Noveltee(n)

2012-01-21T13:15:00.000-05:00

Hi guys,

I hope you've enjoyed the by-teen-writers, for-teen-writers blog we started back in April. It was really fun for all of us to connect and get to know each other better. But life, as teen lives often are, was volatile, and we lost three contributors. For those of you who didn't follow Noveltee(n) closely, that left us with just two.

Kate and I have decided to take an indefinite break from keeping up the site. If you're interested in becoming a contributor, go ahead and send me an email, and I will let you know when we have a full list of teens interested in blogging with us.

Until then, go ahead and enjoy the archives! There are plenty of interesting posts of advice and interviews from the past eight months!

Thanks for reading!

Taryn and Kate

Motivation

2012-01-13T01:50:00.001-05:00

One of the things that I've really tried to focus on throughout my revisions is motivation. Characters need motivation. This may sound like an obvious rule, but I'm always surprised by the number of manuscripts I read in which the protagonist lacks sufficient reason for their decisions. In order to empathize with a main character, we as readers need to understand why they're doing what they're doing, and whether emotion or logic lies behind the choice.

Here's what I've learned: in general, emotional motivation tends to be stronger than logical motivation. For instance, say your character is trying to save the world. "Trying to save the world" is motivation, but it's not particularly interesting. (I should know. In one of my earlier books, the main character had this exact same motivation....save the world.) That is, unless there's some emotional component attached. Take, for instance, Harry Potter. Possibly not the best example in the world, but Harry's determination to take down Voldemort certainly has an emotional component: his parents. Voldemort killed his parents and deprived him of a childhood. This motivation is far more empathetic and interesting than a boy who simply wants to do the right thing.

At every moment in the book, your character should want something. Oftentimes a book's main plot might not start until a little ways into the story (i.e., Harry isn't determined to take down Voldemort until about halfway through Sorcerer's Stone). However, even before the character's most pressing goals actually surface, they should desire something at all times. In the beginning of Sorcerer's Stone, Harry wants desperately to escape the Dursleys. This want gives us the opportunity to connect with Harry through similar emotions.

Anyways. Those are my ramblings of the day. Hope everyone's had a great week!

Writing is like . . . the flu!

2012-01-09T20:10:00.000-05:00

Since I spent all weekend throwing up, I thought I'd repost one of my first posts ever.

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For the past five days I've been sick. Not, like, bed-ridden, write-up-that-last-will-and-testament, friends-cry-by-my-emaciated-body sick, but sick enough to skip swim practices and sleep too many hours. And late last night, when I should have been sleeping out those last few germs, I got to thinking about how being sick is like the writing process.

Don't believe me?

Observe.

1. Throwing up
-"OMG look! Shiny new brilliant ~~germ~~ idea! Must...get...words...out!"
-Action: 50-100K of [word] vomit later: "I feel better. But look at that crap!"
-Go Here.

2. Fever: feeling cold and sweating simultaneously
-"Oh no. If I want this pile of ick to be anything worthwhile, I might have to do something about it."
-Action: find betas. "This is scary! They'll hate me! They'll love it! What if they steal it? Ahhhh!"
-Go Here.

3. Splitting headache
-"So I got through the ~~fever and the temperature~~ first draft and the betas. Now I have to WHAT?!?"
-Action: Despair, holding head in pain, and popping ibuprofen like candy.
-Go Here.

4. Pain swallowing
-"All right. No matter how much this MS covered in red pen looks and hurts like it is blood from my own body, I will persevere. I will do them edits!"
-Action: Despair, again, but this time there's something to show for the pain.
-[Sorry. Find your own edits.]

5. Mucus explosion
-"So, I've accepted that ~~I'm getting better~~ it's getting better. Now I need to let out the rest of the ~~mucus~~ problems."
-Line edits, copy edits, and general polishing.
-You could go here . . .

*Rinse and repeat as needed

Ta da! Shiny new MS!

Come Laugh at my Pitfall

2011-12-19T23:28:00.001-05:00

It starts as an itch. Something you can't put your finger on, but it's undeniably there. Maybe you haven't looked at that last draft of the MS for a while, so you think it's perfect. Out of sight, out of mind, right? And you're off searching the web, when an agent says someting.

"Hark!" You sing. "The herald agent said, glory to this genre thing!"

Number One Agent is looking for a YA monkey-murder Amish novel!!! And that's just what you have!!! Clearly you must query NOW NOW NOW or you will miss your chance!

Query's decent, manuscript's opening pages are polished and shiny, so I will send send send!!!

Oops.

No, I'm totally not a premature querier. *twiddles thumbs*

How do you stop yourself from querying before you're ready?

That Boy's Head

2011-12-12T13:17:00.000-05:00

So there's this guy who sits in front of me in chapel, our thrice-weekly mandatory assembly/service thing. I know he's in my year, since we have assigned seating and we sit by class, but at the beginning of the semester, I didn't know anything else about him.

Since I sat smack-dab in the middle of the chapel, and he was pretty tall, I could never see the speaker, so instead I busied myself with staring at his head. I spent a few weeks trying to pick out any detail that would tell me his identity. I'd watch who he talked to, where he sat at lunch, whatever. I was just SO CURIOUS.

I go to a small school. How could I not know his name?! I'd never even seen him before.

Eventually, after much ~~stalking~~ sleuthing I figured it out.

But by then, I'd also discovered Lindsey Leavitt's book, Sean Griswold's Head, in which a girl uses the head of the boy who sits in front of her in class as a "focus object."

So, in my head I'd been calling that boy Sean Griswold all semester, and now, whenever I see him, he's Sean. Always Sean.

It's a problem, people.

What about you? Have books seeped into your life? Share your embarrassing stories!

Writing Awesome Endings

2011-12-08T11:05:00.001-05:00

For me, writing the end of a book has always been the easiest part of the entire process. I usually have the climax set up from the beginning, so by the time I get to it all the details are resolved in my head and I just can't wait to get them down on paper.

I think there are five aspects of an amazing ending. My favorite books have all five, some have two or three, and some (series in particular) may only have two. These are what I strive for whenever I write the conclusion to a story.

1. The Twist. A sudden reveal, an exposed secret....plot twists really help make the ending of a book interesting. Here I'd quote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. When Harry walks into the room with the Mirror and sees Professor Quirrell instead of Professor Snape, it shocked most readers out of their seats. (Figuratively. Unless you actually did fall out of your seat, in which case literally.) It was the biggest OH SNAP moment of the book.

2. Physical Action. Let's face it, a climax would be boring if characters just stood around talking. Physical action is essential to move the plot along. In Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, the climax involves an elaborate escape plan, the main character almost getting ripped in half by sadistic religious scientists (all Catholic-Inquisition-style), and blowing up a detainment building in the middle of Arctic nowhere. The physical action is very effective and well-paced.

3. Emotional Action. Every good main character should have an emotional journey. A climax needs to expand upon these emotions, and the character should face mental barriers as well as physical. I know opinions are divided over Mockingjay, the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy, but in terms of emotional impact the climax is perfect and moving. Katniss gives up everything to protect her sister Prim, but in the end she can't save her. It's a sad and dismal ending, to be sure (although the last chapter does give some hope for the future), but the emotional climax is far more effective than a climax merely based on action.

4. Resolution. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of series in which books end on complete and total cliffhangers. I think, in order to create a good climax, there needs to be some measure of resolution. Again, I think the Harry Potter books are particularly good at this. They leave you salivating for the next installment, but every book contains its own individual story, and all the major points of these stories are wrapped up by the end of the book. They satisfy readers' curiosity as well as hinting at events in the next installment.

5. Unity. I think this is the hardest part of a climax to nail: combining physical action, emotional action, themes, etc into an ending that wraps up all (or most) loose threads. Authors who can come up with a climax in which a single event relates back to all these things (i.e., the character's emotional journey and physical journey come to culmination in one arresting moment) create the most satisfying and emotionally wrenching climaxes. Here I'd quote Ptolemy's Gate, the third and final volume of the Bartimaeus trilogy. Author Jonathan Stroud pulls off the absolute best climax and resolution I've ever read. For those of you who don't know, there are two main characters in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, and Stroud manages to converge both characters' emotional and physical journeys, as well as the book's overall themes, into a single final instant that's absolutely perfect in every way. Stories are made up of multiple threads, but the very best climaxes spin these threads together into a moment that can be used to summarize the book as a whole.

So there you have it. Those are five points that (in my opinion) contribute to an amazing climax. Do you guys like writing your own endings? Do you find them difficult, or easier than the beginning and middle? What do you think makes a good climax?

Writing vs. Holidays

2011-12-06T18:21:00.001-05:00

Christmas/Hannukah/any-other-winter-holidays-I-can't-think-of-off-the-top-of-my-head is coming! This doesn't really mean much to me. I mean, I love Christmas. But it'll change my writing(or rather, editing) schedule...none. I don't get breaks. Usually, sure, but I'm on a deadline, and I have an insane amount of work to do.

How do holidays affect your writing? Do you think holidays should be taken off, to give yourself a little break, and to spend proper time with loved ones? Or do you plug away as always?

Have wonderful holidays!

God Rest Ye Merry Querier

2011-12-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

God rest ye merry querier
Let rejections not dismay
Remember agents are people
Born on every day
To help and cheer and be with you
When you want to say
Oh I should give up on writing
And never write again
Oh woes of terror and doom

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Okay, it kind of fell apart there at the end, but I'm working on less than 6 hours of sleep and sitting in science class, so give me a break.

In other news, I have all my finals one week from today, which will kind of suck. I'm going to stop being writer-Taryn and switch to school-Taryn, a phenomenon which happens one week every semester. Weird, huh? In the light of finals, you tell me . . .

How do/did you study? Does writing distract you? Serve as a reward? Give me tips!

Swearing in YA

2011-12-02T02:57:00.002-05:00

Ah, swearing. A semi-hot-button issue. Today's post will be short, as it's one in the morning and I have a math test to study for, but I just thought I'd comment on swearing in YA fiction.

Personally, I'm fine with a bit of swearing. I swear on occasion (probably more than I should) and I don't have a single friend who doesn't swear. Quite honestly, it's part of being a teenager, and I'd wager that 95% of teens have sworn at one point or another. There will always be exceptions to such a generalization, but for the most part swear words are consistently present in day-to-day high school life.

Here's the thing: as an author, you write from your main character's perspective. What your main character chooses to do and say does NOT necessarily reflect your own beliefs. For instance, my main character steals a human child every year for a ritualistic sacrifice. Does this mean I condone sacrificing infants? Of course not. My main character is not me, and I am not my main character. At times, I feel readers (parents in particular) have a hard time separating the two.

If you write a book from the perspective of a girl who's dabbled in drugs, odds are she swears. Sanitizing all her language will reduce the authenticity of your work. Trust me, readers will notice. On the other hand, forcing a character who otherwise wouldn't swear to use foul language (usually in an attempt to connect with a teenaged audience) will feel just that: forced. Immerse yourself in your main character's thoughts. What would she/he say? Write from your character's perspective, regardless of your own moral values. A writer who lets his or her own beliefs overtake the organic actions of a character is compromising the impact of the project.

On a forum the other day, one of the commenters said something along the lines of, "There are always ways to avoid swearing. Authors only swear when they can't come up with a more creative/intelligent way to express feelings." Now, could an author come up with a more creative and less vulgar way to say "fuck you?" Certainly. But would the character in question purposely abstain from using the word "fuck" in order to avoid foul language? Doubtful, in the case of most teenagers. Any attempt to censor language at the expense of a character's individual voice does a disservice to the author and the reader.

I've also heard parents express concern that teens will "pick up on" swearing in YA, and thus use the words themselves. This may be true in select cases, particularly younger/less mature teens, and I think it's appropriate that some parents help select what their children read. But by the time teens enter high school, they're surrounded by swear words all day. Anybody who says otherwise is kidding themselves. Considering the amount of foul language teens hear regardless of what they read, swearing in a YA novel is not going to change whether or not they swear. Most kids are smarter and more self-assured than adults give them credit for.

Swearing must be deliberate. It must be an accurate representation of the character, and the situation should warrant such an expression of intense emotion. I think it's entirely possible to write a clean YA novel with an authentic ring. However, in my opinion, there is most definitely a place for swearing in many YA stories.

Plantsing

2011-11-28T15:08:00.001-05:00

No, I'm not employing a new method where I dig up soil in my garden and place trousers in the dirt in the hopes of a trouser-tree. Plantsing is my new method of pre-story actions. It's not outlining, but there's definitely a plan. I have room to wiggle, but I know where I'm going.

In the past, I've been every kind of writer you can imagine. I've completely pantsed things, where the genre changed unexpectedly on me in the second chapter, and I wasn't sure of my MC until halfway through. I've also written with a strict outline, adhering to POV, setting, even pieces of dialogue or bits of description. (That outline had a word count around 15,000. Wow.) I've used notecards, word docs, and pictures. I've let it build for three months, or less than a day.

Over the past six "serious" novels I've written, I've learned what works pretty well. Ready?

It varies.

How you prepare for your story depends entirely on the story itself. I wrote two novels this year during nano. One was stringently planned (it was a rewrite, though), and the other used the plantsing technique I'm about to talk about.

So what exactly is "plantsing," other than my new favorite planning technique?

For my writing process, I need one thing: to know where I'm going. This sucks because I HATE endings. Hate writing them, hate planning them, hate thinking about them. I live by this quote by E.L. Doctorow:

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Plantsing is a technique that allows me to plan "as far as my headlights." I plan out the first part (first third, quarter, whatever. I separated it into about 15,000-word chunks), then write that, then plan again.

Advantages of plantsing:

--The wonder remains. Pantsers say they hate planning because plans take away the surprises of getting to know the characters and changing the plot. But by planning by 10-20K segments, you're able to surprise yourself.

--Deviations are easy to implement. When you outline the whole thing, and find out during the writing that a character wouldn't do something you'd planned, the ripple effect ruins the whole outline. In plantsing, you only have to switch up a few thousand words.

--Built-in breaks. When you're writing, it's hard to tell what's an appropriate break that you should take and what's you being lazy. With plantsing, you have the necessary breaks built in--whenever you have to plan a new section, you won't be writing. You can take a step back, assess your story, and make sure you like your direction. Ta-da! A second wind.

Have you ever tried a technique like this? What technique have you used that works best? Share!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-22T22:07:00.001-05:00

It's Thanksgiving. Well, in two days. So have a happy one! For me, it means writing madly until family gets here, and then LOTS of board games once they do.

And... I'm thankful for NaNo being almost over. Not because I don't LOVE it. NaNo is awesome. It's just very hardcore. I like slow and lazy. But it's uber good for me; having such a set deadline makes me write even when I think curling up in a corner and dying would be preferable. But even so, getting a moment to breathe will be nice.

What are you doing for Thanksgiving? And what are you thankful for?

A Pool of Prose

2011-11-21T16:31:00.001-05:00

So picture your manuscript spread out and dumped into a giant pool. (Not the papers. Just, like, the words and sentences and scenes and stuff. It's all metaphoric, I promise. I know how much it sucks when your MS gets wet. *glares at sister*)

Now look at that. That's kind of what the warm down area at my last swim meet looked like. Mass chaos, no guiding lanelines, and everyone doing what he wants. In my hours at the pool, I classified these people in three different ways, and each had a corresponding writer-type.

The Meanderer. This person is somehow oblivious to everyone else, believing no path means s/he will not run into anyone, and s/he weaves in and out of traffic without a clear path. This is the author who does not write chronologically.

The Straight Line. This swimmer knows there are other people in the pool, but s/he frankly does not care. S/he is going down that straight line, so get out of the way! This writer will forge ahead no matter what, damn the inconsistencies, that's what revisions are for.

The Dash and Jerk. This was my favorite swimmer to watch, because they look like the Straight Line--until suddenly, when a collision is imminent, they JERK to the side (or down) and narrowly avoid the other person. This is the writer who usually writes chronologically until s/he just can't take it anymore, and then s/he jumps.

How do you write? I always write chronologically, except if I think of a particularly brilliant exchange of dialogue, in which case, I jot down a, like, 200 word scene.

How bout you?

Distance

2011-11-17T09:50:00.002-05:00

I'm sure all of you have heard authors, agents, or editors give this advice: take some time off from your manuscript before a big revision. Whether it's two weeks or two months, distance provides a renewed perspective that will make it easier to execute the needed changes.

Thing is, writers are impatient people. I'm impatient. We want to go out on submission now, we want to query agents now, we want a book deal now, now, now, now! I've had an agent since late April and we're just now preparing to go out on submission. Why so long? Distance.

I took a good three months away from my book before I went back to do a big revision. I mulled over the plot, the characters, and the overall structure, and I made some changes that entirely altered the story. It's so much better now than it was. And if I hadn't waited, if I had let my impatience rule me, I don't think I would've had the perspective to figure out what changes the story needed.

So here's my advice for unagented authors especially, since I know how tempting it is to revise quickly and send out queries. Take your time. After you get notes from a critique partner or a beta reader, spend a few weeks just thinking about them, brainstorming how you can alter your story to fix the identified problems.

Distance and perspective are key. If you're serious about a writing career, waiting a few more weeks to send out those queries shouldn't matter.

Sadism or Tough Love

2011-11-15T13:21:00.001-05:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that writers are really just sadists.

Okay, maybe only some. But it is pretty common, when one overhears writers talking about their work, to hear the writer gleefully discussing maiming or emotionally scarring their characters, or killing people off, etc.

But I'm thinking it's not actually the hurting the characters that the writer delights in (okay, maybe a little) but rather what the hurting will lead to. As S.E. Sinkhorn says over on her blog*:

"Try it. Take away something your character loves dearly. Cut away their family. Steal their significant other. Annihilate their best friend. Destroy their freakin' world. Then let them change. Let them grow. Let them become someone with a different outlook on the same past. Let them be stronger for it. And let the story continue."

What doesn't kill your characters does make them stronger. If you kill the character's whole family, they will probably be devastated. If you throw their life in a mud puddle and stomp on it with soccer cleats, they will suffer. But they will get over it, and become better characters. Because that is what people do.

So really, it is a truth not-so-universally acknowledged, that writers love their characters so flipping much that they are willing to put them through the pain that will make them better, stronger people.

