Beyond the Children’s Section: Writing YA (Emerald City Comic-Con 2015 Writing Panel Notes)

Another YA panel? Yes, but just as we've learned with the sex panels, each time a writer or group of writers tackles this subject, the information rendered is unique. Enjoy!

* * *

Beyond the Children’s Section: Writing YA

Aaron Michael Ritchey, Holly Black, Lisa Mantchev, Rachel Hartman, Arwen Elys Dayton

Moderator: John Lovett

What are the characteristics that you’ve found that make for a YA market?

AD: Wrote a book and paid no attention to genre; it happens the four main characters at the centre of the story are teens. It’s a minefield that we go through in life and a very interesting part of life to examine.

RH: YA for her has to do with the themes. The time in your life when you’re stepping out, emerging, coming out and trying to figure out who you are, all the possibilities ahead of you. As opposed to adult lit where you’ve made your mess and must lie in it.

LM: Similar experience: wrote the story she wanted to write. It just happened to be YA. Now she knowingly writes YA as a theme, the coming of age story, foundation issues for a YA novel.

HB: What defines a YA novel is a teen protagonist. Certain themes and characteristics throughout, but there are outliers that don’t have those things. It really does come down to a teenage protagonist.

AR: Wanted to write YA. Yes, it’s a teen protagonist going through teenager things, but also dealing with other things.

HB: YA didn’t used to exist the way it did now. Most people just transitioned to writing adult novels. Remember that you’re competing with adult books. You’re writing the experiences of a teenager. Otherwise, they’ll go read adult books.

AR: It’s the emotional vibrancy.

We’ve talked about the characteristics of this market. Are the characters supposed to be two years older? Are the sentences longer (as per Stackpole)?

RH: It’s not our job to plan that.

LM: It may be a 10-year-old advanced reader or their grandmother who bought it for them. Lots of people read YA. Not just kids or the target audience. Syntax, etc, are editorial decisions.

AD: People are more willing these days to talk about what happened when they were teens. But don’t write down or talk down to a teenager. You don’t dumb it down.

RH: When you were young, you were used to learning new words through context.

HB: Idea of aging up the character: most of the time, readers like reading characters a little bit older than them, to tell whether they like it or not to figure out whether a character is right for them. If you get asked to age up or down a character by the publisher, you don’t have to. And making sentences shorter. YA allows for more complex sentences. MG wants more simple sentences. And when people are talking about YA, they are often thinking about MG. HP and Percy Jackson behave like seventeen year olds in a middle grade.

AD: Problem with Harry Potter – Rowling made no distinction between MG and YA. She had the luxury of working between both.

LM: She deliberately did not choose to focus on teen issues. Partly because the aspects of being teens were not important when dealing with the world-at-stake issues.

AR: What it really comes down to is the sex stuff. You can kill, but the moment you add the sex stuff. There are no rules; what works, works.

Speaking of the Harry Potter series – YA used to be Burroughs and Tarzan. How has the YA market fundamentally changed, and how do you think the Harry Potter series has influenced the YA market, and where is it going?

HB: HP is not YA. Has changed the MG market, adding younger middle grade and older middle grade. Big series that affected things: Gossip Girl, Twilight, the Hunger Games. What we see as YA has shifted. And it’s still in flux. It’s way different than it was a few decades ago. And some YA back then would be considered MG.

LM: Write what you really want to write; don’t chase a trend. The digital revolution has now found new homes for books. As YA authors it’s now limitless possibilities as for what you want to write and how you want to get it out there.

RH: Agrees that HP is MG. But it is directly responsible for YA authors being able to publish600 page books. Twilight, too. Opened doors for longer manuscripts being accepted.

AD: YA used to be less about how old you were than what you were interested in reading. Now kids have very big books. Write what you want to write; it finds the audience.

LM: Also, YA saved the industry. Parents would still buy their kids books even when the economy tanked. YA was the one category that outperformed every age group every year.

AR: One of the reasons why is that you have this emotional vibrancy in teen fiction. You get that in YA books because it is such a vibrant part of our life. And an emotional vibrancy in the fan base. Also, the coming of age story is so great because it’s such a hopeful arc. Madeline L’Engle: If you really want to write complex stories, don’t write for adults, write for younger stories.

HB: Not just page length or series length. Release dates, midnight releases, now have become a thing.

LM: This is how big it’s become.

AD: Entirely new territory.

In the context of writing a YA novel, are there stereotypes of characters and tropes you’d suggest that authors avoid? What would be the least and most successful?

RH: Use any trope you want, but you have to earn it, own it, make it yours. They’re not bad in and of themselves. You use them and think about them and be aware of when you’re doing them. Stereotypes arise from a lack of understanding. Notice how you use these building blocks, try not to fall into the traps   before.

