And Another Thing

I learned about writing from NaNoWriMo is

5) November is a lousy month to tackle this challenge.

The beginning of the holiday season is not a good time to try to produce 50,000 words in 30 days. Families tend to balk at the idea of you taking your turkey dinner into the writing room so you can get 500 more words. When your company has driven across two states in a snowstorm, they kinda want to see your face.

My suggestion is to move it to April, June or September. Whichever works best for you.

And Another Thing

I learned about writing from Top Chef is:

5) Use just the right amount of seasoning.

A lot of times the deciding factor in who has to "pack your knives and go" comes down to seasoning. Too much salt? You're out of there unless someone cooked something that was inedible. Produce a dish that's too bland? Another good way to get yourself a ticket home.

How many times have you read a story that has a good plot but leaves you flat? Chances are that the author under-seasoned. He didn't give enough description. Maybe the word choices could have been better. An adjective or two might have given it just a touch more flavor.

I've heard some authors say they want the reader to be able to supply the details so they are more involved.  Sorry, I think that's lazy. It's our world and our people, we need to make them real for the reader. Not the other way around.

Then there is the opposite extreme. Purple prose. The overly flowery, adjective-laden, adverb choked prose of an author who is just trying too hard.

I have a feeling I like description a bit more than most people do. I want to be able to picture where a story is taking place, what the characters look and act like, feel the sun on my face or the wind in my hair. So I have to make sure some of my first readers are those who like spare prose. I need to see if I've overwhelmed them or if they don't notice what I've done. Then my readers who are more like me have to weigh in on whether they felt the story was too bland.

How do you strike a balance when seasoning your writing? Do you prefer blander stories or ones with a little more flavor?

And Another Thing

I learned about writing from Joss Whedon.

5)      People may assume things about you, based on your writing

If you didn’t get it from the previous points, I will say flat out, “I love Joss Whedon.”  His shows are fun and exciting to watch.

However . . .

He seems to repeat a certain pattern.  Namely, the teenage girl/young woman with superhuman strength.  Buffy as in The Vampire Slayer and River in Firefly can both take out a room full of men three times their size.  Echo in Dollhouse can be programmed to do just about anything.

Also, the vampire, Angel, has been cursed with a soul by a group of gypsies.  He will become evil again if he experiences a moment of true happiness.  Does he revert to evil when he saves the love of his life?  Nope.  When his son—a miracle he never thought possible—is born?  Nope.  He becomes evil after having sex with the girl he loves. 

Hmmm. 

In any case, Joss Whedon has given us a lot of wonderful characters and amazing stories.  If he never wrote another thing, he’d be well ahead of most of us.  And it would be a shame. 

I’d love to write one character who is as fully realized as most of Joss’.  Something to aspire to.

And Another Thing

I learned about writing from  the Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries by Charlaine Harris/True Blood, based on the books.

6)      Keep telling your story

As I said in item 5, the makers of the True Blood, the television show, are not really following the books anymore.  There’s a vague resemblance in some places, but the shows are different.  So much so that a character who dies in the first book is still alive—and a fan favorite—in the Season Three finale.

Even with the changes, Charlaine Harris has continued to tell the stories her way.  The television show introduced Vampire Eric’s maker in Season One.  He is not the maker Harris gives the reader in Book Eight.  That takes dedication to your storytelling. 

Would you be able to continue writing a series the way you originally planned if a hugely popular television show based on your characters  had already given a different version of a situation?  Character?

And Another Thing I Learned About Writing

from The Da Vinci Code.

6)      People love conspiracy theories

From the assassination of a JFK to Roswell to 9/11 to Free Mason’s to whatever, there are always those who will question the “official version” of major events.  Sometimes these people are right and they expose a lie—think Watergate.  Sometimes they’re just crackpots. Sometimes we’ll never know  one way or the other.

Dan Brown uses questions that were already being asked by others—which led to a copyright lawsuit or two.  He uses them, though, in a novel.  This gives him the ability to say, “It’s just fiction.” 

Is the Catholic Church covering up the truth about Jesus Christ?  And what is that truth?   Was he simply a profit who caught the imagination of the masses?   Was he married and a father?  Is there an unbroken line of descendants who are aware of their heritage, but who keep it secret to keep from bringing down Christianity as we know it?  Is there a Priory of Sion, dedicated to protecting the secret of Christ’s bloodline? 

None of those things need to be true.  Just posing the questions raises controversy.  And controversy begets debate, or the modern day equivalent of debate—shouting at the top of one’s lungs.  Once that starts, interest is piqued and an increase in sales can follow.

I’m not proposing that everyone should make use of conspiracy theories in their books.  Nor that all books need to spark controversy.  But there should be something about them of interest to readers—even a niche market.  There should be something about the book that people love.

