Writers In The Storm welcomes back double RITA finalist, Kara Lennox, a.k.a. Karen Leabo.  Don't miss Kara’s writing tips the first Friday of every month.

Here are the links for Parts 1-7:

Part 1 - Your Premise Isn’t Compelling
Part 2 - How To Fix a Weak Opening
Part 3 - A Lack of Goals
Part 4 - Is Your Conflict Strong Enough?
Part 5 – Raising The Stakes
Part 6 – 5 Tips To Help Improve Your Story’s Pacing

Part 7 - Pick up the Pace

by Kara Lennox

Sometimes, I read a manuscript and think, I've read this before.

I can almost predict the next line of dialogue. There is nothing on the page to surprise and delight me.

This a tricky situation, because editors say they want new, fresh voices, but they tend to buy familiar stories. The trick is, to tell a familiar story (Cinderella, for example) in a fresh way, giving it some fresh twists. Otherwise it comes off as stale and predictable. Editors want to be able to put something "marketable" on the cover, but they don't want readers bored into a coma.

Here is one of my favorite exercises to thwart predictability. As you are working out the plot for your book (or, for you pantsers, as you are trying to figure out what happens next,) make a list of all the things that could happen next.

If your heroine has to make a decision, make a list of at least ten (or twenty) decisions she could make. You'll get four or five easily; the next five might be more difficult. When you absolutely cannot think of one more decision, look over your list. Toss out the first five, for sure. Sometimes it is number 10, 11, or 12 that you should use.

You don't want your heroine to act out of character, so be careful of that. But this exercise can help cure the plot doldrums. This exercise, by the way, was suggested by literary agent Donald Maass, but I've heard it for years, from a variety of sources. This is another good time to think, "What is the worst that can possibly happen?"

I have a writer friend who loves her characters so much, she can't bear to make them suffer. Her first drafts often have a very "ordinary" feel to them, because she doesn't fling enough bad stuff at her characters. Her critique group (me, among others) have to remind her to torture her characters in new and different ways.

Remember -- seeing a character suffer undeserved misfortunes is one way the reader connects with them. Think of poor Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. He's skinny, weak, and he has a horrible name. He is an embarrassment to his father. He is thwarted at every turn. The girl of his dreams ridicules him (I just watched this movie tonight, and it's a perfect example.)

Another handy exercise is to think about your character, decide what is the very last thing he/she would ever do, then find a way to make them do that very thing. An oft-cited example is Indiana Jones, who will face caves full of giant spiders and poison darts without flinching, but he hates snakes. So later in the movie, he gets dumped into an underground chamber full of snakes and has to brave them to save himself and Marian.

When you force your characters out of their comfort zone, you show character growth, and that’s a good thing. Would the Cowardly Lion ever scale the Wicked Witch's castle walls to save someone? Not when we first meet him.

Most editors will tell you to err on the side of “too much” rather than “too little,” so don’t be afraid to make a daring choice, try something that’s never been done. An editor can pull you back if you’ve gone too far over the top, but they can’t fix a bland scene.

I recall judging a contest entry once that was so hilarious, I fell in love with it and I knew, without a doubt, the author would one day be published. She sold that book shortly afterward, but the final version that was in print was substantially toned down from the original (so it was more in keeping with the tone of the category romance line that published it.) The author’s daring plot decisions won over the editor, and it didn’t matter that it had to be strenuously edited. This worked in my favor once, when I was unpublished.

One of my favorite authors, Jane Graves, once wrote a love scene between two people who were inside a rickety shed with a hungry tiger on the roof. It was fresh and different, and was the highlight of a memorable book.

Look at your various plot points. Are some of them too predictable, too familiar, or too ordinary? Choose one and make a list of at least five alternative things that could happen. Do any of them jump out at you as brilliant, funny, unexpected? Can you make your hero do the one thing he swore he’d never do?

So tell us – have you ever tried this technique? What did you do to your poor undeserving character to make things worse?

In honor of Halloween, we decided to take a hiatus from the norm to tell ghost stories!  But they're all true. So sit back, enjoy, and relax . . . if you can!

Buahahahaha!

