Writers in the Storm

Before I jump into today's post, I just want to remind you to stop back on Friday for our next Fabulous Friday guest blogger, multi-published author, Louisa Bacio!

Part 1 of a series

This part brought to you by Laura Drake. Check back Monday when Fae Rowen presents the opposite viewpoint.

People have a hard time even agreeing on the definitions of plot-driven vs. character-driven. I’ve had an hour long argument with an English professor friend about whether the term “literary fiction” even exists.   I don’t want to go there again. Let’s just agree there are many shades of grey, and use Justice Potter Stewart’s porn definition,“I know it when I see it.”

The easiest way to illustrate the difference between a plot driven and character driven book is by example:

Plot-driven Stories:

Die Hard
Patriot Games
Angels & Demons
The Bourne Identity

Plot is featured prominently. The characters are, at the extreme end, only generic – there to carry out the plot.

Character-driven Stories:

Jane Eyre
The Catcher in the Rye
Native Son
Pride and Prejudice

Characters are more important than what happens. The extreme end of the spectrum prompted the term, “Navel Gazing.”

Which is better?  We all know it’s not really a war – the best books are a perfect blend of both.  Good examples that come to my mind are:

• Gone with the Wind
• Hunger Games
• Avatar
• Atlas Shrugged

Two of my favorite authors come to mind as well -- Pat Conroy and Jodi Piccoult.

When you began writing, do you recall making a conscious choice between the two?  I sure didn’t. Like your voice, your choice is influenced by your personality, your tastes and your experiences.

When you sit down to write a book, what comes to you first?

For me, it’s a character. The only part I get of plot in the beginning is the setting. The rest comes after I know my main character(s.) I really have to work at finding engaging, gripping things for my wonderful characters to do.

Plotting Tools

Since I need to focus on improving my weaknesses, I’ve amassed a lot of plotting tools. I'll share them with you here. For those of you who need help with character, check back on Wednesday - our own Fae Rowen is going to have tips for you.

1. You may want to try an Index Card Method.
2. I am a huge Randy Ingermanson fan. You may know him as ‘The Snowflake Guy.’ He created a plotting method that’s fascinating.
3. Blake Snyder was an amazing teacher of screenplay writing and plotting that we lost recently. His ‘Beat Sheet’ really helps me be sure all the elements are there, in the right order. If you don’t have his book, Save the Cat on your bookshelf, you should.
4. T.N. Tobias has an article on Ten Ways To Create a Plot Twist.
5. Glen Strathy has written a great article, How to Create a Plot Outline in 8 Easy Steps.
6. The amazing Donald Maas wrote an article for Writer Unboxed that may help you, entitled, The Elements of Awe.
7. Linda George has a great blog, Plotting for Writers.
8. Software abounds. Here's a review of 10 of them.  Storybook is free shareware. Randy Ingermanson has the Snowflake Pro.

I could go on and on, but I think that gives you enough to start with.

So now, your turn. Which side are you on -- plot or character?  What works for you? Do you have any suggestions of plotting methods for us?

by Fae Rowen

To our readers who comment on this blog:  You'll be entered for a chance to win six hand-crafted cards from Fae Rowen.  One entry per person, please.  We'll post the winner of the cards next Monday, August 29.  Good luck!

I realized as I wrote the first blog, Crafting Handmade Cards , about the joy in the creative design and execution (yipes!) phase of "card production," that I go about making a new card much the same way I go about starting a new writing project.  Here are the steps with the card making part first, followed by the writing part in italics:

1.  Inspiration/Theme:  I see something in nature or on a trip that makes me think, "That would make a good card."  For example, when I went to the Big Island, Hawaii, I went to the seahorse farm near the airport.  There were tanks of seahorses in various stages of growth and at the end of the tour we got to wash our hands, make one hand look like a coral reef (thumb and forefinger connected) and lower our hand into the tank.  A seahorse wrapped around my fingers and held tight.  What an experience!

I took home a seahorse rubber stamp from their gift shop.  Okay, four seahorse stamps.

On a trip to Sedona, while driving across the Arizona desert I thought, "What if you suddenly got dropped here with nothing but protein bars and water? (Yes, I was on a diet at the time.) It's a l-o-n-g drive, so I had a lot of time to flesh out the idea.  My current WIP is this story.

