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Monthly Archives: November 2012

How To Make Your Own Sticky-Note Outlining Kit

Sticky-Notes

I prefer the 1.5″x 2″ sticky-notes in bright colors, but there are many sizes and tints to choose.

Paper

Any paper will do. I prefer pastels, with which I can differentiate the different acts of the book. (Say: four sheets of marigold paper for the chapters of Act I, five sheet of lilac for Act II, etc.) In a series, you could also use a different color paper for each book.
Three Ring Binders

Three-Ring Binder

Punch holes in the paper, stick the paper in a three ring binder and use one sheet per chapter (or per scene) and label your sticky-notes with the beats.
Voila!

 How I use it:

In the Unfinished Song, I use one color paper per book; I have the whole series in a single three ring binder. This way I can flip back and forth between previous (already published books), my current Work In Progress, and future books. The future books may be a little more sparsely populated by sticky notes at this point, if I haven’t done the Scene by Scene outline yet, so to indicate that I sometimes use all canary yellow sticky notes to show those scenes. That way I remember they are still uncertain. When I reach that WIP, I switch out the yellow stickies for the colored stickies that represent my PoV scenes.
I also have to remember to go back to earlier books and make sure the Sticky Note Outline reflects the final version. An outline should never been a corset that constricts the breath of the novel. The stays should be loosened as required to let the story dance.  However, it’s important that I go back and update my Sticky Note Outline after the fact, because I continue to refer to it to remind me what has gone before in the series.

Help! I’m Just Starting #NaNoWriMo! (Emergency Tip Day 3)

“The Witcher” by A.Sapkowski
For those of you on the Gonzo NaNoWriMo, here’s Day Three.

Day Three: Outline Your Novel. 

You outline your novel quickly the same way you outline your novel slowly: One step at a time. Use index cards or sticky-notes to brainstorm plot points you’d like to include, play with them, and expand each beat in your Beat Sheet until the outlines starts to fill out.

Example:

Yesterday, I worked on characters for my September Knight story. I need this story blocked out before I can proceed on my other book October Knight (which has some recurring characters and occurs the next month). I don’t necessarily need to write out the whole story, but I do need to have a solid outline, to make sure the two books are compatible.

I know this book will have a mystery. I know it will have a romance… but if I want Clare to also have a romance in October Knight (uh oh, these books were supposed to be self-contained!) I have to make it a “happy ending for now” romance, knowing it won’t be her “real” true love. That’s going to be…tricky.

So maybe I will make another relationship more important in this book: a friendship. The female equivalence of a “bromance” or buddy cop movie. How about a fairy god-sister?

I already had the story broken down into four acts. I knew there would be three chapters in each act, and at least three scenes in each chapter. That was the structure I needed to fill with plot. I jotted down plot points and characters that needed to be introduced in Act One:
Plot Point: A corpse is discovered. The cause of death is mysterious in some way.
Plot Point: The September Key glows when Clare registers for school. It’s never done that before.
Plot Point: The guidance counselor, Mr. Cambiel, asks Clare if she will accept the role of September Knight.

Character Introduction: Jinx (fairy god-sister); Clare’s reaction — resentment, feels Jinx is there to spy on her)
Character Introduction: Zola (ghost friend); Clare’s reaction — curiosity, envies Zola’s joy and freedom
Character Introduction: Mysterious Hot Guy #1; Clare’s reaction — too shy to act on her attraction, kicks herself
Character Introduction:  Mysterious Hot Guy #2; Clare’s reaction  — too shy to act on her attraction, kicks herself
I’m also using a couple of sneaky tricks. I have a Love Triangle and also a Friendship Triangle. Clare will have to choose between two hot guys, but that won’t be completely resolved here. More importantly, she has to chose between two friends, Zola and Jinx. Although these are not a sexual or romantic relationships, the principle is exactly the same, plot wise, as a love triangle. Both friends must offer something that is attractive to Clare, making her decision difficult.

I’ll be using the Rule of Three to help out in Act Two. (She tries out for Theater, Cheerleading and Soccer), which will help me structure the second and third act.Once I have the major characters and initiating events in motion, the events for the final act will flow into a climax and conclusion. Especially since I already know the ending, thanks to the beat sheet.

Here’s some other steps to do on Day Three:

NaNoWriMo Tip #26: Keeping On Track

Shiny idea is trying to hook you! Don’t bite! (Or at least don’t get reeled in…)

These are my personal tips for NaNoWriMo. You know the drill. Take only what works.

As you write, no matter how detailed your outline, new ideas will occur to you. This is a good thing. The new ideas are often an improvement or refinement, and you should go with your gut.

Mostly.

Sometimes, you need to reign in that impulse and keep on track. So how do you know? Look for these danger signs:

Lure of The Shiny

You find yourself off on a tangent, chasing a new idea that radically changes the direction of the book… not because your original premise was worse, but because the new thing is Shiny. It’s distracted you, like a will-o-the-wisp leading you to your doom in a forest of never finished manuscripts.

