Writers in the Storm

Orly Konig

On October 8, 2015 I fell in love with a seed of a story idea. Over the years, that seed has sprouted countless offshoots and grown into a full-blown story tree. But that lovely story tree has been dropping its lemons on my head faster than squirrels dive-bombing for gourmet roasted nuts.

I’ve worked on this book a number of times over the years only to be interrupted by publishing deadlines (don’t you hate it when that happens?) and life (seriously, the nerve?!). A few months ago, though, I dusted it off, this time with a deadline (mercy!). This is not my first book. As a matter of fact, I think it’s the fifth or sixth one I’ve written. I’ve mostly honed-in on a process that works for me. I know that process shifts some, but for the most part, I have the confidence to know I’ll start and find my way to the end. 

But once in a while (okay, I probably say this about every story, every time, all the time), you come across a book that wants to kill you. Last June, I pulled this story seed out of the idea greenhouse and started working on it in earnest. There’s been growth and pruning, sour fruit to dump, and juice worthy beauties. Most of the time, though, I feel like I have a bullseye on my head.

But with that deadline looming, it was time to rethink a few beliefs …

1) GPS doesn’t necessarily work in the thick of the trees. For anyone who’s read my previous blog posts or followed me on this writing journey, you know I call myself a “pantser with suspenders.” I don’t outline and I don’t plot where the story will go. What I will do though, is mind-map story threads and brainstorm ten things that will happen to my main character throughout the book (small or large, it doesn’t matter).  Armed with those seeds, I dive in and find my way to the other end. 

Except that this book has been a work-in-(some)-progress for over three years now. I stopped working on it when my debut was acquired and revisions came in. I stopped again when my second book was acquired and needed a drastic overhaul. And I stopped again when life took a detour and took my energy and focus with it.

Sometimes the map you’ve used, the process you’ve perfected, the plan you careful outlined stop working. Sometimes they can actually take you in the wrong direction. Without my trusted process, I felt lost and unsteady. Could I even write another book? At some point, I had to admit that my directions I was clinging to weren’t taking me to where I needed to get. I had to let go and start trusting my instincts and ability instead. 

2) It’s okay to backtrack in order to make forward progress.Part way through the first draft, I realized I was missing something big. This lemon tree was growing sideways. So I brainstormed and story-boarded and came up with a brilliant (if I do say so myself) plan. I usually do this after the first draft is complete but this time, because of the starts and stops over so many years, I stopped writing before the first draft was complete, and started revising.  

And it seemed to be going well. Except that reams of paper later, I lost confidence in my new roadmap. Were these changes working or was I repeating myself? Was the scene I just referenced in an earlier chapter or something I remembered that was later in the book or one I’d actually deleted? One step forward, three back. 

For the third time, I abandoned my trusted process before reaching the end of the draft. The last third of this book was still in my head (and sort of in my notes) when I started typing in those new changes. This book doesn’t have an end yet (yes, it’s making me seriously twitchy, what gave me away?!) but by taking those steps backwards, I have a better view of where I’m going. 

3) Wear a helmet. Okay, not literally. That would just be weird and I’d hate for those pictures to show up on social media. This goes back to taking chances. If you’re worried about getting bonked on the head, you won’t look up as you wind your way through the word-forest. You’ll miss the detour signs and the amusing squirrels along the way. You’ll reach the end – whether it’s the right end or a dead end – without taking in the wonderous opportunities along the way.

So put on that imaginary helmet and look up, look around. Don’t be afraid to change course mid-way through a book or delete 2/3 of the first draft (yeah, that was a bit scary).

4) Buy margarita mix. Okay, I’m kidding. And not … celebrate your success (whether that’s with lemonade or margarita’s or chucking lemons at the people who leave rotten reveiws). Celebrate whatever success – every success – you can. Because, oh my god, you guys, there’s so much angst in writing. There’s the doubting if you’ll ever be able to reach the end and if you’ve forgotten how to string two sentences together and whether anyone other than your cat will ever be interested in what you’ve written (and said cat really only wants to shred the paper anyway).

*someone hand me the sugar please – I’ve just found a particularly sour lemon in this last chapter.* 

What’s your trick to get through a hard to wrangle manuscript? 

About Orly

Connect with Orly online at:Website: www.orlykonig.com
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by Tiffany Yates-Martin

You know that feeling—like you were coasting along on a greased golden road through your first draft (or second…or twelfth), and suddenly you come to a bone-jarring halt, like Wile. E. Coyote sent an avalanche right smack into your creative pathway.

Ka-pow, as the coyote would say: "writer’s block." I use quotes because I think getting stuck isn't the big scary monster it's often painted as—not a condition like a disease that must be cured, but rather a symptom of an underlying problem, the way a stuffy nose isn't your core problem when you have a cold.

