Writers in the Storm

Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to write. She wasn’t thinking about getting published or becoming rich and famous (okay, maybe a little), she just wanted to write. She took writing classes, joined writer’s groups, and let the words pour forth. With a finished manuscript in hand, a writer friend suggested she should try to get published. Huh, why not?

So she joined more writer’s groups, took more workshops, partnered up with a critique buddy, wrote a query letter, researched agents, rewrote the query letter, researched more agents, joined more writer’s groups (even helped found one ;-) ), wrote another manuscript, created a website, developed a platform, wrote another query letter … yeah, okay, you get it.

She devoured every bit of generous advice from her just agented, just published author friends. And she played out scenarios of what it would be like to get “The Call” and what life would be like after “The Call.”

Then one day, she got “The Call.” She knew she was ready. She’d been working for this moment for years. The call came and the girl stood in her living room waiting for everything to change, for the harps to play, the birds to sing, for the big-girl author panties to finally fit.

Guess what happened next.

Are you ready?

No harps, no birds (other than the one who pooped on the grill), and the big-girl author panties promptly gave me a wedgie.

Seriously? All those years imagining the perfect scenarios for revealing my big news, the way I’d feel, the changes that news would unveil … all wrong.

I thought I’d scream the news from the top of the house, squee on social media, change every bio I’ve ever written. I told my two closest writing friends and my family. Then spent the next couple of weeks texting Laura some variation of “ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod” (actually, the only variation was the punctuation at the end of those texts). And Laura would respond with some variation of “Get over yourself and announce it already” (Actually, the only variation was the level of expletives as time went on).

I was totally unprepared for how possessive I would feel about the news. After that many years, and so many near misses, I’d connected with someone who loved my writing and believed in my ability. I kept staring at my new agent’s website and my name under her client list, hitting refresh a gazillion times just to make sure. I updated my website with “represented by,” and I’d answer the “any news” questions with “actually, yes.” But the idea of broadcasting the news—that scenario I’d played out, written and edited in my head countless times—no longer appealed. This was my happy place that I’d been working so hard for and I wanted to savor it.

I thought I had all the pieces of my platform perfectly placed and ready to take me to the next level. I’d followed all the “should dos” you read about. I had a website, twitter account that I remembered to access every so often, I was active on Facebook, even had a Pinterest account although I’d never gotten around to setting up a board for the book that actually got me the agent and sold to an editor. The more I looked at everything I’d worked so hard to build, the more I realized how much more work I had ahead of me.

My to-do list went from revisions and start new project, to revisions, start new project, get author photo taken, redesign website, develop Pinterest boards, outline/research marking ideas, catch up on Goodreads reviews, go meet local bookshop owners, set up Facebook author page, and on and on and oh my god how did I ever think I was ready?!

The other side of “The Call” was suddenly looking way more stressful than I’d imagined.

I didn’t think it would change the way I felt about writing. In all the years I was querying, I never doubted my path to traditional publishing. I wanted to work with an agent who saw something in me and could help me build a career. I wanted an editor who believed in my writing and could help me polish those word rocks into diamonds. Having those people in my corner gave me a confidence boost. Suddenly the new story I’d been noodling for ages felt doable.

And yet the moment I sat down to begin writing on that new project, I got hit with a “holy poop can I do this again” panic. Now if I don’t deliver, it’s not just me I’m letting down.

For years I watched my friends sign with agents, get publishing contracts, release books into the world. I watched how they acted and reacted in public,  and I devoured their advice in private. I thought I knew exactly how I’d feel and how I would act when my time came. Not even close!

Maybe it’s because I’m not a public spectacle kinda of gal. Or maybe because I’ve embraced my inner troll. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve matured as a writer and what I thought would be the fireworks end of the journey is more of a comforting hug during the journey.

That journey, like the writing, is personal and often surprising. You may think you know where you’re headed, but things don’t always go as planned. I’ve had plenty of characters in my stories throw me plot curves. So I suppose it’s not that surprising that the well thought out scenarios for my writing career would meet with a couple of plot curves as well. The key … acknowledge and adjust.

What surprises have you found on your path to publication? Have you surprised yourself with your reaction or have you stayed the course with the mental picture you drew early on?

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About Orly

After years of pushing the creativity boundary in corporate communications, Orly decided it was time for a new challenge. Three women’s fiction manuscripts later (plus a handful of picture books), it’s safe to say she’s found her creative outlet. When she’s not talking to her imaginary friends, she’s reading or at least trying to ignore everyone around her long enough to finish “just one more paragraph.” Orly is the founding president of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She is rep’d by Marlene Stringer, Stringer Literary Agency LLC.