AD: You can’t come up with something wholly original; it’s about the story, lets it grow in its own space as its own story.

LM: Just because something has been done already doesn’t mean you can’t do it better. You get your craft to the point that you know what you can do with a story. Make it worth reading. Uses TV tropes.

HB: Write a book that you the reader would truly love. Then hope other people will love that too. Try not to write nostalgically about childhood/youth. Remember what it was truly like to be there. Write for yourself then and yourself now.

AR: It takes courage and bravery to do that. Being a writer is an act of absolute courage and daring. And what you write can have an impact on a writer. Write the books that will save someone else’s life.

Audience question: What is your research process when writing a marginalized character?

HB: It’s the iceberg. You’ll have to do a lot of research that won’t show up in your work. Make sure that you do this respectfully and well. Have folks of that marginalized group read it for authenticity. You’re creating a character with the weight of representing that. One of the ways to do that well is to hopefully not have that character be the token, only person of that marginalized group.

LM: Have your ducks in a row, use beta readers to get feedback. Some will not be offended, some will be very offended. And you will still screw up. No way to write a perfect character. And you’ll still get feedback about how folks feel you represented that character. And it’s important that you do it well because kids will see themselves in that character.

RH: Whatever their backgrounds are, it’s about extreme empathy, finding the part of that character somewhere inside yourself to be able to write them. And then, when you do receive criticism, find a way to deal with it and empathize again.

AR: And be courageous. It will happen. If you start doing stuff out of the norm, you will get attacked. We have to have diversity. It’s our job as authors to show it.

AD: If there’s someone in your life that you get to know and research it that way, great. Research with love. Once you capture that you have a fairly good chance of the words coming out right, the story heading in the right direction.

When you start outlining a story, do you focus on certain parts specifically?

AR: Goes through the 14 points in Save the Cat. Has to have the beginning hook and the climax, then follows the 14 beats.

HB: All over the place. We talk a lot about plotters and pantsers and it’s very clear but experience is that most people exist on a spectrum. Even plotters don’t stick to their outlines. Everyone has the process that they’ve come to.

LM: Everyone does it differently. No one can turn in a perfect draft. Everything good in a draft happens in revisions. All of us have files of versions of the books that will never see the light of day. Also, keep your ducks in a row for book 1 so that the details for book 3 are consistent and don't contradict book 1.

RH: Process for each book is different in each book.

NG: You never learn how to write a book. You learn how to write *this* book.

AD: A method you learn is likely only applicable to the book you are working on. Updates outline to match what she’s written. If an outline helps, go with it, otherwise throw it out. Whatever gets the book written is the process that works.

When do you share excerpts with others, who do you share with?

AD: Shares it with only a few close first readers, and watches their body language.

RH: Has two beta-reader friends.

LM: Shouts ideas through the shower to husband and daughter. If their reactons are good, that works for her. Also has done collaborations with others and working together, having someone immediately looking over your shoulder that’s as invested has been very interesting, both invigorating and challenging.

HB: Mostly shares with author friends, and formal critique group when done.

Fuelling Creativity: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Authors on Ideas (Emerald City Comic-Con 2015 Writing Panel Notes)

Fuelling Creativity: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Authors on Ideas

Cat Rambo, Django Wexler, Greg Bear, Jason M. Hough, Myke Cole, Ramez Naam

Moderator: David Hulton

               

Is there a process to coming up with ideas, or do they hit you like a bolt of lightning with total clarity?

RN: Never a fully-completed idea. It evolves with time. It’s never fully formed until the story is written.

DW: Has more ideas to write than he can actually write, adding up faster than he can get rid of! Sometimes it’s super-clear, and sometimes it comes together easily, but sometimes it’s much weirder. (Like his Hidden Library series, came from the idea of a very creepy Dumbledore)

MC: “Writer’s need to live life like they’re hunting it.” You cannot control how inspiration strikes. You cannot control how inspiration strikes. All you can control is the work. Sit down and come up with ideas. Be okay with coming up with bad ideas. Keep doing it until you come up with a good idea. If still can’t, then construct one. Have faith. (Books: Gemini Cell: if Harry Potter went to the Navy Seals instead of Hogwarts). The point: However you come to it, control the one and only thing you can control, which is the work. Do your work. “Do it well. That’s all that you can do.”

GB: Have ten million crackpot ideas and sufficient courage to turn them into a story. When you have a whole raft of crackpot ideas, you can pull them out when you need them. Fantasy ideas often come from the mythic consciousness. SF ideas come from the same, but have to work in a different way. Ideas come from the same thing: You need pure arrogance, to believe in yourself. Surround yourself with people who give yourselves ideas. Get rid of the ones who don’t believe in you. And you must believe in your characters, too.

CR: Agrees, most writers are very arrogant. Problem is not getting ideas, it’s not paying attention to them. If you stop paying attention to them, you’ll stop getting ideas. If you get an idea, write it down. Tells students, “My unconscious mind is much smarter than I am and produces all sorts of things. My job is to pay attention to it.” Pay attention to the weird shit that your mind throws at you. There is gold there.

JH: Agrees, write it down. You don’t want to lose those things, you never know when you’ll use it. Keeps an idea spreadsheet. As for ideas that come randomly that need to be written down and captured – those are the lightning bolts. Others come from brainstorming.

Do you have any advice for writers for how to get started?

RN: Do the work. Don’t wait, don’t overthink, don’t plan, just start. Have 1) Structure and 2) Accountability. Structure: Have a place to do the work. Accountability: Have people that will follow up with you to make sure that you get the work done.

DW: You have to write. Have to give yourself permission to write bad things. Sit down in a chair and do it. A certain amount of planning can be helpful, but overplanning can kill it.

MC: Don’t just talk about writing; write the novel. Don’t build castles in the air. Knows he’s getting into the meat of his story when he’s thinking about his characters, not the world he’s set them in.

GB: Still, must understand the culture of the character you’ve put in the book. That culture will shape that character if the world is your own creation. The chars have to be changed by the world they live in. All our chars are human, but they are not precisely like us.

CR: Don’t worry about that. Just sit down and write the goddamn story. It is so much more fun to talk about writing than it is to write. “Writers just fucking write.”

JH: Exactly.

Nothing is original anymore. How do you make the writing fresh when we live in a world where so much is already out there?

DW: Nothing is original, period. Just don’t worry about that. That’s the best thing they can do. If your characters are different enough, they’ll make for an interesting story.

RN: If you read a lot in the genre you write in, you’ll notice how there’s something you want to see that isn’t there.

DW: Never do something just because there’s a market hole; by the time you finish writing it, that hole may have already been filled.

JH: If there’s something out there already like what you want to write, you may want to tweak yours. However, if you gave the same high concept to five different writers, you’d have five different books.

What’s the difference btw a good idea and a bad idea?

GB: If it sings in your head and won’t let you alone, that’s a good idea. RayB says, “You can’t chase cats; they’ll run away. But if you turn your back on them, they’ll come back to you sometimes.

DW: Sometimes a character doesn’t work in one setting, but works somewhere else.

How do you get the inspiration to go back and edit after your crappy first draft?

MC: You don’t. Difference btw professionalism and aspiration: what makes a pro writer is that the pro writer sits down and does the work even when it sucks. It’s not being unkind to yourself; give yourself a second to wallow, gather your strength, then get to work.

CR: One thing that is very helpful is to build some time away from the book into it. Try to put it away for at least a month or so. Don’t procrastinate; build time into your schedule to let it cool off.

JH: But remember, there’s no rules, only tools. He steps away from the story until it’s been two days since he hasn’t thought about the story.

GB: Go away, and when you think of how to make it better, then you can go back and fix it. Books do not look pretty right away. Learn how to rewrite. Take all the feedback that works for you, and leave the rest.

RN: For every person who’s finished a draft, there’s a thousand people who have never finished a novel. So congratulate yourself on that, too. Likes to get feedback.

DW: Process is very personal. Once you finish your novel, start a new book the next day. Sometimes you odn’t want to spend three years revising a novel, but you can’t make that judgement the next day. Most of all, what matters most is that you need to keep going. But there must be something writing related the next day. Once you stop, it gets harder to restart.

After you’ve finished that first draft and you come back to revision, do you find yourself doing massive story edits, or just grammar/spelling edits?

GB: Yes. All of those things. A lot of adding and cutting and including the sensual elements comes through rewrites.

CR: The other thing about revision: thinks of it as coase grade sandpaper; the bigger revisions first, the smaller revisions come along

DW: Depending, it may help to outline first.

How do you balance an intensive work job with writing?

DW: The secret to writing is that it goes on in your head every day. Find a time to write it down. For him, that’s first thing in the morning. But it doesn’t need to be a lot of time.

MC: Decide what you want to do with your time. But as he began to get serious about writing, he got rid of more things in his life. You must accept that there are no guarantees of success right away. Ask yourself the hard question: What do you want to do? There may be hard choices and things you want to do that you’ll have to wait for.

MC: Let the Elephants Run – the theory that the creativity is in our DNA.

How do you focus on one idea at a time?

