.

This one isn’t an exercise in the true sense of the term, it is more like a tip to simplify the action in your writing to make it clearer and stronger.

Search through your work for ’suddenly’ and ‘before’. You can use the ‘find’ feature to help you locate them.

Let’s start with ’suddenly’. How do you use suddenly? Are you using it to modify a not so exciting or weak verb? Are you tapping your reader on the shoulder and saying, ‘hey, this is where things get exciting’ instead of letting the action build and explode before their very eyes?

To borrow an example from rsmellette over on AQ, which is stronger?

“Suddenly the room was full of bullies.” Or “Bullies crashed into the room.”

Which is going to move the pace of your story and get your reader on edge? Is ’suddenly’ going to surprise them, or is the action happening before you eyes going to do it?

In most cases, writers find that they can cut ’suddenly’ and make their sentences stronger and more compelling. Give it a whirl. How many can you cut?

Today’s other action tip came in yesterday from my brilliant critique partner and deals with ‘before’. As she puts it: “You might search for the word “before” and rewrite the sentences where you use it in the middle of an action. It seems like you write “He stood before walking to the door” when you could just say, “He stood and walked to the door.” Good call, eh? In my 30 pages I had a whopping 21 uses of ‘before’. That’s just wrong, wrong, wrong. Simply the action.

Go forth and simply my writer friends. You can do it.

Enjoy!

Tags: professional development, writing tips // Add Comment »

How are you feeling? Are those exercises getting your writing muscles limbered up?

Today’s exercise is odd, but fun. First things first, take a peek in your fridge and cupboards, then grab a pen and paper and write out a grocery list. If you want, you can borrow mine:

sour cream
eggs
bananas
cucumber
bread
crackers
milk

What we’re going to do is make that grocery list stand out. We’re going to make it evocative. Ready?

We’ll get ourselves started with a few themes to help us get in a ‘mood’. To make it simple for our first go around, we’ll use some of the main story genres; romance, science fiction, mystery and literary.

Let’s start with romance. Pick an adjective (or verb) for each of the items on your grocery list that shows your genre/theme. By the time you’re done your list, there should be a feel for the theme. For example, in romance you might have passionate milk or caressing sour cream, maybe some doe-eyed eggs and swooning bananas. My list is a bit silly, but it gives you an idea, particularly if you compare it against the adjectives you pick for another genre.

How would your list differ for science fiction? And mystery? Maybe you’d have screaming crackers, murdered eggs, stealth bread.

When you’re done your lists, compare them. Can you get a sense of the genre/theme or emotion you are trying to convey in each list? (Ignore the genre title.)

When you are done laughing at yourself and your list, check back with a few scenes in your manuscript and see if your adjectives and verbs are doing the work you think they should to evoke mood.

Enjoy!

Tags: professional development, writing tips // Add Comment »

Okay, I’m going to get evil today. We’re going to make your writing bones ache, but it is going to feel soooo good afterwards.

One of the biggest issues I’ve had with my writing has been progression and focus. Part of this is a result of me grabbing an idea and just going for it without much forethought or planning. Here’s an idea. Off I go. Then I find myself in edit hell for ages and ages while I try to pull it all together into one tight little package.

Then I took a class from Susan Meier last fall. It saved me! She taught me a golden little nugget that I’ll share with you here. As you write, edit or even plan your story, think of this: every scene must have at least an ‘action’, ‘reaction/consequence’ or ‘decision’. And they must flow. In other words, an action sets off a reaction which creates a decision. That decision causes a new action and onward. You may have a scene that involves one aspect, or all three, depending on the ’size’ of what’s happening.

Here’s an example: John hits his brother in the mouth (action). His brother hits him back (reaction) and breaks his jaw, sending John to the hospital. John decides (decision) to get even with his brother. John lies to his brother about a girl the brother is dating (action). The brother has a fight with his girlfriend and they break up (reaction) and decides to leave girls aside and travel to Africa (decision).

When I wrote my latest story (during NaNoWriMo), I used Susan’s tips again. This time, as I wrote my story, I kept my handy story notebook beside me and wrote down a few words describing the scene I was writing or about to write. Naturally, I included whether it was an action, reaction or a decision. This was huge in helping me keep the story focused as well as helping me move forward when I felt stuck. And at the same time, I got to keep writing and dreaming up the story as I went, which is pretty much my favourite way to write. (I usually know the ending and some of the major plot points before I start writing though. It isn’t all totally moving forward in the dark.)

