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Posts Tagged ‘Middle Grade’

Thanks

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on November 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

It seems an appropriate time to think about everything I’m grateful for. Since this is mostly a writing blog, I’ll confine myself to things I’m thankful for in my writing.

  1. I’m grateful and excited to have recieved an honorable mention for my short story “Infected With Magic” from Writers of the Future.
  2. I’m hugely thankful for my great critiquing partners. There are too many to list, but you know who you are. With some I’ve done a single exchange. Others are a continuing relationship. Both are invaluable.
  3. I’m thankful to have found two great writers’ forums, Hatrack River Writers Workshop and David Farland’s Writers Groups. Without them, I wouldn’t be half the writer I am now.
  4. I’m thankful to have enough ideas and projects that when one of them runs off into a ditch (BLOOD IS THICKER) I can work on another (MAGIC’S FOOL) while I figure out how to get  the first one back on the right track. It’s much better–and less painful–than pounding my head on the keyboard.
  5. I’m grateful to all the wonderful professionals out there–writers and agents, mostly–who spend some of their own time to help those of us who’re trying to reach that level, too by sharing their knowledge, expertise, and experiences.
  6. I’m thankful that what would otherwise be a very painful situation gives me the time to write and perfect my craft and tell the stories inside me.

I’m sure there’s more, but that’ll do to be going on with.

 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

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Musings on Point of View

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on November 20, 2011| 2 Comments »

This is something I’m wrestling with a bit right now. I’m not talking so much about first or third person right now. That, for me, is mostly controlled by the voice of the story I hear in my head when I’m writing. If I hear “I”, I tend to write in first person. So far, I’ve only written two short stories in first person. I haven’t yet tried to do a whole novel that way. (Though if “Heart of Oak” ever grows into a novel, I may have to try.) Most of the time, I write in close third person.

No, what I’m talking about now is how many points of view to use in a story. I have a sort of general rule about point of view. (And like most rules in writing, it’s really more of a guideline than a law.)

For middle grade, I try to stay in a single, close point of view. Whatever doesn’t happen where my main character can see or hear it, he’ll have to find out about some other way. The first time I did this in MAGE STORM, it was a little challenging. How do you make your hero understand the antagonist’s goals?

MAGIC’S FOOL, so far at least, is working out fine with a single point of view. Which is interesting because it’s original incarnation as a mainstream fantasy called THE SHAMAN’S CURSE (I know, I hate that title, too.) had at least a half-dozen point of view characters.

Young adult stories I tend to tell in dual points of view. Archetypally, the boy and the girl, because young adult is always about romance on some level. SEVEN STARS flowed very naturally that way.

And in adult stories, I try to limit the number of points of view, but I will use as many as I need to tell the story. This is where I free myself to actually tell part of the story through the antangonist’s point of view.

Now, there’s nothing hard and fast about this, as I said. Anymore than there’s a strict rule that you must stay with a single point of view in a short story. Generally, short stories work out better that way. But I’ve broken that rule once (“Heart of Oak”) because there were things that I wanted the reader to know that my main character simply couldn’t understand. And I can think of perhaps a handful of good short stories that also broke the rule–and several not so good ones. Which is probably why it’s one of those rules you should think hard about before you break it.

I can think of middle grade stories that have multiple point of view characters. (John Flanagan’s RANGER’S APPRENTICE series comes to mind. Not only multiple points of view, but third person omniscient, in which he can tell us what any character is thinking or feeling at any point in time. It actually gets a little disorienting at times.) But the ones that I’ve enjoyed most usually stuck to just one point of view–or very close to it.

I can also think of lots of young adult novels told from a single point of view and a couple that have multiple points of view. The multiple points of view actually didn’t work so well for me in this kind of story. Either really close to the struggles of a single character or the intimacy of seeing how the two characters are trying to overcome their fears to come together seems to work best for these stories. Here again, I’ve got two young adult stories on the back burner now that might well be told from a single point of view. We’ll just have to see when I get there.

And, except for the third-person framing story, Patrick Rothfuss’ KINGKILLER CHRONICLES is told from a single, first-person point of view. There are plenty of other examples. Patricia Briggs’ MERCY THOMPSON series is one. You really don’t need multiple point of view characters. Not even for the romance part of the story.

See, no hard and fast rules.

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Writing Myself Into–And Out Of–A Corner

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on November 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Well, it was bound to happen. It’s just the opposite of what I expected.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I’m about two-thirds of a discovery writer. Even when I’ve tried to write a chapter-by-chapter outline, I ignored it completely once I started to write and went where the story and the characters wanted to lead me. So, I don’t put myself through that anymore.

At the same time, my second book (now shelved) broke me of the idea of writing entirely by the seat of my pants. I require a few milestones before I’ll actually start writing. Generally, that’s the central conflict, the inciting incident, and the climax at a minimum. Better yet to have an idea of the first and second try/fail cycles, too. Enough of a road map, generally, to keep me from going too far off into the weeds with still enough freedom to discover some fun and exciting things along the way.

It’s not a guarantee, though. Well, nothing is, in writing or any other creative endeavor.

I’ve written myself into a bit of a corner on BLOOD IS THICKER. I know what needs to happen next. I just haven’t figured out why my characters would do that. From where I’ve go them now–and I like what leads up to this point–I just don’t see their motivation. I have to let my subconscious play with that and bubble up a few ideas. There needs to be something that pushes them back out. I have the beginnings of a notion of what that should be. If it works out, it’ll tie nicely into a subplot I started a few chapters ago. And that’ll strenghten the whole thing.

I know that I will eventually find the way out of this corner because I’ve done it before. I had the unfortunate experience last week of being stopped on both projects. MAGIC’S FOOL wasn’t really in a corner, though. I was just working out one of the new combined characters.

So, in the interim, I started work on the query for SEVEN STARS even though I don’t plan to start querying that until around March. It’s never too soon to start that because queries take a lot of polishing.

And then MAGIC’S FOOL came together in my head. I see my way clear to the ending now. Most likely I’ll go ahead and finish that while I let my subconscious play with the problem in BLOOD IS THICKER. 

What’s surprising is that MAGIC’S FOOL was the one I was struggling with because it’s a rewrite. I was deeply insecure about this one. Now I see pretty clearly exactly what I need to do. Not only to get to the end, but also what elements will need to be strengthened in the second draft. And I’m not worried about it anymore. This rewrite is going to work!

I really expected it to be BLOOD IS THICKER that grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and made me finish it first. Goes to show you never can tell.

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Rewrites

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on November 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

So, at the same time that I’m working on the first draft of BLOOD IS THICKER, I am also sporadically working on a rewrite of one of my first novels, new title MAGIC’S FOOL. I didn’t originally set out to be working on two things at once, but the rewrite was going so slowly, I had to pick something else up to save my sanity.

I’ve done lots of revisions, sometimes very extensive revisions. But this is the first time I’ve attempted a true rewrite. And I’ve learned something. Rewrites are hard.

I waited almost two years, so I could approach the story with a fresh perspective. And I haven’t permitted myself to even look at the original. Not until I’ve at least finished a first draft. I want to look at things as much as possible as if I were writing this story for the first time. Even so, I think part of the what makes this one so hard to write sometimes is that I’ve already told the story once. It’s hard to have the same first-draft enthusiasm for a twice-told tale.

So why rewrite it at all? I still believe in this story. I think it has something to say (which isn’t necessarily true of all my stories). I still have more I want to do in this world and with these characters, but that won’t happen unless I get the beginning of the series–and it is a series–off the ground. And there were just too many problems with the original version.

One huge problem was that it got over-edited. In places, it completely flat. Flat is good in pie crusts and pool tables, not so much in prose. This is the book that convinced me to limit the number of revisions I put a story through before calling it done.

The original version (yes, I’m avoiding using the original title. It was really bad.) also had way too many characters. It wasn’t quite a cast of thousands, but, well, I actually considered including a geneology chart just to help the reader keep the main character’s famil straight. And that was just for the characters actually related to him by blood or marriage. Yikes! I’m a little less than half-way through on the fist book (I think) and I’ve already cut ten named characters. Now, not all of them were important in the story. Some were more background and were cut because the more-important character that they were background for was cut. I’ve been trying to combine the characters with an actual role to play in the story where I can.

