Starting to feel like normal :)

Well, since the court-date has passed and it seems like everything is on track for my divorce to finalize in June, I feel like things are starting to get back to normal and I don't have to censor my online life anymore.

SO, pages (at the top) are up again, as well as the ability to navigate old posts via archive & labels are back...

And a couple new things have been added:

One of the reasons my blogging has been a little less... frequent is because I've been dipping a proverbial toe into the twitter-universe.

Best/worst part about it? Having actual evidence of the number of dyslexic errors I make since I don't have the ability to really edit, unlike here :) You're welcome to come laugh at me :D

Also, I sortof put up a small website. Still playing around with what I want. I was going for a look that suits my personality... laid back, a little bit silly/fun, but all relevant information is accessible & clear.

Suggestions/corrections are always welcome :)


Well, that's what I've been doing... how about you? Anything new/interesting to report?


...I know one of my long-time buddies is graduating today!

CONGRATS, J!!!

Time to take over the world with your giant, beautiful brain :D

Why I don't review books

I have a brain-wrenching quandary.

Ever since I started hanging out online and chatting about writing, I've had a clear policy of not talking about books I've read.

There are three main reasons for this.

#1) I find it incredibly disrespectful to dump on something I don't like because it might be someone else's favourite thing in the world, and because the (in this case) author worked darn hard to get their book in print.

#2) As part of the whole respect-thing, I will never lie or exaggerate. If someone respects me enough to ask a question, I want to respect them enough give them an honest answer. I want to own my words.

 #3) I (unfortunately) know myself.

The first one is easy. It's pretty self-explanatory. Disrespecting others is about the one thing that snaps my usually calm/patient state of mind and has, on the rare occasion, gotten me so furious that I can't speak/articulate a single word. I could write an entire post (or several) on why I care so much about respect/disrespect, but it boils down to: when you disrespect someone, you're essentially treating them as less-human than yourself, which is a very slippery slope upon which can be found the greatest atrocities in human history.

But let's avoid a hearty dose of over-analysis for today, yes?

And the second reason is also pretty clear. I'm not going to talk-up a book I didn't particularly like. I might suggest it to someone who I think will like the book, but I will avoid talking about my own reading experience.

So what do I mean with the third reason?

I (unfortunately) know myself.

From #1 & #2, you should be able to guess that I don't want to talk about books I have not liked.

So that narrows the potential list to review and leaves the books I tolerated, I liked, and I loved.

All of which come down to personal taste. "Would I have it again?"

...and I'm not shy about admitting I may have bad taste.

Because the things I like, the books I am attracted to are... strange. Or the reasons I am attracted to them are strange.

Like, I've read Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' probably 50+ in my life and it is one of my favourite books, but probably not for a reason anyone else likes it...

I love that, through the entire book, no character ever tries to sympathize/reason with him. They simply label him as a monster (which I'm not arguing, he is, and that's awesome), but at the time when Dracula was written, most intelligent people still judged those from other cultures as sub-humans and sought to destroy them with the same level of dedicated arrogance as Van Helsing & co set out to destroy Dracula.

I have a set of world mythology books published by professors from Yale/Harvard/Oxford/etc in the early 1900's where they consistently refer to other cultures/people as barbaric, etc and how difficult (and necessary) it was to 'civilize' them. That's only a hundred years ago...

So, assuming Dracula is a monster, sub-human, and not worth trying to empathize/reason with, fits perfectly in with the world-view at the time. It's a nearly-honest, non-white-washed, non-PC-glossed glimpse into how people actually thought about those outside their culture at the time.

Now... to anyone out there who's read "Dracula", is that something you noticed, or cared about? And for those who haven't read it... does that even remotely entice you to read it? ...I'm guessing "no".

Let me reiterate that I read it for the first time when I was 9, and I couldn't articulate all of this back then... but I did ask myself why they didn't just talk to Dracula. So even way back then, this was the odd reason I connected to the book and the reason I re-read it... because I couldn't understand why they didn't just sit down and have a conversation. It seemed the obvious thing to do.

I almost never lend books to other people because usually the books are returned... unfinished. Most of the books I love and re-read,no one has ever heard of. But I don't really care. Just like I want to own my words without being ashamed, I also want to own the things I love without being ashamed.

Which makes me want to write reviews for books I love...

...but...

I like books for weird reasons. Like a character who is creepily OCD. Or the author is amazing at playing with words to create sentences that have multiple meanings. For clever description. For philosophy, for irrationality, for humour, for the way words are strung together so they look good, or sound good or taste good. I like books that are so ridiculous that they hit a level of absurdity that's baffling. Characters who are arrogant, or dense, or broken. I like seeing how skillful an author is at emotionally or psychologically manipulating readers. And subtext... shovel on the subtext and I will revel in it :)

There's no set reason why I like a book, other than, maybe, it gets me to look at something from a new angle. Good, or bad.

Now, add in the fact that I'm prone to over-analysis...

...so if I wrote a book review...

...and focused on what I liked...

