Roundup of best links for the year

Photo credit: DanielaTurcanu from morguefile.com

Another year is ending, which naturally tends to make us stop and take stock of where we've been and where we are hoping to go next. I've done well with some goals, less well with others.

Reflecting on what worked, I realized there were some influential articles and blog posts that were especially helpful to me. As my year-end gift to you, here they are:

Most helpful posts of the year

The procrastination doom loop, and how to break it via @TheAtlantic
It's very easy to become slave to your moods when you're doing creative work. This is one of the best explanations about how to overcome this. Truly a game-changer for me.

The Redemptive Arc via @DavidCorbett_CA
Really helpful discussion on how guilt and shame operate in a person's life, and how to harness these powerful emotional forces to build stories that resonate.

Five tips for making writing a daily habit via @premieressay
Some of the advice here will seem like old hat--goal setting, accountability. Other tips are unique to creative writing, like being always prepared to capture ideas when they come. Not putting parameters on what "counts" as output for the day is great too. Check it out.

Discovering our writing process via @JamiGold
Whatever gets you to "the end" is worth trying. Don't let the plethora of advice online paralyze you, or worse, make you waste your creative life chasing the Holy Grail of  "a perfect writing process." If the thought "I must be doing this writing thing wrong" ever crossed your mind, check out this post.

More than one adjective--Comma or no comma? via @CathleenTowns
This is my favorite editorial discovery of the year. I've never before heard the rules of how to order adjectives, even in graduate-level editing courses. If commas drive you batty, go check this out!

How POV can solve your writing troubles via @Janice_Hardy
This one crossed my Twitter feed when I was struggling to ensure my denouement would remain dynamic and dramatic, not devolve into a dull info-dump. It helped me with with more than this--I was able to revise several other scenes I knew weren't quite working yet.

"Can you make this worse?" Thoughts on rituals of self-care when the writing is hard via @gingermoran
Are you genuinely taking risks in your writing, daring to go deep when it would be easier not to? This post discusses teasing out the deep emotions that are difficult to access, and also how to not lose your mind while doing so.

The unfair truth about how creative people really succeed via @JeffGoins
A look at why networking is important, and helpfully gives tips on how to do it better. For the reticent and shy, this is good stuff. It's all about being supportive and trustworthy, not flashy.

My favorite writing books from 2015 

Story Trumps Structure: How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules by Steven James
At last! A writing craft book for pantsers that doesn't try to force you to become a plotter. James's approach is to help you develop more deeply what you do well--follow your instinct toward the most compelling direction a story can go. His chapter on "status" in character interactions is worth the purchase price. Pure gold.

Around the Writer's Block: Using Brain Science to Solve Writer's Resistance by Roseanne Bane
A great all-around resource for building better work habits while gaining a deep sense of satisfaction and creative joy. This book isn't just about routine and schedule, but caring for and feeding your muse. Her most powerful concept is the importance to entering a relaxed state in order to create. If you struggle a lot with writer's resistance (fear-based procrastination), you MUST read this book. It is hugely helpful. A great follow up to Pressfield's The War of Art.


Any powerful lessons you learned this year? Favorite links you'd like to share?

Read More

How I do it: keeping revisions organized

Revisions. Love 'em or hate 'em, they're a necessary step to strengthening your work. But it's easy to get really overwhelmed by the prospect of fixing problems, or simply bounce randomly from place to place in the story doing small tweaks without tackling the bigger issues.

Once you have a manuscript that's complete, you can try to identify weaknesses yourself, after you've set the manuscript aside for a while. Or you can ask a few readers to give it a look. I've done both before digging into a full revision.

Your goal is to identify a set of major threads--perhaps character arcs or plots--that need to be shored up or perhaps re-conceived. Between reader feedback and my own re-reading of sections and scenes they identified as somehow lacking, I came up with four major threads. With this knowledge, I next do the following:

Gather supplies

I find it helpful to work with a printed version of my manuscript. It's easier to navigate than an electronic one and I'm less likely to end up with version confusion if I do the messiest marking up on a physical copy. For my method, you need

The manuscript printed, two pages per sheet (see example below)

A three-ring binder

A three-hole punch

Post-it flags

Flag and list

Prepare your manuscript by hole-punching the pages and inserting them in the binder. I prefer the ring at the bottom of the page, with the back of the previous page as note jotting space. But punching the top would work as well, with note jotting space above.

