Solving the "Had" Mystery - Is "Had" Really Bad?

A long time ago, one of my author friends beta read one of my manuscripts and gave me the feedback that I needed to eliminate the word "had." Apparently someone had told her that the word "had" is bad and should always be removed from fiction writing, so this poor gal was tearing her hair out to remove the word from her own writing, as well, which is impossible. I'll repeat that. Removing the word "had" entirely from a manuscript is impossible.

Still others will tell you that "had" is passive. I've been told this so many times that I actually researched the word "had" and passive voice pretty extensively to determine the rights and wrongs of usage.

Let's begin by defining passive voice. According to Grammar Girl (and every other writing reference I've consulted), passive voice is created when the object of the action is promoted to the subject position. For example, "I heard it through the grapevine" is active (subject-verb-object sentence format). To make that sentence passive, you would write, "It was heard by me through the grapevine" (object-verb-subject sentence format). Another way you can determine passive voice is to add "by zombies" at the end of the sentence. If the sentence makes sense, you have passive voice. If not, you have active voice. For example, "She set the book on the table by zombies" doesn't make sense, so "She set the book on the table" is active. However, "The book was set on the table by zombies" makes sense, so "The book was set on the table" is passive.

Additionally, many people think that just because a form of the word "be" is used (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been), the voice is automatically passive. That's not the case. "I am alive" is active and uses a form of the word "be." Another example is "I am holding a pen," which is also active. "A pen is being held by me," would be passive.

To read more on this, visit Grammar Girl's site and the related article, Active Voice vs. Active Voice.

Now that we've defined passive voice and know what it is, let's tackle "had."

In writing, there are three basic verb tenses: present, past, and future.

Present: I live in Indianapolis.
Past: I lived in Indianapolis.
Future: I will live in Indianapolis.

By the way, all three of those examples are active sentences, not passive.

In addition to these basic verb tenses, there are several specialty verb tenses, as I call them. For example, There is present continuous, future perfect, future perfect continuous, past perfect, past perfect continuous, etc. I want to focus on past perfect and past perfect continuous.

Using the previous example:
Past perfect: I had lived in Indianapolis before moving to Florida.
Past perfect continuous: I had been living in Indianapolis for eighteen years when I moved to Florida.

First, let me point out that these sentences are active, not passive, despite the use of the word "had." Second, each sentence indicates a slightly different reference to time than the other. If you want to study this further, check out the Types of Verbs page on Englishpage.com. Along the left on the page, you can select the different verb tenses and study them, get more examples, and complete lessons to help you learn how and when to use them.

The point to remember here is that "had" is part of the past perfect verb tense and not necessarily passive.

For example:
Active: Donya had written many books before she won her first RWA Golden Heart Award.
Passive: Many books had been written by Donya before she won her first RWA Golden Heart Award.

So, how does the past perfect tense affect your writing? Authors usually write in one of two verb tenses: present or past. When you write in present tense, writing flashbacks is as easy as writing in the simple past tense. However, when you write your stories in past tense the way I do, if you want to insert flashbacks or refer to something that came before, you must use the past perfect tense or risk confusing your reader.

Here's a short excerpt from my upcoming Return of the Assassin. The story is in Gina's point of view at this point:

She closed her eyes and tried to push away Malek's memory, which was becoming harder to do. Malek was the male she had met—and then left—in Chicago. The male who had saved her when all she had wanted to do was die. The male who promised to be a whole lot of holy-hell-I'm-in-trouble if she let him.

Since I write in past tense, I had to use past perfect in the italicized verbs to indicate action that came before in the story. If I had maintained the simple past tense, the reader wouldn't be able to distinguish whether I'm referring to the present moment within the story or a past moment from before. Go back and re-read the paragraph without "had" and you'll see what I mean. Sure, you might be able to figure out some of the timing by the context, but it's my job as an author to make the reader think as little as possible so they can simply enjoy the experience of the story. This is just one paragraph. Imagine having 30+ chapters of simple past tense where you have to think about the context to figure out the order and timing of events within the story, trying to figure out what is flashback or past events, and what is the present moment within the story? That would get exhausting, and no reader wants to work that hard. It's the author's job to remove the work for the reader. Using past perfect is the solution to helping the reader understand the story.

Now let's say you have a multi-paragraph or multi-page flashback. How do you write that without italicizing the whole segment, which is becoming an archaic practice, in favor of weaving the flashback seamlessly into the story? I suggest you use the 3 in-3 out rule, as explained in The Best Writing Advice blog post on InTheGardenOfEva.com. I've copied the pertinent text directly from her blog:

If you write your story in the past tense, you have to use the past-perfect for flashbacks. The past perfect is the tense used to talk about something that happened before something else that happened in the past. I call it “the had tense.” For example, the past perfect is bolded below:

He walked into the bar and saw her standing near the pool table. The last time he’d seen her, she had stabbed a fork into his leg.

But the past-perfect gets old awfully fast with all those “hads.” The solution is to start off your flashback with the first three verbs in past-perfect. This makes your reader aware of what’s going on. Then switch to simple past, which is much more pleasant to read. At the end of your flashback, make the last three verbs past-perfect to get your reader “out” of the flashback.

If you read a lot, you've probably noticed as I have that fewer authors are using the italicized flashback in favor of the seamless, 3 in-3 out flashback. I use one of these flashbacks in Return of the Assassin, and while it felt weird and took a little finesse to work the verbs so that readers fell into the flashback easily and emerged from it just as easily, I like this method. And since more editors now frown upon italicized flashbacks that can be too jarring on readers, this is the way to go from now on.

So, see. "Had" isn't so bad. The word "had" has a vital place in fiction writing. It isn't a bad guy or an automatically passive villain. Yes, there are instances where "had" can be rewritten out for a stronger sentence, but that's not always the case. So go easy on your quest to rid the world of "had." He has a place, and his place is necessary.

Happy Writing!
-D

Continuing Education For Authors

Over the weekend, I submitted a piece for a writing book. I included my thoughts, opinions, and advice on such topics as writers block, pantsing vs. plotting, and editing, as well as on staying educated about this fabulous profession known as making up stories for a living.

Writing, as with any job, requires that authors stay up to date on styles, trends, and technology, and that they constantly work to improve their technique and craft. To compare writing to other professions: Architects don't graduate from college and never take another class, or never invest in industry journals and further education as a means to continue learning. Some professions even require a certain number of classroom hours every so many years for a professional to maintain accreditation or certification. Authors who want to maintain an edge need to continue their education, as well.

How? Writers can attend workshops, conventions, or take creative writing courses. I took two long-term writing courses at the Long Ridge Writers Group, one in writing for short stories, and one for writing novels. These two classes were invaluable as a means of learning what it takes to be a bona fide author. While they focus primarily on what it takes to get in print with a big publishing house vs. how to self-publish, I believe that writers must learn to walk before they run. And walking involves learning the industry and what it takes to get published the traditional way before running off to self-publish. Those who simply say, "I want to write and self-publish a book," but have no basis for what it takes to be traditionally published, miss a huge chunk of knowledge that can make their writing the best it can be. In short, just because writers can self-publish now and circumvent the traditional route doesn't mean they don't need to know how the industry works and how to write. Courses, classes, and workshops help fill that gap.

