All posts by Jordan

Reading

TBR Tuesday: What should I read?

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Recommendations wanted!

Obviously I don’t have enough books to read already. I often mention how I don’t generally read fiction, especially not with a voice or genre similar to my own, while drafting. I’ve sketched out a break for the next few weeks to devote mostly on catching up on my reading.

Aside from tackling that big TBR pile (and my others, sigh), I have a few books from some of my favorite “auto-buy” authors to catch up on already:


Broken Harbor by Tana French


Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter


Shadowed by Stephanie Black


Smart Move by Melanie Jacobson

Sooo pretty much every living fiction author I put on my list. I need, like, an RSS feed of new books, apparently.

I’ve got a few to start with, but I’d love to get some more recommendations. My favorite genres are mystery and YA. So, I’m asking you: what are the best things you’ve read recently? What books do you read over and over again?

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Writing Life

Parallels, plotting and publishing

This entry is part 8 of 14 in the series My writing journey

Trying to “fix” a Winchester Mystery Story to make a habitable home novel wasn’t the only reason I turned to plotting. My next project came about from off-the-wall speculation with Sarah, one of my writing friends from high school. (Off-the-wall speculation is our specialty.)

trust your crazy ideasOne day, our crazy speculation turned to international soaps we watched as teenagers—Abrázame muy fuerte (Mexican telenovela) and Ballykissangel (Irish soap opera). Although the soaps were really different from one another, they were both set in Roman Catholic cultures, and featured priests characters prominently. We felt really compelled to explore this fascination in fiction, and we wanted to write something together.

The day after this conversation, I sent her an email:

Okay, this idea is just crazy and a product of watching too many fabulous spy shows, BUT–what if he was joining the priesthood as a spy cover/to escape a horrible secret?

And she did me one better:

I LIKE IT! So now I have an even crazier idea.

I was thinking, maybe we could turn this story into that LDS themed book. Maybe we can have two couples? One LDS guy turns into a Catholic priest as a cover-up that he’s a spy. His friends and family won’t know and they’ll be totally shocked by it. What if he started flirting with this Catholic girl who really likes him but is disturbed by it (plagued with guilt) because she thinks he’s a real priest? So maybe guy A’s sister ends up moving to X-town where her brother lives and meets a real initiate (haha what do you call future priests?) and falls in love. [. . .]

Too crazy?
There are several seminaries in Chicago. Maybe “priest” A is posing as a Priest to get in with the mafia somehow?

You know, when you put it like that, it sounds absolutely insane . . .

My favorite kind of book!

So we set about our parallel novels, mine about the spy/priest and secretary/parishioner, and hers about the sister and the seminarian. To keep the projects straight, of course, we couldn’t both just pants our way through these novels. So I didn’t just dip my toes in the plotting pool. I jumped in the deep end:
I've never successfully plotted like this, but whoa.

  • I wrote out full plot treatment, about one page long, hitting the milestones of the Hero’s Journey.
  • I wrote a journal entry from the villain’s POV to understand his motivation behind the murder.
  • I made a day-by-day timeline in a spreadsheet, her events in one column, mine in another.

That might sound like a lot of work. The first two were done the day after our emails, and we traded first chapters in the first two days after that. Most of all, however, we had fun. We didn’t shy away from the absurd, we put our characters into horrible straights, and we laughed and laughed and laughed.

The best parts were the scenes with all our characters in them. We would schedule times to “get together” online and write the dialogue/blocking in a spreadsheet (often with our own running commentary in another column…). Once we had them roughed in, we’d convert those scenes to prose with our characters’ thoughts.

The whole time, I feared the project was too “controversial” for an actual publisher to be interested. My previous projects were not going to get into publishable shape any time soon (or, likely, ever). Could I afford a third “flop” if I really wanted to be a published author?

In the end, though, I loved the story too much to let my perception of the market stop us. So we wrote and enjoyed our story. Within three months, we had two finished first drafts.

But, as any one knows who’s written “The End” enough times, that’s only the beginning. And in this case, the journey was a lot longer than it probably should’ve been. I had a lot to learn.

What do you think? Have you ever tried parallel novels or another form of co-authoring? How would you handle it?

Photo credits: trust your crazy ideas—Leandro Agrò; planning—Jez Nicholson

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Mechanics

Fix-It Friday! Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers

Inspired by a discussion on one of my writing mailing lists, I’ve been thinking about misplaced modifiers. One of my favorite examples allegedly comes from a medical transcription (but I’ve also seen it credited to a police blotter):

A man was bitten by a bat walking down the street on his thumb.

If you don’t get the joke, it’s about to become a lot less funny. Modifiers—adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, even participial phrases—should usually come as close to the word they’re modifying as they can. While we can (eventually) figure out the man was bitten on his thumb, that sentence says he was “walking down the street on his thumb.” (In fact, it says the bat was walking down the street on his thumb. The bat’s? The man’s? The world may never know!)

Gonna fix it?A friend mentioned that in school, he had to do an entire worksheet of fixing these sentences, and ever since then, he’s been very sensitive to them. Dude, I thought, is that all it takes? That might be pretty useful!

For each of the following, look at the “modifying” elements to figure out why they are WRONG. Feel free to share your fixes or your favorite dangling modifier examples in the comments! (And feel free to laugh, too—they’re supposed to be comical. Sometimes.)

1. Sensing her brother was about to pounce, he bent his knees, ready to jump at her.

2. He couldn’t believe she was standing there after their conversation yesterday doing the dishes on the sidewalk.

3. At the age of seven, his father told him the truth.

4. Running from the scene, the horror clung to his mind.

5. “As mayor of Park City, people often ask me, ‘[I forget the rest of the sentence, but that was an actual commercial. Agh!]'”

6. “At 26 ounces, you’ll find yourself drinking more.” (Another actual commercial)

7. “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. (How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.)”

8. We tiptoed over the ice in our heavy boots, which had begun to crack.

9. “McCance was found shot to death by her family Monday afternoon at her southern Wake County home.” (Actual news article.)

10. “Nearly six months after taking office, Gov. Beverly Perdue’s political honeymoon is over.” (Actual news article.)

11. “As a parent, the so-called “Halo killer” may have you nervously watching your kids as they jab at their joysticks.” (Actual news article.)

12. “After grounding her grandson, Allen Gann, from playing games the night before for not doing his chores, he sat down and played a full day’s worth, including Resident Evil, Smackdown vs. Raw and Midnight Club 2.” (Same article as the previous.)

Work better on paper? Download the worksheet as a PDF and print! Can’t get enough? Lots more examples to play with!

Photo by Ricky Bragante

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Technique

Secret sauce: Behold, the scene chart!

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This entry is part 7 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

There are probably as many ways to edit a story as there are to write one. One of my favorite tools has been a scene chart, inspired by a post on Edittorrent.

The original post suggested creating index cards for each scene, listing a number of important features—everything from where and when the scene is set, to first and last lines, to “promises” made to the reader, to important details like descriptions. Then you could move the index cards around to resequence events or scenes, or play with the story without hurting your MS.

Like many of the commentators on the post, however, I used a spreadsheet to do this in a very small space. I also combined this with probably the most important thing I learned from Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure—the structure of a scene and the importance of a scene goal—for the character, not just me as a writer. (More on scene goals next week!)

So here’s an example of the kind of scene chart I used, partially filled in for an imaginary story (anybody recognize the plot? Hint: it’s from an old card game). I didn’t use all of these columns myself (and if any of them aren’t clear, feel free to ask what I mean).

I liked this technique so well, I’ve used it on almost everything I’ve written since the first time I used it, more than four years ago. I can use it to make sure the vital elements of every scene are present.

Checking for these elements is a very powerful tool. It makes sure that:

  • Each scene is vital to your story
  • Each scene has direction and purpose
  • Each scene keeps your reader engaged and interested
  • The story is consistent in its details
  • There are no loose threads or forgotten promises

We’ll talk more about how the scene chart helps with some of these elements over the next couple weeks.

