their first reaction will probably be to blame the other driver, but if the teen had been driving safely and planning for poorer driving conditions due to the rain, it's very likely the accident could have been avoided. But due to their lack of experience, the thought wouldn't even occur to the brand new teen driver.

By definition, you can't plan/manage/expect uncertainty, so rationalizing and blaming others isn't helpful. They are both self-comforting mechanisms to convince yourself that you have more control than you really do. Being out of control is scary, and usually that makes people panic and get angry.

The thing is, if we understand the difference between 'risk' and 'uncertainty', when we are hit with something unexpected we would be better able to recognize the difference, and rather than panic/blame others, instead we could learn -> gain experience, and be better able to handle a similar incident in the future.

If you don't learn from it, well, it's pretty likely you'll be rear-ended again in the future...

So, are we all clear on the difference between the two words?

Okay, so in the next few posts, I'm going to talk about:

Uncertainty/risk as a matter of focus

Uncertainty/risk as a writer

Uncertainty/risk in terms of character

Uncertainty/risk in terms of plot

These posts are going to be a progressive series, one leading into the next, but I’m breaking them up because I know my nerdy posts are heavy-reading. Hopefully they will be more palatable in smaller bites.

Story Structure, SiWC Masterclass

Okay, this is the last SiWC post, and this one I didn't actually plan to put up... mainly because I'm having to type this all out by hand now instead of just copying/pasting my notes, and my arm is pretty sore from too much computer work during the past week.

Since I *won* the draw for a free SiWC pass in 2013, I didn't have to pay for the 2014 conference. Because of that, I sprung for a Master Class with the author Eileen Cook (she's also from Vancouver, which is awesome :p), and this was absolutely the high-point of this conference for me.

Since it was a Master Class, I don't feel that it's right to post my notes from this class, but I think it is okay if I post about the story structure component.

One of the greatest disadvantages of being a dyslexic writer is that anything to do with structure/grammar makes absolutely no sense to me.

And I'm not exaggerating here... Ask me to define, or recognize, anything more complicated than a 'noun' and you really will believe I have a learning disability.

My understanding of sentence structure/grammar/etc comes down to three things: repetition (tons and tons of reading), aesthetic instinct (which I believe is also from repetition), and several extremely basic grammar rules that I can understand/recognize... like, when listing three or more things, you put a comma in between them.

Story structure... thinking about it, hearing about it, having it explained to me nearly always puts me into panic-mode... like being parachuted into a non-English-speaking country without money or passport, it absolutely overwhelms me.

Which, I know, most of you probably don't think of that as a big deal... especially those of you who have had your stories critiqued by me. I'm so thoroughly analytical about big-picture stuff that maybe no one has noticed that I almost never talk about the actual structure. And I'm pretty sure it's a major weakness in my own work -> this failure to properly understand structure.

BUT, because I generally like to make things difficult on myself, and because I never want to accept my own limitations, I signed up for this Master Class on editing.

...and finally got the first story-structure explanation that makes sense to me. And you know I like to joke around and say I'm the lowest common denominator... if it makes sense to me, it'll make sense to anyone!

I decided to post this here because I just typed it out for someone else...

So here's the story structure layout that succeeded in hammering basic comprehension into my thick skull:


1) setup -> what the world looks like

a) inciting incident

2) new situation, have to make decision of how to deal with it

b) decision/change of plans (this happens @ the 25% mark)

3) progress -> work towards the goal

c) point of no return ->can no longer go back to the person they were before the decision (this happens at the 50% mark)

4) complications/higher stakes

d) major setback, often death (75% mark)

5) Big push, have to keep going

e) Big climax

6) Aftermath -> what the world looks like now


This is simple. This makes sense to my brain. This I can plug in basic components and *see* the structure of my story.

As an example, I'd use TRoRS, except for the fact it's such a weird story (structural weirdness is only the beginning) that I wouldn't know where to begin.

So how about a story I've talked a little bit about, an older manuscript that a very reputable agent ripped apart and told me to either re-write it as upper YA or MG because, as it currently exists, falls into neither category... (in other words, it's a mess).