I can’t say enough for this method. For me, it was a golden nugget of wisdom. It opened that door, allowing the light of writing knowledge to shine down on me after months of struggle. So, now it is your turn to go forth and work that writing muscle. You can’t lose.

Tags: professional development, writing tips // Add Comment »

Okay, today’s exercise is a fun one. You get to sit back and use your imagination. Are you ready? Let’s go!

You’re going to need a partner for this one. So either grab an existing character who needs some fleshing out or create/fill out a new character who’s hanging out in a work in progress and needs some help.

Generally, when people think of characters, they first think of their outside appearance. Are they blonde, brunette? Eyes blue, green, brown, grey? Etc, etc. That’s all fine and dandy, but what about the aspects of what makes them real? (Case in point, New York Times Bestselling author, Sophie Kinsella, never actually described her character Becky Bloomwood in the Shopaholic series. Yet, she is so real that readers want to reach through the pages and slap her, hug her or simply meet her for coffee.) So, once we’ve got the appearance down, what can we do to flesh these ‘character’ people out?

Please note that if you don’t know the plot, it’s okay. You can build plot first or character first, or even build them simultaneously. Whichever you choose, try and ensure that the plot and character work together in terms of believability, firing up motivations and the like. Right now, we’ll put our finger on who exactly this character is:

First of all, we need to do some digging.

What is the cultural background of your character? Are they of German decent, Finnish, English, Italian? Small things like this can influence the way they feel about food, family, even physical proximity to others. Personally, I find this one tricky seeing as I pretty much see everyone as part of that big melting pot called Canada and think we’re all fairly similar. However, when I’m creating a fictional character these ’stereotypes’ can be helpful for filling out small details in the character’s behaviour and personality.

Next up, how does their family background affect their behaviours, attitudes, philosophies as well as how they express themselves? You can move these questions along to the effects of their social background (where they grew up, education, wealth or lack of it) as well as religious background and emotional background.

Once you have some of the bones of who they are and how they were raised and their inner core, we can put some meat on those bones:

• What was your character’s most embarrassing moment?
• Who was their first boyfriend/girlfriend? How did the relationship end? How does it influence future relationships?
• How do they feel about animals?
• What is their occupation?
• What are their friends like?
• What are their dreams?
• What are their relationship like with their parents and siblings?
• What is their biggest weakness? This can be anything from chocolate to sappy movies to the inability to say ‘no’ to the urge to run away any time things get difficult in their life.
• What does their home look like?
• Do they collect anything?
• What are their hobbies?
• What movies do they like?

I’ve built a few worksheets you are welcome to use if you want to help organize yourself in this activity. Context and Character (pdf) Context and Character (Word) (scroll to bottom of page) as well as Character Core (the sample) and Character Core (Word version to fill out at bottom of page).

Enjoy getting to know your characters. It’s time well spent when you hit the pages of your manuscript.

Tags: worksheets, writing tips // Add Comment »

How are your writing biceps feeling today? That was some weight we pulled yesterday with all those adjectives and adverbs, wasn’t it? Today, we’re going to give your fingers a workout, so do some finger stretches to get them limbered up.

This is a strange exercise and I resisted it for some time. Take one of your favourite pieces of work written by someone else. Or take a piece of work that you strive to be like. For me, I write chick lit/romantic comedy so I chose the opening of one of Meg Cabot’s books. You will need five pages of that other person’s work.

Here’s where you need your fingers. Take those five pages and type them (or write them) out. I know this seems like a strange thing to do, but trust me on this one. Type it out and see if by the end of your five pages if you haven’t discovered something about how the great writers approach things.

Let me share a bit of what I discovered when I typed out those five pages of Meg’s. First of all, let me mention that I had the impression that chick lit tended to have stunted, grammatically incorrect sentences here and there to create that chick lit voice. I also figured there were internal wit and barbs all over the place. Not quite true. In fact, my grammar checker didn’t go off ONCE during that five pages, whereas in my own writing I was going off several times in one page. Lesson learned: chick lit writing is actually quite good in terms of grammar. It just gives you the impression of being informal and off the cuff in terms of grammar rules.

There was also more action than I had realized. By action, I mean that things were moving along a lot faster than in my own work. We were right into the action and there was no let up. It was focused and fast. There were also a few well chosen words to set the scene, describe a character, and in short, things were tight.

Probably the coolest thing was how she dealt with backstory. Seeing as the book I copied out of was part of a series, she had to tuck a lot of backstory into the first few pages. To do that, she used a disposable character and used him very well to fit her needs. It was interesting, even for someone who had read the first book several times.