DW: Writes things down. Dwells on them for a little while, writes it down to get out of his head, saves for later. It helps that he’s

GB: Sometimes they’re not quite related and they work together when multiple ideas come together. See what happens.

CR: You can work on more than one project at one time.

What do you do when you have multiple ideas and don’t know how to put them together?

GB: Start stories, finish stories, just plain keep writing.

Finding the Story: Recipes for Writing Fiction (Emerald City Comic-Con 2015 Writing Panel Notes)

Hey! Want to know what's almost as stressful as moving? One's downstairs neighbours moving. Especially when they decide to stay up to all hours partying because they seem to realize, "Hey, we can't be evicted, so let's make as much noise as we want!"

*sigh* I miss sleep.

But rather than me coping by stress-eating (one thing I am *way* too good at) or writing delicious fictional scenarios in my head about how wonderful the new neighbours will be (that too), let's talk about a different sort of cooking. In his talk given at this year's ECCC, author Michael A. Stackpole breaks down several types of plots with simple recipes he's devised over the years.

* * *

Finding the Story

Michael A. Stackpole

It’s important for him to not suffer writer’s block, so he’s developed techniques to find stories. That allows him to stretch himself as a writer. He needs to be able to judge things and then drop a story in. This is a process panel.

Listen, write it down, retain it more.

He reasons to find a story anywhere (since being blocked is frustrating). Because the worst thing you can do for yourself is agonize over being blocked.

If you find yourself blocked, if the story isn’t working and the words aren’t humming, STOP. Do not continue to push. What it means is that you do not know the characters well enough. You made a decision within 3-5 pages before the story dies that the character does something out of character, which is why the story has died.

Technique: Interview your character.
- Ask your character the same questions asked in a celeb interview in a magazine.
- The more you know about your character will inform the character’s unconscious choices.
- (e.g. Seahawks fans wear their team-themed stuff around the city. You know them by their typical default colors, etc.)
- Having these little details, even if they never make it into the story, inform the story. You learn more about your character.
- Can also apply psychoanalytical books to this (like, 4000 things you should ask your crush).
- Write down the answer the character will give, and the answer they truly think.
- How many secrets do they have in their lives, and how far will they go to keep their secrets secret?
- When you need to write a story, there is some drama or trauma in their lives.

Writers are better than anybody else!
- A lot of stories share a lot of plotlines.
- He doesn’t like the word “formula”. He prefers the word “recipe”. Different people will produce different variants on a recipe.
- This is what drives themes for anthologies, too.


Simple Story Recipes

The Bug Hunt
- The most basic story that gets told
1) Learn that the bug exists. (problem) (eg. A wolf has been stealing sheep)
2) Learn how to kill the bug.  (solve the problem) (eg. How to destroy the wolf – the protagonist learns)
3) Develop the skills and resources to learn to kill the bug. (solve the problem) (how to kill the wolf)
4) Kill the bug. (solve the problem) (or, kill the wolf, etc)
- This same four-step engine is the engine that drives every single problem in every story.
- There isn no problem that won’t work though these four steps.
- When we reach step 4, may fail. So go back to steps 2 and 3, lather rinse repeat until 4) is achievable.
- A novel is a series of these breakdowns.
- Usually linked in parallel, dealing with more problems at the same time.
- Sometimes solving this problem gives you resources and skills to solve more problems later.
- Can break any problem down into these steps.
- You always want to challenge yourself, do the more challenging thing.
- Sometimes it’s possible to have a resolution where the bug doesn’t die, but the protagonist finds other solutions. Or it may set up a problem for later in the series.
- False success; failure to kill the bug but you wouldn’t know it. The bug re-manifests. Or the heroes are tasked with killing the dragon and then the land is overrun by the orcs that the dragon was feeding on. Whether you fail to kill the bug and you know it, or you believe you did and you didn’t, that lack of success leads to more story later.

The Romance Recipe
- You want romance in your story.
- If you have characters capable of being loved, they’re capable of being redeemed.
- Having characters go through that is something we love. We love seeing characters getting together.
- If you can fit romance into your story, do it.
1) Boy meets girl (or boy meets boy, etc). Everything seems fantastic.
2) Circumstances force them apart.
- a) either a misunderstanding or
- b) a hostile third party
separates them. (Circumstances force them apart.)
3) The two lovers overcome difficulties and solve the problem to force them back together again. (Characters go through hell to get back together again. Going through hell: finding bugs, killing bugs, etc.)
- You can play with characters’ availability, obligations, partners, misunderstandings and assumptions
- Just don’t repeat the same situation as readers will see that and get annoyed.
- This will fit into any book anywhere.
- You want your characters to have emotional lives. That makes them more real.

