The Frustration of Writing---Where I'm At

I had a different post planned for today, but this one seems anxious to be written, so I am obliging.

As most of you know, I've been working on the sequel to All Fall Down.  I drafted the novel last year and was working on revising it.  I was excited to workshop it with my critique group this month.  But then in January, things started to go awry.

First, the more research I did on the Witness Protection program, the more I knew it wouldn't fit in my story.  The facts are, when the witnesses do what they're told, the U.S. Marshals have a very high success rate in keeping them safe.  Not to mention that a lot of Witness Protection storylines are cliche.  The more I researched, the more I realized my storyline needed to go in a different direction, so I had to scrap it.  Which meant cutting out a significant chunk of my book.

So now I'm left with a much shorter book.  I really love the story (it's Colby's, from All Fall Down) and I think the storyline is fresh overall, but having to flesh it out has been much harder than I anticipated without those chapters and without that storyline arc.

It's been suggested to me to have more inner conflict from my hero and to add a secondary storyline.  Which is like telling someone, just lose ten pounds by next month okay?  It's easy to say and hard to do.  I have ideas, but I'm struggling trying to fit them in my plot so that it's cohesive.  Which is probably because I'm doing it backward and should have laid it all down with the plot in the first place.  *deep sigh*  Stupid research.  *insert Julie's whiny voice* Stupid cliche Witness Protection.

*deep breath*

Not one to sit around and whine all day, (only some of it) here are my possible solutions so far:

Sit down and outline the plot as is and with added arcs.  Write down all its intricacies, down and detailed and figure out this puppy and every plot bit before I go any further.

Put back the Witness Protection chapters and just hope readers can suspend disbelief.  And anything that may or may not be cliche.

Release it as a novella.

Shelve it and start over.

Rip it into tiny pieces and throw it in the fireplace and eat some Canadian chocolate while cursing Witness Protection and all the cliche stories that have come before me.

*ahem*  But I digress.

What are your thoughts when the book you'd planned isn't working and needs help?  Do you have any suggestions to add?

Word Count Wednesday--What Do You Think About Novellas?

I am so excited to post that I wrote 4652 words this week.  I nailed down a lot of my ending, but I still have a little ways to go.

The problem is, this book isn't exactly as long as my other books.  I've been mulling over a few ideas, like adding a secondary plot, adding a character, you know, the usual, but then I've also been thinking about making this a novella.

So today I have two questions for you.  First, what do you think about novellas?  Do you always want more, want it to be longer?  Or do you like them?

Second, how did you do on your word count this week?

My Review of the Best Castle Episode Ever

Where do I even start?

Let's start at the beginning.  My fave moment in the beginning?  Kate trying to comfort Castle in that hallway, holding hands.  The despair in his voice.  Then the tiny bit of hope when the kidnappers have terms.  The ransom exchange.  Boy I thought they were going to shoot Achmed right there, but then when he showed up with Sara I was right there with Castle going, "where's Alexis?"  I know I've said it before but Nathan Fillion is an incredible actor.  The way he handled his daughter's disappearance seriously made my heart ache.  I believed every emotion he showed.

I loved the little scene with Espo and Kate.  He called her Kate which isn't normal and you could see the concern in his eyes for her.  I love our little precinct family.

Castle going rogue in Paris was awesome.  His face when he's talking to Gaston about hugging his little girl and then not having her there.  Oh. My. Goodness.  The intensity was ramping up exponentially.  So well done.  I did not see any of the betrayals coming, but loved the introduction of his father.  I was so nervous that the writers would bungle that, but they surprised me and let it be emotional and yet still realistic.

Okay, who didn't love the mole and the techy gadgets?  I really do love that sort of stuff and writing/reading about it in spy novels.  Castle sitting there listening to that tape was so sad.  *sigh*

Then we come to one of the most amazing scenes ever.  Kate in the interrogation room.  Holy crap.  "My partner's daughter is missing and you are in my way."  "I'm not a cop today honey."  Boy, that lady changed her tune quick.  I love kick-butt Kate and the look on Espo and Ryan's faces when she kicked in that door? Priceless.  Love, love, love Kate.

This was such a different Castle than the easygoing guy we see at the the precinct.  He wasn't taking anything from anyone.  "My money.  My daughter.  I'm coming."  He was reacting emotionally, as a father, but it brought something out in Castle's character that was dark and twisty and interesting.  He would do anything for those he loves and I wonder if that will be revisited in other episodes.

Did you love the message that creepy guy left for the bug in the wall?  And then the phone ringing right after? A little bit of a lighter moment in all the tenseness.  (I loved that guy's accent, too.  There's something about the French . . .)

