Writers in the Storm

Fae Rowen

I promise this is the last in what was never intended to become a series. But it seems every time I think of "F" words, more come to mind...

My blog with the first six words can be found here. Like the first six words, these F-words are perfectly "clean" for mixed company and young ears, so no worries, no matter where you're reading this.

Let's start with a group of three words that might make life difficult for your characters: festering, forbidden, and frantic.

Is there something in a character's backstory that is like a festering wound? We all know that to avoid staying two-dimensional, our characters need a backstory. Backstory is true in the eye of the beholder, so it will have a lot more impact on your character than those who experienced the same event in your story.

You probably don't need to think deep to find something in your own past that you remember differently from a sibling or a parent. For you, it bordered on traumatic. For someone else, they barely noted it. They certainly remember it differently than you do.

If something was forbidden, that, too, can add to backstory. If it is currently forbidden, well, you've just upped the conflict in your story. Remember that the sooner you resolve the forbidden element, the sooner you've resolved the tension in that thread. To maintain reader interest, you can resolve the forbidden element then up the stakes by adding a new layer of tension.

How do you do this? Well, let's say your romantic couple each have reasons for their affections to be forbidden. She believes he loves her sister. He believes he's the bastard son of her father. When she discovers that he doesn't love her sister—that was just her sister's girlhood fantasy and revealed when her sister happily gets engaged to someone else—your female lead character believes the way is clear for her to love—and have that love reciprocated by—the male character. Oops, he still believes she's his half sister, and no matter how attracted to her he is, he's going to fight the attraction, even to the point of hurting her. For her own good.

These first two F-words can lead to making characters frantic, but so can a lot of other things, like ticking clocks, plot twists, other characters. You know...all the things that make writing your own stories so much fun. A frantic character can make mistakes take work for you, as the author, for the rest of your book. Or you can semi-resolve them and leave your characters with a worse dilemma.

Which brings us to the next group of F-words: facade, flexible, and family.

Maybe you thought of family as in F-word when you read my first blog on F-words. There is no doubt that, for many people, family is an F-bomb. There is a reason so many people dislike (even hate) the holidays. How many of your friends currently aren't speaking to one or more of their relatives?

Feel free to take out your aggressions, your feelings of being slighted or devalued, the times you were powerless to state your truth, around your family. Those experiences will make your story, and your characters, more authentic. On the other hand, you may be one of the lucky ones who had great parents and supportive siblings. That would color a character's backstory as well.

Perhaps you, or your character, or the "good child" in your family because you've developed an impenetrable facade over the years. What an effective way for one character to keep out another character. And what a wonderful way to build a relationship—it could be very rocky at first—as one dedicated person chips away at the facade of the other because they know there is something of great value below that facade.

Family and facade can lead to learning how to be flexible to survive. Of course, you can be flexible without calling on a character's facade or family. Flexibility can also be seen as a weakness particularly in male characters.

The final group of F-words can be a writer's treasure chest of ideas when wanting to throw out one positive nugget of a character. Friends, fascination, fulfillment, and the future can shade your characters with attitudes that bring readers back to your books for those satisfying endings.

How many times have you heard those sayings like friends being the family we choose for ourselves? The people we choose to surround ourselves with show a great deal about us—our strengths, or weaknesses, our likes and our dislikes.

What fascinates your characters? Do they thirst for knowledge? Do they work to perfect a craft, a hobby, a trade, a physical ability? How do they pursue their fascination? Do they bring others, like friends and loved ones, into their fascination?

How do your characters see their futures? This probability will change during the course of your story as your characters move through their character arcs. Good for you! This gives more depth to move your characters from cardboard to real. You can also use what a character wants for their future for motivation and conflict and plot-driven nuances of your story. Similarly, a character can react to a possible future in a strong negative way which helps them grow and "improve."

Finally, that leaves F-word number ten: fulfillment. By the end of your book, your characters need to have their hearts and lives filled with happiness, and probably love, even if you aren't writing a romance. I write science fiction, on the speculative fiction side of the genre, and my characters better feel that they've made their world a better place to live and learned to love themselves. If they've learned to open their hearts to another, so much the better.

Do you have another F-word to add to our collection? How has it improved your writing?