The Murder Mystery
- Suspense, solving crime, always some aspect that can be used.
- Modern Murder Mystery
1) Someone dies.
- In old stories you run into all the characters first, all the suspects. Nowadays you just start with a body.
- Your protagonist needs to be on screen or in the story as much as possible.
- The reader needs to make sense of what’s going on, so start with the body being splattered all over the place, crime techs giving the details, hero
- As a reader’s job it’s to predict they know the ending
- The writer’s job is to throw things off and create a surprise ending
- Whatever problem shows up on the first page of the book has to be solved on the last page.
- Can dress up characters so they look like inconsequential chars and become more important and relevant later.
- Don’t toss out insignificant clues.
2) Suspects are questioned, evidence is examined, someone lies, and we learn a new fact.
- A piece of evidence shows that someone is lying. You break down why they lied. But now they’ve told the truth, someone else has lied.
- Go through the “someone is lying, break them down” process until you
3) Detectives learn facts that expose the lie
- Go through steps 2 and 3 quite a number of times.
4) (optional) Someone else dies.
- New witnesses, new clues, new cycles of steps 2 and 3.
5) After you’ve gone through enough, the protagonist knows who did it.
6) The villain is exposed and captured. (Knowing the bad guy’s identity is not the same as exposing the bad guy.)
- Technically this recipe is a more specific type of bug hunt.

With these three storylines, you can do anything.
- Basic bug hunt: about 4K.
- Beginning novelist: Be over 80K and under 120K.
- More experienced novelists: Can write the longer books.
- Electronically self-pubbed: 50K (avg. length of mysteries and sci-fis of old)
- YA: Character should be 2 years older than target audience.
- Adjust sentence length and word length. The average reader reading for pleasure reads at an 8th grade level. Average sentence length should be about 12 words.
- The human memory handles 12 words very well. Add more, and we lose some.
- The moment you hit a comma, it acts as a new sentence.
- When doing action scenes, the average should drop to 8 words per sentence.
- Use commas and conjunctions to stretch a sentence out.
- Longer sentences make the readers work.
- Use characterization to enhance the story.

Serial Fiction (ongoing story arcs)
- Individual episodes, but an overall story arc.
1. Intro (first thousand words): who the story’s about, what the problem is that will be true for the main line of the story. The problem that will be resolved in the main line of the story.
2. Main. (second thousand words continue dealing with the main line of the story).
3. A
4. Main.
5. B
6. Main
7. Main
8. A
9. Main
10. Wrap it up.
- 70% of this story is dealing with the problem only in this individual story.
- The only parts not dealing with this are A and B.
- A: Soap opera material. Stuff about the life of the protagonist. Can use romance as an idea for example. (In the first A meets someone they might be interested in). In subsequent A, develop it a little more. Key to making the soap opera work.
- If A is a positive subplot, B has to be a negative subplot. Car stolen. Romance problem. Character is in trouble.
- The A and B lines carry on to the next story. The next story, you might have the same things, but in the next story the B fills the A slots. Or we can be dealing with a new problem in the next book.
- Doing a push-pull with the character’s life.
- B is good to be distinct from A but it doesn’t matter.
- Key: Never let the soap opera stuff to be more than 30% of the story. If there’s more main, drop in more A & B.
- Otherwise, once it gets to be more, it forces readers to have to have read all the stories. (And yes, you want that, but you don’t want the story to have to make no sense if you haven’t read the previous stories.)
- A can be negative, and B positive, but you have to have one negative and one positive.
- A and B don’t have to be isolated. They can affect each other, work off another.
- You can have bits of A and B surface in Main, but must keep

Final Thoughts
If you are in a position where you are stuck, throw more characters in, do more things, rather than killing. More characters increase the options. Make it more complicated, not less.
Everything must serve the story.

When do you do the check to make sure the story works?
When working on the next draft, set it down for a bit. Then come back. If you’re yawning, fix it.

Kidnapping Your Muse (ConCarolinas 2012 Writing Panel Notes)

Back again, finally. Sorry for the delay, folks. Canada Day fell on a Sunday, so our statutory holiday was Monday ... and, well, not much sleep was had that night. Let alone posting. My rhythm, it was interrupted.

This next panel, "Kidnapping Your Muse", was technically called "Part One", but I never did make it to Part Two (which featured different authors). But this was pretty good. It was about writer's block (if you so choose to acknowlege it), overcoming simply being stuck, and how to keep the inspiration flowing.The responses were very insightful into process!

Again we had a round-table sort of discussion going, so here's what I transcribed.

