Here’s how you shouldn‘t do it.

1. Write things exactly as they happened, in the order in which they happened. Even in a memoir, readers need a dramatic arc, a story, not just a recitation of facts. “But that’s how it happened!” clients have told me. Maybe so, but just because it happened doesn’t mean it needs to be included. Pick and choose the events, thoughts, and people who make your memoir into a coherent story, and discard the rest.
2. No detail is too small. That’s right. No story will get bogged down in the minutae of daily life, will it? Everyone is bound to find every conversation you have absolutely riveting, aren’t they? Um, no. Many of us remember the beginnings of social networks, when we were treated to the particulars of someone’s breakfast menu or the moment they decided to take a nap. There is nothing interesting about the details of anyone’s day. Trust me on this. If you have something interesting to say, say it. Otherwise, leave it out.
3. If it’s interesting to me, it will be interesting to the book-purchasing public. Uh-huh. I’ve noticed that in general the people who live the most interesting lives are not the same ones who go around saying that their life is interesting. Check out your premise with a critique group before you assume that it’s going to capture the world’s attention.
4. Memoir and biography are kind of the same thing. Yeah. Like broccoli and sports cars are kind of the same thing. A biography is a straightforward narrative that does in fact capture an individual’s life in chronological order. It’s generally written about someone who has accomplished many significant things (being president of a country, discovering the cure for cancer, founding an opera company). If that just described you, then go for it. Memoir, on the other hand, follows a theme: a time, relationship, career, or task that was particularly significant and that can be woven into a story arc. If you’re still unclear, take a look at Frederick Buechner’s memoir, The Sacred Journey. In it he says,
   

   Memory is more than a looking back to a time that is no longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still.

5. This is bound to be a bestseller. Okay, I’m not even going to comment on that one.

So there you have it. Think many more times than twice before attempting a memoir, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

When you have a beginning, you’re on you your way—whether you outline or work by the headlights (only knowing what’s just ahead)—you’ve started the journey. And on that journey, to get from your beginning, rife with possibility and excitement, to your ending, a
surprising yet inevitable conclusion that fulfills the hopes of your readers, you must traverse the middle (or as some of us refer to it, the muddle in the middle).

Your beginning sets up the story.

Your ending pays it off.

Your middle has to do everything else:

• show progress in character arcs so we can see the protagonist has changed (or had the opportunity to change and refused to) over the course of the story
• show characters trying and failing to solve the story problem—or succeeding and making things worse
• show things that may be genre specific — for example, the detective talking to witnesses and looking for clues in a mystery

In short,

• show all of the information we need to find the ending believable—whether it’s two people falling in love, a murderer being brought to justice, or an agent foiling a plot to topple the leaders of Europe.

The middle is also where we see subplots arise and possibly be resolved—subplots that may reflect the theme of the book, the emotional arc of the main character, or a different aspect of the character’s journey. Subplots can also look at ideas from a different angle, coming to a different conclusion from the main plot. For example, if the hero needs to overcome his pride in order to reach his goal, we could see his brother-in-law giving in to his pride at a crucial moment, which makes his daughter run away from home (thus leading to a related but different subplot).

The middle is the part where you take everything that was set up in the beginning and complicate it. This is the part where, if the hero’s car broke down in a safari park, the animals try to get into the car, the hero gets out and runs—only to discover there’s a cliff in front of him, the lions are behind him, and if he manages to make it down the cliff, there’s a river full of crocodiles and hippos. He makes for the hippos, only to discover they’re even more mean tempered than the crocodiles—and so on. Every attempt at a solution makes things worse and complicates life in some fashion because if it doesn’t if the reader ever feels that the protagonist is at peace with nothing else to work toward, your book gets closed and never re-opened.

I really struggle with the middle of a book, making sure I’ve got enough story in there. I outline before writing, and yet I still wind up stuck somewhere, knowing I don’t have enough going on to justify calling something a novel (or novella, depending). I know the book needs more to entice readers. Or although the plot makes sense, it doesn’t fit with the way the characters and world have fleshed out in the writing, and I need to come up with an alternate next step. So what do I do?

