Jigsaw Puzzles and Stories Need Substance

 

I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, so Roland gave me a “Personalized Hometown Puzzle” of DeTour Village, Michigan, for Christmas. DeTour is the light gray spot on the mainland in the upper right-hand corner of the puzzle. Unfortunately, the people who made the puzzle didn’t put any thought into it. As long as it contained DeTour, they didn’t care what was around it. And that’s why I finally gave up, as you can see from the darker gray areas that show the mat (also a present from Roland) below the puzzle.

Putting some of the land together was difficult, but I enjoyed the challenge. Then I got to Lake Huron. There are a few places with writing identifying reefs and shoals, but most of it is simply a uniform blue. Even the shapes of the pieces didn’t help because too many are similar on the two or three sides that matched the part I had completed. But if I put them in the wrong spot, nothing I tried after that would fit. I did replace several pieces with others in an effort to find the right ones, but that didn’t work, either.

So I gave up.

It didn’t have to be that way. All the puzzle maker had to do was move the image north, and possibly a little bit west, so that the puzzle area was mostly land.

Writing fiction is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Each piece must fit in its place to make a cohesive whole, and the story needs substance to give the reader clues about where each piece fits. Too many passages that don’t add to the story make a reader give up before finishing the book, which also loses the author an audience for the next one.

That’s where it becomes important to cut unnecessary material. Sometimes that’s all I have to do. But if it’s not enough, maybe I need to move the story north (figuratively speaking) and possibly a little bit west.

Because jigsaw puzzles and stories both need substance.

To Err is Human

 

I like to unwind in front of the television before going to bed, and there isn’t much on at that time of night. So sometime I watch old game shows on Buzzr, and one of them is Super Password with Bert Convy.

The other night I caught what I thought was a rather significant error. But before I go into that, let me explain a bit about how the show works.

There are a series of puzzles involving five clues each. The contestants play with celebrity guests, and the initial object is to guess those clues from one-word hints and then use them to solve the puzzle. The first puzzle is worth $100, the second $200, and so on until someone reaches $500. The winner of the $200 puzzle gets to play Ca$hword for additional money that they get to keep even if they don’t win the game. After that, they contestants change celebrity partners and the game goes on.

So here’s what I saw the other night. After the $200 puzzle, Bert Convy picked up the box with the Ca$hword clues, then set it down again and told the contestants to change partners. The tape never showed them playing Ca$hword, however. Then, after the commercial, and having changed partners, the male contestant asked if they weren’t going to play Ca$hword, and Bert said something like, “We just did that.” Nobody said anything else (at least on the tape), and the game went on with that contestant losing.

The producers of the show weren’t perfect, and when they made an error that prejudiced a player and couldn’t be fixed right away, they usually invited that player to return again as a “new” contestant. I don’t know if that happened here or if the contestant even pressed his complaint. He might not have won the Ca$hword money anyway and may have felt that the honor of being on Super Password was enough. I hope he did press it, though, because the producers would probably have appreciated learning about it that way rather than having someone else point it out later.

That’s how I feel as a writer. If you are reading my work and discover an error, please point it out. If I can do something about it, I will. Or maybe it isn’t wrong at all, in which case bringing it up will give me a chance to explain it.

But I appreciate knowing even if I can’t do anything about it. I hired a professional cover designer for my first middle-grade historical, Desert Jewels, which is about a Japanese girl living in California at the beginning of World War II. After it was published, a Chinese friend told me that the girl on the cover was Chinese rather than Japanese. I take responsibility for the error since I had rejected some cover ideas and approved this one, and it bothered me more than it did my Chinese friend. But even though it was too late to change it, I was glad I heard it from her rather than being blind-sided by someone who was not as kind about it.

If you see an error in a story or a book, don’t worry about hurting the writer’s feelings.

Better to know sooner than later.

Tell Me What I'm Doing Wrong

 

Every writer needs at least one critique partner. It could be an individual or a group, and I have both. Either way, we need someone to keep us on track

Sometimes it’s big things, such as beginning a book with an epidemic that doesn’t produce the desired outcome. My online critique partner, Celeste Charlene, is a retired nurse, so I asked her for advice on what illness to use. She told me there were none that worked the way I wanted, at least not at that time in that place. Although she didn’t yet know what the story was about, she suggested some other possibilities to achieve the same outcome, including a fire, and that’s what I used.

The little things are almost as important, and they add up much faster. Often, it’s just a case of confusing my reader. I know who I’m talking about or what I mean to say, and sometimes I assume my readers will read my mind as well as the words on the paper. So when Celeste or members of the Highland Writers Group misinterpret what I said, or which character I’m referring to, I know it needs clarifying.

These independent sets of eyes make my stories so much better.

