My mother quoted both Shakespeare and Newton and others I have yet to divine, and as a child, I was completely unaware. It's completely shocking to read a work of great literature, or science, and hear my mother speaking the lines from decades past.

When it came to Newton's laws, her recitation tended to follow a complete kid klutz moment. For instance, putting books onto the dining table, push back, spill milk across the dining table. Mom would spout Newton's 3rd law:

I guess that was better than yelling at us for spilled milk.

But here's the thing. Newton's laws apply to people and characters as well as the universe. Newton's law of inertia, states that an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside source. In this example, the object at rest is our character before the story begins.

Jennifer Brody, in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, writes:

[momentary pause wherein I acknowledge my mother's genius]
​

In this analogy, the character is the object at rest. The character is living their happy or unhappy life in stasis, or as Christopher Vogler (The Writer's Journey) calls it, the Ordinary World.

The character may be unhappy, but they're not unhappy enough to move. Take Luke from the original Star Wars. He's completely unhappy working for his uncle on the farm at the far end of the universe, but he's there anyway, plugging along, dreaming about leaving, "some day." He has the desire, but not the actionable force. It takes a droid, a crazy old hermit, and the death of his aunt and uncle to "force" him from his Ordinary World. Vogler called this the Call to Adventure, but in Brody's version, the events that take place are the equal and opposite force that compel the object at rest into an object in motion (or, a Character in Motion).

Once the character is in motion, their wants and goals keep the plot moving.

As the story progress, the equal and opposite force that Brody discusses can come to life through either conflict or a nemesis (antagonist). It is the equal and opposite force that acts against the character in motion.

​It's the question "[w]hat is standing in the hero's way?"

The force standing in the hero's way must be strong enough to push him off course. For instance, think about what it took to force the Millennium Falcon close enough to the Death Star to get captured? And yet, isn't that where Luke and Han were destined to go?

Think about your current work in progress (WIP).

• What is the equal and opposite force that will move your characters out of their inertia?
• What is the equal and opposite force that will change the direction of the story?

I never stopped to consider that something in science, one of my least favorite subjects, could impact my writing world. That was a deficit in my viewpoint. Everything in the world and on our planet can impact our writing world. From years ago, my mother was teaching me how to apply universal laws to my life, and I am the better for it.

Now, if I could just find that outside force to get the rest of my life in motion.

When I first started writing, a decade or two (ouch!) before I actually published, I wanted to be a historical romance writer. My favorite stories to read were Regencies and, because I read them, I wanted to write them.

Enter reality.

Historical romance in general, and Regency in particular, has very demanding fans. Get something wrong about the Regency era, and the readers WILL haunt you. And, as much as I loved to read them, I really didn't want to do that kind of research.

Years later, I worked in the public library system in the reference department (yes, I see the irony). And I really do love research now, but I no longer want to write Regency. :)

I learned a few things in the process, though.

• First, my voice in strongly grounded in contemporary fiction. If I had continued to attempt to write in the Regency era, even with the best research skills, I would have failed, because Regency is not the way that I "speak."
  • The lesson here is to find your natural voice and genre.
  • They should be compatible and, yes, it does make a difference.
• Second, every book requires research.
  • I have interviewed police officers (this one has actually been ongoing).
  • Spent long, laborious (and joyful) hours culling through the FBI's webpages.
  • I've studied weapons and bombs and self-defense.
  • So even though my writing is contemporary, I still have to research.

Most of it is fun. Often it is distracting from the real work, but necessary all the same.