Query for this story (so everyone has at least an inkling of what I'm talking about, and this is probably the first 'decent' query I ever wrote):

Where desert wasteland meets raging sea, people die hard, fast and young, but fifteen-year-old Simon doesn’t care about other people, or even about himself. All that matters is protecting his ten-year-old brother, Hector. Everything else can get sunk.

Orphaned, sold, and forced to dredge silt from the local river, Simon is fast to talk his way into a safer job in the red district. Hired by a brothel madam to rehabilitate her daughter, Simon thinks he’s made a good bargain until they meet twelve-year-old Faith. The girl doesn’t talk, she only screams, bites, and lashes out whenever someone gets close. Turning Faith into a normal person seems impossible and the madam has only given them four weeks. If they succeed, they will be fed and clothed until they reach adulthood, but if they fail, they’ll be sold back into indentured slavery where a single slip could mean their death.

Desperate to keep his brother safe, he uses whatever tricks he can to keep Faith’s interest, even when it puts her in danger or he is beaten by the madam’s hand. As the deadline draws closer and Simon’s careful plans begin to fall apart, he must choose where his loyalties lie and which promises he must break.

Told in alternating viewpoints between Simon and Hector, SIMON’S OATH is a 73,000 word YA Fantasy in which two brothers survive by their wits as they struggle, separate, and test the fragile, familial bonds that both tie them together and weigh them down.

And now, this is what that story looks like, following that structure layout:

1) setup -> what the world looks like I started the story with Simon bringing Faith her breakfast, and she basically freaks out. Hector is terrified they'll get sold, Simon reassures him. Simon gets beaten. World building stuff (since it's not based on any specific real world/culture/place/time).

a) inciting incident Simon figures out Faith is always watching the water... and steals a tile with shells in it to (hopefully) catch her interest, and it does. Faith speaks for the first time ever.

2) new situation, have to make decision of how to deal with it Seashells, in the mythology of the world, are cursed, so Simon returns the tile and plots to bring other pretty things... Faith wakes to discover it's missing, chaos ensues. Well, partly due to the shells, more because she's being given a bath. This is the first time Simon/Hector feel sympathy for Faith instead of fear, and they go out looking for new things to show her. The brother's fight and separate.

b) decision/change of plans (this happens @ the 25% mark) Simon convinces Hector they need to get Faith outside, H reluctantly agrees, but still explores on his own and decides they need to go to the mausoleums where (potentially) there are more shells/sea stuff that they can steal.

3) progress -> work towards the goal Simon talks to Faith, working on convincing/manipulating her to go outside, the brothers head to the mausoleums to steal more shells to lure her out... they steal some, but they also find a huge overgrown garden.

c) point of no return ->can no longer go back to the person they were before the decision (this happens at the 50% mark) Because they were stealing shells, Faith freaked out while they were gone and the madam beats Simon when they return home. They essentially 'steal' Faith outside the next day, Simon pushing Faith due to his anger with the madam.

4) complications/higher stakes When they return, the madam hits Hector, and Faith freaks out, but Simon is able to calm her (which is a big deal). The madam gives permission for them to take Faith out again, since she seems a little 'better', but at the same time, kind of writes them off and reiterates the ultimatum. They are running out of time. The brothers take Faith out more, explore the city, Simon manipulating both Faith and Hector. Hector gets resentful/jealous. Faith almost drowns. Hector starts to mistrust his brother. They take Faith to the mausoleums and Hector rebells -> heading into the wild garden that Simon is afraid of.  If I understood more about structure when I wrote this story, I would have more crap/bad things happen here, especially in the garden, as it's essentially their own little paradise. I don't think I raised the stakes enough here.

d) major setback, often death (75% mark) The madam finds the seashells (the ones S&H stole from the mausoleums, which are considered cursed), and in her fury at them bringing shells into her house, she sells Hector to the dredge-line. The brothers are now separated for the first time ever, and Hector could easily slip and die.

