Cup o’ Self-Doubt, Anyone?

Several writers posted on this FB page I follow regarding their ability to write, but not only write, but write well. I think one person actually said, “I’m not good enough for my story.”

*falls out of chair*

It’s a Maryland group, so you bet your ass I stayed clear of the water. No way am I drinking their self-doubt.

The first writer posted and I was like, oh, how sad. Buck up chick! It’s all good.

The second and third and fourth chimed in and I was like… *blink* *blink*. Okay, really? Number one, the water is clearly bad so everyone drop your water glass, and number two, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

We’ve all been there. We’ve read that book that was utter brilliance. A canvas of words painted with such artistry that we just know we can never compare.

But let me ask you this: Why not and how do you know that for sure?

Here’s what I’m learning. It’s all about the voice. Who’s voice, you ask? Good question. Excellent, in fact.

Is it yours?

NO.

This isn’t your story. *insert comedic laugh track* It’s that fake person’s living inside your head. The one that wakes you up at midnight, one, four, six a.m. Your only job is to put it on paper.

That fake person is your voice.

Once you let that person take the wheel, you have to let them drive. It’s imperative, or that brilliant story idea you have will end up in that file labeled “Dead MS’s”. O-o-o-o-oh yes, I have one.

Your only job as a writer is to learn your craft. Learn to show the story instead of telling it. While your fake person is driving, you need to soak up all the knowledge you can so their story shines. Get to know GMC and MRU. Cuddle with them a little bit. They’re going to be your bestest friends from here on out.

That said, never follow a rule off a cliff. Learn them, yes, of course, but damn… Don’t lose your voice in the process!

And the next time you read brilliance, say, Wow. I can’t wait for this author to read my brilliance some day. It’s a way better feeling then the one that says, Oh, man, I suck ballz.

Happy Writing!!

*scampers off to write something brilliant*

Creating Character

Wow, hey! Long time… I got sucked up in Nano, then post Nano. What a weird/bad/good/awesome experience that was. 90 something thousand words between two different novels—one very bad, one very good and still a wip I hope to finish in the next couple weeks.

Anyway!

I’m talking to my sister yesterday about 2 of my ms’s. One is an older edit in progress and the second is my current wip. She’s never read any of my stuff before (full time mom of 3, full time job, and a college student doesn’t leave her much spare time) and was very excited over my babies. Yes, they’re my children, lol. She, like many others, said she loved my books. That said, she’s not a writer so I have to take that with a grain of salt. Plus, she’s family. It’s like a given. I only ever really listen to my crit partners.

What she said that got me thinking, though, was that she loved my characters. She thought that while I had awesome stories, my characters were what made them. She loved and hated and felt for them.

So I have to ask myself what it was that I did. What steps did I take to create my characters? And I really had no idea. If you’re anything like me, they speak to you. Seriously, Emma, my latest main character, woke me up in September with something very close to this:

In a world where women are a rare commodity, Emma Tucker is man's greatest enemy. She fights for freedom but is held captive to the love of two men—one her husband, the other her worst enemy. If only she could remember which one is which.

I didn’t have her name, but I knew her story. That, of course, is the refined version which used to be my first paragraph. Emma literally woke me out of a dead sleep and forced me downstairs to my computer. I wrote an entire page for her, then put the ms to bed. This is what I do for my characters. I listen to them.

Can you imagine if I’d not gotten out of bed? That paragraph hovered in that moment of half wake half sleep and I never would have remembered that in the morning. Never. Now I have a pitch.

So, listening, I guess you could say is step one.

Step two: I pay attention! Not just to my favorite characters in books. Don’t you have some favorite TV shows or movies? What makes those characters great? What mannerisms make them unique? Have you ever watched something without the sound? Try it if you haven’t. I swear, you’ll learn even more about that character. There’s so much to learn just by watching.

I truly believe great characters are in the details. Everyone wants to give their male leads these chiseled god-like features, but what makes them unique if you don’t do what Cassie Clare did to Jace in The Mortal Instruments? She gave him a chipped tooth. I’m beginning to hate characters who don’t have minor details like this. And I don’t think they have to be flaws. They can be anything. Laugh lines. A mole. Whatever. Find that actor/actress you’ve chosen to represent your mc and pick them apart. Find that character on television and pick apart how they react to things. Seriously, Chandler on Friends anyone? Lots of arm gestures, the vocal inflections, the way he bounces on his feet and talks with his eyes…. I could go on all day. What a great character.

