What are some of the places you go to for advice and/or inspiration? Please share.

Tonya Stoneman is an American writer based in France. Currently, she is a journalist for Delano Magazine in Luxembourg. Occasionally, she publishes stories with In Touch Magazine, the monthly she edited for 12 years before moving to Europe. Stoneman has been publishing personality profiles and creative non-fiction for nearly twenty years.

Daniel Darling is a pastor, speaker, and author of several books, including his latest, Activist Faith (July 2013). His work has been featured in diverse publications such as Relevant Magazine, The Gospel Coalition, and CNN.com. He has guest-posted on leading blogs such as Michael Hyatt and is a contributing writer for many publications Crosswalk.com, Leadership Journal, Stand Firm and others. Publisher’s Weekly called his writing style substantive and punchy. He and his wife Angela have four children and reside in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

One reader said…

HI Mary. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I was wondering your thoughts on swearing in a CBA geared novel.

What I mean is, the first few chapters of my WIP, my character is angry with God..well, angry at EVERYONE. She’s lost to a world of drugs/alcohol, etc.

Anyway, her character would have a foul mouth. I’m not talking heavy swearing (like the F word or anything). More like “Oh my God” or “Damn” things like that. After her conversion, she cleans things up. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Another reader said…

Along the same line about language… I have a novel in the makings, that takes place just before the Civil War. A person in NY finds a fugitive slave. I wondered about a slave hunter saying the N….. word. Is it acceptable in that instance, or should I find another way of saying it?

I’m thankful Lynn and Yvonne posed this language question. It really depends on your audience and the publishing house you are writing for. Some houses will not allow hell, damn or anything resembling swearing. Others are more lenient. What you can do is research the house you are submitting to in order to determine what level they are comfortable with. Then when you pitch, be sure your few chapters won’t cause the publisher to stumble.

That being said, I am a true believer in honesty with a caveat. I value my readers and don’t want to offend them, so I use the verbiage, “She swore,” instead of adding the colorful language. In my memoir, I took a different tact, using @)($& for a swear word because I needed people to see how awful the word was in the context of my childhood.

However, if you are writing for the ABA, the rules are completely relaxed and you can have your character do whatever she wants to do. (It’s up to you to decide if you are comfortable with that.)

As to the derogatory N word, yikes. That’s a hard one. It’s such an inflammatory word that if it were me, I’d nix using it. But that’s just my opinion.

The tall man sat at the conference table. The doctor took a sip of coffee and looked at his presentation notes. The Lithuanian orphan scratched his head. The left-handed man jotted down a note. The Harvard grad readjusted his chair. Karl checked his watch. The old man wiped his glasses. The widower looked around the room…

…and saw that he was still alone at the conference table.

Surprised?

Are you thinking, “Wait, how could he be alone? What about all those other people in the room? The doctor, the orphan, the tall guy, the lefty, etc.?”

Many aspiring novelists make the mistake of referring to an individual character by more than one name or descriptor in the same scene. In the scene above, all those descriptors (from Lithuania to Harvard) refer to the same person. Karl was a tall, old, left-handed, widower who began life as a Lithuanian orphan and then went to Harvard and became a doctor.

But my guess is that you thought there were eight people at the table. That’s the problem with referring to the same character by different names or monikers in the same scene: it’s confusing and misleading.

The rule is this: stick to one name per character per scene.

Maybe I should add “per viewpoint character” to the rule.

If your viewpoint character calls him “Karl,” then he must be called “Karl” throughout the scene in which you’re in this viewpoint character’s head. If the next scene is from a new viewpoint character’s head, and that person refers to the same character as “Pops,” then this new viewpoint character should refer to him as “Pops” throughout the scene and probably never as “Karl,” “the old man,” or “the Beatles fan.”

I think writers do this as a form of telling. They think they can use these different names and descriptors as subtle ways of sneaking in other bits of information or backstory about the character. I mean, by the end of the scene (if you’d been able to understand it correctly) you would’ve learned a lot about our man Karl. But it would’ve been cheating. Because telling is usually cheating.

If you need us to know that Karl was a Lithuanian orphan, figure out a way to bring that out organically, through scene and dialogue (or perhaps even through the Dumb Puppet Trick, Tip #21), not through sticking it in here and thus confusing us, your readers.

