To rewrite or not to rewrite?

That is the question.

I was reading an MS from the slushpile today, and getting very frustrated with the opening paragraphs. My frustration was for many reasons, but one of them was the way the MC was introduced to new concepts.

The MC was starting in a state of ignorance, as are many MCs in YA fantasy, and is found by people who know more than her whose job it is to educate her. And herein lies my problem. It's not interesting to read about an MC being lectured in what they don't know. It's passive. The MC is not actively seeking this information, she didn't even know it was out there. It just fell into her lap. She was even ignorant about her ignorance so there was no reason for her to go actively searching for an answer. And ... I was not terribly entertained. The end result? I stopped reading after about four chapters. (I would have stopped earlier but I'm still nervous as a new intern about not giving MSS enough of a chance.)

My story, to a certain extent, suffers from a similar problem, and it's taken me til now, pinpointing it in this story, to realise it's what's causing me grief with mine. I've rewritten my first 40-60 pages or so about four times now. Each times it's gotten marginally better but I'm never fully happy with it and now I know why: my MC is ignorant, and, rather than not taking no for an answer when her seniors refuse to give information, she accepts her ignorance and waits for it to fall into her lap.

The thing is, her ignorance is so important to the story (but not ignorance of her ignorance - she knows there are things she doesn't know and this is imporatant). So, the solution as I see it is to remove the sources of information that are handed to her and make her go out and get it. And that means ... well ... basically a rewrite, probably from start to finish.

If I can find time around two internships, full time work and part time uni.

Eep.

Have you ever found yourself in this situation? Have you found ways to make your current set-up work with minimal rewriting, or did you have to do a complete overhaul? If the latter please just lie to me and tell me it was easy peasy! Kidding, I really do want to know about your experiences and your words of wisdom.

PS. Please excuse me if I'm making little to no sense. It's late, and I'm tired, and I've just had an unepiphany that looks like it's going to equal oodles of work.

June is over - how did I go with my goals?

... Ahhh ... *crickets chirp into the silence*

Well, let's just say that I didn't fail completely, but I may have been a little ambitious with the goals.

Let's have a look:

Complete at least one round of revisions for Blood Legacy. Nope. Not done. I didn't do it every day either. More like 80% of the days in June. So while the revisions are not complete I did get some good progress on this, although it is going a little slower than I'd like because I'm rewriting a lot of scenes from scratch.

I also had some notes back from a CP about my beginning which got me thinking a lot about that for a couple of days. I now have some good ideas for the beginning rewrite (number three) but that will have to wait till I've finished this round of revisions.

Read and write notes for critique partners. Check. Although I do still have some to do.

Write out plot for Blood Legacy. I wrote BL with absolutely zilch planning and therefore I have no record of my plot. I figure this would be a big help for revisions so I wanted to have it written down. Also, I won a ten page critique from the awesome Sarah Billington and I need to send a synopses along with it. To start the process off for both of these I have been writing a one to two paragraph summary of each chapter as I finish revising it.

Work on consistency of character voice in BL. This kinda comes under revisions, and I am working on it. I think I'll do a post on this some time soon too.

Continue writing and choose a setting for So Far to Fall. These two were bonus goals if I got through the rest, so no - they haven't been touched.


Did you set June goals? If so how did you go with them? Will you set some goals for July?

In the beginning...

Back in March I did some very unscientific research on first pages, which you can see here:
        A very unscientific look at first pages (with charts!) - part one
        A very unscientific look at first pages - part two

I decided a successful first page needs the magic three: Character, Setting and Intrigue. Of those three it seemed Intrigue was the most important. I didn't look beyond the first page in my very unscientific study, but it was a start.

Now, as I revise, I realise how much work my beginning really needs. Not just the first page - the whole beginning. I've already rewritten it from scratch once. Apparently once is not enough. My beginning is still in need of a lot of work. A lot of 'rewrite from scratch again' type work. The question is, where?

Where does my story start?

Something I've discovered, which is going to sound completely obvious to all of you, is that to answer this question you need to know what your story is. Since Blood Legacy was written with no planning whatsoever, I'm still learning about my story. My characters are always telling me I got it wrong, and my list of things to do in revisions gets longer and longer. For now I'm trying to put a big black line through 'get the beginning right'.

There's a lot of advice out there on how to answer the question on beginnings. The most helpful advice I've seen is start at the point of change.

Don't start with action for action's sake. Don't start with conflict for conflict's sake. Same with character. Same with setting. Avoid back story like the plague (also cliches). Start with change.

What changes in your story that triggers the snowball effect in the rest of the plot? What is the inciting incident? This doesn't have to be a huge event. Explosions aren't necessary. It could be very subtle, but it is the moment your story starts.

Think about it like this: your story, the story you want to tell, is only a small part of a much larger story. Your characters and world existed (in the land of make-believe -- let's not get too carried away) long before the events of your story began and long after it ends. Your characters had lives. Your world had history. But you're not telling the story of previous historical events, or how your characters came to be where they are now. You're telling the story of where they're going.

If the story before is a wide river flowing along a straight path, then your beginning is the the event that diverts that river -- the moment of change -- and the story you tell is the rapids and waterfalls and constricting gorges the river has to flow through before it can return to a new calm path.

Poison Study by Maria V Snyder, starts with the main character Yelena being taken from a cell where she's spent the last year, to what she believes is her execution. She's then given a choice -- die or become the Commander's new poison taster.

The story doesn't start with what she did to get into the cell. It doesn't start with the events leading to her taking such an action. It starts with the moment of change. The reason the rest of the story happens. Up until that point her path was leading to death, and it was diverted with a choice. What happens after ... well I'll let you read it to find out.

Not all stories have the moment of change so soon, but the best ones often start as close to that point as possible. Anything else is set-up. Anything else can lose a reader.


Do you find beginnings difficult? Do you know when your story starts, or are you still trying to figure that out, like me? Do you agree with starting with the point of change, or do you have another take on beginnings?

Life's too short to read a bad book

I have a problem. If I decide to read a book and I get past the first few chapters, I'm the sort of person who has to finish it, no matter how angry it makes me, or how awful I think it is. I have this compulsive need to finish it, even if I think I already know what's going to happen.

Recently I was moaning about this to my friend Lana. The problem was even worse than usual, I was on the third book in a series. There were (I thought) five books total. Each book was just as bad as the last but they were all relatively short and I just kept telling myself, "Just read fast, you'll get to the end soon!"

What did Lana tell me? "Sari, life's too short to read bad books. Just let it go and start something you like!"

If only I'd listened to her. My compulsive book (series) finishing habit was in full force, and although the MC was driving me up the wall, the secondary characters were cliche and poorly developed and the plot was incredibly predictable, I KEPT READING! I know, there's something wrong with me.

I was halfway through book four when I read something saying there were actually six books, and another two still to be released. Oh hell no!

That was when the truth of Lana's words sunk in. I had a stack of other books I wanted to read. Why was I wasting my time reading a book that made me cringe when there are so many other brilliant books written by talented authors out there? I stopped reading at book four, halfway through the book.

My compulsiveness didn't entirely leave me. There was a love pentagon going on (yes, pentagon, just one of the many reasons the books were driving me insane - and it was YA) and I had to know if the guy I was voting for ended up with the girl. Got on Amazon and searched for some spoiler reviews. There were many many less than happy reviewers, and no my guy did not win.

The good news? I've read four books I've adored since then, with nary a love triangle to speak of. (Not that I have anything against love triangles, so long as they serve a purpose and... well that's a post for another day).

Are you like me? Do you read a book even when it's really not doing it for you? Or are you quite happy to set a story down the moment it starts irritating you, no matter how much time you've invested in it?

The shadows I see are worse than those that hide from me

I've been thinking a lot about foreshadowing lately, and when it's good, and when it's not.

When foreshadowing is done well, it's subtle. The reader won't realise they're being given a hint of future Big Events, at least not until the Big Event happens and then all will become clear, and the reader will think to themselves, Ah! I get it now. The Big Event won't have come out of the blue, completely unexpectedly, but the reader just won't have realised they were expecting it.

Subtle.

JK Rowling is the master of subtle foreshadowing. The entire Harry Potter series is threaded together in so many small ways that seem insignificant when first read, but everything has a greater meaning. One of the most basic examples is at the start of the first book, Harry talks to the snake at the zoo. Later we learn that he's a parseltongue and the ability is rare. But when I first read the books, Harry's ability to talk to the snake at the start was only proof of magic, nothing more. Not until later.

On the other end of the spectrum there's obvious foreshadowing. Perhaps the most cliched is:

It was a dark and stormy night...

Yea, ok, so something bad's gonna happen, right? Another one which is quite common is:

I shouldn't have left the house that day, if I hadn't XXX would never have happened...

Or some variation on that. Personally, I'd prefer to be surprised than to read so much heavy handed foreshadowing throughout the book that I know exactly what will happen when it happens. It takes away the excitement and the payoff for spending the time reading the book.

So how do you get the foreshadowing right?

Well, I'm no expert on this, but I can tell you what has worked for me, and what I think has worked in the books I've read.

First, don't make a big deal over the hints you've dropped. Assume your readers are smart, because they are. They don't need you to put flashing red arrows up to show them the clues. They'll see them, but they'll appreciate them a lot more if they can figure out the importance on their own. If your MC's going to get charged by a bull today, instead of blatantly saying:

I threw on my lucky red sweater, but little did I know that it was the bad luck I was going to get today...

Just leave it at:

I threw on my lucky read sweater and ran out the door...

Red sweater? Check. Does the reader think it's important? Not yet. Later? Aha!

Next, don't try to get all your foreshadowing in first draft. This is near impossible if you're a pantster anyway (which I am). If you're a plotter I'm sure it's easier to slip some foreshadowing in while you're writing the first draft, but as is often the case with first drafts it might not be done well. And things change, do they not?

Once you've got the first draft done, figure out the major events, the things that can't just happen out of the blue because then your readers will be left scratching their heads (which is just as bad as them knowing it's going to happen before it happens). Once you know this, in revisions go back and slip in your clues. The off-hand comments and the seemingly inconsequential details about setting or character descriptions or whatever.

Sometimes if you've allowed your muse to do its thing during first draft you'll find you've unintentionally left hints, Holly Lisle calls these muse bombs, and they are often more interesting (and subtle) than the hints you drop intentionally.

Test your foreshadowing on beta readers. Are they surprised but in a good way when your Big Events happen? Disappointed at figuring out the story before your MC did? Scratching their heads going WTH just happened? Trust me, beta readers and crit partners are gold.

And of course, keep practising. Don't give up. You'll get there!

What do you look for in foreshadowing? Have examples of good? Bad? Any tips on making it work in your own writing?

Sharing genius

I've just been catching up on my blog reading, something I haven't had much time for lately and which I have missed.

I came across this post by one of my awesome critique partners, Maggie the Genius (my new name for her).

You should go read it, but to sum it up, she had a middle of the night epiphany (something I'm sure all you writers are familiar with):

Make the awesome parts of the book awesomer, and get rid of all the parts that aren’t awesome.

I'm going to frame that and put it on my wall. Seriously.

What writing gems has your subconscious brain given you while you sleep?

Series and the 'no cliffhangers' rule

As a writer, with the hope to one day be published, I've been trying to learn about as many of the rules of the trade as possible. One such rule was really grinding my gears: if you're writing a series, make sure each book can stand-alone - no cliffhanger endings!

My 'newby writer' brain did not like this rule. But it's a whole story told in two books! I thought, How can the first book stand-alone? And cliffhangers are exciting! They make people want to know what happens next, right? RIGHT?

Well, yes. Here I switch into my 'long-time reader' brain. I do love a good cliffhanger. It's usually the reason I end up reading till three in the morning, because when I get to the end of a chapter I can't stop. I have to keep going.

