Writers in the Storm

Susan Spann

In addition to writing novels and practicing law, I have a marine aquarium filled with corals and seahorses. I started reef-keeping years ago, though I’ve loved aquariums (and seahorses, especially) all my life. I knew, from the outset, that seahorses rank very high on the aquarium difficulty scale, and that they require a lot of work.

What I didn’t expect was that my seahorse-keeping would teach me lessons that applied to writing also.

I love sharing pictures of my reef, and my seahorses, on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, but today I thought I’d also share some vital writing lessons I’ve learned from my seahorse reef:

1.  If You Want To Succeed, Do Some Research Before You Start. Seahorses require specific water conditions, environments, and tank mates. If you want to keep them alive, you have to establish a proper reef environment from the start. The more you know about their needs, the better the chances your seahorses will thrive.

Similarly, the more you know about yourself, the publishing industry, and the kind of story you want to write, the better your chances of success as a writer. “Doing the research” means educating yourself about publishing options, genres, and writing skills, and learning as much as you can up front. You don’t have to know everything—and, in fact, most writers will tell you we learn as much “on the job” as we do beforehand, but knowing some things in advance will boost your chances of success from the outset.

2. You Have to Feed the Beast Every Day. Unlike many creatures, seahorses lack a true “stomach.” Instead, they have an intestinal tract that moves food through without giving it time to hold and digest. Because of this, they require feeding at least two times a day (four times, when they’re as small as the babies shown here).

A writing career is no different. If you fail to “feed” it regularly—in many cases, daily—it withers and dies. It isn’t absolutely necessary to write two times a day—or even daily—to keep the writing dream alive, but like a seahorse, the more often you feed it the faster it will grow.

3.  Constantly Push Yourself to Learn and Improve. Successful seahorse keepers often start out clueless (or nearly so) and end up highly knowledgeable about seahorses, water chemistry, poop*, and other aspects of aquatic life. We learn which creatures help seahorses thrive, which will harm them, and which ones might-or-might not work, depending on circumstances.

In writing, also, it pays to continue learning every day. Pushing yourself to develop new skills and story structures makes you a better writer, and the more you write (and read!) the more you learn how to use the elements of character, plot, and grammar to your advantage. You learn which plot devices work in your genre, which phrases always turn your prose a lovely (but unprintable) shade of purple, and which elements work in certain stories but not so well in others. The more you push yourself to improve, the more successful you will become in your writing and your career.

* Observing seahorse poop is easiest way to make sure a seahorse is healthy. Four years in, I know far more about seahorse scatalogical habits than I’d like to admit.

4.  Sometimes, Tragedies Happen. And You’ll Survive Them. Last September, I lost my female seahorse, Ceti, after a prolonged illness. I tried my hardest to save her with medications, a hospital tank, and even help from seahorse experts (yep, there’s a website for that). In the end, she died—and I was very sad.

It took me ten years and five manuscripts to find an agent and a publishing deal, and I can tell you from experience, that hurt even more than losing a seahorse. Some days, I didn’t think I could take another round of “I didn’t fall in love with it enough to place it in this difficult market.”

I also “lost” more than one manuscript during those years. Each one, I queried to death and then forced myself to write a new one to take its place. None of them reached publication (and their future remains uncertain). Like losing a seahorse, it pained me deeply to “let them go.”

However, if I’d kept mourning Ceti, I wouldn’t have the new babies: Vega and Kirin. If I hadn’t set the older manuscripts aside and written new ones, I wouldn’t have written Claws of the Cat—the novel that launched my career as a published author.

Publishing, like keeping a reef, won’t always go your way. Bad things will happen—but good things happen too, and in the end the success is worth more than all the rough times put together.

5.  If You Love it, Never Give Up. Seahorse keeping never gets easy. Writing doesn’t either. Both require massive amounts of work for rewards that sometimes feel short-lived and seldom pay huge dividends. But if you love it…do it anyway.