Like, analyzing the use of 'I' in 1st POV. Or cataloguing the use/frequency of colours. Or how the author uses a specific word which manipulates the reader into thinking "x". Or how I like the taste of a set of letters/sounds/words in a particular sentence. How the order/arrangement of a couple lines can completely change the subtext. Or the progression/arc of emotional intelligence or self-awareness in a side character.


...can you imagine the result?

Well, most likely any potential readers' eyes would glaze over and they would die of boredom. The things I seem to like and care about are not generally things that others are interested in. Thus, not enticing others to buy my favourite books... which would be the opposite of what I set out to do.


And therein lies the quandary. How to go about sharing books I love, while being honest/true about why I loved them, yet also succeeding in not actually scaring people away...

Suggestions? Advice? Thoughts?

(other than I'm crazy and you feel the intense need to run far, far away)





As a curiosity, here's a random/short list of some of my favourite non-YA books. Three gold stars for anyone who has heard of, or read, more than two of these:


Edward Carey's "Observatory Mansions" and "Alva & Irva"
Jostein Gaarder's "The Solitaire Mystery" and "Sophie's World"
Helen Oyeyemi's "Icarus Girl"
Banana Yoshimoto's "Amrita" (and nearly everything else she's written)
Elizabeth McClung's "Zed"
Catherynne Valente's "Orphan's Tales" (books 1 & 2)
Nicholas Christopher's "A Trip to the Stars" and "Veronica"
James Thurber's "The Thirteen Clocks"
Kris Kenway's "Bliss Street" and "Too Small for Basketball"
Lulu Wang's "The Lily Theatre"
Joe Coomer's "Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God" and "A Pocketful of Names"
Sean Dixon's "The Girls Who Saw Everything"
Stephen Walker's "Danny Yates Must Die"
Jim Munroe's "Angry Young Spaceman"
Emma Donoghue's "Room"

Probably the last one, Emma Donoghue's "Room", is the only one you've likely heard of/read.

SiWC 2014 Workshop #6 YA Panel

YA Panel

Joelle Anthony (writer), Abby Ranger (editor), Anita Daher (writer), Mandy Hubbard (agent/writer), Eileen Cook (writer)

What’s taboo in YA, and has it changed?

MH: The short answer is no. I think you have put anything in, but it has to be through the eyes of an authentic teen character. Drugs, loss, losing virginity, etc, as long as it’s through the authentic view. Sex scenes, for example, are more about the emotions than the mechanics. IT’s the way you handle things on the page.

AD: I agree, nothing off limit, how you handle it is important. Anything that right for the story/character is good as long as it isn’t for shock/gratuitous. It has to be there for a reason to forwards the character/story, and the question is how far you go. Have to be truthful to the character.

AR: I agree with both. the only thing I can see as ‘no’ is a grown up protagonist who is experimenting with a younger character without any consequences, growth, etc. If it’s not serving the story/character, take it out.

JA: I don’t read dark and it’s not where I go as a writer. When I work with kids (teaches writing), the only thing that mattes is to own your words and stand behind them. If you’re okay with that, if you can accept that, that’s fine.

AR: We always see this articles saying, ‘why are we letting children read this gross drivel…’ why are we allowing this to be public, audit’s always designed to create an uproar. Responses to that is, there isa lot of darkness because teens are trying to grapple with the darkness in the world, and at the endow these books, there’s a spark of hope. The really bleak endings are more in adult literature, not in YA. We have the responsibility to find that glimmer.

AD: With everything teens are exposed to in the news/internet/etc, but they are only getting snippets of that’s going on. A book is a very safe place for teens to explore these darker issues, to take the journey they might now be able to do through a news snippet or a tv show/movie.

EC: YA is such a new ting that I think most adults forget there was a time you skipped immediately from children to adult literature.

HM: I want to add that if you don’t have these things, that’s okay too. Thee is a market for that. One of my books ‘fool me twice’ is in the Scholastic listing - they never would have piked it up if it wasn’t clean. They want books that are okay to promote for younger teens.

AR: Have to ask, who is this for? Be thoughtful for your audience. Where does this sit in the library, who is going to endorse this? There are specific gatekeepers.

EC: So what about those gatekeepers, librarians, parents, teachers, etc? Do you think about those?

JA: You can’t really control who reads. t’s middle school librarians, etc, the readers who say,, eww, why is there a kiss scene?’

EC: What about banned books? Would you like to write a book that’s banned?

AD: once you book is out there, don’t be afraid of being banned. Write your story as it has to be and worry about hose things later.

EC: Is there something ‘hot’ or ‘not’?

AR: There have been waves that have peaked, like paranormal, then dystopian, lately we’ve had contempt and ‘sick-lit’, and I think it’s silly to publish more because of ‘TFiOS’. It’s very unwise to write to that. What editors/publishers/agents want is to open something up and be completely surprised. Taking some spirit of what people love, that’s out there, that people love, and then translating it to a different genre - but transformed into something new. The heart of what makes a book work, and doing it in your own distinct way.

