There has been a lot of discussion these past two weeks about Nanowrimo. Unless you live under a rock, or perhaps even if you do, you will know that’s National Novel Writing Month. Is it good? Is it terrible? The rules of the challenge are simple: on November 1st, begin writing. On November 30th, pause. If you have 50,000 words, you’ve “won.” Personally, I think “victory” goes beyond the final word count.

Victory 1:

Words. No matter what your final word count actually is…if it’s fifty thousand…if it’s twenty-five thousand…if it’s one thousand…you made words. You have a stack of pages full of words…ideas…and perhaps even a plot. And if not, you have something you can form into such a thing. You are forming the Play-Doh from which stars can be extruded.

Victory 2:

Habit. The act of placing fingers to keys; the act of putting butt in chair, or café bench, or wherever you sat down. They say it takes twenty-eight days to form a habit. November has thirty days. Have you formed a habit? Will you continue to make words on a daily basis? Even if not, you know you can. You’re doing it this month. Do it again. November may have given you permission to sit down and bang out the words, but they’re yours to take whenever you like. Keep on.

Victory 3:

You made stuff. Perhaps you finally took all of those scribbled notes on fragments of paper and cocktail napkins and put them in some order (or, like me, put them into a non-linear blender and hit “on”). Perhaps you finally opened a notebook and wrote the words that have been bubbling up inside of you for years. Perhaps you leapt in without any idea of where you were going or where the words would lead. You made stuff.

Victory 4:

You participated in the writerly community. Writing can be such a solitary thing. You, alone with your thoughts and characters. You, talking to yourself as you work out a scene. (Your neighbors locking the doors and drawing the blinds so as to not watch as you pantomime something with great passion.) Connecting with other writers who are also struggling to create…that’s a victory. It’s easy to stay introverted and talk only to your characters. This I know. Interacting with other writers: win.

Victory 5:

It been fun! There were gatherings in cafes and bookstores and clubs and forums to gossip on and…oh yeah, the writing!

Victory 6:

You’re learning stuff! Every time you write, you learn things. Be it through actual research or about your own personal process. How do you work best? Maybe you work best without a daily word count! Or maybe you work best with a group of peers and like the challenge of watching those word counts go up and up and up. Even if you think your project currently sucks, I bet you’ve learned something along the way. (Did you know: Shimmer‘s art director emeritus Mary Robinette Kowall started her novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, as a Nano novel?)

Now…

Leave a comment…what’s YOUR personal victory if you’re working on something for Nanowrimo?…and then, get back to it. The month is only half over! Keep making Play-Doh!

Exposition, what is it? What’s the difference between elegant exposition and an unreadable info dump?

First Off, Let’s Define

Exposition exists in music, plays, or written text. In music, the first part in a sonata or fugue introduces the themes used in the composition. In a play, exposition gives background information on characters and situation. Since you’re here, let’s assume you care about exposition in prose fiction.

The word “exposition” comes from the Latin for “to place.” You want to ground the reader in the details and important information in your story, the writing needs to be concise and easy to understand.

That’s all well and good, but what’s too much? Not enough? How ‎will your reader know the prince is really the son of a poor bagel seller if you don’t tell them? You’re halfway through your epic tale and you haven’t even touched on the implications of the political back-story and the religious sect that worships 70s action figures.

Readers are engaged when they know what the heck is going on. If they don’t know what to worry about they won’t worry, if they don’t know who to care about (and why) they wont care.

But too much information (especially all at once) doesn’t work either. How do you get them grounded in your world without long boring paragraphs of info-dump?

Exposition is always a little tricky, especially because different readers have different tolerances for it. But here are some simple guidelines that can help.

Keep it Interesting, Keep it Short

Don’t tell us more than we need to know, and don’t use too many words to do it.

“My mother was a nun until she met my father. I was born a few months before they married.”

That’s a decent amount of information, all wrapped in some titillating details. It’s short but (hopefully) interesting. Not only is the reader getting vital information about situation and setting, they’re getting hints of things to be curious about. It’s both a hook and exposition.

And about that curiosity: you want them asking questions, but you don’t want them confused or focused on a detail that’s not central to the story. Make sure they’re asking the questions you want them to ask.

Don’t be Coy

What does “coy” mean? Coy means that instead of just saying “The prince was really the son of a poor bagel seller,” you spend pages and pages dancing around the subject and trying to find a way to drop the information in a way that’s not obvious. This is where the infamous “As you know, Bob” dialogue comes from: a writer trying to be subtle and failing.