Another way to maintain a writing edge is to read books on craft. There are books on all facets of writing, including showing vs. telling, how to write a book in a month, how to build a series bible, how to edit, and how NOT to write a novel. Below are some of my favorite books on writing. Go through each and determine which would best suit where you are and what you need to learn right now. A couple of the books at the bottom of the list are stellar and have average ratings that float just under 5 stars on Amazon.

• Self-Editing For Fiction Writers (this is a must-read multiple times, as far as I'm concerned)
• On Writing by Stephen King (THE book all authors should read over and over)
• How To Write a Damn Good Novel II
• The Art of War for Writers
• Write Away (this book is more advanced, but excellent!)
• The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier (a quick read that addresses not only misplaced modifiers, but passive voice, weak/vague -ing words, weak verbs, and much more. Excellent book.)
• How Not To Write a Novel
• Showing & Telling
• Writing Tools (I've only skimmed this one, but can't wait to read it. The Contents pages include excellent topics)
• It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences.
• Writing Well (this one is pretty hard to find, but if you can find it, it's worth grabbing. It breaks down writing to its simplest forms. Great book for beginners and professionals alike).
• Write Your Novel In a Month
• The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes
• On Writing Well
• Keys to Great Writing
• Stein on Writing
• Fiction Writer's Workshop
• How to Grow a Novel
• Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder (because every writer should improve their vocabulary)

By no means is this list all-encompassing. I own each of the above books, but own many more that I left off the list. The point is, there are hundreds or even thousands of books on writing craft that you can buy to help you improve your writing. You can spend hours on Amazon going to the additional books they recommend when you pull up a new book to view.

When I read one of these books (or even just a chapter in one of these books), I often come away inspired or with tons of ideas. If you're stuck in your story, try picking up one of these books for a while, and watch the magic happen as your mind starts to come back to life. Soon, you won't be stuck, anymore, and you'll be writing like a pro again.

Happy Writing!

-Donya 

Passive Voice vs. Passive Verbs - There is a Difference

As a writer wanting to learn more about passive vs. active voice, it's pretty disheartening to buy a book that is supposed to address just that, only to find out the book has mistakenly identified weak verbs as passive voice. But that's exactly what's happened. Which set me on a mission to differentiate the following terms from one another:

• Passive voice
• Active voice
• Passive verbs
• Active verbs

First, let's clarify what passive voice is. Passive voice occurs when you shake up the subject-verb-object order of a sentence—the acted-upon is in the actor position, and the actor is in the acted-up position (if the actor is mentioned at all). [quoted from The Book on Writing by Paula LaRocque.] Examples:

Active voice: The boy hit the ball. (subject-verb-object)

Passive voice: The ball was hit by the boy. (object-verb-subject)

Passive voice: The ball was hit. (object-verb. No subject.)

Okay, pretty simple, right? Here's where the passive/weak line blurs. See that "be" verb, "was"? You might have learned "be" verbs as "linking verbs" in school: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been. These verbs are also known as passive verbs. Oh holy hell, right? Now we've got passive voice and passive verbs. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Many writers think that any time a passive verb is used, passive voice automatically results and should be rewritten into active voice. They have mistakenly been taught this concept, and they have mistakenly continued to teach it to others (me included), until massive amounts of writers now wrap themselves around trees in order to eliminate the word, "was" because they think it's passive voice, when all it really is is weak writing.

So, let's call passive verbs weak verbs and active verbs strong verbs. If you do that, you won't be as likely to confuse passive voice with simple weak verb usage. Here's the new and improved list of terms:

• Passive voice
• Active voice
• Weak verbs
• Strong verbs

Much better,right? Okay...onward we go.

Eliminating all "be" verbs is not only impossible, but silly. As I just pointed out, "be" verbs aren't always passive. Most of the time, they are just weak. And more often than you might think, weak verbs are acceptable, because sometimes you don't need a stronger verb. Sometimes you simply need to write, "I was sick," not "I succumbed to the flu," which would come off as too formal, depending on context. Let's look at some examples of active voice that is weak vs. active voice that is strong. Note the italics, which point out the weak or strong construction. Again, all the below sentences are written in active voice, despite the "be" verbs.

Active but weak: Micah was fit to be tied after being accused.

Active but strong: Micah fumed at the accusations.

Active but weak: Trace was ready to be flogged.

Active but strong: Trace sank to his knees, head bowed. The hair on his arms prickled, and he licked his lips. Any second, the strike of leather on his back would relieve the ache in his chest.

In the examples, weak verbs (not passive voice) were replaced by stronger verbs. The weak sentences were still written in active voice, but they suffered from weak construction. By replacing the weak verbs with strong verbs, we strengthened the sentences while keeping them in active voice.

See the difference between passive voice and weak verbs?

What made me begin to question the concept of passive voice (because I had been taught the incorrect way to identify passive voice and generalized "be" verbs as always passive) was judging entries for my local RWA chapter's annual contest. As I pointed out what I thought was passive voice in some of those entries, I began to question whether I was right. I don't know what it was, but something didn't make sense. So, I began to dig for more details about passive voice, and stumbled upon Paula LaRocque's book, The Book on Writing, where she clearly differentiates between passive voice and weak verb usage. A-ha! That's when I realized I had been taught wrong.

Weak verb usage does not necessarily mean passive voice. This is important to me, because as I continue to judge and critique others' work, I want to make sure I'm providing quality, concise feedback that not only helps but teaches. And I can't do that if I'm not using proper terminology. There is a difference between telling someone their writing is passive vs. weak. A big difference. And while "be" verbs may not always indicate passive voice, they usually indicate generally weak writing that can be improved with stronger, more precise verbs.

Oh, and don't forget: There is a place for passive voice and weaker verbs. You can't completely eliminate both, and you shouldn't. But you should certainly watch out for both and eliminate them when you can, and when it's appropriate.

Happy Writing

What To Do When Your Novel Isn't Speaking To You

On Facebook yesterday, I saw a post by another author where she voiced her frustration over how she couldn't seem to trudge through her edits. She had been reading the same three paragraphs for three hours, unable to make any progress.

Man, do I feel her pain, as I'm sure all writers do. It's the nature of the beast to fall into periods of low or even non-existent productivity, and when that happens, it's easy to fall into a panic, seeing the time slipping away as your deadline looms ever-nearer. (NOTE: Even indie authors should assign themselves deadlines; otherwise, it's too easy to poo-poo away that slipping time with a wave of the hand and a flippant, "I'll get to it eventually.")

So, how do you handle these potential time-bombs of panic? When the story just isn't working?

Before I talk about how I handle them, I'd like to share where I think some of these low-or-no productivity periods come from.

I have learned from experience that when a story isn't "talking" to me, whether through the draft phase or the editing phase, or when I'm struggling with a manuscript, it means one of two things:

1. I am forcing too much of me into the story, meaning I've stopped listening to my characters and am trying to finagle them into situations that I contrived, not them. In other words, I have ceased telling the story the characters want to tell and am instead forcing the story I want to put into their mouths.
2. I am not understanding my characters.

