#posts by pear

Shout out to @roselinbooks-official for the tag! Thank you — it's so nice to reconnect with you on the EmberWrite community. I'll be responding with lines from Murder in Saint Salma Parish, as that's currently what I'm focused on in near-final edits (a murder most curious, a pet shop trafficking mythical creatures, local gods in danger, and a painting of bigfoot that cannot be trusted not to tell the most devastating of dad jokes, oh my!).

your most recent line

Aphiruuk climbed into the passenger seat of Mary Ann’s car, asking for the window open as soon as he settled. Mary Ann obliged. How could she not? There was every possibility that Aphiruuk could breath fire, or acid, or something, and she didn’t have the first idea about how to clean that out of her car’s floor mats.

a line you're proud of

“Do you know why you are doing this?” Sylvie’s slow, measured question seeped into her, a soft question that didn’t demand an answer now but expected one with time. That felt right for this place, a place that understood so well the roles that patience and time played—that life and light and growth needed both—a place that knew that all came to pass with enough of those.

a line that makes you laugh or smile

“I’ve got books upon books of regular, boring paper and one that’s just a whopper of a mystery. Whatever you are, answer at least one fucking question.” She yanked on the old handle. The shed opened into void. The vastness of stars stretched out from the threshold with a cloud of cosmic dust, the scent of burning, and a sucking gasp. “Sure,” Mary Ann said. “Y’know, when I told Ron it couldn’t get weirder, I didn’t mean you should try.”

a line you hope makes readers cry

"Gods, Mark, we wanted it to be you. We strained our ears…just waiting, hoping, praying. But you weren’t there.” She squeezed Abe’s hand. “Someone else needed you more.”

a line that summarizes your WIP

In her silence, Sylvie prompted, “Speak, child. You need not be formal with me.” An easy statement from a god, but all the same, she felt the tension in her shoulders ease. “It’s strange. Ron offered to take the ring the first time I met him. I said no then because there were so many questions that needed answers. So many whys still hanging around. I know more now. There’s this whole world of magic that I only ever thought was story but turns out to be not only real, but part of my family’s inheritance. Learning what Valda did, I’ve felt responsible.” “It was not you who let a lich into the paths of the dead to feast upon the foundations of the world.”

Tagging: @luwianskies, @writer-on-time, @agwitow, @gingerly-writing, @beezarre — as is tradition, no pressure, but I'd love to see:

a line with a scream

a line you fell in love with

a line with a whisper

a line you almost took out

NaNoWriMo - Day One:

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NaNoWriMo - Day Three:

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NaNoWriMo - Day Two:

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NaNoWriMo - Day Eight:

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This is a really interesting ask. I haven’t done writing advice in a while but now and then I get something in my inbox—flattering and terrifying at once—and some of them strike my fancy to answer. I say this ask is interesting for a couple of reasons: 1) it’s clear you’ve really thought about this from a story theory standpoint, and 2) I think there’s some real discussion to be had here about word counts, style, pacing, and crafting plot. I think everything will come back to one question: Whose story is it? So let’s talk.

This ask is a tough ask to answer because I don’t know your style. I don’t know the way you knit words together when story-crafting that makes something distinctly yours. I don’t have your voice to refer to. And part of your answer may lie in understanding whether your exposition is harming your story or whether it's another living part of it.

Story is partially composed of exposition—sorry friend, there’s no getting around that—but how that exposition is delivered can make the difference in whether your story is hobbled by it or flourishing from it. Are you putting your exposition to work in service of your characters’ development? Does all your exposition support the telling of that specific story?

Worlds are places of infinite story. Every place, every stone, every building, every finial on the doorway has a story, let alone each and every person being the center of their own tale, but you’ve chosen a very specific story—a specific person’s story. Choose the elements of exposition that best support that story, and find ways to pass along that exposition that also support that story. Make your exposition pull its own weight.

Are you weaving your exposition into how your characters speak, what they notice, the resources they go to when faced with a problem? Are you crafting scenes and subplots with that exposition that allow you to show character development in their relationships, their sense of belonging, their personal growth?

If your exposition is being put to work in these ways, scenes that seem—on the surface, to the writer who can see the cogs at work beneath the story’s veneer—as though they’re only vehicles for explaining the world are actually helping to buttress up whose story you're telling. It’s the idea that every scene should be advancing the plot, but sometimes “advancing the plot” means advancing a character through scenes that build your world and the context in which your character lives. Their development through interactions with the world and your exposition is just as important as the actions that make up popular culture’s idea of plot.

So then, is your exposition uplifting whose story you’re telling? If it is, is it really a problem? If it’s not, how can you craft scenes around the exposition in a way that caters to the development of characters and their growth?

Here’s one last thing to consider which probably is only marginally helpful: Is your 80k bloated for the genre you’re writing in? The phrasing of your ask feels like you’re unhappy with 80k, but personally, 80k sounds like a pretty good length. If that’s the amount of words it took you to tell the story, then sometimes listening to your story’s heart and knowing when you’ve told what you wanted to tell is enough. Maybe it’s just a function of spinning your exposition into a feature of your story instead of a bug. Think about how you can give it voice and style, and make it really work for its place in your story.

Good luck, writer.

-Pear

Let’s Talk About: Plot – Part Three: Determining Length

Let’s Talk About: Series vs. Stand Alone – Part Eight: A Closer Look At Stand-Alone Books

Creating Conflict

Too Many Subplots?

Understanding Voice

Let’s Talk About: World Building – Part Ten: The Effect of More

What’s Immersive And Why Do I Care?

You’re Too Close – Letting Your Reader Imagine

NaNoWriMo - Day Five:

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NaNoWriMo - Day Twenty-Eight:

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