Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (33 page)

Freezing Moments in Time

Step 1:
Find in your novel a moment of transition, a pause, a moment of character definition or testing, a place where the action can be momentarily frozen, or the prelude to (or the aftermath of) an important plot event.

Step 2:
What are three things that make this minute in time different from any other minute in time?
Write those down.

Step 3: What are three things that make this place uniquely different from any other place? Write those down.

Step 4:
What are three things that define the social world of the story at this precise moment?
Write those down.

Step 5:
Use the details generated in any of the steps above to craft a paragraph that freezes for the reader how the world looks and feels to your point of view character at this moment. Pin down the unique feeling of this time, this place, or this social world.
Start writing now.

Follow-up work:
Choose four other moments in time to freeze in the novel and delineate them using the steps above.

Conclusion:
Here is where to apply your powers of observation. You notice things, don't you? You get the world's ironies, appreciate its wonders, and pick up details that others miss, right? Of course you do. You are a writer. Okay, now is the time to use those gifts. Give your protagonist the same awareness of the world that you have, or maybe one that is keener. His observations of time, place, and society will further reveal, delineate, and define this character. How we look at the world is as distinctive as the fingerprints we leave on drinking glass. Make sure that your protagonist has a distinctive take on things, too. He will spring alive in yet new ways for your reader.

Inner Change

We grow and change. We also note the growth and change in others. The moments in breakout novels in which such changes are observed are milestones that measure the journey that is each story. Changes in characters— or rather, characters' perceptions of the changes within themselves and others—may happen within a scene or across long stretches of time. It doesn't matter. Inner changes calibrate a plot, lending it a sense of inexorable progress and pace.

Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins's best-selling series Left Behind is a saga of the days following the Rapture foretold in the book of Revelation. The first volume,
Left Behind,
begins with a vivid account of the aftermath of the instant disappearance of millions of faithful people selected for salvation. The novel opens on a full 747 passenger jet flying overnight from Europe to Chicago. In the middle of the night one hundred passengers vanish, their clothing and jewelry remaining behind in their seats. The point-of-view character in this scene is the plane's pilot, Rayford Steele, who at the novel's opening is fantasizing about his senior flight attendant, Hattie Durham, a young and sexy contrast to Rayford's fanatically religious wife:

Rayford tried to tell himself it was his wife's devotion to a divine suitor that caused his mind to wander. But he knew the real reason was his own libido.

Besides, Hattie Durham was drop-dead gorgeous. No one could argue with that. What he enjoyed most was that she was a toucher. Nothing inappropriate, nothing showy. She simply touched his arm as she brushed past or rested her hand gently on his shoulder when she stood behind his seat in the cockpit.

The simultaneous disappearance of millions of people has caused chaos on the ground. Traffic accidents and airline crashes are the first consequences. Following a harrowing landing at O'Hare, Rayford and his crew find the airport in a state of disarray. Because roads out of the airport are blocked,

Rayford hops a helicopter ride away from the terminal soon after learning that his wife and son probably are among the disappeared. He also finds Hattie Durham in the only available seat in the helicopter—his lap:

He had been playing around on the edges of his mind with the girl in his lap, though he had never gone so far as touching her, even when she often touched him. Would he want to live if Hattie Durham were the only person he cared about? And why did he care about her? She was beautiful and sexy and smart, but only for her age. They had little in common. Was it only because he was convinced Irene was gone that he now longed to hold his wife?

There was no affection in his embrace of Hattie Durham just now, nor in hers. Both were scared to death, and flirting was the last thing on their minds.

In this passage, LaHaye and Jenkins convey a remorseful change of view on Rayford Steele's part, but at the same time demonstrate the effect of the profound upheaval that is the Rapture. The event blows away temporary desires and petty concerns, and puts old loves into a new perspective. In the face of disaster, what really matters is thrown into sharp relief.

In an earlier chapter I discussed
Empire Falls,
by Richard Russo, in which Janine is the estranged wife of the novel's protagonist, Miles Roby. At the outset of the novel she is planning to marry an obnoxious local entrepreneur, Walt Comeau, owner of a fitness center. Once overweight, she is now in shape and brimming with self-confidence, regret about her marriage to Miles, and admiration for Walt:

Back when they got married, she hadn't even known who
she
was, her own self, never mind her intended. At least now Janine knew who Janine was, what Janine wanted, and, just as important, what Janine didn't want. She didn't want Miles, or anyone who reminded her of Miles. She didn't want to be fat anymore, either. Never, ever, again. Also, she wanted a real sex life, and she wanted to act young for a change, something she hadn't been able to do when she actually was young. She wanted to dance and have men look at her. She liked the way her body felt after dropping all that weight, and by God she liked to come. For Janine, at forty, orgasms were a new thing and she damn near lost her mind every time she had another. . . .

It was Walt Comeau who'd taught her about herself and her body's needs.

Much later, disillusioned with Walt Comeau (who styles himself The Silver Fox), she reexamines her view of him during a high school football game they attend with her daughter, Tick, and her mother, Bea:

Janine was sitting next to her own destiny, of course, and that destiny was itself perched on a damn hemorrhoid cushion. "Oh, leave the child alone, Walt," she heard her mother say, and she then saw through her tears that her husband-to-be had returned, no doubt sneaking down the row behind her just as Tick had done. Apparently he'd given his stepdaughter a kiss on top of the head and been handed his usual rebuff by way of thanks.

"What makes you think a pretty fifteen-year-old girl wants to be kissed in public by an old goat like you?" Bea asked him.

" 'Cause I'm a good-looking old goat," said Walt... [He notices that Janine is upset.] ... The only thing to do was to cheer her up. So he began crooning an apropos lyric of Perry Como's.

"The way that we cheered/Whenever our team/Was scoring a touchdown," he warbled, nudging her, in the idiotic hope of getting her to sing along.

Perfect, Janine thought. At last she finally understood her hus-band-to-be's infatuation with Perry Como, which had nothing to do with the singer's good looks, charm, or silvery foxiness. The fucker was simply Walt's contemporary.

Notice how Janine's unit of measurement of Walt has shifted from orgasms to hemorrhoids. Russo's strong point-of-view writing enhances this change in one character's view of another.

In Phillip Pullman's complex and compelling fantasy
The Golden Compass,
also discussed in an earlier chapter, orphan Lyra Belacqua is raised by the scholars of Jordan College, Oxford. But she is no ordinary child. She is (or so she is told) the niece of powerful Lord Asriel, heretic and researcher into the mysterious matter of Dust, and (unknown to her) she is a child whose destiny is great and dangerous. One day she is introduced to the elegant Mrs. Coulter, whose ward she will become. At first meeting her at a college dinner, Lyra is awed: