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What I Learned About Writing a Novel

From my novelist mother, that discipline and persistence pay. She wrote every weekday morning for four hours, from the time I was five until I graduated from high school and left home. A-ha moment for me: No one else will make you get the work done, but they’ll be perfectly happy to distract you.

From my screenwriting instructor, that if you put a gun in Act I, it has to go off in Act III, and other principles of three-act structure. A-ha moment for me: Every story belongs to someone, and When Harry Met Sally is Harry’s story.

From my thesis adviser, that theme is what happens while you’re busy telling the story. Where you leave the reader always makes a point. A-ha moment for me: If Hamlet had gotten his act together sooner, it wouldn’t have been a tragedy.

From my critique groups, that sometimes a cheerleader is more useful than a critic, and sometimes a critic is more useful than a cheerleader. A-ha moment for me: You need to surround yourself with both cheerleaders and critics and know which the moment calls for.

From reading 160 romance novels in a year, that no matter how artsy you think you are, genre writers have a ton to teach you about storytelling. A-ha moment for me: When I realized that it wasn’t just coincidence that the heroine and hero always had great sex halfway through, hit a brutal obstacle at the 3/4-mark, and got their act together for the last time at 9/10.

From my friend Brad, that ignorance and arrogance are two indispensible traits if you want to get a book published. A-ha moment for me: When I realized that the daughter of a novelist needs to forget everything she thought she knew about the probability of success in publishing and just write.

From listening to audiobooks, that books are fuller and richer and more visual than I ever dreamed possible. A-ha moment for me: Discovering that when I read novels, I skip the description and all the dialog tags (blocking), and that it was showing through in my writing.

From Karen Wiesner’s First Draft in 30 Days, that outlining isn’t nearly as terrifying as I thought and that all that great stuff that comes out of your mind when you’re brainstorming can actually get organized so you don’t have to store it in your head. A-ha moment for me: When I made my first scene-by-scene outline and STILL loved writing the book.

From Randy Ingermanson, particularly his restatement of Dwight Swayne’s advice on scene-writing, that structure is fractal, and each beat of each scene is like a tiny version of each scene which is a tiny version of each chapter which is a tiny version of the story as a whole. A-ha moment for me: There are rules that govern every aspect of the craft of writing, and even if you choose to ignore some of them some of the time, you should sure as heck know what they are.

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The Book I’m Not Writing

I had this brilliant plan to periodically blog about ideas for great books that I’ve decided not to write. The title of the post is a nod to Patty Larkin’s song “The Book I’m Not Reading.”

The only problem is that as soon as I started thinking about good book ideas that I’d decided not to write about, I realized that they’re actually not such bad ideas after all. For example, the NPR story I heard that was so tragic I had to turn the radio off midway through? I’d concluded that there was no way I could dwell in the awfulness of those characters’ stories long enough to write a novel about them–but then when I was about to blog about them, I realized that the story would make GREAT tragic backstory for a romance hero.

I also have a story that’s off-limits to me as fictional material because it’s the true tale of how my sister met her husband (too icky to write that close to home). But as I was thinking about how to blog that story, I realized that I could use the amazing setting and circumstances of their first date in an unrelated novel. And then I started to think about how if my sister and her husband were the hero and heroine of a romance novel, they’d have to be a heck of a lot more extreme in their internal conflicts than they are in real life. And immediately terrible internal conflicts for the fictional two of them came to mind–perfect for a novel. So, oops! Can’t blog that one either.

Still, there’s gotta be some material out there that’s just not suitable in any way, shape, or form for repurposing into a romance novel, and as soon as I find it, it’ll find its way into The Book I’m Not Writing.

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Reckless Morality

I’m listening to the audiobook Reckless Pleasures, a Harlequin Blaze “Pleasure Seekers” book by Tori Carrington (narrated by Lauren Fortgang). I’m fascinated by Tori Carrington for (at least) two reasons.

The first is that Tori Carrington is a husband-wife writing team. I’d like to write a novel with my husband. We could combine his incredible powers of observation and keen mind for historical detail with my various plotting and character-development talents, and voila! Fame and fortune!

I suggested we write a World War II romance. He was all for it. He jumped right in with, “As the elliptical wing of his Mark II Supermarine Spitfire sliced through the 88mm flak over Germany, he thought about…” then turned to me and said, “OK. Your turn.”

(Later, he said, “I might have gotten the year wrong on the Spitfire. And it might not have had the range to fly over Germany.” I rest my case about the pairing of our talents.)

The second reason I’m fascinated by Tori Carrington is that–

I’m having a small amount of pronoun anxiety here.

–that they? that she–

that she frequently includes instances of infidelity in her plots. In Reckless Pleasures, the heroine, Megan, gets horny while her boyfriend is fighting in Waziristan and sleeps with his best friend. I have a few things to say about this. One is that I am never going to forgive Megan and I am never going to trust her again, and I think Darius (the hero) is a dumbass if he does–which means that for all intents and purposes, it’s going to be really hard to convince me that Megan and Darius can have a Happily Ever After. But I also have an enormous amount of respect for Tori & Tori, because I think infidelity is the realest and worst thing you can throw at a relationship, and the way that a couple deals with it is the truest crucible for what loves means to them. I’m not sure how many more T.C. books I’ll seek out, because I’m just way too much of a HEA-seeking sap, but I’m going to be thinking about this one for weeks if not months, and that’s a lot of weight-pulling for a skinny category book.

To get all academic here for a moment, Reckless Pleasures made me start thinking at a theoretical level about infidelity, justice, and HEAs. We think that all we want from our HEAs is for the hero and heroine to end up together. But we actually want something else, too. We want anyone who breaks the rules to be punished (that’s why we expect the villain who stands in the path of true love to get what s/he deserves). And the rules of romance are that true, monogamous, married love is sacred. So the problem is, you can’t have both. You can’t serve the unfaithful hero or heroine with true justice–the loss of love–while also delivering them a happy ending–the winning of love. That’s why books where a hero or heroine commits infidelity are so unsettling for romance readers. Even if we don’t recognize it, we want two things that can’t co-exist. And not just any two things. Love and justice, which are the two strongest driving forces in narrative, the stakes that matter most. I guess what I’m saying is that Tori Carrington is a little bit revolutionary, and in appreciation we should invent a new pronoun for them.

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What I Learned at RWA National 2011

From Erin Quinn‘s “Set It in Emotion” workshop, a great method for brainstorming descriptions, particularly descriptions of settings. You put the POV character’s dominant emotion in the center of a circle, then brainstorm words that fit with that emotion. Then you use the brainstormed words as you write the description of the setting that the POV character is in. A-ha moment for me: The goal of good description isn’t just to capture what the five senses are taking in; it’s to capture what the emotional state of the POV character is doing to filter those experiences.

From Roxanne St. Claire‘s “How Do You Mend a Broken Scene?” workshop, a whole new and much improved attitude towards revising. Ms. St. Claire took five different scenes, A & B versions, and showed how careful revision could make them–and the book–much stronger. A-ha moment for me: If there’s something wrong with the book, you fix it by finding the scene where you’ve first gone wrong and making the tough fix there–everything else falls into place from there.

From Michael Hauge‘s “Uniting Plot Structure and Character Arc” workshop, all the missing vocabulary from my understanding of structure. He explained six-part structure and how it works for both plot (and external conflict) and character (and internal conflict). I’d managed to glean all the essentials of what he was saying by reading 160 romance novels in one year, but it was a huge relief to have him put names to everything I had only intuitively known. A-ha moment for me: When Hauge noted that today’s contemporary romances frequently lack a first “setup” section because readers like to cut to the inciting incident (usually the meet scene).

From Megan Coakley, Kimberly Savage, and Ellen Price, that a conference is only as good as the great people you hang out with. One of us needed help finishing a book. One needed help keepin’ on keeping on with a discouraging pitch-and-query process. One needed a reminder that yes, she IS a writer. And one needed a self-confidence boost about talking about herself and her work. We all got it. Ah-ha moment for me: Nothing beats a hug *right* before and *right* after a pitch session.

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What’s Your Writing Superpower?

Thanks to The Lone Woman for stripping away my drab Lois Lane daily wear and revealing my writing superpower!

…sex scenes are Serena’s superpower. I think I might choose something less time-intensive, like laser-beam shooting eyes, or super-strength. But Serena’s power should not be underestimated. Imagine how the bad guys might be distracted by the sudden appearance of a smoking hot sex scene. Maybe she could magically implant the audio version in their brain, and as a velvety-voiced narrator read it aloud, the other superheroes could swoop in and snare the paralyzed perverts. Not that reading, or writing, sex scenes is perverted. Mostly, it’s just hard. I mean difficult.
 

That’s the nice thing about having a superpower–it means that something that other people find difficult is easy for you–at least most of the time. I discovered my superpower young and got my 10,000 hours (of writing, people) in long before the world (temporarily) convinced me to write staider stuff. When I started writing novels where the bedroom door was thrown wide open, I felt like I’d come home. No strain, no pain. Of course, it doesn’t make all the rest of it–desk discipline, witty dialogue, accepting criticism–any easier. But at least there’s one thing I don’t sweat (figuratively) over.

My only regret is that I can’t post an excerpt that showcases this particular superpower because I’ve decided that my desire to share it with the blogosphere is superseded by my desire not to have my children and my children’s friends (and the rest of the world’s children) read it out loud at play dates.

