Learning to Rewrite

by Jemi Fraser

For me learning to rewrite a draft was NOT an easy road.

Stage #1 - Complete Ignorance

• in my first rewrite, I had no idea what I was doing. I went through the draft, fixed all the typos, tweaked some sentences, and was daring enough to eliminate a couple of paragraphs here and there
• then I met some amazing folks over at Agent Query Connect and learned that a rewrite should be a slightly more intense process

Stage #2 - Gaining Confidence

• the next step in my journey was realizing that everything I'd written in my first drafts didn't have to be included in the final draft. I could take out entire scenes. I could move entire scenes. Change pov.
• these realizations actually shocked me, and took me a while to wrap my head around 
• at this point, I carefully saved each new 'draft' with a date indicating the changes

Stage #3 - Gaining Crit Buddies

• this changed my world and burst my naive little bubble. And I will be forever grateful.
• I learned that a rewrite involved more than the tweaking I'd been doing.
• reaching deep down into the story was pretty tough. I was faced with some big realizations. Probably the biggest one was that external conflict isn't enough. There needed to be internal conflict too. For both my MCs (I write romance).
• this involved re-reading and re-writing scene by scene, making changes, keeping track of changes, making notes, deleting favourite scenes & lines, adding conflict (lots and lots of adding conflict)
• I no longer saved drafts, only the main one, with a folder (I'd discovered Scrivener at this point) with the very few scenes I though I might want to reuse or rescue somehow

Stage #4 - A Real Rewrite

• I tried my Stage 3 version of rewriting for several of my novels, and found it very discouraging. Several stories I know have tons of potential were languishing. I also discovered Stage 3 is HARD. Very hard. For me, a million times more difficult than writing a first draft.
• brainwave!
• I decided to dump all my chapters and scenes into a new Scrivener folder titled Draft 1
• because I love (LOVE!!) writing first drafts, I decided to treat Draft 2 like a Draft 1
• I rewrote the draft from scratch. At first I found it tough to not peek at the first draft, but it definitely got easier. The changes I needed to make were core changes and because of that, the story changed dramatically, while keeping the same basic plot elements, and I already knew those plot elements, so I didn't peek.

Stage #5 - Unknown

• as I'm evolving as a writer, I know my style will change too
• I've got 5 or 6 stories begging for rewrites (I was stuck fast in Stages 2 & 3 for far too long) and at this point I'm nearly salivating wanting to do a Stage 4 rewrite for each of them
• I wonder if I'll have discovered Stage 5 by the time I get to them all?

Learning to write well (and to rewrite well) is a personal journey. My journey will probably look nothing like yours, but I hope by sharing mine, you might find some ideas to help you move along to the next step. Or suggestions as to what Stage 5 might look like for me!

Do you rewrite? Do your rewrites look anything like mine?

Jemi Fraser is an aspiring author of contemporary romance. She blogs  and tweets while searching for those HEAs.

All Things in Moderation - Even Writing Advice

by J. Lea López

 Have you ever watched one of those weight loss stories where the person who's lost 120 pounds says something along the lines of, "I had tried everything. Every fad diet, every pill. Everything. Then one day I woke up and I knew I couldn't live like this any more. I was killing myself. That's when I started my journey to getting truly healthy. It was hard work. But I did it, and I feel great."

Well, I'm there. With my writing, that is. And hopefully you can learn from my journey.

I also have weight struggles, but I've never been one for crash dieting to the extreme. There are all kinds of "cures" and systems out there, many of which seem to contradict each other. Low Glycemic, Atkins, Weight Watchers, Gluten-free, Paleo, all bacon all the time (I don't know if that's really a diet, but I could get behind that). There are a lot of people who seem to do well on each of these plans, but sometimes people can take it to unhealthy extremes. The same goes for writing advice. Taken to extremes, even the best advice can be detrimental to your writing. I'm sure you've heard - and tried to implement - a lot of it:

• No adverbs. Ever!
• Action, action, action! Tension, all the time! 
• Be unique - but don't be so unique that you're the only one who will get your writing.
• Start smack dab in the middle of the action and let every word further the plot from there.
• Banish every trace of passive voice.
• Read all the classics because they're the only benchmarks by which to measure your talent!
• Characters shouldn't growl, breathe, or hiss their words. Using anything other than "said" is a crime against humanity!
• Personalize your query - but don't kiss ass.
• Blog, tweet, market, network and get your name out there - but do it the "right" way.