Subplot Coup By A Supporting Character

One of your characters, often armed with a subplot, has monopolized your interest, to the peril of the main character and main plot. You need to kick that usurper back to the curb. Or cut a backroom deal by promising him his very own book if he’ll just back off for now.

No End In Sight

If you wrote an outline, you know your ending. But maybe you ignored my advice to know your ending first. Or maybe the ending you planned now strikes you as wrong. Or maybe you still know how the story will end and what you need to do to get there, but the chapters you thought would 2000 words each are turning out to be 7000 words each, so although you’ve won NaNoWriMo already / reached 50,000 words, you’re only Chapter 7 out of 30 chapters.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

If any of these warning signs are occurring, step back and assess how you want to move forward. Ask yourself if you really want to pursue the Shiny, include the subplot, change your main character, write a totally different novel, or expand your novel’s length to 210,000 words.

Choose wisely.

If you prefer these Tips as an ebook you can buy it here for $0.99:

 

Writing In The Crosshairs: What Makes a Good Novel Ending?

A great post on what makes a good ending:

An inept ending can kill your otherwise great book. So what questions do you need to ask about yourending? 

1. Does it resolve the core conflict of the novel? 

This is the big “this is what my book is about” question that your protagonist has spent the entire book trying to achieve. 

This is a biggie for series books, as there’s a larger story arc across multiple books. But the goal in that one book needs to be resolved.

2. Does it satisfy the major questions posed in the novel? 

You don’t have to tie up all the loose ends, but there are probably a few major things in the story readers will want to know answers to.

Read the rest at Writing In The Crosshairs: WHAT MAKES FOR A GOOD NOVEL ENDING?

Help! I’m Just Starting #NaNoWriMo! (Emergency Tip Day 2)

“Hero” by martinwiklund.

For those of you on the Gonzo NaNoWriMo, here’s Day Two.

Day Two: Expand Your Idea. 

You’ll want to make the leap from Beat Sheet to Scene Outline as quickly as possible, but to reach the richness scenes will require, you’ll need to know more about your characters. Knowing your characters better will allow you to deepen their personalities and spice up your plot.
What’s your character’s dark secret?
What’s your character’s worst fear? 
What’s your character’s most important need?
What’s your character’s overarching goal?

Hobbies: Murder, Torture, World-Conquest and Playing with Kittens. He’s well-rounded.

 

Example:

My original idea for Clare, the heroine of September Knight, was pretty shallow. She was a badass beauty (it’s that kind of book), she knew her way around a gun, and she came from a long line of ghost hunters. She became giggly and insecure, however, around cute boys.
Considering that the hero of my October Knight novel is dealing with heroin addiction, I felt I needed a more serious aspect of this book, a deeper problem for Clare to struggle with. At first, I decided her parents were getting divorced. Maybe that’s why she moved to a new town (the story begins with her attending a new high school). 
I already knew a ghost would try to take over her body, and that at first, Clare’s reaction to this would be unexpected: relief. The ghost, at first, seemed to doing a much better of living her job than Clare herself. 
That’s a strange reaction, so I asked myself why. That’s when I discovered Clare’s dark secret: she’d tried to kill herself.
That led me to asking why…
And so on.

Here’s some other steps to do on Day Two:

NaNoWriMo Tip #25: Quick and Dirty Guide to Scene vs Summary

Adeena

These are my personal tips for NaNoWriMo. You know the drill. Take only what works.

Show Don’t Tell. Show Don’t Tell. Show Don’t Tell. Yada, yada, yada…

If you’ve heard that so often you want shove the words into a piñata and beat it with a stick, I don’t blame you. Also, what the heck does it mean? I’ve seen it explained poorly WAY too many times.

For instance, I’ve seen the advice, that if you say, “John was furious,” that’s Telling. Whereas if you write, “John clenched his fists,” that Showing. So you should always talk about John’s fists and never say flat out, “John was furious.”

Er, not necessarily.

Ok, yes, technically, telling the reader that John was furious is telling, and showing his clenched fists is showing, at the sentence level. If your writing is full of simplistic sentences like this, then it’s worth looking into other ways to show emotion through body language and action. Make each sentence as strong as it can be. Strike cliché from your writing wherever you find it.

But don’t confuse the old adage Show Don’t Tell for turning your characters into drama-queens who are constantly stomping their feet, clenching their fists and flashing their eyes. Sometimes, a little telling goes along way: “John was furious. He smiled politely, gesturing his mother-in-law into the drawing room. ‘Yes, please stay to dinner.’”

Context is everything.

If you are writing a rich outline / rough draft of your novel, particularly if you are trying to finish it in a month—meaning you want to scratch out your ideas in the white heat of inspiration and worry about refining the writing later, this level of Show Don’t Tell doesn’t even matter. Later you can go back over the paragraph and change, “John was furious,” to, “John clenched his fists,” easily enough if you want to. Sentence level improvements are not that hard, and can be a real pleasure.

What you cannot change so easily, and what you should take the time to get right even in the draft (if you can) is choosing when to write in Scene and when to write in Summary. Changing Scene to Summary or vice versa can involve restructuring you whole novel, and it’s seldom a pleasure. It usually feels like being stuffed into a piñata and hit with a stick.

