Brinkhurst.com

Sometimes the details can captivate. A few days ago, I said that too much description from the narrator can be a bad thing, and now I’m saying a lot of extra unnecessary details can make for a good story. In both posts I want to get across that the delivery is what is important.

If the details speak to the type of character, you can likely give superfluous details without boring the reader.

What if we try something like this?

I am sitting with James before the meeting. He can’t stop talking about Christina and how beautiful she is. I have never met her before, but the thought of meeting this young, beautiful woman is very enticing.

In the meeting, I sit directly across from her. She has beautiful crystal blue eyes and light brown hair. Her skin is pale, lips and breast are full, and she is in great shape. I want her, bad. She slides her hands across the keyboard. Oh gawd. Her hands; they are hideous. She has ugly fingers, and her nails are bent, broken, misshapen, and discolored.

I can barely look in her direction. The ugly from her hands is creeping up her wrists, through her arms, and all over her body. It is like an infection, visibly moving up a vain, directly to the heart and through the body, until the pretty is entirely dead. Who could ever find her attractive with nails like that?

Your narrator, who is a part of this story, is instantly struck by the beauty of this young woman in his presence, a woman that is considered beautiful by other people. He gets really hung up on her unhealthy nails. This should be a minor issue, so it really speaks to our narrator’s mindset. With these details, I have attempted to show a character who has hang ups. Our narrator hasn’t just given details about a woman. If the woman had unhealthy nails, it wouldn’t matter. The bad nails only matter because of the insight we get into the narrator’s character.

What are your thoughts?

I think multifaceted characters are the shizzle, but freedom haters might disagree with me.

A one dimensional character is predictable. The difference between a one dimensional character and what I’m calling a multifaceted character is that with the multifaceted variety you don’t truly know what to expect from the character, regardless of whether or not the storyline is predictable.

The Terminator is a good example of a one dimensional character. He had no depth to him, just mission. Now, at this point, the freedom hating terrorists might argue that if you let the Terminator give into emotions and have him cry at the injustice of assassination, it would ruin the whole movie, the whole premise of the movie. All right, if anyone is keeping track, that’s one point for the bad guys. However, if we had of established a character early on in the movie who was an assassin and found a way of letting the audience know that he has some inner turmoil when it comes to the whole murder thing, we would have left the doors open for a character with depth.

Trying to flip a character from one dimensional to multifaceted is confusing and just plain odd. If we take the Terminator and turn him into this really nice guy at the end of the movie, the audience is going to be all like “WTF.” It just doesn’t fit his profile.

As a writer, your goal should be to setup anyone who is a main character as multifaceted; your readers truly are intelligent enough to follow that. Allowing the character to have thoughts and feelings outside of their role makes for a more enticing story. It gives a side story to the story. Pulp Fiction is a good example of that. There were thug killers who are debating the meaning of a foot massage and contemplating whether or not God had sent them a message. The characters had depth and were truly multifaceted, which allowed the one character to easily walk away from thug life and become a true believer.

Making money from fiction is a very difficult task. You have to be an exceptionally good writer, and a publisher has to believe that your work can be sold. If you are the world’s best writer, but you produce work that (for whatever reason) people will not buy, your fiction will never get published.

Printing costs are enormously expensive, so a publisher looks at a manuscript like a business deal. If that publisher has a chance of making money from your work, your work will then become a commodity to be sold.

Publishing your manuscript is a romantic notion, but the reality of all situations in the publishing world is that it can take years to get your work published, and you will have to make creative and personal sacrifices to get there.

This is where most writer’s fail. You are faced with no money and no immediate hope of getting any of your work published in a paying venue. Now, you are faced with the reality of having to take a job to pay bills. Your job takes all of your free time, and you don’t have anytime to write.

If you are like most people, you might end up with a spouse, kids, job, and other commitments. After work, you are too tired to write. You have to find time to spend with the family. You should workout. There are a ton of excuses not to write.

