Meaningful specifics: Draw out your character's essence

In Writer's Digest, I just read another writer saying that it's all in the details--things about your character that make him real, true-to-life for the reader. This is such foundational advice, I've been aware of it since middle school creative writing classes. And yet, how long can it really take to master this art?

"Meaningful Specifics." That's what novelist Susan Gregg Gilmore called those details at the mid-winter retreat I attended last month. As an exercise, she showed us photographs of houses and people and had us describe them, picking out, or making up, the details that characterized the personalities. Pretty simple stuff. And yet I can write thousands of words and know so many details about a character I write that I've lost sight of what are really the essential details. I have to ask myself--of the list of details I know, what are details that really define him: that played soccer in high school, that he loved grilled cheese sandwiches, that he wanted to be an illustrator but couldn't succeed in college art classes, or that he's perpetually late?

I read another article, in The Writer, about how to draw the details that give you maximum mileage. It included an exercise to draw, in a single sentence, a description of the essence of a few closest friends. I did, and I found it came down to a story I'd heard that, for me, defined how they were in their essence.

Here's one, I'll call this friend P:
"When there was no food left in the house, P concocted a soup for her siblings and parents that has lived on in legend." To me, the essence of P, what I most admire about her, is her resourcefulness, her ability to create art when everyone else sees nothing of worth. And her ability to survive hard circumstances.

Here's another, I'll call this friend H.

"Despite how difficult it was, and how everyone expected her to quit the nasty job of dealing with fish entrails for a suburban restaurant, H. refused to quit." That white-knuckled determination won my respect early on, so I've carried around this story for years.

I realized that in both instances, what encapsulated my idea of these friends existed in a story, both from a rather distant past, that for me defined who I saw they had been or become. I realize that for my characters in a novel or story, the "meaningful specifics" are the details of the same variety. SO, for my character Ash, is my knowing that he played soccer really that important? maybe not. What about grilled cheese sandwiches? Well, I know that he loves them because his mom made him ones with 3-slices of grilled cheese, out of guilt, when he was a chubby, isolated boy, and that is a foundational story for his link between food and love. He's never made it as an art major because his mother, an artist, criticized his lack of "eye," and his supportive girlfriend isn't with him in college to counteract his lack of confidence in the face of tough professors. Maybe that detail is important. I know his being late certainly is. He was an hour late picking up his date for the senior prom because he spent the time consoling a friend who never got a date and was on the verge of something extreme. His lateness is a "meaningful specific" because it reveals, upon further inspection, that its rooted not in lack of character or respect for others, but instead, a respect for others so deep that he cannot leave someone in need, no matter what obligations he'd previously assigned to himself.

I still feel like I'm wading though a swamp sometimes, when it comes to my novel. I've got so many ideas, words, pages. I see that my revision stage will be about carving out those meaningful specifics from all the other "stuff" I've collected over the years.

I feel encouraged by an epiphany of how to apply this business of specifics. In an opening chapter, Asher describes his wife for the reader: what she wears, her shoes, etc, all of which reveals her personality. And then I have a scene where he comes home and sees her sitting at her computer. I remember I have her wearing bed clothes and bedroom slippers--only because it was evening and it was a practical choice. but I realized the other day, I should combine the two things--the description of her clothing habits and the scene of her at he computer. I should simply have Asher describe her sitting at the computer in clothes and shoes typical of her personality--saves words. There was nothing wrong with her being introduced in bedroom slippers and sweatpants, and yet, it does nothing for the story and wastes words. It's a simple thing to realize, really. And yet I hope I'll continue seeing my manuscript through such eyes--seeing how I can economize every detail and word, to get the most mileage out of each. And thereby reduce my word count!

Other things I write:


Choices for Your Best Birth: Five women share what helped them most, and what they wished that had done differently for their deliveries.


High Fructose Corn Syrup: Thirteen Reasons to Avoid It

How to Determine If Your Child is Ready to Begin Kindergarten

100% Wheat Bread with Honey or Molasses, for a Bread Machine

Lyme Disease and Autism Patients Prescribed Diets Free of Genetically Modified Foods

Mastering Time Management to Meet Writing Goals

It's not that I haven't been aware of what's keeping me from meeting my writing goals. I know. And I'm going to tell you in this blog, which is why I'm still somewhat hesitant to publish it. Because my problem is not awareness--it's about the next step--commitment, and publishing is nearly like asking for accountability.

In honor of the new year, Writer's Digest had an article about revamping your writing routine--check if what you're doing is working for you, and adjust as necessary. Then last week, I went to a writer's retreat with author Susan Gregg Gilmore (Searching for Salvation at the Dairy Queen and The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove) and she asked what do all writers have in common? Her answer was, a routine. I remember her photo in the power point presentation: an alarm clock with six o'clock blazing. It happens to be the time I used to get up at regularly.

