Holiday Wishes from The Mayhem by Michael Gettel-Gilmartin

It's been a great year for Project Mayhem--since our beginnings in 2010 we've written more than 900 posts! Our love affair with middle grade writing grows ever stronger, and we are so very grateful for all our readers. Please accept our best wishes for the New Year ahead.

Here's a rundown on what some of the Mayhemmers have been up to this year. As you can see, we're a busy bunch.

Caroline: I had two books come out this year (though only one MG): Blue Birds in March and Over in the Wetlands in July.

(Hopeful writers, I'd like you to know I continue to get pretty consistent rejections, too. It's just how this works. :)

Paul: My debut novel Surviving Bear Island came out in March from Move Books:

After a sea kayaking trip with his father takes a dangerous turn, Tom Parker is stranded on the remote, outer coast of unpopulated Bear Island in the waters of Prince William Sound, Alaska with only a survival kit in his pocket. Desperate to find his father, Tom doesn’t know how long he can survive and must put his survival skills to the test as he fights to reach safety.

“The tension is well-crafted and realistic. Bear Island is a challenging environment to survive but a terrific thrill on the page.”–Kirkus

It is a Junior Library Guild Selection in the High Interest Middle Category for books that will appeal to even the most reluctant middle-school readers.

In December, Surviving Bear Island, went to press for a second printing. Surviving Bear Island has also been listed by the Alaska Dispatch on their Favorite Alaska Books of the Year List. It has been nominated for a Cybils Award.

Dianne: I published my fourth book, The Inquisitor's Mark; and The Eighth Day became a finalist for the Sunshine State Young Readers Award in Florida.

Eden:  Book Three of the Young Inventors Guild trilogy. The Strange Round Bird...  (the ellipsis included since I have not decided on the second part of the title!) is due out in 2016.

Donna:The release date for the 2nd book in my Joshua and the Lightning Road series, Joshua and the Arrow Realm will be May 31, 2016 by Month9Books.  Also, Joshua and the Lightning Road was nominated for a 2015 Children's & Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Award (CYBILS) in Elementary/Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction.

Chris: I released You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers, and the MG/YA adventure novel Bandits Peak. 

You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers is available for the Kindle, in paperback, or in Large Print paperback.

Remember the magic of bedtime stories? When you write for children, you have the most appreciative audience in the world. But to reach that audience, you need to write fresh, dynamic stories, whether you’re writing rhymed picture books, middle grade mysteries, edgy teen novels, nonfiction, or something else.

Whether you’re just starting out or have some experience, this book will make you a better writer – and encourage you to have fun!

Bandits Peak: Danger in the Wilderness 

While hiking in the mountains, Jesse meets a strange trio. He befriends Maria, but he’s suspicious of the men with her. Still, charmed by Maria, Jesse promises not to tell anyone that he met them. But his new friends have deadly secrets, and Jesse uncovers them. It will take all his wilderness skills, and all his courage, to survive.

Readers who enjoyed Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet will love Bandits Peak. This heart-pounding adventure tale is full of danger and excitement.

Learn more at www.chriseboch.com or Chris's Amazon page,

I also had three fiction and three nonfiction work for hire books come out in 2015, written as M. M. Eboch. For fiction, the three world adventures for Rourke are Monster Island (Greece), Walking the Dragon's Back (China), and An Artful Adventure (France). The nonfiction titles are Native American Code Talkers, A History of Film, and A History of Television. World War I Battlefield Medicine will come out January 2016.


MAY THE MAYHEM BE WITH YOU! SEE YOU IN 2016!

Merry Mayhem: 2014 Project Mayhem Roundup by Michael Gettel-Gilmartin

2014's been a busy year for the Mayhemmers. We had several old hands retire, and welcomed some fantastic new blood. For those of you with a statistical bent, we are just shy of 356,000 page views--from our humble beginnings in 2010. Which, of course, means that 2015 is our 5th anniversary! Look for some amazing events to celebrate in the coming months.

Here's a round-up of what some of our members have been up to during the past 12 months--

Marissa Burt: Marissa has a new middle grade deal in the works. Her novels, STORYBOUND and STORY'S END, have been optioned for film.

Chris Eboch: Chris releases a new novel, BANDIT'S PEAK, in January. Here's the description: ​While hiking in the mountains, Jesse meets a strange trio. He befriends Maria, but he’s suspicious of the men with her. Still, charmed by Maria, Jesse promises not to tell anyone that he met them. But his new friends have deadly secrets, and Jesse uncovers them. It will take all his wilderness skills, and all his courage, to survive. Readers who enjoyed Gary Paulsen's Hatchet will love Bandits Peak. This heart-pounding adventure tale is full of danger and excitement.​

Paul Greci: I have just completed my Special Education Endorsement (it has been a very high energy 3 years of taking graduate classes while teaching). I’m very happy to be at the end of this road. The endorsement has resulted in a job within walking distance from my house—down the driveway, then on a trail through the woods and in five minutes I’m at the door.


