Writers in the Storm

Many of my fellow writing parents tell me that the summer school break is a menace to their writing schedule. There's no denying that it's a challenge that takes juggling and creativity. I've already completed the first road trip of the summer, and here are the five benefits I've found (so far).

1. The importance of "location, location, location."

New places and new people add grist to our writing mill. The dysfunctional family at a rest stop..the wise waitress at the roadside cafe..the twitchy person at the front desk of your hotel. They are all new characters, and new things to describe when you are stuck.

On our last trip, there was an older man who had Middle Eastern music blaring out of his pocket at the breakfast buffet. Like all around the buffet. He was a total giver who walked to every corner of the room, so he could share with everybody.

I don't know about you, but I can't think before coffee. I especially can't think over drums and violins before coffee. I was bonkers within five minutes of the Music Man sitting next to us. I put my coffee in a to-go cup, went upstairs and got this dude out of my system and onto the page in a hilarious scene. He was so much fun to write, and I never would have run across him in my usual writing cocoon. 

I know most writers are cave dwellers who often don't leave their homes (or their pajamas) for days on end. *hitches up flannel pants* But a new environment brings a fresh view to your story. When I think a scene is boring, the easiest fix is a change of scenery. Go to a coffee shop, or the library, or the park.

2. It takes a village.

Don't be the only set of eyes reading your manuscript. Especially if you don't have a critique group, your summer road trip can be a godsend to your book. Read that baby out loud to your driver. If you're the driver, make your passenger read it to you. You'll clearly see what's missing when you hear your book read out loud.

3. Nothing replaces paper.

I don't know why this is, but the eyes see new things in print than they do on your screen. Every writer I know recommends a printed copy for final revisions.

I also use paper to be able to write in the car. Sometimes my eyes can see the plot better, and the view out of the window can add to the experience. Additionally, I can read those pages to my Dragon software so that the work makes it to the page for more revision. I freak out a little bit if I can't see forward progress, and then all the work gets stalled. God bless Dragon!

4. Take a nap.

Susan and Harry Squires did a fantastic post about Talking Back to Your Brain. They explain why it's important to ask yourself small manageable questions as part of your writing process.

The Squires recommend you not ask yourself large esoteric questions like: "Why am I stuck?" or "Why do I suck, and I can't finish this chapter and I'll never finish this book..." (You get the picture.) Instead, formulate a small specific question like: "I need to get my character from the beach to the mountains. Who should they travel with and why?" You get the picture.

Think small and be specific. 

It is completely true that if I'm thinking about an issue with my manuscript and I nod off for a nap, I'll wake up with - if not an answer - at least a potential solution to my issue.

There's cool brain stuff involved in this, so be sure to click the link and read that post!

5. An hour is golden.

As long as you don't get carsick, setting "time chunk" goals is a great way to use your passenger time on a road trip (or the school line, or your lunch break) for writing.

I don't know about you but, if I'm in a timed sprint I write faster. I don't know why. But it just seems like the act of setting a limit on it makes my brain stop lollygagging and bring out its "A" game. I talked about this group sprint concept quite a bit in my Holy-Moly-I-Won NaNoWriMo article a few months back.

Most of all, be flexible and creative. If you need the writing time, find ways to get it. We're writers...we know how to find creative solutions to problems. Or perhaps you'll give yourself permission to just take a break from writing altogether and enjoy your summer break. You're allowed to do that if you don't have a deadline! Really, I promise. You can take a writing break as long you put a specific date on the calendar to get back in the writing saddle.

Bonus Link: Here's a great article on self-editing: 10 Simple Ways to Edit Your Own Book by Blake Atwood at The Write Life.

What are your most valued tips and tricks when school breaks and vacations smash your writing schedule to smithereens? Do you love the summer break, or hate it? (Enquiring minds want to know!)

