Sunday, January 30, 2011

Telling or Showing

The other day, in the library, during recess, one of my friends shoved a book into my hands and said, "I recommend this book." Yes, that's exactly what she said.

I looked at the book in my hands. I was already scared. It was one of those young adult books that are black with blue or red or purple letters and have something to do with vampires or werewolves or something like that.

But, I believe in judging a book by what's inside it, not its cover. So, I opened it up to the first page. I can't remember it exactly, but I think it went something like this.

"I walked down the street. Then I walked up a hill. I stood there and waited a while. The boy and his dog were not there. This made me mad."

I shoved it back on the shelf. I was already falling asleep. Not only was the prose slightly clumsy, but it didn't show me a thing. I couldn't see the world. I couldn't connect with the character. Every word was telling. Even when something was happening. And it was BORING! I didn't care a bit.

However, there's another side to this.

I keep sneaking my mom's first draft of the book she's writing right now. It's really awesome. But if I didn't hear her talking about it all the time, I would be really confused. There's a whole lot of action happening, but nobody stops to explain to the main character what in the world is going on. I'm not lost. But that's because I already understand how the world works. Anyone who hasn't spent the last 15 years listening to my mom talk about the Society of Peregrines would probably be completely lost.

In Japanese, we had to do a project where we learned a Japanese dance and taught the class how to do it. Before the first group started, the teacher got up and said something important.

He told us that almost everyone in his first class failed the project because the first thing they did was talk for five minutes about the origin of the dance. Then he explained what he wanted. He said we needed to start by getting the class engaged. Asking them to stand up and do the first motion. Then we could stick facts in here and there while we taught the dance.

This can totally be used in writing. It's important to start off a story with action, not a lengthy explanation. Then, you have to keep showing, but at the same time, tell the reader enough that they understand what's going on. So the audience is neither bored nor confused.

So, how do you keep your showing and telling balanced?

Friday, January 28, 2011

Pass-Along Descriptions: Grief

It happened. She died. One of my main characters, that is. I've been putting this part off forever because there's so much riding on it.

My previous note says: She dies now.

Don't panic, I've expounded on that. Today I sat down and wrote the scene. Then I re-read it and rolled my eyes. It's very first draft and needs an arena-size bin of polish applied. I'm working on it now and, slowly, it's coming around.

You know, grief is complicated. There are five stages, which can happen in any order. There's no right or wrong, since everyone reacts in different ways. Now that's what makes writing these parts interesting.

And getting a fresh take is even more interesting. I'm excited to see what you come up with.

Soooo . . . if you're up to another one, how would you write a physical and/or emotional description of grief?

Thursday, January 27, 2011

To-do Lists, Writer's Block, and Letting Characters Lead

by Leisha Maw

Today's to-do list:

1. Wake up: check.
2. Actually get up: check--and yes, I do have to have a separate line for this. Getting up is hard.
3. Get kids up: check, check, check, and check.
4. Get kids up again because they fell back to sleep: check.
5. Repeat steps 3 and four several times: check.
6. Beg/bribe/force some of them to get dressed: check.
7. Remember it's Kid D's birthday: check.
8. Pat self on back for remembering, because yes, I've forgotten a kid's birthday before: check.
9. Start laundry: check.
10. Make beds: check.
11. Make birthday breakfast of blueberry pancakes from scratch: check. I even ground the wheat. Extra check.
12. Get kids to school: check, check, check, and almost check.
13. Write blog: checking as we speak.
14. Write 2000 words in WIP: ummmmmm

Do you ever have those moments when it seems you've run out of words? When the flow just stops? What do you do?

I used to try to force the story and make my characters do what came next in the outline. It never worked well. Ever. (Kind of like number three on my to-do list.) So now I take a step back and consult my writing checklist before I start yelling at my characters to behave.

