The Etiquette of Contest Judging

The writing contest circuit is alive and kicking this time of year with the Golden Hearts, the Ritas, and various chapter contests all approaching the judging deadline. I judged in the Golden Heart this year, and I also judged our chapter's contest this past summer.

I enjoy it for a variety of reasons. For one, sometimes I read really cool writing that I know I'll be able to find on my Books A Million shelf in a couple years. For another, judging a contest (if one judges well) gives me the opportunity to encourage an up and coming writer who needs to know where they can improve, but also desperately needs to hear what they're doing right.

I never thought about writing a contest judging etiquette post until I recently saw some stuff on Twitter and Facebook that was an awful example of judging at its worst. I'll get to that in a minute. For now, I give you my (less than comprehensive, I'm sure!) list of what to do as a contest judge.

What To Do:

1. Remember you hold someone's dream in your hands. Treat it with the same respect you'd want someone else to give yours. This doesn't mean you inflate the score or give insincere compliments. It does mean you treat them as you would want to be treated were you in that writer's shoes.

2. Get perspective of the scoring range. If the highest possible score is a 9, the basic, average, "you've got a lot to work on" score should start at 5. Not 1. A 1 is "you don't know how to put two words together to form the most basic of sentences." A 1 is a crushing insult to someone who can, indeed, write basic sentences, but needs improvement in grammar, spelling, plot etc. If an entry is formatted correctly and meets the basic criteria for a story (has main characters, seems to have a plot, I'm able to read it, grammar errors notwithstanding), start in the middle and move up from there.

3. Don't let your personal pet peeves skew the score. If you hate sentences that start with "and" or "but" and you're sooo over vampires and the entry you're reading has both, look past it and judge the quality of the writing. If you honestly can't look past it, contact the contest coordinator and request the entry be reassigned. Being as fair as possible is crucial.

4. Learn how to offer constructive feedback. Saying "I don't like your character" isn't nearly as helpful as saying "I don't feel connected to your character because I don't have any idea how she feels about things. If you showed us her emotional reaction to the events in this chapter via body language, dialogue, and some inner turmoil, I think I'd be connected and care deeply about what happens next." Structure every comment with as much respectful, helpful guidance as possible.

5. Watch the negative comments. If the entry really needs a lot of work, focus on a few things that would make a big difference and touch on those. Be sure to include positive as well as constructive feedback. No one needs to have their spirits crushed when with a little thought and finesse you could get your point across with grace and respect.

6. Remember what it felt like to be new. Remember the rush of deciding you were going to finally pursue your dream of writing? Remember how you spilled words onto the page without much thought to anything but getting the story out? Remember when you thought that first manuscript was the best thing you'd ever write? Give the benefit of the doubt to the entrants. I'm not recommending inflating the score. I'm saying be gentle. Honest, but gentle. Choose encouragement over cruelty every time.

7. Be professional. Discreet. Respectful.

What Not To Do:

1. Do not, under ANY circumstances, tweet or post on Facebook negative comments about the entries you judge. This reeks of unprofessionalism. It's disrespectful to the writer whose entry you're judging and it makes you look rude. Don't blog about it either. If you really can't judge other writers' work without spilling negative comments online, don't be a judge.

2. Don't use sarcasm in your feedback. Even if you think you're being funny. Just don't.

3. Don't roll your eyes at mistakes you know you made when you were new. Help them fix it. If you're judging a contest where comments aren't included, take care how many points you knock off for different things. The goal isn't to grind the writer down.

4. Don't assume the responsibility of helping the writer "grow a thick skin." That's simply a poor excuse for you not remaining professional. Will the writer have to grow a thick skin (or at least the appearance of one?)? Maybe. But you don't have to be the cause.

I'm sure there are some points I've missed. Veteran contest judges (or writers who've had good/bad experiences with contests) feel free to chime in.

Top 10 Reasons I Won't Read Your Next Book

1. You barely skimmed the surface of your main characters. I love to sink beneath the skin of your characters and live in their heads for the duration of the book. If your heroine has the emotional capacity of block of wood, don't expect me to care if she gets put in mortal peril in chapter twenty. At that point, chances are good I'm rooting for her to bite the big one and put us all out of our misery.

2. Every character in your book is stunningly beautiful and perfect. I have a confession to make. Stunningly beautiful/perfect characters bore me to death. If you have an entire cast of them, I'll wonder if some cruel trick of fate has landed me in the middle of an episode of America's Top Model. I was about to say the only thing worse than reading an episode of ATM would be doing a workout with Richard Simmons, but at least he makes me laugh.

And he's not afraid of sequins.

3. Events happen that go against what a character would authentically do/choose simply so you can have the plot twist where you want it to twist. This a) is lazy writing and b) assumes I'm too stupid to realize you've hijacked your characters for the sake of sticking with your outline.

4. Your main character is never in any real danger. I don't necessarily mean physical danger, though most of what I choose to read includes that component. Emotional danger works too. At some point, I need to worry the hero/heroine won't get what he/she needs. I need to be afraid he/she won't live, won't succeed, or will be broken beyond repair. If you can't deliver stakes like those, what's the point of reading the story?

5. You repeat things I already know. It's one thing to revisit an important fact/idea occasionally throughout the book. It's another thing to SHOW me a character laughing and then fill up the next two paragraphs TELLING me the character found something funny. Give me the action and trust me to understand its implications. If more explanation is needed, do it in a way that doesn't assume I'm too stupid to have figured it out on my own.

6. You rhapsodize endlessly about a certain feature on your hero or heroine. I love a sexy hero as much as the next girl. I don't love endlessly reading gooey descriptions of the hero's lips. Eyes. Jaw. Pecs. Whatever. Now, this one is certainly a matter of personal taste. I'm sure there are readers out there who enjoy having the hero's adorable cleft chin referenced on every other page. I'm not one of them. I'm much more interested in what's going on within the hero's heart and mind. And I like to think the heroine is the kind of woman who's intelligent enough to get past her initial OOOH! Cleft chin! reaction and start looking for signs of heroism beneath the external.

7. Your villain doesn't scare me. Voldemort scared me. The killer from PSYCHOPATH (Keith Ablow) scared me. A villain who has the opportunity to cause pain and uses it instead to endlessly explain his every little move (All the better to give the hero a chance to arrive, my dear!) does not. I think it's fantastic when a villain offers some sort of insight into the way his mind works. I just need it to be done in a way that increases how threatened I feel by him. If I'm not afraid of the villain, I don't care about the story.

8. If I can see a convenient way out of the danger/situation, if all the hero/heroine has to do is do x instead of y and x doesn't cost him/her anything, I'm done reading. I love to be on the edge of my seat, unable to see how the hero/heroine could either a) get out of the situation unscathed or b) pay the cost of the decision they'll have to make. You do that, and I'm hooked for life.

9. Your ending is heavy on the exposition, light on the action. This is an easy mistake to make. You've got loose ends to tie up. Questions to answer. A foundation for the next book to lay. I get that. But I've been reading feverishly for the last two hundred odd pages to get to this point and I don't want to sit back and read the equivalent of Driving Miss Daisy. I want action. Danger. Life-threatening/emotionally-scarring stuff. I want to be unable to put the book down because I'm so afraid the characters I know and love won't come through.

10. Your stakes suck. For a story to really pull me in, the stakes have to matter. Really matter. I have to care deeply about the characters and the outcome of their struggle. I have to want them to make it. I have to see that the cost of them not making it is painfully high. It doesn't actually matter if the stakes involve physical danger, saving the world, or finally making a romantic commitment to their soul mate--the stakes have to really matter to me. For the stakes to matter, you have to push the characters to their limit. You have to make me frantically turn page after page because I have this terrible fear that somehow the characters won't pull it off.

Any reasons you'd like to add to the list?

