Tag Archives: Writing

Book Review: Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson & Peter Economy

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills First Drafts Reviews Rewriting The Writing Life Writing Tools 2 Comments

This book is for you if:
You’re new at plotting and you don’t know where to begin;
You want a concise yet usable refresher course on plotting, character and world  building;
You’re revising your novel; and
Especially if you’re a pantster!

Writing Fiction for Dummies is all about making sure your novel has all the right components for success. As author Randy Ingermanson says in his opening notes in Snowflake Pro, a design program for novelists:

Good fiction doesn’t just happen, it is designed. You can do the design work before or after you write your novel. I’ve done it both ways and I’ve found that doing it first is quicker and leads to a better result for me. But you may find that doing your design after you write your novel works better for you. It doesn’t really matter when you do your design work, as long as you do it.

And this book covers all aspects of the writing from finding your target audience, to choosing your creative paradigm, using the principles of powerful plot, editing and getting published.  However, it’s not for dummies – it gives credit that the reader is intelligent by succinctly providing information and tips. I like that I don’t have to read an entire book on character or plot or revision and then have to distill the information I need.  Plus, the book has great examples to illustrate each point.

These authors are masters in taking you through the steps logically. For example, Part II: Creating Compelling Fiction takes you from building your story world, to creating compelling characters, plot layers and examining theme. Part III gives you the tools to edit and polish your work by analyzing characters, story and scene structure and then editing scenes for content.

Truly, I always thought I was a panster at heart until I realized that I was simply plotting and outlining in my head. Writing fiction for Dummies has given me the tools to put those points on paper. Now my plots are multi layered, my characters are deeper and I don’t have the headache from keeping all that information in my head! I still can’t write a detailed outline – it’s just not me. But, I’m a more organized pantster now who has lots more fun brainstorming the deeper “what if?’ scenarios.

I’ve started a new series and I can’t keep five books worth of information in my head. Chapter 8: Story Line and Three-Act Structure is my starting point for the basics and I brainstorm from there. I planned the big picture first – key points for the beginning, murky middle, climax and ending for each novel.  Now I have an idea of plot arc, character arcs, emotional arcs and where each story in the series needs to end. I still have lots of room for random creativity as my characters take me on unexpected turns in their journeys and I can let them do that with confidence because I know I have enough of a plan so that key story elements aren’t derailed. Most importantly, I know that if the novels grow in unexpected ways, I can revise the plan because as our characters evolve, so do we as writers and so must our plan.

Whether you’re writing your first or tenth novel, revising your draft or reviewing, Writing Fiction for Dummies is a resource every writer must have. It’s a quick reference guide filled with checklists and thought provoking questions on critical elements … and I can hardly wait for the revision process because now I know what I’m doing!

Happy writing and revising! It’s always a joy to create!

To learn more about authors Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy, visit their sites at:
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
http://www.petereconomy.com/Welcome.html

Okay, so you have your novel started…so, now what?

Craft & Skills First Drafts Nancy Greene Rewriting The Writing Life Writing Tools 6 Comments

One of the wonderful things about NaNoWriMo is it forces thousands of writers to get the writing party started. This raises the question of: Now what?

The answer is deceptively simple: FINISH  IT.

Okay, I can’t leave it at that. Simple answers just aren’t in my nature. Why? It’s because the simplest answers often hold the hardest truths, and most difficult objectives.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in a month. Keep in mind that the goal isn’t 50,000 immediately publishable words. I’ll circle back to that point in a moment. Most adult-reader novels (and no, I’m not taking about those at the top of the rating system, but all books that fall outside the picture, children’s, and middle grade markets) these days are more than 50,000 words.   Young Adult novels use to fall into the 50-60,000 range, but with the breakaway success of the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises, Young Adult often exceeds this mark as well. Books in the fantasy genre tend to be on the  higher end of the word count spectrum. If you’re not Brandon Sanderson or George R.R. Martin, your likely word count is between 80,000 and 120,000 words.  Romance and Thrillers tend to ranger closer to the70- 80,000 word mark.  So, our task isn’t done when at the end of November we hit the magical 50,000 words. We can’t spell check and e-mail the partially-finished manuscript out to our top ten fantasy agents and expect them to rush to represent us. Seriously, don’t do this.

