We’ve all heard about showing instead of telling. It’s one of the things my editor catches me on all the time. I end up grousing and repeating the words of ~~Princes Leia~~ Carrie Fisher from When Harry Met Sally. “You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right.”

Check out this example:
Anger filled Danny as he strode through the room. He was looking for Shiv. If he ever found his friend, he’d give him a piece of his mind.
There’s a lot of telling about Danny’s emotions in that paragraph. To make the storytelling more interesting, I’m going to turn to The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

The Emotion Thesaurus is a wonderful reference book that’s organized by emotions like amazement, confidence, gratitude, and shame. Each entry has a long list of behavioral cues authors can use to show instead of tell.

When I look up anger in The Emotion Thesaurus I see lists of 36 physical signals like “flaring nostrils”, “Slamming doors, cupboards, or drawers”, and “laughter with an edge”. After that is a list of internal sensations, mental responses, and cues of suppressed anger. All of these offer inspiration to unlock ideas of how I can show my character’s anger.

How about this:
Chin held high and jaw clenched, Danny shouldered through the crowd. He scanned through the room for Shiv. Curses boiled in his mind, building and building in pressure. The only thing that kept him from punching one of these idiots was knowing how happy Shiv would be to see him get thrown in jail for battery.

I built this new version by consulting The Emotion Thesaurus. I didn’t use the entries word for word. Instead, I riffed on them, used them for inspiration.

Check out The Emotion Thesaurus at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.

Falling behind the pack – how to keep pushing on when you’re lagging behind.

November 19, 2012

Nancy

In case you missed it, this month is National Write a Novel Month or NaNoWrMo (NaNo) for short. Yea, I know. If you’re reading thos post, you know all about NaNo since we’ve been talking about it all month.

By this point, you should have written 31,654 words. I’ve written about 20,000. I’m almost 12,000 words “behind”. In the picture, can you see the black dog who’s looking up over the pack in front of him? Yea, that’s me. With only eleven days left in the month, I’d need to write almost 2,800 words a day to make it to the magic 50,000 word count. My chances of doing this are slim given my trial schedule for the rest of the month. Now, I’ve done it. I usually lag behind and spent most of Thanksgiving weekend writing. But that’s not likely to happen this year for lots of reason.

So, why push on? Why keep trying to hit that goal. Shouldn’t I just take my squeaky toy and head home?

NO. And neither should you.

“But why not?” you ask.

You can’t be a professional writer if you give up. The number one mandate of any writer is to FINISH the story. Keep slogging through it. Taking your toys and hiding out in your doghouse is not an option.

If you are struggling to meet your goal, whether its this month as part of NaNo or at any other phase of writing, redefine it. My husband, a criminal defense attorney, does this all the time. Most criminal cases that go to trial will end in a conviction. If your definition of “win” as a criminal defense attorney is an acquittal, you are going to have a short and frustrating career. Similarly, if your goal is a writer is to have all your stories make a billion dollars, get ready for disappointment. The husband defines “win” as any time he can get hisb client less than a full sentence. As a writer, I define the writing portion of winning as getting to “the end.” Every word I put on the page for NaNo is a win. As long as you keep writing, you are winning.

I did a post a while back on my blog about writing when the world conspires against you or inching toward success. I find that when life conspires against me, I need to write to escape into another world and regain my balance. Use NaNo as a tool to help you inch toward success. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with aiming for 50,000 words and writing 30,000 or 20,000. The point is to write.

As Jonathan Coulter said in A Talk With George:

Enjoy yourself, do the things that matter

Cause there isn’t time and space to do it all

Love the things you try, drink a cocktail wear a tie

Show a little grace if you should fall

Don’t live another day unless you make it count

There’s someone else that you’re supposed to be

There’s something deep inside of you that still wants out

And shame on you if you don’t set it free.

To buy this fabulous song you can go to JoCo’s website or Itunes. It’s one that’s helped me over some real tough roads.

If you’re discouraged about your word count, there’s only one cure. Sit down in front of your keyboard and make the words appear. You can do it. And sometimes, there’s a cocktail waiting. Whether you write 500, 10,000 or 50,000 words, you can only succeed if you show up. If you’re at the point that you need to redefine “winning” do it. There’s no shame in that. In fact, it’s a tried and true technique. You can find the time to write, even if it’s only 15 minutes a day. You can do this.

Inch by inch and word by word, you’ll cross that finish line. I’ll see you there.

Libraries & Writers Groups ““ A Partnership made in Reader Heaven

November 16, 2012

fictorians

Craft & Skills Guest Posts Reading Reviews The Writing Life Writing Tools 2 Comments

Guest Post by Holly Paxson

You’re a writer. You know the joys and agony of transforming that blank page into something creative and new. But you’re tired of slogging away at the keyboard on your own. Maybe you’re a brand-new writer who isn’t sure where to go after those first few pages, maybe you’re an experienced master of prose who needs a fresh environment to break a block. Whatever the reason, you’ve decided you want to join a writer’s group, perhaps even start one of your own. So how do you go about it?