Note I said chapter. Last night, at one in the morning, I finally managed to reconcile my reader and writer brains on this particular rule. How? I finished reading the fourth book of the Mortal Instruments series, City of Fallen Angels, by Cassandra Clare. It ended like this:



Is that guy really naked and hanging from a cliff with not even a rope? I think he might be...

Maybe my reaction was supposed to be: Wow, what a cool CLIFFHANGER ending, now I will wait patiently until the next book is released in... May 2012!

But I did not do that. Instead I went: Aaaargh! I am so frustrated right now. I do NOT want to be left hanging for over a year to find out what happens. And now I'm ANGRY.

I did try to do this quietly though, because it was 1am and Ollie doesn't understand the need to read until the early hours of the morning, and would have also been angry if I'd woken him with a book tantrum.

So, the effect on my reader brain? Not so good. Will I buy the next book in the series? I don't know, if I'm honest. When May 2012 comes around, if I even remember reading the series, I'll be a bit worried that I'm going to be left with another cliffhanger ending which won't be resolved until September 2013 with book six.

I know that this is an unavoidable issue of traditional publishing that plagues series, and authors have no control over pub dates, but they do have control over the endings in their books, and not agitating their readers.

Oh! I get it now! says my writer brain.

I do wonder though, will self-pubbing change this? Would I be more forgiving if I only had to wait a few months until the next installment? Probably.

What do you think? Am I being too harsh? Do cliffhanger endings make you mad, and potentially harm an author's readership? Or are you willing to wait for the next book?

Ooooh a shiny new lightbulb

Some of you may know I've been attempting to write my query letter recently. Attempting being the operative word. I'm not in any way ready to query, but I thought, since queries seem to be the bane of many writers, I'd get a head start.

Well... it hasn't been going that well. Aside from my issues with length, and lack of ability to decide what's important enough to be in the query and what isn't, I've just kind of felt like there's something missing. Like the tension is lacking and the query is falling flat.

I've heard people say that writing your query is a great way to see if your story has issues, and now I know it's true.

It took me a while but after several attempts to answer Janet Reid's query questions, and then a discussion with my amazingly artistic and talented brother Ushan on Sunday (yes, we all have strange names), I finally realised what was wrong.

The question and answer that was causing me trouble was this one:

What does the protagonist want? To find her family.

Ahh... pretty important question, right? Pretty lame answer, too. I mean, sure she's spent her whole life thinking she has no family, so finding out the truth that she has family is pretty important. And of course she'd want to go find them. But... it just isn't enough. Even I don't want to read a whole book about an MC finding her family when there's much bigger things going on, and I wrote it!

Enter my friend, the epiphany. MC's mum dies on the first page. She was murdered. MC knows this. MC saw the murderer. And she knows nothing about her dad. Why the hell isn't she trying to find the nasty murderer and deal out some sweet sweet revenge? And track down her dad in the process?

What does the protagonist want? To avenge her mother and find out who her father is and why he's never come for her.

Friends, please note exhibit A: the pitfalls of being a pantster.

This lightbulb moment also resolves an issue I was having with this story being split into two books. I wasn't sure if the story arc for the first half was strong enough to stand alone. Now I know it will be because I've already written the ending which ties in neatly with the new MC goal.

If you're interested, Janet's questions for what needs to be in a query letter are:

What does the protagonist want?
What's keeping him from getting it?
What choice/decision does he face?
What terrible thing will happen if he chooses A; what terrible thing will happen if he doesn't.

Have you had any lightbulb moments recently? Realised you've made errors that are going to result in significant revisions (like me *sigh*)? Or just any words of wisdom?

Share the Birthday Love Blogfest Post

Since finishing the first draft of my WIP, I've started trying to write a query letter. I know I'm still a long way away from querying anyone, but I figured it's going to take me a while to get it right. And it is. It's HARD!

Anyway, my query has been through a few iterations since the first version. My most recent version (only the part about the story) is under the tab 'Blood Dragon' above. I've had some feedback on Nathan Bransford's forum asking for more feedback, so I've tried to steer away from previous versions. I'm struggling with length (358 words!) and just the query in gerenal. Any feedback would be wonderful!

