All posts by Jordan

Reading

TBR Tuesday: A funny thing happened on the way to the wedding reception…

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But first, the winner of The Emotion Thesaurus eBook is . . .

BONNIE HARRIS!

Thanks to everyone who entered!

So I mentioned that my youngest sister got married last month. My parents (really my mom) benefited from their expertise from hosting my and my other two sisters’ weddings (and a five-year break since the last one), and the whole thing was wonderful.


See? We loved it. I’m the one on the left, enjoying the drollery with my sister Brooke.

After the beautiful ceremony and luncheon, my family regrouped at my parents’ house before heading out to the reception. I happened to be driving the first carload to return home and I found two packages waiting. One of them was addressed to my new brother-in-law’s older sister, Ellen—kind of weird, considering we’d never met her before that week.

Thinking it was a gift she was sending to the newlyweds, I brought the package inside until they got there. After a while, they arrived and I handed the package over.

Inside were three copies of this:

the_isolated_hc_d2b

It was my new brother-in-law’s older sister’s YA novel, The Isolated (by Ellen Stokes, if you’re getting tired of the long relationship story). We thumbed through the copies. Somehow, despite seeing the word “PROOF” stamped in the interior pages, we figured they must be gifts for the newlyweds. Still.

Mmkay. (We’re slow. I was also under the influence of the plague*.)

We finally trek over to the reception venue, and word gets ’round to Ellen that her books had arrived. For some strange reason, she really wanted to, you know, see her proof copies.

All of them.

Oh, right. Because she knew she’d be there for a few days before the wedding, she had her proofs shipped to my parents’ house.

Where the books still were.

Um, duh. So after the reception, she headed back to my parents’ house and I got her proof copies, since she was hitting the road early the next morning.

Would’ve gone off without a hitch entirely if my newlywed sister hadn’t later asked, “Oh, where are the books Ellen sent us?”

*facepalm*

More about the book!

It’s been seventeen years and Gray has never tasted salt. She’s never tasted sugar. She’s never heard the swelling voices of a crowd or felt the heat of bodies in a packed room. She’s been banished from society since birth and merely waits to die in Griseus, the endless moor of dead grass and wind to which her murderous uncle exiled her.

But all that is about to change when Gray is unexpectedly ripped from solitude and into the world she never knew: a world that is filled with bustling alleyways, towering citadels, glorious new tastes, and a task so dark it nearly swallows her up.

For the first time in her life she is needed, and it’s vital she comply. Knowing nothing of the world, Gray would latch first onto another human soul that can guide her—any other soul. Even if that soul were her captor.

Set in a place unlike any other, THE ISOLATED asks its readers which is worse: the captivity of the mind, the body, or the soul?

What do you think? Did you ever have one of those embarrassing moments with another author?

* Not an actual plague.

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Writing Life

When life won’t let you write

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Tune in tomorrow to find out the winner of the giveaway: an eBook of The Emotion Thesaurus!

In early December, I sat down and planned out the next couple months of writing. I set up some deadlines for myself based around my family’s plans for the year, knowing that I wanted to end up with a fairly complete novella and a rough drafted novel by the middle of February, for a total of about 90,000 words. By now, I wanted to be at 35,000 to 40,000 words, even with two weeks off for Christmas and vacation.

Instead, I’ve spent the last six weeks like this:

  • December 9-16: Meet my writing goals on day one! Fall 40% short day two with a sick kid at home (again). Day three, getting ready for Christmas. Day four, catch the stomach bug that’s run through the rest of the family, wiping out the rest of the week.
  • December 17-23: Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, packing, Christmas.
  • December 24-30: Put on Christmas at home, then spend the rest of the day flying cross country (with 3 kids 6 and under) to put Christmas on at my parents’ house. Begin getting sick. Preparations for my youngest sister’s wedding and family time. Wedding day and sickness. Family photos. Sickness develops into plague*. Sleeping is about all I can do.
  • December 31-January 6: Plague* slowly begins to subside, only to be replaced with more health problems. Continue to fight plague*. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Fly back across the country. New sickness.
  • January 7-13: Remnants of plague settle in for siege warfare. Start writing again! Also tackle reorganizing all my children’s toys to make room for the new ones. Finally start unpacking. Writers’ block sets in.
  • January 14-20: Writers’ block, then finally just start writing again. Sudden weekend plans knock out another day. Husband offers to take kids so I can have a writing day Saturday. Arrive at library. Food poisoning begins. Write SLOWLY until I just have to go home and lay down.

