Bonnie's NaNoWriMo* 2007

It's 2008, so where's your NEW story?

2008-08-30T04:20:00.002-04:00

I have already moved my thinking to Bonnie's NaNoWriMo* 2008, my blog for this year. Go take a look at it ... and leave me a comment, if you are so inclined. Thanks.

Now What?

2007-12-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

Lots of people have lots of ideas of what we could do AFTER NaNoWriMo. Here are some of them:

National Novel Finishing Month
http://www.nanofimo.org/
A challenge to finish an existing project in December. This project can be your NaNo novel or anything else, but it should be a partially written novel, not a complete draft in need of editing. (There's NaNoEdMo for that.)

National Novel Editing Month
http://www.nanoedmo.net/xoops/
Spend 50 hours in a single month editing your work, in March.

National Novel Writing Year
http://www.nanowriye.com/
A year-round challenge that lets you choose your own word goal for the year.

National Novel Publishing Year
http://www.nanopubye.org/
A one-year plan for getting your novel ready to submit for publication, including writing, editing, learning about the publishing business, getting critiques, and putting your submission together.

National Novel Continuing Month
http://www.nanocomo.org/
A monthly event, reset on the 1st of every month, with a goal of a minimum of 30k words for the monthly target. Every new month there is a fresh goal of yet another 30k words. Each month is an event within itself and it is not necessary to continue the previous month's novel.

I won, I won ... in a 3-way tie!

2007-12-05T02:24:00.000-05:00

Cartoon Caption Challenge results
December 3rd, 2007
Thanks to all those who participated in the Cartoon Caption Challenge I posted just before American Thanksgiving:

Lots of great ideas! In the end, I couldn’t choose between the following three-way tie:

“If my NaNovel is in the oven, where on earth did I leave the Thanksgiving turkey?” (Mari)

“Just in time for Thanksgiving day, Dawn discovers there is a difference between the ‘bake’ and ‘clean’ buttons on her new electric oven.” (Tasha)

“And my NaNo novel is STILL half baked!” (Bonnie Jacobs)

Do you want to read part of it?

2007-12-03T23:43:00.001-05:00

The novel is still a draft ... and the end is not yet in sight ... so it will take a lot of writing, polishing, and re-writing before most of it is worth showing to anyone. However awful they are, I did put up three excerpts from different parts of my draft, which you can read by going here:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/212741

You may click around that page and see my stats (showing a chart of word count), my writing buddies and their results, information about me, and those three excerpts. Have fun.

Chattanooga: TGIO Party: Today!

2007-12-03T08:45:00.000-05:00

Hello, Chattanooga Wrimos!

I'm so proud of ALL OF YOU for knuckling down and writing your little fingers off!

In our region of 29 writers, we had a total word count of 316,378, with an average of 26,364 words per writer! That's ABSOLUTELY AWESOME, especially for our first year as a region!

In any case, I do hope you'll all come out to the Thank Goodness It's Over party this afternoon from 4 until 7ish. Bring a 1-page excerpt of your novel to read, and your Winner certificate if you have one. If you didn't win, but you doubled your word count in the last week of NaNo, come to the TGIO party to claim your Doubler's certificate -- a Chattanooga region special!

Hope to see you all there!
--Stephanie

--
This email was sent by a NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison in the 'United States :: Tennessee :: Chattanooga' region using a blind mail forwarding system. Municipal Liaisons are never given direct access to your contact information.

I'm a winner!

2007-11-29T15:54:00.001-05:00

50,099 words

It's almost here! The End, and the TGIO!

2007-11-28T12:21:00.000-05:00

Well, we're getting down to the wire. The last three days. Are you getting tired/ Are you typing your fingers off? Have you started putting descriptions of random websites into your novel? My first novel is "dated" by the fact that I felt it necessary for word count to describe all the time wasters I had found, and the Hamster Dance website ended up as a crucial plot point to the story!

If you're looking for a few thousand words, it may be time to insert a long, involved dream sequence into your novel, something that is utterly bizarre, but opens your story up for using strange words, stranger characters, and having them all do very strange things that take a whole lot of words to describe. "It was all a dream" could be the best five words you discover in this final sprint to the finish line!

We have details now for the TGIO party, which will be in Hixson, largely because we had the largest turnout at the Hixson write-ins.

=================
DETAILS ON THE TGIO PARTY
=================

WHAT:
The TGIO (Thank Goodness It's OVER) pary! Come celebrate, raise a glass or just a salad fork to cheer your accomplishments this month!

For the truly adventurous, bring a 1-page excerpt to share with your fellow writers!

WHO:
YOU!!! Whether you wrote 50,000 words or 15, we want to celebrate the creative spirit together! Your family, friends, and cheerleaders are also welcome to join us!

WHEN:
Sunday, December 2, from 4 PM until 7ish.

WHERE:
The Brick Oven Grille
5437 Highway 153
Hixson, TN 37343
(423) 875-4454

SEE YOU THERE!!

--
This email was sent by a NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison in the United States :: Tennessee :: Chattanooga region using a blind mail forwarding system. Municipal Liaisons are never given direct access to your contact information.

The End ~ a note for WriMos in their final week

2007-11-28T12:06:00.000-05:00

“The End”As we approach the end of the month – and hopefully the end of our novels – we hear the roar of the crowds up ahead as others cross the finish line and earn their bright purple winner’s widget. Chris Baty seems to think this energizes us, but I’m finding that I am slogging along in a funk, wondering which way is the finish line. I am more tired than I expected to be, less sure (not more) that these words come close to being a novel at all. But it truly is almost over. If we can hold on three more days – today, tomorrow, and Friday – we will have survived a crash course in writing. A novel? Maybe some day. A first draft? At the moment I’m not even sure mine is that. A bunch of words? Okay, a bunch of words that may or may not be something that can be polished into a work of art. But … but …

I have exercised my imagination muscle in ways it never thought it could move!

And now I can imagine being a “real” writer. Ahem, let me explain that. A writer is one who writes, right? And we have all been doing that. Hurray for us! “The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on.” That’s a quote from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which I have posted on the sidebar of my Weekend Wordsmith blog, here:
http://weekendwordsmith.blogspot.com/

Having writ, as Omar Khayyam says, it is now almost time for us to move on. Some of us will move on to revision of our masterpieces; some of us will simply move on. If it turns out, upon close inspection, that we have not written the greatest novel of the twenty-first century, then we are free to pick a fragment from this month’s efforts and expand on that … or write about any idea that crosses our expanded minds … because we can all say now that we are writers. Try it. Repeat after me:

“I am a writer!”

There! Didn’t that make you feel better?

Homestretch Pep Talk from Garth Nix

2007-11-27T17:30:00.000-05:00

Hi there NaNoWriMo writer.

I’m writing this on a Sony notebook perched precariously on my lap, said lap created by me slouching in the red armchair in my living room. Prior to the red armchair slouching I thought about what I was going to write on my walk home from my office (a luxury of my later writing life) and I scribbled down some notes with the first pen that came to hand while I was standing up in the kitchen cooking dinner. Which leads me to my first bit of advice.

Don’t get hung up about how, where and with what you write.

Most of my earlier novels I wrote longhand first, only typing up each chapter or sometimes a bunch of chapters when I could get to a computer. Many of my later books I wrote parts of longhand but much more directly on many different computers, in bedrooms and living rooms, park benches, offices, beaches and even on the wall of a crusader castle. The location doesn’t matter, and you don’t need a great computer, or any computer at all, to start with. Many famous novels were written on pieces of paper with pens or even pencils. You can always type it or get it typed later. Don’t let the lack of a computer, or the lack of a desk, or a writing room, or an attic, or a comfortable café or time to go somewhere put you off. Writing in bed can be pretty productive, or in the bath (though best to not use a laptop there). Try writing wherever and whenever you can, and see what works.

The journey of a book begins with a single chapter.

I never actually sit down in front of a blank screen or a piece of paper and tell myself I have to write a ninety or one hundred thousand word novel. I tell myself I have to write a chapter, which typically will be somewhere between two and five thousand words. That's a much more achievable task. Then, when I’ve written a chapter, I put it aside for revision and tell myself I have to write the next one. Eventually, I discover that just by writing a chapter at a time, I’ve written a book.

Rereading and revision works best after rest.

I like to let chapters sit for at least a day or two before I go back to re-read and revise them. A little bit of space is helpful in looking at the work with fresh eyes and mind. This can work well for getting a rhythm of writing too, where you spend part of your writing time re-reading and revising a previous chapter and then go on to write new material. The re-reading and revising helps you get back into the ‘world’ of the book and the new writing helps you feel that you’re making forward progress, not just revising the old.

Write for the writing, don’t plan on publishing or dwell on success (or the lack of it).

While I think it’s important and useful for writers to learn about publishing and how the book business works, try to forget about all that when you’re actually writing. Worry about agents and publishers and marketing when you actually have a finished novel, if you want to try and get it published. But also remember that being published is not a necessary validation or a path everyone wants to take with their work. Writing---and finishing---a novel is a great thing in itself, whether or not the book is published or becomes widely-read or not.

Finally, I think it’s always best to write the story that is currently strongest inside you, the one that won’t go away, regardless of its genre or marketability. If you are true to your inner vision, believe in the reality of your story and write the book you want, you will bring it to life.

Good luck!

Garth Nix

--

Garth Nix lives in Sydney, Australia. He has been a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve, a bookseller, book sales representative, publicist, editor, marketing consultant and literary agent. Garth’s books include the award-winning fantasy novels Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen and the young adult science fiction novel Shade’s Children. His fantasy novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of The Seventh Tower sequence, and The Keys To The Kingdom series. Garth’s books have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The Bookseller, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Sunday Times.

To put that in context, it took him five years to write his first published book, and the one after that was universally rejected and has never been published. But he just kept on writing. For more on Garth, visit www.GarthNix.co.uk

Week Four pep talk from Deanna Raybourn

2007-11-25T19:28:00.000-05:00

Welcome, writers, to the place I call Very Nearly the End.

By now, NaNoWriMo has taught you that writing is not for the faint of heart. You must be stalwart and brave, like pioneers of old, unafraid of uncharted lands or crossing vast frontiers. It was exciting at first, wasn’t it? Preparing for the journey, stocking supplies, counting down the days until the start of the great undertaking. That enthusiasm would have carried you through the first weeks, and even the pitfalls along the way might have seemed like thrilling opportunities for adventure. But now you have come to the bleak no-man’s land just before the last great push to the end. It is barren and empty and it seems as if no one has ever passed this way. Except for every other writer who has come before you. This place lurks along the journey of each book for all of us. Here we hate our characters, our plot is mundane, and our prose is as flat and unlovely as the landscape. Be watchful; it’s dangerous, this place. I have heard of writers who lacked courage and who turned back to safety, never to return. They simply stopped being writers because they could not find their way across this nothingness. That is not an option for me, and I don’t believe it is an option for you. You have come too far, weary travelers! And there is a way across, I promise.

The solution has two parts. The first is to be a little selfish. At this point in the book, a writer is a bit like an invalid emerging from a life-threatening illness. We are fragile and wan, and people will remark that we have grown thin and pale. We startle easily and we tire quickly. This is when we have to be kind to ourselves. If there is someone who can cook for us and bring us cups of tea and rub our feet, excellent. If there are children to be attended to, they ought to be settled onto the sofa next to us — or better yet, the bed — and told to read something soothing to us. Phone calls and e-mails and chores that can be neglected, ought to be. A few hours of cosseting are often just the thing to restore us. If that fails, we must employ more drastic measures. We must get right away and leave the book behind. Some writers take up big-game hunting, others like to sail or climb mountains. I shop for shoes, the higher the heel the better. (Fiction is more easily subdued when one is well-shod.) You might try a massage or a pick-up basketball game, anything to change your perspective. When you return with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, you will be ready to work again.

That is when you move on to the second half of the cure: you must sit down and be quiet. It sounds like an admonishment, but believe me, it isn’t. Think of it as a gentle reminder instead. I know, writing every day is challenging. But it is also incredibly easy. When you write every day, you are always in the story. There is never a period of reconnecting with your characters, of trying to remember what mood you were attempting to create the last time you worked. And by working every day, you engage your subconscious in a way that simply isn’t possible when you keep a more whimsical schedule. There is no need to summon the muse because there is no time for the fickle little strumpet to go anywhere. I become so immersed in my story that I seldom write more than an hour a day, but I am typing the entire time, with no breaks to think or to wonder where the story is headed. I write flat out because the other 23 hours I have been thinking about the book while going about the rest of my life. (That includes the time I’m asleep. I seldom wake up without thinking of the scene I’m preparing to write. When I sit down to work, I’m essentially taking dictation from myse lf.)

Now, for being quiet. This is by far the more difficult of the two, but I have learned through painful experience this one, incontrovertible truth, and I am going to put it in italics so you will know I mean it: you only have one chance to tell your story for the very first time. One chance. Do you want the first time you tell it, when it is imbued with all of the passion and enthusiasm and verve you possess, to be when you’re chatting up the UPS guy? Or your mother? Or your cat? Trust me, you don’t. You want that first time to be on paper, so it’s there forever, recorded in all its juicy, rich, living color. When you have already described your brilliant twist or your genius plot device or your protagonist’s crippling character flaw, you have killed some of your own thrill, whether you realize it or not. Yes, it’s an ego rush of the very best kind to watch someone’s eyes widen when you tell your tale, but the thrill is very short-lived, and when you go to put that twist on paper, it is just a little bit stale. The more times you tell it, the duller it becomes. Like a bottle of opened champagne, the fizz has faded, but when all of that wonderful effervescence is bottled up, seething and bubbling, you have one choice: work or explode. That last delicious burst of creativity is what will see you through to the end.

So, be kind to yourselves. Be quiet and be seated, and be ready for the heady rush of completion because you are almost there!

Deanna Raybourn

--

A sixth-generation Texan, Deanna Raybourn grew up in San Antonio, Texas. After three years working as a teacher, Deanna left education to have a baby and pursue writing full-time. Fourteen years and many, many rejections later, her first novel, Silent in the Grave was published. The sequel, Silent in the Sanctuary, will be out in January 2008. For more on Deanna, visit www.deannaraybourn.typepad.com

Week Four pep talk from Julianna Baggott

2007-11-22T13:53:00.000-05:00

Dear NaNoWriMo Author,

You’re hearty stock. This is obvious. You don’t have prissy notions about the muse as some airy thing that sometimes does and sometimes does not alight on your shoulder. And I like this about you. It is, in fact, one of your most endearing qualities.

If you look at the world one way, it takes from you---it’s a thief of time, energy, creative mojo. But if you look at the world another way, it gives you an endless supply of motivation. Here are a few things that the world offers (in furious fistfuls) that get my butt into the chair: petty jealousy, the chip on my shoulder (a slight deformity I was born with), my kids’ pending orthodontia bills, guilt of the Catholic variety, rejection, and, on a Freudian level: my parents’ love.

And now my tips:

Polish your jealousy to a high shine---like the chrome of a well-loved Mustang.
My jealousy took the form of the phrase "two-book deal with Dutton." My student, Sharon Mitchell, who went on to become #2 on the African American Bestseller's list for her first novel Nothin’ But the Rent, had just gotten a two-book deal with Dutton. I hadn't. I was her teacher. I'd been at this, seemingly forever. She was a psychologist, dabbling in the novel. This phrase haunted me: "two-book deal with Dutton, two-book deal with Dutton." Luckily, I couldn’t shake it. At that point we were running a boarding house out of our home, and my desk was in the living room. Every night I went to bed, after turning off my computer, late at night, and it had a light that, even when the computer was off, blinked at me across the room. Each time it blinked it said, “Two-book deal with Dutton, two-book deal with Dutton.”

Ditto the chip on your shoulder. Treat it well. Feed it crackers, and maybe it'll turn into a parakeet---one of those blue ones who knows how to cuss.
Luckily I was born a scrawny fourth child after a suspiciously long gap. I was forever trying to prove that I could hang with the conversation, that I was a good enough athlete to be chosen for Kick-the-Can-Dodge-Ball (a virulent strain of Kick the Can that entailed hurling a ball at someone when you snuck up on them in a hiding spot). I eventually grew into a vicious field hockey player in high school, known for shoving in the box. I liked the tall itchy socks, the pleated skirts, the wooden sticks, even the mouth guards, but most of all I liked that I was shorter and scrawnier than everyone else on the field---because they expected nothing from me. If you lavish the chip on your shoulder, you will always be the underdog, and I've found this---for me---is the best place to write from. Every insult, every slight, every underestimation---I take comfort in these days, because I know they 're rocket fuel.

Stare at your children’s crooked teeth or imagine the crooked teeth of your imaginary children. If this doesn’t work, jump straight to college tuition. This writing could pay off at some point.
Nowadays, I write because it's my job. I go to work, just as any fishmonger would, and at the dinner table, we often end up talking about the business as a fishmonger would talk about the discount prices he's got going on salmon. I write because I have four kids, and although kids start out pretty cheap---especially the breastfed variety---they do add up. Frankly, almost anything times four is pricey----like jimmies on ice cream. (Do they all need jimmies on their ice creams? Turns out, they do.) Piano lessons times four. Orthodontia times four. College education times four. It gets ugly quickly. And although I’d write if I made no money whatsoever, I do use money as a motivation. And, who knows? You could sell this novel you’re working on … It’s been done … Regardless, if money motivates you, use it.

Remember Vocation Day at your grade school. If you’ve got a nun rattling around in there, remember how she told you not to ignore a gift from God. Try to think of writing as a gift---more complexly put: it is the curse and the cure.
For me, writing has become like breathing---a necessary exchange with my environment. If I get too much air, hold my breath, I’ll pass out. If I take too many breaths, I hyperventilate. Writing is how I sort the world. I allow it its mess. I don’t make sense of it. I witness and rummage until I feel better. The more I write, the more I need to write? Maybe. Maybe so.

As for my nun, yes, I had a good one. Sister John Marie. Faith is involved in this writing curse and cure---but I’d rather not go into all of that here. (You’ve got a novel to write. I won’t dawdle.)

Invite rejection in. Offer it a drink. Become pals-y-wals-y. Don’t fight it even when it goads you with inflammatory politics and ribald jokes.
This business offers endless opportunities for rejection---even in the most successful careers. (At a certain point, you just have the opportunity to fail bigger, no?) In any case, rejection is guaranteed. And if you haven’t been rejected as a writer yet, look forward to it. And when it happens, cherish it. It’s a sign of authorial authenticity. Also, rejection is a spur, if you see it the right way. A beautifully sharp spur.

When all else fails, call your parents just to talk about the weather and termites and hip replacements.
We all want our parents’ love. We might hide it – most of all from ourselv es. But it’s there so you may as well use it, too, on top of all else.

Plus, a reminder of your own mortality can do wonders to drive you to the page.

That’s a sampling of what gets my butt in the chair.

What keeps it there? (This is the most important part. In fact, if you get this part, you can forget all of the above.)

A love of this mad work, the thrumming in the chest, this pure desire to tell it.

Julianna Baggott

--

Julianna Baggott is the author of four novels, including Which Brings Me to You, co-authored with Steve Almond, and three books of poems, most recently, Lizzie Borden in Love and Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees. She also writes novels for younger readers, including The Anybodies trilogy and The Slippery Map. She teaches at Florida State University's Creative Writing Program, is married to David G.W. Scott and has four young kids (who can eat their weight in jimmies). For more info on Julianna, visit: www.juliannabaggott.com and www.theanybodies.com.

I found a NaNoWriMo widget

2007-11-20T17:18:00.001-05:00

Light green and red show where I was above or below the goal for the day, bold green and red are reserved for days where I did exceptionally well or monumentally badly.

I'm happy to say that I am only 66 words below where I need to be by this evening, and I haven't even started writing today.. In other words, I'm ahead. Yes, ahead of schedule. I'm surprised, but very pleased.

Chattanooga ~ Is Week Two Over Yet?

2007-11-20T14:01:00.000-05:00

Yes, it is! Officially, Week Two is OVER! If you're staring at your word count and thinking "there is no way...." please don't give up hope on your novel yet! Just poke away at it-- for some of us (me included, which is why there was no pep talk last week, just wallowing in self-pity), Week Two lasts longer than 7 days.

I encourage everyone to do two things today:

1) Update your word count on the NaNoWriMo site, and post an excerpt of something you like in your novel. To post your word count, login and go to the "Edit Profile" link at the top of the page. Click "Author Info" and scroll down to where your novel's word count is. Update it manually, or copy/paste your novel into the word counter if you prefer.

2) BACK UP YOUR NOVEL. If you want to send it to a friend so it's stored off-site and away from your computer, you can email it to me at mortaine@gmail.com. I won't even read it-- I'll toss it into a ChattNano folder on my GMail account, where it will stay for all eternity. Or, put it on a thumb drive, CD-ROM, FTP site, web site, floppy disk, or yes, even a printout.

There are ten days left to finish your novel, and I will tell you, unequivocally, that you can finish your novel in the remaining time. I know this because SOME crazy folks finished in the FIRST ten days! If that's possible, then finishing in the last 10 days is certainly do-able.

If, however, you find yourself thinking "I cannot finish," then take a deep breath and push the thought out of your mind. There is a point during this process at which your gentle ML will help you find the right goal. Today, however, is not that point. Today is the day for really blind optimism and hope. Today is the day you introduce a rhinoceros to your novel. Or a penguin. Or a ten-foot-tall Australian. Whatever.

UPCOMING WRITE-INS:
There will be write-ins this weekend. Several, in fact. I'll post them to our calendar (it's in the Forum, below the forum threads). I will try to have one every day of the long weekend, including Thursday morning, so you can get a few thousand words squeezed in before running off to the festivities. Friday we'll have one so you can avoid the mall crowds and write. Saturday and Sunday we'll have them so you can feel like you got your weekend writing in. Next week, the final sprint to the finish line, I'll probably schedule write-ins every night of the week.

If you haven't been to a write-in, I encourage you to do so. Collectively, the four of us who have shown up consistently have written over 50,000 words at the write-ins (I could be underestimating on that, too). Here is what Bonnie wrote in her blog, about handwriting at the write-ins:

"I figured the write-ins were making things worse for me, since I could be home using my computer to blast away at the word count. I've been to three write-ins so far, but ... SURPRISE !!! ... I am catching up on the number of words written! Even at the write-ins I scrawled out more words than I thought could be written by hand. There were 15-minute word wars, where we tried to beat our previous 15-minute count, and ... SURPRISE ... I wrote faster and faster each time. I discovered that the fellowship of others with the same goal of writing 50,000 words inspired me to keep going."

Bonnie is now at 33,000 words and climbing. Absolutely inspiring!

Meanwhile, our region has 181,575 words TOTAL, and 16,506 AVERAGE PER WRITER! Consider the fact that no one has logged their 50,000-word win yet, so the average is pretty close to average. That is AMAZING, and tells me one very important fact: WE CAN ALL FINISH OUR NOVELS THIS MONTH!

So, get to it. Contact me if you have questions, problems, concerns, or victories to share.

--
This email was sent by a NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison in the 'United States :: Tennessee :: Chattanooga' region using a blind mail forwarding system. Municipal Liaisons are never given direct access to your contact information.

A week three pep talk from Neil Gaiman

2007-11-17T20:44:00.000-05:00

Dear NaNoWriMo Author,

By now you're probably ready to give up. You're past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You're not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end, when words and images tumble out of your head sometimes faster than you can get them down on paper. You're in the middle, a little past the half-way point. The glamour has faded, the magic has gone, your back hurts from all the typing, your family, friends and random email acquaintances have gone from being encouraging or at least accepting to now complaining that they never see you any more---and that even when they do you're preoccupied and no fun. You don't know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you're pretty sure that even if you finish it it won't have been worth the time or energy and every time you stop long enough to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began---a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel, in which every word spits fire and burns, a book as good or better than the best book you ever read---it falls so painfully short that you're pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.

Welcome to the club.

That's how novels get written.

You write. That's the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

A dry-stone wall is a lovely thing when you see it bordering a field in the middle of nowhere but becomes more impressive when you realise that it was built without mortar, that the builder needed to choose each interloc king stone and fit it in. Writing is like building a wall. It's a continual search for the word that will fit in the text, in your mind, on the page. Plot and character and metaphor and style, all these become secondary to the words. The wall-builder erects her wall one rock at a time until she reaches the far end of the field. If she doesn't build it it won't be there. So she looks down at her pile of rocks, picks the one that looks like it will best suit her purpose, and puts it in.

The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

The last novel I wrote (it was ANANSI BOYS, in case you were wondering) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I cou ld abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm---or even arguing with me---she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, "Oh, you're at that part of the book, are you?"

I was shocked. "You mean I've done this before?"

"You don't remember?"

"Not really."

"Oh yes," she said. "You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients."

I didn't even get to feel unique in my despair.

So I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing.

One word after another.

That's the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes in to Chapter Nine, it's the only way to do it.

So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.

Pretty soon you'll be on the downward slide, and it's not impossible that soon you'll be at the end. Good luck...

Neil Gaiman

--

Neil Gaiman is the author of the New York Times bestselling children's book Coraline and of the picture books The Wolves in the Walls and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. He is also the author of award-winning novels and short stories for adults, as well as the Sandman series of graphic novels. His most recent novels include InterWorld and Anansi Boys. For more info on Neil, visit www.neilgaiman.com

HTML color codes ~ and swatches

2007-11-17T10:02:00.000-05:00

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/11/15/ffffff-888888-000000/

http://html-color-codes.com/

http://www.visibone.com/swatches/

Week Three pep talk from Sara Gruen

2007-11-15T21:54:00.000-05:00

Dear NaNoWriMo author,

I've been trying to write this pep talk for almost a week. The problem, you see, is that I'm wickedly behind on my word count and I was determined to catch up first. Last night I realized that it wasn't going to happen. So. All you people who have vast amounts of words in the bank, gobs more than you're supposed to have at this point in the month? Super great! Keep it up! Those of you who are just a little bit depressed and crazy, not to mention googley-eyed because you've pulled eight all-nighters in a row trying to catch up? Come sit with me. We will get through this.