For example, In Rebel Obsession, I struggled to like Miriam and portray her in a positive light. In the first draft, she came off like a spoiled, self-obsessed brat. Ugh. I wrung my hands and gnashed my teeth. What was wrong with her? And why wouldn't she talk to me? Every time I asked her why she was the way she was or what she wanted, she said, "I don't know." Double ugh! And then one day the light bulb went on. She really did not know. As soon as I realized that, she rejoiced inside my mind. I got it! I finally got it! That was the angle I needed to portray her from. Once I understood her, I was able to portray her correctly as a confused, rebellious character who was struggling to figure out where she belonged in a world where high expectations that she didn't want and had no idea what to do with were placed on her. She simply did not know what she wanted, because she had been sheltered all her life. Hence the source of her problems. She wanted to break free and figure herself out.

Long story short: As long as I am listening to and understanding my characters, the story flows out of me. But as soon as I start trying to force my will, the story shuts down.

This happened in my latest work, Return of the Assassin. I went into the preparation with this story holding high hopes. The characters had powerful stories to tell, and the passion between them was smokin'. And then I started worrying about word-length. My last book in the series clocked in at 115,000 words. The one before that was over 80,000. The one before that: 60,000. So, I decided I needed this book to be around 90,000 words or more. Next I began to worry about all the side characters. I needed to work Trace into the story, because fans love him. So, how was I going to make Trace a part of this book so that it worked? And then there was my new character, Maddox, Trace's father. I needed to work him in. Oh, and then there were the other new characters: Kieran, Tully, Searcy, Lorena, and Savill. And then I needed to make sure to mention Brak, another new character who is pivotal to the ending of the book, as well as future books. Oh, and let's not forget Apostle and Bishop, Grotek and Chane, and, and, and.....AAAAUUUUGGGHHH!

Before I knew it, Return of the Assassin had shut down. Not a peep for weeks. Panic set in: "OMG! Why won't the book talk to me? My deadline for the draft is the end of March, but the story won't even whisper right now! How will I finish it in time to release the book by September? Oh, despair, despair!"

Now we come to where I answer the question: What do I do when a story is no longer speaking to me? Maybe my methods will help some of you overcome the same writer's block.

In the case of Return of the Assassin, I set the book aside and worked on other projects for a few weeks. This let the manuscript simmer in my subconscious where I could work out the issues without really thinking about them. A couple of weeks ago, I picked ROTA, as I call it, back up and started trudging through it. I began editing even though the writing phase wasn't over, which is something I rarely do, because, in my opinion, a writer should never start editing before finishing the writing phase. It's too easy to fall into a self-defeating loop of continual edits and rewrites without ever getting to the end of the manuscript.

But in my case, I needed to figure out where the story had gone off track, so I started rewriting. But the more I rewrote, the more desperate the situation seemed to become. The characters just weren't talking, and I was becoming very upset. I mean, what I was rewriting was better than what was there before, and the changes strengthened the story by leaps, but I was suffering to pull the story out.

Then one morning, I was getting ready for work and said to my characters, "Okay, what's wrong? Why isn't this working?"

As I worked through a dialogue with the characters, they stripped me down to the basics of what was important in the story. Within twenty minutes, my problem was solved. My main characters, Malek and Gina, showed me how their story had become everything but their story. I would have seen this in edits, but it was so much nicer to see it now, so I could save myself a lot of time and aggravation.

So, my worries about word length? Gone. If the story comes in at 60,000, then so be it. I'd rather have a wham-bang, kick-ass story at 60,000 words than a so-so one at 120,000. Trace? Sorry, but he's out. I know fans love him and want him, but his book is next, and the scenes I wanted to include in ROTA that focused on him will better serve his book, not Malek's. He might get a tiny mention, but that's it. Kieran and Tully? Gone from this book. Searcy, Savill, and Lorena? They stay, because this story depends on them. Basically, I stripped out anything that had nothing to do with this story, and pumped up Malek and Gina into powerful leading characters, ripe with emotion and inner turmoil, who have brought me to tears numerous times as I write. As a result, ROTA is flowing again, and Trace's book is already off to a fabulous start because of all the Trace scenes I removed from ROTA. So it's a win-win, with a bonus: I will blow my completion date of March 31 out of the water by over a month, and will finish ROTA's draft within the next week, maybe two at the most. What that means is that I will be able to release the book sooner than expected, and that I can start Trace's book sooner than expected, too.

All because I pulled my ego, influence, and personal desires out of the equation and let the characters take charge. It's their story to tell, after all.

In summary, here's how to help get you back on track if you've fallen off of it (I use each of the following methods to help break me through plateaus):

• Make sure you're not forcing too much of YOU into the story. It's not your story. It's your characters' story. You are simply the vehicle to tell their story. It's your job to determine the best way to tell it so readers will love it, and that's it.
• Are you listening to the characters? If not, try listening and see if that helps.
• Are you understanding the characters? Again, really pay attention to what they're saying. You might be missing something like I was with Miriam.
• Are you worried about word length, secondary characters, and side plots? If so, forget about all that. Stop, breathe, and focus on what the main story for your book is about. Write about that. The word length will take care of itself.
• Breathe. Walk away and just breathe. Watch TV, read a book, go to a movie. Eventually, when you least expect it, the story will begin talking to you again...when IT is ready, not when YOU are. Be patient.
• Work on another project. Sometimes it's another project that wants your attention. If another story is talking to you, that's the one that needs your attention right now. Don't fight it and force yourself to work on a project that isn't speaking to you when another one is. You'll blow both.
• Maybe you just need a week off. Everyone needs a break, even a writer.
• Read a book on writing or a book outside your normal genre. I am reading a nonfiction book on running right now (Born to Run) that, every time I pick it up, I'm inspired to write. The author has a fabulous way of putting things into words that is a joy to read and inspires my own writing. Furthermore, I read a book on Deep POV last November that rocked my writing world so powerfully that I put Rebel Obsession through a special last-minute edit that totally altered the story in a fabulous way. My editor said it was a totally different—and much better—book after I made the changes.

Writing is work. It's not supposed to be easy. And like with anything we do in life, sometimes we are just not in the right frame of mind to write. We get into moods: I feel like seeing a movie; I feel like Chinese for lunch; I feel like taking a nap; I feel like going for a walk; I feel like taking a day off...and yes, I feel like not writing today, or this week, or whatever. And that's okay. Because in time, you WILL feel like writing again. And in time, the stories will begin talking again, too.

Does anyone else have other suggestions for breaking through plateaus? Please add them below in the comments.

Happy reading and writing!

-D

Passive vs. Active Voice - The Most Effective Tip I've Ever Read

If you're a writer, you've likely heard over and over that passive voice is detrimental. You want to write actively, not passively. But what if you don't know what passive voice is from a hole in the wall?

I read a lot of writing books so I can hone my skills. The latest book is The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier - How to Solve the Mysteries of Weak Writing, by Bonnie Trenga.

The first lesson in the book was about detecting and correcting passive voice, and this was probably the best example of attacking passive voice I've ever seen anywhere. Let's break it down:

There are three clues you've used passive voice:

1. You've used a form of the verb to be (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been).
2. You've used a past participle (the past tense of a verb: washed, stolen, ripped).
3. You've used the word by.

That last one is a dead giveaway in my opinion, and I'd never heard that the word by was a passive identifier. At any rate, let's continue with the lesson.

