Her dark gaze darted from guest to guest, searching for an appropriate distraction, until her focus skidded to a halt. Her steps slowed and a wintry blast of irritation swept through her, locking her muscles in place. Two devastatingly handsome men of Viking proportions stepped inside the ballroom. Lord Beaufort on her left, with his ready smile, bore the swarthy, rugged complexion of a Welshman, and in stark contrast, his dark-haired companion wore his brooding English refinement like a shiny badge of honor.

This paragraph illustrates a common error in event sequencing and verbs. There are two ways to analyze this error, and two ways to correct it.

Good, linear prose takes the reader directly from event to event in sequence through time. Yes, sometimes we break that line on purpose, as with a flashback. But in general, we want events to proceed in a direct line through the chronology of events.

In this paragraph, what is the very first event in linear time? Her dark gaze darted from guest to guest, searching for an appropriate distraction. And what comes next in story time? Look closely. It’s not the event in the second half of the first sentence. It’s buried in the middle of the paragraph. Two devastatingly handsome men of Viking proportions stepped inside the ballroom. This is the second event in the list of events taking place in the paragraph. In chronological order, the second and third sentences are reversed in time. It’s a small jump, but it’s a jump nonetheless.

Because the timeline skids backward, the verb must reflect the time shift, or the reader might get confused. Using the past perfect verb tense clarifies the sequencing. Two devastatingly handsome men of Viking proportions had stepped inside the ballroom. This is now the past perfect — an event in the past of the storyline’s simple past. (Just as in real life, the present tense reflects “now” and the past reflects “before now,” in most stories, the past tense reflects “story now” and the past perfect reflects “before story now.”)

So, that’s the temporal/chronological analysis and repair. There’s a second way to look at this and fix it, one that examines not the time sequence, but the chain of causation.

Action and reaction are the foundation upon which story is built. Something happens. A character reacts, causing something else to happen, causing a new reaction, causing a new action, and so on until the whole cast is all bollixed up in a crisis. If things happen without cause, we say they’re improperly motivated, or improbable, or contrived. But what do we call it when something is properly motivated, but that motivation isn’t revealed until after the event?

It’s a sequencing error. In larger forms, it can give rise to a logic error. Here, in it’s smaller form, though, when the cause is revealed directly after the reaction, instead of creating a gap in logic, it’s creating a minor stutter in the otherwise smooth flow of the narrative.

So let’s look at the true causative flow of these events. First, she scans the room. Because she scans the room, she sees two men step into the ballroom. Because she sees them, her eyes stop on them. Because her eyes stop on them, she has a shocked reaction and is able to process some descriptive detail related to their appearances.

If you compare this causative chain with the order of events in the paragraph itself, you’ll notice that the same sentence is out of order. Two devastatingly handsome men of Viking proportions stepped inside the ballroom. In the paragraph, this sentence follows her shocked reaction. In the chain of causation, though, her shocked reaction stems from their appearance. The fix is to move this misplaced sentence into its proper place in the causative chain:

Her dark gaze darted from guest to guest, searching for an appropriate distraction. until her focus skidded to a halt on two devastatingly handsome men of Viking proportions stepping inside the ballroom. Her steps slowed and a wintry blast of irritation swept through her, locking her muscles in place. Lord Beaufort stood on her left, with his ready smile, bore the swarthy, rugged complexion of a Welshman, and in stark contrast, his dark-haired companion wore his brooding English refinement like a shiny badge of honor.

I had to tinker with it a little to smooth out the sentences — stepped is now stepping, for example. But there’s one very good reason for not making this change. Can you see it? Post your answers in the comments, and we’ll talk it over.

On a side note, I would like to thank everyone who has sent in a question to the Ask an Editor column. You’re giving me lots of good questions to choose from, and I look forward to answering them in upcoming months.

* * *

RU Readers, how about you? Have you encountered problems with use of tenses? Wanna share a few sentences, so Theresa can provide suggestions on how to fix them?

If you have a question for Theresa you can submit it to askaneditor@romanceuniversity.org.  Don’t miss this great opportunity to have your concerns addressed by a top-notch editor!

Adrienne talks to Golden Heart finalist Amy Atwell about the twists and turns of pursuing that first book deal.

