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By Julie Daines
I keep hearing people talk about descriptive narrative as though it's something different from internal dialogue. I suppose if you're writing some kind of literary fiction from an omniscient POV, it might be. But for the most part--especially in children's and YA fiction--it is the same thing.
Interiority and description are the same. It's all in the POV voice. It's all about what the POV character is thinking. Sometimes they're thinking about their feelings and motivations, sometimes they're thinking about what they're seeing/hearing etc.
All of it needs to be written from the mindset of the POV character.
Remember this poem by Wordsworth?
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
This is good practice to think about description in your own writing. Imagine a huge field of daffodils. Now ask yourself, how would a lonely or depressed person see that field verses an angry person, a betrayed person, or a happy-go-lucky person. Then write the description through their eyes and in their voice.
It's easy to try too hard to write a snarky narrative voice, but then when it comes time for description, wax into an eloquent Dickensesque voice.
It should be all the same voice.
All writers struggle with this, so practice and always keep it in mind.
It’s funny how things change in a week. NaNoWriMo started exceedingly well. Week two came along and it has became a chore.
The wall, the murky middle, the notorious hardest week of NaNo has arrived. Allow me to re-post tidbits and tips to help us all through.
The first is from Monday’s NaNoWriMo site. I can’t locate the article to credit the author but I believe it came from the local Salt Lake chapter who advised: back up your work. Right now. If you’re on track with 25,000 words or only a tenth of that, it is too much to loose. Back it up now, back it up every other day hereafter.
Gwen Hicks, also from a NaNoWriMo email offered these points:
--Not every thing you write this month will be good, some of it even bad. The key is to accept that you may disappoint yourself and not live up to your own standards, but the time to nitpick is after its finished.
-A sign above Ray Bradbury’s writing office advises: “You must never think at the typewriter. You must feel.”
-Stuck? Start talking to yourself - ad-lib dialog, even record it on a sound recorder
-Trapped in a scene? Do a choose your own adventure with several possible outcome based on a charter’s actions.
My operating procedure has been to set a timer and write for an hour, repeating as many times as I can manage. I record the number of minutes for each hour. If I first devote five minutes to figuring out what needs to happen in a scene, my word count goes way up. Know what you’re to write before you write.
Know when to write (and when not to). My word count goes way down at night when I am tired. Some people fight through it and struggle on. I merely waste time when I should have given up and gone to bed. Know when you are most productive and when you are not, then plan accordingly.
In different font color, I drop remarks in the middle of my text. Notes to self such as “fix that” or “thesaurus” is my signal where something wasn’t right, or a more precise word is called for. This keeps the internal editor at bay, yet gives him something to go on when I let him out of his cage. It’s quick, easy, and doesn’t in erupt the flow of thought.
-Let go of perfection.
-Chip away at the story using spare moments of time rather that waiting for a huge chunk of time.
-Keep fingers moving - you need to read what she says about that.
-Be all in - again, Julie says it better than I can summarize here, so follow the link for the complete idea.
It’s half-time. Don’t give up. We’ve still got sixteen days to get our stories to finished. Good luck.
(This article also posted at http://writetimeluck.blogspot.com)
by Julie Daines
Now it gets hard. You got your NaNo novel off to a great start, and you know how it's going to end, but what to do with all this middle part?
Here are some tips that help me get through the tricky middle weeks of NaNo:
1. Let go of perfection.
Realize that what you're writing is only a draft--an idea of what your book is about. Don't go back and edit, just keep moving forward. If you write something you don't like, don't delete it, just use the strikethrough function and then move on. That way it still counts toward your goal, you have a reminder for later that this is a part you hate, and you never know--you may end up keeping it later.
2. Chip away.
We don't all have hours of time, so use every spare minute. Don't wait for huge chunks of writing time, chip away. The words will accumulate.
3. Keep your fingers moving.
When you don't know what to write next, don't stare at the computer screen with glazed eyes, keep your fingers typing. Drag out the scene you just finished, write a boring transitional scene of your character driving home from work, write anything that will up your word count and keep your mind going.
