Posts by Writer Unboxed
Therese here. We recently received a craft question in the WU mailbox, from a writer grappling with how best to show and tell emotion in fiction. I passed the question along to Dave King, editor and author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers–a must-have book for every serious fiction writer, in my opinion–who kindly agreed to take it on. Both question and response are worthy of a share here on the blog.
First the letter:
When you write character emotions into your short story or novel, I was always under the impression that you weren’t supposed to NAME the emotion. For example, if you’re character is experiencing RAGE, it’s recommended that you show that emotion WITHOUT using the word RAGE. However, when reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a novel that many writers are advised to read, Tolstoy seems to name the emotion the character is feeling all the time. For example, Tolstoy writes:
He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her.
So we got fury, alarm, amazement, all without showing any raised eyebrows or clenched fists. I guess I’m trying to find a middle ground here. I don’t mind clenched fists every once in a while, but there are only so many times you can show someone banging on the a table or stomping their feet before it becomes repetitive. But let’s take this to the next level; some people don’t always act out when they experience a powerful emotion.
I just read a novel by Richard Mason, “History of a Pleasure Seeker” and he constantly names the character’s emotions and the novel was brilliant! I knew the character’s motivations, desires, and thoughts and it didn’t sound clichéd. For example, he writes lines like:
Jacobina had taken a scented bath and was feeling wonderfully composed. She knew at once that Piet was not, and the jolt of power this sent through her banished all inclination to guilt.
In the context of the novel that was a very powerful moment and I felt like I got some insight into Jacobina’s desire for control. Try SHOWING that. Good luck.
So much of the discussion on the web on this issue has been on how to SHOW emotions … but I rarely find good advice on how to TELL emotions. Sometimes, emotions are so complex, layered, and nuanced that pure showing just leads to a guessing game. Just because a character raises her eyebrows doesn’t necessarily mean she’s shocked by something; she could be interested, or even better, secretly disgusted by what she just saw and doesn’t want to reveal her true emotion.
So let me know what you think, and hopefully you can help me sort this out. Thanks a million, love your website, been following for years, just before Therese published her first novel.
Bests,
Dwayne Parker
Philadelphia
And now Dave’s response:
Read MoreSo you know we’re not happy unless we’re trying something new. Our latest push: gearing up to premier a spanky new Writer Unboxed newsletter in March. This newsletter isn’t a regurgitation of what you’ve already read here. It’ll offer fresh content, including:
How can you get your hands on this gorgeous creation? (Because it will be gorgeous.) Type your email in the box below, click subscribe, and that’s it. We’ll never share or sell your email addy, and if for any reason you want to quit us, we’ll make that easy for you too. No hassles.
Thanks for giving us a shot. We’re excited about this new venture. See you in your inbox!
~ Therese and Kath
p.s. Have an idea for our newsletter? Suggestions welcome in comments, or email us direct at writerunboxed@writerunboxed.com.
p.p.s. If you’d like to help us spread the word–Tweet this out, post it to your Facebook page, blog about it, etc…–we’d be appreciative. Thanks!
Photo courtesy Flickr’s Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton
Read MoreAs many of you know, our first-ever WU auction was plagued last weekend due to a distributed denial-of-service attack, which took out our site, forced us to change hosts and IP addresses, and generally gave us a lot of gray hair and required the scheduling of massages. Because many of you were either —
a. not aware we were running an auction in the first place or
b. not able to access WU at all because of the static or messed up links
c. not able to access us even after repairs because of our new IP address, which required a cache-clear for many readers
— we want to offer interested parties a second chance at winning some of our offerings — at the final-bid price.
What’s up for bid?
Thanks to all who contributed logos in the Writer Unboxed logo contest. The competition was fierce, with forty entries vying for our affections. In the end, we gravitated toward a few logos that used imagery to show a sort of unboxing. Here’s what we loved, now you tell us what you love.
Take a look at our top three picks, then vote using our PollDaddy poll below. (Votes left in the comment section will not count.) One vote per person, please. Polls close at 8 p.m. tonight, EST.
UPDATE: The poll is now closed. Congratulations to Logo #1 and its creator, the talented Kristy Condon! Missed all the action and want to see the original contenders? Check below the fold.
Read MoreHi everyone,
If you’ve experienced problems with links, or any other form of wonky-ness relating to your experience at WU between Friday and today, we want you to know you’re not alone. On Friday, our web host informed us that WU was under a distributed denial-of-service attack, and needed to shut us down. We’ve been scrambling to recover ever since. With the help of our host, we’ve secured a new IP address among other things.
