This Writer's Life

Moving....

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 05:44:05 GMT

This blog has been combined into my other. ANything writing related will now be at http://jeanettehere.wordpress.com/

Book Proposal

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:52:45 GMT

It has been awhile since I have updated. I haven't been doing any exciting writing ventures lately. I took on another site at BellaOnline.com Women's Lit http://womenslit.bellaonline.com I am loving it so far. I have been in contact with lots of publicists so that may play in may favor eventually. I did send my first book proposal this week, It is for the book I did during my first NaNoWriMo in 2004. We will see what happens!

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:43:18 GMT

Help me decide which plot to take on this year!!!!!

lcsdove.livejournal.com/260236.html

Breaking Down the Query Letter

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:27:49 GMT

Posted by Chuck (not my Chuck)

I talk to a lot of writers about how to compose a good query letter. Make no mistake - it's no easy task, and it will take a lot of work. But what I can tell you right off the bat is that a good query has a distinct structure, and I can show you it right here below.

Think of a query as a three-part monster, broken down into three paragraphs. At the top of the page, you will have your contact info, as well as the mailing address info for the agency and the date. After that, you have your three paragraphs:

For more: http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/Breaking+Down+The+Query+Letter.aspx

Using Parallelism in Your Writing

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:23:55 GMT

October 22, 2008
by Bonnie Trenga

The Sentence Sleuth says you need to balance all the elements of your sentences.

I don’t know about you, but I was glued to the Olympics this year. And I’m not embarrassed to announce that I watched many hours of gymnastics, synchronized diving and synchronized swimming. You have to admire the athletes’ amazing precision, excellent balancing and graceful landings.

If only writers were as precise, balanced and graceful as these medal winners. If they were, readers could happily wend their way down a logical, parallel path, enjoying elegant sentences whose parts match each other. Parallel elements have the same weight and are often the same part of speech. Noun, noun, noun. Check. Adjective, adjective, adjective. Yep. Verb, verb, verb. Parallelism is all about equality; parallelism creates a nice rhythm in your sentence; unparallelism, bad. Adjective, adjective, verb. Yikes. Noun, adjective, adjective. Insert sour-faced judge here.

For more: http://writersdigest.com/article/using-parallelism-in-your-writing/

NaNoWriMo Update

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:17:30 GMT

Yes, I am writing this year. Yay! I guess lol Who else is in?

NaNoWriMo’s Chris Baty shares five tips for writing your book in a month.

http://www.writersdigest.com/article/november-is-national-novel-writing-month/

Special Announcement

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:16:09 GMT

Everyone please give me a round of applause! I FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY FIRST NOVEL!!!!!! *bows* Yes I am very proud of myself. I typed like a mad woman for 3 days almost non-stop, pumped out 15,000 words and I finished last night!!!!!!! I am taking a few days off from writing and will begin the revision process!

Dictionary: Impossible!

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 07:08:22 GMT

Here is a game to play to get those creative juices flowing as we approach the end of NaNoWriMo for 2007!

Let's play Dictionary: Impossible.

Writers, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take out your dictionary and flip through it, then stop on any page at random. Write down the first word you see. Repeat until you have a list of ten words.

subculture
cemetery
excessive
steamroller
nag
cocktail
impute
underproof
borough
nonage

Level 1: Create at least three novel titles using only the words on your list (a, an, the, and other simple words can be added for style.) You have five minutes to complete this level.

Borough Cemetery
An Underproof Cocktail
The Nag
Excessive Nonage
Steamroller Subculture

Level 2: Create a story premise for the titles you've created from your list. If you get caught on this level, PBW will disavow any knowledge of you.

Borough Cemetery: Citizens of a fortified medieval city discover the victims of a strange plague won't stay in their graves.

An Underproof Cocktail: Farmer Bubba's miracle cherries were supposed to soak up the alcohol from the youngsters' drinks, not turn the teens into killer zombies.

The Nag: She knew he loved her; all he needed was a little half-hourly reminder to show it.

Excessive Nonage: How many times could one demi-goddess cheerleader turn sweet sixteen?

Steamroller Subculture: Homeboy heavy equipment operators battle a demon road crew paving the way to hell.