Lastly, show, don’t tell. We hear it all the time. There is nothing worse than having your mc tell me how hot for teacher she is over the guy in the room. And then goes on and on and on about it. I want to yank my eyeballs out and bleed all over that book. Then request my money back.

Show me how hot that character is in the way he walks, talks, looks around, anything!! Describe them that one time and I’m golden. I don’t need a “Edward’s so sparkly and his eyes are so golden” every other page. I love the way a character can just walk in the room. Or leans against the wall… Take these pics for example. They each tell a different story, am I right?

              

Show. That’s all. Show me what makes them unique to you and they’ll be unique to me.

That’s all I have to say on the subject. Anything to add?

Is that the sound of chickens? Ba-bock!

So I finally settled on a project for NaNoWriMo. I’ve been juggling between three ideas and finally settled on a full plot rewrite of my very first manuscript.

It’s the writer’s version of cheating. You can say it. Cheating.

I think I’m chickening out. Writing an entirely new book scares me. It’s been a year since I wrote something totally new. I wrote my first book TWICE already. There’s no telling how many times I revised it.

I wrote my second book, then decided it needed to be three books, so I started over. Wrote two and a half… then quit. To revise. The muse said, You’re an idiot cuz you’re gonna change book one upteen million times and books two and three will be useless. She was right. And guess what? I just rewrote book one. After a billion revisions. New beginning, new ending. Oh, and you know what? Books two and three are useless. The muse is smart. Sarcastic, but smart.

Then came the 2010 NaNo. I’d been playing with that idea for like a year, then buckled down and finally did it. I literally used NaNo as a reason to get the damn idea out of my head. Guess who rewrote the entire thing plot and all last summer? *raises hand* (Ew, but I had some “interest” in that one, so it’s closer to perfection with each rewrite. How freakin sad is that?!)

I’m currently revising said NaNo (again), and deep in line edits for the first book of my vampire series. I’m crazy to add another book under my belt, but now I’m itching. At least it’s not an entirely new book! LOL. I’ve had a YA bouncing around my head for a year but the world building is going to be nasty. NASTY, I say. Then I recalled this seriously old story I used to write in my head pre-writer days last month. That thing is basically plotted out because I freaking wrote the entire thing in my head for God’s sake. I should write that one.

But I can’t.

The scenes for this new rewrite are slamming into me with warp speed force. I can’t say it’s totally cheating. I’m taking out half of the plot, changing up an entire main character backstory. Two main’s actually. Does it help that I have zero gmc’s for my antagonist yet? That’s right. ZERO. I never did, which was the problem to begin with.

Good Lord I need help.

So, uh, doing NaNo? Buddy me Click the link on the top right to find me! Watch my rewrite in action.

Nano Prep: World Building

There's less than a month to prepare for NaNoWriMo. Are you getting ready? Plotting away? Most of us have our ways of preparing. Plotters are surrounded by whiteboards, post-its, notecards . . . stuff. Pantsers (like me) are plotting in their heads. Sort of:) We're just going to wing it and keep our fingers crossed we come up with something fabulous.

But here's where we can all get into trouble: World Building. We spend so much time working out plot and character that we forget to build the world. And it can be somewhat realistic and similar to ours, or it can be basic and not really believable. OR you can make it REAL. Knowing every inch of your world will only help you in the long run.

Before I start, let me tell you that I am NO expert on world building by any stretch of the imagination. But I have taken a couple workshops... Putting the information I've gathered to use has yet to be put to the test, and I have to get over my procrastination hurdle to implement.

World building is no joke. This isn't simply about viewing the world from the outside. I think what makes world building the most difficult is that in most cases you're using environments that most people live in day to day. It has to be realistic--fantasy or not. And those people will criticize you to no end if you get it wrong. 

So to start, it's important to do your research. If you're writing a historical, for example, you don't want to compare someone to fine china if fine china doesn't exist yet in that period. If you use street names and describe areas, going off memory isn't necessarily the best way to go. Did you know Google Earth will take you to street level? Put in your address, drag the "figure" to the street and all the buildings will come up around you. It's brilliant. You can "walk" down any street you want. Well, almost. It's damn near close. (Also, a little creepy that technology like this exists...) Anyway, get your geology set up and straightened out to near perfection or you're going to lose readers.