I always feel that writing is much like exercise or even meditation. You stop doing it because of time, but once you get back into it, it feels great. You find that you truly do have time for it.

Try writing one line on the first day, two lines on the second day, and so on. If you can write 200 words a day, you’ll have a manuscript by the end of the year.

For me, the more I write, the more I am able to write.

How about you?

I find that too much description in a novel is boring as hell. It can be very important for an author to let you know the specifics. So, what do you do if you need to let the reader know that Sam the janitor has a beard, long hair, blue eyes, and thick bushy eyebrows? My preference is to allow characters to reveal information about themselves and other characters, but I often see the narrator tirelessly giving lines and lines of details without any character conversation.

What if we did something like this?

Shawn and Jessica are chatting by the lockers outside of the gym as Sam the janitor walks by.

“Look at him Jes! He is so weird, with his beard and long hair.”

“I don’t know. He’s kinda cute, and he just looks so honest and kind.”

“Are you kidding? Look at his thick serial killer eyebrows. You can’t trust anyone with eyebrows like that.”

“No, no. Shawn, look at him. Look at his big, beautiful, piercing blue eyes.”

Some people might argue that this does not give an adequate description. Maybe the reader wants to know that the eyebrows are one whole inch tall, and the length of the eyebrow hair is actually one inch long as well. My feeling is that since thick eyebrows are subjective, why not let the reader imagine how thick those eyebrows are. Instead of wasting lines of narrative description on Sam the janitor, we have managed to build two characters and describe a third.

What are you thoughts?

What makes a moment sensual when it is written? Is it:

1. A muscled man kissing a heaving chested woman with a ripped dress
2. Warm chocolate sauce with some strawberries
3. A deep emotional connection followed by a sexual climax

In my view, this is a bit of trick question. All of these things can make for a sensual moment, but the one and only thing that is truly needed for a sensual moment is the setting. Even if we take sex or the possibility of sex out of the equation, a sensual moment can still happen.

What if we take the Cinderella story as an example?

Cinderella is at the ball, longing for her Prince. They run off to the kitchen together; the staff all left at 11:30pm. They are alone. Cindy puts a single drop of honey on the Prince’s big fat lower lip. He stares into her eyes, waiting, simply waiting. She grabs his shirt collar, pulling him towards her. She places her two lips over his lower lip and sucks it off, her eyes still locked with his. He grabs her waist and places her on top of the counter, placing himself between her legs. Cindy grabs a near by bowl of chocolate sauce, dips her finger into it and slowly licks it all the way from bottom to top. The Prince sees a small spoon, places it in the bowl and pulls it out to dribble it onto her neck. He is kisses the chocolate sauce off her neck, while moving from the base up to her ear. Cindy runs her nails up under his shirt, feeling his rippled chest, and the Prince barely manages a steady hand while he works his way up from her leg from knee to thigh to her warm . . .

Cindy looks at the clock, 11:59pm. She wants the Prince so bad, but within a minute she will be exposed as a fraud. She runs. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I must go.”

“Please wait. Please . . . no.”

While writing this, we are taking for granted that the reader knows the Cinderella story and knows that the she will need to leave before midnight. We have also established that it is after 11:30pm. We have given the couple a very small window to consummate their relationship, so the reader knows that sex is not likely to happen, but the reader might still be hopeful. Adding something other than sex to create a sensual moment can heighten the writing as well. In this case, we are trying to use food to help heighten the moment. Risk, danger, a bit of S&M light, are also things that can help to add to this sort of situation.

In this case, it feels as though setting has made a big difference. If we take out the sensuality of food, the moment might lose its spark. If they are in the Prince’s bed is it still sensual? Again, something is lost. Also, if the sexuality is too overt, the sensuality is lost. What if the Prince props Cindy up on a table in the dance hall while everyone watches him taking her? That might be exciting for some, but it is not sensual; it is just sexual. Sexuality is raw and dirty. Sensuality should be written more pure, as a moment, a bond between two people that will continue on.

What are you thoughts?