Avoiding Cliches

Editors look for fresh writing. They want to read original analogies, similes and metaphors not overused phrases. Hot under the collar and as happy as a pig in mud carry meaning, but the meaning is trite and readers skim over the words without noticing so they lose the impact of what you’re saying.

As you work on your novels, especially as you create emotion or use descriptions of people or places, you can make your writing more memorable to readers by finding new ways to describe what the character sees.

I’ve used this example before, but here it is again. In romance, how many times can a heroine’s heart flutter or can she become breathless? These phrases are found in most romance novels, including mine, but I have worked hard to come up with new ways to express these feelings of emotion. One of my books has an examples that demonstrates this. The heroine Jemma has just met her mother-in-law’s cousin, Philip. Jemma and Philip are saying goodbye in Claire’s boutique. Jemma and her mother-in-law, Claire had very miserable marriages and are both widows.

Excerpt:
A summer pinwheel whirled in Jemma’s chest. No one gave her that much kind attention, not even Lyle. She murmured her thanks and sat nailed to her seat while Claire followed him toward the side door. His rich, genial voice drifted from the hallway.

Drawn to follow, Jemma rose and hovered behind them. Before he disappeared through the door, Philip gave her a summer-breeze smile, sending her internal pinwheel on another merry spin.

Notice how a summer pinwheel provides the same breathless flutter yet allows me to avoid the cliche phrase “her heart fluttered.” With the pinwheel analogy set up, I used the idea again in the next paragraph with references to his “summer-breeze” smile, sending her internal pinwheel on another merry spin.

This is so much more effective and creates more dynamic word pictures than using the trite phrases. Readers will remember this image.

Other examples:
Cliche: She was at the end of her rope.
Original: She stood on the edge, watching the cliff corrode beneath her feet.

Cliche: He was smart as a whip
Original: He answered every question with the speed of a NASCAR racer.

The original offers us the same meaning but with fresh images and concepts.

Cliche’s can be used dialogue if it fits the characterization. Most people use them in daily conversations, but don’t overuse trite language in your writing. Those phrases are skimmed by readers who’ve heard them so many times. Instead find creative ways to say the same thing, even in dialogue if it works with the character.

To see the kinds of cliche’s that should be avoided in your writing, here’s a wonderful website where you can find an amazing list of trite language by clicking http://www.suspense.net/whitefish/cliche.htm from Laura Hayden's "Left-Brain- Right Brain/Creativity Program."

Story Structure and My Big Fat Greek Wedding

While on a writer’s loops, one of the members mentioned a blog on Story Structure which they found helpful. The blogger, Amy Deardon, used My Big Fat Greek Wedding to illustrate story structure. I found her blog interesting and asked permission to use it on this blog. She granted me permission.

Amy said:
In my studies of story structure, the biggest surprise I found was how little story development varies. My dear friends, we are such very boring creatures! No matter the genre, the same development of story events occurred, over and over and over.

For this blog entry I wanted to give a quick summary of story structure according to me. Much of this is not original work -- I'm not that brilliant -- but I've synthesized the work of smart people with my own humble observations to come up with a model of story structure that works for me, during my work in coaching writers.

During my studies, I tore apart about 20 *good* modern novels (ie novels that I enjoyed), ranging in genre from literary to adventure to mystery to YA to science fiction, plus a bunch of movies. I did word counts or timed scenes with a watch, listed everything into columns, and then analyzed the commonalities of story progression across genre.

The story can be divided into four more-or-less equal parts, each part with a distinct theme. Furthermore, there are definite story POSTS that occur reliably in the progression of the story, and land reliably within a range of a few percentage points of the whole. I'll put them down very briefly, and use the film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, to illustrate. BTW I could have picked just about anything to illustrate, but this is a cute movie.

ACT ONE: demonstrates the original or starting position of the protagonist, plus the set up to show how he moves into the main story.

Ordinary World -- shows what the protagonist's *normal life* is like. Toula is a 30 year old unmarried Greek woman working in her (extremely intrusive) family's restaurant.

Inciting Incident -- shows a potential change offered to the protagonist, either a choice or an assignment. Toula finds a college brochure that might offer her an opportunity to achieve something different by taking a few classes.

Argument -- the protagonist isn't sure if he will enter the new world or not. Toula must convince her father to allow her to take some courses at the college.

Door -- represents a *journey* into the new world. Toula enters the college campus and starts taking classes.

ACT TWO FIRST PART: the protagonist learns how the *New World* works, and also thinks that once this little journey is over he will be *unchanged* (able to straddle or return to the Ordinary World). This is often shown as a series of three encounters, each increasingly involved.