1. Setting: is it developed? Check.
2. Plot: do I have one? Check.
3. Characters: what would they do? Oh flub.

There's my problem. I'm reacting to the scene, instead of letting them react and act for themselves. What's the difference? It's kind of like my morning checklist. If I had my way, I'd never need numbers four, five, and six. Umm, okay, and eight. Oh heck, I'd never need number two. And someone else would make me pancakes. In bed.

But there's a reason I have those numbers in my checklist. Because my children drive the list. They drive my morning story. It's the same with a book. The characters, if they are fleshed out enough, have strong personalities and develop a life of their own. They won't do certain things. You can make them try, but no one will believe it. They won't. The reader won't. Even the writer won't.

Most of the time when I get stumped in my writing I just need to take a step back and ask myself, what would this character do in this situation? Then I smack myself in the forehead and let the character tell his own story while I write it all down.

What do you do when you hit a writing wall?

Leisha Maw

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Bottom of the Ninth

Within a few days I will write the last words of a first draft.

Nothing else seems to matter. There's laundry and dishes everywhere. I hope the kids did their homework. I wish I could lock myself in my room with my computer and have someone bring me my meals. Not that I'm sure I would eat them.

When I have to stop, it feels like my mind is coming back from a long ways away. And it doesn't want to stay for long.

I'd love to come up with some snappy concluding sentence for this post, but I really must get back to work.


Friday, January 21, 2011

Thank You Grandpa Tolkien!

by Rebecca J. Carlson

My son's third-grade reading teacher called to tell me he's dropping behind. He can't keep up with the other readers in his group, and he may need to be put back a level. This surprised me. I have a family of voracious readers. I'd say over half of our dinner table conversations are about books.

But as I thought about it, I realized I don't see my third-grader reading much.

Time to convert him to the family pastime. I went to the shelf and pulled down some chapter books that his older brothers had loved--The Time Warp Trio, Marvin Redpost. I spotted A Cricket in Times Square and added it to the pile. And then I stopped a moment to think about what I had loved as a third-grader.

The Hobbit.

I remember finding it on the shelf at the school library, an enticingly illustrated spine with a smoking volcano and some paths trailing around mountainsides that rose from a deep forest. I had pulled the book down, opened it up, got sucked in and never came back.

So I grabbed our paperback copy and took it along to my son's room, even though I doubted he would want to read it. The reading level would be too high for a boy who may need to drop down to an easier reading group. I gave him the stack of books, starting with The Hobbit, telling him, "This book is the best."

Thirty minutes later I came back. What book did he have? The Hobbit. "I like this one the most," he told me. Smiling, I kissed him goodnight and turned out the light.

When I went to get him up this morning, I found him already sitting on the couch in the family room, reading The Hobbit!

This is another reason why I do what I do. Why I work and wish and hope and fight. Because some child, some reluctant boy reader, some day, may get up at five in the morning to read the next chapter of one of my books.

Thank you, Grandpa Tolkien!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Advice to Writers from a Tax Man

All right. I can already hear you groaning. Tax time is fast approaching - and you're a writer. You have expenses. You can claim them on your taxes, right?

Yes, IF you do it the right way. Well, most of the time.

In a recent meeting of our chapter, Walt Eddy, an appeals officer for the IRS (and fellow writer) spoke to us on this very subject.

Here are the highlights.

Treat your writing as a business:

Make a dynamic business plan.

Open a separate checking account to be used only for writing expenses and income.

Keep all your receipts.

Keep a record/journal of all the events you attended and your expenses. Mileage to and from these events is usually allowed.

Do some research and KNOW which expenses are allowed and which are not.
(And sorry, for the most part, all your movie purchases probably won't make it through an audit - even if you only used them for story-line research - which of course we know you did.)

To legally use your expenses for your taxes, you MUST be submitting and promoting your work, and be able to prove it. If you haven't made any profit after three years, you might want to think twice about claiming them if you're showing a loss.

I have three more pages of notes, but I'll torture you no longer. Most of us have limits to how long taxes fascinate us, even if it is about writing.