The list could go on and on. There are valid points of advice that inform each of those statements, of course, but too often we try to incorporate too much of other people's advice into our technique. Then we wonder what happened to the voice, the pizzazz of our own writing that we were pretty sure was there when we first started.

I was tweeting with a writing friend the other day about food and nutrition. I told her that my approach now was more along the lines of everything in moderation, while focusing on thing that are as natural as possible, not depriving myself of fun stuff, not beating myself up when I don't eat as well as I want, and being aware of foods that are triggers or have specific health consequences for me, as opposed to what other people tell me my body should or shouldn't have.

Then I realized my personal approach to writing and publishing had shifted to something very similar recently.

Somehow, somewhere, one day, something just clicked. I'm open to learning new things, hearing criticism, discovering better ways to do things and challenge myself as a writer. But the bottom line is that literary crash diets, like the nutritional ones, will ultimately get you nowhere. I know my own strengths as well as my own weaknesses, and the plethora of writing advice and literary techniques are like a massive buffet that I can pick and choose from to get my desired results.

This year, I hope any of you prone to dangerous writing crash diets will learn to take all advice in moderation and trust your writerly gut. Do you know why there are so many nutritional plans out there that all seem to work for so many different people? Because health and nutrition isn't one-size-fits-all. Neither is writing.

If you've deleted every adverb and gerund from your writing and it still seems a bit sickly, take a deep breath and a step back. Trust me, it will click. It will be hard work to get your writing into prime condition. But it will be worth it.

Are you guilty of crash dieting with writing advice in an attempt to get your writing in tip top shape?

J. Lea López writes erotica and women's fiction. Find her on Twitter or her blog. To read some of her mainstream short stories, check out the anthologies The Fall: Tales from the Apocalypse and Spring Fevers. Find some of her erotic short stories on her Facebook page.

It was a dark and stormy night...

by S. L. Duncan

Not too long ago, I got notes back from my agent on my new manuscript. It’s a weird thing sending your work out to someone who has both the power to crush months of work in a single blow or light the fuse of another possible dream come true.  What follows from the moment we authors hit send is a frozen, panicked state of fear while we wait for the worst.

Well, at least that's what happens to me. Hence my absence from the interwebs.

I’m thankful to report his enthusiasm falls somewhere on the latter end of that spectrum. After some light refocusing of plot, we’ll be submitting in Spring!

So long as the news is mostly good, I love getting notes. I know; that’s a stupid thing to say. It’s sort of like, “I don’t mind playing Monopoly, so long as I win.” But finding the better story in a good story is a blast. Trying to make a broken story work is ... well ... work.

Accompanying my good news was a list of the story’s strengths and weaknesses. As a story that takes place during World War II, atmosphere was an extremely important thing for me to get right. London during the Blitz had a specific feel and look. Its people spoke in a specific manner and rhythm. Somehow, according to my agent, I’ve managed to not screw that up.

So I want to talk a little about atmosphere, inspired in part by this post at my blog over at INKROCK.com. In the recipe of the narrative, atmosphere is like a stock or base—the foundation for where the world of the story will be built and the characters will (appropriately) live and breathe. Take for example a thriller or horror story, where atmosphere functions to encourage feelings of suspense or fear. It’s not just the dark and stormy night, by why there’s a feeling of fear and suspense. What about the world created by the author makes the characters (and thus the reader) feel fear and suspense?

I recently read Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. If this book does anything brilliantly, it’s atmosphere. From the feel of the swamp to the look and attitudes of the characters, you are drawn into the world. Atmosphere is one of Russell’s sharpest tools, creating the sandbox that would inspire these characters and motivations. More than just setting, her atmosphere flavors the story with a specific reality unique to this story.

So how do you get atmosphere right? Well, I suppose that depends. For me, to capture the atmosphere of the Nineteen Forties London Blitz, I had the benefit of looking to a specific time and place in history. Using books, radio programs, war diaries compiled by the BBC, and films, I got a sense of how people lived in their natural environment during this unnatural time. Once you know what it was like to live in their world, in their reality, you can make character decisions that make sense in the context of the time and place of the specific story.

That’s atmosphere.