When I start writing, I don’t worry about who my market is.  That would paralyze me.   But as it’s nearing the final edits (maybe Draft 4 or 5), I will begin to think about who might want to read this particular book. 

What about your book will people love?  Is it funny?  Heart-warming?  Scary?  Romantic?  Thrilling?  Some combination? 

And Another Thing I Learned About Writing From

The Pikes Peak Writers Conference

6)  Celebrate Any Request for "Pages"

But don't hang all your hopes on an offer from them.

So you get your manuscript ready, really ready. It’s revised and polished to a high gloss. You get a pitch session with Dream Agent. You practice your pitch for weeks. You sit down with said agent and pitch your little heart out. Then you sit back and wait.


And she says it sounds interesting. Asks a few questions. Then she hands you her card and asks you to send the first three chapters.

You float out of the pitch room, skip down the hall, rush to the bar to tell all your friends the good news. They help you celebrate and plan how you’ll spend your six-figure advance.

When you get home, you give your chapters another going over—or three. And you send them off to Dream Agent. You polish the rest of the manuscript again in anticipation of a request for a full and eventual offer of representation.

The email—or letter—arrives. Heart racing, you open it and read “Thank you for letting us read your work. However, Book Title isn’t a fit for us at this time.”  Despair.  What did you do wrong?

Probably nothing.  Some agents have a hard time saying "no" to a writer who--all eager-like--is sitting across a small table from them.  The pitch may have been good but, possibly, not completely representative of the actual manuscript.  Or the agent got back to the office and realized she had offered representation to another author with a similar story. 

So follow the steps above.  Polish the chapters to a gleam and send them off.  Then polish the rest of the manuscript to the same high gloss.  Then query other agents who represent what you write.  And start on that next book.  It'll keep you occupied while you wait for Dream Agent's reply, and you won't be hanging all your hopes on one response.

Registration is open for this year's conference.  We all know the state of the economy.  But if you can possibly afford it, go.  Attend the workshops, talk to other writers.  Try to sit at a table hosted by an agent, editor or author you admire.  And if your manuscript is ready, sign up for a pitch session.  Oh, and take the pitch practice workshop so you're ready. 

Most important of all--have fun.

And Another Thing

I learned about writing from Room.

4.  Inspiration only gets you so far.

Emma Donoghue has said that Josef Fritzl case was the original inspiration for the book.  He is the man who imprisoned his own daughter in the basement as a sex slave.

Now I would understand how a crime writer would use a case like that for inspiration, as a psychological thriller, a case study of the man.

But Donoghue turned this inspiration on it's head and, of course, changed it.  It is not the woman's father who abducts her.  It's not a crime story.  It is a psychological study, but of the boy and his mother.

Her website explains the extensive research it took to get everything right.  Some of that research was, as you can imagine, harrowing.  Then there was the mundane, like looking at decorating sites to get the room just right.

I'm going to look at headlines a bit differently from now on.  Instead of dismissing certain stories with "that wouldn't fit my genre," I'll look at how it could if I took it from a new angle.  This could open up a whole new world for my writing.

How about you?  Where do you find inspiration?  How much research do you do for each book?

And Another Thing. . .

I learned about writing from my critique group.

5. Listen to all the feedback.

Even if you disagree. Violently.

This can be a hard one--it is for me. But even if you don't agree with the feedback, you should listen. Because something didn't work for that person. It may be a style thing, which you don't want to change. But the thing is, what they may have given as the reason in the critique may not be the real cause of their discontent with your story.

I'm not saying that anyone is lying to you or purposely obfuscating. But sometimes a piece of a story doesn't gel for us, and we can't quite say why. So we might look at the things we can identify: sentence structure, pronouns, adverbs--anything to try and help the author.

So do yourself a favor and try to figure out what really went wrong. Remember that one reader in your group represents a lot more potential readers for your finished work. Do you really want to lose that many people for something that you could have fixed, without giving up your personal style?

And Another Thing

I learned about writing from Sandman:

4. Break Those Stereotypes

Death is one of Dream's siblings. What is the picture that just popped into your head? A hooded figure? Perhaps skeletal? Definitely male though. Not in Sandman. Death, in Neil Gaiman's universe, is a cute Goth teen. And it works.

Gaiman shakes things up in other ways as well, taking what we think of as fact and flipping it upside down and backwards. In The Sound of Her Wings, my favorite story from Preludes and Nocturnes, Dream is in our world. He is sitting on a park bench, feeding the pigeons, and he sees Death. They discuss humans. Death says, "Mostly they aren't too keen to see me. They fear the sunless lands but they enter your realm each night without fear." Dream replies, "And I am far more terrible than you, my sister."

I've been called out by my critique group on stereotypes and cliches in my work. Never intentional, but that doesn't really matter. one of the things I'm working on is really shaking up expectations with my characters.

What do you think? Can dreams be more terrible than death? Are there ways you can surprise your readers by not living up to their expectations?