Back to Maass--Raising the Stakes

In last week's Maass class we were reversing motives; finding different ways to motivate the characters into what they do in the story.  Now we're working on raising the stakes. But as Maass says on page 60 of the book, the reason we care about the character when the stakes get high is that we care about the character, period.
 
And therein lies the rub, eh?

We've all read books where we really connected with the characters, and books where they seemed, well, flat.  Maass has already covered a few techniques that he says will help you connect with your reader through words: open with the character in action, show him/her with heroic qualities, have them demonstrate larger-than-life qualities, etc. 

But on page 61 he says that by clothing your protagonist(s) in a cloak of "high principles and codes of personal conduct" you'll create a character who has value, who is worth saving in the readers' eyes.  A book must have, he says, "high public stakes and deep personal stakes" to have breakout potential.

This, of course, is work that's done well before Word One gets set down.  You have to know and understand your character at a very deep level to know what he or she stands for, what matters to him or her. 

So how do you do that?  I've taken a wonderful class with Alicia Rasley that forced me to go deeper, and it was a great help.  I've used Meyers-Briggs personality tests.  I've interviewed my characters.  I've read about their occupations, their time periods, and a zillion other things.  What do you do to dig deeper, to really understand the heart and soul of your characters so you know what matters to them, and thus what you can put at risk?

e-books vs. print books

Well, for the first time ever, Amazon announced last week that e-books had outsold traditionally-bound books.  Here's one of many articles published on it:

http://www.kippreport.com/2011/05/ebooks-outsell-booky-books-so-what/

And of course, we've got to slam them, right?  What's this 'books of questionable quality' crap?  Like no bound book was ever a wall-banger?  Yes, I understand this is the Wild West of publishing right now, but there are still good books and icky books and books that have a narrow market.  But that's not really different than it's ever been.  Books are still selling largely by word of mouth--which is why some e-authors are selling gajillions and other are selling nil. 

So here we are, apparently, at the Tipping Point. 

I really, really, REALLY want an e-book reader.  But I only want one.  And I don't know what that one is.  I like the e-ink, but I also like a color display.  If and when old copies of Godey's Ladies Book or other such items become available, I'd like the ability to examine the illustrations in color, to see the detail in the drawings and the different colored layers in the clothing or what have you.  Right now I want a Kindle for the ability to read easily, and an iPad for the lovely color display and the ability to read Time Magazine and Scientific American on it and get the full effect. 

I've become an iPad rumor whore, dashing from website to website looking to see when they might come up with the magic instrument of my desires.  So far the fairy godmother hasn't landed.  So I wait. 

But back to the subject at hand.  Admittedly, Amazon's customers are already computer-savvy.  They're not afraid to try something new, given the fact that they're shopping online for everything from groceries to platform shoes.  I see this as the tip of the iceburg.  I think there will always be some paper/hardback books printed, but I can see in 10 years that it could very well be a print-on-demand service.  Those who insist on paper will have to order it in advance, have it printed and (::gasp!::) shipped to them. 

Either that, or shop at the Boy Scout Rummage Sale, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army Thrift Store, as those will be the only places left with paper books. 

Am I being too pessimistic?  Was the Rapture really about our books, and we just misunderstood?  Tell me your predictions for the literary world for the next. . . . let's say 5 years.

Loving the (Un)saleable story?

Reading through VALENTINA over the past couple of days, I realize that I'm just as much in love with it now as I was 7 years ago when I finished it.  Yes, my writing has improved and I can tighten and strengthen, but the basic bones of the story are strong.  My hero and heroine both want--no, NEED--something desperately, and are willing to do just about anything to get it.  Their motivations make sense, and falling in love is a complication neither of them needs.  But the story was really not saleable material, at least not to the NY romance-publishing houses.

The story is set in Spain, not England.  It's set in 1880, which is neither a contemporary story nor the Georgian or Regency periods.  When the book opens the heroine is planning on murdering someone--the bad guy, it turns out, but she's still bent on killing him.  And although being disguised as a male isn't all that unusual, being disguised as a male bullfighter and actually getting in the ring to fight bulls most definitely is.  Not sure I've ever read that before, at least not in historical romance.

Completely unsaleable.