1. Ask what the worst thing that can happen is. Even if that’s not the way I was planning to take the plot, it can really strengthen the story as the characters have to cope with something deeper. And sometimes, the worst that can happen isn’t something bad now — letting the hero and heroine deepen their relationship and trust in each other makes the inevitable Black Moment when it seems all is lost that much stronger.
2. Look at the three characters closest to the protagonist and ask how I can complicate their lives. Not only can their subplots add resonance to the novel by reflecting themes and motifs, but complications here can also affect the protagonist. When a trusted companion isn’t available, where will the protagonist turn for support or help?
3. Look for patterns in the story so far. We’re coded to recognize patterns, and from very early on, we’re taught that things happen in threes. Has something happened twice that can happen again, perhaps with a different outcome? Or has something happened that was a single minor occurrence that could have added significance by repeating it?
4. Do some free writing. I sit down with pen and paper and just start writing about what’s going on in the story, where I’m stuck, what’s the next thing that I know I want to have happen, what’s stopping me from getting there. Unlike the previous tactics, I’m not looking for a specific type of solution; I’m just hoping for inspiration of some sort. It often works, and it gives me an angle that I might not have come up with by following a defined path.
5. Add in something unexpected. Create a new walk-on character, throw in an unrelated complication (“This just in: tonight’s meteor shower is expected to result in minor property damage in the Tri-State Area.”), or include a trope from a different genre (This one works best when used early in the planning process).
6. Review the beginning. Are there any promises or hints of things to come, story questions asked but not answered, threads that have not been followed up on?
7. Look at the ending. Maybe even write up a short draft of the climax scene. What needs to be in place for this scene to play out? How can I set that up ahead of time?

If all else fails, I go work on something else for a while to give my brain a rest, then come back, hoping to come at the middle from a different angle, refreshed and able to see what I was missing before.

When all is said and done, there’s a feeling of excitement to knowing that I’m setting things up that are going to pay off down the line, and when I’m about to write the climax scene and all of that work is about to come to fruition, I know I’ve survived another middle.

Erin M. Hartshorn is a desert rat (native Nevadan) transplanted to a humid climate. Her ideal home has bookcases in every room. She is a moderator at Forward Motion for Writers, an on-ine writers community. Her fiction has appeared both online and in print in various places, placed in the PARSEC short story contest, earned honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest, and been short-listed for the UPC Award. When she’s not writing, she enjoys various handicrafts, though she prefers spending time with her family. She blogs online at www.erinmhartshorn.com/blog and can be found on Twitter @ErinMHartshorn.

What is a stylesheet? Well, you’ve probably at least heard of or at best worked with style manuals such as The Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press Handbook of Style, or the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association. You might even be familiar with The Elements of Style! These manuals tell you how to present your work in such a way that it’s clear and consistent. Wikipedia says, “A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field. The implementation of a style guide provides uniformity in style and formatting of a document.”

A style sheet begins where the style guide leaves off. Essentially it’s a document in which you maintain the “right” way to do things for the specific manuscript you’re working on. If it’s a nonfiction manuscript, you’ll want to include formatting issues, header information, and so on. If you’re dealing with fiction, then stylesheets are truly the best way to keep continuity: how many stories have you read in which Mary has black hair on page 14 but red hair on page 362?

Now I expect that most writers who are reading this will by now be shrugging it off. Isn’t that something my editor should do? Why should I be bothered?

There are a couple of reasons you should create a style sheet:

• It’s the kind thing to do. I didn’t create a style sheet for a recent novel, and doing so would have saved both the editor and myself a great deal of time, as I had to change some of her changes back to the original, and explain why. It would have been far better to have made that explanation upfront.
• It’s the efficient thing to do. How many times have you had to flip back in your book to remind yourself of a minor character’s last name, to check a date, or to remember what you said about Aunt Sophie? Easier just to turn to your style sheet to find the answers.

