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Yesterday I wrote about books and manuscripts with wooden prose and a flat delivery.

Ways I thought a writer could jazz up the writing a bit were by changing the voice, revising the work, including vivid setting imagery, changing the sentence structure, and by supplying character movement.

Here are some other ways to enliven flat text:

Use more dialogue. A conversation between characters; as long as it’s moving the plot along or creating some conflict, or playing a role; is a great way to liven up a wooden scene.

Use both long sentences and short sentences. Mixing up the sentence length lends the text a different rhythm and pace.

Show, don’t tell. Instead of telling how a character feels about something, show the emotion through the character’s actions. There are times where telling is better than showing (action sequences, for example), but for the most part, it’s more interesting for the reader if they can draw their own conclusions instead of being spoon-fed information. It brings the reader into the story and gives the novel depth—gets rid of the flatness.

Consider your choice of words. Are you writing in an accessible way? What kind of an impression is our vocabulary or style giving the reader? The worst thing to do is sound pedantic or as if we’re talking down to our reader. Plus, it’s not drawing the reader in. And, usually? It reads very woodenly to me.

Consider the project itself. Have you lost interest in it? If you’re writing woodenly day after day, it could be symptomatic of a problem on your end. Have you fallen in love with an idea for a different novel? Have you written yourself into a hole? Assess what’s changed. See if you can get excited again about the WIP or whether it’s time to put it in the graveyard of unfinished projects.

Has your WIP ever sounded flat? What did you do to fix it?

Have you ever run into really flat writing?

It’s the kind of wooden writing you see from many non-writers. Desultory, lifeless. There’s no passion at all in it…just a straight narrative. A retelling of events.

It can be a trait for newbie writers, too. Eager to cross their t’s and dot their i’s, they might lose the energy and excitement in the passages they’re penning.

I’ve even read scenes in published books that seem really flat. It’s like the writer wasn’t even trying that day. I’ve had days like that, too—where I was just throwing it on the paper and knew I’d go back and fix it later. But I did make the writing livelier during the revision process.

Tips for Infusing Life in Your Writing:

Consider your voice. Are you trying to have a wooden, flat storytelling style? (J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caufield had a monotone delivery for Catcher in the Rye—but Holden is depressed.) If not, try to find your voice. When you’re telling a story about your weekend to a friend, you wouldn’t tell it in a wooden, flat style. How you tell the story is uniquely yours…but you need to discover that voice.

Cut out the dead wood. Is there a scene that’s really pedantic? Is it necessary? Pinpoint the information that the scene is there to convey. If it doesn’t advance the plot, develop conflict, or assist characterization, then why is it there? Cut it out. If it does advance the plot, see if there’s a way to rewrite the scene to give it more feeling.

Create settings that pop. There’s nothing worse than reading descriptive lists in a story. Listing the types of birds at the birdfeeder, listing the flowers blooming in the garden, listing the foods on the menu. Make your setting pop by using vivid words and imagery.

Change the sentence structure. Are you stuck in a subject-predicate pattern? Try switching the arrangement of your sentences a little. Start a sentence with a verb, prepositional phrase, or adverb.

Get your characters moving. Are your characters spending too much time sitting at diners and talking? Talking over coffee? Talking over supper? Maybe it’s time to kick your characters in the rear and get them to move around a little. They don’t have to be jogging or anything—they could be looking for something they misplaced and be absentmindedly answering the protagonist’s questions. They could be washing their car. Change the scenery, use some verbs. Give them some action to respond to or have them instigate action.

After writing this post, I realized it was way too long for a blog. I’ve got five more ways to liven up your writing tomorrow…hope you’ll come back by.

My daughter was a little bored yesterday afternoon, so I offered to play a game with her. I didn’t want to play a long game with her (like Monopoly), and it happened that there was a deck of Old Maid cards very handy.

She did not want to play that game.

When I finally persuaded her to play, she shrieked whenever she got the card and did everything in her power to give it back to me. She was a wreck.

Luck was on her side and she won 2 out of 3 games. The one she lost really upset her. And she doesn’t even know what an old maid is. She just didn’t want the card with the leering, goofily-unattractive woman on it. She seemed to associate some really sinister feeling to the card.

I need characters like this sometimes. I need characters that no one wants to be around, that throw monkey wrenches into my plot.

I’m not talking about flawed characters. Flawed characters are interesting and fun, well-rounded, and sympathetic to readers. I’m talking about characters that other characters run away from, screaming.

You know them—the Uriah Heeps of the world.

Ways to Conjure Up the Ick Feeling for the Reader

Other characters’ negative perceptions of the character. Do they cross to the other side of the street when they see them? Does a chill go up and down their spine when someone mentions their name?

Invade the reader’s personal space. Have the character stand too close to the protagonist in conversations. Bestow them with unpleasant smiles full of bad teeth and malodorous breath.

Grate on the reader’s nerves. Conjure up that fingernail on the chalkboard feeling with a whiny, discontented voice or the habit of arriving at houses uninvited and staying far too long.

It’s not too hard to do—we’re basically going to imbue the character with annoying habits, poor table manners, and anything else that personally bothers us. We just have to be careful not to overdo it—make it a character that goes onstage only for short periods of time or after long intervals offstage.

Have you delved into the world of unlikeable secondary characters?

As I mentioned on Thursday, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to become a better writer. You can use your library card and get more information than you can ever find time to absorb.

Sometimes, though, we need a little extra help. When I was writing my first book, I was definitely aware of areas where I had shortcomings. I wanted more information on “show, don’t tell.” I wanted to know how to write a well-crafted synopsis. I wanted to learn more about creating well-rounded characters.