Orly's debut novel, The Memory of Hoofbeats, will be released by Forge in 2017.

You can find her on Twitter at @OrlyKonigLopez or on her website, www.orlykoniglopez.com.

Margie Lawson

Thank you for inviting me to be a guest blogger. I’m always honored to be a WITS guest!

 

Reading a book with flat-lined cadence is like watching a movie on mute.

 

Most writers know about the power of rhythm and cadence and beats. But most don’t use that power in every sentence.

 

A compelling cadence is more than varying sentence lengths. More than using ­­­­­stand alone words.

 

A compelling cadence carries power on the page. It propels readers through paragraphs and passages and pages.

 

Dean Koontz is one of the kings of cadence. Here’s what he shared with Brad Crawford in an interview. 

I like prose to have hidden rhythms; I like prose to have a music beneath the

surface. It's almost never recognized by the reader in a conscious way, but it is

recognized unconsciously. It's why readers feel the prose flow, why it speaks to

them.

A poet once reviewed one of my books and recognized that entire passages were

written in iambic pentameter. I didn't think anyone would ever notice that.

Different poetic meters affects us emotionally in different ways. It's not anything

anyone's going to see, but it's one of the great techniques to suck a reader right

into the heart of the story.

 

Read your work out loud, with feeling, and you’ll hear what beats work well, and what beats are missing.

 

Many rhetorical devices are cadence-driven. Knowing which rhetorical devices boost cadence, pick up pace, make the read imperative, and 747 more cool things, loads your writing toolbox with super-powered tools.

Check out these cadence-driven examples.

 

Hide, Lisa Gardner, A two paragraph excerpt from page 9.

It was raining. He held his coat over my head. And then, tucked inside his

cologne-scented jacket, he gave me my first kiss.

 

Arms wrapped around my waist. Dreamy smile upon my face.

 

The compelling cadence in Lisa Gardner’s second paragraph was powered by what I call an RD combo. Two rhetorical devices.  Parallelism and assonance.

 

I included the first paragraph so you could see—and hear—the cadence in the lead-in.

 

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen, From the prologue: 

The concession stand in the center of the tent had been flattened, and in its

place was a roiling mass of spots and stripes—of haunches, heels, tails,

and claws, all of it roaring, screeching, bellowing, or whinnying. A polar bear

towered above it all, slashing blindly with skillet-sized paws. It made contact

with a llama and knocked it flat—BOOM!

 

Sara Gruen made that piece strong with alliteration and word play, as well as style and structure and strategy.

 

The Ones We Trust, Kimberly Belle, 4-time Immersion-Grad, 4 Examples

1. Gabe’s good looks are real and rugged and raw, and now that I’ve seen both brothers up close, I’d choose Gabe over Zach any day. 

RD Combo: Polysyndeton and Alliteration.

2. The silence that spins out lasts forever. It’s the kind of silence that wraps around you like a shroud, the kind that turns the air thick and solid, the kind that makes you want to hear the answer as much as you dread it.

Rhetorical Devices:  Amplification (silence) and anaphora

3. My heart races and my skin tingles and my blood pressure explodes like a grenade.

Rhetorical Devices:  Empowers visceral responses with polysyndeton and a simile.

4. “Gabe.” I wait until he falls quiet, and then I say, in my best calm-a-spooked-source voice, “She’ll call.”

Dialogue Cue freshened and empowered with a hyphenated-run-on for a cliché twist.

 

The Blessing of No, Megan Menard, 4-time Immersion-Grad, Three examples:

1. Luke had a machine-gun laugh that fired about every third word.

2. “That makes me feel so much better.” I hoped my sarcasm covered my lie.

3. I picked up a French fry. It was a slender blonde, tall and weepy. I named the fry Tanya and chomped off its head.

All three examples carry interest and power and are perfectly cadenced. The third example uses parallelism. And it reveals a truth in a humor hit that could make us want to laugh or cry.

 

Test of Faith, Christa Allan, multi-Margie-Grad

 1. “If. Faith. Can. Come. Live. With Me?” I heaved every word out of my brain and into my mouth. I felt like someone regaining consciousness in an unfamiliar room or house or life.

Christa Allan stylized that dialogue by using a Period. Infused. Sentence. That’s what I named it.  Her dialogue cue is amplified, amplified, amplified stellar.

She used an RD combo in the last sentence: polysyndeton and zeugma.

2. That Logan could embrace his inner dork made him all the more likeable. If I’d idled at likeable and not throttled up to loveable, I wouldn’t have risked crashing into the wall. This dinner was the Indy 500 version of returning to the track after a pit stop, except that the finish line was Logan, and there was only one first place.

