Category Archives: First Drafts

Jump-start Your Writing Routine with NaNoWriMo

Craft & Skills First Drafts Kristin Luna Storyline The Writing Life Writing Tools 3 Comments

If you told me that I’d write my first book in a month, I’d say, “Thanks, and here’s the beer I promised you for saying that.” Because, in truth, I had already worked on one book for three years, and in that time, I’d given it more treatments than a Beverly Hills housewife. And I hadn’t even finished writing it.

If spending three years writing one thing sounds a little nutty to you, imagine how I felt, especially being an impatient person.

It occurred to me that I had been looking at this writing thing all wrong. Well, wrong for me.

So I wiped the slate clean. I postponed writing short stories, put the labor of love novel on hold, and started outlining a new story. By piecing the new story together as a YA novel, I realized it would be easier to cut my teeth on than a dramatic literary fiction piece (which will be The Next Great American Novel… just give it time).

Instead of slaving through paragraphs, scrutinizing word usage and generally trying to make the labor of love perfect, I put all of my energy into preparing my new story. I used National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) as my diving board– no more dipping my toes in the water.

I wrote approximately 57,000 words in 28 days.  More importantly, I finished writing a book.

But I couldn’t have done it without a game plan.

How to Jump-start Your Writing Routine with NaNoWriMo

Realize what writing a book in a month actually means.

Yeah, sounds like a doozy. I know. But lets do some MATHS (even though we hates it, the filthy mathsies).

Let’s say you’re planning on writing a young adult novel. The average young adult book is between 50,000 and 60,000 words. This isn’t a rule, and you’ll find plenty of books that aren’t. But it’s easier to do the MATHS if we just say 60,000.

    •  There are 30 days in November.
    •  If you write every day in the month of November (spoiler alert: you should), then you need to write 2,000 words a day.
    • Don’t worry, dude. You can do that.

Realize what writing a book in a month means for you.

Clear your calendar, bro. Do not agree to take Taekwondo classes with your boss in November.  Do not schedule voluntary surgical procedures during this time. What I mean to say is: make writing your top priority (or one of your top priorities). Let your boss know what you’re going to be doing. Tell your family and loved ones. Buy lots of snacks and make a little squirrel stash at your writing desk. Create a good headspace for yourself. For example, I didn’t drink alcohol during the entire month (I missed you, beer! We had a tearful reunion at the end of November).

Realize what writing a book in a month means for everyone you love.

You may daydream about November – you, all hunched over a laptop wearing your sexy, hipster bifocals with two fingers of scotch in a glass next to you while you brood at the screen. Or, this may just be you.  In any event, this is what your family and/or loved ones will see: an angsty hobbit creature J.D. Salinger-ing it in its office.

You may think, around the 10th of November, that you are still speaking clearly and concisely to your wife. To her, your words are nothing more than animal-like grunts, and when you look at her, your eyes are a permanent, gazed-over haze. This is why the planning phase is so important: tell loved ones you’ll become a hobgoblin in advance.  Make them promise they won’t get mad at you, leave you, call the cops on you, or burn all of your clothes.

Plan for everything.

Some important things to consider before November rolls around:

  • What time of the day will you sit down and write?  If you don’t make that appointed time, when is your Plan B writing time?
  • Your in-laws are visiting? This is your one opportunity to say (and mean) “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” Okay. We all know that’s not going to work, so instead, explain that you’re writing an entire friggin’ novel in a month, and you’ll need some quiet and alone time every day for at least an hour.
  • Crap. You missed a day.  How will you make up for those 2,000 words? Write 4,000 the next day? Spread it out over a couple of days?
  • Outline your entire novel in September and October. Take as much time as you need on your outline. Know the story you are going to tell so you don’t get stuck during November.

Use the tools that are available to you.

Take advantage of the NaNoWriMo website, which sends you helpful tips as the month goes on, provides tools to help you track word count, and connects you with other crazy writers NaNoWriMo participants.

NaNoWriMo may not work for everybody.  But if you’re looking to jump in to your first book, finish writing a book, or set up a daily writing routine, it’s an extremely efficient practice.  Remember, it’s never too late to start, and it’s never to late to try something new. You may find that concentrated bursts of writing help you complete projects and help you establish a routine that works for you.

 

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Kristin Luna is a Marketing Consultant by day and writer by break of dawn. She sings to one of her cats, but the other cat doesn’t care for her voice. Kristin, a descendant of the 74350infamous Dread Pirate Roberts, is currently working on a Young Adult fantasy trilogy. When she isn’t contemplating marketing campaigns or writing, she’s designing handbags for gerbils, playing board games, tasting craft beers, teaching her cats sign language, reading, or getting in cabs saying, “To the library – and step on it!”. She is kidding about only two of those hobbies.