So, I took online classes. And they worked out really well.

Like anything, it depends on the instructor. But the classes I took were taught by working writers. And I only sought out classes that were in the $20-$50 range. Some of them, like the Blog Book Tour class, were free.

In my experience with online classes, they work like this:

*You go to the website find the class you’re interested in. Usually you pay via PayPal or credit card.

*You then will be joined to a Yahoo group, which goes active on the first day of the class.

*The classes that I took usually lasted four weeks, with two lessons posted each week.

*Everyone in the class introduces themselves on the email loop. The instructor introduces himself/herself, gives his/her qualifications, and then provides the syllabus.

*The instructor gives a first lesson, usually in some detail, and with examples of vivid characterization, or plotting, or whatever the class is covering.

*The lesson ends with an exercise for the class members to do individually, then post back to the email loop. The instructor gives feedback on each individual person’s assignment and answers any questions. Usually you have a certain number of days to post on an assignment before you’re expected to move to the next posted lesson and assignment.

There are classes online that run into the hundreds of dollars. I really just can’t recommend those. I think you can get much the same experience, on a wide variety of topics, at a much lower rate.

Here are some links to online organizations and sites that sponsor online classes and their calendar of upcoming workshops. The classes range from $15 to $50.

http://www.writeruniv.com/

http://www.writersonlineclasses.com/?page_id=22

http://www.rwanational.org/cs/chapter_conferences_and_events#online

http://www.rwamysterysuspense.org/index.php

http://www.romance-ffp.com/workshops.cfm

Have you taken any online classes? What did you like or dislike about them?

Yesterday I stretched myself a little.

The stretching exercise involved the garbage disposal, which spitefully kicked the bucket on New Year’s Day, following a visit by my husband’s family.

I grabbed the phone number of the appliance repairman to throw myself on his mercy.

My husband, on the other hand, was intrigued. What was wrong with the garbage disposal? “Look–there’s something lodged in there,” he said. “Can you get me some pliers?”

I gave him a dubious look. Were pliers the pinchy things?

After my husband decided to locate the pliers from the garage pegboard himself, he attacked the disposal with enthusiasm. There was a penny lodged in there. How or why the penny had gotten there, I couldn’t say.

“There’s a hole at the bottom of the disposal…under the sink, “ my husband told me. “If you put an Allen wrench in there and turn it, you’ll get the penny to this spot where I can get it out.”

So there I was, sitting on the kitchen floor, turning an Allen wrench into the disposal. Fixing things, solving problems? I’m not good at that. That’s one reason my husband was so fascinating to me when I met him in college. Oh! He knows how things work by just looking at them.

Novels are usually about interesting people. And interesting people have skills, talents, and hobbies. In the mystery genre, there are many talented sleuths. They’re not only talented at sleuthing, either. Depending on the book, they might be crocheting, knitting, scrapbooking, or doing crosswords. Having a hobby is a big deal these days in mysteries.

I write the Memphis Barbeque series for Berkley Prime Crime. I’m not Bobby Flay. But my Lulu is.

The thing is…we can’t afford to write characters that are limited to our own abilities. I need characters who are chefs, expert gardeners, and mathematicians. I need athletes, chess players, and painters. If I only write what I know, then my books are going to get stale.

Sometimes? It means research. I cringe when I type research because I’m on such a limited schedule. But if it means lending authenticity and depth to a character, I’m going to do it.

Why creating a talented character is good for our book:

* The character introduces something new, different, and interesting to readers. Dan Brown created a professor that taught Religious Symbology at Harvard. There isn’t any such course of study. In fact, MS Word underlines “symbology” in an angry red color to tell me the word is made-up. But Brown made it real and interesting to readers with his research into symbols and religious history. He mixed fact and fiction with successful results.

*The character is a rounded person with an occupation, hobby, curiosity, or interest. They have a life, they have talents—they’re thinking, breathing people. And, honestly, if they’re not like us, we have to work harder at making them live. And hard work, with characterization, isn’t such a bad thing.

*We get to learn, too. I know a lot more about owning restaurants and cooking after spending time working on my Memphis book. And Myrtle, with her helpful hints column, has had me busily searching through the old wives’ tales and home remedies.

With work and creativity, we can stretch our boundaries and those of our characters. Then they get to use their own, specific talents to grow and solve problems.

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I also wanted to thank Mason Canyon , who was sweet enough to give me the Honest Scrap award. She asked her recipients to mention ten things about themselves.

I wish I were more interesting. :)

1. I break a vacuum cleaner every single year. I got my newest one, a Hoover Windtunnel, 2 days ago.
2. I backpacked around France and Italy in college.
3. I don’t sleep much.
4. I have a hard time sitting still. I leap up and pace around when I write.
5. I took 5 years of French and 2 years of Latin.
6. I have a political science minor.
7. I’m incredibly clumsy. I fall down the stairs at my house on a regular basis and have trouble walking through doorways without hitting my shoulder on the doorjamb.
8. At parties where I don’t know anyone, I gravitate toward quiet, nerdy types.
9. I’m at least the 5th Elizabeth in a row in my family tree. I was always called “Little E” to distinguish me from the other Elizabeths, since I was youngest. But I wasn’t little—I was always tall.
10. Being the low girl on the totem pole at the 2 periodicals I worked for taught me to be able to write on anything. At a moment’s notice.

If you haven’t had a chance, pop over and see Mason’s blog. Her blog is well-organized and thoughtful—a huge accomplishment for such a new arrival in Blogdom.