Before You Start Your Story

You know how authors release novellas or shorts between novels in a series? I tried this "extras" technique out on two WiPs, and it's crazy how much it helped. The trick is to write them before you pen a word of your first draft.

All you need to do is take your protagonist back to a point in his or her life that will be important to the plot later. Doesn't have to be pivotal, as long as they discuss or think about it in the actual manuscript.

Get your pen/computer/typewriter out, and write the scene. You'll have a better understanding of your character and their motivations, as well as setting, the relationship with other characters, and backstory. Makes a huge difference.

Happy writing!

What I'm Up To

Happy 2013! I'm personally looking forward to this year. No reason. Just am.

I haven't been online much recently because I'm getting a new manuscript together in a rather unusual way.

Many of you might be having this problem - you're trying to write something and all you can think is agentagentagent or readerreaderreader or publishedpublishedpublished and you can't seem to get those chants out of your head. That's what happened to me. My work wasn't nearly as "me" as my initial writing, and it lost its fun, no matter what I tried. So I took the agent-reader-published craziness out of the equation and began writing in a notebook. I know. Old school, right?

But wait! There's more!

Years ago I bought a gorgeous bronze notebook with symbols and carvings on the cover. It looks like something out of a magic realm. I was waiting to use it for something special. I figured now was as good a time as any.

So what I'm doing - wait for it - is scribbling down the first draft of a scene in some cheap notebooks, then writing it out again in my bronze book. The rewrite includes perfecting my sentence structure and using stronger vocabulary. Focusing on the craft as well as getting the words down. Yes, it's madness. Yes, it takes twice as long. And this novel isn't going to be short, either. But querying is in the distant future using this method, so that's mostly gone from my mind. Now I only worry about the story.

The other reason I'm doing this is because I'm prone to rushing to finish manuscripts. And with wonderful contests and agent crits constantly up for grabs, it becomes sorely tempting to submit too early. (Hands up, come on, who else is guilty of this?)

By writing in notebooks, there's no possible chance for me to put my work into contests. I can concentrate on my story first and foremost, which, at this point in my writing life, is what I need to do.

Will this method get me back on track? I'll keep you posted.

So. Anyone else struggling with writing things more so than usual?

Guest Post!

I was lucky enough to win a guest post at Cupid's Literary Connection, and Cupid not only posted it, but very nicely raved about it (thanks, Cupid!).

You can find the post here.

And Suddenly - October

Yikes! When did October happen? It's school holidays here in Western Australia, so I've been plugging away at my new book, NaNo-style. I'm writing 6,000 words a day in the hopes I'll finish it before I have to go back to work and spend weekdays with little munchkins.

My latest project isn't my best work in terms of "homg this is literary genius let's put it in a museum and study it in English classrooms for all time." More, it's my best work in terms of "homg this book is so much fun I can tell the author loved writing every word and I can't stop laughing because these characters are AWESOME."

I was aiming for the first version with all my other manuscripts. Tell you a secret: I prefer the second way. Maybe it'll flop, and no agent will touch it lest they catch my crazy. Or, hey, maybe people will think my crazy is Pure. Genuis. (Shut up, I can dream.) Regardless, I'm still having more fun writing than I have in a very long time.

Pitch Friday!

Got a finished (unpublished) manuscript?

Well, this is for you! Australian publisher Twelfth Planet Press is having a Pitch Anything Friday for TODAY ONLY. It's open internationally - all you have to do is tweet your pitch and use the hashtag #12thPlanetPressPitch. It can be for any genre, any style. Fiction, nonfiction, art, craft, promotion, anything!

If you missed the window but still want to find out how to submit to Twelfth Planet Press, check the website.

And if you need help pitching using less than 140 characters, I did a post on how to do that here.

Good luck!

(Yet Another) Change to the Process

A few posts back I raved about how well plotting worked for me. I got the story written quickly, it was an adequate length, and there were few revisions needed. With such a successful experience, I figured plotting would be my best bet for my newest story. So last week I sat down and started brainstorming. I wrote copious notes for about five pages.

I didn't write anything else for six days. Not a word.

Yesterday, I'd had enough. I didn't know the minor details about my world yet. I didn't know much about the plot. I didn't have essays on my main characters (although I know a fair bit about where my minor characters come from). Despite all this, I opened up a Word document (I know, not even Scrivener!), and started writing.

I wrote a chapter. Four(ish) pages. Maybe not a huge amount, but it was a start, and it was darn better than how I was doing before.

So why didn't plotting work for me this time?

I thought about it, and the best answer I can give is this: Last WiP, it wasn't really a first draft. It was a rewrite. I wanted to take out the magical elements (which were essential to the plot in the original), and emphasise what had been the secondary plot.

And that made all the difference. Because I had a basic plot already written out. I had the setting, and the characters. Technically, that original story WAS my plotting.

I don't know much about this new story. At ALL. But maybe if I think of my first draft as my plotting, work out world-building and character development as I go, and write it relatively quickly, I can do up a proper plotting sheet and then open up Scrivener to do it properly.

I can't believe it's taken me so long to figure out that this is my process.

How about you? Have you worked out a process, or does it change for each book? Do you have another way of besides just "plotting" or "pantsing"?

Nightfall

This is another post for my book reviews for writers. I break down the main plot and character components of a novel and discuss what writers can take away from it.

There are a few minor spoilers in this post. Read at your own risk!