I started out with the best of intentions, namely letting my OCD run free. I created a spreadsheet that shows my word count for the day and what my word count should be if I had completed my 1667 words a day. Just looking at that growing column made me feel giddy---If I could just drag my way through 1667 words each day, I'd sail on through the month and be the prou d owner of 50,000 shiny new words.

Then life got in the way. My horse got conjunctivitis, and while I was out treating her, I slipped and broke my foot, meaning I couldn't sit at my desk because my foot would balloon. But I was still determined, so I got up each morning, lay on the couch with my foot on pillows and my laptop propped open on my stomach. It made for a lot of typos and a toasty stomach (my laptop gets really hot!), but at least I was writing. Then my dog got sick. Really, really sick. As in, they thought she had cancer and might not come home sick. But as soon as we'd spent the requisite fortune to prove to her that we love her, she miraculously recovered (all our pets have taken up this method of proving our continued devotion). Meanwhile, my word count was slipping a little further every day. (You're probably wondering where the pep part of this pep talk comes in, aren't you?)

In the wee hours of last night, when I was trying to figure out how I could possibly give advice to people about their word counts when mine is so abysmal, I realized my problem. I've been ignoring my own advice, and everyone else's too. You know, the "no editing" rule, and the "it's okay to write a really bad first draft" rule, and the "move around the story as much as you want" rule. I was dutifully handing that advice out to my nano'ing friends, but I wasn't taking it myself and I was (and am) 5,640 words behind where I should be according to my little spreadsheet. But today, I am going to jump around and write only the fun bits! I’m going to write about food fights, and disastrous sex, and escaping in-laws, and apes with unlimited credit! I'm going to write about roach-infested motel rooms with strippers upstairs and ways of using Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City" as revenge! (Sorry Grace, I love you, but...)

And whenever one of those scenes starts windi ng down, I am going to ditch it without so much as a sayonara and look for the NEXT fun scene. The transitions can wait. And instead of avoiding writing by going to various gossip sites that some person *cough* (Joshilyn) who-shall-remain-nameless *cough* (Jackson) got me addicted to last time she came to my house, I will visit them at the end of the day as a reward for having written my words.

I can do this. WE can do this. However far behind you are, take comfort in knowing that there is somebody else out there in the same boat, and look for that next fun scene. And then the next. And if that doesn't work, set someone on fire. In your book, of course.

See you in the winner's circle.

Sara

--
Sara Gruen is the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Water For Elephants, as well as Riding Lessons, Flying Changes, and the upcoming Ape House (Spiegel &a mp; Grau, Fall 2008). She has participated in NaNoWriMo for several years. Ape House will be her third NaNoWriMo book. For more information about Sara, see www.saragruen.com.

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NaNoWriMo ~ word count

2007-11-15T00:29:00.001-05:00

Day 01 = 1,708
Day 02 = 3,337
Day 03 = 4,469
Day 04 = 5,402
Day 05 = 6,912
Day 06 = 7,227
Day 07 = 8,191
Day 08 = 10,805
Day 09 = 11,192
Day 10 = 13,181
Day 11 = 15,103
Day 12 = 18,237
Day 13 = 20,166
Day 14 = 22,008

Do you want to know what surprised me the most about writing this novel? Let me take you to the answer in a round-about way:

It turned out that Chattanooga, the fourth largest city in Tennessee, had no official group because we had no "ML" ... which stands for Municipal Liaison. You know me, and you probably know what I'd do, right? I'd get a group of us together one way or the other. It turned out that someone who had been an ML several times would be in Chattanooga during November. She volunteered (Tennessee is called the volunteer state, so she fits right in) to be our ML, and two minutes into November she was made our official liaison! Hurray for us! She won't be here next year, so I volunteered to be next year's ML. She thought that was a great idea ... until she learned this is my very first year, which means my very first attempt to write 50K words in 30 days. Yes, that's 50,000 words. Since we were in the flush of week one, she advised that I hold off.

Week Two arrived, and I (along with every other NaNoWriMo newbie, most likely) wondered why I had thought I could do this. At one point during Week Two, my word count was behind almost 4,000 words ... counting the 1,667 needed per day to make the total by the end of the month. Nevertheless, I was trying to do all the events the ML set up for Chattanooga, even though everyone else arrived at the write-ins with laptops ... and I had my tablet and pens. I figured the write-ins were making things worse for me, since I could be home using my computer to blast away at the word count.

I've been to three write-ins so far, but ... SURPRISE !!! ... I am catching up on the number of words written! Even at the write-ins I scrawled out more words than I thought could be written by hand. There were 15-minute word wars, where we tried to beat our previous 15-minute count, and ... SURPRISE ... I wrote faster and faster each time. I discovered that the fellowship of others with the same goal of writing 50,000 words inspired me to keep going. I have now almost caught up with the daily count, and our ML said the final week brings a rush of words. She says we can make it even if we don't hit 20,000 words until November 20th. Look at my word count above. See that? I have already passed 22,000 words.

Thanks to all of you who keep posting a sentence or two, telling me you think I can do it, that I can make it to the end and actually have 50,000 words when I finish the day on November 30th. You know what? I'm doing it!

NaNoWriMo pep talk from Sue Grafton

2007-11-11T08:11:00.000-05:00

Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2007 23:19:58 -0800

Hey, boys and girls!

This is Sue Grafton, just checking in to see how you're doing. I've been thinking about you often and I hope your work is going smoothly. In the event that it's not, I wanted to assure you that I get bogged down all the time. Someone asked me once if I ever got writer's block and I said, 'only once or twice a day.'

For reasons absolutely unknown to Science, many writers begin their novels with a burst of enthusiasm. There's a measurable outpouring of time and energy. I experience this myself. At the outset, my optimism rides high and my hopes are boundless. This book ... this book, I say to myself ... will be clever, inventive, fresh, original, witty, and profound. My characters will be complex, textured, and amazingly true to life. My prose will sing. The pacing will be relentless, yet the story will ebb and flow in a manner that will produce both thrilling surprises and quiet moments where the reader can reflect on what's gone before. My descriptive passages will be evocative, bringing scenes to life in a way that will later translate into a movie sale with all the attendant fame and glory and big bucks. (Personally, of course, I'd never sell my character to Hollywood, but you get the point...)

This hype, this glorious feeling of Omnipotence sometimes continues unabated until Chapter Two. By then, most puzzlingly, I might notice something is amiss. You may find yourself in a similar position at this point in the game. Whether you've written a thousand words or ten thousand, you may find yourself faltering. A little note of doubt may creep into your consciousness. This, I assure you, is not about the merit of the work you've done so far. It's an artifact of your own insecurities. You're probably beginning to wonder what your mother will think of those steamy sexual passages. Perhaps you're suddenly uncertain your immediate family will appreciate your rendition of their annual drunken Christmas antics that result in all those accusations, renunciations, and slamming of doors. You might suspect that your mate (and let's not even talk about your kids) might take a dim view of what's visible through the little window you've opened onto your soul.

This is my advice. Disregard the nagging voice piping up from the back of your brain. You aren't stupid. You won't fail. You won't humiliate yourself (that much) in front of all your family and friends. The important point is to keep up your momentum regardless of the fact that you might stumble now and then. Most people you know have never written a novel at all, let alone pounded one out in a jam-packed thirty days.

Look at it this way; you're not compelled to show your manuscript to anyone, right? In fact, I'd advise you do the opposite. Keep it under lock and key. Guard it with your life. This is your opportunity to express yourself, safe from the opinions of the dolts around you, who don't know bad literature from good. If you're smart you've kept your mission a secret, but suppose you've already blabbed your goal to anyone who'd listen. What was the initial response? Did your loved ones and colleagues scoff or pretend to be supportive while making faces behind your back? Either way, if you bravely soldier on, you can make them eat their words. You can throw their skepticism back in their faces and laugh yourself silly that they had so little faith.

Believe me, getting from beginning to middle to end is an incredible accomplishment in itself! Literary quality is in the eye of the beholder and who's to say your novel won't be right up there among the greats? All you have to do is work. All you have to do is push. Focus on the job at hand. Ignore the urge to second-guess yourself. This is not the time for introspection; it's a time for charging on. Believe in yourself. Be determined to keep the promises you made when you first began. Your commitment to do this will see you through, even over rough ground.

So. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and write. You said you would do this so nod your head and say, "I will do this. I will do this. I will do this." And then do this.

Sue Grafton

--
Sue is the author of the bestselling Alphabet Series, which began with 1983's A is for Alibi. The latest in the series, T is for Trespess, is due out in December. For more on Sue, visit www.suegrafton.com.

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Week Two: Accept all Guests to the Party

2007-11-08T18:01:00.000-05:00

Well, Week Two is creeping up on us. For anyone new to NaNoWriMo, Week Two is better known as "that hellish week where I felt like I was adrift in the doldrums." Words, words, everywhere, but not a noun to speak?

This is the week in which all inspiration flees, and we are left adrift in a sea of pointless plotlines, insipid characters, and settings that bear a more-than-casual resemblance to white rooms painted with white paint.

Do not despair, my friends. This is the part of NaNoWriMo that makes you as a writer. It is easy to pen a few thousand words and call it a day. It is much harder to do so after the eighth or ninth day! Surprisingly, though, if you can stick with it through fifteen days, you will find yourself pleasantly surprised at how easy the following fifteen become.

Here are the keys to making it through the dark disturbing waters of Week Two and into the glorious meadow of Week Three:

* Persistence. This game is all about persistence, and nowhere is that more evident than in Week Two. If you have a 0 word count day, get thee to the computer and write ten words -- something, anything to get some words into the day.
* Flagrant breaking of the storyline. This week, it is perfectly acceptable to have your Renaissance-era vampire monotonously read aloud the server logs you got as a text message (perhaps it's some arcane spell!). Don't worry, he'll be back to speaking in iambic pentameter next week.
* Inviting the gatecrashers in. There might not be many uninvited guests at your novel this week, but if any do arrive, by boat, Ferrari, or dream, invite them to the party. You never know when a fur-clothed barbarian will cozy up to your spunky alien starship captain and come up with a side plot that you didn't even think was possible, given their respective anatomies. Let all guests

Finally, come to the write-ins this week! We have one scheduled for Sunday night at the Northgate Mall Panera Bread, and a request for one somewhere downtown. I'll check with the downtown Starbucks and see how late they're open; if anyone wants to give me a lead on another location, that would be awesome. Right now, my thought is to have that write-in on Monday evening, from 5 until about 8 (so folks can come by after work). This week, we will have many great word wars at the write-ins, with excellent prizes, so please do try and attend!

See you this week!
--Stephanie

--
This email was sent by a NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison in the 'United States :: Tennessee :: Chattanooga' region using a blind mail forwarding system. Municipal Liaisons are never given direct access to your contact information.

NaNoWriMo Pep talk from Naomi Novik

2007-11-08T11:21:00.000-05:00

Dear NaNoWriMo Writer,

The single most important technique for making progress is to write ten words. Doesn't matter if you're badly stuck, or your day is completely jam-packed, or you're away from your computer---carry a small paper notebook and write a sentence of description while you're waiting on line at a coffee shop. I think of this as baiting a hook. Even if you have a few days in a row where nothing comes except those ten words, I find that as long as you have to think about the novel enough to write ten words, the chances are that more will come.

The rest of this advice comes out of my own bag of tricks for getting those ten words and then turning them into many. It may well be that only some of these or none at all will work for you; they may not fit into your life or your own mindset. But if these don't, try and come up with others that do work for you.

Remove distractions. The internet is a phenomenal research and communit y tool without which you might never have started the novel you're working on right now. It is an equally phenomenal tool for procrastination and wasting time. Unplug your connection. While you're at it, put down that book, turn off the TV, shut down the Wii. Make scrambled eggs and salad for dinner. The dishes can wait to be washed. Ideally, get out of your house filled with your stuff that you like and go somewhere where you have nothing better to do than write.

I like writing longhand a lot for clearing jams and rapidly generating new scenes. I don't generally try and write complete scenes when I am writing longhand, I do more of a pencil-sketch version of a scene, all rough and scribbled, drifting in and out of outline form, full of shorthand and initials and incomplete sentences. This is also a easy way to get some polish in without losing speed---when you transfer the longhand to your computer, you'll almost without thinking improve the sentences. And it's fun having a physical artifact to commemorate the work---get one of those nice journals from your local bookstore, and if you are the kind of person who hates to waste money, spend enough on the journal that you will then feel bad if you don't finish the novel.

If characters aren't coming clear, play casting director. Instead of trying to invent a character from scratch, mentally cast someone in the role and try to imagine how they would do it---their physical mannerisms, their vocal tics, the way they hold themselves. The nice thing is, as the casting director of a novel, you are free to cast actors who are booked elsewhere, too young or too old for the role, not actually actors (your next-door neighbor will never know), dead, or fictional (a writer of my acquaintance once cast Madame Bovary as a character in his modern-day novel).

If you're finding a scene boring to write, cut it and skip to the good part. Set something on fire. Have zombies a ttack. Note that boring is not the same as hard. Really great scenes can be very hard to write and take a long time, but if you're sitting there going "god, when will this be over," make it be over. You indeed have that power. It's your novel.

Have fun with it.

Naomi Novik

--

Naomi Novik is the author of the Temeraire series---His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, and Empire of Ivory. For more info on Naomi, visit www.temeraire.org.

Improving on the Masters ~ I, II, III

2007-11-05T00:23:00.000-05:00

Improving On The Masters, Part I

Last month, I gave away one of my biggest secrets in
the craft of writing fiction. I spilled the beans on
MRUs.

What's an MRU? It does sound hideous, doesn't it?
Like one of those "Meals Ready to Eat" that the
military gives to soldiers.

"MRU" stands for "Motivation-Reaction Unit" and the
term was invented by Dwight Swain, one of the great
teachers of fiction way back in the 1960s. I still
swear by Swain's book, Techniques of the Selling
Writer, which I consider one of the great writing books
of all time.

HOWEVER, Swain was not thinking when he named these
things. "MRU" just isn't an exciting name.

If you missed last month's article, now would be a good
time to go read it or to check out the article on my
web site on "Writing the Perfect Scene" at
http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/perfect_scene.html

As a VERY brief reminder, an MRU has two parts, a
"Motivation" and a "Reaction". The Motivation is
objective and external. The Reaction is subjective and
mostly internal to your Point of View character.

What I'd like to do this month is to pick some random
scenes from some of my favorite novels and see if we
can "improve" the MRUs. This is risky business. Can
we really improve on masters of the art of writing like
Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, and Michael Crichton?

We'll see . . .

As a first example, I'm going to pick a random page in
Tom Clancy's latest novel, The Teeth of the Tiger
(hardback edition). OK, turning to a random page, I
find a nice sequence on page 15, in which an FBI agent,
Dominic Caruso, is searching for a young girl who's
been kidnaped. There's a report that the suspect may
be driving a white van. Caruso sees a van on a
secluded lane near an isolated house and goes to
investigate. Before he does, of course he checks in
with his boss, Ellis, by cell phone. That's where
we'll pick up the action. For convenience, I'll number
the paragraphs. We pick up right after Dominic Caruso
interrupts his boss. His boss responds:

1 "Yeah, Dominic?"

2 "I'm going to knock on this guy's door."

3 "You want backup?"

4 Caruso took a second to think. "Affirmative--roger
that."

5 "There's a countie mountie about ten minutes away.
Stand by," Ellis advised.

6 "Roger, standing by."

7 But a little girl's life was on the line . . .

8 He headed toward the house, careful to keep out of
the sight lines from the nearest windows. That's
when time stopped.

9 He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the
scream. It was an awful, shrill sound, like
someone looking at Death himself. His brain
processed the information, and he suddenly found
that his automatic pistol was in his hands, just in
front of his sternum, pointed up into the sky, but
in his hands even so. It had been a woman's
scream, he realized, and something just went click
inside his head.

Randy sez: This sequence is vintage Clancy. He's set
things up nicely, so the action here is ready to hop
into high gear. Clancy doesn't waste space on dialogue
tags in the first couple of paragraphs, and he doesn't
need to, since we know who's talking. Let's walk
through these in Super-Slo-Mo, with my commentary after
every paragraph:

1 "Yeah, Dominic?"

Paragraph 1 is a Motivation, since it's Ellis speaking
and our POV character is Caruso. Note that this is
objective and external--it's exactly what a tape
recorder would hear. It's also exactly what Caruso
hears, but Clancy doesn't tell us that. He doesn't
need to. It's obvious from the context.

2 "I'm going to knock on this guy's door."

Paragraph 2 is Caruso's Reaction. Remember that a
Reaction can have up to three parts--a Feeling (can
begin within a tenth of a second), a Reflexive Action
(takes between a tenth of a second and a half second),
and a Rational Action (takes longer than half a second
to start). This Reaction skips the Feeling and the
Reflexive Action and goes straight to the Rational
Action (a sentence that Caruso says).

3 "You want backup?"

Paragraph 3 is a new Motivation. Again, it's a very
simple Motivation, with no space wasted on a dialogue
tag. These short, one-sentence paragraphs give the
reader the feeling of fast action, which is what you
want in a scene like this. Clancy is doing great so
far.

4 Caruso took a second to think. "Affirmative--roger
that."

Paragraph 4 is a Reaction in two parts. Clancy tells
us that Caruso takes a second to think. Then he shows
us the result--the Rational Speech. The purpose of the
"telling" sentence here is two-fold: It gives us a tag
so we won't get lost and forget who's speaking. It
also slightly slows down the action, which is the right
thing to do. Caruso is about to go into a man's house
(and will end up killing the kidnaper in cold blood.)
Clancy needs to show that he's proceeding rationally
here.

5 "There's a countie mountie about ten minutes away.
Stand by," Ellis advised.

Paragraph 5 is a new Motivation with some nice FBI
lingo in the first sentence. This is what Clancy is
good at. He trips up a little bit in the second
sentence by using a dialogue tag when none is really
needed, and a poor one at that. Most writing teachers
will tell you that "said" is the least obtrusive
dialogue tag. Clancy seems to love anything but the
word "said". Here he has Ellis "advising". In other
places, he'll use "questioned", "raged", "insisted",
"philosophized", etc. All of these are worse than
"said". Better still would be an action tag, or nothing
at all.

6 "Roger, standing by."

Paragraph 6 is Caruso's Reaction, and as in all the
previous Reactions, it's strictly Rational. This is
typical in action scenes. What comes next is interior
monologue, the first we've seen in this sequence:

7 But a little girl's life was on the line . . .

Paragraph 7 feels a little abrupt. Why? Because it's
a continuation of the Reaction begun in Paragraph 6,
but it's not really a Reaction to anything, not even
the passage of time. In fact, Caruso is presumably
still holding his cell phone. It might be better for
him to put it away, which would be an objective action
that would allow a slight passage of time that would
perform the same function as a Motivation.

8 He headed toward the house, careful to keep out of
the sight lines from the nearest windows. That's
when time stopped.

Paragraph 8 is a continuation of the Reaction begun in
Paragraph 7, and it follows naturally and logically
from Paragraph 7, so there is no need for a Motivation
between 7 and 8. However, note how Clancy blunders
here by telegraphing what's about to happen. The final
sentence in Paragraph 8 "tells" rather than "shows".
Clancy informs us that time stops here, rather than
letting us feel the shock of what comes next. He
compounds the problem by putting the effect before the
cause:

9 He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the
scream. It was an awful, shrill sound, like
someone looking at Death himself. His brain
processed the information, and he suddenly found
that his automatic pistol was in his hands, just in
front of his sternum, pointed up into the sky, but
in his hands even so. It had been a woman's
scream, he realized, and something just went click
inside his head.

Paragraph 9 could have been so much better. The first
clause is a Reaction (a Reflexive Action)--"He nearly
jumped out of his skin"--but a Reaction to what? We
don't find out until the second clause--"when he heard
the scream".

Never mind that "jumping out of his skin" is a cliche.
When you show the effect first, the reader doesn't
respond emotionally, because there is nothing to
respond TO. So this paragraph is a mix of a Reaction,
followed by the Motivation that caused it, followed by
more Reaction (this time Rational Action).

Also, note that Clancy gives us some interior monologue
"it had been a woman's scream", followed by the
entirely unnecessary tag, "he realized".

Let's see now if we can improve on Clancy just a wee
bit by rewriting this sequence into pure MRUs, as
follows. (Yes, I have a lot of chutzpah to rewrite
Zillion-Selling Tom Clancy, but what the heck.)
Whether the rewrite is better than the original, I
leave for you to judge:

1 "Yeah, Dominic?"

2 "I'm going to knock on this guy's door."

3 "You want backup?"

4 Caruso took a second to think. "Affirmative--roger
that."

5 "There's a countie mountie about ten minutes
away," Ellis said. "Stand by."

6 "Roger, standing by." Caruso jammed his cell
phone back in his pocket and stared at the van. A
little girl's life was on the line . . .

8 He headed toward the house, careful to keep out of
the sight lines from the nearest windows.

9a A scream slit the morning stillness.

9b Caruso's heart slammed in his chest. The scream
was an awful, shrill sound, like someone looking at
Death himself. His brain processed it, and he
suddenly found that his automatic pistol was in his
hands, just in front of his sternum, pointed up
into the sky. It had been a woman's scream, not a
child's. Something went click inside his head.

Randy sez: OK, I think that last paragraph is still
kind of overwrought, but I don't want to mess too much
with Tom's style.

_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

Improving On The Masters, Part II

You may or may not agree that my surgery on Clancy's
writing actually cured the patient, but I hope it's
clear what procedure I used--separating out the
Motivations and Reactions and fixing bad dialogue tags.

Let's take another random example from Dan Brown's
book, The DaVinci Code (hardback edition). Oops, Brown
tends to be more careful than Clancy, and most of his
MRUs are pretty good. So let's take a NONrandom
sample. Let's look at his celebrated chapter in which
the Truth About Mary Magdalene Comes Out.

The setting is as follows. The Point of View
characters is Sophie Neveu, a cryptographer who is not
knowledgeable in art history. She's in the study of
Sir Leigh Teabing, a scholar whose role in this scene
is to fill Sophie in on Dan Brown's views on Mary
Magdalene. Teabing will have help from Sophie's
companion on this adventure, Harvard symbologist Robert
Langdon.

The author's goal here is to use dialogue to present a
large amount of information to the reader, by having
two scholars explain it all to a novice. Brown's
initial presentation here is almost flawless, as he
shows Langdon and Teabing giving Sophie a lesson from
DaVinci's painting, The Last Supper. We pick up the
action as Brown moves from his forte, medieval art
history, into his weaker area, early church history:

1 Sophie weighed the information. "I'll admit, the
hidden M's are intriguing, although I assume nobody
is claiming they are proof of Jesus' marriage to
Magdalene."

2 "No, no," Teabing said, going to a nearby table of
books. "As I said earlier, the marriage of Jesus
and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical
record." He began pawing through his book
collection. "Moreover, Jesus as a married man
makes infinitely more sense than our standard
biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor."

3 "Why?" Sophie asked.

4 "Because Jesus was a Jew," Langdon said, taking
over while Teabing searched for his book, "and the
social decorum during that time virtually forbid a
Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish
custom, celibacy was condemned, and the obligation
for a Jewish father was to find a suitable wife for
his son. If Jesus were not married, at least one of
the Bible's gospels would have mentioned it and
offered some explanation for His unnatural state of
bachelorhood."

5 Teabing located a huge book and pulled it toward
him across the table. The leather-bound edition
was poster-sized, like a huge atlas. The cover
read: The Gnostic Gospels. Teabing heaved it
open, and Langdon and Sophie joined him. Sophie
could see it contained photographs of what appeared
to be magnified passages of ancient
documents--tattered papyrus with handwritten text.
She did not recognize the ancient language, but the
facing pages bore typed translations.

6 "These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and
Dead Sea scrolls, which I mentioned earlier,"
Teabing said. "The earliest Christian records.
Troublingly, they do not match up with the gospels
in the Bible."

Randy sez: This passage is one of a large number of
"informational sections" in The DaVinci Code. This
particular section is one of Brown's more controversial
passages, where he makes some rather bizarre claims.
Let's examine the sequence paragraph by paragraph to
see Brown's technique:

1 Sophie weighed the information. "I'll admit, the
hidden M's are intriguing, although I assume nobody
is claiming they are proof of Jesus' marriage to
Magdalene."

This is a Reaction to the previous paragraph, which was
a long summary of the art history lesson Teabing has
just given on The Last Supper. The information is
speculative, and Sophie is making the obvious point
that it doesn't prove anything. She has to make this
point, since the reader will naturally be thinking the
same thing.

2a "No, no," Teabing said, going to a nearby table of
books. "As I said earlier, the marriage of Jesus
and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical
record."

This is a new Motivation, in which Teabing concedes the
point that the painting proves nothing. Then he pulls
an extraordinary reverse by claiming that the marriage
is a matter of historical record (a factoid that would
be disputed by virtually all historians). Remarkably,
Brown does not have Sophie contest this claim. The net
effect is to make her seem either timid or stupid,
since most readers are going to be astounded by this
claim. Teabing continues on:

2b He began pawing through his book collection.
"Moreover, Jesus as a married man makes infinitely
more sense than our standard biblical view of Jesus
as a bachelor."

This is a continuation of the Motivation, and the
sermon is now getting kind of long. Brown desperately
needs to inject a little conflict in this scene by
intervening here with an objection from Sophie that
would give Teabing some sort of opportunity to explain
himself better.

3 "Why?" Sophie asked.

At last, Sophie gets a word in, but it's too little and
too late to create any real conflict. This is a
Reaction, but it feels remarkably tepid. It might be
good to include some sort of Feeling here. Surprise at
the very least, given Sophie's upbringing.

4a "Because Jesus was a Jew," Langdon said, taking
over while Teabing searched for his book, "and the
social decorum during that time virtually forbid a
Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish
custom, celibacy was condemned, and the obligation
for a Jewish father was to find a suitable wife for
his son. If Jesus were not married, at least one of
the Bible's gospels would have mentioned it and
offered some explanation for His unnatural state of
bachelorhood."