Tip #1 then is to write until done. Whether you need another 20,000 words or another 60,000 words, you must finish the story and type “THE END.” Having the privilege of typing that phrase a number of times, let me tell you it’s the best feeling. Revel in it for a day or two. By typing “the end” you’ve done what most of the want-to-be writers never do. You’ve finished the story. Congratulations. It’s a huge accomplishment.

But, you’re not ready to hit send yet. RULE 1 – and unlike pirate “rules” you are not allowed to ignore this one – No story should go from the first time you type “the end” immediately into an agent’s or editor’s hands. The story isn’t ready, and worse, if you had a connection with that person, you might have wasted your “big chance” on an inferior product. Hopefully, your first draft isn’t far off the mark, but everyone needs some editing before publication.

A very wise and funny lady once told me “give yourself permission to write a crappy first draft.” Thank you, Lisa Scottoline for that advice. The saying isn’t unique to Lisa, but she’s the first person I heard it from where it sank in. I mentioned above  very few people can write 50,000 publishable words on the first pass. I think outliners have an advantage over pantsers like me because the outliner already beta-tested, as it were, the story’s structure. For most of us, the hard work comes after we type “the end” and start the editing phase.

Tip #2 – Put the draft away.

We fall in love everytime we write. I love my characters, even the really horrible people, and their story by the time I type “the end.” I’ve spent months or years with them. Like any other parent, this unconditional love means I’m blind to the characters’ and story’s flaws.  I generally need at least a month before I can objectively look at a novel I’ve written before I can wade into the forest of words with a machette. Take at least a week. Longer if you can. The distance will grant you objectivity, and you’ll need that for the editing/ rewriting process.

Tip #3 – Outline the story.

Okay, this is where opinions will vary widely and you’ve going to need to experiment to find out what works for you. Tip 3 is where the editing process starts. Whether you are an outliner or a pantser, my recommendation is to outline your completed story to ensure you hit all the “beats” you need.  I’ve written about the Hollywood Formula of story telling here before and we just had a great review of Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat which uses this formula here so I won’t replow this ground.  Please check out those two posts because the outlining and story telling techniques set out in both are helpful in structuring a story or fixing one when it’s leaped the tracks.  If you use this method to dissect your story, the “what’s missing” to take this from fair, to publishable, to kick-butt runaway sucess become obvious which makes the editing process less painful.

Tip #4 – It’s okay to delete.

This tip is a version of Stephen King’s imfamous phrase, “kill your darlings.”

I had a professor who was also a playwright. He’d adapted a well known classic novel that hadn’t been previously adapted to the stage. One of the reasons, I think, this particular work of this very well known and revered writer hadn’t been adapted was the “novel” was originally published week-by-week in a newspaper. Sometimes the week’s episode fit into the overall story arc and sometimes it didn’t. The professor overlayed a plot line of the writer’s actual life with the story. The idea was brilliant. The first act’s execution suffered because the professor wouldn’t kill his, or the original writer’s “darlings.” The tech crew (of which I was one) spent the act-break telling the audience the one scene they needed to know from the first act, and  begging them to stay for the second act.  On a good night we only lost half the house at intermission. The second act was brilliant, beautiful and heart-breaking. The problem was almost no one saw it. Instead of listening to advice, killing the scenes which were neat but interrupted the story, and making the play a long one-act, the professor insisted on his version which kept all these odd-ball bits. Because he wouldn’t “kill his darings”, the professor killed the entire play.

If you have a bit you love and that’s the only reason you’re keeping it, use the cut and paste function. Cut it out of the current story. It’s a cancer that will infect the whole work. Paste it into a file named “darlings” or “neat bits” and save. At some point that darling will rise from its technological grave and be given new life in a story it belongs in. Have faith in yourself that you’ll find a home for it in some other work. If a bit isn’t advancing character and plot, it doesn’t belong in this story. Take it out.

Tip #5 Stop editing when it’s time.

People who advocate for limited editing have a valid point. You can edit a story to death. At some point, you have to say it’s as good as I can make it and let it go. Do you send it to agents and editors now? No.

Tip #6 When you’ve gotten it as good as you can, phone a friend.

