Tag Archives: Lynda Rutledge

Why This Writer Reads Stories: Reasons 6 & 7

I became a better reader when I started teaching college-level English courses in writing, literature and critical thinking. Since I had to lead discussions relating to literature, I studied authors who were renowned for their literary prowess such as John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost and Paulo Coelho who wrote The Alchemist. I read books on how to develop plot, build characters, use a setting to strengthen a story, and employ figures of speech to heighten meaning.

Today, through reading, I’m still studying all of these topics in great detail. Here are two more specific writing techniques I’ve studied recently from reading other author’s stories.

Reason 6: How to develop characters with different speech patterns and thoughts

The best stories have memorable characters, and memorable characters are unique people who have a distinct voice, extraordinary thoughts, and notable physical characteristics.

In my novel, my main character, Leonie, is from San Francisco. Her companion on the hike to Machu Picchu, Luna, is a woman from Argentina. These two women meet many people on their journey—a winery owner, a young woman who seeks love, a tango instructor, a fortune teller, and tourists who are visiting South America from all over the world. Each of these characters must be distinctive in order to effectively contribute to the story.

In West with Giraffes, Lynda Rutledge does a fantastic job at creating likable characters that entice the reader to stay with the story until the final curtain. In this story, an old man has the task of transporting two giraffes from New York to the San Diego Zoo by truck. One giraffe is wounded, so he must take great care not to injure the giraffe further and to provide it with enough comfort to heal.

The old man is rather gruff with his first driver when the driver drinks too much and threatens the giraffes’ safety, but he is gentle with the giraffes, as gentle as a mother soothing a baby. Rutledge develops his personality by creating dialogue in which he shouts at the driver and threatens him. Immediately afterwards, she describes how the old man climbs up to the giraffes and speaks to them until they are calmed down. In other words, the author develops the old man’s character with careful dialogue and action to show that he can be impatient with people who are irresponsible, but also kind with creatures under his care. These are two techniques that I can use to develop the characters of my story.

Reason 7: How to connect the setting to the plot of the story

From real life, writers learn that setting is intricately linked to the plot of a story since characters’ choices are strongly influenced by where they live, travel, or wish to go.

In my novel, my two main characters decide to take a four-day hike to Machu Picchu in Peru. The hike is strenuous, risky, and uncomfortable. For example, some of the elevation on the trail is steep and the hikers must either do everything they can to endure it or choose to give up.  Some of the hike is at 12,000 feet elevation and some hikers are not conditioned for such altitudes. In addition, no showers are available at the camps until day 3, so the hikers must decide what to do for hygiene. All of these conditions greatly influence the choices that characters make.

In The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Santiago goes to Tangier, a dangerous port city, where he is robbed of all of his money. He had wanted to use that money to go to Egypt. Because he is now destitute, the boy takes a job in a glass shop where he learns patience, business skills, and a new language–skills he needs to travel to Egypt.  As he learns the skills, he also learns not to give up on his dream. The setting of the dangerous city shows the boy that he is naïve and must decide whether to give up or to persevere. The setting gives the author the opportunity to show that the boy is strong and determined to achieve his goal.

If the purpose of stories are to help humans learn how to navigate through their own lives, then stories must imitate life realistically enough to be instructive. Human lives are challenged by their environments on a daily basis—riches, poverty, war, traffic jams, noise, isolation, abuse, and advantage all impact what people can or can’t do.

A good author puts a character into a challenging setting and shows the reader what a strong character does with it.      

Why This Writer Reads Stories: Reasons 1, 2, & 3

I have 257 novels marked “read” on my Kindle and I also read books on paper. My six-foot-tall bookcases in my home library contain over 300 books, plus I have some on the shelf underneath my television, on my coffee table, and inside drawers next to my bed. I read every day—in bed, on the couch, in the doctor’s office, at the hair salon, in the rocking chair in the back yard, and at the dining room table. Everywhere, whenever I can.

I became a writer when I was nine years old and wrote my first poem. Since then, I’ve written more poems, short stories, articles, websites, blogs, recipes and essays. Now, since I’m retired and have more free brain power, I’m writing a novel and loving my increased writing time. 

But I read more than I write. I devour stories like they’re chocolate sundaes, loving every bite of their plots, characters, settings, and figures of speech. I read voraciously because I’m a writer; I love language, the power it has to convey information, emotion, and empathy. In addition to loving other writer’s stories, I read to improve my writing.

Here are three specific writing techniques I’ve studied recently from reading other author’s stories.

Reason 1: How to indicate who is talking without using “he/she said”

Dialogue is a dynamic technique to use to create action in a story, but a writer must make it clear which character is speaking. I’ve read stories where authors use tags such as “he said” or “she said,” and sometimes these tags create wordiness and take impact away from the dialogue; therefore, one day I chose to study how an author can use effective dialogue between two characters without including these repetitive tags. By reading The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers, I learned to identify the speaker of dialogue by describing what a character does right before she starts talking. Maybe she steps closer to the person to whom she is speaking and then she speaks. Another technique that Myers uses is to describe what a character thinks about the person with whom they’re talking right after she speaks; for example, she might imagine him playing a sport or eating spaghetti.

Reason 2: The effect of strong vocabulary on a reader

One thing I love about my Kindle is that I can underline a vocabulary word and get a definition for it immediately. I’m always looking up words, even familiar ones. I ponder about why the author might have chosen this word instead of its synonym. Is it a more accurate choice?

Or the word might be one I’ve never heard of before. This happens more often when I read authors who were educated in countries other than the United States. Recently, when I read Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams, I learned another word for altitude sickness, soroche. Discovering a new word feels a little bit like having a new baby. It’s a treasure and an opening to a bigger world.

Reason 3: How to move characters from one geographic location to another

In my current novel, my two main characters are traveling in South America. I was struggling with how to move my story from one scene to another. Should I describe what they can see outside the train window? Should I create a scene about how they pass the time on the train? Maybe one of the characters could be lost in thought as she crosses the border between Argentina and Chile.

Luckily, I began to read West with Giraffes: A Novel by Lynda Rutledge, a story about a destitute young man from Texas and an old man who must transport two giraffes from New York to San Diego.

Rutledge uses many techniques to move her story across the United States. The young man first steals a motorcycle and follows the giraffes’ truck. He watches the old man and his first driver as they argue. He notices a woman in red pants following behind them. He listens to the noises the giraffes make, and finally, when his motorcycle runs out of gas, he convinces the old man that he can drive the truck for him after the other driver quits. By the time he starts driving the giraffe’s truck, he knows the old man’s routine. While he’s driving the giraffe’s truck, he watches what the giraffes are doing in his rear-view mirror, he feels how their movements destabilize the vehicle, he talks to the old man, and he thinks about his childhood.

After observing how other writers use specific techniques, I then experiment with the same methods to develop my own novel. I can’t think of a better way to learn the craft of writing than to study writers—one technique at a time.