Commercial Fiction: One Writer's (Probably Intelligent) Rant

Today, I read something that made me mad. I won't link to it because I refuse to drive more traffic to this person's site, but in a nutshell, this writer stated that agents and publishers are choking off the existence of literary fiction by forcing the masses to only read commercial fiction which, by this writer's definition, is "low-brow and unintelligent." The writer speculated on the lack of talent, work ethic, and intelligence in those writers who would write commercial fiction and stated they must be writing it because they wanted publication enough to suck up to what publishers wanted.

As a writer of commercial fiction, this offends me deeply. Here's why.

1. The writer makes a big fat assumption that I write commercial fiction because I'm not smart enough to write something else. I despise sweeping statements that classify an entire group of people as if there aren't nuances to everything. Frankly, if someone is too elitist or ignorant to realize that there are individual people with individual choices behind every commercial manuscript published, I'm not ready to give credence to anything they say.

More to the point, I write commercial fiction because it's what I love to read. I'm intelligent, educated, well-read, experienced, have a firm grasp of the English language and many of its subtleties, understand the craft of writing, have mastered much of the art of story-telling, know how to weave symbolism into the thematic fabric of my work, and can plumb the depths of the human condition with one finely crafted sentence. I could write anything I want to and I do. I write commercial fiction. Not because I'm unable to write something else. Because I love it.

2. This writer's assertion that her manuscript hasn't been published because agents and editors refuse to allow "real" fiction to fall into the hands of the adoring public smacks of both sour grapes and a stubborn refusal to take her rejections like a big girl and move on. We've all written something that won't sell (With, perhaps, the exception of Stephenie Meyer.). We've all been told "no." Most of us will hear the word "no" far more often throughout our career than we'll ever hear "yes." Does that mean agents and editors have banded together to refuse our masterpiece a space on the hallowed shelves of Barnes & Nobles because we're too intelligent for the masses to comprehend?

No.

It means write something else. And then something else. And something else again until you write something that will sell. It's called paying your dues. Practicing your craft. Hitting your stride. Finding your niche. Getting lucky with the market.

If a writer thinks she should be entitled to bypass this because her manuscript is important enough to be called literary fiction, she needs to wean herself off the Entitlement Wagon and join the real world. No one owes you a publishing contract simply because you typed "The End." I don't care what genre you write.

3. Which brings me to what really bothered me: the assumption that literary fiction is somehow more important than every other genre out there. This is elitist snobbery at its worst. It's like saying classical is the only true music out there and everything else is a red-headed step-child crowding the airwaves and filling up the concert venues and night clubs because the masses are too stupid to realize better music is out there. I can't get behind anyone who believes one form of artistry takes more thought, more work, or more craft than another. Or that one genre is more important than another.

Different genres exist because tastes differ. That's something to celebrate. I enjoy bypassing rows and rows of genres I don't care to read on my way to the rows and rows of genres I love. Why? Because other shoppers are crowding the rows I ignore, discovering new authors or buying from those they already love and that's a good thing.

A good thing.

It's good that smart, talented, artistic writers like Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Laura Lippman, Maggie Stiefvater, J.K. Rowling, Dean Koontz, Jeaniene Frost, Lillith Saintcrow, Julia Quinn, Nancy Werlin, Lisa Mantchev and a host of others buckled down, worked like ditch-diggers, and wrote what they loved.

And I must make it clear that I'm not taking aim at literary fiction or those who love to write it. I'm responding to one writer's attitude only. I think lit fic has just as much place on a bookshelf as manga or romance or thrillers or YA and I believe all authors deserve respect for pouring themselves into their craft.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to crafting my own piece of commercial fiction in which themes of abandonment, choice vs. nature, and what must be sacrificed for the greater good go hand in hand with fainting goats and stealing a flock of chickens.

Rules? We Don't Need No Stinking Rules!

There is much discussion within the writing community about rules. Rules for how to plot a book before you write. Rules for how to write--what should go where and when, what you can and can't get away with, and for Pete's sake, GRAMMAR people!--and rules for what to do with your writing when you're finished. Rules for how to approach an agent or editor.

It's enough to make a girl go a little crazy.

Don't get me wrong. Some rules are necessary. Like the one that says stalking a literary agent into a restroom and handing your manuscript under the stall door is TABOO. That's a good rule.

And the rules of the craft, the basic understanding of how to write a compelling sentence, an excellent paragraph, a knock-em-dead chapter, and work it all into a HOLY COW good book are necessary.

To a point.

But in every writer's life there comes a moment when you have to throw out some rules and start experimenting. It's how you gain a Voice that sets you apart from others. It's what defines your style.

When does that moment come? I don't know. I'm sure it's different for every writer, just like how every writer chooses to approach writing a book is different. Maybe you have to be good enough within the "rules" to be able to break some by choice. Maybe you have to practice long enough to start feeling constrained by the old school ideas.

I'm not here to tell you what rules YOU should break. (Though I definitely wouldn't hand my manuscript to an agent under a bathroom stall unless she'd specifically asked me for toilet paper and I had nothing else available.)

I'm here to tell you the rules I break. I didn't start off doing this. In fact, it took a few drafts of my first manuscript for me to realize my Voice was dependent on not just my ability to craft a compelling sentence, but my ability to artistically and strategically throw some rules out the window.

Rules I Break:

1. I love using fragments. Love it. Really. I use fragments to both establish my character's voice and to manage the pacing of a scene. Sue me.

2. I start sentences with And or But whenever necessary. I'd been told by a published author that was her biggest pet peeve. And yanno, if I did it every other sentence, it would be my biggest pet peeve too. But, I don't. I only do it when it works in dialogue or, again, for pacing.

3. I don't use the hero's journey or a formula stating at which point in my book I should hit each next escalation of plot. I don't think those are bad things at all. They just don't work for me. They shut down my imagination. I'm a more organic writer (Look! Pesticide free!) and while I do a blurb and some one sentence chapter plotting ahead of time, I let the book and the characters tell me when I need to slow down or speed up. Pacing for me is something I can feel as I write. Trying to shut down that sense and use diagrams etc. instead makes me slightly homicidal.

4. While I do read heavily in my genre (and two other genres that interest me), I don't agonize over whether the story I'm telling fits perfectly within my genre. I just get to know my characters, flesh out the plot, discover its twists and turns, and do my absolute best to remain authentic and truthful to MY story. I think that helps give me a unique Voice. I think it probably also gives my agent a headache. So, yanno, use this one at your own risk.

5. I write in first person. There isn't actually a rule against this, per se. But there's plenty of scuttlebutt warning new writers away from this. Some told me it was too risky. That until I had an established sales record, no editor would touch it. Some told me no agent would sign me either. I tried third person and it worked. Sort of. But my Voice comes alive in first person. And my Voice is what attracts (or repels) readers from my books. I decided first person fit best and plunged into it and I've never looked back. And guess what? My agent loved that I wrote in first person.

Which just illustrates my point. You can break any rule you want to break if you know how to do it well. And maybe you won't do it well at first, but that's what practice is for. So, go ahead. Be a rule-breaker. Experiment. Find what makes your Voice stand out and then practice that until it knocks 'em dead.

What rules do you break? What rules do you absolutely hate to see broken?

Point A to Point B

The other day, a (probably) well-meaning co-worker (eavesdropped) overheard a conversation between a friend and me regarding Casting Stones, the book I'm currently writing. (Please note it is no longer known by the generic Lilli's Book One although that title had a certain State The Obvious charm to it.)

In the conversation, my friend asked how the writing was coming along and I told her I needed to really get a chunk done in the next few weeks to hit my deadline. (By chunk I mean Holy Nearly Unattainable Word Count, Batgirl!) I then explained that it usually takes me around 4 1/2 hours to craft a 3000 word chapter.

The (probably) well-meaning co-worker chimed in with the pithy advice that if I already know what is going to happen in each chapter as I sit down to write (And yes, on this book, I actually DO know what's going to happen before I write the chapter ... I know. My Pantser universe sort of cracked and fell off its axis this time.) it shouldn't take 4 1/2 hours. I should just discipline myself to start at point A and end up at point B.