* * *

Authors: David B. Coe, Crymsyn Hart, Misty Massey, Allen Wold, Faith Hunter 

Moderator: A.J. Hartley

AW – Does writers workshops, teaches

MM – Fantasy writer, Mad Kestrel, pirate magic adventure, on the Magical Words team, MW book

FH – Jane Yellowrock series, on the Magical Words team

DBC – Now also writing as D.B. Jackson – Thieftaker, on the Magical Words team

CH – Paranormal erotic e-romance

What to do when the book we’re writing doesn’t want to be written – inspiration, and more specifically, what to do when it dries up

What do you think about Writer's Block?
 

AW – gets blocked when his story takes a left hand turn and goes off in the wrong direction, that can be discouraging – when he lets a character down, when he pushes them down a wrong path or make a wrong decision rather than what they want to do – that’s why he’s often stopped writing. So he has to go back and find that place and where he’s supposed to go and then he can continue with the story.

MM – hates the term writer’s block. Two types – 1. The temporary, where she’s stuck at the computer and the words aren’t flowing – gets up and moves, walks around her house; dances; that; 2. Emotional issues in her real life that stand in the way of her being creative – she calls friends and seeks solace, or turns to something completely different from what she’s working on, for forward motion.

FH – Instead of not allowing a character enough freedom, she gives the character too much freedom and they do something stupid. Has to back off, put the words elsewhere, and make the character do what she promised to do in the outline. Also, can’t write when house is dirty; has to houseclean to get work done

DBC – Doesn’t believe writer’s block exists – that term presupposes writing is easy, is supposed to flow, everything should go smoothly from beginning to end – Writing is hard. There are fits and starts and stumbles. That’s writing. This is a hard process. Block is just the wrong word for it.

FH – It’s a creative process.

CH – When creative process stops or dayjob gets in the way, characters are screaming in the air to write them, there’s a spot she gets to that she has to write

AJ – Writing time is circumscribed. Very specific deadlines. Has to produce x words consistently in places to get it done. He’s not blocked, but he’s bored sometimes by sitting in the same place, etc. Has to get re-excited about the book again. Something about the term writer’s block  - it’s a legitimizing excuse for not working.

AW - It’s about not being able to move forward for some reason. There are several different varieties of reasons – You must be able to identify it and then you’ll get unstuck.

Outlining?

FH – does not deviate from outline. If she leaves outline, it gives her trouble. (She only outlines plot points, not how the character feels or reacts).

MM  - Used to be a pantser, let narrative carry her along – tried outlining and is now completely committed. If she’s not sure where to go, she looks at outline. She’ll occasionally deviate if it turns out in the narrative that it’s not a really good idea – She outlines the events, not the reactions.

AW – every book is different. Has written with and without outlines. "Outline" is like “block”; it means different things to different people. The more detailed, the less he can write.

AJ – Outline not written in stone – tells story as he imagines it at the start – discovers things about characters as he goes along – it’s a balance. He may not need the outline in the end, but it gives him faith that there is a story to be told that he can get to the end of. Occasionally he glances down to make sure it still working.

CH – Is a pantser. She just keeps going. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and she writes something different.

DBC – Writing a 15 pg outline would be death. Each chapter gets 2 sentences. This is his creative process. It's like a bottle of soda – every time he opens it to talk about it, to outline it , it goes flat. He is sparing in what he does in prepping because that release of energy is his creative process. He re-outlines as he goes along if he needs to.

AJ – Does write a 15 page outline – very loose, and he writes from character perspective so that it reads like  a short story with lots of emotional colour with lots of specifics that are missing. He knows what has to happen in the next 70 pgs, but doesn’t know how it’s going to happen.

Outlines with novels vs. short sotries?

DBC, AW: don’t outline their short stories. The outline is the objective the character is trying to accomplish, whether he gets it or not. DBJ has no idea what’s going to happen, how it’s going to end. Writes with faith, treats it like an adventure. The characters tell him. Misty: outlines short stories. On paper.

AJ: However much outline he does, there will always be a point where he has to create a document, “What the hell is this book about”. What the core of the story is about. What the narrative arc is. This is after writing the story, though.

CH – Doesn’t outline anything, writes the outline in her head and not on paper.

Does the quality change whether you struggle in real life or don’t?

CH – Where your mind is is a big thing.

AJ – They tend to go together.. A miserable day in real life or writing is a miserable day. They're not separate. Writer's block is a sign that he’s lost faith in a story.

When you have a bad day, do you find refuge in your writing to turn your day around?

FH – Sometimes.

AW – If he has a bad day, he can’t write. Except when he gets a very very very nasty rejection.

MM – Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

FH – Writes well when upset if she can find a way to channel that energy.

