The last time I posted about writing, I mentioned the biggest task I have in improving my work in progress is to give my characters each a more distinct voice. I grabbed my e-reader and reread a few chapters from Gloria Kempton’s Write Great Fiction- Dialogue. She recommended using the Enneagram as a tool to think through each facet of a characters personality, strengths and weaknesses, fears and hopes and to determine how your characters will think, feel, act, and speak throughout the story arc.

This is brilliant advice. I would have being better off completing this exercise prior to writing the book. The remodeling is going to be slow work.

Here’s the steps I took to start this process:

Get familiar with the model.

Wikipedia is your friend. Jordan Green,  the Editor in Chief of the Burnside Writers Collective, turned me on to The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Riso and Russ Hudson. It’s going to take some time to cuddle up to the model to get the gist of it. And be prepared, The Enneagram is a tool that’s been handled by many religions. The Wisdom of the Enneagram has a distinct religious framework that doesn’t play nice with Christianity. That said, a model for understanding human personality does hold up for centuries unless it didn’t function well as a sense-making device for seeing people.

Select a personality type for each of your central characters.

Choosing a personality number for my character Icarus was simple. Throughout the plot of the book, he’s constantly driven by his need to achieve and to “be someone.” He’s a “three”, The Achiever. Dion’s character could have ended up with a couple of different personality types, but I choose  6– The Loyalist.  This personality type would make for a good “side kick.” Icarus is an angry character, so in order for Dion’s sticking with him at his lowest points, I needed a character who would be prone to overlook faults to maintain the security of the friendship. Arva’s character ended up being a 4-The Individualist. My Enneagram, calls this type The Artist. Both designations fit Arva. She’s deals with feelings of being truly unique to the point she’s not sure she can relates to anybody. She also experienced a single mystical experience as a young girl that she can’t duplicate or explain.

Build a cheat sheet for your characters.

This step will take a bit of time. Patiently work through the books take notes on the following features of the personality types you’ve chosen:

• Key characteristics
• Their signature sins (Also known as Deadly Sins or Passions)
• The unconscious childhood messages they picked up from their parents
• Basic desires
• How they manage feelings (Icarus is a “three” and tends to repress emotions and focus on the task at hand.)
• What these personalities are like at varying degrees of emotional health ( This will give you clues as to what they will say or do when you “throw your main characters down a flight of stairs.”)

Revise.

This is slow work but worth it. I’m currently having fun giving Dion a more nuanced personality. I’m discovering that he uses humor to mask anxiety. His anxiety also makes him impulsive. Both of these things irritate the already smoldering Icarus. More conflict, which creates more interest for the reader. And I’ve only gotten to chapter seven.

I’m expecting this method to create some headaches along the way. I might discover that had written the character doing things untrue to their personalities. If I get to that point, I’ll have to have them protesting the decision of another (more juicy conflict), being forced into the circumstance by a greater danger (even more conflict), or I’ll have do a whole sale rewrite to make the character’s motivations and actions match.

Either way, I’m expecting the quality of the my WIP to substantially improve with this exercise.

Last week I mentioned that I received my the first feedback for my work in progress. One of the most challenging things to hear was that the three central characters all had the same voice. This was especially disturbing when I realized that all three characters shared my personality. My novel, in its current form, is a collection of mini-me’s. I couldn’t stand the thought of subject readers to that.

I grabbed my e-reader and reread a few chapters from Gloria Kempton’s Write Great Fiction- Dialogue. She recommends grabbing a book on the Enneagram as a tool to flesh out the nuances of each character. The Enneagram is model for understanding human personality that predates modern psychology by  centuries. (Yes, the Enneagram has some roots in the Kabbalah  and Islamic Mysticism. I tempted to record myself reciting the Apostles’ Creed and embedding itself in this post to calm fears that would only bloat the size of this post. A little trust, then).

The model has a tremendous insight: That each personality has a signature fear that leads to a missing of the mark. Moses and King David referred to this as “transgression” and used the same work to describe an arrow that missed the target. The day after the AFC championship game there’s not a Baltimore fan who would object to that word being used to describe the final play of the game.