*Nooo, I didn't just choose a blog topic that would fit that link because that link is about Doctor Who, why do you ask?

Put It Together

2011-11-14T08:30:00.000-05:00

We writers are a superstitious bunch. Before sending that query, we have to turn a cartwheel and clap three times. When at a writing conference, we only wear our lucky underwear. Once you're on sub, it's all about hyperventilating in that one particular way.

So why should starting a project be any different?

Let's be honest: the Blank Page is scary. It's all empty. And the bottom says "Page: 1 of 1 | Words: 0" and you're like, "OMG how do I turn that into 'Page: 1 of 310 | Words: 80,319'?" Slowly, you write the first line, but something isn't clicking, maybe because you're overwhelmed.

This doesn't seem like a story, you think. It could be a class assignment! Then you shudder, remembering that 30 page research paper you did on the church in China. What makes the documents different, anyway?

Format.

(Unless you write your novels in MLA format, that is.)

So today I want to know how YOU draft.

What font?
What point size?
What color?
What spacing?
How do you change chapters?
Do you use numbers, words, or actual titles for chapter titles?
Do you have a fancy title page?
Do the answers to these questions change per manuscript?

Me? I draft in boring TNR 12-pt black double-spaced. Page breaks between chapters, and "Chapter 12" halfway down the next page. This is industry standard. However, I used to draft in Georgia, and I used to use business spacing (single spaced, no indenting, with an extra line between paragraphs, like blog posts), but changing that back into industry standard got annoying.

Your turn!

****I'm hosting a teen chat over at Write On! tonight at 7 EST! I'd love to chat with you!****

Be Thorough

2011-11-08T17:29:00.000-05:00

And we have yet another NaNo post!
Ahem.
So I've had an awesome NaNo so far. Not as impressive as Taryn hitting 50k, but hey, that's just not how I roll. I am ahead of my wordcount at the moment, and that's what matters to me.

I hit one snag last night: I have a murder in my story, and when plotting I had sort of glossed over that. Which was, uh, dumb since it's so integral to the plot. Luckily I had Maggie around to talk at, and it's all figured out now.

Moral of the story(and this very short blog post): if you're going to prep something, be careful you don't just work out the fun, interesting random details of your story. Get those necessary plot points too.

Back to frantically writing!

Happy writing––and reading––y'all!

On Torture

2011-11-07T08:14:00.001-05:00

The big news today (well, actually, last night) is that I hit 50K in my NaNo! I'm doing two projects, one rewrite of my April project, and one YA mystery. The rewrite is speeding along (at 30K), and I am in love with the new one (at 20K).

The MC in my mystery is very similar to Parker Fadley from Courtney Summers' CRACKED UP TO BE. If you haven't read that, just know she's kind of, well, a bitch. A character you shouldn't like. The girl you love to hate. But somehow it works. Courtney Summers says she wants to write about how bad a person can be and still be forgiven, and I really do like Parker.

But until this NaNo, I was scared to experiment with so-called "unlikable" characters.

I have an alpha reader. She's my best friend, and she reads voraciously. Last night, after she read the first 20K of BEGGING TO BREATHE, I bit my lip.

"Do you like Tessa?" I asked.

"Yes," she said immediately. "And I feel sorry for her."

After heaving a huge sigh of relief, I grinned. "Yeah, she's got a tough life."

Kelsey, of course, looked horrified that I was grinning over someone's misfortunes, so I started to think about it. Tessa's parents suck. She has this medical problem that screws with her memory. Her coach sees her as a way of getting points rather than a person. And, to top it all off, everyone is blaming her for a murder she doesn't think she committed.

So Kelsey suggested I give Tessa some happiness. I pointed out a relationship that's blossoming, but then I grinned again. "HA. This happiness means she's gonna be miserable at the end of part two!"

Writers really are awful people.

But the truth is, we can't be scared to hurt our characters. We can't baby them. We need to throw them against a wall until they learn to climb it.

How have you tortured your characters lately? Or am I just sadistic?

NaNoWriMo - Why perseverance is more important than natural talent

2011-11-03T23:46:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, when I talk to other writers who don't know me, they tend to pull the prodigy card. They chalk up the successes I've had as a writer to, "Oh, but she's a prodigy. She doesn't have to work as hard as normal people." Now first of all, I definitely don't consider myself a prodigy. My brain is definitely wired more toward writing/creativity than math/science, but so are lots of people's. I'm not vastly more intelligent or more talented than other kids my age.

Like other writers, I spent years working to hone my craft. I started writing with the intention of publication at age eight. Books 1-4 will never see the light of day, while Book 5 is undergoing revisions at Scholastic. The whole "prodigy" thing has always bugged me a little, because it implies that young writers are able to churn out manuscripts without having to work on their skills. Thing is, when it comes down to it, even the most gifted, naturally talented person in the world would never be able to write a good book without practice.

I think the old saying is true: writing is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration (or something like that). So to all you people who are doing NaNo? You rock. 81% of Americans say they'd like to write a book someday, but you're actually following through. Not many people have the stamina. I'd like to give you all a (virtual) round of applause, because you've realized what I've realized: natural talent is moot if you're not willing to put in the work.

Who all is participating in NaNo? How's it going?

Caveman Words

2011-11-01T00:30:00.000-04:00

NaNo starts today, so my updates may or may not become very short. Yay all that are NaNo-ing with me!

Caveman words––those sounds you make that aren't really words, but more likely space-fillers. They are actually some of my favorite things ever. I find them fascinating, especially ones from other countries that are new to me.

Highly Sophisticated Not-So-Comprehensive List of Frequently-Used Caveman Words From Around the World:

The English Edition:

Agh!

Ugh.

Gr.

Guh.

Gah!

Ug.

Uh...

Um.

Er...

Bah!

Oops/Whoops

OW!

Ew!

The Korean Edition*:

Aigoo...

Aish!

Ya!

The French Edition*:

Euh...

Oups!

Bah!

Zut**

Feel free to add to this list! Or correct me if I'm wrong on any.

*These are a lil different, because they might actually be real words.... but I couldn't find direct translations for them, so...
**I hear this can sometimes be a profanity, but Google Translate, oh so reliable as it is, says it means "heck", so I'm adding it anyway. Don't strike me down if I was mistaken in trusting Google Translate.

Planning Murders on Halloween

2011-10-31T08:27:00.000-04:00

When I walk to morning practice, it's dark. When I leave morning practice, it's still dark. Usually I'm too dead to realize dark roads at five AM could possibly be dangerous, but that changes on two occasions:

1) When I read creepy books.
2) When it's Halloween.

This morning, on the seven minute walk between my dorm and the pool, I realized the date, and my brain immediately began working overtime. Vampire behind that tree! Werewolf howling at the (not-even-close-to-) full moon! Was that a buzz in the air? OBVIOUSLY an EMP just turned everyone into zombies! Etc, etc, etc.

Finally my thoughts turned to the realistic: Rapist! Serial killer! Sex trafficker!

These morbid thoughts of death reminded me of this year's NaNo, which is a murder mystery. I've spent the last three days planning this, and I find endless joy in answering the question "what have you been doing?" with variations on "I've been planning a murder."

Yesterday a friend asked me, "How do you research for this?"

I, grinning, said, "Field experience."

She laughed slightly nervously.

"The funny thing, Ranay," I said with an enigmatic smile, "is that you're 99% sure I'm joking."

But planning the murder itself isn't a big deal. Shove someone's head under water long enough, and s/he will drown. The end. Boooooring. But the why the killer did it and the how the sleuth figures it out? That's the tough part.

I've figured out why, and now I'm stuck on how. One more day to plan my murder, and I will continue to announce my nefarious plans to whoever asks.

What about you? Do you have any Halloween-related writing plans? Have you ever said something ridiculous that only makes sense because you're a writer?

NaNo Essentials

2011-10-27T16:44:00.009-04:00

So I'm doing NaNo for the first time this year, since I plan on finishing LIKE CLOCKWORK revisions this weekend. I'm super excited! I've been waiting to write this book for months (seriously, I've been revising since April....sooo stoked to start something fresh). Anyhow, this is my list of NaNo essentials:

A computer, or....

A pen and paper

A quiet place

Caffeinneeeee. Seriously, if you haven't had Starbuck's salted caramel mocha frappuccino with whipped cream, you're missing out.

Spring rolls. I know, I have weird taste in comfort food.

CANDY CORN

So what about you guys? Are you doing NaNo? What's on your list?

Timed Writing

2011-10-25T00:30:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I had my midterms. My second midterm was for English, and we had to write a timed essay. It made me think of NaNo (also "timed", for those that have been living under rocks like the guys from that Geico commercial).

What is so magical about timed writing, eh? It's used frequently in our society, for both happy reasons (NANO!!!!!!!!!!!!) and tests (...midterms...). I see where both are coming from; for NaNo, you hope the tight deadline will produce results, despite their probable crappiness. For tests, the prof is hoping a deadline will force you to use your brain, and that such a test will show your level of... something. Okay, so maybe I don't get it in the test case.

Ahem. But what I do get is this: the two different uses of the same method have the same magical non-fail solution! And that is...? Come on, guys, say it with me! Yup. Pre-prep. Doing as much as you can beforehand so you spend less time later staring blankly at the page. What does this involve? Outlining. In fiction's case, world/character/plot building. In essays, thinking your thesis statement and all your arguments through till they're as tough as nails. You do whatever you can to be as ready as possible to start throwing your words on the page, to form thoughts and pictures, when the timer starts.

Can you think of any other instances where you've had to do timed writing? How about what you do to prep for such a task? Hope y'all are having a fantastic fall in your part of the world.

Rose-Tinted Glasses

2011-10-24T14:21:00.001-04:00

(I had this post written out, but Blogger deleted it. Grrr. This is the condensed version.)

Inspired by this post.

Think of your husband/boyfriend/crush/fiancee/significant other in any capacity. I bet s/he is super hot. Drop dead sexy. Most gorgeous person alive.

Now remember the first time you saw him/her. (I'm sick of he-she, so everything will be from my perspective now.) He had weird eyebrows. Some zits. A little bit of a pooch. But now that he's the most awesome person ever, describe him.

Gorgeous eyes, glowing golden. Perfect arms. Lips chiseled in his stubbled cheeks.

Same guy, but completely different focus.

As humans, we often look at the negatives, maybe to make ourselves look better, maybe because we want to have things to fix--whatever. Unless it's someone we want to find perfect, we don't. But those people you want to be perfect? It's all "chiseled cheekbones," "shiny hair," and "abs of steel."

What about you? Describe the way you see that person you like, and then describe them for real. Do they match?

My Life as a YA Novel

2011-10-17T08:31:00.001-04:00

A lot of times we as readers scoff at the events of fiction. "Please, that would never happen," we say as the popular womanizing jock turns out to have a heart of gold. "Yeah, right," when the whole school cares about the Big Game. "Gag me," when every single boy in the world loves the unassuming, naive MC.

But think now about how many moments in your life could have been a YA novel. The lovely Maggie is often amazed by how much of my life seems like fiction, so let me amaze you with some of the instances in my life:

-A girl liked by two boys with the same name at the same time
-A girl who met her boyfriend-to-be at the airport during a flight layover and learned they went to the same school
-A transfer student who broke up with her boyfriend of a year, then a month later, we swam a dual meet against them, and they came in wearing t-shirts saying "Team [His Name]". (Jerks.)
-A motivational speech given by our coach which rallied us to an awesome performance in a relay at nationals. (It's just like MIRACLE!)
-A girl whose at-home boyfriend drove a 4 hr round trip every weekend to see her

Most of those have to do with boys, but did you really expect me to talk about the vampires I know?

So what about you guys? Anything "stranger than fiction" in your lives? What YA novel moments have you had?

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This week in CONTESTS!

To celebrate selling her debut novel, Shannon Messenger is giving away EVERYTHING (including WISHES)! Go here to enter.

One of the books she's giving away is Brandon Mull's BEYONDERS, which got me into reading MG. Enter, enter, enter!

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Also, Secret Agent entries over at Miss Snark's First Victim are today!

Love Fill-in-the-Blank

2011-10-11T01:00:00.000-04:00

I just read two very interesting blog posts about love triangles and love "teeter-totters". First thing that came to mind––after appreciating the brilliance of both posts––was how there was one scenario missing: the love lines.

<3's <3's

Greg –––––––> Sally –––––––> Carl

This is a painfully familiar situation, actually. You have Sally, the MC, and Greg, her best friend/other guy she's not interested in Like That, and Carl, the true love interest. Sometimes the author will spice it up by throwing in a lil bit of doubting on Sally's side over Greg––"Maybe I do love him...?"––that makes it seem like a love triangle. But really, they are just friends/acquaintances, and always will be––in Sally's mind (Greg's a different story).

And then there are love circles, which you NEVER see.

v–––Carl <–––^

Tammie O Sally

v–––> Greg–––^

(Excuse how bad that diagram is. O_o)

I have to say, if I saw this in a book, I'd buy the book purely because I would be tickled. Seriously. That much unrequited love? Ah, angst FTW!

Anyway. Have any other love shapes you know of you'd like to share? I'd love to be enlightened. ^_^ And have a FANTASTIC day.

Crisis

2011-10-10T08:03:00.000-04:00

The Chinese word for crisis is "wei-ji," and is represented by pairing, side by side, the symbols for danger (wei) and opportunity (ji). The danger of ignoring the crisis or applying a quick-fix, without understanding the underlying dynamics, is that an even larger crisis will result later - and we might not even recognize it as being related to the first! The opportunity the crisis presents is one of discovery, and the rejuvenation and transformation that results if the call to awakening is truly heeded. -Dave Potter ("Journey to the Soul of an Organization")

I read this quote in the homework for my Leading Groups class, and even though it was talking about dissension in the workplace, it immediately resonated with me in regards to revisions. (Note: the could be because everything reminds me of revisions right now.)

Think about it.

Yes, it's dangerous for us to change words that are "very good," but unless we take the opportunity to edit and revise them, they will not become great. When we take the easy way out, we lose our chance to be the best we can be.

I had a swim meet this past Saturday, and the same principle applied there. "It's crunch time," is a common phrase in athletics, and that's a nice way of saying "here is a crisis." The danger comes from the pain of working hard, of laying it all on the line. The opportunity comes because this is the one chance to break from the athlete you have been and become someone, something, greater.

One last quote to leave you with:

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. -Benjamin Franklin

Don't listen to your fear and settle for very good. Take the opportunity to be great.

Laziness

2011-10-06T09:41:00.003-04:00

Behold:

I feel like this picture says quite a lot about writers. We all have days when we feel lazy....we don't want to write, revise, or think about our stories. But I also think this picture applies to the revision process itself. Sometimes, there is an aspect of a story that I, as the author, know doesn't quite fit, but I'm too lazy to go back and change it. I think to myself, "Nobody will notice. That info dump on page three? It's basically invisible, hidden by sharp dialogue."

We all do this.

Stop right now.

I know it's hypocritical for me to say this since I do it myself, but I think it's something we can all work on. Don't be lazy. Don't settle for anything less than perfection. Expect more of yourself. And even if you do ignore that info dump on page three, your critique partners will spot it from a mile away, and then you'll finally be forced to confront it. This is one of the huge things I've noticed as an editor at Teen Eyes - when I make suggestions, the author oftentimes already suspects what I'm going to say. They know what's wrong with their manuscript, but they hope they can slip by without fixing it.

Laziness leads to plot holes and character inconsistencies. It's just a downer all around. This month, my goal is to be less lazy.....get stuff done, revise meticulously, and never settle for less than my best.

I hate to be cliche, but the old saying is true: you are the greatest obstacle to your own success.

Getting Going

2011-10-03T08:32:00.000-04:00

So today was the first day of our in-week morning practices for swim team. (Note: we've had morning Saturdays for a month, and weights every T/Th at 7 for almost as long, so we have been getting up. Just not to swim in the week.)

But morning practices are the worst. M/W/F from 5:30-7. Not too long, but long enough.

Alarm goes off. You glare at it. 5:20=waaaay too early.
Open the door. IT'S FREEZING OUTSIDE. 5:22=waaaay too early.
Miserable walk up the sidewalks. BRRRR. 5:28=waaaay too early.
In the pool. WHY IS THE POOL SO COLD??? 5:32=waaaay too early.
5:33-6:50: OMG WE GOT OUT EARLY YAY!!!!!! Also, I'm starving. Forget about how early it is, and get to the food ASAP.
In the caf. Why does the food suck??? 7:05=FOOD.
NOM NOM NOM Time for class :( 8:00=Booooooored.
Oh, hey, I know! I'll write a blog post. 8:15=right now!

So, um, why does my morning matter on this writing website? Other than that you want to stalk me, or whatever. (Hey. Go ahead. If you want to sacrifice your sleep and invite frostbite, it's your life.)

Because getting up for morning practices sucks. It really, really sucks. You want to roll over and smash your alarm and knock your coach over the head and never ever wake up again.

But they're good for you. And half the time, once I'm in the pool, I appreciate being woken up like that.

I mean, how many times have you been staring at your ~~day~~ blank document, wondering why it's so hard to write?

I suggest warming up. Little warm up exercises. And maybe you're like "Taryn, I want to spend my time working on the novel I actually want to write. Not some dumb little exercise."

Ahh, oh brilliant writer, but are you actually writing that novel? Or just staring at its document?

Uh-huh. That's what I thought.

So next time you're stumped, try an exercise.

One of my favorites is a voice exercise. I did it for the first time at a teen writer meeting. The teacher had us pick two objects (I chose a sunrise and a flower) and then write about them for three minutes in four different ways.

1) In long words and long sentences.

2) In short words and short sentences.

3) With as many questions as possible.

4) With as many exclamation points as possible.

You get a very distinct POV from each approach, and it really shows you how you can differentiate your characters based on their words and mannerisms.

Do you have a favorite writing exercise?

Characters getting married

2011-09-29T09:49:00.003-04:00

I read a fair number of manuscripts for Teen Eyes, and one of the things that I've noticed, particularly with older writers, is the tendency to write in marriages between their seventeen/eighteen-year-old protagonist and their love interest.