What's one thing you do when you’re stuck that works for you?

FH: (You mean, other than drinking?)

DBC: Opens a separate file, talks about where the story needs to go. Also goes back and reads what he has so far (even if it’s the whole book), and takes notes.

AJ: Sometimes the act of re-reading gives you faith that it works.

CH: Steps away from the book.

AW: Goes back and sees where he made the mistake. If you can’t get much done, it’s time to stop and go back. 

MM: Moves – dances (exercises). Easiest way to jumpstart her brain. Stops reading what she is writing and looks at something else.

FH – Outlines in a web outline, starting with the main point in the centre, to try to pinpoint what's not working.

AJ – Walks, any time he runs into a part where he’s bored, struggling , or stuck. Doesn’t run. Energizes his body but keeps his brain free. Imagines conversations – the act often helps get the issue figured out.

MM – Does her best dancing when she stops talking to herself. It’s about disengaging the brain. Can think about writing because her body is doing stuff.

DBC – Can’t walk away. When faced with that thing that isn’t working, he pounds away at it until he figures it out.

AW – Ideas come clear to him when he first wakes up, because all of the critical aspects of thinking are eliminated.

AJ – Wrote a problem on a piece of paper and stuck it under his pillow before bed. It worked. Because he was aware of it.

Do you ever have moments of doubt even after completion of the novel?

  

DBC – Every novel at 60%, he has a serious crisis of faith. Everything sucks. Then he gets over it.

AJ – Neil Gaiman's 3 things : “Produce good work, on time, and be nice and easy to work with. If you have two of those, you can get away with the third.”

MM – Yes, we doubt. The night before her book came out, she thought of better ending.

AW – There’s always another book, another story to tell.

 

Can you read fiction when you’re writing fiction?

AW – No.

MM – Yes, reads all the time. Tries to save it for bedtime, like a treat for having written. Everybody’s different, though.

AJ – Yes, but things that are different from what he’s writing

DBC: Didn’t used read what he is writing, because he was afraid of similar voices creeping into his head. But at this point he does and he’s glad, and it took him awhile to be comforatable enough with his own writing.

CH: Doesn’t read romance because that’s what she writes.

If you’ve built your world for your novels, do you therefore stop reading in that genre to avoid lifiting ideas?

AJ – Yes, so he doesn’t subconsciously.

Respecting the Day Job (March Madness Check-In, Day 12)

"For now its just playing, but one day i'll find that artery"

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the day job, and what it means to me. When I was a kid, once I'd determined that I wanted to be a writer, my dreams centered around me one day being published, rich, and famous. Reality didn't factor into my ambition when I was twelve, and seventeen years later*, I'm still working on that dream—of being published, at least. Rich and famous? I may be an optimist, but I'm also a realist.

And these days, that's something I've come to terms with. Last week's Magical Words post by David B. Coe about the realities of publishing (and even Carrie Ryan's follow-up about YA publishing in particular) wasn't entirely news to me. But still a part of me had been clinging to the idea that my day job was just that, a day job, one that no matter how much I loved it I would eventually leave to pursue my writing.

That's not to say it won't ever happen. Anything is possible, right? Just that lately, I've come to realize that I'm happy with what I've got. The job I do is rewarding in itself. No one minds that I use my lunch break as writing time. And by working a little bit extra every day, I get one day off every two weeks (hint: it's Mondays).

Sometimes I feel confined by days when I don't get as much writing time as I could if I didn't have the day job, but even on those days, lately I've made it work. Writing in the car while DH drives us to and from work (yay carpooling). Squeezing in half an hour before sword class. Making sure I use the lunch break for actual writing. Fitting writing and reading in where I can, because that's what I need to do.

I thought about taking today and the Monday two weeks from now off, specifically for March Madness, but that's not what this is about. The point is (Dear Universe), this is reality. And I love my job enough to know that even after getting published, I could still handle it. Probably would have to handle it. The "Day Job" may be an epithet for some, but I can't let it be that for me. And youthful fantasies aside, I'm okay with that.

March Madness folks: How are things going today? Do you have a challenge to your writing schedule that you've come to embrace and respect? What do you do to squeeze in writing time? Progress-wise, I'm coming along. Since last week, I've edited 9 chapters. Still more to go, but there's a write-in tonight and I'm hoping to get some work done. How about you?

I'll be at work today *points to title of post* but I'll be sure to respond this evening. And don't forget to check in at Denise Jaden's blog tomorrow!



* * * * You do the math. Guess which big one I'll be celebrating this June?

