2016 Goals

A new year means new goals. For the past two years, I’ve written down general goals, but this year, I’m trying something new. My Co-ML for our region and I have decided to push ourselves to write more over the year, and we’re going to be each other’s ‘whip-masters.’ I’ll keep her on track, and she’ll keep me on track.

In the month of December, we started getting together twice a week for at least two hours to write. Usually, at least one of those days, I’m able to stretch it out into four or five hours. With that in mind, I’ve put together a calendar of goals. What I want to be doing each month, what I want to accomplish each month. That way, it’s not a general idea of ‘revise this novel at some point.’

I’m working on revisions for Commissioned, the first book in my new series, and my goal is to finish by February 11^th. So far, I’m halfway through, so I think there’s a high chance I’ll be able to finish by that point.

From there, I have more goals, which I’ve shared with my whip-master, and I’m more than positive she’ll keep me on track.

So I’m not going to share them all here, but I do have other goals I’ve set. Last year, I wasn’t able to meet the 52 books read, but this year, I’m hoping for 45 books. So far I’ve read two, so I’m at least I haven’t fallen behind yet!

What kind of plans do you have for 2016? Do you have someone to keep track of you and your goals?

Storyteller's Symposium

Last weekend, I was able to attend the first ever Storyteller’s Symposium in our little town. It was a fantastic event, and I was very impressed by the number of would be artists that appeared. What I really hadn’t expected was that the storytellers included all facets, including photography, writing, film, and everything in between.

 What I loved was that even though I’d heard most of the advice already, it didn’t mean that there wasn’t something new for me to learn. For the majority of the month, I’ve been working on prewriting and preparing for NaNoWriMo, which means that I’m going back to the beginning. It’s been a year since I’ve started a first draft, and I feel like I’m relearning and revising how I start out a novel.

Probably what makes this ‘novel’ so difficult is that it isn’t a novel. It’s shaping up to be a series, which means that there’s even more plot points, even more characters, and even more planning so that the story arch follows a clear trajectory from start to finish. I’d gotten about two thirds of the way through the rough outline when I got stuck. I needed a large and satisfying climax, but I still wasn’t sure who my actual antagonist was. Or if the two potentials were working together.

During the symposium, I was thinking about this issue, and there was one lesson that really stood out to me. One of the presenters talked about the Dramatic Structure, the need to have a clear protagonist and a clear antagonist, and to have the two confront one another during the climax. He also mentioned that if there are two protagonists, then they both need to be present during the conflict.

You’d think that would be obvious, but every single climax I’d run through hadn’t included one of my characters. She was just as important as the other, but somehow, I hadn’t thought to make sure she had a clear reason to be there as well.

Once I figured out that both protagonists needed to be present, the dynamics changed, and the plot opened up again.

How’s your prewriting going? Ready for November?

Don’t Even Try

This month, I’ve been gearing up for NaNoWriMo, and since I’m ML of my region, it means that I’m trying to get a hold of other writing groups and find those who would be interested in writing a novel in one month. The town I live in is almost half students. When they’re off track, it’s like a ghost town, which means that the largest potential candidates for NaNoWriMo are students.

My Co-ML and I have been attending the school’s different classes, seminars and clubs, looking for writers. I’ve also been listening and participating in each club and seminar, because I want to know what writing students are being taught in college.

I haven’t been super impressed.

The advice that astounded me the most came from a student leader in the Writer’s Critique group. She started out the meeting by teaching all of the writers about publishing. She premised by stating that she didn’t know very much about publishing, but since they asked, she got the information from her teachers. She taught them about how to find small press publishing, to find publishers who are willing to take unsolicited queries.

She taught them that it was the only way to get published. One of the girls asked what to do if she wants to be published by one of the big five. She had no idea. She told them that it would be impossible to be published by one of the big five without an agent and it’s harder to get an agent than to be published by a small press. She said that an agent wouldn’t even look at someone who hasn’t published.

I was stunned. Basically, writing students were being taught to not even try. It’s too hard, so take the easy way out. Everyone says that it’s better.

I’m so grateful that I’ve learned about querying, and about publishing from those who’ve actually experienced it. In different online communities, I’ve met those who have published without using small-publishers. Those who spent years of querying before actually succeeding. With an agent who landed them the big five. Those who decided to self-publish and have already sold an entire series on their own, no publishers needed. I’ve even read stories of those who have already published with small press, but don’t have enough sales and actually have hurt their chances in the future to publish with bigger press.