About Fae

Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a science fiction freak. Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes that she can live anywhere but the present. As a mathematician, she knows life’s a lot more fun when you get to define your world and its rules. 

P.R.I.S.M., Fae's debut book, a young adult science fiction romance story of survival, betrayal, resolve, deceit, and love is now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Fae's second book, P.R.I.S.M: Rebellion, will be available for pre-order in October 2019.

Julie Glover

I'm a born pessimist — whenever things are going too well in my life, I get this overwhelming sense of dread. Because I just know that doom is right around the corner.

Obviously I'm not here to advocate pessimism, or we'll all be doomsayers and how annoying would that be?!

But sometimes, writers read motivational quotes, and rather than feel inspired, we feel cheated. For example, remember that saying, "If you can dream it, you can achieve it"? Yeah, right. Whoever said that probably didn't dream of making the New York Times bestseller list with their debut book.

So what if you're a pessimist like me? Or just having one of those seasons when the writing gig is going about as well as Alexander's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? What if the motivational quotes just aren't doing it for you?

You're not the only permanent or temporary pessimist writer out there. Let's hear from some famous authors with their pessimistic — and yet somehow inspirational — observations about writing.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. ~ Ernest Hemingway

No wonder I keep feeling like this should be easier than it is, and yet it isn't. We're always learning, or should be.

Writing is a delicious agony. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

Sounds about right.

To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself. ~ Anne Rice

Oh great, the very thing I tried so desperately to avoid doing throughout adolescence and my dating years, now I'm supposed to embrace. Bring it on! Let me be a fool for the sake of the story.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. ~ Anne Lamott

Too often, we compare our first drafts to other authors' final products, and then feel awful because we don't measure up. But maybe it's okay to be terrible at the beginning, as long as you're willing to polish the story and the prose to a shine.

The easiest reading is damned hard writing. ~ Thomas Hood

Of course it is! Why should we be surprised? Dancer Fred Astaire once admitted: "I suppose I made it look easy, but gee whiz, did I work and worry." Creatives must recognize that requires intense effort to make something appear seamless.

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann

True. Becoming a better writer makes it more likely that you'll recognize when your story isn't quite there. You know you can do better, and you will.

When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done. ~ Stephen King

Only Stephen King would immediately come up with the analogy of murdering children (I hope), but he's spot-on about how much it can hurt to edit. And yet, we must accept the pain to reach that next level, the level of penning a novel readers won't forget.

I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. ~ Harper Lee

We can't take critique, rejections, and bad reviews too personally. Even if what you write is fantastic, someone won't like it. (Though I don't know who it was that didn't like To Kill a Mockingbird.)

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. ~ John Steinbeck

Good information to know going in. But hey, we can do a lot to make it more likely we'll win the race, and when our horse crosses the finish line first? Aaaah, a sweet, sweet victory!

What pessimistic quotes about writing actually inspire you to keep going?

About Julie

Julie Glover is a pessimist by nature, but an optimist in practice! Because no wants to hang out with an Eeyore all day—not even Eeyore himself. (Although an overly cheery Tigger would get old quickly too...)

Julie writes cozy mysteries, young adult fiction, and supernatural suspense (under the pen name Jules Lynn). Her upcoming YA contemporary novel, SHARING HUNTER, finaled in the 2015 RWA® Golden Heart®, and her co-written Muse Island Series is available now, beginning with book one, Mark of the Gods.

You can visit her website here.

Gwen Hernandez

Scrivener has three “group view” modes: Scrivenings, Corkboard, and Outline. Group view modes only have something to display if you’ve selected a folder, or a group of files in the Binder. Hence, the group part.

Scrivenings (multiple document view) and Corkboard (synopsis/index card view) get the most attention, but Outline view is pretty powerful, especially if you use metadata.

(If you’re thinking, “Hold up, what’s metadata?” skim this post from last November before you continue.)

Introducing Outline View

Despite its name, Outline view is really more like a spreadsheet, where each row represents a file and each column is a type of metadata (e.g., word count or Label value). Its power comes from being able to view and edit the files’ corresponding metadata in one place.