NOTE: the word had was not specifically called out as a dead giveaway for passive voice. Some people have tried to teach this to be the case, and preach about eliminating all occurrences of the word had from your manuscripts. I have a friend who was told to do this, and God love her, she was in fits over it. You can't eliminate the word had 100% of the time. I've tried. But as a writer who uses past tense as the present (Micah looked at Sam with love in his eyes. He welcomed her into his world, ready to be her mate and a father to her children until the end of time.), when I need to dig my characters further into the past, the only way I can do that is with the word had (Micah had welcomed Sam into his world six months ago, and now she was his forever.). To eliminate had altogether would confuse readers as to what time period I'm referring to, present or past. Sometimes had must be included. It is not automatically passive. An example of had as passive: A good time was had by everyone. Active: Everyone had a good time. See, had is in both sentences, but one is passive and one is not. The active sentence may not be the most interesting sentence, but it is active.

Back to English 101, an active sentence is one in which the subject performs the action and the object receives it:

The cat attacked the dog.

Subject: cat

Action: attacked

Object: dog

If you turn the object of this sentence into the subject, you create passive voice:

The dog was attacked by the cat.

Ouila! Instant passive voice. Do you see all our clues in that sentence? We have a form of the verb to be (was), a past participle (attacked), and the word by. In this sentence, you have taken the action away from the perpetrator and loaded it onto the recipient.

In school, I remember lessons in English class where we were taught to invert our sentences to make them more interesting. Obviously, these lessons weren't directed toward clear and concise writing, because with just this one quick lesson in Ms. Trenga's book, I learned that inverting a sentence to put the object first is a big no-no in the writing world. This is the most effective tip I've ever read about identifying and correcting passive voice.

Here's another passive sample:

The football was kicked by the punter.

How could you make that passive sentence active? Let's flip it around and attribute the action to the subject:

The punter kicked the football.

Sometimes a passive sentence will contain all three of our passive elements, but sometimes not. The only element that will always appear in a passive voice is the past participle. Let's look at a few more examples.

Passive: The radio was turned on to drown out Tom's snoring.

Here, the word by is missing, but this is still a passive sentence. Additionally, a subject is missing, which is one of the bad side effects of passive voice: it allows you to eliminate the subject. We don't know who turned the radio on here, do we? The radio sure didn't turn itself on, right? This makes the sentence unclear and vague, as well as passive, and writers should always strive for clear writing, so by eliminating passive voice, clarity will naturally follow. 

Active: Kimberly turned on the radio to drown out Tom's snoring.

Here's another example from the book, and this gets a bit trickier:

Passive: Driven to the crime scene, the psychic led police to a viable suspect.

We don't have the word by or a form of the verb to be, but this sentence is still passive. Furthermore, it is extremely vague. This sentence could confuse readers. Did the police drive the psychic to the crime scene, or did a vision lead her there? Making the sentence active clarifies this.

Active: After a dream drove the psychic to the crime scene, she helped police identify a viable suspect.

Why You Should Avoid Passive Voice

Besides the ambiguity it creates, there are three other reasons for eliminating passive voice:

1. Passive voice allows you to omit the subject (thus contributing to the ambiguity)
2. Passive voice forces you to use lots of weak verbs (was and were, etc.)
3. Passive voice is wordy.

Here's a sample to illustrate all three points:

Someone who looked like the suspect was rounded up, but he was released after his alibi was checked out.

(no subject, lots of was verbs, and wordy)

Here's the same sentence, only active:

The authorities rounded up someone who looked like the suspect, but they released him after checking out his alibi.

(we have our subject, authorities; we've eliminated was, and the wordiness has been replaced by clarity and a more visual representation.)

When It's Okay to Use Passive Voice

You can't eliminate all incidents of the verb form to be. I've heard people say that they need to eliminate all occurrences of the word was, but that's impossible. Sometimes you need am, is, are, was, were, be, being, and been. The only time you should strive to eliminate it is when it is creating passive voice in conjunction with a past participle and the word by. Just because you write, What was he going to do? doesn't mean you're automatically passive because you used the word was. This could just be a character's internal dialogue.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't become obsessive about eliminated all incidents of a given word just because some text somewhere said it could contribute to passive voice. It could, but that doesn't mean it does 100% of the time.

So, when else is passive voice okay? Well, when you've made a conscious decision to use it for effect:

1. You want to focus on the object, not the subject.

The piles of snow, which had aggravated Florida residents for days, finally melted.

2. You don't care who did what, it's obvious who did it, or you don't know who did it.

The department's new policy states that only candidates with police training will be hired.

3. You intend to omit who did what.

Mistakes were made in the investigation.

In my latest book, Rebel Obsession, I included intentionally passive voice in one of the early chapters because I didn't want to reveal one of my characters, yet. I wanted to keep him in the shadows for a few pages until I was ready to announce him. This is one instance where passive voice is okay to use, because it's being used for a specific purpose.

I hope this helps all you writers out there.

Happy writing!

-D

Go Deep! Deeper! YES! Deep POV Rules in Fiction.

I'm in the final stages of preparing my next manuscript, Rebel Obsession, to be released on January 15th. I've edited, given the book to my beta readers, edited, edited some more, and now I'm proofreading.

So, what's wrong? Nothing really, except that I went and read a new writing book called "Rivet Your Readers With Deep Point of View," by Jill Elizabeth Nelson. Excuse me while I hang my head and plant my palm over my face.

Why, why oh why did I go and read a writing book at this stage of finishing my manuscript? I'll admit that I was researching POV for a series of blog posts I want to write, but don't I know myself well enough by now to know that I'd be so motivated and inspired by the words of wisdom in this book, especially, that I'd want to go back to my manuscript and tear it to pieces as I thought of new and better ways to convey the scenes in the story? Apparently not, because silly me, I read said book, and now I'm in a mad dash to liven up areas of my manuscript using the new arsenal of knowledge this book taught me.

Not that the manuscript was flat. My beta readers loved it, and my editor said that Rebel Obsession is her favorite story in the series so far, but now that my mind has been stretched with this new knowledge of Deep POV, I can see where my story can be even better. Granted, I do have a tendency to write in Deep POV anyway, but this book taught me how I can go even deeper. And in this case, deeper is definitely better.

This small book—a handbook really, at the length of only sixty pages—teaches you all you need to know about this somewhat-elusive POV and writing skill. And, yes, most definitely, writing in Deep POV takes skill. I thought I was doing well before, but even I'm struggling to fully grasp how to change my shallow POV areas to deeper ones.

Okay, so what's the big deal about Deep POV and why should every fiction writer know about it and strive to utilize it in their manuscripts?


Here are the highlights:

By its very nature, Deep POV takes your narrative to "showing" rather than "telling," and as writers we all should know how important showing the story over telling it is.

Deep POV is more respectful of your readers' intelligence than Omniscient POV, where every little thing is explained to the reader from a distance, and which by its nature is "telling" rather than "showing."

Deep POV creates first-person intimacy when writing in the third-person, so hooray hurrah!

"Author intrusion," where the author consciously or unconsciously inserts an invisible narrator between the character and the readers, is removed by use of Deep POV.

What is Deep POV?

As quoted on page 17 of the handbook, this is one way to look at Deep POV: "The narrative should read like the thoughts going through the character's mind but without the need to italicize as in direct thought quotations."

Sounds simple enough, right? That's what I thought. I was wrong. There is an art to writing Deep POV, as I've found, and the skill has to be acquired through lots and lots of practice, as I'm also finding.