I read the book and worked to find which personality trait fit my protagonist. He’s the prototypical Number 3: “The Achiever.” Not coincidentally, so am I. The “Passion” or “fear” that comes with being an Achiever is deceit. Riso and Hudson define deceit as a drive that”causes us to put all of our efforts into developing our egos instead of our true nature. We could also call this passion Vanity, our attempt to make our ego feel valuable with without turning to our spiritual source.”

My Evangelical Decoder Ring translates this to mean “I’m prone to relying on performance instead of God’s grace and love to measure my worth as a human being. I’m not above subverting Christianity and even Jesus into pawns for my own spiritual DIY project.

This is my signature sin. It’s what I do.

God must appreciate my tendency to be a slow learner. My church is studying a book by John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be. Last week I read these words:

We do not get tempted by that which repulses us. Temptation rarely begins by trying to get us to do something that is 180 degrees in the opposite direction of our values. It starts close to home with the passions and desires that God has wired into us and then tries to pull them a few degrees off course. The result is enough to pull them a few degrees off course. That subtle deviation is enough to disrupt the flow of the Spirit in our life, so coming to recognize the patterns of sin most tempting to us is one of the most important steps in our spiritual life. (p. 147)

Pastor John says that the pattern of each person’s sin is like a fingerprint and its always connected to our strengths.

Ortberg pulls a list of strengths from a book that draws from the Enneagram. He goes on to suggest that Achievers are prone to become preoccupied with success and are even willing to manipulate others to secure praise. It’s insights like this that keep me from inviting Ortberg over for parties.

And then this morning I visited Don Miller’s blog and read his confession that he’s tired of being more consumed with his reputation than his character. Like I said,  God knows that in this arena, there’s no difference between the slope of my learning curve and that of a bowling alley. Thee days, three different looks in the mirror.

The next task of the book is to flaw every important character with their signature sins. The heroes will become self-aware and find some level of triumph over these character flaws on their way to resolving the conflict. The villains will be the ones driven by their own passions.

Sounds a lot like life.

I asked a handful of trusted friends to beta-read a work-in-progress back in December. Last Friday, I received my first piece of feedback. The beta-reader’s input was affirming, polite, thoughtful… and still hard to read. The reviewer caught missed details, minor continuity issues, and pacing issues. She suggested I introduced some facts earlier. Quick fixes, all.

But then she had the audacity to suggest that I had some work to do on the voices of the central characters. In her opinion, they were too similar.

I knew she was right but I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t matter that I chose this reviewer because  I knew she was a reader, a teacher, and a wise person. What I really wanted to hear was “Good job. That year you’ve invested in this book was enough. You’re finished.” I wanted to dismiss everything she had to say.

This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve done contract work for over ten years and had three books published. Editors have dissected my writing more times than I can count. In the privacy of my own skull, I’d questioned their sanity and taste. I’ve challenged the wisdom of being paired up with pre-pubescent professionals. Blood has been shed on the big screen of my imagination.

I’ve been fortunate enough to never voice those thoughts. After minutes or hours, the wave of indignation recedes and I return to my right mind.

Here are some things I’ve learned to tell myself when receiving critique, whether its in writing, work, or relationships:

The human brain is hard-wired to resist critique:

Our brains are designed to be convinced of our own beliefs.  Imagine going to the grocery store and having to decide each time you walked down the produce aisle whether or not you really preferred cantaloupe over apples. Indecision would prevent you from ever finish shopping. Our brains prevent this shopping catastrophe. When we are exposed to opinions which which we disagree, our “fight or flight” reflex kicks in. On the other hand, when we hear an opinion that we agree with, the brain’s pleasure center releases a package of dopamine and gives us sense of well-being.

So the architecture of your brain prevents you from having to re-choose your religion, political affiliation, whether-or-not-those-jeans-make-your-butt-look-fat, and whether or not you like Tim Tebow* every morning. The downside is you are also not inclined to really hear criticism.

The hack: Wait until that surge of emotion passes before deciding if there’s merit to the critique or not.

If you build a reputation for not hearing criticism you will stop receiving criticism.

The calm version of myself knows that I need critique. I have blind spots and inexperience as a writer and as a human being. I’m selfish and sinful. Critique, then, should be as valued as oxygen.