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About Jenny Hansen

By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 18 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, or here at Writers In The Storm

Aimie K. Runyan

As an author of historical fiction, my work must—almost by definition—begin with a concept. Am I going to write a gritty saga about the women who flew as combat pilots for Russia in the Second World War (I did and it was great fun)? Am I going to write a sweeping fictionalized biography of Joan of Arc? A dark and twisty Tudor-era mystery? I have to be grounded in that first to know what I’m doing. That’s the easy part in many ways. But as many writers will tell you, a story isn’t just something happening. It’s something happening to someone. Even in the case of a Joan of Arc biography, you have to decide who your Joan is. Bold and fearless or tentative and unsettled? These are all decisions you have to make.

I was recently asked if I could change direction on my work-in-progress. As in, shelve what I was working on and start over on something very, very different. Fine by me, I can come back to the other project when the market is right for it. I’m every bit as excited about the new project, and being flexible is definitely an indispensable trait for anyone in this crazy business. I was set to chat with my new editor the following week to discuss the new idea, so I had work to do. In order to nail the call I’d have to figure out one thing: Who is my protagonist?

I spent half a day driving around trying to get hold of a research book I’d need to get a better sense of the history. You might wonder why I needed the research book to figure that out. My protagonist—an invention of my own brain--had nothing to do with the dates, facts, and figures that I’d find in the book. But as I read about the life and times my unknown protagonist was living in, my brain would automatically try to figure out the type of woman who would be daunted by, and eventually thrive, under the stressors I would put on her. As I read, I began to ask myself what she looked like, what she wore, where she lived. Definitely a place to start. She also insisted that her name be Ruby. Sure thing, girl, you’re the star of the show.

But I had to ask her some deeper questions.

What do your days look like? Who are your friends? Do you have any friends? What is your secret pleasure? What embarrasses you? What annoys you? And even bigger: what do you want out of life? I’m not one to necessarily spend a lot of time writing character sketches, though I almost always take some notes. I prefer to have these ideas in my head and let them come out as I actually draft the story. Sometimes my characters really add another dimension in the second draft and that’s always a fun discovery. I’m a voracious plotter, so this organic development is how I regain the thrill of discovery that I lose by knowing the general direction of the narrative.

So once I have some ideas in my head, I open up my trusty OneNote Workbook that I use for everything (timelines, lists of names, interesting articles, and so on) and make a sheet for the protagonist. I Google for pictures to find someone who looks as I envision my character would, perhaps searching for images of some items in their life that are important as well and paste it all in the page. I might throw together a few paragraphs about my protagonist’s thoughts on life and goals we’ll see unveil in the story. Maybe some bigger goals we won’t see. Then I get to work clickety-clacking on some chapters.

Seems easy, right? Well some characters are easier to crack than others. A prime example of a difficult character is the protagonist from my upcoming novel, Daughters of the Night Sky. My protagonist, Katya, is an officer in the Red Army. She’s driven to learn how to fly from the time she’s a child because life has forced her to grow up before her time. She was focused, determined, and married to her work. She and I didn’t have a lot in common, and she was pretty closed-lipped (as any good officer in the Red Army would have been), so coaxing the character onto the page took some time.

I spent a lot more time doing freewriting exercises when I couldn’t reflect her personality on the page. Writing letters from Katya to important people in her life was one that helped a lot. Even then, my redheaded pilot was a character that really needed a second draft to add the final dimension into her personality. Even tweaks in drafts six and seven brought out some spark in her. It was a challenge, but I think she came into herself at long last. It was definitely worth the struggle, but thank goodness this new girl, Ruby, is a whole lot chattier than Katya ever was.

So, what tips and tricks do you use to breathe life into your protagonist?

Share with the crowd!

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Aimie K. Runyan is a historian and author who writes to celebrate history’s unsung heroines. She is the author of two previous historical novels: Promised to the Crown and Duty to the Crown. She is active as an educator and a speaker in the writing community and beyond. She lives in Colorado with her wonderful husband and two (usually) adorable children. To learn more about Aimie and her work, please visit www.aimiekrunyan.com.