Now let me start off by saying that I think this can work at times, especially in historical fiction. People got married younger during medieval times than they do today. But generally, I find this trend really doesn't work for me. Here's why:

~At seventeen/eighteen, most teens aren't nearly emotionally mature enough to make a lifelong commitment. True love does occasionally strike during the teenage years, but for the most part I think teen relationships don't tend to be long-lived. Maybe this is cynical of me, but it's the truth. Teens are still discovering themselves and trying to find their place in the world.

~Most teens aren't even remotely concerned with marriage. I did an informal poll on Facebook, and it showed that the overwhelming majority of teens aren't nearly ready to even consider marriage, let alone go through with it.

~Marriage and sex. I know there are people who wait until marriage to have sex, but statistically speaking the vast majority of partners will have sex before getting married. Whether or not you agree with premarital sex, that's the way it is. It's strange, because of all the contemporary fantasies I've read that end with the character getting married, sex isn't addressed once. The characters don't even think about it. It's as if the author is trying to portray the characters as pure and virtuous, but sex is a biological urge, and even a teen who isn't having it will definitely be thinking about it.

For the most part I feel that marriages between main characters in YA novels aren't realistic. Again, they can work at times, but I usually feel like the author is compromising the authenticity of their characters by forcing them to marry. Writers tend to project their own adult perspectives onto their seventeen-year-old protagonists. Remember, these are teenagers. They obsess over prom and parties, not marriage. There will always be exceptions, but I don't have a single friend who is, at eighteen, seriously considering marriage.

What about you guys? Do you think about marriage? What about marriage in YA fiction?

Shiny New Idea

2011-09-27T23:36:00.000-04:00

I am just about to go to bed. I remember this. I blanch. I run to my computer and pull up this page.

You're walking down the street with your pet llama. Allofasudden* you get a Shiny New Idea while you're still in the middle of writing Shiny Last Idea. Uh-oh. What to do??

I write it down––everything that came to me. But I limit any actual scenes to a max of 2 pages, just so I won't accidentally fall into the pit of Writing Too Much of Non-WIP.

What do you do?

*I really feel like that should be one word. Humor me.

Revision Checklist

2011-09-26T10:00:00.000-04:00

Anything I'm missing?

Adverb EPIC FAIL

2011-09-22T16:19:00.003-04:00

Kate Coursey proudly (haha) presents, An Editor's Worst Nightmare:

Once upon a time, there was a lovely girl named Caitlin who had an astonishingly awesome talent that involved juggling amazingly on a tightrope. She happily skipped to circus practice after school, where her fellow performers waited anxiously for the show to start.

"I love juggling," Caitlin said conversationally, dropping gracefully onto the couch beside her BFF Jasmine. "It gets my heart pumping crazily."

"Me too. But I hate the tightrope."

"Why?" Caitlin casually popped a bite-sized pastry into her mouth. "Surprisingly, it's the best part."

Jasmine sighed exaggeratedly. "But you could die awfully in a fall."

"Not if I'm especially careful."

At that moment the ringmaster called loudly, and Caitlin reluctantly deposited her food on the table and walked purposefully toward the backstage area. The audience was filing excitedly into the seats beyond the curtain.

Caitlin determinedly squared her shoulders, ready to artfully perform her act in front of the hundreds patiently waiting outside.

I Hate You. (with Pictures!)

2011-09-19T11:26:00.000-04:00

Conversations with the Clueless

This last one was inspired by Maggie, who looked at me with Much Hatred when I asked her what her MS was about.

Middles

2011-09-15T10:02:00.005-04:00

So we often hear writers talk about beginnings and ends. Your beginning is of the utmost importance - it's what originally hooks an agent, editor, and eventually reader. It serves as the foundation of your novel. The end, on the other hand, is what a reader takes away from your story. Without a good climactic scene, the ending of your book may feel like a let down.

But what about the middle? Personally, I've always felt that I'm all right at writing beginnings and ends. What I really struggle with are middles. How do you keep up the tension in a story while continuing to develop character relationships? How do you introduce plot twists without it seeming forced?

Take a book like Lord of the Rings. As epic fantasy, it follows a plot line that consists of multiple small incidents leading up to a bigger one. In the Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo and Sam must escape the black riders, make it through the old barrows, survive a trek through the wild with Strider, traverse the dwarven mines, and thwart the Uruk Hai sent by Saruman. Each of these incidents function separately from the others, like a series of trials. This goes back to the work of Campbell and the idea of a hero. Frodo's journey follows a "quest" structure typical of Tolkien's genre.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, employs different tactics to make the middle of the books interesting. Instead of smaller, separate trials, the Harry Potter books generally focus on a single overall mystery, and the characters uncover pieces and clues as the books go along. The books also employ subplots surrounding the characters' romantic lives and struggles in school. It is more character-driven than Lord of the Rings; although the fantasy aspect draws readers in, so too do the typical teenage problems of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. It is, in a way, a more complex method of increasing tension than the methods employed in Lord of the Rings. Of all the Harry Potter books, Goblet of Fire follows a structure most similar to that of epic fantasy.

I think the key to making the middle of your book interesting is to never let the tension dissolve. No matter what's going on, you need to have some kind of suspense, be it romantic, physical danger, school-related, or a mystery. There are large sections of Harry Potter in which nothing Voldemort-related happens. Voldemort is an obvious source of tension, so JK Rowling compromises with different problems. Tension doesn't have to be all dragons and wars; there are more subtle forms that will still hold your readers' attention. Epic fight scenes and immediate danger are easy ways to build suspense, but generally speaking, too much danger in a book will feel forced and fake. In writing a good middle, the key is discovering how to build up subtle tension whenever there's a lull in the action. Identify your characters' inner struggles. Use their emotions to drive suspense in the story, and you shouldn't have any problem hooking your readers from start to finish.

What about you guys? Do you struggle with beginnings, middles, or ends? How do you deal with these issues?

POVs

2011-09-13T18:23:00.001-04:00

I just finished an AWESOME book the other day. The concept was pretty original, the plot was well-done, the characters were all epic. In fact I only have one complaint about it: the point of view.

Unwind was written in a close 3rd person/omniscient POV. There were moments when it would be telling from one character's POV, and all of a sudden there would be something about another character––something the POV person couldn't have known. Or the narrator made a comment that would give away something about the story later on that the characters don't know yet. Those jerked me out of the story every time.

Now, clearly the book is still great despite the chosen narrative style, and maybe some people don't mind it. But as a rule, I'm not crazy about omniscient. I don't like it when information is given away by someone not even in the story, especially when said information could very well be told by some good ol' subtle foreshadowing. I'm not saying omniscient can't work; it's just like any other narrative style––if it's well done, people will read it. In Unwind's case, I feel like if he had just stuck to a close 3rd the story would have been just as good, if not better.

But tell me. As a rule, what is your preferred POV to read or write? 1st, 3rd? Or maybe even 2nd? (If you are one that likes omniscient, don't take offense at my comments; I'm just being opinionated.)

As for me, I prefer close 3rd or 1st, past or present tense. But that's not to say I won't read others. If it's well done, I'll read anything.

Opportunities

2011-09-12T08:25:00.000-04:00

Happy Monday, guys!

There are two awesome contests just for teens that you need to know about/enter. One's for one-sentence pitches, and one's for your first 100 words. You can check out my post on one-sentence pitches here, and Kate has a post on beginnings here.

Claire Legrand (The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls) is hosting the pitch contest here, and Tori Scott doesn't have the post for the 100 word contest up yet, but her blog is here.

Secondly, Read for Relief is an auction with funds going to victims of Irene. I've donated a Teen Eyes critique, and there are tons of other awesome items up for bid. Check it out!

Thirdly, go enter Brenda Drake's blogfest, which Kate and I are judging! I know, most of you are teens, but it's always good to get another set of eyes on your MS, and the more entries in the contest, the happier Kate and I will be.

And lastly, you all should be jealous, because I'm going to visit Maggie this weekend!

Have a great week!

Try-Fail Cycles

2011-09-10T10:52:00.002-04:00

I’ve just moved into residence at Augustine College, so this post might be a little short. And so I decided to talk about try-fail cycles, because I can explain them faster than…um…some other broader topic that I can’t think of at the moment. I think I need coffee. Anyway…

Try-fail cycles are a great way to help tension in a story. In any story, there’s conflict. The hero will almost always be trying to get somewhere or accomplish something. As writers, it’s easy for us to use the first or second solution we think of. Of course! Mr. Protagonist shoots all the guards, blows up the doors, storms into the building, and shoots Dr. Antagonist in the head!

Unfortunately, the first thing we think of tends to be the most obvious solution. If you end your book that way, the readers will just be like “Well, that was easy. What were all those townsfolk so worried about if Dr. Antagonist is that easy to kill?” One of the best ways to avoid this, I’ve found, is to brainstorm and come up with as many different ways to kill Dr. Antagonist as you can think of. Throw out the first one, second one, probably third and fourth, until you get to one that no one would think of right away. The harder the problem is to solve, the more impressive it is when Mr. Protagonist solves it.

Sometimes, though, leaping straight to the complex solution and ending the story that way can be just as frustrating for your poor readers. “Why on earth did Mr. Protagonist steal a helicopter from the CIA so that Nerdy Scientist Guy that he rescued from Afghanistan to teleport a nuclear bomb into Dr. Antagonist’s base? Why didn’t he just blow up the doors and shoot him in the head?”

This is where try-fail cycles come in. Try-fail cycles are pretty much when Mr. Protagonist tries to kill Dr. Antagonist one way and fails. He tries another way and fails. And tries a different way and fails. And each time he tries, the plan gets more complicated and seems like it’s definitely going to succeed this time, but then each time we just realize that Dr. Antagonist is INDEFREAKINGSTRUCTABLE. The more Mr. Protagonist fails, the higher both the stakes and the tension are raised. And it makes it that much more impressive and stand-up-and-cheer-ish when Mr. Protagonist finally DOES come up with a plan that works.

My Name Is...

2011-09-06T21:25:00.000-04:00

Have you ever thought about your book, published? I know I have. The cover... the title... the name. But for your name, what do you see? Do you picture your full name in that space? Or maybe you see your initials, and then your name. Or is it sort of unclear?

Lots of people are okay with using their own name. But sometimes, we want pseudonyms, for whatever reason. 'My last name is hard to pronounce.' 'My last name is embarrassing.' 'I've never liked my first name.' 'My name is too similar to this other author's.' ...etc. The reasons go on and on.

How do people choose their pseudonyms? Well. I don't know how published authors choose theirs, but I totally always think, if I chose a pseudonym, I would use my middle names (I have two; MaryAnne and Francis). Some people might use their mother's (or theirs, if they're married) maiden name. I've even considered making up a name.

But really, this seems like something this big should have some thought put into it, you know? Maybe that's just me.

So tell me! Have you ever thought about whether you would use your real name or a pseudonym? And if the latter, how would you pick it? Nickname? Middle name? Maiden name? Random? Or something else?

A Novel Poem for YOU

2011-09-05T08:00:00.002-04:00

Hush, Hush.

Let me

Speak

For

Infinite Days

This Lullaby.

Just Listen

To the

Beautiful Creatures—

The Great and Terrible Beauty—

Trapped

In the

Ink Exchange

As you

Break

All Unquiet Things

With your

Ballad.

Across the Universe

People will

Fall for Anything

From you.

They have

A Need So Beautiful

That

Something, Maybe,

Could be

The Awakening

To their

Invincible Summer.

Your words are

The Eternal Ones

Which combat

Personal Demons

And allow

Stealing Heaven.

No one will

Wither,

Stolen,

Losing Faith

That they are the

Girl Wonder.

We are a

Revolution,

Crossing

The Line,

And

Catching Fire

The Chosen One.

You are not

Forgotten.

You are not

The Replacement.

You will never

Wake.

Fade.

Gone.

Remember your

Legacy

And follow

A Northern Light.

This is your

Love Story.

Write with

Abandon.

Runaway

Into those words.

Let their

Undercurrent

Set you on

Fire.

Become

Entwined

With

All You Desire.

There will be

Freedom.

Nothing is

Impossible.

The Sky is Everywhere,

And how you

Captivate

Twilight

Extraordinary,

You

Crazy Beautiful

Perfect You.

The winner of SHUT OUT is Kate Coursey, who ~~totally blackmailed me into picking her~~ was picked by random.org. Yay, Kate!

Writing an emotional scene

2011-09-01T10:19:00.006-04:00

Most books contain at least one emotional scene. Be it the death of a major character, some bad news, or a messy breakup, emotional scenes allow us to connect with the characters and the plot. Writing a good emotional scene is an imperative aspect of completing your novel.

A good thing to remember is that almost every emotional scene centers on character relationships. For instance, the death of a character is sad because of the relationships that character had with others. Fred Weasley is a perfect example of this. When Fred dies, the reactions of his friends, family, and especially his twin are what allows us as readers to feel the grief. He was a brother, son, and friend. If Fred Weasley had absolutely no emotional connection with any of the other characters, his death wouldn't have been nearly as sad.

Since most emotional scenes are based on relationships, it follows that the strength and development of character relationships correlates with the impact of emotional scenes. I'd suggest listing out your major characters. Pair them with one another, using every possible match (I know, it takes forever), then write a few sentences about how each pair relates to one another. Do they always get along? What do they like about each other? What do they dislike?

Death scenes are particularly difficult to pull off. A lot of authors use them to varying degrees of success, but death is so intangible that it's difficult to really hook your audience. I'm going to use two examples of death scenes, one from a book and one from TV, that really exemplify how an artist can portray authentic emotions.

1. Ptolemy's Gate

Ptolemy's Gate is the third and final installment in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. I love these books. Love them. Stroud has some of the most complex, realistic characters of any book I've ever read, and Bartimaeus has to be my all-time favorite protagonist. Better still, Stroud's character relationships are equally intriguing and intricate.

I won't give away too much, but book three ends with the death of a major character (it's probably my favorite ending of any book EVER....can you tell how much I love this story?). The character who dies was by no means perfect, at times cruel and morally ambiguous, but therein lies Stroud's genius, because the reader still cares. The final moments of the character's life are delivered in sparse, poignant sentences, a brief exchange between servant and master on the level of equals, before the character dies and the book ends. It's not at all melodramatic. There's no crying (on the characters' part, anyways) but when you close the book, you can't help but feel empty and saddened by everything that came to pass. The Bartimaeus trilogy is not really a sad series, but this is probably one of the best death scenes I've read.

2. The Body - Season 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I know, I know. It's hard to take a show called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" seriously. I didn't at first, but when my sister convinced me to watch it I realized why critics today consider it to be one of the best shows of all time. The writing in this series is absolutely brilliant....it's a blend of comedy, drama, horror, fantasy, B-movie, and sci-fi, which in the hands of a lesser writer would've been a complete disaster. But Buffy has delivered some of television's best episodes, one of which is The Body.

In essence, The Body starts when Buffy returns home to find her mother Joyce lying dead on the couch, killed by a brain aneurism. The next few harrowing minutes follow Buffy through the house as she calls 911, attempts to administer CPR, and waits for the paramedics to arrive. There's no music in the entire episode - the silence itself becomes oppressive. When the paramedics pronounce Joyce Summers dead, Buffy can't seem to comprehend what they are saying. As they leave they tell her to "try not to move the body." Buffy's father-figure Giles shows up (Buffy called him, although she didn't tell him about Joyce), sees Joyce lying on the ground, and runs to her. Buffy races to stop him, shouting, "You're not supposed to move the body!" It's at this point that she breaks down, horrified that she just referred to her mother as "The Body."

Buffy shakes her mom in an attempt to wake her.

"You're not supposed to move the body!"

For those of you writing emotional scenes, I'd suggest watching this episode (all seven seasons are available on Netflix instant watch). Although this initial scene stands out, the entire piece chronicles those first few hours after Joyce's death, and the reactions of the different characters. This is where the writing is really brilliant; the writers perfectly capture each character's response. They all process grief differently. This is an important factor to remember when writing any emotional scene, not just death, because characters are unique and they won't respond to grief in the same way. The Body is a perfect example of this, and although their reactions are more poignant for audience members who know the characters and have watched the first five seasons, it can still be beneficial for people who haven't seen Buffy. And quite honestly, if you're a writer, you might consider watching the entire series. Season 1 isn't so great, but the subsequent seasons really do have some of the best writing out there.

Anyways, if you have any thoughts on writing emotional scenes, let me know in the comments!

Noveltee(n): Kody Keplinger (and SHUT OUT giveaway)

2011-08-31T08:09:00.000-04:00

Hi guys! With the release of her second novel less than a week away, I have Kody Keplinger here for an interview. Kody, who just turned 20, has released two books already.

Tell us a little about the books you have under contract.

Well, there are 3. First there was, THE DUFF, which released last year, which is a contemporary YA romance. Up next is SHUT OUT, a modern re-imagining of the Greek play Lysistrata, about a girl who gets her friends to go on a sex strike with her in order to get their boyfriends to end a sports rivalry. Then I hae another out in the summer, but I'm keeping a little tight lipped about that one for now.

When did you stop thinking of writing as a hobby and start thinking “I don’t care that I’m young—I’m going to be published”?

Honestly, I never thought "I'm going to be published." In fact, I honestly never thought it would happen at all. But I knew that if I didn't try, I would never know. So I started approaching agents about my work - expecting nothing - when I was seventeen, during my last year of high school. I still seeing writing as a hobby, though. A hobby I sometimes get paid for. It's kind of great!

What was querying like? How did agents react when they learned your age? Did you put it in the query?

Agents had no idea about my age. I got rejections, a few requests, and only one offer. The only agent who knew I was seventeen is the agent who signed me, and she didn't find out until after she called me to offer me representation. I didn't put my age in the query because, as far as I was concerned, it was irrelevant. i wanted my writing to speak for itself!

How did your friends/family/teachers react when they learned you were going to be published?

Everyone was super supportive, and still are. They didn't tread me any different, but they let me know all the time how proud of me hey were and are. I have GREAT people in my life.

Has the fact that you have a book deal changed you plans for a “real” job?

Somewhat. I'm taking some time off now, just to see how the writing thing goes. If I think I can write full time and support myself, that's what I'll do. But I might decide to get a day job just to get me out of the house every once in a while. We'll see! I haven't decided just yet.