What about you? What kind of advice would you give the girl who wanted to publish with one of the big five? What kind of experiences have you had with publishing?

Plot, Character and Setting

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been gearing up for NaNoWriMo. Every year, I try and do something a little bit different, something to push me to try something new.

Last year, I wrote my first modern day novel with no fantasy, just actual family relations and dealing with the disease of Alzheimer’s. It was a learning experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. To see what I learned from that novel, check out the link here.

This year, when I started thinking about NaNoWriMo, back in April, I didn’t quite have a story in mind. I used Camp NaNoWriMo to create characters, hoping that at some point, one of them would jump out to me and ask me to write their story. Fortunately, even though it was a frustrating month (possibly because I don’t like spending a lot of time with strangers), I did have two characters whose stories started to meld together.

Last month, I started plotting out the story. It was exciting, the more I plotted, the more I learned about the story. It’s the closest I’ve come to pantsing. I’m not actually writing, but I’m letting the story flow out. The more I wrote, the more I learned about the world, about the situations the characters were in, about the setting. Unfortunately, I kept hitting walls. Moments when I didn’t know where the story was going.

This week, I put aside plotting and character development. I started working on the setting. Getting to know the world my characters were living in. I had to determine how different organizations work, both of my characters are deeply involved in their own systems, and apparently, the plot wouldn’t move forward unless I understood the setting.

Writing out the rules to the magic system

As I continued to build the setting, I suddenly understood my characters so much better. Once I understand their world, I was able to understand their thoughts, their reactions, and their motives. It’s amazing how plot, character, and setting are all so intertwined.

What preparations are you making for NaNoWriMo?

Best Advice to a Newbie Writer

Over the weekend, I was able to go visit family. My little sister is about to go on a mission for our church, and it’ll be a year and a half before we see her again. While we were there, my mom threw a huge open house, and I got to meet a whole bunch of my sister’s friends.

One of those said friends found me (with my sister’s help) and told me that he wants to be a writer. There’s nothing that gets me more excited than when I meet another person eager to start the writing journey. As we talked, I learned that as much as he wants to write, he hasn’t really done very much. He told me that he wants to write, but it’s a lot of work, and in the past few months, he’s written about ten pages.

In that kind of situation, I’m never quite sure what to say. I don’t know him very well, and I don’t know what motivates him. He’s got the desire, but without the effort, there’s not much that I can do. The best thing I could do was to direct him to the NaNoWriMo website and help him sign up.

NaNoWriMo is one of the best resources for starting because there’s a built in goal. Each day, you get the chance to gauge how well you did, know whether or not to increase the number of words you write. Plus, there’s a built in writing group, people who encourage you to actually do it. You’re not alone, and you’ve got someone to take the journey with you.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for NaNoWriMo. This year, we’re really pushing toward getting as many new writers as we can. We’re going to paper the town in the next few weeks, which will be awesome!

Who else is excited for NaNoWriMo?

Insignificant Scenes

My neighbors have recently introduced me to the Marvel Universe. We’ve been working through all of the movies one by one, and I’ve loved it. One of things that has really amazed me is the story telling. Joss really doesn’t have a single insignificant scene.

It may not seem that way, there are random scenes that seem to pull out of the story, or reduce the tension, but every single scene is absolutely important to the scene.

We were watching Thor: The Dark World the other night, and there’s a scene where they spend several minutes dropping bottles, shoes and cans down a vortex that takes them to a completely different world. At the end of the scene, the intern drops their car keys down. It’s a hilarious scene, and the first time I watched it, that’s all I thought it was. A way to diffuse the tension, build comedy. But the second time I watched it, I realized there was a very important purpose to this insignificant scene.

Near the end of the movie, two of the characters are stranded. They have no way out, and then they find a vortex. One of the characters automatically knows that this vortex leads into her world. How? She sees cans and bottles… then shoes… and finally her keys. It’s a way to clue the audience into the significance of this one particular vortex, and where it leads. Otherwise, the audience might cry foul when they magically appear exactly where they want to go.

This is just one of the many, many examples found in the new Marvel movies. Every single scene, no matter how insignificant has a very vital part of the story.

When writing, I like to use Scrivener so that I can separate my scenes and figure out where I am. After watching the Marvel Movies, I’ve decided to go back through each scene and write the purpose. How does it move the story forward, and is it vital to the story?

