A great post here, from the very wise Cheryl Klein, about avoiding plot contrivances. In short: make sure you don't set up plot points that are too-easily resolved.
I see this a lot in the queries I receive, maybe especially in romance novels, which are of course by their nature somewhat formulaic. Done well, they're nowhere near as formulaic as non-fans tend to think, I hasten to add, but of course you need the central focus to be on a love story, and it needs to end on a happy note, either "happily ever after" or "happy for now." But then where would be your novel, without some conflict standing in the way of the happy couple?
Here's a shorthand tip: if the so-called conflict could be resolved with a single conversation, you're probably not thinking big enough.
What's the meanest thing you've ever done to your characters to stave off a happy ending?
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Blog-to-book deals.
A good post yesterday on Splitsider, about the difficulties of turning your blog (or in this case, your Tumblr) into a book.
I haven't done a ton of blog-to-book deals, partly because the field got very crowded very quickly, and partly because a blog, even a really popular one, is free, and no matter how much people love something, it's not always that easy to get them to shell out money for it. So for me to do a "blog book," it really needs to be something that makes sense as a book independently of the website on which it's ostensibly based. The real acid test: if someone picks up the book in a bookstore (yes, they still exist!), and they've never heard of the website, will the book appeal to them?
Do you spend much time thinking about "target audience" when you write? Do you find that it affects the quality of your work, or its success in the marketplace?
I haven't done a ton of blog-to-book deals, partly because the field got very crowded very quickly, and partly because a blog, even a really popular one, is free, and no matter how much people love something, it's not always that easy to get them to shell out money for it. So for me to do a "blog book," it really needs to be something that makes sense as a book independently of the website on which it's ostensibly based. The real acid test: if someone picks up the book in a bookstore (yes, they still exist!), and they've never heard of the website, will the book appeal to them?
Do you spend much time thinking about "target audience" when you write? Do you find that it affects the quality of your work, or its success in the marketplace?
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Five strategies to stay motivated.
Unclutterer (whose fabulous editor-in-chief is one of my clients!) had a terrific and very timely post yesterday titled Five strategies to stay motivated. I'm biased, of course, but this post is a great example of why Unclutterer remains one of my very favorite websites; there's something for everybody, and the advice is always really down-to-earth and approachable.
Motivation is especially hard, I think, if you're self-employed, as all writers are on some level. Day job or no, there isn't really anyone to tell you to work on your novel (or your book proposal, for you nonfiction types). Especially if you've got a day job, I think, it takes a lot of self-discipline to sit down and write: when you'd rather sleep an extra hour, when there's so much great TV piling up on the DVR, when cleaning the bathroom sounds like more fun, when it's August.
Go read Deb's Unclutterer post, and below I'll tell you how I'd adapt her five tips to the writing life:
1) Make a list and a short-term plan: Set small, manageable goals for yourself. You know yourself better than anyone: if you're a planner, map out a schedule and a deadline for your current chapter of your WIP. If you're a seat-of-your-pants'er, set yourself a daily word count goal and stick to it. Making lists is not about setting yourself impossible tasks, it's about clarifying your priorities so it's easier to stick to them.
2) Think of the end result: Everybody's got big dreams for themselves, or should, but I encourage you to think not about a three-book deal with your Dream Publisher, complete with an advance that falls into "quit your job" territory, but about the innate sense of achievement in finishing your WIP and starting your next one. The Romance Writers of America, in an effort to best serve their members' evolving needs, have different tiers of membership for writers at different stages in their careers. I'll mention two:
-PAN (Published Authors Network), for authors who are published by a royalty-paying publisher, who have achieved a certain sales threshold in terms of their royalties income (it's a fairly modest one).
-PRO (which is not an acronym) is for RWA members who have completed a manuscript and have begun the process of finding an agent or a publisher, but who have not yet reached PAN status. What I love about the PRO category is that it recognizes this stage of an author's career as an accomplishment. You finished the manuscript. You're actively pursuing your goal of publication. That is a big deal and deserves recognition. PRO membership, as all the PRO members I've ever met will tell you, is a stepping stone to bigger things, one hopes, but it's wonderful to acknowledge the achievement of having made it this far.
3) Go ahead and do something else. I rarely write anything much longer than a submission letter, an email, or (sometimes) a blog post, but even if all I'm doing is putting together a page and a half of edit notes for a client, I like to let it sit for a few hours, sometimes overnight, before beginning the process of putting my thoughts to paper or keyboard. I do my best writing first thing in the morning, after I've had a cup of coffee or three, and before the minutiae of my inbox has taken over my brain. If I try to write a submission letter with no pre-planning just before lunchtime, it can take over the rest of my day. If I've planned to think about how to say something specific, often as not, when I sit down to write, the words just flow. The "fallow period" in writing is really important. Go pull the weeds in your yard, or take your kid to the park, or go for a run. Your brain is still working on the manuscript.