Plotter or Pantser?

Usually a pantser, but I plot every once in a while.

Notebook or netbook?

Netbook.

Mac or PC?

MAC!!!!! I am a convert!

Pen or pencil?

Pen. Ink all the way.

And finally, what upcoming release are you most excited for?

YOU AGAINST ME by Jenny Downham. She is so incredibly talented it is insane.

Thanks so much, Kody!

So you all are in luck: I preordered a copy of SHUT OUT a couple weeks ago, and then, when at the bookstore last week, I saw a copy early. Since I quite honestly could not wait, I bought that copy too, which means I have an extra copy for you!

And you want this book.

Rules:

+1 for commenting

+2 for tweeting

+3 for being a teen

+4 for blogging

+1 for adding everything up

Contest closes 9/4 at midnight PST.

Everyone's Favorite Post (Let's Talk about Sex, Baby)

2011-08-28T23:49:00.000-04:00

The lovely Authoress posted about sexuality in YA the other day, and I thought that topic deserves its own post here, on Noveltee(n), as well.

Personally, I'm not sexually active (hi Mom and Dad!), but I've been exposed to people who are from a very young age. Let's just say swimmers are very confident in their bodies and physical experiences. And I'd have to be blind and deaf (and likely missing a few other senses) to avoid the sexualized culture of today's media.

Of course teens are going to wonder. Of course teens are going to make their own decisions.

Truth is, it's uncomfortable to talk through this with parents, so many don't. Many take action, and learn through experimentation, pressure, and regret. But I'm in the camp that's it's better to learn through reading, thinking, and relating.

I just finished Kody Keplinger's SHUT OUT, her second novel after THE DUFF. Both have heavy sexual themes, and Kody, as a teen, knows exactly how today's teens look at these issues.

And here's how: each girl thinks she's weird. One thinks she's weird for loving sex. One thinks she's weird for wanting to wait til marriage. One thinks she's weird for disliking it. With no one willing to say what normal is, how can anyone tell?

So when teens go to the bookstore, or the library, or browsing on their Kindle, we're just looking to see if we can relate.

We want to know if we're the only one who thinks this, or does that, or wants the other thing.

Frankly, I let the story be told. If my character is someone struggling with some sexual issue, I let her struggle. But I'm not going to force in gratuitous sex to make things "edgy."

What do you think about sex in YA? Why do you think authors include it? Do you think it's "right" or "wrong" to include it? How do you deal with sex in your writing?

(PS: Noveltee(n) contributors, feel free to make your own opinion known in your own post this week!)

Also! I'm giving away a copy of SHUT OUT on Wednesday this week when I interview Kody.

Five stages of grief...er, revisions

2011-08-26T10:34:00.001-04:00

Denial - My critique partners just don't get it. They don't understand what I'm trying to do. This story is obviously perfect, and if they can't see my brilliance then that's their problem. Who cares if it's exactly the same as Twilight?

Anger - Why did they have to be so harsh? They're wrong! They suck! I'm never working with them again! My vampire is sexy and that's all that matters!

Bargaining - Okay....I'll cut the vampire-human-hybrid-baby out of the story, but there's no way I'm removing her sparkly vampire boyfriend. No. Just no.

Depression - I'm an awful writer. My critique partners hate everything about my story. I'll never be any good and I'll never get published.

Acceptance - Fine. I guess I really should cut out the vampire-human-hybrid-baby and the sparkly vampire boyfriend. Back to the (metaphorical) drawing board.

Character Growth

2011-08-23T08:00:00.002-04:00

Hey all! So, a lot of people have been or will be starting school soon. I'm not starting yet, but it has been a hectic, hectic week for me!! How about you?

I'm going to take a page out of André's book and use a movie to make a point.

So the other day, I saw Cowboys & Aliens. It was good. I mean, not amazing. But a decent; I liked how they mixed the western and sci-fi. That was definitely the best part, for me, besides the special effects (I'm a sucker for good special effects). It had Harrison Ford in it, so I couldn't not go see it, because Harrison Ford is awesome. (Raise your hand if you love Indiana Jones! Anyone?)

Okay, semi-spoilers.

.....

But honestly... I didn't like his character, Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde. First, they used his character as a cheap bad guy. Like, he basically killed (or at least severely injured) a man by tying him to a horse and then letting the horse loose. I was cool with that––in a "Oh, he is clearly the bad guy" sort of way––at first.

But later... Another character is talking about how wonderful he is, and kind and intelligent, etc. Which... totally rubbed me the wrong way. I was like, "Seriously?"

Because they needed an antagonist before the aliens showed up, they used his character. That is okay. What is not okay is making it so utterly unrealistic. At the beginning, he's this awful sort of man who kills men by tying them to horses. But without any character development or an event that makes him grow, he is suddenly a pretty decent guy, if maybe a little gruff.

That would have been okay, but for the lack of... actual growth.

.....

Now, I've seen this happen in other movies and books, where a character is annoying or bad, and then for no apparent they turn all good. It. Drives. Me. Crazy.

People, character growth? It is a good thing. And a real thing. Your friendly neighborhood axe murderer isn't going to stop chopping people into bits for no apparent reason. If he stops (we hope he does O_o), it will be because he has encountered something that challenged him. That made him think. Or, he, you know, will be arrested by the police. Which would be good too...

I digress.

Don't just write an annoying character who at the end of your story has a change of heart. And if they have a change of heart, it needs to be believable, brought about by some event or personal revelation. Because the kind of characters that just decide to stop being axe murderers because they felt like it, they aren't believable. (Unless they are psychotic; they might be believable then, but that's a topic for another time.)

So, character growth = good.

Back at School

2011-08-22T14:04:00.000-04:00

I'm settled in my 90 sq ft single-person dorm room, I've had my first day of classes, and I'm already sick of the heat. I'll post pictures of my window seat-desk, bookshelf, and bed setup soon.

That's all you get for today, since I'm backed up on internship full requests and Teen Eyes MSs.

Also, there may or may not be a boy.

How about you guys? Are you back at school?

On Personal Obstacles

2011-08-20T00:00:00.002-04:00

So I recently watched The King's Speech. If you haven't seen it, (I guess there are spoilers, if you care enough to avoid them...it's not the kind of movie where it really matters, though) the basic premise is that the main character, King George VI, has a stammer which makes it not only hard to speak in the best of times, but pretty much impossible when he has to make a speech. He finds a doctor to help him, and the movie is basically about him overcoming his stammer.

It's not a fast movie, there's no action, and yet the climax was more riveting than a lot of battle scenes I've seen. The climax was a man in a room giving a speech. Slowly. With several long pauses. Not exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to be anything more than really, really boring.

It wasn't boring because they got us (or me, at the very least) emotionally invested in the characters. We get so caught up in wanting George to succeed that by the time we reach the end, even a long halting speech has us on the edge of our seats because we so desperately want him to succeed.

This is where I find a lot of books, and movies, go wrong. They give their characters physical obstacles, but no personal ones. Death and swords and archenemies and such are great, but they're all just superficial unless you can make people care about your characters. Giving them personal obstacles to overcome is a great way to make people care about them. External obstacles are easy. A slash of a sword at the right time, a bunch of complex sciency-sounding words, and the problem's dealt with. Personal character problems are much more, well, personal. They help us care more specifically about the character as a person rather than just a machine for killing goblins.

Characters are what drive the story. They're what keep the reader interested all the way through. If we don't care about them at the end, it's just a lot of people hitting each other with things. So...don't do that. :-P

Here endeth the blog post.

Not a good reason to be a goblin-killing machine.

Liebster Award

2011-08-19T00:01:00.003-04:00

Thanks so much to Amanda the Aspiring, who awarded Noveltee(n) the Liebster Award. This award is meant for blogs with less than 200 followers. Amanda says:

Noveltee(n): A group of five teen authors blogging together in a single force set towards global domination. *cough* I mean, set towards the enlightenment and advancement of teen writers everywhere! Taryn, Andre, Constance, Kate, & sometimes Mad contribute on set days of the week. Try it, you'll like it. Their blog design is amazing(props to Andre), and they're lots better than Alka-Seltzer*. XD

Thanks again Amanda! And here's our list of five bloggers to whom we present the Liebster Award:

Here are the rules:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.

2. Reveal your top 5 and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all - have bloggity-blog fun!

Have a great weekend everyone!

What Do You Write With?

2011-08-16T20:25:00.003-04:00

Back in the day, there weren't many answers to that question. "I write with pen and paper." Or maybe a pencil. Or a quill. Or charcoal. Or blood. Scratch that last one; I sincerely hope you've never written with blood.

But now, we have computers. And those computers have all sorts of different programs that can be used for writing. On PCs, Microsoft Word is pretty common (I could be off about that; PC users, feel free to correct me).

Mac owners use Word too, but some use Pages. That is what I used to use. It has basically the same abilities as Word, as far as I know.

What I use now is Scrivener; I've mentioned it before. I love it. Everything is in one document, and there are sections for research and character pages. There's a name generator, where you can put in different options and it will generate all sorts of different names. (I LOVE playing with that. I have wasted literally hours playing with it.) You can set yourself deadlines with dates and word counts and pretty little progress bars that change colors. It will even compile your finished manuscript with the proper MS layout.

But anyway; I'll stop raving about it. (But I'm only raving because it's amazing.)

What do you use to write? Word? Pages? Scriv? Something else? What do you like about it? What annoys you?

Why Teens Who Write are the BEST EVER

2011-08-15T15:45:00.000-04:00

How many times have you heard the story of the woman who always wanted to write? How she loved books as a teen, but chose to focus on school? And then she majored in English or something, but didn't focus on novel writing because she wanted to have her degree? Then she needed to get a job, because financially stable, get married, blah blah blah.

Those are all excuses.

So right now? You and you and you and you? We're pursuing our dreams right now. Even if we don't even have a novel actually finished, or if we haven't even thought of querying.

Just by reading this blog, you are taking steps toward writing. Writing as a teen.

And, of course, there are plenty more perks to writing as a teen, like not having to think about writing as a job, or making people super impressed, or getting a head start.

But sometimes it just comes down to getting the experience, so do that. Have fun. Write what you love. There's a saying that it takes a million words to be publishable, and guess what? If you start early, you'll get there early.

Good luck.

You're awesome.

Immature Characters

2011-08-13T22:03:00.000-04:00

Immature characters should be destroyed.

…Okay, not all of them. Lots of people are immature, therefore immature characters are not only plausible but probable. Fiction would be unrealistic without immature characters dotted throughout. But please don’t tell a story with an immature main character unless you happen to have a really, really good reason. Usually there is no good reason.

I think people write immature main characters for one of two reasons. Either they make their main character immature in order to be able to teach them some lesson or give them some character arc that would have been impossible otherwise, or they make the character immature just…because. Okay, so I don’t really know why anyone would do it for a reason other than the first, but they do.

Ignoring the second reason, since I don’t understand it enough to say anything about it other than “don’t,” the first reason can work sometimes. If you’re going to try, though, you need to understand the pitfalls and how to avoid them. I don’t know everything, of course, but I do know some of the reasons why immature main characters tend to annoy me so much.

-I’m not immature. I’m just not. And nowadays, the type of people who read books (well…good books) instead of playing video games or watching reality TV shows tend to be more mature than the average, I think. When your audience is more mature than your main character, it tends to alienate them very quickly. (Again…”tends to”. Nothing I’m saying in this post is set in stone in any way, apparently. XD)

-Being more mature than these main characters means that if the purpose of having an immature main character was in order to teach some sort of lesson, odds are the readers will have already learned that lesson. And instead of going “Wow, I never thought of that!” or at the very least “Huh…interesting,” they’ll just go “Well, DUH. I stuck with this stupid character for 286 pages to get to THAT??” and throw the book at the wall. Unless they’re like me and have such an aversion to damaging books in any way that they’ll just set it quietly aside and then write an angry blog post about it. …No, this post isn’t a reaction to any specific book. Really.

Okay, this post kind of veered off-course. I’d started it thinking about the type of main characters who are just immature and don’t really change, because those characters I just can’t stand. But I ended up talking about the ones who do change, to some extent, and those can, and often do, work quite well. But even so, they have to be really well written, and there has to be a good reason for them to be that way. Otherwise, you’ve just annoyed a lot of people…or at the very least, you’ve annoyed me. :-P

Kate's word of wisdom (to go along with Andre's word of wisdom)

2011-08-12T15:09:00.002-04:00

Revise.

That is all.

Top Five Best of Summer

2011-08-09T22:01:00.005-04:00

Summer is almost over, and for some of us, that means back to school––and less writing time. For others, maybe it means more writing time.

On my personal blog, I made a list of my five favorite memories from these past few months. Because sometimes you need to look back and appreciate the good in your life.

So without further ado, my five favorite writing-related memories/things from summer 2011:

1. Noveltee(n). Writing posts for this blog made me think things through when it came to my own writing, and reading the other awesome teens' posts was/is always refreshing and insightful. They're awesome and I am glad I know them.

2. Finishing my first book. I've always(up to before I joined the Write On! community) had trouble finishing my stories, and when I completed my book this summer, I was ridiculously happy. It didn't matter that it was crap, and would need a ton of work to make it anywhere near decent. It was done, and it was mine.

3. Authoress's The Basics over on Write On! are awesome. They cover grammar stuff, mostly. But as writers, grammar stuff is pretty darn important. And it surprises me how much I learn each Tuesday when I go check for a new post and learn something I'd never known.

4. Inspiration. Different writers get it from different sources, but mine has really been surprising me this summer. And I consider that a wonderful thing.

5. Twitter. >.> This one might seem silly, but I only joined Twitter at the prompting of Lizzy at Write On!. I am so glad I did. I've gone and discovered this whole world of writers and readers and just generally awesome and amusing people. I've learned a lot about the writing/publishing world from the tweets.

So those're my five. What about you? What writerly things made your summer better, or at least unforgettable? (Though we hope it was both!)

Genres and Strokes (+Winner!)

2011-08-08T11:10:00.000-04:00

The winner of our 50 followers giveaway partial critique is . . . Eileen! Send your 50 pages (double-spaced) to tarynalAThotmailDOTcom.

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So once upon a time I did this post. In it, I took types of writers and compared them to types of swimmers, and there may or may not have been shirtless swimmer-guys for examples, just in case you need some incentive to check it out.

I'm feeling like doing another marriage-of-my-two-lives post.

In swimming, there are four strokes, but everyone knows there are six ways to divide swimmers.

Sprint freestyle
Ahh, sprinters. At first glance, everyone is jealous of the sprinter. How could a race that takes less than a minute be as hard as a 15 minute one? But add in the necessity for perfection, the knowledge that .01 could be your downfall, and suddenly you're sweating. Too much pressure. Sure, it's easy to swim across the pool, but swimming it well? A whole different ballgame.

Eamon Sullivan-AUS

Sprinters are like the contemporary writers. First thought: ohh, contemp is easy. No need to worldbuild. No need to draw extensive maps, or figure out a way to make on-foot travel across many miles interesting. But then again, contemporary is what everyone lives everyday. Writing it well? Much, much more difficult.

Distance freestyle
That person in the pool long after practice ends? That's the distance swimmer. The one who believes in quantity, in fully immersing in their craft. The one who isn't afraid to go the extra mile, so to speak, if that's what it takes.

Ous Mellouli - Tunisia

There's really no question: distance swimmers are epic fantasy writers. Who else would spend the hours and hours writing those backstories, drawing those maps, and planning an epic twenty book saga. Sometimes the rest of writers shake their heads as if you're doing too much, but the truth? They're in awe.

Backstroke
It's like freestyle, but on your back. Lots of people call freestyle the "boring stroke" and backstroke is only a step up. Same stroke, new twist.

Aaron Peirsol - USA

Kinda like same setting, new problems, right? That's why I consider backstroke to be the swimming world's equivalent of mystery/thriller/suspense novels. Contemporary setting, but instead of trying to find yourself/get the guy/graduate high school, you're chasing a bad guys with the threat of death. A little bit more interesting, right? (*interesting does not mean any one mystery is better than any one contemp. Just that the genre has a little more . . . oomph to it*)

Breaststroke
There are two ways to describe breaststroke: that awkward stroke or that dirty stroke. There are also two ways to learn breaststroke: naturally or through endless practice. With all the variations in technique, even at the highest level, breaststrokers have the most ability to be unique yet still in the same race.

Ed Moses - USA

Unique, and same genre? Sounds like paranormal to me. Mermaids, vampires, witches--they're very different, but very solidly placed under the umbrella of paranormal. And, speaking of dirty, well . . . who hasn't seen the adult paranormal romance section?

Butterfly
So beautiful when done right, so painful when done wrong. Young swimmers gulp when their coach assigns it--oh, who am I kidding. Old swimmers gulp too. It's a punishment, a trophy, a grueling manifestation of years of work. And done right? The most effortless stroke of all.

Milorad Cavic - Serbia

What genre requires complete world building in addition to a realistic look at society today? Dystopian combines these elements in a way that is the hardest to get right, and the hardest-hitting when presented best. Who didn't get chills when reading 1984?

Individual Medley
Take the four strokes (in the order butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle) and smush them into a race. Emerging the champion doesn't just require a strength--it requires no weakness.

Ryan Lochte - USA

That's why genre-benders are so hard to sell. Talk about your romantic sci-fi western with paranormal elements, and you'll have agents running far, far away. But done well . . . Natalie Whipple says it better than I could.

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What do you think? Agree, disagree? Enjoy the pictures? For those of you who saw this on my personal blog, was it just as good the second time?

Camp NaNoWriMo!

2011-08-06T01:51:00.002-04:00

You’ve probably heard of NaNowriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November, when writers around the world disappear for a month to churn out 50,000 words of crap just for the sake of getting something written. It’s freaking awesome, and a great way to get going if you’re having trouble writing. And what you write doesn’t even have to be terrible, though it often comes out that way due to the schedule…I wrote 70k last NaNo, and it’s my best completed draft so far.

This year, though, they’ve started something new. As well as regular NaNoWriMo in November, there’s Camp NaNoWriMo! Camp NaNo is basically the same as Regular NaNo, except that it happens twice — in July and in August.