How do you make sure that your stories don’t have non-vital fluff?

What’s In a Name?

I’ve been having a bit of a dilemma recently. At work, there’s a guy who’s been calling me Tiffany since we first met. Now, I would have corrected him, but at first, he would mumble “Hi Tiffany” while passing me in the hall, and usually, by the time I realize what he’s said, he’s already turned the corner. This went on for several weeks, and it’s not like I can correct him before he even greets me.

So basically, it’s been two or three months since he started calling me Tiffany, and by now, I just feel weird saying anything. Plus, I know he’s talking to me, so does it matter?

I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, whether a name fits a person or not.

And as a writer, it’s even more important than in real life. Because when you have three characters named Andy, Andrea and Andre, it might get a little confusing. In fact, I had a beta tell me that all of my characters have two syllable names. Something I’ve never actually realized.

When I first started writing The Orphans of Jadox, I had three separate characters. I spent time and energy naming them, and I liked all of their names. When I started writing, when I finally got to a scene with all of them in it, I realized that their names are just too similar: Aydra, Emera, Emdra. It was the third one that really tied them together. So once I changed that, Aydra, Emera and Shara, it didn’t feel like I had Huey, Dewey, and Louie on the page.

Then when I was working on The King’s Councilor, I realized that all of my character’s names started with a C or a K: Cassie, Karvid, Kelso.

Now, when I’m planning a story, I write all my characters down next to each other so that I can double check what they look like together.

What kind of name traps do you find when you write?

What I Learned from a Bad Movie Trailer

As many of you know, in January, I hosted a query party for several writers to come together and critique one another’s queries before we send them out. 

There were several moments of realization during the party.  I probably got through two queries when that lightbulb flashed through my mind. 

I was able to pare down another person’s query into something that made sense.  It wasn’t a long-winded, distracted bundle of words, it was short, succinct, and it made sense.  It focused on the main character, who he was, what he wanted, what the stakes were. 

That’s it.

I tried doing the same to my query, and suddenly it was 50 words longer.  Over the past two weeks, I started working on my 35 word pitch for Pitch Madness.  (If you haven’t heard of it, head over to Brenda Drake’s website!  She hosts some awesome competitions.)  I had a critiquer go through it, and she told me that my pitch was muddled, confusing and vague.  It made sense to me, but to someone who didn’t know the story, apparently it wasn’t clear.

I had another AHA! moment last week.  I’m not sure how, but I came across this trailer for a movie that came out last month.  It’s called Strange Magic.

I think I’ve watched it seven or eight times already.  Even so… I’m still not sure what it’s talking about.  There’s so many characters introduced that I can’t keep track of them.  I think I know who the main character is, but she’s only in there probably about a fourth of the time.  I get that a sister is kidnapped, but I’m not sure why, or what the main character (or who I think is the main character) has to do with the bad guy’s ultimatum.  Why her?  Also, who are all those other people?  

I’ve seen movie trailers where they give the whole story.  But this one, it makes me wonder if there is a story, somewhere beneath all of the odd characters and obvious attempts at jokes.

It also makes me wonder if that’s what my query looks like.  I went back to my pitch, and stated who my main character was, what he wanted, and what the conflict was.  That’s it.  35 words, and it makes sense.  It’s clear, and it sets up exactly what the reader should expect in the story.  No fluff, no other characters, or subplots.

Now it’s time to clean up the query.

Starting Again

I had a brief conversation with a friend this weekend about returning to work while writing.  She said that she hadn’t written in a long time and wasn’t quite sure how to start again.

 

“How do you start writing again when you’ve been away for years?  Makes me nervous.”

 

I know that feeling. 

 

When I was younger, I wrote a lot.  Not very well, but I never stopped.  When I got to high school, I finally finished a novel, which I considered one of my greatest accomplishments.  But then I graduated, and I figured that I needed to grow up, which meant that I wouldn’t ‘waste’ my time writing.

 

For two and a half years, I didn’t write.  I didn’t think about writing, I didn’t miss my characters.  Then I went through some difficult times and had a hard time coping.  When I went to my parents’ house for Christmas, my mom made me clean out my old closet, and one of the items inside was my ‘Writing Bible’ for my novel.  I packed it in a bag and took it home with me.

