Writers in the Storm

by Jenny Hansen

One of my favorite speakers on writing is Jennifer Crusie. For some reason, she makes sense to me...as if she has an expressway dug directly into my writing mind. Stephen Cannell (creator of The Rockford Files) was the man who etched 3-Act Structure on my brain, but for turning points it was all Jenny Crusie.

Below is an excerpt of the talk she gave at an RWA conference a few years back, and I'm using it this morning to edit my fiction.

The 5 Turning Points ala Jenny Crusie:

A turning point is a part in the story where an event happens that throws the protagonist into a whole new place.

1^st turning point is where things go from stable to unstable. You can start 5 mins before or after this turning point, but not later. You must introduce a protagonist that the reader wants to stay with for the whole book. (It’s why you often start things off with the protagonist in trouble.)

Your reader is going to connect to your hero or heroine from that first page – you give them the payoff with your turning points.

2^nd Turning point - The original trouble gets worse.

3^rd turning point is where the reader can’t go back.

Some people title each turning point, which I think is a grand idea. In Agnes and the Hitman it was called "Agnes Unleashed" and it was where she gives in to her rage.

4^th turning point is the Dark Moment. This is the crisis where both the heroine and the reader lose everything. This is the crisis the heroine is not sure she can overcome. The actions the heroine decide on here will determine the last turning point.

5^th turning point is the end where there is once more a stable world, it is just a new stable world.

Now, here come my favorite bits of "Jenny" advice about turning points!

1. Do not identify these turning points until the 2^nd draft.

2. If you're thinking in terms of 100K book, the 1^st turning point should be at the 30K word mark. This needs to be a very big event.

Note: Don't confuse "inciting incident" with "turning point."

3. About 20-25K words later, you hit them with another big event. (This second event combats "sagging middles.")

4. Each chunk of the book should grow smaller.

5. Things are getting worse faster if the pacing is quick and you keep the heroine struggling with these events.

6. Pace the novel AFTER the first draft.

7. Every scene should have a protagonist and an antagonist (keeps conflict on every page).

8. People do not change because of thoughts – they change because of actions.

Are those stellar or what??

Most writers shake their heads over Elmore Leonard's famous quote on writing:

I try not to write the parts people skip.

Jennifer Crusie's talk on turning points was the first time I got a glimmer of what the hell Mr. Leonard was talking about.

Have you ever heard a good talk on turning points? Who gave it? What turned the lightbulb on for you? Add your own bit of advice in the comments! If the idea of turning points is new to you in your writing, do you have questions?

Jenny

*** Need more Jenny? Check out her latest post:
5 Vices I Get To Keep (Sweet!) ***

About Jenny Hansen

Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after the newly walking Baby Girl). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing.

When she’s not at her blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA and here at Writers In The Storm. She's also the author of the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.

Or... Turning Whine into Gold
by Kathryn Craft

I’d like to thank the team here at Writers in the Storm for letting me blow in with a series on attitude adjustment.

If you think this has nothing to do with becoming an author, you couldn’t be more wrong! From our first words tentatively pressed to the journal page all the way to our most recently published book, writing is an artistic endeavor fraught with anxiety that, if we let it, can have its ugly way with us.

This series seeks nothing less than alchemy: if we accept that negative feelings are part of the artistic process, we can learn to manage them to our advantage.

First, let’s drum up some optimism, shall we? Because optimism can help you get published.

Doubt it? More than thirty years of research in high-rejection endeavors, from athletic competition to life insurance sales, suggests the statement is true. There is more to optimism, however, than The Little Engine’s “I think I can.”

Optimism is the practice of framing what has already happened in a positive light.

To raise your optimism quotient, try the following ten affirmations. Meditate on them, speak them, and copy them down in your own hand until you are convinced of their truth.

Once you own these concepts, your writing will be less about the absolutes of success and failure, and more about gleaning the benefits of every step on your path. And who knows—you may end up appreciating the long process of getting traditionally published as much as you enjoy the writing.

10 Affirmations To Bolster Your Optimism:

1. Agents, editors, and authors all love to read and all have the same goal: to increase our country's wealth of good writing. Agents and editors need writers to keep them in business. We are comrades.

2. The book industry is super tough right now, but I am doing what I can to improve both my craft and my knowledge of the publishing industry.

3. I believe that being a published author is my destiny and I will start my journey down that road, but factors beyond my control will affect the timing of my arrival. I will get there when I get there.

4. While pride is the first of the seven deadly sins, optimism is a blessing for myself and for all of those around me. I love my work, so I will share my enthusiasm for it with others.

5. Rejection is the badge of honor I must sometimes wear to prove that I am boldly putting my work out into the world. But it is better to learn that I am not quite ready for publication through a private note from a publishing professional than to get slammed by critics and readers in the court of public opinion, where I might realize poor sales and never be published again.

