Writers write. It’s what we do. To go above and beyond that, by answering interview questions they receive in email, is astounding indeed! For this round of Five Authors/Five Questions, I’ve barged into the workdays of Louise Marley, Lavie Tidhar, Lisa Mantchev, E.C. Myers, and Jay Lake.

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Question one: Do you make yearly writing goals? Monthly goals? Are goals measured by word count, story count, or something different?

Louise Marley: My goal is to write every day.  Even on vacation, I typically spend some time each day on the current project.  As I plan my schedule, working in exercise and household commitments, I try to set aside a block of completely unencumbered time each day when I can eliminate all distractions and concentrate on the novel or story I’m writing. Distractions, I’m convinced, are the greatest enemies of creativity.  In the world of the 21st century, we have an abundance of them:  internet, TV, radio, cell phones, and so forth.  My best work gets done when there’s no interference by any of these things, and the only person who can turn them off or tune them out is ME!

Lavie Tidhar: I’ll aim for a minimum of 1000 words a day, but obviously some days you end up not writing anything, or falling short, and some days you get all your work done before 11am in the morning. My goal for 2012 is just to finish a whole bunch of half- or third-completed projects. Generally I like to alternate, and to work on more than one thing at a time. But I take a fairly relaxed approach to goals. I don’t really think in terms of years or months or even know what I’ll be working on, exactly. As long as I’m enjoying myself–and as long as I do complete things! –I’m quite happy.

Lisa Mantchev: I usually measure my goals by project. “Need to draft a new novel. That’s about 75,000 words,” or “Have a story due for an anthology, about 8,000 words.” I like writing at least one new novel and a handful of shorter pieces every year.

E.C. Myers: These days my goals are purely based on deadlines. Having a contractual obligation to deliver a manuscript by a certain date is a powerful motivator! But left to my own devices, I’m fairly focused on project-oriented goals: to complete another novel revision in X months, to draft a new short story for the next writing group meeting, to submit three short stories to markets. I find word count and story count to be good markers of progress and productivity, but not necessarily goals in themselves. As long as I’m writing and have concrete measures of success, like a completed draft—and, of course, as long as I’m happy with the work—the work takes as long as it takes, and it’s as long as it needs to be… Unless I’m falling behind on those deadlines! Then I’d probably better set some kind of schedule, and stick to it.

Jay Lake: I make yearly goals these days. Essentially, I plan out what I intend to write for the year, in a fairly high level way, and assign a production calendar. It might say something like, “Jan-Feb, draft novel X. March, work on short fiction. April, revise novel Y.” I also have goals for individual projects. For example, when working on a first draft of a novel, I try to write 2,500 words per day. When working on a revision of a novel, I try to do at least an hour a day on the project. I do track these, and self-report, to keep myself honest. Also, I allow myself up to two days off a week for brain breaks or dealing with life’s inevitable interruptions. At other times in my career, I’ve had other kinds of goals. For example, from 2001 to about 2005, my practice was to finish a short story or novel chapter every week, all year long. As I shifted more heavily into writing novels, that stopped being practical, but it served me well at the time.

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How do you structure your own writing goals? What goals have you set for 2012? Leave us a comment! Next Wednesday, we talk about the “typical” writing day. Is there any such thing?

Shimmer staffers talk books! Victims Participants this time include: Beth Wodzinski, Sean Markey, Grá Linnaea, Sophie Wereley, and Keffy Kehrli.

 What’s the last book you bought? What’s the last book you read?

BW: The last three books I bought are: Dan Wells’s serial killer trilogy; George Martin’s Dance with Dragons; Joan, by Donald Spoto. The last book I read was Scott Westerfield’s Midnighter trilogy.

KK: The last book I bought was Stina Leicht’s Of Blood and Honey. The last book I read was Cat Valente’s The Grass-Cutting Sword, which is placed somewhere on the intersection between poetry and prose. It’s about ancient gods, eight daughters and a monster. Beautiful language.

SM: The last book I bought was The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  The last book I read was The Magician King by Lev Grossman.

SW: The last book I bought was The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. For college. The last book I read was Across the Universe by Beth Revis.