 

Just seeing my ‘Writing Bible’ made me curious.  It had been a really long time since I’d written anything.  I wanted to start again, but I didn’t know how.  I thought I’d finished that previous novel, and there wasn’t another story in my head.  For fun, one night while I was on quarantine for the H1N1 Flu, I pulled open my computer and started reading my old manuscript.

 

It was terrible.

 

I’d changed in the past years, and reading what I’d written as a seventeen year old made me cringe.  I’d done a ‘revision’ but it was only editing.  The writing was immature and the story simplistic to a fault. 

 

But here’s the thing: reading it made me want to write again.  I wanted to fix all those small problems.  I decided to do a rewrite of the novel.  To challenge myself, I took the entire novel, in first person, and changed it to third.  I started on the first chapter and it took me days just to finish the first few pages.

 

I’ve learned that writing is muscle memory.  If you start, you train your brain to do it automatically.  If you do it daily, then it becomes a habit.  It took a long six months before I finished my rewrite.  It went from about 62,000 words to a whopping 80,000.  I reworked major parts of the story, creating a better plot and discovering more of my voice.

 

I found that jumping back in, especially after a long hiatus, it works well to go back to what I’ve already written and rewrite until my imagination gets used to it again.  It’s like training before the marathon, or a dress rehearsal before the real thing.

Writing Something Familiar

I’m almost done with my purple WIP.  So close.  This is the one that I started during November for NaNoWriMo.  I wrote 50,000 words in November, and now I’ve written about 20,000 words since then, so my momentum has definitely slowed.  Though, to be fair, half of that was written this month.

This week though, I’ve been able to get back on track, and I’m in an interesting part of the story.  I’d accidentally started a section before realizing that I skipped a whole part, so I’ve been simultaneously working on both at the same time.

One of the sections, the main character is taking a tour of a city that is very important to my family.  It’s a teeny tiny town on the edge of Illinois, where the early members of our church gathered, and many important things happened there.  My character is currently taking tours and watching shows that are more than familiar to me.  In fact, one of them, I’ve been in for four years.  She’s also meeting people that I know out there, though I never specify them by name.

With hubby in Nauvoo

The second section, her father falls and hits his head and is rushed to the hospital.  As a nurse, I know what it’s like when someone hits their head, I know how they bleed, what the paramedics will ask, I even know what kinds of things a doctor will look for in that kind of an incident.

Both sections are familiar, and yet, it’s almost surreal writing because it’s not familiar to my MC.  She’s never been to Nauvoo, and she doesn’t know where each building is, how to get from one place to another.  She doesn’t know where the shows are, or which ones she needs tickets to.  And as an added difficulty, all of her travel companions speak Spanish, which she barely understands. 

With the paramedics and hospital, it’s not something that comes naturally to her.  This is her father, and she’s going to react on fear and probably not understand everything that’s going on.

I’ve never had to work so hard to think in someone else’s head.  In all of my other stories, I’m discovering the world with my characters.  They all live in foreign and exotic worlds, so I’m still trying to get an idea of the territory as I write.  But now, these are real world places and situations.  I have to be true to them, make sure that they are exactly right, and show them through the eyes of someone who’s not going to know what kind of assessments a doctor will do in an emergency room.  Or who doesn’t know the difference between Parley and Muholland Street.

Have you ever had to write about something you know well, but present it in a way that’s utterly foreign to you?

Learning Writing

Last week, I was contacted by a company known as Webucator, which is celebrating Computer Education Month by asking various bloggers to write about teaching their craft.  It’s a project known as Teach Your Talent.  I’ve been thinking about it for several days, and I’ve reached one conclusion.

There’s no real way to teach writing.  There’s no real way to measure if you’ve learned how to write or not.  What’s the measurement?  How do you know if you’re experienced or still learning?

If you’re learning how to use C++, wouldn’t you know if you’ve learned it if you write a program that actually works?  If you’re learning the piano, you can measure your achievements by the difficulty of the song you’re playing. 

But with writing?  What’s the goal?

Is it writing that first novel?  Publishing a short story?  Getting your first rejection?  Publishing anything?  Seeing your book in the front window of a bookstore?  Getting on the bestseller’s list?  Having your book adapted into a movie? 

I know of several bestsellers that others have criticized as poor writers.  Their prose is torn apart and their stories reduced to mockery.  It’s a very subjective field.  Nothing ever stays the same.  Different genres bounce in and out of popularity, readers that once loved a certain writing style now hate them. 

