Between you and me, "between you and I" is annoying

Watching a TV show written by well-paid writers. TWICE tonight characters have said, "Between you and I." (Okay, with ONE it might be just a character who doesn't speak well. But there were two, and they were both attorneys, presumably educated. I think it's the writer, not the characters, who doesn't know how to talk.)

I understand that I'm approaching a very slippery slope, and if I keep getting cranky about things like that, I will pitch over that precipice and slide down to the bottom where I will become one of those who mutters and takes photos of signs with inappropriate apostrophes and posting them on Pinterest with scathing captions.

But really. Did no one on that TV set, esp the expensive writers, hear something off about "between you and I?"

If they'd pay me, I'd check their grammar. Heck, I'd do it for free.

Alicia walking up to the edge and peering over and thinking it doesn't look that steep

Call to action examples

Who says I'm behind??  This comment asked for examples, and it was only 3 months ago. Anyway, Claire is referring to this post: http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/2011/12/call-to-action.html

Clare K. R. Miller said...

I mean, I'm still not sure what the call to action is, but at least I know it's not the same thing that seems like it should be as early in the story as possible. I wouldn't mind some examples of calls to action, if you have them on hand...

Okay, Claire. You were mentioning that the confusion might be between the "inciting incident/event" and the call to action. The inciting incident happens a bit earlier, and might not happen TO the protagonist (it could be just a general event). But the call to action is more often really aimed right at this character-- it's a call not to generalized action, but calling for specific action from this specific person. So:  

Inciting incident: The attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war, leading to universal conscription.

Call to action: Johnny gets the draft letter addressed to him personally. 

More examples:  

Inciting incident: The homicide unit is called to the crime scene to see the dead body.

 Call to action: Detective Miller get a call from the police commissioner, asking to be kept informed.

Inciting incident: There's a notice posted for auditions for the class play. 
 Call to action: Best friend wants to try out but is nervous so begs Callie to come along.

Inciting incident: The doctor points out that the triglycerides are way up.  
Call to action: Mike goes the gym and passes the free-weight room, noticing how buff all the weightlifters are... and then catches sight of himself in the mirror... not buff.

Inciting incident: As predicted by the polls, Sarah wins the mayoral election.  
Call to action: Her first day on the job, the city comptroller confesses that the city is broke and won't make the next payroll unless Sarah finds $30K quick.

So....  The call to action is what specifically provides the incentive for the protagonist to start acting, going to the draft examination, taking a mortgage on her house to pay the city payroll, enrolling in a weight-training class, trying out for a part in the play, whatever the character  must do to get into there and start engaging the conflict and moving the plot. In the original post, I suggest that this be a new action, something he/she hasn't done before-- this isn't just another dead body, not just another day at the office.

Other examples? How about from your own stories?

Alicia

Past Participial Modifiers

Okay, so we might have discussed present participial phrases here a time or two. (cough 19 cough) Now we'll talk about past participial phrases, which are exactly the same as present participial phrases except they use past participles instead of present participles.

Past participle:
evaluated

Present participle:
evaluating

Both forms can be used to conjugate verbs. The present form can be used as a noun (technically, a gerund).  And both can be used as adjectives.

Evaluating the competition, the coach looked worried.
Evaluated for speed, the other team posted record times.

In both examples, the introductory phrases -- adjectives, remember -- modify the nouns they go next to. Because that's what we do with modifiers. We put them next to the words they modify.

Just like a present participial phrase, a past participial phrase can be misplaced:

The other team ate sandwiches, evaluated for speed.

This implies the sandwiches are evaluated for speed. It is a misplaced modifier because it has not been placed next to the word it modifies.

The sandwiches had too much mustard, evaluated for speed.

This is a dangling modifier because it cannot attach to any noun in that sentence. Neither the sandwiches nor the mustard are being evaluated for speed.

And if you think those examples look bizarre and funny, well, they are meant to. But so will every other botched PPP once you learn to spot this kind of error.

Theresa

Line editing at RU

The brains at Romance University thought it would be fun to show some line editing techniques in my columns. And they're right, this is fun. Volunteers send in their first two pages, and I randomly choose one and put it through the Theresa machine. We'll do this every other month (agent Sara Megibow will do the same in the gap months).

Today's entry was very well written, but there were a couple of edits that won't surprise long-time readers of this blog. You guys know what I do to the bling and the -ing!

Theresa

Minor sentence fix-- what would you do?

When I'm working with another writer, I don't have the freedom just to transform sentences I might have with my own writing. Much as I might like to, I can't rewrite the book or paper for them. Rather I need to make changes that will improve clarity without changing their voice or purpose or meaning, and without making the sort of small changes that will require big changes in the paragraphs around this sentence.