A great place to start is your local public library. In addition to the helpful books and other resources on writing, libraries often provide free meeting room space for writing groups to meet, or perhaps already run such a group as a library-sponsored program. Libraries host everything from weekly critique groups to full-fledged day-long writers workshops complete with published-author instructors and tips on getting published. And almost always, these programs and workshops are completely free.

If your local library doesn’t have any kind of writers program or group, then you may wish to consider starting one. First, think about what kind of group you’d like. A small critique group? A large organization where members share presentations on writing and form critique partnerships on the side? Think about how often you’d like to meet, and, if you don’t already have a group of writers ready to join you, consider how you’ll get the word out that your writers group exists.

Once you’ve considered these questions, then, go to your local library. See what kind of meeting space they have available. Will you need to commandeer a table in a quiet corner, or does the library have a meeting room you can reserve? What is the room’s capacity, and how often is it available? Ideally, the availability of the library’s space will work with what you’ve envisioned for your group.

You may even wish to approach the library staff, to see if they’d like to work with you to make your writers group a library-sponsored program. When libraries sponsor programs, they can provide advertising to promote your group to help recruit members, sometimes even provide funds to assist with workshops or presenters. Typically, all that the library asks for in return is that participation in the writers group be free and open to the public.

Libraries can also support the work of your group’s published authors, to varying degrees. For those who wish to get their work into the library’s collection, the best way is to ask the library what their criteria are for accepting books. Some libraries can’t add books that have been self-published, or are only available in ebook form; others can. Some libraries have special donated local author collections, which allow any local author to donate a copy of their book for the community to borrow and read. Some libraries will sponsor special author receptions or book-signings to help promote local authors, or will allow books to be sold in associated Friends of the Library bookstores or booksales.

More than ever, libraries today are community hubs and busier than ever. As an institution supported by your tax dollars, they exist to be used, to provide resources, and to bring people together. For your writers group, a partnership with your local library can be invaluable. So how do you know what your local library can do for you?

All you have to do is ask them.

Holly Paxson has worked (and written!) in public libraries for the past nineteen years. She currently manages a branch of the Timberland Regional Library in Lacey, Washington, where she is hard at work on her next book.

Three Lessons NaNoWriMo Taught Me

November 14, 2012

Eric Edstrom

The Writing Life 4 Comments

In December 2009, my nephew posted a challenge on Facebook. “I’m doing NaNoWriMo next year,” he said. “Who’s with me?”

On impulse I replied, “I’m in!”

I had started many novels over the years, but I had never finished one. The challenge to write a novel in one month, combined with my nephew’s go-for-it attitude, inspired me to complete a significant bucket list item.

I was so excited about the idea I didn’t even want to wait. I had a vague concept for my book, something that had come to me during a long drive. Bigfoot is an alien, part of an advanced civilization hidden deep beneath the mountains.

I decided that if I was going to write a SF novel in one month, I needed to do a certain amount of world building and outlining to get myself ready. I bought myself a blank notebook, and began scribbling down notes and ideas, letting my mind to go where ever it wanted. By the time November rolled around, I thirty hand written pages of cool details about the world in which my story would take place.

On November 1st, 2010, I sat down with my MacBook, a can of Diet Coke, and a heart full of enthusiasm. I think I wrote about 150 words before the sad trombone sounded in my head.

Lesson 1: Thirty pages of world building is not a plot.

I hadn’t even thought up a main character! The clock was ticking, and so I plowed forward, making up names on the fly (one was named Beyonce for a long time) and finding out what happened next at the same time my characters did. That first day I wrote north of 10,000 words. The second day 3000, the next day 1200. A pretty easy trend line to graph.

I kept going. On November 14, 2012, almost halfway through NaNoWriMo, I ground to a stop. I was stuck. I ignored the advice to just plow forward and not worry about continuity. I felt that my story was fundamentally broken, so I went back.

I deleted about 10,000 words-at least a third of my manuscript-and got a running start. To that point I’d had a comfortable lead on my goal, but now it was behind. But failure to reach my ultimate word count was not an option. I continue to write every single day, many days watching my total word count remain even despite the fact I was writing thousands of new words.

Lesson 2: Sometimes meeting your daily word count comes at the expense of yesterday’s word count. It can feel like failure, or treading water. But writing is not about how many words you get. It’s about telling a story.
There is a necessary and valuable tension between deadlines and one’s artistic standards. The deadline prods the author forward and provides urgency which lends the writing pace and urgency. And sometimes it forces the brain out of the way so that the muse can operate with less friction.

NaNoWriMo recalibrated my standard of productivity. Prior to participating in NaNoWriMo, my gut instinct told me 50,000 words would take half a year. The goal of doing that in a month seemed ridiculous. And now, having written several more books since then, the NaNo pace seems a bit unambitious.

Lesson 3: To write a novel, learn how to start.

I don’t mean learning how to write the first sentence, or page. Or learning how to sit down on the first day and begin typing. What I mean is learning how to start writing each day. NaNo is like a bootcamp to teach this discipline.

What lessons has NaNoWriMo taught you?