Every morning, I drag myself out of bed and into the office to feed the seahorses. Usually, they’re already nosing around in the food bowls, reminding me I’m late. By noon, they’re ready to eat again—and I actually had to take a break while writing this post to feed them. My hands are often wet and wrinkled from caring for the reef. I care for my seahorses and my corals deeply; I love them, feed them, mourn them … and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Writing is an equally hungry, messy, tear-stained endeavor. Most people consider writers a little crazy—and we probably are. We pour our heart and soul and hours into putting words on the page, in the hope that someone, somewhere will want to read them. We rejoice when we have a happy day and mourn when the words don’t flow. And yet, we always return our hands to the keys and our minds to the worlds we spin from dreams and passion.

We do it because, at the end of the day, we love it. Creating worlds with words gives us joy and makes our spirits soar. It’s a difficult, heart-wrenching, magical thing—and if you love it as I do, it’s worth every bit of the trouble it causes along the way.

Exactly like a seahorse.

About Susan
Susan Spann writes the Shinobi Mysteries, featuring ninja detective Hiro Hattori and his Portuguese Jesuit sidekick, Father Mateo. Her debut novel, CLAWS OF THE CAT (Minotaur Books, 2013), was a Library Journal Mystery Debut of the Month. The second Shinobi Mystery, BLADE OF THE SAMURAI, released on July 15, 2014. Susan is also a transactional attorney whose practice focuses on publishing law and business. When not writing or practicing law, she raises seahorses and rare corals in her marine aquarium. You can find her online at her website, http://www.SusanSpann.com, on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SusanSpannAuthor) and on Twitter (@SusanSpann), where she created and curates the #PubLaw hashtag.

Okay Orly, you say you're a pantser, and for the first draft, I agree you are. But then you happily flip into complete, committed plotter. All those post-its? Nope, I'd say you're a "hybrid-pantser."

Me, I'm pantser through and through. The idea of an outline, post-it notes on charts, even Laura's famous chapter spreadsheet, all make me want to get in the Athenamobile and drive away. Fast.

So how does my writing process work?

My characters present themselves. There are plenty, riding around in the carousel of my mind. Usually one will step forward and demand her story be told next. I spend some time with her, piecing together backstory, what she really wants–it's never what she tells me up front–and look at the potential for conflicts. Sometimes the hero appears first, or they present themselves together. If they're both interesting in their own right and seem screaming-wrong for each other, I'm interested.

I start running movie scenes through my head, about how they meet, what draws them together, how they see the good, and the bad, in each other, and how they fall in love. If I like the way those scenes come together, I start writing. (Aw, who am I kidding? If by this time I've fallen in love with my hero, I start writing.)

I'm typically a nighttime writer, which works great for my process. When I go to bed, I rerun the pages I just finished and play director, changing little, and big, things to make it better, adding snappier dialogue, modifying staging, bumping up the conflict. Then I just let the movie continue and fall asleep. That preps my brain to work on the plot while I sleep, and usually the next morning I have some revisions and ideas for the next scene or two.

Now, don't get me wrong. When I start writing a new book I know most of the pivotal emotional difficulties–er, blow-ups, arguments, inner conflicts– and the technology malfunctions and battle scenes (I write science fiction, give me a break!)-but not exactly how and where these plot points and pinch points will take place. I'm sorry, but if I knew how everything was going to play out, it would be boring to sit and type it all out. I love a good puzzle and fitting the plot, the emotions, and the conflicts together make writing exciting for me.

As for the actual, fingers-on-keyboard writing, I typically keep writing until the end of a scene or the end of a chapter, but I usually always know how the next scene will begin. I'm going to be digging my characters out of the hook where I stopped.