5) Big push, have to keep going On their own, Hector starts to find confidence in himself, while Simon starts to fall apart -> he's obsessed with keeping his brother safe, and feels he has failed. Simon's not allowed to take Faith outside anymore since the madam doesn't trust him, and Faith breaks down, causing so much chaos that the madam finally relents. Simon starts taking Faith to the garden daily. Both brothers, on their own, plan for the future in their own way.

e) Big climax the caravan returns, which is the madam's deadline for 'fixing' Faith so she can convince Faith's father to take the girl with him. Simon makes an absolute mess of things by lying/manipulating others and Hector ends up saving the day. I also think this is a point where the stakes were not high enough...

6) Aftermath -> what the world looks like now Okay, this is totally a point where I failed with this MS. Essentially the story ends in the very next scene after the climax so there is no satisfactory resolution.

Part of the reason my end was so crappy is that I wrote the last 30,000 words in 10 days. I was so exhausted by the time I got to the end, it just kindof petered out.

As it turns out, this was also an excellent exercise in making a rough synopsis of the story :)

Really, until I just did this exercise a few minutes ago, I had no idea whether this story conformed to proper structure in the least... so not only did I learn something at the class, I learned something 5 minutes ago putting it into practice.

Definite high-point :)

...and now I kinda want to rip this story apart and re-write it ;)

No, Alcar. Faith and Simon will NOT end up together in a love-love relationship... /shudder/ the thought still creeps me out.

Well, hopefully that was as helpful for you as it was for me (it kinda blew my mind, to be honest), and if it didn't, well, you got a glimpse at an old manuscript of mine that is not 'trunked', but has definitely been put on the back-burner for a while.

SiWC 2014 Workshop #6 YA Panel

YA Panel

Joelle Anthony (writer), Abby Ranger (editor), Anita Daher (writer), Mandy Hubbard (agent/writer), Eileen Cook (writer)

What’s taboo in YA, and has it changed?

MH: The short answer is no. I think you have put anything in, but it has to be through the eyes of an authentic teen character. Drugs, loss, losing virginity, etc, as long as it’s through the authentic view. Sex scenes, for example, are more about the emotions than the mechanics. IT’s the way you handle things on the page.

AD: I agree, nothing off limit, how you handle it is important. Anything that right for the story/character is good as long as it isn’t for shock/gratuitous. It has to be there for a reason to forwards the character/story, and the question is how far you go. Have to be truthful to the character.

AR: I agree with both. the only thing I can see as ‘no’ is a grown up protagonist who is experimenting with a younger character without any consequences, growth, etc. If it’s not serving the story/character, take it out.

JA: I don’t read dark and it’s not where I go as a writer. When I work with kids (teaches writing), the only thing that mattes is to own your words and stand behind them. If you’re okay with that, if you can accept that, that’s fine.

AR: We always see this articles saying, ‘why are we letting children read this gross drivel…’ why are we allowing this to be public, audit’s always designed to create an uproar. Responses to that is, there isa lot of darkness because teens are trying to grapple with the darkness in the world, and at the endow these books, there’s a spark of hope. The really bleak endings are more in adult literature, not in YA. We have the responsibility to find that glimmer.

AD: With everything teens are exposed to in the news/internet/etc, but they are only getting snippets of that’s going on. A book is a very safe place for teens to explore these darker issues, to take the journey they might now be able to do through a news snippet or a tv show/movie.

EC: YA is such a new ting that I think most adults forget there was a time you skipped immediately from children to adult literature.

HM: I want to add that if you don’t have these things, that’s okay too. Thee is a market for that. One of my books ‘fool me twice’ is in the Scholastic listing - they never would have piked it up if it wasn’t clean. They want books that are okay to promote for younger teens.

AR: Have to ask, who is this for? Be thoughtful for your audience. Where does this sit in the library, who is going to endorse this? There are specific gatekeepers.

EC: So what about those gatekeepers, librarians, parents, teachers, etc? Do you think about those?

JA: You can’t really control who reads. t’s middle school librarians, etc, the readers who say,, eww, why is there a kiss scene?’

