Promises, Promises, Writers Promise Readers a Lot Plus a Screech Owl Chilling With Board Games

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

Writers Are Promise Makers

Writers are promise makers. We tell our readers that we’re going to give them something just because of the cultural expectations that happen when someone opens our books.

What do we promise them?

We promise a character

The book is about someone. We reveal different aspects about that character as we show them act or react to the things that go on in the book.

The character will likely have something they want and something they yearn for and there will be things that keep that from happening.

We promise things are going to happen.

You can call this the plot if you’re into it. You don’t have to.

You can call this cause and effect or an action sequence. You don’t have to do that either.

But stuff happens in your story. That’s what makes your story a story.

To show the character and put them on a journey, we have to have things happening to them. Usually those things involve a problem for our character as they trudge forward and try to get their wants.

The character makes choices. Those choices have ripple effects. Sounds like life, right?

We promise that we’re going to tell the story in a certain way.

You can call this point of view and it has a lot to do with that.

You can call this voice and it has a lot to do with it.

You can call this mood even, but that’s a little reach.

The voice of the story creates an atmosphere. It tells the reader if they can trust the narrator or not. The word choice of the narrator and voice can tell the reader about the characters.

The point of view is all about how immediate the relationship between the reader and the narrator is. If it’s first person, that I point of view, then it’s going to be pretty immediate. Third person omniscient? That all knowing voice? Usually not so much.

We promise a setting

There needs to be a world where all of this takes place. Setting. Details.

And there’s one more big thing.

We promise to make sense.

An old editor’s blog post by Beth Hill puts it out there pretty succinctly.

“You promised an entertaining story.

“You promised a believable story.

“You promised a story that fits a genre if you write genre novels.

“You promised something different—a new character, a different world, a different dilemma. A different outcome.

“You promised cohesion and logic.”

We promise so much, don't me?

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie says that if you tell someone you're going to take them for a walk, take them for a walk. Or, you know, they might not believe you any more about things--like that cats are not demon furballs from Oklahoma or whatever.

FUN EXERCISE

This one comes from IndieReader.

3. PIVOT!

In an episode of Friends, Ross enlists Chandler and Rachel to help get a new couch up to his apartment. They struggle to carry the hefty couch, to which Ross continuously yells “PIVOT!” as though if he exclaims this enough, the couch will glide on up the staircase. By the time they’re done, the couch has been chopped in half.

Don’t mangle your story to get it from your desired point A to point B. When you reach a point in the plot where the path seems irrevocably blocked, PIVOT on your heel and find another way. It doesn’t mean you can’t come back to this spot and try again later, but as Ross proves, kicking and screaming is not the best way forward.

For this exercise, go to the point of your story that’s troubling you and take it in a completely opposite direction. And go wild with it — introduce dragons and have the sky fall down and start writing in second person POV. You might just find that taking the strangest path helps you recalibrate your story’s compass.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction Eligibility: All authors writing in English regardless of nationality or residence Prize: $5,500 + publication by Mad Creek Books, an imprint of the Ohio State University Press Entry Fee: $30 (nonmembers); $20 (members) Deadline: February 28, 2024

RANDOM THOUGHT LINKS

Learn about the screech owl in Connecticut here. Photo courtesy of the Town of West Hartford Police Department/Facebook.

SHOUT OUT!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

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