You'll be surprised at the ideas that will pop into your head while writing a bunch of boring nonsense--just as long as you keep those finger going. Sure it will all get cut later, but in the mean time, the words count and your brain is working.
4. Be all in.
It's easy at this stage to say, "Well, I got off to a good start, I guess that's good enough." Don't give in to that little voice of doubt telling you you can't finish. If you really want to be a successful writer, you have to be all in--not just in November, but all the time. Discipline is how a goal is reached, always.
Being an author means writing. It means hard work. And it means meeting your goals and deadlines. NaNo is good practice for discipline.
Good luck to all you NaNoers this month!
Share some of your tips on how you are succeeding.
By Julie Daines
Ladies and Gents, I think it's high time for some fun and games. How about a nice round of Guess the Emoji?
Each emoji below is a clue to a book title. They are all works of literature ranging from middle grade to adult, classic to modern. Remember to think outside the box.
Here they are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Leave your answers in the comments. You have until Friday midnight to enter, I'll post the answers and the winner on Saturday, September 27.
Good luck!
And since I happen to have a stack of extra books lying around, anyone who makes a guess will be entered into a random drawing to win a book of their choice. If you guess them all right, you will be entered twice. Yippee!
The choices are (And just for clarification, these have nothing to do with the emojis.):
By Julie Daines
There's a lot of confusion out there about indie publishers and self-publishers. Let just get straight to the point. Here is this:
Don’t Confuse Independent Publishing with Self-Publishing
Indie, Independent and Small Press Publishing Are So, Soooooo Different from Self-Publishing, Vanity Presses and Pay-to-Publish “Publishing”
I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a zillion times: yes, dear author-to-be (and those already published), there is a difference between self-publishing, vanity presses, pay-to-publish, a small press, and independent publishing. Don’t mix them up. Don’t get confused.
She quotes Wikipedia:
The majority of small presses are independent or indie publishers, thismeans that they are separate from the handful of major publishing house conglomerates, such as Random House or Hachette. The term ‘indie publisher’ should not be confused with ‘self-publisher’, which is where the author publishes only their own books.
Defined this way, these presses make up approximately half of the market share of the book publishing industry.
This is a great article if you're confused about any of these terms. Go and check it out.
Unfortunately, I feel the term independent publishing (Indie) is going the same way so many words have already gone--Verbicide. It is used so frequently in the wrong sense that it's original meaning is becoming lost.
My “next” project that I’ve been working on forever has been giving me fits. One of the dilemmas is what age to make the characters, and therefore, who the target audience will.
I’m an MG kind of a guy. I’ve spent a career teaching fifth and sixth graders. I know how they operate, what shenanigans they think they can get away with, and the cocky attitudes they employ to pull it off. And I’m smart enough to realize they probably got away with a few things I wasn’t aware of. They’re as capable as teenagers of scheming wild ideas, just not as aware of when the silly notion won’t work.
Earlier this week, Julie Daines said to listen to your gut, our writer’s intuition that is our friend should we choose to listen. I think my friend is telling me to take it MG. But the first time I did that, I overshot my audience. What to do, what to do?
Then a timely article arrived this month from Writer’s Digest. In “The Key Differences Between Middle Grade Vs. Young Adult,” agent Marie Lamba of The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency helps clarify the two. She sees a lot of queries of manuscripts with “an MG/YA identity crisis.” She rejects many of these simply because the writer did not know the basics of the age group they thought they were writing for.
In a nutshell, the differences boil down to a few areas:
Age of readers
Middle-grade does not mean middle school. MG is for readers ages 8-12 and 13-18 for YA. While there is no “tween” category, middle school libraries tend to have shelves for both. There are upper and lower MG as there is in YA.
Age of protagonists
Kids “read up” so your characters should be on the higher end of the age of the readers. Thus a 10-year old hero would be ideal for a lower MG, 12 or even 13 for upper MG, and 17 or 18 for YA. Your YA character can’t yet be in college.