Scene is another way of saying, “Show,” and Summary is another way of saying, “Tell,” except at a higher level of story, at the level of paragraphs, scenes and whole chapters. Both are necessary. Newbie writers, however, often write Summary when they should write Scene, and write Scene when they should write Summary.

Analysis of Scene vs Summary in a Sample Novel

As an example, I’ll refer (with permission) to a manuscript I was looking at for a friend of mine. She began her book with a terrific opening paragraph, but then, in a classic newbie mistake, veered into First Person Summary. (I’m not going to quote directly, but will indicate the style for each paragraph.) I’ll also label which ones are Scene and which are Summary.

Paragraph 1: [Summary] A three day storm had swept over the city like a jealous bitch, leaving debris to trip up the unwary all over the streets. [More description]
Paragraph 2: [Summary] My name is Alice Munroe, and I’m a 34 year old housewife. I’m not fat, though I could stand to lose ten pounds. My shoulder length blonde hair is starting to show a few gray hairs. … [blah blah blah]… [a couple paragraphs of self-description]
Paragraphs 3-5: [Summary] I grew up… [blah blah blah]… [a couple paragraphs of backstory]
Paragraphs 6-7: [Summary] I married …[blah blah blah]… [more paragraphs of backstory]
Paragraphs 8-9: [Summary] I’m pretty sure my husband is cheating on me because …[blah blah blah]… [more paragraphs of backstory]
Paragraph 10: [Scene]  This afternoon, I waited outside my husband’s office. As soon as I saw his red Chevy pull out, I peeled out of the parking lot and followed him all the way to the Cheery Buster Motel…

Every paragraph until 10 was Summary. Now, you might think I advised this writer to cut all of them, but no. I advised her to cut all but one of them. The first paragraph, although it was Summary, although it was Description and although it didn’t introduce a character or a conflict directly, was a great paragraph. It established us in a time and place, it was dynamic description, and importantly, it foreshadowed the conflict to come (the jealous bitch was about to hit her husband like a storm and leave their marriage in debris). Some Summary is worth keeping.

Paragraphs 2-9, however, stopped the action cold to give us a boring and static description of the woman, her past, her marriage, etc., and completely sucked any tension or mystery out of the next scene (when the woman followed her husband’s car). Basically, the author told us what the protaganist was going to do [Summary], she did it [Scene], and then (in the second half of the chapter), the author slipped back into Summary to recap what had just happened.

Repetition like this is useful in business writing (this author had a long non-fiction resume), where it’s safe to assume your readers are dolts with little interest in the subject, but it’s deadly in fiction. Fiction readers are geniuses and should be respected as such by authors.

Wally Reading vs. Reading Wally.

Is it Scene or Summary?

Unfortunately, there are no Hard and Fast rules about when to use Scene vs Summary. But here’s a Quick and Dirty guide to Scene vs Summary. Please don’t whine that you’ve seen good writers break these conventions. Of course you have. Good writers are like politicians. They know how to break rules and get away with it.

Summary:                                                     

Backstory                                                       

Short flashbacks                                             

Summarized dialogue (no quotes; He told us that…)             

Habitual events (Usually he would…)

Covers long periods of time

Scene:

Immediate action

Long flashbacks

Dialogue (quotes; he said, she said)

Unique events

Unfolds in “real” time, beat by beat

Examples of Scene vs Summary

Description

Summary: Over the years, she had collected a dozen different pieces of diverse tea sets from garage sales.

Scene: She sipped from a white tea cup decorated with roses and set it down on a dark blue Limoges plate fringed with gold loops.

Journey

Summary: Paragraph or two describing the trip over the mountains

Scene: Two characters have a dialogue as they pick their way over the trail

Confrontation

Summary: The boss gave me the pink slip that morning, in the afternoon Jenny asked for a divorce and told me I couldn’t sleep in ‘her’ house anymore, and by evening I’d ended up punching some guy in a bar. At least I had a place to sleep that night after all; the cot in the jail cell wasn’t as hard as it looked.

Scene: “We value your contributions as an employee,” said Mr. Schmuck. “Don’t come back on Monday.” [Etc., followed by individual scenes with Jenny, the bar brawl and the arrest.]
As you can see, these actually work best if you mix and match them. You can describe the woman sipping from the tea cup and also mention how the pieces were collected over the years. You can show the characters chatting on the trail and summarize the rest of the journey over the mountains.

Final Quick and Dirty Questions to Ask

Here’s a final question to ask yourself if trying to decide to write Scene or Summary?

Is this a pivotal turning point or important conflict in the story?

If yes, write Scene. If no, write Summary.

Is this merely something the characters have to do to get to the next part of the story or is it tangential to the main plot?

If yes, write Summary. If no, write Scene.

Suppose your novel is complete or nearly complete and as you’re looking back over it, you realize there are a number of Summaries that should be Scenes and a couple of Scenes that could be deleted and re-condensed as a paragraph or two of Summary. That’s fine. These changes can also be made in revision.  

 If you prefer these Tips as an ebook you can buy it here for $0.99:

 

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