Assign a colored flag to each of the revision threads you will be tackling. (I happened to have patterned ones, but plain, as shown above, work great too. Color coding is the key.)

Open a new document in Word and list the major threads. This will be where you keep a record of all your concerns, ideas and plans: a revision running list.

I like using the space below to jot notes.

Go through the manuscript, scene by scene. Look for opportunities to add or replace material for each thread.

Flag the scene with the appropriate colored flag. Jot a note in the margin or on the adjacent page about what's bothering you.

In your  running list Word document, under the appropriate thread,

~List the page where you see the opportunity.
~Describe what isn't working.
~Brainstorm possible solutions.
~Jot down dialogue or descriptions that occur to you

If ideas to fix later scenes involving the same thread occur to you as you read earlier scenes, describe them in your running list under the appropriate thread. When you eventually get to those scenes in the read-through, add flags to the pages and page numbers to your running list.

As much as possible, try to tackle this identification process in a linear manner, progressing from the beginning to the end of the story. Otherwise, you risk missing minor details that affect your revision threads and need to be changed.

Resist the urge to actually fix any of the problems. Simply list them. If you have a perfect solution, add it to the running list.

Conversely, if you don't have a solution, there's no pressure. You're aware of the issue and can come back to it later. Perhaps once you've tackled other things, a solution will come to you

Revise your manuscript

Print out your complete running list.

Tackle any revision you clearly know how to fix. Then remove the colored flag from that page in your notebook, and check it off your running list. (I find it helpful to also use strike-through on the electronic version of my running list as a back up, because I may end up adding to the list as I actually do the revisions.)

Move on to the more and  more difficult revisions and rewrites. If any revision will affect a later problem scene, add the information about what changes to your running list.

Continue until you've removed all the flags and crossed off everything on your list.

Print a fresh copy of your story. Set it aside for a few days.

Read through it aloud. Mark rough transitions, voice issues, repetition, echoes, wordiness, and typos.

Make those corrections.

Pass the manuscript off to beta readers or your editor, depending on how confident you feel after your copy-editing read.

How do you typically tackle revisions? 

Read More

Escalation: The key to avoiding melodrama

Melodrama. It might make for addictive daytime TV, but it tends to drive readers crazy.

It's a long, slow ride to the top (Photo by kconnors from morguefile.com)

Consider the following melodramatic scenarios:

• Eyes lock across a crowded room and the hero will now spend 300 pages risking his life for a woman he has never spoken to.

• The heroine's boyfriend sees her touch another man's shoulder in a conversation, A page later, he strangles the rival and disembowels him, then sends the organs to the heroine.

• A knee-replacement patient wobbles during physical therapy and has a crying, screaming, furniture-tossing tantrum.

• A destitute single mother receives a million-dollar check from a philanthropist she never met.

What do you notice is a common thread among these scenarios?

Suddenness. Instantaneous action. Emotionally going from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in two seconds flat.

In other words, what tends to convert a dramatic moment into a melodramatic one is lack of preparation.

Consider how each of the above scenarios could be converted from melodrama to drama with some preparation.

Scenario 1

Eyes lock across a crowded room and the hero will now spend 300 pages risking his life for a woman he has never spoken to.

~Eyes lock across a crowded room. That woman looks so much like his dead wife, the one he couldn't save. He'll do anything to atone for his failure on that mountainside.

~Eyes lock across a crowded room. That woman looks so much like his missing sister. Could it really be her? He'll do anything to find out, and to keep her safe.

~Eyes lock across a crowded room. He knows she's had nine drinks so far, and he won't let her out of his sight. Not like he did with his college roommate who didn't live to see graduation.

Backstory, parsed out at key moments, can give some preparation for a character's radical actions.

Alternately, you can use nonlinear narration to give us this moment that seems out of the blue, then gradually reveal how this character's reaction is inevitable, based on previous experiences. 

Finally, you can ratchet down the emotion, so it's not no connection to "die for you" in seconds. More on that with the next scenario....

Scenario 2

The heroine's boyfriend sees her touch another man's shoulder in a conversation. A page later, he strangles the rival  and disembowels him, then sends the organs to the heroine.

The heroine's boyfriend sees her touch another man's shoulder in a conversation. That's her brother, right? he thinks. No wait, who is that guy?

He ponders whether she tends to touch shoulders of anyone she converses with. He gathers data, watching her talk to women, children, men old and young. He notes that she rarely touches anyone but him.

