Season 2, Episode 40: Read It Out Loud!
This week, Mel gets excited because she doesn't have to make another pass on her chapter, but Kemlo calls her out for a lazy/info dump chapter ending. (There's a dramatic reading...don't miss it!)
“You can’t wrap up an exciting an action-packed chapter in...two lines.”
Or maybe you can, but not like that! Reading your work out loud, or hearing others read it out loud, is really important in the revision process. Abby heard of a writer that recorded herself reading her story and then listened to it. If you can stand the sound of your own voice, go for it! It can be useful in getting the nuance of knowing that you're getting your point across, highlighting awkward phrasing, etc.
Mel wants to know what Kemlo thinks about some of the inconsistencies in this chapter - one of her characters is unconscious and needs to wake up. Kemlo believes that it actually doesn't need to be resolved in this chapter, since there's so much on-the-page action, but something that can be addressed in the next chapter. The group does some brainstorming in finding ways to satisfy the question.
We talk about the little ways this chapter that Mel has worked on drawing two of her characters closer, and the subtleties she's worked into the story - not pages and pages of rumination, but enough to introduce the possibility of attraction as a "thing" to bring back up later.
Kemlo goes over adverbs and dialogue tags, and why we should be careful. It's easy to get into the habit of adding an adverb post dialogue tag, mix it up! Find other ways to inject emotion into your character's dialogue - either via nonverbal cues or adding other descriptions to the conversation.
Abby makes reference to Nabakov's Favorite Word is Mauve, by Ben Blatt. This book goes over the habits and tendencies writers get into - whether it's too many adverbs, how men and women write their characters and other fun data points from famous novels. In regards to the current conversation, basically, if you use too many adverbs, you're struggling with being concise. The book has a lot of other interesting techniques and research on the patterns and prose of successful writing.
Here is the link to the gender guesser we talk about.
Keep writing, moms! And parents! And everyone else, whether you have kids or dogs or cats or a job that takes up too much time - you'll never regret the time you put into bettering yourself as a writer.
“Just because she’s experiencing an emotion, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s meaningful. But so what? Why do we care that she’s angry? What does it have to do with what’s at stake in the story?”
The key thing for a story is that it needs to be particular to show us a unique point of view. What is happening for that character? What's it like to experience what they're going through?
Considering this, Abby's looking to add some magical oomph to a scene she's already written, and she and Kemlo brainstorm solutions while working consistently within the constraints of the magic. The things she changes here and decisions she makes about her world's "rules" will have an effect on the rest of her scenes, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - it just means more work, adding another layer to those scenes.