Orly Konig-Lopez

A group of us were headed to a party at a friend’s house. They lived on a country road that was quite dark at night. We were caravanning in two cars. I was in the first car but in the back seat.

We weren’t driving fast—lots of ruts in the road—but still probably faster than we should have been (hey, we were in high school.)  The second car was pretty close behind us with their brights on so the driver was swerving a bit trying to keep the headlights from blinding us.

We came around a bend, just before the clearing for the house, trees on both sides of the road, when a man walked out of the woods and in front of the car. He was wearing a baseball cap, a red shirt and jeans. He stopped and looked directly at us just as the car hit him.

Needless to say we all screamed and jumped out of the car. The guys in the car behind came running and yelling, “what happened?” They saw our car lurch to a stop but didn't see why.

There wasn’t a body under the car, around the car, no sign that anyone had crawled into the woods, nothing. The only evidence was a slight dent in the front fender.

We continued to our friend’s house but didn’t stay long. On the way home, we drove very slowly, windows up, doors locked. When we reached the same bend our headlights caught a baseball cap hanging on the limb of a tree.

Laura Drake

I was a jock in High School. Competition racing, and synchronized swimming. I was one of the few on the team who had their Mom’s car, that week before Halloween, so too many piled in after practice, after dark.

It was foggy. I’m talking thick white-out fog, when your headlights just reflect back cotton. We had all the windows open and our heads out, but I still couldn’t see the edges of the road. so two giggling volunteers sat on the hood, to keep us out of the ditch.

Fog can get spooky, smothering sight and sound. And it wasn’t just me; by the time we got to Margie’s neighborhood, we had all fallen silent. How we found her house in that soup, I don’t know.  But I had just pulled up out front, and Margie was climbing out.

A massive dark shape came out of the fog, moaning – right into my face, grabbing at me. The face was pale, bloody, and scarred. In that second, I knew I was going to die. I emptied my lungs, and my bladder.  I think several of the others did, too.

Margie’s brother thought his mask and his joke was hilarious. If I hadn’t been so embarrassed about it, I’d have made him clean the seats of my mother’s car.

Sharla Rae

Ever had a vision or premonition? When I was around 19 I still lived at home with my folks. I’d been out one evening, parked my car and climbed the stoop to the front porch. But when I pulled open the screen door to unlock the front door, I blacked out.

I didn’t exactly faint though and on some level I realized I still stood with the door handle in my hand. At first there was only a terrible dark and then I realized that I hovered on the shoulder of a dark highway.

By the light of flashing emergency lights, I saw that there’d been a bad accident involving a pickup truck colliding with a semi. Everything was very quiet and I didn’t see who was driving either vehicle. I sensed I knew someone in the accident but just that quick I was back on my front porch again.

I was weirded out and when I told my mother what happened, she was too. You see, my dad drove a pickup truck to work and his job was driving a semi that hauled gas. We couldn’t help seeing the possibilities.

My mom promised to warn dad to be careful. But a week later he was driving his semi when a drunk in a pickup caused him to swerve off the road. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Guess I’ll never know if that was because he’d been warned or if it was just a very strange coincidence.

Fae Rowen

My mother had been recovering for almost a year from a broken hip. “The worst break I’ve ever seen,” according to her orthopedist. When she completed nine months of physical therapy and “graduated” from her walker to a cane, I took her on her bucket-list trip – a cruise to Scandinavia and Russia.

My kitchen was being re-modeled and we were staying with her for a few weeks, and all we heard was, “When I get to take a bath again...” She was one week short of being cane-free and excited about being cleared to take a bath again. After fifty-one weeks of showers, which she’d never liked, she was ready for a good tub soak.

Unfortunately, she died suddenly at home in that last cane-required week. One of the things I cried about was how hard she had worked for that never-to-be-taken bath.

The morning after she died, I was awakened by a thunder in the house. Not the thunder of a storm. It sounded like Niagara Falls. Inside the house. Certain that a pipe had burst, I ran into my bathroom. All was well. I ran into the kitchen. No water anywhere. Still, the thunder of a waterfall.

I ran into my mother’s bathroom to find her tub filling, the water tap opened wide. I thought something had broken and wondered where I would find a wrench in the garage. But when I turned the handle, the water stopped. I was afraid to leave the house, in case it happened again. Obviously something was wrong with the plumbing.

