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Story Elements (Characters)

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Characters are important, but how important? Well, if you have no characters, then there is no story, and according to some folks, they are more important than even plot:

“An idea has no worth at all without believable characters to implement it; a plot without characters is like a tennis court without players… Personality. That is the key, the drum, the fife. Forget the plot.”—Chuck Jones, an animator of such characters as the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote

That’s pretty important, but who do you include? Populating your story with people who feel real will help humanise it, so consider what roles you will need:

  • The Hero (protagonist), often the POV character, needs to show courage and willingness to sacrifice for the greater good in the face of danger and adversity.
  • The Villain (antagonist) opposes the Hero, either physically, intellectually, or emotionally, and he doesn’t need to be a single person. The government, a crowd, even the environment could be the villain. He often has a helper: The Tempter.
  • The Tempter works in the shadows, manipulating the Hero and trying to convince him to join the dark side.
  • The Sidekick, the Hero’s helper, is an unconditionally loving friend. No matter how bad things get, the Sidekick thinks the Hero is right—Sancho Panza in Don Quixote.
  • The Mentor acts as the Hero’s conscience, guiding him toward the right path…guiding only, not controlling. The Hero has to make his own choices—Gandalf in the Hobbit stories.
  • The Sceptic doesn’t believe in the Theme, he doesn’t support the Hero’s goal, and he doesn’t mind getting in the way. He has his own agenda—Han Solo in Star Wars.
  • Love Interests add much to the fullness of a story, whether boyfriend, girlfriend, or even a pet animal of some sort. This character can add a whole subplot (or even the main plot…romance stories?). Their relationship isn’t necessarily solid, as the villain is constantly interfering, trying to distract the Hero from his goal.
  • Finally the Spear Carriers, bit parts, filled in by folks who walk on, give their lines, and walk off, never to be seen again. Just one of the masses adding to casts of thousands. Still important, but mostly as information givers. Let them have their moment in the spotlight…then move on.

Not all those roles will be needed in all stories, but any character you have can be lumped into two types: Emotional and Logical. Emotional characters follow their gut, often acting before thinking, and help the Hero by making a decision that a thinking person would never have even considered…and often fail, spectacularly, by leaping without looking.

On the other hand, Logical characters plan ahead, look for common sense solutions, and answer questions with facts. They are useful, but the Hero may find that the head needs to listen to the heart to work at its best.

Keep a good balance, and your story folks will not only seem real, but also be talked for years to come.

Coordinating Conjunctions

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From the name, you can guess that conjunctions connect things (con=with, junction=to join). There are a few different kinds of conjunctions—we will discuss Subordinating and Correlative Conjunctions in later posts. For now, let’s look at how Coordinating conjunctions connect ideas that are equal with each other (co=together with, ordinate=put in order). There are seven basic Coordinating Conjunctions in English: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So. You can remember them by their initials: Fanboys. The things that are connected together can be as simple as a single word (noun, verb, etc.), as involved as a phrase, or as complicated as a whole clause (sentence). Why do we want to use conjunctions? To connect ideas, to establish a relationship between them.

Coordinating conjunction examples:

  • Words: “Dick and Jane ate the sweet but spicy soup.” In this example, we connect two nouns (the children) as doing the same thing together, but we also connect two adjectives (the flavours of the soup) in a contradictory manner.
  • Phrases: “The rabbit had to pick to run into the bush or down the hole, so he could escape.” Here we present two prepositional phrases as alternate options, either of which is valid. We also have a clause added on describing the result of the action.
  • Predicates: “The crook ran around the corner yet was caught by the police.” Now we have two predicates detailing the crook’s fate with an unexpected connection.
  • Clauses: “A violent gust of wind swept up the street, for it is in London that our scene lies.” Here we tie two full sentences together in an explanatory manner, attaching additional information.
  • Clauses: “The commotion did not cease, nor did it decrease in the slightest bit.” This one has two more full sentences connected in a negative sense, similar to ‘or’ but backwards.

One point to remember: if the items that are being connected are clauses (full sentences), then there needs to be a comma just before the conjunction—if not, then no comma should be there.

As you can see, using conjunctions to connect ideas improves the flow, one idea leading into another with a specific relationship.

Basic Layout of a Book (inside)

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In a previous post we delved into what is needed for the cover of a book, so now we are going to examine the inside. Besides the brilliant content you’ve created, there is the Front Matter and Back Matter, but that’s just what is there. In this post we are going to consider how it appears.

