CJ Redwine, whose query workshop I’ve mentioned before, got a great new book deal. Unfortunately for the rest of us, she’s only going to be doing one more query workshop and then she’s calling it quits. She says she still has room and the last one starts Monday! You missed your chance. I hear she’s creating an eBook with this info. I’ll update you.Read More →
We suck. Seriously. I mean, there’s lots of reasons we’re awesome. I wouldn’t not be a writer for anything, but still. We always know what’s going to happen next. Well, in fiction. Not like we can predict the future or anything. We yell at the television for bad writing. E.g. “You can’t just ignore the rules in the world you created, writers! Why? Why are you doing that? You’re lazy. That’s why.” We throw books. We even have a name for books that deserve to be thrown. “Wallbangers.” I know this makes sense to us, but how weird is this? We roll our eyes, grumble,Read More →
I bought another pack of index cards. I’m at this point in my story where I’m chucking what doesn’t work (after 11k words, trust me when I say: it could be worse). I’ve got to keep what works (mostly the characters) and dig deep and find the goals and the antagonist(s) and the conflict. (Why do I forget these things when I first start writing? It’s like I have to play with my characters for a bit before I can rip them apart and say, “You’re not quite right.”) So, I’m in the grocery store and there’s this pack of index cards. A bigRead More →
I learned a few years ago, when I lost an entire weekend to the time-suck that was Seasons 1 and 2 of Grey’s Anatomy, if you watch a television series in order, for at least a season, you can actually learn a lot. A season of television (good television, anyway) has story structure, character arc, and escalating conflict. Think about it. You get 22-25 or so episodes in a season of (most) TV shows. A season is structured to introduce the season’s conflict, build the tension, tie up the plot in a nice bow, and introduce next season’s story question. An episode does the sameRead More →
To me, especially when writing romance (which, I do), the two main characters have broken places*. It’s not that they couldn’t get past what’s dug in deep or that they’re incapable of healthy relationships. It’s that, just like in real life, we sometimes make bad choices when it comes to who we date and those bad choices can often be seen through a filter of our experiences. I know people can grow into their thirties, forties, fifties or older before finding what makes them choose people who are wrong for them.
In romance, to me, it’s about coming upon this person who is actually a perfect fit. Not perfect. Perfect is dull. But perfect for the character. And then it comes down to this push-pull that they’re just right because of how they not only soothe, but embrace, the broken places except the character isn’t ready yet because they need to grow. Need to arc, if you will.Read More →
I read a post a few days ago. It’s not the one linked below, because I had Kindle Klipped it to myself and read it there. In fact, I can’t track it down at all, because a Google of “brainstorming 100” comes up with lots of posts from different sites. It didn’t even hit me that much when I read it, except to say, “Hmm. That idea doesn’t suck.” But then I started reading a novel and, while trying to go to sleep, began looking for the GMC in that book. I was impressed to realize that while the hero’s GMC is obvious from the beginning, theRead More →
There are approximately a billion ways to create a character. A lot of people use character worksheets or questionnaires. I do not use these. I will be brave enough to admit that one of those reasons is because I never spell questionnaire correctly on the first go. That alone puts me off them. But, really, they just don’t work for me. I have a few personal tricks for developing* a character. I usually, but not always, start with an idea of what they look like using pictures of actual people. If it’s not there from the beginning, it comes quickly. Once upon a time, IRead More →
In my experience, which ordinarily involves a great deal of slapping myself on the forehead and muttering, “Why’d I do that?”, a writer who is serious about writing has to write everyday. Did you see how many times I use the word write or a variation thereof? Yeah. That’s because this is some serious writing info. So, every day. There’s a couple of reasons for this. In the big picture, if you’re not doing it every day, if you’re, say, only writing when the inspiration hits you, it will take you approximately 874 days to finish a novel. Know how long that is? For-freaking-ever. AndRead More →
I said earlier in the week I’d post my queries, before and after my workchop with CJ Redwine. I’m not looking at my notes (from more than a year ago) to see why I did this–I’m just comparing the two because I don’t think that would be fair to those who have paid for and benefitted from the workshop. Below, the very first query I ever sent out. A very public flighty heiress and a TV exec with a past he’d rather keep private work against each other to create a talk show while falling crazy in love. ON A BET is complete at 82,000Read More →
I don’t know how I ended up in my archives. Something I read had me coming back to see if I’d written something on the same topic and, well. Here we are. About a year-and-a-half ago (oh-my-God: have I been here this long?), I wrote about my plans to send out my very first query. I was nervous, of course. I expected rejection, but in that way where you know it happens, but if the universe lines up just right, it won’t happen to you. A few months later, I wrote this post about handling rejection and how to use it to figure out whereRead More →
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