You don’t want to be blatant all the time, but sometimes you’ll save yourself (and the reader) a lot of time and effort by just telling what’s going on and getting back to the action. If your narrator already knows the information, just say it. A lot of writers withhold crucial information because they think it will pique the reader’s interest and keep them reading, but this tactic is more likely to frustrate your reader and make them put the story down. Don’t do it.

Work It Into the Story’s Present

Have you seen Inception? In the first chunk of the film, there’s someone named Mal. The main character knows her, there’s something weird between them and she’s clearly set on messing up their plans–and yet the audience doesn’t quite know who she is or what she wants. The movie isn’t being coy; all of their dialogue and interactions make sense when you know what her deal is–and at the same time the characters all know what’s going on and don’t need to explain it to each other for the benefit of the audience. We don’t quite get the full picture till a new character comes in and asks who Mal is and what she wants. It feels completely natural to release that information at that point, and it pushes the plot forward. If you’re having trouble working a piece of information into a story, maybe it’s worth seeing if it will fit better into the scene before, or the scene after–or maybe if you need a different scene entirely.

Don’t Put Exposition in an Action Scene

When you have a tiger chasing you, you’re probably not ruminating on how you got into this mess (take my word for it, don’t test this.) You’re too focused on high tree branches and tranq guns and OMGOMGOMG!

Work your exposition into the moments when characters (and readers) have a moment to breathe and think. And while you’re at it, fit it into whatever they’re doing to move the plot forward.

Tell the Reader Everything Pertinent to the Moment, Move On, Rinse, Repeat

In music, exposition hints at the larger musical work, it doesn’t cram the whole thing in. Same in writing, tell the reader what they need to know to be grounded in the immediate action, move them along your story, give them more information they immediately need. Repeat, repeat, repeat till the end.

If you want to practice this stuff, try laying out everything your reader needs to know on a pad of paper, then outline your story’s scenes on another page. See if you can assign where each piece of information needs to show up. Massage that information into dialog and description that’s already moving the plot forward. It might come off unnaturally in your first try, but you’ll start to build an eye for when back-story can be added in.

Your Turn

How do you handle exposition and tiger chase scenes? Any tricks to share? Drop them in the comments!

Some writers know instinctively who they are from day one. Words bloom on the page, and the writer’s personal style spills over and saturates the story with meaning. To quote the lovely Anne LaMott, we don’t like those people very much. Most writers struggle initially to find their voice and wonder what the hell narrative voice even means.

To put it simply, Voice equals Style. Voice is what makes a person’s writing unique. It’s the personality and attitude the writer conveys in the story. The more charismatic and fine-tuned the voice, the more immersive and enjoyable the experience is for the reader.

When you pick up a book by a favorite author it’s like slipping into a snuggy with a cup of hot cocoa. Your expectations are rewarded; you know something of what you’re about to enjoy – whether that’s an immersion into lush prose, to be confronted with a gritty and uncompromising tone, or simply transported by a transparent style.

But even if we know what narrative voice is, how do we find our own? We often doubt we have the skills to achieve the soaring lines we admire in our favorite authors. Sometimes, this doubt can become crippling, and stall out your writing career before it even begins. So what’s the answer?

Pretend.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” –Kurt Vonnegut

Pretending is what writers do best; it’s like breathing. When we pit our bi-polar heroine against the evil Cobbler, and bequeath the Cobbler with halitosis, a smoker’s cough, and a penchant for wearing lacy thongs beneath his leather apron, we’re pretending.

Why not take a half-step further and pretend to be awesome writers, even when we don’t feel awesome enough?

Borrow from the writers you admire. Read their works twice: first for the sheer enjoyment, and then again, critically. Pinpoint what you love most about the author’s voice (what you don’t like is also useful). Think about the tricks and flourishes the writer uses to make the story better, and then borrow them. Go ahead and try one of them yourself. Then try another. And another.

Another fantastic way to learn voice is to type or write out chapters from a beloved book, or even copy the entire book, word for word. It helps to feel those words on your fingers. You begin to understand how and why the author made certain choices, and you will probably enjoy an AHA! moment or two.

Borrow away then, to gain confidence and skill, and to discover what suits you. Authors have learned from one another since stories were invented. Our heroes blazed the trail before us; they studied, and continue to study their own personal heroes. When we borrow and try out their skills, we become more fluid, take risks, and improve and grow along the way.

No one else can write like you; your uniqueness is inbuilt. Each new skill adds to that. Like kids dressing up in adult clothing, we eventually fill out those clothes, and then we are what we pretended to be.

Be AWESOME.

Your turn.

Let us know what you think about developing your voice. What have you learned?