Anyway, I came across one sentence today that ended in "into," and no matter where we end up in debates about ending on a preposition, ending on that particular one (it's really two ... in and to) usually makes for an ugly sentence. So right away, I thought about how to get rid of that. Often, I can just delete the preposition and the sentence works fine, like:
That's the state I'm dwelling in.
can become:
That's the state I'm dwelling.
 without any loss of meaning. It's still not a particularly GOOD sentence, but it's serviceable, and maybe it doesn't have to be very good. Anyway, it's an easy fix to a sentence when I have more important issues, like finishing this edit by dinner.

But sometimes mere deletion of the preposition doesn't help much. Here's a sentence that's part of a biography (the syntax is identical, but I changed the details, if you're wondering why on earth anyone would put in a bio that they rented a storage closet ):

By then I had enough money and was able to rent a storage closet to put my bicycles and tools into.

That's the sort of sentence we often write when we're trying to get from point A (here, poverty) to point B (starting a bicycle repair business), just a waystation between departure and destination. And so the sentence is just conveying some information, and doesn't have to be really sparkling (save that for the great success sentences coming up). But even a waystation sentence can be comfortable. (I thought maybe I'd use "comfortable" to go with the waystation metaphor, see. A waystation can be comfortable, but it probably can't be "harmless," which was my first adjective choice.) Let's see how to make this an okay sentence, starting with the ending:

By then I had enough money to rent a storage closet for my bicycles and tools.

What do you think? Not too much in the way of change, but it's concise now, and the cause/effect is clearer when the "and" is replaced with the infinitive "to rent," and the other clutzy infinitive "to put my stuff into" is cleaned up with the nice encompassing "for."

Most important, now this waystation sentence doesn't call much attention to itself. It's not pretty, but it's not clunky. (Or rather, it's not glitzy, but it's not a dive either. Metaphor!) It's just clean and quick for a stop on the way to somewhere more important. 

But there might be better ways to clean up that sentence. What do you suggest? I must say, it's never going to be a great sentence, and it shouldn't be, because it's not expressing any great thought. I just want those types of sentences-- necessary, but not special-- to be precise and concise and quick for the reader. Your suggestions? Anyone have a "waystation sentence" to share?

And is it important to make even the minor sentences precise and concise? Is it a waste of time to focus much attention on those instead of the more important passages that can pay back big returns in reader experience? 

Alicia

What do you need to start?

Each year around this time, I get together with the same group of writers for a weekend crash session. We hole up in a hotel and plot their next books, one at a time. It's a focused, concentrated experience. Each session is recorded and lasts around three hours, and in that three hours, the basic book will be mapped out. We use giant pads and thick markers to take notes on plot points and characterization, and we stick those notes to the walls like outsized reminder notes. Often, after the original three-hour sessions are done, we revisit a particular book to get more in-depth on a piece of the plot or to try to come up with a stronger twist.

It's an exceptionally good weekend process that has resulted in some exceptionally good books being written. We use the same basic procedure for each writer -- in terms of recording, note-taking, the basic process of Q&A-driven brainstorming -- and yet, each individual session is strongly different. These differences are based in the particular needs of each writer at the early stage of planning a book.

In some ways, Author One is the easiest to get started. She needs a strong structure and clear plot in place in order to begin writing. She writes romantic suspense, and her process begins with the external plot. The character motivation and emotional arcs come later for her -- and we know from experience that she is plenty capable of making those things work in the final draft. But she can't get to that final draft, and she has a hard time even wrangling that first draft, until she knows the basic structural pieces (initiating incident, midpoint lock, villain's m.o., final plot twist, black moment, and the like). She tends to arrive at these sessions armed with research about whatever crime her villain will commit, a setting, and some basic character backstory. So we brainstorm a clean, strong external plot and structure, and she runs with it from there. We do discuss her characters, but we don't flesh them out fully at this stage. We just get a working skeleton in place, and she gives them hearts and brains and fun bits later. She's the one who, if I ask her when they have their first kiss or first sex scene, is likely to shrug and say, "Somewhere around this scene." But I never have to worry that she'll overlook the romance in the final book -- it's just not something she needs to brainstorm in advance.