I will be getting around everyone's entries tomorrow morning. Can't wait to read them all! (I would have done this sooner, but my dad is in Japan so it's been a stressful day! He's ok though.)


QUERY: Blood Legacy (YA Fantasy)

Dear [Agent],


The people of Dereshan have waited centuries for their saviour, a child with two-toned eyes and the heir of the last dragon queen. But for Dani Strider, ignorant of her heritage after growing up on earth, the uncontrolled magic coursing through her is a curse. All it’s ever gotten her is loneliness.

When Dani wakes to strangers in her home the last thing she expects is to meet the family she thought were nonexistent. Her joy at the discovery is ripped away when they vanish, fading into the woods behind her house. The only evidence of their visit is a cryptic message: if he comes, you must follow.

Dani’s anger at the loss unleashes her magic and wreaks destruction on her surroundings. She wakes in a blast crater, a giant gray dog at her side, and an expression all too human in his eyes.

Dani follows the dog to Dereshan, only to discover he has a voice, an attitude, and far too many secrets. His help doesn’t come free; he wants to be healed and Dani’s the only one who can do it. What he means by that he refuses to tell.

The long-lived tyrant Vaddrin controls the world of Dereshan using fear and dark magic, and is soon to find the Dragons’ Histories, a weapon that will give him dominion over not just Dereshan, but all its parallel worlds, including Earth. According to an ancient prophecy, Dani’s the only one who can stop him, and he wants her dead.

Dani discovers her ancestors are the founding members of a society called the Kaardrivaal, the only opposing force against Vaddrin. If Dani bends to fate she will join the war against Vaddrin, and it will likely cost her life. But she is determined to choose her own path, and by doing so she may lose the one thing she’s always wanted: her chance to claim her place in the world.

BLOOD LEGACY is a young adult fantasy of approximately 84,000 words. It is a complete story with strong series potential. This is my first novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Kind regards,

Sari Webb

Crumbling the walls of writer's block

I've written a few posts recently about making writing goals, how I wanted to get a certain number of words per day and have my WIP finished by a certain date. I had such great intentions, but in the end intention =/= action.

I've been struggling with months and months (and months) of writer's block. It got the point where I forgot what was going on in my story and had to go back and review my words. This took a lot longer than expected, because I found myself editing along the way (I know, not recommended), and getting distracted from it all together. This has all culminated with me getting very fed up with myself.

So, without further ado, here are my tips for kicking writer's block to the curb, and taking some of my own advice:

• Shut down the webs. Twitter - closed. Facebook - logged out. Blogger - gone. The only web thing I leave open is my trusty Thesaurus.com (I love that page).
• Give myself permission to freak out for a moment about the fact that I don't know what the hell is going on with my story, then shut that down too.
• Try something new. This is where I completely strayed from my traditional writing process, which makes me think I'm not as much of a Pantster as I thought. The tools I used were: pretty pens, notebook, note cards, computer. Here's what I did, written in handy dandy instructional form:
1. Start with the notebook. Ask a question. Any question. If the 'what happens next' question is blocking you right now, ask something else. Anything to get the ideas flowing and the Muse warmed up. I keep a list of plot holes I need to resolve and started with one of those.
2. If you're finding that the answer to one question leads to another, and then another, then you're doing it right. When your writing brain is feeling limbered up, try asking the 'what happens next' question. If it's still blocking you, maybe ask it in a different way, like 'what happens as a consequence of character X doing action A?'



Not too imaginitive, right? It's ok, it doesn't need to be amazing, as long as it gets answers.

3. Once you've got an idea of what happens next, grab the note cards and pretty pens. Sit yourself on the floor (more space to work that way) and start writing out ideas for scenes. Don't worry about order, just write them. Once you have them, then put them in order. When I did this, it turned out I only had four major scenes to go until the end of the WIP. Woop!
4. Start writing! I ended up getting 4,371 words the day I did this.
• Keep writing every day. Create a writing habit (will post about this later in the week, otherwise this would be a mammoth post).
• Learn from others. I didn't come up with these ideas by myself. This is an accumulation of all the wonderful writing resources I've seen on the webs (check the Writing & Publishing Goodness links to the right). If you found this process helpful, I would definitely recommend checking out Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways. I haven't even finished the course yet, and already I've gotten so much out of it. Also, she's adding new content in March, and the price of the course will be going up after March the 11th, so if you're interested, check it out now. If you're on the fence, Holly has heaps of free writing courses and articles on her website to check out first. What are you waiting for? Go forth and explore!