Embracing Change (March Madness Check-In, Day 5)

"Uncomfortable kitteh is ... apparently comfortable"

Welcome to March Madness Mondays! For those of you participating in the challenge, how's progress? For some, I know the weekend meant a break from the madness. For others, it was an opportunity. For me, it was a weird mix of both. I didn't manage quite what I'd intended to accomplish, but I made *some* progress. I'm up to Chapter 15 in my second pass read-through after making a major change. (More on that in a bit.)

Which brings me to my point.

Do you ever get attached to something? An element in your story. A certain creative habit. Even reading in a particular genre. Whatever it is, it's easy to fall into a comfort zone. We like it just the way it is and we don't want to let it go. So when someone tells us it doesn't belong or that we need to stretch ourselves or do things differently, then it rankles and if we're attached enough, the criticism falls on deaf ears.

But what if that means that we get so attached we refuse to make a change when we really need to? (Yoga pants, I am looking at you. Yes, you're comfortable. Fashionable everyday wear? I wish.)

So, what was it for me? Well, I always thought I was pretty flexible. Editorial suggestion? Sure! If something's not working, I can make changes. As long as the essence of the story remains, then if it makes things better, I can do both the story and myself justice by making those fixes. I'm not adverse to learning new things. If I have the opportunity to be a better writer, then I really ought to embrace it, right?

Yeah, but there was one little detail I'd decided was a non-negotiable.

Some of you already know the story, but I might as well explain it from scratch: My WIP, SIGN OF THE STAR, was written in first-person, present-tense. And even though some of my beta group told me that it didn't work for them, I chalked it up to a matter of opinion. The original was written that way. And that's how I wrote the revised version, too. But I clung to the idea that that was how the story was supposed to be. Even when one of the Magical Words folks made an excellent point that present tense comes at a heavy price. (Seriously, check the comments. See Moira Young's—my cursed pen name at the time—naive response.)

Then last month, I had tea with an awesome beta reader who doesn't pull punches, and she nailed the problem I'd been having with it when editing by telling me that "it was like watching through a veil". She had trouble connecting with the characters because the present tense created an artificial distance. Which was exacty not what I was going for.

So I caved. And before February was out, I'd changed the story over to past tense. (Really not hard, even though for awhile there I was mentally changing the tense of any text I encountered. Hooboy.) Now I'm making a second pass for clarity, voice and flow. And I love the story so much more. It feels more accessible. Janni's voice has never been more clear. Did I damage the story's integrity, or change my heartsong? Surprisingly, no.

Sometimes we have to make the change. Sometimes it can be scary. And sometimes it can be exactly what we need.

So, have you gotten stuck on or attached to something in your work? Have you asked yourself what the cost would be to you to try something different? What are the possible rewards? What's the worst that could happen if you gave it a chance? March Madness, #wipmadness, is about putting yourself out there, being daring. Let us embrace all that it can offer.

Update: Forgot to add, don't forget to check-in tomorrow (today actually) at Denise Jaden's blog.

The Puzzler

It seems like, this past year, my writing group can't go more than four weeks without a conversation weighing the merits of plotting versus pantsing. Mostly it becomes an entrenched discussion, where each side spouts the merits and their reasons for their chosen alignment. Recently I've decided to stick with "it's a spectrum; all pantsed novels will contain parts that were plotted, and all plotted novels have parts that were pantsed". And as far as analogies go, that's the best as I can do.

Me, I identify as more of a plotter, but the term wasn't quite satisfactory, even though when forced to choose, that's the side I'd fight for. On previous occasions when I've tried to describe my particular outlining process, I've explained it as "a sort of messy cross-stitch", because of how my thoughts jump around. That didn't quite feel right either, but the fact is, my thoughts aren't entirely linear.

Then on Friday, I read a post by author David B. Coe (one of the Magical Words gang) at sfnovelists.com, about how he completes novels. This is how he describes it:

"... a book sometimes feels like a puzzle.  I start with the outline, or, to work within the metaphor, with the border pieces.  I set aside the internal pieces until later, and just get that broad exterior in place.  Once that’s done, once I have some sense of what the puzzle is going to look like, I start to fill in the middle."

He goes into more detail after that, and I highly recommend you read what he has to say in its entirety, but that's the main gist of it.

I read the post. Then I read it again. As it sank in, the shades of gray that the plotter/pantser spectrum represented fell away, and the mental image of a gorgeous magical garden sprang to mind. That, I realized, is exactly how I craft a story. I have an idea of what the final image will look like, and I've filled in the edges and corners and parts of the middle, but the rest of it comes to me in bits and pieces, and often I have to go back and figure out exactly where a piece fits.

Even Coe admits that the metaphor is imperfect, but for me, it's the best way to describe it so far. I'm not a plotter. I'm not a pantser. I'm a puzzler.