Another way to think of Deep POV is that it keeps the story/character/reader firmly rooted in the now. It's great for high action scenes and for taking a trip into a character's psyche during a contemplative moment; however, Deep POV is not where a character goes on "nattering" to himself endlessly about things that don't propel the story forward or that have nothing to do with the action taking place.

Okay, let's get to the nitty gritty. Maybe the following four sections will break Deep POV down in a more understandable way.

Phrases and Words that Scream "Shallow POV" as Opposed To Deep

Following is a list of phrases and words to avoid and/or rewrite if you want to pursue Deep POV. These words create narrative distance, putting a reader at arm's length as opposed to planting them squarely inside the character's head. Reader at arm's length = bad. Inside the character's head = good.

He/She thought...
He/She felt...
He/She knew...
...wondered...
...realized...
...speculated...
...decided...
...wished...
...etc.

In all the above examples, as Nelson points out in the book, a narrator is required in order to say that a character knew/felt/thought/wondered/etc. something. In our own minds, we don't think like that. We don't say to ourselves, "I think the wall looks dirty." We think, "The wall is covered with dirt. Who did that?"

More examples, borrowed from the book:

Shallow: "She wondered how she would get through the next day."
Deep: "How could she possibly survive the next day?"

Shallow: "I wished I hadn't said that."
Deep: "If only I hadn't said that."

Shallow: "He thought a good bath wouldn't hurt the dog."
Deep: "Whew! A good bath would do this dog a world of good."

See how we transport more fully into the character's head with the deep examples? Don't you feel more involved? Maybe even more emotionally vested? Because you can identify with the Deep portrayal better than the Shallow one, because Deep is how we, ourselves, think.

I'd like to add a couple of other phrases to the above list:

...in the air
...filled the air
...couldn't help but to...

Shallow: "Noxious fumes filled the air."
Deep: "Was that sulfur? Her nose scrunched and she pinched her nostrils closed with her thumb and index finger as she held her breath." [it's pretty clear the fumes are indeed "in the air." There's no need to tell us that.]

Shallow: "He couldn't help but to wonder how Jessie was coping."
Deep: "How was Jessie coping?" [Notice that "couldn't help but to" naturally wants to precede one of our to-be-avoided terms, such as feel, wonder, think, realize, wish. So, by removing the offending phrase, you also remove teh offending term and make the sentence fall into deep POV. Additionally, the deep example automatically implies that he is wondering and that he couldn't help himself from doing so. There's no need to tell the reader those things.]

When you see these phrases, you're telling, not showing. You can go deep to remove most, if not all, occurrences of these phrases and more effectively engage your reader.

The Five Senses...If You Tell Us the Senses, You're Not Deep Enough

Here's another list of phrases/words to remove from your manuscripts if you want to go deep:

He/She saw
He/She tasted
He/She heard
He/She smelled
He/She could see, taste, hear, smell

These are called sensory tells. Key word: tells. Guess what you're doing when you use them. That's right, you're telling. When you use these in your story, you're inflicting narrative distance again, pushing your reader away from the action and the character. Think of it like this, when you drink spoiled milk, do you think, "I'm tasting spoiled milk."? No, you probably think, "Ew! Yuck! How old is this milk?" That's how you want to think when you're writing Deep POV.

Shallow: "He heard a car pull into the driveway and froze."
Deep: "A car pulled into the driveway. He froze."

You don't need to tell us (tell) that the character tasted the milk or heard the car. Just show us the character tasting the milk and hearing the car. By going into Deep POV, you naturally do this. Does that make sense?

Avoid Naming Feelings and Emotions If You Want to Go Deep

Much like in the phrases above, naming emotions and feelings for your characters also puts readers at a distance and interjects a narrator's voice.

Shallow: "Tony closed his phone, frustration and fury surging through him."
Deep: "Tony slapped the phone shut. If steam could escape his pores, he'd be a toxic cloud."

See the difference? Nelson does a good job showing us in this example from her book exactly how we can portray frustration and fury by taking us inside the character instead of just telling us the character is frustrated and furious. Did you catch that? Telling. A narrator tells us that Tony is frustrated in the shallow example, but Tony himself shows us how he feels, which conveys his frustration naturally, in the deep example.

Another example from the book:

Shallow: "Hot jealousy flashed through me."
Deep: "Heat boiled my insides. If that wimp could win a trophy, where was mine?"
Any and all emotions and feelings can be inserted for "hot jealousy." Joy, happiness, sadness, anger, despair, terror, fear, aggravation, boredom. Happiness flashed through me, sadness flashed through me, terror flashed through me. *YAWN-boring* But when we go deep, each Deep POV, showing method will be unique: "The moment I saw Jeff emerge from the burning house, my body relaxed and I looked to the heavens, tears trailing down my cheeks. He was safe. My husband was safe. Thank God." "The air grew heavy and my body wilted as if the act of staying upright was too much work. Someone was talking, but I couldn't hear them. Jeff? Dead? He hadn't survived? Had I heard the officer correctly?" "My skin prickled and I searched the darkness, my breath locked inside my throat. 'Who's there?' Someone was watching me. Someone evil. I could feel it."

The lesson to be learned here? Remove the name of the feeling or emotion and replace it with a description of how, in your mind, your character would experience that feeling or emotion.

Prepositional Tells - Ditch 'em

A derivative of the previous section is the prepositional tell, where a preposition precedes the naming of an emotion, attitude, or thought. Examples: "...of happiness," "...with excitement," "in need."

As with the previous section, remove the prepositional phrase and replace it with a deeper description from within the character's POV.


Is going deep easy? No, but it's not hard, either, and it gets easier the more you do it. Using Deep POV takes work, and my suggestion is to write your first draft without even thinking about it and go deep in the editing process.

The purpose of the draft stage, where you're writing your manuscript from scratch, is to simply dump the story and scenes from your head onto paper (or computer screen) anyway. Writing takes place in the right brain, so when you're writing, you shouldn't be worrying about editing, which takes place in the left brain. Write first, edit later.

Furthermore, a first draft should never, NEVER, ever be what you publish. In fact, the first draft should only marginally resemble the finished product if you're editing correctly. Unless, of course, you're a professional author who's been writing books for the big leagues for twenty years. But then, if that's the case, this blog isn't for you. :)

Once you've brain-dumped your manuscript in the draft, you're ready to edit. Manipulating and correcting your manuscript is what edits are for. This is where you will go through and find all the offending shallow phrases pointed out in this post and correct them to be deep. As you do this more and more, you'll get better at including Deep POV in the draft stage so that it becomes more of a natural way for you to write. But reaching that stage could take years...although it will be worth it.

Be patient and never stop improving your writing.

Happy Reading and Writing!
-D

Note: Examples and terminology used in whole or part from Jill Elizabeth Nelson's book, Rivet Your Readers With Deep Point of View.

The Purpose of Scenes - Show vs. Tell - Part 2

In my ongoing series of Show vs. Tell, I'm bringing you a run-down of Chapter One of Showing & Telling, by Laurie Alberts, where we dive in to the most basic component of showing: the purpose of scenes. Until you understand why scenes are used, you can't have a full grasp of the concept of showing your story.

First, we need to understand what readers want. Why do they read fiction? Why do you read fiction? We read fiction "to be transported out of our own skins into the lives of others—we read to expand our emotional awareness," according to Ms. Alberts. Scenes are the means by which authors fulfill this reader objective.