So if I were to give advice to a new writer, here’s what I would say:

1.       Don’t focus on the end result.  Writing is going to be hard.  Just because you write one good novel, it doesn’t mean that everything’s going to be hunky-dory.  J.K. Rowling wrote a series that send the entire world into a frenzy, and when she tried to publish under a pseudonym, she barely made a ripple.  Along the same lines, DON’T write for trends.  By the time you write and publish, the trend will have moved on.  Write what interests you.

2.       If you really want to improve, give and receive critiques.  I can’t even stress how important this is.  I spent years working on my craft.  I’d edited, revised and rewritten my novel five or six times and I was convinced that I’d gotten it as perfect as it was going to get.  My first beta partner tore apart the first chapter and left me in tears.  There’s two things you can do at that point.  Either give up, or prove them wrong.  I can’t tell you how grateful I am that her words, though harsh, made me want to try again.  I rewrote the chapter and was astounded by the change.  Same thing with giving critiques.  I’ve had people tell me something in a critique (ex: less telling, more showing) but it didn’t make any sense until I read someone else’s piece and realized what it meant.  Seeing someone else’s work will help you realize what your own is missing – either in a good way or the bad.

3.       Find some good writing buddies.  Writing is so much more rewarding when you have a writing group.  Whether you meet in person, online or anything in-between, knowing that you’re not alone will always pull you forward.  If someone in your group succeeds, you’ll see that it’s possible.  If someone fails, they have a natural net to buoy them up.  Next month is NaNoWriMo, and each region meets in person to celebrate and write together.  Go sign up!

4.       Write every day.  Like anything else, if you don’t practice, you will lose it.  That’s not a threat, it’s just the truth.  The best way to improve and learn how to write is to write.

 How about the rest of you?  Any good advice for someone thinking about picking up that pen for the first time?

NaNoWriMo

Pssst!

See this new badge? 

That’s right!  I have the privilege of being one of the Co-MLs in my region – in its brand new, inaugural year. 

I can’t even tell you how excited I am for NaNoWriMo.  Last year was an absolute blast.  I really wish I hadn’t taken so much time to actually participate.  I’d heard about it for years, and I’d always wondered what it would be like…but I never had the courage to actually try.

The greatest advantage to NaNoWriMo is the community.  Have you ever heard that writing is a lonely profession?  That’s because it can be.  I mean…other than the imaginary people that traipse around our heads.  I was a lone writer for years, all through high school and through college.  I never went out to find anyone else who had the same interests or who knew what I was going through.

Then I started following some writing blogs, which led to finding writing communities.  I stayed on the outside, on the fringe.  It took me way too long to actually participate in any of the communities though. 

Then I joined NaNoWriMo.  That was the first writing group I’d ever been in where I had face to face interactions with other writers.  And it wasn’t just people who were like me, there were teenagers, college students, mothers, and fathers – every kind of person imaginable.  But there was something that connected all of us and made us into a united group. 

Writing can be a lonely profession, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be.  Any of you thinking about participating in NaNoWriMo?  Do it!  Even if you don’t make the 50,000, there’s a benefit of finding others in your area that will encourage you to continue writing.

So what are you waiting for?  Let me know if you want to be writing buddies!

Using Real Life

The other night, hubby wanted to go out and eat to celebrate his first day of school.  While we were eating, the staff sang happy birthday to a guy who’d arrived with several of his friends.  Right when they finished, another group announced that they were there to celebrate a birthday too –- a group of girls.  The staff and her friends sang to her, making sure that their volume and enthusiasm exceeded that of the guy’s birthday song.

As we were watching the dueling birthdays, my husband leaned over to me and said, “Wouldn’t it be a cool story if after dinner they talked and then connected?  Years from now, that could be the story of how they met?”

I agreed that it would be quite a story, and then I started thinking about the NaNoWriMo story that I’m working on for November.  I hadn’t quite figured out how my two main characters, a husband and wife, meet.  As I thought about it more, I realized that my husband had given me a perfect backstory for my characters.

Makes me wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t gone out to dinner that night.  What kind of alternate story would my characters be experiencing in November?  It’s great to be in my own brain, coming up with characters, situations and even settings, but there are moments that living in the world and watching real people can give even more insight.

Have any of you used real life inspiration recently?

The Advantage to Outlining

I’m not a pantser.  I tried it once and it was an absolutely terrible experience.  Not necessarily because I didn’t enjoy the chance to find out as I wrote.  I actually enjoyed that. 