I completed all the rewrites on my debut novel, SURVIVING BEAR ISLAND, which comes out in the Spring.





Joy McCullough-Carranza; I signed with Sara Crowe in February and I had the honor of reading and critiquing for a number of fabulous writer friends throughout the year, while maintaining a busy write-for-hire schedule.

Dianne Salerni: Dianne made her debut as a middle grade author with The Eighth Day. (And Book 2 in the series, THE INQUISITOR'S MARK, publishes on January 15th 2015!)










Caroline Starr Rose: I finished the hardest, hardest thing I've ever written in my life, and I'm proud of it (Blue Birds).

I finished the first draft of a book that sold simply as a "second book to follow". No proposal, nothing. I wasn't sleeping I was so fearful of what I'd gotten myself into. Add to that I wrote the book in a style (prose) that up to this point I'd never sold before. But I did the scary work and turned in that first draft at the end of September. (Bravo, Caroline!)

Joanna Roddy: 1. I picked up a lot of freelance article work this year (not MG related, but still a personal accomplishment). 2. After two years (from my last full edit with my agent), I completely rewrote my novel and my agent loved the work. We've been together for three years now and the book is finally (finally!) going out on submission in January. At one point I really didn't know if I could save this project, and I have grown so much as a writer. Props to Marissa Burt for supporting me through that very tough season as an author, friend, and mentor. Fingers crossed my book finds a publisher in 2015.




Kell Andrews made her debut with DEADWOOD from Spencer Hill Press. (Hooray, Kell!)









We sincerely wish our readers the best for 2015. May all your dreams come true. Drop us a line and tell us what you've accomplished this year--or what you hope to accomplish next year. Until then, may the Mayhem be with you!

Wrangling the Mayhem - Survey Time! by: Marissa Burt

Photo Credit: Kevin Wen from Wikimedia

So I'm a checklist kind of person. I'm the one with the super-pack of postits in her shopping cart. The one who wishes google calendar wasn't so efficient, because she misses picking out an annual planner. The one who always liked those pens with the different tabs that you could click on the end? You know, so you could write multi-colored titles and bullet-points?

And as we come to the close of 2014, my organizational impulse kicked in to gear, and I thought it might be nice to hear from some of you readers. If you'd be so kind, I'd love it if you clicked through the very short survey below so we can learn what kind of posts would you like to see more of or maybe even what you've found to be a bit of a yawn. And if you haven't yet introduced yourself, please jump in and leave a comment - maybe with your favorite middle-grade read from this year? Or, if that's too difficult a choice, perhaps your favorite office supply? ;)

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE VERY SHORT PROJECT MAYHEM SURVEY

Critique Methods Part II, by Matthew MacNish

Okay, this should hopefully be the last post in my series about critique and advanced use of MS Word. You can find the previous posts here:

• Critique Methods
• The Beauty, and Agony of Revision
• Document Map, a Tutorial

Last time, in Critique Methods, I talked about the difference between copy-editing, line-editing, and developmental editing. This time, I'm going to cover ways to convey those methods, and some other types of feedback, to the author of the manuscript you're critiquing.

Comments

First, and probably most important, is the function built into MS Word "leave a comment." It's been there since at least Office 2003, and I'm sure much longer, and it is probably the most useful tool when providing another writer feedback on her work.

To leave a comment, highlight a bit of text, or even a space, a punctuation mark, or formatting character (if formatting is revealed), and press CTRL+ALT+M. You can also use your mouse to click REVIEW-NEW COMMENT, but who has time for that, amiright? You can also leave a comment on another comment. This is done by highlighting the comment instead of a piece of text, and again, pressing CTRL+ALT+M. This can become extremely useful when passing a critique back and forth for a few passes, or when doing a tandem critique, or when co- or multi-authoring a text. Comments left by different user will be color-coded and start with that user's initials [in brackets].

NOTE: In the below screenshot, the comment color by user/author wasn't working, and I didn't have time to figure out why (Review - Track Changes - Dropdown Menu - Track Changes Options - Comments By Author - Didn't Help).

Anyway, comments can be used for all sorts of things. I think one of the most important things you can do during critique is to leave a comment on a particular turn of phrase or line of dialog that as a reader, you really loved. Encouragement is its own form of critique, and it can be just as crucial to the development of a manuscript as constructive criticism.

Highlighted Text

Another thing I try to do when critiquing a manuscript is to point out overused words. In my own manuscripts, these would be all the JUSTS and ANYWAYS and ONLYS. Everybody has different crutch words, and of course sometimes an author uses and repeats particular words for particular reasons, whether they might be narrative voice or even a verbal tic of a certain character that they use in dialog.