EC: What about banned books? Would you like to write a book that’s banned?

AD: once you book is out there, don’t be afraid of being banned. Write your story as it has to be and worry about hose things later.

EC: Is there something ‘hot’ or ‘not’?

AR: There have been waves that have peaked, like paranormal, then dystopian, lately we’ve had contempt and ‘sick-lit’, and I think it’s silly to publish more because of ‘TFiOS’. It’s very unwise to write to that. What editors/publishers/agents want is to open something up and be completely surprised. Taking some spirit of what people love, that’s out there, that people love, and then translating it to a different genre - but transformed into something new. The heart of what makes a book work, and doing it in your own distinct way.

MH: I have this editor spreadsheet that’s 50 pages long, and one editor I first talked to said to me, ‘I’m always looking up for a surprise’, and that stuck in my head. I signed a book last year I never would have said ‘I’m looking for this!” -> a magical chicken that levitates things with its brains. My only thing with trends are to be aware of the really saturated ones. If you have a lot of ideas, and one is dystopian, maybe work on one of the other ones, you’re kind of stacking the odds against you. Dystopian/paranormal are really tough. But there’s always the exception to the rules.

EC: What do you like best about writing for teens, or why do you work in this particular area?

JA: Because that’s what I like to read, so it was a natural progression, and i agree when Abby said ‘there’s a glimmer of hope’. I’m a really cheerful person, so I like that idea of hope.

AR: I had a great conversation with other editors/agents about what internal age you are, what age you still remember well/connect to. For me, maybe insecure 17yo girl, the goofy 11yo boy who likes adventure. Part of what I love is just that sense of intensity. So many things you’re experimenting for the first time. Everything has a life/death sense of feel to it that in another age might feel flatter/wrong. In the craft of storytelling, part of what I love doing in working for teens is that all those books are so important because you’re trying to hood the attention of someone who has a million options and really short attention span - being able to draw them in and make them feel for that character is much harder than writing for an adult, you don’t necessarily need that strict storytelling craft.

AD: I believe when we go into a creative place, we do have an age we naturally go to. When I immerse myself into a story I go very naturally into a place between 12 and 17. I’m cheerful too, but also moody. The story, the start/middle/end of stories is more important to teens than for adults. Maybe I just never figured out where I fit in. Teens have a very strong BS meter

AR: As a very broad comment, MG is about finding the place in the family house, YA is about burning down the house, the options and complications to that.

MH: ‘The Truth about You & ME’, a 16 year old gets involved with a teacher in university. They’re bantering about about what songs were popular when they were young, and I knew hers, but when I googled to find his, I was shocked that he was only a couple years younger than me! When I wrote my first novel, an agent told me that my voice worked better in YA, so I said, ‘i should read some!’

EC: I know people say to me, I want to write YA, and when I ask, ‘why’, they say, ‘because it’s selling well’, and I don’t like that. If you don’t like it, read it, etc, it’ll come across on each page.

EC Do you have one piece of writing advice?

MH: Let yourself write crap. I have that moment in every book where eI read something and think’, oh my goodness, I wrote this crap?’ but then I look at the books on my shelf and put it into perspective.

AD: Going back to the taboo a bit, with one story I didn’t know they were a cutter, I knew she was depressed, but as I wrote, that’s what made sense. I don’t go deep in my first draft, I go deeper later. I do suggest if you’re going to write about an issue or something, research it. I found out that if a cutter reads about cutting, it’s trigger and I didn’t want to put out a book full of triggers, so I worked with my editor to strategize around that.

AR: Respect your reader. Don’t underestimate them. Another similar/different point is not judging your character, what they want, what they do, etc. Empathize properly with your character. Don’t question the moral/ethical code when you’re in a character’s skin, especially the villains. What is deeply human/relatable about them.

JA: Eileen took mine. My best advice is to read, but more than that, give yourself permission to read. Don’t feel guilty that you’re reading instead of writing. It’s part of your work/art. Read 150 books in your genre every year.