6. No other writer has my exact combination of innate abilities, predispositions, life experience, interests, passions, and humor. These elements create a perspective all my own that will contribute to the wealth of existing literature. My readers unwittingly await my arrival.

7. Every experience is a good experience for a writer. Victory, failure, acceptance, rejection—they are all part of the human experience, and stoke the creative fire within me.

8. If I am an optimistic fool, so be it. The real fool is the person who stops doing what he loves just because it is difficult.

9. Worst case scenario: it never happens for me. My epitaph: "She died pursuing her dream." What stronger, more beautiful statement could be made about my life, published or not?

10. I am committed to learning. Learning can be uncomfortable, but ignorance will not move me forward along my path. If writing is truly my passion, I must not give up. If we writers stop pursuing our dreams, who will write all the books?

Have you ever turned around a difficult situation by writing out affirmations? It’s a powerful tool. Yes, it’s a bit like brainwashing—but think about it. In an industry as tough as publishing, how can this type of brainwashing hurt you? From the inside out, you will become a writer optimistic that she will eventually get published—and sensing this, others will perceive that you are already a success.

Awesome stuff, right? Kathryn will be here with us at WITS every 4th Monday for the next while. Let's give her a rousing welcome down in the comments!

*******************

Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com. Her debut novel, The Art of Falling, will be released through Sourcebooks in January 2014. To read more about her book, check out her author site, KathrynCraft.com. Pre-order links are live at bn.com and Amazon.com!

Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania literary scene, she loves anything that brings writers together—conferences, workshops, retreats, and blogs like Writers in the Storm. She also blogs at The Blood-Red Pencil and at her personal blogs, The Fine Art of Visiting and Healing Through Writing.

Connect with Kathryn on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

By Piper Bayard

Everything I know about writing I learned from belly dancing. Yes, belly dancing.

How can this be? Art is Creativity, channeled into a three-dimensional form. It is the same basic process regardless of the medium, so the act of becoming proficient in any art is the same: discipline, practice, and dancing.

Dancing? Yes, dancing.

The question writers ask me most often is, “How do you deal with writer’s block?”

I tell them that dancing—writing—is the elimination of thought between the music and the motion. Like I tell my dancing students, when you get stuck, don’t push. It won’t work. Take a deep breath, and relax your way through it.

With writing, that means turn off the left brain and allow your muse to take over—allow your right brain to dance. Stories do not come from us; stories move through us. We are not the source of Creativity, but through discipline, practice, and subjugating the ego to the higher purpose, we can become effective conduits for Creativity.

So how do we unblock our conduit?

[No. Fiber is not the answer.]

Getting stuck in our process is all about the left brain—structure, plotting, and editing.

Control. Control is a good thing. It is the material our conduits are made of.

Discipline, practice, and understanding of our craft all contribute to building healthy channels for the flow of Creativity so that it doesn’t simply flood and dissipate with no constructive product to show for it. However, getting caught up in control can narrow that channel to the point that Creativity, like water, will go find an easier path.

When our inner control freaks get out of control worrying about what should come next, what should these characters be saying, what could make this scene bigger and better, we narrow our conduits.

The left brain is all about the piping, not what flows through it. The right brain is all about the flow. The right brain is Creativity’s studio, so when Creativity begins to dry up, it’s a sign we need to get the left brain to back off.

There is actually something simple we can do to achieve this . . . sleep.

When we sleep, our left brain checks out, and our right brain heads for the studio. That’s why so many of us wake up in the middle of the night with our best ideas. When we sleep, Creativity dances.

As you’re drifting off at night or for a nap, ask your brain a question. When you wake, before Creativity notices you’re watching her pirouette, pull out a piece of paper. Unlined paper is best, because lines are all about form and structure. Lines are left brain, and you don’t want the left brain clapping off beat with Creativity’s music.

Get out your unlined paper, get cozy with your favorite pen, and let Creativity dance.

Don’t tell her that she’s doing the wrong steps. Don’t tell her she has on the wrong shoes. And especially, don’t tell her she isn’t good enough to try those moves . . .

Don’t let your thought come between Creativity’s music and the dance she leads through your writing hand. Let her do anything she wants on that page, and trust that she will answer your question while she’s there.

We are not the source of Creativity; we are only her instrument. The three-dimensional tool that allows Creativity expression in this plane of existence. Build her a studio with discipline and structure, then get out of her way and let her dance.

Have you experienced writer's block? How do you combat it? Do you dance?

******************

Piper Bayard is a recovering attorney, a full-time author, and the managing editor of Social In Worldwide, Inc., a news and events network. Her debut dystopian thriller, FIRELANDS, is available from Amazon in Paperback and on Kindle and in e-book at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iTunes for iPad and mobile devices.

She is currently working with a “senior mouseketeer” in the intelligence community on the APEX PREDATOR series of spy thrillers. Her web site is BayardandHolmes.com. She would love to hear from you on Facebook at “Piper Bayard” or on Twitter at @PiperBayard.