GL: I just picked up Boarding Instructions by Ray Vukcevich, who’s amazing. I just read The October Country by Ray Bradbury. I guess I’m having a Ray week!

Author Lisa L. Hannett joins the Shimmer blog once more, with very extremely good awesome writing advice that you can put into action today!

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Michelangelo, that Renaissance jack-of-all-trades, is given credit for one of the most famous observations about the art of sculpture. “In every block of marble,” he says, “I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to other eyes as mine see it.” His now-iconic David is considered the ideal representation of the male form, not just because it is massive (even in the Middle Ages, size, apparently, mattered) and not just because Master Buonarotti was a whiz when it came to wielding a chisel, but because you can’t pinch an inch on young David. Trimmed of all fat, skin smooth and firm, hands placed just so to effortlessly prevent gravity from wreaking havoc with those muscular marble arms — this statue is a triumph of hewing away the rough walls and revealing the perfection trapped inside.

Great short stories writers all get a case of the Michelangelos when it comes to crafting their narratives. Although not everyone will immediately see the fully-formed shape of a story (Michelangelo’s a bit of a show-off in that respect), most will practise the same process of “hewing” the artist describes above. Through redrafting and revising each piece, writers of short fiction act the way word-sculptors should: shearing away all the flabby bits, they reveal only the story’s most essential elements, releasing striking images from the prison of sluggish prose.

But how do these word-sculptors do it? It doesn’t matter if you’re writing fairy tales or splatterpunk, space opera or paranormal romance, there are at least five ways you can tighten up your paragraphs and transform them into things of beauty.

Be active, not passive

Writing in the passive voice can waste words. Get your characters off their butts and make them do, instead of having things done to them. Saying, “Sunscreen was slathered on the albino’s skin” could be trimmed by telling us “The albino applied sunscreen” and it also makes us stop wondering who it was, exactly, that did the slathering in the first instance. (Sure, it could’ve been the albino, but then again it could’ve been a poltergeist with a penchant for zinc creams. There’s no indication, in the first sentence, whether it’s the former or the latter.) Writing primarily in the active voice will also allow you to use the occasional passive construction for dramatic or emotional impact. For example, if your protagonist is consistently described in active terms — “Her sword sliced the mutant’s head”; “His song hypnotised the court” — then using the passive voice at moments of crisis can underscore his/her loss of power — “Wounded, she was captured by the mutant king”; “When his voice faltered, he was cast out by the courtiers…”

Using active verbs to describe your characters’ actions can also help prevent awkward or flabby phrases. Early in James Joyce’s “The Dead,” for instance, “Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins across the landing.” Freddy isn’t “pulled along by the elbow,” nor is he “dragged by Gabriel across the landing” — instead, Gabriel “pilots” Freddy. This concise description instantly conjures up the image of one man directing another, but it also gives us a sense of Gabriel’s personality. He doesn’t guide or lead or assist Freddy; he pilots him. This active verb effectively sketches the characters’ movements, while simultaneously conveying Gabriel’s desire to steer people and events to suit his own purposes. Choosing exactly the right word — a process Flaubert refers to as selecting le mot juste — can tighten up your sentences, with the added bonus of adding dimension to your characters.

Let one word do the work of many

Taking the time to find le mot juste doesn’t have to be something you do in the first draft. If you’re someone who writes quickly, just to get the story down, then keep at it! When revising, watch out for words like very and really and extremely, which often crop up in that first mad burst of writing. Some authors, such as Susanna Clarke, pepper their stories with very. In the first few pages of “The Ladies of Grace Adieu,” we are told “The second Mrs Field and Cassandra were very pleased with each other and soon became very fond of each other” and “Miss Ursula and Miss Flora were very prettily behaved children” and there is also mention of “a very short letter,” “a very fine day,” “a very smart barouche,” “a very slovenly fellow,” a song played “very badly” so the pianist was “very reluctant” to play at all… and the onslaught of very continues throughout the collection. In Clarke’s case, this overabundance of very (as well as quite and rather) adds to the tone of the work — the wordiness is part of the point. But for those of us not recreating the verbosity of Regency literature, then choosing one perfect word instead of many can only benefit our prose. When tempted to use words like very, really, and extremely stop and ask yourself if there is a more effective way of conveying this idea. Is it very bad or abysmal? Is it extremely hot or searing? Is it really funny or hilarious?

