Fixes & Trims

My query process has been pretty slow going cuz I usually just send out a few handfuls, then wait for responses. I consider my first several months of querying to be like toe dips into the water. Sure, you could cherry bomb into the pool and hope for the best, but if you instantaneously get fifty people wet with rank hideousness, it skims your best picks right off the top, leaving you with lesser-thans.

If I get no requests after ten or twelve, I make changes. I'd do this for a while, then stop to make changes, but without feedback, it's hard to know where I went wrong. Was my MC too whiny, wimpy, dull, what? Does my concept suck? Is my letter pure crap? It's so impossible to know...Maybe not.

Well, I feel dunce-cap-worthy it took several months for the light bulb to finally flick on over my near-empty skull, but I decided to just query agents who requested a query letter only, then I'd know for sure if the main glitch was with my letter. I kept sending out my query, then I'd revise and try again. I didn't find much interest.

I mean, maybe the main conspiracy of my novel comes across too unbelievable boiled down into one sentence of explanation and tucked into a couple paragraphs of what's, who's and how's.

So, I scratched my letter completely and wrote an entirely new one that is huge on voice and character with minimal plot points.

One agent requested a full, but she thought the work would be better in First person, which told me she'd only read a few chapters because anyone who's read further on would never in a million years think that. My MC doesn't know the greater details of the plot until the epilogue, so, a limited perspective just wouldn't work. The bulk of the story's big mystery is revealed to readers through my parallel protagonist's journey instead.

However, hints of that didn't break open in chapter 8. So, I bumped his weirdness up to his first POV scene in chapter 4. The bit of commentary I'd received was not entirely right for my particular story, but it helped me to see I needed to point the good guts out much earlier.

If my book were simply a girl against two would-be-killers, then First person would probably work great, but it's not. Originally that was my concept, 'tis true, but sometimes stories just grow and unexpectedly surprise the writers penning them. And that's what happened with me and my story.

Even if I don't wholly agree with suggestions, they do usually help me to see where I've gone wrong and what adjustments need to be made. If you have Betas or critters of any kind, consider their opinion valid, even if you don't agree. If you give it some time, you may see they're right. Maybe they're not, but keep the notes and try to see your work through fresh eyes. Maybe a part of what they're saying is correct. Maybe it hints at a different, deeper problem like mine did.

Even though I liked it, I had to change my first chapter after several people complained of it being too confusing. The advice you get, whether prickly or smooth, could be just the thing to make your story even better. As the writer, you owe it to your story and your readers to write the best you can and edit with that same drive.

And if you're in the querying stage like me and frustrated by all the form rejections you're collecting that say, "Not for me" or "I'm not the right agent for this", without so much as a hint of feedback to suggest where you misfired, try querying agents who only request the letter. Start there. If you're get nothing but form letters from agents who rep the kind of work you write, and you don't have 200,000 words or some likewise monstrous book, your letter needs some work, so have it critiqued and keeping working on it until it shines and gets results.

If your letter is sparking interest and several agents request a partial or a full, then turn you down without much feedback, you'll know the error is with your work, probably within the first few chapters. So set that sparkling jewel of a letter aside and take a hiatus to work on your manuscript. Once it's ready, get back in the game.

Happy writing, happy hunting!

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Editing Surprises

I took a brief hiatus from querying to sharpen my MS and hack and slash some words. I went from over 106,500 words (which I had this past spring) down to an astonishing 88,000. I didn't think I could cut that much, I really didn't. And when at 98,000 words, I even stated on my writing site that I could maybe cut 5,000 but NOT 10000 or whatever it was, but I DID. Yes, yes, yes. Doing a happy dance. Join in if you want.

In the word slashing stage, I really needed to look at each sentence with a fresh perspective to see if it was truly needed or if it could be changed up. I condensed passages of exposition, tightened dialogue, omitted anything unnecessary, already obvious or redundant. My mistake in the fall was that I was simply looking for words to cut. But, when I did that, my scenes lost personality. I ended up returning much of what I'd taken out to fix that. I mean, voice is what really makes your work stand out.

Along the way, I discovered some new and better turns of phrase and brought an even greater sparkle to my already quirky voice than I had before. So I'm really exicted about the end product.

I even added some things like some more internalization or action around dialogue, deeper perspective voices. So, I still can't believe I cut nearly 20,000 words. That's an amazing feat in my opinion, especially because I didn't have to hack off scenes.

Well, I did remove three small mom scenes, but I'd only added them later to make my work seem less YA, but now that I'm going YA, I made the mom's arc extremely minimal. But in all, these particular extractions only amounted to about 1500 words.

The new approach really worked for me and made my work much, much stronger. Now, I'm back in the hunt again.

So, when you're going through to edit, really think about how you can keep the essence of each sentence while relaying it with a more succinct, sharper, wittier delivery. That will take the sting out of killing your darlings. You'll be super excited with your work's shiny new luster and will be a better writer for it.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Don't Be Shark Bait in the Treacherous Ocean

I have a couple of phobias. One of the things most likely to make me faint is knives. I'm terrified of them, well big ones, sharp and horrifying. Like the Chef's knife, that diabolical slicer made most famous in Psycho. I'm not quite sure why I jump back and shudder at the presence of a knife or why I can't use or wash one in the sink, but that fear is just there. I could never keep the block of them on top of my fridge cuz on the freakish chance you bump into it while getting HalfBaked, the block could tip over and the alliance of daggers would then butcher you to death, or at the very least cut off your eyebrows or do some serious damage to your girls or piggies.

My fear is so intense I can't even watch someone dice carrots or a knife infomercial. Honestly. That Rock-n-Chop is not of God, right out of hacker-slasher hell, and my best friend had the nerve to send some sales guy over to my house for a demonstration. [I don't care that he was earning money for college or whatever. That's Sick!!! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? WHY? How would you like it if I sent a moose over to your house? You wouldn't. That's right. Sick freak.]
And if you've ever seen Predator, you know how violent it is, but the only part I can't watch is where a guy is shaving with a straight blade. Uggghh. I CANNOT watch a guy get shaved that way at the barber or even think of seeing Sweeney Todd live. Panic attack for sure.

I'm also afraid of bees, even so much as to run several feet away from my children to avoid them. I shriek and wiggle and pull over my car if one of those mean creatures invades my space. If I were ever on Fear Factor and bees were involved, I'd forsake the million, or whatever the prize was. I understand their importance, but I despise them nonetheless.

And my worst fear of all is sharks. Though I'd go hang gliding or jump out of a plane no problem, I won't go on a shark dive or surf or do many oceanic activities that might bring me into contact with them. I totally hate that about myself because I love adventure. With writing, I'm afraid of what's out there in the unknown, but I have no choice but to jump in the deadly ocean and watch out for sharks. I do hope to be published, and that's my first plunge into making it happen.

Once work is polished and ready for submission, some writers don’t know what to do next or how to go about finding representation. You’ve written the query, the synopsis. Now what? Don't send work directly to a publisher. Go find a literary agent, a good one. Searching for agents on the web can be overwhelming. In the scary murk, with hundreds of sharks out there hunting for young and naïve prey, how do you find the dolphins, who have the communication skills, connections and muscle to get work sold? To avoid being chum, here are some red flags to look out for so you can find the good guys.

◊ If an agent charges reading fees or anything upfront, RUN. Some agents in smaller agencies charge for supplies, but look for sold work, talk to represented authors, make sure there’s a cap on expenses and know exactly what you’ll have to pay, and really only choose an agent like that if you’ve exhausted all other options. Agents should get paid off commission, not nickel and dime writers into the poorhouse.

◊ If there’s no proven track record of sales and more sales, RUN. Look for works sold in the genres they say they represent. Good agents aren’t secretive about their sales. Who would hide published success? Really.

◊ If a website is too vague and sparse, no agents or bios in sight, authors with only first name and last initial giving glowing testimonials, RUN. Sometimes they’ll sweeten their appeal by offering a 10% commission instead of the customary 15. These “agents” are salivating for fresh, young meat. Really. Run.

◊ If an agent’s website is lacking clarity or full of errors, grammatical or otherwise, RUN.

◊ If an agent is not a member of the AAR, the Association of Authors' Representatives, PAUSE and do some more research before sending in or signing anything.

◊ If an agent is running ads to get business, WALK AWAY BRISKLY. Even if it’s a legitimate agent who’s starting up and wanting to get his name out into the world, opt for an experienced agent with contacts. New agents have no clue what publishers are buying or how to get in the door. This is your work we’re talking about. Would you let some inexperienced doctor operate on your child just because he ran a good ad campaign? Think not. Let some other writer be the Good Samaritan and business booster. Top agents don’t have to reel in writers. They’re swamped with submissions already.

◊ If an agent offers to represent you ONLY if you use such and such editing services first or their suggested rewriter, RUN. Kickback is in play.

◊ If an agent hasn’t sold works to the big houses, WALK AWAY BRISKLY. Your book might have the potential to be the next best seller, but who would know? With a smaller press, your spankin’ new, published book could die right out of the box. A good agent knows what type of publisher would be best for your work and has contacts all over the map to get the right deal done.

◊ If an agent works with subsidy or print on demand [POD] publishers, RUN. You could just as easily do that yourself if you wanted to go that rout. Why pay the extra fees?

Check out Writers Beware for already tagged sharks.

You can find a comprehensive list of agents with bios and contact info at these FREE sites: LitMatch and Agent Query. Advanced searches can pinpoint agents by name, genre, location—not only the U.S. btw. You can also organize and track submissions instead of having to set up a spreadsheet in Excel. There’s also a resource page listing agent blogs.
Look for agents who are seeking and selling what you write. Every agent has their own personal guidelines and tastes. Don’t do a blitz submission or even write a form query letter. It’s really impersonal, unprofessional and ineffective. Choose agents carefully and write individual query letters for each one.
Nothing to fear. With your eyes alert and your mind sharp, you can avoid being shark bait and find your way in the treacherous current. Now off you go. Nothing to fear? Maybe I will take a shark dive sometime. Haha. Doubt it. Not without Valium and an army of prayer warriors on their knees.

~Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

What I'm Pretty Sure I Can't Do

I'm up for just about any challenge with writing. I've written a few novels, some short stories, a couple flash pieces, even tried my hand at structural poetry like an English sonnet and a villanelle. But there are some things I'm pretty sure I can't do.

I can't see myself writing historical fiction. You really have to have a passion for this kind of thing, and I don't really. I'm not opposed to the genre. Some extra special historicals have really resonated with me actually, like the Mark of the Lion Series by Francine Rivers. I believe those three books are the best novels I've ever read because they introduced me to well-rounded characters, put me right into Roman times, made me cry, challenged me spiritually and entirely gripped me.

That's some amazing writing if a book, a series of books really, can do all that.

But as much as I loved those books, the amount of research you'd have to do just seems so daunting to me, in just making sure every single prop is correct. I'd be so afraid of ruining credibility with some stupid bumble, it would kill my drive.
Although, now that I've said that, I'll probably get an idea for a book and I'll have to scratch my 'can't', to 'well, maybe', then, 'okay, yes I can'.

I also could not write a First person novel with a narrator who is not the protagonist. All but four of the Sherlock Holmes books are this way, with Watson as the narrator. He is the every man, sidekicking Sherlock around, providing some distance from the brilliant, analytical mind of the hero as he solves the crimes.

But for me, part of the fun of writing First Person is discovering voice and revealing character. It is almost too difficult for me to wrap my mind around this concept. I think my narrator would soon outshine the protag. I don't know.

What are some things you're pretty sure you can't do with your writing?

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Stir Up a Whirlwind of Curiosity

I tend to enjoy novels that have multiple threads. They are the most memorable for me. To give your book more interest and originality, consider working in some subplots to further pique curiosity in your readers and make your book harder to put down.

Let’s take a look at Dark Rivers of the Heart by Dean Koontz. Here’s the summary from my book review:

When Spencer Grant, an ex-law enforcement officer, who’s living off the grid, tries to reacquaint with Valerie Keene, a waitress who dazzled him in a bar, he discovers she’s being hunted by government officials on a mission to kill her. From what he knows of her, they can’t possibly have good reason for wanting her dead. His quest to find her makes him the target of an assassin, who works for the shadow agency hunting Valerie and kills emotionally wounded or physically hindered individuals to show them mercy.