Remember when I said writers are parents who are blind to their child’s faults? This is where that maxim comes into play again. You need a trusted reader or six. These people are new to your story and can see what you can’t. Whether you’ve had other readers in the editing process, this group’s purpose is to give you impressions (not line edits). This is the group I want to come back to me with emotional comments like “hu?” or “I cried here.” and not technical ones.  You want cheerleaders out of it. If you get people who finished only because they are your friends or, worse, get the DNF (“did not finish”) comment, you have a problem that needs to be corrected before you go past “Go” and collect your book advance.

Tip #7 Send it out.

A professional writer’s light at the end of the tunnel is publication. You can’t get published if your story languishes on your computer’s harddrive.   You must submit.  Do your research. Meet agents and editors. Send the story to the person it is a good fit for. Self-publish if that’s what you want to do. Then the waiting begins.

Tip #8– Start all over.

While you are waiting, guess what you need to do. Yup. That’s it. Write another story. Kismet happens, but you need to put yourself out there. Finish more stories. Give them wings and send them out to the world. Keep at it long enough and you’ll suceeed, whatever that term means to you.

For me,. suceess means writing another 2,500 words today. I best get started.

See you at:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding the Strength. . . .

Nancy Greene The Writing Life 8 Comments

Back over the summer I wrote a post on my blog about how I’d never run out of inspiration because I had children. You can find the post >here<.  The summer had my children (and I include my husband in this designation) building a boat in our pool (see, the photo). It also had the children playing putt-putt golf in a thunderstorm. Needless to say, at the first sign of lightning, my boys abandoned my husband, holding all the golf clubs, and bolted for our room. For more details, please check out my post on my blog.  Anyway, I have a somewhat colorful life. But sometimes even that’s not enough to get the words on the page.

Hopefully, you’ve read James A Owen’s fabulous post on this site. He might call it inspiration, but what he’s done in his life takes a whole heck of a lot of courage. He awes me.

A deep dark secret is I tend to lean toward the depressive side. It’s often hard to find the reason to get out of bed, or not crawl back into it, pull up the covers and hide in the dark once I’ve gotten out the first time. How strong the urge to hide is depends on what’s going on. My last three months have been chaotic. The law firm I was part of split up months before it was projected to and left me scrambling in the busiest month I had to make agreement for a new practice, whether it was solo, with most of the original partners but as an employee rather than a partner myself, or a new firm where I would likely be a partner by the end of the year. The woman I consider my second mother is dying of cancer. It was caught late, and  she opted not to undergo chemo. She’s getting hospice care now. My father has Lewey Body Dementia. It’s a nasty disease where, essentially your brain forgets how to talk to your body. He’s having more bad days than good.  My folks are trying to take a Disney cruise for their 51st anniversary this week, but now there’s a hurricane threatening. Thanks Sandy.  I have a crazy neighbor, and that’s a whole ‘nother story.  And that’s just a list of the big issues. There were, of course, other challenges. As a result, earlier this month, I learned what it took to break me. Not an experience I recommend to anyone or wish to repeat. So, lately,  my reason to get out of bed was solely that I had no choice.

Well, not solely. There were those pesky kids again. And the peskier husband. And James and his Superman ring.

Those pesky kids that spent all summer sailing that boat from one side of our very small pool to another. If we’d actually had a breeze, the boat probably would have broken the pool. But they loved it. My husband and I kept promising we’d get the boat out of the pool and into the nearby lake. Didn’t happen.  And the kids didn’t care.

We have fabulous kids even if they have no common sense. Even as I write this they are fighting over who has to change the “input’ for the TV so they get cable rather than snow. This fight become more ridiculous when you consider that the TV has to be turned on manually – we’ve lost the original remote and no universal one works with this TV- so my oldest was next to the button he needed to push to fix the problem had he waited 5 second instead of walking back to the sofa. Instead. I had to get up, go down stairs, yell/laugh at them for the lack of common sense and hit the input button. Sadly, this wasn’t their most asinine fight.

Here’s the thing, for me at least.  I’ve lived through some terrible things, and I’ll live through more as long as I keep seeing the sun rise. Although this last thought is a good argument for becoming a creature of the night. There are always going to be terrible things happening in life. Sometimes all those terrible things will happen at once.