MH: I have this editor spreadsheet that’s 50 pages long, and one editor I first talked to said to me, ‘I’m always looking up for a surprise’, and that stuck in my head. I signed a book last year I never would have said ‘I’m looking for this!” -> a magical chicken that levitates things with its brains. My only thing with trends are to be aware of the really saturated ones. If you have a lot of ideas, and one is dystopian, maybe work on one of the other ones, you’re kind of stacking the odds against you. Dystopian/paranormal are really tough. But there’s always the exception to the rules.

EC: What do you like best about writing for teens, or why do you work in this particular area?

JA: Because that’s what I like to read, so it was a natural progression, and i agree when Abby said ‘there’s a glimmer of hope’. I’m a really cheerful person, so I like that idea of hope.

AR: I had a great conversation with other editors/agents about what internal age you are, what age you still remember well/connect to. For me, maybe insecure 17yo girl, the goofy 11yo boy who likes adventure. Part of what I love is just that sense of intensity. So many things you’re experimenting for the first time. Everything has a life/death sense of feel to it that in another age might feel flatter/wrong. In the craft of storytelling, part of what I love doing in working for teens is that all those books are so important because you’re trying to hood the attention of someone who has a million options and really short attention span - being able to draw them in and make them feel for that character is much harder than writing for an adult, you don’t necessarily need that strict storytelling craft.

AD: I believe when we go into a creative place, we do have an age we naturally go to. When I immerse myself into a story I go very naturally into a place between 12 and 17. I’m cheerful too, but also moody. The story, the start/middle/end of stories is more important to teens than for adults. Maybe I just never figured out where I fit in. Teens have a very strong BS meter

AR: As a very broad comment, MG is about finding the place in the family house, YA is about burning down the house, the options and complications to that.

MH: ‘The Truth about You & ME’, a 16 year old gets involved with a teacher in university. They’re bantering about about what songs were popular when they were young, and I knew hers, but when I googled to find his, I was shocked that he was only a couple years younger than me! When I wrote my first novel, an agent told me that my voice worked better in YA, so I said, ‘i should read some!’

EC: I know people say to me, I want to write YA, and when I ask, ‘why’, they say, ‘because it’s selling well’, and I don’t like that. If you don’t like it, read it, etc, it’ll come across on each page.

EC Do you have one piece of writing advice?

MH: Let yourself write crap. I have that moment in every book where eI read something and think’, oh my goodness, I wrote this crap?’ but then I look at the books on my shelf and put it into perspective.

AD: Going back to the taboo a bit, with one story I didn’t know they were a cutter, I knew she was depressed, but as I wrote, that’s what made sense. I don’t go deep in my first draft, I go deeper later. I do suggest if you’re going to write about an issue or something, research it. I found out that if a cutter reads about cutting, it’s trigger and I didn’t want to put out a book full of triggers, so I worked with my editor to strategize around that.

AR: Respect your reader. Don’t underestimate them. Another similar/different point is not judging your character, what they want, what they do, etc. Empathize properly with your character. Don’t question the moral/ethical code when you’re in a character’s skin, especially the villains. What is deeply human/relatable about them.

JA: Eileen took mine. My best advice is to read, but more than that, give yourself permission to read. Don’t feel guilty that you’re reading instead of writing. It’s part of your work/art. Read 150 books in your genre every year.

EC: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Ivan Coyote speak, but she to me to send stuff out, and I said, ‘no I’m not ready’, and she said, ‘you’re already not published, so if you send stuff out, the worst that can happen is that you still won’t be published.’ That gave me permission to send stuff out.

Audience question: Are there more taboos in content for MG?

MH: There are more gatekeepers, but also, there’s a lot of things that will go over younger kids’ heads.

AR: I always have to pause at the word ‘content’, every publishing house has different rules and it often depends on a book-to-book basis, the voice, the character, etc, how everything is serving the story. Sometimes it’ll be a question of dialling something back, adjusting the character to get it into the Scholastic listing (into school), and then it’s up to the writer.

AD: MG kids are more interested in school, friends, etc so it really depends on how you hand it.

Audience Question: Difference between YA/NA?

MH: I think it’s tempting to tack NA onto a lot of things, but where this took off originally was the transitional college age with more romance. That’s not a bad thing, but that’s just where things are, and since it started out s e-book, bookstores are actually having a hard time selling hardcopy NA book, but tone of e-books are being stolen. NA isn’t just sexed-up YA.

AR: YA is a broad section, it includes so many genres -> fantasy, contemp, etc. It holds so much, but right now, NA is very small -> sexier/older protagonist with more mature themes. Talked to someone else who said for her, it’s like a combination between chick-lit written 10-20 years ago (in a higher economy) combined with YA. NA is more like.

Audience question: My daughter likes fantasy/etc, but is trying to find YA where they main focus isn’t about ‘the guy’. How much if it is out there?

MH: It’s out there, it’s just harder to find, because that’s what most teens are interested in.

JA: I don’t like books where it’s all about the romance, but mine do have a small romantic element.

