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science writing

Science and Poetry: Dog Days Edition

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Sirius A, overexposed so you can see Sirius B (lower left)
Sirius A, overexposed so you can see Sirius B (lower left)

My latest favorite phrase from technical reports is method of moments. There are actually two definitions, one from statistics and one from probability theory, and the thought of explaining either of them is making me sleepy right now, so instead I present to you what I think that phrase should mean (hey, if it can have two quant-related definitions, it can have a literary one, too).

Got a story in your head? Some people do a traditional outline, some go for less linear processes such as spider diagrams, and others like to sit down and type it out from start to finish. Nothing wrong with any of these methods as long as they work.

Here’s another way. Most stories start with a seed: an overheard phrase, a road sign, an earring, a dog tied up outside a store. Call them moments. What if you laid out the entire story as a succession of moments? Put them on index cards, either physical or virtual, so you can shuffle them around until they tell your story the way you want to tell it.

Two reasons why this works: One, it’s an organic method of recall; when you try to remember something that happened, it usually comes to you as a jumble of events, not always in chronological order. Once the pieces are collected, you can assemble them in the most effective way to relate the experience, which, again, not always chronological. Two, and closely related, the story changes with the sequence of moments and how you choose to connect them. Like a constellation.

Try it sometime, whether you’re writing fiction, memoir, or sampling techniques. You know you’re going through life filching moments like a ferret steals socks; now you can put them to some use or at least string them all on a narrative cord so they don’t get lost under the sofa with the cat toys and spare change.

Still wondering why there’s a photo of stars at the top of the page? The Roman phrase “dog days” (diēs caniculārēs) refers to the hottest part of the summer, which coincided, at that time and location, with the period when Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, rose with the sun. It was considered an unlucky time, rife with disease, and the Romans sacrificed a red dog to Sirius to keep off the worst of it. This astronomical coincidence no longer happens (and red dogs are safe to chase Frisbees and pant in the shade), but the name lingers and still signifies torpid, sweaty weather.

Enjoy the dog days. Don’t forget to collect some good moments.

selling your work writing

Notes from the Field: Special Fiction Edition

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It’s summer vacation time, which means school’s out and my office hours shift toward the nocturnal because during the day I am surrounded by people who are boooored. What do we do when we’re bored? Read a good book, obviously. Or write one. For those of you struggling with drafts of your fiction, here are the top three problems I run across in novel manuscripts and what to do about them.

1. throat clearing

By this I mean taking the first two or three chapters to find your voice, to really get your story rolling. Guess how long an agent will read a book that doesn’t grab her by the eyeballs in the first paragraph. About as long as it takes to read that first paragraph, possibly less. Skipping the whole agent thing and self-pubbing? Most prospective readers of fiction will give you even less.

This is one of the easiest problems to fix, however. Simply take everything that precedes the scene in which everything starts happening for your main character and delete it. You might have to add a sentence here and there for exposition. That’s it. “But—” No. You don’t need it. Listen to your inner 7-year-old moaning about the second week of summer vacation, and jump right into the action.

2. low stakes

You’ve set up a story, some characters, some situations and obstacles, and everything is going great, except that nobody’s really sure why the MC has to do whatever it is he has to do, or else. Or else what? In a good story, there are stakes clearly outlined in the beginning of the second act, and then, as the action continues, the stakes go up. The screw is turned. Your hero doesn’t have to save the world, but in a way he does. He has to save his world as he knows it or have a fantastic reason to let that world go straight to hell to save someone else’s.

This is a harder fix because if the stakes aren’t there, you’ve got no story. Get it done in your storyboarding/outline stage and save yourself a lot of heartache and liver damage.

3. I hate this guy

A corollary to the one-dimensional hero/villain problem in fiction is the character that is profoundly and thoroughly annoying, so annoying in fact that your annoyance yanks you right out of the story. There’s “Dude, I totally know someone like that,” and “OK, that’s like my old boss, but worse!” and from there you drift uncontrollably into “No! No one is like that, and if anyone were, someone would lock that person in a construction site portable toilet and drop it off a bridge. Into a dry ravine. That’s on fire.”

Go on and write that guy. Get him out of your system. It’s one of the great joys of being a writer: the ability to lambast jerks in print. Then take a few days off and go back and add a little realism, even and especially if you’re working in genre fiction. There is no room in a book worth reading for someone whose sole purpose is to be the human equivalent of a Claymore mine. All your characters need to pull their weight, and none of them should be upstaging the primary movers.

Enjoy the long (so very long) summer days, and when the editor in your head says, “I’m bored! This is boring,” pay attention and do something about it. If you have real live children telling you this, pat them on the head and tell them they’ll make fine literary agents someday.