He casually brings up the shoulder-touching incident in conversation with her, not mentioning the touch. "Who were you talking to the other day?"

When she gives an innocent spin on the story, he fears she is lying, and presses back. "You seemed awfully friendly."

Her protestation confirms his fear. The lady doth protest too much, as Hamlet's mom says. My girl is definitely lying.

He becomes fixated on learning more about his rival. Is he married or in a relationship? How long has he known my girlfriend? In what capacity? He asks friends' opinions of the rival.  Googles the rival. Stalks his Facebook page. Any data that confirms his suspicions will be worried over, repeatedly rehearsed.

When the heroine will next be put into contact with the rival, her boyfriend  tries to convince her to change plans. When she refuses to do so, his anxiety increases more. He will try to control her appearance, suggesting she wear more modest clothes, less makeup.

He asks a friend to keep tabs on her while she is in contact with the rival, and to call him if anything seems out of line.

While his friend is spying, the boyfriend torments himself. He imagines the heroine in passionate embraces, hotel trysts, a Vegas wedding chapel. He wonders what he did wrong in their relationship that would drive her to cheat. He re-imagines every happy memory they ever had together and looks for signs that she was somehow unhappy or deceptive.

When the friend reports back that he saw the heroine and rival whispering together in a corner, the boyfriend ups his game once again and begins stalking the heroine, the rival, or both.


I can probably pause here, as you likely see where this is going. Jealous rages do not come out of nowhere. They start from a small suspicious action that is misinterpreted and gradually magnified. The jealous one will work every possible angle to either disprove or prove his suspicions, depending on how trusting vs. insecure he is, or how healthy vs. narcissistic.

Likewise, jealous rages do not become homicidal in nature until the one cheated on slowly but inevitably comes to the end of his rope. He will try all kinds of other methods to part the lovers or protect his own feelings before he will resort to murder.

Skipping the long arc of emotional escalation will always feel unrealistic and melodramatic.

Your MUST slow it down. Think escalator, not bullet train. The increase in "height" (intensity) should be gradual. 

Dissect the emotion. Think through how suspicion becomes worry becomes paranoia becomes jealous heat becomes anger becomes rage. 

Too fast emotional escalation is one of the key problems I see in beginning writers. If you want to improve your craft, make it your mission to understand HOW emotions escalate. 

• Study books and films that do it well and analyze how they did it. 
• Read psychology books and self-help books that analyze emotion.
• Observe emotional escalation in those around you and make notes about what you see and hear. 
• Listen to your inner voice when your emotions are stirred. How does it feel to become gradually more angry, for example, or more hopeful?

Exercise

Take one of the remaining melodramatic scenarios above and consider how to rewrite it either by properly preparing or by slowing down the emotional escalation.


Do you struggle with melodramatic scenes cropping up in your story? How might you better prepare for dramatic actions?

Read More

Caring for your creativity during the holidays

Photo credit: danielemusella from morguefile.com

December is here, and with it comes a lot of rush and bustle. Shopping, decorating, parties, concerts, recitals, bake sales, visiting family and friends, preparing for visitors, more shopping, more baking, more parties, etc. All the festivities can be pretty draining, not only of your bank account and time, but of your creativity, too.

"Caring for your creativity" might sound a little strange, but think of it like a muscle. It needs both consistent exercise and protection from injury. Holiday busyness provides both unique opportunities and unique dangers for your creative powers.

Deeply engage socially

The times I've been most blocked with my writing have not been for want of time, but want of ideas--specifically interesting stuff for the characters to be doing that move forward their arcs of change. Busy seasons provide an opportunity to fill up with ideas. Getting butt out of chair and living life can help, as can being exceptionally curious and nosy.

During the holidays, you are thrown together with lots of people in all sorts of venues, so take advantage of it. Everyone who crosses your path has an interesting story to share, so make it your mission to access those stories. Some folks will be quick to share their best adventures, others have to warm up a bit. Here are some conversation starters that can help you get people talking:

• What is your favorite holiday memory?
• What happened on your worst Christmas ever?
• What is the most memorable gift you ever received? 
• What is the kindest thing anyone has done for you?
• What unique traditions have been passed down in your family?
• What do you love most about your family? Dislike most?
• How are you like your parents? How are you different?
• What was your most precious childhood possession?
• Are you a collector? What do you collect and why?
• What is the weirdest secret you ever discovered?
• What is the funniest thing you’ve ever done?
• What’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken? Was it worthwhile?
• What is the coolest place you’ve ever visited? Scariest? Most disgusting?
• What mishap turned out better than you ever expected?