 

Collaborative Projects: How to Write Well with Others

Authorial Trust Craft & Skills Editing First Drafts Ideas & Plotting Outlines Rewriting Storyline The Writing Process 1 Comment

I have written and sold one collaborative novel, and I’m in the middle of writing another, so I have some experience in this sub-specialty of our craft.

Once you’ve gotten past the “Let’s write a novel together!  It’ll be fun/great/a ball!” stage, reality sets in. First of all, forget the idea that it will be less work.  It will take more time and energy total between the two of you to write something than it would if one of you wrote it solo.  You’ll be fortunate if it only takes 150% as much time and energy as a solo work.  Second, this will be different from writing a solo work.  Trust me. Here are some of the practical matters you will need to deal with.  Some of the points are my own observations, and some are gleaned from other authors who do frequent collaborations.

1.  Check your egos at the door.  Really.  You are establishing a relationship here, and although you may or may not be equals in talent, knowledge, skill, and drive, you need to be on a personal basis of honesty, diligence, and compassion.  The old teaching of “Treat others the way you want them to treat you” comes into play.

2.  Determine your collaboration approach.  To steal from my May 28, 2012 Fictorians article “Anatomy of a Collaboration,” you need to settle on an approach like one of these:

  • If sections of the novel require certain knowledge or expertise, one author may write those parts while the other writes the remainder.  This approach seems to be most commonly used when both authors are of similar levels of skill.
  • More commonly, one author will write the first draft, while the other author will do the second pass.  If one author is newer to the craft, he will usually write the first draft while the more experienced/skilled writer will do the final polish/draft.
  • And sometimes one author will look at another and say, “You start,” and the story is built somewhat like a tennis match, with no prior planning to speak of and the authors volleying responses back and forth.  A lot of “letter” stories are actually written that way.

This step is where you agree on how the byline will be styled.  If it’s a senior/junior relationship, the senior author’s name almost always goes first.  This is also where you agree on how the revenue (and any expenses) will be shared.  And even if you’re friends, write it down.  It will save grief later, I promise.

3.  Decide who the tie-breaker will be.  If you arrive at a point where the two of you are in disagreement about something serious and you can’t continue until it is resolved, someone has to break the tie.  Determine who that person is at the beginning of the project.  It may be a senior author.  Or, if you’re writing in a universe created by one of you alone, then that person will probably be the tie-breaker.  But regardless of who it is and how you determined who it will be, if it ever has to be invoked, remember Rule 1 – check your egos at the door.

4.  Do any world-building that has to be done that will be foundational to the story.

5.  If both of you are outliners, you’ll need to write an outline.  If one of you is a pantser, you’ll need to write an outline.  If both of you are pantsers, you’ll really need to write an outline.  Seriously.  If for no other reason than to keep you both facing the same direction.  Especially if you’re doing the “you write this part and I’ll write that part at the same time” thing.

6.  Communicate, communicate, communicate.  Especially about the important stuff, but since it may be difficult to know what will be important twenty chapters down the line, it’s mostly going to be important stuff.

7.  Again, communicate, communicate, communicate.  If you’re the junior author or you’re working in someone else’s universe, don’t be afraid to ask questions.  And if you’re the senior author and/or the universe creator, don’t brush your partner off.

8.  Remember Rule 1.

9.  For the third time, communicate, communicate, communicate.  If there’s one area where collaborations can really be more difficult than solo work, it’s flexibility in dealing with change.  When you’re working on your own, if you get a brilliant idea when you’re 80% done with the work, backing up and rewriting twenty chapters is not so much of a much.  When you’re collaborating, however, especially if you’re using one of the parallel streams-of-creation methods, your idea may blow up your partner’s work in a big way.  So before you do anything with your Grand New Idea, talk about it-in-depth and in detail.  If the decision is Do It, you revise the outline.  You write it down so you can both be in agreement as to what the change is, what the effect is, and who’s doing what to implement it.  If the decision is No, you continue down the existing path with no looking back.

10.  Remember Rule 1.

11.  Set deadlines as to when milestones will be accomplished.  You may or may not attain them, but if you don’t set them, this thing could drag on for a seeming eternity.  As much as possible, hold each other accountable.

12.  Remember Rule 1.

13.  When the first draft is done, review it together.  Decide what needs fixing, and determine who will do it.  Execute the fixes.

14.  Determine early on who will do the final polish to smooth out the edges and establish a consistent voice.  This will usually be the senior author, the writer who owns the universe, the person who’s the better editor, or whoever won/lost the coin flip.