The timing was terrible, natch. Jane Friedman had a fantastic post up on Friday, which many tried to link to without success. And on Saturday, we began our planned three-day auction. You can find these posts here now, just scroll down, or click the links.
Sorry for the inconvenience, everyone. Hopefully things will be a little smoother moving forward.
All best,
Therese and Kath
Update: The auction has ended! Thank you for all who participated–and who tried to participate–despite the problems the site had over the weekend. We appreciate all of you.
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As promised, our first ever Writer Unboxed auction begins today.
We are excited to offer you opportunities to gain valuable attention in exchange for funds that will help to keep this site running (and us from going crazy). Money earned during this auction will provide for WU’s needs, including a virtual assistant, web hosting, server space to accommodate our growing traffic, our upcoming newsletter, and more. We hope you agree that this auction can be a win-win for all of us.
Why do we think you can gain attention on our site?
Read MoreWant to bid to win a guest post opportunity with Writer Unboxed? The winning post will go live on Writer Unboxed in March of this year, on a FRIDAY.
We only put a blog post up for bid once before, with the Writers for the Red Cross auction, and it went for a healthy $400. The winner of that auction was author Keith Cronin, and you all know how that turned out. Happily, for all of us. And while we’re not implying that winning this auction could lead to a permanent position with WU, you never know what opportunities might arise down the road if you knock our socks off. We asked Keith if he’d say a few words about his WU bidding experience.
Bidding on a WU auction is definitely a win-win-WIN scenario. You’re supporting a worthy cause, you’re encouraging others to do the same within the friendly competition of the auction bidding process, and you’re getting a chance to make your own written contribution to one of the most helpful writing sites on the Internet. Go for it – I am SO glad that I did! -Keith Cronin
Please note that Writer Unboxed reserves the right to edit content as needed and will advise the winner re: the content of their post. (Tip: We generally ask our guests to search for a fresh angle to write about, and to provide content that can help other writers.)
BID FOR A GUEST POST OPPORTUNITY WITH WRITER UNBOXED BELOW IN COMMENTS. AUCTION CLOSES AT 8 P.M. EST ON MONDAY, JANUARY 30TH. HIGH BID WINS. SERIOUS BIDDERS ONLY PLEASE. Good luck!
Photo courtesy Flickr’s WarmSleepy
Read MoreWant to bid to have your book appear as one of three profiled ads in a Writer Unboxed rotating ad? Your ad will run for two weeks in our sidebar, anytime within the next year. You tell us when.
Look at the top-left sidebar of our homepage. See the rotating ads there—with Therese Walsh’s The Last Will of Moira Leahy, Donald Maass’s The Breakout Novelist, and Keith Cronin’s Me Again? The top three bidders will each claim one of those spaces. Don’t know how to build an ad? We don’t expect you to. Instead, you provide us with the art (a high-quality jpg of your book cover or the logo for your business), some promo text (like a selling quote for your book, or a client’s recommendation), and a hyperlink to the web portal of your choice, and our ad guru will turn it into a shared ad space for you and two others.
BID FOR A PLACE IN WRITER UNBOXED’S ROTATING AD BELOW IN COMMENTS. AUCTION CLOSES AT 8 P.M. EST ON MONDAY, JANUARY 30TH. HIGH BID WINS. SERIOUS BIDDERS ONLY PLEASE. Good luck!
Photo courtesy Flickr’s qthomasbower
Read MoreWant to bid to win Writer Unboxed’s skyscraper ad space? Your ad will run at the top of our sidebar for two weeks, anytime within the next year. You tell us when.
Look at the top-left sidebar of our homepage. See the ad there under the header “Skyscraper Ad”? That space is what you’re bidding on in this auction.
This ad is the cheese. It stands alone. No rotating with any other cover, no sharing. Provide us with the art (a high-quality jpg of your book cover or the logo for your business), some pertinent copy (like a selling quote for your book, or a client’s recommendation) and a hyperlink to the web portal of your choice, and we’ll do the rest. OR you can provide us with an already created web ad sized to our specs if you prefer.
BID ON WRITER UNBOXED’S SKYSCRAPER AD BELOW IN COMMENTS. AUCTION CLOSES AT 8 P.M. EST ON MONDAY, JANUARY 30TH. HIGH BID WINS. SERIOUS BIDDERS ONLY PLEASE. Good luck!