This is a Motivation, but we see no Reaction from
Sophie, which is problematic. What is she feeling?
What is she thinking? It might have been nice to have
Sophie better educated in history. Then she could
object at this point that the first-century Jewish
priest and historian Josephus was ALSO not married
until past the age of thirty, with nobody accusing him
of being in an unnatural state of bachelorhood. The
net effect here is that Langdon is bulldozing Sophie
with a weak chain of logic, and she lets him get away
with it.

5a Teabing located a huge book and pulled it toward
him across the table. The leather-bound edition
was poster-sized, like a huge atlas. The cover
read: The Gnostic Gospels. Teabing heaved it
open, and Langdon and Sophie joined him.

This continues the Motivation with some visuals and
breaks up the rather heavy dose of dialogue. The final
clause might be more effective by splitting into a new
paragraph, since the paragraphs in this chapter tend to
be long, leaving little white space on the page. The
net effect is that the chapter looks and feels like a
sermon.

5b Sophie could see it contained photographs of what
appeared to be magnified passages of ancient
documents--tattered papyrus with handwritten text.
She did not recognize the ancient language, but the
facing pages bore typed translations.

This is a Reaction, but it is weakened a bit since it
is mostly "telling" rather than "showing".

6 "These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and
Dead Sea scrolls, which I mentioned earlier,"
Teabing said. "The earliest Christian records.
Troublingly, they do not match up with the gospels
in the Bible."

This is a new Motivation. Note the peculiar adverb
"troublingly" in the dialogue. This is a rather odd
usage, and gives Teabing the feel of a caricature
academic. The only troubling part here are the two
glaring factual errors: First, the Nag Hammadi scrolls
are second century Gnostic Christian texts that most
historians date several decades later than the New
Testament documents. Second, the Dead Sea scrolls are
not Christian documents. So it is not clear why
Teabing should find it troubling that these documents
don't match the Biblical gospels. Sophie apparently
doesn't know this, so she gives no Reaction.

I would like to revise this sequence to enhance the
conflict, but I don't see an easy way to do it without
giving Sophie more knowledge than a cryptographer
normally has. Also, allowing Sophie to argue with
Teabing and Langdon would knock the author off course
as he presents a far-fetched version of history. So
I'll leave the passage as it stands: a heavy-handed
sermon. Brown's action scenes are a whole lot better.

This passage illustrates one of the problems in
constructing a storyline to fit a Theme. The thematic
sections, such as this one, end up feeling contrived
and a bit dull, due to lack of conflict. Better to let
the Theme emerge from the story! (And, I might add,
better to get an expert to check the technical parts
you're not good at.)

_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

Improving On The Masters, Part III

The last scene was a fairly slow scene with lots of
information being given to the reader in dialogue. Now
let's look at a high-action scene from Michael
Crichton's time-travel novel Timeline that also
presents a lot of information in a lively and
entertaining way.

Marek is a history student who's been transported back
to a time he knows well, 14th century France, and he's
been snookered into participating in a joust. He knows
what to do, but there's no guarantee he'll be able to
do it, though he's a fine physical speciman. He's
matched up against Sir Charles, who means to kill him.
Quickly. As we pick up with the action, Marek and
Charles are charging toward each other on horses and
they're only eighty yards apart. Marek is the Point of
View character:

1 He saw Sir Charles adjust his lance, angling it
upward. He was going for the head. Or was it a
feint? Jousting riders were known to change their
aim at the last moment. Would he?

2 Sixty yards.

3 The head strike was risky if both riders were not
aiming for it. A straight lance to the torso would
impact a fraction of a second sooner than a lance
to the head; it was a matter of the angles. The
first impact would move both riders, making the
head strike less certain. But a skilled knight
might extend his lance farther forward, taking it
out of counched position, to get six or eight
inches of extra length, and thus the first impact.
You had to have enormous arm strength to absorb the
instant of impact, and control the lance as it
socked back, so the horse would bear the brunt; but
you were more likely to throw off the opponent's
aim and timing.

4 Fifty yards.

5 Sir Charles still held his lance high. But now he
couched it, leaning forward in the saddle. He had
more control of the lance now. Would he feint
again?

6 Forty yards.

7 There was no way to know. Marek decided to go for
the chest strike. He put his lance in position.
He would not move it again.

8 Thirty yards.

9 He heard the thunder of hooves, the roar of the
crowd. The medieval texts warned, "Do not close
your eyes at the moment of impact. Keep your eyes
open to make the hit."

10 Twenty yards.

11 His eyes were open.

12 Ten.

13 The bastard raised his lance.

14 He was going for the head.

15 Impact.

16 The crack of wood sounded like a gunshot. Marek
felt a pain in his left shoulder, stabbing upward
and hard. He rode on to the end of the course,
dropped his shattered lance, extended his hand out
for another.

Randy sez: OK, let's walk through this, play by play.
Crichton uses those one-sentence paragraphs very
effectively to count down the time to impact. Each one
plays the role of a Motivation.

1 He saw Sir Charles adjust his lance, angling it
upward. He was going for the head. Or was it a
feint? Jousting riders were known to change their
aim at the last moment. Would he?

This is intended to be Marek's Reaction, but it's a
little muddled. Whenever an author writes "he saw",
it's a telltale indicator that we have a Motivation in
Reaction's clothing. The Motivation here is Sir
Charles shifting his lance upward to point at Marek's
head. The Reaction is the sequence of Marek's thought
processes, very skillfully done. It would work a bit
better to split this paragraph into two.

2 Sixty yards.

This is a Motivation. Why? Because it's what a
videocamera would show you. It's an objective and
external view of the distance to that pesky charging
horse.

3 The head strike was risky if both riders were not
aiming for it. A straight lance to the torso would
impact a fraction of a second sooner than a lance
to the head; it was a matter of the angles. The
first impact would move both riders, making the
head strike less certain. But a skilled knight
might extend his lance farther forward, taking it
out of counched position, to get six or eight
inches of extra length, and thus the first impact.
You had to have enormous arm strength to absorb the
instant of impact, and control the lance as it
socked back, so the horse would bear the brunt; but
you were more likely to throw off the opponent's
aim and timing.

This is a Reaction. It's all Rational Thought in
Marek's head. There's a slight danger in putting a
long paragraph of explanation in an action scene, since
it might feel like it takes too long to read it.
However, one can easily imagine all this flitting
through Marek's head during a split second. Crichton
needs to explain all this information to the reader so
that the action that follows will be intelligible. This
is the best place for it. The following paragraphs are
progressively shorter, and the net effect is to make
the reader feel like the horses are accelerating.

4 Fifty yards.

Another short Motivation.

5 Sir Charles still held his lance high. But now he
couched it, leaning forward in the saddle. He had
more control of the lance now. Would he feint
again?

This is again a mingling of Motivation and Reaction.
The first two sentences are the Motivation. The last
two sentences are Reaction.

6 Forty yards.

Another Motivation.

7 There was no way to know. Marek decided to go for
the chest strike. He put his lance in position.
He would not move it again.

This is again Reaction, and again it's Rational Thought
followed by Rational Action.

8 Thirty yards.

Another Motivation. The repeated pattern is very
effective in heightening tension.

9 He heard the thunder of hooves, the roar of the
crowd. The medieval texts warned, "Do not close
your eyes at the moment of impact. Keep your eyes
open to make the hit."

This is Reaction. It is not necessary to say "he
heard". Marek is reliving all his old history classes
in the last split seconds before impact.

10 Twenty yards.

Another Motivation.

11 His eyes were open.

A Reaction, again Rational Action. The decreasing
sentences jack the pace up to almost unbearable levels.

12 Ten.

Another Motivation, shorter than ever.

13 The bastard raised his lance.

Another Motivation, mingled with Reaction, since the
word "bastard" can only be within Marek's mind. I'm
sure this violates some Rule or other, but I don't see
a better way to write this sequence. Motivation and
Reaction are blurring together now at the speed of
light. Isn't this FUN?

14 He was going for the head.

This is straight Reaction, Marek's last Rational
Thought before impact. Note that Crichton doesn't slow
things down with emotive feeling here. That comes
later . . .

15 Impact.

A very nice Motivation. This is the end of a section.
Just so you won't be left hanging, I include the first
part of the next section:

16 The crack of wood sounded like a gunshot. Marek
felt a pain in his left shoulder, stabbing upward
and hard. He rode on to the end of the course,
dropped his shattered lance, extended his hand out
for another.

The "crack of wood" is Motivation. Now, at last, we
have Feeling, the pain in the left shoulder. In fast
action scenes, there is often not a lot of time for
Feelings. The Feeling here is followed by a sequence of
Rational Actions that chew up some time and let the
reader decompress a bit. It takes time to ride to the
end of the course, drop a lance, and reach for another.
It also takes a bit of courage. Marek has guts here,
and Crichton doesn't tell you how courageous Marek is.
He lets you figure that out for yourself.

It's a strong scene, and I'm scared to death to try to
improve it. But let's take a stab, shall we? The
worst that can happen is that we'll see what goes wrong
when you try to follow those Rules too closely.

1a Sir Charles adjusted his lance, angling it upward
at Marek's head.

1b Was it a feint? Jousting riders were known to
change their aim at the last moment. Would he?

2 Sixty yards.

3 The head strike was risky. A straight lance to
the torso would strike a fraction of a second
sooner than an angled lance to the head. But a
skilled knight might extend his lance six or eight
inches out of counched position to get the first
impact. You had to have enormous arm strength to
control the lance as it socked back; but you were
more likely to throw off the opponent's aim and
timing.

4 Fifty yards.

5a Sir Charles still held his lance high. But now he
couched it, leaning forward in the saddle.

5b Marek tightened his grip on his lance. Sir
Charles had more control of the lance now. Would
he feint again?

6 Forty yards.

7 There was no way to know. Marek kept his lance in
position for a chest strike.

8 Thirty yards.

9a The thunder of hooves. The roar of the crowd.

9b Marek desperately wanted to blink. The medieval
texts warned, "Do not close your eyes at the moment
of impact. Keep your eyes open to make the hit."

10 Twenty yards.

11 His eyes were open.

12 Ten.

13 The bastard raised his lance.

14 He was going for the head.

15 Impact.

16a The crack of wood sounded like a gunshot.

16b Pain lanced up Marek's left shoulder. He rode on to
the end of the course, dropped his shattered lance,
extended his hand out for another.

Randy sez: I'm not sure whether I made it better or
worse. I trimmed a few words and broke up a few
paragraphs, but in the end, I have to say that Crichton
earned his nickel on this one.
__________

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/ezine/2005/AFW_Ezine_2005-06-01.txt
__________

Past issues of the ezine:
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/html/afwezine.html

Accumulate, accumulate, accumulate

2007-11-03T15:16:00.000-04:00

Writing doesn’t happen when I sit down with an empty piece of paper or at a blank computer screen to do it. It happens all day in my head, usually while I’m doing something else. And it won’t happen if I don’t take down those notes. If you don’t record your phone messages or write them down, chances are, you’ll forget them, especially if you’re getting a lot.

