The Pain in the Heart

I've been pondering this post for a long time, trying to get the words right. 

Ironic, considering my chosen profession. Sometimes I think we become writers because we see great beauty and sorrow, and need to find words for it. Even if those words aren't always easy to come by.

This idea of mine is something I've long felt about writing, since I was a teenager and just starting to think about writing as a craft, and not just the stories I told myself at night, but not something I had words for.

A few weeks ago, I was reading DEAD SET by Richard Kadrey (so good!), and the feelings I've been trying to articulate came into sharper focus. The story is about a teenage girl dealing with the death of her father. She and her mother have to move into a shabby apartment, and she's struggling in a new school. She wanders into a record store one day, and finds a special room. The room is filled with records made from people's souls, her dad's among them. She travels to the Underworld, battles dying souls, and copes with the death of her father.

Kadrey has a light hand throughout the book--thank goodness. It would be easy to make Zoe mopey and depressed all the time. It would be easy to harp on how much she misses her father, and how she wishes she could be with him again. It would be easy, but the book would suffer for it.

Instead, Zoe's grief rises and falls like the tide. Sometimes, like when she discovers her father's soul at the record store, it rises. Other times, it's way underneath the surface. Not just as subtext, but as something hinted at in the spaces in between. In the words, and the scenes, and what's there, and what's not there. 

Kadrey is a good writer. So good, I'm going to assume he knows the chestnut about showing and not telling. He's very good at showing. Light on the telling. 

The obvious emotion running throughout the book is grief. Zoe's loss of her father. Her strained relationship with her mother. But in order for Kadrey to be able to sustain that sort of undercurrent all the time, he had to have been feeling grief himself. Not just emotion forced on the page, but a feeling that wells up inside you and pours out onto the page.

You feel sexy when writing a sex scene. You feel witty and clever when writing humor. These emotions are part of the larger book, but for me, the best books come from a place of pain. Of disquiet. Unrest. The main character needs something. Something desperately. Whether it's a sandwhich or true love, told well, we feel this yearning through the entire story, as something even deeper than subtext.

I believe that is where the words come from. The inspiration. The pain we feel in our hearts. The unrest. The easier we can tap into this feeling and just let it flow, let is simmer, the better our writing will be for it.

I'm not just talking about the subtext or surface emotions. I can think of a happy memory and feel happiness, but it doesn't last. For this other, more elusive feeling, it simply is. It just bubbles up from you--whether it's grief, or lust, or sadness, this is a state of being. Curiosity, a sense of justice. It's like a secret heart, beating inside the novel.

It then occurs to me that many writers were famous for being tortured. Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Plath. It's not that you can only be a good writer if you're borderline suicidal, but that these people have obviously had horrible things happen to them, and this infused their work. 

I think you can be perfectly well adjusted and still feel disquiet. Or curious. Or rail against the injustice you see. And these feelings will then lend themselves to words, because it burns inside you to tell it.

I still don't know if I'm explaining myself properly, but it's the best I can do for now. In the meantime, I hope you all mine your own emotions, if only to exorcise them on the page.

*I totally stole this title from the name of a Bones episode, because it fit so well.

Award Goodness

So my friend Rena, aka the Liz with the Dragons, has nominated me for an award. Awards are fun, and I always enjoy talking about myself, so here we go!

The rules:

• paste the award badge to your blog, 
• give us 11 random facts about yourself, 
• answer the 11 questions, 
• and choose your nominees

 Since I am not sure I can think of random facts about myself everyone wants to know, we're skipping right to the questions, m'kay? M'kay.

a.        What naive misconception did you have about writing books when you started

That your "process" was a static thing. Once you found your magical process at the end of a rainbow, that was it. Just, lather rinse repeat for every single book, forever and ever.

This is so not the case. I always try new things, partially because I am always trying to find a better way to do something, and also because the same thing doesn't work for each book. Some ideas I spend a lot of time working on the character, while the next book I might not have to work hard at all. 

This isn't to say that I don't spend equal time working on character, plot, and setting, just that some things come easier than others, but what things are easy and what is hard changes with each book.  
 

b.      What is your favorite part of writing? 

That warm, bubbly feeling in the pit of your stomach when you're writing and the rest of the world disappears. Your fingertips are flying across the keyboard and the words come easy.

I also really love brainstorming new ideas.

 

c.       What is the one thing you would change about publishing and why?

Wow, what a can of worms! Most of the business practices of publishing are there because they need to be, I think (please lay down your pitchforks). But there's a lot of things that could be done far more efficiently, and I think the new computer tracking systems make it hard to build a career. 

 

d.      Do you have an inspiration list? Can you give us a sample? 

I use music and pictures to inspire me, especially during the brainstorming stage of a project.

Pinterest is excellent for the picture aspect. Here are my boards. All of them are for a book idea. Some of those ideas are really far developed (Deja Vu and Sanctuary for example), but other ideas have been really slippery, so I actually used Pinterest in attempts to brainstorm (What the Water Gave Me for example). 

As for the music aspect, that's why Job invented iTunes. I make playlists for each book idea, and I have a separate playlist called The Idea Mine that's nothing but songs I find inspiring. A few of those songs are:

"A Question of Heaven" by Iced Earth

"Snuff" by Slipknot

"What the Water Gave Me" by Florence and the Machine (if you couldn't already tell from Pinterest) ;)

"Talons" by Bloc Party

and "Daisy" by Brand New

Tangent: there is an excellent Whedonverse music video to Daisy...

 

e.       If you were a super villain, what would be your fatal flaw? 

Hubris, for that is everyone's fatal flaw.

Other than that, it would be over thinking everything. I would try to run a Xanatos Gambit, over think all the possibilities, and never get anything done. I would be the less effective supervillain ever.

f.       If you were a super hero, what would be your super power? 

I would be the superhero that pulls all the other superheros together. When the chips are down and all hope seems lost, I would be the plucky sidekick that gives a rousing speech about friendship or courage or nachos that kicks the Moody Superhero off his/her butt and saves the day.

If I was short inspiration that day, I would just crib Aragorn's speech. He wouldn't mind, I'm sure.

 

g.      If you could go on a trip to a tropical island but you didn’t get to pack anything before you left, would you go?

Yes.

If you asked the same question about the Arctic Tundra the answer would be no. I figure, a tropical island, I could just buy whatever I needed there. Arctic Tundra, not so much.