Level 3: Write an opening line for the title/story premises you've created. Should you decide to continue on with the mission, you have exactly thirty minutes to complete this level.

Borough Cemetery

The Baron would have blamed it all on the gravediggers, but theirs were the first bodies left in pieces outside the city's gates.

An Underproof Cocktail

Seein' pictures of that college fella usin' clay teabags to soak up poison outta bad drinkin' water were what gave me the original idear.

The Nag

She'd left him her phone number, written on his bathroom mirror in red lipstick along with a kiss-print and CALL ME LATER.

Excessive Nonage

"Diana Hunter made the squad?" Heather, who had not, turned purple under her crystal rose blush. "She only moved to town like two minutes ago."

Steamroller Subculture

Bodeen climbed down from the barricade truck and walked over to inspect the surveyor's mangled, bloodstained tripod. "Somebody let Julio back up the dozer again?"

Level 4: Write the story to go with one of your opening lines, premises and titles. You may take as much time as you need, but remember that any idea may self-destruct in as little as ten seconds.

Level 5: Write the stories to go with all of them, and you win Dictionary: Impossible.

Links of the Day

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:42:08 GMT

Got caught up on the work finally. Here are some links I found will ~~stalling~~ brainstorming

http://www.ourtimelines.com/create_tl_2c.html

Create a Timeline (Of 5 to 140 year span)
I am sure there would something useful for this if you were say doing a story the spans years, decades, centuries (like a vampire story) or a story where it is important to keep track of major events over a certain period of time.

In case you didn't already have enough to do in November....

Learn to Knit!
http://learntoknit.lionbrand.com/

http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/storymap/
Story Mapping

Brainstorming, Found some links to share!

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:42:33 GMT

While brainstorming ideas, I found some links to share.

Digital Storyteller
http://www.digitalstoryteller.org/

Digital Storyteller is a web-based tool that offers teachers and students frictionless access to digital images and materials that enable them to construct compelling personal narratives.

How NOT to Multitask - Work Simpler and Saner
http://zenhabits.net/2007/02/how-not-to-multitask-work-simpler-and/

This post is How NOT to Multi-task — a guide to working as simply as possible for your mental health.

Box.net
http://www.box.net/home

Free online file storage!!! For NaNo on the go and you don't want to carry your disks/flash drive around with you!!!! I signed up! You don'thave to download anything for the individual account.

100 (Legal) Sources for Free Stock Images
http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2007/100-legal-sources-for-free-stock-images/

By Laura Milligan

If you’ve ever tried to design a website or blog, you’ve probably felt the need to add images to your creation. It can be easy to see the Internet as a free-for-all, but images belong to the people who created them. Staying legal means you’ll have to either create your own images or buy them from stock sites. Fortunately, there are a number of sources for free images, and we’ve collected them here. So read on for 100 sources where you can find free stock images: and don’t worry — they’re all legal!

Bartleyby.com
http://bartleby.com/

Online source for great books to read.

Neat-o NaNo Thingy

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 04:11:44 GMT

I have used this since 2005 when doing NaNo. I promised to give this to Euphrates a few days ago but got busy. *Sowry Eu! Hugs* I thought I would share it with everyone else. It is pretty self explanatory. Enter in your goal at the top of the spreadsheet. Then fill in the word count and time spent writing. Each of the tabs at the bottom of the spread sheet is linked to different charts and graphs. I am such a geek/nerd I know LOL I am one of those Capricorns that likes organization and neat shiny things LOL

Here is the link to open it.
http://members.tripod.com/ravensilverwing/nanowrimo-report-card-2006.xls

If you have an problems using it, let me know.

Word of the day from Dictionary.com

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:15:50 GMT

woolgathering \WOOL-gath-(uh)-ring\, noun:

Indulgence in idle daydreaming.

Similarly, in the meadow, if you laze too late into the fall, woolgathering, snow could fill your mouth.
-- Edward Hoagland, "Earth's eye", Sierra, May 1999

It would be easy to slip off into woolgathering and miss a deadline.
-- Jeraldine Saunders, Washington Post, March 4, 2004

Plagued by guilt, they took refuge in wine, women, and woolgathering.
-- Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

The soprano roused Fergus from his woolgathering.
-- Sandra Brown, Where There's Smoke

Woolgathering derives from the literal sense, "gathering fragments of wool."