And that is all. I now have around 10k words left to go, and all that time I was stalled not realising how close I was to finishing.

What about you, do you ever suffer from writer's block? How do you go about beating it? What are your favourite writing resources? We'd love to hear about them.

The Writing Process: Idea to Plot

As I mentioned in my previous post, today is the What's Your Writing Process Blogfest day, hosted by Shallee McArthur. Check out the link to see a stack of great posts about other writers' metaphorical tools when it comes to getting a story on the page. You just might find something that can help.

Today I wanted to talk about how an Extreme Pantster goes from getting an idea to developing it into a plot. Now, if you know anything about being a pantster, you're probably going to tell me that putting 'pantster' and 'plot' in the same sentence is a contradiction. Well yes.. this is true, to a certain degree. But let me explain.

Let's start with The Idea. Writers have various methods of coming up with The Idea. Taking inspiration from everyday life, brainstorming, their own past. None of these work for me, or at least, very rarely. To get an idea I first have to start writing it. Sounds kinda backward and counterintuitive huh? Yep, sounds that way to me too. But it's the only way that woks for my muse.

In case you're wondering what I actually mean by that, well, it is how it sounds. I sit down, no clue of what I'm going to write, and start putting words to paper (or tapping them out on the computer) and I start writing the start of my story. After a page or two I start getting an understanding of The Idea. For example (an in-class demonstration =P):

The back of Makenna's hand stung, like shards of glass jabbing into her skin. She rubbed at it, trying to ignore the pain, and the tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. She'd been in trouble one too many times this week, and she wasn't about to get kicked out of class again. The thing is, while she could feel it digging into her skin and bones, she knew if she looked there would be nothing there. Only her pale skin and long spidery fingers. Mr Fredrickson would accuse her of causing a commotion and send her to the principal, or worse, the school councilor. 

       So she would wait till class was out, and then hurry to the bathroom to run some cold water over the phantom wound. All the while trying to ignore the creepy stares the new kid kept giving her. It was hard not to notice the fact the pain had started when he turned up.

This is how my stories start, I had no idea what I was going to write just now (and yes I came up with this while I was writing this blog post so please forgive the crappiness) but as I wrote it the more I knew what had to come next, and what was happening to the character, and even why it was happening. The Idea is forming. (And now I actually kinda wanna write this story).

So now that we have The Idea, we need a plot (and characters, conflict, setting and all that other good stuff, but let's save that for another day). Again there are so many ways to plot a story: scene cards, story arcs, computer programs, etc, etc. They're all good ways, and they all work for someone.

My plotting method grows organically from my idea cultivating method. I keep writing. Once I've written that first paragraph, or page, or whatever it takes, I start seeing things that I want to happen in the story. Scenes I want to write. Characters I want to meet. I never have a fully fleshed out plot, but I tend to have a few scenes I know in advance which I'm really excited about. The rest comes as the idea did: by writing and discovering.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Not always, sometimes I get stuck, have a bout of writer's block (I hate writer's block). At these times I try out some of the tried and true methods of the more organised writers out there. I try to think about where my story is going. Have conversations with my characters. Ask questions. Usually I can get past the block and keep going. Sometimes... it takes awhile.

There are definitely pitfalls to being a pantster. You can be writing in a certain direction for a long time before you realise you've gone completely off course. And it can take a lot of effort (and cut words) to straighten out the story again. But I find that, for me (at least for now), this is what works. Maybe one day I'll realise that it doesn't work as well as I thought it did, and have to force myself further along Pantster-Plotter spectrum. But for now, I'm happy where I sit.

What about you, how do you come up with your Idea? How do you mould it into Plot?