Let's Get Real

Hi! I thought maybe today we could discuss the issue of researching background for your story. It's important, and possibly not for the reasons you might think.

When you have an idea for a story, as a general rule, you are more focused on and excited about what happens between and among the characters than you are on and about the specifics of the world in which they live. I mean, who the heck gets all turned on and stoked about what lawyer Bella's office looks and feels and sounds like? Why would you care that law school takes three years post-undergraduate-degree to finish if you're a full-time student in the US, which means that unless Bella is a legal Doogie Howser, she's probably about twenty-four years old by the time she's out of school and taking the bar exam? Or that doctor Edward might have attended Dartmouth's combined program and fast-tracked his way through undergrad course requirements in three years? What's the big deal about the fact that Forks is fifty miles away from Port Angeles? Who will honestly notice if the characters in your New York City story drive everywhere instead of taking the subway or cabs? You just want to get on with the action, and are really pretty tempted to either gloss over the finer points or to just drop whatever sounds good to you in there and hope that it works.

Researching isn't sexy, but without it, the world you construct for your characters is flat and dull, and the reader can't trust that these people exist in a real space. Fudge the details too much, and you shortchange the characters, the story, and the readers.

People will tell you to write what you know. And that's fine advice, but I think you should write whatever the heck interests and motivates you, PROVIDED that you're willing to devote adequate amounts of time to building a plausible universe for the people who will live there. You can write about astronauts, or doctors, or cowboys, or beauty-pageant winners. Why not? I see no earthly reason for you to limit yourself to only writing about occupations and worlds with which you have first-hand experience. Blech. Booooring. You live in a digital age, and don't have to spend a zillion hours harassing the reference desk at your local library for details on things like medical school programs. It's all there, right in front of you, on your computer screen. You don't need to trust Wiki for this, because you can actually poll real people who live where you want your characters to live, and who do what you want your characters to do. There is a forum somewhere out there for absolutely EVERYTHING. Visit Dartmouth's website if you want to know about their medical degree programs. Visit Sperling's Best Places if you want first-hand accounts of what life is like in New York, or Port Angeles, or almost anywhere else.

See, it's not enough to merely say that a character lives somewhere or does something as an occupation. Your readers want to immerse themselves in the world you create, and in order for them to do so, you have to give that world a rich texture. This is not to say that you need to spend thousands of words describing the world in painful and excruciating detail; I can't speak for any other readers out there, but I don't require so much detail that I feel as though I could take over whatever job the character is doing and move into her house. It's all about choosing enough important details so that your writing comes across as confident. Your character will take certain things for granted, and since you live in your character's head, you should take them for granted as well. Don't treat these things as "new facts" in your writing; treat them as though they are comfortable and worn-in facts. For example, if you character is a teacher, you don't need to explain what a seating chart is, but you should have the character scan the seating chart to see if Lauren Mallory is in this class. The teacher knows what a seating chart is for, and the confidence in that knowledge is what makes your reader believe that the character is actually a teacher. So, rather than say "I reached into my briefcase and pulled out the chart that showed me where every student was sitting, noting with relief that Lauren Mallory was not among them," you can say "A quick scan of the seating chart showed me that Lauren Mallory wasn't in this class, and I breathed a sigh of relief."

Imagine your characters sitting (or standing, as the case might be) in their place of employ. What are they seeing? What are they saying? What is being said back to them? What would they notice as cues that would require some kind of action or response from them, and how would they respond to those cues? What sort of jargon would they use with their coworkers? What is generally annoying about the job, and what makes it fun or engaging, if anything? How do they spend their day? You can take a few little liberties, but in the main, you should be able to offer your reader a realistic "feel" for the environment, and if you don't have first-hand experience, that can only be achieved through research.

Once you've firmly established the walls and floors and general sense of the world, you don't need to keep revisiting it chapter after chapter. The same goes for establishing geography. If you're writing about Seattle, for example, actually take some time to study the place. How do people get from one side of town to the other? Where do they shop? Where do they live? Once again, you can take a little artistic license, and by all means feel free to invent things like restaurants and street names, but you should have a basic sense of the place before you start to write it into your world. For example, five minutes' worth of research will inform you that there's a Subway restaurant in Forks, but no McDonald's. The population hovers around the 3k mark, so it's not a hotbed of retail activity (I mean, no malls, you know?). It does not, to the best of my knowledge, boast a large and super-hip nightclub. It is a small town, and if you start adding a bunch of big town/city elements to the place, you destroy the vibe and take the reader out of the story as a result. Yes, it's inconvenient that the people of Forks need to schlep up to PA in order to visit a Wal-Mart or a Costco, but on the other hand, isn't it wonderful that Forks only has two traffic lights and is surrounded by beautiful nature?