So I find that the best thing to do is to highlight these words, and therefore point out to the author how often those words are appearing, and let them decide for themselves whether it was on purpose, are whether perhaps the volume grew so high by their falling into autopilot while drafting. It's their manuscript, so it's up to them to decide what, if anything, to change.

Tracked Changes

Then again, sometimes you want to illustrate a change or point out a clear mistake. As discussed in my previous post, you want to be careful about copy- or line-editing someone's work who didn't ask for it, but if the need or lack thereof is not specific, and if we haven't worked together before, I will generally do some light copy-editing when critiquing a manuscript.

Some of the changes I will track are simple and obvious mistakes like typos, mispellings, comma splices, and other general grammar snafus, but sometimes, I will also track changes in stylistic choices. This is not done to tell another writer how they should tell their story, but rather to suggest options that cannot be conveyed by a simple highlight. Oftentimes, this is to discuss a specific question the author had when they requested the critique, such as "Does my male teen protagonist sound like an actual teenage boy here?"

This is the kind of thing critique partners should definitely discuss up front, so that a clear understanding of what's needed and what's expected will be in place before the work begins (critiquing an 80,000 word manuscript is a lot of work). Once you have worked together several times, there should be a clear understanding and solid foundation of trust established.

Inserted Text

Sometimes, comments just are not enough. Different people work in different ways, but I find that it's most often when discussing big-picture topics like pacing, plot arc, or character development that it becomes necessary to insert a large chunk of text as pictured here (actually, usually much larger, but this is just an example).

Of course, as I will describe below, you can technically fit as much text in a comment as you need to. I'll get to how that works in a moment, but the problem is that there is only so much real estate in the comment sidebar, and eventually you will run out of space.

So when I have something very complicated to say, I simply insert a large chunk of text directly into the existing text. As long as TRACK CHANGES is enabled, it will automatically appear colored (again, this should by default appear in different colors for different users, but something was off with my settings).

Comment Sidebar

Something you may eventually notice (this is rare when doing a solo critique unless it gets passed back and forth several times, but can be quite common when co-authoring) is that when so many comments are added (or a few comments that are very long) you will eventually run out of space on the right sidebar. When this happens, some of the comments will be truncated, and a small ellipsis will appear at the bottom right corner of those comments.

You can click on the ellipsis (it's barely visible in the bottom right of that screenshot above) to have the entire comment appear (scroll-able if necessary) in the left sidebar that usually makes up the document map when you have that option displayed. This setting is extremely useful in comment heavy documents like co-authored works.

NOTE: As I mentioned above, I created this example (I would never edit Melville, but it was the first free text that came to mind) on two different computers, with two different users. Normally, Word will color code the comments by user. I'm not sure why it didn't do that here, but if you click the image to zoom in, you should be able to see that the [BRACKETED] initials are different for the two users. You can also tell when a comment is commenting on another comment, rather than the text, because the bracketed text references the number of the original comment. It sounds much more complicated than it is.

* * *

And with that, this post has probably gone on far too long already, especially considering most of this is pretty basic stuff that the vast majority of you know already. Personally, I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable in Microsoft Word, but I am by no means an expert, and there is always more to learn.

Do you have any questions? See anything I missed or got wrong? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Critique Methods, by Matthew MacNish

There are lots of ways to critique a novel, most of them pretty useful. But ... they do not always have clearly defined definitions among the writing community. I'll be covering what I understand them to mean, in this post and probably one other, but I don't mean to imply that I know everything, or can't be wrong, because I definitely don't, and certainly can.

Before I get started, you should definitely read:

• The Beauty, and Agony, of Revision, by Matthew MacNish
• Document Map, a Tutorial by Matthew MacNish

These topics are all related, trust me.

Now, you back? Good. I've exchanged a lot of pages with a lot of writers. Some of them are famous authors, some of them are regular authors, some of them are aspiring authors, and some of them are just starting out. There is great value in all of those examples, for both writers involved.

In exchanging all those pages, I've learned a lot of things. For one, no two writers work exactly the same. Probably when drafting and revising too, but I'm talking about critiquing here. A lot of times, when exchanging work with another writer, there isn't time for what I like to call "a deep critique," and so we go through a quick "beta read," and end up exchanging an editorial letter, that usually averages around 2-5 pages, and really only covers big picture topics. Character Arc, Theme, Plot, Pacing, and so on.

These are great, and they certainly help, but personally? Nothing helps me polish my manuscripts more than a good deep critique. One that is so full of highlights, and tracked changes, and comments, and inserted colored text that it looks like a burst pinata at a third grade birthday party.

Nothing inspires me more than really digging in. And I mean both with feedback someone has given me on my work, and in doing the same for someone else.