Writing does happen when I sit down with an empty piece of paper or at a blank computer screen and mix what happens there, on the spur of the moment, with the notes that I’ve already taken. If one exists without the other, writing doesn’t usually happen for me. The secret to writing a book, I think it’s this: Take good notes and write often enough that it starts to accumulate. But there is also an alignment that has to take place, when you match ability and willingness to do the work with the way that has opened to do it.

~~~ by Colleen Redman, from this post Writing: A Driving Force and this one The Voices in My Head

NaNoWriMo ~ report

2007-11-03T14:53:00.000-04:00

In two days I wrote 3,337 words, exactly three words over and beyond the minimum of 3,334 needed (at 1,667 per day) to make it to my 50,000 word goal by 11:59 pm on November 30th. However, on this third day of the month, I have looked over those 3,337 words and found it all to be conspicuously egregious! (Well, those were Roary's words when he snorted near my ear earlier today. Unfortunately, I agree with him.) Now what? I have also thought of a two-part problem that may "fix" the faults before this novel runs into a ditch ... and I may be able to salvage some of what I've written. Probably a lot of it. Maybe. Gotta see what happens next. Gotta get busy writing.

Today I have been inspired by Absolute Vanilla, who has discovered a thinking toaster who reflects its thoughts! Yes, indeedy, one must consider all angles when trying to write a novel. If an errant toaster is helpful, so much the better! And thanks again to Ab Vanilla for this idea: "Bonnie - there'd be a great children's story in the magic toaster with thoughts of its own..." I took a look at my toaster, painted white, and it doesn't seem to have a mind of its own at all. Oh, well.

Welcome, Chattanooga writers!

2007-11-02T21:24:00.000-04:00

We did it! We have a ML (me), and a regional forum (http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1032857)! We have a write-in scheduled! We're rocking and rolling with our bad selves! WE HAVE OUR VERY OWN REGION!!! YAY!

OK, details:

As of 12:02 AM November 1, I was granted the fairy godmother-like powers known as Municipal Liaison powers. This means that I:
1) Can add items to our calendar.
2) Can email you (did you get this email? Good! It worked!)
3) Can now moderate our regional forum (http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1032857). Worry not: I am a light hand with modding, folks.

OUR FIRST WRITE-IN AND KICK-OFF PARTY:

Our first write-in, on Saturday, is also our kick-off party. Because we got a bit of a late start with having a region, we're merging the party and the write-in into one.

Details:
Saturday, November 3, at 5 PM.
Panera Bread, 4900 Hixson Pike, at the entrance to Northgate Mall (formerly the St. Louis Bread Company), phone (423) 877-0223.

If this is your first write-in, here's how it goes: You show up with your mobile writing instrument of choice (laptop, alphasmart, pda, pen and paper... whatever). Get yourself a beverage and/or snack of choice. Find the folks with a "NaNoWriMo" sign on their table. If you don't see anyone, that means you're FIRST! Pull out your OWN sign and sit down with it. Then, get crackin'! Write, write, write! Write-ins are all about writing! There's a little socializing, there's some fun and games (I like to give out prizes!) and there's writing. Sometimes, people will read out loud when they came up with something awesome. Sometimes, people will ask questions like "does it make sense for my bug-eyed alien to speak English?" But these-- as well as responding to them-- are entirely optional. Headphones are welcome. This is the most anti-socially accepting social gathering you'll attend this year!

We will take a break at some point to specifically be social and introduce ourselves (that's the kick-off part of the party).

MORE PARTIES:

There will be more write-ins this month, probably one a week. If you want to organize/host a write-in on your own (perhaps on campus?), just tell me where and when, and I will put it on the calendar! Mid-month, we will have a midpoint party/write-in. At the end of the month, we will celebrate with some kind of finish-line event.

CAN I BRING MY DAD/SPOUSE/TARANTULA?

In addition to non-NaNo'ing writer friends and family, any non-writerly spouses, parents, siblings, etc. are welcome to attend all NaNoWriMo events and parties (provided they respect the "we're writing" theme). This goes double for any young writers in our group-- please feel free to invite your parents to come meet us so they know you're safe.

Any tarantulas or pets must abide by local health and food safety laws.

THE DARES:

The official "Our ML dared us" dare for Chattanooga is to include somewhere in your novel a bootlegger. Can be a whiskey bootlegger, a music bootlegger, or a space pirate-- doesn't matter. Be creative. There is now a thread in the Chattanooga regional board for dares, and I pointed to the previous one from the Elsewhere.

In parting:
Please do drop me a line and let me know how it's going, what you're writing, what you're loving and hating about this whole mad, wonderful process!

You can always reach me at the official ML-Chattanooga email address (chattanooga_tn@nanowrimo.org) or at my direct email address. You can reach me by PM (private messaging) on NaNoWriMo's website by going to my profile (http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/3381) and clicking to send NaNoMail.

You can also call me on my cell phone if you're ever trying to reach the write-in and need help, or you need to talk to someone about how horrible your novel is, or how great it's going, or whatever. If I can't talk, I won't answer the phone, but most of the time, I will gladly pick up and chat for a few minutes.

Best wishes, and happy word count! WRITE ON!

--Stephanie Bryant (mortaine)

--
This email was sent by a NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison in the 'United States :: Tennessee :: Chattanooga' region using a blind mail forwarding system. Municipal Liaisons are never given direct access to your contact information.

Opening scene

2007-11-01T16:19:00.000-04:00

"No self-respecting woman would ever do that," Julia said, slamming the door as she left. What were you thinking? she asked herself. Why would you ask him for help in the first place?

Julia was totally unaware of the image she projected, walking with authority and self-possession down the echoing hallway at the school. Her own office was on the floor above Richard's department, and she reached it quickly and closed the door between her office and the receptionist secretary. Almost immediately, there was a light tap on the door.

"You had a couple of calls while you were out," Marla said. "One was from Zoe."

Zoe, checking in after school. Hopefully that's all it was. Julia quickly dialed the number.

"Zoe? Everything okay?"

"Yeah, Mom. Just letting you know I'm home, and Grandma is already here to pick me up." Julia could hear her mother talking in the background, telling Zoe what to say to Julia.

"Be good for her this weekend, Zoe. Don't push for special favors."

"Mom, I don't! She just likes to give me stuff."

"I know, I know, but don't ask for anything more. We don't have room in our house or one more Beany Baby, you know!" Julia's laugh always made her daughter smile, and she was laughing now.

"Um, how about another rock?" Zoe asked slyly. Zoe the rock hound. Zoe's rock collection would some day collapse the house under its weight at the rate she was buying, finding, labeling, and storing her polished stones, rough rocks, and pretty pebbles.

Julia laughed again. "Don't you dare!" she said.

"Just kidding, Mom," Zoe sang into the phone. "Just kidding!"

"No, you weren't," Julia replied, but Zoe heard the laugh in her mother's truth. Collecting rocks was better than ... better than ... better than always wanting new dresses like that silly Kaylyn across the street. Such a sissy.

"Take a dress for Sunday morning," Julia was saying. "And your dressy shoes."

"Aw, Mom!"

"Do it, Zoe. You know she always goes to church." Julia repressed a sigh, not wanting her daughter to hear it, but she was so tired of her mother's insistance on the importance of taking her only granddaughter to church.

"Zoe needs to go to church, Julia," her mother would say. "Otherwise, she's going to grow up a heathen."

My daughter is not a heathen, Julia was thinking as she said good-bye and tried to get her mind back on the fight with Richard.
__________

Comments, please! Do you want to read more?

Encouragement ~ from Tom Robbins

2007-11-01T08:44:00.000-04:00

Dear NaNoWriMo participant,

When you sit down to begin that novel of yours, the first thing you might want to do is toss a handful of powdered napalm over both shoulders---so as to dispense with any and all of your old writing teachers, the ones whose ghosts surely will be hovering there, saying such things as, "Adverbs should never be...", or "A novel is supposed to convey...", et cetera. Enough! Ye literary bureaucrats, vamoose!

Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.

Ah, but how can you know if it's working? The truth is, you can't always know (I nearly burned my first novel a dozen times, and it's still in print after 35 years), you just have to sense it, feel it, trust it. It's intuitive, and that peculiar brand of intuition is a gift from the gods. Obviously, most people have received a different package altogether, but until you undo the ribbons you can never be sure.

As the great Nelson Algren once said, “Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.” Most really good fiction is compelled into being. It comes from a kind of uncalculated innocence. You need not have your ending in mind before you commence. Indeed, you need not be certain of exactly what's going to transpire on page 2. If you know the whole story in advance, your novel is probably dead before you begin it. Give it some room to breathe, to change direction, to surprise you. Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure.

A topic is necessary, of course; a theme, a general sense of the nexus of effects you'd like your narrative to ultimately produce. Beyond that, you simply pack your imagination, your sense of humor, a character or two, and your personal world view into a little canoe, push it out onto the vast dark river, and see where the currents take you. And should you ever think you hear the sound of dangerous rapids around the next bend, hey, hang on, tighten your focus, and keep paddling---because now you're really writing, baby! This is the best part.

It's a bit like being out of control and totally in charge, simultaneously. If that seems tricky, well, it's a tricky business. Try it. It'll drive you crazy. And you'll love it.

Tom Robbins

--
Tom Robbins is the author of eight novels, including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Jitterbug Perfume, and his latest, Villa Incognito.

Julia and Zoe

2007-10-31T23:24:00.000-04:00

Me: Hi, Zoe, how was trick-or-treating?

Zoe: Fine. Me and my dad went around his neighborhood.

Julia: Dad and I.

Zoe: Okay.

Julia: Say it correctly, please.

Zoe: My dad and I went trick-or-treating.

Me: Lots of candy?

Zoe: Sure, but I gave Daddy all the ones with nuts in them.

Julia: Bedtime, Zoe.

Zoe: Awww, can't I stay up a little longer?

Julia: (Raises her eyebrows at Zoe.)

Zoe: Okay, okay, I'm going.

Me: Good night, Zoe. See you tomorrow?

Zoe: I guess so.

Julia: Leave the candy here.

Zoe: One more?

Julia: You've had quite enough.

Zoe: (*sigh*)

(Zoe goes off to bed.)

Me: Tell me about Zoe's father. What's he like? Do you get along with him?

Julia: Richard and I both teach at the university, though we're in different departments. I teach world religions, and he's an English professor. He slept with a young woman who had been one of his students, and I caught them together.

Me: Hmmm, somewhere I'd heard that he slept with a student.

Julia: Well, she used to be his student. Graduated a year before their little affair, which he claims was the one and only time he was ever unfaithful. I don't believe that for a minute, but I saw it for myself. In my own bed, no less. What an idiot! If he's ever caught with a student, he'll be fired. That would be unfortunate for Zoe and me, since I can't imagine him doing any other job. He loves the English language. He loves literature. He goes around quoting famous lines.

Me: Is he a problem?

Julia: A problem? Not any more!

Me: You seem to have strong feelings about him.

Julia: Well, of course I do! He's the father of my child. He's the man who promised to love, honor, and cherish me forever. Which lasted all of eight years! Zoe was only seven when I divorced him, which made me feel like a horrible mother, even though I knew he was the one who caused our break-up. I know I wasn't the horrible one, but I see how it affects Zoe. I see how she misses her father.

Me: I have only 13 minutes left now before the start of NaNoWriMo. I need to know ...

Julia: Yes?

Me: Conflict? What's the biggest conflict in your life right now?

Julia: Me? Nothing. I'm doing fine.

Me: That is not helping me!

Julia: Well, don't shout at me. That's your problem, isn't it?

Me: Yes, but my problem is that I can't see any problems for you.

Julia: But that's good, isn't it?

Me: Noooooooo!!!!! Does your mother have a problem? Your grandmother? Help me out, here, please!

Julia: Grandmama's biggest problem is my mom, who wants to control her. Mother wants Grandmama Lilli to sell the lake house and move in with her and Dad on the mountain. Grandmama says she'd rather die ... or be a bag lady ... before moving in with my parents.

Me: Countdown has started! 11:53 pm, 11:54 pm, 11:55 pm ... five minutes until I can start typing. Bye, Julia, gotta get into novel-writing mode.

Brainstorming with Julia

2007-10-31T20:33:00.001-04:00

Me: Thanks for talking to me, Julia. I may have to write this story from your point of view.

Julia: Tell me how I can help you.

Me: I noticed your mother and grandmother get on each other's nerves.

Julia: You could put it that way. Mom was apparently a difficult child, according to Grandmama, who is also rather set in her ways. She's really a strong personality, my grandmother.

Me: Tell me about her.

Julia: (*sigh*) She's had a rough life. When her fiance, Jack, was drafted in 1942, they decided to go ahead and get married before he left. The short story is that he never came back, but she was pregnant with my mother. Mother never knew her father, and Grandmama was left to raise their daughter, alone. Jack, my grandfather, had inherited his father's land on the lake when his father was killed in a traffic accident a couple of years earlier. Although Grandmama doesn't like to talk about it, she and her mother-in-law fought over who got Jack's property. Grandmama Lilli was his wife, and law said the land was hers. But my grandfather's mother was still living there. Yes, that was a problem.

Me: I can imagine.

Julia: They finally worked it out, and my great-grandmother finally agreed that her new daughter-in-law owned the land. I am pleased to be able to say that these two agreed to live together ... and raise the baby, my mother.

Me: Really! I didn't know that.

Brainstorming with the women

2007-10-31T19:57:00.000-04:00

Me: Zoe's gone now, so who is willing to speak up?

Julia: Tell us what you want to know.

Me: About you. I know you're a family. Or at least women of a family. Well, not even all the women. But you are four generations of one family, right?

Lilli: Right, but that still doesn't tell us what you want to know about us.

Me: Tell me about your family and your relationships with each other.

Anna Grace: Oh, for goodness sakes! This is ridiculous! Don't we have a right to our privacy?

Julia: Mom, she's writing a story about us. Don't you want her to get it right?

Anna Grace: No, I'd rather she'd go away. I'm a private person and don't need my life flaunted before the public.

Lilli: Anna Grace, you were a petulant child, and you're still peevish and ill-tempered.

Anna Grace: Mother, don't you bring up that petulant child stuff! It is simply not necessary to air your grievances the way you do!

Lilli: There you go again!

Julia: Mom, Grandmama, please! Not now. Can't we just help her out a bit? Her request isn't unreasonable.

Anna Grace: What!? Because you're a professor, you think a novelist is somebody who should write about us? About US?!?

Julia: Why not us?

Lilli: I think I'll just go back in my room and read a book. I don't want to listen to these two fight.

Me: Would you two talk to me together? Or one at a time?

Julia: Sure.

Anna Grace: I truly would rather not.

Me: Julia? Could we talk a bit?

(Anna Grace follows her mother out of the room.)

Panic setting in!

2007-10-31T19:56:00.000-04:00

Me: Ladies, I've gathered you here tonight because it is Nano Eve, and I don't have a clue what's going to happen. As your author, I should have some idea by now ... four hours before the starting gun! ... what your novel is all about. Unfortunately, I don't. Maybe you could tell me a bit about yourselves. Umm, and each other.

(Silence as the four look at each other, and I look at all of them.)

Me: Okay, Zoe, how about we start with you. You are the youngest and probably need to go to bed earliest, right?

Zoe: Well, no, not exactly. It isn't my bedtime I'm worried about, but trick-or-treating! All the other kids are out knocking on doors, and I'm sitting here in your living room because you haven't done your homework!

Me: Oh, good point! Do you want to get your part over with first? Or come back after trick-or-treating?

Zoe: Could I just go, please? I need to get into my Halloween costume.

Me: Who or what will you be?

Zoe: A Red Sox player! I'm good at baseball. I like to play either first base, where all the action is, or short stop. Uh, do you even know why I picked the Red Sox? Never mind, you probably don't.

Me: Okay, you go trick-or-treating now, and I'll catch you later.

Zoe: Okayyyyy!!!

Mozart's Bassoon Concerto (my favorite music)

2007-10-31T15:44:00.000-04:00

Mozart ~ Bassoon Concerto in B flat major

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60-JUrZUwIE

Mozart ~ Bassoon Concerto 2nd movement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njBRz4mhOgc

Mozart ~ Bassoon Concerto 3rd movement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKBQjnXJ2O8

Vivaldi ~ Bassoon Concerto in E minor, 1st movement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMsrXePCjjc

C.M. von Weber ~ Bassoon Concerto, 1st movement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWYSSkaLn80

Super Mario Bassoon Quartet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gXh83hNnWw

Super Mario Bassoon Quartet Advance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5d042gZZa4

Joy's joyful song

2007-10-31T15:30:00.000-04:00

Novel excerpt

2007-10-31T14:34:00.000-04:00

My Novel
an excerpt

Beginning November 1, you'll find much more than a coffee stain on this page. Once NaNoWriMo begins, authors will be able to post excerpts of their novels-in-progress here via the Author Info tab of the Edit Profile page. Be sure to check back then for a delicious jolt of high-velocity noveling genius.

In the meantime, we would like to offer you this fine quote from Camino Real by Tennessee Williams, a man known to drink his share of coffee.

"Make voyages," he writes. "Attempt them. There's nothing else."

On your mark, get set...

2007-10-31T12:08:00.000-04:00

Dear NaNoWriMo participant

Well, we're on the cusp of another beautiful noveling November. The turn-out so far has been phenomenal. Between our main program and Young Writers Program, we'll have over 90,000 authors on board by the end of the week, making this officially the largest NaNoWriMo since the event was first adapted from an Andorran mule-wrestling ceremony back in 1999.

For those of you who are new to NaNo, I want to quickly run through the noveling schedule for the month ahead.

Step 1: Keep reading this email; learn the secret of NaNoWriMo.
Step 2: Wait for 12:01 AM local time on November 1.
Step 3: Write a novel.

No problem.

Okay, back to Step 1. The secret of NaNoWriMo. Which is this: There is a door in your brain. The door has been there your whole life. You may not have noticed it before because it blends in with everything else in your brain. Weird art. Mismatched furniture. Squishy gray bits clinging to everything.

So what does this door have to do with your novel?

Your job this month is not so much writing a book (which is intimidating) as it is finding that door (which is easy).

It's easy because you'll have guides in November who will take you right to it.

These guides are also known as your characters. They're kind of an abstract notion now, but you'll meet them in all their glory in Week One of NaNoWriMo. They'll be a strange lot. Insecure warlocks. Stamp-collecting squirrels. Teenage detectives.

Whoever shows up, go with them. And go quickly. You may have a general sense of where you're going together; you may not. It doesn’t matter. Just write your allotment of 1667 words (or more) on November 1. Don't edit any of it. Editing is for December. Then come back and write another 1667 words the next day. And the next. And the next.

By Week Two, you'll be at the door. A few words later, you'll be through it. You'll know you're there because the writing will feel different. Less like work, and more like watching a gloriously imperfect movie with cringe-worthy dialogue, heaps of confusing tangents, and moments of brilliance so delightful that you'll want to scream.

Once you've stepped through that door into the vast reaches of your imagination, you'll be able to return there as often as you like. It's an enchanted, intoxicating place, and there are other great things besides novels in there.

But we'll talk about that later.

For now, here's our game plan for the coming week.

1) Make sure you've affiliated with a region and then made it your Home Region. This is a two-step process. You do it by signing in and then going to the My Regions page of My NaNoWriMo. The far-left tab gives you a list of regions to choose from. Choose one by clicking "affiliate," then go to the far-right tab called Home Region and make sure your region is ticked.

2) Make sure you have your Edit Profile settings geared to allow emails from us (if you got this, you're good), and that your email program knows to accept messages from noreply@nanowrimo.org. Pep talks from esteemed authors will begin landing in your inbox this week, and will continue to arrive every four days or so. To turn off emails from us, just head to Edit Profile and change your settings to "No mail."

3) On November 1: Begin writing. At this point, you'll be able to begin updating your word count on the Author Info tab of the Edit Profile page. You can do this on the honor system by just typing in the number, or you can paste the whole book in and let our robots count it for you. If you paste your book, please scramble it first, using instructions in our FAQ. You can also post an excerpt of your book in the same area of the Edit Profile page.

4) For the first week of the event, the site will be on fire. This year we moved to a completely new back-end system, and it has made me beat my head against the wall almost every single day. Pages disappear. Parts fall off. Error screens everywhere. It handles high traffic the way a country lane would handle a freeway. We have so many plans on rebuilding the site it for next year it's not even funny. But for now, we have to work with what we've got. Russ is making all the improvements he can to make it suck less.

If the site isn't functional, just postpone updating your word count until the dust settles. NaNoWriMo does not live on a website. It lives in your heart, in your powerful typing fingers, and in your dramatically escalating word count.

We'll keep working on the site. You keep working on your novel.

Together we will rock November.

Happy noveling, everyone! We're so glad to have you writing with us.

Chris
NaNoWriMo

Character study ~ Lilli

2007-10-30T15:24:00.000-04:00

Lilli
~ age 85
~ b. 1922
~ m. Jack
~ widowed

A = Agenda
~ wants to live on her own
~ wants to NEVER have to live with Anna Grace
~ considers Anna Grace still a petulant child
~ hard-won independence

B = Backstory
~ married Jack when he was drafted
~ Jack had inherited lakefront property from his dad
~ Jack called the place Pebble Beach
~ Jack was killed in France in WW2
~ pregnant widow at 20
~ life has been hard
~ worked as clerk, then secretary, at National Teacher's Agency on East 8th Street to support self and baby
~ secretary at TVA after NTA closed
~ never remarried
~ took up pottery

C = Conflict

Character study ~ Anna Grace

2007-10-30T15:21:00.000-04:00

Anna Grace
~ age 64
~ b. 1943
~ m. Peter

A = Agenda
~ wants to redecorate house on Signal Mountain
~ wants her mother Lilli to move away from Pebble Beach
~ wants Lilli to move in with her
~ wants Lilli to give up pottery (heavy clay, potter's wheel)
~ Peter considers church important for children to become cultured

B = Backstory
~ never knew her father
~ very religious
~ life has been easy
~ volunteers, like her counterparts
~ her motto seems to be: "Thou shalt be nice"
~ she's very controlling (petulant child)
~ she and Peter are staunch Republicans

C = Conflict

Character study ~ Julia

2007-10-30T15:13:00.000-04:00

Julia
~ age 45
~ b. 1962
~ m. Richard
~ divorced
~ BA 1984
~ MDiv 1987
~ PhD 1995

A = Agenda
~ teaches world religions
~ sees good and bad in all religions
~ COEXIST bumper sticker
~ environmentalist, tree hugger
~ green bumper sticker "Love Your Mother" (Earth)

B = Backstory
~ Richard teaches English
~ Richard slept with a student
~ Julia moved away from church
~ moved away from her mother's control
~ lives in White Oak, near cemetery
~ Richard has Zoe most weekends
~ reads a lot, when she has time
~ Democrat, but feels progressive
~ tried yoga last year

C = Conflict

Character study ~ Zoe

2007-10-30T15:07:00.000-04:00

Zoe
~ age 10
~ b. 1997
~ 5th grader

A = Agenda
~ collects rocks, wants all types
~ talks her dad into hiking and camping
~ trying to get her dad to fly a kite with her

B = Backstory
~ loves rocks
~ tomboy
~ attends Normal Park Magnet School
~ rides school bus
~ likes polished stones at New Moon Gallery
~ looks at stones at Books-A-Million
~ eats with Richard along Northshore
~ likes eating at Stone Cup or Mudpie
~ would rather play ball than do "boring" yoga

C = Conflict

Characters with character

2007-10-30T14:07:00.000-04:00

My maternal grandmother, Goldie, has been the best character developer in my life. I only remember her from one moment in my life, but that moment has defined my entire fifty-seven years on earth. When I was around 3 years old, my grandmother dying of cancer asked my parents to bring me to see her in the hospital. As they were arguing with the nurse that I could be in the hospital room, I remember going over to see my grandmother as she lay in bed surrounded by all that white. This was a person I knew about only from my mother telling me about her. Being a world traveler of sorts, she was rarely in town to visit. When I approached her, she smiled and motioned me to come as close to her face as I could. She told me never to be afraid because Jesus was always with me. She said he was there right now to take her with him to a perfect place. Death was good.

Those moments have stayed with me, comforted me, and sustained me through all of my life travails. Even during my questioning of my purpose in life and what I was to do in certain situations, those few moments with my guardian angel Goldie have been my moral compass, leading me ultimately to the right decision. Guardian Angel Goldie is the reason I am a lifelong member of the Disciples of Christ denomination, a more liberal Christian denomination. Reconciliation Sunday and Week of Compassion are the major “extra” offerings taken. Because of my guardian angel and my membership in this church family, I became a social activist and metaphoric reader of Scripture. What a blessing in my life is Grandmother Goldie!

A second blessing in my life is the time I spent with Carolyn, a fellow teacher and kindred spirit. Carolyn has also passed from her life here on earth but she continues to influence me daily as much as Grandmother Goldie does. I met Carolyn as I entered my second year of teaching in Kansas. There was an immediate friendship formed between opposite personalities. Carolyn was more outgoing and intelligent than I. She was a Baptist who had discerned that denomination was less important than reading and following the truth of Jesus’s life. She guided me through and aided me in my progression to where I am now in my spiritual life. She was my mentor through the rough times in Bird City, Kansas and was a constant reminder to me to stay faithful in my following of Christ and all would be fine.

She was a presence for me even at her own funeral. It seemed impossible for me to attend her service since it was so far away and I did not have the time to drive to Colorado to attend. The timeline worked out for me to go by bus, but it was a 30-plus hour trip one way. My congregation was reading Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life at the time and I was keeping a journal since I was not able to participate in the discussion. Through that reading and journaling on the bus trip, I was able to memorialize what Carolyn means to me.

What a blessing these two strong and faithful women continue to be in my life, even after their deaths!

On the mountain

2007-10-29T07:43:00.000-04:00

At the lake

2007-10-29T05:43:00.001-04:00

Plotting tool

2007-10-26T09:20:00.000-04:00

http://www.spacejock.com.au/PlottingANovel.html

http://www.spacejock.com.au/NaNoWriMo.html

Plotting is the process of describing your novel in summarised form, usually before you start the actual work of writing it. First, it can be very useful in the writing of your novel, especially when you start to lose your way. Second, it's much quicker to read, revise and rewrite a two page summary than a four hundred page novel. It's easier to spot flaws and it's easier to get an overview of the whole book.

So why doesn't every author write a plot outline?

I don't know about other authors, but I never liked plotting and I never enjoyed writing to a detailed outline. Once I'd spent days or weeks on the plot, writing the book was just like going to the movies and watching a film I'd seen ten or twelve times already. I knew what was coming, and frankly I found it quite boring.

What I used to do was map out a few scenes ahead of where I was writing and basically stumble along until I reached the end of my novel. That worked fine, except that I never knew how long a novel would take to write, and I'd end up with loads of dead ends and stray scenes. It was creative and spontaneous, yes, but it was also inefficient and very slow going.

After my first novel was accepted by a publisher I had to work with their editor to revise and improve it. She read my book and pointed out the flaws, as all good editors do, and also pointed out the bits which worked well. My job was to fix the flaws and make them more like the good bits.

At first I considered sitting down and rewriting the whole book, but then I realised she'd have to read the thing all over again, and would no doubt make another batch of suggestions (or even tell me the first version was better!)

So, instead of rewriting the book I wrote a detailed outline. It was very comprehensive - 14 pages long in the end - but it was short enough to read in a sitting. My editor commented on the outline, I made changes, and eventually we ended up with a document which we both thought would make a good novel.

So how do you write this outline? How do you create a plot in the first place?

I can't tell you how to come up with your story ideas and characters, although my article on how to write a novel has some pointers. What I can tell you is that once you have the basic idea it's just a case of fleshing it out in more and more detail until you have a plot.

Let's use something really basic: A woman arrives home from work to discover her husband has been kidnapped. Unable to call in the police, she uses her initiative to trace his recent movements and discover who might have taken him - and why. Then she rescues him and they live happily ever after.

Freemind runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and is free to use.
I'd put those three sentences down and label them 'beginning', 'middle' and 'end'. You can use paper, or a word processor, but I prefer to use Freemind. Start a new sheet, rename the central blob to the title of your book, then press Ins to add fields like Major and Minor characters and Locations on the right, and Beginning, Middle and End down the left. Now you can add sub-fields for your characters, and sub-fields under each character with notes. That should look something exactly like this:

Now fill in the plot points for beginning, middle and end. All nodes are collapsible which makes life easy when it comes to printing.

The thing is, your original beginning (A woman arrives home from work to discover her husband has been kidnapped) can be expanded to include who she is, where she's coming home from, their personal situation (is it their wedding anniversary? A dinner date?), what she finds when she gets home, everything.

As you add these layers of detail, other ideas will come to you. But eventually you'll have a more detailed outline for your book:

This isn't the end, by any means. Most writers think about their work in progress throughout every day (and night!), scribbling notes on scraps of paper, work documents, the backs of envelopes and so on. Although not every idea will make it into the plot, they're all valuable. Sometimes one duff idea will generate two really good ones.

Here's a Freemind file I prepared earlier - it's a basic outline you can download and add to.

The important thing is to print out your plot and write all the new ideas alongside the existing entries, expanding and filling in the blanks. (It's also vital to transfer these ideas from scraps of paper to the plot by hand, rather than entering them directly on the computer, because it gives you more time to consider each one properly.)

When your printout contains all the hand-written notes, then you can go to the computer and add them to the plot. You'll gather more ideas and notes, which can be added to this master copy and subsequently typed into the computer. Over time the plot will grow into a complex and detailed document, until you know what happens, when it happens and who it's going to happen to. Now you're ready to write the book.

Remember, once you have an outline you don't have to stick to it! It's just a guideline, and if something unexpected comes up while you're writing a scene you can easily read the rest of the outline to see how this new change affects subsequent events. Every unplanned change creates ripples ... sometimes they're confined to a single scene or chapter, and sometimes they'll have a big impact on everything to follow - and much of what came before. You have to decide whether it's better to stay on track or to take this new and intereesting path. And there's your spontaneity.

After it's done. Read my article on how to write a novel

Design a novel

2007-10-26T06:59:00.000-04:00

When you design a novel, do it like making a snowflake, with this as the final product.

This, then, would be the sequence.

Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Something like this: "A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul." (This is the summary for my first novel, Transgression.) The sentence will serve you forever as a ten-second selling tool. This is the big picture, the analog of that big starting triangle in the snowflake picture.

When you later write your book proposal, this sentence should appear very early in the proposal. It's the hook that will sell your book to your editor, to your committee, to the sales force, to bookstore owners, and ultimately to readers. So make the best one you can!

Some hints on what makes a good sentence:

Shorter is better. Try for fewer than 15 words.
No character names, please! Better to say "a handicapped trapeze artist" than "Jane Doe".
Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now tell me what he or she wants to win.
Read the one-line blurbs on the New York Times Bestseller list to learn how to do this. Writing a one-sentence description is an art form.

Step 2) Take another hour and expand that sentence to a full paragraph describing the story setup, major disasters, and ending of the novel. This is the analog of the second stage of the snowflake. I like to structure a story as "three disasters plus an ending". Each of the disasters takes a quarter of the book to develop and the ending takes the final quarter. I don't know if this is the ideal structure, it's just my personal taste.

If you believe in the Three-Act structure, then the first disaster corresponds to the end of Act 1. The second disaster is the mid-point of Act 2. The third disaster is the end of Act 2, and forces Act 3 which wraps things up. It is OK to have the first disaster be caused by external circumstances, but I think that the second and third disasters should be caused by the protagonists's attempts to "fix things". Things just get worse and worse.

You can also use this paragraph in your proposal. Ideally, your paragraph will have about five sentences. One sentence to give me the backdrop and story setup. Then one sentence each for your three disasters. Then one more sentence to tell the ending. If this sounds suspiciously like back-cover copy, it's because . . . that's what it is and that's where it's going to appear someday.

Step 3) The above gives you a high-level view of your novel. Now you need something similar for the storylines of each of your characters. Characters are the most important part of any novel, and the time you invest in designing them up front will pay off ten-fold when you start writing. For each of your major characters, take an hour and write a one-page summary sheet that tells:

The character's name
A one-sentence summary of the character's storyline
The character's motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
The character's goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
The character's conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)
The character's epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?
A one-paragraph summary of the character's storyline

An important point: You may find that you need to go back and revise your one-sentence summary and/or your one-paragraph summary. Go ahead! This is good--it means your characters are teaching you things about your story. It's always okay at any stage of the design process to go back and revise earlier stages. In fact, it's not just okay--it's inevitable. And it's good. Any revisions you make now are revisions you won't need to make later on to a clunky 400 page manuscript.

Another important point: It doesn't have to be perfect. The purpose of each step in the design process is to advance you to the next step. Keep your forward momentum! You can always come back later and fix it when you understand the story better. You will do this too, unless you're a lot smarter than I am.

Step 4) By this stage, you should have a good idea of the large-scale structure of your novel, and you have only spent a day or two. Well, truthfully, you may have spent as much as a week, but it doesn't matter. If the story is broken, you know it now, rather than after investing 500 hours in a rambling first draft. So now just keep growing the story. Take several hours and expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends.

This is a lot of fun, and at the end of the exercise, you have a pretty decent one-page skeleton of your novel. It's okay if you can't get it all onto one single-spaced page. What matters is that you are growing the ideas that will go into your story. You are expanding the conflict. You should now have a synopsis suitable for a proposal, although there is a better alternative for proposals . . .

Step 5) Take a day or two and write up a one-page description of each major character and a half-page description of the other important characters. These "character synopses" should tell the story from the point of view of each character. As always, feel free to cycle back to the earlier steps and make revisions as you learn cool stuff about your characters. I usually enjoy this step the most and lately, I have been putting the resulting "character synopses" into my proposals instead of a plot-based synopsis. Editors love character synopses, because editors love character-based fiction.

Step 6) By now, you have a solid story and several story-threads, one for each character. Now take a week and expand the one-page plot synopsis of the novel to a four-page synopsis. Basically, you will again be expanding each paragraph from step (4) into a full page. This is a lot of fun, because you are figuring out the high-level logic of the story and making strategic decisions. Here, you will definitely want to cycle back and fix things in the earlier steps as you gain insight into the story and new ideas whack you in the face.

Step 7) Take another week and expand your character descriptions into full-fledged character charts detailing everything there is to know about each character. The standard stuff such as birthdate, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. Most importantly, how will this character change by the end of the novel? This is an expansion of your work in step (3), and it will teach you a lot about your characters. You will probably go back and revise steps (1-6) as your characters become "real" to you and begin making petulant demands on the story. This is good -- great fiction is character-driven. Take as much time as you need to do this, because you're just saving time downstream. When you have finished this process, (and it may take a full month of solid effort to get here), you are ready to write a proposal and sell this novel. Do so.

Step 8) You may or may not take a hiatus here, waiting for the book to sell. At some point, you've got to actually write the novel. Before you do that, there are a couple of things you can do to make that traumatic first draft easier. The first thing to do is to take that four-page synopsis and make a list of all the scenes that you'll need to turn the story into a novel. And the easiest way to make that list is . . . with a spreadsheet.

For some reason, this is scary to a lot of writers. Oh the horror. Deal with it. You learned to use a word-processor. Spreadsheets are easier. You need to make a list of scenes, and spreadsheets were invented for making lists. If you need some tutoring, buy a book. There are a thousand out there, and one of them will work for you. It should take you less than a day to learn the itty bit you need. It'll be the most valuable day you ever spent. Do it.

Make a spreadsheet detailing the scenes that emerge from your four-page plot outline. Make just one line for each scene. In one column, list the POV character. In another (wide) column, tell what happens. If you want to get fancy, add more columns that tell you how many pages you expect to write for the scene. A spreadsheet is ideal, because you can see the whole storyline at a glance, and it's easy to move scenes around to reorder things.

My spreadsheets usually wind up being over 100 lines long, one line for each scene of the novel. As I develop the story, I make new versions of my story spreadsheet. This is incredibly valuable for analyzing a story. It can take a week to make a good spreadsheet. When you are done, you can add a new column for chapter numbers and assign a chapter to each scene.

Step 9) (Optional. I don't do this step anymore.) Switch back to your word processor and begin writing a narrative description of the story. Take each line of the spreadsheet and expand it to a multi-paragraph description of the scene. Put in any cool lines of dialogue you think of, and sketch out the essential conflict of that scene. If there's no conflict, you'll know it here and you should either add conflict or scrub the scene.

I used to write either one or two pages per chapter, and I started each chapter on a new page. Then I just printed it all out and put it in a loose-leaf notebook, so I could easily swap chapters around later or revise chapters without messing up the others. This process usually took me a week and the end result was a massive 50-page printed document that I would revise in red ink as I wrote the first draft. All my good ideas when I wake up in the morning got hand-written in the margins of this document. This, by the way, is a rather painless way of writing that dreaded detailed synopsis that all writers seem to hate. But it's actually fun to develop, if you have done steps (1) through (8) first. When I did this step, I never showed this synopsis to anyone, least of all to an editor -- it was for me alone. I liked to think of it as the prototype first draft. Imagine writing a first draft in a week! Yes, you can do it and it's well worth the time. But I'll be honest, I don't feel like I need this step anymore, so I don't do it now.

Step 10) At this point, just sit down and start pounding out the real first draft of the novel. You will be astounded at how fast the story flies out of your fingers at this stage. I have seen writers triple their writing speed overnight, while producing better quality first drafts than they usually produce on a third draft.

You might think that all the creativity is chewed out of the story by this time. Well, no, not unless you overdid your analysis when you wrote your Snowflake. This is supposed to be the fun part, because there are many small-scale logic problems to work out here. How does Hero get out of that tree surrounded by alligators and rescue Heroine who's in the burning rowboat? This is the time to figure it out! But it's fun because you already know that the large-scale structure of the novel works. So you only have to solve a limited set of problems, and so you can write relatively fast.

This stage is incredibly fun and exciting. I have heard many writers complain about how hard the first draft is. Invariably, they are seat-of-the-pants writers who have no clue what's coming next. Good grief! Life is too short to write like that! There is no reason to spend 500 hours writing a wandering first draft of your novel when you can write a solid one in 150. Counting the 100 hours it takes to do the design documents, you come out way ahead in time.

(I'll note that many seat-of-the-pants writers shriek at the thought of doing a Snowflake document. That's fine. Different people are different. I suspect you know already whether the Snowflake is something that's going to work for you or not. Even if it does work for you, I'd encourage you to improvise on it. May a thousand different Snowflake methods bloom!) There is not just one solution to the problem of how to write a novel, there are many. Use the one that works for you.

About midway through a first draft, I usually take a breather and fix all the broken parts of my design documents. Yes, the design documents are not perfect! That's okay! The design documents are not fixed in concrete, they are a living set of documents that grows as you develop your novel. If you are doing your job right, at the end of the first draft you will laugh at what an amateurish piece of junk your design documents were. And you'll be thrilled at how deep your story has become.

That's All! That's the Snowflake Method. It works for me and for many of my writer friends who have tried it. I've lost track of how many people around the world who have emailed me to say that the Snowflake helped them get their novel on track. So it works for a lot of people. I hope it works for you.
__________
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

Analyzing MRUs in two literary novels

2007-10-26T06:43:00.000-04:00

The articles I wrote on those pesky MRUs in the last issue were so popular that I've decided to do some more--only this time analyzing literary novels. This month, we'll look at novels by Leif Enger and Audrey Niffenegger.

_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

Analyzing The Masters, Part I

In May, I gave away one of my biggest secrets in the craft of writing fiction. I spilled the beans on MRUs.