Tips for NaNoWriMo

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:22:42 GMT

Here are some tips that I found in an old email....

One of the most important things about NaNoWriMo is learning to write. Just write. If you're going to be a writer, you have to work on your craft and just like a singer going through the scales, just writing will make you a better writer. That is the real benefit of NaNoWriMo. Practicing your craft and seeing just how much you can really do.

To meet this challenge, I've developed some habits which are fairly effective. A few other winning NaNoWriMo participants have indicated they also do similar things in order to hit that goal. So what is this magic?

1. Write every day, no matter how you feel. In fact, don't think about how you feel or whether you really are in the mood to write or not. Moods are immaterial. Given the least encouragement, your moods will decide you'd much rather be sitting on the sofa eating Fritos (my personal favorite--you can have whatever you want) and watching the latest Freddie/Jason/Predator/Alien movie.

2. Plan the next day's work lying in bed, right before you go to sleep. This way, you're relaxed, so ideas will flow, and the next day, you'll know exactly what you want to write and just have to type it (or write it out longhand, if you prefer).

3. Change of venue. Okay, for NaNoWriMo, I can't really recommend writing long hand because you do want to get credit, and you'll just have to type it into the computer anyway, but if you can change where you write, that often helps creativity. Shockingly enough, writing in a public location, be it a coffee shop, library, or my personal favorite, the airport, really does help. Somehow, all that hustle-bustle makes you get down to work. I do like to write long hand when I'm stuck or my mood to write is flagging, because that does seem to inspire me, particularly using pretty colored inks in different pens, but this may not be effective if you're really going for that NaNoWriMo certificate. I generally only do that at other times of the year, particularly the summer, when it's hard to write at all because of all that enervating heat.

4. Write anything at all. This is really only for NaNoWriMo. If you're stuck, or your plot is not working out, just write any old junk. Treat it as a blog. Put in your opinions about life, the universe, and everything. I've never done this, but I know other participants who have, and it does work to hike up the word count. Remember, the goal is to write. Any writing is good writing--the more you write, the better a writer you will be--it doesn't much matter what you write, as long as you write. If you're a serious writer and want to actually do something with the output, then at least try to stick to whatever plotline you have going for you, knowing that you can always cut the junk out later and add more relevant parts. I find that killing off a character is a wonderful plot device, although maybe that's because I really like mysteries and think any genre could use a few dead bodies to keep the reader's attention straddling that razor's edge. Ouch.

5. More. I just can't think of them at the moment because my cat just leapt into my lap and attacked the keyboard.

So watcha doing, Jeanette?

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:15:24 GMT

I am so glad you asked! Yes I am NaNoing this year. The novel I started in the 2005 attempt is resurfacing but this year I am doing it from a different point of view. The original one that I started I did in 1st PPV (PPV is writer lingo for person point of view btw)(oh btw= by the way). To get a new perspective from all characters, I am doing 3rd PPV. That novel was based on an abusive relationship I experienced. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent. I already have a publisher interested in looking at it. I sent the first 3 chapters too them and was told by a rep with a little work and polishing, it could be published. So I am finishing this first draft this month of the 3rd PPV and then I am going to squish them together like shuffling a deck of cards and *crosses fingers* I will have a manuscript to submit to them at the beginning of the year.

This weekend may be slow for writing for me. Tonight Chuck and I are doing our Friday family night out again. We are taking the kids out to eat then going to come home and possibly watch a movie or something. Tomorrow my final exam for my computer class will be available so I need to do that ASAP to get it done. I have a ton of stuff to list on eBay for the mother-in-law and text books from myself. Our friend Rochelle is supposed to come over sometime tomorrow to hang out. And to top the weekend off I have to go buy some winter clothes for the kids, grocery shop, and do laundry....so writing time will be probably pen and paper until I can type it all up on Monday.

How is everyone else doing with their writing?