The trick is making everything connect. Character decisions, motivations, settings—all these things have to feel real and appropriate as they work together to weave the narrative. Atmosphere should be what bridges all these things together and form the reality.

What works for you? Any books out there that you’ve recently read that do it well?

S. L. Duncan writes young adult fiction, including his debut, the first book in The Revelation Saga, due in 2014 from Medallion Press. You can find him blogging on INKROCK.com and Twitter.

A Physical Experiment

by R.S. Mellette

Let's play a game.  It should take about 10 minutes, and be fun for you and educational for us all.  I'll explain why after the game.

Here are the rules:

1. Read the following few words of a work in progress.

"You're in a lot of trouble, young lady." 

Adults say the stupidest things sometimes.  Of course twelve-year-old Suzy Quinofski was in trouble.  She was covered in dirt and dried tears.  Her fingers were cracked and bloody from digging in the ground, and she was being questioned in a police interrogation room.  The man informing her of the obvious was Detective Mark Danner. 

"You don't know the half of it," she said to him.  Actually, he didn't know a tenth of it.  He didn't know a millionth of it.

"Then why don't you fill me in?"

"Because you couldn't comprehend it if I did."

"Suzy!"  Janice Quinofski, a.k.a. Mom, used what Suzy called her "bad dog!" voice, reserved for those rare occasions when Suzy needed disciplining.  Obviously, Mom wasn't accustomed to seeing her sweet, straight-A, multiple-scholarship-contender, daughter acting like a street kid.  This was a whole new world for both of them.

"What, Mom?  It's true."  Then to Danner, "No offense.  I don't think there's anyone on the planet who could understand it."

"It's not that complicated.  I just want to know what happened to Billy Bobble."

"I told you.  He disappeared."

"Disappeared to where?" asked Danner.

"If I knew that he wouldn't be 'disappeared,' would he?"

"There was an explosion," said Danner.

"No, there was an endoplasmic eruption of what we think might be Bose-Einstein condensate on an OTC scale."

"OTC?"

When Suzy didn't answer, Danner turned to her mother.  "Off the chart."

"Out of all of that what you didn't get was OTC?" asked Suzy.

"Maybe I'm not as dumb as you think."

Suzy nodded her head toward the two-way mirror that filled a wall of the interrogation room.  "Maybe you've had too many lawyers complain about abbreviations in your transcripts."

"Call it what you want," said Danner to Suzy ...  "Something blew up and it took Billy with it."

"Maybe so," said Suzy, "but not in the way you think."

"How then?"

"If Billy exploded his guts would be all over the school yard.  Did you find any bloody remains in Linda Lubinski's hair?"

"Suzy!  Billy was your friend."

"Is my friend, Mom.  Billy is my friend and I wish they would let me out of here so I could help get him back."

"How would you do that?" asked Danner.

She hung her head.  "I don't know."

"Okay, good.  That was honest.  Keep it up and together we can find Billy."  Suzy's silence passed as capitulation. 

"Your friends have told us—"

"They aren't my friends."

Danner stopped to acknowledge what she said, then went on.  "They told us you and Billy were working on some sort of elaborate magic trick."

"Not a trick.  Actual magic."

"Hey, I need that honesty.  You're smart enough to know there's no such thing as actual magic."

"Okay, if you want to get all Arthur C. Clarke on me; 'Technology advanced to the point of being indistinguishable from magic' - which for you would probably be a cell phone."

"Suzy!"

"That's all right, Ms. Quinofski.  Suzy, you can be as surly and sarcastic as you like, so long as you tell me what happened.  How did Billy disappear?"

"It's a long story."

"I get paid by the hour."

"You won't believe me."

"Try me."

"Okay."  Suzy glared at him with as cold of a stare as she could muster and told the truth.  "Billy Bobble has a magic wand."

###

Done?  Good.  Now:

2. In the comments section write a sentence or two describing what the characters in the excerpt look like WITHOUT GOING BACK TO RE-READ IT and WITHOUT READING ANYONE ELSE'S DESCRIPTION. 

3. When you've done that, read the rest of this blog, then feel free to add another comment at the end and read the other descriptions.

You've had to go through this experiment because I am still bitter about something a high school teacher did to me grade-wise decades ago.