What do you think? Do you use a form of scene charts? What’s your favorite high-level editing technique?

Photo credit: Aaron Brown

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: Giveaway!

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If you enjoyed Marketing Mondays last year, today’s giveaway is for you!


Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook
by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo

More about the book:

The rules of marketing have changed. Savvy marketing professionals know that they must engage with individuals directly on the Web, and smart businesses know that customers can become friends—with benefits. Friends With Benefits shows you how to get into the online marketing game. A guide filled with tips, tricks, and real-world case studies, Friends With Benefits shows how you can increase your company’s online visibility and Web traffic and win over online influencers.

Friends With Benefits explains how to:

  • Connect with potential customers and join their conversations
  • Tweak your website to support your social media marketing campaigns
  • Promote your products or brand and manage the toughest negative online feedback
  • Track marketing campaigns, monitor discussions, and measure success

With viral videos racking up millions of views and Twitter mavens influencing thousands of their friends, social media marketing is an essential new tool for every marketer’s toolbox. The expert authors of Friend With Benefits guide you through the social media landscape, where authenticity and connections are more important than the size of your marketing budget, and real results can be just a few clicks away.

FWB came out over three years ago (an eternity in Internetdom), and while some of the more specific advice is a little dated, the overall principles endure. It’s not tied to any particular platform, but focuses more on the high-level strategies to find potential customers and promote yourself online.

What do you have to do to enter?

  • You MUST leave a comment on this blog post AND fill out the Rafflecopter giveaway form (which will display below, I hope!)
  • Extra entry: Like my page on Facebook
  • Extra entry: Follow me on Twitter
  • Extra entry: Tweet about the giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

What are your favorite marketing resources?

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Writing Life

The Winchester Mystery Story (that lead somewhere!)

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This entry is part 7 of 14 in the series My writing journey

All stories, says Larry Brooks, have structure. And, to employ my own analogy, so do all buildings. But not all buildings are created equal:

Winchester Mystery House Scary Exterior Tower

You might recognize this place, or the legend behind it. The owner believed that her house must be under construction always, or she would die. But they couldn’t use a master building plan.

Considering that, the Winchester Mystery House is pretty well-built. Yeah, it has stairs that lead to nowhere and doors that open out from the second floor (no stairs on that one—maybe move those first stairs over there?). It’s fun—it’s a blast to explore, and I bet Sarah Winchester had an awesome time throwing in every element she could think of.

It has a decent foundation—instead of leveling it, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake only knocked off the top three stories. After the quake it stood four stories. The remaining structure is a rambling, 160-room, 4.5-acre mansion. It requires more than 20,000 gallons of paint to coat the whole thing once—and once you finish, it’s time to start painting again.

I think we’ve all gotten to the end of a story, looked back and seen our own Winchester Mystery Structure. The Winchester Mystery House has structure. In some sense, it has architecture—but not really. There is no plan, and the closest thing they had to a designer (architect) was a crazy woman.

Winchester Mystery House Stairs to the ceiling

And “rambling” is right. Dead ends, doors and promises that go nowhere, accidental MacGuffins. . . . My real “Winchester Mystery Story” was my second novel. I think I’ve blocked out most of the horrors by now, but I do remember rewriting the last third of the story some three times. Eventually, I got tired of writing stories that looked like they were designed by a crazy woman.

I wish I could say that was my last Winchester Mystery Story, but even in the last few years, with a novel I plotted (though waaay too loosely), I’ve found that same problem of dead ends and lost threads and a plot that meanders without any purpose, etc. While every first draft probably has some ideas that didn’t come to fruition by the end—and they all need editing!—a true “Winchester Mystery Story” might very well be unfixable.