If you'd like to know all the legal exemptions for writers and how to claim them, Walt Eddy has a website and a book, Making Expression Less Taxing: A Freelancer's Tax Resource. You can access them here:

Best of luck and may you all survive another April 15th!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

What's the big idea?

People always ask writers where they get their ideas, and I think there's a simple and a not so simple answer to this one. The simple one is: practice. Anyone who makes themselves write every day is going to get good at coming up with and cultivating ideas. Most of us always have an eye out for a funny story, or an odd image, or a theme suggested by an anthology. Over the years, we all train ourselves to strip an idea down to its most essential components, and then fit it into the structure of a story. We learn tricks like taking two seemingly unrelated ideas and playing them off each other. We learn to spot what kinds of ideas would make a great A plot versus a B plot, and then switch them around for the challenge.

But there's a difficult answer too, and it's probably what most people who ask the question are digging for. How do you find the ideas that you're excited about? That you must write? Before I share my answer, I have a funny story. My friend and writer's group-mate Walter Jon Williams used to wake up in the middle of the night having dreamt the most amazing dream ever, but he'd invariably drift off to sleep again and by morning he couldn't remember it. The feeling that he'd had this incredible idea that just set his creativity on fire was all that was left. So, he put a pen and paper on his nightstand and one night, woke up with one of his world shattering ideas and managed to remember the pen and paper. He jotted down his dream, fell back to sleep, and in the morning woke up excited. He grabbed the piece of paper and looked at what he'd written and it was, (not making this up, you can ask Walter):

UFOs are actually made out of bread.

The point of that story, aside from making you laugh, is that even a writer as experienced and accomplished as Walter, with his many awards and decades long career, will go out of his way to get the idea. He's surely got enough story ideas to fill several careers, given he's practiced coming up with them for most of his life. Yet there are ideas and ideas. The former can make perfectly good, even great stories. The latter won't leave you alone until you pour out your soul onto the page - which sometimes results in a great story, but without enough training in how to write will result in a mediocre, incomprehensible mess. Hence one purpose of practicing your writing skills is to be primed and ready to make those rare ideas shine.

Mine sneak in through the back door. I lay bait for them by thinking of something that I want. A certain feeling that a book gave me, for example, and then I ruminate about it and get frustrated and write a bunch of random scenes and make up characters that don't really click for me, and then, after several days to a few weeks, one of those ideas usually comes together, and it often has nothing to do with what I was originally looking for. Most of my sales, though, come from these ideas, and this in part explains why I didn't start selling stories until relatively recently, even though I graduated from Clarion West a decade ago. I used to work hard on ideas, honing my craft and execution and I got a lot of positive feedback and rejection letters that told me I was close. It was when I started laying bait for ideas that the sales started. I used to provide my most polished, overworked piece to my writer's group in New Mexico. More recently, I dashed off a rough draft of a story with an idea for my writers group, heard them chew it over and worry it to shreds, and came away with an idea, which might or might not have anything to do with what they'd said.

So the question I ask is, how to you find your ideas, as opposed to the regular run of the mill ideas that you've got a million of?

Monday, January 17, 2011

Piecing Together a Story

posted by Rebecca J. Carlson

Strip away the page, the stage, and the screen, and what beats at the heart of any work of fiction? Story. What do we crave as readers? Story. What do we strive for as authors? Story.

But how do you make a good one?

This past week I came across some new ideas from a professional storyteller. His name is Donald Davis, and every summer on a little island off the coast of North Carolina he runs a storytelling workshop. No, I didn't get to go, but I caught the documentary film about it:

What's Your Story?

Even though Mr. Davis teaches people how to find true stories in their own lives, I discovered a lot of things I could relate to writing fiction. He said our first step shouldn't be to ask, "what's the plot?" Our first step is to gather scraps, like a quilter getting ready to make a quilt. I realized that I like to do this for years before I begin a novel, dreaming up little dialogs between the characters, thinking about what their world would be like, what their histories are. I've also tried writing a book without gathering scraps first, and I ran into snags at every turn.