Ah… Metaphors and power words and hope all themed, propelled by a compelling cadence.

 

The Edge of Lost, Kristina McMorris, multi-Margie-Grad

1. Murphy swayed, as if riding the internal waves of his liquor.

Wow. A fresh take on a drunken swagger.

2. Mealtime together was like wading through a swamp: one wrong step could pull you under.

Smart writing. An amplified simile. Perfectly cadenced.

 

Risk, Skye Jordan, 3-time Immersion-Grad 

1. “Julia.” The use of her name was forceful and final, and oddly intimate.

Love the way Joan Swan, writing as Sky Jordan, used alliteration and boosted the cadence with the unexpected juxtaposition—oddly intimate.

2. Julia cocked her hip, crossed her arms, and gave Noah a clear, one-wrong-word-and-you’ll-regret-it stare.

Two hits of body language, parallelism, followed by a look amplified with a hyphenated-run-on. Fun and powerful.

 

Twice in a Blue Moon, Laura Drake, Immersion-Grad

1. “This business will stand on its own.” Her voice was as hard as the untilled dirt in the vineyard.

Themed dialogue cue. Amplified simile.

2. The remnants of adrenaline in her system congealed to a sticky wad of anger.

Powerful visceral response. Fresh. Backloaded.

Next example, two paragraphs:

3. “What do you mean, nothing? You’re looking at me like I’m a mouse turd on toast.”

In her hesitation, time bloated, looming and ugly. Something was wrong. His heart tried to hammer its way out of his chest. Bad wrong.

Stimulus: Fresh, accusatory dialogue.

Response: Expanded time. Amplified with negative connotations and a visceral response. Backloaded. Punched up cadence.

You have thousands of ways to capture your story on the page. Crafting a compelling cadence will capture your reader too. And you’ll take your writing from good to stellar.

BLOG GUESTS:  It’s your turn.

 Post a comment and you have TWO CHANCES to WIN!

 

1. Lecture Packet from Margie Lawson
2. An online course from Lawson Writer’s Academy – worth up to $75!

 

Check out the courses offered by Lawson Writer's Academy in January:

1. Getting Serious About Writing a Series
2. Doing Double Duty with Setting
3. Empowering Characters’ Emotions
4. Madness to Method: Using Acting Techniques to Make Each Moment Oscar Worthy

 

The drawings will be Tuesday, 8:00 PM Mountain Time.

See you on the blog!

All smiles................Margie

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About Margie

Margie Lawson—editor, international presenter—teaches writers how to use her psychologically-based editing systems and deep editing techniques to create page turners. Margie has presented over ninety full day master classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

To learn about Lawson Writer’s Academy, Margie’s 4-day Immersion Master Classes (in Denver, Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Canyon Lake, Dallas, San Jose, Melbourne, Australia, and more), her full day Master Class presentations, on-line courses, lecture packets, and newsletter, please visit www.MargieLawson.com.

 

Marcy Kennedy

One of the most common writing challenges is avoiding point-of-view errors. It doesn’t seem to matter where we are along the writing path—from newbie to multi-published—point-of-view errors crop up like many-headed hydra. Just when we think we’ve got them all, there’s another head coming around to bite us from behind.

When we start out writing, we’re most likely to head-hop, but as we understand point of view better, head-hopping usually disappears. The point-of-view errors we start to make are sneakier, harder for us to see in our own writing.

These POV errors happen any time we’re in a limited point of view—where we’re supposed to stay inside one viewpoint character at a time—and we write something that our viewpoint character couldn’t know, wouldn’t have experienced, or wouldn’t be thinking about. (My friend Jami Gold, who shared her excellent NaNoWriMo tips here earlier this week, calls them out-of-POV phrases. That’s a great way to describe them.)

So how do we avoid them?

We become the point-of-view character.

That might sound simplistic, but if we actually embrace this, we won’t have point-of-view errors in our book. Let’s look at what it means if we think about our point-of-view character in terms of ourselves.

We know our own thoughts and feelings, but we don’t know anyone else’s.

I can’t know what anyone else is thinking, or even if they’re thinking about anything at all. I can’t know how someone else is feeling. They might be smiling on the outside and in agony on the inside. Or the scowl I interpret as anger toward me might simply be gas pains.

I also can’t know why someone does an action. I can’t know if they turned toward me because they heard me enter the room, because they caught a glimpse from the corner of their eye, or because they were going to turn that direction anyway.

So, if we have a female POV character, and we write something like this…

Bob grabbed the signed baseball, angry she’d moved it from the shelf.