The same applies to the general use of adjectives and adverbs. Most of us have been advised to use these descriptive words sparingly — because, in most cases, one word can do the work of many. If the sun is shining brightly, then perhaps blinding or dazzling will expresses this more accurately. If spilled blood is vibrant red, we may want to know the precise hue: is it crimson or scarlet or vermilion?

Cut down on speed bumps

A few other culprits can slow down your prose: that or so that, and then, and and so can act as visual speed bumps, subtly interrupting the flow of your sentences and paragraphs. As with very and its pals, you don’t have to eliminate these words and phrases altogether — but use them with intent, not out of habit. “She stirred the potion so that it would boil and then poured it into a bottle that sat on the workbench” makes perfect sense, and we can certainly visualise what’s being described. Even so, the sentence is sluggish. Removing these speed bumps creates quicker action: “She stirred the potion to boiling before pouring it into a ready bottle on the workbench.” More often than not, going back over your story and deleting that (and rearranging the sentence to accommodate this deletion) will cut down on your word count and tighten up your sentences.

Paying attention to how you use dialogue tags, even simple ones like “he said” and “she said”, can also change the story’s pace. Like commas, these tags can slow our reading, allowing our minds the time to process what our eyes have just scanned. These pauses can be used strategically to suggest a character’s hesitation or reluctance — “Well,” he said. “I guess you were right.” — or to build tension — “Luke,” Darth Vader said, leaning over the fallen Jedi, “I am your father.” However, when writing arguments and other moments of heightened emotion, getting rid of these indicators, as Robert Shearman does in this passage from “Pang,” adds a sense of immediacy to what’s being said.

She frowned, gave it a little thought. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s stopped.”

“But you can’t, one day, after fifteen years…”

“Seventeen years.”

“Seventeen. Good God, is it really?”

“Oh yes.”

“Seventeen. God. Well. Even more reason.”

“You must feel the same way,” she said. “Just a little. Don’t tell me I’m the only one.”

We don’t need the “he saids” and “she saids” after each line to know who is speaking here. And, more importantly, without them this exchange is quick and tense — the way you’d expect a breakup to be.

Borrow someone else’s eyes

Once you’ve completed your revisions, get someone else to read your story and give you feedback. And though I’ve no doubt your mom is awesome, she might not offer the most critical feedback… “That’s nice, dear,” she’ll say. “What a weird mind you have.” Other writers, on the other hand, are ideal critiquing partners. They’ll see repetitions you’ve overlooked a hundred times, no matter how sharp your editing skills. They’ll point out the verys and reallys and extremelys you thought you’d eradicated, and slice through flabby lines with fluorescent yellow highlighters. Plus, they’ll grant you access to their own word hoards, letting you know things like “an entrance to an underground mine which is horizontal or nearly horizontal” is actually called an adit — one word instead of twelve! You’ll expand your vocabulary and watch your sentences shrink, all in one fell swoop.

Let it breathe

If you can, take a step back from your work, give it some distance, before sending it off to a publisher. Give yourself time to regain the objectivity that is inevitably lost after spending so many hours intimately involved with a story. Let the rose-coloured editing glasses come off before giving your work a final once-over. Break up with your darlings — doing so will make it much easier to kill them. And if you still can’t kill them after a few days, you may at least be prepared to put them on starvation diets.

Five questions with five Shimmer staffers this time around. Victims Participants this time include: Beth Wodzinski, Sean Markey, Grá Linnaea, Sophie Wereley, and Keffy Kehrli.

What inspires you?

BW: Tater tots and monkeys.

KK: I was originally inspired by all the “change the world” bullshit that I got fed in the 90’s. I had some crazy idea that if I wrote an amazing book it would do… something. In reality, though, the best thing that a good book could do is be read by people who may or may not even read it the way I wrote it. That’s fine. And while I do think there’s a solid reason to work on better/more representation for minorities in our fiction, I’m not sure that really inspires me directly anymore. I suspect that I write for the same reason a lot of other people do (even if they won’t admit it) – I like hearing myself talk. I know! I’m not supposed to admit that shit, but it’s true. It’s true for a lot of other people, but they like to cushion it by saying things like, “Oh, I just like telling stories.” As an editor, I’m inspired by people writing awesome stories.