Author Two has a very different kind of process. She doesn't necessarily need the entire structure in place in order to begin drafting. What she needs is a solid understanding of the start of the book, and some firm pieces for the middle and end. She can always envision several different ways to write the first hundred pages, and she sometimes has to really think through the details on her first scene -- which should be the first scene, what must be established in that scene, and so on. She tends to come into our brainstorming sessions with a good story question in mind based on her pre-work with these early scenes, but much of the rest of the story will still feel wide open. Many of her questions to us start like this: "I know the character takes this particular action. But why would she do this?" Or, "I know this character has to eventually do this action. But how and why?"  And then we figure it out, extrapolating forward into the plot based on what the author knows about the beginning or some shadowy end point. It's a fun process because it can feel so inventive, and much of what I try to do in these sessions is show her how her existing known pieces might relate to each other. Sometimes pointing out a simple pattern or repetition can open a whole new line of discussion that leads to another section of plot being discovered. Because this author is writing a series, her big concern in plotting new books is ensuring that they are consistent with past books. And what she needs to begin is not necessarily a fully plotted book, but a very firmly plotted opening with a strong sense of how that opening will spin across the pages.

Author Three has the loosest process of all three writers. She writes purely character-driven work -- I know it's popular and trendy to claim that you write character-driven stories, but trust me, this is far more rare than the chatter would indicate. She comes into these brainstorming sessions with something akin to snapshots. She can see a character holding something in her hands. She can see another character standing in a particular room. Sometimes these are motion snapshots -- she can see a character engaged in some kind of movement, like buttering toast, and this will lead her to conclude that the toast is significant even if she doesn't know why. Usually, the first hour or so of our brainstorming sessions amounts to us trying to interpret or extrapolate these snapshots -- maybe she's a chef, maybe she runs a B&B, etc. -- and the author rejecting these concepts until she hears one that sticks. Getting to these sticking points can be a challenge, but once we have a handful, the rest of the story begins to fall into place around them. She complains that plotting is difficult for her -- and god knows, this is the curse of the character-driven author -- but we somehow manage to come up with enough plot and structure that she can aim her characters toward certain plot points as she writes them. But for her to begin drafting, she doesn't necessarily need a powerful, rock-solid structure in place. What she needs is a strong understanding of her characters, themes, symbols, and settings, and then the plot springs up from these other aspects as she writes.

So what is it that you need in order to begin drafting? Not everyone needs the same thing, and I think some of us fall into this trap of thinking that there is one best way to write a book, and all other methods are somehow less legitimate or less fruitful. Not true. Here we have three authors with wildly different approaches, and yet all three are making it happen. They know what they need to begin, and they've learned to leave certain other aspects open for discovery during the writing process. So how is it for you? Do you need to know how the book ends before you can begin writing? Do you need to know your subplots? Do you focus more on the emotions or the events? Understand your process, and it might not get any easier, but your faith in its ability to generate results will certainly get deeper and stronger.

Theresa

Three or Four acts?

Email question:

I'm wondering what the advantages or disadvantages would be for using a 3 Act Structured plot versus a 4 Act structured plot. Could you please explain a little why a writer would choose one or the other. Thanks.

Well, I don't think a writer chooses-- I think the story chooses. Some stories fall nicely into the "action rising to the climax, then quick resolution" three-act schema, and some fall naturally into the climb to crisis, then long aftermath of the four-act structure.

So I'd say you choose the story, but then you don't have that much choice in the overall structure, because the story has an organic shape that you discover as much as you invent it. 

So what's the difference?  Well, novels tend to be 3-act (or five-act-- that is, the middle can break into three short acts, same basic structure), but there are plenty of 4-act novels.  Films are more often 4-acts, I'm not sure why. It probably has to do with keeping the viewer interested in the middle, make sure they don't leave for popcorn without missing something. :)

Three Acts (I discuss this in depth in this article)

1. Set up, inciting event.

2. External conflict rises, rising action, many demands on main character. Ends on point of no return usually.

3. Crisis, dark moment, climax, resolution. The end.

Notice the "Crisis," the most dramatic moment in the plot, is at the start of the third act to precipitate a fairly expeditious ending. The middle act is usually the longest by far.

Four Acts:

1. Set up, ending on inciting event.

2. Complications arising from the external conflict cause rising conflict, ending (near the middle of the story) in a crisis, where the worst that can happen happens.

3. Protagonist, who has lost all or been defeated in the crisis, starts a long climb back up. Could start again trying for the goal, or replace it with a new goal. (For example, in the first act, the goal could be protecting the leader, and then when the leader is killed in the crisis, the new goal could be getting revenge.)

4. Climax and resolution. 

Notice that in a 4-act structure, the first act is usually set up (like the three act structure).

The second act is the build to the crisis. The crisis (the worst thing that can happen) comes at the very end of the second act, so almost directly in the middle.

The third act is the regrouping, the recovery from the crisis.