Okay, so that's your first step. What else is there, you ask? Good question. Depending on how fantastical your world, you have governments to build. Spiritual beliefs. What are your people like culturally? Any taboos? What sort of clothing do they wear? Climates. Architecture. Language. Race. Are they technological? Magical? What sort of medicine do they rely on? Transportation. Commerce. And finally, plant life and animals.

The evolution of your people are very important. Some of the answers you come up with for the above questions come directly from this evolution. What part of their history led them to that point?

Out of those answers, are there any that can add to your plot? Any that will add conflict? Poisonous plants? Will any of the technology create a natural disaster? Will a prudence in culture cause a problem for your main character? So many possibilities for conflict exist in the answers you come up with.

Obviously, if you're not delving really far into a fantasy realm, you won't have a whole lot of work to do. I might be a little jealous:) But knowing your world is super important regardless of genre.

A Day in the Life: Chapter Editing

This is me:

I remember when I’d say something like I’m revising/editing my manuscript today. This is the easy part. Cuz, you know, it’s like reading your favorite book over and over again. Am I right?

So I’d read. I’d reword a few sentences. Decide to delete or add in a haphazard fashion…

God. I really miss those days.

If this is a day in your revising life, I envy you.

I’ve grown up since then. Here’s my list of open internet/doc tabs:

#1 and the most important . . . Pandora Radio. Who’s with me?

#2 Thesaurus.com. This is a must. Do Not, under any circumstances, trust Microsoft Word to give you verb replacement options. It’s too basic.

#3 Savvy Authors. Why? Because they have an autocritter. If you aren’t a member, try this: Auto Crit Editing Wizard. This autocritter makes me its bitch. It tells me what words I’m over-using as well as pinning down words that lead to passive voice or “delay of subject”. And most importantly, you’re telling words such as feel, felt, saw, see, look, hear, heard… 95% of the time you’ll find it in a telling situation.

#4 could be any randomly searched topic necessary for any given subject.

So that’s my Internet. Then I have my TWO Word docs open. That’s right. TWO.

#5 is my original manuscript

#6 is my edit doc. On this edit doc I perform all the totally effed up changes, highlights, notes, whatever… it all happens there. That way, if I make a big change and change my mind, I have the original stuff on the other doc.

I paste in a chapter at a time.

(#7 If you have beta notes, you’d have that doc open too.)

My Headers and Footers look like this:

Why? Because I start checking my chapter for setting details. I go through each part of the chapter and check for at least 4 of the 5 senses. You can’t always have taste… I highlight by color. Yes, I’m that big of a dork. If I scan thru the chapter and see a good variation of 4 colors, I’m golden.

One thing down.

Next, scene and sequel. For this I use the comment boxes.

If you don’t know about scene and sequel, I posted about them ALL month All the steps are laid out.

If I can’t find a step, I fix/add/adjust/work miracles/search for weapons.

Second task done, and crazily enough, those are the easy parts.

Next comes the autocritter. Once I get my report up, I use the Find function and highlight all the overused words. AND, there’s a lot.

I almost fell out of my chair on this report for an unedited chapter. In reality, this is what I did:

I might have petted the screen. Just a little. With a single fingertip.

Trust me when I say, if you start using this feature—from whatever source—you’ll find your active sentence structure will come naturally.

This is also the time when some of those highlighted words need a good verb replacement, hence, thesaurus.com.

Warning: You will be cross-eyed and grumpy upon completion of chapter. In case of humorless groans and sneers of hatred, use your ever-present search tab to open Twitter. Use 140 characters to curse. Breathe. Sag in chair.

Open original manuscript and paste in your fresh new chapter over old crap version and yell things at computer monitor (I beat you, you bastard!! Like that.).

Start over. *shoulders tense* Wail. NOOOOOO!

And THAT, my good friends, are my ridiculously organized and painful steps to editing a chapter. Once you send off finished chapters to beta’s, you can use them for plot holes, etc… Those, I’m afraid, just aren’t easy enough to find unless you step away from the doc for a few solid months. Going back with a fresh perspective is the only cure for that. Why do this part first? It’ll give your beta’s a smoother read and they can focus more on your plot situation rather than wince over your sentence structure.