AR: One thing I love is that there’s a lot of strong FMC who are trying to figure out who they are and what they want and they do part of that through a relationship, but there are books where it’s not defining themselves completely through the guy/relationship.

AD: I wrote a book before NA was a thing, it was an older YA right out highschool, are publishers interested in NA that is fantasy/etc that is not about the romance?

AR:Yes, as long as it’s not a college setting.

Audience question: MG works very well for boys, but when you get into YA, buys kind of disappear. Not enough stuff is being written that appeals to them.

MH: I had to pass on something I loved once because I knew publishers would turn it down because there was no girl appeal.

EC: I can think of some that did well. ‘Noggin’, ‘Winger’, ‘Carter Finally Gets It’.

AR: This is a very real thing. Publishers find that the readership drops.

JA: I work with a lot of kids at that age and the boys are perfectly happy to move immediately into adult ‘Meet Player One’ (recommended to her by a 13yo boy)

Audience question: What about not ‘sex/drugs’, but creepy instead? Lemmony Snicket for for older YA?

AR: There is a lot of stuff out there, ‘Cavendish Home for Boys & Girls’, there is that there, but there was to be the dark/light balance. ‘A Tale Dark and Grimm’

Audience question: Can you recommend any good darker books our there to read?

EC: ‘Kiss Kill Vanish’, ‘Winger’

AR: Asylum (horror)

MH: ‘Rites of Passage’

EC: Is there a YA you’ve read recently that you are recommending to people that’s not yours?

JA: ‘I’ll give you the sun’, ‘The Sky is everywhere’. Some boy books, ‘Brooklyn Burning’, ‘Blinking Caution’ (sp?)

AR: ‘Eleanor & /Park’, ‘Fangirl’

AD:’The Boundless’ (MG), ‘Kiss Candy Crush’

MH: ‘The Cage’, ‘The Madman’s Daughter’ (same author)

EC: ‘Noggin’ was given to me and was one I wasn’t all that interested in reading, but it was really interesting.

Audience comment: In MG, I find there has to be a sense of humour. It can go dark, but there aways has to be something weird/wacky.

Audience comment: I’m a librarian, ‘Anatomy of a girl gang’

EC: Orca Publishing out of Vancouver Island focus on books for reluctant readers, they have great distribution. The stories explode.

Audience comment: I’m a book seller/writer. ’Now is the time for Running’ - two boys having to escape a village massacre.

EC: The connection between reader/writers seem much stronger in YA, so how do you handle that, and how do you advise your clients on how to handle that, social media, etc.

MH: As an agent first, I think more of my followers are adults/writer/etc, but I do get some. So if you get cute emails/etc, always reply.

AD: I hear much more from MG readers than teen readers. With our publish image, I don’t put anything snarky on social media. I do censor myself. I check in on social media, but I try to keep in mind that I never know who will be reading it, so I don’t put anything mean spirited.

AR: There is such a range of how to use social media, so I suggest just do what feels comfortable. It’ll come across if you’re doing it because you think you have to. You’re at an open cocktail party where anyone can/could retweet your comments/etc. It’s really nice to join a conversation, have people supporting them, especially if before their first book comes out, before they have to do all the self-promotion stuff.

EC: That’s true, I think it really comes across if you’re only doing it to sell your book.

JA: I don’t get a lot of emails from readers, but the ones I do tend to be from librarians, adults, etc. and 11yo boys who don’t like my books, which are more geared towards girls. I do keep all business stuff quiet. I don’t talk about it at all in anything other than generic terms. One thing I keep in mind is, if you do receive something, wait at least 24 hours before responding so you don’t seem like a dork.

EC: I think something to be aware of, I have seen querying writers tweet stuff like, ‘I pitched “x” and they were a cow.” Be aware we can, and do search ourselves. Going back, when I wrote for adults, I never heard from readers, but writing YA, I think it’s so cool to get emails/etc from teens now. That’s why you should do social media, because you want to, and can connect with readers.

Audience question: Do you think NA is going to go the way of chick-lit, or is is going to expand like YA?

MH: Well, are people having a hard time finding those things without the NA? Like, fantasy appeals widely whereas NA started because readers wanted that college setting… which wouldn’t really be applicable to genres other than contemporary/romance. But I can’t predict the future, so who knows.

AR: The bookseller is kindof the one who starts it. Barns & Nobel is the biggest bookstore and they don’t have a NA section, but do they need it? I personally don’t see it.

SiWC 2014 Workshop #5 Tension Panel

Tension Panel

Chevy Stevens (Writer) Hallie Ephron (Writer), Robert J Wiersema (Writer), Susanna Kearsley (Writer)

Started off with a section read from RW’s book

SK: Sentences/paragraph techniques to produce tension, R, what did you do on purpose in that passage?

RW: Sentence length gives tension. Do you remember ‘The Matrix’, the fight scene on top of the building just when Neo is coming into his power and there’s the moment the whole thing slows down so you can see the bullets  - it’s so significant, that’s now called ‘bullet time’, to slow down intentionally to make the reader confront that moment. You throw in a long sentence to slow it down and condense the focus, then punctuate with short to break the tension. The interplay, the back and forth. Read it out loud to head where it needs to linger or break.