Now for the nominees:

Joe Selby
Liz Davis
Charity Bradford (who also has a book coming out soon, that you should read because it's AMAZING)

...and anyone else that wants to answer these questions. Let us know in the comments section if you're game, so we can visit and see!

Nominees, because Rena asks awesome questions, I am going to ask that you answer the same ones. :D

Songs to Enjoy

Today I would like to highlight some instrumental songs I enjoy!

Most are from soundtracks, so you're going to notice a lot of Hans Zimmer in this list, as I have a fangirl crush on just about every soundtrack this guy's done (Hans Zimmer has done the soundtrack for lots of movies, some of which you may recognize: The Da Vinci Code, The Dark Knight, Inception, Kung Fu Panda, and the entire Pirates of the Caribbean series).

Feel free to pop into the comments section and suggest other awesome songs!

Desperation Your Secret Ally

A while ago I read a really interesting essay by Neil Gaiman about where he gets his ideas. He's rather candid about it, and I've thought back fondly of that essay time and again. But today what's made me think of his essay about ideas is when he talked about desperation. He was desperate to figure out a story for the Sandman comics and gradually worked his way through it.

So I come to desperation myself. I've worked on three or four different ideas, and none of them came together. The ideas were there, but the plot hadn't joined up like the big robot in Power Rangers (the original show from the 90s...we don't talk about the Power Rangers in Space Metaton IV on this blog). 


Bored and frustrated, I reread some of my old things. You know those novels. They didn't quite work out the way you thought they would. You abandoned them before you finished. You wrote until you didn't know what else happened and gave up. I read over my zombie novel, still beloved in my heart despite it only being 34K and very, very rough and discovered magic.


I could make this into a full length novel. It actually wasn't that bad. Sure I wrote it before I knew what a scene was, but still. The character's voice was alive and whole and there. Like magic. From my brain.

Desperation can be an ally. Sometimes you're at your wits end. You've had enough worrying over the book and your future as a writer, and you just want to lose yourself in a story. Given the rough state of the half draft, I also think it's going to be easier to just write in the spirit of discovery. To write out an exploratory draft, and write with abandon, instead of feeling like I need to stay on the path of the plot. 


I've worked out some things for the plot, but mostly I plan to wing a lot of the story. I also plan to do NaNo this year, and I am excited for it.

Sometimes you just have to throw in the towel, give up your writerly notions, and just sit down and tell yourself a story. It's so easy to forget that, but so vital to remember it.


What about you? Has anything good come out of a moment of desperation?

Exploratory Draft Part Two

A while ago I blogged about calling my first draft an "exploratory draft". This idea came from Laini Taylor, who blogged about the same thing here.

Today I am revisiting the idea. I've wanted to write a post about this for a while, but I didn't feel like I'd come out to a place yet where I could.

The problem was letting go. I've finished a major rewrite. I've been working on developing an idea, but no matter how hard I tried the plot wouldn't come together. Suddenly I started to feel like a failure. I started to worry that the book, tradition urban fantasy, would just get lost among the hundreds of other urban fantasy books out there. 

Then I thought about my other ideas, the weird ones. The ones that are like urban fantasy but set on another planet. Or even weirder than that, the ideas that approach being considered cyberpunk. The little voice worried that a market would be hard to find for those ideas because they are so strange. And what if the book does well? I'd been stuck in the genre. 

Then of course the guilt set in, because I know I should not be worrying about agents and publishing at this stage; I should be focusing on the novel. 

This little cycle of emotions made me realize some things. First, writers are crazy and I am no exception. Second, my doubt masquerades itself as a reasonable voice only looking out for my future. Do you see what it did there? First my idea was too normal and then it was too weird. I couldn't win either way.

So I tried to get back to that feeling, of just having fun with an idea. Allowing myself to write a really, really crappy first draft. Of writing scenes I knew would never make it. Of exploring the idea.

It's not as easy as it sounds. There's a lot invested in the idea after all. And for me, I have to have some idea of the primary conflict before I head off into writing land. Otherwise the idea fizzles after a few scenes. 

I wish I could tell you that I had a magical breakthrough and the novel is now flowing off my fingertips like water from a stream, but that's not the case. I started something last night, but I don't know what the primary conflict is. I plan to spend time today figuring some basic things out, and hopefully I can start up again. 

The point is to just keep trying. You're going to enter weird slumps and phases of your writing life, and sometimes you have to get really creative with the solutions. 

Anyone have any horror stories to share? What about that nagging voice? How do you manage to ignore it enough to make it go away?

Plotting

So for the last few weeks I have been working on my next novel. I definitely need a break after that extensive rewrite, so it was time to work on a new project.

The idea came easily. The characters too. It's just this darned plot that I seem to be having troubles with. At first I was shocked, and then I thought something was wrong with me.

And then I realized it's just part of writing. We tend to forget how hard certain parts of the process are after we've moved on. Or we approach a new project with a "this time it will be magical" frame of mind. I know I do. I get so excited about my idea and the characters that when I stall out, it baffles me. 

"What a second? Wait...this is starting to feel like...yes, yes that's it...WORK."

But it is. As fun as writing can be, there's still a process. Even if you're a panster you still have to come up with the idea. You have to think about the characters, and then figure out how to start the book. Even if you sail through this, you're bound to get to a part in the middle where things start to feel like work. 

But that's as normal as feeling like your writing is blessed by the Book Fairies (they do so exist, and you can't tell me otherwise). If everyone who could make coherent sentences could write a book, there would be tons of them.

Funny slightly off topic observation: there are a lot of people out there who don't know how to write well.

I am not talking about perfect grammar and complex sentences. I am talking about writing a short paragraph that puts their ideas together in a coherent fashion that reads better than something a third grader could write. 

I noticed this when I started getting emails from people (not my writer friends, so no one out there feel guilty). These people from my everyday life know how to speak proper English. They are relatively intelligent, educated people. Yet when I received an email from them, it sounded like something a third grader might write.


Some of the mistakes are just my pet peeves. Over use of text-speak (lots of LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!! for example). Not capitalizing the first word in a sentence. Cramming the sentences together without rhyme or reason. 


But most of it was the way those sentences read. I don't know how else to describe it, other than it looked like something you'd write in third grade. At first I thought these people were just being lazy, but then it dawned on me: they didn't write a lot in their daily life. These are people who didn't have to write something longer than a grocery list in years, and now suddenly there's this magical email thing. 


And just because you can talk well, doesn't mean you're going to automatically be able to write well. 