Easy.

I'd really love to finish the story of what happened to my (probably) well-meaning co-worker but as they've yet to find his body, I think I'll just keep quiet.

But, here's the deal. In writing, 1 plus 1 hardly ever equals 2. Usually, it equals something like 7 give or take 3 to the square root of 52347059 with a margin of error as wide as the entire state of Alaska.

Here's why:

1. I start the chapter at point A.

2. Point A may or may not be exactly, to the nanosecond, after point B in the previous chapter.

3. If it is exactly, to the nanosecond, after point B in the previous chapter, I still can't just jump in without looking both ways. I have to figure out a clever way to re-orient the reader to the thread of conversation/action because the reader may have taken a bathroom break between chapters 14 and 15 and been distracted by a totally unexpected opportunity to stalk Johnny Depp through the streets of her neighborhood as he canvased the local streets looking for the perfect location for his next movie. (Please note this is the ONLY acceptable excuse for putting one of my books down before you've reached the end. Well, that and childbirth. And Zombie Goat interference, of course.)

4. Most likely, I choose to move past some unimportant, mundane tidbits between chapter 14 and chapter 15 and I have to set the scene while still picking up the thread of action/conflict/dialogue. This means I have to carefully consider time of day, weather, angle of the sun, shadows, local foliage, animals indigenous to that location, my chicken-scratch hand-drawn map of local businesses, streets and homes, vehicles (make, model, color, condition) passing by, wind? no wind?, scents, home decor, character's clothing ... and no, I'm not kidding. All of that info goes into my head, bangs around, settles, and I spend TIME carefully crafting two or three measly sentences that perfectly (I hope) set the scene with appropriate sensory detail for the chapter to get from Point A to Point B.

5. How much of my 4 1/2 hours does that take?

6. Depends. Some days I have to Google and Google and Google yet again before finding what I need. Then I have to figure out how to translate that into words without using obvious cliches or truly stupid phrasing (I refuse to admit how often the latter is discovered by yours truly upon re-reading a chapter the next day.).

7. So ... goody! 150 words done! Only 2850 to go!

8. I spend the rest of the chapter trying to get the characters from Point A to Point B while layering in setting, sensory detail, increasing emotional conflict, giving hints about secrets yet to be revealed, pushing the main conflict forward, double and triple checking every sentence of dialogue to make sure it A) rings true for that character, B) furthers that character's agenda, C) furthers the story's conflict and D) doesn't sound supremely idiotic upon re-reading.

9. Oh, yeah, and I also have to do all of this while writing in first person so all of this (including other character's secrets, agendas, and voices) have to come through the filter of Lilli's voice without losing their own.

10. And I have to be sure to set myself up for point A in chapter 16 without giving too much away too soon or losing momentum and treading water while my characters sit and stare at each other wondering when their story-teller is going to get her act together.

11. And sometimes (Hang on for the shocker, those of you who know me well) the words won't come.

12. They. Won't. Come.

13. The image I want to describe remains tantalizingly just out of reach, flirting with the edges of my brain like a ... a ... a thing that flirts with the edges of my brain.

14. And sometimes the words that do come sound good at first but end up painting me and my characters into the kind of corner where all good stories go to die.

15. Other times words flow easily and I have a brief egotistical moment of sheer elation where I think Leonardo DiCaprio had it all wrong and I am truly the King of the World.

16. But most times, each sentence takes effort. Focus.

17. Time.

Since I think great art must cost the artist something, it's a bargain I'm willing to make. But writing, really good writing, isn't about starting at Point A and ending up at Point B. It's about what happens in between. And what happens in between takes time.

10 Things New Writers Need To Know

1. Finish a book.

Really. Stop starting every shiny new idea that flashes into your brain and find the discipline and perseverance to type one idea all the way through to The End. It won't be perfect. It probably won't ever be published. But what you'll learn about yourself and the process will be invaluable and every subsequent lesson on craft will make a lot more sense.

2. Don't be so eager to share your work with others.

Not yet, at least. It's important to protect the creative process and the shape of the story itself and staying away from too much outside input until you're sure of the story and the characters is a good idea. I write and write and write ... until I know exactly where I'm going and how I'm going to get there and THEN I invite critiques from my CPs. And if you're posting chapters of your work willy-nilly on your blog/site/facebook page, stop. Editors are leery about selling a book when much of it has already been offered for free.

3. Less talk, more typing.

There are many ways to network with other writers and I agree that for most of us, that's an important resource. However, many newer writers spend more time talking about writing than actually writing. Most of my author friends have time limits for how much we can spend answering email, blogging, typing on Twitter etc. And all of us have word count/page goals etc. that come FIRST. Write more. Talk about it less.

4. Read.

You'd think this would be a given, but I often talk to newer writers who rarely read. This is foolishness. For one, reading within your genre gives you a firm grasp of the genre and what's already been done to death. Reading outside your genre gives you inspiration for new ideas you could bring to your genre. For another, it's wise to read the books you're secretly afraid you'll never be good enough to write because that's where you absorb craft and, if you let yourself, become inspired. And finally, publishing is a small world. You'll feel like an idiot if you meet a prominent author in your genre at a conference and have no idea what they've written.

5. Linger.

Set the scene. Explore the emotions. Record the sensory detail. Don't be in such a hurry to get from point A to point B that you neglect to deliver the entire scope of the scene to your reader. If you don't know how to linger without filling your pages with exposition--fill your pages with exposition. Get it out there. You can trim it down later when you've figured out exactly what needs to be said.

6. Understand that writing is largely about revising.

And revising is often harder than writing the first draft. Your novel won't be perfect the first time around. It will have clumsy phrasing, awkward pacing, missing words, lack of setting, characters whose motivation is as clear as mud, exposition where there should be action, and plot arcs that manage to get run over by a bus halfway through the book. It doesn't matter. What you didn't learn about craft by finishing your first draft, you'll learn by revising.

7. No book is ever perfect.

There's always something you can change. Another layer to add. A scene to flesh out. A question to answer or one to raise. There are no perfect books but there are excellent books and the trick is knowing when you've hit that level and can let it rest.

8. Some books won't ever be published but you should write them anyway.

I know you think the book you're writing NOW is the one. You may be right. Then again, you may be wrong. It doesn't matter. What matters is pushing yourself to write the very best book you can and then surprising yourself with how much better you can make it through revising. No finished draft is ever a wasted endeavor. You might type The End and think you've reached the pinnacle of what you're capable of accomplishing but you'll look back in two years (IF you continue writing) and wonder at how far you've come.

9. Self-doubt comes with the territory.

I've come far enough along in my career to be privileged to call many published authors friend. All of us share one thing in common--we worry that we won't measure up. We worry that we will. We worry that no agent/editor/reader will snatch up our book and when they do, we worry they won't like it. When they do, we worry our next one will bomb instead. You can't get rid of every shred of doubt and you don't need to. The trick is to answer the doubt with action. Keep your head down and write. Take praise and criticism with as much humility and wisdom as you can and then write some more.


10. Interest and inspiration start books. Determination, perseverance, and stubbornness finish them.

If you're waiting for your "Muse" to return before you discipline yourself to write, you won't finish your book. If you want life to slow down, your schedule to clear, or the people around you to suddenly come to their senses and support your passion before you make the commitment to finish your book, you won't finish. It takes guts to push past the sparkling beginning and dive into the meat of the story. Finishing a book takes giving up sleep, turning down invitations, and refusing to watch tv so you can write instead. Finishing a book means writing a scene that refuses to go smoothly even though you'd rather do just about anything else. If you want to turn your writing from hobby to career, find the determination, perseverance and stubbornness to finish a book.

Writing With Depth

Layers.

When I begin a story, I take time to get to know the characters that populate the story's world. For me, that entails watching conversations between the characters (Yes, these take place inside my head. Yes, if you aren't a writer, you find that incredibly strange.) and asking questions about the characters so I can learn them from the inside out.