The fourth act is the climax-resolution, the working out of the conflict, or the triumph.

What's different is the placement of the crisis.  3-act: about 3/4 through, the very beginning of the end.

4-act: Directly in the middle.

Why?  Well, there are some crises that can't be gotten over in a few scenes.  Think of all the disaster films! They're as much about the recovery from the disaster as the causes of the disaster. 

But it's not just disaster that can form the crisis. I had a book which ended up as four acts -- a romance, Charity Begins at Home.  The first act, the hero and heroine met; the second, they got engaged, and then, suddenly, at the end of the second act, smack dab in the middle, the heroine broke off the betrothal-- the crisis. The third act was the hero trying to get a grip on this, and the fourth was his determined wooing her back. 

Often the protagonists switch places at the crisis, as above, where the heroine was the main driver of the first part of the story, and the hero took over for the second part. I must say, I didn't CHOOSE the four-act structure, but recognizing it led me to emphasize the "breakup" by giving it an entire scene and making it more clearly a crisis for the hero (who thought they were both very happy :). That is, recognizing that the scene in the middle was the Crisis led me to make it BIG, and also not to get frantic because the end of the story had no crisis.

Or look at the Fugitive film. I'd say the protagonist of the first half (or at least the second act) was Tommy Lee Jones, the marshal, and the crisis was when he finally caught the fugitive, only to have him commit suicide (seemingly). The second half, Harrison Ford's quest to find his wife's killer because the driver of the plot.

So... I'd suggest that you go back to your story and think about whether that "worst moment" is going to happen towards the end of the story, with a slower buildup and quicker recovery, or in the middle of the story, so there can be more time to recover. 

You tell me! All I know is, if you try to force a story that is naturally 4-acts into 3 acts, you're going to be frustrated.

Alicia

Meaningless motivations

It occasionally would happen that we would read a synopsis or pitch with sentences like this:

Martha wants a new career because life as a dental technician isn't all she'd hoped it would be.

Goal: new career
Motivation: Current career is unsatisfying.

So far, so good. But then the problem would come in when this entire goal and motivation failed to translate into action. Not once in the course of the story would Martha do anything to get a new job. Not one action would be taken in furtherance of that goal. She might whine a lot about her current job, but other than annoying the other characters (and probably the reader), her career status would have no bearing on the development of the plot.

In romance, this can appear as a phantom romantic conflict.

Martha finds Pete sexy, but his lifestyle is unstable and even wild.

When I see sentences like this in a synopsis, I immediately start checking for events that prove this statement. Events. Things that happen in real story time. If Pete's an accountant who never misses a day of work and turns in at exactly 10:35 p.m. each night, then the reader might be wondering if Martha is talking about a different Pete. But if he rappels naked down her high-rise office building to get her attention, well, now we might be getting a little wild.

Sometimes, these meaningless motivations are explained with backstory.

Martha resists Pete because he served two years in the Navy straight out of high school and she protested the war in 2002.

Okay, but what does that have to do with the plot? If these other things happened ten or more years before the present day, does it matter now? HOW does it matter now? What EVENTS make this long-ago disparity relevant now, in the current plot?

All of which is to say -- the motivations have to become activated somehow in the real-time plot. Otherwise, they're meaningless.

Theresa

A subplot example

A few months ago, I posted about ways to test subplots to be sure they work in the overall context of the story. (That post is here if you want to refresh.) I thought we ought to try working an example of this process. We're going to use Downton Abbey for a couple of examples because, first, I've actually managed to watch it (a claim few shows can make this winter), and second, it is rife with subplots.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't watched Downtown Abbey, you should still be able to follow the analysis. I will include information about plot and characters in this post, but this means you might run into some spoilers. I don't usually include spoiler alerts with this kind of post because I think spoilers are native to this kind of analysis, but I know several people who haven't watched the entire second season yet, and I know they're trying to wear blinders. So there you go.

Quick DA Summary:
DA is the story of the people who live in an English country house during the early part of the 20th century. This group is headed by Robert Crawley, Earl Grantham, who has an American heiress for a wife, a delightfully sharp-tongued dowager mother, a trio of marriageable daughters, and no sons to inherit the estate. Season one, episode one begins with the heir presumptive (James Crawley) and his son (Patrick Crawley) going down with the Titanic. This creates an inheritance issue. The next male heir is a somewhat tiresome attorney from Manchester who has had little contact with his aristocratic third cousins. This inheritance issue, and the resulting attempts to assimilate the new heir into the family and home, form most of the conflict for the first season and a good bit of the conflict for the second season.