If you missed that article, now would be a good time to go read it or to check out the article on my web site on "Writing the Perfect Scene" at http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/perfect_scene.html

As a VERY brief reminder, an MRU has two parts, a "Motivation" and a "Reaction". The Motivation is objective and external. The Reaction is subjective and mostly internal to your Point of View character.

Last month, I showed how an analysis of MRUs could improve on the work of Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, and Michael Crichton. What I'd like to do this month is to pick some random scenes from a couple of literary novels and see if we can pick out the MRUs. (I have no plans to try to improve on people who write better than me.)

The tension mounts as our intrepid columnist opens the first novel at random and chooses a passage . . .

From Leif Enger's novel, Peace Like A River. In this scene, two neighborhood thugs bent on violence enter the house of our narrator, eleven-year-old asthmatic Reuben Land. For our convenience, I number the paragraphs.

1 Sometime past midnight the rain turned to snow. I
could tell by the difference in the sound against
the window: a less sharp, wetter sound. At first I
thought that was what wakened me.

2 Then the door handle turned--the back door, off
the kitchen. I knew that little squeal. How I
wanted it to be Davy coming in, smoky and quiet and
shaking off water, but Davy was inside already,
sleeping not five feet from me, breathing through
his nose in satisfied draughts. Nor was it Dad,
for I could hear him too, rolling to and fro in
sleep, wrestling his headache.

3 I heard the dry complaint of the kitchen floor, of
the place beside the broom closet where joists
groaned underfoot, and if I'd had any doubt that
someone had got inside the house it vanished when a
damp current of air came in and touched my ears and
forehead.

4 Davey smacked, swallowed, sank to yet more earnest
sleep. My lungs shrank with expectation; my whole
surface hurt; I ached to creep across and wake him
but felt benumbed, crippled. Now for the first
time I heard real footsteps. They crossed the
living room. A shoulder bumped the mantelpiece. My
windowpane filled with a burst of driven snow and I
abandoned myself to the knowledge that I'd waited
too long to wake Davy. What would happen now would
happen.

5 The steps came forward. They stopped at my door.
I felt, more than heard, someone's hand upon the
knob.

6 Then Davy spoke from beside me--"Switch on the
light"--his voice so soft he might've been talking
in his sleep. But he wasn't. He was talking to
whomever stood incorporeal in the doorway. "Switch
it ON," he commanded, and next thing we were all of
us brightsoaked and blinking: me beneath my quilt,
and Israel Finch standing in the door with a
baseball bat in one hand and the other still on the
switch, and poor stupid Tommy all asquint behind
his shoulder. Davy was sitting up in bed in his
T-shirt, hair askew. Somehow he was holding the
little Winchester he'd carried in the timber that
afternoon. And holding it comfortably: elbows at
rest on his knees, his cheek against the stock, as
if to plink tin cans off fenceposts.

7 It is fair to say that Israel had no chance. I'm
not saying he deserved one. He stood in the door
with his pathetic club like primal man squinting at
extinction. How confused he looked, how pinkeyed
and sweaty! Then he lifted his bat, the knothead,
and Davy fired, and Israel went backward into Tommy
Basca, and Davy levered up a second round and fired
again.

Wow, now that's excellent writing! I'll be honest--I don't see how I could possibly improve it, but let's analyze this thing and see how Enger uses those amazing MRUs to his advantage. I'll split apart the paragraphs so that the motivations and reactions are clearly spelled out:

1a Sometime past midnight the rain turned to snow. I
could tell by the difference in the sound against
the window: a less sharp, wetter sound.

This is a Motivation, but notice how Enger has fused it with the Reaction that follows, by injecting his narrator into it with the words "I could tell". This is Motivation because it's objective--had you been there, you could have told exactly the same way.

1b At first I thought that was what wakened me.

This is Reuben's Reaction, and it's nothing more than a Rational Thought. Enger leaves it in the same paragraph as the Motivation because he's done so well at putting himself in the Motivation.

2a Then the door handle turned--the back door, off
the kitchen. I knew that little squeal.

This is more Motivation. It's external and it's objective, and that's what a Motivation is. And by golly, Enger has stuck his narrator in the thick of it again with that tell-tale phrase "I knew that little squeal." But you'd know it too if you'd been there. Enger is an absolute master at getting you inside the skull of his narrator, and this is one of his ways of doing it--by blurring the objective with the subjective.

2b How I wanted it to be Davy coming in, smoky and
quiet and shaking off water, but Davy was inside
already, sleeping not five feet from me, breathing
through his nose in satisfied draughts. Nor was it
Dad, for I could hear him too, rolling to and fro
in sleep, wrestling his headache.

This is Reaction again. It's a Rational Thought sequence, where Reuben rules out all the plausible innocent sources for that noise downstairs. It's not his brother Davy and it's not Dad. And that means Trouble.

3 I heard the dry complaint of the kitchen floor, of
the place beside the broom closet where joists
groaned underfoot, and if I'd had any doubt that
someone had got inside the house it vanished when a
damp current of air came in and touched my ears and
forehead.

This is all Motivation. Our narrator Reuben is deeply entangled in it, with all those phrases like "I heard" and "if I'd had any doubt" and the air coming in and touching his ears and forehead. But it's exactly what you would have heard and felt if you'd been there. There is no hint yet of a Reaction from Reuben.

4a Davey smacked, swallowed, sank to yet more earnest
sleep.

This is a continuation of the Motivation into a new paragraph. Don'tcha love that "earnest sleep" thing? Enger has a ton of those on every page.

4b My lungs shrank with expectation; my whole
surface hurt;

This is the first part of the Reaction, the Feeling part. This is all Feeling, and it's the first we've seen so far in this scene.

4c I ached to creep across and wake him but felt
benumbed, crippled.

This is the third part of the Reaction, the Rational Thought part. (There is no Reflexive Action in this Reaction.)

4d Now for the first time I heard real footsteps.
They crossed the living room. A shoulder bumped
the mantelpiece. My windowpane filled with a burst
of driven snow

This is a new Motivation--the sounds of footsteps and bumps in the night and driving snow.

4e and I abandoned myself to the knowledge that I'd
waited too long to wake Davy. What would happen now
would happen.

This is a new Reaction--again, it's Rational Thought. Note that Enger has put the Motivation and Reaction in the same sentence. Yes, that's legal, as long as the Motivation comes first. That second sentence is part of Reuben's Rational Thought--it's his sense of resignation that he no longer can prevent the horrible thing that's about to happen.

5 The steps came forward. They stopped at my door.
I felt, more than heard, someone's hand upon the
knob.

This is Motivation again, and once again, Enger injects his narrator into the thick of it. The sly devil.

6a Then Davy spoke from beside me--"Switch on the
light"--his voice so soft he might've been talking
in his sleep. But he wasn't. He was talking to
whomever stood incorporeal in the doorway. "Switch
it ON," he commanded,

This is a continuation of the Motivation, but now the focus is shifting to Reuben's brother Davy.

6b and next thing we were all of us brightsoaked and
blinking: me beneath my quilt,

This is a Reaction to the light switching on, just raw Feeling this time. Reuben is brightsoaked and blinking (another terrific phrase), as is the thug Israel Finch and Davy. But this time, Enger is pulling the other characters into his narrator's experience, tugging the external into the Reaction.

6c and Israel Finch standing in the door with a
baseball bat in one hand and the other still on the
switch, and poor stupid Tommy all asquint behind
his shoulder. Davy was sitting up in bed in his
T-shirt, hair askew. Somehow he was holding the
little Winchester he'd carried in the timber that
afternoon. And holding it comfortably: elbows at
rest on his knees, his cheek against the stock, as
if to plink tin cans off fenceposts.

This is back to Motivation again.

7a It is fair to say that Israel had no chance. I'm
not saying he deserved one. He stood in the door
with his pathetic club like primal man squinting at
extinction. How confused he looked, how pinkeyed
and sweaty!

This, I would say, is Reaction, but it's not the Reaction of the narrator Reuben at the time of the incident. It's his Reaction--a Rational Memory--seen through the lens of time, with Reuben making a judgment of a complex situation that happened long ago.

7b Then he lifted his bat, the knothead, and Davy
fired, and Israel went backward into Tommy Basca,
and Davy levered up a second round and fired again.

This is all Motivation. Note that if we were seeing this from Davy's point of view, there would a Motivation (Israel lifting his bat), a Reflexive Reaction (Davy firing his gun), another Motivation (Israel tumbling backward into Tommy Basca, the other thug), and a second Rational Reaction (Davy firing again, this time clearly premeditated).

Randy sez: I'm no literarty novelist, so all I can do is stand back and say, wow, that's pretty darn good. The analysis above shows how it works in terms of Story. Enger has maintained a strict cause-and-effect sequence, while blurring his Motivations and Reactions so as to put you right there. It's beautifully done, yes?

_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

Analyzing The Masters, Part II

Our next passage is one from Audrey Niffenegger's book, The Time Traveler's Wife. It's about a guy named Henry who has a flaw in his DNA that causes him to sometimes abruptly time-travel a few years backward (or occasionally forward) for brief periods of time, before reverting to his own time. Many of his travels take him to earlier points of his wife Clare's life.

In this episode, Henry is in his late 30s and he is visiting Clare when she's sixteen and has just had a horrible date with a high school jock, a dog poop of a human named Jason Everleigh. After Clare shows Henry her bruises, he agrees to help punish Jason. They drive to Jason's house with a gun and knock on the door . . .

1 After a moment the music abruptly stops and heavy
footsteps clump down stairs. The door opens, and
after a pause a deep voice says, "What? You come
back for more?" That's all I need to hear. I draw
the gun and step to Clare's side. I point it at the
guy's chest.

2 "Hi, Jason," Clare says. "I thought you might like
to come out with us."

3 He does the same thing I would do, drops and rolls
out of range, but he doesn't do it fast enough. I'm
in the door and I take a flying leap onto his chest
and knock the wind out of him. I stand up, put my
boot on his chest, point the gun at his head. C'est
magnifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre. He looks
kind of like Tom Cruise, very pretty, all-American.
"What position does he play?" I ask Clare.

4 "Halfback."

5 "Hmm. Never would of guessed. Get up, hands up
where I can see them," I tell him cheerfully. He
complies, and I walk him out the door. We are all
standing in the driveway. I have an idea. I send
Clare back into the house for rope; she comes out a
few minutes later with scissors and duct tape.

6 "Where do you want to do this?"

7 "The woods."

8 Jason is panting as we march him into the woods.
We walk for about five minutes, and then I see a
little clearing with a handy young elm at the edge
of it. "How about this, Clare?"

9 "Yeah."

10 I look at her. She is completely impassive, cool
as a Raymond Chandler murderess. "Call it Clare."

11 "Tie him to the tree." I hand her the gun, jerk
Jason's hands into position behind the tree, and
duct tape them together.

That's enough to give you the flavor of the scene. It ends quite happily, with dear Jason taped to the tree, buck naked, and Clare calling all her girl friends to go look at him and mock him. When the girls later see Clare's bruises, they consider this fair punishment, and that's the last we ever hear of Jason.

Now let's take this scene apart and inspect the MRUs:

1a After a moment the music abruptly stops and heavy
footsteps clump down stairs. The door opens, and
after a pause a deep voice says, "What? You come
back for more?"

This is all Motivation. A tape recorder would capture it exactly this way.

1b That's all I need to hear. I draw the gun and
step to Clare's side. I point it at the guy's
chest.

This is a Reaction, a series of Rational Thoughts and Rational Actions.

2 "Hi, Jason," Clare says. "I thought you might like
to come out with us."

This is a Motivation.

3a He does the same thing I would do, drops and rolls
out of range, but he doesn't do it fast enough.

This is a continuation of the Motivation (we are in Henry's point of view). Note that Niffenegger has put this in a separate paragraph. Had she told the story from Jason's POV, this sentence would have been Jason's Reaction, a sequence of Reflexive and Rational Actions.

3b I'm in the door and I take a flying leap onto his
chest and knock the wind out of him. I stand up,
put my boot on his chest, point the gun at his
head. C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre.
He looks kind of like Tom Cruise, very pretty,
all-American. "What position does he play?" I ask
Clare.

All of this is Henry's Reaction, a series of Rational Actions.

4 "Halfback."

This is a Motivation, provided by Clare.

5a "Hmm. Never would of guessed. Get up, hands up
where I can see them," I tell him cheerfully.

Another Reaction from Henry--Rational Speech.

5b He complies,

This action by Jason is a simple Motivation for Henry's next action. Note that Niffenegger is compressing the sequence into narrative summary. She'll drop back into immediate scene blow-by-blow action in just a minute, but there's no point in dragging things out by showing this part, because Jason is being compliant. The author is giving the reader a brief breathing spell before the action heats up.

5c and I walk him out the door.

Again, this is telling Henry's Reaction in narrative summary.

5d We are all standing in the driveway.

This is now a Motivation. Why a Motivation, since nothing appears to be happening? Because nothing IS happening. It's the lull before the storm and Henry needs a short pause here to figure out what to do next. He is, after all, playing this pretty much by ear.

5c I have an idea. I send Clare back into the house
for rope;

This is Henry's Reaction--an idea (Rational Thought) followed by Rational Action (sending Clare for rope).

5d she comes out a few minutes later with scissors
and duct tape.

This is a new Motivation.

6 "Where do you want to do this?"

This is Henry's Reaction--Rational Speech.

7 "The woods."

Another Motivation.

8a Jason is panting as we march him into the woods.
We walk for about five minutes, and then I see a
little clearing with a handy young elm at the edge
of it.

This is a continuation of the Motivation. It is told in narrative summary, so it would really be a sequence of Motivations and Reactions, if it were shown in detail. Note that MRUs tend to blur in narrative summary, and the net result is what those pesky editors call "telling, not showing". A more action-oriented author might choose to show all this, every step, lunge, feint, karate chop, kick, bite, and cuss word along the way. Niffenegger has bigger fish to fry here--she wants to show revenge. Classy revenge.

8b "How about this, Clare?"

This is Reaction to the elm tree--Rational Speech.

9 "Yeah."

Another Motivation from Clare.

10a I look at her.

A quick Reaction from Henry, Rational Action.

10b She is completely impassive, cool as a Raymond
Chandler murderess.

This is another Motivation.

10c "Call it Clare."

This is Henry's Reaction, again Rational Speech.

11a "Tie him to the tree."

Another Motivation from Clare. Clare is driving the show here. She's sixteen years old and is showing some strength of will. She'll need it later on in life.

11b I hand her the gun, jerk Jason's hands into
position behind the tree, and duct tape them
together.

This is Henry's Reaction, a sequence of Rational Actions. You might think that it wouldn't be so easy to do this part of it. During the exchange of the gun from Henry to Clare, Jason might bolt. Why doesn't he? The answer is that Jason's got asthma and is having an attack. In the following paragraphs, Clare has to fetch his inhaler from the house so he won't die. Revenge isn't revenge if you kill the varmint!

Randy sez: A fine piece of writing in a very strong book. The book, by the way, gets an R-rating for sex and language, so if that offends you, be forewarned. The violence is at a PG level. I found it interesting that despite many many many jumps in time, the trajectory of the story was always clear.
__________

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/ezine/2005/AFW_Ezine_2005-07-01.txt

MRUs ~ Motivation-Reaction Units

2007-10-26T06:36:00.000-04:00

Analyzing The Masters

In May, I gave away one of my biggest secrets in the
craft of writing fiction. I spilled the beans on MRUs.

If you missed that article, now would be a good time to
go read it or to check out the article on my web site
on "Writing the Perfect Scene" at
http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/perfect_scene.html

As a VERY brief reminder, an MRU has two parts, a
"Motivation" and a "Reaction". The Motivation is
objective and external. The Reaction is subjective and
mostly internal to your Point of View character.

In June, I showed how an analysis of MRUs could improve
on the work of Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, and Michael
Crichton. In July, I showed how a study of MRUs could
reveal some of the magic behind such literary authors
as Leif Enger and Audrey Niffenegger.

This month, I'll take one last literary example, from
Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones. If you're
squeamish, be forewarned that this is a novel about a
fourteen-year-old girl, Susie Salmon, who is brutally
raped and murdered in the first chapter. The rest of
the book is told from her vantage point in the
Hereafter, watching as her killer evades punishment
while her family tries to deal with the aftermath.

Here is a sample from that gut-wrenching first chapter.
Susie has been lured into an underground lair by her
neighbor, Mr. Harvey:

1 Mr. Harvey asked me if I would like a refreshment.
That was how he put it. I said I had to go home.

2 "Be polite and have a Coke," he said. "I'm sure
the other kids would."

3 "What other kids?"

4 "I built this for the kids in the neighborhood. I
thought it could be some sort of clubhouse."

5 I don't think I believed this even then. I thought
he was lying, but I thought it was a pitiful line.
I imagined he was lonely. We had read about men
like him in health class. Men who never married and
ate frozen meals every night and were so afraid of
rejection that they didn't even own pets. I felt
sorry for him.

6 "Okay," I said, "I'll have a Coke."

7 In a little while he said, "Aren't you warm,
Susie? Why don't you take off your parka."

8 I did.

9 After this he said, "You're very pretty, Susie."

10 "Thanks," I said, even though he gave me what my
friend Clarissa and I had dubbed the skeevies.

11 "Do you have a boyfriend?"

12 "No, Mr. Harvey," I said. I swallowed the rest of
my Coke, which was a lot, and said, "I got to go,
Mr. Harvey. This is a cool place, but I have to
go."

13 He stood up and did his hunchback number by the
six dug-in steps that led to the world. "I don't
know why you think you're leaving."

Enough! It gets worse soon after this creepy segment.
Let's analyze it:

1a Mr. Harvey asked me if I would like a refreshment.
That was how he put it.

This part of the paragraph is Motivation. It is
objective and external. The second sentence shows a bit
of the narrator's personality, but I would classify it
as still part of the Motivation. This paragraph is done
in narrative summary (without quote marks), which any
writing teacher will tell you is Telling, rather than
Showing. The reason Sebold does this is probably
because she is just wrapping up a very long
parenthetical comment about how her parents later
reacted to her disappearance. Using narrative summary
allows her to segue back into the story again.

1b I said I had to go home.

This is clearly a Reaction. A Reaction can have up to
three parts, a Feeling, a Reflexive Action, and a
Rational Action. This has only the last of these parts.
Speech is almost always a Rational Action (except for
certain reflexive words.) Again, this segment is
Telling, not Showing. And that's OK.

2 "Be polite and have a Coke," he said. "I'm sure
the other kids would."

This is a new Motivation, Mr. Harvey's response to
Susie's previous Reaction. Note that we are fully back
into Showing now. We've re-entered the story stream.

3 "What other kids?"

This is Susie's Reaction, and it again contains just a
single part, Rational Speech. This keeps the story
moving.

4 "I built this for the kids in the neighborhood. I
thought it could be some sort of clubhouse."

Another Motivation, a couple of lines of dialogue by
Mr. Harvey.

5 I don't think I believed this even then. I thought
he was lying, but I thought it was a pitiful line.
I imagined he was lonely. We had read about men
like him in health class. Men who never married and
ate frozen meals every night and were so afraid of
rejection that they didn't even own pets. I felt
sorry for him.

Sebold slows down the story a little bit here, letting
the creepiness build by putting the reader inside the
head of a victim and showing a sequence of thoughts.
All of this is the first part of an extended Reaction
by Susie, and it is all Rational Thought.

6 "Okay," I said, "I'll have a Coke."

This completes Susie's Reaction by showing the outcome
of that sequence of Rational Thought--some Rational
Speech. Notice that there is not a lot of emotion being
shown here by the character. (Other than the fact that
Susie felt sorry for Mr. Harvey.) It's not necessary to
show this, because the reader is getting thoroughly
creeped out, partly by Mr. Harvey's behavior and partly
by the fact that Susie is so naive.

7 In a little while he said, "Aren't you warm,
Susie? Why don't you take off your parka."

Another Motivation. The creepiness is building here,
but Susie has only a tiny inkling of what the reader
knows. Suspense is built when the reader knows
something the character doesn't!

8 I did.

This is Susie's Reaction, and by now the reader is
absolutely freaking out, yelling, "No, Susie, get the
heck out of there!" Notice that Sebold doesn't waste
words here. Two words, four letters. It's so stark it
rips you up to read it.

9 After this he said, "You're very pretty, Susie."

This is another Motivation, and now even Susie is
getting the creeps:

10 "Thanks," I said, even though he gave me what my
friend Clarissa and I had dubbed the skeevies.

This is Susie's Reaction, and it now has two parts. The
first part is Susie's Rational Speech, "Thanks." The
second part is that Susie is now experiencing the
skeevies. This actually violates the rule of MRUs that
says Feelings should be written before Rational
Actions.

Does it work to break the rule? Yes! What's going on
here is that the reversed order shows how subliminal
those skeevies really are. Susie still doesn't get it.
And that's what has the reader screaming, "NO, get
outta there now!"

11 "Do you have a boyfriend?"

This is another Motivation, another creepy question
from Mr. Harvey.

12 "No, Mr. Harvey," I said. I swallowed the rest of
my Coke, which was a lot, and said, "I got to go,
Mr. Harvey. This is a cool place, but I have to
go."

This is Susie's Reaction, a sequence of Rational
Speech, Rational Action, and more Rational Speech.
Susie is aware enough to realize she needs to get out
fast, and even toss a little flattery about the dugout.
Anything to get out.

13 He stood up and did his hunchback number by the
six dug-in steps that led to the world. "I don't
know why you think you're leaving."

Another Motivation from Mr. Harvey, and it's the
Motivation that pushes Susie over the line. From here
on out, she'll be resisting. But her resistance is too
little, way too late. It's an absolutely horrific
passage, brilliantly written.
__________

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/ezine/2005/AFW_Ezine_2005-08-05.txt

Scenes and Sequels

2007-10-26T05:47:00.000-04:00

Writing the Perfect Scene

Having trouble making the scenes in your novel work their magic? In this article, I'll show you how to write the "perfect" scene. Maybe you think it's impossible to write the perfect scene. After all, who can choose every word perfectly, every thought, every sentence, every paragraph? What does perfection mean, anyway? Honestly, I don't know. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Style is a matter of taste. But structure is pretty well understood. Maybe you can't write the perfectly styled scene. But you can write the perfectly structured scene. And that's a whale of a lot better than writing a badly structured scene.

The Two Levels of Scene Structure
A scene has two levels of structure, and only two. They are:

The large-scale structure of the scene
The small-scale structure of the scene

This may seem obvious, but by the end of this article, I hope to convince you that it's terribly profound. If you then want to fling large quantities of cash at me in gratitude, please don't. I'd really rather have a check. With plenty of zeroes. I am going to steal insights from Dwight Swain's book, Techniques of the Selling Writer. This is quite simply the finest book ever written on how to write fiction. If you don't have this book, you are robbing yourself blind. I will be giving you the high points in this article, but there is really no substitute for reading the book and digesting it.

Before we begin, we need to understand how we keep score. How do we know what perfection is? The answer is based on understanding your reader's motivation for reading.

Your reader is reading your fiction because you provide him or her with a powerful emotional experience. If you're writing a romance, you must create in your reader the illusion that she is falling in love herself. If you're writing a thriller, you must create in your reader the illusion that he is in mortal danger and has only the tiniest chance of saving his life (and all of humanity). If you're writing a fantasy, you must create in your reader the illusion that she is actually in another world where all is different and wonderful and magical. And so on for all the other genres.

If you fail to create these emotions in your reader, then you have failed. If you create these emotions in your reader, then you have succeeded. The better you create the desired emotional experience in your reader, the better your fiction. Perfection in writing comes when you have created the fullest possible emotional experience for your reader.

Large-Scale Structure of a Scene

The large-scale structure of a scene is extremely simple. Actually, there are two possible choices you can make for your scene structure. Dwight Swain calls these two choices "scenes" and "sequels". This is horrendously confusing, since both of these are what most ordinary people call scenes. In what follows, I'm going to capitalize these terms, calling them Scenes and Sequels. That is your signal that I'm using Swain's language. When I use the word "scene" in the ordinary non-Swain sense, I'll leave it uncapitalized. Since you are exceptionally brilliant and perceptive, you will not find this a problem. Let me give you the high points on Scenes and Sequels right up front.

A Scene has the following three-part pattern:

Goal
Conflict
Disaster

A Sequel has the following three-part pattern:

Reaction
Dilemma
Decision

You may think these patterns are too simple. You may think this is reducing writing to Paint-by-Numbers. Well, no. This is reducing fiction to the two patterns that have been proven by thousands of novelists to actually work. There are plenty of other patterns people use. They typically work less well. It may well be that there other patterns that work better. If you can find one that works better, please tell me. But for now, let's pretend that Dwight Swain is right. Let's pretend these are absolutely the best possible patterns for writing fiction. Let's pretend these are the keys to writing the perfect scene. Let's move on and look at each of these in turn.

As we said, the Scene has the three parts Goal, Conflict, and Disaster. Each of these is supremely important. I am going to define each of these pieces and then explain why each is critical to the structure of the Scene. I assume that you have selected one character to be your Point Of View character. In what follows, I'll refer to this character as your POV character. Your goal is to convincingly show your POV character experiencing the scene. You must do this so powerfully that your reader experiences the scene as if she were the POV character.

Goal: A Goal is what your POV character wants at the beginning of the Scene. The Goal must be specific and it must be clearly definable. The reason your POV character must have a Goal is that it makes your character proactive. Your character is not passively waiting for the universe to deal him Great Good. Your character is going after what he wants, just as your reader wishes he could do. It's a simple fact that any character who wants something desperately is an interesting character. Even if he's not nice, he's interesting. And your reader will identify with him. That's what you want as a writer.

Conflict: Conflict is the series of obstacles your POV character faces on the way to reaching his Goal. You must have Conflict in your Scene! If your POV character reaches his Goal with no Conflict, then the reader is bored. Your reader wants to struggle! No victory has any value if it comes too easy. So make your POV character struggle and your reader will live out that struggle too.

Disaster: A Disaster is a failure to let your POV character reach his Goal. Don't give him the Goal! Winning is boring! When a Scene ends in victory, your reader feels no reason to turn the page. If things are going well, your reader might as well go to bed. No! Make something awful happen. Hang your POV character off a cliff and your reader will turn the page to see what happens next.

That's all! There is literally nothing more you need to know about Scenes. Now let's look at Sequels . . .

The Sequel has the three parts Reaction, Dilemma, and Decision. Again, each of these is critical to a successful Sequel. Remove any of them and the Sequel fails to work. Let me add one important point here. The purpose of a Sequel is to follow after a Scene. A Scene ends on a Disaster, and you can't immediately follow that up with a new Scene, which begins with a Goal. Why? Because when you've just been slugged with a serious setback, you can't just rush out and try something new. You've got to recover. That's basic psychology.

Reaction: A Reaction is the emotional follow-through to a Disaster. When something awful happens, you're staggering for awhile, off-balance, out of kilter. You can't help it. So show your POV character reacting viscerally to his Disaster. Show him hurting. Give your reader a chance to hurt with your characters. You may need to show some passage of time. This is not a time for action, it's a time for re-action. A time to weep. But you can't stagger around in pain forever. In real life, if people do that they lose their friends. In fiction, if you do it, you lose your readers. Eventually, your POV character needs to get a grip. To take stock. To look for options. And the problem is that there aren't any . . .

Dilemma: A Dilemma is a situation with no good options. If your Disaster was a real Disaster, there aren't any good choices. Your POV character must have a real dilemma. This gives your reader a chance to worry, which is good. Your reader must be wondering what can possibly happen next. Let your POV character work through the choices. Let him sort things out. Eventually, let him come to the least-bad option . . .

Decision: A Decision is the act of making a choice among several options. This is important, because it lets your POV character become proactive again. People who never make decisions are boring people. They wait around for somebody else to decide. And nobody wants to read about somebody like that. So make your character decide, and make it a good decision. Make it one your reader can respect. Make it risky, but make it have a chance of working. Do that, and your reader will have to turn the page, because now your POV character has a new Goal.

And now you've come full circle. You've gone from Scene to Sequel and back to the Goal for a new Scene. This is why the Scene-Sequel pattern is so powerful. A Scene leads naturally to a Sequel, which leads naturally to a new Scene. And so on forever. At some point, you'll end the cycle. You'll give your POV character either Ultimate Victory or Ultimate Defeat and that will be the end of the book. But until you get there, the alternating pattern of Scene and Sequel will carry you through. And your reader will curse you when he discovers that he's spent the whole doggone night reading your book because he could not put the thing down.

That's perfection.

However, it's only half the battle. I've told you how to design the Scenes and Sequels in the large scale. But you still need to write them. You need to write paragraph after compelling paragraph, with each one leading your POV character smoothly through from initial Goal to knuckle-whitening Conflict to bone-jarring Disaster, and then through a visceral Reaction to a horrible Dilemma and finally on to a clever Decision.

How do you do that? How do you execute those paragraphs? How do you do it perfectly?

Small-Scale Structure of a Scene

The answer is to use what Dwight Swain calls "Motivation-Reaction Units." He calls them MRUs for short. This is such an absurdly ridiculous term that I'm going to keep it, just to prove that Mr. Swain was not perfect. Writing MRUs is hard. However, I've found that it provides the most bang for the buck in improving your writing. I've mentored many writers, and a universal problem for them was the failure to write MRUs correctly. My solution was to make them painfully work through several chapters so that each one was nothing more nor less than a string of perfect MRUs. After a few chapters, the technique gets easier. Then I maliciously require them to rewrite their whole novel this way. This is brutally hard work, but those who have survived it have become much better writers.

Writing MRUs correctly is the magic key to compelling fiction. I don't care if you believe me or not. Try it and see.

I hope you are salivating to learn this magical tool. You need to first suffer through one full paragraph of theory. I know you will do this because you are intelligent and patient and because I am flattering you quite thickly.

You will write your MRUs by alternating between what your POV character sees (the Motivation) and what he does (the Reaction). This is supremely important. Remember that Swain calls these things "Motivation-Reaction Units". The Motivation is objective but it is something that your character can see (or hear or smell or taste or feel). You will write this in such a way that your reader also sees it (or hears it or smells it or tastes it or feels it). You will then start a new paragraph in which your POV character does one or more things in Reaction to the Motivation. There is an exact sequence you must follow in writing your Reaction. The sequence is based on what is physiologically possible. Note that the Motivation is external and objective. The Reaction is internal and subjective. If you do this, you create in your reader the powerful illusion that he is experiencing something real. Now let's break this down into more detail . . .

The Motivation is external and objective, and you present it that way, in objective, external terms. You do this in a single paragraph. It does not need to be complicated.

Here is a simple example:

The tiger dropped out of the tree and sprang toward Jack.

Note the key points here. This is objective. We present the Motivation as it would be shown by a videocamera. Nothing here indicates that we are in Jack's point of view. That comes next, but in the Motivation we keep it simple and sharp and clean.

The Reaction is internal and subjective, and you present it that way, exactly as your POV character would experience it -- from the inside. This is your chance to make your reader be your POV character. To repeat myself, this must happen in its own paragraph (or sequence of paragraphs). If you leave it in the same paragraph as the Motivation, then you risk whip-sawing the reader. Which no reader enjoys.

The Reaction is more complex than the Motivation. The reason is that it is internal, and internal processes happen on different time-scales. When you see a tiger, in the first milliseconds, you only have time for one thing -- fear. Within a few tenths of a second, you have time to react on instinct, but that is all it will be -- instinct, reflex. But shortly after that first reflexive reaction, you will also have time to react rationally, to act, to think, to speak. You must present the full complex of your character's reactions in this order, from fastest time-scale to slowest. If you put them out of order, then things just don't feel right. You destroy the illusion of reality. And your reader won't keep reading because your writing is "not realistic." Even if you got all your facts right.

Here is a simple example:

A bolt of raw adrenaline shot through Jack's veins. He jerked his rifle to his shoulder, sighted on the tiger's heart, and squeezed the trigger. "Die, you bastard!"

Now let's analyze this. Note the three parts of the Reaction:

Feeling: "A bolt of raw adrenaline shot through Jack's veins." You show this first, because it happens almost instantly.
Reflex: "He jerked his rifle to his shoulder . . ." You show this second, as a result of the fear. An instinctive result that requires no conscious thought.
Rational Action and Speech: ". . . sighted on the tiger's heart, and squeezed the trigger. 'Die, you bastard!'" You put this last, when Jack has had time to think and act in a rational way. He pulls the trigger, a rational response to the danger. He speaks, a rational expression of his intense emotional reaction.

It is legitimate to leave out one or two of these three parts. (You can't leave out all three or you have no Reaction.) But there is one critical rule to follow in leaving parts out: Whatever parts you keep in must be in the correct order. If there is a Feeling, it must come first. If there is a Reflex, it must never come before a Feeling. If there is some Rational Action, it must always come last. This is simple and obvious and if you follow this rule, your Reactions will be perfectly structured time after time.

And after the Reaction comes . . . another Motivation. This is the key. You can't afford to write one perfect MRU and then be happy. You've got to write another and another and another. The Reaction you just wrote will lead to some new Motivation that is again external and objective and which you will write in its own paragraph. Just to continue the example we've created so far:

The bullet grazed the tiger's left shoulder. Blood squirted out of the jagged wound. The tiger roared and staggered, then leaped in the air straight at Jack's throat.

Note that the Motivation can be complex or it can be simple. The only requirement is that it be external and objective, something that not only Jack can see and hear and feel but which any other observer could also see and hear and feel, if they were there.

The important thing is to keep the alternating pattern. You write a Motivation and then a Reaction and then another Motivation and then another Reaction. When you run out of Motivations or Reactions, your Scene or Sequel is over. Don't run out too soon. Don't drag on too long.

Write each Scene and Sequel as a sequence of MRUs. Any part of your Scene or Sequel which is not an MRU must go. Cut it ruthlessly. Show no mercy. You can not afford charity for a single sentence that is not pulling its weight. And the only parts of your scene that pull their weight are the MRUs. All else is fluff.

About Those Pesky Rules
You may be feeling that it's impossible to write your scenes following these rules. Doing so causes you to freeze. You stare blindly at the computer screen, afraid to move a muscle for fear of breaking a Rule. Oh dear, you've got yourself a case of writer's block. That's bad. Now let me tell you the final secret for writing the perfect scene.

Forget all these rules. That's right, ignore the varmints. Just write your chapter in your usual way, putting down any old words you want, in any old way you feel like. There, that feels better, doesn't it? You are creating, and that's good. Creation is constructing a story from nothing. It's hard work, it's fun, it's exciting, it's unstructured. It's imperfect. Do it without regard for the rules.

When you have finished creating, set it aside for awhile. You will later need to edit it, but now is not the time. Do something else. Write another scene. Go bowling. Spend time with those annoying people who live in your house. Remember them? Your family and friends? Do something that is Not Writing.

Later on, when you are ready, come back and read your Great Piece of Writing. It will have many nice points to it, but it will not be perfectly structured. Now you are ready to edit it and impose perfect structure on it. This is a different process than Creation. This is Analysis, and it is the opposite of Creation. Analysis is destruction. You must now take it apart and put it back together.

Analyze the scene you have written. Is it a Scene or a Sequel? Or neither? If it is neither, then you must find a way to make it one or the other or you must throw it away. If it is a Scene, verify that it has a Goal, a Conflict, and a Disaster. Identify them each in a one-sentence summary. Likewise, if it's a Sequel, verify that it has a Reaction, a Dilemma, and a Decision. Identify each of these in a one-sentence summary. If you can't put the scene into one of these two structures, then throw the scene away as the worthless piece of drivel that it is. You may someday find a use for it as a sonnet or a limerick or a technical manual, but it is not fiction and there is no way to make it fiction, so get rid of it.

Now that you know what your scene is, either Scene or Sequel, rewrite it MRU by MRU. Make sure every Motivation is separated from every Reaction by a paragraph break. It is okay to have multiple paragraphs for a single Motivation or a single Reaction. It is a capital crime to mix them in a single paragraph. When they are separated correctly, you may find you have extra parts that are neither Motivation nor Reaction. Throw them away, no matter how beautiful or clever they are. They are not fiction and you are writing fiction.

Examine each Motivation and make sure that it is entirely objective and external. Show no mercy. You can not afford mercy on anything that poisons your fiction. Kill it or it will kill you.

Now identify the elements of each Reaction and make sure they are as subjective and internal as possible. Present them as nearly as you can from inside the skin of your POV character. Make sure they are in the correct order, with Feelings first, then Reflexive Actions, and finally Rational Actions and Speech. Again, eliminate everything else, even brilliant insights that would surely get you a Nobel peace prize. Brilliant insights are very fine, but if they aren't fiction, they don't belong in your fiction. If you can contrive to rearrange such a thing to be in a correct fictional pattern, then fine. Keep it. Otherwise, slit its vile throat and throw the carcass to the wolves. You are a novelist, and that's what novelists do.

When you reach the end of the scene, whether it is a Scene or a Sequel, check to make sure that everything is correctly placed in an MRU and all carcasses are thrown out. Feel free to edit the scene for style, clarity, wit, spelling, grammar, and any other thing you know how to do. When you are done, pat yourself on the back.

You have written a perfect scene. All is well in your world. You are done with this scene.

Now go do it again and again until you finish your book.

Best regards,
Randy Ingermanson, Ph.D.
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php

Order his free e-zine:
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/ezine
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How to write a novel

2007-10-26T05:44:00.000-04:00

Practice - I once considered retelling a favourite book just to get an idea of the level of detail needed. I decided I would duplicate the characters and plot exactly, rewriting the entire book scene by scene in my own words. I never did it, but I still think it could be a very useful technique. After all, you don't have to worry about plot or characterisation ... that's already been done! (Of course, you couldn't submit the result to a publisher. This would strictly be for your own consumption.)

Characters - I generally don't have 'good' and 'evil' characters in my novels, just people with opposite goals. The conflict this generates is more than enough to escalate things to a satisfactory climax and conclusion. I don't spend too much time developing bit players, unless they become more important during the writing. If someone's only going to appear in your book for one paragraph, treat them like a piece of furniture. Also, try and limit the number of characters.

Scenes are the story units, and there are one or more of these per chapter.

http://www.spacejock.com.au/WriteANovel.html

Mindmap

2007-10-26T05:28:00.000-04:00

Once you have the basic idea it's just a case of fleshing it out in more and more detail until you have a plot. Let's use something really basic:

Beginning: A woman arrives home from work to discover her husband has been kidnapped.
Middle: Unable to call in the police, she uses her initiative to trace his recent movements and discover who might have taken him - and why.
End: Then she rescues him and they live happily ever after.

I'd put those three sentences down and label them 'beginning', 'middle' and 'end'. You can use paper, or a word processor, but I prefer to use Freemind. Start a new sheet, rename the central blob to the title of your book, then press Ins to add fields like Major and Minor characters and Locations on the right, and Beginning, Middle and End down the left. Now you can add sub-fields for your characters, and sub-fields under each character with notes.

Now fill in the plot points for beginning, middle and end. All nodes are collapsible which makes life easy when it comes to printing.

The thing is, your original beginning (A woman arrives home from work to discover her husband has been kidnapped) can be expanded to include who she is, where she's coming home from, their personal situation (is it their wedding anniversary? A dinner date?), what she finds when she gets home, everything.

Remember, once you have an outline you don't have to stick to it! It's just a guideline, and if something unexpected comes up while you're writing a scene you can easily read the rest of the outline to see how this new change affects subsequent events. Every unplanned change creates ripples ... sometimes they're confined to a single scene or chapter, and sometimes they'll have a big impact on everything to follow - and much of what came before. You have to decide whether it's better to stay on track or to take this new and intereesting path. And there's your spontaneity.

So what are my novel's beginning, middle, and end?

Beginning: .
Middle: .
End: .

Personal situation:

Up to the highest heights

2007-10-26T04:47:00.000-04:00

Kite flying advice

2007-10-26T04:29:00.000-04:00

Important kite-flying advice, for those who want to try this at home:

When flying a kite you must remember that kites are attracted to trees like a moth is attracted to a flame. It is not a conscious thing, it is merely instinct.

Kite-eating trees

2007-10-26T04:25:00.000-04:00