I’m not proud of this, but on occasion I’ve driven Amy to the point where she doesn’t have the energy or will to even try to confront me anymore. I’m in less relational danger when she confident that I’m hearing and processing her input even if I don’t agree with it. I’ve learned to be scared when she becomes resigned.

Rail against enough editors and watch your work-for-hire contracts vanish. Dismiss a beta-reader once and see if he or she ever makes that time investment twice.

You should be more surprised that your work is good than you are that someone thinks its flawed.

I know, the last person to blog about Malcolm Gladwell’s famous “10,000 hours” should turn the lights out. But he’s right. It takes years of disciplined practice to be good at anything: Marriage, writing, fitness, parenting, woodwork, home repair, or sex: Anything. When I’m wise, I remember that I’m simply logging in my 10,000 hours and this criticism is part of paying my lump.

The operative clause is “when I am wise.”

How about you, what helps you receive critique well?   

*I’ve made my gratuitous Tebow reference and will not have my blogging licence revoked. Thanks for your understanding.

So there’s a marriage book that’s been released by a controversial pastor. I so want to post a review of the book. Last year “Love Wins” earned the title of the most controversial Christian book of the year. I explored the theology of the book in a series of posts and was surprised at how my web traffic ballooned. I’m confident that if I reviewed this book, I’d see similar results.

I just can’t. I made this commitment to not write negative reviews anymore. I’m not saying that I won’t explore and interact with people’s ideas. I wrote posts about Rob Bell’s theology out of genuine concern and curiosity about the book. But in this case, my motives for reviewing the marriage book are more mercenary. I wanted web hits. I’ve also prejudged the book based on my low opinion of the author. I don’t have a puncher’s chance of being fair with the book.

Furthermore, the world doesn’t need my review of the book. I’ve already seen a few calm minds dissect the good and bad in the book. And I’ve seen the feeding frenzy of bloggers trying to get noticed in the fray. My post would simply add to the noise.

Here’s a clip from an older post that explains my rationale for not writing negative reviews as a rule:

Several years ago I was a contributor for a small Internet magazine that wrote book and movie reviews. There were many parts of that experience I enjoyed. I met multiple authors and some of whom I still have relationships with today. I enjoyed receiving free books and DVDs. And it didn’t hurt to get paid to go see movies on opening weekend.

Occasionally I’d review a book or a movie and would feel the obligation to write a negative review. Sometimes the experience was awkward, especially in situations when I liked the author. I’m embarrassed to admit that at times the experience was cathartic and empowering. I’ve come to point that I simply won’t write a bad review anymore. Here’s why:

All publicity is good publicity: When I released Divine Intention I discovered how difficult it was to get your book reviewed on websites that mattered. I learned to appreciate the lukewarm reviews because at least people were talking about and noticing the book. If I truly don’t think a book or movie has merit the most effective way to make it go away is to ignore it and praise better art.

Time is precious. I can usually tell within a chapter or two if I’m going to like a book. I don’t have time to drive through 200 pages of bad writing to produce a fair review.  I just don’t enjoy the process enough.

I identify too much with the creators of the work. I write books. I know the sacrifice and energy someone pulls in to the process. I know that I’ve bruised and angered fellow creative folk along the way with those old reviews. I know first hand that this is part of the game. I’d just rather be a cheerleader for the up- and- coming writers I enjoy.

Sure there are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes I put on my pastor hat and challenge what I believe is a toxic set of beliefs. But the rule is I’ll keep silent about what I don’t like. So in the future when a publisher or authors asks me to review a book I tell them, “It depends.”

Read the acknowledgments in your favorite book and chances are you’ll find the author offering deep thank to his or her editor. Throughout the process of writing editors find themselves acting as shepherd, bartender, therapist, or coach. Sometimes all in the same day. Expressing this gratitude  is proper, since so often authors find themselves balking at the advice offered them by the same editors. It’s like debating with a GPS system and deciding, upon arrival, that the unflappable voice was correct after all.

Early on during the writing of Divine Intention I found myself without an editor. The editor who acquired my book left the publishing house about the time I was turning in the earliest chapters. I felt lost. This book was unlike anything I ever written and I simply wasn’t sure how to proceed. At the time the publishing company was in a lot of flux. I called the switchboard operator looking for someone to offer guidance. After being transferred a handful of times I was finally given an email at which I could submit the manuscript by the date prescribed on my contract.