Season One Inheritance Issue:
The question of whether Manchester Matthew will inherit the earldom is entirely resolved by the end of season one. The family cannot break the entail so that a daughter will inherit the property, and the Countess's surprise pregnancy ends in an accidental miscarriage of her change-of-life baby. As I said, most of the first season conflict stems from this issue, but it is resolved by the end of the first season. The second season revolves mainly around the effects of World War I and the daughters' ongoing attempts to find husbands.

Season Two Subplot:
This brings us to one of the strangest subplots I've ever seen, and the analysis on this one is straightforward enough that we can use it as a simple example of subplot analysis. For the duration of the war, the big house is converted to a convalescent home for officers wounded at the front. Just past the midpoint of season two, a heavily scarred burn victim arrives on the scene. Our first introduction to this character comes when Lady Edith, the middle child in every sense of the term, catches him examining personal items in one of the family's remaining rooms.

This gruesome person claims to be Patrick Crawley, presumed dead in the first episode of season one. He claims he was rescued from the Titanic wreckage and taken to New York. He says he now speaks with a Canadian accent (though his accent is more rust belt than Canada, imo) because he had amnesia and forgot he was English and moved to Canada. He convinces Lady Edith that he is actually Patrick, and she spends a good twenty minutes or so trying to convince the rest of the family, too. However, after making inquiries, the Earl discovers that this man is a Canadian who knew the dead heir and probably gained numerous personal details about the family through the course of that friendship.So, the mystery is solved, the imposter slinks off, and Matthew's right of inheritance is no longer under threat.

The Subplot Test:
Okay, this brings us to the subplot test. The first test of a subplot is whether it has an impact on the development of the main plot. In this case, because Matthew's right to inherit was all buttoned up by the end of season one, this late-season-two subplot revisits that issue without changing the outcome. Matthew was the heir in the moments before the imposter's arrival, and he was still the heir after the imposter left. That did not change. So the subplot fails in that respect.

But that is only the first step of the analysis. It's not enough to examine the impact on the plot. We must also examine the impact on theme, character, and other story elements. In this case, there is a scene in which the family gathers in the parlor to discuss the problem. All of them except for Lady Edith are championing Matthew's right to inherit. This marks a distinct change from season one, when the inheritance issue was actually important to the plot and various family members disputed Matthew's rights. This isn't an anchor scene -- the scenes that mark the beginning and end of the subplot -- but it struck me as a potentially important scene. If the purpose of the imposter subplot was to show this change within the family dynamic, it succeeds because of this drawing room scene.

But the analysis doesn't end there. Now we have to go back to the main plot to see if this point is already being made there, and if not, can it be made in a more direct way there. And the thing is, this issue was also resolved in season one. By the end of season one, Matthew and all the other characters have accepted his role. His champions have won, and his detractors have not only surrendered, but changed to his side. Through the early/middle part of season two, every action shows Matthew as not only the heir, but a welcome and pivotal member of the household. So the subplot is unnecessary to demonstrate this change, which is already being accomplished through the main plot.

There is one other aspect we must consider. At this point in the main plot, Matthew has been injured and is in a wheelchair. His ability to father children is in doubt, and this throws the succession into doubt once again. The imposter arrives before Matthew recovers, and in the drawing room scene, Matthew says it might be better if the imposter inherits because at least he can have children. The question, then, is not whether Matthew should inherit, but who should inherit down the line. If Matthew is the heir and impotent, then the inheritance is cloudy. If the imposter is the heir, he could presumably father a line of children.

This is a somewhat shaky question, though, because the imposter is also severely injured and we don't know whether he can fish with that tackle. Even if the equipment works in the functional sense, there is still the possibility that he would be unable to have children. Or that he would have only daughters, which is what started this whole mess in the first place. So I never really bought the notion that the imposter could guarantee a line of sons to follow him -- maybe he would have sons, and maybe he wouldn't. This means that the story choice is not really Matthew + no children versus imposter + sons. It's more like Matthew + no children versus imposter + ordinary inheritance issues. Think how different it would seem if the imposter turned out to have a legitimate son already. Then this generation-skipping transfer issue is even more pronounced, but it would have failed in other respects.

In any case, it's quickly a non-issue because Matthew can walk again and, we assume, the third leg also works again. So the subplot is used (poorly) to raise the tension level in a season two issue (whether Matthew can have children) by re-raising issues that were resolved in season one (whether Matthew should inherit at all). I thought it was clumsy and unnecessary -- an unusual off-note from an otherwise excellent writer. The imposter could be somehow relevant to season three, but really, I don't care to see the imposter again. Do you?

Can you think of other ways the imposter subplot might have been made important to the story? How would you have revised this?

Theresa