SM: Music inspires me.  I enjoy the idea of using elements from a work that someone else created in another medium to give energy to my individual ideas.  As a writer, I find music compliments prose; it gives the words a new dimension to me as I write them.

SW: Characters have always plopped fully-formed into my head, and I’ve had to figure out their stories myself. I take a lot of inspiration from my childhood – I’ve grown up a multiracial queer girl in a world that isn’t totally ready for that concept. I fell in love with the sea when I was little. The feeling I got when I stood next to it was like my head had been popped open, and then the world fell inside. A lot of my stories are about coming back to the ocean, reconfronting something that inspires some strong emotion.

As an editor, I like stories that gobble me up and don’t let me go. I think I’m inspired by the authors’ creativity and skill more than anything else. I always get so excited when I find a story that I like, and I still carry a few candles for stories that haven’t been published. I’m also inspired by how different authors will use language, either English or another, to tell their story. It’s all very cool to me.

GL: Good writing inspires me. I really buy into the the line “We read for survival skills.” I want to change people’s perceptions with my writing, make them think. I love it when writing does that to me. As an editor, what I want most in the world is to find stories that make me go, “Whoa, I could never have written that.”

Next time: Storytelling

Five questions with five Shimmer staffers this time around. Victims Participants this time include: Beth Wodzinski, Sean Markey, Grá Linnaea, Sophie Wereley, and Keffy Kehrli.

What kind of story do you not see nearly enough?

BW: Well, I’ve never seen a good Adam and Eve or Hell is a Bureaucracy or Cat Narrator story.  But if I say that, then we’ll be inundated with not-very-good ones, and the Shimmer slush readers will rise up in revolt. We’re always happy to read stories from outside the United States, stories that draw from sources other the usual American and European sources, and stories with GLBT elements. And I personally would love a fabulous Joan of Arc story.

KK: Truly weird shit. I’m not talking about the sorts of stuff you think up when you’re four drinks into the evening and giggling with your writer friends, either. I’m talking about the kinds of stories that make me feel like I’ve been listening to Radiohead’s Kid A on repeat, so reality’s slightly sideways and I can’t quite be sure how to tilt it back the right way again. I’m also a sucker for voice and distinctive vernacular when it’s done well. A good example would be Shweta Narayan’s “One For Sorrow” in Issue 10.

SM: Stories that trust the reader to understand what’s going on without the author bashing the idea into our heads over and over again.

SW: It would also be cool if we could get more stories that featured minorities as main characters! Not only racial minorities. I’d love to see more LBGTQ characters. And characters that don’t necessarily identify as “American.” Stories set in other places, like Sri Lanka. Or Brazil. You know, wherever.

GL: Really solid character pieces. Something weird, something with a plot, but with people who read as real and unique who touch us in some way.

Next time: Inspirations

Five questions with five Shimmer staffers this time around. Victims Participants this time include: Beth Wodzinski, Sean Markey, Grá Linnaea, Sophie Wereley, and Keffy Kehrli.

What kind of story would you pay good money to never see again?

BW: That’s not a very good business model! I would never do that. Besides, just when I say I never ever ever want to see another Adam and Eve story, or a Hell Is A Bureaucracy story, or a Surprise! The Narrator is a Cat! story, a really good one will come along. I don’t like unicorn stories, for example, but Shimmer’s run three of them now.

SM: Any story where the characters are constantly addressing each other in dialogue.  It drives me crazy and I can’t get through the story!  No one talks like that in real life except infomercial hosts…

GL: My God, if I never see another “poor struggling author who is at the mercy of evil editors” story it’ll be … well, it’s already too late. My eyes, they burn! I mean seriously people, we’re all writers, we’ve all been there. What makes you think your frustration at not getting published is so special that the rest of us need to see it?