While tracking down Valerie with his trusty, skittish dog, Rocky, by his side, the internally and externally scarred Spencer must not only uncover a buried memory that haunts his dreams and is just a breath away but also avoid the most efficient eyes and ears on the planet. Finally reuntied, he and Valerie embark on the run of their lives in a nail-biting chase. Frustrated and peeved, the assassin pulls out all the stops and drudges up Spencer’s worst nightmare to use as a snare, jerking various characters into a stomach-churning climax, leaving readers cringing and unsure as to who if any of them will survive.

Now, in this book, not only does the main character have a desire to find a woman he likes, he also must unravel the mystery of something from his past he can’t remember. Then when he finds her, he aims to win her heart and has to face the reason for his scars in order to beat the man who's out for their blood.

The book also opens us up to the antagonist's mission, a partner in crime he finds, and we learn about the flight MC's love interest is in.

The best way you build in subplots is by constructing well-rounded characters, who have many goals and desires as well as pertinent pasts. You can also have several characters with different goals, all aiming for something they want or need.

In my latest work, Sapphire Reign , I have several storylines that seem completely different and separate, like individual rainbows, but they all move towards each other and finally intersect and collide in a big dome and explosion of color.

Dig into your story and your characters to find the extra extras you can add to enhance the read. Go for depth, breadth, scope. Stir up a whirlwind of curiosity with your work. All the unmet goals will be as important to your readers as they are to your characters. Keep writing. Rock on!

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Love Your Work Enough to Hate it

Yes, you heard right. Go ahead. Hate it.

Sometimes your work really does suck.

The first book I wrote is wonderful in places, but it's flawed in too many ways to be fixed without a major rewrite.

My MC’s 19, a risky age, being too old for YA, too young for adult. And it has structural failure—the main conflict, dilemma, desire is resolved before the climax, and it should hold taut until at least that point. The work also relies too much on coincidence and may break true FBI procedure. I love quality enough to know this book just isn't publishable.

Practicing, getting your work critiqued and reading about craft & for pleasure will help you recognize the good, the bad and the ugly in your work.

When I wrote my second novel, Kings & Queens, I better understood structure. In that, readers and my MC are aware of a massacre plot in chapter 1, and the whole truth about the why, who and how is not revealed to readers or my MC until the epilogue.

Not everyone can do that, and I’m not saying you have to stretch it THAT far, but to have a hooky work—which is the best kind IMO—the big concern presented at the onset shouldn’t be resolved until as late as possible, and definitely not until the climax.

Sometimes your work IS good, but needs the perspective of others besides your mom to make it oh-so-fabulous.

Don’t be afraid of criticism. Yes, that's your baby, and yes, you have a delicate soul, but most critters want to help you take your work to a higher level. Take what works for your story and ditch the rest.

Hate your work enough to be objective and at least consider they may be right. After several people complained of things being confusing, I changed things to bring clarity.

And sometimes your work Is almost ready for shelves but could use another glance over.

Definitely do it. Go over it one more time, looking at everything: flow, meter, voice, grammatical errors, wordiness. I’ll probably keep toiling and tweaking until I’m signed.

With my edit this past spring spring though, in trying to get work count down, I stripped out nearly every adjective and got sentences down to bare bones, and the writing lost its sparkle and MY VOICE. Not good! So, I ended up replacing a lot of what I cut and just decided I'd reached my word count and that was that.

Well, I really need a much smaller word count. So this week, I decided to go at it again, but I set out with a different tactic. Here are the ways I was able to trim, no lie, 1300 words from my first SEVEN chapters. Yippee! And the cool thing is the scenes don't seem any emptier. They're not sparse or choppy. The flow is nice. I'm very happy. It's just kind of embarrassing that I had that much to trim and didn’t see it. You can keep these tips in mind if your work is in need of a major hack-and-slash.