When I sit down again, I re-read what I wrote during my last session, add details and emotion and "dress the set." This process gets me back into the story so I'm connected when I begin putting new words on the page. After more chapters I start to think about adding a phrase or a scene in previous chapters to foreshadow or provide backstory. I'll write the idea on a post-it and stick it to the edge of my computer. Yes, by the time I'm ready to start the first whole-book-revision there are post-its all around my monitor, sometimes three deep. They've been in my peripheral vision and thought, and I begin layering in those ideas during the first revision. I'm a coward; I always start with the simplest revisions.

Then I usually end up taking some paper and pencil notes about timelines and chapter major events so I can find where to add my ideas. I have to admit that on more than one occasion I've let blue words flow while looking for half-an-hour or more for a specific scene. Those times I swear I should have kept track on Laura's spreadsheet and I vow to use it on the next book.

I used to hate revising, but on the last book I could see the story getting better and better through the revision process. I think that examining my revision process is actually improving my initial draft. I'm aware that I tend to be all about the facts in the first draft, ("But what is she feeling?" is a common comment) so I'm trying to layer in more emotions on those "morning after" re-writes.

Final revisions are all about evaluating and using comments from critiques and judges.

Before I send a manuscript off, I read it out loud. Yes, all four hundred plus pages. I catch weird sounding dialogue that looked great on the page, echoes, and always a cliche or two that made it past several pairs of eyes.

My process works for me, an untrained-creative-writer hard-science nerd who managed to get my college degrees without ever taking a writing class. Of course, once I began writing, I've taken a lot of classes to learn the tricks behind the magic. But everyone's process is different.

How do you create your magic on the page? What is the strangest component of your process?

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.

Punished, oh-no, that’s published as a co-author of a math textbook, she yearns to hear personal stories about finding love from those who read her books, rather than the horrors of algebra lessons gone wrong.  She is grateful for good friends who remind her to do the practical things in life like grocery shop, show up at the airport for a flight and pay bills.

A “hard” scientist who avoided writing classes like the plague, she now enjoys sharing her brain with characters who demand that their stories be told.  Amazing, gifted critique partners keep her on the straight and narrow. Feedback from readers keeps her fingers on the keyboard.

When she’s not hanging out at Writers in the Storm, you can visit Fae at http://faerowen.com  or www.facebook.com/fae.rowen

Shannon Donnelly

Backstory—the background needed to enrich a story—is one of those things that can drive any writer nuts. How much is too much? When do you reveal more? When do you hold back? Too much backstory can sink a story—because you’re not moving the story forward. You’re giving background, and while that can be interesting, readers really want the story to keep moving. Too little backstory and you run the risk that character motivations may not make sense.

There are no right answers about how to handle backstory, but there are some tips to help you find a better balance between stopping the story dead for the background and having so little background that the reader is lost.

Questions to Ask Yourself—

1. Does the reader really need to know this? This is the first thing to ask. Does the reader really need to know the heroine’s puppy was stolen when she was six? Is this just a cool background fact, or is it a vital plot point? (As in the puppy comes back in the next chapter and he’s magical now.) This is a tough question to answer because you usually want to think, “Of course the reader has to know this.” Be brutally honest with yourself—do you just want to put this information in because a) you think you need it or b) you think it’s cool or c) you read another book that had this kind of background. Don’t let yourself be tricked by either bad structure in another book or the ability another writer has to make backstory work brilliantly. And when in doubt save the backstory for later.

2. Does the reader really need to know this now? The now is an important part of backstory. Sometimes you need to set the scene or the world for the reader. This is very important when dealing with history or alternate realties. The reader may need to know how magic works in your fictional world. Or the reader may need to know the importance of manners in another age. These may be vital to making the very premise of your story work—and so the reader needs that information right away. But…be careful with this. You may again overload the front of the book with too much. Again, when in doubt save the backstory for later.

