Agents, editors use #MSWL to broadcast wish lists

I recently came across the hashtag #MSWL on Twitter. It stands for Manuscript Wish List. It turns out that literary agents and editors use this hashtag to convey what's on their wish lists. If you're an author, search for this hashtag on Twitter and comb the posts. It might be you have something they are looking for. And here's more on #MSWL.

Writing scenes with Tom Huang

Today I sat in on a webinar with Tom Huang, Assistant Managing Editor for Sunday and Enterprise at The Dallas Morning News and Ethics and Diversity Fellow at The Poynter Institute.

Tom talked about reporting and writing scenes. While the focus of this seminar was non-fiction, I think many of my fiction writer friends will find what he had to say helpful.

Here are some bullet points.

·    Scenes are the building blocks of dramatic storytelling
·    A story is a string of pearls, think of it as a sequence of dramatic scenes
·    Scenes involve strong characters, action and dialogue
·    Think about turning points, moments of discovery. Bring protagonist face to face with a dilemma. Know what the complication or main obstacle is
·    Scenes can help develop a story’s larger theme
·    Scenes reveal aspects of a protagonist’s character (ie, motives)
·    Scenes come to life with details that transport us into the stories. Writers use sights, sounds, smells, tastes to bring people into this world.
·    Show don’t tell
·    Evoke emotions, stir memories
·    Using details in a very spare way allows reader to add some of their own experiences
·    Action is comprised of strong verbs and active voice
·    What we gain from the scene is not information but experience
·    Scenes help readers feel what it might have been like to be in that situation

Elements of a scene
·    Characters
·    Actions
·    Dialogue
·    Sense of place
·    Details
·    Emotion
·    A range of views, from wide angle to close-up

Character
·    People want to read about people. They want to hear their voices, see them, etc. Ask yourself if your characters grab the reader in some way.
·   Keep narrative “camera” on your main character for most of the story

·   Don’t pack the story or scene with too many characters
·   Show protagonist’s physical details, mannerisms, movement, let reader  “hear” protagonist’s voice

Action
·    Wants and needs of character drive plot forward
·    Use strong verbs
·    Use active voice
·    Start scene in middle of the action
·    Pay attention to how characters move and interact

Dialogue
·    Dialogue advances narrative while quotes delay it. When you read a quote, you step out of the narrative flow. Dialogue happens within the narrative flow.

Sense of place
·    Story needs to have a geographical heart
·    You want to leave a sense of place, not just a laundry list of details
·    Allow time to roam around a place to get to know it better
·    Research history of the place
·    One suggestion if reporting from a place is to stay in a locally owned place (think bed and breakfast) as opposed to a national chain.

Details
·    Be highly selective
·    Use details that reveal something important about your character or moves the plot forward. Also, details that are important to the larger theme
·    Spare details stimulates memories
·    Show don’t tell
·    Use spare, simple language
·    Reveal person’s emotions through their action

How to select which scenes to include
·    Which scenes have the most dramatic potential
·    Watch for turning points (ie. successes, failures, etc.)
·    Start with a scene that has main character in it
·    Good scene causes subsequent scene to occur

Story ideas fighting to be first

Three new ideas for middle-grade books popped into my head. I like them all. When this happens, how do you decide which idea to pursue? Or, do you pursue each, perhaps a chapter or so, and see which one gets legs? Or, do you outline each to see which one feels right?

We've talked before about outlining, and I generally don't do it. My latest YA was different. Because of its nature, I absolutely had to outline to keep track of everything. But generally I know the beginning, know the ending and some of the plot points along the way. The story goes where the characters lead me. So outlining all three ideas wouldn't work for me.

How do you handle this situation? So far, my ideas are jotted down on scrap paper. I've been thinking about all three and no one in particular seems to have an advantage. Thoughts? 

What would you change?

Here's something I've been wondering. Let's say you wrote a book and you were asked to change something about the protagonist.

Perhaps he was straight and you were asked to make him gay. Or white and you were asked to make him black.

Or maybe she was a vampire and you were asked to make her a zombie. Or she was a fae and you were asked to make her a witch.

Could you? Would you?

I can't wrap my brain around writing a book, for instance, with a vampire MC and then rewriting that same book with the MC as a zombie. Maybe it's just me, but like zombies are so not attractive. I don't think I'd be able to make a zombie sexy. Maybe that just means I stink as a writer. But I have to feel it, you know. I have to feel that passion and cuddling up to a zombie, who by the way isn't even a live being, makes me want to puke not purr.

I will go to the ends of the earth to make my novel the best it can be. I'll rewrite the entire novel if I have to. But I'm not sure I can change something so vital to the story that it, well, changes the entire story.

Have you ever been asked to do this? Have you been successful? Thoughts from my writerly friends?