Manuscript length
30,000-50,000 words is the norm for MG while YA starts at 50,000 and goes up to 75,000. These are not set in stone, but a good length to shoot for. Fantasy novels can exceed that due to the world-building necessary.
Voice
YA is usually written in first person while third person is common for MG.
Content
There is a difference in what is allowable in each. While there is no profanity, graphic violence, or sexuality in works for younger readers, they are acceptable for YA, the exception being erotica. In a recent Writer’s Digest webinar, Jennifer Laughran of Andrea Brown Literary Agency says a few “Hells” and “damns” are okay for MG, but the harsher curses should be avoided. MG heroes can have romance, but it should be limited to a crush or first kiss. Generally, MG novels end on a hopeful note while that isn’t necessary of YA works. Marie Lamba says there are gatekeepers between you and your middle-grade audience - parents, teachers, librarians - who may discourage the book. That ultimately could affect a publishers’s choice to print it. This isn’t as much an issue for YA, though gratuitous sex, numerous F-bombs, and extensive violence could mean the book may sit in fewer schools.
Mind-set
This is a biggie, the one I missed when I originally wrote the book. MG focuses on friends, family, and the character’s immediate world and their relationship to it; character react to what happens to them, with minimal self-reflection. YA characters discover how they fit in the world beyond their friends and family; they reflect more on what happens and analyze the meaning of things. Jennifer Laughran says that MG kids test boundaries and have adventures “finding their place within a system” whereas YA teens do the same, while “busting out of the system” and find themselves.
There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. Once you have the writing chops of J.K. Rowling, you, too, can write a 200,000 word tale. But even Harry didn’t kiss Ginny until they were teenagers.
So I’m listening, gut, my quiet friend. I do wish you would speak louder sometimes.
(This article also posted at http://writetimeluck.blogspot.com)
By Julie Daines
I'm not much of an outliner. I've tried it before, and it just doesn't seem to work for me. I wish it did because it seems like a much better way to write. But no. For me, I just can't.
So, I'm constantly asked, how do you work out the pacing of your novel?
Good question.
I am now going to divulge my secret and never-before-spoken-out-loud trick.
I listen to my gut.
Here's how it works:
I'm writing a scene. It's going great. The dialogue is fun, the action intense, and the conflict building. Then suddenly, I get this wrenching, panicky feeling right in the middle of my stomach. It says, "Oh my gosh, this is getting too long. You're dragging it out. Something new has to happen. You've got to move on." My blood races and my fingers shake unsteadily on the keyboard.
"MOVE ON!" it screams.
I listen. I wrap it up and move on. On to the next scene and the next plot point.
Is this a scientific method? No. Will you find it on Blake Snyder's Save the Cat beat list? No. But it works--for me.
Our guts--our writer's intuition--can often be our best friend if we take the time to listen. Feed back from critique partners, from beta readers, pacing, character names, character reactions, almost any part of our novel will speak to us.
Take a moment, consider carefully all sides, and listen to your gut. It is your friend.
When have--or when do--your writerly instincts kick in and help you?
By Julie Daines
The other day I had the most wonderful surprise. A reader read my book, Unraveled, and loved it so much she created a Pinterest board for it with a few pictures that sparked her imagination about certain elements of the story.
I can't believe I didn't think of that. What a great way to share fun visuals with readers. I started thinking how Pinterest could be used as a promotional tool, as a forum to draw readers together to share something they love, or as an idea generator while drafting.
Here is a link to her awesome Pinterest board. It's only got seven pictures, but it captures the novel perfectly.
I'm not always the best at using all the tools at hand when it comes to writing and promoting.
I'd love to hear ideas from all of you on ways you've seen Pinterest--or any of the social media platforms--used in any part of the writing process.
By: Tabitha Thompson,
on 5/9/2014
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Recently our blogger Yamile wrote about including diversity in our books for children. One of her great points was to make the character of ethnicity the hero or heroine rather than the sidekick.