"To be truly engaged in the lives of characters, events must be dramatized rather than simply reported; for dramatic impact we must be grounded in place and experience the illusion of real time passing, which only occurs in scenes. We must live the moment along with the characters, especially moments of change." -Laurie Alberts

Remember from Part I of this series, Scenes vs. Summaries, scenes take place in the moment, whereas summaries refer to something taking place (or that took place) outside the moment. Scenes show; summaries tell.

Okay, so how do you use scenes to show? By understanding the purpose of a scene, which is covered in chapter one of Ms. Alberts' book.

The Purpose of Scenes
Scenes are used to:

• create an emotional connection between character(s) and reader
• dramatize events
• move action/plot forward
• introduce or intensify conflict (and we'll talk more about conflict when we discuss the different types of scenes, but conflict is THE single-most important element to moving your story forward)
• build suspense
• create change over time
• introduce or reveal character
• introduce themes
• establish mood
• provide resolution

Scenes make characters seem real, which naturally leads to an emotional connection with your reader. One of the best compliments I've gotten on my AKM novels is that readers feel so strongly that the characters are real that they fantasize about them, make up stories in their minds about them, and want to go to Chicago just to see if they will bump into them. I've heard this from a few of my readers, and when I receive a comment such as, "I daydreamed all day about Micah and Trace and couldn't even focus on folding my laundry," I know I've created an emotional connection between those characters and the reader. You can't fantasize about someone you don't envision as being real.

And why do my readers feel like Micah and Trace are real? According to Ms. Alberts, "The 'real' feeling comes from the reader going through the experience with the character as it's happening in time, complete with sensory detail." In other words, my scenes are so powerful and evocative, readers feel like they're in the scene with the characters, living it, seeing it, and experiencing it right alongside them. That is what you want to bring to your scenes.

Let's look at the rest of the items on the list after reading an example from Rise of the Fallen, my first AKM novel, since that's easier than trying to find a sample written by someone else, or retyping the one in Ms. Alberts' book.

In this scene, Samantha is tending to an injured Micah, who she isn't aware is a vampire. She just knows he is badly injured, excruciatingly thin, and has seen that he has been self-mutilating his arms by cutting them. She is about to treat a shoulder wound by cleaning it with alcohol, which is the "white heat" Micah refers to in the third paragraph that brings him out of his mostly-unconscious state:

-----

Micah had been in a semi-lucid state, aware of everything going on around him but unable to rouse himself. He had felt the woman cut off his shirt, had felt her sure, confident hands ranging his chest and torso before her gentle fingers caressed his face. She had talked to him, too. Well, not really to him, but sort of. Her voice was smooth and low, sultry. He just wanted her to keep talking. The sound of her voice was a balm, an audible salve to soothe his soul.

But then she had grown quiet and sucked in her breath. Micah touched her mind and realized she had seen his self-mutilation. Shame flooded him as his long-absent conscience reappeared, chastising him for what he had done. For some reason, he didn't want this woman seeing the damage he had done to his own arms.

And then everything shattered into white heat as fire stung his shoulder.

Intense hunger raged like wildfire. Micah couldn't recall ever needing to feed this badly. In an instant, his eyes flashed open and shot to the woman tending him. Terror erupted in her expression, but all he could see, think, feel, smell, and breathe was blood. Glorious, life-giving, hunger-sating, Heaven-sent blood. With graceless impropriety, Micah yanked her wrist to his mouth like it was a sandwich and he had gone way too long without food then bit down with unceremonious impatience.

When was the last time he had truly fed?

The woman struggled as he locked his hands around her arm and lurched upright with her wrist clenched in his mouth. Her blood flowed like a river of life into his belly, and he moaned in ecstasy even as he fought to restrain her. He had been too wrapped up in his need to feed to compel her into submission, and she grappled, squirmed, and struggled against him, gasping and protesting for him to stop.

Blood. All he could think about was drinking her blood. She swung at him with her free arm, kicking and trying to pull away, but he stayed with her, using one hand to deflect her haphazard punches, turning his body to avoid her kicks. All the while, his fangs kept her wrist locked in his mouth and her blood spilling down his throat.

He finally overpowered her and bent her back and down to the floor. Crouched like a man kneeling in prayer, his gaze ranged up her arm that stretched between them, linking her to him like an umbilical cord as she continued to struggle. His feral gaze locked onto the pools of clover green in her eyes as his chest and abdomen heaved lustfully. Blood lust. Strong and pure and all-consuming, it gnawed at him like a jackal on a bone.

The woman tried to cry out, but he slapped his hand over her mouth, stifling her scream, taking his fill of her blood as her body finally stilled beneath his.

It was only then that Micah realized she was crying. Tears streamed her cheeks as horrific sobs convulsed her chest. As his senses ebbed back into him, he gently lifted his hand from her mouth, keeping it close in case she tried to scream again.

"Please, please stop. Don't kill me."

Her fear smelled like sulfur as the words clubbed him. Kill her? He didn't want to kill her.

Where was he, anyway?

Micah's eyes flitted around the room and suddenly it was clear he wasn't in Kansas, anymore. What was this place? He had never been here before. Nothing was familiar. How had he gotten here? His eyes darted back to hers.

After releasing her wrist with a gasp, Micah fell back like he had just seen Jesus wagging a judgmental finger at him, and he ass-planted on her generic beige carpeting.

"Where am I?" he said.

-----

We start the excerpt with a brief summary that transitions us from Samantha's POV to Micah's, but once we get past the summary and into the scene, you emotionally connect with Micah's pain and humiliation, his hunger, and eventually, his dismay over his whereabouts. You can connect emotionally because the scene is rendered dramatically. I didn't just tell you what was happening. I showed you. The action moves the story forward by bringing Micah into awareness and introducing him to who will ultimately be his reason for living, Samantha. Suspense is built because now Samantha knows there is something very different about Micah. Hell, he bit her, for crying out loud. And drank her blood! What normal dude does that? And how will she react when everything comes out about who and what Micah really is? How will these two embark on a relationship when she's human and he's a vampire? I can't say this scene creates change over time, but it is the beginning of a changing point for Micah as he progresses from a suicidal state of mind to one where his survival becomes of the utmost importance. We're not introducing characters in this scene, but we are revealing a bit more about Micah and Samantha. The theme of never give up or lose hope, because hope could be just a step away is introduced in this scene. And, maybe it's just me, but I think mood is clearly established for both Micah and Samantha—one of fascination and intensity. The relationship between these two characters, as well as throughout the book, will be severely intense. No resolution has been provided.

Scenes won't encompass all the bullet points on the earlier list, but they will illustrate at least some of them. If you have a scene that doesn't fulfill any or only one of the above purposes of a scene, you might want to consider removing it, because that's a sign it's probably not necessary and the information can be better included elsewhere.

A word on theme, plot, and action, as defined by Laurie Alberts:

Theme is not plot. Theme is what the story or essay is about on its deepest level. The theme could be as simple as "look before you leap" or more complicated, depending on the story. Ms. Alberts uses the following example in her book: "It took an accident for Sally to discover that she wasn't cut out to be a kindergarten teacher and that she needed to keep searching for her true calling."

Action refers to the events that happen in a scene and in the narrative as a whole—this happened, then that happened.

Plot, however, is action with a cause-and-effect relationship—this happened because that happened.