2.   Develop the idea, Research/Develop the idea, Research:  I played with the stamps on cards, but nothing did my experience justice.  I decided to emboss the seahorse in many different colors and cut it out then attach it to a light blue card.  Better, but not that special.

Flesh out characters, develop a plot, do any necessary research.  And write a short synopsis, which I believe is always easier to do before you write the book.  Actually my two-page synopsis is the only plotting I do, so I start writing without knowing much more than an opening scene, a theme, and how the book will end.  I know a few of the scenes in the middle, but how everything will be connected, that happens in the actual writing.

3.  Bring in new ideas/Write and Talk to your Critique Group:  I thought of those seahorses and how they wrapped their tails around kelp, how the water in their tanks sparkled.  I bought some blue netting and green "hairy" yarn.  Attaching the netting to the card was messy and I didn't like the results, so I let the project sit for awhile.  But then I bought some sparkly blue netting and pulled out my project bits and moved them around.  I punched a hole in the seahorse's tail and poked the yarn through it.  Yes.

My main character morphed daily as I wrote the first chapters and revised them.  Her age, her height, her feistiness--all differed from the first version--but better in keeping with the theme, which became much more finely honed.  The secondary characters got fleshed out as I "discovered" their backstories.  Someone dies later rather than earlier.  Another person didn't die, but moved.  I told the story to Laura, Jenny and Sharla and answered their questions.  (Their questions always help me figure out who my characters are and what they really want.) 

4.  Put it together. Again/Write. Revise: I attached the netting to the cardstock in various ways, then positioned the seahorse and yarn ends.  Once the seahorse and yarn looked right, I glued them down.  I tried different versions until I found the one I liked the best.

Write.  Do the seat time.  If a scene isn't working, write it from a different characters point of view.  Just like a card shows your theme, make sure you show, don't tell.  Keep writing. Finish the book.

5.  Production/Write and Edit:  Once I have THE card, I make several to give away.  Sometimes it's a self-limiting thing, as in the case of the seahorse cards.  I really don't like cutting out images, so I embossed a limited number of seahorses--only as many as I was willing to cut out.

Write.  Edit.  Write  Edit.  When you think you're done, edit some more. 

5.  Give away/Sell what you created.  And prepare to accept kudos gracefully.

How is your creative process alike when you write versus when you create something else? How is is different?

Here's the seahorse card.

Welcome to another installment of Sensational Summer Fridays, here at WITS with Linda O. Johnston!

I write both mysteries and romances.  My mysteries contain romantic elements, and my romances contain suspense or mystery.

Why?  Because I love them both!

But there are, of course, other elements in mysteries besides relationships, or they wouldn’t be mysteries.  What are they?  And how do I address them?

I’ll be talking here primarily about cozy mysteries, since that’s what I’m writing, but a lot of the same elements appear in traditional suspense stories, too.

First, you need a protagonist--someone the reader will like and, hopefully identify with.  Because cozy mysteries often have themes, the protagonist is always involved with that series theme.  For example, in my Pet Rescue Mysteries, my protagonist is Lauren Vancouver, who runs a private no-kill pet shelter.   My theme is pet rescue.  In my Kendra
Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mystery series, Kendra is a pet-sitter, so the theme again involves pets.  Cozies are about amateur sleuths, so the protagonist just happens into a lot of murders that she has to solve--and, yes, most cozy protagonists are female.  In other kinds of mysteries or suspense, the protagonists can be professional law enforcement types, including cops or even private detectives.  Whoever the protagonist is, there needs to be at
least something likeable about them or readers won’t want to read about them.  Kendra’s a bit quirky, and Lauren is one dedicated animal rescuer who doesn’t let anything stand in her way.

Choosing Your Protagonist

How do you decide on the right protagonist for your story--or series of stories?

A lot of that depends on you, and the kind of book you want to write.  As I mentioned, if you want to write cozies, choosing a woman who has a career, hobby or other interests that could attract a lot of readers makes sense.  I’ve been blogging weekly on KillerHobbies.com for quite a while, and my sister bloggers there write about protagonists who are experts at
scrapbooking, quilting, rubber stamping and crocheting--and of course they’re amateur sleuths, too.  And one of my blog sisters is about to start a new series with Jane Eyre as her protagonist!

Of course, Killer Hobbies supports the premise that people who engage in hobbies can be amateur sleuths.  But my protagonists have jobs and interests that involve pets--and pets aren’t hobbies, they’re family!

