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I think life moved a little slower a few decades ago. It seemed to, anyway.

I certainly remember having four TV channels and getting up to change to another station.

But these days with digital and satellite television, we can page up and page down rapidly through a huge selection of programs. Surfing the web with a DLS modem means we can bring up websites in a second.

Even the television shows seem faster-paced with choppier, shorter scenes. And if a show like West Wing or ER needs a scene with the key players talking to each other, they arrange it so the conversation is taking place in a rush while dashing down a hallway to the next meeting or the next medical emergency.

I’ve also noticed that many books are faster-paced—for all age groups. Children’s literature and YA seems a lot faster-paced, for sure, than they used to be. In some ways, I think it’s a good thing—these books probably pull in a lot more reluctant readers by grabbing them right off the bat.

Adult fiction usually starts off with a compelling scene and then keeps things moving along with conflict (which editors advise should be in every, or nearly every scene). No saggy middles of books, either.

It makes me wonder a couple of things—is this mostly an American phenomenon (because I do think our attention spans are pretty short here) or if it extends to other cultures? Also I wonder if we’re doing the right thing, long-term, by pandering to this reader impatience.

I read Girl with a Dragon Tattoo which I thought was excellent—but slower-paced than most books in its genre. Was this because Swedish culture in general is a little slower-paced? Or was the pace just particular to Larsson?

I’ve noticed that frequently books by authors from the American South can be slightly slower paced. There seems to be more sitting on porches in rocking chairs going on (I’ll admit to writing that way, myself.) But we’re still running 100 mph in every direction, so there’s not a whole lot of difference in our pace these days.

And should we be writing fast-paced books to meet market demands? So much classical literature was slower-paced. Have we completely moved on?

I think to be published these days (at least for a first book) you’ve almost got to have a book with a plot that moves along quickly. And I do think that books have so much competition in the entertainment arena—computers, TV, Ipods, etc.—that to lure readers to novels, publishers have to look at books that will pull readers in.

What do you think? Does pace correspond with culture? Should we write to our market when pacing a story?

‘Information dump’ is one of those terms that’s so descriptive, I could guess its meaning right away.

We can get information dumped on us as a reader in several different ways—in backstory (what happened before the story started), research (when an author is eager to share all the work he did with the reader…even when it’s not really necessary to the story), and even a descriptive dump about a character.

You know how it is…you’re writing and you’re probably trying to get this character clear in your mind and so you describe him. Ad nauseum. Here’s an info dump on Uriah Heep (pictured): He had orange, Tang-colored hair, a pointed chin, and a tall stature. His whole demeanor was suffocating and cloying in nature. His jerking, clumsy walk and repulsive manner was decidedly off-putting. He was tall and pale and his … blah, blah, blah.

The problem is that readers don’t really like to have a huge amount of information dumped on them all at one time. But gosh, it’s easy for us writers to pen it in. We’re trying to picture our character and want to recreate this picture for our readers.

At the same time, as a reader, I don’t like being introduced to a character and not have at least a general impression of him. Is he old or young? Is he educated? Attractive? What’s his relationship to the protagonist? If I can’t find out this information quickly, I start shuffling through the pages to try to find a description so I can at least have an idea who this guy is.

So…what can we do? What’s just the right amount of information and description and what’s the best way to share it with the reader?

The best method seems to be a combination of direct and indirect characterization. With direct characterization, you provide the reader with the information (this is the blond hair, blue eyes, devilish grin part.) Direct is the ‘telling’ approach. With indirect characterization, you let the reader draw their own conclusions: based on character dialogue, his internal musings shared with the reader, and other characters’ observations about him (the ‘showing approach.’ )

Showing is definitely the more time-consuming of the two, but I like it better. It’s a great way to mislead the reader, too—nice if you want to make them think a character should be admired and then later have the character’s true colors show.

How do you describe your characters?

It’s Sunday afternoon as I write this and I’m at the swimming pool with the children. It’s 90 degrees Fahrenheit and there are about 200 people crowding the pool.