What I didn't enjoy was what happened next...

I’m still working on the revisions to piece together the story so that it’s manageable. 

I’m a planner by nature.  Everything needs to have a plan.  Our family recently received some disheartening news last month, and it was difficult to adjust to our new situation.  However, as I began to think about it, and with some wonderful friends who encouraged me, I realized that this was exactly what I’d wanted, though not in the way that I wanted.

Now, I know exactly what to expect for the next two years.  I know where I’m going to live, I know where I’m going to work – I can make plans in a semi-long term fashion.  In fact, my husband and I have made a 2 year plan, and it’s a relief to know exactly what I need to do to achieve our brand new goals.  It’s something visible, something I can follow and know if I’m on track or not.  If something new comes alone, I can figure out if it fits into the plan, and if it doesn’t, then I can discard it or adapt it to the plan.

I need the same thing in writing.  If I don’t know where the story’s headed, all sorts of sidetracks are taken.  I get lost easily, so my writing is full of dead ends, u turns and slippery slopes.  I need a map to figure out the journey before I even start.

I started working on my NaNoWriMo outline this week, and I’ve got to say, I’m starting to get excited.  The story’s coming together – slowly but surely.  There are already those rough starts, the accidental side road, but I’m fixing it now so that once I get to November, it’ll be nothing but a smooth, exhilarating ride. 

Honestly, what could be more frustrating than getting lost or even stuck in the middle of nowhere when you’ve got somewhere you want to be?

The Advantage of Self-Doubt

Let me clarify.  I’m not talking in the writer.  As writers, we’ve got enough people doubting us – even if they don’t say it out loud.  We’ve got to have faith in ourselves even when things don’t look to be sunny and rosy. 

I’m talking about self-doubt in the character. 

Right now, I’m halfway through Catching Fire, the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy.  I avoided reading the second book because I wasn’t sure how I felt about the first book.  This year’s NaNoWriMo theme in our region involves the Hunger Games, so I figured I’d better find out how it ends.  So far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

As I was thinking about the book so far, I realized that almost nothing has happened.  Plot wise, it’s been a very slow book.  Yet, I’m still riveted.  I still want to keep reading.  Why?

Katniss is one of those complex characters that always keeps me guessing.  Honestly, with the self-doubt she struggles with, I’m amazed she’s not mentally crippled.  From the first book, I wouldn’t have expected that.  She just won, she’d somehow beaten the system.  I’d have been elated.  Instead, she’s pulled away, reexamining everything that happened and believing the worst of herself.

Why is the effective?  Because when the character doubts themselves, then the reader will too.  Each character must endure trials and struggles.  Otherwise, there would be no story.  The reader goes through the experience with the character, and it’s important that they realize the danger of losing.  If you’re cheering for someone, it’s more exciting when there’s a chance they won’t achieve their goal.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to Katniss, but knowing that she doesn’t know that she’s going to win means that there’s a chance that she won’t.  There’s a chance that everything will end in disaster.  That’s why I keep reading.  Not because the action is riveting, but because I want to see the outcome. 

Now I want to go back and double check how confident my characters are in myself, and I know the one who probably needs a health amount of self-doubt.  From the start, she’s overly confident, and I’ve got to find a way to knock her down, give the reader a chance to wonder if she’s going to win.

Do you infuse your character with doubt?  Do you raise the stakes so that the reader wonders if victory is even possible?

Skimming the Story

 Over the past few days, I’ve been reading a book that had been recommended on multiple sites and was so popular, it had a pilot created for a TV series (which was unfortunately not picked up.)

Unfortunately, it took me several days to finish.  Usually, if I’m hooked, if I have to put it down, it’ll only take me two days to finish.  This one took me five or six.  And I wasn’t that upset when I had to put it down.  Add to that, I ended up skimming a large portion of the story.  Not because it wasn’t well written, but because it didn’t add to the plot.  There was a lot of background information, a lot of narrative and not so much action.

I’m not a huge action person, but I can get impatient if I want to know what’s going on in the story and all I get is a detail of the trees standing in the yard.  On some beta reads, I’ve told various people “get back to the story.” 

Fortunately, I had one beta tell me the same exact thing.  It’s so easy to see it in others’ writings, but sometimes it takes someone to point it out in our own. 

Conflict and action is what moves the story forward.  Taking long, meandering side trips can sometimes frustrate the reader.  They’d better be some awesome side roads with amazing views.