SW: I really dislike it when authors use their stories as substitutes for therapy. I know there’s a lot of attraction to writing characters with messed up psyches, and I do it all the time, but once the story starts touching on issues that the author has… it gets a little weird. You can tell if that’s what’s going on based on the writing, and I’ve never responded well to it.

KK: I feel like I should be able to snark on demand for this one, but I can’t think of anything. (I’ve already ranted about time travel and heaven vs. hell stories. Basically, your chances don’t improve when you’re starting with the same tired concept that a million other people have already used and been rejected for…) I suppose I’m most frustrated by stories that start with a really intriguing idea-germ and then plug the Neat Idea I Haven’t Seen Very Often Or At All into a standard plot. So I start out thinking “WOW, this is a great voice” or “WOW, you could really do some neat things with that,” which just means that the disappointment is that much worse when I get halfway through the story and find a big steaming pile of MEH in the middle of it. Yes, yes, drugs are bad, people like to get revenge, detectives solve crimes and fairy tales still end with fairy tale endings…

Next time: What stories do we not see enough of?

Your story submission to an editor is the first impression you make to them. Just as you would not go to a job interview barefoot (even if it was for a lifeguard position), there are certain things you need to do with each and every submission. As I write this, it’s been an incredibly curious week in the slush pile, so I thought I would throw some examples/suggestions your way.

Story One:

“The Bees Knees” arrives and looks pretty normal. Cover letter, and the attachment is in the DOC format. So far, so good. But the story itself is 8000 words long when I open it. I look back to the cover letter. “As per your guidelines,” the author writes.

The problem: If the writer had read Shimmer‘s guidelines, they would know we don’t accept stories longer than 5000 words, unless one queries and attaches the first page of the story.

The solution: Read the guidelines. Always and forever. If you cannot afford to snag a sample issue of every magazine you want to submit to, read their guidelines. Everything you need to know is there. Know them. Follow them. An editor will love you for this simple thing.

Story Two:

“The Honey Hive” arrives and at first glance, there’s not much to see. Looks like the author attached an RTF, but, that’s all there is. No cover letter, no bio, no background.

The problem: Receiving a story like this often feels like a slap to the face with a wet fish. While newspapers are thrown onto porches throughout the world, stories are not newspapers and should not be thusly flung.

The solution: Learn how to write a basic cover letter. We aren’t asking for an essay, and certainly not a summary (these aren’t novels), just a hello. This is your first impression–make it a good one. “Dear Editor, please find my story of #-words enclosed for your consideration. I have published here, there, but not yet everywhere. I am a member of SFWA, thank you for your time.” (Gra has written about cover letters, and so have I before!) There’s no need to include your complete bibliography; your three most recent sales will do. And if you don’t have any yet, don’t sweat it.

Story Three:

“Sweet Stings” arrives, and the author has written a great cover letter; no story summary, just telling us the basic facts, and mentioning our guidelines. At first glance, it looks like it fits what we want, but then, the attachment says DOCX.

The problem: The author has sent us a format we can’t read.

The solution: Shimmer accepts stories in DOC and RTF formats. The end. Word 2010 and onward makes this a challenge, as Microsoft saw fit to change their standard, but it’s not impossible. When you send the proper format, it makes for a smoother process for everyone, and you, the writer, don’t have to go back and do it all over again. Read the guidelines. Submit accordingly.

And write on, bees. Write on!

My conversation with writers concludes with thoughts on how one crafts the perfect ending to a story. Participating writers include: Luc Reid,  Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan. Next time, I pick on some Shimmer staffers for an entirely new round of interrogation questioning.

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How do you craft the perfect ending for a story? How do you keep an ending from falling flat?

LR: I think a lot of the artistry comes in here, because the ideal ending, to my mind, is surprising but also inevitable. That’s difficult, because if readers can predict what will happen at the end of the story, they’ll tend to check out, but the ending has to be contained in what has come before–or at least be something that brings together the important pieces of what’s come before.