So what’s your writing superpower? The black moment? Capturing emotion? Setting? Character? Internal monologue?

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Left Brain, Meet Right Brain

When I was in my early twenties and working on magazines, co-workers said that I was a perfect combination of my author mother and computer-programmer father: exactly half creative-type, half geek.

Apparently, this genetic legacy was also good preparation for my current mission: going paperless with the writing/revision process. There are two catches: 1) I want to end up with my copy just as clean as if I were reading on paper, and 2) I’m stuck with the limitations of Mac for Word.

The short version is that I’m editing & taking notes on the Kindle, then entering changes on my Mac, then asking my computer to compare the old and new manuscripts so I can check to make sure I’m not introducing new issues. Here’s the long version:

1) I dump the manuscript to Kindle (third gen) and have the Kindle read it aloud to me while taking notes directly on the device. (This gives me a break from my computer, because in the absence of paper, I spend waaaay too much time in front of the screen. You can also have your Mac read out loud to you. )

2) I save the original Word doc under a new name, then enter changes by propping the Kindle up against my screen and using Cmd-F to search for the sections I want to alter. (The Kindle generously provides me with a few sentences of context along with my notes, so I can find them easily by searching on less-frequently-used words.)

3) I keep running notes on which sections of the MS have been changed most so I can reread them. If you use Word on a Windows machine, you can skip this step AND section 4 and just compare versions in Word itself.

4) I use the Mac’s command line to do a comparison between the original Word doc and the revised one (which I saved under a new name :-)). I save both files as text documents, choosing the “Other encoding” option, selecting “Western (ASCII)” in the drop-down, and checking the “Allow character substitution” box. For ease, I save the two docs as “TitleA” and “TitleB.” Then I launch the Mac Terminal program, CD to the directory my files are saved in, and type, “diff -w TitleA.txt TitleB.txt >compare.txt” You substitute your own file names for TitleA and TitleB and call the compare.txt document whatever you want–that’s the document that will show you the changes you’ve made.

5) I read the compare.txt file (you can open it in Word), making sure I haven’t introduced any new mistakes, then re-read the sections of the manuscript I’ve flagged in step 3 to check for flow issues.

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And the Number One Reason I Love My Kindle …

I’ve been searching for a way to make re-reading and revising easier and more fun, and I think I’ve found it. I loaded my manuscript onto my Kindle (3rd generation; see this link and scroll down to “Sending Personal Documents to Kindle”) and have been using the text-to-voice feature (see this link) to have the Kindle read my book out loud to me.

So far I’ve caught a bunch of teeny-tiny typos I probably would have missed (“imagation” instead of “imagination,” and repeated and omitted words), and I’ve also heard word repetitions and other rhythm issues that would have been hard to catch without reading the entire manuscript out loud.

As I work, I take notes directly on the Kindle, and later, when I’m ready to enter the changes, I can look at a list of all the edits I’ve made with enough text from the original that I can Edit>Find the sections easily.

Suddenly, I like revising almost as much as I like the first rush of writing.

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Literally, Part II

Small boy: Mommy? Where is your imaginary friend, the agent?

Me: The real agent? or my imaginary friend?

Small boy: Your imaginary friend.

Me: I sent her back to New York to live. That’s where she lives, really. I was only borrowing her.

Small boy: Is that really true?

Me: Well, it’s a really true way of explaining it to you.

Small boy: Can I have some chick peas? Heated up in the microwave for 5 seconds? No, 30 seconds?

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Literary License, Taken Literally

Earlier this week, I got a great rejection letter from a terrific agent I’d love to work with. It’s still early times for me with cold querying, so I haven’t entirely figured out a strategy yet for hedging against disappointment. By the time this agent rejected my full manuscript, I’d managed to construct quite a fantasy life around how she was going to ride into my life on a white horse and launch my career.

To try to explain to non-writer friends how I could be elated by the agent’s praise but still bummed out over the lost connection, I told everyone I talked to that I felt as if someone had sat on my imaginary friend and squashed her.

Yesterday morning, my warm, sleepy five-year-old son climbed into bed with me and rested his head on my shoulder. “Mommy,” he asked, his sweet little voice full of worry. “Who squashed your imaginary friend?”

“Oh, bud!” I said. “No, no. No one really sat on my imaginary friend. I was just trying to explain a way that I felt. I felt sad the way I’d feel if someone did that. But–” I put on the tones of total maternal authority. “No one can sit on your imaginary friend. It just can’t happen.”

Reassured, he snuggled up against me and threw an affectionate arm over his imaginary friend, resting on his other side.

The moral, I think, is to use extreme caution in constructing both fantasies and analogies.

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