Alternately, you can just invent a place. Fictional towns and cities are wonderful because they can just become whatever you need them to be, and nobody can complain about them. However, if you go that route, try to create a place that is realistic, as opposed to merely convenient. Small towns generally don't have upscale malls. Big cities generally don't have single-family homes with detached garages in the downtown area. If the story is compelling, the reader will willingly suspend their disbelief on any number of things, but you need to create an environment that makes some kind of sense.

You are the one-person welcome-wagon for your readership. You invite them into your story, and ask them to pull up a chair and stay for the duration. Did you give them cozy armchairs, or those molded plastic affairs? Your readers will be as comfortable there as you let them be, and these details provide the cushion that creates the comfort. A thoughtful author, like a thoughtful host, anticipates the needs of the guests involved, so serve your readers enough tasty, nutrient-rich facts and details to keep their minds from rumbling, but not so much that they beg for mercy and develop indigestion.

Your Beta and You: An Owner's Manual

As you are likely aware if you're reading this, I beta a lot of people here in Twific. I love everything I beta, and I think I'm extremely lucky to be working with so many talented, strong writers. It's fun to find that balance between accepted elements of style and an author's individual voice, because despite what you might have heard, editing for fiction is a healthy compromise between science and art, and if you edit with strict adherence to Strunk and White, you run the risk of killing a writer's rhythm.

So, you're writing. Maybe it's something you've never attempted before, and you spent the majority of your time in English class passing notes to your friends and wishing you had the kind of telekinetic power that could force the minute-hand of the clock on the wall to move from 11:00 to 11:55 in the blink of an eye. You missed some stuff about the difference between a comma and a semicolon, and Cliff Notes didn't explain things like Nigel Watts' "eight-point story arc" to you with any degree of clarity. Forget hyphens - I mean, Jesus, those things are annoying, and the rules are ridiculous. Sure, you studied, but what you primarily chose to study were your fingernails or the split-ends in your hair. You had no plans to write fiction at any point in your life, because fiction seemed about as useful to you as algebra. Karma hates you now, boy, because here you are, with a story to tell, and no English teacher standing by, waiting for you to raise your hand with a question about the difference between "who" and "whom".

You realize that you are in need of a beta. Everyone talks about theirs, and if they've got one they really love, you look on with the same jealousy you might once have reserved for that friend who got a great new car, or that annoying couple down the street who've been married for ten years and still hold hands and make goo-goo eyes at each other. You want that kind of relationship with a beta. You want a beta who is going to make you look good, and who is going to make what you write look pretty. There are only two things amiss with your plan to get the right beta for yourself: the first is that you have no real idea what a beta should do, and the second is that you have no idea where to find this "perfect" beta.

Let's talk about what a beta should do. There are no hard-and-fast rules, here, so let's talk instead about general things an author might need from an extra (and hopefully, more experienced) set of eyes. Obviously, a beta should be pretty clear on the rules of punctuation and grammar. I mean, they don't need to be able to define a past-perfect tense at the drop of a hat (no - I take that back, because they really should be able to do that. Past perfect in English just involves the word "had", as in "I had paid attention in English class when the teacher talked about tenses."), but they should have some kind of grip on things. They should be able to proofread for spelling errors and general usage (reign/rein, waste/waist, your/you're, et.al.). But in addition to these, a good beta should be available to discuss any concerns you might have about things like plot construction and character development. They should be able to helicopter over your story and spot potential shoals and riptides.

I don't know how anyone else does it, so I'll tell you how I approach the position of beta. I'm not here to write your story for you, because that's your job. I take the craft of writing very seriously, and I know that you'll never develop your own authorial voice if I'm constantly getting in the middle of things and forcing you to view the story through my eyes, with my voice. You need to make mistakes in order to learn from them. Instead, I will generally wait for you to come to me with your concerns. "Does this make sense? Does this work? Do you understand why the character chose to act this way?" Those are all questions I'm thrilled to get from an author. In return, I will ask questions like "Who is your character? What motivates him/her? What does he/she want from this situation? What does he/she fear?" I ask those questions because again, if you've properly developed your characters, the answers to these questions will go a long way toward guiding you to the right answers to the questions you've just asked me.

