Clinching the Cliché Conundrum

We all know what a cliché is, right? It’s a phrase or expression that's been used so often that it's no longer original or interesting; or, a theme or device so commonly used in books, stories, etc., that it's no longer effective.

“No longer” is the key here. These overused tools were once fresh, new, and witty. But now, employing them merely proves that you can have too much of a good thing.

For that reason, unless we want to impress someone with our lack of originality, we should avoid clichés like the plague. For an example, it’s been an eternity since someone first used “an eternity” to describe a long but finite stretch of time. Now, the vibrant analogy is so overworked that it's weak as a kitten. We should leave no stone unturned in our search for more picturesque speech. Or at least, phrases that don’t look like something the cat dragged in.

You get the idea, so I’ll stop beating this dead horse.

In first drafts, it’s okay to allow clichés to sit around the table over their coffee, taking up space and chatting. It’s in the editing phase that we must send them on their way and make space for paying customers. But once you’re ready to clear the room, how do you find the better clientele? Where does the sort of language grow that’s fresh, crisp, and juicy as an October apple?

Here’s where it can pay to write speculative fiction. (Believe me when I say it doesn’t pay financially.) When you create a world and a culture, you can also create everyday expressions that people in our world haven’t heard yet. Which means, of course, that they’re not clichés. 

A character can be as “content as a luglit with his belly full of zikzak” without making the reader yawn. (She might scratch her head in puzzlement, but she won’t complain it’s a cliché.) Another character can say he feels as out of place as a Nobian sand snail in a crystal punchbowl. And a father can state, when a screaming child won't listen to reason, that “Tears can’t hear.” Though these are all common expressions on Gannah, most readers on Earth have never heard them, so “fresh and new” still applies -- even if they’re not particularly witty.

But what if you don’t write weird stuff like that? No matter; writers of earthbound fiction can beat the cliché rap in much the same way. Dig up turns of the phrase from the world you’re writing about. Pull them from your characters’ brains. Envision how someone's experiences might color her speech and let her speak for herself.

For instance: Is your protagonist a fireman? He might say, when refusing to weigh in on a sensitive topic, “I’m not touching that with a 100-foot ladder. It’s hot as napalm.” When faced with a situation that’s too far gone to remedy, a character who loves to bake might say, “That cake’s already burned.” A meteorologist might describe his teenager as being as gloomy as a low-pressure system stalled overhead.

Don’t like those examples? No, they’re not perfect. But I’ll bet you can think of better ones if you put your mind to it.

However, I don’t think you’ll find a better escape from the humdrum than a trip to Gannah. Yes, I’m biased, but others share that opinion. Many readers who don’t ordinarily head for the sci-fi section tell me they enjoy the series, and those who ordinarily do like speculative fiction say it blasts the typical clichéd story out of the sky.

Though each title in the series can be read alone, they also fit together to build an epic tale. It all begins with The Story in the Stars, an ACFW Carol Award finalist in 2012. The saga continues with Words in the Wind and Ransom in the Rock, and concludes with The Last Toqeph, released last month.

If you like to walk alongside believable characters as they deal with emotional situations, all told from a Christ-centered perspective, consider a flight through the Gateway to Gannah into some serious sci-fi adventure.

The Last Toqeph: Will Adam right an ancient wrong and lose his inheritance? Or ignore the truth and lose his integrity?

Yvonne Anderson writes fiction that takes you out of this world. When not exploring space, she lives in Western Maryland with her husband of almost forty years and shares the occasional wise word on her personal site, YsWords. She’s been with The Borrowed Book for a year or two now and has coordinated Novel Rocket’s Launch Pad Contest for unpublished novelists since the beginning of time. (Or at least, since the contest’s inception.) She also does freelance editing.

Read More

What's the Word by Author Yvonne Anderson

At my first writer’s conference (ACFW, Dallas, 2007), I met with Andy Meisenheimer, then acquisitions editor for Zondervan, to discuss a manuscript. The occasion held a number of personal firsts: among other things, my first conference, my first meeting with an editor, and my first foray into writing science fiction.  (Four years later, the book was published as The Story in the Stars, the first in the Gateway to Gannah series.)

By God’s grace, I wasn’t particularly nervous. Considering the experience an educational field trip, I felt no pressure to achieve any specific goal but to learn and enjoy myself. Since I had no expectations, I was surprised that when I explained my story’s premise to Andy, he showed real interest and asked pertinent questions, nodding at my answers as if intrigued. (Possibly he was just being nice, because he seems to be that kind of guy.) 

One of the questions had to do with the languages in my story world. “A lot of writers try creating a language, such as Tolkien did with the elvish language, for instance. But it usually doesn’t hold together logically like a real language does. Do your characters speak another language? And if they do, how did you create it?” When I told him the Gannahan language was ancient Hebrew, his eyes widened and he grinned. “Cool!”

When I first began to sketch out this new world, I thought about God creating our world, and how it all started with a garden. That inspired me to give the planet a garden-related name – but Eden was already taken. What about the word for “garden” itself? I got out my Strong’s Concordance and found the Hebrew word is gannah. Sounded like a good name for a planet. And so it began. 

