I’m working!

I’m working. I’m revising. I’m rewriting.

The more I revise, the more I see to revise. Now, I’m rewriting the first few chapters and seeing even more places to rewrite.

I feel good that in some places I can do what Maass says it takes: I can let go of my words and rewrite scenes from scratch. Feels like jumping off a cliff, no, it feels more like standing on the edge of a cliff, lifting your arms out so you look like a cross and leaning forward over the side of the cliff, free falling. Heavenly. So far, I haven’t hit anything. Makes it easier to trust rewriting the next thing.

So, I may be away from the blog for a week or two. Or, I may only write short entries.

Bless you.

Heart about Writing

Hello Dear One,

Seems I’m always writing this blog with a dog named Time yipping at my butt. So I’m not always saying all I want to say, and sometimes my entry comes out as an essay.

Here’s just some heart about writing.

You are the one doing the writing. You are the god, the creator, but you are making something from things you don’t always consciously know about. These people or visions (characters, ideas) come, sometimes pester you, until you write. But they need some free rein. You are the passion, the flying, crashing wave that the work rides on.

First draft is Passion, Flow, Enthusiasm, Excitement! Let anyone (in the story) do anything, say anything!! Kill them all off!! Bring them all back to life!!! Use as many damn exclamation points that you want to!!!!

Use as many adverbs as you want to. Write as starkly as you want to. Describe nothing. Describe everything.

Just write whatever comes. Some of my best short pieces are from following the writng prompt “I’m going to write the worst drek ever.”

The hardest and most essential part is to sit still in front of the page, and wait. Wait. Listen. Watch. Hear out of the ears of your point of view character. Look out of her or his eyes. Touch with her fingers. Smell what she smells. Think what she thinks. Then, when you are there, not in your head but fully there inside the character or narrator, sitting in the hard chair she is in, concretely in her space and time, then, you write.

Through this joyous up and down roller coaster, you will discover what you’re making! And you will know why I love writing and why it’s so hard.

Enjoy the ride, but on the first draft, don’t wear a seatbelt and do let your hands fly out of the car.

 

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”                      -AlbertEinstein

Dialogue

“These days, the best and most artful dialogue is marked by inattentiveness of its characters.” 

–Charles Baxter in The Art of SUBTEXT: Beyond Plot

 

 

In dialogue, interest is added when characters aren’t paying attention to what each other says.

Dialogue should advance the plot.

Dialogue needs to move. It is considered action in fiction.

Dialogue should hold conflict about something.

 

            “Hear anything about the robbery?” He leaned against the doorframe, the beer casual in his hand, almost spilling.

            “Have you seen my green sweater?” She threw clothes out of her bottom drawer.

            “Heard somebody took all your mom’s jewelry?”

            “I swear I put it in this drawer. Did you take it?” Another top flew out behind her.

            “Take what?”

            “The green sweater with the ohm symbol on it. It’s one of a kind.” She was sitting on her clothes, now: knit, silk, cashmere.

            “Shit. Natalie was wearing it when I felt her up last night.”

           

 

Real life dialogue holds plenty of ummms, Hi, how are yous, repeated phrases, wells, yeses and nos. We don’t get to revise our real dialogue, but in our fiction, we can edit out what makes it slog and pull us down.

General guideline, according to Evan Marshall in The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, is “not allowing a character to continue uninterrupted for too long (A good rule of thumb is a three-sentence limit).”

 

 

In Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, Janet Burroway says, “But when people talk in literature they convey much more than the information in their speech. They are also working for the author—to reveal themselves, advance the plot, fill in the past, control the pace, establish tone, foreshadow the future, establish the mood. What busy talk!”

 

 

 

 

Happy Mother’s Day!!!!

We love, we nurture, we nourish, we clean, or go crazy because we haven’t gotten to clean. We are often the leaders of our home. We set examples and make mistakes and want so bad for our children to be HAPPY. We try so hard.

Yes, we have fun, get beautiful soft peck kisses, tight hugs, little fingers that feather across our necks, arms or backs and see the most BEAUTIFUL, PRECIOUS smiles ever.

I value you as a mother today. I appreciate all you do. You are amazing!!! You keep getting up again. You are the Supreme example of unconditional love.

Bless you.

Happy Mother’s Day!!!

(Thank you, Mom.)