Were you as on the edge of your seat when they got to the woods as I was?  Who is Alexis Castle really?  "This isn't right."  Whew.  Seriously, the editing, the music, the actors, it was so great.  And then the big moment.

"Richard, I'm your father."

Best lines from Dad?  "You wanna stay out here in the woods with all the dead guys?"  "Given how you're feeling so bad about your $200 phone you might want to pick up the $3 million briefcase and take it with ya."  "You didn't tell me your name."  Hunt, Jackson Hunt."  "Sounds made up."  "It is."  "You been playing cop for year, you ready to play spy?"  Haha.  Shooting out the phone was a nice touch, too.

Wasn't Alexis in that cage so creepy?

Loved the dad's backstory overall, loved the escape, although it was a tiny bit unbelievable that Castle could just shove a gun-toting bad guy out of the way and not have him shoot at them at all.  Worst bad guy ever I guess.  (And why didn't the CIA give him some back up?  Is he a rogue agent or something?)

Such a great reunion with Castle and Alexis.  "We're together."  "You look good."

Great ending with our little Castle family.  Kate and Alexis hugging.  Martha and Castle.  Casino Royale.  But, of course for the Caskett fans there was the "please don't ever do anything like that again without me."  Awwww.

Best. Episode. Ever.

What did you think?

North and South With Patrick Swazye

I know I'm supposed to review a book on Mondays, but this week I'll be doing a special review on Thursday, so I've postponed my book review until then.

Today I'd like to talk about one of my favorite mini-series of all time, North and South. They've been playing it every Sunday night for the last few weeks and I admit, it drew me again like it always does.

It's about a man from South Carolina who meets a man from Pennsylvania at West Point and they become best friends.  The story follows them and their families through the years of the Civil War and it is so incredibly well done.

Patrick Swazye is Orry Main, the southern gentleman who is struggling with some of the aspects of slavery and honoring his heritage.  James Read is George Hazard, a man from Pennsylvania whose family owns an iron works that employs a lot of Irish immigrants.  He also has a sister who is an abolitionist (played by Kirstie Alley).  It is so interesting how the miniseries explores issues from both sides.  The south did have some valid political points, but I am glad the north prevailed and the union was preserved.  But, oh, what a cost!

The cast of North and South is incredible, with lots of big names, including Jimmy Stewart, Hal Holbrook, Johnny Cash, Robert Guillame, Elizabeth Taylor, Gene Kelly, Genie Francis, David Carradine, Terri Garber, and Forrest Whitaker to name a few.  There are some really strong female characters, which I love.  The history is also articulated so well, it's hard for people who love history not to be drawn in.

I love the lush settings of North and South, the family drama, and the deep enduring friendship between George and Orry.  That seems hard to find on shows done nowadays, especially one where it is so well done.  There's also something about the Civil War era that fascinates me.  Maybe someday I'll write a book about that.

Here's a promo that was done for Book II

Do you have a mini-series you love?  Have you ever seen North and South?

First Page Friday

This week there was an article published about what agents are looking for in a novel opening/first page. If there was any clearer reason why First Page Friday is needed for writers, then I don't know what it is.  Several agents mentioned what Ms. Shreditor and Angela Eschler have been telling us for over a year and a half---have an opening that immediately draw you in, an opening that has clean copy, one with beautiful writing and a great voice to name a few things.  (If you'd like to read for yourselves more of what agents said they were looking for in novel openings, you can go here.)

I'm so glad to be able to offer the expertise of these editors to you every week.  As you know we've had success stories in people who have submitted here, taken the suggestions and gotten requests for partials and fulls and that makes all the effort of these editors worth it.  I hope you will tell your friends about First Page Friday and take advantage of the help offered in polishing your novel opening.

As always, thank you to Angela and Heidi and to our author for today's submission and critique.  See you next week!


The Entry

Onion Layers

by Chris van Soolen

I stared at the platter of food being offered and wondered what I had just ordered. Ignoring the twitchy bits, I nodded my thanks to the vendor and added an extra couple of credits to the tab. Cocking her head to the side, the attendant’s large sapphire eyes glittered as she handed me the tray of food. I forced a smile and hoped some of the food would be edible as I made my way through the crowds looking for Ethan and Hannah.

Ethan had chosen this moon and this market for our first shore-leave because it was open-air. There was nothing like real dirt on a real planet with real fresh air. The view of the planet, which hung in the sky like an oversized orange gumball, was spectacular. I hadn’t seen a sky in so long, I got homesick just looking up. There was so much new and vibrant that the old longing was tempered by my curiosity and interest.