Though the people of Gannah speak a language that’s very much like Hebrew, I don’t; the best I can do is name things based on Hebrew words I find in the concordance. For instance: the colorful forest in the opening scene, in which the foliage is blue, yellow, and red as well as green, is the Ayin Forest, based on the Hebrew word for color. The ruling family’s name is Atarah, which means crown; the Gannahan weapon of choice is called a lahab, meaning blade. But because my knowledge of the language is so limited, I use only a word here and there; I don’t put them together in sentences or write songs or poems, as Tolkien did with the elvish language.

How about the Karkar? (The which? The Karkar. They’re the people from a different planet, and ancient enemies of Gannah.) The Karkar words, what few of them I use, come purely from my warped imagination. And they’re fun. Listen while a character contemplates his job as a researcher on a medical starship: “The assignments were challenging but satisfying, and when he pillowed his head at dimlights, he felt as content as a luglit with a bellyful of well-aged zikzak.

Which brings me to another kind of word I had to create: names for inventions and concepts that don’t currently exist in our world, or are so different as to be unrecognizable. These names, I tried to make self-explanatory. Dimlights in that last example, for instance, refers to the fact that on a starship, there is no night and day, so the lights are dimmed during the hours that would be night if they were on a planet. Instead of a refrigerator, they have a chill cabinet, and rather than a microwave, they warm food in a quickheater. What we might call a snowmobile, Gannahans call a motorsled. On the space station, you’ll find no bellboys to carry your luggage to your room, but a baggage bot. (“Bot” being short for robot.) My favorite gadget is the floor bot. As you might guess, that’s the one that scrubs your floors to a cheery shine while you’re out having fun on your motorsled.

If you’d like to learn more, come visit Gannah; even people who usually avoid space travel enjoy their time there. You might even find a souvenir to bring home.

The first two of the four books in the series are currently available in both print and e-book versions. Book #1, The Story in the Stars (2012 ACFW Carol Award Finalist in Speculative Fiction) on Amazon and Barnes & Noble; Book #2, Words in the Wind on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

Read More

Don't Try This at Home by Author Yvonne Anderson

Do you dream of becoming an author? Searching for a professional writer to emulate? 

Don’t look at me; I’m a rotten role model.

Let’s walk through my typical day to see what I mean.

I set an alarm for six, but I’m usually up before then. I hobble into the kitchen and turn on the coffee. Then I shower to bring me fully awake—and to tame my hopeless bed-head, which, thanks to my three (3) cowlicks, cannot be brought under control without copious amounts of water. 

After that, I start writing? Nope. A cup of black coffee in hand, I spend the next hour to hour-and-a-half in prayer and Bible study.

And then I get down to work, right? Wrong. This is where I have breakfast and my second (and last) cup of coffee. I talk with my husband—who, being retired, has no particular schedule but is always up and about by breakfast time—and putter around on my laptop (check emails, blogs, etc.). Then I clean up the kitchen, fix my hair (which has been air-drying), and go to work.

I’m a church secretary. I began working there in January. I hadn’t been looking for a job, but, since my husband and I moved here in November, I had been looking for a church, and the Lord led me to a church and a job at the same time.

And because He is merciful, the job is only part-time, so I’m home in time for lunch.

Now I start my writing day, right? Umm… not usually. I mentioned that we moved recently, and that my husband’s retired. I should also tell you he’s a handyman, and quite a good one. Put all these together, and what do you get? A guy who always has projects going on, both in the house and in the yard. And who, bless his heart, only has two hands.

I wish I had a dollar for every “do you have a minute?” Or worse yet, “Are you busy? Because I could really use some help” (that one should be worth $2 at least). If I were paid for each of those requests, I could afford to hire an assistant for him. Or at least, I’d be making more money than I do selling books, which I can’t seem to ever get written because somebody is always interrupting me.

This has been the situation for quite some time, because before we moved, he was getting our previous home spruced up for sale. I haven’t had any time to myself since 2012, when I wrote my current new release, Ransom in the Rock. (Just got around to publishing it, but it’s been finished for quite a while.)

The interruptions used to drive. Me. Mad. Especially when reading advice from successful authors about how, if you’re going to take your writing profession seriously, you need to plant your posterior in the chair and write, write, write – don’t be distracted – tell your family to not interrupt you – blah blah blah.

It finally occurred to me: the profession I take most seriously is that of my faith in Christ. I write because He urged me in that direction. But did He ever suggest I make it my career? No; it’s people who tell me that, not God. 

Has He commanded I be submissive to my husband? Absolutely. Does “submission” mean grumbling and grinding my teeth? Not hardly. It means, when confronted with that apologetic Do you have a minute?, replying with complete sincerity, “I have many minutes, and they’re all yours.”

“But…” (you may sputter), “You’re a writer. You need to be writing. You need to… [fill in your choice of the experts’ wise advice].”