Not all bad things (I mean, what’s not to love about Christmas and the best wedding my parents have put on yet?), but between busy-ness, unusually bad health and blocks, I’ve only got 15,000 words.

Frustrating, isn’t it?

Sometimes life won’t let you write, and when you’re on deadlines—self-imposed or more external—it’s even more stressful. It’s so easy to let the burden of all those unwritten words weigh on you until you can’t face that too-short WIP and—hey, Facebook!

But guess what? FB-stalking your elementary school besties doesn’t add any words to the WIP. Instead, it fuels the vicious cycle of procrastination. For me, that usually goes like this: “I have too much to do, I don’t even know where to start. So I won’t”—and I fall even farther behind in my goals.

Obviously, this pep talk is for me, too. I need to try something new.

Just keep swimming writing

I will probably up my daily writing goals a bit to try to make up for the shortfall. My usual goal, purposefully set somewhere that’s low and attainable for me, is 2000 words a day. If I up it to 3000 words a day, I can finish on the same deadline. (Note that these numbers are totally personal. As I drafted my last three novels, I shot for 4000-5000 words a day, which is doable, but a lot.)

But there will still be days I fall short, most likely, especially if my goal is 3000 words (which is exponentially harder than 2000). Instead of feeling defeated and looking at how far I am from my goal, I need to focus on how much I’ve actually accomplished.

Every word I write is one I didn’t have five minutes ago. If I end the day with 1000 words, I’m not nearly a day behind—I’m 1000 words closer to my end goal. I mean, I wrote 853 while coming down with food poisoning. How is that a loss? (Aside from the “coming down with food poisoning” part…)

What do you think? Can positive thinking work—at least to help us avoid a cycle of stress and procrastination?

* Not an actual plague.

Photo credits: Sick! (medicine)—Michelle Dyer; Just Keep Swimming—Angel Kittiyachavalit

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Technique

Which is better: suspense or surprise?

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I’ve been blogging about writing for almost four years (!), so I probably have some gems lurking in the archives. I picked the most popular post from January 2010 to share today. This post was originally part of the series on Tension, Suspense and Surprise, which I recently released as a free PDF!

Surprise and suspense might seem like polar opposites to be included in the same series. After all, one is all about making promises and putting off their fulfillment, while the other comes out of nowhere. But really, I think they’re just two ways of handling all the new information you’ll give readers in a story—and in some ways, they’re just opposite ends of a spectrum.

You’ve got a huge event coming in your novel, and you have two choices. You can lead up to it with a lot of anticipation, promises, foreshadowing and/or dramatic irony—building suspense. Or you can throw your readers for a loop and just drop it on them (though at least a little foreshadowing is usually good here—hence the spectrum).

Alfred Hitchcock has famously explained the difference (emphasis added):

There is a distinct difference between ‘suspense’ and ‘surprise’, and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, ‘Boom!’ There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table, and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the décor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene.

The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: ‘You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb underneath you and it’s about to explode!’

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second case we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.

—Hitchcock by François Truffaut, p 79-80, as quoted by senses of cinema

Not to disagree with my good friend Alfred, but both surprise and suspense are important. For major events and big promises, suspense is generally better. But for smaller events—especially things that don’t need the extra explaining and won’t live up to the level of suspense—surprise is a great thing.

If we lead up to all the events in a story, we run the risk of being too predictable. If we lead up to none of them, our readers are more likely to experience PTSD than suspense. One is probably better for your event and your story.

How do you determine whether your event should be a surprise or be used to create suspense? Hitchcock’s guideline is a starting place: if it’s a twist ending, surprise is pretty dang important. On the other hand, if that surprise would heighten the suspense throughout the book (without dragging it out too much) and if you can set it up for the audience to know without informing the characters, you could think about whether you could use the extra layer of suspense.

Conversely, consider whether you spend too long building up to minor events—what if you cut all the foreshadowing? Would the reader be slighted or delighted when the surprise is sprung?

What do you think? How do you decide whether an event will be used for suspense or surprise? Come join the conversation!

Photo by Jeremy Stanley

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Reading, News & Contests

TBR Tuesday: Giveaway!

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This year for Christmas, I received a copy of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. I’m excited to dig into this resource! And you should be too—since I also have a copy of the eBook to giveaway!


I first discovered the Emotion Thesaurus when it was in blog form at The Bookshelf Muse. Last year, authors Angela and Becca published the Thesaurus. Somehow, I got lucky enough to also win a copy in the drawing and Angela has been kind enough to allow me to give it away here!