So what’s causing your imagination congestion?

Reasons writers get stuck—whether in drafting or revising—contain multitudes…but I’ve found that often when characters are resisting and refusing to perform, it’s because the author (or sometimes the editor) is forcing them to go where they don’t want to go—pushing the story into a corner it doesn't want to be in. And, like the tantruming toddler who goes completely dead-limb when a parent tries to force him where he doesn’t want to go, your story can throw a resistance fit and go limp.

Writing is such a mystical process—an unlikely partnership of right and left brain, a delicate balance of inspiration and intention. Sometimes when the left brain takes the lead, the right brain rebels. A plot line or character arc may seem fantastic on paper…but as the story and the players begins to take shape they may change direction. If you keep slavishly trying to cleave to your original idea, inspiration often dries up.

I am a believer that you can't force a vision on a story--if you've created real, vivid characters and a juicy situation for them to live in, eventually it takes on a life of its own, and if you try to impose your will over the will of the characters they will freeze up. They will boycott you. Stephen King put it in a way I love in On Writing: You create the stage and the players, and then if you have done it well, the characters will get up there and perform the play in front of you. "What should happen next?" King asks. You will find out—they will come onstage and tell you. It’s miraculous, otherworldly, transcendent—and yet sometimes it’s hard to let go and let the muses have their way.

So how do you unclench and get unstuck?

First, give yourself some mental distance. I'm guessing you've heard this before, but if you’re stalled in a blind alley, stop driving forward. Get your brain out of that world for a while—distract yourself so your creative mind can take a step back, out of the maze, and recalculate.

Don’t just go work on another manuscript—that just keeps the screws turned on your poor overwrought mind. Studies have shown that “pushing through” mental strain is counterproductive.

Give your brain a break and let your body take the lead—go for a walk or a run or play Putt-Putt; take your dogs to a dog park (they will thank you); do yoga. Or wake up another part of your creative mind: paint; cook; garden; throw something on a pottery wheel. Or relax everything and de-stress: take a soothing bath; get a massage; meditate. One of my favorite ways to open up new ideas is by taking in someone else’s—read a book; go see a movie; binge-watch your favorite show.

The point is to force yourself away from your story—physically as well as mentally—so you can jostle yourself out of the track that keeps leading you into a dead end. But the magical thing is that while you’re ostensibly taking a break from the story, your characters are still bumping around on their own in the background, whether you realize it or not. Often once you come back to the desk, you’ll find they’ve solved the problem in your absence, and all you have to do is let them come onstage…and just watch.

If you come back and find things stalled right where you left them, here’s an exercise I love and often suggest to authors:

Write a scene—even just a throwaway scene—where, whatever you had planned for your characters, the exact opposite thing happens.

Do you want your protag to leave her husband and run away with her lover? Make her find out she's pregnant and can't leave. Make her husband get a terminal illness and she can't abandon him. Make her lover find out his ex is pregnant and he still loves her. You get the idea. Take the thing that ruins the story you are trying to tell—directly flies in the face of your intentions—and write the scene that way.

Notice that this is similar to the idea of torturing your characters. There's a reason that advice is so universally given: Conflict is juicy—and the bigger, the juicier. The scene that results may not be where the story ultimately goes--it probably won't be, because as you see I used extreme, bodice-ripping, melodramatic examples. But that's the idea—take the craziest, most completely opposite thing you can think of and write it, just as an exercise. More often than not, even if you don't use that actual idea it will jostle something loose, and you'll see an avenue out of your blind alley.

Just don’t keep banging your head against that same dead end and expecting something different to happen—for inspiration to suddenly descend. Because that, at the risk of clichéd writing, is the definition of insanity.

What do you do when your writing gets "stuck?" Please share your tips, tricks and woes in the comments!

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About Tiffany

Tiffany Yates Martin is privileged to help authors tell their stories as effectively, compellingly, and truthfully as possible. In more than 25 years in the publishing industry she’s worked both with major publishing houses and directly with authors (through her company FoxPrint Editorial), on titles by New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers. She presents editing and writing workshops for writers’ groups, organizations, and conferences and writes for numerous writers’ sites and publications.

by Lisa Hall-Wilson

Many of us love to create female characters who are in charge. They are the boss, the leader, the take-charge and kick ass types who keep everything from the local PTA to an entire country running just the way they like it. They don’t ask permission, they act.

The alpha female character often comes off as bossy, bitchy, too masculine. Whether they start off that way or circumstances force them into the role of an alpha female, characters like Princess Leia (Star Wars), Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games), Cat Crawfield (Night Huntress Novels), Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (Battlestar Galactica), Lisbeth Salander (The Millenium Trilogy), Sansa and Arya Stark or Cersei Lanister (Game of Thrones), and Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables) are fun to read (and write) about, but we wouldn’t always want to hang around with them in real life! 

