Writers in the Storm

I'm very excited to have my mentor, Margie Lawson guest blogging with us today. Fae Rowen and I attended her amazing Masters Immersion Class this year, and are editing feverishly!

Here's Margie:

A HUGE THANK YOU to Laura Drake and the Writer’s in the Storm bloggers for inviting me to be your guest today. 

This is a combo-list, including four points from me, and three each from Francine Prose and Barbara Kingsolver. I’ll share the list of ten then chat about each tip.

FROM FRANCINE PROSE:

1. Your first sentence (or paragraph) makes a promise that the rest of the story (or novel) will keep.

2. Give your reader a reason to turn every page.

3. Keep a very large trash can beside your desk.

FROM BARBARA KINGSOLVER:

4. Show, don't tell. Everybody knows this rule, and most of us still break it in every first draft. Be ruthless. Throw out the interior monologue.

5. Be relentlessly descriptive. Use details from every sense you own.

6. Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

FROM MARGIE LAWSON:

7. Make multiple Deep Editing passes.

8. Write fresh!

9. Honor your Controlling Premise.

10. Cadence. Cadence. Cadence.

NOW – I’LL DIG A SKOSH  DEEPER . . .

FROM FRANCINE PROSE:

 1. Your first sentence (or paragraph) makes a promise that the rest of the story (or novel) will keep.

YES!  If you follow this rule, your readers will be emotionally hooked. They will have to keep reading.

Check out the first lines of five of Harlan Coben’s books.

CAUGHT
I knew opening that red door would destroy my life.

 

THE INNOCENT
I never meant to kill him.

 

LONG LOST
“You don’t know her secret,” Win said to me.

 

GONE FOR GOOD
Three days before her death, my mother told me—these weren’t her last words, but they were pretty close—that my brother was still alive.

 

NO SECOND CHANCE
When the first bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter.

 

2. Give your reader a reason to turn every page.

SHEESH!  I want to believe that every writer strives to write by this rule. But I’ve read plenty of the first several pages of books that did not give me a reason to turn more pages. I didn’t.

3. Keep a very large trash can beside your desk.

OR – Be willing to kill, mutilate, morph, and tweak your darlings. 

FROM BARBARA KINGSOLVER:

4. Show, don't tell. Everybody knows this rule, and most of us still break it in every first draft. Be ruthless. Throw out the interior monologue.

Ah!  Look what Barbara Kingsolver slipped in at the end.  Throw out the interior monologue.  I’ve read some of BK’s books - -and I know she isn’t suggesting that all thoughts and all internalizations should be nixed.  She’s saying, MAKE THEM COUNT!

In my EDITS System, thoughts and internalizations are highlighted YELLOW. I differentiate between YAMMERING YELLOW and WORKING YELLOW.

Yammering Yellow is nixed or turned into WORKING YELLOW.   ;-)

5. Be relentlessly descriptive. Use details from every sense you own.

Ah – another not absurd tip we all know. It’s a good reminder.

6. Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

So true. Make every day a writing day.

FROM MARGIE LAWSON:

7. Make multiple Deep Editing passes.

If you’ve taken some of my editing-focused on-line courses or reviewed the Lecture Packets, you know I’m the Queen of Deep Editing. What is DEEP EDITING? It’s what’s in those 1000+ pages of writing craft lectures. It’s adding psychologically based power to create a page turning read.

8. Write fresh!

Avoid clichés. Avoid overused word pairings. Share some fresh writing, but not so much or not so fresh that the reader trips. Write like I’m sitting next to you. And give the reader a boost with a phrase or sentence or two of NYT writing in every scene.

9. Honor your Controlling Premise.

A CONTROLLING PREMISE is a three to five sentence who’s-doing-what-to-whom-where-and-why-the-reader-cares story summary.

I recommend writing your Controlling Premise and pasting it at the beginning of each chapter. It will keep you focused on your big black story thread.

10. Cadence. Cadence. Cadence.

It’s smart, smart, smart to make your writing cadence-driven. Read your work out loud, and keep tweaking each sentence and paragraph until the cadence drives you from the first word to the last.

WRAPPING UP:

I’ve started something new!  I created Lawson Writer’s Academy – and from now on, I’ll teach all my online courses in a cyber classroom from my web site.

