Trusting Your Gut

Writers get conflicting advice from all sides: from readers, from professionals, from critters. You know the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it. Some people will get what you're doing and some won't. Here is a list of things your work should have regardless of feedback:♥ complex characters (check out this example of character development
and how to use it to find plot points)

♥ a strong voice (check out this post on voice)

♥ a story question that doesn't lose slack until at least the climax (check out this post to learn about story questions)

♥ conflict (check out this post on conflicts)

♥ a solid, beginning, middle and end with no saggy, draggy parts (check out these posts for more on beginnings, middles and ends)

♥ hooks in the story and at the end of chapters. (check out this post on hooks)

♥ strong verbs (check out this post on weak verbs)

♥ dialogue that reveals character and/or moves the story forward (check out this post on dialogue)

♥ dimension, description and sensory impressions (check out this post on visceral depth)

Also use good grammar, zingy prose and the appropriate narrative for the story.

A professional who read a partial suggested Kings & Queens would be better served in First Person with just my MC's perspective, but my story's complexity in the next two-thirds of the book would be completely lost in such a limited scope. Some stories work perfectly in First, and some of my future works are calling to be told in First, but this one would be severly damaged and empty. My forty-three other readers would hunt me down with hatchets if I even considered taking out the guys. I can't imagine my book without Derek's perspective or Warren's; they help to paint the full scope of the plot and show how they break their stereotypes.

If my story were just about a church shooting and the girl who overheard the plot beforehand, as it appers at the onset, maybe First Person could work, but it grows and grows and grows into something totally unexpected and twisted, and my main character, Majesty, is not aware of that aspect of the plot until the very end.

You know the story you want to tell, so tell it in the way that's right for the story. Trust your gut.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Little Drones

I hate when I can perfectly visualize a scene, yet when I try to put it on paper, it just doesn't come out quite as sparkly and vivid. That's where I'm at today. I'm writing a scene that is falling flat and boring me. I like plunging readers into the middle of a scene, but here I need to show some stuff before the good, better stuff. The lead up is what's boring and transitioning from one locale to another.

To add some more oomph to the scene, after I've written it, I'll go back in and insert texture, like sensory impressions and reactions, and hopefully that will work. If not, I'll scrap it and try something different.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Inspiration Jags and Nags

Sometimes inspiration can wane and other times it can rush in where and when you least expect it. It's often small things that inspire me, little ideas that grow into novel-length concepts. An overheard plot for mass murder in a dream gave me the plot concept for Kings & Queens. Another dream with a little girl psychically connected to a serial killer gave me my idea for the sequel, Sapphire Reign. In that dream, I was a different person, which never happens, who ended up being a character in my book.

Fellow blogger/writer, Dara, just had an inspirational dream set in a specific time period with multiple characters. Read about her experience here.

My book Dropping Like Flies was inspired by a sound, just an intercom type noise while I was lying in bed. And an article on foster children being pushed back into society right at eighteen gave me my idea for Decadence. I wondered what if the teen was even younger, like sixteen, and the world even more harsh and dangerous? What if this person had no family to turn to? What would this person do to survive? My character becomes a prostitute.

Pieces of dreams, emotions or things that affect me often inspire my poetry and short stories. And I'm usually compelled to at least write down my inspired thoughts before they escape me. That's the nagging part of inspiration, the voice that won't go silent.

Where do you find your inspiration?

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.