EC: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Ivan Coyote speak, but she to me to send stuff out, and I said, ‘no I’m not ready’, and she said, ‘you’re already not published, so if you send stuff out, the worst that can happen is that you still won’t be published.’ That gave me permission to send stuff out.

Audience question: Are there more taboos in content for MG?

MH: There are more gatekeepers, but also, there’s a lot of things that will go over younger kids’ heads.

AR: I always have to pause at the word ‘content’, every publishing house has different rules and it often depends on a book-to-book basis, the voice, the character, etc, how everything is serving the story. Sometimes it’ll be a question of dialling something back, adjusting the character to get it into the Scholastic listing (into school), and then it’s up to the writer.

AD: MG kids are more interested in school, friends, etc so it really depends on how you hand it.

Audience Question: Difference between YA/NA?

MH: I think it’s tempting to tack NA onto a lot of things, but where this took off originally was the transitional college age with more romance. That’s not a bad thing, but that’s just where things are, and since it started out s e-book, bookstores are actually having a hard time selling hardcopy NA book, but tone of e-books are being stolen. NA isn’t just sexed-up YA.

AR: YA is a broad section, it includes so many genres -> fantasy, contemp, etc. It holds so much, but right now, NA is very small -> sexier/older protagonist with more mature themes. Talked to someone else who said for her, it’s like a combination between chick-lit written 10-20 years ago (in a higher economy) combined with YA. NA is more like.

Audience question: My daughter likes fantasy/etc, but is trying to find YA where they main focus isn’t about ‘the guy’. How much if it is out there?

MH: It’s out there, it’s just harder to find, because that’s what most teens are interested in.

JA: I don’t like books where it’s all about the romance, but mine do have a small romantic element.

AR: One thing I love is that there’s a lot of strong FMC who are trying to figure out who they are and what they want and they do part of that through a relationship, but there are books where it’s not defining themselves completely through the guy/relationship.

AD: I wrote a book before NA was a thing, it was an older YA right out highschool, are publishers interested in NA that is fantasy/etc that is not about the romance?

AR:Yes, as long as it’s not a college setting.

Audience question: MG works very well for boys, but when you get into YA, buys kind of disappear. Not enough stuff is being written that appeals to them.

MH: I had to pass on something I loved once because I knew publishers would turn it down because there was no girl appeal.

EC: I can think of some that did well. ‘Noggin’, ‘Winger’, ‘Carter Finally Gets It’.

AR: This is a very real thing. Publishers find that the readership drops.

JA: I work with a lot of kids at that age and the boys are perfectly happy to move immediately into adult ‘Meet Player One’ (recommended to her by a 13yo boy)

Audience question: What about not ‘sex/drugs’, but creepy instead? Lemmony Snicket for for older YA?

AR: There is a lot of stuff out there, ‘Cavendish Home for Boys & Girls’, there is that there, but there was to be the dark/light balance. ‘A Tale Dark and Grimm’

Audience question: Can you recommend any good darker books our there to read?

EC: ‘Kiss Kill Vanish’, ‘Winger’

AR: Asylum (horror)

MH: ‘Rites of Passage’

EC: Is there a YA you’ve read recently that you are recommending to people that’s not yours?

JA: ‘I’ll give you the sun’, ‘The Sky is everywhere’. Some boy books, ‘Brooklyn Burning’, ‘Blinking Caution’ (sp?)

AR: ‘Eleanor & /Park’, ‘Fangirl’

AD:’The Boundless’ (MG), ‘Kiss Candy Crush’

MH: ‘The Cage’, ‘The Madman’s Daughter’ (same author)

EC: ‘Noggin’ was given to me and was one I wasn’t all that interested in reading, but it was really interesting.

Audience comment: In MG, I find there has to be a sense of humour. It can go dark, but there aways has to be something weird/wacky.

Audience comment: I’m a librarian, ‘Anatomy of a girl gang’

EC: Orca Publishing out of Vancouver Island focus on books for reluctant readers, they have great distribution. The stories explode.