Visit my cyber Open House for Lawson Writer's Academy, July 14, 15, and 16. You’ll have a dozen chances to win a Lecture Packet or an online class!

It’s your turn now! Chime in. WHAT NOT ABSURD WRITING TIPS DO YOU LIVE BY? You can say HI!, comment on this list, or share your favorite not absurd writing tip. 

Post a comment –YOU COULD WIN A LECTURE PACKET!

I’ll respond to blog comments several times during the day and be back on again late tonight. I’ll draw the name of the WINNER at 8:00PM Mountain Time. I’ll post their name on the blog about 8:30PM Mountain Time.

The winner may choose a Lecture Packet from one of my on-line courses.

1. Empowering Characters' Emotions
2. Deep Editing:  The EDITS System, Rhetorical Devices, and More
3. Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist
4. Powering Up Body Language in Real Life:
   
   Projecting a Professional Persona When Pitching and Presenting
5. Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors

Margie Lawson —psychotherapist, writer, and international presenter—developed innovative editing systems and deep editing techniques for used by writers, from newbies to NYT Bestsellers. She teaches writers how to edit for psychological power, how to hook the reader viscerally, how to create a page-turner.

Thousands of writers have learned Margie’s psychologically-based deep editing material. In the last six years, she presented over sixty full day Master Classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

For more information on Lawson Writer’s Academy, lecture packets, on-line courses, master classes, and the Immersion Master Class sessions offered in her Colorado mountain-top home, visit:  www.MargieLawson.com.

Thank you for joining us today. I appreciate your time. 

All the Best…Margie
www.MargieLawson.com

by Fae Rowen

I was shocked when Laura, Sharla and Jenny suggested I write a craft blog on world building.  Before you read any further, I need to confess something.  I've never taken a world building writing class.  But after three decades as a science fiction freak, it's no wonder I enjoy world building.  In fact, creating my own worlds may be why I write science fiction.

However, you don't have to write science fiction or fantasy to build your own world.  The world you build is the container for everything that happens to your characters.  You determine the size of the container, what's in the container, and more important--what's not in the container.

I'm in the process of beginning a new work so I'll share a little about how I put together my new planet.  There are rules.

Rule #1:  The setting is a character.  Your setting needs to have good things and challenging aspects, just like your hero and heroine.  Think pioneer women.  I can't imagine loading all my worldly goods into a covered wagon and heading west to battle unknown weather, native Americans, and terrain.  Prairies and mountains were characters in the lives of those Americans.  Heck, we've just celebrated the Fourth of July.  Can you say Mayflower?

We won't get into the people those settlers had to travel with, here.  Next week's blog will cover the cultural and social aspects of world building.  Today is about putting together a believable physical setting, whether it's a planet, an asteroid, a space station or a mountain cabin.  How exciting to control every aspect of your characters' lives from the get go!  Just be sure to use the setting as you would a villain or an ally.

In The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins uses the game arena as a character, throwing challenges or rewards at her heroine.  (If you haven't read Laura's review of this amazing trilogy, check it out.)

You want to remember to account for the basic necessities to sustain life in your world:  food, shelter, light, warmth, air and water.  Then you can move to the interesting stuff like safety, animal or sentient life, and technology.  In my new world there is no human food.  Imagine the conflict that evolves around an annual food distribution.  To say nothing of the fear of no more food deliveries to the planet.

Rule #2:  Beware the laws of physics.  If you break one or more of the physical laws in our universe, you better have a darn good reason why your world works differently.  You must be able to convince your reader that the change is a real and consistent part of the physics of your setting.  Note, you don't have to be an astrophysicist to pull this off.  I'm not.  In my contest wins, editor comments about my world building let me know that my worlds are "solidly drawn" even if they are a bit "off."

While a planet with two or three moons and maybe a couple of suns would be interesting-- and my critique partner Laura Drake could paint wonderful scenery with amazing colors and shadows--the instability caused by overlapping gravity fields would be a major problem.  You'd be hard-pressed to convince me that such a planet wouldn't be pulled apart.  Likewise, random gravity might be an interesting concept, but you'll have to come up with plausible rules governing the phenomena.