Stick to one name per character per scene (per viewpoint character) and you’ll do fine.

I belong to a lot of social media sites, facebook, twitter, writing groups, etc. I don’t have time to participate a lot but I watch what is being discussed and who is doing it. Sometimes I see something being discussed that I think maybe I have something I should contribute and I do, but mostly I quickly just keep my finger on it before I delete and get back to work.

I take note when someone without sufficient experience is giving advice I consider not to be solid and when I see that I will watch a bit closer for a bit. Usually a more experienced writer will chime in and I don’t have to, but if not I’ll speak up. Not that I consider myself an expert on everything, but I attend a lot of conferences, network with a lot of people who are terribly knowledgeable and well, a lot of good information does come my way.

But what’s with the title of this blog? What’s an unscheduled interview? I keep an eye what I have on my plate, what I have in my inbox to work. If I’m holding some work to evaluate I recognize if I start seeing that name coming through the social media. In a proposal people often tell me what they want me to hear. As part of the evaluation process if I start having some interest I’ll probably Google them to get a closer look.

But if I see them coming up in social media I may tune in. I get an informal look at who they are, what they think, if we might be a personal match for each other. Snooping? No, it’s out there for personal consumption. It’s out there because they want others to know them better and that’s what I might use it for.

I’ve said in the past that the process of getting an agent and the process of an agent deciding to represent a client is a lot like dating and it is. First and foremost it is about the writing, pure and simple. I’m looking for well written stuff that I can fall in love with and really want to help get it out on the market. But I also want people that I like and get along well with, people I connect with, people who will fit well in my very tight-knit client group.

I don’t ask people if they are a Christian before I sign them but I believe all of my clients are. I don’t look to see if they are involved in activities or espouse opinions that I really don’t want my name associated with. I don’t ask and they don’t tell. A lot of publishing contracts have a moral turpitude clause, but our agency contract doesn’t. It hasn’t been a problem yet, but I could see where it could at some point in the future. There have been a couple of times that I’ve gotten a heads up about that sort of thing in an unscheduled interview however.

What are your thoughts on it?

Terry Burns has been with the Hartline agency for over ten years, five years as an agent, and has a substantial list of clients, a growing list of credits, and a reputation for presenting to conferences all over the country. Terry comes from a writing background and has over 40 books of his own in print. A bookstore of his available works as well as a periodic blog can be found at www.terryburns.net. He’s a member of the Association of Author’s Representatives (AAR).

I wish I could teach folks how to create flow of language. For me, word choice and syntax is a feeling. I’ll write something and it feels clunky or out of place. So I rewrite until it sounds like poetry to me. I have my father to thank for that, I suppose. He was a poet. Although I pen subpar poetry, I do think I’ve received his natural ability for word flow and imagery.

One thing I see a lot as I mentor clients is their constant use of the same sentence structure. N-V. N-V. N-V. Example:

Jim saw the dog across the open field. (N-V+N+prep phrase). He ventured closer. (N-V-Adv.) He hugged the dog. (N-V-DO)

Sure, we’ve got a direct object, an adverb and a prepositional phrase thrown in, but the essence of the sentences are the same structure. Jim saw. He ventured. He hugged.

Instead:

The dog, wet with morning dew, trotted closer to him. It was only when Jim spied the dog’s red studded collar that he ran flat out toward Rover, covering the smelly wet dog with unmanly kisses. “You were gone,” Jim sighed. “And now you’re back.”

I know, it’s a crummy example, but it shows how much more interesting we can create a flow to our writing simply by changing up our structure.

Years ago I wrote puppet scripts for my church’s children’s department. Puppetry, like fiction, is a great way to have audience members or readers receive words of truth and challenge that they probably wouldn’t accept from a pastor or nonfiction book.

Very often in these puppet scripts I would need to have some information come out to the audience, whether it be explanation of what’s going on, clarification of the plot points, or enunciation of the message.

So I would bring in the dumb puppet.

“Sally, why are you stacking up those Bibles? Are you going to start ‘standing on the promises’? Gu-huh, gu-huh, gu-huh.”

“No,Jimmy! We’re stacking these up because Leroy is going to give them away to the children during backyard Bible club next week.”

“Oh, so they can stand on the promises.”

“Well, in a way.”