I seem to be the only one with a notebook. :)

It’s so hot I can barely think so I’m making lazy observations about the other pool-goers as a writing exercise.

There’s a lady in the row of chaises in front of me. She’s reading Veterinary Times and occasionally taking a bite of a salad. From time to time she reaches over and sprays the elderly lady next to her with sunscreen.

There’s a very distinguished-looking man nearby who’s also observing everything around him as he sips a Lipton’s iced tea.. He’s got a pair of carefully folded plaid shorts on a designer bag next to him. His hair is “executive silver.” I’m surprised to see he has a large tattoo of a pair of lips on his arm.

The lady next to me frowns as I look her way, pencil poised over my notebook. I smile weakly at her. She looks at me with a measuring look…then focuses her attention on the bag next to me. I wince a little as I realize I brought my Malice Domestic bag to the pool—it has a large teacup with a skull and crossbones on it. She’d been speaking in English to someone on her cell phone…now she abruptly switches to Spanish.

If I take a picture of these people and we analyze the picture, we could come up with a bunch of conclusions.

And some of those conclusions would be wrong.

Maybe the lady I’m assuming is a vet is actually flipping through the magazine because it was left on the chaise by someone before her.

Maybe the man that I think looks distinguished, isn’t. Maybe he’d open his mouth and it would be total bike gang lingo coming out.

I’ve jumped to conclusions based on what I’m seeing. And so, probably does the woman sitting next to me. I’m sure she thinks I’m nosy. (Maybe I am nosy.) The bag with the skull and crossbones? Who knows what she thinks about that.

What if these impressions are coming (and they frequently are) from our protagonist? Many times the reader sees the world through the protagonist’s eyes.

Fiction does have many “unreliable narrators.” Nelly Dean, the narrator in Wuthering Heights definitely interprets the events of the book through her own lens. Agatha Christie used the device, I think very successfully, in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In movies, Fight Club would be an example.

But sometimes it’s frustrating as a reader not to be able to trust the protagonist’s or narrator’s perceptions. We have to trust somebody in the book—we’re outsiders looking in. We can get to the point in a book where we don’t know who we should believe.

For me, as a reader, I do get frustrated if I’m aware—the entire book—that the narrator is unreliable.

If I find out at the end of a book or movie that the protagonist wasn’t reliable and it’s a twist ending…that might work. If it’s done well.

If the inaccurate perceptions of the narrator/protagonist are scattered through the book? I usually have less of a problem with that, too. Many murder mysteries work that way. My sleuth might draw the wrong conclusions about a suspect—maybe she saw the suspect out at a dinner and he was tipping the waitress with a $100 bill. The reader, of course, is in on this observation. But we find out later that the suspect wasn’t wealthy—he acquired this cash via blackmail and money is a motive in the murder.

Huckleberry Finn didn’t frustrate me. Yes the narrator’s interpretation of events was sometimes skewed or inaccurate—but he was a child. It’s understandable and wasn’t an obstacle for me to enjoy the book…I expected him not to be as mature in his observations or analysis of events.

How about you? Have you ever used an unreliable narrator? How about one who just occasionally has incorrect observations? As a reader, how do you feel about them?

I have a hidden talent that I’ve kept secret on this blog.

I can recite approximately 24 Teletubbie episodes by heart.

No, this isn’t an ability that I’m particularly proud of. I know that parents are not supposed to put their toddlers in front of the magic box.

But when my now-13 year old son was 2, he took to getting up each day at 4:00 a.m….for the day. This continued for a whole year.

Now, I do get up at 5:00 every morning. But to me, 4:00 is ‘morning’ only by a technicality.

The show made life at 4 a.m. bearable for me—because my son was enchanted by it. And, grudgingly, I became fascinated too. Why was this baby’s face in the sun? What was this semi-buried spaceship house they lived in? Where were these things’ mommies? I became hooked into the story.