Once you ask, listen, not only to story ideas, but also how the story is told. Note the storyteller's tone of voice and be alert to unique turns of phrase. Watch their expressions and gestures. Jot down the best stuff. Get a copy of Emotions in the Wild, a guided journal I created to help you collect data about how real people express emotions, and use it to keep your observations organized.

And if you're a party host, your guests just might love a structured time of storytelling, in which they take turns sharing a funny or touching memory with the group.

Seek pockets of stillness

Busy seasons also have a way of filling our minds with a lot of noise. This can be a big cause of post-holidays burn-out. The more you can give your mind pockets of quiet and stillness, the more mentally healthy you will feel during and after the holidays. Here are some ways to reduce noise and introduce peaceful moments into your day:

• Pare back on social media. Most of what you'll find there is buy, buy, buy anyway,
• Set your phone and computer aside more often.
• Limit TV watching
• Take far-away parking spaces and walk more
• Begin and end the day with a few minutes of silent reflection or prayer
• Journal: write away some of the noise of the day, then write about your childhood
• Snuggle with pets and loved ones
• Cook something that has to be constantly stirred
• Listen to soothing music while doing gentle stretches
• Walk, preferably during daylight hours to get vitamin D
• Swap a few showers for baths
• Copy poems or inspiring prose into your journal
• Write snail-mail letters to distant friends and family
• Improvise with a musical instrument
• Doodle, draw or color
• Build Legos with or without your family

Balancing out the hustle and bustle with quiet should make for a happier holiday season, and keep burn-out at bay.

What special challenges make writing difficult for you in December? Which ideas above appeal to you most?

Read More

The emotions laboratory outside your door

Photo credit: jdurham from morguefile.com 

I'm not here today, I'm guest posting over at Jami Gold's blog on honing your observation skills in order to better portray characters' emotion in fiction.

Reading others' emotions is something you do every day.  It's a skill one begins to develop from infancy. But like other kinds of reading, it's a learned skill, not an entirely inborn one. So if you feel like this is a weakness, never fear, you can improve with practice.

And it's worth the effort to observe people's natural emotional reactions in natural settings in order to better represent human behavior in your fiction.

So please swing by to say hello and, I hope, pick up some useful tips for turning your ordinary trips to the grocery store, your kids' swim meet, the dentist, the gym into an emotions laboratory.

Read More

Tips for using numbers in fiction

Dear Editor-on-Call,

Photo credit: diannehope from morguefile.com

My critique group always argues about how you should write time. 5 o'clock or 5:00 pm? And do you have to write out numbers, as in five thousand, or can you go with 5,000 (in fiction?)

Yours truly,
Counting on you


Dear Counting,

Unfortunately, there isn't one hard and fast rule for this. These sorts of decisions are what industry pros call "style." Every publisher has its own style guide dictating its preference for handling things like numbers. No one will expect you to know this information ahead of time--they'll likely just ask for changes during the editing phase if you chose something other than house style. However, if you don't handle numbers consistently, you won't be making fast friends with the editorial department.

For many years, I worked on publications that used Associate Press (AP) style, so I've had that pretty deeply ingrained in how I approach this question. Its style choices will feel more right for some genres than others.

Clock time

AP usually handles time like this-- 4:43 a.m. or 11 p.m. (Note the letters are lower case with periods after each. AM and PM is right out.) If your story is, say, a mystery, thriller or SciFi full of time references, this is the format to go with. It's pithy and official looking.

In most other fiction, I typically see times written out as four o'clock or eight-thirty or half past two. For occasional references, spelled out numbers read more fluidly. The a.m. and p.m. distinction can be handled better through descriptors like morning, afternoon, evening, night.

I'd recommend against combining the two formats. Both "four forty three a.m." and "5:02 o'clock" just look stupid.

Quantities, amounts and ages

AP style says to spell out numbers under ten and use numerals for everything else. I can't think of a single novel that follows that rule. Quantities should be spelled out. Hyphenate a compound number when used as an adjective.

He came in sixth place.
Joyce won fifteen million dollars.
The kidnappers are demanding thirty grand.
I can give you twenty-two reasons to stay home. (note hyphen)
When Kit turned twenty two, she bought an electric bass.
The victim was an eleven-year-old male. (note hyphens)
I haven't been back to Viperville since I was eleven years old.