Rule #3:  Although your world is governed by the laws of physics in your universe, you don't want to dump all the detail on the reader up front. 

As exciting as abandoned alien tunnels may be to explore during the book, you can drop a couple of hints about the map having an obvious mistake when your character gets a little lost to set up the discovery that the rock is alive and growing and changing.  Or perhaps the oceans are polluted and the mist from the water causes hallucinations, but the sea monster with venomous fangs is definitely real.

It's a good thing to expose facets of your setting throughout your story, but don't tell the reader about your world.  Show your character's daily life in the setting, or if your character is on this unknown planet, let the reader experience the differences as your characters discover them.  Save some surprises for your reader.  In this way your setting can be hero or villain--or both.

Rule #4:  Make a world that has everything, just like your dream vacation spot, or your worst nightmare.  Then work those angles on your characters.  They may not know anything but their own world, or they may be from elsewhere and know just how wonderful or how miserable their current surroundings are.  Drawing those comparisons will reveal layers about your characters by showing their attitudes and skills.

The world of my new book is beautiful, filled with crystals as tall as trees.  In fact, the planet has only crystals and water.  No plants, no animals, no indigenous life.   This world is a three-month (real time) journey from the nearest civilized outpost.  Why would anyone want to go there?  Ah--those reasons supply the social/cultural setting.  More on that aspect next week.

Rule #5:  If you choose to ignore Rule #4, change only one thing about our present world, but make it an important plot point.  Maybe the oceans have dried up.  How would that affect weather, food production, travel?  The reasons for the change would be considered back story, so don't fall into the trap of telling your readers all about the change.  Do describe the world as it is at the beginning of your story.  Maybe, as in Frank Herbert's  Dune series, your world is being actively terraformed to turn it into a more hospitable place for humans.  Your setting can have a character arc!

Don't forget to mine every ounce of gold from your world building.  After all, you placed all those wonderful nuggets there yourself as you built your setting.

What challenges have you overcome--or still struggle with--in your world building?  What are some ways you've used physical setting as a character?  Are there laws of physics that you need help with or ways to tweak physical phenomena?  Maybe you'd like to share a particularly interesting concept or questions you want answered in next week's blog.  Let those comments flow.

Next week:  World Building Part 2:  Social/cultural Setting

I didn't realize it had been so long since we've had a mash-up -- we had a ton of links for you!  I've tried to organize them into categories, but it was like herding cats!  Have a wonderful Holiday for all our readers in the States!

Changes in the Market:

Is publishing turning into the wild west? - By Randy Ingermanson
Publishers Plan a one-stop book site – NY Times article

Indy and Epublishing:

3 Publishing Trends Writers need to be on top of – by Jane Friedman
Author Marketing lists book marketing articles  
Market news, Entangled Publishing by Cindy Myers
Love me, read me, buy me, promoting
Why authors fail
Setting up a brand page on Face book without needing a personal profile
Estributor a new position for agents
How to advertise your book on a budget

Amy Shojai’s Tuesday Tip Series on all thing DIY and Kindle are WONDERFUL!

Blogging: 

Tools to promote your blog – from Galleycat
10 steps to blog fame

For any of you who worry over your Blog/Twitter/Facebook numbers like a mother hen, this post is for you!

Craft:

Transition words for INTENT  
Making the past come to life 
What’s in a character name

Inspiration / Creating

37 plot situations
Thinking outside the box 
Theme Generator
Common book themes
Great First Lines to Inspire you

Stray Cats:

Writing Contests, the best ones to enter
Anatomy of a kiss
So you want to be a writer A video
Struggling With Burnout
Advice on Zen Habits
A great mash-up from Piper Bayard – The End is Near and We Deserve it…
10 MORE ways to support authors you love…by Chuck Wendig
Haley Whitehall has a great list of Mark Twain quotes to make every writer smile.

Gene Lempp gathered a magnificent list of Blog Treasures so the rest of us writers wouldn’t have to – AWESOME list!

If you don’t hop on over to Mystery Writing Is Murder every Sunday for Twitterific, you are missing out!

And finally, just for the Holiday:

If you want to get a peek at the Declaration of Independence, and hear Lee Greenwood sing, get on over to Angela McGill’s July 4^th blog, Celebrate Your Independence.