Gloria & Audrey Harchar

People have been asking me why I returned to teaching. Why not stay at home and write full time?

• It’s weird, but when I was teaching I was more productive in my writing. I find when I don’t have much time, I don’t squander time–time doesn’t get away from me like it did when I wrote full time. That said, teaching in a new school I find I’m having to revamp lesson plans. I’m also teaching a lot online. So I’m not as productive in my writing as I will be, once I get in more of a routine with this new teaching position.
• When I stayed at home writing full time, I had a difficult time saying no to people when they would ask me to do things, go places, and volunteer.
• I find when I teach I have a lot more writing ideas. I write with more emotions, more colorfully. I have more fodder for my stories.
• Since I’m writing a Young Adult series, I find it useful to surround myself with teenagers. I’m at the alternative school, and I’m finding all sorts of conflicts that the students have to deal with on a daily basis. I get to see first hand how they react, how they manage their lives.
• Teaching this year has given me all sorts of ideas for my writing. I might not get to write as much as I want to–at least, not yet. But the scenes are popping into my head and the story I’ve been wanting to write since last summer is finally taking shape. I’m beginning to write again, which is exciting to me!!

I’ve been reviewing James Scott Bell’s book called Plot and Structure. It’s really good and if you get the chance to get it, do so.

What is plot? Per learner.org, plot is a causal sequence of events in a story.

Look at the following: The boy died in a boating accident and the father died in a car crash. Is this plot?From this statement, can we say that the two deaths are related, other than the two people were father and son? Did one event cause the other? We don’t know–at least, not from this information.

But if I said: The boy died in a boating accident. When the father received the news on his cell phone, he lost control of the car and spun off a cliff. Now that is plot. An incident happened which caused a chain of related events.

So, what kind of a plotter are you? You might be one of those writers who likes to have the story all worked out in your mind before you write your novel. You preplan, plan, and revise the plan before writing. Maybe you have index cards all over your wall or you store you scenes in your computer.

Or, you could be a writer who doesn’t like to plan at all. You might like to plop down at your computer desk and just write, letting the story flow without planning, anxious to see what your wild writer’s mind will conjure up.

After studying hundreds of plots, Bell says he has developed a simple set of foundational principals he calls LOCK.

L=Lead

O=Objective

C=Confrontation

K=Knockout

The lead, or protagonist, must be interesting. She doesn’t have to be sympathetic, that is, likable–compelling. Enough so that the reader will want to keep reading to discover what happened to her.

Objective is the what. What does the protagonist, or lead, want?

Confrontation is what is keeping the lead from getting her goal.

Knockout is an analogy to the boxing ring. Everyone watches a boxing match because they are anticipating the big move, that punch that knocks out the opponent–that big climax where everything accumulates and comes to the tip of the summit. That string is getting tighter and tighter and you are anticipating that huge snap! where the string breaks.

Overall, this is a nice change to how I’ve been taught. Bell skims over the motivation–at least he does in his LOCK system. And the example of the obstacle was more external, rather than internal. But mostly it was pretty good.

Theme is the deeper meaning of a text, the insight about life which comes both from the author and the reader.

Themes are what may influence your life long after you’ve completed reading the story. The author is going to put some clues and information into the story, but the reader is going to bring their life experiences to the text. Together those things are going to lead to the insight about life.

Looking for theme?

It’s difficult to find theme, and, what’s more, have others agree with you. Too, it’s sometimes challenging to put it into words.

The title may be a clue. Authors are very picky about their titles (unless the editor influences the change of title). Anyhoo, titles may point you in the right direction for what the author wants the reader to get out of the text.

Watch how the characters change, or how they don’t change. This might be a clue to the theme.

Focus in on the most important events in the story.

Pay special attention to the resolution of the story. When it’s all said and done, what happens to everybody?

Style: How writers use language to express themselves.

The author might play with punctuation, put it in unusual spots to create an effect rather than follow the rules of grammar.

Sound patterns might hint at the theme.

plot twists, repeated symbols or themes, rhythm.

The author might use figurative language, such as similes, metaphor, hyperbole and personification to keep things interesting, keep the reader turning the pages.

Or they might rely on imagery, or different visuals that come up time and time again.

Style is the hardest thing to teach someone, but it’s the best tool an author has because it lets the author’s personality come to the surface.

It may help reflect a theme, mood or message.

It is that mysterious element that hooks you on an author. Style is what keeps you reading late into the night.

When you start writing your own stories, experiment with these elements to find your own sparkling, unique style!

These are characters based on real life characters. You might find biographical characters in…gasp!…biographies. Or you might find them in historical fiction, or in different human interest pieces. We’re going to study biographical characters and how we can tell facts from opinions, and how we look at inferences.