FREE E-BOOK

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:55:00 GMT

Hey ya'all! I love Holly Lisle's site for writers. She is offering part of one of her e-books for free. It is about plotting and it is just in time for NaNoWriMo!! Here is a link to have a peek! Let me know what you think. Hey I am a poet today!

http://www.hearwritenow.com/writing/Lisle-Create-A-Plot-Clinic.pdf.pdf

Yes, again

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:34:21 GMT

I am doing NaNoWriMo again this year if any of you were wondering. I am thinking about starting over slightly with last years manuscript since I didn't get very far. I also have a few pages of another story I started about 2 years ago. I may post it here and get some opinions. My NaNo link is http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/82226 Anyone else playing this year?

I am on a roll of sorts

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:12:34 GMT

I need to stay out of my email while at work LOL I keep coming across some really good websites with good tips. I have been implimenting some already. I am determined to get one of these manuscripts finished!!! I am going to have about 2 hours of time all to myself at home tonight while Coach Daddy takes both kids to soccer practices! Check out this site!

50 Tools that can Improve your Writing Skills http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/07/50-tools-that-can-improve-your-writing.html

Here is an example of the tips. You have to go to the site to click on each to read.

Writing Tool #1: Branch to the Right

Writing Tool #2: Use Strong Verbs

Writing Tool #3: Beware of Adverbs

Writing Tool #4: Period As a Stop Sign

Writing Tool #5: Observe Word Territory

Writing Tool #6: Play with Words

Writing Tool #7: Dig for the Concrete and Specific

Writing Tool #8: Seek Original Images

Writing Tool #9: Prefer Simple to Technical

Writing Tool #10: Recognize Your Story’s Roots

Writing Tool #11 Back Off or Show Off

Writing Tool #12: Control the Pace

Writing Tool #13: Show and Tell

Writing Tool #14: Interesting Names

Writing Tool #15: Reveal Character Traits

Writing Tool #16: Odd and Interesting Things

Writing Tool #17: The Number of Elements

Writing Tool #18: Internal Cliffhangers

Writing Tool #19: Tune Your Voice

Writing Tool #20: Narrative Opportunities

Writing Tool #21: Quotes and Dialogue

Writing Tool #22: Get Ready

Writing Tool #23: Place Gold Coins Along the Path

Writing Tool #24: Name the Big Parts

Writing Tool #25: Repeat

Writing Tool #26: Fear Not the Long Sentence

Writing Tool #27: Riffing for Originality

Writing Tool #28: Writing Cinematically

Writing Tool #29: Report for Scenes

Writing Tool #30: Write Endings to Lock the Box

Writing Tool #31: Parallel Lines

Writing Tool #32: Let It Flow

Writing Tool #33: Rehearsal

Writing Tool #34: Cut Big, Then Small

Writing Tool #35: Use Punctuation

Writing Tool #36: Write A Mission Statement for Your Story

Writing Tool #37: Long Projects

Writing Tool #38: Polish Your Jewels

Writing Tool #39: The Voice of Verbs

Writing Tool #40: The Broken Line

Writing Tool #41: X-Ray Reading

Writing Tool #42: Paragraphs

Writing Tool #43: Self-criticism

Writing Tool #44: Save String

Writing Tool #45: Foreshadow

Writing Tool #46: Storytellers, Start Your Engines

Writing Tool #47: Collaboration

Writing Tool #48: Create An Editing Support Group

Writing Tool #49: Learn from Criticism

Writing Tool #50: The Writing Process

CAPTURING CHARACTERS

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:24:54 GMT

by Karen Elizabeth Rigley

Voices. Do you hear voices when you write? Do you eavesdrop on imaginary conversations or receive orders from a person you thought you created? Do your characters exist on a mystical plane, allowing you glimpses of their world? Do they wait patiently for you to capture their lives on paper or do they clamor for your attention?

Do authors exist merely for them? Who is really in control?

No wonder ordinary human beings refer to authors as "crazy writers". Do you question your own sanity when part way through a story your character refuses to obey your commands? Can fictional characters alter a well-planned plot? Do you listen to your characters?

Imagine my dilemma writing WEB OF LOVE when Aloa insisted a man tried to drown her. Who? Where? Why? I admit it made a great mid-book complication.