Running Headers and Footers are at the top and bottom of each page, outside your content. The Header often has the author’s name or book title on one side and the section or chapter name on the other, while the Footer has the page numbers (centered on the page, or at the outer corners—your decision on that), but it’s not a requirement to follow that pattern. The main reason they are there is so when readers are flipping through your book, they know exactly what’s being covered in each section.

Page numbers are important for reader’s to find what they need, but remember they are different for the different sections. The Front Matter has Roman numerals—the main section uses Arabic numerals. Odd numbers are on the right hand side (the recto)—even on the left (the verso). Page 1 is always the first page of content, and because chapters typically start on the right side, the left page just in front of each chapter may be blank…if it is, make certain it is entirely blank.

You want to make it easy for your readers, so pick a good, clean font. No need to be fancy here. Also make certain your line spacing is comfortable, anywhere from 1.15 to 1.25 is good enough for standard fonts. If you have a particularly tall font, it may need more, so just make the leading 5 to 10 points larger than the font size. Make certain your justification is appropriate for your content: non-fiction, fully justified; fiction, left justified. Paragraph indents and spacing also differs depending on the topic: non-fiction, no indent, minor spacing between; fiction, small indent, no spacing between. The space around your text should be considered, too. Set your margins and gutters wide enough. Especially important is avoiding widows and orphans. Both are bad—white space is good.

Obviously the content is up to you, but what you put in front of and behind your creation will be covered in another post.

Symbols sometimes used

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I say sometimes used because there are some strange ones available that will most likely never be used, but just in case, we’re going to cover them as well. Some of the more popular symbols are the copyright and trademark (and registered trademark), not used very often, but every book should have the copyright symbol on the copyright page, so it may be important to know how to put it there.

As with many things in Windows, there are a few different ways to do it. If you have AutoCorrect turned on (which you probably do unless you intentionally turned it off), you can type “(c)”, and it will ‘correct’ it to the copyright symbol. On the other hand, if you prefer to do things by yourself, you can always type Ctrl-Alt-C.

Similarly, you can get the trademark and registered trademark symbols with “(tm)” and “(r)” respectively…or Ctrl-Alt-T and Ctrl-Alt-R. Either way works fine. (For those of you who prefer mousing around, those symbols, and many others, can be found on the Insert Tab, Symbols Group, Symbol pulldown.)

Accents

A few other ‘symbols’ sometimes used are actually just accented letters, such as the ‘e’ in “café”. Again, there are a few ways to get those into your ms. I find the easiest way is to combine the accent with the regular letter by first typing the accent with Ctrl, then the letter. For example, to type “café” I would type “caf”, then hold Ctrl and type what looks like the appropriate accent mark, in this case the apostrophe, then release Ctrl and hit the letter ‘e’.

When you type the Ctrl-apostrophe, nothing appears, but when you hit the ‘e’, you get both! All you have to do is keep track of which accent mark you want. We wanted the acute accent (the one pointing up to the right) this time. If we had wanted the grave accent (pointing down…to a grave), we’d use the backtick mark (found under the tilde ‘~’ in the upper left of most keyboards).

The circumflex is found above the ‘6’, so you’d type Ctrl-Shift-6 to get that one. Putting the tilde above ‘n’ is done the same way: Ctrl-Shift-tilde (it’s above the backtick we used for the grave accent, but with Shift, we get the tilde). Also there is the cedilla…the little dangly thing hanging down below the letter ‘c’ in some words: façade for example. It sorta looks like a comma, so that’s what you’d use, typing Ctrl-comma then ‘c’. Finally, to get an umlaut (two horizontal dots over the letter), you’d use the symbol that looks like two vertical dots: the colon! Ctrl-Shift-colon followed by ‘o’ gives ‘ö’, just what you’d need if your character were a German scientist (or whatever).

As you experiment, you’ll find other key combinations that make various accented letters. Have fun and play around. You may decide that you need an international cast of characters, so you can use all those neat letters.

Basic Grammar Terms Everyone Should Know

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Again, as I dislike reading dictionaries, I will not be presenting an alphabetical list of terms, rather I’m going to go step by step from top to bottom explaining as I go. I will underline the new terms and give relevant definitions in parens. We’ll start with Grammar, which is nothing more than a set of rules dealing with syntax (how words are combined) and structure (how words are built up). For now, we’ll assume the top of the syntax pile is the sentence (largest standalone unit of grammar), which can be simple (contains one clause), compound (contains at least two independent clauses), complex (contains at least one independent AND one dependent clause), or compound-complex (contains two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause). Whew! What a mouthful, and we didn’t even mention relative clauses.

