Writers Corner: Good to the Last Page - A Crash Course in Finishing your Novel or Narrative Nonfiction

On April 25th, I was honored by the opportunity to share about constructing a book in general, and finishing it in particular, at my very favorite place in Memphis - the Dixon Gallery & Gardens. Between the art (lovely!) the grounds (peaceful!) and the programming (fascinating!) it has brought so much joy to my life, so it was lovely to get to participate in one of their weekly lunchtime lectures ("Munch and Learn," every Wednesday at noon).

Anywho, I got to pare down quite a lot of fiction theory into an afternoon chat and was asked (rightfully so) to post the slides on my website. Theoretically, the video should be available at some point? I will follow up on that. In the meantime, let me walk you through what we covered...

Jane Austen Week: Day 3 - Q&A with Teri Wilson

Welcome to Day 3 of Jane Austen Week! To recap briefly, on Day 1 I shared the recipe for chamomile and lavender scones, as well as the link to the All Things Jane Giveaway. On Day 2, I got  chat Jane Austen and time travel with author Kathleen A. Flynn.

Today, I'm thrilled to be hosting Teri Wilson, author of Unleashing Mr. Darcy!

Teri came onto my radar via an elderly neighbor from our Vancouver, Washington neighborhood. I'd been gardening and doing yard work with my mom in the front yard and had Shiloh and puppy Sylvie tethered near the front door. The neighborhood's bank of mailboxes was just to the left of our house, and I met most of my neighbors over there. That day a sweet, elderly lady from two doors down introduced herself and, after a fashion, remarked on Shiloh and Sylvie.

"They look just like the dogs from that movie, that Hallmark movie," she said. "The Mr. Darcy movie."

As you can imagine, my ears perked up. Cavaliers? Mr. Darcy?

I did some creative Googling later and discovered that Unleashing Mr. Darcy was indeed a Hallmark Original Movie - which would be re-airing in a couple weeks - and was based on a book by Teri Wilson.

Who has two cavaliers.

Writer's Corner: The Hands-On Approach to Beating Writer's Block

Let’s talk writer’s block today.

To really break down writer’s block, you’d need a book’s worth of space – because what we call writer’s block is kinda like Biblical references to leprosy – it’s a catch-all term for, rather than a skin disease, the problem of not being able to write effectively.

But the tricky thing is that writer’s block has all kinds of causes and variations - none of which, I'm sorry to say, involve putting down a book and watching an episode of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt. I've written out the processes that help me to work out problem spots and keep going; they're geared for fiction, and based around an understanding of three act structure, but even if you're writing non-fiction you'll find some crossover. Let's get started!

Step 1 – Admitting it is the first step

Sometimes when you’re thinking “I’m not feeling the book today” that’s actually code in your head for “I don’t like it because it’s hard,” which is also code for “I’m stuck.” You can “not feel it” for days – or weeks, or months. Once you see it for what it is – block – you can move forward.

Other times, if you're like me, you can wind up in a panic spiral. What started as "It's a problem" can turn into "I can't figure it out and I'll never have any ideas ever again." Which - no. Look at it this way - a block is your brain's way of telling you that your book is hitting a dead end. It's an alert system. So take a deep breath, trust your brain, and dig in.

Writer's Corner: Compelling Characters

It's been a while since I've had a Writer's Corner post. Which...is kinda too bad, because I had some cool insights about characters a few months ago. Be sure to tell me what you think in the comments.

So, the last writerly post was about active versus reactive characters. As I was thinking about active characters and their common threads, I landed on a thought - the very best active characters have a superpower.

Anne with an "e" knew what she was talking about: What to Consider as You Name your Characters

I renamed a character this week.

I have a thing about names. Some authors are pretty relaxed about them. I think that's great - it's just not me. When I create a character, the name is one of the first things I have to nail down. Otherwise, it's like making a friend whose name you don't know - who does that?

(Actually, I do sometimes. I'm not always great with remembering names. But when it happens, it's VERY uncomfortable and certainly not ideal. Not in real life, and not with made-up people).

With the book I'm working on now, it really became necessary to change several names of central characters. For a couple people, that was fine and downright easy.

But the others? Not so much. You see, these people are half French and half Italian. They're practically a super-species, if by "super" you mean "super stubborn, super strong-willed, super opinionated." And you know what?  They did not appreciate the name change. Not. One Bit. One character even flat-out refused.

A Little Romance: The Mechanics of a Love Story

I've been asked to appear as an expert, of sorts, for middle school writers.  The subject? Romance.

Yeah, I know.  I struggle with smooshy, mushy romance.  But they asked for romance, so romance they shall have.  I spent some time thinking on the subject of Romance Theory (which seemed to dovetail with the blog on The Vow, come to think of it).

Good romance is the most character-driven of all genres, so if you're going to do romance (or a believable romance subplot/thread), you've got to know your characters and be able to communicate their essence on the page.

I mean, *really* know your characters.  Because the reader has to believe both characters as people, be invested in both of them, and believe that those people could/would be into each other. Obviously, there will be obstacles - that's what drives the turning of pages.  The reader has to:

a.) want the two characters to get together

and

b.) not be certain it's actually going to happen.

If one of those is missing, you've got a problem. If the reader doesn't want them to get together, she (we'll just assume the gender here) will hate you in the end when they do.  And if you make it too easy, there's not enough plot.  The love story can't be a foregone conclusion.  There have to be roadblocks, there have to be difficulties. For your characters - your hero and heroine - to be motivated enough to persist through those roadblocks, they have to be more than likable. They have to be desirable.

(Sorry. The italics just kind of happened there.)  If you skip out on desirability, your reader will sit/read/watch and yell at the character (the one who's romancing the undesirable) to RUN, RUN FAST, RUN FAR, IT'S NOT WORTH IT!