In DISAPPEARANCE OF EMILY, my detective discovers Emily held hostage in an attic, instead of murdered in the woods as I had originally intended. It added a new layer to the mystery. The novel, SUMMER OF FIRE , evolved from only a title, but then the characters took over. Kalina announced herself as the heroine and introduced her legless brother Steven. Randy, the hero, appeared and claimed it was his fault that Steven had lost both his legs in battle. Suddenly, Kalina was fighting to save her business while dealing with two war-scarred vets against a background of flaming forests. Without determined characters who shared their story, that novel could have remained merely a title.

Collaboration with my frequent co-writer, Ann Miller House from West Texas, proves no protection from demanding characters. In COMANCHE MOON, old Will kept popping up in my scenes and Ann kept taking him out. So he transferred his attention to her, evenually carving out a role in the gun-smuggling and forcing Ann to create a spellbinding scene where Will recounts the Comanche Moon legend to Destiny. In another novel, we planned a chase scene through the underground tunnels in Houston. Instead our hero and heroine insisted on a shoot-out at sea. The tales go on and on, as I'm sure yours do.

Writers depend upon our characters to fire our imagination. It can happen in every novel and every short story. Sometimes, characters are content to let us write along, occasionally interrupting to set us straight. Sometimes they pester us. Always they guide our storytelling.

Authors expect characters to spark to life, to carry on conversations as if they were real and to display independent actions or startling responses. You needn't be alarmed when your characters come alive. Worry when they don't.

Remedial Characterization

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:21:12 GMT

The thing to know about characterization is that it is difficult to learn it from someone who does it effortlessly. They tend not to know how they do it and they sure can’t tell you how to fix it because they’ve never done it wrong. You learn more from your mistakes than you’ll ever learn from doing it right instinctively.

So, where to begin? There are so many ways characterization can go wrong and hundreds of ways to put it right. I can’t cover it all and I sure can’t include all the ways to fix anything that may be wrong but here are a few tips. I've learned this the hard way and am still learning it.

Oh, and I’m going to put the bottom line right up front. Nothing, and I mean nothing is terminal. You can fix everything. You would be amazed at what a difference it makes to just add a single sentence or paragraph revealing the character’s motivations. Sometimes, that’s all that is necessary.

There are two main complaints culled from rejection letters that I’m going to detail here:

“I can’t get into or sympathize with your characters”

“Your characters are caricatures”

http://www.amypadgett.com/Remedial_Characterization.htm

Good link

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:18:57 GMT

I don't normally like traditional romance novels. I have gotten hooked on chick lit though. This website http://www.likesbooks.com/write.html is titled for romance readers and writers but the articles about writing could benefit anyone.

CLOSE UP AND PERSONAL

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:15:41 GMT

By Lorraine Heath

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you read a novel, you come away from the story feeling as though you know the character as well as you know yourself? Or you feel as though you not only read the story, but you experienced it?

One method that a writer can use to achieve this goal is to keep the story close to the character.

Example: It was a blistering hot day.

The above is an example of a passive description. What have I shown the reader? Nothing. I've told the reader that it was very hot -- but where is the character?

Example: John Stetson removed his hat and wiped his sweating brow. He'd never known a hotter day.

This example reflects an active description. Here, I've also shown the reader that the day was hot -- but I've placed the character in the middle of the heat, given his perspective on it.

Neither example is wrong, but I think the second example brings the reader closer to the story.

Example: A thousand gnarled and crooked posts served as anchors for his barbed wire fence.

The character is a little closer in this example. We refer to his fence. But how can we use the character to show the reader that the land is fenced in? How can we keep the character close to the story? Would this work?

"He worked the ridge of his spine into a comfortable position against the gnarled and crooked post that served as one of a thousand anchors for his barbed wire fence."

Keeping the character close to the reader does not mean that a writer must include the character or a reference to the character in every sentence, particularly when you are describing things outside of the character -- but you can keep the character close by bringing the character back into play.

Example: "The nearby river flowed to the rhythm of Nature's lullaby: the mating call of insects mingled with the occasional swoosh of an owl's wings and the howl of a stalking coyote. Dallas wanted his son to hear that song, to appreciate the magnificence of nature, to tame it, to own it." (Texas Glory, 1998)

Momentarily, I left the character to describe the sounds of the night . . . but then I returned to let the reader know why these sounds were important to the character. I could have kept Dallas in the description from the beginning by writing: *Dallas heard* the nearby river flowing to the rhythm of Nature's lullaby: the mating call of insects mingled with the occasional swoosh of an owl's wings and the howl of a stalking coyote. He wanted his son to hear that song, to appreciate the magnificence of nature, to tame it, to own it.