All of this is to remind us that writing is a skill. It truly is. It's a skill we hone every time we write blog posts about Book Fairies, every time we think about our character's conflict, every time we, you know, write. 


P.S. I have valiantly checked, and rechecked, this post for typos. I always do, but since I was talking about writing skill it seemed extra important to make sure I didn't do something silly. Yet, it is early and I am so very tired. So I apologize for any typos in this post, and shall submit myself to the Grammar Police if there are any typos that escaped the purge. 

Pet Peeve: Words Have Weight

"Word have weight." 

                                 ---Holly Lisle

Today I am going to talk about a pet peeve of mine. Since most of my readers are also writers, I am going to be preaching to the choir on this one, but I figure some of you might not have thought about things this way. If you have, well then join me in the comments section and we can complain about it. :D

Today I read a funny article on Cracked.com about subjects people love to talk about, but most people don't want to hear about. Number one on the list was your book/script/screenplay. I rather enjoyed the article, especially since Daniel O'Brian made the caveat that most writers like to talk to other writers about their ideas. And most of the time, if you have a book or something to show for your efforts, "normal" "non-writer" people usually like to hear about your book because you have something to show for it.

I am going to add to that statement and say in my experience, even IF you have a book to show for your efforts, most people don't want to listen to you breathlessly talking about your space adventure cowboy romance between a sentient tree and a hamster. Short, interesting pitch sentences, yes. When my co-workers ask about what I am writing, I use that as an opportunity to practice my pitching skills. 

"It's a retelling of Snow White on a tundra, about an exorcist who promises her mother on her deathbed that she'll stop a demon summoning before the winter solstice, but she winds up discovering her mother's secret life in the cult." (that's the basic plot of my book, The Heart's Remains, in case I haven't mentioned it before).

See, that was short and sweet. I can gauge how interesting the story is (to some people) by their reaction. I can also choose to include different details to see what people seem to respond best to. When they ask for more information, I expound, but I usually don't go on at length about my book. 

I think a lot of people like the idea that you're a writer more than actually hearing about your book in detail. We're interested because it's our book, but most people really couldn't care.

I used to ramble on and on and on. It wasn't pretty. I would deluge the hapless sap who asked me about my book with details. "It's about this girl who's mother is sick from an unknown illness, and right before she dies she tells Sera, the main character, about a demon summoning that a secret cult is doing, and Sera promises to stop them, but then she finds out it's hard to find proof of the cult, and she gets sick herself, and she has a twin sister, and her friend gets possessed, and...."

To most people it's just a bunch of details. It doesn't make sense to them. 

But that's not my pet peeve. I have made my peace that 99% of the population is not rabidly excited about my book ideas.

In the comments section a lot of people disagreed with the author's statement that you need to have tangible results, like half a book, in order for most people to be interested in your book/film. Lots of people said that ideas were just as good, if not better, because you can see where the book is going.

I've also seen this basic sentiment prevalent on forums everywhere and in real life. How many people have you met that say they had a book idea? And it's going to be the best thing since Twilight/The Da Vinci Code/The Bible. Yet they have nothing to show for the idea.

I am not saying these people are lazy posers and need to write that idea down. Not everyone is a writer, after all. It's a lot of work. It's just really annoying to me when people act like having an idea is the same exact thing as actually writing a book.

I know I should be more understanding. They don't know, because they haven't written the book yet. They don't actually know how hard it is to get from the beginning to the end, and then to edit the sucker within an inch of it's life, and then...

The other thing these people don't seem to understand is words have weight.  Having an idea is great. It's the first step. But anyone who's ever had an idea and then wrote that out into a book knows that no idea remains completely intact from when you first had it. The words you're writing have weight. Even if you have an idea come to you and everything is laid out perfectly, and you write the book and barely a thing changes, the book still feels different than your idea. There's layers to it. Nuances and subtleties that you didn't conceive of intially.

That's okay. Normal. What's supposed to happen. But that's why I get annoyed when people try to compare having an idea to writing a book. It's not as easy as simply jotting the idea on paper and selling it for millions of dollars.  

If it was, everyone would have a book out there.

So there. That's my rant. I'll stop foaming at the mouth.

So what do you guys think? Am I nuts? Or does that burn your biscuits too?

A Plot Bunny for You

One month from today, I will be getting married! Yippee!

Okay, done with the mushy real life stuff!

Back to the blog.

I have recently found a great website for writing prompts, otherwise known as Plot Bunnies (You all know what a plot bunny is, right? It's an idea that spreads through your manuscript, procreating like...well, bunnies. The new idea usually have nothing to do with the main plot, and can lead you astray. But sometimes plot bunnies can spark some creativity to your first draft and take it places you never imagined.). I don't like to use writing prompts to write something completely new, but they have helped me out of a sticky scene a time or two, or recharged a saggy manuscript.



So I thought I would post some of the more interesting ones on my blog from time to time.

I can hear you groaning from here.

I promise, I will only post the prompts I think are different, and actually have a chance of sparking someone's imagination. I don't like the writing prompts like "A man meets a mysterious stranger". Too vague. A good writing prompt should spark something inside you, and make you immediately think of the possibilities. I will only post the most high quality, writer-tested prompts for your enjoyment.

And before you scoff, saying “I don’t need no stinkin’ prompts”, remember the last time you stared at the computer screen, knowing the story should be going somewhere but you aren’t sure where?

Sometimes prompts can help. They can provide a springboard for you to jump into the scene in a cool new fashion. Most prompts I have used never go into the book exactly as it reads, but are changed to fit the story or situation. Sometimes I don’t even use the prompt itself, but thinking about the prompt made me think of something else, which in turn made me think how cool it would be if…you get the idea.

Think of them as inspiration Energy Drinks. A Red Bull for your Muse, if you will.

Here is today’s prompt, from the Forward Motion for Writers forum story idea generator:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

FIRST IMPRESSIONS...

You only get one chance to make a good first impression, and that's never truer than in fiction. What you write about a character when they first enter a story will create that character in the reader’s mind, so make sure the intro counts!

Today, see how many one line character sketches you can do, giving attention to making a vivid first impression for each of them. For example:

'Long blonde hair and a face so sweet it was hard to believe she could be standing there with the bloody knife still in her hand, the smell of death and gunpowder clinging to her gown like lilies in at a funeral.'

Okay, your turn!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

I especially like this one for vamping up your secondary and tertiary characters. Not exactly main characters, but people that exist in your story to make it more real.