Or is it?  I have cautious optimism now that the complete has been requested.  What does it say about this brave new publishing world if it now beats the odds and gets published?  Is it because the market has widened?  Is it because standards have been lowered?  Is it because readers have always wanted more variety and now can have their demands answered? Is it because there's less of a cash outlay demanded from an e-publisher who will only print the paperback version in limited quantity? 

I've seen all sorts of theories bandied about, but I'm not sure anyone really knows the answer right now.  Would I like it to be published by Avon or Dell or St. Martin's?  You betcha.  Is that going to happen?  Probably not, at least not with this book.  I tried most of them (I think) after finishing the story, and they weren't interested in taking a risk on a book like this from an unknown author.   But now that I've emerged from school lo these many years later, I'm looking at a publishing landscape that bears absolutely no resemblance to the one that existed when I returned to school. 

Because over the past seven years the story really hasn't changed much, I have to think the primary reason that someone's looking at it now is because of the tectonic shift in publishing.  True, I spent my time looking at a host of e-publishers and finding one that has published books in non-traditional locations and with non-traditional characters (The Wild Rose Press requested it), but I tried that the first time as well. 

So what do you see ahead in publishing?  Further diversification?  Some consolidation at some point?  If that happens, will we still have the variety of genres and stories that we currently enjoy?  Will authors be able to love (and sell) their 'unsaleable' books?

Wax on, Wax off

Or, how do you polish?

I have 5 days to go through one of my old manuscripts and get it ready for submission.  Very excited that I got a request for the full manuscript, but now panic is setting in.  I polished up the first three chapters when I sumitted the partial, but I wrote this historical novel. . . at least 7 years ago, because that's when I went back to school.  My writing has improved since then.  But I only have a week.

Do you work on the little things, or do you look at the overall story arc?  I'm tempted to do the latter, but what if I find a big hole?  5 days isn't much time to fix it, especially when the bulk of that day is taken up with the day job, and this isn't a week I can take off much in the way of extra time. 

I know there are many people out there smarter than me, so I'm appealing to that collective wisdom.  What's my best choice, given just a few days' time?

Maass--Reversing Motives

Now we're on Page 38 of the Workbook, and Maass says to pick any scene with your protagonist in it, and write down what the character is trying to accomplish, obtain or avoid.  Then write all the reasons WHY the character is trying to do that--as many as you can come up with.  (Do that now)


Circle the very last reason you came up with, and re-write the scene using that very last reason. 

Maass's reasoning is that we often use the first reason (I do--it's most logical, right?) and that makes the scene predictable.  But no one likes reading about predictable people. Or as Maass puts it, "Safe choices make a scene predictable".  So by choosing another reason, you're straying from the 'safe' path and making the book more interesting. 

The thing I particularly like about this method is that you haven't changed your charater's GMC. Okay, you changed the M--motivation--but only for that one scene.  Overall, though, the character is still the same person: you haven't changed the overarching reasoning why this character is on his or her story arc.  You're just changing one little thing beneath that arc to add some zing to the story. 

I'm trying this using Debbie Macomber's infamous "List of 20": come up with 20 things for whatever you're stuck with.  The first five or so will be safe; predictable.  Around the middle I always get stuck and have alien abductions or some such nonsense.  But listing the aliens or wizards gets me past that hump and then the good stuff usually starts to come out.  My little pea brain has been working on it while I was busy adding zombies or rock stars to the list. 

And while we all like routine to a certain extent, we're all unique and we surprise even ourselves from time to time.  So what do you do to keep your characters interesting?  Have you tried this exercise?  What happened?

. . . . or smaller

In "Adjudting the Volume", Maass says that larger OR smaller reactions than the reader expects can increase tension and make your book better.  He uses an example from The Da Vinci Code, where Langdon and Sophie have just escaped the Louvre where it seems all of Paris had run after them.  As they're racing away in her Mini Cooper, he doesn't yell or scream or whoop for joy.  He says, "That was interesting", which, of course, makes the whole series of events from which they just escaped a little bit larger.


Then he asks you to go through your manuscript and find 24 places to heighten or diminish something your protagonist says, does or thinks.  Wow! 


If you're writing about someone who's naturally quiet, is there a danger of making this person a caricature?  Then again, even 24 instances in a 300-page manuscript isn't that much.  Plus it's a mix of increased reaction and understated reactions.  This shall be very interesting.