Ø For the most part, keep modifiers to one per noun. Slay extra extras. Removing ALL strips out color, so don’t do that. Rather, go for vivid, concise pictures. Is it really important to say his polo shirt’s blue? If he gets mistaken for someone else wearing a similar shirt, then his shirt color factors into plot. Keep it. Just consider everything, whether it's needed or not.

Ø Choose punchy verbs over an adverb-verb combo.

Ø Omit unnecessary dialogue tags, pointless action or anything that disrupts flow during a conversation.

Ø Examine dialogue and try to say the same thing in fewer words. I hacked off so much when I broke speech down to the guts.

Ø Take a machete to exposition. Since it’s the Narrator spilling info, it pulls readers from the scene and somewhat breaks POV. Examine those scene-killers, hack away, keeping only the most vital bits.

Originally in ch. 1, I stopped to describe this hangout called Spanky’s. It really wasn't needed. I offed 75 words, keeping the one line that held some voice--a mini-golf/ice cream shop gone wild.

And chapter 4 had four paragraphs describing my character Derek’s lousy upbringing, thought process, fears, etc. I cut 200 words and it's now one spiffy graph. What I did keep relates to his thoughts.

Ø Do some telling. I know we’re told to show not tell, but in many cases, showing adds words. Showing is important for engagement, but if you’re a writer with 90-95 show percentage, don’t be afraid to take it down to 80.

Ø Kill your darlings. Sometimes we love the specific way we word sentences, but look at each construction with fresh eyes and think, can I convey this tighter? Be ruthless. Rewrite and reorganize sentences rather than just trimming down what you’ve got so you can maintain voice.

Ø Look for extraneous articles, prepositions, that’s, evens and other extras that can be cut off and not missed.

Ø Perform magic with better word choices. [e.g. He went up the stairs, two at a time…He whooshed up the stair…He double-stepped the stairs.]

Ø Get dirty with talk and thoughts. Dialogue doesn’t need to be perfect English and thoughts can be broken because people don't always think in complete sentences. [e.g. "Can’t wait for football season to start!"...or "Goin' home?"..."Excited about your new job?"...Boss sucks!]

And people blend many, many words--gotta, wanna, kinda, sorta, hafta, should've, that'd (contraction for that would...That'd be okay.). Stripping out formality, when it’s fitting for the speaker, not only trims words, it helps your characters seem more real and you less stuffy.

Ø Expand your vocabulary. Sometimes a perfect, juicy word can replace two or three. [e.g. come up with v. devise.]

Ø And don't forget to remove as many filters as you can like he saw, she could sense. Just name the stimulus or spill what the character is thinking or experiencing. [e.g. She wondered if he could read her mind. v. Could he read her mind?] If you're firmly locked into one POV, such trims won't be jarring at all.

Strangely, with all this excess baggage shed out of my manuscript, I feel refreshed and exhilarated, knowing my work is cleaner and overall better.

Don’t be afraid to have a love-hate relationship with your work. You’ll be a much better writer for it.

All the best!

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

The New Me, Writing Tidy & Compact

Yesterday, I read a bit of the first version of Kings & Queens, pre-critique. Wow! Total eye-opener! What a mess!

I had good plot construction and well-developed characters, but I had a tendency to overwrite, still do at times, but this was way worse.
Often times, I see newbies making this same mistake. They choose wordy fluff and flowery rills, going the roundabout way of saying everything, because they think it makes them sound more writery or literary. All it does is create sludge for readers and scream "amateur" to pros.

Of course it's cool to use unique phraseology, to have lush description at times. That's what gives you your voice and your story some texture. I'm talking about overwriting when you don't need to.

There's a huge difference between:

Majesty chuckled, traversing from grass to dirt, finding it humorous that kids still gave credence to the tale her friend, Alec, had spun eons ago about the spooks, these wood-dwelling people-turned-creatures.

and this:

Traversing from grass to dirt, Majesty chuckled that Alec’s tale about the wood-dwelling people-creatures endured.
Man. That top one's terrible, right? Don't I know it! Major suckatude!