KITE ~ Charlie Brown is probably the best known kite flyer around, but the book Kite Runner has also been popular in recent times. What's your kite story? Did a tree eat your kite as it did good ole Charlie Brown's? Can you get a kite up? What shape is/was your favorite kite?

1. Juliet (Crafty Green Poet) ~ Kites
2. Tricia (The Miss Rumphius Effect) ~ Kites and Poetry
3. Tiel Aisha Ansari (Knocking from Inside) ~ 0,0
4. Paisley (the ink pot) ~ to fly a kite
5. Mad Kane (Mad Kane's Humor Blog) ~ Toying with Kites
6. Bonnie (Words from a Wordsmith) ~ Go fly a kite!

Delta kite

2007-10-26T04:16:00.000-04:00

While vacationing with my kids in Destin, Florida, I sat on my beach towel and let the breeze carry my delta kite aloft. It was just that effortless. No running, like at home. No hoping a nose-dive didn't kill the kite. Just sitting still and letting the constant breeze waft it back and forth through the sky.

Gertie the Seagull Kite

2007-10-26T04:00:00.001-04:00

We were in a hotel at the edge of the ocean in Myrtle Beach, and I was standing on the balcony looking up the seashore. I noticed a seagull, staying in one place in the stiff breeze from the sea and started watching him. Surely he couldn't float on the wind forever! But there he was, adjusting his wings, but staying in one place. I noticed a man on the beach was also watching that seagull ... and holding ... wait a minute! That man is flying a kite! When I started looking for the kite string, I could see it in places. Dang! That's the most realistic-looking kite I've ever seen!

The Sea Gull Kite has a wingspan of 42 inches and would blend in very well with all its real brothers out drifting over the shore. The wings flap in the breeze, and people will think that you have a real bird tied to a string. If you want, you can hang this kite from a pole and when the wind blows it will start to fly on its own. It's just amazing how realistic this bird is! The designer of this kite made all of the dove kites that were flown over the Atlanta Olympics.

Go fly a kite!

2007-10-26T03:50:00.000-04:00

When I hear "go fly a kite,"
I remember my Daddy helping us fly a kite
when we kids were too small to do it alone.

One day we had a red kite high in the sky,
really really high up in the sky,
and the string broke.
Daddy had us all jump in the car to chase it.

As it danced in the sky trailing its rag tail,
we kids kept an eye on it,
following it all the way to Ridgedale,
at least a couple of miles from where we started.
And then we lost it.

It escaped and we never found it,
but that kite has remained floating in my memory
for more than sixty years.
__________

Shameless said, "Nice post. Reminds me of a kite, lost but then found, in one of my novels I'm trying to sell. Kites can symbolise so much in our imaginations."

Neco said, "Your poem reminds me of when our Dad used to take us driving in his little green MG looking for the end of rainbows. We'd tell him which turns to take."

Crafty Green Poet said, "I like the red kite floating through your memory."

Bill said, "I remember that day very well. Our Daddy was really fun to be with. I also remember a trip to Florida and as we drove along a long stretch of open road with very little traffic on it, Daddy slammed on the break and stopped the car, jumped out of the car, and leaned over and walked across the road in front of the car. He then stood up and walked back and got in the car and drove off. We all said, 'What did you do?' And he said, 'I was helping a bug cross the road.' What a guy. He was a very funny guy when he was in the mood for it. Thanks for reminding me of a good memory."

Dewey said, "Sounds like a precious memory, and I love Bill's memory of the bug crossing the road, too!"

Absolute Vanilla (and Atyllah) said, "Ah, kites. I love kites. I've always wanted a kite but have never owned one. And last Sunday I went to a kite festival - but alas, there was no wind! Lovely and poignant post, Bonnie."

Defining a literature of social change

2007-10-25T09:27:00.000-04:00

Socially responsible literature, for the purposes of this award, may describe categorical human transgressions in a way that compels readers to examine their own prejudices. It may invoke the necessity for economic and social justice for a particular ethnic or social group, or it may explicitly examine movements that have brought positive social change. Or, it may advocate the preservation of nature by describing and defining accountable relationships between people and their environment. The mere description of an injustice, or of the personal predicament of an exploited person, without any clear position of social analysis invoked by the writer, does not in itself constitute socially responsible literature. "Social responsibility" describes a moral obligation of individuals to engage with their communities in ways that promote a more respectful coexistence.

Clear, analytical and literary accounts of political and social injustice (either current or historical) include the following excellent examples: Beloved, by Toni Morrison; Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson; To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee; Crows Over a Wheatfield, Paula Sharp; Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison; The Women’s Room, Marilyn French; Memoirs of An Ex-Prom Queen, Alix Kates Shulman; Mean Spirit, Linda Hogan; Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks; The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver; The Color Purple, Alice Walker. Other contemporary contributors to this tradition include Michael Dorris, Louise Erdrich, Ursula Hegi, Ursula K. LeGuin, Ruth Ozeki, Grace Paley, Marge Piercy, and John Edgar Wideman.

These authors notwithstanding, issues of social responsibility have in recent decades held a less commanding place in U.S. literature than in the wider world. Social commentary in our art is frequently viewed with suspicion. Its advocacy does not fall within the stated goals of any major North American publisher, endowment, or prize for the arts. The Bellwether Prize was conceived to address this deficiency. We would like to see the place of conscience in our nation’s artistic landscape restored to the same high position it holds elsewhere in the world. By means of this prize we hope to enlist North American writers, publishers, and readers to share in this crucial endeavor.
__________
Bellwether Prize for Fiction ~ in support of a literature of social change.

Word count

2007-10-24T04:49:00.000-04:00

FIRST
Swimming out of her deep sleep, Grace stretched and saw Jack slumped in a chair across from her.

"Welcome back, sleeping beauty," he said quietly.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Almost midnight."

"No!" Grace sat up, holding her head. "Then Sebastian knows I didn't come home."

"I suspect so." (50)

"I have to..."

"Grace, wait!" Jack said, coming to sit beside her on the sofa. "Let's talk."

"I can't believe I did this with no more planning than..."

"It's okay."

"What? How can you say that? I haven't even told you why I'm here."

"I can guess, but I would (100) rather you tell me about it."

Grace pulled back to take a good look at Jack's face. "You know something, don't you?"

He nodded. "I've sort of kept up with you over the years."

"Me? Why?"

"Because we knew the man you married, and we were worried about you."

"We? (150) We, who?"

"Sebastian and Mike and I."

"Sebastian?"

"Oh, sorry, Sebastian Compton. Friends in college, remember? Not your Sebastian."

"You're telling me that someone I barely remember has been worried about me? That doesn't make sense." Grace lurched to her feet, with Jack right behind her.

"Grace, take a deep (200) breath and listen for a minute." Jack raked his fingers through his tousled hair, wondering where to start. "We have files on your husband, files that could send his sorry ass up the river, but we sat on it until ... until ... you chose to leave him." Jack lowered his face (250) to hers. "That is what you've done, isn't it?"

Grace closed her eyes. "I don't understand any of this. I didn't even know I was coming here until I was already in the taxi. Who are these people, Sebastian and Mike?"

"Have you totally forgotten my old college buddies? We (300) used to hang out together, then Mike became a cop and Sebastian went to law school. Me? I'm ready to take over my dad's business when he retires, but mostly I'm the guy still trying to watch out for you, just the way I've done since kindergarten."

"But the others?" (350)

"They think I'm crazy, but they're my friends," Jack said. "And we are so ready to take on your husband." (370)

SECOND

Swimming out of her deep sleep, Grace stretched and saw Jack slumped in a chair across from her.

"Welcome back, sleeping beauty," he said quietly.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Almost midnight."

"No!" Grace sat up, holding her head. "Then Sebastian knows I didn't come home."

"I suspect so."

"I have to..."

"Grace, wait!" Jack said, coming to sit beside her on the sofa. "Let's talk."

"I can't believe I did this with no more planning than..." She tugged her blouse down, ran her fingers through her hair, rubbed her sleep-crusted eyes.

"It's okay." He moved closer and reached out his hand toward her.

"What? How can you say that? I haven't even told you why I'm here."

"I can guess, but I would rather you tell me about it."

Grace pulled back to take a good look at Jack's face. "You know something, don't you?"

He nodded. "I've sort of kept up with you over the years."

"Me? Why?" His heart skipped a beat at that way she had of screwing up her face when she was confused or frustrated. It was so familiar, yet so long ago since he's seen it.

"Because we knew the man you married, and we were worried about you."

"We? We, who?" Uh-oh, that's her testy voice, he thought. Gotta be careful here.

"Sebastian and Mike and I."

"Sebastian?"

"Oh, sorry, Sebastian Compton," he said, mentally kicking himself for not thinking. "Friends in college, remember? Not your Sebastian."

"You're telling me that someone I barely remember has been worried about me?" she said, obviously annoyed. "That doesn't make sense." Grace lurched to her feet, with Jack right behind her.

"Grace, take a deep breath and listen for a minute." Jack raked his fingers through his tousled hair, wondering where to start. "We have files on your husband, files that could send his sorry ass up the river, but we sat on it until ... until ... you chose to leave him." Jack lowered his face to hers. "That is what you've done, isn't it?"

Grace closed her eyes. "I don't understand any of this. I didn't even know I was coming here until I was already in the taxi. Who are these people, Sebastian and Mike?"

"Have you totally forgotten my old college buddies? We used to hang out together, then Mike became a cop and Sebastian went to law school. Me? I'm ready to take over my dad's business when he retires, but mostly I'm the guy still trying to watch out for you, just the way I've done since kindergarten."

"But the others?"

"They think I'm crazy, but they're my friends," Jack said. "And we are so ready to take on your husband." He was grinning like a schoolboy. (370 + 87 = 457)

NaNoWriMo ~ calendar

2007-10-24T03:54:00.000-04:00

Parts of Speech

2007-10-23T21:20:00.000-04:00

I. NOUN: a word that is the name of something: person, place, thing, or idea.

A. 5 classes

1. proper: names a particular something; must be capitalized
2. common: names a general something
3. concrete: names something tangible (using senses)
4. abstract: names something intangible (an idea not using senses)
5. collective: names a group or unit

B. 3 forms of nouns

1. number: singular (one) or plural (two or more)
2. gender: masculine (male), feminine (female), neuter (neither), indefinite (either)
3. case: nominative (subject of clause), possessive (shows ownership), objective (direct object, indirect object, object of the preposition)

II. PRONOUN: replaces, or substitutes for, a noun a (its antecedent)

A. 3 types

1. simple: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who, what
2. compound: myself, yourself, himself, herself, ourselves, itself, whatsoever
3. phrasal: one another, each other

B. 5 classes

1. personal
a. its number: singular or plural
b. its person: (1st – replaces speaker, 2nd – replaces person spoken to, 3rd – replaces person spoken about)
c. its case: (nominative, possessive, objective)
d. its gender (masculine, feminine, neuter)
e. reflexive pronoun: ends with –self or –selves and intensifies the word it replaced

2. relative: relates an adjective clause to a noun or pronoun in the sentence (who, whose, whom, which, what, that)
3. indefinite: refers to unnamed or unknown people or things (anybody, few, all, no one, several, someone, such)
4. interrogative: asks a question (who, whose, whom, which, what)
5. demonstrative: points out without naming (this, that, these, those)

III. VERB: expresses action

A. 5 forms

1. number: singular or plural (must agree in number with subject)
2. person: first/second/third and singular/plural
3. voice: active (indicates subject is acting) or passive (indicates the subject is being acted upon)—used with a “be” verb
4. tense: indicates time
a. present: expresses action that is happening at the present time, or happens continually, regularly
b. past: expresses action that is completed at a particular time in the past
c. future: expresses action that will take place in the future
d. present perfect: expresses action that began in the past but continues or is completed in the present
e. past perfect: expresses action that began and was completed in the past
f. future perfect: expresses action that will begin and be completed by a specific time in the future

5. mood: the tone or attitude with which the statement is made
a. indicative: used to state a fact or to ask a question
b. imperative: used to give a command
c. subjunctive: express express a condition that is contrary to fact (“If I were you, I wouldn’t giggle in front of Dad.”), to express doubt or uncertainty in the past (“Dad looked as if he were about to ground you. Well . . . maybe not. Actually, he looked as though he were about to ring your neck!”), or to express necessity (“It is moved and supported that no more than 50 dollars be used to purchase decorations for the dinner.”)

B. 4 classes

1. auxiliary: helping verbs used to form some of the tenses, mood, and voice. Common helpers are is, are, was, were, will, should, must, can
2. transitive: communicates action and is always followed by an object that receives the action and completes the meaning of the verb
a. active voice: directs the action from the subject to the object
b. passive voice: subject receives the action of the verb and must have a helper

3. intransitive: refers to an action that is complete in itself. It does not need an object to receive the action. A linking verb is a special kind of intransitive verb that links the subject noun to a noun or adjective in the predicate
4. Verbal is derived from a verb, has the power of a verb, but acts as another part of speech
a. gerund: a verb form that ends in –ing and is used as a noun
b. infinitive: a verb form that is usually introduced by “to” and may be used as a noun, an adjective, or as an adverb
c. participle: a verb form ending in –ing or –ed functions as a verb taking an object or an adjective

IV. ADJECTIVE: clarifies or defines a noun or pronoun. It can be common or proper and can be found in the subject or predicate (defining a subject noun or pronoun). There are 3 forms of adjectives:
A. positive: clarifies without comparing it to another
B. comparative (-er): compares 2 nouns/pronouns
C. superlative (-est): compares 3 or more nouns/pronouns

V. ADVERB: clarifies or defines a verb, an adjective, or an adverb.
A. 4 categories:

1. time: tells when, how often, or how long
2. place: tells where, to where, or from where
3. manner: often ends in –ly and tells how something is done
4. degree: tell how much or how little

B. 3 forms

1. positive: clarifies a verb, an adjective, or an adverb without comparing it to another
2. comparative (-er): compares 2 nouns or pronouns
3. superlative (-est): compares 3 or more nouns or pronouns

VI. PREPOSITION: shows the relationship between its object noun or pronoun in its clause and another word in the sentence. There are 3 kinds:
A. simple (at, in, of, on, with)
B. compound (within, outside, underneath, notwithstanding)
C. phrasal (on account of, on top of)

VII. CONJUNCTION: connects individual words or groups of words. There are 3 kinds:
A. coordinating: connects words/phrases/clauses equal or of the same type (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, so)
B. correlative: used in pairs to connect (either/or, neither/nor, not only/but also, both/and, whether/or, just/as, just/so, as/so)
C. subordinating: connects words/phrases/clauses unequal in importance

VIII. INTERJECTION: communicates strong emotion or surprise. It is set off from the rest of the sentence with a comma or exclamation point.

Title

2007-10-23T19:40:00.000-04:00

For Always and Forever

Darkness Rises

Darkness Puddles and Spreads

Characters and places

2007-10-20T00:00:00.000-04:00

Why tell the story through the granddaughter, Meg, who is one generation removed from Bassie, and not her daughter, Nina?

Bassie needed to be elderly in order to have been born in the time period I wanted to represent. Meg needed to be moderately young, because I wanted her life still to be ahead of her so that the lessons she learned wouldn't be wasted. Also, the age difference allowed me to see the modern part of the story not only from two different viewpoints but also from two widely different stages of life, and this was interesting to me. Nina, as it turned out, simply filled in the gap between these two women. It was tricky fitting all the time frames together because I had a lot of events that had to happen at certain times: the Mormon massacre, the years that the Montezuma was open, the beginning of tourism in the west. I would have liked to make Meg's story exactly contemporary-2006-but couldn't pull that off without making Bassie too old to be credible, so Meg's story had to be set in the 1980s. At one point in the writing I thought I could simply be vague about the present time frame and exactly when Meg and Bassie traveled to New Mexico, and that no one would notice-it could feel as if it was anytime in the last ten or fifteen years without putting a date to it. But then there was the problem of cell phones. You can't fudge on something like that: either your characters have cell phones or they don't. And if they do, the story changes, things are handled differently, the entire way in which Meg relates to her work back in Austin while she's in New Mexico would be drastically different if she was carrying a cell phone. In the end I simply fell back on my rule of authenticity: it had to happen in a way it could have happened. So, for Elliott to have survived the Mormon massacre, and to have married Hannah without too much of an age difference between them, and for Hannah to have had Bassie, and for Bassie to remain a force to reckon with during my contemporary plot, then Meg and Bassie had to have taken the trip to New Mexico in the late 1980s.

The land of New Mexico, vividly described in both Hannah's journals and Meg's modern observations, is very much a character in the novel. What drew you to this geographic area and these time periods specifically?

Read the whole author interview here:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/pfp.asp?ean=9780143038573&z=y

Scenes

2007-10-19T10:57:00.000-04:00

Scenes: The Building Blocks of Novels
© Kim Kay
Jan 5, 1999

"The basic unit of fiction is not the sentence or the paragraph, but the scene." -- Unknown

A novel is made up of several mini-stories which, when linked together, create the plot. These mini-stories are called scenes. Like chapters and the novel as a whole, each scene has a distinct beginning, middle, and end. There are many different types of scenes but every one should advance the plot in some way. If a particular scene has no effect on the outcome of the novel or the storyline as a whole, it should be omitted or rewritten.

Types of Scenes

Opening Scenes: The first scene of your novel, the opening scene, is arguably the most important. It is your readers' first introduction to your novel and can compel them to continue reading or cause them to put the book away unread. One way to "hook" your readers in the opening scene is to get them emotionally involved with the main character or storyline right from the start. You do not want to begin your novel with description of the setting or explanation of past events. You want to begin at a crucial moment in the action and give enough information so that your readers want to find out what happens next.

Action Scenes: Action scenes will comprise the majority of your novel. In these scenes, the character is trying to accomplish parts of his or her primary objective or one of the subgoals which will lead him or her to the resolution of the novel. These scenes will have some type of conflict with either the protagonist or the antagonist coming out ahead at its resolution. The "winner" should vary from scene to scene to help build suspense.

Exposition Scenes: The purpose of exposition scenes is to give information on the setting of the novel. Time and place are revealed. Exposition scenes can also be used to show a character's background or future goals.

Transition Scenes: Transition scenes move the characters to another setting or through a period of time. The main purpose of these scenes is to make the novel flow as smoothly as possible. They allow you to link together action, exposition, and other scenes, making the novel seem as if it were one continuous scene.

Ending Scenes: Your ending scene is almost as important as your opening scene. It is the resolution of your novel. By the ending scene, all conflicts should be resolved, questions answered, and loose ends tied up. Your reader should go away feeling satisfied and a sense of completion.

Constructing Scenes

Each scene will have some information which is directly expressed and some which is implied. Direct information is the characters' thoughts, actions, and dialogue. Implied information is revealed by how you present your scene. If one scene was used to show the reader that the main character is painfully shy, instead of telling, you would show it through their actions and other direct information.

Your scenes should vary in intensity to keep the reader from getting either bored or emotionally drained. Intensity level is determined by the importance of winning the conflict in each scene, the risks involved, and the resolution of the conflict. Generally, scenes near the climax of the novel will be more intense than ones in the middle.

Your scenes may also vary in length. There is no formula for determining the "right" length of a scene. It can be anywhere from a couple of sentences to several pages. Basically, a scene needs to be long enough to achieve its purpose. In action scenes, for example, the scene ends when the conflict of that scene is resolved and the character(s) involved either learn something or are a step closer to (or farther from) his or her primary goal.

When writing the scenes of your novel, make every one have a purpose and let them flow one into the next. In you achieve these two things, you will be well on your way to creating an enjoyable and tightly written novel.

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/novel_writing/14516
__________

Scenes and Structure
© Marg McAlister

Beginning writers often tend to think of a book as a series of chapters. It's actually more useful to regard it as a series of linked scenes. Why? Because it makes it a lot easier to control the pace of your story.

'Pace' may be described as the forward movement of your story. Sometimes it will move at a slower pace than at other times. What you need to aim for is a story that moves along fast enough to maintain reader interest, but not at such breakneck speed that the reader doesn't have time to get to know the characters or assimilate the plot. Nor do you want your story to slow down too much. That can lead to your reader closing the book. (If that reader happens to be the editor to whom you hope to sell the story, you're in big trouble.)

Scenes that contain a lot of action or conflict tend to elevate the reader's blood pressure. They have her whipping through the pages, anxious to absorb every moment of the drama being played out. A novel full of such scenes is

(a) too tiring to read for hours at a stretch and

(b) diminishes the overall effect of each scene so the entire novel loses punch.

None of us can put up with constantly high stress levels without burning out!

A book that moves at too rapid a pace is like a movie packed with one action scene after another-it's all too much. To appreciate and enjoy the conflict when it happens (in a nail-biting kind of way) we need periods of calm between the storms. These alternating scenarios can be regarded as scenes and their sequels.

The scene involves the main characters in action and/or conflict. It usually contains dialogue. Picture it as a scene from a movie - lights, camera, ACTION!

Following such a scene, you give your reader a chance to breathe, by moving into the sequel. The sequel is the logical aftermath of the scene. In the sequel, the viewpoint character has time to think about what has just happened, what it means to him/her, and what he/she intends to do next. By planning your novel as a series of scenes and sequels, you can control the pace.

Want to slow things down? Expand the sequel, the 'calm' period, which gives the character (and the reader) 'time out'.

Want to speed things up? Shorten the sequel. For example:

'By the time Marianne reached her apartment, she was good and mad. There was no way she intended to let Jake Rockford get away with a pathetic story like that! Five minutes after walking through her front door, she was dialling the Rockford's number. Within half an hour, she was pulling up in her sister's driveway, ready to do battle.'

In just a few lines, you have pitchforked the reader into the next action-packed scene. We know that Marianne doesn't believe Jake's story. We know she's eager to confront Julie and/or Jake. And we haven't wasted any time getting her there: one scene leads very quickly into the next, thus keeping the story moving along at a smart clip.

Learn to use scene and sequel effectively, and you retain control over the pacing of your novel. At all times the paramount question in your mind should be: How will this scene advance the story? If the answer is 'I don't know' or 'It won't, really' -- then out it goes, no matter how well-written it is.

The Structure of a Scene

The viewpoint character in each scene should have a goal. Why? So you don't include scenes that go nowhere and achieve nothing. Scenes that bog your story down.

These are the things you should take into consideration when planning a scene:

1. What is the viewpoint character's goal?

o What does he want at the outset of the scene?
o How will the action in the scene help him to get what he wants?
o Is the scene goal relevant to the viewpoint character's main goals in life? (Either work or private)
o Will the reader worry about whether the viewpoint character will get what he wants?

2. What is the source of conflict?

o What complications will arise to prevent your character from achieving her goal(s)?
o How will your character try to overcome these problems?
o Will the readers worry about whether the character will achieve her goal(s)?

3. Does your scene end dramatically?

o Is the viewpoint character better off or worse off at the end of the scene?
o If he is better off, have you introduced (or foreshadowed) a new plot twist to maintain tension? (Never make things too easy for your main character.)
o Has the scene moved the story forward?
o Has the scene left the reader wanting to know what will happen next?
o Have you answered the question you set up in the reader's mind at the beginning of the scene? (For example: will Character get what he wants? How will he go about getting what he wants?)

4. Have you planned the scene's sequel?

o Have you had the character think about what has just happened?
o Have you had the character decide what to do next to pursue her goal?
o Have you had the character take action or make a decision that moves us into the next scene?

http://www.writing4success.com/novel_scenes_and_structure.htm

Candler

2007-10-19T07:55:00.000-04:00

Julia wants to understand her mother's passion about religion and ends up going to seminary herself. But she is agnostic about Christianity, greatly disturbing her mother. So where does Julia stand on the issue of salvation? Definitely not where her mother stands! So why go to seminary at all? Good question.

http://www.candler.emory.edu/

Rocks rock!

2007-10-19T07:24:00.000-04:00

Their house is made of river rocks, like this column. The rounded rocks came from the creek bed in Soddy-Daisy. The house was built in the 1960s.

Peter decided his house should be called Rocky Point.

Their driveway is made of pebbles from the river, which were also dumped in the mud along their shoreline because it was squishy with mud. Because of all the rocks and pebbles, they call their home "Pebblebrook." Where's the brook? Whenever there's a heavy rain, a tiny rivulet runs across a corner of their property, not big enough to have a name, not big enough to be called a proper stream or brook. But they like to think of it as their brook.

Zoe is interested in rocks, rocks, and more rocks. One night her mother is quietly picking up Zoe's clothes after Zoe has fallen asleep, and a large rounded river rock falls out of Zoe's jeans. She's such a sound sleeper, though, that she doesn't wake up. On Zoe's wall is a poster showing igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks.

Exposition

2007-10-18T07:37:00.000-04:00

Exposition is a literary technique by which background information about the characters, events, or setting is conveyed in a novel, play, movie or other work of fiction. This information can be presented through dialogue, description, flashbacks, or even directly through narrative.

Because exposition generally does not advance plot and may impede present-time action, it is usually best kept in short and succinct form, though in some genres, such as the mystery, exposition is central to the story structure itself. The alternative to exposition is to convey background information indirectly though action, which, though more dramatic, is more time consuming and less concise.

Methods of Exposition
Methods of exposition include:

Prologue
Prologues are common in certain genres, especially in the theatre. For example, Oedipus the King by the Greek dramatist Sophocles. Many of the plays of Shakespeare begin with a character coming forward and speaking the prologue to set the scene - Romeo and Juliet being one of the best-known examples. In Hamlet, he has the exposition performed by Bernardo, Marcellus and Horatio in the first scene, and by Hamlet's father's ghost in Act I, Scene IV.

Character Lecture
The most straightforward way of exposition through diologue is the character-to-character lecture. This generally involves is an expert or someone otherwise "in the know" explaining something to an less knowledgeable character. This technique is widely used in science fiction and fantasy to give the background to a story -- and in any genre in which significant technical or esoteric information is required. Examples are abundent and varied:

Mulder's slideshows on strange phenomena in The X-Files.

The novel Eldest by Christopher Paolini, uses the elven training of main character Eragon for several lectures on magic and elven culture.

The character Mr. Gibbs in Pirates of the Caribbean tells Will (and in doing so, the audience) of Jack's past with the Black Pearl in the first film, and in the second film tells the legend of Davy Jones and the Kraken.

In every episode of CSI, CSI: Miami, and CSI: NY, one of the main characters will explain how they discovered a key piece of evidence, and the scientific basis for that discovery to another main character.

The TV series The West Wing often uses this device to explain some complicated point of law or legislative procedure to the audience by having the character Joshua Lyman explain it to his seemingly naive secretary Donna Moss.

Problems with exposition

The Plot Dump
When the presentation of exposition becomes awkward or wordy, it is sometimes referred to by the pejorative expressions "plot dump" and "info dump." In written fiction, the term is additionally used to indicate giving information by exposition rather than revelation through action and dialogue; if such passages are well-written and intriguing, they may be described as "info-dumping" with no pejorative intent. This method has long been used in classic drama and modern productions where the plot is the consequence of preceding events that would either weigh down the production or would reveal too much, spoiling the mystery. Exposition is also necessary in some dramas since it can be from the point of view and perception of a character, and may or may not accurately reveal the facts. Examples of such well done exposition include Shakespeare's Hamlet and the 1956 film Forbidden Planet.

The term "plot dump" is usually invoked in a derisive sense. Plot dumps at the beginning of a movie are often tolerated as a necessity for setting the premise of the plot; this is the case for such widely-acclaimed movies as Casablanca and Star Wars. However, a plot dump expressed by characters in dialogue during the course of the movie is often taken to be indicative of an inferior narrative. Examples of the latter sense often take the form of one character explaining elaborate details regarding another character that would seem exaggerated and out-of-place in real-life conversation.

A stereotypical and exaggerated example of inferior plot dump would be:

Joe: Who's at the door?
Mary: Oh, it's my uncle, who was released from prison yesterday after serving ten years for stealing the family jewels from this very house, although the jewels themselves have never been found and are rumored to be buried in a secret chamber guarded by the ghost of my late grandmother.

Villains are frequently given to making speeches about their sinister plans to helpless heroes, often foolishly prefacing their exposition with the comment that it can't hurt to divulge the plan, since the hero will be dead soon anyway (or the plan will be impossible to stop in the short time available). This is known as the villain speech or monologuing. James Bond villains and comic book supervillains are particularly prone to it, and it is seldom even given such justification as the villain's desire to have his cleverness admired by the one man who could appreciate the extent.

Plot dump tends to be more tolerated on television than in the movies because the narrative of television episodes is shorter. Plot dumps are especially common in sit-coms in the introduction of non-recurring characters which drive the comedic plot of a particular episode. A prime example would be the use of the narrator in Arrested Development to quickly sum up revelations and inner thoughts of characters in order to keep the viewer tuned to the plot. In serial television drama, exposition in individual episodes is often relegated to a brief montage of scenes from earlier episodes, prefaced with the phrase "Previously on [name of series]."

In television sketch comedy, which itself borrows heavily from the tradition of vaudeville comedy, plot dump in the most exaggerated sense is often used explicitly for outrageous comedic effect. In this case, plot dump is not seen as a weakness but as a standard and necessary aspect of the genre which is expected by audiences.

Stories which are concerned with the unearthing of a secret past rarely avoid plot dump sequences. For example, substantial portions of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash are naked, unapologetic infodumps, with lengthy Idiot Lecture and Exposition sequences. These gradually bleed into theorizing about the implications of the dumped information. Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum mixes speculation and infodump throughout, with characters almost inventing events simply by infodumping their possibility.

Plot dump parodies
The Austin Powers film series has a character named Basil Exposition whose job was to repeatedly plot dump as a parody of the process in ordinary movies.

The series Mystery Science Theater 3000 always mocked movies who made blatant use of this practice. For example, in Parts: The Clonus Horror, there is a scene where a character views a videotape that explains the organization's origins and purpose in painstaking detail, basically providing all of the necessary exposition in one fell swoop. Tom Servo quips, "Good thing he wandered into the Department of Backstory!" At the beginning of another MST3k movie, Riding with Death, an extra consults a computer file containing information about the movie's protagonist for completely unexplained reasons (other than providing exposition). Once again, Servo notes this by referring to the computer as the "Backstory Database."

Plot dumps are parodied in the movie Spaceballs when Colonel Sandurz explains a plan to Dark Helmet, though Dark Helmet should have already known the plan. Dark Helmet then faces the camera and, breaking the fourth wall, asks the audience "Everybody got that?" to parody the true purpose of the plot dump.

Several villains in the Nickelodeon series Danny Phantom have been prone to plot dumping, especially the recurring technology ghost, Nicolai Technus. This is made into a running gag in the episode "Identity Crisis." In that episode, Technus claims to have upgraded himself, one of the advantages of the upgrade being that he would no longer shout his nefarious plot into the sky. He was able to maintain this for most of the episode (at one point even criticizing Danny for shouting something into the air himself), but eventually dictates his plot to himself near victory, immediately afterwards saying, "Nobody heard that, right?"

In the stage musical Urinetown, the first song is in fact titled "Too Much Exposition" during which the Narrator and Little Sally explain about the drought that caused the water shortage, and in turn the end of private bathrooms. While discussing the issue Officer Lockstock finally stops Little Sally before she reveals too much because "nothing can kill a show like too much exposition."

As you know, Jim
"As you know, Jim" (or "As you know, Bob") is a particularly clumsy form of info-dump through dialogue in which characters tell each other things they already know. Sometimes the other character will even say something like, "Why are you telling me this? I was there!"

Narrative = Story

2007-10-17T23:50:00.001-04:00

Story = an account of incidents or events

1. Reveal a minor character's future when s/he leaves the plot.
2.
3.
__________

The 3 Acts
The Greek play
Beginning, Middle, End

Character Development

Plot Development
Conflict and turmoil
The opening scene: getting to the conflict quickly
Showing versus telling
Narrative and exposition
Weaving back story
Plants and how to use them unobstrusively
The basic plots (there are fewer than 25 original plots)
Which comes first? The character or the plot.
Secondary plots

Climax and Plot Conclusion
The reader expects closure: satisfying the reader
The rise and climax of conflict
When to quit

Setting and Scene
Where, when, who
Scene as the driver of plot
Beats
How to arrange and order scenes
Keeping the story moving and keeping the reader interested
Alternation of fast action and slow action
What scenes are needed, which are useless

Dialogue
Showing through dialogue
Revealing back story through dialogue (and making it sound natural)
Interior monologue

Self Editing
Less is more and eliminating redundancy and useless words
Eliminating errors and rooting out plot mistakes
The overuse of adverbs (the -ly kind) to substitute for weak prose
Speaker attributions
_____, he said. Not ____, said he.
Limiting descriptions on attributions _____, he groaned. ______, she cried. _____, they beckoned. etc
Adverbs and attributions
Paragraphing
The cliché and hackneyed
Deus Ex Machina

Mastering Fiction
Getting organized
Writing an outline or synopsis
Using index cards
Research: locale, history, people, customs, etc
Writing as habit
Ideas
Allusion
Metaphor
Theme
Prose as art
Rhythm, word selection, sentence and paragraph length, variation
Reading (and imitating) the works of the great authors

Writer's Block
Techniques to break through
Write down anything that comes to mind. Try to draw ideas from what has been written.
Take a break from writing.
Read other peoples' writing to get ideas.
Ask others if they have any ideas.
Write with the screen off, it limits your inclination to edit as you write.
Don't be afraid of writing awkwardly. Write it down, and edit it later.
Set deadlines and keep them.
Work on multiple projects at a time.

Lists of emotions

2007-10-16T18:04:00.000-04:00

Emotions
Acceptance • Affection • Aggression • Alertness • Ambivalence • Anger • Angst • Anticipation • Apathy • Anxiety • Bitterness • Boredom • Calmness • Compassion • Contempt • Contentment • Confusion • Depression • Disgust • Doubt • Ecstasy • Embarrassment • Empathy • Emptiness • Enmity • Enthusiasm • Envy • Epiphany • Euphoria • Fanaticism • Fear • Forgiveness • Frustration • Gratification • Gratitude • Grief • Guilt • Happiness • Hatred • Homesickness • Hope • Horror • Hostility • Homesickness • Humiliation • Hysteria • Jealousy • Limerence • Loneliness • Love • Lust • Melancholia • Panic • Paranoia • Patience • Pity • Pleasure • Pride • Rage • Regret • Remorse • Repentance • Righteous indignation • Sadness • Self-pity • Sexiness • Shame • Shyness • Suffering • Surprise • Sympathy
__________

LIMERENCE, a word coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in 1977, is an involuntary cognitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic desire for another person, the limerent object.

JEALOUSY is frequently used to describe what is more properly envy, fixation on what someone else has.

REGRET is distinct from GUILT, which is a deeply emotional form of regret.

SHAME typically refers to the social (rather than personal) aspect of GUILT.

REGRET can describe not only the dislike for an action that has been committed, but also, importantly, regret of inaction. Many people find themselves wishing that they had done something in a past situation.

EMBARRASSMENT is similar to SHAME, except that shame (at least in the West) may be experienced for an act known only to oneself. Embarrassment usually carries the connotation of being caused by an act that is merely socially unacceptable, rather than morally wrong.

HOSTILITY is used in everyday life as a synonym for ANGER and AGGRESSION.

DOUBT is uncertainty in the context of TRUST (where it takes the form of DISTRUST), action, decision, or belief. It implies challenging some notion of reality, in effect, and may involve hesitating to take a relevant action due to concern that one might be mistaken or at fault.

FRUSTRATION is an emotion that occurs in situations where one is blocked from reaching a personal goal. The more important the goal, the greater the frustration. It is comparable to ANGER.

ACCEPTANCE, in spirituality, mindfulness, and human psychology, usually refers to the experience of a situation without an intention to change that situation. Acceptance is contrasted with RESISTANCE.
__________

Classification by basic emotions

One of the most influential classification approaches in the study of emotion is Robert Plutchik’s classification into eight primary emotions. The emotions that Plutchik lists as primary are:

anger
fear
sadness
joy
disgust
curiosity/interest
surprise
acceptance

Similar to the way primary colors combine, primary emotions are believed to blend together to form the full spectrum of human emotional experience. Plutchik reasons that these eight are primary on evolutionary grounds, by relating each to behavior with survival value. For example: fear motivates flight from danger, anger motivates fighting for survival. They are considered to be part of our biological heritage and built into human nature.

Paul Ekman devised a similar list of basic emotions from cross-cultural research on the Fore tribesmen of Papua New Guinea. He found that even members of an isolated, stone age culture could reliably identify the expressions of emotion in photographs of people from cultures which the Fore were not yet familiar, and concluded that the facial expression of some basic emotions is innate. The following is Ekman’s list of basic emotions:

anger
fear
sadness
happiness
disgust

Ekman holds that this lends further support to the view that at least some emotions are primary, innate, and universal in all human beings.

Lazarus (1991) similarly offers a taxonomy of 'Core Relational Themes' for various emotions; these help define both function and eliciting conditions. They include a demeaning offense against me and mine for anger; facing an immediate, concrete, and overwhelming physical danger for fear; having experienced an irrevocable loss for sadness; taking in or being too close to an indigestible object or idea (metaphorically speaking) for disgust; making reasonable progress toward the realization of a goal for happiness.

Balance

2007-10-16T07:59:00.000-04:00

What is BALANCE to you?
How do you achieve BALANCE in your life?

delicate balance
fragile balance
tricky balance
onerous balance
Sisyphean balance
balancing the boulder
balancing a boulder
petulant pebble

balancing a boulder
on my shoulder

Brainstorming:

petulant pebble
ponderous pebble
pouring pebbles in the mud

on the lakeshore
to make a driveway

pebble beach
pebble shore
small pebble causing ripples in a pond
__________

Writing Tip of the day
10/22/2007
Seek to maintain balance because writing is both a privilege and a business.

ABC's of emotions

2007-10-16T05:12:00.000-04:00

A = Agenda
B = Backstory
C = Conflict

Agenda ~ characters desire something.
Backstory ~ the characters' desires come from emotional, personal history.
Conflict ~ opposition to these desires can come both from within (from conflicting emotions or emotional drives butting up against some obstacle) or from without (from other foces or characters).
__________

Four generations

2007-10-16T04:56:00.000-04:00

Lilli ~ b. 1922 ~ age 85 in 2007
Anna Grace ~ b. 1943 ~ age 64
Julia ~ b. 1962 ~ age 45 (BA 1984, MDiv 1987)
Zoe ~ b. 1997 ~ age 10

Four elements, four seasons

An email from your imagination

2007-10-15T02:45:00.000-04:00

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:07:59 -0700

We got this email today from your imagination. It was misaddressed to us, so we're sending it along to you. We hope it finds you well.

-----Original Message-----

Hello!

This is your imagination. I know work, school, and general craziness have been keeping us apart lately. But there's something we need to do together this November.

It's called National Novel Writing Month. For it, we'll bash out a 50,000-word novel, from scratch, in 30 days. You and me. Writing a book. Together.

I need you to sign us up. Because I don't have any arms.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Love,

Your imagination

__________

This email is being sent to you because you or someone who loves you put your email address in the "NaNoRemindMe" box of NaNoWriMo.org. This is the only email you will receive from us. Unless, of course, you sign up for National Novel Writing Month. Then you'll get dozens of great emails, including pep talks from Neil Gaiman, Julianna Baggott, Sue Grafton, Naomi Novik, Garth Nix, Deanna Raybourn, Tom Robbins, and Sara Gruen. All for free. We're a creative writing nonprofit. And we want you to write that book.
__________

Hello imagination,

I was thinking about you today when I set up this blog just for our NaNoWriMo novel. While I was thinking about it, I posted some things that I hope will keep us energized and motivated. As far as I can tell, we are so ready to get started. Do you have any ideas about what kind of novel this will be? or any possible characters? or any action situations? I was kinda wanting to do it in the third person, but I can't find the Magna Carta I wrote last spring. I know I saved it somewhere I wouldn't forget, but I have forgotten where that was. I need a little help here, please!

Love,
~~~ Me