So, no, I won't tell you what to do with your story. It's your story, not mine - I'm merely functioning en loco parentis as a bit of a foster mom. If I see what strikes me as a glaring omission or wildly out-of-character behavior in the story, I will mention it without being prompted. I will call you out on clichés, and encourage you to find a more original way to express a thought. I will correct any grammatical and usage errors I find, and try to strike that aforementioned balance between academic punctuation and the art of storytelling. I'll talk to you about things like dialogue tags and meta-monologue (of course I'll tell you what a meta-monologue is, because I can see you're curious: it's the internal monologue a character has in which he or she wonders something "big" and more comprehensive about the world or his/her place in it, i.e. "My mother never hugged me as a child. Do all children who grow up without physical affection learn to fear and mistrust it as adults?").

Okay, it's your turn, now: what are you looking for in a beta? Go in with a clear idea. Do you need someone to sit with you while you draft an outline and talk through plot points with you? Do you need someone to just focus on style and grammar and leave the rest up to you? Do you want someone who will hold you to a strict production schedule and demand weekly updates from you? How much contact are you expecting to have with your beta? How quickly do you expect your beta to be able to turn a chapter around and get it back to you? Do you think you'll need to go through several drafts of each chapter, or are you a "one and done" kind of writer? Do you want your beta to pick apart your characterizations with you? Are you looking for a beta who would be willing to function almost in the role of co-author or close collaborator? How hard do you want to be pushed? How honest do you want your beta to be? Are you a fan of tough-love, or kid-glove?

Seriously, make a shopping list. WRITE IT DOWN, AND BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF.

Once you have your shopping list, where do you go to find this awesome beta? Of course, you can start with Project Team Beta and Twicounsel, both of which exist to help novice writers jump in and start swimming around the fic pool. They're there to make it easy for you, which is incredibly nice of them. If, however, you're a maverick and want to find your own way, there are several tried-and-true methods. The first is obviously to find someone who is a fan of the genre of story you're planning to write. Don't look at the angst crowd if your story is a fluffy one. Don't hit up the AU crowd if your story involves human teenagers. Don't romance someone who writes T-rated fic if you're planning to get your characters naked a lot. Want to write slash or Bellsper? Stay away from the canon-couple crowd and hardcore B/E shippers. It's challenging enough to find a good beta fit: don't shoot yourself in the foot by attempting to date outside your species.

Once you've figured out which group you need to target, look at everyone involved: authors who write in that genre; eloquent reviewers of stories you love; and beta profiles that specifically list the kind of interests which march alongside those in your proposed story. It's obvious to go for authors, but there are literally HUNDREDS of fantastic reviewers who could easily beta for you. Read reviews for stories.

When you have a target or two, spend some time discussing your plans with them. Ask them to be honest with you, and let them know that there are no hard feelings if they find they can't commit to the project. Be gracious, because you're asking for help, and nobody's under any obligation to give it to you. Look for a combination of skills and enthusiasm. You might not find both in the same person, so it's possible that you'll end up with two or even three betas, who will go over your work with an eye toward different elements of the thing. Decide for yourself how much of their input you'll accept, because in the same way that they are not obligated to offer it, you are not obligated to take it. Betas offer suggestions and help - if you encounter a beta who gets butt-hurt when you don't accept their advice, you're probably best off finding another beta. Good betas put their egos aside to give you the help YOU need, not the validation THEY crave.

This doesn't mean that you shouldn't be grateful for their help and advice, because you should. Being a beta is often a bit of a thankless task, because the author gets all the glory in the form of reviews, while the beta sits there on the sidelines and is left to bask in the quiet knowledge that they had a hand in your success. It is for this reason that you should always remember to thank your beta. Make a fuss. They volunteer their time and their care to help make your story a better one, so acknowledge them whenever and wherever you can. Not doing so is the rough equivalent of Hilary Swank accepting her Oscar and neglecting to thank Chad Lowe for being her husband. DUDE. That's wrong, and it's also probably the reason why they're no longer married. I'm just guessing, because it's not as though they told me about their reasons for the divorce.

Fifty Ways to Leave Your Pixie

Okay, so check this out: the OED (that'd be the Oxford English Dictionary) estimates that there are approximately 250,000 distinct, non-technical words in the English language. This doesn't include the various inflections and cases of the words, just the actual words themselves.

Some of you are sitting there thinking "Really? Only 250,000? That doesn't seem like a lot. No wonder there are so few ways to describe bronze hair, or nipples." Just be glad you're writing in English, and not in, say, French, which has fewer than half as many words with which to convey the glory that is Edward Cullen.

You've got more raw material to work with than any other people on Earth. What do you do with it? Do you stretch yourselves and attempt to break new ground when you introduce us to Edward's smile, or Alice's stature? Or, do you flip the handle on the La-Z-Boy recliner and just grab a handy cliché to cover the situation?