Lengthy descriptions that never bring the character into play can cause the reader to lose sight of the character. If we keep the character close to the story, the scenes, and the descriptions, we are more likely to keep the reader close to the character.

Example: Beyond the stone walls, day melted into twilight, but within the shadows the walls created, Clayton Holland knew only the inky blackness of a starless night. (Always to Remember, copyrighted 1996)

I could have just as easily left the character out of that opening paragraph -- but I wanted the reader to know what the character was feeling and experiencing.

In your opinion, which of these examples bring the character closer to the reader?

Someone nudged his shoulder.

He felt someone nudge his shoulder.

The stars sparkled like diamonds thrown on black velvet.

He gazed at the stars that sparkled like diamonds thrown on black velvet.

The water rushed over the falls.

He heard the water rushing over the falls.

Gently, she touched him.

In all his life, he'd never known a touch as gentle as the one she gave him.

I think in all instances, Example B brings the character closer to the reader.

There isn't any rule -- as far as I know -- for how often you should bring the character into the story or how often you should mention him. But we must remember that it the story belongs to the character. The reader must have his perspective if she is to understand the character.

If you distance the character, you distance the reader.

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Website Copyright © 2001-2006 Lorraine Heath. All rights reserved.

Writing Formula

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:28:04 GMT

I came across a little blurb today while looking through some writing websites now I don't know where I got it from but wanting to share it. Have you ever got stuck in a story you are writing and wondering where to go from here? Here is a littl formula to help get the wheels rolling...........

Some nights, just as she snuggled down and finally began to drift off, my Daddy would say, "And then what happened?" Believe it or not, she'd even continue the story for him!

What has this to do with creating a plan of action for your characters to follow while trying to achieve their goals in your story?

I could get into lots of others' writing how-tos for this section, but I wont. Instead, I'm going to stick to something much more simple: basic paragraph structure and chronological order.

Remember that? You probably learned all about it in grade school. To write a paragraph in chronological order, you'd start by writing down what happened FIRST. THEN you'd write down the second event that occurred. Next, you'd write what happened NEXT. And last but not least, you'd write down the FINAL event.

The "formula" went something like this: FIRST, THEN, NEXT, and FINALLY.

When using this formula to create a plan of action for your characters, it may look something like this:

FIRST, the heroine plans to (insert your story info here), but (conflict: something occurs).

THEN, she intends to (insert your story info here), but (additional conflict: something hampers her intentions).

NEXT, she's determined to (insert your story info here), but (additional conflict and climax: something stands in her way).

FINALLY, she... (resolution: whatever she does that resolves the things she's tried to do so far in a logical, satisfying way).

To e-publish or not to e-publish, that is the question!

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:27:39 GMT

Since I am nearly finished with my first draft of "I Survived!", I am looking around at all the different options to get my baby into print and into the hands of people. I have looked at several what is called e-publishers. I can't believe the price they are asking to print my book and then it may not even make it into bookstores for everyone to see. I stumbled upon this aritcle though by Karen Wiesner.

http://www.dowse.com/articles/Karen-article.html

So which am I going to choose? It is hard to say right now. I may just send to traditional publishers and hope for the best and seek an agent. It still may be years before anyone sees my name on the cover of a book but one day it will happen!

Harry Potter

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:23:02 GMT

For those of you wondering, yes of course I am reading the new Harry Potter, DUH!!!!!! Chuck stood in line at the local grocery store to get it for me so I wouldn't get mugged for my copy walking home LOL I was going to challenge myself as I like to do to read it by this morning but this weekend was Wesley's Birthday so that was out of the question adn I want to enjoy the story and not have to keep flipping back through to claify things. I am on Chapter 16. I will be done by next weekend.