Beats, briefly

Beats are simply the attributions, gestures, internal thought that usually surround dialogue. It’s based on the idea that we hear when we read, so the book has the right rhythm or doesn’t. Too many beats can kill tension, distract the reader. Too little beats leaves an abandoned clueless reader. In both cases, the reader will put the book down. (That’s assuming the novel gets past the agents that scan pages for 5 seconds and tell if the beats are too many or too few and then reject the whole manuscript.)

 

“Beats are the little bits of action interspersed through a scene, such as a character walking to a window or removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes…” from Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King
Beats such as drinking tea or smoking cigarettes are usually just filler and interruptive of the scene, unless they truly show the nervousness of the character or belong for some other reason. For example, a man speaking about his lung cancer while he inhales deeply from his personally rolled cigarette says something.

With beats, a reader can learn more about the characters and see what’s happening,

But, what’s happening should add to the story, not just be a break in dialogue.

Beat On.

Tag-Sending Attention

For those of you who don’t know, we bloggers try to help spread the word about other blogs. That’s what I like about blogging, we share and help others.

I, fortunately, have been tagged. That means I get to spread the love to six others and say six random things about myself. Thank you, Don of Orbis Writings.

Here’s the rules.

 

 

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Write six random things about yourself.
• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blog
• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
• Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

 

Here’s some random things about me.

 

I keep a life jacket in the back of my car in case someone spontaneously asks me to go water skiing or kayaking.

 

I usually keep a portable potty back there, too, in case Wise One makes a spontaneous request.

 

Today, Wise One, Grandma and I rode a Little Choo Choo train through Zilker Park.

 

I am actually using my laptop in my home office instead of upstairs in the bedroom or at a coffee house. (Another benefit from High Tension conference.)

 

 

Everyone who reads my blog knows I love chocolate, but get this, I haven’t had any chocolate for almost a week, well, four days. (since Sunday, I had chocolate chip cookies at the conference. They’re part of the price, and hey, I had to get my money’s worth.) 

 

I keep my waterski here in my office, which does me no good if I’m spontaneously asked to go waterskiing while I’m driving around in my car.

 

Dear Ones to whom I linked, may this bring you good and add to your success.

 

 

Ron Seybold, The Write Stuff

Kit Frazier Unleashed

Of Course I Write Romance Novels.

Scenes From a Notebook

Reality Check

Kathy Holmes

 

 

 

High Tension on Every Page

Yes!! The conference was fantastic! Yes!! It was worth the money and time! Yes!! I believe I’ll have significant improvement in my writing! Maybe even by 92%. I say that because when I arrived, a woman who had taken a previous Maass workshop told me her writing improved by 92% from that last workshop.

 

Tension keeps a reader reading. Tension holds attention and creates a memorable book. We all know that tension is good in a novel. What many don’t know is how to create tension on every page. This is what Donald Maass addresses.

 

I could give you some one-liners, and I will, but learning how to use tension should be experienced.  Maass uses the Harvard method of  presenting case studies. He worked through those with us. Sometimes we dissected our work, other times we dissected published works.

 

And Donald Maass.

Impassioned, dynamic, funny. He really cares and wants us to get this.

 

Tension is what leaves the reader wondering how things will end up, leaves the reader wanting to know what happens next, makes the reader keep reading.

 

So, if you want to study what you read for tension…

Notice where you skim. This means there is no tension there.

Check tension in your own body. Notice when you relax.

You can use these signs in your own work.

Ask your critique group members to mark where they wanted to skim and where it was really interesting.

 

You already know there’s tension in dialogue when two people disagree or when one person resists what the other says. How much dialogue do you have where everything is hunky dory and harmonious? There’s no tension there.

 

We’ve been so bombarded by action (especially chase scenes). Action scenes need to be different and the reader needs to know somebody’s emotional conflict over the situation.

Yes, some emotional conflict adds tension; It’s not plot, plot, plot.

 

Raise questions without revealing answers.

 

You might start first with deciding to have tension on every page.

Maass told me to throw my manuscript in the air and pick out a page at random to start on. Go through every page that way, not in order.

 

When Maass asked us to look over our work and find places to create more tension, we all just read our stuff over and over. We preserve our own words. This can be our novel’s downfall. We must be willing to let it go and rewrite the whole scene.

 

Tension comes from people.

 

(more coming from the conference)