So, a deep critique. What goes into it? Like I said, it can be different for every writer, but this is what I do:

Copy-Editing

I'm no professional, and it isn't quite this simple, but basically copy-editing is looking at the text (copy is text of any kind before it gets typeset in preparation for printing, binding, and publishing) on the most microscopic level. Is everything spelled right? Is the grammar correct? Are words properly capitalized? Is the punctuation correctly used and properly placed?

Basically, copy-editing is pointing out mistakes. Again, it's not that simple, but that is the basic concept.

I usually try to do a little copy-editing when I critique. A lot of times, the things I point out will be stylistic choices, and the writer knows what I'm pointing out is just a suggestion, so much of the changes are eventually ignored, but the important thing is to point them out, and let the author decide for themselves whether they made that choice on purpose.

Some writers vehemently do not want you to copy-edit their text during critique. They will usually clue you into this in one way or another. For example, "I'm sending you this in .PDF format, so you can turn your inner editor off."

That's generally a hint that means don't send me back a document that has more red on it than black and white.

When working on critique exchanges with a fellow writer, it's important to know what they're looking for, and not to waste your time giving them feedback they aren't interested in, and honestly might offend them.

Line-Editing

For a long time I did not understand the difference between line-editing and copy-editing, and to be honest, as far as I know, there is still some overlap, and a few gray areas. That said, if we're sticking with the microscope metaphor, line-editing is generally considered a level above copy-editing on the big picture scale, but the two are tied together closely enough that sometimes the same person can do them both.

In informal critique exchanges, I certainly try to. Line-editing, like copy-editing, still deals with sentence structure, and does not concern itself with macro-level concepts like pacing and plot. The main thing line-editing seeks to achieve is consistency. If you called the love interest's dad Jon with no H in chapter 3, did he suddenly gain a letter in the spelling in chapter 10? If the antagonist has a verbal tic in which he refuses to speak in contractions, does he suddenly say "ain't" in chapter 12?

Passive voice, syntax, repeated words, subject/verb agreement. There are many things to look for, but the job of a good line edit still considers a manuscript one sentence at a time.

Developmental Editing

Why is there no hyphen in this one? I'm not sure either.

Anyway, developmental editing is the highest level gaze a manuscript gets. Oftentimes, major changes of this kind are best left to a developmental editor who works for a publisher who is actually paying you to publish your manuscript, but when exchanging pages with other writers, there is nothing wrong with making suggestions, knowing that your critique partner will only implement those that resonate with her vision for her story.

Developmental editing concerns itself with the biggest of the big picture topics. Plot, pacing, character arc and development, theme, and so on. It considers a manuscript by the paragraph, page, scene, and even chapter. Oftentimes, scenes can be moved around to improve tension or build suspense. Other times, scenes can be cut or lengthened or even inserted (as in a new scene), depending on just what the story needs at that position in the tale.

Of course, this is all highly subjective, and I would definitely recommend second and third and fourth opinions if you're considering making these kinds of sweeping changes to a manuscript, but I have personally re-written an entire book from scratch before, and it was a great learning experience.

* * *

Well, that's it for today. Come back next time and I will cover exactly how I implement these methods when I'm critiquing pages for another writer.

In the meantime, when it comes to general manuscript cleanup, you should absolutely check out this post by my favorite editor, Andrew Karre from Carolrhoda Lab.

Mayhem's Season Premier: Three New Stars!!!

Welcome to Project Mayhem's new season of Writing with the Stars... well, we can but dream of being beamed into every living room in America in our spangly gowns and sparkling tuxedos. (And get a look at Hilary's tap shoes!)

Seriously, it does seem like a new season on the blog. This summer, we said farewell to three magnificent Mayhemers--Lee Wardlaw, Mike Winchell, and Tracy Edward Wymer ("The Three Double Yous")--as they moved on to pursue other avenues of Mayhem in their lives. Then, in kind of our own papal conclave, we sent up some white smoke and were blessed by three great new writers who said YES! to the Mayhem. So, without further ado, let me introduce our newest members:

Joy McCullough-Carranza – Joy grew up in San Diego (where she was a total bookworm), went to college in Chicago (where she studied theater and became a playwright), and lived in Guatemala for a year (where she met her husband). Now she makes her home in Seattle with two book-obsessed kids and an equally book-obsessed husband. A walk through their home includes the ever-present danger of a falling stack of books. Between homeschooling her children, freelance writing and editing, answering someone else’s fan mail, and writing her own middle grade fiction, Joy is excited to make room for Project Mayhem in her life.

Website  Twitter  Blog

Braden Bell - was the least-stable, lowest-achieving middle school student in the history of civilization. He shocked every former teacher by eventually earning both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in theatre.  A middle school teacher by day and a father by night, he is around middle-grade mayhem 24/7. He teaches choir and directs plays, but whether he fights evil on evenings and weekends is something he cannot disclose. Braden lives with his wife and children on a quiet, tree-lined lot outside of Nashville, TN. He is the author of THE KINDLING, PENUMBRAS, and the forthcoming LUMINESCENCE.