How to Start a Novel

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:25:49 GMT

I have to say that one of my biggest inspirations when I decided to give novel writing another go was Holly Lisle's website. I have this huge binder at home with almost every one of her articles from her website printed out and put in it. Here is here article about how to start that novel that you have in there. Her website is so worth the read!

http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/wc2-1.html

How to Start a Novel

You've decided you want to write a book. Terrific. Maybe you've even tried it a few times, but haven't gotten one all the way to the finish line. It happens. I had a slew of thirty-page novel starts before I finally found out how to start a novel that I could finish.

See, that's the trick. You have to start the novel, but you have to have planned to finish it before you type the first word on page one. And that means laying some groundwork. What steps do you need to take to have the best chance of finishing the book you're starting with such enthusiasm?

Here are a list of suggestions that will help you start the novel in such a way that you can hope to reach the end.

(Linked rules lead to workshops related to the rule. I will eventually have one for each.)

Know your world.

You might think that I'm off on the wrong track already---that maybe this first rule is sensible for people who are working on historical novels or science fiction or round-the-world thrillers, but that it doesn't apply to you. After all, you're planning on writing a novel set in the town in which you currently live, using thinly disguised versions of your friends and relatives as the characters, so you don't need to research your background.

Yes, you do.

In your town, which streets intersect lanes; in which direction do the house numbers run; what kind of tree is that monstrous thing that grows in the library's side yard; what are the five most common varieties of birds you'll find around the bird feeder in January, or the birdbath in July? What is the family name on that elaborate tombstone that you notice every time you drive to the grocery store? What color are the handles on the carts in your grocery store, and if there's lettering on them, what does it say? Are the parking spaces straight in or diagonal? Which families started the town, and are they still in control of the place? What material has been used to pave the streets? How old is the oldest house and where is it? Who built the projects over on the east side?

I could ask a million questions like those---they're the sort of questions I always ask myself about any new world I'm creating. They are small, personal questions, which when answered offer intimate knowledge of a place. That intimate knowledge is what will make your book come to life---tiny, perfect details, mentioned so casually that you might not even realize you have included them.

To get these details you have to look around your world with the eyes of a stranger before you begin to write. You must become an innocent, asking silly questions and being willing to make a fool of yourself. And this is true whether you're using your home town or creating a complete world from scratch on the fourth planet out from an alien sun. You have to name the flowers and the trees and the grass, the streets and the houses and the stars, the animals and the rivers and the clouds---even if you don't intend to use these names, or this knowledge. Even if you don't think you'll need it.

The act of learning these details will make them part of your thoughts, and your mind will know they exist even if you don't put them on the page. And as a result, the book you write will live within a whole world, and not in a Hollywood set, where if you walked out in the front door of that beautiful house, nothing would greet you but the parking lot behind the propped-up set.

Know your characters.

Don't spend half an hour going through your baby name book to pick out a name for your main character and call that character creation. You want to have a feel for what your character would do in most situations (though if you've created him well enough, one of these days you'll try to plug him into a scene and he'll look at you and say "I'm not doing that.") And even while you're angry with him, you'll be thrilled that he's real enough to stand up for himself.

And don't do a superb job of developing your main character and ignore everyone else. At barest minimum, you should feel that you have intimate knowledge of the two or three characters who take center stage in each of the first three or for scenes you've planned .

Know your conflict.

This should be fairly obvious, but I overlooked it in most of those thirty-page false starts. Conflict is the engine that drives any novel, and if you try to write one without first making sure you have an engine, you're not going to get far. Write out your conflict. (Or conflicts.) And don't go for the big generalities. "Gerri versus men," is a conflict, all right, but when you're stuck on chapter five and you look at your notes for something that will help you get back on track, something along the lines of "Gerri's hatred of her father drives her to take up with dependent men that she can then abandon, and the man she has now abandoned intends to kill her" might actually aim you in the right direction again.

Embrace a theme.

Know whether the story you are writing is about good versus evil, or about the transcendence of love, or about anything that can go wrong going wrong. You'll find additional themes as you're writing that will add depth and resonance to your main theme, and sometimes the main theme will shift focus part way through the book, but if you don't know what the theme is to begin with, you won't have any control of it when it shifts. And theme more than anything else is what will unify the beginning of your book with the end.

Determine a voice.

