Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

Yes, it’s Thursday morning again. Today I’m sharing a bowl of chicken soup…with all the ailing passengers I encountered on my flights to Orlando and back. Enjoy!

Yesterday I touched a little on my thoughts on Disney’s talent for entertainment and how I think we can capitalize on some of their ideas. You’re not going to be able to write War and Peace with their approach, but I think some of their general entertainment techniques are sound.

Sometimes, simple is effective. Nearly all of their rides combined humor with thrills. They didn’t get too analytical. They didn’t get too complicated.

Suspense. They kept me wondering what was going to happen next. I never knew what was around the next corner. By not giving their riders too much information, they kept us guessing and engaged.

Their endings were satisfying. They didn’t leave their guests hanging at the end. Everything was tied up and ended on either a humorous note or a relieved one (you survived whatever scary ride you were on.) Life isn’t like that. But neat endings for novels can be satisfying for a reader who’s stuck with you through an entire book. If you’re writing a series with a continuing storyline, it’s still important, I think, to tie up some loose ends for the reader, even if they’re just minor plot points.

Disney was a unique experience—I didn’t have my kids with me this time! The pure creativity and imagination spilling out of the place was inspiring to me.

Say what you will, Disney is one of the long-time masters at presentation and delivery. If you go to their parks with the mindset that you want to have fun, they’ll do their best to make sure you’re not disappointed (long lines not withstanding.)

I’m flying home probably as you’re reading this (unless something dire happened at the airports with delayed flights).

But here’s what I learned from my 3 days at Disney:

They were masters at quickly identifying real characters among their guests and immediately capitalizing on the find. I went to an interactive show (the Monsters Inc one). They’d studied us as we came into the room and the people who became characters in their show had vividly-colored clothing on and an unusual manner. There was a bald man who looked like Uncle Fester from The Addams Family, a sweet-looking middle–aged woman who later exhibited an unexpected devilish look in her eye, and a suspicious-looking pre-schooler who glared fiercely whenever the camera was directed at her. They were hilarious. There was just something unique about them. And Disney had spotted those qualities during our 5 minutes in their holding tank before the show.

Using their technique, I took some great shots with my camera of some really interesting people. Disney World is apparently rife with interesting characters. I think I got 3 books worth of characters that I could accurately describe and create entire storylines around.

Want to learn how to write engaging beginnings that pull in the reader quickly? Disney’s got it down pat. They had, as far as I could tell, several techniques for doing it.

• The big one was directly addressing the audience in a conversational manner. (e.g.: “Oh! Hi there! Come on—come a little closer. Not that close!”) You know the technique. That works well for rides, but pulls the reader out of the book a bit if you’re writing it.

Their technique can be modified, though. The point is that they’re beginning with engaging dialogue. Honestly, most of the books I read don’t start with dialogue between interesting characters—they start out with some sort of narrative (which can lose me sometimes).

• Another technique they used (well) was foreshadowing during their rides’ beginnings. Now, there is plenty of talk about writing ‘rules’ and foreshadowing frequently makes the list of no-nos. Well done, though, I think it can be enormously effective. A hint of some kind of upcoming turbulence. Or even an emphasis on how happy and perfect everything is. They know their audience is mistrustful when everything seems to be going too well. Something’s got to go wrong. The audience itself has foreshadowed disaster, then…they didn’t even have to do it for them.

Their entire aim is entertaining their guests. They don’t go off on self-serving tangents. They don’t preach to their audience (even environmental messages are housed in an entertaining fashion). They don’t lose sight of their ultimate goal. They don’t stick in bits and pieces that have nothing to do with the tightly plotted show or ride theme. Too many books that I read start rambling about description that I’m not interested in, or observations that don’t seem to stay on-topic.

Honestly, they entertained so effectively that I’m going to touch on their techniques again tomorrow, including their satisfying endings. Hope you’ll come back by.

Driving my car to the airport, I was nearly blown off the road by a car on the highway. It flew by, then cut directly in front of me and sped off.

As I was being passed, I knew what state and county would be on the car’s license plate. Fulton County, Georgia.

Atlanta.

Sure enough (and I’m always delighted when my setting stereotypes prove true), the car was indeed from Atlanta.

Charlotte, NC drivers are very aggressive, too. I’m sure when I’m speeding through small towns, the drivers look resentfully at my North Carolina tag and guess I’m from Charlotte.