It’s too late for the July one, obviously, but I’ve started the August, and I’m going to see how much I can get done. Even if I don’t make it to the 50k mark, it’ll give me the motivation to write a lot more than I would otherwise.

So if you need motivation to get something written, you should sign up. Seriously. It’s awesome. Plus you’ve got the NaNoWriMo Forums, which are full of awesome writers talking about awesome things. (Did I mention it’s awesome?) I know it’s already August 5th, but you’ve got plenty of time to catch up. There are people who joined NaNo on November 27th and STILL made it to 50k before the end of the month. I’m going to have to miss a whole week of writing, later on. That’s no reason not to sign up.

So go sign up. And write stuff. (And yes, Camp NaNo is the reason I’m blogging about this instead of something that requires more thought. I want to get back to writing my novel. :-P)

Surviving critique groups

2011-08-04T15:50:00.004-04:00

Critique groups are one of the best resources a writer can utilize. I myself have a critique group, as well as a pool of trusted beta readers who look over my manuscripts once they're complete. With critique groups I definitely prefer to meet in person, because once suggestions have been made about a particular manuscript we can all sit around and brainstorm possible solutions and ways to improve. I find dialogue, the back and forth between writers discussing a particular piece, is the best way to get out of your comfort zone and come up with an original way to make a story the best it can be.

That said, accepting criticism is difficult for the best of us. I myself have a very hard time with it. Of course I recognize that my manuscripts need work, but when you've put so much effort into one project, hearing other people tear it to (metaphorical) pieces is a lot to handle. My critique partners are wonderful; they hit the perfect balance between critical and appreciative. They list the things they liked, the things they didn't like, and how improvements might be made.

Some tips for critiquing:

~Be honest, but not harsh. Start out by talking about the things you did like, then list some negative aspects, then finish with your favorite part of the manuscript.

~Offer up suggestions to fix the problems you identified. Even if the person you're critiquing goes in a different direction, having suggestions can help get their creative juices flowing.

~Brainstorm! Talk about the problems in each person's manuscript, and try to get to the root of the issue. Is a character acting strangely or in contradiction to their previous actions? Is there a pacing problem?

~Don't go with your immediate reaction. When someone critiques your work, take a few minutes to think about it. I objected to the idea of changing my manuscript to first person when my editor initially suggested it. However, after a few hours of considering the story and my own notes, I realized changing it to first person would make the story much better.

~Don't argue.

~Just remember, even if critique sucks now, you'll be grateful in a few weeks when your manuscript is a million times better.

Now go out and find yourself a critique group!

Guest Post: Visual Inspiration

2011-08-03T00:00:00.001-04:00

Today we have a guest post from one of the Write On! forum frequenters. She wrote a nice little intro to her post, so I'll have her take it away:

Hi. I'm Sarah. *waves* So I'll do a quick intro. I'm 16, love candy, and am a writer. But, uh, you probably guessed that already so I'll move on.

I'm going to talk about a subject that I've recently given a lot of thought to - visual inspiration.

In my recent WIP my main character is living in a mansion. A mansion that a lot of people have lived in - it was designed for that use - and like any good mansion that was built in the 1800's it has secret passageways and and stairways and is three stories. In other words, it's massive.

When I started writing the story the MC's movements through the mansion were confused. She would be walking up and down stairs and going through multiple hallways at any given time. Really there was no rhyme or reason to where the rooms were or what halls she was going through because the fact is, I didn't have a set place in my head where everything was. I found myself having to go back and read what I wrote so that if the kitchen and library were next to the gym I wouldn't end up saying the sitting room was suddenly next to it.

I couldn't keep it all straight so I decided to get three sheets of poster board to represent the floors and map the mansion out.

This is the first time I've ever done something like this and I can't say it's easy considering the fact I'm still working on it. I'm a writer not an architect or designer but I know that doing this will make my story better and it will make things clearer to the readers. When it comes to my writing being good, even if it isn't easy or exactly fun, I'll do it because I want my writing to be the best it can possibly be.

So how about you guys? Do you map out where the character's live? Do you search for photos that inspire you to write a story? Do you model your characters' features after actresses or paintings you've seen? I'd love to hear what you all do!

And now I go back to building my mansion as soon as I search through story to find out what I actually did put the library next to.

Missed It

2011-08-02T23:00:00.003-04:00

I forgot it was Tuesday. I'm a terrible person that deserves to be covered in rotten tomatoes.

But I'm still not going to blog. I've been sick today. Drinking tea and sleeping. When I got up, it certainly wasn't my choice. And now I'm going back to bed, because there is no way I'll survive work tomorrow if I don't get enough sleep. So, sorry. *hands out consolation cookies*

I'll ponder on something extra-wonderful for next week, I promise.

I hope you all are not-sick. If you are, I feel your pain. Get better.

The Morality of ARCs

2011-08-01T00:52:00.000-04:00

Maybe a few of you saw my post on twitter (follow me @aswimmerwrites!) about how I went to a used bookstore and saw a bunch of ARCs on the shelves. I'm not just talking old, already-pubbed books. They were all from 2011--1/11, 3/11, 5/11, 6/11, all the way to 11/11. That's a book that hasn't yet come out.

And on the cover: Advance Reader's Edition. Not for Sale.

But the store was selling it.

At this point I faced a moral dilemma. It's illegal to sell an ARC, but is it illegal to buy one?

I bought the 11/11 one, and let me tell you why.

It had already been sold by someone who had acquired it and should have known better.
It wasn't being appreciated in the proper way sandwiched in between some old books.
The buzz, a necessary task of the ARC, was not being generated.
As a blogger, I am in a place to review and giveaway this ARC.

ARCs aren't supposed to be sold, yes. But when one is sitting on a shelf collecting dust, it has no use at all. In a few weeks, I'll do a review and giveaway for this one.

What about you? What would have done? Do you think I should have left it there?

Kill Them!

2011-07-30T01:07:00.005-04:00

So I saw Transformers 3 the other night, and it pretty much lived up to my expectations. The characters, plot, dialogue, etc, were nothing special, but the special effects rocked. Even so, there were times when I could have been impressed by the writers if only they had the guts to actually go all the way.

Spoiler Alert — I’m not giving away too many specific details, but if you really don’t want to know anything before the movie you might want to be careful.

In the movie, there were several (four or five, I think, but I might be exaggerating) times in which characters we liked were about to/believed to have died or were supposed to leave and never come back. That last example, where the Transformers were supposedly leaving Earth for good, was frustrating for several reasons. One, because the explanation given in the film was just plain stupid, but also because no one really believed that they were leaving. It was halfway through the movie…no one’s going to believe that the big robots we’re supposed to root for are just going to leave. And yet the filmmakers made it out to be this huge emotional scene, doing everything they could to make it sad. Maybe if the good robots actually HAD left, and the humans had figured out how to fight the bad robots on their own, it would have been neat, and the emotion would have been justified. But as it was…it just wasn’t.

It got more frustrating as the movie went on, as characters were about to die. And again the strings swelled and the dirt-stained actors wept and Michael Bay did his best to make his audience cry until — oh, haha, just kidding he survived. …GAH.

I’m not saying this is always a bad thing to do. I’m definitely not saying you should never do this — there are many times when it works brilliantly. But make it believable. If your readers don’t believe that you could kill that character, they’re not going to be sad when that character’s staring down a gun barrel. They know that something will swoop in and save the day at the last moment. And there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, except when you try to force the emotion down their throats. Don’t try to make something sad if it isn’t.

In my first paragraph, I mentioned that I might have liked it if the writers had had the guts to go all the way. Yes, sometimes you have to save your characters, but sometimes you don’t. In Transformers, they didn’t. They could have killed those people or those robots and still made a Transformers 4, which I’m sure is part of why they were scared not to keep those characters alive. You want to make your readers feel emotion? Don’t hold back. Don’t threaten your characters with certain death and then let them live, because eventually they just won’t care anymore. Don’t let them live just because it’s the easy way out…if the only reason they’re still alive is because you like them, or because it means you don’t have to deal with your other characters’ reactions, they shouldn’t be alive. Kill them, and figure out how the rest of your characters deal with it, both emotionally and plot-wise (sure, it would be a lot easier to defeat the bad robots with equally powerful good robots, but that doesn't mean that makes the best movie), and it will almost always be better. Halfway just doesn’t work.

Hopefully those last two paragraphs didn’t sound totally contradictory, because they aren’t. There are legitimate reasons to pretend to kill someone, and that’s great. But if you don’t have a legitimate reason to keep them alive…don’t. Go all the way and force yourself to deal with the consequences, because that will almost always make for a better story.

Happy 50 Followers!

2011-07-27T00:43:00.000-04:00

Because of the launch of Kate and my editing service, Teen Eyes, we here at Noveltee(n) have decided to offer one critique of the first 50 pages of your manuscript!

Simply comment on this post for an entry. Tweet for +1, and blog for +5. Teens will get double points, since this is a teen site, but everyone is welcome to enter.

To read more about Teen Eyes, go here or here. Another opportunity to win a full manuscript critique is here.

Putting the "Plot" in "Subplot"

2011-07-26T18:47:00.003-04:00

Subplots! We all have 'em(or... we should). What do they look like? Well, they are what propels the plot. In my current story, one of my subplots is this guy building a spaceship of sorts. Yeah, that seems random, doesn't it? It's not. That spaceship'll be important later on. Without it, the plot will be stuck as me on the couch if you don't stop me from starting a good book. *cough*

Subplots aren't just random little ditties that dance around willy nilly in the middle of your story. If it is, your story is going to get confusing, and people will probably ask... "Uh, Constance... what's with that tangent in the middle about a spaceship? What the heck does that have to do with, well, anything?" They are still plots. Hence the name 'subplot'.

Do they last as long as your main plot does? Maybe, maybe not. I have some that start right off the bat, some that start 1/4 into the story, some that end 1/2 into the story, and some that end when the book does. Their main point is to add flavor and push to your main plot.

Flavor: unless you're writing a romance, any romance you have in your story is a subplot, even if it is closely tied to the main plot. It's there to spice up the story, to fill in the empty silences with something interesting.

Push: Spaceship. Important.

So do subplots work the same as main plots? It varies from person to person and subplot to subplot, but mostly, yeah. They should be structured. They should have a beginning, middle, and end, just like any other plot.

I am using a beat sheet(a la "Save the Cat!"), and I make sure that for every plot point that my main plot has, my subplot has the same quota, even if they start late/end early.

How do you do subplots? How many do you average per book?

Blogs you REALLY Should Be Following

2011-07-25T00:28:00.000-04:00

I compiled a list of book-related websites I often visit, and I got to thinking how many there are. It's hard to keep up with that list of like 40, and my Google Reader has over 100. Today I'm going to share the top sites, the ones I try to visit every day (if the authors post that much).

Review sites:
The Story Siren: There's no better site to keep up with new releases than this one. She reviews a book a day, posts the books released each way, founded the In My Mailbox phenomenon, and hosts plenty of contests.
Forever Young Adult: Though this site is geared toward adults reading YA, I stumbled across it last summer and read faithfully. The three contributors are HILARIOUS, and they have the best book reviewing system I've ever seen. Seriously. Check it out.

Author sites:
Tawna Fenske: Okay, slight disclaimer: Tawna writes adult romantic comedies. Her humor is hilarious but also on the dirty side. I once read her entire archive (two years) in one day and never stopped laughing. She's got a ton of useful information, including a post on showing not telling that I have printed and posted on my wall. And she does it all while being hilarious.
Kiersten White: Repped by the same agent as Tawna, Kiersten is also beyond hilarious. She's the author of PARANORMALCY and SUPERNATURALLY (coming out in two days!!!), and her voice is just as good in the blog.
Tahereh Mafi: This woman. She started her blog the day she got an agent (two years ago? a year and a half?) and through the next year and a half, through losing an agent and gaining another and selling one of the most anticipated trilogies of the future, she has been nothing but hilarious and sweet and giving to her followers. You're missing out if you aren't following her.

Other:
YA Highway: From their ever-popular Road Trip Wednesday series to the incredibly useful Field Trip Friday posts, this collaboration blog is easily one of my favorites. The girls are all super sweet (authors like Veronica Roth (DIVERGENT), teen Kody Keplinger (THE DUFF, SHUT OUT), and Kirsten Hubbard (LIKE MANDARIN) write for it), and each post is so, so, so helpful.

Tracy Hickman on the Importance of the Reader

2011-07-23T17:36:00.005-04:00

So I don't have a post today, but I do have a (rather long) quote from Tracy Hickman on the importance of the reader and why books are superior to other forms of media. This quote is from a rather old episode of the Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcast, during an interview with Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. As someone who enjoys movies and TV shows almost as much as books, I thought it was really interesting to think about.

Margaret and I have long appreciated our readers, and especially because the reader is our partner in the creation of these wonderful places. The reader is an active participant in the creative process.

When we look and consider language itself, the written word itself, it’s just a set of linear symbols. As a communication medium, it’s really low bandwith, as we like to say these days. You can transmit an entire book very easily as an attachment on an email. But all of these symbols are in a line on a page are taken by the reader, and the reader as they interpret those symbols that are on that page, it is the reader that breathes life into the text. That is where the experience takes place. Until the reader reads the written word, it just lies on the page. When the reader reads, it takes those symbols on the page and translates those into meaning, into sights and sounds and smells and emotions and feelings and meanings that are not necessarily in the words themselves, but are an important part of the creation of the experience that’s there. So the actual experience of the text, the actual reality that takes place when the text is created is created in the reader’s mind, not by the author. So the reader is actally the one where the experience takes place.

My wife likes to say that reading is one of those places where the actual preformance takes place where the author is not present. Because the preformance takes place within the reader’s mind. That’s where the meaning takes place. It’s the reader that translates the words into not only experience but very often into action as well. That’s where the written word is so powerful — far more powerful in affecting people, I think, than other media and media that has simultaneity like film or television. You think of those being very impactful, and they are very impactful. They’re very easy and they’re very good at giving us meaning. But the written word brings us to meaning, and it’s a very different thing.

The reader is such an active participant there. I have often said that reading the written word is the most interactive media that we have. Because it isn’t leading us around by the nose, it opens doors to meaning in people. You can have an epiphany in the midst of reading a book that a very formulaic or structured film is not going to lead you to. Our whole new media in terms of modern news is to provide you with meaning rather than help you come to a conclusion. It’s all very nicely packaged for you. Meaning is placed in front of you and fed to you rather than given to you as something to think through. Again, that’s the power of the written word. And why it is so important that we as a people become a reading people rather than just a passively watching people. We need to be more engaged, and I think reading is a more engaging activity.

-Tracy Hickman, on Adventures in SciFi Publishing Episode 72

Why I am not posting today

2011-07-21T23:30:00.003-04:00

So Thursday is my day to post, but I have a feeling that anything I try to write will come out as senseless babble.

The other night, Taryn and I were texting about murdering people (murdering me, to be specific). She asked me if she should send her manuscript to a certain (female) editor. I responded with this:

"What's wrong with him?"

I don't remember sending this text. In fact, I was fully unconscious at the time it was sent, which means I pulled a pretty awesome stunt by texting in my sleep. Judging by the nature of the message, I'm pretty sure my subconscious is currently pissed off at the entire male species.

That, or my brain is just fried. The latter seems more likely. Which is why, dear readers, I'm not going to burden you with a post of incoherent fry-brained nonsense.

It's been a crazy week. I love you all.

Kate

Review: LEGACY by Cayla Kluver

2011-07-20T13:32:00.001-04:00

A month or so ago, I interviewed teen author Cayla Kluver whose traditionally published debut LEGACY came out at the end of June. If you missed it, check it out.

I finally got my hands on a copy when I went to Borders armed with a 30% off coupon and a keen eye for books I'd been wanting. In addition to LEGACY, the stack included JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW (MG sci-fi, former agent Nathan Bransford), UNDERCURRENT (the sequel to SIREN, Trica Rayburn), the first three PERCY JACKSON books (when people learned from this post that I hadn't read them, I got shot, Rick Riordan), HALO (another teen author, Alexandra Adornetto), A NORTHERN LIGHT (by the author of Revolution, Jennifer Donnelly).

Whoa, that's a lot of books.

Anyway, this is not an In My Mailbox post, so I'm going to move on to the review:

Title: LEGACY
Author: Cayla Kluver
Genre: YA fantasy
Release date: June, 2011

Goodreads summary:

The first boy disappeared on the day of his birth, on a night when the pale yellow moon of the nighttime sky turned red and bathed the heavens in the ghastly color of blood, on the same night the Kingdom of Cokyri abruptly ceased its merciless attack.

Across the land of Hytanica, under the shadow of the crimson moon, infant boys continued to vanish. Not until the blood had faded from the sky did the disappearances stop and the bodies of the murdered infants were found outside the gates of the city, a final word from the greatest enemy Hytanica had ever known. For the next sixteen years, peace reigned, but one mystery remained unsolved. The Cokyrians had abducted forty-nine newborns, but returned only forty-eight bodies.

Now, as seventeen-year-old Princess Alera of Hytanica is besieged from all sides by suitors vying for the Throne, a teenage Cokyrian boy, Narian, is encountered within the walls of her Kingdom, a boy who will show Alera a world where women serve a purpose and not just a husband. As Narian helps Alera find her voice, she struggles against an arranged marriage that will shatter the life she has scarcely begun to live. And when Narian's shocking past is uncovered, and war with Cokyri looms once more, he must fight to defy a fate ordained at his birth.

So this summary? Has it all wrong. It makes the plot of the book sound like Narian's identity as the forty-ninth baby. (That's not a spoiler, since you were all thinking it.) Anyway, that's uncovered in the first third, scarcely after we meet Narian. The problem with the summary is that it sounds like the book has the most pathetic twist of all time.

You ask what the true conflict is.

The true conflict is Alera fighting between love and kingdom in more ways than one. As conflicts go, this one is high stakes. There are plenty of swoonworthy moments with Narian, and Alera's betrothed is intriguing enough to make me waffle back and forth on whether I love him or hate him. Very well done romance.

My favorite part of the story was actually Alera's relationship with her sister. It's sweet and realistic and adds to a twist and sacrifice toward the end.