You could also revamp the introduction to your main characters, paying attention to the most unique details of the person. Let us know who that character is immediately, and your chance of hooking the reader goes up exponentially.

So what do you guys think? Do you like the prompt? Should I be burned at the stake for posting a such cliché writing tool? Do you have a favorite search engine for story prompts? How do you like to use them?

I would also love to know if anyone has actually created an entire book from a writing prompt. I assume this mythological creature exists, but I have yet to sight one.

Write What You Love

Editing has made my creativity run into overdrive.

Apparently editing doesn’t count as writing as far as my brain is concerned, so I am currently suffering the symptoms I experience when I haven’t written something in a while: unable to fall asleep, and tossing and turning when I do, I feel out of sorts and listless, everything seems neither really exciting or really boring—just a gray in between.

As a creative outlet I am tinkering around with ideas (in between editing. I logged thirty more pages today, and thirty yesterday, so I am not slacking off). I have three book ideas that feel very similar on the surface, so yesterday I opened a new MS Word document, wrote out a working title for each book, put it into bold and underlined them, and then listed some basic elements for each book as a way to differentiate between them.

Something wonderful happened. I started to be able to clearly see each book as it’s separate entity, and not the murky brown color they all seemed to be. Part of the problem is one of the ideas was split up into two separate books, so it still felt like characters didn’t quite fit their new home.

Listing each book out clearly allowed me to see each book idea in it’s entirety, and I could compare each one to the other. After that, I went through my “My Themes” document to further mine for ideas.

Let me explain “My Themes”. I think every writer needs a document, whether it’s paper or electronic, where they keep track of all the stuff that excites them. I am not talking about book ideas—that’s another file entirely. I am talking about a list of stuff that makes your muse go into hyperdrive (I fired my last muse, and am now working with his brother, Ira. It seems to be working well so far).



Here is a small sample of my list:

survival in a dystopia
survival after an apocalypse
dreams
Morpheus
Orpheus going back to get his love
death is not the end
bouncers
serial killers
Seattle
1940’s gangsters
Cyberpunk
Mental illness
Hostage situations
Forgotten cities, and ancient lore.
Profilers
Autumn in New York, when the leaves are on fire.
Rocky coast lines
Ghost tours
Twins
Complicated relationships between people
Childhood accidents
Apprenticeships
New kid learning the ropes
Characters forced to be together
Making difficult, no-win moral choices
Heaven and hell battling, angels versus demons
Deals with the devil
Being thrown into a new situation
Constructed people—golems, homunculi, etc
A likable villain
sacrifice
The one person that interests a misanthrope
The bad guys are really the good guys

My list is about twice this long, but you get the point. Notice how I have all kinds of stuff on there? Some are concepts like constructed people, some are conflicts like new kid learning the ropes, and some are settings like rocky coast lines.


Because really, doesn’t this picture give you a thousand story ideas?

But all of this stuff fascinates me. You can even analyze the list and then figure out why I like the TV shows and movies that I do. Let’s see, my favorite TV shows are: Firefly (space western), Criminal Minds (thriller about profilers), Bones (forensic crime solving), House (medical mystery about a misanthropic doctor), and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (crime solving with emotional situations for the cops/victims).

Some of my favorite movies are: Equilibrium (science fiction dystopia), The Prestige (rivalry between former friends who are magicians), The Day After Tomorrow (disaster movie), Legion (heaven versus hell).

Do we see a pattern here? These shows/movies interest me because there’s one or more (usually several) elements in them that I find fascinating.

You’re probably thinking, “No duh, Elizabeth. Of course you like those shows and movies because they have elements you find fascinating.” But it’s really helpful to know exactly what about something interests you.

Because then you can repeat it.

They say write what you know, but I think we should change that to write what you love. If you are not in love with your story, you’re just not going to have the strength to get through all the work it’s going to take to make the story salable. It’s not enough to start with one good idea. You need several good ideas within one book. You might start off with one good idea, and write out the first draft without planning more. That’s fine; whatever your writing process is.

But eventually you’re going to have to analyze the plot elements, and I feel it would behoove you to make sure your plot has several things going for it. When I say “idea” I am not just talking about plot points and characters, but everything. You could set the book in somewhere you find beautiful, have a character in a situation you love, with a cool villain idea, and a new twist on the conflict. It could be something as simple as what the character does for a living. You could make a new book based of off this list, or you could just add the elements you find appropriate for each book.



For example, let’s say I have a new book idea. Let’s say you only have the character idea, like I frequently do. No plot in sight, but the main character shows up as a real person. Let’s say the character is an anti-hero who is a misanthrope. So we have:

Misanthrope who (does something)(not medical related, so no one says it’s just a House ripoff).

To start with. We could leave it at that, and start writing if you are a pantser, or we could just develop the character more if you’re a planner. The obvious direction to go would be Why is this guy such a misanthrope?

Because I hate the “anti-hero with a heart of gold” trope, we’re going to just say that he’s always been kind of a jerk, and bucks society’s rules because he thinks they are pointless. To further avoid the “anti-hero with a heart of gold” trope, let’s say he made a mistake that got someone killed he was supposed to protect (instead of saying mommy didn’t love him enough, and that’s why he’s a jerk. People in real life are more complicated, so let’s make sure our characters are more complicated too, okay?).

You could write a perfectly good book all this jerk, but let’s not stop there. Let’s add more awesome stuff to this already fun idea.

I already have the concept of the one person that the misanthrope doesn’t hate, so let’s add that:

The one person that interests a misanthrope

So now we have character number two. This could be a woman, and they fall in love. This could be a younger girl and he has to raise her (for some reason). It could be a guy, whatever. It all depends on the type of story you want to tell.

Since he’s an anti-hero and a misanthrope, he’s already going to be complicated. So let’s add:

Complicated relationships between people.

Since I don’t see the jerk going out of his way to get to know someone, let’s also add:

Characters forced to be together

Since he’s already a jerk, we could play with:

The bad guys are really the good guys
A likable villain

We could add setting about here:

Rocky coast lines
survival in a dystopia

I picked dystopia because it fits the misanthrope vibe, but you could also go for contrast, and say it’s set on a lush tropical landscape to further show how miserable the guy is.

So to recap we have:

Misanthrope who (does something)(not medical related, so no one says it’s just a House ripoff).
The one person that interests a misanthrope
Complicated relationships between people
Characters forced to be together
The bad guys are really the good guys
A likable villain
Rocky coast lines
survival in a dystopia

And the cherry on the top, a theme of:

sacrifice

Now this books has several ideas going for it that excites me. Some of them might not make it into the story, they might have to be teased out, but it gives you some ideas to brainstorm with at least.

