Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

To me, the best time to clean out the car is at the gas station.

So on Saturday, I busily pulled handfuls of camp newsletters, empty sandwich baggies, empty sunscreen bottles, a cardboard box, etc., out of my car while it was filling up with gas. (Yes, this was clutter that had collected in the few days since I’d last fueled up.)

There was a man at the pump behind me who apparently watched me as I cleaned. I didn’t pay attention to him at first, but then—after making several trips from the inside of the car to the trash can—I noticed that he was smirking at me.

I realized that I’d pulled a prodigious amount of paper trash from my car. In fact, I’d filled up half the can. I smiled weakly at him. “I…uh…have kids,” I said.

“Noooooo. Really?” he asked.

His sarcasm earned him a glare, but I had to admit he had a point. Who else but a parent would be driving a minivan that seats seven people? That has a bumper sticker on the back emblazoned with the name of an elementary school? That has a booster seat in the middle row, easily visible through the open, sliding door?

I had stated the obvious and he’d called me on it.

When I first started writing fiction, I found it really easy to use unnecessary adverbs—frequently in dialogue. You know: ‘’he said, knowingly’ and ‘she retorted angrily.’ Then I realized I could just show that the man was a know-it-all by what he was saying: “Actually, the circumference of an ellipse is determined by finding the complete elliptic integral of the second kind.” And I could show that the woman was angry by what she was saying. “Good for you. But do you know where the laundry hamper is, Mr. Smarty Pants? Because the gym socks lying on the floor are the reason we’re arguing.”

If you’d rather show tension via body language, you could have him smirk. Or he could heave a long suffering sigh. She could have tightly pressed lips or bunched shoulders.

When we state the obvious, we’re selling our readers short. They can tell how our characters are feeling by their body language and dialogue. The last thing I want is to have a reader put down my book with a “Nooooooo. Really?”

I read really quickly. But usually I don’t automatically gravitate toward books on the shelf that are thick when I’m browsing at the bookstore.

Thick books usually equal lots of characters, complicated plot lines…maybe even a family tree or a map at the beginning of the book.

If I see a family tree at the beginning of a book, it’s going back on the shelf. I wish I had that kind of time, but I don’t.

Long Book Avoidance doesn’t happen when it’s an eagerly awaited sequel or part of a series I’m reading. I just finished the many-paged Private Patient by P.D. James. But I start out with an advantage with series books—I already know some of the characters.

Right now I’m writing 70,000–75,000 word books. I think my reading preferences have seeped over into my writing preferences. Maybe someday I’ll want to make a stab at some epic saga of a book, but that day has definitely not come yet.

Thoughts on Word Count:

Personally, it’s not something I like to think about when I’m writing. But I can tell if I’m in the right ball-park with my word count as I’m writing the first draft.

One editor (Moonrat’s) thoughts on word count for debut novels: summing up, the highest word count she’d recommend for a debut would be 100,000 words. She thinks that some editors would rather see 80,000. She says:

“There are practical reasons for this rule! It’s not (entirely) that editors are close-minded pigs. The reason is 100,000 words casts off at about 480 typeset pages. That would make your book…well, a lot of pages–astronomically expensive to produce. Since literary fiction (particularly debuts) sell in smaller numbers than genre fiction, the potential profit margin on your book would be even lower than on another debut. Publishers would be very, very wary of the financial risk they were undertaking.”

If you’re looking for just general, ballpark information on word counts for various genres, try: http://tinyurl.com/lm2dyu . Ronnie Smith, the author of this article, is careful to remind the reader that these are generalizations.

As for me, I’m going to look forward to the day when I can study a novel’s maps and family trees to my heart’s content.

Yesterday evening I went to the grocery store to pick up some milk.

The grocery store is huge.

It’s a super-sized Bi-lo and it took me a long time to even get to the milk. I really should have had my walking shoes on instead of flip-flops. And I got all distracted on the long walk to the dairy section and ended up buying all sorts of things. But I’d only intended to get milk, so I hadn’t gotten a shopping buggy or a basket at the front of the store.

So here I am, juggling a bunch of impulse buys, and hoofing it all the long way back to the cashier.

When I was a kid, we had a tiny A&P grocery store in my hometown of Anderson, South Carolina. When I lived in London for a while in college, there was a Safeway near where I lived (close to the British Museum) that was a nice, small store. Birmingham, Alabama had the cozy-feeling Piggly Wiggly.

But now…it’s mostly just gigantic stores.

My husband’s sister and her husband live in Kenya. They came to North Carolina for a visit and I took them to the Costco warehouse (pictured) the day after they got off the plane. I figured they needed to stock up on some stuff.