15.  And finally, remember Rule 1.

Okay, that’s probably not everything that needs to be thought about, but it covers the high points. Good luck!

It’s Finished… or Is It?

Colette Black Craft & Skills Editing First Drafts The Writing Process 6 Comments

We’ve all done it. We finish our manuscript, think we’ve done our self-editing, followed submission guidelines, we hit Send, and then…oops. We should have done__________.

checklist

I had a completely different post written out for today. One with lots of links to books, and workshops, and what to do and not to do, and it sounded patronizing–not the customer kind, but the looking down your nose kind. I mean, let’s be real. I think I’m a good writer, maybe even a great writer someday, but I’m no editor. Every time I go to send a query, send out my next novel, or write up a series synopses, I think I’m going to hyperventilate. Why? Because, I almost always forget something. I have an editing checklist, but it’s changed over the last couple of years, improved, and yet I’m realizing right now, I’ve never actually updated it. Most of the checklist is in my head and for me, that’s not the safest nor the most reliable location. So for my sake, and I hope this helps someone else, here’s a revised self-editing checklist. This is my list for end-of-the-line editing, not the content editing or even the full line-editing list. Maybe we can do those another time, but it’ll be a much longer post.

Basic Formatting:

  • One-inch margins
  • 12-pt Times New Roman font
  • Double-spaced
  • No spaces before or after paragraphs (check to be sure)
  • first-line indent
  • Header with last name/title/page #
  • Correct title page with contact information, Word count, and title done correctly
  • Chapter Heading one-third down the page with page breaks between chapters (but no blank pages)

My Particular problems:

  • No extra spaces between words/before paragraphs
  • Search and replace or delete over-used favorite words, like “just”
  • Check for improper usage of past and past-perfect tense.  (This became an issue when I read a lot of YA books with this problem, so now I especially check to make sure it doesn’t seep into my own writing–Thank you David Farland for pointing this out.)

Problems to watch for, learned from David Farland’s workshops:

  • forward and toward, not forwards and towards (That’s American English vs. British English)
  • Check usage of  “and, then, finally, felt, saw, look, that”  Get rid of them whenever possible
  • Use spell-check
  • Check “-ly” adverbs–There should be few, if any
  • Have I read the manuscript out loud, at least once?
  • Did I change the font and read the manuscript in order to catch less-noticeable errors?

And a few extra:

  • A basic spell-check
  • Re-read the publisher’s or agent’s specific requirements
  • Include appropriate letters (query, cover letter, synopsis)
  • correct postage for snail mail
  • proper formatting for electronic submissions
  • If I cut and pasted from another submission, change editor/agent name, word count, work’s title, name of magazine/agency, and all other details.

And NOW, it might be ready. This seems like a lot, but I think I’ve forgotten almost all the points on this list, or have almost forgotten them, at least once when sending to agents and publishers. I wish I’d put this together years ago, but then I don’t think I knew half the items on this list years ago. I hope this helps someone, and I’d love to add anything I’ve forgotten, so if you think of something please leave a comment.

Happy Writing!

 

Platonic Male-Female Relationships in Fiction (a.k.a. “The Glue”)

Character Craft & Skills Evan Braun First Drafts Reviews The Writing Life 7 Comments

In my first published novel (I’ve only had the one, but hey, I’m nothing if not an optimist), I originally set out to write a book that would subvert expectations in that it had no romantic subplot whatsoever. It was about three men setting out on a globe-trotting adventure. No icky girl cooties here! There was lots of questing, but alas, no love story. Well, after a few beta readers got through with it, I caved and added one-and you know what? In that case, the book was better for it.

Then, last summer, I sat down to begin work on a new novel. In the first chapter, I introduce two characters-one of them a man, the other a woman. They’re co-workers, archaeologists working together on a dig in South America. The two characters aren’t romantically involved. They’re just friends.

Well, by Chapter Five I found myself inadvertently writing a paragraph about the man admiring the woman from behind and acknowledging that he’d always been attracted to her.

Whoa! I thought to myself. Where did that come from?

Maybe Harry Burns was right. In When Harry Met Sally, one of the most iconic romantic comedies of all time, Billy Crystal’s character starts off spouting his theory (though he calls it fact) that a man and a woman can’t just be friends. Ignoring the hetero-normative caveat here, his ideas are met with stiff resistance. Every time I watch this movie, I cheer when Sally sets him straight. I mean, what a load of crap! Of course men and women can be friends. My own life is exploding with opposite-sex platonic friendships.