• To avoid the distractions, stay focused.
  • As you're writing, make notes on what you need additional research on [don't stop writing to check "real quick"]
  • Go back to do research at a different time, and have your list of research questions handy.
  • Set a time limit and stick to it!
  • Don't follow the hyperlinks from one site to the next.
  • Keep your end goal in mind.
  • If you're looking up stuff on bombs, don't go down the Unabomber Manifesto bunny trail. Next thing you know, you're on 4chan interacting with questionable "anonymous" sources, and you really might show up on an NSA watchlist. (I'm just saying, be careful).
• The key to good research is recognizing a quality website versus click bait and the ubiquitous blog from some random blogger. Not that bloggers are all wrong all the time, but they are not created equal. Make sure you know your source before you write a story around research found on "Joe's Blog."
  • Does the author sign their blog or otherwise affiliate their name with their blog?
    • This refers to reference type information, not book bloggers etc.
    • If the writer doesn't want to list their name, why would you trust their research?
    • If they didn't put their name on it, why would you want to put your name on anything based on their research?
  • Does the author list credentials?
    • How does the writer know what they know about random subject matter?
    • Here's a little aside. Sorry, it can't be helped. My brother is a conspiracy theorist. And, hey, he can be whatever he wants to be, BUT, here's the key, a critically thinking researcher would ask questions of blogs, YouTube videos, and questionable articles based on the thinking of a guy who believes he's inside the head of John Malkovich (Being John Malkovitch).
    • Be wary of well-meaning but inaccurate information.
  • Does the page have flashing ads every time you scroll?
    • Sometimes, this is the website provider, but something to consider:
      
      • Is the website designed to share information or make money?
    • That's not to say affiliate links are bad...I'm really talking about click bait.
  • Does the writing seem professional?
    • Typos happen to all of us, but if it's full of misspellings, typos, broken links, and questionable information that conflicts with the other sources, put that site on your blocked list.

The best advice I can give, however, is to enjoy the ride. Research can and should be mentally engaging. It should be interesting and intriguing.

Consider it playtime. Have fun!

• A seamstress might tear a piece of clothing apart at the seams to understand how it was made so s/he can duplicate it.
• ​A painter might study and duplicate the brushstrokes of a master to learn to paint like the master.
• A builder might study how the pyramids were made to understand and duplicate their building methods.

A writer does the same. We tear things apart to figure out the how and why, so we can duplicate the techniques in our own writing. Reading is the primary means of learning to write, which is why it makes me sad when new writers tell me they "don't read." I typically sic Stephen King on their heretic asses:

Before we know what to write, we need to know how to write, and the how is reading like a writer. Asking questions, annotating, figuring out how a writer accomplished a certain technique. Like the seamstress, we are taking apart a shirt so that we can use it as a pattern for making our own shirt.

Mimicry is part of the learning process. In middle school I wrote a noir detective story my teacher said sounded "borrowed." Nevermind that her destructive commentary became that negative voice in my head (and most writers have them). The point is that I started at a point of mimicry, but I grew past it. I learned the rules so I knew when, where, and how to break them effectively. I still read like a writer, and I'm reading a book a week (or more). I read across the card catalog: fiction and nonfiction, literature and genre fiction like romance, mystery, thrillers, women's fiction, and just about any genre but horror (sorry Stephen King). Speaking of Stephen King, he continues the quote about the value of reading with the following: 

Reading is an invaluable part of a writer's toolbox. In fact, it may be THE essential tool, but only if you're reading like a writer. So what does that mean? Check out Mike Bunn's article, published free as part of an OER (Open Education Resource), for specific, concrete ideas on what it means to read like a writer. Also, see the video below on how to annotate as you read.

Works Cited:

• Bunn, Mike. "How to Read Like a Writer." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2, 2011,    http://writingspaces.org/sites/default/files/bunn--how-to-read.pdf.
• "How to Annotate Text." YouTube, uploaded by School Habits, 9 May 2017, https://youtu.be/w5Mz4nwciWc.
• King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribner Anniversary Edition, 2010.

Happy Writer Wednesday. I'm cross posting a video this week as I'm on the road taking my daughter to college (cue crocodile tears). See my video and follow up with the link below for questions you can ask when you're critiquing or being critiqued.

Questions: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/questions-for-critique-partners/#

Is there a connection between our lives and the story we are writing?

In an obvious sense yes. And no. Yes, of course it revolves around the writer's experience, but no, it is not a poorly disguised autobiography. I'm reading The Hidden Machinery by Margot Livesey, a gift from my MFA mentor. In the first essay, she discusses both Henry James and E.M. Forester. Forester, she claims, could have finished A Passage to India when he first started the book in 1913. The pieces were all in place, he had four novels under his belt, so he had the skills, but Forester was never happy with it. Until he was.

Why did this novel take Forester longer?
​

He had to mature, essentially, to the point where the novel made sense. He first had to experience the things which would became central to the story.

The writer's life informs and reforms the writing. I could only write Untouchable after going through a hellish divorce. I have a novel in a drawer that languished, waiting for me to get over the hurdle at the first turning point. And since I didn't get through the barrier in my life, the character failed to thrive.

