The Problem of Bobbing Heads

Lately, I’ve come to realize that I use ‘nod’, ‘nodded’ and ‘nodding’ too often. In a way, it is lazy writing. In another way, it is a character mood-check shortcut for the reader. But either way, with 57 instances of the word in my manuscript, am I running the risk of having bobbing head characters?

I am leaning towards, yes. It is too many nods. (I have cut some out before that count, if you can believe it.) The question is, where do you need a nod, and where would a different action work better?

Men tend to nod to show they agree with what someone is saying. Women tend to nod to show they are listening and to encourage the speaker to keep talking.

In my manuscripts they nod because…well, I’ll share a few examples–some that work and some that don’t.

First ‘nod’ in my manuscript. Page 12:

“Beth.” He gave a sharp nod and glanced at the chart in his hands, even though she was sure he’d already committed its details to memory.

I like this nod as it characterizes this uptight doctor. It can stay.

Second instance. Also page 12:

After a brief silence, he asked, “Are you doing okay?”
Beth nodded numbly. What else was could she do? Fall into the perfect doctor’s arms and cry so hard, snot flew from her nostrils?

Okay, I think this one works too. Because she is distraught (fiance in a coma) and basically, doesn’t want to speak and is in shock.

Third instance. A page later:

“Oz’s father, Barney, was not as lucky as Oz.”
Beth nodded and blinked.
“He didn’t survive his injuries from being thrown from the car. The medics were able to revive him on scene, but a heart rate could not be sustained.”

Would she really nod? Probably not. I cut a whole bunch of ‘reaction’ out of here, leaving the blinkin and noddin. (Winkin was cut, in case you were wondering what happened to him.) Looking at this snippet, I think it would flow better without anything from her. Just him talking.

A random instance:

She paused to glare at Katie. “Are you trying to get my goat?”
Katie laughed and nodded. “A little.”

Does she really need to nod here? No. A laugh combined with her words gives us what we need to know–she’s copping up to teasing the lady.

Here’s an example of a nod where one woman is encouraging the other to keep speaking:

Katie leaned forward and spoke softly, “I’ve changed my mind about getting married.”
Mrs. Wilkinson nodded, her eyes bright.
“I know Will’s going to propose. And it’s all good.”

The nod can stay.

And here is one that could be switched for a better action:

“Will you do it?” Katie asked.
“Of course, I will. So tell us, was it cheesy?” She nodded towards the oak. “Gran said you had worries.”

Is she really nodding to the tree, or is she tilting her head towards the tree, or gesturing to the tree with her chin? Probably the latter. It takes more words, but creates a better picture.

How many nods do you have? Do you fall back on certain gestures? (My characters used to ‘look’ everywhere and at everyone.)

UPDATE: I went through looking for ‘nod’s and removed over 20 of them. I doubt they will be missed.

Highlighting Characteristics

So you have a character. You know this person better than anyone, yet you aren’t sure you are getting it across to your readers. What do you do? Give them a nice little list of characteristics that make up this person you have created and sneak it in the first few pages of your story?

You could. But you may bore them, plus the chances are your reader is going to whizz through the list and not absorbing your carefully selected laundry list of characteristics.

What if you highlighted one thing? Just one important detail?

Easy!

Hang on. One thing? Just one thing? One thing that makes this character so unique that if he/she was pushed into a pile of fictional characters a reader could identify and yank your dude out of the pile?

For one of my stories, the fact that the main character, Allie, is always losing thing is a defining characteristic. She is brainy and winning awards, yet very absentminded and thus loses things. A lot. How is this important? Well, outside the story it really isn’t. Everyone can probably think of someone they know or times where they have lost things due to preoccupation. Yet, this characteristic is key within the story. People are stealing Allie’s work from under her nose. It isn’t particularly noted or even noticed seeing as she is always losing things. Therefore it is easy to discount missing documents, purses, keys, etc. This causes problems and conveniently becomes a vital plot point.

Once you have your key feature/characteristic, think of a way to highlight that feature for your readers. Take a lone paragraph and fill it with 2-3 sentences on that key feature. The chances are the reader is going to take note. (But don’t overdo it.)

If I had to describe Allie in a few sentences to highlight her absent-mindedness, I might say something like this:

The expression ‘she’d lose her head if it wasn’t attached’ could have been made with Allie in mind. The woman lost three purses in four months. She was losing documents so often she didn’t just fear losing her job, but her sanity as well.

What sort of things might be key to your character and hence become an important part of your story’s plot?

Chewing gum? The fact that your character walks like they’ve been stuck on a horse for days? A severe dislike for dill pickles? Whatever you choose, make it work for you.

Enjoy!

New Year Writing Workout #3: Discovering Your Character’s Culture

Okay, today’s exercise is a fun one. You get to sit back and use your imagination. Are you ready? Let’s go!

You’re going to need a partner for this one. So either grab an existing character who needs some fleshing out or create/fill out a new character who’s hanging out in a work in progress and needs some help.

Generally, when people think of characters, they first think of their outside appearance. Are they blonde, brunette? Eyes blue, green, brown, grey? Etc, etc. That’s all fine and dandy, but what about the aspects of what makes them real? (Case in point, New York Times Bestselling author, Sophie Kinsella, never actually described her character Becky Bloomwood in the Shopaholic series. Yet, she is so real that readers want to reach through the pages and slap her, hug her or simply meet her for coffee.) So, once we’ve got the appearance down, what can we do to flesh these ‘character’ people out?