SK: do you do that with paragraph length too?

RW: well because I write longhand and then transcribe it later, I’m very aware of length and fragment paragraphs after a long section during revision, those fragments can act almost as gun shots.

HE: I’m always aware of white space, where there are many long paragraphs, that’s the visual cue that you need that short bit to summarize, or suddenly twist what has come before. Readers read the beginning and ending of chapters and paragraphs carefully and scan through the middle, so when you want to punctuate, that’s how/why I do it.

CS: You guys already covered all the good stuff, so yeah, I do that too. I do short sentences for sure, and in paragraphs, like in essays, you start a paragraph with an idea and try to bring it back at the end. In action scenes, or when a character is feeling a lot of tension, you’re seeing things in very quick snapshots, so short paragraphs, short sentences will create the tension, then later you can wind out and draw out again. Calculate. It does matter how it looks on the page.

HE: It’s also important when to bring the camera is really close, into the heart, the head, seeing the sweat. Then you pull out again. I know darkness/shadows are a little cliche, but they’re cliche because they work. You come home and there’s silence, shadows, and you ask what’s hiding in there, what’s going to happen. Good place to bring other senses to the scene.

RW; I built a scene with five different points of view, but I never allows the character to show their own feelings, only looking outward so there was no temptation to wallow, to disappear in their own heads. So I allowed 1st POV to catalogue the emotions of the other characters. Simon is very flat/observational (he’s a lawyer), but he’s viewing his wife’s much more emotional state. I wanted to build in the misapprehension/misunderstanding from looking at someone else’s emotions.

HE: IN 3rd POV, when the reader knows more than the character, you can create tension through that. Like, the guy in the closet, you’re worried when the MC walks into the dark house…

RW: There’s a contrast between reader/writer. The reader wants to be manipulated, but not used.

CS: All my books were 1st POV, and now I’m writing a 3rd POV and it’s almost freeing because I can explore the other characters feeling/etc. For example, the scene starts with a woman talking to a psychiatrist and you know she’s been kidnapped, held, and eventually come home. So we know she survived and you’d think that kills the tension, but instead, because you know she’s going to get kidnapped and want to find out how/why she gets away, there’s still that tension of wanting to know what happened.

HE: Sometimes you have to choose between surprise/shock and tension. You can’t really do both at once.

SK: Those are some great examples, but how do you how the tension over the whole book.

HE: You don’t want to explode everything in the first chapter. You can’t scream at the reader in the first chapter because they’ll stop listening, so it’s all about stakes. One thing that starts out as personal, and then becomes more universal

‘

RW: I now want you to take a step back. Tension very natural transmogrifies into suspense. But looking at tension itself is valuable. Without tension, there’s no narrative. It’s the root of all narrative. We want the reader to keep asking questions, ‘what happens next’, and you build from there into specifics. What’s going to happen, what does this character want, what’s going to happen when they choose ‘x’. Suspense builds on that, those questions, the interplay between the reader and writer asking questions -> leading their expectations and telling them how to read what you’re putting in front of them, what’s important.

CS: We need to know why we should care. They don’t have to be liable, but there has to be a reason why we care, why do the stakes matter to the character. Emotional tension, that ache to talk, but not able to. Silences, etc. Chapter length, I do use that. (Girls like That) Jumps between two characters, and each section ended in a tension-filled moment and the sections got closer and closer together.

RW I don’t have a tremendous respect for Dan Brown, but I do respect the writing of it. It’s perfect. Each chapter ends in mid conversation, at a cliffhanger, a question (8 page chapters) he’s created the ‘potato chip book’ - just one more chapter, just one more chapter… you just have to keep going, and that’s how I lost Christmas Day 2008.

SK: Robert, a few years ago, said: ‘the reader should always know slightly more than the character. Let the reader know in advance. The reader’s expectations must both be met, and undermined.’ In Robert’s words, shameless manipulation. You’re telling lies to get the response you want. Can you use a specific example, a technique to do this to a reader? Was there a focus technique you used?

RW: ‘Before I Wake’, one of the advantages to using 6 POV in this book is that I was able to the thing the filmmakers were able to do. Film is interesting because you don’t ever have people in a room like this and the room explodes. You’re show the people coming into the room, you’d see the blinking red light under the chair of the bomb, then you’d cut back to the room again, to the characters. I wanted that ability to show a mash-up of the POV’s of these people who were going to attack other people who were having a nice, quiet special intimate family moment -> the rekindling of a marriage on Christmas day. You know they’re going to be attacked, but you don’t quite know in what form the attack is going to happen.

HE: But you have to make sure the attack, but also the family drama, were equally interesting.

RW: For me, the highest stakes were this personal, family, emotional drama. I like to think that I did it well.

CS: Red herrings, someone meant to look guilty: the boyfriend looking guilty to the reader, but the main character not suspecting -> but making sure the mc didn’t just look too stupid to live.