It's important to learn them from the inside out. Characters, like ogres, have layers.

Or they should.

Few things turn me away from an author faster than characters who are simple parodies of the basic character archetypes. Or worse, characters who behave in ways clearly meant to help the author stick to her synopsis. These are cookie-cutter characters with zero depth and I'm simply not interested in reading unless I can sink beneath a character's skin and live there for the duration of the story.

How do writers avoid creating cookie-cutter characters? By asking questions. Then asking another. Then another until we wind our way to the heart of our character.

Layers.

For example, I'm getting to know Grace, my heroine from Twisting Fate. I've known for quite some time that she's agoraphobic but I didn't know why. Knowing why is crucial. I can't simply write her as agoraphobic and expect my reader to just accept it. Every behavior is rooted in the soil of past experience, watered with a character's perceptions of her reality, and fed a steady diet of whatever keeps that character from embracing a new behavior. Could be fear. Could be anger. Could be a desire to protect or control. Could be a combination of things but something sparked that behavior, solidified it into habit, and holds it steady within that character's mind.

Layers.

To learn why Grace is agoraphobic, I asked the following questions:

1. What symptoms of agoraphobia does she exhibit?
2. Are there any places where those symptoms don't occur?
3. Moving beyond the symptoms, what is she afraid might happen if she's in a crowd?
4. Why is she afraid of that?

By the time I answered #4, I had it. I understood the terrible, awful something that caused Grace to exhibit symptoms of agoraphobia. I knew what she feared and why. I knew the worst that could happen if she was trapped in a crowd and I knew what lived inside of her that kept her from moving away from this behavior.

Layers.

Now that I know what has Grace so twisted up inside, I can see the events of the story through her eyes, colored by her perceptions, and her actions will be based in what I've learned of her, not on what my synopsis says should happen. She'll have depth. Layers.

I also know that Grace is a courageous woman with super powers. How can courage, super powers, and agoraphobia exist in the same woman?

Layers.

I asked questions to understand the nature of Grace's courage, the choices she's currently making that look like courage/protective nature to her, and I understood what would happen when events in the story put her agoraphobia (and its cause) in direct conflict with her courage.

I did that because no character is ever just one thing. Characters, like ogres, have layers. Motives. Fears. Desires. Convictions. Blind spots. Vices. Wounds. Conflicting thoughts/behavior. The characters who struggle with these things, who let us inside their heads for a front row seat to their own private war, are the ones we love to read. The ones who keep us coming back for more.

What layers can you add to your characters by asking questions? What character trait or behavior does a character exhibit that you've yet to really explore? Better yet, what are you waiting for? Go add some layers. :)

Toss A Bull Into The Orchard

I did a lot of babysitting during my teenage years, and most of it wasn't very memorable. A few temper tantrums or fist fights to break up. The occasional potty training mishap. And one rather unfortunate incident with a hot burner and a (used to be) pretty little stove cover which I'd rather not revisit.

But one night of babysitting is etched into my brain with the indelible ink of WHAT WAS I THINKING and solidified with a healthy dose of NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.

And I won't.

Unless the right set of circumstances presents itself, of course. If it does, I'm absolutely certain I will once more find myself doing what, any other day of the year, would be an unthinkable course of action for me.

It all started when a family friend called up asking if I could watch their seven kids at the last minute. Seven is not a number to be taken on by the inexperienced or faint of heart. Since I was neither, and since I was perpetually short on shoe money, I agreed.

This family of seven lived out in the country, surrounded by farmers, dairies and the miles of neatly planted orchards that stitch one small town to the next in California's Central Valley. I arrived with a couple hours of daylight left to burn, greeted the children, and was introduced to the concept of playing hide and seek in an orchard.

As a side note, let me just say that small children playing hide and seek among skinny little peach tree trunks have a distinct advantage.

We'd been playing in and out of the orchard and the rolling stretch of green-brown grass covering their backyard for twenty minutes when one of the boys ran up to me and breathlessly announced that the neighbor's bull had gotten loose again and was in the orchard.

I had the boy repeat this ridiculous statement twice, my brain trying the words on for size and rapidly rejecting them.

He pointed back into the trees. I followed the line of his arm and there he was--the biggest bull I'd ever seen (The fact that he was the only bull I'd ever seen has no bearing on this story.), staring across the scant thirty feet separating us with murder in his eyes.

At least, I thought it was murder. It could have been simple assault and battery, but I wasn't going to hang around dissecting nuances.

I called the children to me, using a whisper (All the better to not aggravate the bull) that nevertheless carried across the entire yard and issued the following rallying cry: "To the house! Now! But, move slowly. We don't want him to charge."

The children refused to obey. The girls settled back into their game of "house," carting a rather irritated feline around in a tiny pink stroller that bumped precariously across the wooden porch of their home. I dismissed them. The bull wouldn't charge the porch. Not when he had three juicy targets sitting right out in the open.

That one of those targets was me did not escape my attention. Reissuing my command to the boys, I gestured forcefully toward the porch before freezing, hand in mid-air, my eyes glued to the bull. I didn't know if there were hand gestures that meant "Charge the idiot human!" to the bull and I decided I could wait a few more years before finding out.

Rather than obey me, the oldest boy said a sentence that shifted my course of action irrevocably. He said, "Want me to get him out of the orchard for you?"

Excuse me? I glared at him, all thoughts of hoisting the two boys over my shoulder and sprinting for the porch temporarily forgotten. Who did he think was in charge here? If I needed help, I'd bloody well ask for it. Besides, the day I let some nine year old display more courage than me was the day I'd turn in my stilettos for a pair of rubber galoshes.

I couldn't leave the boys on their own to handle the bull. My sense of responsibility and my tremendously competitive nature wouldn't allow it. So, I heard myself say the unthinkable: "I'll do it."

I'll do it?? I'll chase a bull out of an orchard? With what? Sheer attitude and a shiny pair of pink Jelly shoes?

With plans like that, who needs obstacles?

I stepped away from the boys, walked toward the bull, and said, "If he charges me, run into the house, take the girls with you, and call for help."

"He won't charge. He'd get his horns stuck in the tree trunks," the six year old informed me.

His horns.

Until that moment, I hadn't truly examined my nemesis. I was too mesmerized by the "I stomp girls like you for breakfast" expression in his eyes to tear my gaze away.

I stopped walking and considered the rack of death mounted atop the bull's head. Suddenly, the phrase "take the bull by the horns" began to sound incredibly foolish. Combine the horns with the bull's homicidal leer (Don't think bovines can leer? Think again.) and the only thing moving me forward was my innate refusal to back down from any challenge issued to me, even if the challenge was from another species.

"Here. You'll need this." The nine year old shoved a stick in my hand.

A stick. A slim piece of wood versus two feet of perfectly honed horn. What was I going to do, smack him in the face as he crushed me to the orchard floor?

Sensing my ignorance, the six year old piped up. "Hit the tree and yell to herd him in the direction you want him to go."

Noise? Noise and attitude? That was my plan? The negatives to this course of action were too numerous to name, though my regrettable lack of herding skills could certainly head the list. On the plus side, I had plenty of experience in dealing out noise and attitude.

I crept closer, not fooled in the least when the bull simply stood there. Chewing. Trying to lull me into a false sense of security. No doubt hoping I'd believe he was munching on grass when I knew full well he was simply masticating the remains of whichever babysitter used to watch these children.

I stopped four trees away, gripped the stick like it might somehow save me, and slammed it into the tree trunk with a sharp thwack!

The bull bellowed.

He did not grunt. He did not issue a pleasant how-do-you-do. He did not gently call to any other cows in the area, hoping to poke fun at the idiot city girl who came to her appointment with Death armed with a twig.

He bellowed.