So, for example, my main character no longer has a younger brother. The brother played a role in the first book but actually became a little awkward in the later stories when he just wasn’t that important anymore. His part has been combined into the main character’s cousins. (That decision also cut the brother’s wife and two children. They probably would have had to be cut anyway, for another reason I’ll get to in a minute.)

I’ve also combined two half-brothers into one, which again got rid of the other half-brother’s parents, wife and two children. There’s at least one more character on that chart in serious jeopardy right now.

The biggest difference, though, is the audience I’m writing for. The original was written as if it were a mainstream fantasy.  (I hate to say adult fantasy. It just has the wrong connotations.) This time, I’m writing it as a middle grade fantasy.

It probably always should have been middle grade. The character started out at 15 in the original. I’ve dropped back a bit and started this one at 13. A lot of the issues he has to deal with, especially early in the story are appropriate for that age group. So is the theme of the series which is acceptance. The progression through the series is in the main character learning to accept his differences, then to embrace them, then to be willing to let others know about them, and finally to understand that people who don’t accept him for who he really is aren’t really accepting him at all.

Of course, the change to middle grade has wiped out some other plot elements. Wives and children are just one of them. There were certain other subplots that just aren’t going to work anymore. I worked really hard on getting some of those subplots right the first time around. I actually think I did a pretty good job of them and now I have to scrap them. Well, no writing is ever wasted. It’s all practice at the very least. And maybe I’ll find a place for some similar subplots or plots in some future work. Not in this though.

The one thing that worries me a bit is that the story that made up one adult novel (a little over 100,000 words) will have to be broken into at least two middle grade novels. And, as I said in my last post, I need to make those two stand alone. I’m not going to worry about that until I write through to “The End” though. I know I can fix it later if I have to. I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

Sometimes, it’s hard to remember that, though.

Back to work. My main character has a half-brother to meet for the first time.

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Sequels and Series

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on November 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, but it bears repeating. Sequels and series are hard. And since I’m working on BLOOD IS THICKER, which is the first sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL, it’s on my mind right now.

You’d think they’d be easier. You’ve already got the world built. You know the characters inside and out. And that’s exactly the problem.

You know all that stuff. And so do readers of the first book. But a reader who picks up the second or third book cold won’t. I’ve stated before that I have a very strong preference for the books in a series to be able to stand alone. Okay, it might be a better reading experience if you read them in order, but each should be able to stand on its own. I can’t stand series (which shall be nameless) that go on and on and on and . . .  Well, you get the point. If it takes more than three books to get to a resolution, you’d better resolve something in between or you’ll lose me. So, I won’t write that kind of series.

Perhaps more so because I’m not counting on readers to have read the previous book(s), there’s a very delicate balancing act of trying to put in enough world building, at the right time, without boring someone who’s read the first book and already knows all of this. The tried and true learn-as-you-go method of showing the world is a little trickier the second time around.

This is where critiques from readers who haven’t read the first book can be invaluable. Precisely the places where they ask questions or say “Wait. What?” are the places where you need a little more world building. Either right there or even better a little earlier so when they get to that place, they understand what’s going on.

Then there are the characters. In the first book, you can start with one or two and build your cast of characters gradually. In the second book, all these characters have already been established. Once again, you have the balancing act of describing who these characters are to one another without bringing the story to a complete stop.

How difficult this is depends in part on how many characters you have to introduce in the early chapters. In the first sequel I ever wrote (now shelved), I think I had in the neighborhood of a dozen established characters in the same location as my main character when the story started. Way too many to introduce all at once. I won’t make that mistake again (I hope). Of course, that story had too many characters to begin with. BLOOD IS THICKER starts off with just two, fortunately.

At the same time, of course, you don’t want to load the first chapter with so much back story that you drag this story down. That’s what makes it a balancing act. I don’t expect to get it right on the first draft, of course. But it does help to have some readers point out the places where I’ll need to beef up the background in the next go round.

Added to that, I have a theory about sequels, series, and especially about trilogies. (BLOOD WILL TELL, BLOOD IS THICKER, and the as-yet-unamed third sequel will form a series, but not a trilogy. There will be overlapping settings and characters, but not an overarching conflict that ties them together as a unit.)

My theory is this: The second book is almost always the worst. In the first book, you have the joy of discovering this world and these characters. In fantasy, especially, hopefully also a sense of wonder. In the third book, you have the big bang of the trilogy climax. The middle book is, well, the middle. I can think of very few trilogies that avoided the pitfall of the second book.

Yet, that’s what I’m writing now. The second book in a series (not a trilogy).  Wish me luck.

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Ending Conflicts Too Soon

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on October 23, 2011| 3 Comments »

I came across this problem last week. I’m not talking about the main conflict of the story, of course. That would mean I’d completed the story in eight chapters. Trust me, it’s not close.

No, but no novel (or very, very few) lives on a single conflict. There are always others–internal conflicts between mutually exclusive desires or fears. Conflicts between characters, even when they’re on the same side in the larger conflict. Sub plots. A dozen other kinds of conflict that enrich the story.

And I acknowledge that I have a problem. I have a desire to end a particular kind of conflict too early. It’s the conflict between my two romantic leads. I have no problem stringing this out before they come together. It’s after they’ve become a couple that I tend to want to smooth over their little differences. I want them to be happy together. But the course of true love never does run smooth–certainly not in fiction.

BLOOD IS THICKER is the sequel to my paranormal romance BLOOD WILL TELL. The central conflict hits very close to newly-weds Rolf and Valeriah. And there’s a conflict between them in how to deal with it. Rolf wants to run around trying to fix it (typical male). Valeriah is driven to protect . . .  well, you’ll just have to wait and read it to find out what she wants to protect.  Can’t give too much away.  (Besides, it’d take too much backstory to explain in this post.)

Rolf is basically clueless and occasionally puzzled by Valeriah’s reaction. For Vallie, it’s a sort of hot and cold conflict. Sometimes she’s really pissed off with Rolf. (And she’s half werewolf.  You really don’t want to make her mad.) Other times, she’s merely annoyed. Which, of course, only makes Rolf more confused. He’s trying to be strong for her and she’s reading it as detached.

I had the scene in my head where Rolf finally gets it and they get back on track. So, I wrote it. Nothing wrong with that. But I’d only gotten a couple of chapters further before I realized my mistake. It’s a good scene. I’m going to keep it. It just can’t happen for about a dozen more chapters, bringing them back solidly together just before the climax.

So, I’ve spent the last few days redoing chapters 7 thru 9. I don’t usually allow myself to go back during a first draft. I try to make the first draft forward only and keep the infernal internal editor switched off. But when it’s a conflict I need to pull forward in the story, well, I didn’t think I had any choice.

Even better, this conflict allows me to draw two characters closer together and set up a separate conflict which will probably continue even when the first is resolved. Don’t you love it when that happens?

Back on track, now and almost done with chapter 10.

In other news, Rebekah Loper has passed on a couple of blog awards to me.

The Blog on Fire award, which requires me to share seven (more) facts about myself and pass it on.

 

 

 

And the 7 x 7 Link Award, which requires me to choose one of my posts in each of seven different categories and then pass the award along.

 

 

Thank you, Rebekah. I’ll be taking care of the requirements in my next blog post.

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Research

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on October 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As a fantasist, this isn’t something I deal with all the time. Usually, I get to take bits and pieces from all over and fit them together in new and interesting ways, glued together with a little imagination. That’s how my world-building usually works.

I did a bit of research on my very first (now shelved) novel, because the protagonist was a blacksmith. I needed to know at least enough about blacksmithing to not make any really obvious mistakes, like setting the forge out in the open. (Always at least partially enclosed so the smith can see the color of the heated iron he’s working on.)

Now, however, I have two projects on which I need to do a bit of research. One is a current project and the other is a future project.

BLOOD IS THICKER is the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL. As a paranormal romance/urban fantasy, it’s mostly set in either a world I created out of whole cloth or the world I actually inhabit. However, there’s one element in this story that’s going to force me to do a bit of research into, of all things, geology. That’s because the central conflict of this story revolves around someone’s attempt to import geothermal energy technology to Chimeria without proper safeguards. It’s endangering something very near and dear to the protagonists’ hearts and they have to find a way to fix the problem. Obviously, I’m going to have to know enough about geothermal energy to not make an idiot of myself. Not there yet.

The other project is THE BARD’S GIFT. This one will be an alternate history, so the need for research is pretty obvious. Actually, I don’t need to research any historical figures and I don’t need much more than the broad brush of (then) current events. This story will take place far from the centers where such things are happening. But what I do need to know is the daily-life stuff about these people: What kind of houses did they live in? What did they wear? What did they eat? Who was in charge and why? What would their relationships have been like? Basically, all the stuff I usually get to make up to suit myself.

In this case, there really isn’t a lot of information available on my real target (the original Norse Greenland settlement). But there is information on the next-best surrogate–Iceland of the same time frame. Most of the Greenland settlers came from Iceland, so it’s a reasonable assumption that they at least tried to establish the same way of life.

I got lucky and found a book that is intended to document Icelandic life during the saga age. That’s about as close as I’m likely to get. Will it be enough by itself? Maybe not. But at the least it will point me in the right directions and tell me what further questions I need to ask.

By the way, THE BARD’S GIFT does not actually take place in Greenland (although it will probably start there). It actually takes place in a Norse settlement of Vinland (or possibly Markland) in the New World that never actually happened–at least as far as we know. Of course, it’s a fantasy, so there will be some elements that no Norse explorers would have encountered. Dragons, for example.

It’s amazing how dragons of all different kinds seem to show up in so many of my stories. Couldn’t be those three dragons surrounding one end of my computer desk, could it?

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The Value of Critiques

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on October 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ve posted about this before, but it really does bear repeating. There is nothing in writing more valuable than beta readers and insightful critiques of your work. You simply cannot, no matter how long you let it rest, ever really see your own story objectively. You need somebody who will read it and be honest with you–brutally honest if necessary. Especially someone who will take the time to really analyze exactly where you’ve gone off into the weeds.

I’m fortunate to belong to two great writers’ forums–Hatrack River Writers Workshop and David Farland’s Writers’ Groups (the Pied Pipers). Links to both forums can be found in the sidebar.

MAGE STORM’s history goes something like this:

  1. I wrote it last year (2010) and submitted for readers in the Pied Pipers (a group on David Farland’s Writers’ Groups specializing in YA, especially fantasy YA). I got some good ideas, incorporated them, and started querying. I had a crit partner from over on Hatrack River read through the revised ms.
  2. MAGE STORM has been queried moderately lightly (37 queries). Of those, it’s gotten one request for partial and one request for the full, but neither went any further.
  3. However, the agent who requested the full did give me some feedback. Boiling it down, I decided that the main problem was that the central conflict wasn’t clear enough. (She complained that a certain event hadn’t happened soon enough. But that event was the second try/fail cycle, not the central conflict, and it happened pretty much right on schedule.) Well, partly that was a fault of the query and synopsis, for highlighting the wrong thing. But it was also true that there were things I could do in those first three chapters to really make the central conflict more clear. One way and another, I’ve been working on that since last June.
  4. I went back to my first readers to kick around some ideas and then revised the first three chapters. I submitted them back to the Pied Pipers for critique.
  5. Those revisions weren’t entirely successful. Basically, I’d managed to mess up the progression of Rell’s magic. It should have gotten scarier and scarier in order to propel him into the rest of the story. Instead it had done the reverse and so his decision didn’t make much sense. This, I find, is a pitfall of piecemeal revisions. It’s too easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.
  6. I made an attempt to fix that and asked for critiques over on Hatrack River. This is where having more than one critique group can be invaluable. It’s easier to find fresh readers who have never seen the story before (or never more than the first 13 lines) and can look at it with fresh eyes and no expectations of where the story is going to go from there. (Thirteen lines is all you’re allowed to post on Hatrack River. Anything else is handled through emails.)
  7. Well, I got some good critiques and one really extraordinary one. That one–that’s the one you’re always hoping for–really showed me where the problem was. What I had added that really didn’t need to be there. And where I needed to go to raise the stakes. (Thank you, MattLeo.)
  8. I’ve just submitted that revision back to Pied Pipers to see what they think.
  9. I’ve still got one critique on the whole ms outstanding. We’ll see what that turns up.