I had a couple beefs, like the setting, which seemed high fantasy but had mentions of Latin and the traditional Earth months and days of the week, and the names, none of which were pronouncable. Overall, though, I'd recommend it.

LEGACY is a traditional YA fantasy in a market that has eschewed the genre in favor of paranormal. If you're looking for high fantasy, this is it.

My sister actually read it first, and she couldn't put it down. She can't wait for the sequel, and I'm with her, because LEGACY leaves off in a very uncomfortable spot.

Where to Begin

2011-07-20T00:34:00.004-04:00

Well, it all started when I went to the moon and saw...

*blinks* *looks around*

Oh, my mistake. I'm on the wrong blog for that story. *cough*

Aaaaaaanyway.

I'm about to start my next WIP, and I am delightfully... getting nowhere. Why? Because I don't know where the heck to start. You would think it'd be easy. I know precisely what needs to happen, after all; the MC needs to be injured.

But the possibilities for that are... endless! I could start well before the injury, just before the injury, during the injury, right after the injury, ages after the injury. And just what is this afore-mentioned injury, you ask? Good question! And don't even get me started on whether to write it in first or third person.

I'm prepared to try writing the opening from all of my options, in both POVs, but it truly frustrates me. For my last novel, the beginning was not this hard to find.

So tell me, what do you do to decide where to start your stories? Randomly pick? Or just inherently know? Or just push on with one whether or not you like it and just go back and change it later?

~~~

Note: Of course, while writing this, I figured out which to start with. I don't know yet if it will work, but I've got a good feeling.

Apparently, my click is not any of the ones I listed. Mine is talking it out. Which didn't happen until I sat down to write this post.

So maybe, if none of the above or anything else you try is working, find a writerly ear, or just borrow the ear of the random old man in your neighborhood coffee shop––the one without teeth is the less-creepy choice––and talk at them. It's like when you edit. Sometimes you catch things that you didn't notice before when you say it out loud. Same goes for brainstorming.

If you're where I was five minutes ago, good luck on finding where to begin!

(I would like you all to note, it is still before midnight, aka Wednesday. Six minutes before, but still... :P)

I'm 18. Really.

2011-07-18T23:30:00.000-04:00

At WIFYR this year, my dear teacher Louise Plummer asked us our "inner age." As we had three teens in the class, we all giggled at our turns--

Me: Well, my outer age is 18, and I'm still not sure what my inner age is. Maybe it hasn't settled yet.

We had 60-somethings who were 16, 17 year olds who were 20, and people all over the place, from 12-20. (It was a MG/YA class, after all.)

So what age do you tend to/like to write? Are you like me, bouncing all over the place? Do you have a range?

In other news, check out Kate and my editing service merge here!

The Problem of Grammar

2011-07-16T00:51:00.005-04:00

This post is actually a sort of response to Lizzy's on whether most writers like grammar

Personally, I LOVE grammar. Now that I don't have to learn it in school, when it comes up (aside from the endlessly painful mistakes of people on the internet), it comes up in writing, and it’s actually really fun. It might be because it’s enjoyable to be able to create something and know exactly how to make it clear and understandable, or that as wordsmiths we like to be able to use words like affect and effect and know for sure that we said exactly what we meant to say. I’m not necessarily fluent in all the terms (I still get confused with simple things like adjectives and adverbs, sometimes >_>), but I tend to be good at it and enjoy it.

But as a subject in school, it was pure evil. I hated it so much that eventually I was able to convince my mom (I was homeschooled, luckily) that I didn’t need it because I read so voraciously that my grammar was pretty much perfect anyway. So it’s rather interesting that I ended up being a grammar nerd after all.

I think it’s because in school, it wasn’t about the interesting things like writing, making sense when you write, or forming aesthetically pleasing sentences. It was math. Noun + verb = sentence. Memorize this list of “be”s. Stick a sentence in a diagram so it looks like Algebra instead of English. It wasn’t about understanding language better, it was about memorizing some words and formulas, and I don’t think that’s how most writers’ brains work. It’s certainly not how mine works.

So yeah. Grammar is brilliant, learning it out of context is not. And now I just know I’ll have made some stupid grammatical errors in this post that I’m sure you’ll be kind enough to point out in the comments. *wince*

Oh, and because I can’t do a post on grammar without including the internet:

Developing main characters

2011-07-14T23:53:00.001-04:00

Developing a main character can be one of the most difficult aspects of writing a novel, particularly when working in first person. How can you make your character stand out? What part of their voice is unique?

As a writer I’ve struggled a great deal with character development, and up until last year I didn’t have a very good grasp of how to create compelling protagonists. I’ve improved a lot since then but I’m always looking for opportunities to get better. I think, as writers, it’s helpful to talk about the areas in which we struggle, so I thought I’d do a post with some tips on creating main characters.

1. Focus on reaction, not action. Sometimes I find it helpful to mentally insert my character into a hypothetical situation. For instance, let’s say your main character’s best friend is giving them the cold shoulder. Does your main character get sad? Angry? Resentful? Do they ask what’s wrong, or do they respond by ignoring their friend in return? Figure out how your character reacts and what basic emotions drive them, and then base their actions upon events.

2. Figure out your main character’s driving emotional force. Usually it’s easy to identify a driving physical force - this is the plot, or the goal your character is trying to attain. In Harry Potter, Harry is trying to defeat Lord Voldemort so he can save himself and his friends. But what’s his driving emotional force? For Harry, I’d say it all goes back to the death of his parents and his desire to have a family. This emotional force permeates all seven books and drastically influences Harry’s actions (think of all his pseudo-father-figures, such as Sirius and Dumbledore). The driving emotional force should probably be even more prevalent in your story than the driving physical force.

3. It’s not what your character thinks, it’s HOW they think it (I feel like I’ve done a post on this before...have I? If so, sorry for the redundancy). This one sentence completely altered my view on developing protagonists. Everybody thinks differently, and if you can discover how your character thinks/what they focus on, you can integrate it into your story. When I wrote The Color of Yin, I decided that my main character would have synesthesia - when other people speak, she sees their words as different colors in the air (her mother has orange words, her sister has purple words, etc). Yin comes to associate different colors with different emotions, and whenever she thinks she thinks in terms of color. Knowing this about my main character really helped me develop her story. There are so many different ways to do this...if your character is methodical, maybe they make lists in their head. Maybe they count things when they get nervous. Identify how your character thinks, and use it as a basis to determine what they think.

So there you have it....some tips for developing unique protagonists. If you have tips of your own, don’t hesitate to share them in the comments! We’re all writers here (mostly) and we can all learn from each other.

Contest!

2011-07-13T00:51:00.000-04:00

Hi guys,

Just wanted to alert you all to a couple contests going on right now:

Pitch contest with Kristin Miller hosted by the amazing Monica BW.

Pitch contest with the amazing Vickie Motter hosted by YAtopia.

Contest for a critique with the amazing Becky Wallace.

Contest for two critiques with me (the also amazing, lol)!

Check them all out!

Online

2011-07-12T15:11:00.003-04:00

Well, it's official. I'm online. Sure, before I had a twit, and I was doing this, but now, I have a personal blog. With Lizzy from Write On! (aka my twin).

What I have to wonder is... will having something like this, that encourages me to write frequently, if not every day, be a help or hindrance to my writing? I mean, yeah, it does make me write nearly every day. But it also takes my time away from actually writing.

That of course leads into the broader question of how much online activity is too much for a writer. You do want to be online, meet other writers, read writerly/publisherly blogs, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera... (*cough* Couldn't resist... I saw The King & I this past weekend.) But you don't want to spend ALL your time online and have it taking away from what you really should do, which is eat chocola––I mean, write.

But hopefully, most of us are clever enough to know when enough is enough, online-wise. But for those of us that aren't always(*cough*me*cough*), you have to watch out for the internet. It can totally suck away hours of your writing time.

(What do you mean, am I speaking from experience? Of course I'm not! >.>)

Now just in case Lizzy is reading this, I rush to add: I truly love having a blog with her. I just had to ponder on that. Get it out of my system. I'm good now. Let the blogging begin!

Genre Divides

2011-07-11T00:20:00.000-04:00

At the WIFYR conference, I was in the Novel class. My amazing teacher, Louise Plummer, writes only contemporary YA, and quite a few of us didn't. We had novels which spanned sci-fi, near-future, dystopia, a couple magical realisms, some paranormal . . . all sorts of sub-genres.

Louise called them all "fantasy."

I, of course, took offense at this term, as my dystopian involved no elements of magic that such a name would usually imply. This led to me defining the genres differently. This is how I break my YA novels down into two broad categories:

Realistic: something that could happen today, or in the past, with our technology, physical rules, and laws. Sub-genres include contemporary, romance, mystery, thriller, or historical.

Unrealistic: something that could NOT happen today. Could be speculation on the future (dystopian, sci-fi, etc), or this world with magic (paranormal, urban fantasy, etc), or a completely different world, like Tolkien (high fantasy, hard sci-fi).

Do you guys like dividing things this way? What have I missed?

Andre's Saturday Word of Wisdom

2011-07-09T16:45:00.002-04:00

Write.

Going with the Flow, or Mad Loves Analogies

2011-07-08T22:17:00.003-04:00

First of all, I want to apologize to you guys for not posting in so long. Between my computer crashing and vacations and the inherent unreliability that comes with a laptop that has to have a little fan on its vent or it’ll shut off, my posting abilities have been dampened. Also, I want to apologize for being so late tonight. Today’s been crazy and I have to get up early tomorrow for a 7 hr. GED test.

If you know me at all, you’ll know that I’m big on the martial arts. My dad was in judo for eight years, and I was enthralled with karate for almost two.

On Monday, I start a new adventure: aikido.

For those of you that don’t know what aikido is, it’s a method of self-defense that involves redirecting an attacker using ki, as well as their momentum against them. It’s not about violence or injury; rather, it focuses on keeping yourself out of harm’s way without harming anyone. It’s all about peace and harmony and being balanced.

It also looks cool.

I’m just a little excited.

But I got to thinking (I know its dangerous when I do this) about how aikido is like writing.

Sometimes we’ve just got to go with the flow, whether it involves agents or rejections or motivation. Sometimes, going with the flow might involve scrapping a beloved work and starting something new.

Sometimes, it means going out on a limb.

I’ll just leave you with that incoherent thought while I run off to bed…

Kate, the Publishing Insider

2011-07-07T11:31:00.000-04:00

So I arrived in New York City yesterday at 3:30. After dropping my stuff off at the Webster, I decided to take a trip just to make sure I knew how to find the Scholastic building. Well, I didn't. Not one bit. I wandered around for three hours, nearly died of starvation, and spent the last thirty minutes trying desperately to find a bathroom so I wouldn't pee myself. Eventually, however, a crisis was averted, and I found the Scholastic building right smack in the middle of Broadway.

This morning marked my first day as an intern at Scholastic Press. I met three other reading interns (I'm a writing intern) and as soon as I arrived my editor set me up in her boss's office to work. Jody (my editor) is pretty awesome, and I got to speak briefly with David Levithan as he flew by on the way to a meeting. Otherwise, Zoe (another intern) and I had the room to ourselves, where we distracted one another for a while before finally getting down to business. I edited several chapters, and many of the Scholastic editors were kind enough to answer my questions about publishing and the like. Here are just a few of the things I learned:

~Interns are ALWAYS the first readers. Even if the manuscript comes from an agent or an established author, an intern will read it and write up a report before the editor even glances at it.

~Editors will often read no more than twenty pages of a submission.

~Scholastic has a rooftop garden and a nice little coffee shop inside the building.

~You don't want to be stuck in the slush. Trust me, if you're going for a major publisher, you should definitely try to get an agent.

~Unsolicited submissions get read (albeit by interns) because the editors don't want to miss out on anything brilliant. Still, the interns will always read agented manuscripts first, so if you're in the slushpile it can take months to get to your manuscript.

~SLUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!! TANGIBLE SLUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!

~Also, guess who found an ARC of the next book by Matthew Kirby lying on a table? That's right. You're jealous. THE CLOCKWORK THREE was awesome, and I'm sure this one is even awesome-er!!!

On a different note, I bought a super cute hat and a pair of shorts at H&M. Yes, the shopping has officially begun. Pure madness.

That's all for today, but I'll be back soon with more tidbits of information learned at Scholastic Press!

Hello, I'm Deja Vu

2011-07-05T01:00:00.001-04:00

So your favorite author has written a contemporary book. You love it. Then they write another book, this time dystopian. You love that too. Then, they write another book. It's contemporary again... And you have a glaring moment of deja vu. This third story is kinda the same as their first book. Not completely, but enough to notice.

It happens.

Most authors can think up completely original story lines that are about as different from their first book's plot as a comedy romance is from a horror novel. But occasionally, they have the same cast of characters. Or maybe it's a fantasy, and their magic system is the same basic idea with a tweak or two.

It's easy to fall into a rut. If you're good at writing a snotty, snide character that is just witty enough that everyone loves her beside the fact that she's a snotty, snide person, it could be tempting to write another character just like her.

And sometimes, it's hard to keep coming back with completely different people. Or places. Or concepts. But you won't grow as a writer if you don't try branching out.

You don't necessarily have to always come up with completely new ground, either, though.

For example, let's say I've written an epic fantasy, complete with dragons. (Seriously. Who doesn't love dragons?) My next book, I decide I want to write a sort of urban fantasy dystopian. And, I want to do dragons again. Should I stay away from them, since they were so predominant in my last book? Or could I get away with it if I just made them less intelligent, more like dumb beasts?

Personally, I think that if I did want to do dragons again, I could. It would take work, to make sure I didn't just reuse my last type of dragons. But just because you use a theme or creature or person type in one story doesn't mean you can't use it again. You just have to watch out for doing a copy-and-paste: make your dragons in the new story unique somehow, different from your first set.

There are a million stories out there. There is no way what you're writing hasn't been written before. But every single human being on this planet has a unique way of looking at things, based off personalities, genes, pasts, etc. No two people are exactly the same, and therefore, no two people are going to think exactly the same. And if you try, you can reach into your imagination and come up with dozens upon dozens of different ways to create a species of dragons.

You can write whatever story you want, even if you've already sort of written part of it. All it takes is that legendary "twist" that writers always talk about.

Happy Fourth!

2011-07-04T01:17:00.001-04:00

I'm off doing this,

and this:

with the family, so no post!

Researching

2011-06-30T13:44:00.002-04:00

As someone who writes (sort of) historical fiction, I thought I'd do a post on researching and different ways to get information. LIKE CLOCKWORK in particular required a lot of research...although it's set in a fantasy world, the society is largely and obviously based upon historical India. I did a great deal of research before starting the novel, focusing mainly on Indian customs and clockmaking, as the story has a distinctly steampunk-ish feel and clockwork is a huge part of the magic system.

Below are some of my tips for research:

1. Pictures/videos are always better. When researching a place, culture, or custom, try to find videos that depict what you're looking for rather than just reading about it. With LIKE CLOCKWORK, I rented every documentary on India I could find and took notes while I watched. Being able to watch the people of India interact with one another and with their environment provided me with a basic template upon which to build my own world. Books are all well and good, but a visual image will better allow you to describe the scenery and what's going on, and since I didn't have the money to travel to India myself movies were the next best thing.

2. Personal exchanges are always better. If possible, meet with someone who is an expert in the category you're trying to research. For instance, I visited several mechanical clock shops in Salt Lake City and spoke to clockmakers before writing LIKE CLOCKWORK. When writing the original version of ENCRYPTED I spoke to an uncle who has spent a great deal of time in Nepal. There are all sorts of resources you can use, especially in major museums, so if at all possible try to find someone you can talk to.

3. Go directly to the source. When you read a book with information on a certain subject, find the bibliography and look up each source. Try to trace the information back to its origin - you'd be surprised how much it changes as it is transferred from one source to another.

So for those of you writing historical fiction, or fiction that requires any kind of research, go forth! Become as informed as you can to increase the authenticity of your work :).

Breaking it down

2011-06-27T21:13:00.002-04:00

This morning I did a workout that was 30 reps of squat clean, 30 pull ups, and an 800 meter run (I only did a 400 because I'm new), three times through. The top Crossfit athletes do that in about 20 minutes.

It's a long, hard series of exercises, and ten reps into my squat cleans, I was exhausted. But there were 80 more of those, 90 more pullups, and 3/4 of a mile left. The only thing that got me through that was breaking it down.

I started doing sets of tens for the squat cleans and the pull ups, but soon I couldn't do ten. Then it was four sets of seven plus two. By the last round, I was in sets of five. But I did it. 25:19. First one done. I credit that wholly to my stick-to-it-iv-ness.

So. There's a writing tie-in there somewhere.

Often we look at our strory ideas or outlines or blank pages and wonder how we could possibly make 50- or 80- or 100,000 words from that. We look at people who can pound out stories in nine days, and try to figure out how that's possible. But the truth is, Kiersten White and I (Let me have my moment of comparison) do it just like you: one word at a time.

Words--> sentences.

Sentences--> paragraphs.

Paragraphs--> pages.

Pages--> scenes.

Scenes--> chapters.

Chapters--> acts.

Acts--> book.

Break it down.

Once, when I was a swimmer (lol), I wrote up my goal time for the 50 backstroke with each hundredth of a second written down solely so I could see the time drop in little increments. It looked like this:

I was at the red, and wanted to get to the blue. I'd done so much--surely it wouldn't be hard to do more.

Do that with your writing. 2000 may not seem much compared to 60,000, but hey. 2000 is a LOT on its own.

Happy writing!

Hang a Lantern on It!

2011-06-25T12:21:00.001-04:00

Hanging a lantern on something is when the author points something out that might cause the reader to lose their willing suspension of disbelief for the specific purpose of maintaining that belief.

You’ve probably heard the term “willing suspension of disbelief” before. When reading a story, the readers will suspend their disbelief and believe in the impossible (magic, dragons, x-wings…), but only so long as the impossible does not become the improbable. Stories still have to be internally consistent and logical — more consistent and logical than real life, even, since in real life things just happened. Yelling about how improbable it was that they happened doesn’t change the facts. In fiction, you’re not trying to make the reader believe that these events did happen, but that they could have happened, within the boundaries of the world you’ve created.