According to E.M. Forster:

Action = the king died and then the queen died.

Plot = the king died and then the queen died of grief.

Next time I'll talk about the types of scenes, which may take more than one post, since conflict is one type of scene that's so important, it might need its own post just to emphasize just how important it is.

Until then, happy reading and writing!
-D

Scene vs. Summary - Showing & Telling - Part I

Authors hear a lot of "Show, don't tell," but do they really know what that means? I'll admit that while I do know what it means, I struggle to explain it to others. Well, not anymore. As part of my birthday/Christmas gift to myself, I ordered a batch of writing books, including one called Showing & Telling, by Laurie Alberts:

What I've struggled to put into words, Ms. Alberts makes simple, and this book is so inspiring that I've decided to write a series of blog posts based on the concepts outlined in the book, starting today with the introductory matter. I would highly suggest that if you're serious about your writing, you pick up a copy of Showing & Telling and follow along...or not. I mean, if you buy the book, you'll be golden and won't need my synopses. :)

First, good writing uses both showing and telling. The trick is in knowing when to use which and how to use them (which, as this blog series continues, should become clearer, especially if you buy the book). What an author should strive for in a story is balance between showing and telling, or scenes and summaries, which are the two basic components of writing. That doesn't mean you need equal amounts of both. No. In this case, balance means knowing when to chill on a scene and give us some summary to keep us connected between scenes and to give us a dose of your character's distinct voice.

Scene vs. Summary
This is just another way of saying Show vs. Tell. In fiction and some nonfiction writing, such as memoirs, you have two means of story-telling: scenes and summaries.

Scene: Scenes allow us to enter the action and feel the emotions of the characters. They take place in the moment, within the scene. Scenes are essential for breathing life into your work. This is where you show the action to the reader. Think of a movie, which is built completely out of scenes (unless you have a narrator who pops on once in a while, such as Bella in Twilight or Deckard in Bladerunner). If the actors just sat in chairs and told you about the scene, that would be pretty boring to watch, right? But they "act" out the scene, thus dramatizing it. That is how you need to think when writing a scene in a book. Think about "action" and how actors would show that action on the big screen.

Summary: Summaries are the material between the scenes and contain background exposition, character thoughts, reflection, or even—gasp—an actual summary of events that occurred over time or long ago. In summary, time is compressed. You're not experiencing it in the moment as you do in a scene. Summaries give context to scenes, meaning that scenes can stand on their own without the summary, but the summary enriches the scene by providing more information the scene doesn't offer. Lastly, summaries are often where distinctive character voices are created. By delving into past events and going inside the head of the character, we learn more about that character than what a scene can show on its own.

Example:

Scene: Pinned to the bed, Micah's hands holding her arms down, Samantha gazed up into dark navy pools of heat that stared at her hungrily. Her heart raced, pounding with such force that she could feel the pulse of her carotid at the side of her neck. Micah's gaze darted to the same spot, almost as if he'd read her mind, his eyes narrowing as his tongue barely darted out to wet his lips.

In that scene, we're in the moment. We are living each step as Samantha lives it. Seeing it as she sees it. Now, let's look at a couple of summaries that could shed light on what else might be going on. Remember, summaries add context to scenes and enrich them.

Summary #1: Who was he? All Samantha knew was that his name was Micah. When he had barreled out of that alley and grabbed her, his friend had called him by name. The other man had come after them, shouting in some strange language that sounded Russian but not quite. Romanian, maybe? Micah had turned and snarled—actually snarled at the guy. What the hell was up with that? And why was he now staring at her throat like it was his next meal? 

Okay, so maybe my example isn't the best in the world, but the point is, in the summary, we're no longer in the moment. We're back in time. Maybe only a few minutes or a few hours back in time, but back in time we are. This summary enriches the scene by giving us more information, and we getting a clearer sense of Samantha's "voice," as well. [Note that at the end of the summary, I pulled you back into the moment of the scene by use of the word "now." We'll talk more about transitioning from summary to scene in future posts.]

Summary #2: Earlier, Micah had teased her relentlessly, playfully restraining her arms as she'd made dinner. He'd become more dominant like that lately, holding her hands behind her back as he assaulted her neck with his mouth, pressing her back against the wall as he kissed her. She should have seen this coming. Micah liked being in control in the bedroom, didn't he? And he certainly liked that she liked it, too.

This gives us a whole new idea about what's happening in our scene, doesn't it? Now, we no longer see that Samantha is in danger. Nope. We see that she and Micah have known each other for a while and that things have been building up to this moment...and she likes it. We still get a sense of her "voice," and we obviously are not in the moment in this summary.

And if we're not in the moment, we are not in a scene. We are in a summary.

Pretty easy, huh? I had never heard anyone put showing and telling in such an easy-to-understand context before. Show or tell. Scene or summary. Those are the basic components, and you need both to bring a story to life.

Think of scenes as the muscles and bones of a body, and summaries are the connective tissues. Without muscle and bone, the body is nothing. However, without the connective tissues, which connect the muscles and bones to one another, the body can't move. But there is far less connective tissue than muscle and bone.

In Part II of the series, we'll begin looking at Showing: Making Vibrant Scenes. We'll also look at the purpose of scenes.

Until then, happy reading and writing!
-D

P.S. Yes, I am still working on a short series of posts regarding POV (omniscient, third person, etc.)

Is Head Hopping in Books the Same as Watching a Movie?

The other day, I posted about head hopping. One of my readers commented that head hopping wasn't all that bad and compared it to watching a TV show or movie, alluding that head hopping goes on all the time in movies and TV shows, so why not in books? I've been thinking about that comment every day since, trying to reconcile head hopping to watching a movie. I've even googled it (I didn't find anything substantial).

Being that I'm interested in all sides and want to look at all angles, I took this reader's comment seriously and have dug into this concept in an effort to either put merit behind it or debunk it, in a manner of speaking.

Before I continue, I will say that after reading other blog posts about this subject, I think a lot of people, authors and readers alike, misunderstand what head hopping really is. Head hopping is not when an author uses a break (either a scene break or a chapter break) to change from one character's point of view to another. That is simply referred to as a POV shift. Head hopping is where an author does NOT use a scene or chapter break and instead jumps from one character's POV into another's without warning the reader, oftentimes mid-sentence or mid-paragraph. Call it whiplash.

[NOTE: For those who try to say they're not head hopping but writing in omniscient, think again by reading this post by Jami Gold.]

I've always been told I think too much, but 1) I can't help it, and 2) how can someone think too much when we only use 10% of our brain power to begin with? and 3) I love thinking and debating sides in my own mind, which is why I'm thankful for the reader's comment on this subject.

I've heard this head-hopping-is-okay-because-they-do-it-in-the-movies argument before, and it has never sat well with me, stewing on my mind as I've tried to figure out what doesn't make sense about it. So, anyhoo, now that I've thought about this and read a bit more on the subject, and tried to give it an objective mind-scouring, here are my thoughts on how head hopping in novels is not the same as watching a movie:

To begin with, when we watch a movie, we are receiving input to one of our senses that doesn't get to partake as deeply when reading a novel, our sense of sight. While reading, we see the words, but that's as far as our sense of sight goes. With movies, our sense of sight is allowed to feast in a way it doesn't get to at many other times.