Clauses:

Each clause contains a subject (indicates what the clause is about) and a predicate (contains verbs, objects, and phrases used by the verb). Clauses are built up by combining phrases (small group of words). Words (combinations of sounds that communicate a meaning) consist of a single morpheme or a combination of morphemes. Morphemes (the smallest unit of meaning) are either free (can stand alone) or bound (have to be connected to another morpheme).

So we’ve now gone from largest to smallest and still haven’t covered the good stuff. Everyone likes to talk about the parts of speech, so here goes. There are two types of nouns (used to name or identify things): mass (can’t be counted) and countable (can be counted), and they have friends: pronouns (point to a nearby noun). Verbs (describe an action or state of being) have two types: transitive (needs a direct object) and intransitive (doesn’t have a direct object). Adjectives (modify a noun or a pronoun) and adverbs (modify other parts: verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs) round out the basic list. With all these parts, we can build simple sentences from individual clauses.

Combining clauses:

Now we get to the more involved sentences by combining clauses using conjunctions (connectors between words, phrases, and clauses). Three types here: coordinating (connecting two or more ideas with equal emphasis and importance), subordinating (connecting two or more ideas giving one less emphasis and lower importance), and correlative (pairs of words or phrases joining ideas equally). These are so important that we have entire posts dedicated to each: Coordinating, Subordinating, and Correlative.

Just a few more items to finish up with. Verbs have tense (indication of when action occurs), showing past, present, or future. Both Verbs and Nouns have number (marking quantity) showing singular or plural (only those two available in English!). Then there’s voice (manner of expression) with both active (actor of verb identified) and passive (actor of verb not identified, either implied or assumed).

Well, that covers just about an entire semester’s worth of instruction. If you need more info, two websites out there that I can recommend are the Online Writing Lab at Purdue and Grammar Girl.

Paper Sizes

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In anticipation of discussing the various sizes of books (Trim Sizes), we are going to first take a look at how paper sizes differ throughout the world. As is typical of many things, two main standards exist in the English-speaking world: The US and everyone else. We’ll go over both and touch on the advantages and disadvantages of each. The size of a piece of paper is directly related to how easy it is to print and bind books, and that’s what our goal is.

US Paper Sizes

The origins of the sizes used in the US (and a few nearby countries) are lost to history, though there abounds quite a few different explanations, including the length of a vatman’s arms. (The vatman was the person in the papermaking process who collected the pulp onto frames before stacking and pressing, requiring very skilled labour.)

The sizes of papers in the US include Letter (8.5×11), Legal (8.5×14), and Ledger (11×17 or two Letter sizes together), producing at least two trim sizes: 8.5×11 (Letter) and 5.5×8.5 (Half-Letter). Typical use of the larger one is text books or tech manuals, often with a spiral binding, so they will stay flat when in use. The smaller one, also called Digest size, is close to typical paperback size, so it is one of the more popular used for shorter novels.

One of the big criticisms from other countries is that the Aspect Ratio isn’t constant with US paper. (Aspect Ratio is the mathematical comparison of the height to the width.) Letter has an AR of 1.29, Legal is 1.65, and Ledger is 1.55. Half-Letter has the same AR as Ledger because it is half and Ledger is double letter. (That’s just the way the maths works out.)

International Paper Sizes

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO, short for Greek isos meaning equal) has a set standard for paper sizes (ISO 216) based on an idea presented in 1786 by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. He proposed using a constant Aspect Ratio, which mathematically works out to be the square root of 2 (√2=1.414…). The advantage there is that cutting a sheet in half or doubling it gives another with the same AR—very useful for enlarging or reducing prints.

Series A paper starts with A0, a sheet a full metre square, and each succeeding size smaller is exactly half the previous. Corresponding B sheets runs a bit larger, but each one is half way between adjacent A series sheets. The A series of paper is more common, and some manufacturers print books on A5 paper, only slightly wider and less tall than US Digest size (making them a bit stouter). You can often find books printed at the B5 size, only slightly larger than the US Trade paperback size (but again stouter).

That pretty much covers all the main differences between paper sizes. We’ll see how that affects book sizes later.

How do I make and use dashes?