Toula is shown changing her image to become more glamorous (hair, clothing, ditching the glasses, makeup etc.), answering questions competently in class, and socializing with other students (something she couldn't do as a kid).

Midpoint: an often flashy event that represents either a false high, or a devastating loss, that makes it clear the protagonist can no longer go back to his Ordinary World.

Toula meets Ian, a high school English teacher, and starts dating him even though she knows her family will *never* accept him because he isn't Greek. Shortly afterwards, Nikki tells Toula that the family knows about her romance with Ian, and then Toula must sit before the disapproving family committee that tells her to break it off.

ACT TWO SECOND PART: the protagonist scrambles to regain equilibrium while the antagonistic forces gain power. Toula's family tries to match her with other *suitable* bachelors without success. Finally Ian proposes to Toula, who joyfully accepts, but her family only reluctantly agrees. Ian yields to these powerful forces by becoming *Greek*: becoming baptized and participating in Greek family activities, including a fabulous party in which Ian's conservative parents are contrasted with the noisy Porticullis clan.

Slide: another often flashy event that serves as a funnel. The nature of the climax is now clearly seen. Often there is a sort of *death* present here; think Obi Wan against Darth Vader in the first Star Wars movie. (observation courtesy of Blake Snyder in his Save the Cat! , a book I highly recommend). Toula comes home with her wedding plans, only to learn her family has already ordered the invitations and the bridesmaids' dresses.

ACT THREE: the protagonist gears up for the final encounter, although it looks unlikely that he will ever win. Toula is dismayed that her family is so intrusive, and that her family and Ian's are so different.

Darkest Moment: The very worst position that the protagonist can possibly imagine. While preparing for the wedding that morning, Tulla realizes she will never be free of her family.

Help from Outside: a small action that allows the protagonist to regroup and win. This story post I recognized courtesy of Nancy Rue and Angela Hunt in a NANGIE writing class I took a few years ago. Toula's grandmother shows Toula her own wedding crown, and Toula realizes that her family all love her and that she is connected to her family in a deep and profound way.

Climax: an often flashy sequence in which the protagonist ultimately wins, if not the outer conflict then certainly the inner (think Rocky). Toula and Ian have a beautiful, Greek, wedding and reception. Toula's father makes a joke that shows how Toula's family and Ian's family, although different, are ultimately the same.

Resolution: tells how the protagonist's life will go on. Toula and Ian are shown several years later in a house next door to her family's house, walking their daughter to Greek school.

******
OK, there is the story structure in miniature, sort of. Try laying these story points over any story you like -- you'll be surprised at how well they'll match!

Visit Amy Deardon’s blog site at: http://amydeardon.blogspot.com/2008/10/story-structure.html

Bio:
Amy Deardon is a skeptic who came to faith through study of the historic circumstances surrounding the death of Jesus. Her first novel is A Lever Long Enough, about a small military team that travels back in time to film the theft of Jesus' body from the tomb.
A Lever Long Enough, Taegais Publishing LLC, January 2009, ISBN 978-0-9818997-2-5
Some reviews are on amazon HERE

Pacing Your Novel

As always, I love to hear author Randy Ingermanson share his knowledge of writing fiction and the next best thing is to read it in his Advanced Fiction Writers Ezine. Randy has granted me permission to share his article on pacing with you.

Randy says:
When I sold my first novel, one of the comments I got back from the editorial team was this: "The pace for this novel was perfect -- never too fast nor too slow."

I was surprised, because I'd never thought much about pace. Certain things come easy to every author, and other things come hard. Pace comes easy to me. What is pace? It's the amount of time you spend on each part of the story. The Goldilocks Principle applies to pace -- it should be neither too fast nor too slow, but just right.

There isn't any tidy little rule you can memorize to define what the perfect pace is for a story. A general rule is to vary the pace to suit the tension in the scene. So most often, you'll want to zip through the boring parts of the story and take more time on the exciting parts. That seems very strange, doesn't it? If you're showing a high-speed car chase, surely you'd want to make it read fast, wouldn't you? Which means using fewer words, doesn't it?

Yes and no. Yes, you want it to read fast. But no, you don't want to spend fewer words on it, you want more.

There's really no paradox here. Ever seen a football game in which one of the players makes a huge play, dodging first one defender, then another, all the way down the field, finally dancing into the end zone for a touchdown? What happens next?