P.S. I'll go right now and sign us up.
__________

Found it!
Posted it Saturday, June 9, 2007
My Magna Carta

What makes a good novel?
Chris Baty, who wrote No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, made this list for himself (pp. 85-86):

first-person narration
quirky characters
true love
found objects
disappointment
music
catharsis
feisty old people
strong, charismatic protagonists
improbable romances
smart but unpretentious writing
urban settings
cliffhanger chapter endings
characters who are at turning points in their lives
books set in the workplace
happy endings

So, what do I like best in a good novel?
Baty says, "Okay, now make your list. Go crazy, and take as long as you want. Once you've finished, frame it. This document will be your Magna Carta for the next month, helping you channel your awesome writing powers for the good of the people" (p. 86).

third-person narration
feisty old people
strong, charismatic protagonist
liminality = characters who are at thresholds
disappointment
found objects, if Baty means "coincidental" things
nature settings, but in the city
unpretentious writing, yes, that sounds natural
catharsis = purging of emotions, relieving emotional tensions
happy endings

Here's one other sentence from Baty that I really like: "Write your joy, and good things will follow" (p. 88).
__________

So tell me, imagination, should I buy this book? or not? Would I even have time to read it, what with all that writing we're going to be doing? Probably not. But what if I want it later, maybe for inspiration, and I can't get it? Maybe I should buy the kit instead? The kit includes:

48-page booklet
31 Daily Noveling Briefs—recommended allowances of writing advice and activities for every day of the noveling month
Guided, month long, displayable log for keeping track of progress
Motivational materials, pep-talking letters, and commitment coupons
The Mighty Badge of the Triumphant Wordsmith

Maybe I should buy BOTH the book and the kit? B&N says this about the author: "Chris Baty is a writing cheerleader who founded National Novel Writing Month in 1999. Since then, the November writing escapade has grown to include 60,000 participants from all over the world."
__________

Well, imagination, I've done it. I signed us up as Bookbuddybonnie, visited the Literary Fiction Forum and, somewhere down one of the pages, found this:

vertical-chaos RE: Our Preliminary Novel Ideas
0 / 50,000
Joined:
October 2, 2007
Location: Bklyn, NY
Posts: 111
Posted on:
10/02/2007 - 03:16 I'm excited to get going on mine for real rather than just doing character exploration!