Take Lord of the Rings, for example: of course the Ring has to be destroyed, and of course Sam and Frodo have to be the ones to get it to Mount Doom, because for Sauron to win or for Frodo to fail would be like a kick in the face after everything Tolkien has asked us to invest in the characters. But if they just get there and Frodo tosses the Ring in, then first of all it’s an anticlimax, because what’s exciting about tossing a piece of metal into a crater? Secondly, the corrupting influence of the Ring would have counted for nothing despite being a central theme of the story.

So it usually seems important to have the ending be not just “will this happen or not?” but rather “how can this possibly happen?” For instance, Frodo absolutely wouldn’t turn away from his quest, but if the Ring really has that strong a hold on him, how could he possibly destroy the thing?

Of course, I’m really talking about the climax rather than the ending, but the ending–the denouement–is just an easy wrapping up of the little unanswered questions, like “how do they go back to their old lives?” or “how does he cope with the terrible things he’s experienced?” Once the climax has been reached, everything else is coasting. Making things like buildup and climax work well in a story, on the other hand, are the hardest tasks, some of the things that make writing an art and not just an assembly process.

KHL: Endings are even trickier than titles.  Jeanne Cavelos at Odyssey taught me the importance of the ending being both surprising and inevitable, in order to be most satisfying to the reader, but that’s easy to say and hard to do. I find that if the ending surprises me, that’s a good sign, and usually means other folks won’t think it fell flat. But it has to be true, too. And that often means being brave enough to depart from what I think the ‘perfect’ ending is. Imperfection often makes an ending tug harder at the heartstrings. Partial resolution is one of my favorite tricks. And, this is controversial, but I’m always a fan of stories that leave the reader in the mystery, in the wonder. Which means risking not explaining everything, thus (hopefully) leaving the reader the space to make it perfect.

DM: I’m a little better at endings. I write horror and action, so my endings can be pretty violent with a high body-count. I often add a short section after the big climax—a chance for the characters to think about what had happened and to put it all in perspective. There’s a fancy literary term for doing that. Gene Wolfe once told me the term, but I forget what it was. (I should write stuff down). But the key to a “perspective” ending is brevity.

Of course I get it wrong sometimes. I once got a reply from an editor that I’d mixed up whose story was being told, and that the ending fell flat. But he liked other elements of the story enough to consider a re-write. Luckily, I didn’t have to change the POV to fix it. I just re-wrote the ending to resolve certain conflicts, which in turn, fixed my flat ending. My critique group (which I heavily rely upon) said it was a much better story, and the editor acquired the re-write.

JH: An ending should give off a tone, as if the story were a bell struck by a hammer. The reader should go away still hearing that sound. I avoid perfection. That way lies madness. I strive for some place beyond my best, beyond my last story, going after that moment when the story surprises me. That surprise should be the ending.

VK: If you’ve been writing the story well all along, you should be narrowing it down to the only ending possible given what’s come before. If you get to the end and you aren’t sure if the story will end happily or not, you’ve messed something up in the middle. Almost always, when the ending is broken, it’s because the middle isn’t supporting it. Think of a house of cards. To add the top story to your creation, you need a stable and supporting middle. If it’s not there, the house falls. Furthermore, you can’t put a middle in your house of cards and expect the top to float off to one side; it must sit squarely on the foundation that came before. That’s what your ending is like: balanced on the prior scenes. An ending should close the conflict you’ve set up and add new depth to everything that came before it. If you continually suffer from weak endings in your stories, learn to write middles first.

My conversation with writers continues. Today, we look at point of view. Which is most effective? Of course that completely depends on the story you’re telling… Participating writers include: Luc Reid,  Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan.

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How do you decide whose story is being told? Do you have a favorite POV to work in?

LR: I usually seem to go for whatever character is in the biggest trouble: the kid who won’t leave the dangerous magical family alone, the girl who teaches herself about shipbuilding when she’s supposed to be cultivating charms to attract a husband, the old ladies who are interested in suicide protests, or young man who gets exiled from his village for stealing apples. For point of view, if the character seems like someone who wants to tell their own story in their own voice, I’ll go with first person, but otherwise I tend to use third.