One of my favorite things that Mr. Davis said is that we need to establish what normal life is like in our stories. That's what people want to know about. What was your life like? What's it like to be a potato farmer's daughter, or to grow up in the Projects? Or maybe if you're writing science fiction, what's it like to live in an alternate world? But that's not all people want to know. They want to know what problems we faced, and then most of all, what progress we made. What did we learn? How did we grow? How did we survive and overcome? A story is a quilt made up of these three kinds of scraps - daily life, problems, and progress - put together in a unique and beautiful pattern of meaning.

I also enjoyed Mr Davis' wisdom on how to take care of "newborn" stories, on tapping into our memories, and on why humans need story. Take some time to enjoy this film and get a refreshing, inspiring view of the heart of our craft.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Rushing Slows Me Down

by Rebecca J. Carlson

The cabin girl sneaked a look at the latest print-out of my unfinished manuscript.

Okay, I let her. I didn't take it away from her when I saw her bringing it out to the car. All the long one-hour drive into town for our monthly Costco trip I listened eagerly for the gratifying giggles that came now and then from the back seat.

After she'd read the last page I waited, breathless, for the verdict. My daughter has no problem telling me when my writing is boring, or lame, or just doesn't work.

"This is good, Mom, but after the first few chapters it feels like you're rushing."

She was right. I had been rushing. Desperately rushing to catch up from the sixth months I'd spent moving my family to Hawaii. Rushing to catch up with my dreams. Rushing to write the book I'd been waiting all my life to write. But day after day, the words only trickled out. I stopped counting words to keep from getting depressed. I pushed harder, tried to put in more hours. Still, I felt bogged down in the endless morass of the middle. Have to get out, must get to climax, must press on...

Wait a minute! Sure, I'm excited to finish this book and get on with my writing career, but what's the rush? The real fun is in the writing.

So yesterday I decided to relax and have fun. Enjoy each and every beat. Stop trying to plow through my outline and get to "the good stuff." It's all good stuff, or it isn't worth writing.

When I stopped driving myself so hard, the words came. At the end of my daily writing session I had ten pages to print out, whereas in these past weeks my daily page count had been five or six.

I'm through rushing. It slows me down.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Pass-along Descriptions: Anger

You know it's coming. Your characters face off. Tension builds. Hackles rise. Then comes the emotional explosion.

How would you describe what they do and what they think?

This is round two of pass-along mental and physical descriptions. If you missed the previous one on SUPRISE, visit:

Any descriptions listed here are open for any and all to use in their work. The purpose is to have a resource of new imagery ideas for those times you're writing at 3:00 a.m. and your brain simply can't find the words.

Okay, okay. You can use them at other times, too.

Have fun and thanks for contributing!

Sunday, January 9, 2011

When querying, focus on what is in your control

by Chersti Nieveen 

So for the last six months, I've been querying. There have been highs and there have been lows, but I have come to realize one thing.

Make sure you have the right focus.

So what does that mean? Well . . . you can make it your goal to (a) become a NY Times best-selling author on your FIRST novel (b) have 50 agents not only request to see fulls, but offer representation (c) get a FREAKING HUGE advance that blows not only your socks off, but your neighbor's socks off as well (d) all of the above

We all wish, right?

But think about those goals -- are any of those things in your control? Not really. So let's look at some more realistic goals.

[1] Write the best book you can possibly write. Then let it sit for a month, and go back and make that book even better.

[2] Attend writing conferences, read books about writing, and work with other writers to learn more about what you can do better.

[3] Make every sentence better. Make the prose in your book so masterful that people want to read it out loud.

