Posts by Jeanne Cavelos
We’re delighted to introduce Jeanne Cavelos as WU’s newest contributor! Jeanne is a bestselling author, an award-winning editor, and the director of the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust, a nonprofit devoted to helping writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror improve their work. Since Jeanne loves working with developing writers, she created the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 1996, which quickly became one of the most respected programs in the world for writers of the fantastic. Jeanne was a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she won the World Fantasy Award for her editing. As you’ll see in Jeanne’s in-depth post below, she is a wonderful teacher, and Odyssey is the only program of its kind run by an editor. Be sure to check out the next workshop, which runs from June 1-July 10. The regular application deadline is April 1, 2020–Learn more here. Welcome, Jeanne!
The Compelling, Emotional Complex Sentence
If you’re like me, you struggle to find the best sentence structure to express each idea in your story. Would a long sentence that draws readers in be best? Or a short one that carries impact? Would it be stronger to have one independent clause with several dependent clauses attached? Or would two independent clauses better convey the situation?
Thus I was very excited to come across a claim that the complex sentence has a special ability to convey depths in a story.
I found this claim in the fascinating book Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison. The book mainly talks about alternative plot structures, but it has a chapter on words and sentences.
Intrigued by this claim, I began to pull short stories and novels off the shelves and search for complex sentences. And I was very excited by what I discovered.
If you need a quick grammar review, please visit THIS review page, which clarifies what a complex sentence is and why it has this special power.
Pacing, Excitement, Entrapment
I learned some really interesting things looking at some passages from Stephen King’s 11/22/63. Read the passage through first and try to be aware of the pacing of the sentences and how they make you feel. Which sentence feels like the climax of the passage? Then look at each sentence and see if you can identify what type it is. Then scroll down to see how I’ve labeled the sentences.
In this passage, Frank Dunning is about to kill his wife and children. First-person narrator Jake enters Frank’s house to try to stop him.
I turned my head and saw ten-year-old Harry Dunning standing in the door of a small water closet in the far corner of the kitchen. He was dressed in buckskin and carrying his air rifle in one hand. With the other he was pulling at his fly. Then Doris Dunning screamed again. The other two boys were yelling. There was a thud–a heavy, sickening sound–and the scream was cut off.
For me, this passage moves very quickly. The sentences generally get shorter until the last one, which forms the climax of this passage.
All of the sentences are simple sentences except for the last, which is a compound sentence. The simple sentences allow the passage to move quickly, and the […]
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When I’m teaching at the Odyssey Writing Workshop and I bring up theme, some writers balk. They’re eager to learn about setting, character, point of view, plot, and more, but theme, to some, seems like an abstract, mysterious, high-school English class torture device that doesn’t relate to what they’re writing. Even those few who have fond memories of discussing the theme of Romeo and Juliet in high school often do little more than jot down a theme for their story, set it aside, and forget it.
But theme isn’t something to be avoided or checked off your prewriting list and forgotten. On the contrary, theme is an absolutely critical element of strong fiction. It’s more important than setting, character, point of view, style, or plot, because it is the organizing, unifying element, the CEO of your story that makes sure all the other elements are doing their jobs and working together.
How well can a story work without a CEO? Well, there’s a chance that all the other elements might work together on their own, if you have flawless instincts. But in my experience, no writer has flawless instincts.
But is it really important that all the other elements work together? Yes. Theme is the key to creating a unified story, and unity is the key to creating a focused, powerful, effective, meaningful, and emotionally resonant story. So checking in with your CEO at some point in the writing process could be extremely valuable.
Theme: More Than a Word
What is theme? For the purposes of this article, we’re focusing on the dominant theme, a general idea or insight the entire story reveals. A theme is a complete idea, and so should be stated as a complete sentence. It should be able to stand apart from the story, without reference to specific characters or events in the story.
What are some themes?
While you can begin your writing process with a theme and build your story from there, like a CEO hiring employees and giving them tasks–and some great writers do this–most writers don’t work this way, so we’ll leave that possibility for another time. For most writers, theme is best discovered and considered in the midst of writing the first draft, or after the draft is finished, to be used as a revision tool.
Discovering Your Theme
For example, initially you might just think, Gee, I really want to write a story where people are replaced by aliens who grow in pods to look identical to them. (If this sounds like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it is). You may not be sure why this idea fascinates you so much. But as you work on the story, what it has to say will gradually reveal itself to you, if you look for […]
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Gianfranco Blanco, Flickr’s CC
Many writers are nice people. They love their protagonists and want them to succeed, so they provide characters who will help and support. The loyal friend who will stand up when the hero needs an ally. The love interest who will bandage the protagonist’s wounds. The mentor who will provide important information.
I see this in so many stories and novels. The impulse to add a character so the protagonist is not spending extended periods alone is often the right one. But if this ally is only helping, you are missing a great opportunity to introduce conflict and emotion into your story.
A character who only helps works against the needs of story. He makes things easier for the protagonist, reducing conflict, suspense, emotion, and putting less at stake.
One key type of ally that allows the author to avoid this problem is the adversarial ally. I first read about this concept in The Dramatic Writer’s Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories by Will Dunne. Since then, I’ve discovered that some of the most powerful stories feature great adversarial allies, and I’ve realized the full value of the adversarial ally in a story.
An adversarial ally is a character who, underneath it all, is an ally to your protagonist. The “adversarial” part comes in because this character won’t just agree with everything the protagonist says and does. He won’t automatically help the protagonist with anything the protagonist wants to do. He wants what is best for the protagonist, but has his own strong options about what that is and thinks he knows better than the protagonist. He sees the protagonist as flawed or failing in some way and calls her on it. He’s not going to let the protagonist make mistakes or indulge her weaknesses.
Adversarial Allies Deepen Conflict And Enrich Characterization
In the original Star Trek series, Dr. McCoy serves as a great adversarial ally, often arguing with Captain Kirk about what he’s doing. In the episode “A Private Little War,” Kirk discovers that the Klingons are arming one faction on a primitive planet. He decides the Federation must provide equivalent arms to the other faction. McCoy disagrees with Kirk’s solution and lets him know. Here’s a link to the full episode, provided by DailyMotion. Go to 35:30 to see the key scene between Kirk and McCoy.
Read MoreCreate a protagonist. Add an antagonist. Toss in a sidekick or minion, or if you’re writing a novel, perhaps a whole array of characters. But then what do you do with them? How do you incorporate each character into the story so he has a powerful impact on plot, raises intense suspense, and generates strong emotions?
One very useful tool to help you maximize the impact of each character on the story is to consider each character’s type. The book The Dramatic Writer’s Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories by Will Dunne introduces different character types, such as the close powerful ally, the close weak ally, the distant powerful ally, the distant weak ally, the close powerful adversary, the distant powerful adversary, the close weak adversary, and the distant weak adversary. While Dunne identifies other fascinating types, we’ll focus on these in this article.
At first, these categories may seem fairly obvious. But as I thought about them, I realized how much power they could bring to a story if one considers what type of character would best serve the story at a particular point. For example, if your protagonist starts out weak, like Harry Potter, then a close powerful adversary should quickly destroy him, if your story is to be believable. Instead, Harry needs a close weak adversary that he has at least a chance of beating, such as Draco Malfoy, so we feel suspense and concern. If Harry has nearby allies, then they should be close weak allies.
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