Blog   Twitter   Facebook

Joe McGee - Joe was raised by wolves. Llama riding, Irish wolves who roamed the countryside, selling stories for cheese and Sour Patch Kids. At the age of 12, he began to write these stories down, filling spiral-bound notebooks. He has not stopped. He has ink in his blood and words in his heart. He is 17 feet tall and can swallow fire and can play six ukuleles at once and may have been a pirate in another life... Wait. None of that’s true? Well….what about the spiral-bound notebooks filled with stories? Yes, that part IS true.

He LOVES quirky, dark, strange fiction. (Tips hat to Roald Dahl.) He enjoys witty banter. Cemeteries, shadows, and tentacles make him warm and fuzzy. Joe has his Master’s Degree in writing and is very close to finishing his MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at The Vermont College of Fine Arts (July 2014). He is represented by Linda Epstein of the Jennifer DeChiara agency. Joe writes picture books, young adult, and middle-grade (HUZZAH!)           

Website  Twitter 

I sat down (virtually) with the new recruits to chew the fat. Of course, since we're all writers, our first ruminations were about books.

Me: So guys, any thoughts about books you'd like to share? Favorite books as a child? Favorite lines? Books you'd love to read again for the first time?

Joy: I'd love the chance to re-experience the Harry Potter series - as a kid. (But watching my daughter discover them has been the next best thing.)

Me: Oh, me too. I've actually read the series aloud twice to my older two kids. Now I'm waiting for my first grader to show interest. But he wants to be Indiana Jones, not a schoolboy wizard.

Braden: My favorite book when I was younger was actually a whole series of books about pig named Freddy who solved mysteries. There were at least a dozen, I think. I still remember some of the names and characters because they seemed so vivid to me at the time.

Me: Whoa, never heard of that! (Quick web search) Hey, I've found it: Freddy the Detective, by Walter R. Brooks. Cool. I'll be on the lookout for those!

Joe: I've got a favorite line to share. Actually, I want to give you two. Can I do that? Can I lead off with some mayhem? ;) 

1. "Not all those who wander are lost." J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.
2. "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

Me: Speaking of breakfast, I'm a bit peckish myself at this time in the morning. What's your favorite breakfast, Joe?

Joe: COFFEE.

Me: Yeah, I gather you're a bit of a night owl. How about you, Joy?

Joy: Hmm ... I love breakfast foods, both sweet and savory. I think I'll go for some super fluffy chocolate chip pancakes drowning in whipped cream. I wouldn't turn down some fresh-squeezed orange juice. No coffee, though. Because blech.

Me: Ooh, them's fighting words! But we all get along on Project Mayhem, even if we can create a bit of a stir. Braden, you got anything to add?

Braden: I have to leave the house at 6:25 to get the kids to school so I don't eat breakfast--that is a few extra minutes of sleep right there. So I have spoonful of peanut butter usually and then way too much Dr. Pepper. 

Me: Wow! I'm not letting my kids know that's an option. They'd be all over it! Well, now that we've got the breakfast issue out of the way, how's about having a little fantasy. Anyone want to share a dream vacation?

Joe: Riding llamas (or zebras) across New Zealand, stopping only to serenade the locals with ukeleles, and fireside stories.

Me: Okay, I'm expecting a new llama/zebra-with-ukelele novel from you any time soon. Joy and Braden?

Joy: I've never been to Europe, and if I have to narrow it down, I think I'd say Italy. But ideally, I'd love to do the whole shebang. Not with backpacks and youth hostels, though. Europe on a luxurious budget - now there's a dream!

Braden: I spend so much time gone and away from my home that when I am daydreaming about vacations, I tend to daydream about not having to go anywhere. Being able to putter in my yard, read, and watch some old movies is my dream vacation. Oh--and lots of lemonade and even more Mexican food. 

Me: Yup, let's hear it for staycations. And Mexican food!!

Thanks, guys. This has been quite a fiesta. You're all so great! I'm really looking forward to working with you at Project Mayhem. 
World, have your say, and welcome Braden, Joe, and Joy to the Mayhem!

Document Map, a Tutorial by Matthew MacNish

Document Map is a setting in Word that lets you navigate around a document quickly, and view the layout of a document at a glance. This is especially useful when dealing with a long document like a novel manuscript. Now that I know how to use this feature properly, I have no idea how I worked on writing without it.

Most of the Project Mayhem authors probably already know about it, but when I learned about the Document Map recently, and then shared about it on Facebook, I was amazed how many writers I know didn't know about it.

So, I'm going to write this post based on Microsoft Word 2007, which is what I own, and what I write in, but my understanding is that the feature exists in everything since Office XP (Word 2003), and is even better in Word 2010. Enabling and using the feature might be a little different in the different versions, but I'm sure you can Google the settings for whichever version you use.