4) Start with the easiest thing first. Whether you're a planner or a "pantser," I give you permission to skip around in your manuscript and write the parts you already know how to write. Just don't forget to go back and do the hard ones.
5) Phone a friend. There are a couple of ways to pull this off as a writer who's struggling with motivation, I think, but they both come back to finding someone who will empathize and yet still hold you accountable. I have a number of clients who like me to create a (wholly artificial) deadline for their WIPs, because it's easier for them to make themselves sit down and write if they feel like I'm tapping my foot impatiently, waiting for it. You could do the same thing with a critique partner, a spouse, or even just a friend who will promise to check in on a regular basis to see how the manuscript is coming along.
And here's my addition to the list, my own best strategy for staying motivated:
6) Fake it 'till you make it. Your energy level (and your love for your WIP) is naturally going to ebb and flow. Sometimes you need to force yourself through a period of resistance. Try setting a timer to see how many words you can write in 15 minutes, or tell yourself you can't get up from the computer until you've written 500 words on that scene you've been avoiding. If you can push past your mental block, usually--eventually--it'll get easier.
What are some of your strategies for keeping yourself motivated?
Motivation is especially hard, I think, if you're self-employed, as all writers are on some level. Day job or no, there isn't really anyone to tell you to work on your novel (or your book proposal, for you nonfiction types). Especially if you've got a day job, I think, it takes a lot of self-discipline to sit down and write: when you'd rather sleep an extra hour, when there's so much great TV piling up on the DVR, when cleaning the bathroom sounds like more fun, when it's August.
Go read Deb's Unclutterer post, and below I'll tell you how I'd adapt her five tips to the writing life:
1) Make a list and a short-term plan: Set small, manageable goals for yourself. You know yourself better than anyone: if you're a planner, map out a schedule and a deadline for your current chapter of your WIP. If you're a seat-of-your-pants'er, set yourself a daily word count goal and stick to it. Making lists is not about setting yourself impossible tasks, it's about clarifying your priorities so it's easier to stick to them.
2) Think of the end result: Everybody's got big dreams for themselves, or should, but I encourage you to think not about a three-book deal with your Dream Publisher, complete with an advance that falls into "quit your job" territory, but about the innate sense of achievement in finishing your WIP and starting your next one. The Romance Writers of America, in an effort to best serve their members' evolving needs, have different tiers of membership for writers at different stages in their careers. I'll mention two:
-PAN (Published Authors Network), for authors who are published by a royalty-paying publisher, who have achieved a certain sales threshold in terms of their royalties income (it's a fairly modest one).
-PRO (which is not an acronym) is for RWA members who have completed a manuscript and have begun the process of finding an agent or a publisher, but who have not yet reached PAN status. What I love about the PRO category is that it recognizes this stage of an author's career as an accomplishment. You finished the manuscript. You're actively pursuing your goal of publication. That is a big deal and deserves recognition. PRO membership, as all the PRO members I've ever met will tell you, is a stepping stone to bigger things, one hopes, but it's wonderful to acknowledge the achievement of having made it this far.
3) Go ahead and do something else. I rarely write anything much longer than a submission letter, an email, or (sometimes) a blog post, but even if all I'm doing is putting together a page and a half of edit notes for a client, I like to let it sit for a few hours, sometimes overnight, before beginning the process of putting my thoughts to paper or keyboard. I do my best writing first thing in the morning, after I've had a cup of coffee or three, and before the minutiae of my inbox has taken over my brain. If I try to write a submission letter with no pre-planning just before lunchtime, it can take over the rest of my day. If I've planned to think about how to say something specific, often as not, when I sit down to write, the words just flow. The "fallow period" in writing is really important. Go pull the weeds in your yard, or take your kid to the park, or go for a run. Your brain is still working on the manuscript.
4) Start with the easiest thing first. Whether you're a planner or a "pantser," I give you permission to skip around in your manuscript and write the parts you already know how to write. Just don't forget to go back and do the hard ones.
5) Phone a friend. There are a couple of ways to pull this off as a writer who's struggling with motivation, I think, but they both come back to finding someone who will empathize and yet still hold you accountable. I have a number of clients who like me to create a (wholly artificial) deadline for their WIPs, because it's easier for them to make themselves sit down and write if they feel like I'm tapping my foot impatiently, waiting for it. You could do the same thing with a critique partner, a spouse, or even just a friend who will promise to check in on a regular basis to see how the manuscript is coming along.
And here's my addition to the list, my own best strategy for staying motivated:
6) Fake it 'till you make it. Your energy level (and your love for your WIP) is naturally going to ebb and flow. Sometimes you need to force yourself through a period of resistance. Try setting a timer to see how many words you can write in 15 minutes, or tell yourself you can't get up from the computer until you've written 500 words on that scene you've been avoiding. If you can push past your mental block, usually--eventually--it'll get easier.