Please note that if you don’t know the plot, it’s okay. You can build plot first or character first, or even build them simultaneously. Whichever you choose, try and ensure that the plot and character work together in terms of believability, firing up motivations and the like. Right now, we’ll put our finger on who exactly this character is:

First of all, we need to do some digging.

What is the cultural background of your character? Are they of German decent, Finnish, English, Italian? Small things like this can influence the way they feel about food, family, even physical proximity to others. Personally, I find this one tricky seeing as I pretty much see everyone as part of that big melting pot called Canada and think we’re all fairly similar. However, when I’m creating a fictional character these ‘stereotypes’ can be helpful for filling out small details in the character’s behaviour and personality.

Next up, how does their family background affect their behaviours, attitudes, philosophies as well as how they express themselves? You can move these questions along to the effects of their social background (where they grew up, education, wealth or lack of it) as well as religious background and emotional background.

Once you have some of the bones of who they are and how they were raised and their inner core, we can put some meat on those bones:

• What was your character’s most embarrassing moment?
• Who was their first boyfriend/girlfriend? How did the relationship end? How does it influence future relationships?
• How do they feel about animals?
• What is their occupation?
• What are their friends like?
• What are their dreams?
• What are their relationship like with their parents and siblings?
• What is their biggest weakness? This can be anything from chocolate to sappy movies to the inability to say ‘no’ to the urge to run away any time things get difficult in their life.
• What does their home look like?
• Do they collect anything?
• What are their hobbies?
• What movies do they like?

I’ve built a few worksheets you are welcome to use if you want to help organize yourself in this activity. Context and Character (pdf) Context and Character (Word) (scroll to bottom of page) as well as Character Core (the sample) and Character Core (Word version to fill out at bottom of page).

Enjoy getting to know your characters. It’s time well spent when you hit the pages of your manuscript.

Secondary Characters

A few weeks ago I took out a scene that I felt wasn’t sitting right in my story. It felt purposeless and that it wasn’t progressing the story and was rather catty–basically not being true to the story nor the characters.

Then I sent the chapters surrounding the missing scene to my critique partners and they were all up in arms with comments that were along the lines of what the heck happened? Why did you lead up to this scene, skip over it all together and then sum in up in a sentence later on? How did this rift happen between these two characters? What? What? What?

Ah crap. It wasan important scene! So, I dig through old versions and pulled the scene back out and plunked it back in, adding another three pages to my already big manuscript. And reading it afresh, I realised that it was important to the story and it was true to it–whether I liked it or not. The scene showed the rift begin between the heroine and her boyfriend as well as the beginning of the heroine identifying her inner strength and pulling on it in a time of need.

So, the scene is back and everything makes more sense again. Strangely enough, I learned something about myself as a writer with this scene. I think the real reason I originally took this scene out is that it has a secondary character being mean to my heroine–who I loved dearly. I came to this conclusion when I did an edit when I was plunking the hated scene back in, because when I was done, I was a little pissed. I was grumpy! So I sat back and thought, why is this? It can’t be the peanut butter cookies I just ate. Well, it is because I HATE the secondary character that I created. Seriously. She is a mean, conniving bitch that ensures that she illustrates how my heroine doesn’t fit in at a party. I disliked her somuch and the way that she made my heroine feel, that I eliminated her without realising what I was doing to the story. So now, The Bitch is back and is as mean as ever. Well, for her one scene…then I give her the awful boyfriend back. Ma-ha-ha. The rest, as they say, is history.

Character Core Worksheet

So, this week in the world of Jean has consisted of an awful lot of crossing things off my ‘procrastination list’. This even includes vacuuming under the beds and changing the alternator in my car. And man, have the prices of alternators gone up! It is really quite astounding.

Anyway, what have I been doing this week to progress my writing? Well, the usual Agent Query Connect banter and whatnot that goes on over there. Lots of wishing I had more time to write (but life is good nevertheless). A bit of blog reading. I also asked Meg Cabotif she would be so kind as to send me one of her extra copies of ‘She Went All The Way’. I even tried to be witty and have my email stand out among the undoubted thousands of emails she got from the world’s free book grubbers, like myself, begging to be chosen. Anyway, I never win anything, so probably no book for me. Although, I got a nice autoreply from her email account. It is sort of cool to see an email in your inbox from a famous author.

Oh right, what have I been doing to actually IMPROVE my writing? Well, a little brainstorming. And since I was making a brainstorming worksheet for myself, I decided once again to share it. It, like the other one I have created, is based on content in Linda Seger’s book “Creating Unforgettable Characters”. This has been a fun exercise. Basically, you brainstorm core characteristics of your characters. For example, someone into fashion, may also know something about interior design, etc, etc. You pick a core characteristic and just keep going out and out from that one characteristic as well as any ideosyncrasies that might pop up in such a character. If you are curious, or what to learn a bit more about it, go over to my favourites online and at the bottom of the page are the worksheets I’ve created. Open one up and enjoy!

Have fun, I’m off to ensure that my cookie levels don’t dip into the red (low) zone.