I'd like to continue with that topic as I am currently working on a picture book to help young children understand how to approach people with physical disabilities.
There aren't a lot of books that include differently abled leads, but (UCW's own) Julie Daines' book, "Unraveled" offers young readers a heroine whose legs are crippled. Daines said that she wanted to provide a love story without the perfect princess-type heroine.
Frankly, I'm surprised there aren't more heroes and heroines with such issues. Not only does it increase understanding of diversity in readership, but in the most clinical of writing terms, it can be very useful to the drama of the story as it adds another layer of difficulty with which the character must contend.
Another tough, but useful, subject is long-term illness in children.
Lupus is a topic dear to my heart (in the interest of full disclosure, I am the board chair of the Lupus Foundation of America, Utah Chapter). And I get to interact with some of our youth who are dealing with this disease. They are bright, enthusiastic, and overburdened--trying to balance the regular social interactions and school with fatigue and other health-related complications.
Lupus causes flares and remissions of widely variable time frames--sometimes within the same day. This is difficult for a lot of adults to understand. But kids are often labeled by their peers as "fakers"; symptoms ebb and wane, affecting different parts of the body at different times, and fatigue is always lurking in the background.
So, while I add a rousing cheer to Yamile's great post and remind you, our UCW blog readers, to consider diversity of all kinds in your lead characters, allow me one latitude (I promise to only take the blog sideways ONCE this year):
Tomorrow is the Walk to End Lupus Now in Salt Lake City's Liberty Park.
I invite you to join us. Walk. People watch. And see some really heroic characters.
www.utahlupus.org
Pleasant Grove City Library presents: 2014 Professional Writers Series
Come meet local authors from a variety of genres. These authors will share their views on the creative process. Discover what makes a storyline, how to write historical fiction and what drives writers. You could come away from this exceptional series with a new sense of purpose and direction, not to mention ideas that should spark your imagination for days to come.
Mark your calendars for all these free presentations now! Each presentation will begin at 7:00 p.m. and will be on the lowest level of the library. There will be a Q&A after each session.
Julie Daines - "First Chapter Perfection: Learn the Elements Necessary to Make your First Chapter Shine"
Thursday, March 20, 7:00 p.m.
Julie Daines was born in Massachusetts and raised in Utah. She spent eighteen months living in London, where she studied and fell in love with English literature, sticky toffee pudding, and the mysterious guy who ran the kebab store around the corner.
She loves reading, writing, and watching movies—anything that transports her to another world. She picks Captain Wentworth over Mr. Darcy, firmly believes in second breakfast, and never leaves home without her vervain.
She is the author of
A Blind Eye (published February 2013), and has won several awards for her writing.
By Julie Daines
Writing is generally considered a low risk profession. But there are several serious--and even terminal--diseases to be on the lookout for. Here are a few that affect me.
1. Obsessive Compulsive Editing Disorder (OCED). I edit everything from the back of cereal boxes to notes from my kids to whatever novel I'm reading. I wish I could turn it off, but there doesn't seem to be a switch. It's almost impossible for me to read a book without a pencil in hand to add a comma here or delete a word there. I hate it. I just want to enjoy the story.
2. Unintentional Analytical Plot Predicting Syndrome. (Also known as Beat Beating.) I can't watch a movie or TV show without analyzing the plot and trying to predict the ending. My husband asks me why I even bother watching any more because I always know what's going to happen.
3. Author Attention Distraction Disorder (AADD, also frequently referred to as "crazy"). I'm constantly distracted. Not by shiny toys and squirrels, but by everything inside my head. "Mom, this is really important. I have to have one hundred..." One hundred. Yes! That's it! What if my main character lives a hundred miles away? That would put enough strain on the relationship to make the scene work better and lead right into the climax. But then the villain... "Mom? Did you hear me?" "What? Is someone talking to me?"
4. Blood Shot Twitchy Eye Syndrome. Some call it insomnia, when you wake up in the middle of the night because you just had this great idea and you can't go back to sleep because scenes and dialogue keep playing out over and over in your mind. Please just make it stop!