Common Ground

The path to like-ability is common ground. What do your readers have in common with your character who may deny many traditional female qualities?

Do they bottle up their feelings? Do they feel like a fraud, an outcast, like they don’t belong? Do they hate being alone? Do they overthink things? Are they overlooked? Forced into a role they hate to get ahead?

K.M. Weiland, in her critique of the Avengers: Infinity War movie, pointed out that we come to love Gamora even more because we get a much bigger glimpse of her past, how her relationship with Thanos began, how she can both love and loathe her adopted father.

Ever been in a situation where you hate the things someone does, but can’t help yourself from loving who they are because you see their true heart?

Are They Lovable?

Everyone loves something and someone. Katniss loves her sister Prim. Anne Shirley loves Gilbert Blithe. But do they exhibit qualities that others find worthy of love? Let them be loved by someone else.

Marcy Kennedy writes, “In The Hunger Games, Katniss furiously attacks Peeta after the interview where he confesses his crush on her. Haymitch (their mentor) tells her that Peeta did her a favor—he made her desirable.

"In loving her, Peeta sent the implicit message that she’s worth loving. If he loves her, maybe the reader should love her too. (And so should the sponsors who could make the difference between Katniss living or dying.)”

Pit Them Against Impossible Odds

Katniss is fighting the Capital. Jane Eyre is fighting society and a vindictive aunt. Lisbeth Salander is fighting corruption in the secret police and the Russian mob. Everyone cheers for the underdog because they’re fighting for something the reader can cheer on.

Now, all my romance-writing friends are rolling their eyes. There are no impossible odds in our genre. Not true my friends, not true. The hero is not the antagonist in romance.

The bank is foreclosing on the farm if she can’t get the crops off and sold—FAST. The hero, rock-hard-abs farmhand might be a pain in the you know what and limitlessly lovable by the end; however, the heroine gets to be the David to the unfeeling bank (or bank manager’s) Goliath. Because the hero loves her, readers get to see why she’s worth loving too.

Overlooked Truths Of Female Alpha-hood

Being a female alpha isn’t a “you are or you aren’t” thing. It’s not like being pregnant. Alpha-ness is a spectrum, and where your character finds herself on that spectrum will vary by circumstance, location, setting, even groups of people.

A woman could be the alpha in the home but be a subordinate in the office or vice versa. She may be the alpha only with a particular group of people or a particular circumstance (her area of expertise perhaps).

A character can grow into her alpha role in any situation either by default or opportunity.

Female alphas are social glue and grease. Women navigate social situations better with an alpha female around (aka, there’s less drama). Everyone relaxes and gets along because she keeps things moving and people connected. Female alphas are like a queen bee.

When a subordinate leaves a conversation, the other women fill in the gap like she wasn’t there. When the alpha leaves, there’s a lull in the conversation, people stare awkwardly up or down, nervous laughter might follow, and eventually the group disperses if a new alpha doesn’t step in. High school or teen rom-coms are maybe the best places to see this in exaggerated forms.

Body Language Of Alpha Females

In a group of females, the alpha female will use the same power poses as men do. I wrote about dominant men here. However, in a group of mixed genders, often the alpha female loses her power.

Alpha females are often attracted to alpha males if they’re seeking excitement or protection. In order to attract an alpha male, females will often adopt submissive body language (make themselves small, scrunch, round shoulders, pull arms and legs in, expose their neck *cough* hair flipping *cough* etc.). It’s socially conditioned, so even alpha females will do this without realizing it.

Where alpha females are happy to let the alpha male be in charge at home, they don’t want to be rescued, instructed, fixed, or stroke egos. However, alpha males aren’t often attracted to alpha females (according to research) because they want to be the dominant personality in a relationship. More commonly, opposites attract.

If you’re writing an alpha female/alpha male romance, be sure the reader knows why they’re attracted to one another.

Do you have a favorite alpha-female character, either in your book or someone else's? If you’re writing one of these characters, how are you making them like-able?

About Lisa

Lisa Hall-Wilson was a national award-winning freelance journalist and author who loves mentoring writers. Fascinated by history, fantasy, romance, and faith, Lisa blends those passions into historical and historical-fantasy novels.

Find Lisa’s blog, Beyond Basics for intermediate writers,  at www.lisahallwilson.com.

The 5 Day Deep Point of View Challenge is coming back! It was super popular last time I ran it, so I’m doing it again. It launches March 4 and runs until March 8. Sign up here to get an invite to the closed group on Facebook where all the magic happens!