In my later versions, I'd stripped out a lot of this, but for the past two weeks, I've been trimming more and more, burning off everything extraneous. In my first seven chapters, I removed 1300 words. 1300 words! That's insane! I'm almost embarrassed, AFTER several edits, I still had that much garbago.
During my last word extraction, I took out extra adjectives, unnecessary dialogue tags and the like, but a ton of that tinkering made my work too dry and stilted. So I put some back in and considered my work done. Not!

I just went about it the wrong way. Now, I'm rewriting and rearranging, blending actions and sharpening dialogue to get things tight and tidy. I have exactly the same scenes, but they're tighter and neater.

Since I'm going YA with this crossover novel of mine, my word count needs to be nearer to YA range, which usually caps off at about 80-85,000, slightly more for literary, epics and fantasy. Mine's suspense. So all this cutting is necessary for me if I want to succeed.

In summer, I was at 106,000 words—nuts I know—and two weeks ago, almost 101,000. I'm currently at 95,500, but I'm only finished with 11 chapters. I think I can get it to 90,000 or lower. It would still be large, even for a multilayered, upper-YA like mine, and that's not as glaringly horrid as a 100 g's and change.

Thanks to my wonderful critters from TNBW, I've come a long, long way from that wordy nerd I once was. Now I'm just a nerd...with a more concise delivery.
Write on, my peeps. And be direct. It'll save you lots and lots of time in the editing round.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Editing Glitch

The long, drawn out editing process can do strange things to your mind, especially when you’re on your fourth, fifth or sixth pass through your manuscript. There’s so much to look for. Grammatical errors, places that drag, plot holes and glitches, passive voice, mistakes in continuity, misplaced modifiers, sentences ending with prepositions, too many be-verbs, adverbs, adjectives, ugly people. You also have to comb through your work, looking for crutch phrases or overused words.

In the first novel-length disaster I wrote, snickered was my word of choice. In almost every scene, I had someone snickering. It’s difficult to come up with another word to describe that Ernie laugh…the one that’s through the nose, kinda snorty, not even close to a guffaw or a chuckle…it’s a snicker. For some reason, the characters in my book were only finding things sort of funny and not hilarious enough to warrant a full-bellied laugh. As a snicker replacement, you can use sniggered or tittered, but too many of those appear and read quite silly. I try to only use one of those offbeat snickers per book. Same thing with guffaw, if it graces the pages at all.

In my latest completed novel, Kings & Queens, my main roach is huffed. While editing, I'm finding there’s a whole lot of huffin’ going on. J.L. Campbell so kindly pointing out the overabundance of huffing, so I can exterminate the bulk of those pesky verbs.

One day after hours of editing, the word THE started jumping out at me from every angle. THE was annoying me, totally and completely, until I realized its importance. It is difficult to write a story without that word, although I'm sure some feisty soul would be willing to take up the NO-THE Challenge, but I can’t even write a post without it. THE is greatly overshadowed by snazzier words like ostentatious, sprightly or sardonic. They possess flair, while THE generally goes unnoticed, sitting in the background, dissolving in shadow, waiting for recognition. I definitely recognized it. THE should be lauded. It does, after all, own total unsung power. A work of fiction can include zingy treasures like precipitation, chimera, onomatopoeia or zephyr, but without conjunctions, prepositions and articles gluing those ritzy, glitzy words together, stories, articles, blogs, etc. wouldn't make sense. [The jury's still out on poetry, which sometimes fails to make sense with or without our beloved, trusty THE. That artistic expression is in a league of its own.]

When editing, look for word and fall-back phrase infestation. Squash those buggers right quick. Some reader will notice and it will pull them out of the story. Of course, now that I brought the all-powerful THE to the stage, front and center, you may be annoyed by its seepage throughout your work. As long as every sentence does not start with THE, same thing with He, She, [insert character’s name] or I, THE will go unnoticed, like it always has from the beginning of the English language. Keep polishing. And then find a point to let go and hunt for an agent, if you don't have one already. You could be the next, great undiscovered talent, soon-to-be best-selling author. Get crackin'.

~ Signing off and sending out Cyber hugs

Finding Your Characters in Questions

Sometimes characters spring to life easily through your fingertips and other times they kind of plod out without much fanfare or dimension. If you're halfway through with your story or struggling to get it going, go back to character. Even if you have a thin plot, you can make a character-driven novel interesting and gripping, as long as you make your MC someone worthy to read about and follow.