Theresa’s bio:

After earning degrees in creative writing and law, Theresa Stevens worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm based in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. The lure of the courtroom led to a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry, but now Theresa is back as Managing Editor for Red Sage Publishing, a highly acclaimed small press. Her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

Your last column on writing actively brought up a question I’ve had for quite some time on passive voice writing.  In commercial genre fiction (romance, mystery, etc), the practice of writing in an active voice vs. a passive is pretty standard and accepted.  I’ve noticed, however, that when someone is claiming to write literary fiction, the writing tends to be passive voice (with lots of has and had and were and other passive voice indicators and sentence structures) with much of the action and scene events being “summarized” instead of being shown to the reader through direct action and dialogue.  To me the difference is as noticeable as feeling like I’m listening to a report of the story on the radio vs. seeing the events play out live on TV in ”Breaking News!”

Is there really a different active/passive voice need in commercial genre fiction vs. literary fiction?  Is it a matter of commercial fiction narrative vs. literary narrative?  Or is this something wannabe authors tell themselves distinguishes their work from “mass commercial fiction,” or is it really a necessity of their form? 

Thank you.

Julie H.

Hi, Julie,

Let’s start by distinguishing passive voice from passive writing.  Passive voice is a type of sentence structure in which the object of the verb action occupies the subject position in the sentence.  For example, in active voice, we might write:

The priest rang the bell.

In passive voice, however, the sentence would read:

The bell was rung.

Or,

The bell was rung by the priest.

Passive voice is a useful sentence construction anytime you’re trying to obscure the actor or anytime the actor is unimportant.  It has a bad reputation, but it is not without its uses.

Passive writing, on the other hand, can result from any number of things–weak verbs, meandering characters, flat conflicts, too much exposition, and many more.

The style you describe — especially the reference to heavy use of narrative summary — is something that many of us first encounter when reading classic literature in school.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that aping that style makes the resulting work literary.  The literary community has evolved since the days of the early novelists.  They’re bending narrative forms and tinkering with structure and point of view.  Think, for example, of De Lillo’s long lists of nouns in “White Noise,” Proulx’s fractured interior monologue in “The Shipping News,” the metaliterary flourishes in Faber’s “The Crimson Petal and the White,” or Atwood’s truncated structure in “Oryx & Crake.”

Although it’s possible for the style you describe to be used by a contemporary literary novelist, in my experience, this type of writing more often results from laziness or confusion. Writing from subjective viewpoints is hard work. And wrapping a standard genre plot and characters in exposition won’t convert a book into a literary novel. Today’s literary novels push the boundaries of form. They don’t retreat into a style that was developed over a century ago.

Commercial fiction usually prefers deep point of view (though some thrillers are sometimes more omniscient), lots of action, minimal exposition, and other devices which engage the reader’s emotions in an immediate and direct way.  This is especially true of romance with its goal of providing powerful emotional experiences for the hero, the heroine, and the reader. (Which is not to say that current literary books are incapable of engaging our emotions. See “Oryx & Crake” in particular for an example.)

In general, writing genre fiction means getting this part of it right. We want stories told in scenes with lots of action and emotion.  There are exceptions. For example, Sherry Thomas kicks off her popular first novel, “Private Arrangements,” with an omniscient summary of the definition of proper marriage that feels almost Dickensian. But the rest of the book is narrated from the subjective point of view of the hero and heroine, and there’s very little exposition other than that opening. This technique worked beautifully for this book, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. The subject of Thomas’s expository opening was unique and engaging enough that the lack of an immediate point-of-view character was not a problem.

All of which is to say, yes, genre writers can occasionally borrow techniques from our literary brethren, but we still must focus on providing an emotional, immediate reading experience. We can accomplish that better by avoiding passive writing and narrative summary.

Readers, what do you think makes for an emotional read? Active writing? What else?

If you have a question for Theresa you can submit it to askaneditor@romanceuniversity.org.  Don’t miss this great opportunity to have your concerns addressed by a top-notch editor!

After earning degrees in creative writing and law, Theresa Stevens worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm based in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. The lure of the courtroom led to a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry, but now Theresa is back as Managing Editor for Red Sage Publishing, a highly acclaimed small press. Her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

I finally got a rejection that wasn’t a form letter, but it says the editor didn’t connect with my characters.  How am I supposed to revise my manuscript with this comment in mind? 

How do I make an editor like my characters more?  My crit partners think my characters are good.