[4] Think you have a great beginning? Experiment with something new -- something that might work better. [See more specifics on that challenge here]

Notice how all those goals had one thing: focusing on your craft. Let's repeat that. FOCUS on making your writing better today than it was yesterday. Make each sentence not only shine, but make each book a legacy of how you grew to become a better writer. And never end your personal quest to shine.

Becoming a better writer has become my goal for 2011. What's yours? 

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Open Auditions

posted by Rebecca J. Carlson

I signed up to audition for a musical.

It was a crazy thing to do. I haven't been in a show since high school. Still, I've always wanted to be in community theater and this is the first time the opportunity came up. Besides, if I signed up, I knew I would get a few short seconds to read lines, sing, and dance on a stage. In front of lots of college students. Including some of my algebra students.Yeah, we'll see if they ever let me live it down.

I enjoyed my audition, even if no one else did. But what I enjoyed most was listening to all the other auditions. So much talent! So many of those kids were good enough for lead roles. And each one had their own unique take on the characters. I'm glad I wasn't the one who had to pick.

But still, among all those that were good enough, I saw a very few that made the characters come alive in a way I couldn't explain, or whose singing filled the auditorium with golden sound, or whose dancing was an absolute joy to watch. It wasn't hard to tell who had put in the time to train themselves for excellence in music dance theater.

That would not be me. I did not make call-backs. My preparation, which consisted mostly of sitting in the audience of a lot of musicals and wishing I was on the stage, did not cut it. If I really wanted to, I could find a vocal coach, sign up for ballet lessons, and take an acting class. If I put in the time and money, someday I might have a better chance. But it would still only be a chance.

There's not a whole lot of room on the stage.

Four years ago, I submitted my first manuscript to nine literary agents. My one request for a partial quickly turned into a rejection. No surprise that I didn't make call-backs. Up until that point, my preparation had consisted of reading a lot of books and wishing I could write one. Wishing isn't the right word. It was more an all-consuming, burning, ravenous desire. So I couldn't say, "oh well, that was fun. I'll go find another hobby," and still live with myself. Instead, I decided I needed to train for excellence.

I joined a critique group. I read books on writing. I went to a writer's workshop and came home feeling like I'd been re-born. And all the while I wrote, practicing my craft for hours nearly every day. Now, three workshops and a couple of manuscripts later, I think I finally have a chance. But it's still only a chance.

There's not a whole lot of room on the shelf.

I know that. But now I'm consistently making call-backs. That's progress. And someday, one of my books might "light up the stage" for a literary agent, an editor, and then a whole lot of happy readers.

And that's why I'm still in the game. That's why I'm going to keep coming to "author auditions."

Break a leg, everyone!

Friday, January 7, 2011

Turtle Girl

Hello everyone!

I went into hiding the first week into December from Cyberworld (but for my e-mail).

I apologize for my escapade.

I've been rethinking my networking v. writing ratio. It seems that networking is taking on the winning lead and my writing has been frowning from poor sportsmanship.


Funny, but Deirdra Coppel, a dear friend of mine, says that networking is GREAT, but how can I promote my book if he's in poor condition? He's not ready for agenting!

Where do you stand in your networking versus writing ratios as of now?

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

What I Learned about Writing Novels from a Book on Screenwriting

Robert McKee's book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting is amazing. I am literally in awe of McKee's wisdom about crafting stories. I can't recommend this book strongly enough - it has changed the way I think about storytelling.

You should reading all 418 pages cover to cover, because there is something to learn on virtually every page.

McKee had me from the first paragraph:

A rule says, "You must do it this way." A principle says, "This works ... and has through all remembered time." The difference is crucial. Your work needn't be modeled after the "well-made" play; rather, it must be well made within the principles that shape our art. Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

Throughout Story, McKee uses screenwriting terminology, but refers often to the commonalities between novels and screenplays. They intersect as different forms of accomplishing the same thing: telling a story. The story is something apart and different from the form (screenplay, novel, play, film, ancient rock carvings).

For just as glass is a medium for air, air a medium for sound, language is only a medium, one of many, in fact, for storytelling. Something far more profound than mere words beats at the heart of a story.