How did I decide on my protagonists?  They just came to me.  Or maybe my Cavalier King Charles Spaniels Lexie and Mystie planted the ideas in my head.  Both Kendra and Lauren were natural choices for me,
of course, since I’m a real pet lover.

When you’re thinking about your theme or background, consider your own likes and hobbies.  Just remember that you’d better enjoy your choice, since, when you sell your series, you may be living with it for quite a while.  My Kendra series ran for nine books.  So far, there are three books in my Pet Rescue series.  BEAGLEMANIA was published in March, THE MORE THE TERRIER will be out in October, and HOUNDS ABOUND will be a 2012 release--April, I think.  No problem with my maintaining my enjoyment of
writing these stories.  They all contain animals!

Do you like to cook?  There are quite a few mystery series about cooks, chefs, and different kinds of food stores, restaurants, and coffee shops.

Or do you like to engage in any of the hobbies I’ve mentioned--or
other hobbies involving crafts or anything else?  You can jump right in and create your own series based on what you enjoy--and what you decide your protagonist does with her life.

Is it a problem that there are already series that use that
theme?  No--it just shows that the subject is popular.  Of course you
need to come up with your own twist on it.  Maybe make your protagonist a
psychic, too, or add a ghost, since they’re popular, too!

But what if you prefer not having the Jessica Fletcher syndrome in
your story (from the old TV show Murder She Wrote)--where an amateur sleuth
keeps tripping over bodies no matter how small the town is in which she lives
or how few people she knows?  Maybe cozies aren’t for you, so consider a
protagonist who’s already in, or about to enter, law enforcement or a related
career where she may actually look for dead bodies or other mysteries.
She can be a cop or sheriff or government agent, but can possibly get
away with skirting the law more if she’s a private investigator.

And of course, since I’m a lawyer by background, I can always recommend
that you make your protagonist an attorney.  Love those legal thrillers!

Making your protagonist have some kind of background where it’s
natural for her to know and enforce the law--or be aware when she’s doing something that’s not quite legal--is always a great way to go.   It’s
your decision.

Whichever way you decide--cozy or pro--you’ll need, in your first
story, to set that protagonist down into the middle of a terrible situation where she has to solve that murder.  Fast.  And correctly, despite all the
possible suspects.  And if it’s a cozy, she may be the main suspect.

Hey, you can do that if you do a suspense story with a law enforcement protagonist, too.  Why not?

I want to finish talking about protagonists with one final thought.  Make your character someone memorable!  She doesn’t have to be nice all the time, or perfect, but she needs to be a person readers can identify with--and will want to read about again and again.  Easy?
Not always.  But one way to do it is to think about your own favorite characters in others’ books and why you like them, then give similar traits to your protagonist.

More to Come

Okay, enough about protagonists for now.  Here are some more elements of mysteries.  I’m just touching on them here and will focus more on each of them in future posts.

First, there has to be... a mystery!  In cozies, they’re always murders.  The protagonist has to have a reason to get involved with solving them--such as being a major suspect.  In my Kendra stories, Kendra was always upset because she realized she had become a murder magnet. Lauren is becoming one, too, but she’s dragging her feet and resisting... to no
avail. She was a major suspect in BEAGLEMANIA, and her former mentor is the
main suspect in the upcoming THE MORE THE TERRIER.

Coming up with a mystery involves plotting, and I’ll be discussing how I plot one day soon.

And of course, in a mystery, you need a villain.  In cozies, that villain could be a very likeable character--preferably one the reader doesn’t suspect until the very end.  Same goes in other kinds of mysteries.  In suspense novels, the reader may know who the bad guy is even if the protagonist doesn’t, which can ramp up the suspense and danger,
depending on how the story is written.

So... in cozies, the protagonist solves the mystery and catches the villain.  Sounds easy!  But there must be clues and red herrings and more.  I’ll address some of those, too, in future blog posts.

What is your favorite kind of mystery or suspense story?
Why?

Linda O. Johnston is the author of 27 published novels, with more
to come.  She currently writes the Pet Rescue Mysteries for Berkley Prime
Crime, a spinoff series from her Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mysteries, also
for Berkley .   The second Pet Rescue Mystery, THE MORE THE TERRIER,
will be an October release.   She additionally writes paranormal
romance for Harlequin Nocturne--the Alpha Force miniseries about a covert
military unit of shapeshifters. The latest one, GUARDIAN WOLF, is an August
release.