Also, my other blog, Buffy's World, was part of a big award win for York Daily Record/Sunday News. YAY for my world!

Writing tips from Jan Winburn

I recently watched a Poynter webinar on Writing Successful Profiles with Jan Winburn, senior editor for enterprise at CNN.com. I couldn't wait to watch this particular session because I knew Jan would have lots of great information to share. Turns out, she did.

Below is some of what she said. I'm sharing it here, with my writer friends, because while this webinar was directly toward journalists, I think that we can apply much of what she said to fiction writing as well. 

Some background on Jan. She joined CNN in 2009 after more than 30 years as an editor at newspapers and magazines. She edited Lisa Pollak’s 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning feature story “The Umpire’s Sons” and was named a Times-Mirror Journalist of the Year in 1997 for improving writing at The Baltimore Sun.

Here's some of what Jan said.

A. What reveals character? Jan says appearance, speech, action and thought. 

Appearance This includes features, shape, style, environment, "sense impressions." Also, watch for external things that reveal something internal.

Speech Jan says not to use dialogue to merely convey information. Some information is better left paraphrased.

Action Jan says that actions speak louder than what a person says or think. She suggests looking at past actions and events for clues about the person.

Thought Thought informs motive. It's most interesting when it's in conflict with a person's speech, appearance or action.

B. What is the quest?

What makes a person (or character) who they are? What motivates them? What moments or life events shaped them? Everyone has a quest (get the girl, win the game) and it's up to the reporter/writer to discover that quest. What conflict do they have that they want to resolve? A person's quest is often life-changing for him or her. If you're a reporter, you might have an hypothesis about a person's quest. It's up to you to test it.

Once you know what the quest is, then you know which pearls to include on the story strand.

A work needs focus, a place where all of the rays meet.

C. Getting the details

Ask open-ended questions, such as What's missing from your life? What has made you the most afraid? What do you worry about? A person's answers to these questions can tell a lot about a him or her.

What were the points of time that were critical and defining to them? Don't forget about visuals aids, like scrapbooks and video.

Search for tension. Tension lives inside the quest, lives inside those defining moments.

D. Avoiding the cliche

Let the cliche be a target. Go into a story with an open mind. Be well-informed but wary of biases. Everyone has a dark side. Let it inform, not overwhelm.

E. Greatest virtues

Jan talked about having patience and thoughtfulness. She feels these virtues will help us be successful.

F. Promise of a piece. She also talked about the promise of a piece, that little something that makes you want to keep reading.We need to offer readers this promise.

Every story needs an engine that drives the reader through the story. Do you have that engine in your piece?


Visit my social media blog at Buffy's World

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Love my new iPad dock/keyboard

Trash the trite

I hate when I read trite expressions or descriptions in writing or worse, when I write them. Make sure that part of your revision process includes trashing the trite.

Let's look at some examples and you see if you can come up with something better.

1. Lexie's plan was rotten to the core.

2. Becca noticed the red car as quick as a wink.

3. The dress was as white as snow.

4. The rumor spread like wildfire throughout the school.

5. Sean was as brave as a lion when the doctor gave him his shot.

6. Matt drank like a fish and smelled like one, too.

What trite expressions do you see in writing?

It's in the details...

Hemingway said: Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

I think details bring a story to life. They place us smack dab in the middle so that we can see and feel and smell and hear.

 It's just not a stately mansion, but a stone estate with a circular driveway and a three-tier granite fountain with scalloped edges in front. (from WIP)

It's not a pretty girl but a girl with an hour-glass body and endless legs and mane of curly hair that falls softly down her back.

As an exercise, describe a character or a place from your WIP in comments.

I hope you a great writing week and that you use details to bring your writing to life.

This WIP is exhausting

I'm working on something that is extremely challenging for me in a number of ways. The book can be emotionally exhausting at times. It angers me, shocks me, makes me cry and yet I push on because I must tell this story.

I've been praying a lot about it, too. Asking God for His guidance and to give me the strength I need to pull these threads together. I'm a double-rainbow-kind-of-girl, so fitting the dysfunctional pieces of one life with that of another life has been my most challenging work yet.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love this work. The characters are people to me and I want them to be happy and it bothers me that I can't make them happy. Now I know what you're thinking. Well, you're the writer. Make that happen. But that's not how it works for me. The characters show me the way and sometimes, well, sometimes I don't much like where they take me.

Do you ever feel like this? Please tell me I'm not the only weird one out there.

Writing advice from the pros

Margaret Atwood
Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

Diana Athill
Read it aloud to yourself because that's the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out – they can be got right only by ear).

Roddy Doyle
Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.

Helen Dunmore
Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

Geoff Dyer
Keep a diary. The biggest regret of my writing life is that I have never kept a journal or a diary.

Anne Enright
Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.