The average college graduate has about 20,000 to 25,000 words in his or her active vocabulary, with access to the meanings of an additional 50,000 - 75,000 passive words (that is, words the person knows but which the person does not regularly use). Shakespeare used 31,534 different words in his collected works. Bloody Shakespeare, people. I'm asking you to aspire up.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love words. I love big words, and small words, and odd words, and all words. I hoard them. I'm passionate about them. I kick ass at freerice.com because I know what ululate and concomitant mean. I read dictionaries FOR THE FUN OF IT, just to meet new words and absorb them into my vocabulary Borg. But as much as I love the little buggers, I love nothing so much as finding and using the right words to convey, or conceal, or shade, or highlight a thought. Many times, the best word isn't the biggest word. The trick is to look at all the various ways in which you might say the thing you need to say, and then choose the word which best describes that thing. Economy and precision should be your primary goal, always.

There's no need to wander into a jungle of purple prose in order to accomplish the task. Here - rather than use an example from someone else, I'll share what might be a lame example from my own experience: in a recent chapter of "Breaking News", Edward is upset because Tanya is threatening to tell Bella something he really doesn't want her to know. Edward and Tanya argue about it, and then Tanya makes a decision to just go ahead and speak with Bella whether or not that's all right with Edward.

The words I chose to describe Edward's reaction to the situation were these:

"Tanya," Edward said, his voice in the octave of menace.

Now, I could have used "Tanya," Edward said threateningly. Or "Tanya," Edward warned. But I chose what I chose because Edward was really, really pissed, and because his relationship with Tanya allows him to show her that without using any polite convention to mask his true feelings. Using the word "octave" immediately brings the tone of his voice to the mind of the reader. Pairing "octave" with "menace" provides the reader with the information that Edward's voice was low and lethal, and without question really, really unhappy about where this thing was headed.

You hear the word "threat" almost every day. There's a threat of rain in the forecast, or the amount of paperwork on your desk threatens to make you late for dinner, or the newspaper informs you that the terrorist threat in the United States is currently at Orange Level. And "threat" should make you aware that something bad might happen, but you're kind of inured to the word, so it doesn't punch you in the head with the gravity of its meaning. Now, "menace", on the other hand, isn't a word you hear all that often. There's no menace of rain in the forecast. It sounds more dangerous, even though the dictionary will tell you that it means the same thing as "threat"; in fact, Merriam-Webster uses "threat" to define the word "menace". "Menace" means "I want to hurt you", and nothing else.

Let's look at Alice for a moment. When Twific authors need to describe the way she looks, many of them just reach for the word "pixie", because heck, that's what everyone else uses, and it fits, so why torture yourself to come up with another way to communicate the effect? Because you're writers, that's why. She's elfin, and a sprite, and delicate, and Happy-Meal-sized. She's minikin and diminutive. She is anything small and energetic and full of mischief and determination. She's a glass figurine with an iron core.

It's possible that you're feeling a little panicked right now. You want to reach for a thesaurus and start combing through it for different words to use. STOP. In the wrong hands, a thesaurus is a dangerous weapon. If you really want to deliver fresh writing, work on increasing your word-store instead of looking to a thesaurus to provide you with options for words you already know. Your words are your arsenal. A thesaurus offers you words which are similar in meaning, but which might also have shades of meaning which you definitely do NOT want to include in your writing.

Wander on over to thesaurus.com and plug the word "gasp" into the search function. The site defines "gasp" the noun as "a sharply drawn breath", and "gasp" the verb as "to draw breath in sharply". Now look at the words they offer you for consideration as substitutes: blow, ejaculation, exclamation, gulp, heave, pant, puff, wheeze, whoop for the noun definition, and: blow, catch one's breath, choke, convulse, fight for breath, gulp, heave, inhale, inspire, pant, puff, respire, sniffle, snort, wheeze, whoop for the verb definition.

Do any of those really replace the shock and surprise Bella feels when Edward looks at her and says 'You're the most beautiful girl in all of Forks High, Bella. If I could dream, I'd dream about you.' ? Of course they don't, which is what makes a thesaurus a dangerous and unreliable resource in the wrong hands. If you wrote "Bella wheezed when Edward told her that she was the most beautiful girl in all of Forks High, and that if he could dream, he'd dream about her", you'd be writing crackfic. Devote some time to considering how Bella would really feel if she heard those words from Edward Cullen. It changes her world. She's redefined through his eyes, and has his attention and admiration in a way she never expected to capture it.

Choosing words carefully is what elevates an author from someone who's just farting around here to someone who is serious about advancing and polishing their craft. It marks a story with a truly individual stamp, because it shows that nobody else sees things with the precise clarity that you can offer. And while no author gets it right every single time, working toward the goal of finding and using words which mean exactly what you need them to mean is part of the fun and joy and magic of good storytelling, both for the author and for the reader.

