Today’s panels were The Rules of Writing, Historical Research, Characterization and Writing Mysteries. Here are Michael Stackpole’s suggestions.

Rules of Writing:

1. Show, don’t tell. If you say “Bob was angry,” the reader is not engaged. If you say “Bob’s face reddened and he slammed his fist on the table” the reader must figure out what emotion is. Tell the trivial, show the significant. “On the road” chapters are pure crap (“Crap is a technical term” says Stackpole). Expand your work in the trivial sections if you need to.
2. Write before you rewrite. You can have one chapter you have revised 24 times – or you can have 24 halfway decent chapters. You only become a novelist when you finish a novel – and only a novelist can edit a book. There is no such thing as a chapterist. The end of the novel will tell you where the novel begins. Just keep pushing forward. Take notes – keep a notebook for each novel. Correcting is OK – revising is not.
3. Never settle for an easy way out. If you can say “I’ve seen this before” then make it tougher and nastier. “Cookie cutter books” are like eating potato chips – it beats not reading, but it’s just salty junk food.
4. Double-duty scenes. Every scene should do more than one thing. Characterization plus ___. “I don’t need to know you know all the colors in the crayon box.” Description should be only a couple of paragraphs to give character an emotional response. Craft materially and content dense stories. This allows readers to get totally engaged. Readers are thinking “I know how this book ends” and the author says “No you don’t.” If the author succeeds in a logical manner, the reader will come back. Toss out vital clues during an emotional scene – you can’t be logical when you’re being emotional.
5. Continuity Bolts. Llook for things you can reuse to save space for more emotion/action/etc. You can also compare new places to old places – “it was exactly like my usual bar only it had ferns.” Make the readers do all the work.
6. Dealing with “he said,” “she said.” It’s a waste of space. “They act like a big fat comma to slow things down.” Make sure each character has a unique voice. Children speak in sentences that contain roughly as many words as their age in years. Professionals develop jargon. Educated characters use long sentences and long words of Latin derivation. Uneducated characters use short sentences, cursing, of German derivation. You can have characters name each other (“Well, Mr. Wolfe…”) You can also use descriptors – “John wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘I didn’t think you’d meet me here.'” The only time you use tags is to slow down the action. “I’m glad you made it out of the sewers,” HE SAID, “because the city’s on fire.”
7. Conflict is the engine of the story. There are 5 basic conflicts: Man vs Self, Man vs Man, Man vs Society, Man vs Nature, Man vs Supernatural or Technological. (Nature has no intelligence behind the force; Supernatural has intelligence)
8. Research everything, Choreograph everything. You know you’ve done enough research when you’re using it to avoid writing. Just jot down “Explain how engine works here” and keep writing. Research includes interviewing people. Everybody wants to be in a book! They’ll tell you things they shouldn’t, too.

Characterization:

People read for characters. It’s not Arthur Conan Doyle’s mysteries but Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Characterization Techniques. Stackpole says, “None of these techniques is ‘The right one.’ It’s usually a mix and match of several.”

1. Modeling: chose a real person as a model for your character (friends/family/famous person). A subcategory is physical modeling – just using a physical description of someone. Problems: a) unless you are actually writing “roman a clef” (every character is modeled on a real person but names are changed to avoid lawsuits), you may pick the wrong model for your story; b) you may adhere too rigidly to the model and stunt character’s growth; c )internal consistency suffers because you can’t tell what is in someone’s mind – people lie to themselves; d) you might hit too close to home with friends and family; e) if the model is recognized,the reader will be distracted or thrown out of story – or there might be lawsuits!
2. Archetypes: like a casting role. This is very easy to create interactions (Black Hat vs White Hat) between characters. Problems: a) inherently shallow and you have to work very hard to develop characters; b) because archetypes are so familiar, you might not push yourself hard enough to develop the characters as unique individuals; c )if the archetype is recognized, the reader will be distracted or thrown out of the story.
3. Compositing: a little bit of both of the above. Gives more depth to the characters, with strengths and weaknesses; more flexibility than strict modeling. Also good for modernizing historic figures. Problems: a it )might just not work (the mix of traits just might not logically flow, like Patton, the Drag Queen); b) you might have so much stuff that you put too much onto the page; c) you have the same problems as with modeling
4. Organic Development: character grows as story grows. The character is a good fit for the story and progresses logically. Problems: a) inherent development eats up a lot of words – you’re feeling your way through. (You’ll either have to take out all the crap or figure out how to carry it forward); b) characters may go off in different directions than what you imagined; c) sometimes a secondary character hijacks the story -you can I) accept it and write the new story, II) save the character for a different story, III) use that character to knock some edges off the main character; d) a lot of their conflict tends to be internal and you need external trigger or ways to represent conflict (have the characters react and vent).
5. Deliberate Design: these characters fit well into the story and conflicts are a lot sharper; they are highly internally consistent. Problems: characters may be too perfect – no room for growth (write the story of how they became perfect)

A Quick Technique: write two statements about the character that run in one direction, then write one statement that runs counter to those. “Blitzkrieg Characterization.” This creates an enigma and sets the hook. (“Bob always had a good word for everyone. He shook everyone’s hand and smiled. But you didn’t want him to take up the church offering.”)

The less the reader knows about the character, the better – they like discovering details. Also, don’t lock yourself in with too much detail.

Stackpole also says, “Forget the ‘fatal flaw’ – give your characters challenges instead.”

This is courtesy of Michael Stackpole’s lecture at Dragoncon.

First, remember that you are not editing as you go along. As Stackpole says, “first, dig the hole” – get the manuscript down before you play with it.

In order to edit the most effectively, Stackpole recommends printing the manuscript out and working on it in a different location from the one in which you write. This forces your brain to switch to editor mode and keeps those two “jobs” separate for you. You should be able to “turn off” one side of your brain and work either as a writer or an editor, but not switch back and forth at the same time.

When editing, if you come across a place in the manuscript where you want to make changes, simple write “FIX” in the margin and keep editing. It’s very important not to switch back into writer mode, but to keep working with the analytical side of your brain to complete your edits. You will go back to writing once you’re done with the edits.

Here are four tips to help you with this process:

1. Create a scene inventory for the manuscript. This is a one-line description for each scene, giving general plot points, tone and nature of the scene (action, technically intense, emotional, etc). For each scene, ask yourself whether it moves the story forward – if not, cut that scene
2. Check the story arcs for each of your characters. Are they genuine? What are the character’s goals, and what obstacles prevent them from reaching those goals? What is the character’s emotional journey? Be sure you have not dropped anything from the arcs, or left out any important information.
3. Make sure your content is genre-appropriate in terms of emotion, action, and thought percentages. For example, for a science-fiction work, you should have something in the ratio of 40-45% action scenes, 40-45% problem-solving scenes, and 15-20% emotional scenes. For romance, the ratio would be more like 15% action, 5% problem-solving, and 80% emotion.
4. When are you through editing? You’re going to write the first draft and then edit, then write a second draft and edit that, and maybe even do a third pass. Stackpole proposes a 10% Rule: when you change fewer than 10% of the words at the end of an edit, it’s time to wrap it up and send it out.

The thing to keep in mind about writing and editing is to keep them separated in your mind. When you’re writing, just write. When you’re editing, just edit. In this way, you’ll develop two different types of skills which will work together to produce your best possible manuscript.

What are some editing tips you’ve learned that help you improve your manuscript?