5. Acute Hyper-Friendlessness Complex (AKA: Loner's Disease). I've always been an introvert, but since I started writing, it's blossomed into an epidemic. A single person epidemic. How can I have time for friends when I have scenes to write, edits to make, and research to do. I've already got hoards of voices in my mind, why do I need more? Come on people! What's more important here? Real life or the fictional world I've created in my head?
What disease do you suffer for the sake of your art?
I’m still working on a story I began in November. Most people called it quits on November 30, but for me I’m still on NaNoWriMo, about day 120.
Writing in NaNo style is kind of fun. The goal is to slap down a story rough draft in thirty days. You just write. You send the internal editor out of the room and just write. I’ve had a problem shutting that guy up so ignoring him was a joy of NaNo.
My normal style is to obsess over every little sentence. I can’t move on to chapter two until chapter one is perfect. It was so freeing in November to let the story just flow, with a note here or there on how to fix it during the next draft. My problem was I didn’t have it roughed out in my head so at times I wrote aimlessly, going around in circles. But when I had direction, it was liberating to lay the story down in a quick fashion.
Now I am trying to finish that first draft, the first 50,00 words for NaNo and again, I fall back into old habits of obsession over perfection. My critique group pointed out the problem and said to return to NaNo style. I’ve done that, but internal editor man still manages to pop up, even though I’ve told him to leave me alone.
A couple inspirational posts have appeared on this blog. Julie Daines commented that the first chapter can never be perfected until the entire story is complete. That makes a lot of sense. You need a beginning and it can have direction. But there’s no need to fixate on it when it’s going to change anyway to accommodate the path it takes.
Scott Rhoades had a great post last week with his truth about first drafts. “Books don't escape the mind fully fledged and ready to fly,” he said. That brilliant idea in your head can look so flawed in the first draft. No matter how ugly that first attempt is, the writer must persevere and tell the story, then come back and make the repairs.
Scott offered a quote from Terry Pratchett that echoed what my critique group said. "The first draft is just you telling yourself the story." I like that little line and it has carried me all week long. You may have a general idea of the plot and the characters who live it, but you really don’t know the story for sure until you tell it to yourself.
So I’m telling myself a story. Maybe one of these days I’ll finish my NaNo project.
Son of a Thousand Faces
By: Julie Daines
Well, since I ran out of time to write a short story, I decided to post a first chapter from a work in progress. Enjoy.
CHAPTERONE
Cull: verb, to reduce thesize of a herd or flock by removing a proportion of its members.
I step out from the shadows. No onesees me. When I wear my own face, I am invisible—a shiver of darkness, a badfeeling, a whiff of something unpleasant.
I squat down at the victim’s head.Time to collect what I came for. My hands hover above him, fingers spread wide.I touch my thumbs and forefingers together, forming a sort-of triangle, andpull. His soul slips out. It flows into my hands and I shape it to form asphere, an ethereal ball made up of what’s left of probably a once-good man.
The place is thick with cops, theentrance to the office building a tangle of yellow police tape. They alwaysshow up, but never in time. Doesn’t matter, this was an easy win. It’s notrocket science to convince a desperate man that his family would be better offwithout him.
I would like my gun back, though.
One of the officers sticks a penthrough the trigger-guard and holds it up, the black carbon steel glints fromthe blue and red strobes flashing through the front windows. He slips it intoan evidence bag. As many times as that guns been fired, I’ve never once pulledthe trigger.
The paramedic wipes his sleeve acrosshis sweaty brow. “Time of death: 4:23 AM.” For the last twenty minutes he’sbeen fighting to save Mr. Jin. I could have told the medic he’d lost the battleas soon as I had orders to collect him.
Actually, it was Jin’s daughter myfather ordered me to bring in. Or at least her soul. I guess she’s somethingspecial. But, dads are so over-protective of their girls, it seemed best totake him first. Two birds with one stone: dad is out of the way; girl ends updistraught. Emotional instability makes my job so much easier.