What about the rest of you?  What makes you skip sections of a story?  What makes you put down a book?

Start With Action?

Yesterday, I started revising The King’s Councilor, starting at chapter 1.  One of the biggest complaints that my betas had was that my characters had completely perfect lives.  They were all happy.  In fact, Cassie achieves her goal in the first chapter.

The first time I read it, I was surprised.  I started in the action.  That’s where the story begins.  Cassie’s going to learn that her goal didn’t start there, but it continued as she attempts to find her place on the king’s council.  So of course, she has to begin by achieving her goal of becoming a councilor. 

Right?

Then the second person said it, then the third.  There was no denying it.  Everyone thought it was too easy.  It didn’t matter that the problems arose after she got her new position.  They wanted to see the conflict, and they wanted to see trials — right in the first chapter. 

I’ve heard the advice to start with action.  It’s good advice.  I remember when I first began working on Servant of an Empire, I started at the beginning.  The story started when the king dies, right?  Sure, but that meant there were multiple boring chapters before the actual story started.  I started that novel so many times, just to get stuck a few pages in.  It wasn’t until I was rereading my outline when I realized that I could cut the first two pages of my outline (12 point font, single spaced) and start where the action really started.

However, it wasn’t until this revision that I realized that maybe it’s not about starting with the action.  It would be easy to throw the main character into some crazy situation, maybe almost ran over by a cart or something.  Or even when I started with Cassie being presented to the king and achieving her status as councilor.  Both of those are action.

So here's my new motto: 

Start with the conflict. 

What’s the main conflict of the story?  Where does your character run across their first stumbling block?  That’s what drives the story.  

Action sequences?  Sure they’re important, but without conflict to guide it, it’ll feel like cheap special effects.  

Using People as Setting

A few weeks ago, my husband and I went to Yellowstone to celebrate our anniversary.  We had a lot of fun, and there was a lot of amazing sights. 

As we traveled, I started thinking about how I would describe it if it were in a story I wrote.  I guess that’s proof that a writer’s mind is never still.  I’d focus a lot on the geysers, the smell of sulfur, and the formations created in stone.

Then there’s the never ending landscapes, trees and mountains.  It almost feels like you can see for miles. 

For some reason, there was something about the dead trees in the middle of the large basins that just amused me.  I think I took way too many pictures of those.

There’s no way to mention Yellowstone without talking about the wildlife: deer, elk, and buffalo. Of course, I can’t really tell the difference between any of them, so I didn’t really take pictures of those.

But when I think of our visit to Yellowstone, I wouldn’t stop there.  When we arrived at Mammoth Springs, we got there at approximately the same time as 2 tour buses of Asians.  It was a madhouse trying to take a picture of anything without having someone jump into the way. 

Many of them thought I was part of their tour group and tried to talk to me, but I didn’t understand a word I said.  And once they realized I was with my Hispanic husband, we got many confused and perhaps disappointed glances. 

They were people, visiting a National Park.  Yet for me, they became a large part of my visit.  If I were to describe the setting of Yellowstone, the tourists would be a large part of the setting.  I didn’t know any of them personally.  I had limited interactions with them, but at the same time, they were a major part of my visit.   

I didn’t take any pictures of them, since I wasn’t sure that would be appropriate. 

When I describe setting in my stories, do I think about the people that surround my characters?  I don’t think so.  But they don’t live in a vacuum, there’s always someone around.  In The Stone Mason, Rowell goes to school.  Yet, I don’t think I ever described the other students. 

What do you think?  Can people be included in the setting description?

Getting Through the Middle

Recently, I’ve been helping a friend go through the first few chapters of a draft.  The characters were solid, the story interesting.  I couldn’t wait for the next chapters.  Then, the momentum slowed, and I started to notice her get a bit discouraged. 

She’d reached that dreaded middle section.  The part where it’s not the shiny new beginning, and it wasn’t the exciting climax and end.  For some reason, I’ve seen that middle get so many people.  Instead of continuing, they stop, go back to the beginning and revise.  And revise.  And revise.  Because there’s no reason continuing until you’ve got the beginning down, until you’ve got it polished.

She’s not the only one I’ve seen do that.  I’ve worked with multiple people who get to the middle and start to wonder about their ability to finish.  They get distracted by the call of shiny, new ideas.  There’s always something easier than writing the sagging middle of the story. 