SK: Let’s talk about pitfalls -> mistakes that break tension. What are things you avoid, that you have learned.

CS: info dumps, too much info in the wrong place, or not letting the reader work things out for themselves (over explaining/repeating)

HE: I think the subtle tighten and release is what’s tricky. You can’t have the tension continue, you have to break it or it gets annoying for the reader. Humour is a great way to relieve the tension and allows the reader to take a breath, recharge and move forward. Using a good technique in the wrong place is usually what kills it.

RW If you’re trying not to diffuse tension, it’s using something in the wrong place. A too long sentence in the wrong place, or a short one. Words can even do it because they don’t just have meaning, they have connotation. So if you accidentally use a word that has humorous connotation, you risk having the reader snicker. You’re weaving a spell, and the moment the reader is even twinged, things can go wrong.

Audience question: How do you hold the tension over the entire novel?

RW: Look at the way people are handling television now. There’s the series with same characters/setting. That’s the uber setting, and each season is a novel within itself with an overarching plot, and then you have 22 episodes, and over those episodes, it tells that story. Not all episodes will focus on that overarching story, some will only touch on them, but as it moves through the episodes, questions and answers and complicating factors that rise and fall, are introduced and answered.

HE: Hold your nose and write. You won’t know until it’s down, until you have other people read it and comment on it.

RW: It sounds like we know what we’re doing, the observations we’re making is from looking at our finished books, not from our first drafts. Once you have the words on the page you can step back and look at what you’re doing.

CS: I had that where I started a book with ___ fighting with a woman in a halfway house, and it was a great scene, but my editor pointed out that by starting with that scene, the reader would think that’s what the story was about, and that was a year into writing the story. So it had to be changed.

Audience question: What’s the difference between an unreliable narrator and lying to the reader?

HE: I never have a POV character lie to the reader. They can misunderstand, tell something the way they think it is, but are wrong (unreliable) My characters tell their version of the truth to the reader. I hate it when characters lie to the reader.

CS: We have to know what the POV character knows.

HE: The writer wants to the reader not to know later, and you can’t shine it that.

RW: Lying to the reader isn’t a ticket violation, it’s a death sentences. IF you want a master class on tension, ’Scott Turouuts (sp?) ’Presumed Innocent’. At the end, you don’t know if he’s actually killed the person or not.

‘The Murder of Roger Ackeroid’ - read.

Audience question: Do you think the reader is more empathetic, is there more tension in 3rd POV vs 1st POV?

RW: Objectively 3rd POV, there are fewer potential pitfalls because the writer has a wider pallet to play with. With 1st POV, you only know what the MC knows.

CS: My first 3 books were all 1st POV because it was a fast emotional connection, but there were pitfalls. I couldn’t cheat/manipulate the reader the same. IT’s limiting, but it wouldn’t have worked as well in 3rd POV because of the emotional tension.

HE: Try both ways and see. I believe you can be emotionally close/emotional/personal in either, but as a writer you may feel one is easier/works better for you. When  you’re in 1st POV, you’re stuck. For claustrophobic, emotional tension, 1st POV works better.

RW: ‘Bedtime story’ has two 1st POV and one objective 3rd POV and one closer 3rd POV because of the level of intimacy I wanted for each part/character. But this is really hard. You have to do it right or it’s awful.

CS: It’s the same thing with present/past tense.

HE: There’s a reason god invented the delete key.

Audience question: Do you outline or write organically?

HE: yes/no, yes/no. I outline, then it goes off the rails, I re-outline, it goes off again. I outline because it makes me feel good, less scary, but in the end, it’s a mess.

CS: I do outline, most editors/agents want an idea of where it’s going, but it’s okay to go off if the story isn’t working. Don’t force it to stay on the outline. It’s a guideline more than a rule.

RW: I’d rather have a root canal than do an outline. I have a general idea, but I don't know who the character are at the start. I discover it as the reader would discover it. I write ‘in the headlight’ method. I write a few scenes, then jot a couple notes for the scenes I’m going to write in the next day. The only thing writing a novel teaches you is how to write that novel.

SK: I’m closest to Robert. I’m an engineers daughter so I like to give myself the illusion of control. Write with Scrivener so I can move stuff around and I don’t like to outline because I feel like then I’ve boxed myself in.

SiWC 2014 Workshop #4 The 9 Best Pieces of Advice I've Ever Gotten

The 9 Best Pieces of Advice I’ve Ever Gotten

Liza Palmer (Conversations with a Fat Girl)

1. Build a community

writers groups, IRL or online. Writers groups that write don’t critique - so people aren’t bringing back the same chapter/short story every week and tweaking it over and over. Community based about actual writing, not about telling you what’s how to/not to write. Once in a while, get a big whiteboard and help one person who is stuck and ‘break’ the book until it’s figured out. Meeting twice a month to read aloud your own work. 

“A rising tide lifts all boats” - stick with each other. Writers are competitive/jealous, so many external markers for success. If you feel you have to hide your light and people aren’t celebrating, this isn’t the right group. You want those in the trenches with you to celebrate.