It was my senior year.  English Composition.  We were told to write a paper describing a person we knew.  I'm sure our teacher – whose name escapes me – was just following along in the lesson plan.  I don't think she'd been out of college a full year yet.  We were supposed to learn about descriptive paragraphs, so the assignment was to describe a person.

I happened to have an afterschool job in an ice cream shop at the time, and a girl I worked with was extremely annoying, so I wrote about her.  Thing is, I never wrote about what she looked like, only what she said.  The story was nothing but dialogue.

My teacher gave me a B+.  I think.  I do remember she thought I'd be all excited about the plus.  "It's really good," she told me, "but you didn't do the assignment.  You didn't describe the character."

"Sure I did," I complained.  "Tell me what she looks like."

I kid you not, a police sketch artist could have drawn a picture from her description, and you'd have sworn it was a photo of this girl.  I nailed it.  I put the image of the character in her mind.

No go.  Still a C+.  Or B+.  Whatever it was, it wasn't an A.

Flash forward years later to someone giving me advice on screenwriting.  "You don't want to paint too clear of a physical picture of the character because you don't know what star might read the script.  If you say she looks like Pamela Anderson, and the script lands on Meryl Streep's desk, then you've screwed up."

But now I write novels as well as screenplays, and I like using actions and dialogue to make the reader think I've told them what the character looks like, when in fact, I've only given them clues and they've filled in the rest.

OR...

I'm fooling myself and what I think is style is simply laziness.  Honestly, I don't know, which is why I created this experiment.

If you wrote a description in the comments – and I hope you have, because this post will be embarrassing without them – go back and re-read the excerpt to see if you can find where you got your ideas from.  The writing is from my latest WIP, Billy Bobble Has A Magic Wand.  I'm curious if the magic has worked.

R.S. Mellette is an experienced screenwriter, actor, director, and novelist. You can find him at the Dances With Films festival blog, and on Twitter, or read him in the Spring Fevers anthology.

Perspective on Our Times

by R.S. Mellette

My neighbor will turn 100 years old this month. She was as old as I am now when I was born. When she was one year old, the first drive-in gas station was built, bringing the total number of gasoline-purposed buildings up to 3 in the whole country.

I think of her every time I see commercials on TV for natural gas drilling in America, where they say that—using fracking—we have 100 years of gas reserves. By the time I'm my neighbor's age, the country will be halfway out of gas. By the time someone born today is her age, we will have no gas reserves at all, so I wonder what the gas lobby is bragging about.

Why do I bring this enviro-political hot potato up in a writing blog? Because of something a Turkish acting teacher told our class at North Carolina School of the Arts 30 years ago. "Know the politics of your character," she said, and followed up with, "the politics of most American characters is none at all, which is just as telling."

And I think of Steinbeck, who was 10 years old when my neighbor was born. He told stories of families and working class individuals against the backdrop of the only economic times worse than those we are living in today.

I think of Mark Twain, who died just two years before my neighbor was born. He recorded the voices of America from his youth, when this was not a free country for many of the people who built it.

And I wonder what young Twain might live in Arizona? What Steinbeck might now be on the road to a North Dakota oil boomtown? For the first time in world history, we have to change our economy from a high-density fuel source (fossil fuels) to a lower one (hydrogen, solar, wind). Will we have a writer to take us through this change the way Charles Dickens (died 42 years before my neighbor was born) took us from wood to coal, or Upton Sinclair (34 when my neighbor was born) from coal to oil?

Sure, you might not write about these world changing events, but if your stories are contemporary, they should be included. They play in the background. They are the undertow to the waves your characters face. And we, as authors, owe it to our society to record their effects.

We writers are all Tom Joad. He promised to "be there" and so should we.

R.S. Mellette is an experienced screenwriter, actor, director, and novelist. You can find him at the Dances With Films festival blog, and on Twitter, or read him in the Spring Fevers anthology.

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling

by Stephen L. Duncan

I had this whole post ready for you about the Writer’s Wall inspired by a fairly brutal editing session I had last week. No, not Writer’s Block; this is something totally different. Writer’s Block you suffer from. Writer’s Wall you crash into.

We’ll come back to it next time, once the bruises fade a little.

It’s a happy week and I’m in the mood to focus on something positive and Writer’s Wall, dear friends, is not something positive. Therefore, I'm calling an audible.