Somewhere in the years of reading everything I could get my hands on, I remembered that wolves or dogs or giraffes or some other breed of animal needed a show of dominance to establish who was master. I figured that probably applied to recalcitrant bulls as well so I bellowed back.

Mine was far less impressive.

The bull thought so too and took a step toward me.

I banged that stick against the tree trunk, screaming at the top of my lungs, and calculated how fast I could shimmy up the trunk before the bull could reach me.

Before matters could get that far, the nine year old raced past me, stick in hand, and gave the bull a stinging slap on the side. I was already moving toward him, sure I would have to dive between him and the bull and charge his parents serious hazard pay when the bull grunted, turned his head away from us, and ambled slowly back to his own pasture.

Just. Like. That.

Turns out, he was a eunuch. Or whatever you call a bull who no longer has his goods. Apparently, that makes a difference.

I told myself under no circumstances would I ever voluntarily face off with a bull armed with nothing more than a stick and pink Jelly shoes, but I would. If I felt challenged to prove myself. If I felt I had to protect someone. The right combination of character triggers can make a person do just about anything.

If it's true in life, it's true in writing. A pretty ordinary character can be made to face a bull in an orchard if the right circumstances are present. And the outcome can be funny. Suspenseful. Tragic. All depends. The above story wouldn't be nearly as interesting if I'd had to chase an obedient little lamb out of the trees. Where's the conflict? The need to step beyond what's comfortable? If your character always stays within her comfort zone, your reader will use your book to cure her insomnia. If, however, you understand what makes your character tick, you push her emotional triggers, and you make it authentically impossible to back down or turn away, you can push her into doing the unthinkable.

The trick to good writing is to know your character well, understand what triggers her deepest emotional responses, and then throw as many bulls in the orchard as you possibly can.

"Knowing" How To Do It Right

I didn't put this pic up because I think it's funny. I put it up because WHAT SANE PERSON DEFROSTS CHICKEN IN A BATHTUB? Blech.

I went to see Knowing last night with my hubby and Paul and most of it was really good. Suspense! (My hubby jumped at one point and now wants a t-shirt that says "I Had The Crap Scared Out Of Me By A Flaming Moose") Heart-rending moments! Interesting concept! (Albeit a tad predictable, since I called the ending twenty minutes before we got there.)

BUT ... there were three things that were just plain wrong and, as these are common mistakes writers make in books as well, I'm going to dissect them here. I'll try hard not to give any spoilers away, but it's a possibility so don't read any further if you want a totally unsullied movie-viewing experience:

* In Knowing, there are these seriously creepy albino-looking Whisper People that are stalking Nicholas Cage's kid. These Whisper People are so unbelievably freaky, they sort of melt out of the woods and once even walk right into the kid's bedroom at night when he's sleeping and wake him up with horrible consequences. These are not people you want anywhere near your kid and Nicholas's character has already had one run-in w/them, trying to chase them away, and he lost, to put it mildly. At one point in the movie, Nicholas Cage and the woman who is helping him (whose daughter is also being stalked by the Whisper People), drive w/their kids to a trailer in the middle of nowhere and then leave their sleeping children in the car while they investigate the inside of the trailer.

This is a serious breach in believable character motivation. I'm a parent. I can tell you with absolute certainty that if creepy Whisper People were after my kid, I wouldn't leave his side for one second until I was sure the danger was gone. This was a cheap ploy by the director to make sure the next piece of his movie could happen as he wanted it to happen. Authors do this too--sacrificing authentic character motivation for the sake of shoe-horning something into the plot. Don't do it. Readers always know the difference.

*In a later section of the movie (SPOILER ALERT HERE), the Whisper People steal both children from the woman, who then races after them in a car and is broadsided and killed. Nicholas Cage is a few minutes behind her, is informed by onlookers that freaky strangers stole the car with the children in it, and then comes upon the accident that killed the woman.

Authentic character motivation would have Nicholas do the following: Race to the ambulance to see if he can get information on the whereabouts/direction the Whisper People were heading with his kid, then peel out of there at 110 miles an hour trying to catch up to them and rescue the children.

What Nicholas Cage does: Approaches ambulance and stands quietly while the paramedics try to revive her. When she's pronounced dead and the medics leave the vehicle to try to help someone else, he enters the ambulance, sits by her side, brushes the hair from her face, and then discovers she's holding something in her hand that is key to the plot. THEN he leaves and races after his kid.

Again, this is a contrived scene guaranteed to give the director the easiest method of giving Nicholas certain information but it does not work. Why? Because all parents in the theater know that if Whisper People had their son, they wouldn't stop for anything, not for anything, to get to him in time.

*Finally, the ending left all of us completely non-plussed. I don't think I've ever had cause to accurately label my emotions with the word "non-plussed" until last night. I won't go into details, but all of us sat there in silence for a few moments, waiting through the credits to see if there was one last scene to fix things, but there wasn't.

Don't do this to your readers. Finish things in a way that leaves them satisfied. This is possible to do, even if you're writing a series and are setting up the next book. Leaving a reader non-plussed at the end of your novel is a great way to have your name crossed off the Authors I Must Read list.

I've gone into detail on the things that didn't work for me in this movie, but to give them credit, most of it worked. I was scared, I jumped once (though not because of a flaming moose), and I spent the entire freaky Whisper People In Kid's Bedroom scene hoping to one day write a scene as scary as that. I just feel that with a little more work, and less reliance on what was easy and convenient, this movie could have been amazing. It's a good lesson to writers to never take the easy road and to always do a check to make sure your character's actions are rooted in authentic motivation.

You Can't Take It Back

A friendly word of advice to my fellow authors: publishing is a small industry. Blogs and loops are read by many authors, agents, and editors alike. If you feel upset or dissatisfied with something--be it a rejection letter, a suggestion for revisions, the outcome of a contest--you're much better off sharing that frustration with one or two trustworthy friends IN PRIVATE, than venting to the world at large via a loop or blog.

You have no idea who reads your words.

It's very possible the person you are venting against will read your post, alter their opinion of your professionalism (because what you're doing is NOT professional), and refuse to work with you. Others who read your words may wonder if you'll react so badly to them and won't want to work with you either.

So, here's the deal. Publishing is tough. You get rejections. You get bad reviews. You don't win contests. Suck it up. Be gracious. Take what you can from the experience to make your writing better. Then, be a professional, hold your tongue, and write.

Anything less will torpedo your career.

To Kiss or Not To Kiss

*Thank you to Courtney Milan for the idea and the link.*

This is how you build romantic tension between your characters. Sometimes an "almost kiss" does more to keep your reader engaged than the real thing ever could.

Here's Something New

Harper Collins has a new site up that invites self-published or unpublished authors to post portions of a completed manuscript, along with a blurb about their book. Registered site users rate the pages and the top five authors each month get to submit their ms. directly to a HC editor.

It's an interesting way to find new talent. =)

*Thanks to Peter Von Brown for giving me the link.*

Step Away From The Paw-Print Bottoms!

I went to the bank a few months ago and stood in line behind a woman who was a low income couch potato whose social life revolved around her fifty cats.

How do I know that?

I don't.

What I do know is that the woman in front of me was overweight, her hair was yanked up in a sloppy ponytail, her accent was what most southerners instantly recognize as "redneck", and she wore cheap gray sweat pants with GIANT cat paw prints embroidered aross her generous backside.

Now, it's very likely that this is a warm and wonderful woman who was simply having one of those days. Maybe she has six children, another two she's taken in from a sick relative, and she's lucky to have made it out the door. Maybe the only clean garment she had at the time was the awful pair of kitty-paw-print sweats her great Aunt Mildred gave her for Arbor Day. Probably she was on the way to serve soup to the homeless.

Most people would never get past her initial appearance to figure that out because first impressions are tough to overcome.

Chapter One is your novel's first impression - your one chance to hook your reader into your story. Don't ruin it by choosing what requires the least effort from you.

Your first chapter should:

1. Introduce your main character: "Introduce" is not a euphemism here for "give the reader every last detail". "Introduce" is code for "seduce the reader into rooting for your m/c".