Beginnings are fun.  That’s where you’re just starting out on the journey.  You’re refreshed, invigorated, and ready to go.  Imagine a long car ride.  You start out, throw everything in the car, get on the highway and blast music while you rush to your final destination.  But somewhere along the way, it’s not so fun anymore.  Your seat starts to hurt, your legs get tired.  You just want to stretch.  You start asking that dreaded question:

“Are we there yet?”

I like to take pictures out the window on road trips

I’ve found that writing’s very similar.  It’s not as fun and glamorous as it looks.  I have so many unfinished novels, they could fill a shelf.  It wasn’t until I finished my first one that I realized that it could be done.  Here’s what I learned with that novel.

Finishing is even better than starting. 

There’s nothing like it.  It’s exhilarating staring at a completed manuscript and knowing that you wrote the entire thing.  You started out on a project with just an idea, and now, it’s here, complete, in your hands. 

So for all of you that struggle with that middle, I have just a few words of advice.

1.       Have a plan in mind. 

      

      I know that not all writers are the same.  Some people like to have detailed outlines while others like to write by the seat of their pants.  But that doesn’t mean that we all need to know where we’re going.  A roadmap can help immensely.  Or even just those signs at the side of the road: Milwaukee turn right, Houston turn left.  Know at least the direction you need to go.  It’s very easy to give up and go back to start when you’re lost.

2.       Skip to the next section

This is how I finished my first novel.  I actually got stuck at the beginning.  I had my plan in place, but for some reason, I couldn’t write it!  I didn’t want to just leave it at the beginning, so instead, I jumped to a section I was excited to write.  The point where two of the main characters meet.  I wrote from that point until I got stuck.  Then I skipped to another section.  I was always working on the story, but whenever I got stuck, I moved somewhere else in the plot.  I found that it was almost like starting a new story, and it gave me the energy to keep working on that specific novel.  At one point, I had five different sections of my story written, and in the end, they all came together.  Not exactly seamlessly, but that’s what revisions are for, right? 

3.       Just keep writing

That’s really the most important.  Writing isn’t going to be easy.  It’s going to be hard.  Life gets in the way, the words don’t come out like we want.  I’m a big fan of getting the words on the page now and fixing and revising later.  Force yourself through that section you don’t want to write, or the one that you just can’t figure out.  It’ll come to you.  Tell yourself that giving up is not an option.  Then treat yourself to some cake once you finish.  There’s no incentive like some yummy food to get through the hard parts.

Do any of you have advice for getting through those sagging middles?  I’d love to hear it!

Let Your Writing Simmer

Last week, I invited some friends over for dinner.  Nothing special, I’d just been feeling like the hermit and wanted to spend some time with other people.

I’d had the entire meal planned out.  I decided to go with a Chinese theme: pork and cabbage, stir-fry, sweet and sour chicken.  I was excited.  Honestly, I’ve always been of the opinion that if you’re not cooking for a lot of people, why cook at all?

Unfortunately, because of circumstances I couldn’t control, I had to go into work that afternoon for a little while.  I got home with about an hour before everyone arrived.  And I hadn’t prepared a thing.  Sure, the meat and vegetables had been cut, but there’s still the time that it takes to cook it all.  I began working like a madwoman; I had three pans on the stove, stirring them all at the same time.  I forced my husband to stop doing homework because I needed help frying the chicken.

Surprisingly, I finished by the time everyone arrived.  Everything was ready, the food was cooked, but it just didn’t taste right to me.  Later, talking with my husband, we both agreed that in my rush, I hadn’t allowed my food to simmer and for the spices and juices to really permeate through the entire dish.  That’s probably why the leftovers taste so good.  Yum!

Last night, I was thinking about the entire experience, and it reminded me of writing.  There’s a reason why we can’t just write a first draft and bam!  Send it out without a second thought.  There’s a simmering process to writing that adds just as much flavor as leaving something on the stove for an extra few minutes.  Allowing the writing to sit, to really coagulate can help when we come back to write.  I know that when I finish a draft, I can read through and think it’s brilliant.

After a few weeks of sitting, it doesn’t feel like it’s the best I’ve ever done.

Then it’s time for the fun part.  Adding the spices, the flavor.  Cut out the unnecessary words, add more vibrant verbs.  Show instead of tell.  Each ingredient adds to the dish until it’s something that I want to share with others.

Isn’t that what writing’s about anyway?