Following is an example of how powerful visual images in movies are:

A couple of years ago, I caught a scene of the movie, No Country for Old Men, as I was flipping through the channels. I ended up watching for about fifteen minutes, and I think only two lines of dialogue were said. Fifteen minutes of nothing but images on a screen, no dialogue, and no music. However, I knew exactly what was happening. I had never seen the movie before, and have yet to see the whole movie today, but through visual cues alone, I was totally transfixed and was able to figure out what was happening.
Why? Because the medium a film uses to convey the story is mostly visual images. Powerful visual images that show the reader exactly what to think. There is no guesswork. There is no need to ask, "Who's talking?" We see who's talking. We see who's taking off their shirt or loading the gun. We can deduce by the acting and film direction what the story is. But, if you take away the visual images and rely solely on just the dialogue and the sounds of that scene I just mentioned from No Country for Old Men, you'll have no clue what's going on.

With novels, the medium of communication is words, not visual images. Try doing in a novel what No Country for Old Men did in that scene, and take away the primary medium of communication (words). Try using no words whatsoever, only blank pages, to convey to your reader what is happening, and see how successful the book is. As with a movie where the visual images are taken away, readers won't have a clue what's going on if you give them blank pages, or even mostly blank pages with just a couple of lines of dialogue on them.

My point? Simple. My point is that readers read your words and create the pictures in their minds from what you tell them. If you can't paint clear enough word pictures, they will lose interest. We, as authors, must convey through the written word what is happening, because we don't have the luxury of visual images and movies in our books. We must paint that picture in our readers' minds through words alone. Otherwise, readers will not be able to see our stories, and they will not engage. Additionally, if you lose them through poor storytelling or poorly structured scenes, they will not engage, and a disengaged reader is bad, bad, bad, because they're the ones who don't finish your book and may never buy another one. And, like it or not, hopping from POV to POV is disruptive in the written medium, especially if it done poorly (see the link I've included below for more information).

As I was researching this topic for this post, I came upon a blog post written by Jami Gold, and she hit the nail on the head in more ways than one and said it better than I ever could:

Jami Gold - Why Is Head Hopping Bad?

After reading Jami's post, I found myself saying, I agree. Before I learned what head hopping was, I didn't consciously notice it, but I did subconsciously, and I remember being uber-aggravated by it more than once. I remember reading books where I got so lost in who was doing and saying what that I gave up trying to figure it out.

One of Christine Feehan's books did that to me, and I remember going back and re-reading several pages at a time more than once to try to figure out who was talking and doing the action. I never read another Feehan novel after that, because that one frustrated me so badly that I didn't think it was worth the trouble. I'm not even sure I finished that novel, but I do remember being extremely irritated. At the time, I had no idea what head hopping was, but I clearly reacted to it in a negative fashion. So, I agree, a reader doesn't have to know what head hopping is to be frustrated by it.

My other observation about head hopping in movies is that I really can't see how it's possible. We are the fly on the wall watching those characters on the screen as the action unfolds. We aren't inserting ourselves into one character's head and then into another's and another's and back-and-forth we go. We are made aware of only what the director or writer of the film (because, yes, movies start off as written scripts) wants us to know when they want us to know them. We are led by visual storytelling, not word storytelling.

Additionally, movies do have scene breaks. Equate them to chapter or scene breaks in a novel. Both movies and novels flow from one scene to the next and so on. And when those scenes break, oftentimes, a different character's POV becomes more dominant than another's, both in books and in movies. John McClane in Die Hard is likely the dominant POV character in the scenes he appears in, but he still interacts with other characters in those scenes and can deduce by their actions and words what's going on. But that is not the same as head hopping. Dialogue with those characters is not head hopping, nor is watching another character unbutton her blouse or answer a telephone call, which is more a result of POV, not head hopping.

In fact, we lose more POV and inside information in movies than in books, which, if head hopping were taking place, would not be the case. This is one of the biggest complaints of books-turned-into-movies. How many times have you heard someone say, "The book was better."? They say it was better because they were able to see more of what was going on inside the character's or characters' thoughts in the book than in the movie.

So, you can look at this a couple of ways: If you believe head hopping is going on in movies, and yet books are more often than not better-received than the movies they're made into, then obviously head hopping doesn't work very well. Or, head hopping really isn't taking place in movies, and the clearly defined POV shifts in books work better to tell the story.

Let's look at Twilight as another example, because it is both a book and a movie, too, much like No Country for Old Men. The book was written in first person POV, from Bella's perspective. In the movie, we get to see her POV come to life, and we get to see the action, whereas with the book, we could only imagine it.

So, is the movie still in Bella's POV or not? Are we, in fact, head hopping in the movie, whereas in the book we were firmly fixed inside Bella's head?

No, I don't think we are head hopping. What is happening is that we are seeing in the movie what Bella saw in the book. We aren't hopping into Edward's head and changing POV in the movie. We are merely seeing the action how Bella saw it, hearing the conversations with Edward and Jacob and everybody else the way Bella heard them. That is not the same as head hopping, otherwise Edward would give away to the viewers immediately that he is a vampire and we would never get to the big scene in the woods where she finally announces that she knows what he is and he says, "Say it. Out loud." Pause. "Say it!" then goes on to call her his own personal brand of heroin after the cat's out of the bag about his vampirism. If head hopping was going on in the movie, we'd know all about Edward early on, and the climax of the big announcement would be more or less a tiny squeak of insignificance.

There is a scene in the movie where we get to see the trio of bad vampires kill Charlie's friend, but again, that is not the same as head hopping. Bella couldn't see this scene in the book, but she was made aware of what had happened by talking to her father and Edward, so we were able to find out in the book from her POV that this had happened because Edward and her father told her. In the movie, we actually get to see that scene rather than just read about it through conversations with characters who know what's going on.

Christine, by Stephen King, is another book-turned-movie. Written from the first person POV of Dennis, Arnie's best friend, there are certain scenes in the movie that weren't "really" in the book, because Dennis wasn't present during those scenes. But the author's vision can come to life and take a few liberties in film, showing viewers what had actually happened in "real time" through visual images rather than through conversations between characters "after-the-fact," which is how it's usually done in books. However, once again, this is not the same as head hopping.

So, does head hopping really happen in movies or not? I don't think it does, and I don't think using that as support for head hopping in books is a good argument. Furthermore, comparing film techniques to book techniques is like comparing apples to oranges. Both films and books are ways to entertain people, but each goes about creating that entertainment in two very different ways. What works in movies won't work in books and vice versa, because each uses extremely different media to entertain.

In five or ten years, the rules might change and head hopping could be all the rage in fiction, but I'm not betting on it at this point, simply because I firmly believe it takes real talent to pull off the head hop without disrupting the reading experience for the readers. But that's just me. If head hopping becomes the vogue thing to do, I doubt I'll be able to do it. Like readers who love to seep themselves into a good book, I love seeping myself into the POV character I'm writing from. It's fun, and I use POV as my "twelfth man," as I wrote about in my last post, working POV like an extra character to elicit specific reactions from my readers and to reveal things in a logical sequence for the best effect.

Opinions? Thoughts? Can anyone show me an example of head hopping in a movie (I'm an avid movie-goer and can't think of any where actual head hopping occurs)? If anyone has other knowledge that I'm not aware of, I am greatly interested in seeing it. Thank you.

Happy reading and writing.
-D