Scents of foreign spices and musk filled the air, made even more pronounced every time one of the Truani preened their feathers. I made my way through the flock of bird-like life forms to find Ethan and Hannah. 

Two humans shouldn’t be hard to spot amid all the color and plumage in the market. I watched for Ethan’s short blond hair and Hannah’s curly golden locks as I navigated through the Truani life forms. An occasional hoot or screech would punctuate conversation. Everything from the nest-like architecture to the planet in the sky was so different from home, I found myself staring and grinning as I took it all in.

“Tish! Over here!” Ethan waved, his head tilting toward his seated sister.

I plunked myself down onto the bench next to Hannah and elbowed her, “Plumage! Hannah, did you see the feathers around their eyes? I think these are the prettiest species we’ve encountered so far!”

Eschler Editing---Angela and Heidi's Comments

Not in Kansas

Right off, an exotic location is presented. There are plenty of clues for the reader to start building an image of the world. A moon with a breathable atmosphere, populated by an avian species, the planet the moon orbits visually prominent in the sky. And of course, the food and the waitress are just unusual enough that we know we’re not in Kansas anymore.

The blend of blond-haired humans with avian aliens presents a vivid contrast, and is coupled with some interesting hints about those characters: it sounds like they haven’t set foot on terra firma (or any other planet, for that matter) recently. They are apparently voyagers, but of what variety, we have yet to discover. Shore-leave suggests that they may be in some military or space equivalent of merchant marines. On the other hand, they may be a private group, space gypsies or privateers or common folk lost in space. At this point, we have no idea, but you’ve got our imaginations fired up, and that’s a great way to start.

Alien Gastronomy

The food squirmed. How about trying an opening line like this on for size? Your opening isn’t bad, but playing around with it a bit could spice things up. In three words, you could establish that the reader is in for a real adventure. The first line of a story, the first paragraph, may be all you’ve got to grab the attention of the reader (or agent or publisher) and hold it, so you want it to give the most bang for your buck. Currently your opening paragraph is a little unclear to the reader—in terms of grounding us in the setting—until we’ve finished it and put all the pieces together. And it’s just a bit lacking in pizzazz—with the focus on just finding friends. Mess around with how you can make it more flashy and focused.

A Fatal Flaw

In spite of interesting details and a solid start to creative world-building, your opening has a potentially fatal flaw: it’s pleasant, but there is no conflict, no hint of danger, no presentation of high stakes, no sense of trouble on the horizon. Author Craig Nybo recently gave some excellent writing lectures at the annual Life, the Universe, and Everything Science-fiction and Fantasy Symposium. He said that every scene must have a conflict, and if it doesn’t have a conflict, you can either add a conflict or get rid of the scene. Now, writing is more an art than a science (although there are definitely rules and formulas that tend to produce quantifiable results), so you can find an exception to just about every writing rule that’s ever been presented to struggling writers everywhere; but I think Mr. Nybo has nailed this one on the head, and you can find books, articles, and a plethora of evidence to support this idea: stories are about conflict, and if you don’t drop conflict in the reader’s lap on page one, at the very least, you need to hint that the storm is coming. A quick look at first page of a few books in my personal library shows:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Robert A. Heinlein): Sons of Revolution meeting is mentioned in first paragraph.

Elantris (Brandon Sanderson): Prince Raoden awakens unaware that he has been damned for all eternity—in the first line.

Dogsbody (Diana Wynne Jones): Sirius, the Dog Star, is on trial by a jury of his peers (first page) and will be exiled to a mortal body by page five.

The Silicon Mage (Barbara Hambly): “The worst thing about knowing that Gary Fairchild had been dead for a month was seeing him every day at work.” (Opening line.)

Quest for a Maid (Frances Mary Hendry): Main character witnesses her sister involved in a murder (first line.)

Treasure Box (Orson Scott Card): Quentin Fears never told his parents the last thing that his sister Lizzy said to him before they pulled the plug on her and let her die.

I could go on and on. Children’s books, westerns, romances, hard-boiled detective novels, thrillers and suspense and murder mysteries, fantasy and sci-fi – it holds true across all genres. I bet that a majority of the books you pick up are going to start with conflict, with trouble, or at least the promise of trouble down the road. (That’s important to remember: your first page doesn’t have to give the main conflict, although it can if you want to structure the story that way), but it needs some problem to begin working with. For example, Orson Scott Card’s novel Enchantment begins in the middle of a family argument. That’s a “little problem” that we can all relate to. The argument about their sudden commitment to Judaism in turn leads to why (the father wants the family to be eligible to immigrate from Russia to Israel) and to surprises (in reality, he wants to get his son to America for the chance of a brighter future) and all this leads to the initial mysterious encounter with fearsome powers.