Some of you might be wondering if doing this might not make your books all sound familiar.

I don’t think so. That list is long, and many times I have more developed ideas arrive, without needing to build a book from scratch off of it. And that point I might add one or two ideas to it, but not too much more.

Also, see how vague all of that is? “Characters forced to be together”. There are so many ways character can be forced together. If we were to boil most books down to this bare bones, they would start to look similar.

So the next time you need something extra to a book idea, why not look through your interests list?

Any thoughts on the matter? What are some ideas that you just love thinking and writing about?

A Lesson Was Learned By All

Song Playing: Take a Bow by Madonna

It appears that editing sends my creativity into overdrive, because I just had three new ideas for stories. Two of these ideas would need a lot of work to become a story, but they are there. The third idea is something closer to what the heart of a book would be in my mind.

It would also appear that most of my ideas come in two distinct forms. On one side of the camp there are the dream ideas. These ideas come from some portion of a dream I had, and are normally just a scene or two. Sometimes I am lucky enough to get some core conflict or characters out of the dream, but the image remains.

The pros of these types of ideas are these images are very intense and can also brew some awesome conflict. For example, my current WIP, my mermaid book, started from a dream. I dreamt about a girl standing on the shoreline of the ocean, silently crying as she watched a burning ship sail out to sea at sunset. I knew that this girl’s father had just drowned in a boating accident—a boat accident she survived—and her father wanted to have a Viking funeral, hence the burning ship.

That’s all there was to the idea. Girl at father’s funeral. But that image is still as fresh to me as the night I had the dream, and the death of her father has formed part of the core conflict in the book.

The con to these types of ideas is I have to work very hard to feel the characters. Since I first saw it as though I was watching a movie, the main characters remain as familiar and yet distant as movie characters do. I have to spend extra time developing the character until I feel like they are a living, breathing person.



The second camp of ideas I receive are usually speculations about “What if…”, and normally crop up while watching a movie or reading a book. Typically, I am frustrated with said movie or book. I feel like they are ignoring obvious internal conflicts, and I wish the story would address it more. Or the movie/book ends with events left unresolved, and I think about the aftermath of the movie/story events. My mind goes wandering, usually while the movie is still playing, “What would make someone get to that point? What if there was this other person, and they did such and such?”

The pros of these types of ideas are that I have the heart of the book, and can feel the character almost immediately. The internal conflict, and sometimes external conflict is right there in my question. For example, last night I was watching a mediocre movie (name withheld to protect the guilty) involving a love triangle. This Nice Guy was totally head over heels for this Girl, but she was already in love with her boyfriend, even though he’s a total Jerk, and broke her heart. The Nice Guy was there for the Girl, helped her mend her heart, but the minute the Jerk comes back into the picture she jumps back into his arms, and leaves Nice Guy in the dust.

Very frustrating to watch, because Nice Guy was obviously a better person for Girl (I know, my estrogen is showing :) ). They actually had a friendship, something she didn’t have with Jerk. So I sat there seething, wondering what would happen if Nice Guy had a Female Friend, and how she would feel about Nice Guy pining for a woman who barely gives him a second glance.

And then I thought, what if the Girl was very popular, the center of her clique’s universe, and everyone wanted to be her or date her? But (now named)Popular Girl was secretly miserable? (at this point, the idea congealed with a conversation I had with one of my massage clients. She’s a school teacher, and we had a discussion about how sometimes the kids turn out differently than people would think. So the cheerleader valedictorian with a scholarship to Yale goes down the path of drugs and petty criminal-druggie picks himself up and becomes successful) So from that line of thinking, I was thinking about the relationship dynamic between Popular Girl and Female Friend, with Nice Guy in between them.

I can’t stand love triangles as plot by themselves, and I would have to spice this thought up to make it not so very high school, but there’s something there, between Female Friend and Popular Girl.

The con to these types of ideas is it can be very hard to capture that essence of conflict within a plot. Especially with this idea I just had. I definitely don’t want to just do a boring love triangle. Those get angsty quick. It can be hard to figure out the exact events that would best show this sort of conflict, and the possibilities can be paralyzing. There’s a lot of vague wandering around conflict and ideas, and thinking “I could…no, no, that’s not quite it.” Like going shoe shopping, and looking for the ultimate pair of shoes: comfy, cute, and not too expansive (I am not sure such a pair actually exists).

I have other ideas that don’t fall into either of these camps, but they are far less prevalent.

You might be wondering at this point why I care, or sound so pleased with myself. This is a fair thought.

The neat thing is now that I have identified this about my ideas, I already know what to look out for. I already know I am going to have to work on the characters of all the ideas I dreamed/thought up a scene for. Most writers can tell you that scenes, no matter how cool, do not a novel make. There’s a lot of other stuff that goes with it too. Like, a plot and stuff.

I already know that all the ideas I had from wondering some form of What if?...will need extra love in the conflict department.

Overall, this makes my life easier, and will prevent future frustration. It might behoove you to keep track of how and where you get your ideas, not just the ideas themselves, and see if you have a pattern.

Or do you already see a pattern? Is there a certain way you get most of your ideas? What are the pros and cons of that way?

I Blame Snow White

Song Playing: Shimmer, by Fuel

Hello! I hope everyone had a great weekend, filled with eggs and candy. I am excited to report I have progress to…report. Yesterday before the obligatory family dinner I especially made some excellent progress.

So here is my progress:

*I loosely outlined my current WIP, my mermaid book (only in the book it’s a merman, not maid, but hey, work with me).

*I started taking a class on revision to help with revision of Masquerade. The class is given by Holly Lisle, and it’s already helped me oodles, so that’s exciting. I printed out the worksheets and made my revision binder, and I am currently working on lesson one. The class is very intense, and I think the first two lessons alone are worth the money I shelled out. Since the class is five months long, I decided to go ahead and let a friend of mine beta read the draft as is, so I can get some feedback on the current state of affairs.

I feel a little sorry for her, because I imagine the book is going to read a little…schizophrenic, shall we say. I edited the first 130 or so pages heavily, rewrote the last 20 or so pages, and the middle has been lightly edited while I was doing my scene comparisons. So yeah, that’s going to be interesting for her. Thanks Linda! My mom has the draft (I am calling it draft 2.5) as well, but…you know, she’s my mom. She loves everything I write, even my To Do lists. It’s what moms are for.