So, it is with great dismay that I watch as the movie progresses to Harry ultimately being proven correct. Perhaps it’s true that men and women can’t “just be friends,” but Harry and Sally eventually fall in love in dramatic Hollywood fashion. (Sorry, folks; no spoiler warnings for twenty-five-year-old movies. Them’s the breaks.) I’m quite the sentimentalist at heart, so this is most likely the only time I’ve actively rooted against a romantic-comedy couple overcoming the odds and making it work. I just don’t like the underlying message.

Indeed, I am a big proponent of platonic relationships in fiction. And yet, I am forced to look at my track record. As in the two examples cited above, I started off writing romance-free relationships and ended up reversing course. I guess that makes me a hypocrite.

The thing is, romance is easy. Now, when I say that, I don’t mean to imply that writing romance doesn’t come with its share of challenges. On the contrary, as the people charged with the uncomfortable task of reading my first drafts know all too well. I’m not the world’s best romance writer. I have to put in two or three times the usual effort for my romantic liaisons to really jump off the page-in a good way, that is.

So why do I say it’s easy? Well, romantic feelings are a wonderful and effective way of motivating your characters to take action. Love causes people to climb mountains, swim oceans, and reach for the stars. The death of a loved one, in particular, can set your story on fire-and this was my motivation, however misguided, for linking my star-crossed archaeologists. You see, in the absence of love, an author has to dig a lot deeper to figure out why characters behave as they do. Adding romantic subplots to spur along a waning story or character is a default move, and it can be used as a crutch when handled inelegantly.

If you are to get your reader deeply invested in a platonic relationship, you’re going to need to get creative. Could When Harry Met Sally have been a satisfying movie if the two characters had merely turned out to be best friends who never developed feelings for each other at all? I’d like to say yes, but I don’t think I’m alone in having a hard time imagining it.

My experiences and observations show me that if it’s true that love makes the world go round, then friendship is the glue that keeps it from coming apart as it hurdles through space at thirty kilometers per second. In other words, friendship is, at its core, stronger. Which is a bit ironic. Friendships, historically, last longer than marriages.

By tapping into the reasons why this is true, we can find a number of ways to guide the creation of compelling opposite-sex platonic relationships. So, let’s get to those reasons!

For one thing, best friends are less likely to keep secrets from each other than romantic partners. As any dramatist knows, secret-keeping is fuel to the plot engine. But guy-and-gal friendship combos are most likely going to be co-protagonists (or co-antagonists, which can be extra spicy), meaning the question of whether or not their friendship will survive calamity doesn’t need to be at the core of your story. It can be, but it doesn’t need to, whereas lovers can hardly ever get through a story without getting muddied at some juncture. The vulnerability and honesty of friends-only pairings actually allows us to cheer for them and relate more readily. A best friend can be the haven in the midst of heavy drama.

In a friendship situation, we are more likely to drop our masks and just be ourselves. If sex and/or a relationship isn’t on the table, what do we have to lose? A man who isn’t trying to woo a woman needn’t work so hard for her to like him, meaning we’ll get a better chance of seeing who he really is. What you see is what you get. The same is true for women, who also are likely to keep their cards close to their chest when there’s a risk of suffering a broken heart. When the chance of rejection is low, the real character comes out-and in fiction, that’s exactly the kind of scenario into which we want to coax our characters. Transparency is a virtue!

The mistake you might make is creating friendships without love. But strong friendships are built on intense love… just not the romantic/erotic love we are more likely to recognize. And if you think I’m making a case for writing friendships without dramatic undertones, think again. The threat of losing a best friend will drive a character to extreme lengths just as strongly-perhaps even more so-than the threat of losing a lover, especially if that friend has been around for a long time. The risk of losing that kind of honesty, vulnerability, and transparency can be devastating.

Returning to the real world, my best friend happens to be a woman, and it sometimes feels as though we have been friends since the dawn of time. We don’t see each other nearly as often as we like, since we now live very far apart, but our bond is tight. The last time we saw each other, just after Christmas, our conversation took an interesting turn.

After dinner one evening, she put down her fork and asked, “What’s the dealbreaker?”

“What do you mean?” I replied.

“Well, what would I have to do for you to end our friendship? You know, the dealbreaker.“

Silence set in. I honestly couldn’t think of anything. After all, we had been through a lot, surviving hundreds of fights and come out stronger every time. Nothing was ever bad enough to drive a wedge between us.

“What if I murdered someone?” she prompted.

I thought about that. Honestly, my bond with her was so strong that even murder wouldn’t change the way I felt about her. The only real dealbreaker I could imagine is if she insisted that I help cover it up or dispose of the body, and even that would depend on the motive for the crime.

And that’s what I mean. Platonic relationships are true partnerships. In fiction, romantic couples are constantly cheating on each other, breaking up, and getting back together. They’re famously inconstant. But when men and women leave romance out of the picture? Well, that’s kismet.