PREMISE

Someone suggested I pick this book up because it was vaguely similar to my own manuscript, and I'm so glad I did! I hadn't read Asimov before - in fact, I haven't read much science fiction at all - so I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Here's the basic premise, for those of you who have been living in the dark (haha) like me: In a world where there are six suns and constant daylight, an approaching Darkness threatens to send the entire population into madness.

Nice, huh? And the first half was brilliant. The entire lead-up to the Darkness was mesmerising. The astrophysics and mathematics behind it was awe-inspiring (for a layman like me, anyway). There were multiple points of view, and all characters ended up being linked by midpoint.

Lesson: A good, different, interesting premise will have people picking up a book in a genre they normally wouldn't read.

Drastically-Altered Midpoint

Erm. This is where the book sort of... fell into a heap. Please remember this is only my opinion, and if anyone who's read it would like to dispute my thoughts in the comments, by all means do so! I'd love to hear a convincing argument for the second half of the book.

Because the second half is where this story (in my opinion) flops. The lead-up was magnificent. Then from the midpoint it seemed to go downhill, and not in a good, thrilling, hang-onto-your-seat-so-you-don't-fall-out-the-side sort of way. The Darkness happens. People go mad. Anarchy. Chaos. Bedlam.

...

Boredom?

The characters just seemed to wander around and not do much. They had a vague goal, and that was it. I think it's fair to say the main goal was "to survive", and if you've ever had to write a character's motivation before, that's not something you want to say. This wasn't the tense, pillow-grip-worthy HUNGER GAMES survive either, this was just wander-in-the-forest-and-don't-get-murdered-by-crazies survive. I actually started skimming. And then just when it started getting interesting again, the book stopped. Finished. The end. Whaaa?

Lesson: If you're going to have a major change in the middle of your book (which isn't bad - I've done it in one of my WiPs), be careful to give your characters goals and motivations. They'll probably be different to the goals and motivations from the first half of your book, but they still need to be there. Just because there's madness and chaos doesn't mean you don't need to stick to those writing rules that will keep your reader interested.

WriteOnCon!

That's right, the biggest, best FREE writer's conference is on again! And the Ninja Agents start making their appearances THIS MONDAY.

*squishy-hugs conference*

Last year I tried my luck with PRINCE OF CITY NIGHTS and won a few pitch contests but it didn't eventuate into anything. This year I'm going in with my freshly-polished sci fi TWELVE MINUTES OF MIDNIGHT.

If you wanna see what I've been working on (and help stop my query getting lost in the forums while the agents are snooping), please check it out and post a comment/suggestion/crit on my page. It'd be much appreciated! (You have to sign up to see the forums, but it doesn't cost anything. Plus, you can see all the awesome crits on my work already! :D)

Here's my QUERY.

Here's my FIRST 250 WORDS.

Here's my FIRST FIVE PAGES.

I'm not going to get any sleep for the next few days zzzzzzz

PS If you're looking for an agent and haven't signed up for WriteOnCon... WHY? GO DO IT NOW!

How to Answer That Dreaded Question

Look, I'm a writer. Writing is ingrained into my soul. I'm not happy if I'm not writing. I always have one foot in reality and the other in my imaginary world. I'm sure most of you feel the same.

So naturally when I meet someone at a party or social gathering, who I am comes up in conversation. "Oh, I'm a writer," I'll say.

And then it happens. Every. Single. Time. That dreaded question. "Have you had anything published?"

Being a writer isn't about being published. I'm not claiming to be a "published author." But those non-writer types (more fondly referred to as muggles) don't understand that. If you don't have a book on the store shelves, you're not a legit writer.

After having had to answer this question more times than I can count, I've come up with a way to keep myself amused until I can finally answer, "Yes. Go buy it." Here are some answers to use and enjoy:

1. No. Drink?

2. Yes. I'm the ghost writer for J.K. Rowling.

3. Sure. Why not?

4. Yup, it's coming out in four years. The title's subject to change. So is my pen name. Keep an eye out for it!

5. Oh look over there, a pigeon! *runs away*

6. Yeah, but it's stuff you wouldn't read. Trust me. *shifty eyes*

7. These tapas are amazing.

8. No. You?

9. Give me your money and I'll send a copy to you. Honest. (Bonus points if you can get them to "buy" one for their friends.)

10. *set self on fire à la Hyperbole and a Half*

Any more suggestions?

Superhuman? I think so.

Ahaha, are you ready for this?

School holidays have just finished.

Two weeks.

80 thousand words.

My latest WiP is DONE.

I can't even begin to describe how good it feels. 80k. Eighty. Thousand. Words. I've never written a finished manuscript this long, let alone a first draft. (The last first draft I wrote was 36k. Seriously.) While I don't know if I can technically call this a first draft, it was written from scratch, with only the setting and maybe three characters the same. The plot had changed from fighting a Beast to... nothing even remotely related. In fact, the fantasy elements were taken out altogether.

But how did I go from writing teeny tiny first drafts to this mammoth of a manuscript?

Plotting.

It's possible that those who know me have just fainted on the spot. I know, right? Me? Plot? NEVER!

That's what I used to think, and I'm not sure how well I'll do if I tried it again, but goodness, it worked this time, guys. I was lucky enough to have recently attended an advanced writing class hosted by Juliet Marillier, and she mentioned her plotting methods and how she didn't understand the whole "pantser" thing because she couldn't imagine doing a million drafts. And I thought, wait, you don't have to do a million drafts? So I had a go at plotting, writing the whole story out scene by scene then adding scenes when necessary, and viola! I now have a real, much-more-advanced-than-usual first draft that has a decent word count.

I'm so excited. I'm off to do my victory dance. How's everyone else's writing going?