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.

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.

ACFW on the Mind

This blog comes to you from the Mid-South again, though a few miles south of Memphis than before (we're staying in Southaven this go-round).  Danny had meetings and further work training to complete in the Memphis branch (though "complete" may be an optimistic term), and with ACFW coming up, we decided to connect the St. Louis trip with the Memphis trip and make it one, giant trip away from home.

Danny's busy in the office and hydraulics shop by day. I've been spending my time getting ready for ACFW.

I confess, my priorities are not as my agent would have them. I need to get together my pitch materials for my conference meetings...but let's be honest. Those (when the author chooses to focus on them) tend to come together quickly. You know what takes more time and effort?

Getting your ensemble for the ACFW Awards Banquet ready.

I've got the dress - it took two tries (the first color I ordered was back-ordered until the day *after* the banquet), but it arrived before we left and it's at an alterations shop as I type. I've got the shoes - picked them up to wear for Easter this last spring.  I've got the handbag - found it at TJ in Richland. Bought a cute little hair-clippy and bracelet yesterday. Still haven't figured out what lipstick to use, and if I'm going to get arty with my accessories and perform some last-minute tweaking, but the essentials are there.

So now that *that's* taken care of, I'm on to the task of getting the pitches ready. This involves creating a title and names for character for a story concept I've loved but hadn't spent time articulating the particulars of. Now, if you've followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I take my names very, very seriously.

For both Plain Jayne and Simply Sara, the main character names were entirely informed by the titles. This is not typically how I roll.  I research, I think about the character in my head, I write out lists, I wait for the right name to pop out and say that this is the one that fits.

Kind of like trying on shoes.

Also, I used to be pretty good at naming books.  I think that period of my life is over.

Next, I'm going to tidy up the first few chapters of my WIP (work in progress), since the second chapter isn't doing for me what I'd like it to.  Especially in an age when readers decide to purchase books depending on the strength of the sample offered on e-reader, the opening chapter and a half (or so, depending on the publisher) is even more important than ever. The days of easing the reader into a story are over. The days of being lazy about starting a plot are over. Bookselling is a competitive marketplace - edit! Tighten! Rewrite! You'll never sit back and sigh, "If only I hadn't given my book a stronger opening sequence."

Seriously.

In other random ACFW news:

Last year at ACFW was tough for me. I resolved then to do what I'm doing this year, which is arrive early to rest up before the conference begins.

I didn't know until a couple weeks ago that I'd be given two weeks to acclimate to the time change, but we'll still arrive at the hotel a day early to get settled and figure out the lay of the land.

Also, ladies, I highly recommend packing this product - Benefit's Eye Bright pencil. They describe it as a nap in a stick, and I would consider that to be an accurate description. I went searching for something, anything to fix my under-eye issues after our last drive back from Memphis - things had gotten so bad I avoided looking at myself in the mirror in the morning.  You can apply it under your under-eye concealer, on top of your makeup at the corners of your eyes, pretty much wherever you need to banish dark shadows. It really is magic, and I don't travel without it.

I also recommend packing plenty of cardigans as well as comfortable shoes - considering that you're moving from one part of a hotel to another part of a hotel, there's still plenty of time on your feet (especially if you're me and you're running late and you've got to seriously hike it from your room to the elevator, and the elevator takes forever and you'd totally take the stairs if you weren't on the ninth floor, and even after you've caught the elevator you make two or three stops before making a dash to the conference room on the opposite side of the building, down a long hall) *and* you never know how the a/c is going to be tuned. Layers are your friend.

Well, it's back to pitch-work for me. If you're at ACFW in a couple weeks, be sure to track me down!

Not Dead

Sorry. I know, it's been a while. Turning in the book sucked out my will to blog. Or write, really, much of anything.

To catch up:

1. Robin Hood. Thumbs-down, sadly. Honestly, you don't know how much that breaks my heart. I wanted to love this movie, but it wasn't meant to be. You really do have to have characters to make a story work. More on that later.

2. The Losers. Thumbs-up. Honestly, the trailer made it look like the poorer, potato-sack wearing cousin of this summer's The A-Team. Which I haven't seen yet. But The Losers does, it does well. The characters are drawn broadly with much love and affection. The action sequences are fun. The villain is pitch-perfect. If she could sound feasibly British, I'd nominate Zoe Saldana for the Tomb Raider reboot. I recommend much.

3. Letters to Juliet. Thumbs-up. It's swoony and unapologetically romantic in a take-no-prisoners sort of way. When I am old, I want to look like Vanessa Redgrave.

4. Crazy Heart. The scriptwriter really did go with the "less talk more rock" approach. Literally. And while I won't begrudge Jeff Bridges his Oscar in the slightest, I found the story itself to be lacking. My engineer husband (who spends a lot of time these days with a novelist) summed it up this way: "It's like it was an act and a half, rather than three acts. There was a lot of setup, the climax, some plot, and then it was over. I didn't like it.)

*Note* He'll come home from work and tell me I didn't quote him right. But it's pretty close and true to the intended message.