“Because they’re all short and can’t see?”

“No, Jimmy! So they can learn about Jesus and maybe become Christians.”

If you’d had Sally talking to Leroy instead of to Jimmy (a.k.a. the dumb puppet) it wouldn’t have worked. You can’t have characters talk to each other about the details of things they both perfectly understand.

“Wow, Leroy, I hope all these Bibles will be enough.”

“I do, too, Sally, because as you know we’re going to be giving these out to the kids at BBC next week.”

“Yes, I do know that, Leroy. And as you know it is our hope that these kids will learn about Jesus and become Christians through these Bibles.”

“Exactly, Sally. Well said.”

I mean, come on. Nobody talks like that. But you bring in the dumb puppet and everything you need to have the audience know gets brought out in a believable way.

The Dumb Puppet in Fiction

The dumb puppet trick is very useful to bring out information in fiction. It helps you avoid long paragraphs of exposition or backstory (i.e., “telling”) and it prevents the Sally and Leroy kind of conversation in which everybody is talking about what they all already know.

You could write: “Jennifer had always loved interior decorating. It all started in 1973 when her mother decided to redocorate the living room and kitchen of their ranch home in Southern California, after the divorce.” [blah blah blah--pure telling]

You could also write: “Jennifer, I see that you love interior decorating.” “Yes, Barb, I do.” “I imagine it goes back to 1973 when your mother got divorced and decided to redecorate the kitchen and living room.” “Yes, Barb, it does. How you know me.” [ick ick ick--pure silliness]

Or you could bring in a dumb puppet. Note that a dumb puppet doesn’t have to be dumb. It is simply someone who is new to the situation and doesn’t know all the whats and whys of the moment.

“Jennifer, this room is lovely. I’m quite sure our readers will adore it.”

“Thank you, Sylvia. That’s kind of you to say. I’m still in shock that your magazine wants to feature my work. I’m nobody.”

“Well, our editor doesn’t think so.” Sylvia looked down at her notepad. “So, when did you know you wanted to get into interior design?”

And you’re off to the races.

The next time you’re going through your novel and you see large chunks of exposition or backstory, and you’re sure it’s information that must come out to the reader, consider how you might bring in someone who could ask the right questions to bring it out organically.

Remember, anyone can be a dumb puppet, even a genius. The only qualification is that he or she (or it, for those of us who write speculative fiction) not know the situation and might be reasonably expected to ask.

Children are great for this because they ask what no one else will. Visitors, tourists, reporters, the new guy, the visiting relative, the repairman, the inspector, and the delivery guy are all good candidates.

The dump puppet is your friend.

The Argument or the Breakdown

There’s a variant to the dumb puppet trick that I’d like to tell you about.

One situation in which people talk about things they already know is when there’s a newcomer to the situation to whom it must be explained.

They also talk about such things when something goes wrong.

“Why are you adding coolant to the asponerator? I told you never to do that.”

“I know what you told me, but look at the heat meter. It’s maxed out. Your ‘repairs’ must’ve broken something else. Again.”

“Enough with that already. I fixed it, didn’t I? And I know I didn’t break anything this time. Maybe the meter’s wrong.”

“It’s not wrong. I ran a diagnostic. Maybe it’s that new enzymer Keely put in.”

“Do you think it could be the strain? With 5 of us on the station now instead of 3? Maybe it can’t keep up? Maybe we’re in trouble.”

And so it goes. These two characters never would’ve talked about this stuff had something not gone wrong. Either an argument or a problem–or in this case both–can give you great freedom in bringing out information in a natural, organic way.

In preparing for writers’ conferences, I have helped conferees come up with what we call a “30-second pitch.”  Their pitches were well received by the editors at the conferences.

1. What should be included in your pitch?

2. Give an example of one you have used or a new one for a book or article you are working on.

3. Expand your pitch into a paragraph that describes your book or article. This can be used in your query/cover letter to describe your project.

I’ll fill in my two cents in later posts.

Susan Titus Osborn is the director of the Christian Communicator Manuscript Critique Service where she heads a staff of 18 editors. She has authored 30 books. Susan is a member of the CLASSeminars staff. She lives in Fullerton, California, with her husband Dick. They have 5 grown children, 12 grandkids, and 3 great-grandsons.