Audience comment: I’m a book seller/writer. ’Now is the time for Running’ - two boys having to escape a village massacre.

EC: The connection between reader/writers seem much stronger in YA, so how do you handle that, and how do you advise your clients on how to handle that, social media, etc.

MH: As an agent first, I think more of my followers are adults/writer/etc, but I do get some. So if you get cute emails/etc, always reply.

AD: I hear much more from MG readers than teen readers. With our publish image, I don’t put anything snarky on social media. I do censor myself. I check in on social media, but I try to keep in mind that I never know who will be reading it, so I don’t put anything mean spirited.

AR: There is such a range of how to use social media, so I suggest just do what feels comfortable. It’ll come across if you’re doing it because you think you have to. You’re at an open cocktail party where anyone can/could retweet your comments/etc. It’s really nice to join a conversation, have people supporting them, especially if before their first book comes out, before they have to do all the self-promotion stuff.

EC: That’s true, I think it really comes across if you’re only doing it to sell your book.

JA: I don’t get a lot of emails from readers, but the ones I do tend to be from librarians, adults, etc. and 11yo boys who don’t like my books, which are more geared towards girls. I do keep all business stuff quiet. I don’t talk about it at all in anything other than generic terms. One thing I keep in mind is, if you do receive something, wait at least 24 hours before responding so you don’t seem like a dork.

EC: I think something to be aware of, I have seen querying writers tweet stuff like, ‘I pitched “x” and they were a cow.” Be aware we can, and do search ourselves. Going back, when I wrote for adults, I never heard from readers, but writing YA, I think it’s so cool to get emails/etc from teens now. That’s why you should do social media, because you want to, and can connect with readers.

Audience question: Do you think NA is going to go the way of chick-lit, or is is going to expand like YA?

MH: Well, are people having a hard time finding those things without the NA? Like, fantasy appeals widely whereas NA started because readers wanted that college setting… which wouldn’t really be applicable to genres other than contemporary/romance. But I can’t predict the future, so who knows.

AR: The bookseller is kindof the one who starts it. Barns & Nobel is the biggest bookstore and they don’t have a NA section, but do they need it? I personally don’t see it.

SiWC 2014 Workshop #5 Tension Panel

Tension Panel

Chevy Stevens (Writer) Hallie Ephron (Writer), Robert J Wiersema (Writer), Susanna Kearsley (Writer)

Started off with a section read from RW’s book

SK: Sentences/paragraph techniques to produce tension, R, what did you do on purpose in that passage?

RW: Sentence length gives tension. Do you remember ‘The Matrix’, the fight scene on top of the building just when Neo is coming into his power and there’s the moment the whole thing slows down so you can see the bullets  - it’s so significant, that’s now called ‘bullet time’, to slow down intentionally to make the reader confront that moment. You throw in a long sentence to slow it down and condense the focus, then punctuate with short to break the tension. The interplay, the back and forth. Read it out loud to head where it needs to linger or break.

SK: do you do that with paragraph length too?

RW: well because I write longhand and then transcribe it later, I’m very aware of length and fragment paragraphs after a long section during revision, those fragments can act almost as gun shots.

HE: I’m always aware of white space, where there are many long paragraphs, that’s the visual cue that you need that short bit to summarize, or suddenly twist what has come before. Readers read the beginning and ending of chapters and paragraphs carefully and scan through the middle, so when you want to punctuate, that’s how/why I do it.

CS: You guys already covered all the good stuff, so yeah, I do that too. I do short sentences for sure, and in paragraphs, like in essays, you start a paragraph with an idea and try to bring it back at the end. In action scenes, or when a character is feeling a lot of tension, you’re seeing things in very quick snapshots, so short paragraphs, short sentences will create the tension, then later you can wind out and draw out again. Calculate. It does matter how it looks on the page.

HE: It’s also important when to bring the camera is really close, into the heart, the head, seeing the sweat. Then you pull out again. I know darkness/shadows are a little cliche, but they’re cliche because they work. You come home and there’s silence, shadows, and you ask what’s hiding in there, what’s going to happen. Good place to bring other senses to the scene.