So this week I came across Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats' Twitter feed. On it, she has listed out, one post at a time, Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling, as you might have guessed from my title. Probably not Official in the sense that these rule are laid out in some company policy manual somewhere, but there is wonderfully sound advice here that is definitely applicable to us hopeful scribes. If there is anything Pixar gets right, it's a great story.

Here Emma is in all her 140 character glory:

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what's interesting to you as an audience, not what's fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won't see what the story is actually about til you're at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it's not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you're stuck, make a list of what WOULDN'T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you've got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you'll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it's poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What's the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That's the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don't succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it's not working, let go and move on—it'll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d'you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can't just write ‘cool'. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What's the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

And lastly, just to keep with the Pixar/quality of storytelling theme, here's a link to Kelly Flynn, my wife's cousin (and recent Ringling College of Art + Design graduate) with her amazing thesis film STONE COLD. The storytelling is brilliantly done and follows every rule above, hitting all the right notes (though she does not work for Pixar). I dare you not to smile.

Stephen L. Duncan writes young adult fiction, including his debut, the first book in The Revelation Saga, due in 2014 from Medallion Press. You can find him blogging on INKROCK.com and on Twitter.

Be Brave

by Stephen L. Duncan

I’m not going to lie. Preparing for my Debut Post here at From the Write Angle kept me up at night. Literally. It’s 4am as I finally write this.

This is a writing and publishing advice blog, and I’ve got loads of writing and publishing advice to offer, but that Debut Post sets a tone. It sets expectations. And that makes me cry just a little bit.

Okay, not literally on that last bit.

So as I floundered on a topic, I looked back at what I might have needed to hear at the beginning of my own journey and what I needed to say here became obvious. Sure, we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of being a writer and publication in my later posts, and I’ve got some good stuff to share (if not only from the lessons learned from the many mistakes I’ve made), but for now I want to reinforce something that you already know if you taken just one step forward on this path to see your work in print.

Be brave.

I’ve tried my hand at many a trade in my life. From grinding metal in a steel factory to trying cases in front of a jury. Writing is the hardest of them all. As an author, you are an exposed nerve, baring your soul for other’s bemusement or contempt, often getting no better than the peel of an apple gets from a knife. Understand: the lows will be crushing sometimes.

Be brave.

You will feel unworthy. You will believe, as we all have many times over, that this pursuit is in vain. That you don’t have The Right Stuff. That you have faultered in your belief that you have something to offer through the written word. You will question your talent. You will question your faith. You will question your taste. And at least once, you will quit this dream of making it in an industry that undervalues talent even at the highest peak of success.

Be brave.

Because the feeling of being rewarded for your effort outweighs all else, whether you self publish or land the big contract. We dream big, us writers. It’s part of the job description. We reach for distant stars and to do that we must have courage. We must be strong. In our way stands gatekeeper after gatekeeper. The Great Wall of No. We share in each other a camaraderie—a kind of common bond that is only forged through mass rejection and constant defeat.

Be brave.

This can be done. You can achieve. The goal can be reached. Even as cries of the end of this industry echo down upon us from the apocalypse du jour publishing journal, people will keep reading. Even as rejection after rejection accumulates like drifts of snow upon your desk, know that you may still become an author. Even as you retire a defeated manuscript only to begin again, determined to better your effort, to sharpen your raw talent, believe that your words may well be read one day by those who love books. And authors will always be needed. You, like me and everyone else that has stood in a bookstore and imagined their name on the shelf, can make the dream happen. It is within our power.

So long as you are brave.

Stephen L. Duncan writes young adult fiction, including his debut, the first book in The Revelation Saga, due in 2014 from Medallion Press. You can find him blogging on INKROCK.com and on Twitter.

Plot Bunny Proliferation: Working With Our Imaginations

by Cat Woods

Ask nearly any writer and you'll hear complaints about the distracting qualities of plot bunnies.  Current WIPs often get left by the wayside as brand new plot bunnies entice writers away from one project after another, leaving a wake of half-realized manuscripts.  Plot bunnies can be dangerous to the unsuspecting.  Just like their counterparts are in my garden.

My back yard is a bunny haven.  While we have two dogs, neither of them are interested in chasing bunnies away from my flowers.  We also have a fence that should keep the bunnies out.  Instead, it seems to keep them in.  I think they like the safety and the ready to eat treats.  We've tried... eliminating them in the kindest way possible to no avail.  So, after years of fighting them, I've gotten to the point of working with them.