What are some of your strategies for keeping yourself motivated?
Monday, August 13, 2012
Stymied by the weather.
We had a heat wave here last week-- no surprise, since it's August and I live in the Northern Hemisphere-- but where I live, in Southern California, the weather is so mild 99% of the time that I have a rule that I don't complain about the weather. (I grew up here, and felt very strongly for my first eighteen years that there was nothing more boring to talk about than weather. What weather??) But the flip side of that super-mild climate-- and I promise I'm not complaining!-- is that I've lost all immunity to shifts in temperature. I spent much of last week trying to get through the lowest-common-denominator version of my to-do list: the emails that couldn't wait, the phonecalls I'd scheduled.
If I'm sitting on a full manuscript of yours, and there are a lot of you in this category right now, I'm sorry! I'll get back to you about it soon!
I spent a long time last week pondering a thoughtful post from Agent Kristin about whether there might be better "seasons" for querying agents. If you're in the midst of the agent query process, I urge you to give her post a look.
I can't say for sure whether I have quite as strong a "season" for queries as Kristin does (see above re: my hometown's relative lack of weather!), but I have always felt that the best queries seem to arrive in waves. I go a few weeks sometimes where nothing catches my eye, and then all of a sudden I'll get three or four or five great projects within a 36-hour period. I've always thought there was just something in the air at certain moments, that all the best projects are magically sent out at the same time, but maybe it's not you, it's me.
How about you? Do you find you're more productive at certain times of year, or times of day? Can you put your finger on why? Any tips for making August feel more like October? Literal or metaphorical, I don't care. Go nuts.
Friday, August 10, 2012
RIP, David Rakoff
The brilliant and underappreciated David Rakoff died yesterday. I really think he'll be remembered as one of the greatest essayists of a generation. Go pick up some of his work, if you haven't read him before; Don't Get Too Comfortable is my personal favorite.
Here's a video of him speaking in 2011 about why writing never gets easier. (Language NSFW.)
Link via Slate.
Here's a video of him speaking in 2011 about why writing never gets easier. (Language NSFW.)
Link via Slate.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Norman Maclean's dream come true.
Yesterday, the Pulitzer* committee decided (for the first time since 1977) not to award a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I'm not on the committee and can't speak to the decision, but a lot of other book people have used the occasion to commemorate some of the terrific novels that were published in 2011. I'd love to hear your suggestions, of any genre, in the comments.
Norman Maclean was snubbed by the Pulitzer committee in 1977 for A River Runs Through It. Despite being passed over for the award, though, Maclean got to live out what I think is many, many writers' dream. Maclean himself described it as "Probably the only dream I ever had in life that came completely true."
Go here, to the always-worthwhile Letters of Note blog, to see for yourself-- but you might want to queue up the Cee-Lo Green first. (Cee-Lo is NSFW.)
(*A pet peeve of mine: it's pronounced "PULL-litzer," not "PEW-litzer.")
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Write the hard parts.
SPOILER ALERT, if you're not caught up on the following:
Bones (TV)
Mad Men (TV)
Brilliant advice from my SJGA colleague Lindsay Ribar, whose debut YA novel The Art of Wishing will be published by Dial Books for Young Readers next year.
As a friend of mine noted after seeing Lindsay's tweet, we've all experienced this from the reader's or fan's perspective: it's immensely frustrating, as a fan, when a longed-for moment between characters happens "offstage." My friend singled out the TV show Bones, which finally hooked up the two protagonists after SIX SEASONS, but didn't tell the audience for several episodes that the long-awaited hook-up had in fact happened. Why would you, as a creator, do this to your most loyal fans?
Here's another example: on Mad Men, the most recent episode ("Mystery Date") seems to have finally gotten rid of one of the most-loathed characters, someone the fan base has hated since at least his most infamous appearance back in Season Two. This was done in more or less the final scene of the episode, and the fan base consensus seems to be that the scene in which it happened was utterly cathartic. When something important happens, we want to witness it for ourselves, not have to be told about it after the fact. And indeed, TV and movies have trained us not to believe in the finality of something (like a character's death) until we've seen the body. Having an event reported to us, even by a character we deem reliable, doesn't "count" in the same way.
Don't click on this link (or the previous one!) unless you have nothing to do for the next three hours. I'm not kidding. http://tvtropes.org
As a writer, you have a contract with your audience: trust me to tell you the story, and I'll tell you everything you need to know.
I know those scenes are the hardest to write. It's so much easier to let someone recap the big dramatic moments after the fact. But doing so is a disservice to your audience, and it undermines the trust you've worked so hard to build in your readers.
Write the hard parts. Write the secret parts. Write everything your readers want to know about the story, whether your characters want you to reveal it or not. Especially if they'd rather keep it to themselves.
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