Story is key - McKee's emphasis is on understanding story first, then translating that to form.

Master storytellers know how to squeeze life out of the least of things, while poor storytellers reduce the profound to the banal. Story talent is primary, literary talent secondary but essential. This principle is absolute in film and television, and truer for stage and page than most playwrights and novelists wish to admit. Rare as story talent is, you must have some or you wouldn't be itching to write. Your task to is to wring from it all possible creativity. Only by using everything and anything you know about the craft of storytelling can you make your talent forge story.

McKee talks about the elements of story structure, down to the smallest beat of a scene, up to the largest sweeps of thematic imagery. He describes how structure is inextricably bound with setting, genre, and character. He lays out a plan to build story structure, from the inciting incident (and how to place that in your story) to the rhythm of each act, to the ultimate climax of the story. When McKee describes Crisis, Climax, and Resolution, for the first time I truly understood what these terms mean and how to craft a story that delivers a satisfying ending.

After talking about all the elements of a story, how to build those elements into a solid story structure, and how to attack common problems like developing dimensional characters and crafting compelling conflict, McKee finally talks PROCESS.

PROCESS is the reason I originally decided to read this book (also it was recommended by a writer I respect, which I've found is the surest way to find the gems). I wanted to do a better job of plotting my next novel, partly because I could sense some of the weaknesses of the stories I had written, but didn't have the tools to fix them.

McKee not only provided the tools, but he gives step-by-step instructions on how to use them. The method is deceptively simple: craft your story first; then begin to write. But there is much that goes into crafting, before the writing begins. This, according to McKee, is not only a speedier process, but also produces the best story. Essentially, he is a hyper-plotter who reserves the pantsing for when the story structure is already in place. This process may not work for everyone, but he makes a very compelling case for it.

He's sold me on trying this method for my next novel, but what of the stories I have already pantsed my way through? Just because I already have a strong intuitive grasp of storytelling doesn't mean that these stories cannot be improved (far from it). Writing intuitively can take you far, but having the tools to write intentionally will take you farther.

That is how an artist masters the form.

I'm excited to use the shiny new tools in my writer's toolbox - I'll let you know how it goes after the hammering is done.

Non-responders, how do you record them?

Like Rebecca, I took a break from submissions over the holidays, and have just now gone back to my files to look at what pieces are where. I've got a ton of non-response entries, and I've noticed they've become more and more common as time goes on. I define a non-responder as someone who doesn't reply within the time they say they will, or who doesn't reply within six months for a short story or query. Though I have gotten responses up to two years after I wrote the person off as a non-responder.

Now if it's a short story market or someone who wanted to review something exclusively, I always chase those. I write a follow up email or letter, and if I still get no response, I send another communication to withdraw the piece from their market so that I can resume submitting. If it's an email query, which more and more agencies prefer, I assume that no response is a rejection because they no doubt get a million queries a month and just can't respond to all of them.

What do you do with the snail mail queries, in which you enclosed an SASE? I haven't been chasing these down, though perhaps I should. I only bother when the person says that I should in their guidelines. Those of you who have chased these, which method did you use? Another snail mail? Email?

My records are getting rather full of non-responders!

Monday, January 3, 2011

Query Update

 posted by Rebecca J. Carlson

I sent my last batch of queries out about eight weeks ago, then took a break for the holidays. Thought I'd collected all the full manuscript requests I was going to get, but lo and behold, one of the agents I queried passed my query on to another agent! If someone says "very interested in reading the full manuscript" that's probably a good sign, right?

As for my querying strategy, I mentioned before that I had three categories of agents. Top sellers (while I'm dreaming), recent sellers in my genre, and personal recommendations from other writers. So how did that play out? One hundred percent of my full manuscript requests came from agents in my recent sellers category. So that means, if you want to find an agent, go look for someone who sells what you write.

I think I knew that.