2. Plunge your reader straight into the action: "Action" here is not a euphemism for "conversation whose main goal is to establish background or give story details". "Action" is code for "action". As Miss Snark always used to say, give me a flaming corpse on page one and you've got me.

3. Set up the conflict: You don't have to deliver the whole ball of wax in chapter one. You do, however, need to give me a sense of the stakes and a reason to keep reading.

4. Ground the reader in setting: I've devoted an earlier post to this so I won't rehash in detail. Suffice it to say that you can ground your reader in setting with a few well chosen sentences sprinkled throughout the chapter.

5. Enchant the reader with your Voice: From paragraph one, your reader should be drawn in by your unique Voice. If your chapter reads "flat", start re-writing until you nail it.

Avoiding the Paw-Print Bottoms:

Don't open your novel with anything that screams cliche. You can read through Agent X, Kristin Nelson, or the Query Shark to find a more comprehensive list of the types of openings to avoid but here are a few to get you started:

Don't begin with:

*someone's dream
*a long inner monologue involving mundane daily details
*someone driving to work/school/church thinking about their day
*conversations between two characters that don't instantly generate conflict
*long descriptions of the weather (unless, of course, the weather is your villain)
*a group of characters doing nothing important

Check yourself:

*Do you spend too much time on painting the scene and not enough time making your reader care about who's in the scene?

*Are you aware that your novel has a slow start but are hoping that since it picks up by chapter five, your slow beginning won't matter? (Agents aren't going to read to chapter five if you can't hook them on chapter one!)

*Does your m/c stand out in chapter one as unique, interesting, different...something to make me want to turn the page and see what happens to her?

*Is your conflict either a)unique from other books on the shelves or b) a fresh take on an old idea?


Your first chapter is what will grab an agent's attention, bring in the requests for more, and later, what will seduce a reader into buying your book. Pull out all the stops. Re-write, re-write, re-write until your first chapter is a tightly written, fast-paced showcase of your Voice.

Your readers don't need every detail in chapter one. They just need a compelling reason to keep reading.

Keep Writing!

Some days, I stare at my work in progress (WIP) and think one of the following:

*I don't know what happens next.

*I can't finish this, it's too big for me.

*I know I've got something screwy with the plot/conflict/setting/characters, but what?

*My WIP is a POS.

*I have no idea how to do this!

I think all writers have those days. Writing is such a solitary endeavor. No matter how many critique partners we have to share our load or how many supportive readers we have who love our stuff, the reality is that if we don't find the words, the story will never be finished.

How do we power past the doubts, the paralyzing realization that we've just written ourselves into a corner, or the blow of another "this project just isn't right for us" letter? How do we refocus when the ideas run dry, the words sound cliche, and the characters all start to sound like cardboard cutouts of themselves?

Here's what works for me:

1. Keep writing. Nothing fuels doubts more than inactivity.

2. Call a critique partner and brainstorm. Sometimes just talking through vague ideas or possibilities with someone who understands writing and gets your voice is enough to solidify the course of the novel in your head and get you excited about writing again.

3. Keep writing. Even if all you can eek of out yourself that day is a page, it's still one page closer to finishing and you have silenced the voice in your head whispering that you can't do this.

4. Network with other writers. The writing process itself is a solitary pursuit but the rest of this life doesn't have to be and surrounding oneself with others who are driven to put the voices in their heads down on paper can be refreshing and motivating.

5. Keep writing. Writing produces more writing which fuels more writing until the ideas are sparking, the words are flowing, and the passion is burning again.

6. Change it up. Do a few creative writing exercises outside of the chapters you're writing. Write letters from one character to another. Write scenes that happened before your novel takes place. Write a prologue for another project... =D Get your creative juices flowing again.

7. Keep writing. I may have mentioned this one before. If you stop, it's hard to find the inspiration to start again. Besides, inspiration is a fickle beast. Determination is much more effective.

8. Approach the problems that trouble you using Courtney's "because" method and get to the bottom of what isn't working so you can fix it.

9. KEEP WRITING. Nothing matters - your ideas, your creativity, your characters, your talent - nothing matters if you don't keep writing.

READER QUESTION: How do you move beyond doubt, discouragement, or dry spells in your writing?

Transitions

A blog reader asked about using smooth transitions in her writing so I decided to tackle that topic for today's Writing Process post. Smooth transitions are essential to excellent writing - they help maintain your novel's pace, change POV, and ground your reader in what came before.

They are also tricky little devils.

I've used transitions differently in my two novels. For DYING TO REMEMBER, I have two or three smaller scenes per chapter, each scene told from a different POV. Instead of transitioning with words from one POV to the next, I simply hit return, used *** centered on the next line to indicate a larger space needed due to scene change, and then started the next scene. I loved using this method because it makes it easy to keep a fast pace (give just enough info to get the reader on the edge of her seat and then switch to someone else) and I didn't have to mess with pesky sentences that restated anything that came before.

For SHADOWING FATE, that method didn't work because the entire novel is told from Alexa's POV. Each chapter is one complete scene. Some chapters are continuations of the previous scene and thus didn't need a transition. They did, however, need a quick sentence to ground the reader who might, God forbid, have put down my novel and picked it up later and need to be reminded where they are in the plot. (As you know, it is my goal to make my books impossible to put down!) For chapters where time has passed since the end of the chapter before, I use one quick sentence at the beginning to cover that gap and then launch the next scene.

Here are some tips that work for me in crafting transitions:

1. Use line breaks (the centered ***) to indicate scene changes between different POVs as a transition. See chapter one of DYING TO REMEMBER on the sidebar for an example.

2. Don't belabor your transition. One or two sentences can ground the reader in your current scene and cover any gap in time between that scene and the last.

3. Make sure you use a transition - which is really just an explanation for where the character is and why - if the scenes do not follow each other in chronological order so your reader isn't lost.

4. If it works for your novel, try a creative approach to transitions - like labeling the top of each scene with the day, or the time, or the location. I've seen this done very effectively and that one little label is all the transition you need.

5. The best way to understand how to effectively use transitions is to read stellar examples of other author's work. Read extensively in your chosen genre and in a few others and pay close attention to how that author structures their transitions. You'll begin to get a feel for what will work for your novel.

Happy transitioning!

Discovering Your Voice

Guest blogger: Lynn Raye Harris

You’ve decided to write a romance novel. Or maybe you’ve been writing romance and you’re contemplating a switch in subgenre. You’ve been writing about vampires and want to write a hot historical. Or the hot historical is turning into gritty romantic suspense. Maybe you’re confused and unsure what to write.

How do you know where you belong, where your voice is a natural fit? I don’t have the one-size fits all answer to that, but I’ve learned some things about genre and voice recently that I’d like to share.

But first we have to go back to the beginning. My first romance manuscript was a whopping medieval tome. How did I arrive in the Middle Ages? I think it was the armor. ;)

Seriously, I love history and I was reading widely about British history when this particular time period caught my eye. I became very interested in Edward I and his battle to conquer Wales. A book (a terrible, huge, meandering book) was born.

Next came a Regency historical. The clothes! The manners! The hot dukes and cheeky maidens! After that foray, a time-travel medieval novella was in order. Ahem. Are you getting the picture here? I had no clue what I was doing and wrote whatever sparked my fancy at the moment.

Next, I tried a single-title contemporary. I was finally starting to figure something out – my life revolved around the military and I was very well equipped to write a military hero. Naturally, since my husband was in the Air Force, I chose to write about a Navy guy – something about which I knew nothing at all. :/

Okay, I was getting there, but not quite.

Finally, finally, I realized something. I love romantic suspense. I love military Special Forces teams. I gobbled up these kinds of books, the ones with teams (military or not) and danger. Duh.