Richard Ford
Try to think of others' good luck as encouragement to yourself.

Jonathan Franzen
You have to love before you can be relentless.

Esther Freud
Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too.

Neil Gaiman
Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong

David Hare
Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome.

PD James
Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more ­effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.

AL Kennedy
Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and ­irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won't need to take notes.

Do you have some writing advice you'd like to share?

Quote of the day

"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph." --Mark Twain

Ugh. He said what I was thinkin'. (Smiles)

Quote of the day

"Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be lovable, or they can be evil, but they’d better be compelling." --PO BRONSON

Speaking of dinner and characters, what character would you most like to dine with? spit food at?  

Is your writing real?

I was at the Y the other night and asked someone who works there how her training was coming along. She shook her head and explained that it wasn’t. She hadn’t had time to work out because she’s busy with her two children, especially the youngest one who has gotten into all kinds of trouble. “If only kids came with manuals,” she said, explaining that the youngest is opposite the oldest who is always on the honor roll and never causes her any problems. I smiled. I have two children, and I know how challenging parenthood can be.

Our conversation made me think about my characters. Some of them give me tons of trouble. They have attitude and do stupid things. They make me angry. Others are easier to love. They do what’s expected without whining. They make me laugh and sometimes cry.

If you write MG and YA, how real is your writing? Is it so real that your characters influence how you feel? Why is it that when we kill off a character we feel horrible about it? It’s because we care. Because we’ve created characters that have made us care.

Like real kids, we love them despite their flaws. They aren’t perfect. They shouldn’t be perfect. We’re not perfect. The challenge is to make our readers care as much as we do. If we can do this, then I think we’ve achieved a level of writing worthy of a smile or two. If we’re lucky, maybe more.

Do me a favor and post next to where you write a little note that says: Make me care. I hope that it guides you in your writing. If you can't make me care, I'm going to skip class the first chance I get. Don't let that happen. Make me care so much that I'm early to class and get the best front-row seat because I can't wait to hear what the teacher has to say.

The bell's ringin'. Gotta go!

Quotes of the day

Quotes by Colin Greenland:

 

Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader's desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not too much at a time, as your story goes on. That's called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax.

.....................

Plotting isn't like sex, because you can go back and adjust it afterwards. Whether you plan your story beforehand or not, if the climax turns out to be the revelation that the mad professor's anti-gravity device actually works, you must go back and silently delete all those flying cars buzzing around the city on page one. If you want to reveal something, you need to hide it properly first.

.....................

So, what do you think? (Smiles)

Quote of the day

"There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly: sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges." --Ernest Hemingway

What is your favorite Hemingway book? 

Writing advice

FROM WILLIAM ZINSSER
Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.

Writing advice

FROM JAMES BALDWIN
The hardest thing about writing, in a sense, is not writing. I mean, the sentence is not intended to show you off, you know. It is not supposed to be “look at me!” “Look, no hands!” It’s supposed to be a pipeline between the reader and you. Once condition of the sentence is to write so well that no one notices that you’re writing.

Writing advice

Writing advice from ELIZABETH BOWEN

1.Dialogue should be brief.
2. It should add to the reader’s present knowledge.
3. It should eliminate the routine exchanges of ordinary conversation.
4. It should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.
5. It should keep the story moving forward.
6. It should be revelatory of the speaker’s character, both directly and indirectly.
7. It should show the relationships among people.

Quote of the day

"Don’t say it was 'delightful'; make us say 'delightful' when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers 'Please will you do my job for me?'" --C.S. LEWIS

Quote of the day

"Some editors will “get” what you write; others won’t. The key is to have patience to learn from the criticisms of the former, the strength to ignore the indifference of the latter, and the wisdom (and great luck) to know the difference between the two." --BRUCE FEIRSTEIN

Advice for writers: Richard Rhodes

RICHARD RHODES:
If you’re afraid you can’t write, the answer is to write. Every sentence you construct adds weight to the balance pan. If you’re afraid of what other people will think of your efforts, don’t show them until you write your way beyond your fear. If writing a book is impossible, write a chapter. If writing a chapter is impossible, write a page. If writing a page is impossible, write a paragraph. If writing a paragraph is impossible, write a sentence. If writing even a sentence is impossible, write a word and teach yourself everything there is to know about that word and then write another, connected word and see where their connection leads. A page a day is a book a year.
 
I love how Rhodes reduces the process to one word at a time. If you can't write a page, write a paragraph. If not a paragraph, then a sentence. And if a sentence is too much, well then write ONE word.
Kind of reminds me of the Christmas special Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Kris Kringle sings these lyrics to the Winter Warlock to help him change from nasty to nice.

Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door

You never will get where you’re going
If you never get up on your feet
Come on, there’s a good tail wind blowing
A fast walking man is hard to beat