Stephanie

Hi, Stephanie,

This is a great question for two reasons. First, we get to talk about likability. This is a key factor for creating good characters in many genres. There are other factors, too, such as shock value and power plays, that can let you get around likability, but they’re much harder to pull off. Master likability first, and then tackle other methods for creating character-reader bonds.

What makes a character likable? The same things that make real people admirable. I find that this concept makes more sense if we phrase it in terms of admirability rather than likability. Make sure your characters are warm-hearted, fair, selfless, courageous, goal-oriented, solution-oriented, and so on. Make them avoid negative traits like whining, fatalism, dependence, helplessness, and inactivity. It’s not enough to put a hero in a blue shirt because women “like” men in blue. But if the collar is scratchy, and the hero wears it anyway because his niece picked it out for him, now we have the beginnings of a character that readers can admire and bond with.

This doesn’t mean you must turn your heroes into boy scouts. Even the most fierce, leather-clad, lone-wolf killing machine of a hero can be made likable if he is imbued with a strong sense of fair play and justice. Even the shy librarian orphan heroine can be likable if she comes out of her shell long enough to stop the neighborhood bullies from kicking the stray dog. It’s not just about type and traits, but about behavior.  

Second, this is a great question because it’s a very common problem.  Sad to say, but I routinely reject manuscripts because the characters are not strong enough.  So what makes a character strong?  They must have solid, powerful personalities that don’t disappear into the background.  They must have a strong sense of self.  They must be vibrantly presented, actively engaged in their own lives, and clear and consistent enough that we can predict how they would behave in a variety of settings.

When evaluating characters, I sometimes try to imagine how they would behave in an amusement park. Would they rush straight to the line for the scariest ride, or would they stand in the walkways and laugh as other people scream?  Would they study the map and come up with a plan to see the most in their allotted time?  Would they memorize showtimes?  Would they take time to eat a meal in the restaurant, or would they suck down a burger while standing in line?

The reason an amusement park works for this kind of analysis is that amusement parks must cater to a wide variety of personality types in order to be successful.  They need to appeal to thrill-seekers and fraidy-cats, those who collect experiences and those who collect objects, the methodical and the spontaneous, and every other personality dichotomy you can imagine. It’s a marvelous environment for understanding personality types.

It sometimes happens that I like a manuscript but I’m hesitating about it, and as soon as I put the characters in the amusement park, I know why.  I can’t figure out how they would behave in that environment.  This means that the author has not presented the characters clearly enough and strongly enough to allow me to understand their personalities.  I may understand why, in chapter four, they decided to drive across country.  But take them out of the context of the book, and the characters fall apart.

Strong characters don’t do this.  Your critiquing partners might like your characters, and your characters might behave in a way that’s consistent with the plot needs of your story.  But try this test.  Find a new beta reader, someone who is not familiar with this book.  Ask them to read it, and then ask them how your characters would behave in an amusement park.  Their answers might surprise you, particularly if they can’t answer at all.

Writing strong characters is a tricky business, and there are many, many resources available to help you with that, including Romance University with their fantastic ongoing series on the male mind.  Also, browse your bookstore shelves in the writing and psychology and a self-help sections, and you’ll find books on everything from archetypes to personality tests to — well, really, the list is a long one.  Writers never stop studying character because character is the basis for good fiction and because, as we age and mature, our understanding of the human condition evolves. Embrace this as part of the writing process, and your characters — and your readers — will love your books for it.

Theresa

To our RU readers, what do you think makes a character likable?  We’d love to hear from you.

If you have a question for Theresa you can submit it to askaneditor@romanceuniversity.org.  Don’t miss this great opportunity to have your concerns addressed by a top-notch editor!

After earning degrees in creative writing and law, Theresa Stevens worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm based in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. The lure of the courtroom led to a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry, but now Theresa is back as Managing Editor for Red Sage Publishing, a highly acclaimed small press. Her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

On July 24 we will be launching our “Ask an Editor” column featuring Theresa Stevens, Managing Editor of Red Sage Publishing.  Theresa will be with us the third Friday of each month to answer questions sent by RU readers. 

Don’t miss this great opportunity to have your concerns addressed by a top-notch editor! 

Send questions to askaneditor@romanceuniversity.org.

*Due to volume we will only be able to answer one question per month.  We’ll make it a good one!