More about The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression:

One of the biggest problem areas for writers is conveying a character’s emotions to the reader in a unique, compelling way. This book comes to the rescue by highlighting 75 emotions and listing the possible body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for each. Written in an easy-to-navigate list format, readers can draw inspiration from character cues that range in intensity to match any emotional moment. The Emotion Thesaurus also tackles common emotion-related writing problems and provides methods to overcome them. This writing tool encourages writers to show, not tell emotion and is a creative brainstorming resource for any fiction project.

I know I’ll be using this a lot, especially when I’m fixing my gesture crutches.

How to win!

Entering the give away is pretty easy. You must leave a comment on this blog post AND fill out the Rafflecopter form to enter. You can also get additional entries by liking my page on Facebook, following me on Twitter, and/or Tweeting about this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Details
One copy will be given away. Entries must be in by midnight EST, January 20, 2013. Winner to be drawn from Rafflecopter entries at random, announced Tuesday, January 21, 2013, and notified via post on this blog—so be sure to check back here!. EBook available in any of the following formats: Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iTunes, PDF.

Remember, to enter you must use the Rafflecopter form and leave a comment! How would you use The Emotion Thesaurus? What do you want to accomplish in 2013? What do you do when you get stuck? What would you like to learn this year?

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

8 things to do when you’re stuck

It happens to the best of us: sometimes we just get stuck in our stories. And yeah, I’m there now. I’m about 2/3s of the way through a short novella—and I haven’t written a word since Wednesday. It’s more than just writers’ block—I don’t know what to do next.

As frustrating as this is, getting stuck is fairly common, right? Even if you’re a plotter (which I am), beatblocksometimes, you just don’t know what comes next and all your ideas are vague, lame, or just not the very next thing in your story.

I’ve been through this before—I was drafting a book last March and I got a little farther than this, and I ran into the end of my outline: the last quarter of the book was supposed to be “They defeat all the bad guys and find love against all odds.”

Helpful.

My outline notes are a little sketchy this time around, too, and my milestones have moved around a bit in my plotting roadmap. I don’t know what comes next—and I’m tapped out for ideas right now. Even in other creative endeavors, I’m coming up empty.

Yay.

So today I’m digging out some very good advice from my archives (and hopefully this time I will follow it) to help me and anybody else who’s coming up against a wall of no ideas.

The kids are in bed, the house is clean, you’ve spent some quality time with your spouse and you’ve watched your favorite show. Now it’s your time—time to write with nothing hanging over your head. You sit at your computer, fingers poised over the keys and—

Nothing happens.

What do you do? Spend the next two hours checking email and blogs, playing Text Twist and Minesweeper, coming back to your story every half hour without anything new to add and drifting away again until you can’t face your computer anymore and go to bed, strangely empty and guilty?


No! You don’t have to succumb to writers’ block—you can fight it, and you should. What makes a writer vs. a wannabe is perseverance (and the same is true about revisions, finding an agent, getting published, selling books, etc., etc.). Working through writers’ block makes you a stronger, better, more creative writer. And here are eight ways to do it.

Come up with more ideas
Easier said than done, I know, but try brainstorming new events and directions for your story. I recently came across an analysis of the story conference for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The surprising thing about this conference is the sheer volume of ideas—the writer, director and producer threw out ideas while brainstorming, not worrying about how outlandish or stupid they might sound—you never know if it could be made workable.

Recycle an old idea
Did you have an amazing plot twist you never got to use or used in another (preferably unpublished) work, or one you love in someone else’s story? Find a way to work that idea into this story. The mine cart chase scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom originally came from the conference for Raiders, but they didn’t use it there—an instant source for later ideas.

Look for more connections within your work
I got stuck in one WIP when I needed a task for my hero. He’d agreed to do something for the villain in exchange for a hostage, but I was drawing a blank as to what that should be. I tried to think of something the villain could send him after—but finally the right answer came to me. It shouldn’t just be something, it should be something related to the plot. And I had a subplot that could tie back into the main plot (and a minimystery that could be solved) right here.

Write something
You may have to take some time away from your WIP to get the creative juices flowing. You can work on another idea—writing or plotting or planning—or you can find writing prompts to get started. Sometimes focusing on another story idea will give you the boost or idea you need to progress in your first story—just don’t get sidetracked for too long!