*I made a map for one of the planets I made up, which I am currently calling Gritty Dystopia Land. I really enjoy drawing maps for my countries, cities, and planets. Like, a lot. If I had the supplies and more free time I would be painting and oil pasteling my maps. At the moment it’s just graph paper and pencil, but once I start finalizing the different countries I will color in the different climate zones and population areas. Can you guess how the economy is doing as a whole on my planet, named Gritty Dystopia land? :D
I plan to set a few books in Gritty Dystopia Land, but in different countries.

Actually, let me elaborate further on the matter of preemptively setting books on planets I haven’t developed very much yet. It might seem odd, and I personally blame Snow White. It all started when I had this awesome idea about what it would be like if a girl found her recently deceased mother’s journal, and discovered some less than wonderful aspects of her mother’s life that she and her sisters never knew about. Like how her mother was really in love with another man, but her father said if her mother left him, she would never see her children again. (Ouch!) The Snow White reference comes from the stepmother trying to kill the step daughter. I thought her father’s mistress might have poisoned her mother, so she could take her place.

I was originally planning on setting this story in the Georgian era of European history, because of all the strict rules for marriage and etiquette would fit with the trapped situation her mother (and now she) is in. There I was, happily reading about the social etiquette of having tea when I realized there were still sooooo many details of daily life that I didn’t know. At this point, I was already several months into the research phase, and I hadn’t even scratched the surface.



I determined:

1) I didn’t want to spend months on research, and still not get the entire picture of daily life in the Georgian Era. This was the second time I wanted to write a historical fiction novel and couldn’t find enough details (the first was set in medieval Japan, and if you think it’s hard to find information on medieval Europe, try researching Japan).
2) No matter HOW much research I did, I would still get letters from history buffs informing me that horses didn’t wear bridles until 1906, even though I clearly mentioned my main character holding onto a horse’s bridle on page 12, paragraph three, line four, and was I lazy and not bothered to do my research?



3) There is a reason why historical fiction writers spend most of their time writing books set in the same era. And why they are history majors.

So! I decided to make it all up. I would simply set the story on another planet, similar to Earth, and make up all my own rules for etiquette and social graces. I AM a fantasy writer after all. Making things up from scratch is a specialty of mine. I also moved the story I was researching medieval Japan for to the same planet. A few months later when I had another idea that seemed historical-ish, off it went to the same planet I have now dubbed Historical Fantasy Land.

Later, when I had accumulated several ideas for a dystopian setting that were similar enough in setting, but self contained in conflict, plot, and characters, I knew what to do. Hence Gritty Dystopia Land was born. I also have Futuristic Bio/Cyberpunk Land. I plan to set each individual story in a different country on their respective planets though, so it’s not like the entire planet has the exact same form of government, laws, and population.

I also managed to do laundry yesterday, and cleaned up my bedroom. I know! I was very productive yesterday. I always feel so satisfied whenever I get a lot accomplished. Today I have to work, but I plan to work on the book I am beta reading, revise Masquerade, and possibly work on the mermaid book depending on how fried my brain is by the end of it all.

What about you guys? How do you organize your ideas that are similar but not similar enough to be the same story?

How to Write a Novel 2: From Idea to Plot

Quote: “Plot is not just about having a single great idea; on the contrary, a good plot is an amalgamation of many ideas or elements of writing, including characterization, journey, suspense, conflict, and context. An idea is paramount, but without these supporting elements, an idea by itself is just that—an idea, an abstraction, not a 120- or 300-oage living being replete with shades, color, and texture.”
~Noah Lukeman

Song Playing: “Time Lapse Lifeline” Maria Taylor

Yes! I am blogging on a Saturday! That’s how much I love you all!

Although, Saturdays aren’t a day off for me, they are actually one of my busiest days, so it’s not like a real Saturday. Not like you people who work Monday through Friday, and have two days off in a row. Mine are spread out—Sunday and Wednesday—which I kinda like. Work a few days, have a day off, work another few days, another day off, lather rinse repeat.

And boy, did we get some snow. At least three inches, and it’s still there this morning from last night. What is that you say? Three inches isn’t a lot of snow? I know, I am from Upstate New York (a tiny, tiny little hamlet near Kingston in the Catskill Mountain region), so three feet of snow wasn’t considered that much. But I am currently residing twenty minutes south of Atlanta, Georgia, and three inches that stick is a veritable blizzard down here. Plus it’s icing over. I am crossing my fingers for a snow day.

Anyways, it’s time to continue our journey through the How to Write a Novel series. Today’s topic is From Idea to Plot. Again, the methods I am describing are simply what works for me, so your mileage may vary.

From Idea to Plot

So now you have a shiny new idea you want to write a book about. Yay for you! Maybe this idea came to you as a dream (some of mine have), maybe you thought of it in a flash of glory and conflict, maybe you were doing something totally boring and mundane, and two previously unrelated ideas fused themselves together in your mind to form one AMAZING superhero type of idea.

However it happened, you have an idea. Or hopefully, you have several ideas for books, but it’s time to sit down and work on one.

1. Which Idea?

The first step isn’t to flesh an idea out as you might think, but to figure out which idea you want to work on. If you only have one or two ideas, or there is one in particular that feels like it’s burning a hole inside you, then this step is almost invisible, and probably not even a conscious one for most writers. Sometimes you wake up from a great dream and set to fleshing this idea out right away. If this is the case, kudos to you, and do a little dance of joy that you don’t have to decide which idea you want to work on.

It’s incredibly important to work on what you are fervently interested in. It takes a looooong time to write a novel, even if you type very fast (like me) so being almost obsessed about your idea is necessary energy (and will keep you out of prison. No one has been sent to prison for stalking an idea, that I know of. Most of the time, these people, these “published authors” are rewarded instead, with cushy book contracts). If you aren’t passionate about what you are working on, whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, or experimental haiku, it’s going to be very difficult to see this all the way through. So, pick the idea you find the most interesting.

If there isn’t one idea that grabs you, or you haven’t had an Eureka! moment lately, it’s okay. Don’t fret. It feels a little weird looking at ideas when one isn’t screaming in your brain to be worked on, but there are other ways of choosing what idea to work on. It’s like going shopping. Sometimes you go to the store knowing exactly what you want (a neon green trench coat) and you walk over to the neon green trench coat section, pick one up, and proceed to the checkout counter. But sometimes you window shop. You know you need some new clothes, but you’re not sure what sort of clothing you’re looking for.