RW; I built a scene with five different points of view, but I never allows the character to show their own feelings, only looking outward so there was no temptation to wallow, to disappear in their own heads. So I allowed 1st POV to catalogue the emotions of the other characters. Simon is very flat/observational (he’s a lawyer), but he’s viewing his wife’s much more emotional state. I wanted to build in the misapprehension/misunderstanding from looking at someone else’s emotions.

HE: IN 3rd POV, when the reader knows more than the character, you can create tension through that. Like, the guy in the closet, you’re worried when the MC walks into the dark house…

RW: There’s a contrast between reader/writer. The reader wants to be manipulated, but not used.

CS: All my books were 1st POV, and now I’m writing a 3rd POV and it’s almost freeing because I can explore the other characters feeling/etc. For example, the scene starts with a woman talking to a psychiatrist and you know she’s been kidnapped, held, and eventually come home. So we know she survived and you’d think that kills the tension, but instead, because you know she’s going to get kidnapped and want to find out how/why she gets away, there’s still that tension of wanting to know what happened.

HE: Sometimes you have to choose between surprise/shock and tension. You can’t really do both at once.

SK: Those are some great examples, but how do you how the tension over the whole book.

HE: You don’t want to explode everything in the first chapter. You can’t scream at the reader in the first chapter because they’ll stop listening, so it’s all about stakes. One thing that starts out as personal, and then becomes more universal

‘

RW: I now want you to take a step back. Tension very natural transmogrifies into suspense. But looking at tension itself is valuable. Without tension, there’s no narrative. It’s the root of all narrative. We want the reader to keep asking questions, ‘what happens next’, and you build from there into specifics. What’s going to happen, what does this character want, what’s going to happen when they choose ‘x’. Suspense builds on that, those questions, the interplay between the reader and writer asking questions -> leading their expectations and telling them how to read what you’re putting in front of them, what’s important.

CS: We need to know why we should care. They don’t have to be liable, but there has to be a reason why we care, why do the stakes matter to the character. Emotional tension, that ache to talk, but not able to. Silences, etc. Chapter length, I do use that. (Girls like That) Jumps between two characters, and each section ended in a tension-filled moment and the sections got closer and closer together.

RW I don’t have a tremendous respect for Dan Brown, but I do respect the writing of it. It’s perfect. Each chapter ends in mid conversation, at a cliffhanger, a question (8 page chapters) he’s created the ‘potato chip book’ - just one more chapter, just one more chapter… you just have to keep going, and that’s how I lost Christmas Day 2008.

SK: Robert, a few years ago, said: ‘the reader should always know slightly more than the character. Let the reader know in advance. The reader’s expectations must both be met, and undermined.’ In Robert’s words, shameless manipulation. You’re telling lies to get the response you want. Can you use a specific example, a technique to do this to a reader? Was there a focus technique you used?

RW: ‘Before I Wake’, one of the advantages to using 6 POV in this book is that I was able to the thing the filmmakers were able to do. Film is interesting because you don’t ever have people in a room like this and the room explodes. You’re show the people coming into the room, you’d see the blinking red light under the chair of the bomb, then you’d cut back to the room again, to the characters. I wanted that ability to show a mash-up of the POV’s of these people who were going to attack other people who were having a nice, quiet special intimate family moment -> the rekindling of a marriage on Christmas day. You know they’re going to be attacked, but you don’t quite know in what form the attack is going to happen.

HE: But you have to make sure the attack, but also the family drama, were equally interesting.

RW: For me, the highest stakes were this personal, family, emotional drama. I like to think that I did it well.

CS: Red herrings, someone meant to look guilty: the boyfriend looking guilty to the reader, but the main character not suspecting -> but making sure the mc didn’t just look too stupid to live.

SK: Let’s talk about pitfalls -> mistakes that break tension. What are things you avoid, that you have learned.