For salable novels, you need to resign yourself to either first person (Let me tell you about the time I found a diamond in my soup, and almost got killed by a hit man.) or third person (The stranger picked up his spoon and stirred it through his chili. He chuckled and glanced up at the waitress. "Let me tell you about the time I found a diamond in by soup, and almost got killed by a hit man.") Second person, the voice so popular in those choose-your-own-story adventure juveniles (You stir your chili with your spoon, then turn to the waitress and say, "Let me tell you about the time I found...") turns off readers so quickly that, unless you're a screaming genius, your editor will bounce it back to you unread. It's ugly and awkward.

So figure out which one it's going to be. First or third. When you're a bit more experienced, it can be both in the same book.

First person is great fun to write, because the narrator will develop a distinctive voice with shocking ease. Its limitations are that you can't know anything except what your main character knows, and, because the main character is narrating, you're almost certain she survives the novel. Agatha Christie did some funky things with this, but I thought the one where the first-person narrator turned out to be the killer (surprise!) was kind of gimmicky.

Third person is broader in the scope of what it allows you to do (multiple points of view, varying emotional distances, shifts to omniscient viewpoint). It is easier to write a literary novel in third than in first. There are exceptions. Its drawbacks are the ease with which you can be drawn off into tangents, the ease with which you can fall into passive voice (boring) and the way that characters can proliferate, to the point that you start losing track of them.

I've written books in both, they each have their uses, and you will discover that one fits what you're writing better than the other. Give it some thought.

Know your genre.

In a perfect world, every book would be equally marketable to every publisher, and we'd all sell everything we wrote and make millions doing so. But we haven't yet reached that perfect world, so in the meantime, you're going to need to know what you're writing so that you'll have an idea of who might buy it. It really, really helps to know this BEFORE you type "The End" and print out your final copy. Or, worse, get fifty rejection letters from publishers who tell you they "don't publish books of this type."

Genre is: romance, mystery, horror, western, men's adventure, science fiction, fantasy, gay/lesbian, religious, historical, mainstream, etc.. Mainstream can have elements from any or all of the other genres, but will have some facet that publishers believe will make it appeal to a wider audience. Walk through a bookstore, and try to imagine where your book would likely be shelved. That's your genre.

And be honest with yourself here. If Fabio's presence on the cover of your book would, A) be appropriate, and B) increase sales, you have not written a mainstream novel. Ditto rocket-ships, women in chainmail bikinis, or guys in cowboy boots and chaps.

Know your expectations.

If this is the first book you've ever written, give yourself a little slack. Nice as it is to imagine that you're going to get a million-dollar advance, a movie deal from Steven Spielberg, and foreign sales in every language known to humankind, the odds are against this happening. First advances generally float in the $2,000-$5,000 dollar range, and most first novels sink without so much as leaving an oil slick on the water to mark their passing.

While having high hopes can keep you going, having high expectations can paralyze you. After all, if you demand of yourself that you write the Great American Novel your first time out, every time you try to type a word on the page, your mental editor is going to say "No Great American Novel ever included that word." And you'll never get beyond the first thirty pages.

Give yourself room to learn, and to make mistakes.

If you do this ground work before you sit down at the keyboard and type "Chapter One," you'll stand a much better chance of getting to "The End." And the coolest thing about starting a novel is having justified confidence that you're going to eventually finish it.

Of course, you might be like me and have 3 manuscripts sitting in the NOVELS file of your computer! Here is a link that helps you finish that novel! http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/wc2-3.html

Holly has many great writing products available. I love her Character Building Workshop!

This Writer's Life

Moving....

Book Proposal

Breaking Down the Query Letter

Using Parallelism in Your Writing

NaNoWriMo Update

Special Announcement

Dictionary: Impossible!

Links of the Day

Brainstorming, Found some links to share!

Neat-o NaNo Thingy

Word of the day from Dictionary.com

Tips for NaNoWriMo

So watcha doing, Jeanette?

FREE E-BOOK

Yes, again

I am on a roll of sorts

CAPTURING CHARACTERS

Remedial Characterization

Good link

CLOSE UP AND PERSONAL

Writing Formula

To e-publish or not to e-publish, that is the question!

Harry Potter

How to Start a Novel

How to Start a Novel

© by Holly LisleAll Rights Reserved

© by Holly Lisle
All Rights Reserved