We’ve created a POV error. She can’t know Bob is feeling angry or what the source of his anger is.

Understanding that our point-of-view character is just like us in that their perception is limited to their own thoughts, feelings, and motivations is foundational to avoiding point-of-view errors. We can only write what our point-of-view character knows. If they’re making a guess or interpreting based on the evidence they see, then we need to make it clear through internal dialogue how they’ve reached their conclusion.

We can’t sense things outside of our sight, earshot, or smell range, and we can’t experience things before they happen.

Sounds obvious, right? But sometimes we forget to think about how we perceive the world around us.

I can’t see something that’s happening behind me or that’s happening when my eyes are closed. If I don’t notice something happening, I can’t tell you about it. I can’t normally see my own face.

I don’t know what my future holds, and I can’t experience something before it actually happens (including the tone of voice someone else will use when they speak).

So if our point-of-view character can’t see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it at that moment, we can’t include it. If we do, it’s a point-of-view error. I’ll give you a quick example for this one. Let’s say our viewpoint character is Andrea.

POV Error: Andrea’s face turned red.

Andrea can’t see her own face. This is from the perspective of someone looking at Andrea, but if we are Andrea, we don’t experience it this way.

What We Experience As Andrea: Heat rushed up her neck and into her cheeks.

If we’re Andrea, we experience it from the inside—what we feel.

We don’t think about things we’re familiar with, and we’re consistent in how we do think about things.

There are parts of my life that I never think about, and I’d bet there are parts of your life that you don’t think about either. You probably don’t think about your eye color much at all, or the way your living room looks (unless you come home to find that your husband and his friends have knocked out a wall), or about the way your boss regularly dresses. You don’t think about how to drive your car. You don’t think about the set-up of your society either—you take that for granted. Yet sometimes all those elements sneak into our writing, creating POV errors.

We can run every part of our novel through this framework. What name do you use when you think about your spouse? I only think about my husband as Chris. I don’t think about him as Christopher. I don’t think about him by his last name. Yet, when we write, within the same scene we might have our point-of-view character think about someone as Michael, the young construction worker, and the man.

The way we interpret, judge, and interact with the world depends on our past and personality and is individual to us.

Every fall, my family attends a rural fair, complete with exhibits, vendors, greasy food, and midway rides. It’s crowded and loud and you’re always running into people you know. I love visiting the animal barns and buying foods I can’t get anywhere else. It’s fun.

To my husband, an Iraqi war veteran with PTSD, it’s a struggle. A crowded situation like my friendly local fair translates to his mind as too many potential threats to mitigate. His past experiences mean that he doesn’t see the fair the same way I do.

That’s an extreme example, but we do it with everything we encounter every day.

I grew up with Great Danes. My current Dane weighs 130 pounds. So I love big dogs. I see a big dog and I want to talk to the owner and pet the dog. But many people see a big dog and it inspires fear.

Does that café you visited for lunch have character or is it grungy and rundown? Is the biker on the street corner someone to be feared, criticized, or used as a source for the best bike shops and tattoo parlors?

One of the biggest mistakes we make as writers in terms of setting is describing it in generic terms. Coloring our descriptions with our point-of-view character’s opinions brings them to life, enhances voice, and gives readers the exciting experience of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.

It also avoids POV errors. When we think about every event through our point-of-view character’s personal filter, we won’t try to describe something with words or opinions they wouldn’t hold. Or to describe things they never would have noticed in the first place.

Next time you’re not sure whether something you’ve written is a POV error or not, ask yourself what you’d experience if you were the point-of-view character.

Do you have any other tips on avoiding point-of-view errors?

• the strengths and weaknesses of the four different points of view you can choose for your story (first person, second person, limited third person, and omniscient),
• how to select the right point of view for your story,
• how to maintain a consistent point of view throughout your story,
• practical techniques for identifying and fixing head-hopping and other point-of-view errors,
• the criteria to consider when choosing the viewpoint character for each individual scene or chapter,
• and much more!

ABOUT MARCY

Marcy Kennedy is a freelance fiction editor and the author of the bestselling Busy Writer’s Guides series, which includes her newest book Point of View in Fiction: A Busy Writer’s Guide. She loves helping writers find ways to follow their dreams without sacrificing their life. The Busy Writer’s Guide series focuses on giving authors the in-depth, practical information they need while still respecting their time. You can find her blogging about writing and about the place where real life meets science fiction, fantasy, and myth on her website. To subscribe to her free newsletter (and receive some thank-you gifts), go to http://eepurl.com/Bk2Or.