It was complete culture shock for them, which clearly I should have realized. Any place that has 2 gallon containers of green peas takes time to adjust to.

Many times I really want to just pick up some milk.

Since books are escapes for me, I’m happiest reading about places that introduce me to a simpler, quieter place. British villages, small Southern towns, anyplace set in the past are my favorite escape settings.

In Pretty is as Pretty Dies, I wrote about a small town with a strong sense of community. There wasn’t a super center in the whole book.

Because sometimes it’s nice to just downsize my world.

I think I must be a masochist.

Here I have a perfectly good manuscript (that, I might add, is due to Berkley September 1.)

It’s completely finished.  I’ve completed two revision sweeps for grammar, typos, content problems.

It looks good.

Plus, I have Pretty is as Pretty Dies coming out August 1. I’m in the middle of phone interviews, setting up blog hosts for my blog tour, and all sorts of mayhem.  As my son said yesterday: “Your book is messing up my life!”

I shouldn’t be doing anything but continuing my revisions by tightening up my writing and finding more errors to erase.  But…

I just can’t seem to help myself.  So I have an alternate document in my computer for my WIP. It’s my ‘what if’ document.

In that document, I explore different outcomes for events.  What if a different suspect committed the murder?  What if there were an additional victim?  What if I added a character and had them do ___________—what would this mean for my sleuth?  And the investigation?

Right now, only small scenes from my what-if additions have made it into the real manuscript. But if one of the storylines I explore is really good, it’ll make it into the main doc. That will mean a lot of revising, but if it works, it’s worth it.

It’s almost as if I’ve created an alternate, parallel universe for my characters.  This alt/doc helps me keep my creative juices going during the dry revision and marketing process, and may provide some additional content for my book.

I’m still in the point of my life where I’m reading a lot of Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. Sometimes I even feel like I’m continuing the storytelling tradition by retelling the tales to my kids sans books.

No matter how often I read and tell these stories, the kids are caught up in them.

What I’ve learned from fairy tales:

Start out right in the middle of the action: Jack and his mother are out of food at the beginning of Jack and the Beanstalk. So Jack goes off to sell the old cow, the last saleable asset, for their very survival.

If you start out with an ordinary day, it should abruptly veer off course (and pretty quickly.) Red Riding Hood was on a run-of-the-mill trip to Grandma’s house before ill-advisedly chatting with a wolf. In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the bears had some hot food that needed to cool–and the need to walk off a few pounds. It was a normal morning for the bears until that naughty Goldilocks broke into their cottage and started destroying their furniture.

Limit the number of characters: Fairy tales have only a handful, suitable for easy retelling through the generations. And, yes, the stories are super-short. But think how memorable these characters are.

Characters’ shortcomings can contribute to their downfalls: Yes, the wolf was a terrible antagonist for the Three Little Pigs. But two of the pigs were brought down just as much by their own failure—laziness. Obviously, brick building matter was available, but they decided to go the easy route with twigs and straw. Little Red Riding Hood shouldn’t have talked to strangers. The poor villager should never have bragged to the king that his daughter could spin straw into gold. Peter’s habit of lying nearly caused him to be devoured by a wolf.

Greed is a powerful motivator: The people of Hamelin didn’t pay the Pied Piper for ridding them of their rats; he lured off their children in retaliation. Jack’s greed (he went back up the beanstalk several times to steal additional items from the giant) nearly killed him.

Before an attack, have tension build steadily. We know something that Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t know—she’s in the room with a ravenous wolf. The tension builds as Red comes slowly toward the bed. “Grandma! What big eyes you have!” Jack hides in an oven while the giant bellows, “Fee-fi-fo-fum!” It’s not a jumping-out-at-you kind of fear. We hear the giant’s heavy steps, see Red come closer to the wolf to peer at her ‘grandma.’ Waiting for the inevitable attack creates painstaking tension.

Have the protagonist save himself by using his wits. Now this isn’t always the case in fairy tales. Yes, the woodsman saved Red and Grandma. And Bluebeard’s wife was saved by her brothers. But in many cases, there wasn’t some last-minute savior. In Three Billy Goats Gruff, the goats outwitted the troll by repeatedly promising him that a better meal was on its way to the bridge. In Hansel and Gretel, Hansel tricked the nearsighted witch by sticking out a small bone leftover from a meal to prove to the witch he wasn’t fat enough for her to eat. The pig with the brick house was one step ahead of the wolf: realizing he was going to try to enter via the chimney, he anticipated the attack and boiled a large pot of water.

When the characters save themselves, the result is much more satisfying.

When I’m reading fairy tales to the kids, I sometimes think I’m getting more out of it than they are. Sharing the stories is a good experience for both of us.

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