Sometimes, though, improbable things have to happen. The lightning just has to hit the bad guy’s sword just as he’s about to decapitate the hero. (Actually, that’s probably a bad example…that’s a problem of not fulfilling promises to the reader, which can’t usually be explained away with a lantern and requires a whole other blog post to talk about. Aaaanyway….) When these sort of things happen (though please nothing as major as my example), one of the best ways to deal with it is to hang a lantern on it. Even Shakespeare does it:

Sir Toby Belch: Is’t possible?
Fabian: If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as improbable fiction.
-Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

When you hang a lantern on something, you point out to your readers that A) you’re aware of how improbable/clichéd/whatever the situation is and B) your characters are aware of how improbable/clichéd/whatever the situation is. It’s a counter-intuitive strategy, since it’s basically calling attention to your faults instead of trying to hide them, but when used properly it can actually strengthen the story instead of weaken it. Because of point A, it gives you more credibility as an author, because you’re obviously just as aware of the story’s possible faults as the reader is. And because of point B, it gives your world more credibility because your characters react just as people would in real life.

Lantern hanging (also referred to as Lampshade hanging) doesn’t only apply to improbable plots or events. It can be used when something is an obvious cliché or trope. One lantern that’s been used many times, now (mostly in movies or TV shows) is the scene where someone says “Is this the part where…?”

This is the part where I ask you to post your brilliant thoughts in the comments. :-D

On querying

2011-06-23T17:46:00.002-04:00

The first query draft I ever wrote read like a summary....at more than 600 words, it described every detail of my novel and every major subplot. I did several rounds of revisions, and when I finally sent out letters I had a 50% request rate. My query obviously underwent some major changes.

Here's the thing about queries: you can't include everything. Most writers I know can't bear to reduce their precious, polished manuscript into a paragraph or two, but agents are busy people and they don't have time to read more. Therefore, querying is about prioritizing. You must dig through the content of your story and pick out the best, most original ideas to highlight in your letter. Characters can also be an issue. I'd recommend focusing on three characters at most, but two is probably better, usually the protagonist and his/her love interest (for YA, that is). In my query for ENCRYPTED, I mentioned Damian's (the love interest) name but spent most of my time talking about Mal's struggles throughout the story. With THE COLOR OF YIN, which is MG and does not contain any romance, I focused on Yin (the protagonist) and her relationship with her twin brother Yang. Too many strange names can be overwhelming and confusing for an agent when they read your query.

Editors have said it time and time again, but the most important part of a query is coming up with a hook....a single sentence that sets your manuscript apart from all others. This can be a description of the conflict or a broader sentence that talks about your story within the context of a certain genre. For instance, with ENCRYPTED, I used this hook:

A teenaged girl discovers hidden messages in Buddhist prayer flags, foretelling the rise of Mara, the Tibetan incarnation of human greed.

I chose to go the route of conflict description. We know (roughly) who the protagonist is, the general problem she faces, and what sets the story apart from other YA books (prayer flags/Tibetan culture). When I need to describe LIKE CLOCKWORK (my novel undergoing revisions at Scholastic) in a single sentence, I use a broader description:

LIKE CLOCKWORK is steampunk, but set in an alternate historical India rather than Victorian England.

I also ran across a pitch sentence on Kristin Nelson's blog, which she said had her hooked from the start:

Bridget Jones meets Harry Potter.

Both of these pitches use examples of other books/genres to categorize the story, and although we don't know the protagonist or the main conflict we can still get a sense for how they differ from other YA books. Boiling your story down to a single sentence is difficult, to say the least, but I've found short pitches very, very helpful, both in querying and when describing my book to someone else.

Anyways, that's my query advice for the day. Hope you're all having a fabulous week!

Kate

Multi-tasking

2011-06-21T23:05:00.004-04:00

I am an awful person. But hey, I had my dad visiting! One day only! Don't hate me forever. Please?

Life, while not as crowded as some people's lives, is really getting to full for little ol' take-everything-slow me. How do you balance a reading list, a job, school work, family time, a social life(not that I've ever cared enough about that to really upkeep one), sleep, and writing?

I've never been the one willing to pick one thing over another. I was always the girl that would rather grab ALL the bags at once and stagger to my destination instead of taking one thing at a time. And, you guessed it, I never was good at packing light, either.

So how do I manage all these things? How do I balance them without letting one be left off?

Well... I've basically given up on sleep. And a social life. (Is it sad that I'm only half kidding on those? No. Don't answer that.)

That still leaves... lots. And I'm not a super-human, like, say, Taryn.

It's hard for me. Really hard. I mean, I'm the one that takes ten minutes just to decide what ice cream flavor would be better, and I have to decide what is most important to me from a list compiled of only the elite essentials in my life? Yeah, right. As if.

This post doesn't really have a constructive ending. More like a question. How do you decide what is most important to you? Obviously, on a blog meant for writers, the general answer is gonna be "writing, duh". But no one can deny there isn't something else that is also uber important to them, be it family or sports or schoolwork.

And if you're lucky, you won't have to make a choose between the two. But if you do... how do you decide?

How I Became Lit World Savvy

2011-06-20T15:30:00.002-04:00

So, on the off chance that your internet exploded and you missed the way I babbled on and on (and on and on) about the WIFYR conference last week, let me tell you again: I was at the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference last week.

Do you feel redundan-ated yet? (It's my blog. I can make up words if I want to.)

Anyway, everyone seemed very surprised to hear that I didn't have a critique group / had never been to a conference / didn't know any other YA writers / etc. This is because I know A LOT about publishing/writing/reading/agenting/etc.

So they all asked me how.

Short answer:

Long answer:

Read. Read blogs, read acknowledgements, read twitter. Don't be scared to click on links in blogs you love. Google things. Google people. Read archives of authors you love--authors who just got a huge book deal. Because then you stumble across posts from a couple years ago, when they were unpublished, un-dealed, unagented. When they didn't even know they wanted to write.

Wanna know why I started blogging? This. Andrea Cremer's blog. I read every single entry, from the early ones where she wondered if anyone was listening, to the ones where she was cautiously optimistic, until she took over the world with Nightshade.

Stalk things. Stalk people. Stalk their journeys, their agents, their twitter feeds.

Now I'm to the point where I've been stalking since about November (7 months), and a few of the people who were my peers, people like Gennifer Albin and Demitria Lunetta--those people found agents, went on submission, and got book deals.

And it's so cool because it says it's real.

So many more people have found agents. Teens Lindsay Cummings and Kate Coursey both got one in the last couple months.

It's real, and it's happening, and it's going to happen to more of us.

Go forth. Stalk. Get inspired. Write. Let's do this.

Gettin' In The Groove

2011-06-14T22:37:00.005-04:00

So... This is late. Muchly so.

But hey, I'm back from vacation! For those wondering, I didn't get my foot bitten off by a shark. Though I did wade through shark infested waters, get an involuntarily taste of raw squid, and bite the head off a ballyhoo. (I wouldn't say that was of my own volition either. There was definitely guilting involved!)

And I might have been in Cuban waters at one point... I'm not sure––we were 40 miles from Cuba. Where do Cuban waters begin and American waters end? If anyone knows, please share!

Having left for a week and a half, without any access to Carlton (my computer; Psych FTW), I didn't get any writing done. No, not true. I wrote about 300 words longhand. But I ended up throwing out that scene, so it doesn't count.

In coming back and having to start up again right off the bat (I have a deadline to hit, after all!), I noticed something. The first day back, I couldn't write. The second, I managed a miserly 200-ish. Next day, I got up to 500-ish. And yesterday, I didn't hit my deadline, but I got about 880. I'd bet the farm I hit my deadline tonight.

Does anyone else have patterns like this, where, after taking a break, it takes a few days to get back into the swing of things? Do tell in the comments!!

K-Pop Pick of The Week: "Like Tears Are Falling" by Park Jung Min. ...Really, some of the names. I certainly hope that's not quite so odd-sounding in Korean.

WIFYR Day One

2011-06-13T20:12:00.000-04:00

Shoot, forgot it was Monday. In case you guys didn't know, Kate and I are at the WIFYR conference this week!

The day in the life of a conference attendee:

6:45: Wake up. Groan. Roll over. Forget that Kate and I are spooning on her couch and kick her. Oops.
7:15: Get in car, awake now and super excited.
8:00: Arrive at the Waterford School, feeling the nerves. Register and find seats in the auditorium. Creep on authors, editors, and agent Mary Kole. Kate greets lots of friends, leaving me feeling awkward but happy she knows everyone.
8:30: Welcome + faculty intros. It's all stuff I knew, since I've been stalking them anyway.
9:00: Head to classes. Meet Louise Plummer, my Novel Class instructor, and the rest of my fellow students. I sit next to the lone male in the class, who tells me he loved my story. I preen.
10:00: Louise finishes telling us about herself, and we go around the room talking about ourselves, how many MSs we have, and where we are on our submitted MS. I have the most under my belt, but I am actually the third youngest. (Yay! Novelteens!)
11:00: We critique a manuscript. Very interesting.
12:00: We critique MY manuscript! Most things are what I expect, but hearing them said gives me great ideas as to have to fix them.
1:00: Kate and I check into my hotel. My room is amazing.
2:00: Welcome + Faculty intros for the afternoon sessions.
3:00: Brandon Mull lecture. He talks about the importance of scenes in a novel and how they help you move a story along.
4:00: A.E. Cannon lecture. She gives us a picture off of which to create a story, and then talks about how movies help with planning a novel.
5:00: Kate and I go to dinner at Cafe Rio, and I get a huge burrito. She gets a salad.
6:00: Back to hotel, and time to write this post, revise some Playing God, and sit in the hot tub.

Hope you enjoyed, and I'll be posting the rest of the week on my blog!

The Learning Curve

2011-06-11T13:57:00.002-04:00

The learning curve is an important aspect of any book, but most especially fantasy or sci-fi, as I’m most familiar with. Basically, the learning curve is the amount of information readers need to learn in order to understand a story and how quickly they need to learn it.

In sci-fi, the learning curve is steep. There’s a lot of information that needs to be established as quickly as possible. Characters, setting, technology level…the readers need to learn the capacity and limits of this particular universe as quickly as possible. Are there aliens? Is there FTL travel? How do things work? etc.

In fantasy, the curve is less steep, but probably just as large. Setting is easiliy established in fantasy…whether it’s the typical meta-European, Middle-Ages setting, or a desert, or wherever else, it will be somewhere the readers can understand, at a basic level. They can fill in most of the little details themselves. In sci-fi, most of those details have to be explained, because no one’s as familiar about typical life in a time that hasn’t actually happened yet. What does need to be explained in fantasy, though, are things like the world and the magic system (if there is one). These aren’t so crucial that they need to be explained instantly, but they’re crucial enough that they need to be shown pretty early on.

In one sense, sci-fi has an easier learning curve, since there isn’t any magic. In any sci-fi book, the fundamental laws of the universe are the same laws that we all already know and unerstand. However the laws in fantasy change from book to book. You have to learn a whole new world and magic system in each new fantasy book, even though a lot of the time most of the elements are familiar.

Characters, setting, and conflict need to be established in any novel of any genre, but in sci-fi and fantasy, the “setting” part of that is more complicated than others. It’s important to understand learning curves and how they work in different genres.

Graduation!

2011-06-09T17:31:00.005-04:00

No post today, peeps, because I'm graduating!

That's right. High school is officially over. Done. Finité.

I'm ecstatic (I mean let's face it, college is so much cooler) but also sad...I had a great (for the most part) high school run, met some awesome people, and reconnected with old friends from when I was little. I've known all the West High kids for forever and I've moved within the same social circles for years. After the familiarity of the SLC avenues crew, college is a little scary!

Anyways, that's why I'm not posting today, but expect me back next week!

Kate

Guest post: Lizzy

2011-06-08T00:00:00.002-04:00

Today we've got a guest post from the awesome Lizzy, who runs the forums at Write On!

--

Hi. I’m Lizzy. To give you a brief intro, I like and do a wide variety of things. I love music. I drink lots of tea. And, most importantly on this blog, I write. So thus, I’m bringing you this post, in the hopes it will somehow help you.

I picked a topic that’s one of my favorites. The word sparks a different reaction in almost every writer, some very negative, some very positive.

WORLD BUILDING.

I adore world building. I love the thrill of vanishing into something I created completely. The feeling of having a true safe haven; a place only I know the ins and outs of. I take immense pleasure in sitting down and figuring out what the people are like, the landscapes, the beliefs, the traditions.

However, to others, world building is something of a struggle. A burden. Even a constant stress in their writing journey. While I can’t relate, I can offer some things to keep in mind about world building, and some of the strategies I use.

This post is not for those of you who are like me. You might enjoy and identify with it, maybe even learn something new, but it’s really written for those of you who don’t enjoy world building. Maybe you’ve never even thought about it. Whatever your case, this post is for YOU, the “I Can’t/Dislike/Don’t/Won’t/Never Heard Of World Build(ing)” Writer.

First, I’d like to say that process of world building is not all you might think it is. I think one of the main reasons writers don’t like it is because they’re simply overwhelmed. You might imagine you need to go all out and figure out the moon cycles and the lifestyles of every inhabitant in your world. Well, you don’t. (Unless you want to, hehe!)

The idea of world building is to create a realistic setting for your novel to take place in. Whether you set your novel in modern day New York City on earth, or on your own completely fictional planet, the world building is going to affect your story.

While the title “world building” suggests you build the world yourself, that’s not always the case. To define it simply, world building is setting the stage for your novel. Bringing it to life. Giving it a space in which it happens.

Thinking Exercise: What makes a novel feel real to you? What sucks you in, despite the fact it might be a really compelling story?

The answer is THE WORLD. The setting. How REAL it feels. While you might wrinkle your nose or doubt, it remains true that one of the key elements to a story is the setting and how real it feels. The good news is that it’s not impossible to achieve this. Not at all.

First, you need to decide your setting. You’ll already know what this is depending on what you’re writing. Fantasy and science fiction may call for a little extra effort, particularly if you have a fictional realm in mind. Other genres like contemporary or thriller will usually be set in our world, and you probably will know what town/city/country you’re imagining it in.

Whichever situation, it’s important to think about the same basic things while writing any scene (keeping in mind that MC = main character, and we’re assuming this is who’s head we’re in-- if we’re in their head, we know their every thought and feeling):

1. What does your MC see? This doesn’t mean description overload, it means the basic things YOU see when you’re in a room or overlooking a scene. What catches YOUR eye? What do you find yourself drawn to observe?

2. What does your MC feel, hear and smell? These three senses are very important, and often overlooked. You’d be surprised how much depth texture, scent and sounds can add to your world. Train yourself to think through your MCs head. What would you expect a field of flowers to smell like? A locker in the winter time to feel like? An empty house in a rain storm to sound like?

3. How far is everything? While it may feel like too much, having an idea of the distance from A to B in your novel will add that realistic touch that helps bring it to life. Whether it’s your own world or not, knowing how long a drive to the library or a journey on horseback to a different city will take can make a lot of difference. Particularly in situations where there’s a time crunch, it won’t be realistic if your MC is flying from place to place in time to greet the next scene. (Unless, of course, there’s time travel involved). Sometimes, the distance in your world can even provide a great way to make things harder for your character, and more believable.

4. Is your stage set? Before writing any scene, it’s a good habit to ask yourself questions about the “stage” this scene is set in. Where are they (your characters)? Where will they be while they talk/act things out? Is there anything that might get in their way? Will anything they do be unrealistic based on where they are? By answering your own questions -- even writing them down -- it will help add depth to your scene, because you’ll already know where everything’s happening as you write it, if only by a mental picture. This will then help the reader, because you’ll be able to communicate more effectively.

Keeping the four things above in mind will help you greatly. It’s good to be aware of where everything happens, and how to best get your settings across to readers. Pages of description won’t do it. Getting in to your MC’s head and SHOWING us through all their senses will. But before you can do that you have to have some idea of the situation you’re trying to show us. #4 will help you with that.

A good trick that I’ve often found helpful is to give yourself the information. Separately from your novel, write out as detailed of a description as you can of your MC’s surrondings. Indulge yourself in tiny details and anything you feel is important to put down. Draw a picture even, if you’re visual, or Google and save images that might help you. When you’ve set the scene and you know your “world”, go back to your novel and write the scene. You’ll be surprised how much easier it will be to give a sense of place when you know so clearly where it’s set.

And remember, through all of this, not to become overwhelmed. Not everyone needs to go figure out calendars and draw maps. Some of us enjoy that, like me. But that doesn’t have to be you too. Do as much as you can, without burning out, to figure out your world, one scene at a time.

You can do it. Give it a try. Be patient. And above all, never compare yourself to others.
Keep in mind every writer is different, and the best of luck to you! I hope this helps you, even a little bit. World building can be truly magical, if you can just find a way to do it that suits you best.

Build worlds! Keep writing!

2011-06-07T08:00:00.001-04:00

Sorry guys. No post. As you read this, I am tanning on a beach in the Florida Keys, looking out at something similar to this:

Actually, it's more likely I'm doing something like this:

Let's just hope no sharks come along and do this:

Have a good week, y'all! I'll be back next week with actual interesting writerly stuff.

PubRadio's Top Five Hottest Hits of the Week

2011-06-06T13:06:00.001-04:00

I don't know, guys. It'll be hard for me to top my last post (to refresh your minds and your eyes). I thought to myself, "Taryn, what do teen girls (sorry, guys, I guess. Sorta. All two of you) like more than shirtless guys?" "Well, Taryn," I said back, "nothing. But second-most, they like music." "Oh, Taryn," I replied, "you're so smart." (I won't bore you with the resulting ego-stroking.)

SO! A few months ago I did a post on my own blog where I took my musical-nerd-ness and did some parodies of musicals sort of like Emilia Plater did here. Except hers are funnier. Which is probably why she has an agent.

Without further ado: PubRadio's Top Five Hottest Hits of the Week

1) R&R. Sensation Lihanna takes PubRadio to a whole new level when she sings about the taboo "revise and resubmit." Why do agents request revisions without signing you? It's a tough topic, but she pulls it off. Listen when you are staring at that particularly tough chapter.