I was on my own.

I realized my anxiety stemmed from the fact that I hadn’t yet developed a clear writing voice. I was still experimenting with syntax, diction, and all the other tools at a writer’s disposal. Experimentation is a wonderful phase of any writer’s life. However, the first book manuscript being turned into a new publisher wasn’t the appropriate canvas. Driving an editor to attend AA meetings is not a virtue.

I ended up picking up one of my favorite memoirs at the time, Blue Like Jazz: Irreligious Thoughts on Spirituality, by Donald Miller and read it over and over. I read it once to get a feel for Don’s cadence, a second time to study how he structured sentences, and a third time so understand how he structured his essays. The early mornings were for writing and evenings were spent re-reading Blue Like Jazz. I might have read the book seven or eight times during the course of writing the first draft. The book served as a set of training wheels while I learned how to ride on my own (That said, I can’t blame where my book fell short on BLJ.)

I’ve been thinking about my New Year’s resolutions about the type of relationship I want to have with God this year. I’ve been thinking about why I’d want to spend time reading the Bible again. I’ve grown up with the Bible. I’ve had years of strong interest in reading the book, years of finding it dry, and quite frankly years where I find scriptures to be a troublesome book.

I’ve decided that this year when I read the Bible this year, I’m going to read it to develop my “voice” in life. I want to understand how the imperfect people scripture dealt with having their status quo’s exploded by God showing up. I want to read with an eye for God’s personality and core values. And perhaps, 365 days later, I might change my life’s “voice” a little bit for the better.

It’s Christmas-time and “free” sounds real good right now, doesn’t it? Here’s three chapters from my unpublished work, A Nativity of Misfits. It’s a memoir of how I wrestled trying to reclaim the meaning of Christmas. The books is the marriage of memoir and historic research. I’m sharing the first section “Jesus Came for People who Struggle with Faith.” Hope you enjoy it.

By all means, work that “Share” button on the bottom of this post.

And then come back and comment.

Why I’m I giving away a few free chapters? A few reasons. Every author wants their work to be seen, and I’m having a hard time interesting publishing houses and agents with this book. They love the writing but point out that this is not a feel-good Christmas story. It’s a bit dark, emotionally. I don’t disagree with that, but so was It’s a Wonderful Life , right up until the end. Anyhow, if this post were to be widely shared and commented upon, well that wouldn’t hurt the cause at all, would it?  So go ahead and give it a read, and if you like it, share it please.

Peace,

Larry

About a month ago I believed I was nearly finished with my work-in-progress. I took a break from editing by playing with the outline to the sequel. I discovered that there was a minor character in the WIP that I wanted to develop more fully in the second and third books. There was no strong female character in the story and I wanted to remedy that.

Toward the end of the WIP I had introduced a young slave girl who aids the antagonist by spying on one of the heroes. I had a sense she might end of being a more important character, but I wasn’t sure. By the end of the work, she ends of aiding the heroes. But I didn’t give the reader enough information about her to care if she continued into the next book or not.

I also felt like I was cheating by adding her so late into the book. Her presence in the book felt contrived, as if the only reason she was there was to advance the plot for the “real” characters.

It felt that way because it was true.

I knew I could add her story into the book fairly easy. The two main characters spend much of their time apart. Many of the chapters ping-ponged between characters. Weaving the heroine’s story into this mix would not be a difficult.

The issue was how to give this two-dimensional character interest. Here’s what (seemed) to work for me:

I connected the character to one of the book’s themes:

I’m exploring the idea of estrangement and alienation this is book. I’ve built a world in which people find themselves estranged from family, society, and nature. I created a vague deity in this world, but did little to explore what it would be like for a character to feel estranged from it. I gave the girl a nagging spiritual longing to connect with the supernatural, but no assurance that such a being existed.

I gave her strong ideals and then made her violate them:

I created the character to be a spy. In order to make her interesting I introduced her as someone who would never spy for the king no matter how desperate she was. I wrote her having a deep hatred for the king and his guard. One I established this unwavering opposition to the king, I was able spend multiple chapters driving her to be desperate enough to betray her principles and to work for the king. I was able to create a story arc for her that made her character likable, sympathetic, and complex.