So I confess, this is a problem. I went through many changes last fall. My husband changed his work schedule and that affected mine. Illness and back pain thrown in, and I lost a lot of time. I used to write during 2 scheduled times a day. I got up at 6 and could get an hour of writing in before the kids were up. I wrote again during nap time. I thought, when my husband started a job that required more travel, that I'd get more writing done during the evening hours when he was off somewhere else in the world and my kids were asleep. However, that hasn't really happened. Not only have I not accomplished extra writing, I haven't even been sticking to my two scheduled times when my husband is home. Sometimes I just didn't want to get up, or was honestly not well and needed to sleep. (I also went through  bout of insomnia, and I knew I had to sleep in to compensate in order to survive the day of being, essentially, a single parent.)

My husband is currently not traveling, but his new job has flexible hours. Instead of having to get up at 6, he can decide to not go in until an hour later, and turn off his alarm and sleep until 7. Sounds nice in the moment, but then, when I get up with him later, the kids are up, and that's it for any hopes of mine at getting any writing done.

My other problem is my afternoon habits. I appreciated when Gilmore talked about how she starts with facebook, twitter, email, etc. "A warm-up," she called it. I get that. I can't go from the stress of putting two (usually) cranky kids down to nap, immediatley into typing words for my novel. I need a way to decompress and switch gears. I have been checking facebook and answering email to do that. The problem is, an hour slips by, the kids can be up in 30 minutes, and my writing time has just been squandered. I did the same often when I had opportunity to write in the evenings when my husband was traveling.

If I'm ever going to meet my deadline of finishing a first draft of the novel in July, I've got to get a handle on this again. I've got to commit to getting up early when my husband is home, evne if it means I respond to the alarm when he just turns it off for his own purposes. And during nap-time, I've got to limit myself by time. I need to allow myself the facebooking, but, honestly, I get kinda numb and keep scrolling down mindlessly. I even start searching for mindless things to do just because I feel fried and don't know how to transition to the real writing. But I need to limit all that, even if it means setting a timer for15 minutes!

So that's one of the biggest things I got from my writing retreat at Aaron's Books in Lititz. It's not earth-shattering. It's not some great writer's trick to cut in half the amount of work my novel needs.  But it's fundamental, crucial. My level of self-discipline will make or break my writing career.

At least that's half my problem. The other half, I'll save for another post. That one's even harder to confess because I'm not sure I have the strength to attempt holding myself to it.

Other writing I've published:
Natural Deodorants: Do Any Work as Effectively as Popular Commercial Brands?

Organic Food: Eight Benefits for You and Your Children

High Fructose Corn Syrup: Thirteen Reasons to Avoid It

Job Search: How to Make Your Application Climb to The Top of The Pile

Prescription: Writer's Retreat, 1 dose for three consecutive days

I said I was going to cut back on freelancing for magazines to devote more time to completing the first draft of my novel by July. Followers also probably wondered if I was sticking to that goal at all, based on my posts about taking on more assignments! Yes, I've been shooting my novel in the foot with article success. In December particularly, I took too many assignments and barely touched the novel.

So how can I get myself back on track with my goal to complete the first draft by this summer? When I know I say it, and then still keep taking more freelancing opportunities?

It's just that I really like freelancing. It's that magazine article writing is very manageable, finite, and comes with a firm reward and pay at the end. I like the satisfaction of completing something and getting paid (however low it may be at some publications...) I get weary sometimes of writing something to difficult, so long-term that I can barely see the light at the end of the tunnel. Freelancing revived my love of writing, many times--but there is too much of a good thing. I said I'd stop seeking new assignments after Christmas. That too has not been true. I was seduced multiple times by call-outs for a few magazines.

When I set my July goal for the novel draft, I thought I was being generous, thinking I could even finish by January. It's now February...

I needed some accountability and encouragement, clearly! So I went to a three-day fiction writing retreat though Aaron's Bookstore in Lititz, PA, featuring editor Kate Kennedy and author Susan Gregg Gilmore (Searching for Salvation at the Dairy Queen and The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove).I hoped it'd energize me towards completing my novel.

So far, so good. As I drove home last night from the conference, my mind was at warp speed entertaining new possibilities for getting my characters to that end--my mind thinking about basic equestrian knowledge, Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing that I'll have to brush up on, and beach scenes. I got up at 6 with my husband this morning and put in over an hour toward moving my novel towards its end in the plot.

And now I'm going to take that inspiration and work some more this afternoon. But I hope, in later posts, to share what I learned at the writing retreat. But for now, I've got to use my drive to write for the novel!


Articles I've published recently:


Job Search: How to Make Your Application Climb to The Top of The Pile

Lyme Disease and Autism Patients Prescribed Diets Free of Genetically Modified Foods

How Much Genetically Modified Food Do You Eat?

Prostate Cancer: Nutrients for Prevention and Defense