Learning about Biographical Characters: Indirect and Direct

• Direct Characterization: the author gives you specific information about the character.
• Example: In 2006, after some thirty years in journalism, Katie Couric became the first solo female evening news anchor.
• Indirect characterization: the reader infers (to infer means to draw conclusions) what the character is like using the information in the text.  We can do this by–
• Looking to see what the character does.
• Example: “After her husband died of colon cancer, Couric became an advocate for colon cancer awareness.” This is a fact, that she got involved in making people aware of the dangers of colon cancer. BUT what isn’t clearly stated is that losing her husband was a pivotal moment in her life. We can infer (or conclude) that she loved her husband, and was deeply hurt emotionally by his death. We can infer that this disease might have been prevented with early detection, and that maybe she feels guilty for not insisting he go in for a colonoscopy.
• What he/she says. Example: Katie Couric: “I’m still ambitious. I want to win. I want to be the first. And you know what? It’s that quality that’s gotten me where I am.” We can infer that she is driven to perfection. We might also infer that she doesn’t let opinions of others get in her way. There are lots of inferences we can come up with here.
• What she thinks/feels.
• What others say about the character and how others act toward the characters. We can look at how others act toward the biographical character. For example, if others slink toward a dark corner of the room whenever she comes into the room, we can conclude that she isn’t well liked, or that she is intimidating. Or, if someone waits for hours to tell her how they lost the farm because their daughter caught Lime’s Disease and they had to sell their farm to pay for the bills, this will tell you that people believe that she can get an injustice fixed. You might have to do an interview to get others’ opinions.

Keys to Biographical Characters:

• Really existed
• Can be explored using first-hand accounts, interviews, family members, and more.
• Can be presented with bias. A lot of things happen in a person’s life. If someone uses a biographical character, they might exclude certain things that happened to put the character in a more positive or more negative light. So be aware that the author might not be giving you the whole picture.
• Common in essays, nonfiction accounts, biographies and historical fiction.
• As the reader or author, you will need to sort fact from opinion/interpretation (or inferences).

I’ve been listening to a series of lessons designed for eighth graders on story structure. Really, it’s quite fascinating. I’ve taken so many courses and workshops on writing, as you can imagine, through Romance Writers of America, classes at the Tulsa Community College, classes at Oklahoma State University, and at conferences at Oklahoma Writers Federation.

I’ve read shelves of books on story structure. Debra Dixon’s Goal, Motivation and Conflict. Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas, Beginnings, Middles and Ends by Nancy Kress, How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler, How to Write Bestselling Fiction by Dean Koontz, and so many more.

But I have never heard conflict described quite like this:

You have a Central Conflict–that is the main conflict that drives the plot all the way to the end of the novel. Then you have secondary conflicts. Of those conflicts you can have External and Internal Conflict. External Conflict can be divided into three different kinds: Character vs. character, character vs. nature, or character vs. society. Internal conflict is character vs. self, (self being broad–like emotions such as lack of trust, confidence, fearing a lack of good morals, etc. They didn’t delve into the self). I thought it was good since the lessons took another angle. Although I did end up making a Power Point presentation to expand on other areas that I thought were lacking.

What they called the central conflict, I always called the red string–or the main conflict that wasn’t resolved until the resolution. All the minor conflicts and subplots were resolved, the table is cleared, loose ends are tied up–except for that big conflict.

Interesting.

I’ve read all the Harry Potter books, Terry Brook stories, Cassandra Clare’s series. To me, the appeal of these books are that the characters are fully fleshed out. All of them have an Achilles’ heel, where they are vulnerable. And even the good guys aren’t perfect. In other words, the characters are very real.

For instance, I loved it when we discovered in the 5th book that Harry’s father was cruel to Snape when he was younger. Throughout the series, we thought Snape was just jealous of James Potter, and so he took out his hatred and jealousy on Harry, who deserved none of Snape’s dislike. We thought Snape was envious of the outgoing James Potter, who was good at Quidditch, popular with the other students, had the most beautiful and intelligent girl in the school, someone we discovered Snape secretly loved. Then, when Harry saw the sliver of dreams, we discover that James had a cruel streak; he bullied and poked fun at the awkward and socially inept teenage Snape.

Cassandra Clare does well with this too when the parents who adopted Jace end up not trusting him, and therefore don’t protect him from the Inquisitor. Then later they are remorseful for doubting him. I love the mystery surrounding the adults’ pasts and how Clare  interweaves the past with the present.

Terry Brooks really explores the dark side of his heroes. His characters, who are constantly fighting evil, worry about becoming evil themselves, about fighting so much that they forget how to love. In Armageddon’s Children, my heart just withers for poor Logan Tom, who lost his whole family when he was only seven years old, and was raised by a military guy who ends up losing his sanity, and Logan ends up having to take care of the man he loved as a father. He worries that he, too, will go insane.

For me, characters make the story memorable. And you’ve got to have characters with an Achilles’ heel.

Welcome to our new site. My daughter, Audrey, and I are writing a novel together for teens. It’s a steampunk, which is a subgenre of science fiction. Have you seen the movie Mad Max? Or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Or have you read H. G. Wells? A more modern example is Steven Hunt’s Court of the Air, and Jay Lake’s Mainspring. But we haven’t seen any steampunk for young adults, and we love it! Our book’s setting is a post apocalyptic world, where the survivors have returned to relying on steam for energy, (which makes it a steampunk). Everything is a mixture of Victorian England and New Age–another characteristic of steampunk. There’s magic too. I will tell you more about our writing journey as we travel down the road!

Audrey, in the meantime, has created the art for our site. Isn’t it beautiful? She worked long and hard on designing the girls who are sisters in our story. The first book we’re writing is mainly about Odessa, the girl with dark hair. Audrey continues to make different poses of them, and she recently designed the hero. For her to do this is fun for us both. She asks me if I envisioned Odessa like this or that, so it really helps us both to actually see her, and get to know her character better. She’s the protagonist in our first book. I can’t wait for you to meet her!