More importantly, it felt like she was indigenous to the story from the beginning.

One of my writing heroes, Cathleen Falsani, invited me to submit a column at www.sojo.net. Her book Sin Boldly: A Field Guide to Grace is one of my favorite works ever. So when she asked me to try my hand at a column, I jumped. Here’s my partial answer toward a definition of an evangelical. Enjoy.

One of the most common mistakes I see new writers make is to  declare victory after finishing the draft of their work-in-progress. To be sure, getting a book down on paper is a huge accomplishment. It’s worth a minor celebration: A few days off from writing, an extra scoop of ice cream, or a night out. However,  I see far too often is a Facebook statuses and blog posts about being finished with the work and agent shopping.

The truth is that, unless you’ve been channeling F. Scott Fitzgerald at your laptop, your work really isn’t good. Not yet. All you’ve accomplished is  creating the clay that you’ll begin to mold. You’ve yet to shape the sculpture. All you’ve accomplished is the creation of the raw materials you need to begin writing. You’ve got rickety sentences and elliptical paragraphs to tame. Sure, your work is filled with gems. But there’s a lot of bad writing in need of editing.

Lots of it.

If this isn’t true you, keep it to yourself. Otherwise, nobody will like you and you’ll never get invited to parties again.

Here are — things you should be doing instead of shopping your newly finished manuscript:

• Take a vacation from your manuscript. Set your manuscript aside for a week or two. After being immersed in a work for months, you’ll need time and space before you and interact with the writing objectively. A passage that seemed genius in the moment often looks natty with fresh eyes. You might realize that ideas that came easy to you were actually borrowed from other authors.
• Share it. Give your work to a few beta readers. Get their honest critique. Some of those readers should be other writers. Some should be readers in the audience you are trying to reach. Why give the opportunity for an agent to find fault (and reject your work) when you can find people willing to volunteer their services? If you find critical readers who can help your manuscript find its next level.
• Read it out loud. There’s something about reading your work out loud that exposes grammar errors and clumsy sentences like no other disciples.
• Read a book on writing. During your vacation from your manuscript, read a book on writing. Choose one or two suggestions in the book that give you opportunity for growth. Then edit your manuscript with an eye for improving those two things.

Malcolm Gladwell’s  Outliers gave us the sobering reminder that excellence is only achieved through long hours of practice and experience. Excellence has to become the stuff of muscle memory before it can produce great art. It’s this knowledge that’s making me appreciate great musicians more and more. A few weeks ago, I took in a Herbie Hancock concert with a good friend. Herbie is now 72-years-old but commanded the stage and the keys with cool and virtuosity.  I was awed at Herbie’s commitment to continually expanding as a musician. He had a few moments of struggle with his new Ipad and Apple monitors. He’d never done a solo tour in his life and wrestled a bit to make the new technology conform to his wishes. He continues to write music and experiment with re-harmonizing old standards.

On Sunday, Amy and I took in A Tedeschi Trucks Band concert (I know, a lot of concerts in a short time, right? It’s not the norm.) Again, I was moved by the mastery every musician had on stage. As Derek Truck’s said in an interview, “no musician is hiding behind anyone else.” Each player had the ability to command the stage by him- or herself. I was impressed by the complex music theory that under-gird several of the songs. Blues, jazz, gospel, zydeco, and reggae all made appearances throughout the night.

Each concert displayed musicians who endured the gauntlet of 10,000 and emerged into greatness. Each concert displayed musicians who weren’t content with their current achievements. Instead, they enlisted themselves in another 10,000 hour program in order to find their next level.

Each musician infused me with a new determination to keep whittling at my 10,000 hours.

I’m not a new writer. I have three published books, one of which was translated into Korean. I stopped counting the number of magazine articles and other work-for-hire projects I’ve got under my belt.

But I made a choice to make the jump from writing fiction to non-fiction. Nobody put a gun to my head. I wasn’t a best selling author, but I had my niche, which is what most writers can ever hope for.

I’m learning a new body of theory. My progress, of course, is slow and uneven. I’m wrestling to find advice and mentors that are truly helpful. But this was my choice.  I had the ability to stand pat at my last level. But I chose a path and I’m again wandering somewhere between hours 1 and 10,000.