You don’t need someone always saying how hard it is - disguises their bitterness as pragmatism.

Finding your ‘tribe’ - those who speak your language and understand you. Writers are ‘outsiders’, observing, so it’s amazing when you find something that’s right.

Online membership groups like SCWBI, Romance Writers of America, etc, retreats and workshops like Do Lectures, Tin House, Fishtrap, Banff Centre for the Arts, etc (Poets and Writers has an entire conference and residencies database)

2) It doesn’t get easier, you get better.

Publishing is always going to be a roller coaster. Yes, always. Anchor yourself somewhere else besides in its fickle waters. That means somewhere internal because the external pressures are never going to go away. You need to be confident, writing itself has to be the reward.

Remember why you started.

“I’m not afraid of storms because I’m learning to sail my ship” Louisa May Alcott (sp?)

3) Say yes and figure it out later. (Tina Fey?)

We pigeonhole ourselves. ‘I don’t write that’, ‘I don’t read that’ - you’re limiting yourself as to what’s out there, or tell yourself what you cancan’t do.

Writing is an apprenticeship. Everything helps your craft, everything fills the well. Step out of your wheelhouse, and take everything in your possibly can.

You are not you genre. You are your voice. Your voice can transcend any genre. IF. YOU. LET. IT.

4) Daniel Day Lewis will never play James Bond

Sometimes it’s not about you.

Art and the Art of Subjectivity. You just aren’t right for the part, so be able to see your work objectively enough to know if it needs another pass. Maybe you are right for the part, you just need to clean up the work a little more.

5) Follow the fear.

Bobette Buster’s Do Lecture (Google it) ‘Can you tell your story?’

Her philosophy is that storytelling is the art form of transformation.

The stories we take into our heart centre around reinvention and/or redemption. (what is the arc?)

How to tell if it’s reinvention or redemption: the moment the character chooses to become fully alive, or the walking dead. Usually that comes at the act 1 break, or the act 2 break. Where that decision is made we know as ‘the dark night of the soul’ (Joseph Conrad’s “Hero’s Journey”)

So how do you find that moment? You follow the fear. The choice you (or your character) makes is the one you resist the most that will set you free. So what is your character’s greatest fear? Underneath that is the underbelly of the hero’s journey.

Example, Shawshank Redemption (act 2 break) Andy leaves Red the harmonica, and Red blows on it - he chooses to accept hope into his life. He’s no longer a prisoner, he’s free.

Is this a story of redemption or a cautionary tale (tragedy/reinvention)? The dark night of the soul is the moment when they take the first baby step towards becoming fully alive or the walking dead.

Bottom line: What people are interested in is to be taken into a world they would never otherwise get to experience and they want to see the ordinary become extraordinary. For better or worse.

resist/resist/resist until they’re forced to make a decision, that opens up the road of trials

6) Go directly to the bar

You go to a party, and you need a ‘job’, so go to the bar and get a drink. That way you have something in your hand, somewhere to be.

7) You don’t win by pretending to be something you’re not

You are the best version of you.  - Malcolm Gladwell

What happens when the underdog recognizes their weakness, and then chooses an unconventional strategy (David & Goliath)? They win. 

Why fight like Goliath, follow everyone else’s rules? It’s easier. Someone else’s checklist is easier than generating one of your own. You don’t have to analyze yourself, your life. You don’t have to dig deep about whether you’re happy or not. It’s much easier to take the road more traveled.

When you follow the market, try to write what’s popular, follow the traveled road, you trade that which makes you most you. Your voice, your ideas, your passion.

You can feel it when you’re writing something important/good for you, and when you’re trying to write like Goliath. It’s clunky, unnatural.

BUT, like the audience who came to watch two guys fighting each other, they were let down/unhappy to see a pip squeak knock out the giant with a pebble. Doing things your way may not be celebrated. They will challenge the way things are normally done.

8) Just let Mellie be Mellie - a character from Shonda Rhimes’ ‘Scandal’

The truth will out.

People are who they are. Things are what they are. They can’t hide this for too long. They will be revealed.

‘If you wait by the river long enough the bodies of your enemies will float by.’ - Sun Tzu, the Art of War

Don’t stress about what everyone else is doing. It’s not about you. Sometimes it’s just someone else’s “turn”. Let it go.

9) “Do the work, Don.” (Madmen)

Sit down, shut up, do the work. Block out the white noise, set a goal, get to work. 

Possible goals: word count, ‘Focus Booster’ (app to download), writing group meet-up, Nanowrimo. Get that deadline and stop giving yourself excuses. SHOW UP.

9.5) “Good luck! But more importantly, prepare well. Visualize each phase, start to end, which probable errors and you actions. Repeat.” Chris Hadfield

SiWC 2014 Workshop #3 Less Theory, More Funny

Less Theory, More Funny

Dan Bar-el

Write two things about yourself, each in a sentence

The first thing is true but boring, the second thing is a lie, but an outrageous lie

Now take the true and boring thing and turn it into an outrageous lie.