For nonfiction writers, style sheets are essential to keep you on track and eliminate long conversations with your editor when the time comes.

Many if not most publishers have their own style sheets (sometimes referred to as style guides); ask for them. It’s always easier to set up a manuscript correctly than to go back in and correct it later! Do that, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

At the grocer’s, when there’s a sign announcing that broccoli is on “special.” On an internet message board, when a contributor notes that “such is my ‘opinion,’ whether others agree or not.”

They’re quotation marks, and they’re almost as widely misused as are apostrophes. When placed around a word or phrase as in these examples, they’re called “scare quotes” … and, man, are they scary! The use of the term seems to date from the first half of the 20th century. Occurrence of the term in academic literature appears as early as the 1950s.

Wikipedia to the rescue: “Writers use scare quotes for a variety of reasons. When the enclosed text is a quotation from another source, scare quotes may indicate that the writer does not accept the usage of the phrase (or the phrase itself), that the writer feels its use is potentially ironic, or that the writer feels it is a misnomer. This meaning may serve to distance the writer from the quoted content.

“If scare quotes are enclosing a word or phrase that does not represent a quotation from another source they may simply serve to alert the reader that the word or phrase is used in an unusual, special, or non-standard way or should be understood to include caveats to the conventional meaning.

“Alternatively, material in scare quotes may represent the writer’s concise (but possibly misleading) paraphrasing, characterization, or intentional misrepresentation of statements, concepts, or terms used by a third party. This may be an expression of sarcasm or incredulity, or it may also represent a rhetorical attempt to frame a discussion in the writer’s desired (non-standard) terms (e.g. a circumlocution, an apophasis, or an innuendo).”

I’m not going to say that they are not sometimes appropriate, because there are many excellent uses for scare quotes, many of them noted in this article:

1. a term used only by a limited number of persons: Linguists sometimes employ a technique they call “inverted reconstruction.”
2. a way to express disapproval: The Institute for Personal Knowledge is now offering a course in “self-awareness exercises.”
3. a way to show that what is being stated is not, in fact, necessarily true: The Serbs are closing in on the “safe haven” of Gorade.
4. a means to indicate a euphemism: Sharon Stone made dozens of “adult films” before getting her Hollywood break.

I have no quarrel with these usages of scare quotes. After all, one can hardly misuse something unless there is, on the other side, a correct way to use it!

But as the wonderful “blog” of “unnecessary quotation marks” is constantly noting, there is a plethora of examples of misuse. Check them out: I guarantee you’ll enjoy them!

A few choice examples:

• Grab a “drink” and get a “snack” on the house!
• Turn off your “cell phone”!
• Great “hot” food!
• We are “open”!

The list goes on and on (to my not-so-secret delight). Do you have examples you’ve seen recently of the misuse of scare quotes? Share them here! Please! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Entries for 2011 include:

• Viral: an illness can be viral; a YouTube video is not.
• Epic: “an epic annoyance,” say the editors. My favorite comment: “Standards for using ‘epic’ are so low, even ‘awesome’ is embarrassed.”
• Fail: no, it’s not a noun. It’s not even an adjective. It’s a verb. If you can’t use it as a verb, don’t use it.
• Refudiate: just because Sarah Palin is stupid doesn’t mean that we have to be, too.
• Just sayin’: “Do we really need a qualifier at the end of every sentence? ” No, I say, no! (just sayin’ …)

There are many more here for your reading pleasure.

Not that it matters, of course. Lake Superior State University is not the University of Chicago, after all, and it seems improbable that this website is going to change labguage usage … perhaps it just is there to give those of us who care about this sort of thing a chuckle. Or a moment of despair.

What words would you like to banish from the present crop of neologisms, verbisms, and general Humpty-Dumpty speech? Let me know, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!