KHL: I often let my characters make those decisions, which means that on occasion I finish a story and realize that the most compelling story is still off-stage, so to speak, as a loudmouth character insisted on telling me his or her story, when really the minor bit wallflower character is the one who has the murder and mayhem to share. But that’s okay, because then I simply cajole the wallflower into spilling the beans. POV changes. I used to work exclusively in what I think of as eyeball socket third person. But eyeball socket first person has been fruitful too, as of late.

DM: I write a lot of historical stories filled with interesting characters from real life. For example, the story I’m currently working on is about a group of African-American jazz musicians who decided to enlist in World War I to help overcome stereotypes. Do I write about the dynamic leader who’s murdered before he could forge a legendary musical career? Or the poor share-cropper who became a Harvard track star and law school graduate? Or perhaps the cultured, brilliant violinist who played for the crown heads of Europe but had to hide his music reading ability from white American patrons? I think the final question is: who’s got the most to gain (or loose)? Whose triumph or death will most impact the other characters and the readers?

JH: I’m at my best when I’m not making decisions but the story itself has decided how it must be told. I certainly have favorite POVs, just as I have favorite character types and capturing their voice is what’s going to make the story exciting. A lot of the drafting process is trying to discover that voice.

VK: The POV is usually* the character with the most at stake. Who will hurt the most?  Who will suffer most if things go badly? My favorite POV to work in is the best one for that story.

*Like all writing guidelines, there are exceptions, and the corner cases can be truly amazing stories. However, unless you have a good reason to choose something different, try keeping POV with the character who has the most at stake, and you will see your stories grow stronger.

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Next time: how to end it all…when it comes to stories!

My conversation with writers continues. Today, we look at slumping middles and how you might avoid such–or…how you might have to write them anyhow! Participating writers include: Luc Reid,  Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan.

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How do you keep a story from slumping in the middle?

LR: I usually feel propelled in writing a story from beginning to end, and that often seems to correspond to the story continuing to have interest for readers through the middle. There’s something I need to see happen or want to depict or want to figure out completely, so I write to get there. If I falter writing it in the middle, that’s a red flag for me that I may be losing interest in my own story. Maybe I took a wrong turn–made a character do something that either they wouldn’t do or that makes that character less worth reading about, resolved a problem instead of making it bigger, or set the protagonist on a course that doesn’t really make any interesting progress toward the main goal. Middles of stories are sometimes described as being a series of failed attempts to solve the central problem, but they need to build, too. Unlike life, most short stories need meaningful progression.

In terms of direct tools to recharge a story that seems to be losing steam, I usually try one of two things: either starting elsewhere in the story, for instance backtracking, or skipping ahead and writing the end; or else letting something go horribly wrong. Making things worse for the characters often seems to make things better for the writer and readers, as long as it continues to bring the characters in conflict with the key story problems.

KHL: Oh, I let the story slump and sag and slouch as much as it longs to in the first draft. Then I cut mercilessly as I revise. And hard as it may be to hear, I ask my wise readers to be brutally honest if they felt the urge to skim anywhere.

DM: Don’t know; I’m bedeviled by stories that slump in the middle. Maybe enforcing an artificial word count. After a story’s finished, decide to edit out a thousand words no matter what. If a publication has a maximum word-count, you might be forced to do this anyway. You’d be surprised how brutal you can be when it comes to making a sale (and you can preserve your story too).

JH: You write a slumpy middle then delete it when revising because the delete key is the sexiest key on your keyboard. Or delete your beginning and tighten the slumpy middle into a tight beginning. Deleting what you’ve written can be a joyous, liberating experience. “Wait. I don’t need you after all Slumpy Middle. I can just sum you up in a sentence or three. DELETE.” Ursula K. LeGuin mentions Chekhov’s Razor (it might have been in her collection THE WILD GIRLS) and once you accept that as truth, that you can delete the first three pages of most drafts and lose nothing, the rest is easy.

VK: Spiked clothespins to hold it on the line. Less metaphorically–add intense, dangerous, and hurtful experiences to your protagonist which make his/her goals harder to get. Kidnap her child, break his leg, send an evil spirit to possess him. Any sort of outside force which interferes with the protagonist’s ability to get what s/he wants. (But my protag doesn’t want anything, you say?  Well then, you have a different problem that you need to solve first…)

Next time: point of view!