3. Can you weave in the backstory with a just sentence or two? Careful editing is your friends. Go ahead and write those three pages of backstory. Go wild with it. Have fun. Then cut it out and save it and use just a sentence here or there. Think of backstory as colorful threads that you want to gleam here and there—too much color in one spot will blind, but a thread showing on this page and another on the next gives dimension to the story. And again…save those big chunks for backstory for later.

4. How long can you leave the reader waiting? This is a great device that requires foreshadowing. If you HINT at your protagonist having some history or issues from the past, the reader is going to start wanting to know more. Drop enough hints, set the trail with enough mystery, and the reader will then wade through any amount of backstory because now the reader is dying to know more. A backstory dump won’t work if the reader isn’t first set up to want this—in other words, if you just put in the backstory without any foreshadowing, the reader is going to wonder if the story was somehow derailed. The good news is you can weave this stuff in after your first draft is done.

5. Can you add the backstory with something else going on? Readers want conflict—they want the story to keep moving forward. Look at some of your backstory and see if you can have it come out at the worst time possible for your character. Instead of finding out in chapter one that your hero hates heights, have him find out in chapter ten when he’s standing on the edge of a cliff and it’s jump or die. If your heroine has some issues with her mother, maybe they can come out every time the two of them are on the phone and the sniping starts over long dead family issues that neither of them can resolve. Look to add dimension to every scene—every bit of conflict—by bringing in the character’s past to that scene. These again are places for those colorful threads of backstory. The caution here is don’t overdo this…and do foreshadow with hints (and hints means hints—trust your readers and do not beat them over the head with the same information over and over again because you worry ‘they might not get it’).

6. Is less more, or is more more? When you’re in the middle of any story and writing madly away it’s very easy to lose all perspective. Get the book—the story—done. Set it aside for a couple of weeks. Then come back with fresh eyes. Now you’ll be able to look at it to see if you need to add a touch more backstory—or if you need to cut back on the backstory. Is the scene dragging—pull out some of that backstory. Is the scene a little confusing—ah, time to add a touch more backstory.

7. Can you use dialogue to add backstory? This can be a great device—or a deadly one. Sometimes you need characters to add to the backstory—but this must be done in character and true to the character’s voice. The last thing you want is a character talking in plot exposition—that’s deadly. Nothing flattens dialogue more than making it all about exposition—either with backstory to setup the plot or backstory to provide motivation. So…make it about more. Layer in emotion to that dialogue. If you have two sisters who are arguing about something that happened between them ten years ago, let them use the kind of shorthand siblings would use—in other words, Theresa wouldn’t tell her sister, “Remember when you stole my beau from me and asked him to the dance.” That’s too “on the nose.” It’s using dialogue to add backstory but in such a way that the reader can’t believe it. So you change it up. Maybe Theresa says, “I remember what happened at the last dance—do you think I’m going to ever let you forget what you did!” Now the reader is also wondering what happened and wants to hear more—and the characters can get into it between each other with a slow reveal of the story (and a lot of tearing at each other). But here’s another place to go back to the earlier questions of does the reader really need this information—and does the reader need this now?

Above all, when in doubt save the backstory for later. You may find yourself pushing it off and pushing it off and pushing it right out of the story. It’s quite possible you may need to write three chapters of backstory because you (as the author) needed to write those scenes and know that information. It’s nothing the reader needs—and should be cut because it stops the story from starting (or slows it way, way down).

And if you really can’t decide about the backstory, find a couple of readers who can read a solid draft of the book and tell you places where the story slowed down too much—or where it was confusing. Those are the places to cut or to add backstory. And remember…backstory is when the story is now going back, not forward. Treat it as such and keep your stories moving forward as much as you can!

About Shannon
Shannon Donnelly’s writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the "Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer" contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA's Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: "simply superb"..."wonderfully uplifting"....and "beautifully written." She is also the author of the Mackenzie Solomon, Demon/Warders Urban Fantasy series, Burn Baby Burn and Riding in on a Burning Tire. She is currently working on her next Regency romance, Lady Chance.