Three reasons why we laugh (unprovoked)

Something is funny (the brain is reacting)

Something is awkward/uncomfortable/nervous/surprised (emotional reasons)

To release tension (when we’re tickled - physical)

Comedy Rule #1

Comedy = expectations not met (when we meet someone, we expect to shake hands, not throw cream pies in their face, or yell, etc)

‘He’s so boring that…’ ‘boring’ and ‘so’ are telling you where the joke is going

web/brainstorm - what does ‘boring’ make you think of, and ‘so’ pushes you to exaggerate, but there still has to be logic:

people bring a pillow when they visit

sharks fall askeep

people yawned big enough to swallow their own face - too weird/illogical

he not only like to watch paint dry, he tapes it so he can watch it again

Exercise:

My town is so small that…

compile the data: what do you find in a small town? gas station -> gas pump -> car wash, police -> station -> jail, traffic lights, library, pets, etc and where does it lead you?

…that the car wash is a tooth brush (both scrub/clean, but one is insanely small)

…there’s no room to park cars (not good)

… the local bank only carries small change (not great, could be better to say, ‘my town’s bank is a piggy bank)

…the sheriff’s deputy is his dog

…the police are also the criminals

…the one room school house is a school apartment

More exercises:

The ants at the picnic were so hungry they ate…

my mom in law’s potato salad, the uncles

They boy’s parent’s were so cheap for his weekly allowance they gave him… (no currency)

a paper route, get out of jail free card, tax tips

My mother was such a hypochondriac that…

she died of embarrassment, she went everywhere in a space suit, she married the immunologist

The guy smelled so horrible that…

my nostrils went on strike, his deodorant crawled back in the tube

The dentist’s e equipment was so bad that to remove a tooth, she used a…

a seance, a tootsie pop

Joke construction:

The real crux of the joke is at the very end of the sentence - anything after it is meaningless.

Why webbing/brainstorming?

Lateral thinking.

Humans are very linear. Because we see our lives like that, we think like that ‘we do this, then this, then this, then this…’

Comedy is about making sideways connections

Posters from Play Land show stuffed animals barfing stuffing. (Fair, games, prizes, stuffed animals. rides, fast rides, dizzy, barf)

How do you create a connection between a cylinder and a cylinder with a triangle on top? (looks like a dunce cap - what did you do to piss off the teacher?)

S S S I (snakes, the last one is scared stiff, the last one is doing yoga)

o 8 (building a snowman, snowman with his head knocked off, zero saying, where’d you get the belt?)

^ ^ ^ v (look what I can do, pyramids? - blueprints upside-down, mountains?)

You can play up a comedic description by comparing them to someone/thing else you wouldn’t expect, like comparing a child running to play to Genghis Khan. He looked just like Georg Clooney if he’d overstayed in a tanning bed for 3 days and then fallen face first into a fire.

Exercise:

We know comedy = expectations not met

image of Shirley Temple, image of crazy looking bearded guy

 - write a short diary entry from one of their perspectives, but reverse the ‘personalities’ you expect based on their images

Instead of webbing, you can brainstorm with a category system:

people, place, thing, even, slogan/expression

example, fireman on a birthday card - only you can prevent cake fires

Comedy exists in a reality similar to ours, but not really,

Why did the chicken cross the road? In reality, it’s going on instinct, in comedy, it’s made a mindful decision

Book called ‘The Nose from Jupiter’. In reality, lonely boy dealing with divorced parents. Comic reality, there’s a tiny alien that lives in his nose.

You go to school - all teachers are monkeys

Mom takes kid to the mall - to buy a machine gun

President gives a speech - using only fart noises

Exercise:

Write down 5 Real Reality events (incorporate a verb into your sentence)

Bring each Real Reality event into a Comic Reality

A girl goes to a martial arts school…

A family sits down for Thanksgiving dinner…

A city is snowed under by a big storm…

A country has just been attacked…

Scientists discovered a cure for baldness… in a world inhabited with dogs. Hairless chihuahuas rejoice

Your soccer team plays another team…

The police chase a criminal…

A man does yoga…

Your child brings home an art project… Art came along to get it back and brought Geography with him

A pilot flies an airplane…

Four Elements of a Comic Character - handout

Comedic perspective: drunk, optimist (excited to get arrested), paranoid (suspects his pets of being spies), klutzy, loser, romantic, crybaby (adult literally has a tantrum when he doesn’t get a raise), hoarder (used kleenexes, a warehouse full of twist ties), con artist, fearful (jumps at her own shadow and screams)

Flaws: absentminded, arrogant, blunt, bigot, 

Flaw works against their character trait - like a bully who is only 3’ tall or really skinny.

example: comic perspective - fearful, exaggeration -  jumps at her own shadow, flaw - she’s nosey (which will lead her into fearful situations)

then add humanity (make relatable)

WALL-E comedic perspective - romantic/innocent, exaggeration - collects useless stuff as treasures, flaws - simple robot limited by his own technology, humanity - has developed emotions and falls in love.