So you need to figure out what sort of book you would like to work on. If you have already written several, maybe you want to develop something different than your previous novels (“I’ve written extensively about monkeys…maybe I would like to write a book about hedgehogs?”). If so, then this is a case of process of elimination. Trying new subjects is nice, but make sure you can still relate to the book in some way. For example, I have a main character who is an older middle aged man. I am a young woman. Pretty different from me on the outside, but internally he struggles with the same issues I do, so I have no problems relating to his struggles.

Maybe you want to write a book about a certain setting (IN SPACE!), or a certain plot (super spy finds love letters in code), or a certain concept (can a person overcome their upbringing?). Whatever it is, make sure it’s something you have a lot to say about. Like, a couple hundred pages worth of something to say.

2. To Theme or Not To Theme

There’s a lot of fur flying over theme and concept and symbolism in the writing community. Some people write with a clear theme in mind, and some people don’t. Whatever works for you, is what I say, and that’s your little red wagon is what Stephen King says.

I usually have a question that I think about in regards to the book. Not a theme exactly, not a moral-bat (similar to the clue bat) that I hit the readers upside the heads with, but a pondering of mine. I think most books are like questions that writers are trying to find the answers to. A simple YA romance novel can be just as it appears to be, and the writer might not have had any other themes or symbols in mind while writing it, but the book is still the writer asking themselves the question: “If I put these characters, at this location, into these circumstances, what will happen?” This question might have Higher Implications about the human condition, or the nature of love, or what have you, but these Implications are almost always personal to each reader. I like having a single question in mind because it helps me stay on track.

3. What if?

Now that you have chosen the idea you want to work on, you can start the brainstorming process. If you are cowering in fear, no you don’t have to do tree diagrams like we did in middle school English. There are loads of ways to brainstorm. You just find the best way for you, and go from there. Also, be aware that this process, from Idea to Plot can take a long time. I have had ideas floating around in my head for years, for reals. You can keep the idea in your head for a while, thinking about it, chewing on it, and waiting to see if anything else comes to you. It’s almost better this way, because once you have a good bit of time to stew on the idea, other possibilities open themselves up to you that you might not have thought about before. But, on the other hand, I have also had the stroke of brilliance moment, sat down to write the idea down, and the plot, and characters, and everyone just keep coming until I was ready to write the book. Some authors exclusively do this one way or another, but I tend to go between the SHINY NEW IDEA phase, and Idea I Have Been Thinking About Since Moses Was A Wee Lad. Whatever works for you.

When you are ready to brainstorm, sit down, and start thinking. This is really, really fun. Try to ask yourself as many questions about your idea, and just let the ideas and questions flow like a river of milk and honey (or chocolate and soda, whichever metaphor makes you happier). Don’t tell yourself a thought or tangent is stupid, don’t worry about the logistics of a thought (in space, how could cavemen even get there?), just write down whatever comes to mind. I find it easier to phrase everything in the form of a question, because I get better, more relevant answers that way. Just What If? and Why? away:

What if a spy found encoded love letters and broke the code, and realized they were addressed to him?
What if those letters were a code for a tactical nuke strike? What if they were a code for a grocery store list? What if they were letters from his mom, who missed him?
What if another spy wrote the letter, meaning for him to eventually break the code and realize her feelings for him?
What if the person the spy delivered the letters to thought they were for her, and thought the spy wrote them himself?

And so on. The point is to just try and think of all the possible ways for this idea to play itself out. Sometimes I find it useful to purposefully reverse roles (especially gender roles) and expectations. So if I was writing the spy story, you might expect the story to wind up being a love triangle between the spy, the lover, and the recipient of the letters, but what if the letter recipient was the spy’s daughter and the spy didn’t know about it (I am aware this make no sense in context of a lover sending a spy secret messages, but do you see how my mind jumped from one idea straight to another? Don’t be afraid to make leaps and conclusions; you can always fill in the backstory so your new idea makes sense later)? So instead you have the lover thinking the spy was cheating on her “another woman” but this other woman turns out to be the spy’s daughter he’s trying to smuggle out of the king’s harem…and what if I reversed all the genders, so now it’s a woman spy, her son, and her lover?

The point isn’t to make your story so twisty and turny that the readers get annoyed, or worse, come to expect it (*cough*M. Night Shamaylan *coughcough*), but to develop the idea itself as something fresh yet recognizable. Maybe you don’t make it a twist that the spy’s son is trapped in the Queen’s harem, but something that the lover already knew about, so the story becomes a mission between the spy and her lover to free her son. It’s not necessarily plot twists (though they might occur to you at this stage) you’re looking for, but idea and concepts in general. You ever hear agents make some noise about “fresh” and “original” ideas? How about “non-clichéd” and “done to death”? That refers to ideas that have been done, over and again. A love triangle. A mother bent on saving her child. A farm boy who become a hero. These are all archetypes (way to use my English class!), but if you don’t think too far beyond a basic situation, it turns into something maybe not dull, or clichéd, but not something that feels new.

Let’s face it: ideas are a dime a dozen. There’s tons of books, movies, and video games. So don’t waste your breath crying about how all the good ideas are taken. When someone says a movie or book is really original, they don’t mean the concept itself, what they are really talking about is the way that particular writer told that story. That’s what you’re doing in the brainstorming process, finding the way YOU want to tell this story. Don’t worry about making your story “original”, instead, strive for finding your voice, your take on the matter. After you have found that, your story will become original. Because there is only one you, only one person in the entire world—nay, the entire galaxy—who has experienced, and felt, and said, the things you have felt and said.

Something useful at this stage is getting another friend, preferably a writer-friend, to help you out. Type up the general idea you have going on, and ask the friend to think of a bunch of What If? for the story. Or you could just talk to them about it, and bounce ideas off of each other. I do some of my best thinking out loud, in the clever disguise as a conversation with someone else. You can do this several times during the writing process. (Screenwriters apparently do this a lot, it’s called a “bull session” from what I understand, where massive amounts of alcohol, drugs, and caffeine are consumed, and they sit around saying What if we did this IN SPACE? What if the mother was really an alien?*) Getting someone else’s perspective on your story can help, even this early on. Of course, you don’t have to follow any of their suggestions, and they might not come up with anything you want to use, but I find my stories better developed when I think about all of the possible permutations an idea can take.