That's it for movies. We've been watching a lot of Top Gear lately. So much that the phrase "Some Say" followed by a pause will now cause a Pavlovian-type giggle reaction. (This is inconvenient for Ridley Scott, since it happened during Robin Hood while one of the actors was trying to be profound. I don't remember who. I was giggling at the time). But it's really delightful and is the only media-related item I've ever found that can make my frequently stoic husband weep with laughter. WEEP.

And honestly, I can't blame him.

One of the reasons I heart it much is that the three hosts - Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond, are all very good at being characters. And I'm all about characters.

So maybe Ridley Scott needed to watch a little more Top Gear, because the sense of character was missing from a film about one of the most famous literary characters.

Lessons We Can Glean From Robin Hood (2010)

1.) It's important to give the audience a reason to like the main character. If we like the character, we will care about his story. If we don't like him, we won't give a cockroach's tush. The late Blake Snyder wrote about this in his seminal screenwriting book, Save the Cat. Basically, give your protagonist an opportunity to save a cat, or something - anything - that makes us like him. It doesn't have to be much. It doesn't have to be a cat. Russell Crowe could have saved a horse, and it would have helped. This is true for anti-heroes as well. Even if they have issues, the likability has to be there.

2.) Characters have to be consistent. When characters are consistent, we believe they're real people. When they're not, we struggle with the suspension of disbelief. So if you give us a smart, gutsy woman like, say, Marian, and especially if you cast a smart, gutsy woman like Cate Blanchett to play her, do not have this character threaten to remove a man's manhood at knifepoint and then have her light a lamp so she can undress behind a thin curtain, giving the aforementioned man a lengthy opportunity to observe and admire the silhouette of her feminine form.

I mean, really.

3.) No plot development is going to be interesting enough to save your story if your characters are flimsy. In fact, if you don't have characters, it's not a story. It's not. It's a recitation of events. Character make story. Stories make character. You can't have one and not the other, if it's going to work. A lot of plot-driven writers struggle with this, particularly sci-fi/fantasy writers. I've seen it in both published and unpublished work. Political machinations don't mean a thing if we don't care about the characters. The reason why is that if we have nothing invested, the stakes will never be high enough to create the tension necessary for a moving plot. And you need high stakes. You need tension. As Lauri Deason once said, "The original Star Wars movies were about saving the universe. The new ones were about tax reform."

And we all know which ones were the most successful.

4.) Pick your tone. Own it. Films like The Losers, Clash of the Titans, and Letters to Juliet work because they know what they are and they're good with that. They're not trying too hard to be too much. Robin Hood swung around from battle epic to comedy to drama to romance in such an awkward way that it didn't work at any of those. (Note: kissing someone in the midst of battle while blood drips onto that person's face...gross. Not romantic. Not sexy. Gross and awkward. No one wants to kiss a bio-hazard.)

So there you go. I've been reading a lot of British Chick-lit lately. I can't wait for this book to arrive at the library (it's currently out). I have a thing for books in which a woman inherits or manages to land into a large, old, decrepit house and has to make it a home of some sort. I don't know why, but I've had this thing for a long time. It's a big plus if the house has a secret history, or if the heroine makes curtains for it. Books like this, this, and this, and obviously this. I just finished Harriet Evans' A Hopeless Romantic, and that was a lot of fun :-)

Speaking of books, need to get back to Simply Sara edits. More later...in less than two weeks :-)

P.S. The frog pic at the top is one of the ones I shot at the Oregon Garden during out getaway weekend. The rest are in the slideshow - go take a peek.

You know you're a (fiction) writer when...

1. Certain office supplies have the power to bring you to tears. Of joy.

2. You about had an apoplectic fit while viewing Stranger Than Fiction.

3. You've found yourself editing the Bible for run-on sentences.

4. You discuss characters in your book to the point that the person you're conversing with thinks they're real.

5. You see unending possibilities in a blank sheet of paper.

6. You see unending failure in a blank Word document.

7. You own more books than anything else.

8. Though you haven't read all of them.

9. However, none of them are going anywhere. You are a haven for the printed page.

10. The librarians at your library have dirt on you.

11. Good dialog makes you swoon.

12. You collect names the way other people collect recipes.

13. No one in your household has clean socks.

14. You re-plot popular fiction in your head so that it actually, you know, works.

15. You re-plot films and TV shows verbally.

16. Your spouse may not always appreciate this input.

17. You've spent serious time trying to figure out if Irish creeks are frozen in February, or if Amish women wear normal bras.

18. There's a list of words you love - and hate.

19. A lot of good reviews make you happy.

20. One bad review makes you, very, very, very, very sad.

21. Forget review. One negative comment in the middle of a good review, and it's depths of despair, all over again.

23. Your work space used to be clean.

24. You say things like, "That was such a good set-up/pay-off" during a movie.

25. You enjoy crosswords.

26. You know a little about a wide variety of subjects from past book research.

27. You keep track of who knows what in your circle of friends - for future book research.

28. Carpal tunnel is referred to in hushed tones.

29. You fulfill over stereotype concerning writers and chocolate.

30. Like Emma Thompson's character in Stranger Than Fiction, you know that while storyboarding and synopses can be your friends, truly good ideas - like anything worth writing - come inexplicably and without method.