Write nothing
Do something mindless—like playing Text Twist or Minesweeper, or doing house or yard work. Do something creative—if you play an instrument, practice. If you do a handicraft—knitting, needlework, woodcarving, knapping—make something. Occupying your hands while letting your mind roam can have great creative rewards.

Erase
As hard as this may be, maybe you’ve written yourself into a corner. Maybe there just isn’t anywhere for the story to go now, and you need to delete the last paragraph or scene or chapter. (Ouch!) Look at where your story took a turn for a dead end and brainstorm another direction.

Read (or watch)
Look for other ideas (and beautiful writing) in other works, in or outside of your genre. You can also watch a movie or TV show and play the “what if” game—what if something happened differently in this scene. (I came up with a whole story idea this way.)

Plot
You can often avoid getting stuck if you plan out where you’re going in advance. Not always, of course—I’m a plotter, and I can still get stuck in the gray areas of my outline. But back before I started plotting out my stories, I began with an ending in mind, but sometimes I spent weeks stopped in the middle, trying to figure out how to get there. Even loose plotting can help to keep the big milestones in mind to keep you moving toward your goals. Plus you can brainstorm in advance and save all those ideas for any lulls.

Beating writers’ block can be tough, but you can do it—and if you’re going to finish, you have to.

What do you think? How do you beat writers’ block?

Photo credits: paper ball—makedonche19; blank page—Chris Blakeley;
I can’t think—Alyssa L. Miller

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News & Contests

Top 10 of 2012

I almost didn’t think about doing this here, but since I love data, I was really interested to see which of my posts from 2012 were the most popular. I’m pretty pleased with the results, since I worked pretty hard on some of these!

10. Everything you ever wanted to know about character arcs
Why characters need to show growth, and how to do it in each phase of your story

9. Fixing the top 10 gesture crutches
Strategies for replacing, removing or strengthening the most overused gestures (including smile, nod, shrug and more)!

8. Goals in fiction, on every level
Characters need goals on all levels of the story, from the whole story to the scene. Find out how to get more out of those goals (and set them in the first place!

7. Tracking your blog: using Blogger or WordPress.com stats
I have to admit, I’m pretty surprised that only one Marketing Monday post made the list—and doubly surprised that it was this one. (Can I just say that Google Analytics is a more robust, complete option for tracking your blog?)

6. Handling multiple POVs: Third person
With more than one POV character, it’s important to make sure our transitions between narrators are both clear and smooth. Read up on quickly orienting your readers (and you!) in a POV character’s head!

5. Plotting a novel with a beat board by Ali Cross
A guest post from my friend Ali Cross, and an addition to my most popular series on plotting, this method uses a classic film beat board outline and Blake Snyder’s beat sheet to create a visual plot.

4. Writing crutches: How to avoid overusing the most common gestures!
Those overused gestures—smile, laugh, nod, shrug, sigh, etc.—can sap the power from our writing. Learn the basic methods of how to avoid them! (Or fix them in revision with #9!)

3. Mass editing with Word Macros
You can harness the power of Word to help find all those gesture crutches, too. Instead of clicking “Find” fifty thousand times, this little bit of code automatically pulls all the sentences using whatever words or gesture crutches you specify into a new document. Then you can read, search, look for patterns and edit! This (and the class that generated it) was my biggest writing lesson of 2012!

2. Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat plotting method by Ali Cross
Another guest post by my friend Ali Cross! She introduced me to Blake Snyder’s work and I’ve learned a lot from reading his books. It was only natural that Ali be the one to write up his beat sheet outlining method!

1. Plot Driven vs. Character Driven: I do not think it means what you think it means.
You can use the terms however you want, but technically, “plot driven” and “character driven” don’t have much to do with which one you thought up first or who’s “running” the story. Learn more about these frequently misused terms!

Also cool in 2012!

The awesome Trisha, frequent commentator here, named me one of her top blogs of 2012!

Next week, I’ll pass this award along to my favorite writing advice blogs!

What was your biggest writing lesson in 2012?? Come join the discussion!

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
News & Contests

Achieving your goals on autopilot

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I set goals all the time—and I’ve found the easiest way to achieve my goals is on autopilot.

I’ve posted this a couple times before, but I would be remiss if I let the season of New Year’s Resolutions pass without highlighting my favorite goal-achieving techniques!