For MS Word 2007, here is a screenshot of how you enable the function:

So that's VIEW on the banner, then click the box next to "Document Map," to place a check mark in it, and then the Document Map pane will appear to the left of the document itself (that dropdown menu can also show thumbnails).

When you're ready to create your first heading (in a novel this might be the title), which is like the highest level in the tree directory of an outline, you need to switch back to HOME on the banner. That will allow you to select style, as seen here:

The default format is probably not how you want it to look in a novel, but we'll get to customizing it in a moment. For now, light blue 14-point Cambria works fine when creating an example outline. I'll show you what this does to the Document Map pane in a second.

For now, you'll need at least one sub-heading to create a directory tree. This is what that looks like:

Keep in mind, that these styles only appear with these default settings when you open a new document. I have found that when trying to add these setting to a manuscript I first started years ago, the styles are all kinds of wonky. You can edit them manually, but I've found it much easier to create a new document, build the headings exactly how you want, and then paste the rest of your text in.

So, now that you know how to enable Document Map, and how to create the first two headings, this is what an example outline looks like, with four levels of headings, and then what that does to the document map pane on the left:

That's a little blurry, so here's a closeup of the map pane:

Isn't that convenient? Imagine a manuscript with 3 sections, and 34 chapters. It is so much faster to be able to jump around the document using this feature, expanding and contracting your headings on the left, and then clicking on whatever section you need to jump to. This feature is amazing during revisions. I have a friend, Adam Heine (who also actually taught me this feature), who even uses a level 5 heading for each scene within his chapters. I haven't found this necessary yet, but the fact that the option is there is pretty nice.

Now, you probably don't like light blue 14-point Cambria to show up in your novel manuscript, so how do you edit the formatting of these headings, so that it fits the style of your writing? There is apparently a way to do it by right clicking the text and then clicking on the paragraph settings, but I've found it much easier to right click the style, and the "modify," like this:

Which will bring up this window, that allows you to customize how you want the style (heading) to look:

Note the outlined font color of "Automatic," (which is basically black), the outlined centering of the paragraph, rather than "aligned left," and the font changed to "Times New Roman," which is the default in the majority of the publishing industry, rather than "Cambria." Now, I didn't change the font from 13-point to 12-point for this example image, but in a novel manuscript, even for a chapter title/heading, you probably should. Some agents and editors may ask for something different, and you can certainly Google, "default manuscript formatting," for better expert opinions than mine, but I keep the entire text of my manuscripts in 12-point Times New Roman, automatic color.

You might not want to center your chapter headings, and that's certainly fine if you don't, but the point is that this window is how you control those formatting options for every single piece of text that uses that style (heading). Modifying Heading 2, for example, will change the formatting for every piece of text that you assigned the style "Heading 2," to.

Does that all make sense? I certainly hope so, because I'm pretty new to this, and am definitely no expert. If you have any questions, please be sure to ask them in the comments, and if I don't know the answer, I'll try to find it for you.

Tell us about yourself and your summer goals (if any!)

It’s great Project Mayhem has so many readers and followers, and being the nosy writers we are, we’re curious about who you are. Sometimes I think blogging is unnatural for writers. Most of us are more interested in other people’s lives than we are in our own. If we weren’t, I’m not sure we’d spend so much time making up characters. The good part about blogging is it allows connections between people who would otherwise never meet. So please tell us a little about yourselves. I’ll give you a prompt you can follow if you like, otherwise, any info. would be great. I hope other Project Mayhemers jump in as well.

 What state do you live in?
Favorite hobby?
Real life job?
Summer plans or goals?

Here’s mine:
What state do you live in? Ohio
Favorite hobby? Reading and gardening
Real life job? Writer, mom, kid chauffeur
Summer plans or goals? Road trip to Pennsylvania, catch up on reading, practice drawing (a long-term goal)

~ Dee Garretson

MEET OUR NEW TEAM MEMBERS!!!!

We had such a hard time deciding this that instead of bringing on two new members as planned, we chose three! They are all super awesome and please help us welcome them to TEAM MAYHEM!!! wOOt!

Caroline Starr Rose

Why we like this girl:Not only does she have a cool middle name, but her first novel, MAY B., debuts spring 2012 (Schwartz and Wade/Random House Children's Books). We can't wait to get our grubby hands on her debut! She's repped by Michelle Humphrey at ICM (awesomeness). Her top favorite middle-grade novels are THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH, HATCHET, anything with Laura Ingalls, Anne Shirley, Ramona Quimby, or Taran, the Pig Boy. Oh, and she stayed in the same room Hemingway rented while writing THE SUN ALSO RISES! She's way too good for us already!!!!