Yes, I’m a writer. But I’m a Christ-follower first, and then a wife, a mother, a grandma, etc. “Writer” comes pretty far down the list.

Let me put it this way: if I should one day find myself alone and able to write with no one to interrupt me, will I regret having given my husband my time when I could? 

And if I go first? When I stand before Christ, will I be ashamed of not having written more books?

I guess this means I’m a hobbyist, not a professional author—and that’s okay. I’m just warning you: if you want to do this author thing right, don’t do what I do.

A resident of Western Maryland, Yvonne Anderson writes fiction that takes you out of this world.  She also does freelance editing; contributes to the writing blog The Borrowed Book; oversees Novel Rocket’s Launch Pad Contest; and is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, International Thriller Writers, and the Independent Author Network. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, or Goodreads.

Fly through the Gateway to Gannah for some serious sci-fi adventure: The first three titles, The Story in the Stars and Words in the Wind and Ransom in the Rock, are all available in both print and ebook. Watch for the launch of The Last Toqeph, the fourth and final flight in the series, in the autumn of 2014. (It’s been finished for a long time too!)

Read More

Leave the Cookie Cutters in the Kitchen

When someone was a little different, my mom used to remark, “What a character!” I’m reminded of that when I hear cable network USA’s tagline, “Characters welcome.”

In our novels, characters are not merely welcome; they’re required. And the more remarkable and memorable—the more “what a character!”—they are, the better readers like it. But there are a gazillion novels out there, each with an assortment of make-believe people running around in it. How can we help our story characters stand out from the crowd?

Several reviewers of my books mention the strength of my characters, so, though I’m no expert, I guess I’m at least on the right track. Let me share with you three things that, in my opinion, a story character needs in order to be lifelike and memorable.

1) A history. Only our forefather Adam started life as a fully formed adult. For the rest of us, our personalities were shaped by a combination of genetics and experiences. You don’t want to dump a bunch of backstory on the reader every time you introduce a new character, but the writer needs to be familiar with that history. Get to know your characters before you start writing about them, and they can be multi-dimensional when they hit the page.

2) A motive. For everything. People who teach about story crafting are always harping on the big-picture motives that drive a plot—as well they should. Because without motive, a plot will flop like an inflatable yard decoration with the air let out. But motive is also important in the little things. In real life, nobody randomly does anything, and the same should be true in fiction. Even the act of brushing a wisp of hair from the forehead is done for a reason. (The character has a cowlick? He’s meticulous about his appearance? She’s afraid of bugs and the hair feels like an insect?) If you give a character an action beat, give him a motive for it as well. Don’t explain the reason, but know what it is, and let the reader see it as the scene plays out.

3) A quirk or two. This is often related to the character’s history. For instance, in my latest release, The Ransom in the Rock, Lileela is a typical teenaged girl in most respects. The usual adolescent struggles are, perhaps, a bit intensified by the tenuous situation she’s forced into, but most readers will remember their own teen years and relate to the feelings that war within her. But unlike the average kid, Lileela has a pronounced limp. She also wears a ridiculous amount of cosmetics.

Both these quirks are tied up with her history. The limp is from a spinal cord injury suffered when she was five. And the make-up problem? Well, you should see the rest of the people on the planet where she’s just spent the last ten years of her life. Let’s just say she picked up some strange ideas of beauty.

It might be a little easier to come up with quirks when you write speculative fiction, as I do. But there are still plenty of flat cardboard characters on that bookshelf.  Sometimes it seems like the author got out her set of fantasy-character cookie cutters and started pressing them into the dough of her manuscript with wild abandon. No genre is immune to same-old, same-old.

But, okay. So your character has a history, a motive for everything she does, and a quirky trait or two. Let me add another thing to worry about: consistency.

Let’s say your protagonist, Cadwallader, is deathly afraid of heights. If his buddy says, “Hey, Wally, let’s go skydiving,” you’d better not have your protag say, “Sure!” and eagerly hop into a plane. That action wouldn’t be consistent with his quirk.

Or, maybe, your character’s history involves being attacked by a bear. Is she likely to go on a backpacking trip in the wilderness unarmed? Not if she has a choice.

It is, however, permissible to make your character do something out of character if she doesn’t have a choice. That can help build your character’s character. Which, despite the repetitive words, makes her stronger and more memorable.

So when you draft your manuscript, leave the cookie cutters in the kitchen. Characters with history, motive, and a quirk or two will take on shapes of their own.

A resident of Western Maryland, Yvonne Anderson writes fiction that takes you out of this world.  She also does freelance editing; contributes to the writing blog The Borrowed Book; oversees Novel Rocket’s Launch Pad Contest; and is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, International Thriller Writers, and the Independent Author Network. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, or Goodreads.

Fly through the Gateway to Gannah for some serious sci-fi adventure: The first three titles, The Story in the Stars and Words in the Wind and Ransom in the Rock, are all available in both print and ebook. Watch for the launching of The Last Toqeph, the fourth and final flight in the series, in the autumn of 2014.

Read More