2) Alien. Sadie Kerry reminds us of her debut sci-fi novel (Penguin, July 2011*) with this edgy pop number. Music usually sticks to contemporary, or occasionally paranormal, genres, so it's exciting to sing about outer space. Featuring contemporary literary giant Don Blue.

3) Post-Apocalypse. Child star "Lit" Spears proves she's still got a novel or two in her head with this eerie number that promises romance until after the end of the world. I'd like to see some of the innocence of her earlier singles, like "Oops, I Sent that Query" or "Agent, One More Offer," but I can't deny "Post-Apocalypse" is catchy.

4) We Should've Had It All. Relative newcomer Manda Locking laments a rejection in this powerful ballad. Based on the talent in this song, I don't think she'll be single long.

5) Chapter Fifty-four. Ayla Quick, the country-memoir superstar popular for writing and recording her songs as she goes through relationships, notices her boyfriend is growing distant. I'm eagerly awaiting "Chapter Fifty-five."

Bonus points if you can name every singer/writer in the post! 4 are easy. 1 is moderate, and 1 is more difficult, but totally do-able.

*To my knowledge, Penguin is not publishing anything by Sadie Kerry. To my knowledge, Sadie Kerry does not exist.

Murdering the Perfectionist

2011-06-04T00:05:00.003-04:00

I am a perfectionist when it comes to my writing. Every time I try to write something, I look at it and realize how lame my dialogue is, how flat my characters are, how boring my descriptions become, how I start every sentence with a pronoun, how I start every sentence with a -ing verb, how I MAJORLY overuse the word “as”, how every other word is an -ly adverb, how I completely forgot to add this important subplot and WHAT THE BLEEP AM I GOING TO DO NOW??

…was that a run-on sentence? *resists urge to edit*

ANYWAY. Noticing those things is not bad. You need to learn to notice them eventually, because when you edit those are the sorts of things that you’re going to have to work on. But until you edit, you have to ignore every single one of them and just keep writing. You have to stab your inner perfectionist with sharp implements until he shuts up. Which is freaking HARD. (Especially if your inner perfectionist is like mine and has recently acquired a suit of armour and ninja training.)

But hard as it is, the alternative is worse. Because if you can’t learn to keep writing past them, you’ll never get anywhere. You’ll get stuck in the Eternal Rewrite. And if that happens, you’ll eventually end up with a really amazing first chapter, but nothing else. The worst completed novel is better than the best first chapter. So write that terrible novel, and THEN make it good. Or if you don’t think you can make it good, write ANOTHER terrible novel. Rewriting one chapter won’t make you a better writer. Writing a book will.

So, basically: Murder the perfectionist. Write.

On conferences....

2011-06-02T18:20:00.004-04:00

Hey everyone! So Emery Grey has agreed to interview me regarding writing conferences....I wasn't exactly sure what to include in the post, so she posed some questions that she thought readers might want to know. Hope you enjoy!

1. Do all conferences cost money to enter? Why do they cost money? In your experience, does price have a direct relationship to the quality of the conference?

Most conferences do charge a fee, because editors, agents, and authors need to be paid for the time they put in. Those of you who have researched publishing know that most authors don't make enough to pay their bills off writing alone. A lot of supplementary income comes from school visits, speaking engagements, and conferences. However, the amount of money varies greatly. A two day SCBWI conference might be $150, whereas the annual Highlights weekend conference costs thousands. The Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference in Utah is very cheap (less than $500 for a week). I think cost does have to do with the quality of the conference, because longer conferences (like WIFYR) are more expensive and also more useful. At WIFYR you not only listen to panels, but you get the chance to share your work in a small group and receive critiques from established authors. This was incredibly helpful for me, and I met several of my critique partners in my WIFYR group last year.

2. How many conferences a year do you go to? Do you stay for the whole conference or only what your schedule and wallet can afford?

Last year I went to two conferences, WIFYR and SCBWI, and this year I'm attending WIFYR. I think you really have to pick and choose when it comes to conferences. Do your research, and figure out what you want to get for your time and money. I personally try to save up to attend the whole conference, because I think the conference experience is more rewarding if you spend as much time as possible with the other attendees.

3. What are some items that you would never go to a conference without?

Make sure to bring a laptop, paper and pens, a copy of your first twenty pages, and business cards (you can have a huge stack made for less than $10 online). Business cards in particular are important, because you never know when an editor, agent, author, or attendee will ask for a way to contact you in the future.

4. How have you gotten to/paid for the conferences you have been to? Do your parents go with you or ever refuse to let you go because of safety reasons?

All of the conferences I've attended have been in Utah, within driving distance from my house. My parents have paid for conferences as birthday/graduation presents, because as a high schooler I don't make enough money on my own. In terms of safety, I think this depends entirely on your age. At 16, 17, and 18 you are probably more equipped to handle a trip to a different state for a conference (also, many conferences do not allow anyone under 16 to enroll). My parents have never attended conferences with me, but again, this might be different for younger teens.

5. In the large ocean of information on the internet, how do you find conferences in your area, at a time you can go, and at a price you can afford? Does it simply take a lot of time and patience, or is there a smart way to go about finding conferences?

I think the best way to go about finding conferences is word of mouth. Tap into the writing community in your area by attending local signings, networking with other authors, and finding online blogs. This is how I heard about WIFYR - an author friend of mine mentioned it, and I used Google to find out more. Hearing about other writers' experiences is a really good way to gauge whether or not a conference will be useful for you.

Noveltee(n): Cayla Kluver

2011-06-01T15:54:00.000-04:00

Hey guys! I went to Starbucks to check my email, and lucky for you I did, since we have a new interview for you all. Welcome Cayla Kluver, the author of a trilogy of which Legacy will debut 6/28/11. (She's had an interesting publication journey, which you can check out here.)

My questions are in bold blue, and her answers are in black.

Tell us a little about the books you have under contract.

Legacy is my first novel, and it’s also the first book in a trilogy (book two Allegiance and book three Sacrifice). The books follow Princess Alera of Hytanica as she is pressured to wed a man she detests, and discovers some very dark secrets about her kingdom. She meets a boy from the enemy land of Cokyri who illuminates her world in a way – he shows her that women can be more than wives and that she deserves respect. Alera begins to question everything she’s been raised to believe, with the result that the futures of two countries are put at risk.

When did you stop thinking of writing as a hobby and start thinking “I don’t care that I’m young—I’m going to be published”?

I grew up in a free-spirited household where writing was never considered a hobby. I was encouraged and honestly never stopped to consider that I might not be able to do what I love for a living. I was really shocked in high school when career counseling time came around – I was asked what I wanted to do for a living and promptly told that my dream, the thing that would make me happy and that I was good at, was impractical. I needed to pick something else. I got very angry – nothing seemed more impractical to me than settling for a lifetime of work that I don’t want to do. So I jumped out of high school and onto the starving artist train.

What was querying like? How did agents react when they learned your age? Did you put it in the query?

I did put my age in the query – if anything I think that was a bad idea. When people learn my age, they almost always have a negative reaction, industry professionals included. A lot of people think I have a massive ego, like I must believe I’m some kind of prodigy because I’m young. I don’t think that at all – historically teenage authors are really common. Mary Shelley had written and published Frankenstein by the time she was nineteen. But socially, across entertainment industries in particular, people have become really disenchanted with young adults. Publicity campaigns pushing the “child prodigy” angle rub people the wrong way, and I know that because they rub me the wrong way. It’s too bad, but I don’t know how to affect it except by trying to go about my writing with a blind eye to the age issue.

How do you balance school and writing? Have you ever let school slip?

Absolutely. I used to stay up until four in the morning writing, then get up at seven for school. Writing was always my priority, for better or worse. I was content to be late to school with some frequency. I’m not encouraging my approach, but I kind of threw everything I had into writing, and whatever was left over went into my school work.

How did your friends/family/teachers react when they learned you were going to be published?

My family was really happy. They’d taken the journey with me, so it was as much a success for them as it was for me. Some of my acquaintances started resenting me, so I made double and triple sure that my experience didn’t change the way I view other people. That was a pointless effort though – my perspective was bound to change, and it did, for the better. I have an even greater respect for those around me than I did before. Having people who don’t know me judge my writing and my person made me stop and consider all the little things I think and say. I make fun of a celebrity’s nose – but that celebrity can’t change their nose and they shouldn’t have to. A voice in my head points out that someone’s gained weight – but why should that matter to me, or anyone else, as long as the person in question is healthy? There are so many negative presences in this world, and I don’t want to be one of them. My close friends surprised me by not being surprised at all; my favorite teacher, who helped me with the editing, was ecstatic.

How did/do you deal with writing on college applications?

The college I’m going to be attending asked for a sample of what I thought was my best writing. I wasn’t sure what to do, and in the end I mailed the admission’s office a copy of my book along with my application.

Has the fact that you have a book deal changed your plans for a “real” job?

Going back to the question about writing as a hobby, I’ve never thought for a second that writing is anything but a real job.

Plotter or Pantser?

Plotter. Absolutely.

Notebook or netbook? (Note: There has been some confusion! Netbook=laptop! I thought I was being clever, but apparently not...)

It depends on what mood I’m in – or rather, what the weather’s like. I love to sit out in the sun with a notebook; otherwise, the efficiency of a laptop is unbeatable. (Note: I thought it was clever.)

Mac or PC?

I have a PC. All of my friends have Macs though. I haven’t really familiarized myself with them, so I have to do some more research before I definitively take a position.

Pen or pencil?

PEN. I love scribbles. Pencils smudge and wear away. I can’t remember the last time I used a pencil. It was probably in elementary school.

And finally, what upcoming release are you most excited for?

This is a ways off, but I’m really excited for Pushing the Limits (HERELINK?) by Katie McGarry. It sounds really introspective and psychological. Can’t wait.

Thank you so much for this opportunity!

+

Wow, Cayla brings a unique perspective to these interviews! If you've missed our last two, Vee's is here, and Kat's is here.

I hope to be back and posting on my regular Monday schedule next week.

The Bible, On Magic

2011-05-31T15:17:00.004-04:00

Wow, lots of blog silence!

So I'm going to shoot myself in the foot now, and talk about one of those "Er..." subjects. You know, the ones people avoid.

Magic––according to the Bible. (This post IS directed more towards Christians that aren't so sure whether or not magic is okay to write. Read on if you dare.)

I had to do research on it for school, so I thought I'd share my findings. (Findings. Heh. Nerdy, table for one?)

Now, I really should add one of those disclaimers. Here's mine: I loveloveLOVE magic. I rarely read anything besides fantasy/paranormal. But sometimes, even I get uncomfortable with some magics, and I'm pretty open-minded about them. Also... Please don't shoot me.

According to the bible, some kinds of magic are bad. No, not all magic. At least, not from what I could tell.

"Bad" magic:

Divination (seeing the future)
Communicating with the dead (talking to pearly whites––aka, ghosts)
Spell-casting (creepy hexes and candles on the floor and smelly dead plants and stuff)
Witchcraft (Controlling people. And demons. All minion-like.)
Wearing charms (Not jewelry. That's fine. Wearing stuff that's supposed to "protect" you, etc.)
And there was one passage about throwing your children into the fire... (But really, that's just bad manners in general.)

"Good" magic:

Anything not on the above list, I guess.

Now, that's not to say that having one of these "bad" magics in your story is bad. You just have to be careful with them. As in, don't pull a Writer's Excuse and go start practicing them for the sake of "research".

Also, there are books out there that have these magics in them. Books where the "bad" magic is on the "good side". Like... Harry Potter.

Ah, let's beat the dead horse, shall we?

In HP, there are "good" witches that cast spells and practice divination. There are ghosts that people regularly talk to.

But in Harry Potter, these things are normal. The magic is less of a magic, and more of a science. The magic is used for both good and bad.

Another, maybe less-known example, is Cinda Williams Chima. She is Christian. (I know this is fact; she was the first REAL LIVE author that ever had an email conversation with me *sort of goes fangirl in remembering*) One of her characters is Catholic. That same character is also a wizard. The magic in her stories is both good and bad, again. There are seers, sorcerers, enchanters, wizards. There are even ghosts. Does that make her book "demonic"? No.

When writing(or reading), these magics are okay. Just as long as you realize that these magics aren't okay in real life. And that the books ARE NOT REAL. (I know, I wanted a Hogwarts letter too)

So if you choose to approach these "bad" magics, just be careful. As with most things, you can't please everyone. But you can at least keep in mind who might be reading your book.

All right. I'm done. *waits for someone to shoot me*

K-Pop Pick of the Week: "Bad Guy" by Joo. Just cause it had "bad" in the title.

No Post

2011-05-30T19:41:00.002-04:00

Again, sorry, guys... Taryn's internet still isn't being friends with her... And she's not feeling well. Hope she can come back next week!

Don't Break the Chain

2011-05-28T14:37:00.005-04:00

This is, I have found, the best way to keep myself writing. Most of the time I have deadlines and goals that keep me going, but some days I just really don’t want to write. And then the next day I still don’t want to write. And eventually, after several days or sometimes even weeks, I’ve been staring at the same sentence trying to figure out how to move on. And that can be really hard, because I’ve been staring at the same exact sentence unable to write, so by now my mind associates that sentence with “forget it, I’ll write later”.

But then I found this thing somewhere on the internet. Basically, you hang it on your wall (this is mine, on the bottom right)*, and every day you write, you get to put a big red X. Soon you get a chain of Xs going all the way down the page, and you are NOT ALLOWED TO BREAK THAT CHAIN. There are 365 days on that calendar, and every one of them needs to be checked off.

You can do this however you want… you could say you’re not allowed to cross it off until you reach a certain wordcount for the day. Or if you’re editing, that you edit at least one paragraph. For me, all I have to do to earn the right to cross something off is write one sentence. One sentence, in any of my WIPs. Because some days I really CAN’T write a whole chapter, or even a paragraph. But if I get one sentence, then the story is still progressing. And when I come back to it the next day, I’m farther than I was the day before. There have been times when I really had no idea what I was doing with the story and desperately did not want to write, but I needed to put an X on the chart, so I sat down and wrote one sentence. And then another, since I was there anyway. And another, because it just popped into my head. And a few hours later I had a whole chapter written, which wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t forced myself to just write one sentence.

You don’t have to use the chart, but basically, if you’re not already doing so, WRITE EVERY DAY.

*Yes, I know I missed a day, three days ago. But…um…well, it will NOT HAPPEN AGAIN.

No post today.....

2011-05-26T23:51:00.001-04:00

I've been preoccupied with a personal issue today, so I didn't have time to post. Sorry guys! I promise I'll make up for it next week.

~Kate

The Deadline

2011-05-24T13:08:00.003-04:00

Deadline. Every writer knows this term. For me, it's not a formidable term that means "10,000+ words per day". But for some, it is. Or higher.

Deadlines are just what we call it when we force ourselves to write. Even when we don't want to, we have to get those words down. Put simply, if we don't hit that finish line, we are dead––metaphorically speaking.

Deadlines are easy to keep track of for me. I use Scrivener, and there is a feature that tracks your words––you can even set when you want to finish the book and the desired final word count. So all I have to do is make sure I turn that little bar green. And my deadline isn't that hard––850-ish words a day.

But sometimes, I don't even hit that. And maybe it's just me, but I always feel that I have to make up for the previous day's failure. If I had 358 words left yesterday, I'm doing the deadline plus 358 words today. Because I want to finish the book. I want to fulfill my dreams, reach my goal.

A deadline is more than just a term. It's our way of saying, "I have a goal." A deadline is a dream. It's our goal to finish that book. To write the last sentence. To get that feeling of satisfaction that we did it––we did something few the world over would even consider doing.

Do we hate them sometimes? Yes. Definitely. But they're just a manifestation of your goal. It's just you saying, "I want to finish this."

So go ahead and hate the deadline if you must, but keep in mind that if you don't adhere to it, you're letting yourself down. And, when that book is done, and there is no more deadline, you'll be grateful it was there to push you.

K-Pop Pick of the Week: "Haru Haru" by Big Bang. Haru Haru's English translation is "Day by Day". I thought it kind of fit. Deadlines can be hard sometimes, and we have to push ourselves from one day to the next.

Internet Issues

2011-05-24T00:23:00.004-04:00

Sorry, guys! Taryn couldn't do her post this week because her internet is broken. But she'll be back next week!

-Noveltee(n)

The Myth of Writer's Block

2011-05-21T13:26:00.001-04:00

I mentioned this on Constance’s post earlier this week, and realized I had to actually write about it…

Writer’s Block does not exist.

…Okay, fine, it does, but not in the way that most people use it. Really, writer’s block is just a term used for a myriad of different reasons for why you can’t write. Writer’s block can be anything from “This sucks and I’m a horrible writer,” to “my main character’s a moron and I have no idea why that frog ate his girlfriend,” to “I wanna play video games.” Sometimes, you really have just been thinking about your story, or schoolwork, or whatever else for too long and your brain really is exhausted and really does need a break before you can write more. That’s fine.

The problem is that so many people use it as an excuse not to write. They sit down for ten minutes, fail to write the word “the” and go “Ah, forget it, I have writer’s block.” They expect writing to be easy. They want those rare times when they’re in “the zone” and exquisitely beautiful prose is flowing from their fingers illuminating their keyboards in the holy light of writerliness.

WRITER’S BLOCK IS NOT AN EXCUSE NOT TO WRITE. Writing is not easy. It’s freaking hard work, but we do it anyway. And yes, sometimes the beautifully concise and brilliant prose flows from our fingers and our keyboards become illuminated with writerly light (literally, if you have a MacBook Pro! *dadum-tch*), but those times are rare, and we can’t wait for them to write.

That’s why I say writer’s block does not exist. It does, but you can’t just say “I have writer’s block,” and leave it at that. You have to look closer, and figure out exactly why you’re not writing, and then deal with it. Saying you have writer’s block is like saying you’re sick. Yes, but is it a cold or is it an infection? Until you figure out which it is, you won’t be able to treat it. Figure out exactly why you aren’t writing, then deal with it. Sometimes the remedy is to give your brain a break and play some mindless video games. Sometimes you need to figure out backstory or edit what you’ve written the day before. But usually you just have to sit down and write. To steal from the awesome Writing Excuses podcast… BIC HOK. Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard.

So don’t just say you have writer’s block. Find the problem. Deal with it. Write.