This time when I sat down, I tried a military romantic suspense. And my voice blossomed. I finally felt at home with what I was writing. I loved opening this story every day and seeing what happened next. I’m on the third set of revisions, but this manuscript is HOT PURSUIT, my Golden Heart ® Finalist.

This is where I should say goodbye and thanks for having me, right? I found my genre through trial and error and now I’m home.

But wait, I’m not done. Nothing says you aren’t equipped to write in more than one genre, or that your voice isn’t adaptable somewhere you might not have ever considered.

When I was growing up, I read Harlequin Presents by the cartload. I still read them, though not exclusively. I love the Presents alpha male and his glittering, wealthy, international world. I love those heroines who are frequently at a disadvantage with this guy but who still manage to conquer his heart.

So when Harlequin Mills & Boon announced they were looking for new writers and were having a first chapter contest, I decided Why not? I wrote one chapter and a two-page synopsis and sent it off. Then I wrote another one.

On March 20, 2008, at around 1PM Central Time (not that I remember or anything), my cell phone rang. Sally Williamson from Harlequin was calling to tell me that one of my entries (the second one I wrote), THE SPANISH MAGNATE’S REVENGE, was chosen by the editorial team as the winner. I would now be working with Sally to finish my book for the Presents line.

Was I shocked? Oh yeah. And happier than you can believe. I feel like I got The Call but without the contract or check. Apparently, my voice is also very well suited to writing about wealthy alpha heroes and the women who conquer them. Not surprising, really, when I took the time to think about it. Whether he’s a military operative or a Spanish billionaire, my heroes are strong alpha males. At their core, they are hard, protective, thrilling men who would do anything for the women they love.

Maybe that’s the key. You need to figure out who your characters are, what thread they have in common, and then you’ll find your voice and your genre. If you’re writing something that seems forced, or wanting a change, think about your characters and their core beliefs.

In truth, I think voice is more important than genre. I think, if you know your characters and who they are, what they believe, and what they want, the world you set them down in becomes secondary.

But that’s just me, and I know not everyone agrees. Do I seem to be contradicting myself? After all, I tried a medieval, a Regency, a time-travel, and a contemporary before finding a natural fit in romantic suspense and classic romance. But I think if I went back today, knowing my voice now, and tried those other genres, I’d either get it right immediately or realize it didn’t work and move on.

Yeah, so this post is clear as mud, right? Just like figuring out which genre to write in. Write often, try new things, know your characters, and don’t be surprised if you find your home somewhere you never considered before. Happy writing!

Reader Questions:

Where have your genre experiments led you?

Did you find your voice somewhere you least expected it?

If you're happy with what you're writing, how did you arrive there? Trial and error, or you just knew where you fit?

Is there a genre you'd like to try but aren't sure if you can do it?


Lynn Raye Harris writes steamy suspense and classic romance. After a lifetime of military moves, she lives in Northern Alabama with two spoiled cats and one spoiled husband. She blogs semi-regularly at www.lynnrayeharris.blogspot.com. Her website, which doesn’t yet reflect her dual writing personality, is at www.lynnrayeharris.com.

Fixing A Languishing Scene

Because I'm in the middle of revisions for SHADOWING FATE and need to spend the bulk of my writing time there, todays Writing Process post will be short, sweet, and hopefully helpful. =)

Sometimes, I sit down to write a scene and everything just falls into place. The dialogue sparks naturally, the conflict leaps off the page, and I know exactly what happens next.

Sometimes, I sit down to write a scene and the words move sluggishly or refuse to come at all. Those are the scenes that I return to later and, upon re-reading, realize I've just written the equivalent of vanilla frozen yogurt - bland and pointless.

Here's a trick to fix that scenario:

1. Every scene must advance the conflict(s) in your novel. No fillers, please.

2. Within the scene, each character needs to have an individual goal. Doesn't have to be lofty. Maybe your hero wants to win an argument. Maybe your secondary character needs to get to work on time. Doesn't matter. What matters is that every character in the scene has their own personal goal, driving their actions and dialogue.

3. When the scene feels like you're slogging through mud, do a goal check. Does the scene advance your conflict or are you getting sloppy and shoving something in just to provide an info dump on your poor, unsuspecting reader? Do each of your scene's character's have a definable goal within the scene? If not, figure out what their goals are and re-write the scene with those in mind.

That's it. Short, sweet, and hopefully helpful, as promised. Off to finish creating mayhem on a page.

Something To Consider

The most interesting and compelling villains are the ones who would describe themselves as heroes of the story. - Janet Reid, literary agent, aka QueryShark

One Author's Journey to SOLD!

Kris Kennedy, a Golden Heart finalist, writes historical romances and recently signed a two book deal. You can learn more about Kris's writing (and her mostly dyed blonde moments) at her web site.


Name:

LOL, CJ. Right off the bat, my blonde (mostly dyed, anymore) is showing. I don't know if you meant my name, of the book's name, so I'll give you both! :-)

I'm Kris Kennedy, and my book, for now, is titled The Kinds Of Wanting. I thought that was a hot, interesting title, but apparently I'm wrong. LOL And, seeing as I know nothing about the publishing business, I think I'll trust my editor.

And so, I had a title vote at my website and got LOTS of great suggestions. I sent the top rated ones to my editor (and tacked on a few new ones, when he didn't gasp in amazement after first glance), so now we'll wait and see what they do with it.

I'll be posting the new title as soon as I know it, and giving away prizes, so come and visit! I will be updating folks on my publishing journey--what each step along the way is like, so come visit my website often. And sign up for the newsletter!

How long have you been writing?

I guess I've been writing romance in earnest since 2000. Although, I took a MAJOR break for about 2 1/2 years after my son was born. Who knew how much a person needed sleep? How weak and pathetic a brain can become when deprived of just a few . . . sweet hours . . . . of . . . uninterrupted . . . sleep.

So, I went a little psychotic there for about 1 1/2 years, with little sleep, husband overseas travelling for work for most of that 2nd year, and my mother passing away, and I didn't get much writing done.

But I felt like I crawled out of my cave when my little guy turned about 2 1/2, and I started writing and entering contests again at that point.


What made you decide to pursue writing novels?

Ha! What to say to that? Is it really a decision?

I remember this: my step-father & mother gave my husband & I their old computer, maybe back in 1999. I used to write endlessly as a child, w/ pen and paper, so I got excited, thinking, 'Maybe I can do it with the computer.'

I sat there that first night, in front of the glowing screen, and I just started typing.

It was like digging up mud. Slow, pointless, heavy.

In other words, it wasn't flowing.

Until I read my first ROMANCE novel. I took the plunge and checked out one of those 80's romance novels from the library. I'd been eyeing it for a year or more, but was always too embarrassed to check out, b/c of the covers. LOL.

But I'll tell you what--I read that book, and THAT NIGHT I was up until 3 a.m. typing. Fingers flying over keys, creating typos like a mad woman.

The next morning my husband said, "Wow. It's nice to see you really into something." LOL.

He had no idea. I had no idea. It was way past ideas--it just had to be.


What genre do you write and how did you choose it?

I write medievals, mostly, although I do have several half-written contemp. stories & one Georgian, which was the first story I ever wrote, and it will NEVER see the light of day.

The contemps will come, but they have to wait, b/c I really love the sweeping, dangerous feel of the middle ages.


Where do your ideas come from?

The short answer: everywhere!

TV shows, a line in the newspaper, a line in a 11th century monk's chronicle, where some mention is made of "And King Art O'Conchobar laid waste the land between the loch's for want of the woman," or something, and I'm thinking, "Oh, yeah!' LOL The tragedies of other people make great fodder for the storyteller.

For any Lord of the Rings fans (the books) you may remember when Sam & Frodo were far into their quest, dying of thirst and and weary beyond words. Sam, in his simple, philosophical way, reflected how the hard times are not the ones you want to live through, but they make the best stories. I thought that was very wise. :-)


How do you approach writing a novel? (plotter or pantser?)