When your first novel is . . . well, your first novel, and your second novel is unfixable, it’d be pretty easy to give up, right? Although I fell out of love with the story LONG before I found a solution to its plot problems, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t realize just how fatally flawed the story was.

winchester mystery house
The whole experience pointed me toward how valuable it could be to actually plan the story in advance. That plotting thing didn’t “kill” my “muse”—instead, plotting helped to strengthen my stories. It seems like a lot of writers experience a “conversion” to plotting once they get over the mystique of the “organic” story. Pantsing does work for some people, but for me, plotting is a much better (and more structurally sound, and less rambling!) way to build a story.

What do you think? Have you ever written a “Winchester Mystery Story”? Are you a converted plotter?

Photo credits: exterior shot and stairs to nowhere courtesy of the Winchester Mystery House; rooves—the_photographer; windows to windows—Emily Hoyer

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News & Contests

March-a-thon check in & events!

marchathon 2013How are your writing goals coming for March? I’m chugging along at my many goals. (Oy. Why do I do this to myself?) So far this week, I’ve worked on projects A, B, D & E (library books—1 down, 2 to go!)

Here are some of the great thoughts we’ve shared in pep talks on the private side of the March-a-thon.

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
— Stephen King, On Writing

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
— Louis L’Amour

“If you really want to be a writer, nobody can stop you — and if you don’t, nobody can help you.”
— Alma Alexander

Quotes courtesy of Wendy Swore

If you’re looking for more motivation, come join us for our live events! Every Saturday in March, we’ll be holding a Twitter March-a-thon Marathon! All day Saturday, hop on the Twitter hashtag #marchathon to find us! Jump in any time by announcing your goal, and then we’ll root for one another to achieve them. (How can you say no?)

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Technique

Secret sauce: scene structure

This entry is part 6 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

Just like stories have structure, scenes have a specific structure, too. Story structure can help make sure your scenes matter; scene structure helps your scenes make sense. Your overall story might be on course, but if your scenes meander, readers will still feel lost.

Scene structure

In his aptly-named book Scene & Structure, Jack Bickham delves into the scene structure proposed by Dwight Swain. The basic structure of any scene, Bickham says, is Goal – Conflict – Disaster.

The Goal is the POV character’s goal at the start of the scene, for just that scene. (More about this later in the series!) The Conflict is what happens as the character pursues the Goal and meets resistance—dialogue, movement, pursuit, etc. The Conflict builds to the climax of the scene—the Disaster, when the character’s goal is frustrated.

Sequel structure

A scene is followed by a sequel, which has its own structure. Bickham’s structure for the sequel is Emotion – Thought – Decision – Action (which leads to another scene). The Emotion is the initial response to the events of the scene and its Disaster. When the character moves past the initial emotion, they think through the events, their response and their options in the Thought phase. This ultimately leads to a Decision, which takes the character to another Action—setting a goal for them.

Not all the steps of the sequel are necessary. In fact, the sequel itself might not be necessary—depends on the pacing and whether the emotional reaction constitutes a change. I often find my sequels very brief, or rolled into the beginning of the next scene.

How does all this help make your story stronger?

Scene structure is a basic good practice. Like I said at the beginning, it keeps scenes from wandering, and our readers’ attention spans from doing the same. It clues readers in from the beginning that the following does impact the story, keeping them hooked through the action.

As Bickham says it, the scene goal poses a question—will s/he get what he’s after? The character then pursues that goal until the disaster answers the question, most often with either “yes, but” (she achieves her intermediate goal, but a larger goal might have to be sacrificed) or “no, and furthermore” (not only does he not accomplish what he wanted, but now there are more problems!).

Our sequels motivate the next action. If you need a character do to something that might seem crazy next, the sequel is the place to give him or her a good reason, and to show the thought process, setting up the next goal and action. This pattern makes our scenes causally linked (instead of casually linked)—creating a plot instead of a sequence of events.

Believe it or not, this pattern can become so ingrained that it’s second nature. You still want to check to make sure you have the basics (more on that next week), but scene structure is so prevalent in modern literature that once you notice it, it’s easy to mimic, even on a subconscious level.

What do you think? How does the structure of scenes and sequels influence your writing? Come share!

Photo by Tony Case

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