You may need to go back to the character drafting board.

You already have your who, but have you asked "what" questions? What questions are pretty generic, just digging into the surface of desire and motivation.

What does she want most?

What is or will be her biggest obstacle in getting it? Internal and external.

What does she do under pressure?

What does she fear most?

What secondary things does she want?

What will stand in her way at getting those desires?

What does she regret, dream about, fixate on, run to or escape with?

What habits enhance or hinder her choices and actions?

Once you've answered several "what" questions, you can delve deeper into the psyche by answering the "whys".

Why does she want to dye her hair pink? Why pink, why not auburn?

Why does she hate her father?

Why does she believe she'll never find love?

Why is her room painted black?

Why does she want revenge?

Answering those questions will give you a more fully developed character and spawn other questions and surprise you with things you didn't know. Once you know who your character is, what they want and why, brainstorm the hows, which takes everything you learn and puts it into action. Discovering the hows is the best way you show character rather than tell.

How will she get the attention of the millionaire when he has that selfish twit Bambi on his arm?

How will she get home or to some place safe when her car dies in the middle of nowhere, at night?

How will she get away from her kidnappers?

How will she accomplish her goal?

How will she deal with moving to a new locale?

It makes an even better story if your characters fail in their hows, if things go awry or set her three steps back. So brainstorm the "hows" of destruction and deterrence as well.

Once you answer questions as such, your characters will cease to be flat; they'll be well-rounded and seemingly real, and in knowing them so deeply, you'll then be able to build a more gripping plot in the same creative breath. Anyone can tell the difference between a stick figure and a flesh-and-blood person. Aim to create characters on the later end of the spectrum, then those babies of yours will be unforgettable.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Sounds: Aid or Distraction?

I'm kind of weird, in case you haven't guessed. Okay, not kind of. A lot weird. For instance, I don't read the way normal people read. Most people can grab a book and sit down in a library or curl up on the couch in a quiet house with some tea in hand and read away.

Not me.

I've always needed some kind of noise to read: people talking, the TV on, music in the background. For some strange reason, needing to block out noise helps me focus and I can then absorb the information. The more boring and complex the book, article or essay, the more chaos I need to actually HEAR the words.

In college whenever I had to read something dry and dull like Economics or Government, I'd show up early to a basketball game and read chapters during the warm-up. That worked perfectly. I could get my homework in and then have fun by watching basketball.

But this little issue of mine made it impossible for me to take reading comprehension tests. The actual testing method contradicts my strange process of absorption and comprehension.

First, you must read boring material—and several blocks, not just one—in a fast amount of time in total silence, except for the blasted, ticking clock. Of course you can hear the clock eating away at your grades, dragging you closer and closer to an F or a dunce cap with each deafening second. Then you must answer questions to prove you can read those boring tidbits, but you can't really READ said paragraphs because that's NOT how you read. Awesome!

In Third Grade, they even stuck me in Special Ed because they were concerned about my "inability to comprehend", but being 8, I couldn't explain that the test just didn't work for me. If I could have had a walkman and no dripping hourglass, I would have aced the test every time. I've never had a problem comprehending anything, aside from maybe medical jargon or legalese. Noise is just a necessity for me and not just with reading.

Now, I require some kind of background noise while penning a novel to keep straight and finish off my various threads. Being a just-wing-it girl rather than an outliner, music helps me to stay focused and on track. And often times, music feeds my fire and drive as well.


Here are a few of the songs that I found inspiration in while penning Sapphire Reign—which I'm close to wrapping up.

Field of Innocence by Evanescence. This completely encompasses my storyline and tone. If I can acquire the rights for a reasonable cost, I want to use this song for my long trailer.



When the Children Cry by White Lion.



Another Brick in the Wall (Here's part 2) by Pink Floyd.



Stop Crying Your Heart Out by Oasis



So, when you're writing do you prefer the silence of a snowy day or some kind of noise like music, TV or people talking? And do you find inspiration in music? Just wondering.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.