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I don’t think dashes are used nearly enough in writing today. Many a comma, semicolon, or even period could be replaced by a dash, rendering the statement much stronger…but what kind of dash? And how do you type it? That’s what we are going to cover this time.

There’s a key on the keyboard that looks like a dash (actually, two of them), but you can’t type a real dash using it by itself. What looks to be a dash is actually a hyphen…shorter and smaller…but not the same as a dash at all. A hyphen is used to connect words or break words—read more about Hyphens. Dashes on the other hand are much more impressive—they add class!

Two Dashes

Two kinds of dashes exist that differ in size as well as use. The larger one is an em-dash, and the smaller an en-dash. The names were originally based on the size of each font’s letters ‘M’ and ‘n’, though this is no longer true. The em-dash is now defined as the same width as the point size of the font—which is often the same as the width of an upper-case ‘M’ but not always—so in a 9-point font, the em-dash is 9 points wide. In a 24-point font, it is 24 points wide.

The en-dash is half the width of an em-dash, which again may or may not be the width of a lower-case ‘n’. In a 9-point font, it is 4.5 points wide. In a 24-point font, 12 points wide. The problem is that many fonts don’t follow these definitions, so there are varying sizes depending on what font you are using. (For more details on this issue, consult the Wikipedia page.)

How to use them

Besides their size difference, they differ in use as well. The en-dash (the smaller one) is used to indicate a range, such as a set of pages in a book (see pp 135–140) or a time period (open Sep–Dec) or scores in a game (they won 3–1). That’s about all the en-dash does. (Some folks do use a spaced en-dash in place of an em-dash as a style decision.)

The em-dash…now there’s a fellow. Used to interrupt—and add a side comment like this—the em-dash adds flair to your writing. Besides interrupting yourself, you can interrupt dialogue to show that someone else spoke up:

  • Bill jumped up and said, “I did not—”
    But Amy was quicker. “Yes, you did.”

You can use it to show that the speaker interrupted himself, too.

  • Bill tapped a finger on the desk. “I believe I shall—no, I am going to do it.”

A rather useful punctuation mark—the em-dash—one that deserves more recognition and use, so do what you can to encourage its use.

Now that you know how to use these punctuation marks, the only thing left is how to type them: The en-dash is Ctrl-Minus on the numeric pad, and the em-dash is Ctrl-Alt-Minus on numeric pad.

Go forth and dash to it!

Printing Terms authors should know

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Instead of presenting an alphabetical list of terms, we’re going to discuss the process of getting ink on paper and what’s involved, defining the words as we go. I’ll underline each new term and define it in parens right after. (If you really want a list, there are plenty of websites out there, but I find reading a dictionary rather disconnected from reality.)

After you’ve finished writing your ms (manuscript), you can start laying out (the process of making your text look like a book) your book. The first step is to decide what physical size book you want, how tall, how wide, how thick. There are a variety of trim sizes (physical size of book in reader’s hand) available, but most paperback books intended for entertainment come in three sizes: 6 x 9 trade (paperback version of previously released hardback book), 5 ½ x 8 ½ digest (magazine sized book), or 4 ¼ x 7 mass market (cheaper version, often sold in racks at airports and drugstores).

Pages

Once you’ve set the size of the page, you need to address the margins (white space surrounding your text on the page) and gutters (extra space on the spine side of the page to account for the binding). Set your word processor to Facing Pages or Book Fold, then adjust the margins and gutters to about ½ inch all around with an extra ½ to ¾ added into the gutter, even more if it’s a thick book.

Check your running headers and footers (text at the top and bottom of each page outside the content, often has author name and title of book, or chapter and section name). See that they are in the right places. Now is a good time to review the page numbers, too.

Verify that your justification (alignment of text lines on the right and left sides), indentation (alignment of first line of a pgph), and pgph spacing (extra space added between pgphs) is correct. Typically fiction uses left justification, small indents, and no spacing between pgphs, whereas non-fiction uses full justification, block indent (all lines even with each other), and a small space between pgphs. Make certain to not mix the two styles in the same ms.

Keep line spacing (aka leading, pronounced “ledd-ing” because it used to refer to adding strips of lead between the physical lines of type) between 1.15 and 1.25 for ease of readability. (For a ms to be edited, use 1.5 or 2, so there’s enough room for the editor to write comments.)

Zoom back

Now you can zoom back and take a long distance view of your page. Inspect every page for widows (last line of a pgph at the top of a page) and orphans (first line of a pgph at the bottom of a page or last few words of a pgph on a line by themselves). Clean those up by tweaking the line or character spacing in earlier pgphs.

That should take care of most issues found in poorly produced books…at least the appearance. We can address the actual content later.

How are hyphens used?

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A hyphen has two main uses…but is often used for the wrong reason—as a dash. We’ll cover how to properly use Dashes later. For now, we’re going to go over the two reasons to use a hyphen: connect words into a larger chunk or show where a word is broken across a line.

Multiple Modifiers

Modifiers are used to tell what kind a thing is, and sometimes it takes more than one word. What kind of candy? Rock hard. So it’s ‘rock-hard candy’. What kind of boy? A quick witted one, so we have ‘a quick-witted boy’. What kind of hotel? A dog friendly one, so it’s a ‘dog-friendly hotel’. What kind of singer? One that is well known, so we have a ‘well-known singer’.

Without hyphens, sometimes a modifier is unclear. Let’s say that you got a new job, and in the work schedule, it says that you are going to work “twenty four hour shifts”. Does that mean you have a bunch of short shifts or one long one? There is a big difference between “twenty four-hour shifts” and “twenty-four hour shifts”. The first are a bunch of short works periods—the second a long time to be at work.

Compound Words

There are some words that we always keep together, for example: Mother-in-law, Master-at-arms, Editor-in-chief. And there are some words that used to be hyphenated but aren’t anymore. Did you know that ‘online’ originated as two words? From the mid-1800s until the mid-1960s, it was ‘on line’ with a space. Then the hyphenated form took over until 1980, when the single-word version became popular, and that’s how we use it today. (If you haven’t had a chance to play with the Ngram Viewer on Google Books, it’s really interesting.)

Broken Words

Allowing your words to be hyphenated will help keep your lines of text fairly even. That way if a word is close to the end of the line, it can be broken onto the next line. It is especially important if you have narrow columns (such as in a newspaper).

The option to turn on hyphenation is on the Page Layout Tab, in the Page Setup Group. To see how your document will look with hyphenation, just turn it on to automatic. If you don’t like the way it looks, you can just undo it (ctrl-Z) and do it manually. Opening the Hyphenation Options dialogue box will allow you to tweak the settings until you get it just the way you want.

Using a half-visible Optional Hyphen in certain words allows you to use the hyphenation process with more control. Those words will only break where you want them broken…if they need to be.

How big is my book?

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The biggest reason to worry about the size of your book is printing costs. It costs more to print a 500 page book than it does a 200 page one. Yes, it’s possible to decrease the number of pages by printing on a larger page—a 250 page book with 100,000 words will fit into fewer than 120 pages if you use 8 ½ x 11 paper instead of the standard 6×9…but then your book won’t fit on the shelf with all the others in the same genre. You do want to stand out, but not for that reason.

The book needs to be long enough to tell the whole story, but short enough to keep the reader’s attention. The actual length will depend on what genre you’re writing in. (If you can’t identify your genre, then your writing is too loose—keep the focus!) Certain genres tend to run longer than others do (history), and some run shorter (mystery), so check out what a common length is for the one you’re writing.

If you’re too long

When you’ve written more than is needed, the first thing to consider is if you put things in the reader doesn’t need to know…or should already know from a previous section—don’t explain too much. Let the reader figure things out for himself. Info dumps give the reader an opportunity to set the book down—and not pick it up again. Either the reader already knows the historical background of all the characters…or it isn’t necessary for the particular story you’re telling.

Another problem is giving too much detail when you shift scenes. We don’t need to see each and every character get up, walk across the room, and exit…only to enter the next scene the same way. Just end each scene with a quick cut and start the next with a short intro of who, where, and what.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.—Truman Capote

A rather irksome tendency of some writers is “As You Know, Bob”. AYKB is where characters discuss things they already know…just so the reader can hear about it. How many times do you stand on the corner watching cars drive by and comment on how interesting it is that they all have four wheels? Not very exciting…either for you or the reader. Leave it out.

If you’re short

This isn’t going to be a problem for most writers, but if you find yourself in this situation, look for sections with little dialogue or action…places where you are telling the story instead of showing it. Expand that exposition into a full scene. Consider adding in a subplot in Act 2…pull in a secondary character and give him something to do.

Some books end too abruptly…almost as if the author gave up and just quit. Make certain you tie up all the loose ends (or imply that they will be taken care of in the next book!).