CS: info dumps, too much info in the wrong place, or not letting the reader work things out for themselves (over explaining/repeating)

HE: I think the subtle tighten and release is what’s tricky. You can’t have the tension continue, you have to break it or it gets annoying for the reader. Humour is a great way to relieve the tension and allows the reader to take a breath, recharge and move forward. Using a good technique in the wrong place is usually what kills it.

RW If you’re trying not to diffuse tension, it’s using something in the wrong place. A too long sentence in the wrong place, or a short one. Words can even do it because they don’t just have meaning, they have connotation. So if you accidentally use a word that has humorous connotation, you risk having the reader snicker. You’re weaving a spell, and the moment the reader is even twinged, things can go wrong.

Audience question: How do you hold the tension over the entire novel?

RW: Look at the way people are handling television now. There’s the series with same characters/setting. That’s the uber setting, and each season is a novel within itself with an overarching plot, and then you have 22 episodes, and over those episodes, it tells that story. Not all episodes will focus on that overarching story, some will only touch on them, but as it moves through the episodes, questions and answers and complicating factors that rise and fall, are introduced and answered.

HE: Hold your nose and write. You won’t know until it’s down, until you have other people read it and comment on it.

RW: It sounds like we know what we’re doing, the observations we’re making is from looking at our finished books, not from our first drafts. Once you have the words on the page you can step back and look at what you’re doing.

CS: I had that where I started a book with ___ fighting with a woman in a halfway house, and it was a great scene, but my editor pointed out that by starting with that scene, the reader would think that’s what the story was about, and that was a year into writing the story. So it had to be changed.

Audience question: What’s the difference between an unreliable narrator and lying to the reader?

HE: I never have a POV character lie to the reader. They can misunderstand, tell something the way they think it is, but are wrong (unreliable) My characters tell their version of the truth to the reader. I hate it when characters lie to the reader.

CS: We have to know what the POV character knows.

HE: The writer wants to the reader not to know later, and you can’t shine it that.

RW: Lying to the reader isn’t a ticket violation, it’s a death sentences. IF you want a master class on tension, ’Scott Turouuts (sp?) ’Presumed Innocent’. At the end, you don’t know if he’s actually killed the person or not.

‘The Murder of Roger Ackeroid’ - read.

Audience question: Do you think the reader is more empathetic, is there more tension in 3rd POV vs 1st POV?

RW: Objectively 3rd POV, there are fewer potential pitfalls because the writer has a wider pallet to play with. With 1st POV, you only know what the MC knows.

CS: My first 3 books were all 1st POV because it was a fast emotional connection, but there were pitfalls. I couldn’t cheat/manipulate the reader the same. IT’s limiting, but it wouldn’t have worked as well in 3rd POV because of the emotional tension.

HE: Try both ways and see. I believe you can be emotionally close/emotional/personal in either, but as a writer you may feel one is easier/works better for you. When  you’re in 1st POV, you’re stuck. For claustrophobic, emotional tension, 1st POV works better.

RW: ‘Bedtime story’ has two 1st POV and one objective 3rd POV and one closer 3rd POV because of the level of intimacy I wanted for each part/character. But this is really hard. You have to do it right or it’s awful.

CS: It’s the same thing with present/past tense.

HE: There’s a reason god invented the delete key.

Audience question: Do you outline or write organically?

HE: yes/no, yes/no. I outline, then it goes off the rails, I re-outline, it goes off again. I outline because it makes me feel good, less scary, but in the end, it’s a mess.

CS: I do outline, most editors/agents want an idea of where it’s going, but it’s okay to go off if the story isn’t working. Don’t force it to stay on the outline. It’s a guideline more than a rule.

RW: I’d rather have a root canal than do an outline. I have a general idea, but I don't know who the character are at the start. I discover it as the reader would discover it. I write ‘in the headlight’ method. I write a few scenes, then jot a couple notes for the scenes I’m going to write in the next day. The only thing writing a novel teaches you is how to write that novel.

SK: I’m closest to Robert. I’m an engineers daughter so I like to give myself the illusion of control. Write with Scrivener so I can move stuff around and I don’t like to outline because I feel like then I’ve boxed myself in.