One thing that was interesting to me—these shows had a basic plot to them. They were designed for babies to watch, so the plot was simple…but the fundamentals of a story were there. Each episode focused on one Tubbie protagonist. They encountered a problem/conflict (LaaLaa’s ball in the tree! Dipsy’s hat isn’t the right size! The Tubbie toaster has gone berserk!) and then the story reached a resolution.

Those 24 Tubbie stories join the thousands of other stories—books, TV shows, movies, stories people have told me, stories I’ve overheard—that I’ve absorbed over my life.

We all start out that way—with fairy tales and nursery rhymes and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and the Wizard of Oz. We hear stories from our parents about the day we were born or the day the tornado hit and everyone had to take cover in the basement.

Everything is a story. I think writers frame life itself as a story. When I was a kid I loved the Dr. Seuss book, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street. Why? Because when I’d be asked about my day at school, I thought how cool it would be to make up a response! The real day might have made a less interesting story.

So sometimes I wonder how the rest of the world doesn’t write.

Most writers, I think, avidly appreciate a good story—a book, tall tale, a well-written TV show or movie, a play. And we want to entertain that successfully, too.

Sometimes the need to focus on promo or on honing our queries…sometimes the business of writing (which is very necessary these days) can really take a lot out of us.

But then I remember—it all comes back to the story. And that’s what rejuvenates me.

What helps you focus on your writing and rejuvenates you when you write?

A few days ago I was visiting Mason Canyon’s blog, Thoughts in Progress and saw she’d posted on writer’s block. Mason writes for a newspaper, and she mentioned that when you’re writing articles for a periodical, you’ve at least got a format to follow for your story: who, what, when, where, why and how. Mason said, “By answering those questions it helps overcome any writer’s block I have.”

Most of the writers I know don’t have a whole lot of trouble with writer’s block. Many of us have trouble harnessing all the ideas we have and deciding whether to channel them into the current manuscript or save them for a future book.

But I think we’ve got to all have days…whether we call it writer’s block or not…that we just can’t seem to jump into our manuscript. Maybe it’s more of a hesitation.

For me, this happens for a couple of reasons:

I’m worried about screwing up an important scene.

I’m not exactly sure the best way to approach the next part of the story.

For me, the only way to handle this hesitation is just to jump in and write as fast as I can without thinking about whether it’s good or bad. I’ll tell myself that it can be as bad as it wants to be…that I’ll toss it all in the trash later on if it’s really awful. Once I’ve taken the perfection pressure off myself, it’s easier.

And sometimes what I’ve written is horrible. But I’ve gotten past the bad spot. And usually there’s something there—some kernel of an idea or a scrap of dialogue—that I can actually use.

There’s been some good advice online recently about handling writer’s block…and even writer’s hesitation. :)

Here’s my friend Cleo Coyle’s take on it (on Terry Odell’s Terry’s Place blog):

I seldom have writer’s block because every day I try to seek out something new that will spark ideas, fuel the creative engine, inspire my spirit. This is something most writers know, yet we all still need the reminder from time to time. So here it is—
If you have writer’s block, learn something new (or something more) about your setting, background, or your character’s occupation. I guarantee that block will soon disintegrate.

Roni Griffin from the Fiction Groupie blog gives pros and cons of both the “write, no matter what” side (this would be the one I fall on) and the “take a break” side.

Here’s an excerpt:

Write No Matter What:
Pro:You keep yourself in the habit of writing daily even if the words aren’t going to be used later on.
Con: You may write a lot of words you’ll have to scrap or write yourself into a corner. How many people finish Nano and say “Hey, got my 50k words, but they’re all crap”?

The “Take a Break” Argument:
Pro: When you take some of the pressure off, your mind can relax and work on the story issues. How many times does the answer to a block arrive while you’re driving or showering?
Con: All that free thinking time may lead to SNI (shiny new idea) syndrome and you may be tempted to move onto another project instead of finishing the other one.

Roni recommends a combination of the two approaches.

So how about you? Are you always flush with ideas? Do you ever have writer’s block…or writer’s hesitation?