Category: Writing (Page 2 of 4)

NaNoWriMo is a marathon — NaNoWriMo is a marathon for writers.

I Answer the Most Annoying Questions about NaNoWriMo

March 18, 2017 / Grace

Saturday Afternoon, 34°F and foggy
Listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer—Tarkus

A confession: The first time I heard about NaNoWriMo I was skeptical. I had been fussing over a manuscript for more than a year and couldn’t imagine what anyone would get out of writing a novel in 30 days.

Then, on November 2, 2007, I made the irrational decision to give NaNo a shot. I won. I now understand that’s not the norm for first-time “WriMos” but I was already serious about writing and had a consistent writing habit.

However, “steaming pile” is not too harsh a description for the resulting manuscript. I disliked the protagonist. There was not enough tension. It was 100% seat of the pants and lacked a few important things, like a plot.

Yet it was worthwhile. Writing that first steaming pile of 50,000 words in 28 days gave me some useful results.Continue Reading I Answer the Most Annoying Questions about NaNoWriMo

Bad dialogue tags: as unnatural as talking on landlines in a meadow.

How not to tag dialogue

February 15, 2017 / Grace

Wednesday evening, 25°F and cloudy
Listening to The Nice, War & Peace

Please, fiction authors. I am begging you. Learn how to properly use dialogue tags. It’s not that hard, I promise. The bad dialogue tags in self-published fiction make my eyeballs spurt blood. I’ll be covering several varieties of bad dialogue tags and what you can do to fix them. If you’re not sure how to properly tag dialogue, keep reading. If you think you’re sure but are using dialogue tags other than said or asked more than once every 5,000 words, keep reading.

Said and asked are your dialogue tag MVPs

You could write a 150,000-word novel using no dialogue tags other than these. It doesn’t mean you have to, but they should make up the majority of your dialogue tags (not including properly used action tags or “beats”). Said and asked are your go-to tags because they are practically invisible.Continue Reading How not to tag dialogue

story ideas are worthless

Why story ideas are worthless

January 27, 2017 / Grace

Friday Evening, 32°F and cloudy
Listening to The Nice, She Belongs to Me.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but those story ideas you have for your upcoming, as-yet-unwritten novels? They’re worthless. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, is buying up ideas for novels. Go ahead, Google around and see if I’m wrong. I’ll just wait here.

The good news is, if you’ve been wasting energy hoarding your novel ideas, you can relax. The dollar value of your great idea is $0.00. Nobody is angling to swipe it from you. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter.

Yet I keep seeing comments like these in writers’ groups:

“I avoid social media pitch events like ass herpes because writers are lurking around hoping to steal my ideas.”
“Whatever my current idea is, I guard it like a state secret.”
“I flat out refuse to even tell my editor what the story is about until I’ve got the first draft finished.”

Now, there may be some good reasons to not share your story ideas, but “people are going to steal them” isn’t one of them. The value isn’t in the story idea. It’s in the story’s execution.Continue Reading Why story ideas are worthless

Your first draft - get out of your own way — You don't have the right words yet. Get comfortable with beginning with the wrong ones,

Your first draft: getting out of your own way

January 20, 2017 / Grace

Friday Morning, 32°F and foggy
Listening to ELP, Rondo Pt. 3 at The Lycium

I was hanging out on a writers forum when someone complained about struggling with how to begin their first draft of a novel. “I just can’t get it started. Nothing sounds right.”

The experienced writers were quick to weigh in with “just write it,” “don’t worry if your first draft is crap,” and Hemmingway’s assertion: “all first drafts are shit.” This is 100% correct. But only helpful if you understand why you need to just write go ahead and write your novel, and what purpose that serves.

The reason we say “just write it” is that if you’re struggling with where to begin, what you really need is to get out of your own way. Quit worrying about whether you’re starting in exactly the right spot, what it sounds like, how it flows or (worst of all) what people are going to think when they read it. If you’re smart, nobody is going to read your first draft. You’re going to revise and polish a second draft (at the very least) before you let another set of eyes on it.

Your first draft is your most important

Wait, what? Don’t let this fact intimidate you. Your first draft is the most important because without completing it you will never write the second, third, fourth or fifth draft you need to polish your manuscript to the point of publishability. Many if not most authors throw away far more words than they ever publish. This is especially true with the words we write when we’re first starting out as novelists. So get to work on that first draft, and quit worrying about starting in the exact right place (you won’t) or making it perfect right out of the gate (it won’t be).

Continue Reading Your first draft: getting out of your own way

late opener is no way to start your story — Tardiness is a flimsy substitute for stakes

Peeve of the day: the late opener

January 9, 2017 / Grace

Monday morning, 20°F with snow flurries
Listening to Tame Impala, Skeleton Tiger

A Bad Beginning

The late opener story begins with the main character alone and late for work, school, or a date. She has overslept. Curse you, malfunctioning alarm clock/newfangled smartphone! She hurries to get dressed, and rushing about, she stubs her toe. Curse you, secondhand ottoman! She runs her pantyhose. Curse you, patriarchy! She spills her cereal. Curse you, Count Chocula!

While all this is going on, she’s fretting about how disappointed/angry/annoyed her boss/teacher/date is going to be. Or worse, ruminating about her backstory (because it’s just fascinating that she grew up an awkward and bookish only child in Poughkeepsie, but moved to the Big Apple after graduation to pursue her dream of blah blah blah, and if only her stupid boyfriend hadn’t blah blah blah, and back when she was in 10th grade in Mrs. Fitch’s honors English class she should have blah blah blah).

And then, oh, the humanity, her car refuses to start. Curse you, Detroit! Continue Reading Peeve of the day: the late opener

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