It works both ways, of course. I can’t expect to take without giving. I provide the same types of feedback to Celeste as she gives me. And it works the same way in my critique group.

Not everyone is a good critique partner, however. You don’t want Aunt Nancy patting you on the back and telling you what a wonderful writer you are. Instead, you want a Celeste Charlene who understands your writing style and notices and points out the flaws in the story. Celeste and I “met” online as part of a three-person critique group, but we didn’t fit well with the other person, who soon left to find a more compatible group. But Celeste and I have been partners for ten or fifteen years.

Although we must understand each other’s writing style, that isn’t the same as critiquing it. Since every writer is—and should be—different, style is a personal matter. We do discuss it, however, asking each other questions to make sure we understand the ramifications of our choices.

If you aspire to be a writer, find a good critique partner or group to tell you what you’re doing wrong.

I’m glad I did.

__________

The photo at the top of this post shows Celeste Charlene and me in 2012.  

It's a Zoom World

 

We don’t know how good we have it.

Imagine what it was like to leave home and not know what was happening to friends or family until a rare letter came through. Since I write historical fiction, some of my characters experience this isolation.

When COVID 19 shut everything down, I thought I was cut off from most of my creative groups. I still communicated regularly with my online critique partner, but what about writers’ conferences and meetings of my photography club? I missed the in-person contact, and I still do. But thanks to Zoom and its competitors, face-to-face interaction is not dead.

The Highland Writers Group had been meeting in-person at coffee houses, but it quickly adjusted to the pandemic by adopting a Zoom meeting format where we chat a bit and then read and critique our work. We have since returned to meeting at venues that allow for in-person interaction, but Zoom is still available for those who are worried about COVID or for whom travel to the in-person location is inconvenient.

The Calumet Region Photo Club (CRPC) also adjusted by holding its meeting via Zoom. And somebody from the umbrella group developed a computer program for holding internet competitions. Of course, that only works for digital images, so those clubs that want to have print competitions must do them in person. My club has chosen to stick with digital competitions for now, and that’s fine with me since I rarely entered prints before the pandemic. (Digital images are cheaper and less work.)

CRPC had an in-person picnic in the summer and an in-person Christmas dinner in December, and they were both wonderful. We thought we were going to return to in-person program and mentoring meetings starting tomorrow, but circumstances interfered and we’ll be online for another month.

I really miss attending writers’ conferences, and I was looking forward to attending the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ (SCBWI) Midwest conference in April. So I was really disappointed when that got cancelled. But the SCBWI has been offering free online workshops for members, and I’ve taken advantage of some of them. That isn’t a Zoom format, but I do get to see the presenters, and those who watch real-time can use the chat function to ask questions.

In-person meetings are always the best way to foster relationships and to learn from others, and I can’t wait until things return to the old normal. At least, I hope they will do that.

But the pandemic hasn’t eliminated all opportunities to interact with other creative individuals and learn from them.

And I’m grateful.

__________

The photo at the top of this post shows the Highland Writers Group’s March 13, 2021 Zoom meeting.  

New Year, Same Person: Some Things Never Change

 

My brother was going through some boxes that my mother left behind after her death, and he came across a report card from my first year in school. I was seven years old and attending The Community School in Amman, Jordan, which was a private school for English-speaking students.

It’s amazing how closely that progress report matches up with my subsequent life. For example, “Her reading is very good. She is eager to read and devours any book given to her.” Or, when discussing mathematics, “Very good & quick. She can now do addition, subtraction & multiplication sums without difficulty. She finds problems easy to solve.” English and math were always my strongest subjects, and I am still devouring books.

Then there were those subjects that weren’t my strengths then and still aren’t today. The progress report doesn’t give grades, and Mrs. Palmer was good at wording things diplomatically. For example, here is the comment on geography. “This new subject does not yet mean much to her.” And in spite of being a world traveler, it still doesn’t. (I am better with those places I have actually visited, however.)

Or here is what she said about handwriting and spelling, which were always my worst subjects and the only ones I ever got Ds in during elementary and high school. “She has tried very hard with her writing and has made satisfactory progress. The letters are now formed more evenly. Textbook work good. She has made a good start in spelling.”

Some things do change, of course. Consider these comments: “All her oral work is hampered with shyness” and “she is still somewhat nervous and shy with adults.” I’m still an introvert, but I’ve worked very hard to overcome my shyness. Many of my acquaintances would be surprised to learn that it was ever one of my major characteristics.

The other big difference is that I wasn’t writing stories back then. But I have always had a vivid imagination, so I may have made them up in my mind.

The point I’m trying to make is that our early years often predict our later ones. And I hope that Mrs. Palmer’s final comments are still true today.

“Kathryn is a helpful little girl. She is always eager to learn & has made good progress in all her work.”

I’d be happy to leave that as my legacy.