Writing – The Craft of

Coincidences

/ Lisa / 3 Comments

I have a personal goal that I will never walk away from a book unfinished.  Partly it’s optimism.  Sometimes I just keep hoping the book will get better.  Honestly, it is very rare that I come across a story that I feel the urge to pitch out into the woods.  Which is why I am very, very slowly making my way through a book called The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova.

Here’s the first problem.  I am on page 323 (not quite half way through) and I still do not know the name of the protagonist.

Second problem.  I can flip through the book, pick out a line of dialog, and not have a clue who is talking because they all sound so much alike.  The father talks exactly like the teenage daughter, who in spite of being a teen in the 1970’s speaks like an old-world professor.  I could cut the author slack here because dialog that is unique to the character is something we all struggle with.  However, I’m also struggling with hundreds of pages with this type of dialog.

Third and biggest problem: Coincidences.  Jessica Page Morrell says in her excellent book, Between the Lines, to use coincidences very sparingly.  One per book could even constitute pushing believability.  If you do use one, it should be written very carefully, very thoughtfully, in order to make the reader swallow it with the story as a whole.  In this book, there are so many coincidences that I’ve given up counting.  It would take too long to enumerate each one here, and I really don’t want to pick this book apart in that level of detail.  After all, it’s not such a horrible book that I don’t keep picking it back up.  It pulls at me in spite of all the problems.  Either that, or I’m just hoping to find out the reason the author is withholding the protagonist’s name.

Either way, coincidences in a story bug me, and I find myself agreeing with Jessica.  If one coincidence is written in, and handled professionally enough that the premise is set up beforehand, it can work.  We all know that coincidences happen in real life, so a reader might be inclined to believe one showing up in a story.

In reality though, I think most readers are disinclined to believe coincidences within the story framework.  I think the reason may be that there is a higher expectation that the writer will not take the easy way out by giving the characters coincidences to ease their path to the end of the book.  Because after all, that’s what coincidences in a story do.  Make things easier for the writer.

Although harder for the reader.

Favorite Blogs

/ Lisa / 5 Comments

Recently the author of a blog I enjoy listed mine as a favorite.  I decided to do the same because that compliment really brightened my day.  Thanks to Ré at Sparks in Shadow for the kind words and the idea.  Hope these links work; I’m figuring it out as I go.  If they don’t, I also have them listed to the right on this page in the Blog Roll.

So here are some blogs that I enjoy, besides Ré’s.

Dancing Beastie at dancingbeastie.wordpress.com  Life in a Scottish castle would have made me read this blog anyway, but the essays are so much more.  My absolute favorite is the Tuesday Tree, and I try to never miss a blog visit on that day of the week.  The blog also has many, many links that have sent me spinning into worlds so different from my own and introduced me to wonderful people.  Matter of fact, just browsing all the links keeps me on the computer much longer than I should.

Susan Schreyer’s ‘Writing Horses’ blog at writinghorses.blogspot.com  Susan is a good friend of many years and one of the three people I trust as first readers when I need honest opinions and critiques.  (The other two being my husband and friend/hiking partner/poet  Sabrina).  I got a kick out of recent posts where she interviewed the characters from her stories.

Lisa’s blog of art and words at satsumaart.wordpress.com Not being able to paint or draw, I greatly appreciate it in those who can.  When you add writing to the mix, you end up with a blog that I visit often.  Lisa and Ré, mentioned above, both give me thoughtful and insightful comments on posts that make me wish I could pull the post and rewrite it with all the new things they give me to think about.

Len’s Conversations With Self at carpediem202.blogspot.com Len is a wonderful, self-deprecating woman.  Her blog includes reviews of books and interviews with authors.  I enjoy those, but I enjoy more when Len herself stops in to visit and her words on her parenting challenges, her gentle outlook on life, and her kind humor shine through.

And finally, here’s a new one I just discovered thanks to the dancing beastie, and I can tell it’s going to be one I revisit often because it involves so many things I love.  whisperingearth.wordpress.com The author of this blog can even find native and wild plants to comment on when walking in the city.  But her words bring to the page one of the things I love about where I live, being surrounded by nature.

These are just a few of the blogs I like, but they are the ones I visit most frequently, and the ones I learn from.  Hope you enjoy them as well.  And now the sun is out finally and I am going to uncover the tomato plants, let the dogs out, and take them for a romp in the creek.

Story Challenge

/ Lisa / 7 Comments

Yesterday I had to go ‘down below’ meaning I left the mountains for the city, spending all day running errands and maxing out on people overload.  While moving through the grocery store, the produce stand, the laundromat, and so on, I started paying attention to the conversations.

For example, during my mammogram, the woman doing the squashing told me about some hilarious camping stories and a couple equally hilarious stories about patients (I’m sure that I’m now new fodder for her).  While at the produce stand the young man running the register told me a story about the nectarines I’d bagged up, and then a story about a cobbler his mother makes with nectarines and blueberries.

At the dentist, the tech filled the time that my mouth was propped open, by telling her captive audience stories about all the precocious things her toddler was doing.

Every single conversation was a story.  There were no interactions that were simply facts.  Everything, every word, was connected to a tale.  As I realized this, I started an experiment.  I tried to not respond with a story.  I failed.  Think about it.  A person tells you a funny camping story, which reminds you of the time something odd happened when on the beach, and that reminds your listener of something else, and before long the two of you are deep in conversations.

Why is it that conversations are all made up of stories? How many of us can answer a question with a simple fact-only answer?  And if you can do that, how many times is that perceived as rudeness by your listener?  As a writer I’m very relieved that humans are so hungry for stories.  But I wonder at the mechanism, at why we are wired that way, why we must speak in stories, even to strangers.

I’m going to challenge myself the next time I’m in public, to try to not tell a single story.  I find myself wondering if I’ll be able to speak at all.  Oh, I have to add that for my challenge I think I will study my husband in public.  He despises meaningless conversations with strangers and discourages stories.  He wants to get into the store, get what he needs, and get home, with minimal contact.  His body language and short answers are clear signals to those experienced with working with the public that he is one not interested in talking.

And that brings me to the downside of the challenge to try not telling a single story.  I’m going to miss out on a day of rich textures, of ideas for writing, and of fascinating people.  Still though, it’s going to be interesting to see if I can manage to go through one whole day in public without telling a story.  I think I shall fail.