The point is, I can’t even begin to express how much stronger the story is for the input of all these wonderful critique partners. Thank you all.

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Not Much New Around Here

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 12, 2011| 2 Comments »

With Wolf Tracks

This is one of those days when it’s just really hard to think of a topic to blog about. Nothing much new is going on with my writing–it’s going, just in the same directions as in my recent posts. I haven’t had any revelations or discoveries to report.

I guess I’ll just have to revert to a status report.

BLOOD WILL TELL: I’m still waiting to hear back from the agent who has the full ms. It hasn’t really been that long (though sometimes it feels like it). I’m still playing around with ideas for the cover, just in case. I really want to try to insert a wolf into the oval made by the dragon’s tail. I have a couple of

With Background

images to play with, but I’m not sure whether my skills are up to it. Won’t know until I try, I guess.

 

 

BLOOD IS THICKER: Just starting Chapter 9. This story and these characters are just fun to work with. I have to think up more trouble to get them into, though, besides the main conflict. I have a couple of ideas. (Possibly one of my characters may get to thwart a kidnapping attempt. That could be fun.)

MAGIC’S FOOL: Still going slowly, but going. I’m just about to start Chapter 6.

MAGE STORM: I need to get serious about those revisions. I’d like to be ready to start querying it again at the beginning of next month. Too much later, and it’ll have to wait until after the first of the year. (A lot of agents shut down for submissions over the holidays.) I’ve identified one scene that either needs to be cut or expanded. As it is, it doesn’t serve enough of a purpose. How did that one escape the last revision? Oh, yeah. I like the way it ends. That’s not enough.

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Update On My Multitasking Experiment

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on September 28, 2011| 2 Comments »

So far, I’m happy with my progress in this experiment. Having BLOOD IS THICKER to work on allowed me to let a particularly tricky scene for MAGIC’S FOOL sort of percolate in the back of my head until it was ready. BLOOD IS THICKER took the pressure to write something off and made that easier to do.

MAGIC’S FOOL continues to be slow going, although I’m starting Chapter 4 today. Spoiler alert: One character does not make it out of Chapter 4. After this, maybe I’ll pick up speed. Or maybe I’ll be called back into BLOOD IS THICKER.  Sooner or later, I expect one of them to take over and push the other to the back burner, but for now it’s working for me.

In MAGIC’S FOOL, I needed to write an action scene involving a game played on horseback with three (not two) teams. That’s what needed some time to gel for me. It’s not like I’ve actually seen a lot of three-sided games (apart from board games, which don’t count) to draw on. Plus, I had to work the rules of this game into the action. (There’s no scene like the one where quidditch is explained to Harry to make that easier. All these kids have grown up with this game.) But I think I’ve got it. Readers will let me know if I’m right about that.

In BLOOD IS THICKER, I’m ready to start Chapter 5, in which the extent of the problem they discovered in Chapter 4 will become apparent. Something will have to be done, involving some sacrifice and a change of scene. That should be fun. I’m already seeing a couple of the scenes in my mind’s eye.

On top of that, I’ve started doing some research for THE BARD’S GIFT, my YA alternate history. I found a great reference book (kindle for pc edition so I’ll always have it right with me when I’m writing) for the basic daily life sort of information. This is the stuff I’d usually make up as part of my world building, sometimes using historical models. With alternate history, though, it needs to be as close to the real history as I can make it. Well, apart from the things I intend to change. It is alternate history.

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