Sometimes I think a book’s setting alone—without description—can set reader expectations: e.g., a small town. The reader might immediately conjure up a slow-paced, friendly, gossipy place. You don’t really have to work too hard if that’s what you’re interested in portraying. But if you want to twist it and show how cliquey, insular, and suspicious of change these towns can be, you’re taking the reader in a different direction.

I’m not a big fan of setting description; actually, I tend to skim through it when I’m reading unless the setting is very interesting to me—like Louise Penny’s books set in Canada. But just like I enjoy describing characters through dialogue and quirks, I like giving the reader a sense of place through the residents’ behavior and mindset.

Although I would have initially been disappointed if the car blowing me off the highway was from a small town in Mississippi, I think it would have intrigued me more. Why are they driving so fast? Are they late for their plane? Have a medical emergency? What’s the story?

Today I’m over at the Midnight Ink blog, Inkspot. I’m sharing some thoughts on a movie about writing that I thought was interesting, and I’m sharing some regrets about having murdered a few of my characters. Hope you’ll pop over.

Thoughts on flying:

Security, post 9/11, was a lot tougher than I’d realized. Wow.

They don’t make coach seats for tall people. And, I have now come to the conclusion that I have monkey arms. When I was finally allowed to pull out my trusty laptop on my flight, I had to hunch up my shoulders to be able to fit my hands on the keyboard. And I had my pointy elbows jutting out on either side of me. I should have been labeled as a sharp object.

If you sit in the middle seat and are writing about killing people (especially a scene involving a poisoning, which I was revising), some people read your text and look at you and read and look. So I pulled up Windows LiveWriter and started writing my blog for today, instead. The topic of my blog? “Murdering Characters.” Didn’t seem to inspire any more confidence in my co-passenger. It’s amazing how well I can block things out, though, when I’m typing.

Does the airport food seem more expensive to you? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten such an expensive meal for one at Qdoba before….

There are interesting characters in airplanes. One of them was furious at not being allowed to use the first class bathroom and plowed through 1st class, loudly, in protest, cussing all the while. (I was in coach, and it was interesting seeing the flight attendant trying to block him.)

I don’t think an airplane is a good place to loudly make out. Just me?

The book signing yesterday went well and I sold about a dozen books.  The staff was great, the customers were nice, and I got to visit with my parents! So it was a successful trip all round.

Now I’m in the airport, getting ready to board a flight for Orlando. My sister has a conference at Disney World, and I’m going along for the ride. The thought is that I’ll write during the day while she’s at the conference, then I’ll go out with her to the parks in the evening and have fun.

I’m in the middle of my trek to Orlando (connecting flight thing.) This morning was the first time I’d flown since 2000.  There’s been no need to fly before now—Charlotte is 3 hours from the beach, 2 hours from the mountains, and our family is all within easy driving distance.

Of course I’d read about all the airline changes.  It’s very different  flying in a post-9/11 world.  I used to take my son to the airport when he was a toddler and he’d be fascinated watching the planes take off and land.  I’d bring a book to read and we’d happily kill a couple of hours at the airport and then drive back home.   No flight, just a free toddler-entertainment activity.

So this morning I had no idea what I was doing.  The security people were smiling a whole lot at me—but not, I think, in a nice way.  I’d done the taking off of the shoe thing, and I took off my watch and a metal necklace I had on.  Then I put my bags on the conveyer belt.

“Ma’am.  We’ve got to take your laptop out, put it in a separate tub, and run it back through again.”

“Oh, okay.  Of course.  Whatever we need to do.”  I start tugging on my laptop.

“Ma’am! Do not touch your laptop! You’re not allowed to touch your laptop.”

“Oh.  Okay.  You were saying ‘we’ but you meant ‘I’.”  I’m not trying to be a smarty pants, I’m just trying to explain why I was violating their security protocol.  I didn’t want to be  detained or anything. He had a pronoun usage problem.

Harsh look from the security man.  He pulls out my laptop and runs it through.

Finally I get to my gate. An elderly lady and I start talking to each other.  She needs to go to get something to eat and asks me to watch her bags…I must look trustworthy.  So I watch her bags….then stern announcement comes on about not watching other people’s bags.  I’m in trouble again.

I get on the plane and open up my laptop.  NO!  Bad Elizabeth! No computers during take-off.

I’m looking forward now to getting on this flight to Orlando and making the final leg of my journey there.   And writing.  I think that will help calm me down. 

And on the way back home….well, now I know the ropes.