It's going to be called "Coventry" right now ~ not sure if it'll change or not. It's slightly "The Hours"-esque in that it's three women in three different time periods...all connected by Coventry Cathedral in England ~ when the first cathedral was VERY new, during WWII when it was destroyed, and modern-day. Turns out they're all the same soul all working through lessons, at least one of which she refuses to learn and is having to repeat lifetime after lifetime. They are pretty inextricably linked with the location. It's about loss, destruction, and redemption. At least I hope that's how it turns out. :)

Characters:
* Madeline ~ She's only a little girl when the first cathedral is being built. Her father's one of the master stone masons. I know I'll be carrying her through at least young adulthood, but I'm not sure where that's going to lead yet.
* Magdalene (Maggie) ~ She's around 18-22 (unclear yet...could go to 25 or so) during WWII. Orphaned several years before, she and her two brothers are living with their uncle, a priest who serves at Coventry. She's there when the city falls victim to a German air raid and the cathedral is lost. And...that's about all I know about her so far.
* Madison (Maddie) ~ I know the most about Maddie so far. She's an Episcopal priest...goes to England to visit friends and just feels drawn to the cathedral. An exchange is worked out and she begins serving at Coventry. Until very heavy emotional stuff she's pushed down and pushed down comes back to bite her in the butt. I don't want to give away too much, but let's just say her seminary training was in New York City...from 2000 until 2003.

They're all guided and guarded by the archangel Raziel. He's actually a character a friend has RPed with, but she's given me permission to use him in the novel because he's so integral to all three of their lives.

I've been playing with my characters for almost a year (yes, in charming fashion, they popped up while I was attempting NaNo last year...), so I'm feeling pretty comfortable with them at this point. Well, Madeline and Maddie anyway. Maggie is who I think will be my surprise...she's the one I know the least about in spite of me feeling like she's sort of the key to it all.

We'll see how it all comes together. I've got some broad sketches about how I want to set things up, but if I learned anything last year it's that no matter how I plan the characters will take it where they want to go.

Buckle up! It's gonna be an interesting ride!! :)

Oh, no! People already have their characters figured out, with names and problems and some way to tie them together, at least in the author's mind. Now I getting worried and my stomach has gotten tense! Oops! We just received an email from the NaNoWriMo Team:
__________

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:41:25 -0700 (PDT)
NaNoWriMo loves Bookbuddybonnie

Dear Bookbuddybonnie,

Well, you did it. You've gone and pledged your November to the pursuit of the month-long novel. Whether this is your first or ninth NaNoWriMo, we know you're going to have a great time, and we're thrilled to have you writing with us.

In case you forget it, here are your author log-in and password for the NaNoWriMo site:

username: Bookbuddybonnie
password:

In a moment, you'll have a chance to complete your Author Profile, and begin getting to know other participants in the NaNoWriMo forums. One quick thing: While filling out your profile on the site, it's important that you affiliate with a NaNoWriMo region. Many towns have Municipal
Liaisons to organize NaNo write-ins and get-togethers in October and November, and affiliating with a region will automatically add you to the update list. It also begins adding your word-count to your region's cumulative tally, allowing you to do your part in crushing the spirits of NaNoWriMo authors in rival cities and towns. Every region has a special message board called a Regional Lounge that becomes visible to affiliates of that region at the bottom of the Forums page.

To affiliate with a region, just sign in to the site, click the Edit Profile link at the top of the site, and then look for the My Regions link in the far-left-hand navigation box. Click that, and you'll see two tabs. The "Regions" tab lets you affiliate with any of NaNoWriMo regions around the world, and the "My Regions" tab is where you tell us how much correspondence you'd like to have from your regions. Once you've affiliated with a region, you can unaffiliate with it through the "My Regions" tab.

To fill out your author profile, just click the same Edit Profile link. In the middle of the page, you'll see two tabs---Account Settings, where you change your password, upload a photo, and do other site maintenance-y things, and Author Info, where you can tell the NaNo-world about yourself. On November 1, we'll unlock the novel-excerpt and word-count area of your Author info area so you can post your escalating word-count, view your personal stats, and offer an excerpt of your work-in-progress to friends and fans.

Before you head off to begin training those typing fingers, we wanted to offer a few bits of advice. You'll find many great tips in the forums, and we'll be sending pep talks directly to your inbox during November. But for now, here's a quick overview of the three-and-a-half things
we wish we had known for our first NaNoWriMo.

1) It's okay to not know what you're doing. Really. You've read a lot of novels, so you're completely up to the challenge of writing one. No plot? No problem! If you feel more comfortable outlining your story ahead of time, absolutely do so. But it's also fine to just wing it. Write everyday, and a book-worthy story will appear, even if you're not sure what that story might be right now.

2) Do not edit as you go. Editing is for December. Think of November as an experiment in pure output. Even if it's hard at first, leave ugly prose and poorly written passages on the page to be cleaned up later. Your inner editor will be very grumpy about this, but your inner editor
is a nitpicky jerk who foolishly believes that it is possible to write a brilliant first draft if you write it slowly enough. It isn't. Every book you've ever loved started out as a beautifully flawed first draft. In November, embrace imperfection and see where it takes you.

3) Tell everyone you know that you're writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who've had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

3.5) There will be times you'll want to quit during November. This is okay. Everyone who wins NaNoWriMo wanted to quit at some point in November. Stick it out. See it through. Week Two can be hard. Week Three is much better. Week Four will make you want to hug the world.

With great well wishes on the noveling month ahead,

The NaNoWriMo Team
__________

I think I'll read this email later; I've decided I'm probably crazy to be doing this at all. I hafta go dream up a character ... or two ... or three.

Think GREEN today

2007-10-15T01:29:00.000-04:00

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. The idea is to get everyone talking towards a better future. Follow this link and take a look.

Today I plan to WEAR GREEN and offer TIPS and CHALLENGES and IDEAS (like these) on my blogs:

Ideal Bite offers daily TIPS ON BEING GREEN.

Diane of Big Green Purse has a CHALLENGE:
Her "One in a Million" Campaign is urging a million women to shift $1,000 of money they'd spend in a year anyway to green products and services that can help protect the environment. It's important because:

Manufacturing to meet consumer demand drives pollution and climate change.
Pollution and climate change affect our health and safety.
If we use our consumer clout to improve manufacturing, we protect ourselves and the planet, too.

Because women spend $.85 of every dollar in the marketplace, we have the clout to make a difference. Hybrid cars? Organic food? Safe cosmetics? Green shopping has already had an impact.

Women are finding all kinds of ways to swap out "brown" products for "green."

Erin, a Green Purse Alerts! subscriber, joined the One in a Million Campaign at the beginning of this year. She recently sent the balance sheet she downloaded from the Big Green Purse website to help her track her eco purchases and report back on her pledge. It only took her six months to become "One in a Million." Her secret? She bought two water saving toilets for a total of almost $600, then made up the difference in organic groceries, safe cleansers, and organic potting soil.

For IDEAS on how you can swap your current purchases for green ones that would make a difference, visit the One in a Million campaign web page.

Some of the most important options (and ones that should be readily available in your neighborhood as well as on-line) include:

____ Organic, locally grown food (reduce pesticides)

____ Energy-efficient appliances (stop global warming)

____ Phthalate-free cosmetics (protect your health)

____ Fuel-efficient car (save energy, clear the air)

____ Fair trade, shade grown coffee (protect rainforests)

____ Non-toxic cleansers (protect your health, reduce toxins)

A novel in 30 days

2007-10-14T21:27:00.000-04:00

Students try novel idea: Writing book in 30 days
Kristin Park
Special for The Republic
Nov. 25, 2006 12:00 AM

After reading a newspaper article about a person with amnesia and then letting his imagination wander, Lanis Johnson felt he had the makings of a novel. It was only 10 days later when Johnson typed the last page of his 180-page manuscript.

Johnson and 20 other students, is taking a unique creative-writing class at Phoenix College called 30 Days = Novel. The online course has spanned the month of November to coincide with National Novel Writing Month. With the goal of completing 50,000 words, the length of a short novel, students are drafting a creative work by following daily writing goals and regularly checking in with each other online.

Instructor Trina Belanger encourages the students to focus on meeting a daily word quota by writing every day. She also discourages editing or reworking the words being laid to paper, which is a foreign concept to many writers.

"If we edit during the process, we will not get anywhere. The inner critic takes over and censors the work and the process," Belanger said.

Johnson, 34, of Buckeye, said he has felt comfortable with the course's writing process and calls himself a "forward writer."

"I don't develop a plot. I really like to write things and let them fall into place without going back over what I've already written. Rewriting makes it more sterile. You strip the emotion and lose that rawness," Johnson said.

A stay-at-home dad and full-time college student, Johnson was not at all intimidated by the feat of drafting a novel. "I find writing fun. It's not work - it was just like getting three free credits. I never dreamed I'd finish in 10 days, though. I also didn't realize how sore my hands and shoulders would be," Johnson said.

Annette Pye is another 30 Days = Novel student juggling responsibilities while aspiring to become a writer. The Tolleson resident has three kids, a full-time job and manages to carry a full-time course load at Phoenix College, where she focuses on business management.

Although Pye, 38, did not complete her novel in record time like Johnson, she is nearing the home stretch and continues to make her daily goals. Hers is a murder/mystery /time travel novel and takes place in 1730 and 2004.

Pye squeezes in her writing time between midnight and 4 a.m. and said that sleeping is a luxury within her hectic lifestyle. "My writing takes me out of the everyday stress."

She refers to Belanger as her cheerleader and appreciates the instructor's daily posts of encouragement and writing tips.

Belanger has no doubt her students will finish. "I don't think the students will allow anyone not to succeed. They bolster each other up all the time. Although writing is a solo sport, taking on something like this has a team mentality. It's working," Belanger said.
__________

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/1125phxnovel1125.html

Writing a children's book

2007-10-14T19:21:00.000-04:00

Six-week plan for writing a
marketable children's book

by Shirley Raye Redmond

Did you love curling up with a stack of library books when you were a child? If so, you've probably dreamed -- off and on -- of writing for kids. But life keeps getting in the way. There's been no time, and besides, you're not even sure where or how to begin.

Have you got six weeks? If you're working full time, can you set aside six weeks of evenings and weekends? If so, you can start and finish a marketable book for youngsters. I've used this method six times and each completed manuscript, including all those mentioned in this article, sold to a major New York publisher. Use the following blueprint and make the project your top priority for the given time period.

Week 1
This week of planning is every bit as important as the actual weeks of writing and revision. Don't take it lightly. You need an idea and a plan. Had you elected to undertake a six-week home improvement project, you would first decide if you were going to build a deck or a garage. Then you would need a building plan before you actually purchased supplies or invited friends to a Saturday afternoon construction party.

I had been reading Richard Ellis' The Search for the Giant Squid: The Biology and Mythology of the World's Most Elusive Sea Creature. Recalling my own childhood interests, I knew that inquisitive youngsters would relish a book about this fascinating subject. That was my idea-to write my own book about the giant squid.

But my plan was more specific than that: I wanted to write a nonfiction book for readers in grades 2-4. I spent my planning week in bookstores and the children's section of my local library. I read dozens of books aimed at youngsters in this age category. I studied the diction and sentence structure. I counted words, paragraphs and pages. This intensive market analysis provided me with a suitable blueprint or pattern for construction. I figured the book should have 48 pages, with about 1,000 words of text.

I also compiled a list of suitable publishers that had already published books similar in style to the one I intended to write. With that, I had a premise, a pattern and a list of possible publishers.

Week 2
Now you can start drafting a rough outline of your manu-script. If you're writing fiction, you'll need to plot your story, develop character dossiers and establish a believable setting. Nonfiction writers will use this week to do research and take notes. If your topic is one that has been written about many times before-such as the 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition-consider a creative new slant to make your manuscript more marketable.

On a trip to Yellowstone National Park, I picked up materials about the expedition and learned how the explorers attempted to capture a prairie dog for Thomas Jefferson as a souvenir of their westward journey.

The image of 40 grown men peering and reaching down into prairie-dog burrows (while the prairie dogs watched curiously in the background) tickled my "inner child."

It was that episode I chose to focus on while writing my 48-page reader Lewis and Clark: A Prairie Dog for the President (due from Random House in January 2003). I spent my research time discovering how the explorers' Corps of Discovery actually shipped the little creature back to Washington, D.C.

Week 3
Using the rough outline you drafted last week, you're now ready to start scribbling a story. Do it quickly. Don't worry about grammar, punctuation, spelling, paragraph structure or anything else. Simply write. Give in to the temptation to ramble on and on. Want to write your ending first? Go ahead! If a particular scene comes to mind and you're eager to put it on paper, do so. You can stitch everything together later.

To help you stay on course, however, keep your working title in sight at all times-at the top of each page, if you're writing longhand, or on a sticky note attached to your computer. This "word map" will help you maintain focus and keep you on the road you wish to travel, without accidentally veering off a side street. I used "Prairie Dog" instead of "Lewis and Clark" at the top of my page so that everything I scribbled would relate directly or indirectly to the capture of that rodent.

Week 4
If you're prone to procrastinate, this will be your most dangerous week. Don't let your will power wane. Take your craft-and yourself-seriously. Persistence, patience, professionalism and perseverance are more often the keys to writing success than talent or creative originality, so don't quit now. If you're working on a long manuscript, keep those creative juices flowing. If necessary, set a word or page quota for yourself. Be your own merciless drill instructor-don't slack off.

If you've been working on a shorter manuscript, you may already be done with your second draft. What now? Yet another draft-this time separating the wheat from the chaff. Don't edit or tackle grammatical errors at this time. You'll do that during Week 6. Now you want to focus on quality control. Get rid of anecdotes or scenes that do not move your story forward. Concentrate on the "why" of it all. Why are you writing this story? To inform? Inspire? Entertain? Does each page or chapter reflect your purpose? Does the dialogue enhance the plot or pace of your story? If not, get rid of it.

"Persistence, patience, professionalism and perseverance are more often the keys to writing success than talent or creative originality"

Week 5
How does your story measure up? Check for consistency. Does your protagonist still have blue eyes, or have they suddenly become brown? Have you been consistent with your spelling of Sacagawea (the preferred spelling of the U.S. Mint)? Is your story still being told from the same character's viewpoint?

While stitching together any out-of-order scenes or chapters, consider the emotion in your story. Like mortar between bricks, emotion and humor will stabilize your narrative. Children are emotional creatures. Let them giggle, worry and even weep. But if your story must have a sad ending-such as two friends parting-at least make it hopeful so that young readers can imagine the two friends will meet again one day.

Week 6
Now's the time to tackle the good, the bad and the ugly. You can be sure your final draft will still need polishing and revision. Clean up that sloppy copy. Perfect your punctuation. A professional presentation is essential for attracting the attention of a discerning editor. Don't skimp on hard work this week. Rigorous revision is often what separates the published writers from the unpublished ones.

Consider your paragraphs one by one. Are they all tightly focused? Are the transitions smooth? Is your sentence structure too complex? Are your word choices age-appropriate and accurate? In polishing my Lewis and Clark manuscript, I realized I had misused the words "marmot" and "woodchuck" to describe two very different rodents. Actually, these two words refer to the same animal.

And your young readers will notice those lapses in logic. In my 96-page chapter book Grampa and the Ghost, the Gaffney youngsters rebel against the very idea of ghosts, while their grandfather readily accepts Tallulah's spooky presence. I knew savvy young readers would wonder why. So I addressed the problem head-on by having one of my characters declare: "You don't believe in ghosts, do you? There are no such things as ghosts and goblins anyway!" His grandfather replies with a sigh: "Mark, when I was a boy, there were no supersonic jets -- I went to Africa on a ship. Man only dreamed of going to the moon, and we couldn't even imagine such things as heart transplants. Microwave ovens, high-tech computers and even televisions weren't even dreamed of. So you see, an old-fashioned ghost isn't such a hard thing for me to believe in at all."

So that's the basic blueprint. Take it and custom-build your very own marketable children's book!
__________

An article from The Writer

My five strengths as a writer

2007-10-14T16:45:00.001-04:00

LOVE OF WORDS
NOTE-TAKING SKILLS
ACTIVE IMAGINATION
PERSISTENCE
IDEAS INTO WORDS
1. First would have to be my lifelong fascination with words. A wordsmith has to be very comfortable with words. When I discovered philosophy is all about WORDS, I majored in philosophy for my first degree ... and I loved it! Along the way I added another major, getting the second part of my double-major in English Language and Literature because of people like e.e. cummings, who wrote poems using words like a philosopher:

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one ...
one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.

My interpretation? We are all ONE, but when we lie-cheat-steal-murder we separate ourselves from other people. Oh, I love words!

2. Other writers inspire me, and I am good at taking note of what they say. Currently, I have three quotes to inspire me:

At the top of Bonnie's Books until yesterday: "Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow." ~~~ Lawrence Clark Powell

Topping Bonnie's Books as of last night: "What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading." ~~~ Eleanor Roosevelt

At the top of Words from a Wordsmith: "The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." ~~~ Albert Camus

Posted beside my computer: The secret to writing a book? I think it's this: Take good notes and write often enough that it starts to accumulate." ~~~ Colleen Redman

3. I have a very active imagination! The other day Colleen, having noticed the plethora of blogs I have (don't ya just love words like plethora, meaning "extreme excess, an embarrassment of riches"?), wrote to me:

Hi Bonnie, Are you over here thinking up themes for new blogs?!

Yep, I admit it. Before you can DO it, ya gotta THINK it, and I'm definitely a thinker, a dreamer, a midnight schemer.

4. Next strength? Persistence. Another word for that is stubbornness, but I'll say persistence because it sounds better. Once upon a time I called that strength stick-to-it-iveness. I stick to my writing until I have polished it to the rhythm I want. I edit, I say it out loud (or more often, in my mind) until the flow pleases me. And not only with poetry, but with prose. I don't want to stumble over a word that just SITS there in the middle of a sentence, getting in the way. So I keep tightening my writing, tweaking it here and there, giving it another syllable or two, taking out the fluttery useless words, finding a slightly better way of expressing myself. I hang in there, trying not to hang myself with any loose threads hiding among the words.

5. And the last one for today ... translating stuff into understandable language. When I was a new pastor out visiting, one woman said something that has stuck with me, partly because she inadvertantly STUNG me with her words:

Now HE was a good preacher! He was so smart that he used BIG words nobody understood. Really smart man.

First reaction was thinking, "She thinks I'm not as smart as that guy!" Second thought was, "No, he wasn't smart, but STUPID and I am smart enough to use words people understand!" Another person who was telling me about their former pastors said of one:

He would knit together a pretty good sermon, but he didn't stop there. No, he kept going until he unraveled what he had said and I couldn't figure out his point. But Bonnie, I remember your sermons!

Toward the end of my years as pastor, I was asked to preach for the community's joint Thanksgiving Service. Having just the day before preached on a text that was perfect for that setting, I decided to use it again, thinking it would be a couple of months later and people from my church would have forgotten most of what I'd actually said ... and those who remembered would forgive me. At the end of the service as people were filing out and shaking my hand, one mother whose ten-year-old stood there beside her grinning, said to me:

He remembers you preached that before, and he noticed the parts you had changed!

It had been so memorable that even a ten-year-old remembered it months later! Translating the big words into understandable language IS a strength, right? Right, so I claim it, even if I don't always sound erudite.

How to revise your book ~ after November 30th

2007-10-14T16:41:00.001-04:00

How to revise a book is a recent post on Maureen Johnson's blog. I have never heard of her, but this information may come in handy some day. I especially like the last part of the article, about this photo:

I tend to hack the book into all of its component pieces, spread them out, and then systematically (don’t ask me what kind of system that matically refers to) rearrange them and delete them. From there, I reshape the story and write it again. Here, as an example, is what Suite Scarlett looks like right now [the photo above].

I can write a rainbow.

Those are the different story events, color-coded by type, arranged into working sections. It is very pretty. I enjoy looking at it. It is behind my head right now as I type this, and it reassures me. I started doing this because, somewhere around the third draft of 13 Little Blue Envelopes, I tore off the entire first third of the book and changed a major portion of the plot. From then on, I needed to see everything at a glance and track all the big movements. But I write every book differently. I'm really glad I'm not alone in this. Here's the frighteningly wonderful Holly Black talking about how she reinvents her style with each book.

This is one of the exciting things about writing. Everyone does it differently. Maybe the Writer's adventures will be helpful to you, maybe not. My only real, hard piece of advice about the writing process is this: if anyone tells you that there is just one method or a correct way of getting it done (few people would, but there's always someone), they're wrong. If you want to revise your book completely backwards, while hanging upside down covered in bees . . . feel free. Choose your teachers carefully. In the end, you'll teach yourself anyway.

NaNoWriMo ~ coming in November

2007-10-14T16:09:00.000-04:00

In September I told my friend Emily about NaNoWriMo, a marathon dash to complete a novel in a month. Since the chosen month is November, I was thinking about the mad dash of writing a full 50K novel in 30 days. That would be a 50,000-word novel, written from beginning to end in a mere month. And November is a 30-day month! Let's see, doing the math ... 50,000 words divided by 30 days ... hmmm, that would be 1,667 words a day. As a teacher who has graded many papers, I know that a double-spaced page of regular-sized type is about 250 words, more or less. So I'd have to complete a 7-page paper every day? Aaaaiiiieeeee! My students complain about having to write a 3-page paper by next week! That same day I was reading articles from the New York Times and ran across this:

Paddles on the Potomac, History on the Shore
It's a travel piece about kayaks in Maryland, which begins like this:

On a morning heavy with summer, our five candy-colored sea kayaks sliced almost silently over a dead-calm section of river, cleaving wavy lines through pewter folds of water. Gauzy clouds hung motionless in the pale sky. Not a breath of air stirred as we paddled rhythmically along.

What does this have to do with NaNoWriMo? Well, as I said, I was thinking about the mad dash of writing a full 50K novel in 30 days. I happen to like the opening of this article. I don't have a clue what my novel will be about ... or who my characters will be ... or anything really. But I like this opening. And I like the title, too. So I ran the title through my brain's word processor and came up with a play on the NYT title:

Puddles on the Pavement, Footprints on the Floor

Okay, I've never heard of a novelist starting her story with the title. And what in the world would I do with puddles, pavement, footprints, and a floor? I dunno, but I'm thinking about it. That's probably the first step, right? For now, though, the title is simply purple prose, in a puddle. Or would that be, in a muddle?

If you want to read the NYT article, click on the title. If you are interested in writing a novel, click on NaNoWriMo.