You can bet your shirt that the networks are going to show the whole thing AGAIN, this time in slow motion, dragging out every twist, turn, head-fake, missed tackle, fancy step, jump, roll, block, clip, and lost helmet, all the way down the field. Showing it in slow-motion takes a lot longer, but it doesn't cut the pace. It INCREASES the pace.

Why? Because when the play ran at normal speed, you missed most of the action. You saw a guy running and you saw guys missing him. It all went by in a blur so fast that you couldn't take it all in.

When they ran it in super slo-mo, you saw every little move. You saw your man do an inside-outside-inside fake. You saw the defender respond to each fake in turn, finally over-committing in the wrong direction. Then your man cut to his right and sped on to the next defender, faking left, then right. You saw the defender freeze, then set himself low for a tackle. Then your man leaped right over the defender.

And on down the field. When your man reached the sidelines, you saw him threading a needle between his blocker and that thin chalk line. You saw every block, every weave. You saw the last desperate flying tackler miss your man's heels by an inch.As he entered the end-zone, you saw his gait change to a high-stepping strut, saw him raise the ball in triumph. And then the normal pace resumed.

It took ten times as long to see it that way, but this time, YOU SAW IT ALL. You saw every action, every reaction, in beautiful, sharply cut detail. That's what you came to see. With that one play, you got your nickel's worth for the game.

In your novel, the moral equivalent of super-slo-mo involves spending far more words than you normally would, but using much shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. You alternate rapidly between what your point-of-view character is doing and what his opposition is doing. If your paragraphs are normally three sentences apiece, they might drop down to two sentences or one. If your sentences are normally ten words apiece, they might fall to five words. Or three. Or one.

You can't keep that up very long, of course. That would be crazy. In the same way, it would be crazy to watch an entire football game in slow motion. You want to ramp up the pace only for the high-tension scenes, where the stakes are high.

Slowing down the pace works the opposite way. Longer sentences. Longer paragraphs. Fewer actions and reactions. More interior monologue, longer dialogue.

Why does this work? It's really very simple. The reader reads fiction hoping to have a Powerful Emotional Experience.

Inside a scene, you provide this by showing actions and reactions between your point-of-view character and the other characters. Every time you show your POV character reacting to the other characters, you have a chance to provide an emotional hit point to your reader.

If you have short actions and short reactions (using short sentences and paragraphs), then you score emotional points with your reader faster. If you lengthen out the actions and reactions, then you score fewer emotional points.

Naturally, it only makes sense to speed up the pace when the tension is high. If you try this when the tension is low, the story is going to drag. (Imagine showing the team's huddle in slow-motion.)

There are an infinite variety of paces you can use as you work through each scene. You speed it up and slow it down, possibly several times in the scene.

How do you know when you've got it right? That's easy. You've got it right when it feels right. Fiction is about creating a Powerful Emotional Experience in your reader. Tweak the pace until you're doing that, and your reader will feel like Goldilocks.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 14,500 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

It's Never To Early To Start Promoting

Have you already sold a novel? Is your work being promoted on the Internet? If you haven’t sold a novel, have you begun promoting yourself as an author? It’s difficult to calculate accurately how effective your promotion is, but I have found one way that gives me an idea and I want to share it with you.

Google is one of the top search engines I’ve found. When I check my sites and see how people are finding me, the search engine that pops up the most is Google and Yahoo. I think most of you agree that your Internet presence is important. It’s a way to get your name in front of the public as well as your writing. One thing you can do to measure your popularity on the Internet is to Google your name or your book or whatever you want to learn about.

As I’ve published more and more novels and have been interviewed, had my books reviewed, donated articles and used the Internet as a promotional tool, my name has grown dramatically on Google. I did a quick search and found sixty-six pages of information about me in each entry and Google had more that I could have found. This means that 660 pages that had something about me or my work viewed by how many people? We don’t know but we know it’s hundreds to thousands.

Do this with your own name and see your presence on the Internet. Are you happy with the results? What can you do to make it better? Can you offer to be interviewed on a blog site? Can you donated an article for a writer’s blog ro website? If you're published, are you requesting reviews of your latest books? Are you being featured on any sites? These are all opportunities open to you by networking with writers and bloggers who are always looking for new information.

Once you see what’s happened in the past, you can learn what’s happening in the future by
having Google send you an alert each time someone writes about you or your name appears on the Internet. Click on this link: www.google.com/alerts and sign up for Google Alert. You’ll be rewarded by learning what’s being said about you on the Internet and who’s helping promote your name or your work. Take advantage of Google Alert. Once you have a grasp of how the Internet can work for you, you can better use it for promotion.