Michael Winchell

Four cool things about Michael:

- When I was younger I HATED school, and now I'm a teacher, of all things. Go figure.

- My biggest pet peeve is hearing people eating/chewing. Drives me nuts, and if they're eating nuts, by the way, that's even worse. (Yeah, we agree, super gross!)

- I have this dream of being able to have my office atop my house (jutting up from the roof) overlooking a scenic view, with windows on all sides and auto-dimming possible to allow me to see out, but people outside unable to see me.

- I am extremely superstitious, especially related to my sports teams (NY Yankees, St. Louis Rams, NJ Nets, NY Islanders, Syracuse Orange).

Michael is repped by Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates and they've got lots of good things in the works!

Yahong Chi

Yahong is very mysterious. We don't have her picture...YET!

Yahong Chi is a children’s writer and book reviewer. She reviews for CM: Canadian Review of Materials, Teen Voices, Crow Toes Quarterly and Canadian Children’s Book News.

Why Yahong is redonkulously cool:I'm the most patriotic Canadian you'll ever meet; I adore my country. My New Year's resolution was to network more with writers, and it's been a ton of fun so far. My favorite bloggers are ones who respond to all comments, and my absolute favorite genre ever is middle-grade fantasy. I am a huge sucker for MG fantasy.Yahong's favorite books/series are: Harry Potter series, Artemis Fowl series and Windblowne by Stephen Messer

WELCOME TO THE TEAM!!! Posts from these newbies will start next month!!!

What Makes Middle Grade?

Some time ago, I participated in a writing exercise. Now, I’m not too fond of writing exercises in general—I write much better by instinct, not on command—but this one was actually pretty easy and very interesting to boot. To help me better understand the genre, I was suppose to describe what I thought defined middle grade. Now we all know the technical definition of middle grade—stories for 8- to 12-year-old readers (or 9- to 12-year-old readers, or 9- to 13-year-old readers, depending on who you ask)—but this exercise went a little deeper than that. What qualities and characteristics, we were asked, make up this fun and fantastic genre? This turned out to be a very useful exercise—I still take my list into consideration when I need a reminder about exactly who my audience is and what I think they’re looking for in a middle-grade read. Obviously, this is very subjective, but here’s what I came up with:

1) Age of the protagonist – young readers like characters they can relate to, that they can perhaps see something of themselves in. For this reason, I think it’s most effective for kid lit novels to have a protagonist close in age to the target audience of the book, give or take a few years. Diary of a Wimpy Retired Accountant just wouldn’t have the same appeal as Diary of a Wimpy Kid (not to a middle-grade audience, anyway). Some kid books work with an adult main character (anybody else love Amelia Bedelia as a child?) but I think keeping your protagonist about the age of your target audience is generally a good rule of thumb.

2) External versus internal – my personal opinion is that most middle-grade books, unless you’re going for something very deep or literary, should probably focus more on external action and events than the internal thoughts/conflicts of the characters. Not that thoughts and conflicts are bad—they’re not, and they should be there—but personally I think most middle-grade readers will find the external more interesting and entertaining. (And again, it all depends what you’re going for. A more serious, emotional novel might have more of an internal focus, obviously.)

3) Pace – again, it’s my personal opinion that middle-grade novels should move a little faster than your average adult or YA. Remember, you’re dealing with an audience that may not have the same attention span as older individuals, and you might be dealing with some reluctant readers who aren’t particularly invested in your book, so you might lose them if things move too slowly.

4) Familiar, relatable situations – moving to a new town, wanting to fit in, dealing with pesky siblings. Middle-graders like to see themselves in books they read, to see characters dealing with the same challenges and struggles they often face in their own lives. This is true even for books that don’t have a real-world setting. My novel, Ivy’s Ever After, is about a princess locked in a tower guarded by a dragon; the prince who slays the dragon will win her hand in marriage. She hates the prince, she doesn’t want to be there, and she actually spends most of the novel trying to figure a way out of this terrible situation that her father, his court, and centuries of royal tradition decree must be. Can most middle-graders relate to being locked in a tower guarded by a dragon? Probably not. But can they empathize with the powerlessness of being young, of being at the mercy of the adult authority figures in their lives, even if it means being forced to do something they’d rather not or something that they actually think is unfair? You bet’cha.

5) Appropriate reading level – okay, this one is pretty self-explanatory. You’re writing for middle grade. Leave the SAT vocab words at home.

Any other thoughts? What do you think makes middle grade?