Think of The Bachelor, for this one.  Sure, the girl the guy likes most may be pretty, but if she's also evil, no one will want them to actually fall in love.

Conversely, it can also be a problem (for some plotlines) if your characters are too desirable.  The Vow is a good example -  they were both too pretty and desirable for us to believe they weren't even remotely attracted to each other. If one or both of your characters are very pretty (either inside or out), there had better be some good obstacles!

As far as I can tell, there are three core types of romance -

1.) The "will she/won't she" romance - will the heroine fall in love with him? Will she??  Stories that fall into this category include Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Anne of Green Gables,

2.) The "will he/won't he" romance - will he fall in love with her? Austen examples include Persuasion  and Sense and Sensibility. YA examples include Anna and the French Kiss and The Princess Diaries.

3.) The "can they be together" romance (a variation on this is how long will they be together - especially applicable in Nicholas Sparks books).  The Princess Bride is a good example.

Those are the core types.  Many stories are a combination of the two. Stranger than Fiction is a "will she/won't she" with a twist of "can they be together" - Maggie Gyllenhaal's character has to decide if Harold Crick, the tax man's flours are charming enough, but even after they all for each other, there's this niggling reality that Harold Crick is going to die.

You've Got Mail is a "will she/won't she/can they be together" mashup - they fall in love online first, but have to reconcile their real lives and true selves with their online personas before they can be together.

Something to consider with love-triangle plotlines - it's still a will she/won't she with a twist of  which one should he/she choose (most successful triangles involve a woman choosing between two men).  It can be kind of  a cop out. The question is "A or B?" rather than "Do I love A with my whole heart? Or should I ditch A and B because this situation is disturbing?"  My take is the same in fiction as it is in real life -  if you really can't choose, the answer should be neither - because you don't love one enough to give up the other.

(This is why I'm neither Team Edward or Team Jacob, but rather Team Go Find a Strong, Reliable, and Loving Human Man With Less Baggage. And don't tell me humans are boring within the framework of Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Because: Aragorn. End of conversation.)

My personal preference is for a combo of the core types - it gives the characters two kinds of drama.  While you're figuring this out, though, you've got to make sure you're maintaining both believability and likability.  It also works best for stories where the romance is a subplot. Your main plot throws your characters just as many curveballs as their love lives.

So - there's my short masterclass on plotting romance. What do you think?

Brief Update: Found this rather awesome article about female stereotypes in chick flicks - you know, the women you see onscreen but NEVER meet in real life. Worth the read.

Synopsis Stuff

After a reply Tweet from a friend, I realized something big has changed:

I'm no longer afraid of writing synopses.

This might be because I've written seven in the last year, at least.  After about two or three, my attitude changed.  I started worrying less and focused more on "knocking it out," telling myself I'd change things later.

You know, like you're supposed to when writing.

So there you go.  My success tip for synopses.  Write them really fast.  Don't overthink them - all you need is to basically sketch out how the book follows a basic three-act structure.  Don't worry about all of the crucial information you're leaving out (hint: you'd be surprised how much you don't really need).  Don't worry about going to long or two short.

And remind yourself that everything - especially the book you're summarizing - can be changed.  Just because something is in your synopsis, doesn't mean it has to be in the book.

The caveat to that is that the synopsis is what your publisher uses to write catalogue copy, possibly before you're done.  So if you change things up, let them know.  I was waffling about whether or not Sara went to visit her sister Rebecca for a while.  The catalogue release sewed that one up.

So there you go. Happy synopsis writing!

When you just don't remember

I started reading Gabrielle Zevin's Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. I thought I was doing so off of a recommendation from Meg Cabot's blog, but after searching her blog for the post I guess maybe I didn't.

So I have no idea how I heard about it.

Just kidding. It was Michelle's blog. I remembered.

Anyway, it's an enjoyable read so far, but it also got me thinking. There's a lot of amnesia fiction and film out there, which is kinda funny considering how rare amnesia really is.

You've got the Bourne movies/books, showing how awkward it is to be with the CIA/contracted by the CIA (I don't remember how it actually went down. Ironically.) and lose your memory.

There's Garry Marshall's happily dippy Overboard, which shows that you do not want to tick off your contractor before losing your memory.

I would be remiss in not mentioning While You Were Sleeping, which has allegations of amnesia, if not the real thing.

In books, Sophie Kinsella's second-to-latest release involved amnesia, as well as Caprice Crane's Forget About it, in which the character fakes amnesia before hitting her head (again) and really complicating matters.

When I was in high school and reading a LOT of Christian fiction, there was Gilbert Morris's Through a Glass Darkly and Lorena McCourtney's Forgotten. Dee Henderson put a twist on standard amnesia using PTSD-related memory loss in Danger in the Shadows.

Releasing September 1st is my friend Christina Berry's first novel, The Familiar Stranger, which (I'm gathering from the synopsis, haven't actually read it yet) shows how memory issues can help you work through marital issues.

And on TV there was Samantha Who?, at least until ABC sadly pulled it.

So no matter where you looked, someone forgot something.

I think the appeal of amnesia is the idea of a fresh start. No memories clogging your perception of who you've become, but a clear path to be the person you should be. That person is usually more likeable than the person we heard about before the blow to the head/car accident/gunshot wound/explosion.

(Ironically, as Robert H. Schmerling, M.D, points out, if you have amnesia, you probably have a brain injury such as bleeding or swelling, so really the memory loss is the least of your worries.)

While on one hand the idea of blanking out on parts of middle school and high school hold a certain appeal, aren't they a part of what makes us who we are? There's a self-loathing streak to amnesia stories - in Bourne especially.

Either way, I do enjoy amnesia-fiction. I suppose the lesson is to try to make good choices the first time - before the blow to the head.