The plumber arrived in a couple of hours. After tapping the wall and turning knobs he pronounced the bathroom plumbing in perfect working order.

My mother was just getting her long-awaited bath.

Just that once. It never happened again.

And in case none of those tales were scary enough, here's Jenny Hansen's husband in a truly terrifying Halloween Costume:

So now? It's your turn. Tell us YOUR scary, true story!

I can't tell you how giddy we are here at WITS.  We've been sitting on an announcement, dying to blab, but having to sit on it until today (well, okay, maybe that was just me-I stink at secrets.)   You ready? 

We have a new crit partner, and full time WITS author/blogger!

Orly Konig Lopez!

You might know her from the RWA-WF or Chick Lit chapters. You might know her from Washington Romance writers or Backspace, Savvy Authors, or SCWBI. You might know her from prison . . . okay, I made that last part up. But we're already loving her sense of humor, and we think  you will too. She's going to be around the blog a lot, so I hope you all will show her some comment-love. 

Have at it, Orly!

Not long after my son was born, I made the decision to quit my corporate job and take up freelance editing, and marketing communications. At first the idea scared the crap out of me, and not necessarily just the obvious, “will I be able to make it” question.

What was going to become of me at home all day, alone, just me, alone, without the daily interaction I was so used to, alone?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve never had a problem being on my own. I’m an only child, so I’m used to entertaining myself. When I was young, I had imaginary friends (the Ghost of Scotland was my partner in crime when I was six and living in the UK—he had a bad habit of breaking things though, and wasn’t allowed to stay long.) I’m perfectly happy curled up in a toasty corner with a book.

But you know what I discovered? I liked being alone. Maybe I actually liked it too much. I was becoming a happy little troll in my solitary cave.

And writing fit the new me perfectly. All I needed was my laptop and my kitty companions (and a functioning espresso machine.) Because, really, what else do you need? You read craft books and then you write, write, write.

Until someone recommended I join RWA. Ummm, an Association? That meant interacting with people, right? No need for panic, little troll, the chapter I joined was an online one. I could lurk on Yahoo loops, sponge information from the wise members, then write, write, write. I could do this.

Then I pushed the comfort zone a bit more, and joined an online critique group. The idea of sharing my work with someone other than anonymous contest judges made the troll sweat. But after that first scary step, I realized it wasn’t so bad. Okay, it was pretty darn great actually.

Hey, we were on a roll. I joined a local chapter and, tossing that comfort pillow around like I was big troll on campus, then looked at the next thing on my “Oh please don’t make me do this” list—pitching an agent. Live. In person. Not an email query. See the troll cowering in the corner?

But, hey can’t stop now. So in March, when my local chapter had their retreat, I signed up for not one, but two pitch sessions. I wrote the pitch, I practiced, I even put on lipstick. And you know what? The troll survived. I even got two requests out of the experience.

I was kicking some comfort zone booty, people.

And I learned something important. There’s nothing wrong with having the cushy safe zone. Sometimes it’s perfectly okay to roll the boulder in front of the cave and hide. But leave a tiny crack. You never know when a big hairy opportunity will stroll by.

For me, the scary, hairy comfort challenge is in putting myself out there. I’m doing that bit by bit—querying, pitching, becoming active with the RWA chapters., And now, my latest; blogging with this amazing group of ladies. My lipstick may not always be on straight, and I still prefer the safety of my cave, but hello world!

So, what scares you? And who helped you pick out your most flattering color of lipstick?

NOTE: Orly lives on the East Coast and is dealing with Hurricane Sandy at the moment. She's safe, but hit and miss in her electricity. She will respond to comments, but it might be "hit and miss" for the next day or so.

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), she's found her creative outlet. Her manuscripts have finaled in the Wisconsin Romance Writers Fab Five Contest, the TARA contest, Stiletto Contest, First Coast Romance Writers Unpublished Beacon Contest, Novel Rocket Launch Pad contest, and the Greater Seattle Romance Writers of America's Emerald City Opener Contest.

When not writing fiction, she's still pushing the creativity barriers for her marketing communications clients and trying to hide from her family long enough to read "just one more page."