​It's not just physical events, like Forester's return trip to India. It's internal change in the mind and spirit of the writer that impact the writing. I've written eight novels. Seven are published and they are the result of who I was and what I believed at the time they were written. But that one book that's not yet published makes me wonder.

Where do I need to be, what do I need to experience, what must I observe before the book is ready for birth?

​What inner or outer events must take place before I feel satisfied with this book? And can I nudge those events into place faster so I can finish it already?

I haven't gotten that far in Livesey's book, but I'm guessing that no, I can't shove myself into the fire to force the inspiration. Instead, I must keep writing and writing, putting in my time and wallowing in the characters, before those internal and external events converge.

As a reader, I skip mass amounts of description in long narrative form. Others read each juicy detail and want more. Where's the balance between too much setting description and not enough?

Part of this is understanding your readers. What is your demographic? In my experience, science fiction and fantasy novels include way more setting detail than thrillers. Neither is right or wrong, but rather common conventions for your preferred storytelling type. The best way to determine this is to read frequently in the genre in which you write.

In our January workshop at the 21st Century Writers group, we had a lively discussion regarding setting. We started with Four Ways to Bring Setting to Life by Moira Allen. The first recommendation was to "reveal setting through motion." If a writer has a reader like me, who sees a huge chunk of description and jumps right past it, they're tricking me by breaking the description up. The writer is showing movement. If a waitress is delivering drinks to the galaxy ala Star Wars Cantina scene, the writer could show the waitress maneuvering past a creature with 8 hands or tripping over tentacles. Action allows the setting to filter into the story organically.

Another recommendation was to "reveal setting through a character's level of experience." In other words, the world as seen through the eyes of the character is different if the point of view character is a hardened galaxy waitress who no longer notices funky tentacles or a newby Jedi who has never left his rural planet. What does the character notice? What does the character NOT notice? And perhaps most importantly, why does it matter? I think this is where many writers fall into trouble.

As writers, we love our worlds, but if the three and a half paragraphs of detailed setting have no bearing on the plot or the character, why include it? As an example from our discussion, a hardened police detective probably wouldn't notice many "extra" details while eating lunch at a cafe. It's whatever to him. A place to eat and nothing else, but put that same detective at a crime scene, and they notice EVERYTHING. And the reader wants to read these paragraphs because somewhere embedded in the setting details are clues to the overarching mystery.

A third suggestion from the article was to "reveal setting through the mood of your character." A castle ruin takes on different details if the heroine is on a day hike versus lost in a creepy old ruin. Word choice is affected. A movie example of this idea is Hoodwinked. In the movie, the same story is repeated for four different characters: little red riding hood, the bunny, the huntsman, and the wolf (oh, and maybe Grandma, too, it's been awhile). Each character is part of the story, but they have very different perceptions of the setting. It's why sometimes when you're writing a scene and it isn't working, you should consider writing from another character's point of view. It can significantly alter the mood and pacing of the story.

A final idea from this article was to "reveal setting through the senses." I highly encourage you to read the source document for this section, but a part that really resonated with our discussion was the idea that the senses we include have different effects on the reader's emotions. For instance, "When we describe a scene in terms of visual inputs, we are appealing to the reader's intellect. Emotions, however, are often affected by what we hear." As readers, we view the world through our senses. If we're walking and suddenly smell grandma's barbecue sauce, it evokes an emotional response, say disgust since grandma couldn't cook if her life depended on it. The same is true of our reader. By showing the setting through the senses of the point of view character, we allow the reader to see the soul of the character, creating someone who is complex and interesting.

That's great, but how do we incorporate that into our writing? For this, I took a look at 21 Writing Prompts for Setting a Scene in Your Novel by Suzannah Windsor Freeman. For our purposes in the workshop, we read through the list of 21 items and answered as many as we felt called to answer, and then wrote or rewrote a scene in our current WIP, adding setting details we learned from the Moira Allen article. The results were pretty amazing. For me, I was stuck on a new project I started at the first of the year. Reviewing these 21 questions helped me to define my character in her current location and turned a blah scene into an active scene. It's amazing what happens when you slow down.

If you'd like to use those 21 questions to write/rewrite a short scene, include it in the comments. Have fun!