Dates

Calendar dates are another sticky area you didn't mention. AP handles them like this--May 5, 1999; June 13; Summer 2014. Commas are used only between day and year. Ordinal numbers are a no-no (notice it's NOT June 13th in AP).

I haven't seen any clear preference in fiction for how one handles numbers for the purpose of naming a date. Obviously spelling out the year will be too wordy, so I'd avoid that. As far as using the word or numeral, go with whichever looks better in context. Ordinal numbers will generally look better spelled out--and sound more like natural speech.

Kyle left for camp on June 23.
Which day should we go, the sixth or the seventh?
Joe-Bob remembered that awful lynching in April 1952.
Who wants to hike on February third?
The ambassador's letter was dated September 9, 2012.

The most important thing is to pick a style and follow it consistently. I'd suggest making an index card with your personal "style guide" and posting near your computer for quick reference.

If anyone knows of a definitive style guide all the major houses use, please me know!

Which of these areas have tripped you up? Would you argue against any of my recommendations? Why?

Have a burning editing question? Feel free to leave it in the comments, and I'll cover it in a future post.

Read More

The End: reflections on wrapping a draft

Monday night I wrote the words "The End" on a manuscript I have been working on steadily for roughly three years. I should be ecstatic, right?

Instead I'm scratching my head about why it took me so freaking long when other people can draft an entire book in a matter of weeks.

Photo credit: deegolden from morguefile.com

My process is such, however, that my "first draft" is more like a NaNo participant's fourth draft. It's not a mess or full of holes. Though I'm an organic (aka "pantser") rather than planner type, I don't draft fast and sloppy. I meticulously research and interview experts as I draft rather than run amok with some half-baked ideas that don't bear out in reality. I revise as I draft, doing big structural changes to earlier chapters when I find I've written myself into a corner. I also do some editing as I draft because I can't seem to not tinker. And because I let my critique group look at a few chapters at a time, and some of them nitpick more than look at structural issues.

From what I can tell, this latter issue is the linchpin of my process problem. I don't stay consistently motivated generating material only for myself. I have a terrible weakness in wanting feedback while I draft. I really don't know how to break myself of it or if I should.  I see a lot of benefit in others with some emotional distance telling me, "hey, your story took a wrong turn at chapter 4" while I'm only on chapter 7, because I don't have to throw out and redo from scratch as much material.

I'm also not sure if I should abandon my method of "draft-ivizing" as some call it, because many other organic/pantser writers I know also stop when a plot problem appears, go back and fix what needs to be fixed, and only then continue moving forward. Steven James's Story Trumps Structure (one of the only books I've read that works with rather than tries to change pantser process) makes clear that pantsers' creativity doesn't work in a linear manner. If it did, we'd be plotters.

This particular story went places I'd never imagined, especially for what is ostensibly a sequel with mostly existing characters. Because a venue change brought to light new things about them. And some of the plot ideas that excited me most required a lot of research, research that opened up some pretty interesting horizons. I now have a lot more knowledge about HIPAA and hip fractures, personality disorders and protocols for EMTs, military re-enactment and draft policies, aphasia and vericella zoster, anti-vax trends and 60s fashion, chemical properties of artists' oils and French idioms, weasel hunting and Pennsylvania driving laws. It's a weird list, I know. I'm not sure what the NSA would make of my Googling habits.

I suspect one of these days, I'll end up writing historical fiction, because I really grooved on all the research. Writing what you know is boring. Writing what you want to know is where it's at. Learning and discovery fuel my creativity. But I suspect I would have just as much fun with my research if I were doing it more methodically, during set periods, instead of chasing down facts as needed.

I know how you readers come to me expecting tips, but we're all learners here, folks. The best I can give you is some of my lessons learned and questions I'm grappling with that I hope will enable me to be progressively more productive with future projects.

• Be willing to let go of preconceived ideas about existing characters. Otherwise, they rebel.
• Be willing to live with ambiguity and notes to yourself so that you can do batches of research at one time rather than constantly stop to look things up.
• Be willing to change your process if it isn't getting you where you want to be
• Consider whether your desire to tinker with a scene is helping your imagination open more or if it's just holding back your forward motion.
• Consider when you seek feedback. Would other eyes sooner help or hurt your forward motion? Perhaps there are other ways to gain accountability and encouragement besides critiques on an incomplete project. 

What parts of your writing process do you want to change? 

Read More