I've allowed them unlimited winter access to my landscaping smorgasboard as long as they turn tail in the spring.  It seems to work for both of us.  They prune my lilac tree, and every spring it fills out beautifully.  They sheer off my perennials so I have less winter yuck to clean up.  And the babies are just too dang cute as they romp around in the melting snow.

Plot bunnies are no different than real bunnies.  They feed off the delicate blooms of our imaginations, yet can be nearly impossible to capture. They also multiply at the same rate—which is to say writers typically have far more of them at any given point than they know what to do with—and the babies are especially cute and compelling.

If left unchecked, both plot bunnies and their real life companions can destroy the best-laid plans.

While I haven't quite mastered corraling all my plot bunnies, I've found that treating them the same as my backyard bunnies helps keep my writing on track.

I allow them unlimited access during certain seasons. 

Seriously, in between projects I allow myself the freedom to explore any idea that pops into my head.  I have dozens of started projects.  These projects run about 1,200 words and capture the essence of my ideas.  I don't consider these failures or unfinished projects.  I consider them practice.  They also become a part of my writing file that I can pick through at other times.  By giving them page space, the plot bunnies settle down and allow me to funnel my attention on my WIPs.

I feed them.

Strange, but true.  I figure if I ever trap and kill off the rabbits in my mind, I'll have nothing left to work with, so I encourage them to multiply as needed.  I always carry a notebook with me.  It's filled with hundreds of mini-outlines, names, places, spaces and character sketches.  Whenever a new thought strikes, I jot it down and play with it.

What I find most often is that the plot bunny isn't fully formed—and likely never will be.  Rather, it is just a shiny, new idea that looks as cute and cuddly as the baby Easter Bunny.  It's exciting for a moment, but once it's placed in the notebook among the other bunnies, it loses some of its appeal.  It's underdeveloped and malnourished.  At least for the time being.

Rarely, the idea solidifies.  It gels, either on its own merit or within the context of other ideas.  Eventually, a few bunnies band together and prune back the winter detritus, leaving room for spring's new blooms.  Whenever I see or hear something I think my plot bunnies would like to eat, I add it to the notbeook.  As time goes on, these ideas become new WIPs. 

And the best part about feeding ideas this way: it takes virtually no time.  Once I pen my plot bunny in ink, I'm freed to think about other things.  Namely my current writing project.

So, the idea behind plot bunnies is to corral them, not eliminate them.  If we embrace our fertile imaginations and provide some boundaries for dealing with new ideas, we will be less tempted to leave our current WIPs whenever a new bunny hops by.

How do you wrangle your plot bunnies into submission?  Do you allow new ideas to take over current projects?  If so, how does that work out?

Curious minds want to know.

This weekend, Cat Woods started spring cleaning her garden.  Thanks to the backyard bunnies, she has more time to spend with her plot bunnies.  You can find her wrangling both rabbits on her blog: Words from the Woods.

Life is Like Writing ... In the Fast Lane

by R.C. Lewis

I recently did a post on my blog about observations on writing related to all my time on the road. As soon as I posted it, a couple more writing parallels struck me during my daily commute.

It's all about getting on the freeway.

First, we have the on-ramp. When I was in driver's ed, they taught me that the reason we have on-ramps instead of making right turns onto the freeway is so we have a chance to get up to speed. Some drivers must have missed that day in class. You don't want to be going 20 mph slower (or faster) than everyone else when you get there.

Same thing in our stories. Are we pushing the action forward at the right rate? Increasing the tension and intrigue steadily? Or are we dragging things out? Rushing them too much? We need to hit the right pace at the right time.

Once we get to the end of the ramp, we have to merge. Other cars are already on the freeway, and we need to tuck ourselves in ahead of some and behind others. When I was a new driver, I realized that merging is an art form. You have to prepare for it way ahead of time, watching traffic, predicting where you'll fit in, adjusting your speed.

The same art applies to merging threads in our narratives, particularly if there are two parallel storylines that eventually converge. We can't just jam them together—we have to see the merge as we're approaching. Chapters in advance, we have to see how they're going to mesh and nudge them toward each other.

I know these are silly "life is like writing" metaphors, but I find when they occur to me, they make me think of a new angle to check in my manuscripts. Maybe it's my teaching background—when trying to help a student grasp a new concept, I relate it to something much more familiar to them.