Also, it’s fun to return the favor for your writer friends. For some reason, it’s much easier to think of interesting plot ideas for a concept that isn’t your own, and sometimes you get your own ideas out of the bargain. Recently, I was helping a friend of mine think of professions for one of her secondary characters, and I suggested a matchmaker. The idea didn’t mix with her character, but in the meantime my muse was telling me about how I could have a character who was a matchmaker and everyone in town came to her for advice…

If you don’t have writer-friends, non-writer family members and friends work almost as well (at least in my opinion. Writers seem to pick up the knack of what sort of ideas you are trying to throw around, where as I occasionally have to explain a little better what I am looking for with the non-writers I know). This distance to writing is invaluable, since you are essentially asking them as readers.

A quick side note: Pay attention to what people complain about in regards to books and movies, especially if these complainants sound like they are well thought out. Even if the compliant devolves into disparaging comments about the directors, the actors, and how everyone in the history of EVAR are sell-outs, there’s usually a kernel of truth in the compliant. If you hear everyone complain that the latest blockbuster movie has no plot, or the characters were wooden, watch the movie and try to see where the movie went wrong. It takes a little while to be able to pick that truth out of the compliant, and should be taken as one person’s opinion, but over time it can help you avoid some of those mistakes. Likewise, pay attention to the books you don’t like. Yes, you can learn from the books you love, but if you can pin point what exactly about the book you disliked, you can try to avoid the same mistakes in your own work (not that you can please everyone, so don’t even try. This is about learning how to tell a story the way you intend for it to be heard).

3. Which way to go?

So now you have your idea, and you have some thoughts about what could happen. You might know what your question is, you might decide that you could care less about questions and themes, and you just want to write a good read.

At this point, you might name your characters, and dive right into writing the story. If you have never tried this before, I recommend doing so. A lot of writing is experimentation. I am still learning what the best method for me is. You might decide you hate brainstorming, too many tree diagrams in grade school thank you very much, and start writing with only the vaguest of ideas. As I said, that’s your little red wagon. Only you know what will work best for you, but I would recommend a certain amount of experimentation. How will you know what does and doesn’t work for you if you don’t try out new ways of doing things?

Personally, I have never finished a book I just sat down and started to write. This is often referred to as the seat-of-the-pants method, because you are essentially flying by the seat of your pants. I do like writing out a scene here and there before I start the novel, just to get a feel for my character (and in a vain attempt to get my character’s voice worked out before I start the book, so there is less thrashing around in the beginning) but I have at least three novels that aren’t finished because I didn’t know enough about the plot and characters before I started. I do find cool things about my characters when I am just typing away, but eventually (usually around 30-50k depending on the idea and amount of caffeine I have coursing through my veins) I stall out because I don’t know what is going to happen next. Some people will go back through the book and mine it for ideas, but that never seems to work for me. So if you are a writer who can do that, I salute you! Maybe you can guest post and tell us a little more about how to write an entire novel from the seat of your pants.

Assuming you need a little more information on your book and characters, you will continue your quest…

4. The End? The End!

There is a large dividing line between writers about “the end”. Some writers have a vague to strong idea about how the book is going to end, and the rest of them have no idea how it’s going to end, and furthermore, if they plan the ending out, it kills the rest of the book for them. I know a few writers who straddle the fence and can write both ways, but these are the minority in my experience (what is that, loyal minions? Which way I do I write? I usually have a vague idea about how it’s going to end, an idea that might change with one scene, but one that is there nonetheless).

5. The Plot

As I stated before, a plot contains the events of your idea. Even if you don’t know the events that carry out the end of your idea, an idea only really becomes a plot when you know something about the characters, what the conflict is, and how it’s going to work out. In the most basic of terms, if it’s going to be a happy ending or a sad ending. If the guy is going to get the girl, or if he’s not going to get the girl. Even people who don’t know HOW the book is going to end usually know the TYPE of ending the book is going to have (i.e. happy or tragic).

6. Wrapping things up…or am I?!

You may have noticed, and been too kind to point out, that my post about how to turn ideas into a plot has wandered ALL OVER the place, between theme, and plot, and characters, and even how some people finish a book versus how other people finish a book. You may have attributed it to my naturally long winded nature, and my love for tangents, and if that is the case, you are not entirely wrong.

But also, and almost so obvious I feel silly mentioning it, your idea encompasses all of those aspects of a book, making it REALLY hard to talk about one as a separate element. Because ideally, they aren’t separate elements. It’s not like ordering from an a la carte menu, and mashing the separate elements together, but more like a stew (Bruce Almighty, the comedy with Jim Carrey, springs to mind, “Buffalo is like a big cookie.”…so there, Writing is like a big cookie…) with each element growing from the other, and making up the whole novel.

As I continue the How to Write a Novel Series you will notice yourself having different ideas about your novel, about the plot and characters; your basic idea will evolve. Rest assured that’s okay, normal, and healthy for the growth of your novel. Creating characters is a great way to develop your plot, and the events of your plot is a great way to develop your characters. I just can’t write it all down into one post, because, to quote Natalie Whipple, Sweet baby kittens, this post is long enough (you are kind, and gentle, and sweet to a) not have mentioned this and b) made it this far. Bless you, good sir, bless you)!

I have broken the entire novel writing process into smaller, manageable bits. But in practice, as you work through this, you will be constantly tweaking one element with regards to another. You might start with characters, and move on to idea, and then theme, and finish up with the plot, instead of sitting down and working on the characters, and then when they are done you work on the plot, and once that’s done you move onto the imagery. It’s more like cooking dinner with each burner holding a separate pot, and you have to stir them all at the same time: plot---characters---setting, what’s the setting---plot, plot again---setting---characters—worldbuilding—theme, theme---oh goodness, the theme is burning---stir the dialogue, don’t want it getting too stale…

You get the point.

There are many, many ways to develop your idea into a plot. Decide what works best for you, and don’t be afraid to experiment. The great thing about writing is that you don’t have to do anything in front of an audience the first time. You could write a book written in second person about hedgehogs, if you want to, and no one EVER has to see it. I think writers are lucky in that regard; when you sing, and mess up, everyone knows it. Likewise for painters, and nearly every other artist. Not so for writers. You could write the world’s worst novel (actually, I am pretty sure I already did) and no one will ever, ever have to read it. You control what people do and don’t see. So feel free to experiment!

Next time, on Elizabeth’s blog—How to Write a Novel 3: Characters!

*No screenwriters were hurt during the making of this hyperbole