“Autopilot” doesn’t mean coasting through the month, or setting absurdly low goals so I can achieve them, though. It means scheduling for me. I kind of beasted Nano 2011, and—especially the first week—I managed to do this without the world falling down around the ears. I’m the mom, of course, and I set the pace of the household. I do most of the housework. So how did I write 5000-6000 words a day (hours and hours of work) without running out of meals and clean underwear for the family?

Planning.

I was already used to one very useful phone alarm: a 15 minute warning to the time we need leave for school. So I decided to expand on that and use the phone alarm to remind me to do laundry (and switch it, fold it, and hand it off to the kids to put away), work with the kids to empty the dishwasher, read with the kids, start dinner and go to bed on time.

Dinners were also planned: I took the calendar for the month and planned out our meals (actually, when I did this for 2012, I planned for the rest of the year because I found so many great recipes—you can see the online ones on my Pinterest). Last year, I focused on quick meals, slow cooker meals, meals I’ve squirreled away in the freezer, and family favorites. Themed nights were also big helps: Meatless Monday, Favorites Fridays, etc. It took a couple hours to write it out, but then for the rest of the month, meal planning was handled and I could just look at the calendar to make out my shopping list.

Even blog posts (on four blogs!) were planned the month in advance. Topics and dates went on the calendar. I made up post drafts for each of those days with the topics all ready to go. I stockpiled topics and full posts. On weekends, I filled in the remaining posts and scheduled them to go.

It actually went really well—until I finished my novel. And then I let a lot of it fall apart. But all that advanced planning helped me to maintain a good routine, be productive and run the house better than I usually did.

So how can that apply to other goals?

Schedule them now.

If you want to write 1000, 2000 or 5000 words a day, pick a time and put it in your schedule. (Doing it at the same time each day can help, too.) Unplug from the Internet. Schedule a time with the fewest kids distractions around. I’ve used a handy browser plugin that would block certain time-wasting websites during certain times of the day—another helper.

5000 words a day was my goal during Nano 2011. I broke it into chunks and assigned each chunk a time: 1500 in the morning, 1500 in the afternoon and 2000 in the evening. This year, my words-a-day goal is a more manageable 2000 when drafting (3000 for playing catch-up right now), but I’m still chunking that down.

This works for other goals, too. If you want to read a certain number of books next year, start collecting recommendations. Figure out whether you prefer reading on an eReader/mobile device (if you have one) or paper book. I like library books since they come with built-in deadlines—and, oh yeah, they’re free. Then figure out how long you can take per book (on average).

If you’re trying to research a project, make a list of resources, get them and give yourself a timeline to read them.

If you want to lose weight, schedule your exercise sessions with yourself. Make up healthy meal plans in advance. Buy and prepare healthy snacks.

We all know that goals should to be broken down into steps to be achievable. But what it really comes down to is to just do it, to quote Nike. Little reminders and baby steps help me.

What does it take to help you just do it?

Photo by Kent Wein

Originally posted in January 2012

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: 2013 Reading Resolutions

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New Year’s Resolutions are all about stretching yourself, right? Two years ago, I set a goal to read 50 books that year. I made it formal with Goodreads, and after a bit of catch-up in December I finally reached that goal.

As I’ve mentioned, last year was more of a challenge, and this year my schedule is probably going to be just as demanding. (In fact, one week into the year, I’m already three weeks behind in my schedule thanks to repeated illnesses, the Christmas rush, travel and my youngest sister’s wedding. So, you know, nothing big.) But I need to make sure I take the time to refill my creative wells, especially with a busy schedule.

I’ve blogged before about how hard it is for me to read while writing. With my yearly schedule, I know when I’ll be drafting and when I’ll be editing, so I can anticipate when I’ll be able to read more.

Not just about the numbers

If you have a goal to read a set number of books in a year, that’s great. I know that setting a specific number in 2011 definitely pushed me to read more. But I also like the freedom to read—or give up on—as much as I choose.

On Twitter this weekend, I heard about a “Book Gap Challenge” to read the books that we haven’t gotten around to yet, or the genres we tend to neglect.

As I was looking over what I read in 2012, I was surprised to discover where my (recorded) tastes fell, almost exclusively. Bottom line: I need to read more adult books. This is a challenge for me partially because I avoid books with excessive language, sex and violence, and partially because even very good adult books often don’t reel me in the way a lot of the YA I read does. I

For 2013, I think that’s how I want to try to stretch myself: focusing on my adult-book gap. So . . . any recommendations?

What do you think? What are your 2013 reading goals? Will you focus on genre, total, or another factor?

Photo by Lauren

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