Aaaa! The heart of my current matter. I have always just winged it (wung it? LOL)

But I got burned on my last ms, one of the Golden Heart finaling ones, the one I just sold.

I wrote this story over such a long time, that it evolved and morphed significantly. I ended up re-writing it so many times. Major, major plot points shifted, characters got more tortured (An aside: I love a tortured hero. If you do too, look for my book in the Spring. But first, check my website for the title, so you know what book to look for! LOL).

Recently, I've been trying to plan (plot) a little more. But I'm scared the Fire might go out (or muse, or enthusiasm, or whatever you want to call it. It feels like a fire in me, so I call it that).

So, I am trying to balance the two different approaches, developing a new, more organized process that still keeps the Fire alive.

Funnily enough (is that a word?), much of that Fire comes from discipline. Self-discipline. Disciplining myself to sit and write every day.

Writing begets writing. The more I write, the more I CAN write, the more I WANT TO write, the more IDEAS I have for writing, the more EXCITED I get about it.

I think that's true for everything. The more we do of anything, the more energy we get for that thing, if it's a our passion.


Are you working with an agent?

Yes, I have an agent. Barbara Poelle, at the Irene Goodman Agency.


How did you choose the right one?

She had some good editorial feedback for me, and that is something feel I need at this point. When I'm flowing, I can do 10-15 different things with a scene, w/ a story. I can amp this up, tone that down, add this in, cut that out, etc etc, and still feel I'm being true to the story.

What I need is some direction. It's great to have an industry professional to give me feedback.


Tell us the story of hearing that you'd "sold"!

Some people may have heard this already (up to 550 times, perhaps) so please, pass on by if so! :-)

I was tending my 3 y.o. son, who had just developed pink eye. It was a tough morning for me, b/c, due to the pink eye, he couldn't go to school, so, whoosh, there went my precious 2 1/2 hrs of writing time that day.

(Sure, I can and do write at night, after he's in bed, but, oh boy, am I not at my romance-writing best at 8 pm after a day w/ a non-stop 3 y.o.)

Anyhow, I was forcibly--I mean, lovingly--holding a warm compress to his eye when my agent called w/ the news.

Sorta changed my outlook on what kind of day it was going to be. :-)


Were contests an important part of your publishing journey?

I think they have been, for so many reasons!

Above all, even if you think you've gained noting from a contest but scores all over the map and another $25 down the tube, you have at least been reminded of how SUBJECTIVE this business is. And that is super important to remember. No one is required to love our stories, no matter how hard we've labored on them.

Contests serve many purposes (I always want to say 'purpii" instead of 'purposes') depending on where we are in the journey of getting pubbed.

Early on, all I wanted was feedback. I don't think I even realized that there WERE editors as judges in those first few I entered. I was just overwhelmed with the idea that, for only $25, I could get three other people to look at my story and give me feedback.

(And there's a new, tangential realization: inflation has not affected the contest realm, has it? It was $25 when I first started entering back in, oh, 2001, and it's $25 today, Nice!)

I do recall with fondness my first contest. Or rather, the results from it. One judge very gently pointed out that I may want to consider the concept of 'Point Of View' for my characters and my scenes.

I was electrified. What's that?, I thought. I re-read her explanation. POV? Cool!

I remember my thank-you letter (I must still have it somewhere, on that parent-donated computer, probably). I said something about thank-you for suggesting this "concept called 'Point Of View.' I think it will be very helpful."

LOL LOL LOL.

Yes, Kris. Sort-of.

What advice can you give aspiring authors?

I think I still AM an aspiring author! But here's what I believe, to the core of my being, after almost 20 years as a psychotherapist: persistence can overcome all.

Keep Showing Up.

Mentally, emotionally. Be There. Because when the Opportunity walks by, you need to be there, too.

People sometimes look at others and think, "Well, sure, if I had the [FILL IN THE BLANK: time/ money/success/judge/editor/the XYZ] she had . . . ."

But chances are, that person has worked her b*tt off to get where she is, whether you witnessed all those efforts or not.

"Must be nice..." kinda thinking kills energy and enthusiasm faster than . . . a sleepless 3 y.o. LOL.

I know this, because I've been known to engage in that kind of thinking myself sometimes, when I'm feeling low. And I know how it makes me feel. Lower yet. Awful.

And it isn't valid thinking anyhow. I mean, if we must destroy our enthusiasm, let's do it with something that makes SENSE!

Because persistence tied to even a modicum of talent, wins. Every time.

Now, I have questions for all of you!

~ What do you think of romance covers? Do you like them hot? Do you think they affect how the romance genre is viewed by others?

~ How do you stay motivated? I'm not just talking to writers, here, either! I want to know from everyone, what keeps you going?

Thanks for listening to all my blather! Now I can't wait to read your comments and listen to all yours. LOL
Kris

Finding Your Voice

"Voice" may be the single most important element in writing a novel. Voice conveys attitude, culture, motivation, identifies characters, and sets your work apart from the hundreds of other novels waiting for an editor's attention.


1. How I Found My Voice:

Finding my literary voice took some experimenting with genres and POVs. I had to stop reading books in my genre areas of interest for a few months and start playing around with characters in my head. I wanted to "cleanse the palette" for a little while so I could construct a novel without anyone else's voices edging in.

My first novel (DTR) is third-person romantic suspense. It's solid writing and I like it but I felt that I didn't quite capture enough originality in my voice using that vehicle. I sat down and made a list of what I really loved in my favorite books and it looked something like this:

1. Strong heroine with interesting inner dialogue that makes me laugh.

2. Suspense woven throughout.

3. Heroine who likes to dish out a little sass. Sort of chick lit style voice but with less whining about men?? Explore this.

4. Romantic element, doesn't have to be paramount.

5. Some sort of "gimmick" that reveals the character's voice (like Blaire in Linda Howard's To Die For who kept making those hilarious lists or a character in one of Johanna Lindsey's novels (How To Marry A Duke? something like that) who started each chapter by writing a new vocabulary word in her journal and then using it in a sentence - ostensibly to cement its meaning in her head - that gave you a humorous insight into the events of the upcoming chapter.)

6. Paranormal or otherworldly element, but am a little tired of the same old vampires/shape-shifters/werewolves bit.

I looked over my list and decided I would try a first person POV so I could capture my heroine's inner dialogue and dish out some sass and then I spent months brainstorming a paranormal suspense series that didn't include any of the usual suspects. Everyone (from my CP to a prospective agent who has read both my GH ms and a sample of SF) says SF has a strong, unique voice. Because the writing flows so well and I love what I can do with this, I have to agree.

2. How I Developed My Voice:

I developed it by learning the craft of writing in first person and by constantly checking my WIP against my list to make sure I'm hitting on the main elements I love.

3. How Important Is Voice?:

Voice is incredibly important. Someone once said "there are no new ideas - just new takes on old ideas" and whether that's true or not, Voice is what sets your novel apart from every other paranormal or historical or romance on the shelf. That doesn't mean you don't work hard on plot, setting and characters but if you have a stellar plot and a ho-hum Voice, you won't grab anyone's attention for long. However, a fabulous Voice in a ho-hum plot may get you someone who sees your potential and wants to work with you.

Besides, some of the most interesting voices in contemporary fiction are short on plot. Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series comes to mind. I never read those for the plot (which is often loopy and far-fetched) but I never miss a book because her Voice is so entertaining.

4. Some Unique Voices In Literature:

Janet Evanovich - slapstick comedy on a page
J.D. Robb - gritty, edgy, fast-paced suspense with surprising flashes of humor and heart and a cast of characters with strong individual voices that come right off the page.
Lemony Snicket - sardonic, unique, utterly different from anything else I've read.
Dean Koontz - lyrical prose slowly sweeping along chilling elements of nightmarish suspense.
Laura Lippman - intense characters that feel as real to you as your next door neighbor.

Additional discussion about experimenting with different genres to find your voice can be found at Jessica Faust's blog. So how did you find your literary voice?