What to Do If Your Fic Has a Head Wound

Today, we're going to talk about what to do when your fic has a head wound. Like pretty much everything on earth with a concussion, your fic will stumble aimlessly around, grabbing at kitchen countertops, and chair backs, and doorknobs, and completely implausible complications - really, it'll hold on to anything in order to stay upright, because it lacks the great good sense to just pass out.

It's time for some triage. First, sit down with your story. Look it in the eye. Explain to it that in the real world, adults ask each other stuff - stuff like "Hey, Bella, why were you hugging Jake in the middle of the restaurant when I walked in to join you for our date?" instead of automatically assuming that Bella and Jake are having an affair. In the real world, Edward would be given an opportunity to explain to Bella that Lauren was kissing him on the cheek to thank him for listening to her ramble on about how awful her mother-in-law Cruella Newton is. Examine the characters in your fic. Check to make sure that they're breathing and have a pulse, and that they can count backwards from the number twenty to the number one.

There's really only one surefire cure for a fic with a head wound: you need to hook it up to an IV full of ACTUAL PLOT. Cleanse the area with reasonable behavior. Bind the injury with strong and rational characterizations. Encourage growth and progression on a regular basis. Pump the fic full of caffeine and keep it moving.

If this sounds too tiresome for you, take it behind the woodshed and Old Yeller it, then find yourself a new fic. I think euthanizing a badly-plotted fic is truly a mercy killing. In a perfect world, stories begin with a complication and with characters who need to learn something about themselves. If all your characters are learning is how to stubbornly misunderstand one another, get Kevorkian with them, and find yourself some characters with real issues to resolve.

"But, Nurse Nina," you whine. "I don't want them to be all damaged and demented and awful. I don't want to write icky drama. I want them to fall in love and go on awesome dates and have some sex and wear cool clothes and sing cool songs. Why is that wrong?" It's not wrong at all. You can have that, and none of your characters needs to spend any time at all with a crisis intervention counselor, or fill out a police report, or cover up strangulation marks with the kickass concealer that Alice always seems to have handy. But in order to have that and make it readable, you need to figure out some kind of plausible dramatic tension between and among your characters.

There is no drama as compelling as two people falling in love with one another. If the people in question are older than about fourteen, they probably have a bit of baggage. They've been hurt before, or they're not sure how to relax around someone they really like, or they're really focused on other things in their life, or they don't want to be trapped in an "ever after", or whatever. Bella wants to be a partner in her law firm by the time she's thirty, or she's working two jobs to put herself through school, or she doesn't want to leave her parents alone because she knows her mother will miss her. Edward's a doctor who's not sure he's in the right profession, or he's sick of the status quo and wants to buy a motorcycle and Che Guevara his way down Route 66, or he's socially awkward and can only express himself through the letters he writes. The point is, these characters have had lives and made decisions which shaped them before they ever showed up in your story. Those decisions, and the lives they led, will impact what happens when your main protagonists meet. The better the backstory you give your characters, the more real they become on the page. How will you know if your characters are exhibiting out-of-character behavior if you haven't taken the time to give them actual character?

Lucky you - because you're writing fan fiction, you already have characterizations from which to draw. The original source material provides these for you. Pick a character point from the series and expand on it. Blow it up. Stretch it out, and put your own spin on it.

Still with me? Good. It's also important to remember that all story arcs are not created equal. If your characters are reasonably healthy and well-adjusted, they won't have much to learn before they reach the right conclusions in their lives, and this means that your story shouldn't be a million words long. Minor tension equals shorter stories. If shy high school junior Bella has a crush on popular quarterback senior Edward, that shouldn't take 300,000 words to resolve. Regardless, if there isn't a lesson learned or meaningful progression toward a resolution in almost every chapter, what you've got is a fic with a head wound.

Listen, this is fan fic. You should have some fun with it. But if you're spending the majority of your story just wanking around with your characters and rewriting every bit of action from seven different POVs, the reader starts to feel as though they're watching fish swim endless laps in a small fishbowl. Fish are nice, but after a while, you long for a pet that will do something unexpected -- like your average cat, which spontaneously decides that it needs to be in another room ten minutes ago, and scrambles around on your hardwood floor before it dashes away as though the room it occupied a second ago is now engulfed in flames.

Plot tightly. Write with an eye toward advancing the story. Build real, dimensional people with credible obstacles. KNOW THOSE PEOPLE WELL, because you are their only source of oxygen. And don't fall so far in love with the sound of your own voice that you forget you've got a story to tell.