In short, I learned about five times more by typing out those five pages than I did rereading and analyzing those five pages five times. So get over the fact that this seems lame and give it a whirl. It won’t take as long as you think it will and you might discover something interesting.

It’s time well not wasted.

Enjoy!

Tags: character development, writing tips // Add Comment »

Happy New Year everyone. If your resolution (made in the wee hours of last night and fuelled by the optimism of Vodka) was to get fit this year, I can help you out. That is, of course, you mean exercising your writing muscle.

For the next few days, I’ll be posting some of my favourite writing exercises from 2008. I encourage you to take the time (Don’t cheat! Some of them can be really telling and helpful.) to try the exercises. There’s always something that can be improved, tweaked or strengthened. Sometimes, you only need your eyes opened.

Without further ado, here’s the first one (borrowed from Noah Lukeman):

1) Take your first page and remove every adjective and adverb, listing them separately.

2) Look at your first page without all these adjectives and adverbs. Does it read faster? Are your major ideas still being conveyed?

3) Look at your removed adjectives and adverbs lists. How many are boring, commonplace, cliche? Try and find a stronger replacement. (Get out the thesaurus!) If you have two or three clumped together, see if you can find one strong adjective/adverb that could replace the two or three. The idea is to aim for stronger imagery and a faster, cleaner read.

4) Try placing your replacements in your story. How does it read now?

This exercise really opened my eyes in terms of adjectives that I overused–I still find myself falling into overuse from time to time. In fact, I went and did a ‘find’ for words like ‘look’ in my ms and tried to find other ways to convey the same idea without ‘look’ or in some cases, remove the whole sentence, creating a better flow.

Good luck and see you tomorrow.

Tags: professional development, writing tips // Add Comment »

Remember the other day when I mentioned that as aspiring writers we need to stand out? Well, here’s a quote from literary agent Nathan Bransford that illustrates my point quite nicely:

“To put it another way still, when a sales rep goes to a chain and tells the buyer about the books on the upcoming list, they need something to point to that makes a book stand out. They need to be able to say, “This is what makes this book different.” A unique character, a unique way of telling the story, a unique plot, a unique world, something, anything that sets a book apart from the thousands of other books that are published every year.”

In other news: Publishers Marketplace is offering a free few days with their service. (Until January 3rd when they start charging $20 a month again.)

As well, Firebrand Literary is offering a query holiday until the 15th of January.

Go forth and prosper my good friends. (And check out your local bookstores, the deals are a plenty.)

Tags: agents, book news, queries // Add Comment »

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday. If it warms up, I think we’ll hit the slopes! See you there.

From one scary looking elf, to you.

Tags: life // Add Comment »

Have you been naughty or nice? If you’ve decided to be naughty and save Santa a trip, then read no further.

However, if you were nice, or simply want to watch Santa on his journey, go to Google Earth and watch Santa’s progress across this great world. (You will have to do a bit of downloading, but don’t worry, they make it simple and easy. And just think how cool it will be to show your kids where Santa is. Gee, kids, Santa Claus is coming to town, better hit the hay!):

Interested in more? Try these links:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/tracking-santa-backstory.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10128642-2.html?tag=mncol;posts

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/12/norad-keeps-the.html

Tags: Internet, just goofing, life // Add Comment »

With the economy dipping down low, there are obvious implications in the publishing industry. Everyone from agents to editors are going to be more careful about what projects and clients they take on. Nobody wants to take a risk when the business itself is already risky. They want a sure thing. They’re going to be searching for the professional newbie in the pile. The one who has done their research, is easy to work with, takes the time to ensure small mistakes are corrected and the like.

That means us aspiring types must take the time to personalize our queries, ensure our queries make sense and express in simple terms what our story is about. We have to showcase. We have to sell. Now is not the time to sit back and say, “I am so wonderful, they will come to me. They’ll ignore a few typos and ill placed adverbs because they’ll see how stellar my story is. My talent will speak for itself.” Not. Give it your best shot, folks. Dazzle them. Make them jump up from their desk and whoop in joy for finding someone who knows the business and has taken the extra few days or months to ensure their submission is A1.

Case in point, Kristen Nelson of The Nelson Literary Agency read 35,000 queries in this last year. Of that, she read 88 fulls and of that, found 2 new clients. 2 in 35,000. You heard right.

Make sure you stand out. Make sure you’re the best you can be.

Tags: career building // Add Comment »