Not only that, but you can sort files by their metadata without losing their order in the Binder. Trust me, it’s more exciting than it sounds. (Hopefully.)

Viewing the Outline

Whenever you select a folder or group of files, Scrivener displays them in the last group view mode you used in this project.

To view the Outline, do the following:

1. Select any folder (or group of files, but I’m going to skip that verbiage from now on) in the Binder. The Editor will change to display the last group view mode you used in this project. If you’ve never selected anything else, it should default to the Corkboard.
2. If you get the Corkboard or Scrivenings view, go to View>Outline (or click the Outline button on the toolbar). Scrivener opens the outline view for the selected folder.

The displayed columns will vary depending on which template you chose when you created your project. Further down, we’ll look at how to change the columns.

Expanding and Collapsing the View

If you’ve selected a folder with subfolders (e.g., a Draft folder that includes chapter folders), you can expand and collapse the outline as desired.

To expand or collapse a single folder, click the triangle to the left of its name/icon.

To expand or collapse all folders, go to View>Outline>Expand/Collapse All.

TIP: You can also limit collapsed folders to those at a certain level. To do so, select a folder and choose View>Outline>Collapse to Selected Level. The outline will collapse only folders at that level and below.

Adding and Removing Metadata Columns

To add or remove a column from the view, you have two options:

• Click the button at the far right of the Outliner and select/deselect the desired column.

• Go to View>Outliner Options and select a column to include/exclude.

Editing Metadata in the Outliner

You can edit most of the metadata values from within the Outliner. Just double-click a text box to edit the text, or click the value of the item you want to change to get a drop-down menu.

This is a handy way to modify values for multiple files from one location.

Rearranging Files

You can move items around in the Outliner (just like in the Binder) to change their place in the manuscript. In fact, if you struggle to move items in the Binder, you might find it easier here.

Just drag and drop the desired item to its new location.

TIP: If moving between two files, wait for the blue line to make sure it lands in the correct location (see below).

You can also drop one item on another to make it a child (subdocument), just like in the Binder. This time you’re looking for a box around the destination item's row, as shown below.

Sorting Files without Changing Their Binder Order

One of the things I like about the Outliner is that you can sort your manuscript files by column, without messing up their Binder (story) order. When might you want to? It depends on how you’re using the outliner, but here are a couple of ideas:

• Sort by word count to see which documents to target for cutting or adding words.
• Sort by writing/revision status to determine what to work on next.

To sort, simply click in the column header. Initially, it’ll sort in ascending order (small icon in header points up). Click again for descending order (small icon in header points down). Click a third time to restore Binder order (no icon).

Changing the Column Order

If you want to rearrange the columns, simply click and drag a column header to the right or left. A blue line indicates where it will land.

Adjusting the Column Widths

You can adjust the column width to make each column’s data easier to read. There are two ways to do it.

• Point to the line to the right of the heading for the column you'd like to adjust. When your pointer changes to a bar with left-right arrows, drag the line to the left or right.
• To auto-fit the column width to the data, double-click the line to the right of the column heading.

Opening a Document from the Outliner

To view a document in the Editor directly from Outline view, simply double-click its icon in the Outliner (piece of paper or folder icon to the left of the title). This may be quicker than trying to locate and select it in the Binder, especially if you’ve hidden the Binder to gain more screen real estate.

Exporting the Outline View

For some reason, you can’t print the Outliner the way it looks in Scrivener, but you can export it to a spreadsheet-compatible file. Here’s how:

1. Set up the Outliner to display the data you want.
2. Go to File>Export>Outliner Contents as CSV…
3. Name the file and choose its location, then click Export. CSV files can be opened by most spreadsheet programs. If not, you can adjust the settings in the Export window to export as a TXT file instead.

Do you think you might have uses for Outline view? What questions do you have for me about this or any other Scrivener topic?

Gwen Hernandez is the author of Scrivener For Dummies and helps authors all over the world find the joy in Scrivener through her online courses, in-person workshops, and private training. She also writes romantic suspense (Men of Steele series).

In her spare time she likes to travel, read, jog, flail on a yoga mat, and explore southern California, where she currently lives with her husband and a lazy golden retriever. You can find more information about Gwen at http://gwenhernandez.com/.