Photo courtesy Flickr’s hokkey
Read MoreKath here. Many of you know longtime WU community member Lisa Janice Cohen from her lively guest posts and insightful comments over the years. It’s been a long road to publication for L.J., one that we can all sympathize. But now she’s announced that her YA fantasy novel THE BETWEEN is ready for launch. We love it when one of our readers realizes a dream, that’s why we’re so thrilled to be able to have her discuss her writer’s journey and her novel. Lynn Viehl of Paperback Writer, reviewed THE BETWEEN and gives it a thumb’s up:
L.J. Cohen’s classic-based magic system suits the world-building and the characters, makes sense and doesn’t smother the story with a lot of unnecessary spell gunk. I think L.J.’s skill with using the magic elements (as well as handling the Shakespearean world-building) comes from her poet side. I kept seeing that lyrical influence throughout the story, too; from the rhythms of the dialogue and the action to the descriptive passages.
Ready for a magical yet real story? Check out THE BETWEEN. Meanwhile, please enjoy our Take 5 with Lisa Janice Cohen.
Q: What’s the premise of your debut novel?
Lydia Hawthorne is a high school senior poised to take her first steps into the adult world when emmisaries from Oberon and Titania’s warring Fae courts arrive, each trying to claim her in Faerie. She is an ordinary girl trying to cope with the unraveling of her ordinary life, immersed into a world of unfamiliar politics, veiled threats, and untapped magic. Thrust into an endless cold war between the rival courts, Lydia must tap their power to survive without losing her own essential, stubborn, humanity.
Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
Read MoreWe have plans. Oh, do we have plans.
In the coming months, you’ll hear a lot about a WU newsletter. This newsletter, which we hope to publish regularly, will be filled with fresh and valuable content from contributors you already know, and some new voices as well. (We’ll post a “newsletter subscribe” button in the near future–one thing at a time!) We’ve also been plotting a Writer Unboxed Retreat–where to have it, what exactly we’d want our focus to be–but we’re still working on that one, so stayed tuned. And something else, something that we’ve been brainstorming for a while. More about that under the cut.
Because we’re expanding the WU brand again (my, don’t we sound entrepreneurial?) we thought it might be nice if we had a Writer Unboxed logo. And because we know that YOU are our biggest source of creativity and inspiration, we decided to have a contest to see what the WU community can create.
Interested?
The WU logo we’re envisioning ideally incorporates “Writer Unboxed” or “WU”, and would be easily adaptable to icon size (100×100 pixels), but other than that we’re open to ANYTHING your creativity can bring. Once we narrow submissions down to our top three picks, we’ll put the choices up on WU for a vote. In exchange for allowing us all rights to use the top-rated logo, the winner will receive:
If you’d like to give it a shot, send us a jpg of your creativity with the subject LOGO CONTEST to us at writerunboxed@writerunboxed.com before 5 p.m. EST on January 26th. You’ll be able to help us choose the winner during WU’s first ever auction.
What’s this about an Auction? Read on….
Read MoreWriter Unboxed will be taking a little break between now and the first of the year. We have big plans for 2012, but we’d also like to hear from you about what you’d like to see here in the coming months. Have burning questions? A topic you’d love for us to cover? Let us know, and we’ll do our best to address those things.
In the meanwhile, we hope you have a great holiday season. Thanks for another fab year as part of the WU community.
Write on!
Photo courtesy Flickr’s Pink Sherbet Photography
Read MoreToday is Thanksgiving in the U.S. We’ll be taking a break today to celebrate, reflect on what we’re thankful for . . . and to EAT!
Speaking of eating, valued contributor, resident expert on all things French, and gourmand Sophie Masson is running a series of essays where writers and editors reflect on foods that touched their lives. Best of all, they also share their recipes. If you love writing and food, visit Sophie’s other home A la mode frangourou for a French/Aussie examination on that which we all love: food and writing.
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One more thing.
Last year we were thrilled to be honored as one of the blogosphere’s Top 10 Blogs for Writers by Write to Done. If you’ve enjoyed Writer Unboxed this year, we’d be grateful if you’d consider nominating us again, as a top 10 blog for 2012.
Here’s what you need to know:
Happy Thanksgiving, friends. We’ll see you on the other side, assuredly a few pounds heavier.
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