Do you have any metaphors you like to use in analyzing your writing (silly or otherwise)? How do they help you get your story on-track?

Writing Lessons from a Mannequin: Building Character

by Cat Woods

While in Chicago last fall, Dear Hubby and I awoke one night to a very loud and still-unidentified vibration. It was 4:30 in the morning. My courageous DH braved the boogey man and opened our hotel door.

"You have to see this."

I headed into the hall in my nightie only to be confronted by a slim porcelain leg. Actually four legs. 

Needless to say, we giggled ourselves back to sleep, and over the  next few days, shared the hysterical pictures of the motionless mannequins as they made their way around the 17th floor.

Incidentally, their antics got me thinking about characters.

To me, characters are the essence of a great book. I would rather read a dull plot with exciting characters than an inspiring plot with motionless mannequins.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Mister and Missus Mann E. Quin's Chicago antics. I just don't want to read about them for an entire novel. In fact, following lifeless, expressionless characters through the twists and turns of a riveting story is the fastest way for a book to get dropped from my reading list into the nearest dumpster.

And so I bring you:

Writing Lessons from a Mannequin

1. Give your characters a head. Seriously, Mister and Missus were headless wonders. I suppose it's so we don't freak out by finding our neighbor's mug on an overgrown doll, but still.  Characters in novels need a good head on their shoulders.  Don't get me wrong, they don't need a high IQ, they just need to have motive and reason.  They can't simply bumble around and stumble upon the murderer's identity.  They cannot spend an entire novel ducking at all the right times so as not to get shot.  This ploy only works in picture books and slap stick comedy.  So unless that's what you're writing, give your character a head and some brains to go along with it.
2. But if you choose to stick with brawn, please give your characters some flaws. The perfectly sculpted creatures in the hall were a bit unnerving. I mean who wants to gaze at flawless wonders? No scars marred their porcelain skin. No wrinkles or stretch marks or love handles could be found. Not a single mole or ingrown toenail existed between the lovely couple. Ugh. Make your MCs real.  Give us something to love and hate, to laugh at and laugh with.  Make them human, or we--your naturally flawed readers--will never relate to them.
3. And don't forget the details that make your MCs unique. Mister and Missus Mann E. Quin were barely distinguishable from each other. Granted Mister had more muscle tone and Missus had larger...pecs. But all in all, a slimmer build doth not set characters apart. Nothing about Mister's physique indicated his penchant for scotch and water, and we had no clue from Missus' calves that she was a bit capricious with a loyalty stronger than our aging black lab's. All we really knew was that they enjoyed frolicking nekkid in the halls of a very prestigious hotel.  They could have been any number of mannequins roaming the streets of Chicago.  A fate not good enough for your novels.
4. And lastly, throw in a little intrigue. Aside from obvious character traits, it's fun to give your MC a bit of mystery. Provide a quirk of some kind that plays into the larger picture. One that subtly speaks of the past and promises interest in the future. Yep, our otherwise silent friends did have one quirk that made DH and I scratch our heads in wonder. Mann E. wore a hard hat. One day it was yellow. Another day it was white. Sometimes there was writing on it and other times it was blank. He often shared it with Missus.  Intriguing to say the least, and a quirk that begged an answer: Why? 

Which brings me full-circle to Lesson One. Characters in novels need to be fully fleshed out and have the tools they need to succeed. Consider the MC's obsessive fascination with insects who solves the murder-by-poison mystery or the physically outmatched parkour nerd who outruns the bad guys in a maze-like trap. Often, it's these quirky personality traits, latent abilities, obsessive passions and physical flaws that save the day. 

They must be in our writing before they are needed so as to feel organic to the characters and the story.  They are the clues and red herrings we use as building blocks for the characters populating our novels.  They are pieces of the whole our readers will fall in love with.

Without an MC who leaps off the page and feels real--who makes us care enough to keep reading--we might as well knock around town with a headless doll in tow.  While this might be fun for a little while, eventually the weight will drag us down and we'll be tempted to ditch Mann E. in the nearest dumpster along with those nasty, characterless books.

How about you?  Do you like your characters perfect or do strive for realism?  Can a character be too realistic as to be fake?  If so, where is that line and how do we balance it as writers?  What tips do you have for building strong characters? 