And then there’s the Superman ring. For a very sick child, Superman became a symbol of hope. We still have James A. Owen because of it. Because of hope, James has found the strength to say “no” and the strength to go on through some really terrible things.

What’s my Superman?

My family.

My husband does fairly outrageous things to make me laugh. I can’t tell you what he just did without losing our “clean” rating, but I laughed so much I had tears streaming down my cheeks.  Where was I again?

Oh, yes, finding the strength to chase the life you want. Not the dream. Staying something is a dream means it’s not, and can’t be, real. You fight toward The Goal, the straight line James talks about. Life’s about finding the will to keep walking that thin line, even when you stumble, even whn you have to resist the urge to lie down and give up, it’s about moving forward when you have to crawl and your knees and hands are bloody from the effort.

You have to believe.

I believe in my sons’ laughs. I believe in fighting through one more day that brings me closer to The Goal. I believe that standing for what I want most makes me a better person for my family, makes me a better writer, makes me a better lawyer. Time in the crucible stinks, but it reforges us stronger.

What do I want most?

I want to spend more time with my family,  continue as a professional writer (to put the right words for the story on the page), and have the freedom to take the law cases I want, not that I have to to pay the bills.  I want to see my epic fantasy in print, to hold that book in my hands regardless of how long that takes. If I keep The Goal in mind, the choices I need to make are obvious, even though they are often not easy.  So, I get out of bed, throw the curtains open wide and get down to the job of life.

What do you want? What inspires you to keep pressing forward to that goal?

It’s almost like being in love. . .

Nancy Greene Reading The Writing Life 1 Comment

Why do we write?

Well, I can’t answer that question for the world at large. I can, however, answer that for myself and the other writers I’ve asked that question. We write because we have to, and because we love it.

Lately, I’ve been noticing a lot of overlap between my day job as a lawyer, and my night and weekend job as a writer. As a lawyer I write nonfiction (although some detractors of the profession might claim what lawyer’s write can only loosely be labled nonfiction). The lawyers I know who are in the profession for the money, because someone thought they should be, or because they want the prestige of those three magic letters (“Esq.”) after their names are miserable people. They are burnt out; they fight for the sake of fighting.

The writers I know of who write because they thought it was easy, or easy money, or because they wanted the prestige of being an “author” are miserable. They are burnt out; they are depressed, and they give up. They are overly critical of others’ stories.

Now let’s look at the lawyers who aren’t burnt out, depressed or on the verge of quitting. While they may hate a particular part of the process, they love the overall system. I love being in court. I love researching and finding new ways to combine existing law to my client’s benefit. I love helping people. My practice reflects this. I don’t sleep or eat much the week before trial. I do my best work when I’m passionate about my client’s position. I’ve jumped up and down behind counsel’s table when arguing a point (my husband, who was observing that argument, had to fight laughing out loud as I bounced around).

The last statistic I heard was the average advance from a traditional publisher is about $8,000. E-publishers pay better (up to 50% of net sales), but they don’t generally pay advances. It takes the sale of many thousands of 99 Cent e-books to lift you above the poverty level, much less replace most people’s regular income. Self-publishing means you spend a lot of upfront money hoping you can recoup it and make a profit. Except for the precious few, writing will never be a “get rich quick” career.

So, why do we do it?

Love.

In the movie Shadowlands, Sir Anthony Hopkins, who plays C.S. Lewis, tells a fellow Oxford Don that he (Lewis) can’t stop praying because the words pour out of him. He could have been speaking for any writer. The words pour out of us. Stories beat on our minds and distract us from other concerns.
I love filling the screen with words; creating new worlds; and that moment when a character is real enough to talk to (and fight with) me. When a story first takes hold of me, my hands shake, my heart races, I have trouble sleeping and I’m constantly thinking about my new world and characters. Sounds a lot like a first crush, huh?

That someone else likes reading what I write is amazing. That someone is willing to pay to read my stories is humbling.

This business is hard. We hear a lot of “no” before we hear “yes.” If you aren’t passionate about writing, you won’t write. It’s just that simple.
Find the story that makes your heart race, and get writing.