-Dawn Lairamore

Talking the Good Talk—My Tips on Dialogue

If you’re writing fiction, dialogue is most likely going to make up a good part of your book, so you want it to be topnotch. Dialogue is a major means by which any character’s voice is expressed, and dialogue was probably the most difficult challenge I faced as a new writer. My novel, Ivy’s Ever After, was my first serious attempt at writing fiction. My prior fiction history consisted of two short stories I eked out while taking a creative writing class in college (boy, did they stink!), and an abandoned attempt to write a children’s novel several years later (I made it as far as Chapter 4). I didn’t have much experience with dialogue, and it wasn’t really working out for me. I’d re-read chapters I’d spent hours writing, only to discover that all the characters sounded the same. Grrrrr—how boring! I wanted characters that came alive in the reader’s imagination, that jumped off the page, that exuded interesting and distinctive personalities. Don’t we all? And since this was something greatly on my mind while I was writing Ivy, I thought I’d use my Project Mayhem debut—and my very first blog post ever!!—to share some of the tips that helped me the most with dialogue.

I learn best through observation and examples, so I made a point of reading lots in the realm of middle-grade (which you should be doing anyway, duh). When I came across a book with particularly great dialogue, I’d read those sections over again. I’d try to pinpoint what about these characters’ voices made them so enticing, and how I could apply these methods to my own writing. I checked audio books out of the library and listened to them while I commuted to work, made long drives to visit friends out of town, and did boring stuff around the house like scrubbing the kitchen floor. There was something about hearing dialogue performed out loud that really helped the nuances sink in. (This is one of the reasons, by the way, that I always read everything I’ve written out loud. But I think it’s especially important for dialogue. You’ll be able to hear if it sounds unnatural or just doesn’t flow.) 

During this time, someone at a writing conference passed along her favorite tip for dialogue. You should, she told me, be able to take any line of dialogue out of context and be able to tell which character said it—their speech styles should be that distinctive. This was great advice, but not advice I agreed with in its entirety. I mean, come on, if your character says something like, “No,” or “I’d like a glass of water,” do you really need to go out of your way to make that super-duper distinctive (“Nay, forsooth, my friends,” “Gimme a glass of water or I’ll smash your face, punk.”)? I think if you get carried away with this, your dialogue can start sounding over-the-top, and you’ll just end up annoying your readers. But, in general, this has been a useful tip for me. I certainly think you should be able to identify large chucks of dialogue or any especially significant dialogue using this method. 

Most helpfully, I made a list of my major characters and what I thought their speech style should be like given their background and personality. Did they talk fast or slow? Were the thoughts expressed in a scattered or orderly fashion? Did they use a lot of expressions and if so, what kind? Did they have a speech impediment? Stutter or slur their words? 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ivy’s Ever After, it’s a fractured fairy tale about a princess and a dragon who team up against a (not-so-nice) handsome prince. (You can read Chapter 1 at my website, http://www.ivyseverafter.com/.) Here’s how I tried to distinguish the speech styles of several characters: 

• Ivy, my princess, is far from a proper lady. She’s sassy, opinionated, bold—and her dialogue shows it. She doesn’t stand on formality, so she often uses colloquialisms or speaks in sentence fragments. She doesn’t hide emotion, as a proper princess would—when she gets angry or excited, the exclamation points start coming out! Sometimes she interrupts other characters if she doesn’t like what they have to say. (Oh, how I love this feisty princess—but no one said she had the best manners in the world.)
• Elridge, my dragon, is not your typical dragon. He’s timid rather than ferocious. He stutters when he gets nervous. He uses the expression, “Dear me,” a lot, often uttered at faint-hearted moments, sort of the way Piglet was always muttering, “Oh d-d-dear,” in those Winnie the Pooh cartoons I loved when I was a kid.
• Ivy’s father, the king, speaks formally, as you would expect of a royal monarch. He tends to use complete sentences and proper sentence structure, and his vocabulary is a little more sophisticated than that of the other characters.
• Ivy’s fairy godmother, Drusilla, is overly excitable. She tends to get caught up in a single train of thought and ramble on and on. . . . Can you say run-on sentence?
• The trolls in Ivy’s world live in large underground caverns. I wanted them to sound different than their human counterparts—they live a very different subterranean existence, after all—so I peppered their dialogue with a lot of rock- and cave-related insults and expressions: “Boulder-brain!” “Dripstone!” “Feldspar fungus!”

I hope some of these methods are as helpful to you as they were for me. And, even though Ivy’s Ever After was released back in May, other Project Mayhemers have been so great about giving away copies of their books that I’m not about to let them show me up! So, please follow and leave a comment to win a signed copy of Ivy’s Ever After. And thanks for stopping by :)

Our first "official post" coming Monday!!! Author Dee Garretson, WILDFIRE RUN Giveaway!

Our first "official" post goes up this Monday, August 23rd! Team Member Dee Garretson will be talking about her debut novel, WILDFIRE RUN (Aug. 31st, HarperCollins) and giving away a signed hardcover!

Help us celebrate her debut and errr...ours too!!!!!

TEAM MAYHEM

Project Mayhem is coming.You have been warned.

We are coming soon....readers beware.