Writing Lessons from a Blogvel

by Cat Woods

First off, a Round-Robin Blogvel is a novel told chapter by chapter on various blogs over a period of time. Inevitably this means different authors with different writing styles and different perspectives. It also means a unique writing experience. And yet, the nuggets of wisdom I gathered while penning my chapter of THE SKELETON KEY are as common as punctuation marks in a WIP and can should be applied to any novel.

Characters are like exclamation points. Use them sparingly, but with confidence. As I read the early chapters of our blogvel, I quickly realized the cast of characters was very large. Each new writer would introduce a character or two, but never have the time in their mere 2,000 words to fully flesh them out or utilize them the way they were first envisioned. Over time, early characters were quickly forgotten. Worse yet was my natural inclination to dismiss newer introductions because I assumed they, too, would fade into the background. As the Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition) states: an exclamation point “should be used sparingly to be effective.” And so must our characters.

Details are like dashes. Grammar Girl informs us that dashes are used to add a bit of extra-ness (my word, not hers) into our writing. Details are important in world-building. They set the scene, describe our characters and place readers into our settings. However, too many dashes are akin to detail over-load. My favorite part of our blogvel was my fellow scribes' creativity and imagination. Yet with each new chapter came new descriptions to flesh out the new ideas. This was delightful in a chapter by chapter summer blogvel of fun, but would have been extremely distracting in a cohesive novel. Distracting and tiring for readers to sort through poetic prose to find important information pertinent to the outcome of the story.

Pacing is like a series of commas. Some sentences are quick and dirty and get right to the point. Others slow the reader down with the use of a tiny crescent comma. The genius of the comma is its ability to allow the reader a small break—a deep breath of air, a rearranging of thoughts or an emotional moment to gather one's self. Likewise, the ebb and flow of a manuscript relies on individual sentence structure, paragraph breaks and chapter endings. A good manuscript takes readers on a series of peaks and valleys before reaching the ultimate conflict and resolution. There is a cadence—or rhythm—to effective writing that dictates when conflict is introduced and when it is resolved. While reading through the chapters prior to writing mine, I hit a point that FELT climactic. I scurried to our chapter list and realized we had just as many chapters to write as had already been written. It was time for a comma.

While I slowed our story down, wrapping up key elements, tying together subplots and penning a satisfying finish all in a single chapter will fall to our last, brave writer. My advice: keep track of your story's pace and finish up old subplots as new ones are getting started. This will eliminate the need to write a massive wrap-up at the end.

Chapter ends are like ellipses. Over at Quick and Dirty Tips, Grammar Girl relates the story of how Charles Schulz used ellipses in his Peanuts cartoons to carry the reader from one frame to the next, much like our blogvel writers were called on to do with their chapters. Time is short, and commitment is long. Readers often do not have the ability to read a novel in one sitting. As writers, we are charged with capturing our readers' attention and drawing them so deeply into the story that the real world doesn't erase our efforts at storytelling altogether. Chapter breaks—with their hints of unresolved conflict and promises of heightened emotion/action—are crucial to this process.

Consistency is like a period. This plain-Jane punctuation mark is so unassuming as to almost disappear from our work. Very seldom do writers ever ponder on the use of a period. Nor do readers fret about its meaning—unless it's used improperly or missing altogether. In the same way, consistent writing comforts us. When written well, writing is all but invisible. Only the story remains. Yet, throw a third person chapter in the middle of a first person novel and watch how fast readers are pulled out of a story. Yep ... that fast. And while it may seem like I'm picking on my talented, energetic and amazingly fun fellow scribes, I only highlight this lesson because it is one I've seen in virtually every beta manuscript I've ever read. In other words, a lack of consistency is commonplace in WIPs no matter how experienced or talented a writer might be. First person to third person. Present tense mixed with past tense. Red eyes morphing to obsidian-like stones. Unique spelling—or should I say misspellings?—of names.

It is our job, as writers, to create a seamless tale in which our readers can fall into and never emerge from until "the end"—no matter how many authors contribute to the storytelling.

So, dear readers, how have you challenged yourself as a writer? What lessons can be learned from stretching beyond our comfort zones? How do we learn to recognize our own weaknesses in the stories we tell?

If you're interested, you can pop on over and find out exactly what my weaknesses were when writing my chapter of The Skeleton Key.