 

Greer Macallister

A few years ago, if you’d asked me about the building blocks of great novels, I would have yammered on endlessly about sentences. They can’t be too long or too short or all the same; they can’t be so complex or descriptive that they get in the way of the story; they are demanding little creatures, able to reel readers in or drive them off, and you need to crack their code for each book all over again.

All that is still true. But I’ve come to believe that sentence management isn’t the only key ingredient to making your writing irresistible to readers – chapter management is just as important.

I confess that I have no natural talent for managing my chapters. While I’m in first draft mode, I tend to just write scene after scene in whatever order they come to me – not necessarily in the order they happen – and the shaping takes place afterward.

Chapters don’t have to be any particular length, though the general advice is to keep the length more or less consistent throughout the book, rather than following a three-page chapter with a twenty-page one, or vice versa.

These are the guidelines I use to shape my chapters to hook readers and keep them hooked:

1. A killer start.

Much like the advice to start your book with action, the idea of starting your chapter with a great first line is solid. While I was working on my most recent novel, GIRL IN DISGUISE, my editor pointed out that my chapter-opening lines weren’t always knockouts, and when I looked back through the draft, I quickly figured out why. GIRL IN DISGUISE covers many years in the life of Kate Warne, the first female detective in Americ, and I was using the beginning line of each chapter to mark how much time had passed since the last chapter. In theory, this helps keep the reader anchored – but, to muddy up the metaphor, an anchor is a double-edged sword. An early chapter of GIRL IN DISGUISE used to start like this:

A year into my employment, I was a new woman. I paid off my debt to Mrs. Borowski and left her boardinghouse for a smaller, finer one in the Garden District. 

In the finished book, the chapter begins this way instead:

I had been a Pinkerton operative for more than a year before someone tried in earnest to kill me.

That’s just a wee bit more exciting, isn’t it?

2. Rise and fall.

If you have a 20-page chapter followed by a 20-page chapter, but one is all action and one is all description, that’s a red flag for your pacing. Each chapter needs to balance action and description.

It doesn’t necessarily matter if you’re covering one scene or multiple scenes, but it matters how those scenes feel. The fix might involve moving a chunk of reflection. Often, at least in my case, it involves deleting that text completely.

Compressing the existing text into chapters is a key part of my editing process and an excellent way to put each scene under the microscope – are things moving too fast? Not fast enough? Are there key characters whose whereabouts are unclear because too much time is spent with other characters instead? Problems with the chapter are problems with the book, and one way or another, you’ll need to solve them.

3. A thought-provoking end.

Yes, you might have heard the advice to put a “hook” at the end to convince the reader to turn the page, and yes, that works sometimes. But ending every single chapter with some variant of “Little she did know what would happen next!!!!” eventually fatigues the reader.

Sometimes the right chapter-ender has a sense of closure to it, which would seem to fly in the face of the “hook” advice, but readers need mini-closure too, along the way. Whether the reader is thinking about what’s to come or what just happened, you want them thinking.

Some examples from GIRL IN DISGUISE:

“Your first case, then, Mrs. Warne,” he said, sliding an envelope across the desk.

But I could keep secrets, even one as potentially incendiary as this one. And so I would keep it, for a while. 

And so I watched his face turn hard, crushing my heart with every passing moment, and finally, I just stopped watching.

 I had planned on a month of this type of education. My plan was derailed.

Pinkerton told me I was needed elsewhere, and what could I ever say to him but yes?

So now that I’ve shared my chapter-shaping secrets, what are yours? What goes into your decision-making process as you shape of your chapters – or does it just come naturally?

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About Greer:

Raised in the Midwest, Greer Macallister is a poet, short story writer, playwright and novelist who earned her MFA in Creative Writing from American University. Her debut novel THE MAGICIAN'S LIE was a USA Today bestseller, an Indie Next pick, and a Target Book Club selection. It has been optioned for film by Jessica Chastain's Freckle Films. Her new novel GIRL IN DISGUISE, about real-life 19^th-century detective/bad-ass Kate Warne, was an Indie Next pick for April 2017 and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which called it “a well-told, superb story.”