I need that in this complicatedbusiness—finding the right face to wear, g
By Julie Daines
By now you should be wrapping up your NaNoWriMo projects. I finished my 50K over the holiday weekend. *Wipes Brow*
The next step - Revisions!
Here are a few tips on revising that work for me:
-Let it rest for a few days. A week or two is best, so the themes can percolate.
-Read the last two or three chapters first--without making any changes--and then go back to chapter one. We know our characters so much better by the end of a book--what the main conflicts are, themes that have emerged, the character arc. Keeping the ending in mind will strengthen the beginning.
-See my post on using a timeline to keep track of everything. You can do a lot of jumping around during revisions, and this helps keep things straight.
-Don't be afraid to kill your darlings. You may have written something awesome, but that doesn't mean you can't write something better. If it doesn't fit, it will only cause blisters!
-GET FEEDBACK! Critique groups, beta readers... anything. And listen. If you don't know what advice to accept and what not to, read this post on Storyfix.
-Ask yourself why? Why did my character think that? Why does this upset her? Why did he just say that? Most first drafts are lacking in interiority. Let the reader understand what motivates your character, and what it is that your character really wants.
What are some of your tips for revising?
Angel and Iron
This is a day of celebrations. It is my birthday, and it is my wedding day. I rejoice in neither.
They tell me that now I’m fifteen, I am old enough to marry. They are wrong. They also tell me our two kingdoms must unite. I am to be his second wife. His first wife died in childbirth. I have never met him.
My handmaiden fits a veil of netted, snow-white silk atop my head, securing it in place with a silver crown. I enter the great hall with my face covered. He waits for me, standing before the priest.
I walk slowly, keeping my head high and shoulders straight. I clasp my hands in front of me to hide the trembling. He is twice my age. A great warrior. Perhaps if he were not so great, I would not be here now, marrying this man to spare my people war.
I take my place beside him. He turns to me, lifting my veil with a flourish, sending it high over my head. It floats down my back silently, like the fall of angel wings. His eyes are the color of raw iron, partly brown and partly grey. They catch and hold my gaze, digging deep as the mines from whence the iron came. I don’t want this man to know me. I look away.
The priest says his part. A gold band slips onto my finger. My husband leans down to kiss me. I close my eyes, lift my mouth, and brace myself. His lips touch my cheek. He laughs so softly, it is nothing more than a breath on my skin.
A cheer rises from the crowd. He grasps my hand and lifts it. His skin is rough and worn. We dine together, at the head of the table. He keeps my goblet filled. When the music starts, leads me onto the floor. I curtsey to him, then we move to the song of the harp, performing the steps of the wedding dance.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
You are very old. I don’t say it. “Thank you, my lord.”
His iron eyes are on me, watching. Perhaps this is how he became such a fine warrior—observing with patience the movements of others. I feel him stripping away my barriers, exposing my weakness without saying a word.
I turn, moving with the music in a circle around him.
“You are unhappy?” he asks.
“No, my lord.” I try to smile, but I’ve forgotten how.
“I can see that you are. Why should you not be? No girl wants a stranger for a husband.”
No, indeed. But if I let the words out, I fear the tears will follow. I stare at his boots.
“Maerwyn.” He says my name. “Come with me.” He takes my hand and leads me from the great hall, towing me up the narrow, stone steps. Up
Haha this made me laugh out loud!
I'm totally with you on the first 2!
I feel like #1 is getting worse and worse for me over time. I miss being able to enjoy a book based solely on its STORY. I've always been distracted by grammatical errors, but now you can add plot holes, cliches, and about a million other things to that list. *Sigh*
And I predict every tv show and movie I watch. Luckily, my husband does, too.
Fun post! One of my AADD symptoms is that I can be talking to somebody about something important, at home or work, and I suddenly realize I'm paying more attention to their gestures, the way their lips move, the position and shape of their head, the way they change their vowels as they get excited, or any number of things that might turn out to be useful some day.