In each of the examples I give above, the author establishes trouble, often in the first sentence, almost always by end of the first page. And this isn’t just a new phenomenon, although it is getting increasingly insistent in our fast-paced instant-everything age. Several of the examples are older classics, but pick up any book published in the last year or two, and you’ll get the same message. As author, you have the advantage of knowing what your story is about and what your characters are going to face. It’s pretty essential to let the reader have a taste of that on page one in order to whet their appetite for the rest of the book.

Putting it in Context

Once you’ve established some trouble for your characters, you need to give the reader some context to put that in. Specifically: you need to show a little more about who your characters are and what their relationship is, both to other characters and to their setting. Your first page isn’t necessarily the best place to explore this in depth (in fact, given all the tasks your first page is expected to accomplish in just a few inches, it isn’t generally even possible.) But you can present enough relative information that the reader can start piecing together a framework for reference.

At this point, we have no idea of who or what the main character is, and what her (I’m guessing based on the name, but this is sci-fi/fantasy, so sometimes naming conventions are unexpected) relationship is to the other characters. It seems like they may be shipmates. Are they friends? Colleagues? Soldiers of fortune? Scientists? Are they old, young, adult, teens? Are they children of long-range explorers down planet-side for a field trip? It seems like they may be teens (Trish calls the natives “pretty” and her enthusiasm for everything has a youthful energy, but I really have no idea.)

Yes, you don’t want to hand-feed everything to the reader. You want to respect their intelligence and allow them the privilege of reading between the lines and drawing their own conclusions. You want them to have the pleasure of having their curiosity piqued by not being told every last detail about characters, setting, and situation. But you need to judiciously insert enough information in the right amount and place to make sure that they don’t draw erroneous conclusions, enough information to guide them along the path you are taking them down. The great fun of being the writer is that you get to pick and choose and mold the story the way you’d like it to go (at least as much as any story lets you mold it; stories can definitely have a mind of their own).

Summing it Up

Writers really live in the best of all possible worlds. We get to play around in any time, culture, era, country, biosphere, galaxy, or parallel universe that we desire. The start of your story is proof. Now pull it all together by adding a problem and enough story-heart/conflict-related details about characters, setting, and situation that the reader can start adding it up, and you’ll be off and running. Happy writing!

Three Tips for Naming Your Characters

The inspiration for this post came because I recently read a book that had a very silly name for the villain and every time I read it, I laughed.  It ruined the book for me because I couldn't get the tension from the plot that was needed because I was busy giggling or rolling my eyes.  I was very surprised that the author's editor let them get away with naming a character that, because it would so easily take someone out of the story, and usually those things are the first to go during revisions.

But that got me thinking to how I name my characters.  For example, I was debating last night about naming a senator in my book something definitive like Senator DeMarco or something non-descript like Senator Whiting.  Of course it all depends on what part the character plays in your novel, but naming characters, while fun, also needs to be done with care.

Here are three things to consider when naming characters.

1.  Choose something that fits the character.  I love the meanings behind the names and for my book, All Fall Down, I wanted a heroine name that would really speak to the fact that she was level-headed, independent and strong.  Sure of herself.  So I named her Claire because I thought of "clear" and "clarity" every time I typed it and it really fit her.  In that same book I made the mistake of nicknaming Claire's dad "Skip" and I had a military reason for doing that, but the reason got cut from the final manuscript and I've had a few people comment that they couldn't see a tough guy nicknamed Skip.  So, in the sequel, I'm working in the explanation for his name, and  I'm going to be more careful in the future of nicknames and making sure they fit my character as well as a given name.

2.  Don't have too many characters with names that start with the same letter.  I started out with a Claire, Colby, and Connor, three main characters in All Fall Down. (And of course when I realized it, I changed it.)  But it makes it hard for the reader to keep everyone straight---and sometimes the author, too.  So be careful with same letter names.

3.  Give your characters, especially the hero and heroine, names that you like.  (I usually give them names I wanted to name my children, but that my husband vetoed for one reason or another.)  And this is a tip from me because as a writer, you will be typing that name a lot and if you hate it or it brings up negative feelings for you, well, you'll be slogging through that manuscript.  When I have a character I love, with a name that fits and that I love as well, I am excited to write them---to see where that character is going to go today.

What's your tip for naming characters?  Have you ever come across names that made you crazy when you were reading?

Anyone Sprinting Tonight?

Is there anyone out there wanting to sprint with me tonight?  If so, come back and check in at 8:15!