How I Write

Hi everyone, I'd like you to meet one of our newest bloggers, Gina! She will be writing every other Tuesday. Be sure to give her a nice warm welcome to MMW! -Nikki

Everyone has their own writing process. Mine looks a little something like this.

Step 1: Shiny new idea. 

The idea usually strikes me in a very inconvenient manner: during my weekly grocery trip, during sacrament meeting, at three in the morning while I'm having an anxiety attack about laundry. But I latch onto it and let my brain deal with it for a while. I am so convinced of this new idea's brilliance that I am willing to set aside everything else to dedicate time to it. I forgo food, sleep, showers, and everything else in order to spend time with this idea.

Step 2: Drafting. 

This step is alternately known as "Plotting is for Pansies." I type until my fingers are sore (my left pinky is always the first one to get sore... that must be my weak link) and then I keep going. I draft, pounding out four, five, six thousand words a day. I AM A GENIUS.

Step 3: The wall. 

Somewhere around 40K words, I realize, "This is where plotting would have helped."

Step 4: Plot 

I create a synopsis. I create character bios. I do some detailed world building. In other words, I STOP and I THINK about where this shiny new idea will take me.

(For the record: I know some of you will tell me to plot before I start drafting. And there's a very good chance you are right. There is a much greater chance, however, that I will never learn my lesson and take this advice. #SorryNotSorry.)

Step 5: Finish the draft. 

Usually about 10% from the end - in other words, I've written 90% of a book at this point - I start to hate my computer screen. I just want to get the gosh darn thing written so I can dive back in and fix the horrible, horrible stuff I wrote before I plotted. And also the horrible, horrible stuff I wrote after I plotted.

Step 6: Let it sit. 

I ignore the manuscript for a while. I do some detailed world building. I spend some serious time with the main characters. I nail down a detailed time line. I start thinking this book is going to be totally brilliant because I am doing all the things you are supposed to do to make your book brilliant. I AM A GENIUS.

(Note: This is not the last time I will think I am a genius. Writing takes a certain bravado.) 

Step 7: Look at the manuscript again. 

I opened with a waking-up-and-starting-the-day sequence. I described my character in a mirror. Nothing happens until chapter fourteen, and I managed to turn that incredibly important plot point into a two-sentence description of nothing. I've named two different characters "Greg" and I don't even know what the second one is supposed to be doing for the story.

Step 8: Make revisions 

I clean it up, I make the changes. Deep cuts are made, telling is turned to showing, characters are solidified, tension is added, atmospheric and sensory details are carefully placed in. This is turning into a really good book, and it's only taken me, like, six months to get here! I AM A GENIUS.

Step 9: Send to Critique Partners. 

This is basically just waiting and refreshing my inbox forty seven times an hour and hoping I don't have to get new friends when these ones discover what a hack I am.

Step 10: Read the critiques. 

Alright. They pointed out some stuff that I need to fix, but there's some good stuff too. And, yeah, I definitely should have caught that. Well, that's just one opinion... okay two opinions.OKAY FINE THAT PART DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE COULD EVERYONE JUST STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.

Step 11: Implement the changes. 

More cuts. More changes. Change characters and pacing and tone and scenes and move things around and just basically make the whole thing completely different. There is now 4% of the original manuscript remaining in this document. And that's mostly just the names of the main characters repeated throughout the whole darn thing.

Step 12: Read through. 

It actually feels like it might be a real book!!!  

What's your process? Does it look a lot like this? A lot different? Tell me your opinions on plotting. 

How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?

My husband has an amazing voice. (One of the reasons I married him, actually.) He's a baritone with a fabulous range and a tone like butter. Yeah, I lucked out.

But my point was not to brag. (Okay, a little, maybe.) Several years ago when we were newly married (read: before kids) he and I sang in a barbershop quartet. (Hi, low alto over here that can pass for tenor most days.) We sang an old barbershop song titled "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?". It was about a young man who has a young lady actively pursuing him, and he wants to tell her to leave him alone, but doesn't know how. It's really cute and old fashioned, but the title has played many roles in my life.

One more recent one is that of placing a manuscript in a drawer (figuratively if you write on your computer) and letting it stew in there a while. I know that I am horrible at this. I think that all my stuff when it first flies out from my fingers is publishable. (I told you I had an ego problem.) I have to force myself to let things lie for weeks, sometimes months before I can revisit it again with a fresh eye with no more rose colored glasses.
I do this sometimes to myself, but most often after I've gotten a critique. Mostly because I have to let my ego heal (I told you I had an ego problem), but also so I can be objective about the advice given by the critter.

I usually only go back to it when the story won't leave me alone and I think about it all the time, wondering how my characters are doing.


I'm sure most of you are better at this than I am, but I was wondering how long you've let things sit. Joyce DiPastena is an author that I know from when we lived in Arizona after my hubby graduated with his undergraduate degree fourteen years ago. When I knew her, I didn't know she was a writer. (Come to think of it, I didn't know that I was a writer, either.) Anyway, she has a couple of great books published (sweet historical romances), and she mentioned on Facebook that she had dug out the first novel she ever wrote, written in college. (I won't make her hate me by guessing how long it's been. A few paltry years, I'm sure.) She commented that while she still liked the characters and the plot and general premise, the execution of it was horrible, so the writing would be 99.9% new.

How long do you let your babies stew?

(P.S. My husband finally got a job offer, but it requires a move...back to Arizona after 10 years back in Utah. We're very excited, but we have to be down there in about a month for him to start...and there is a lot to do between now and then, so I am going to "go away" for a while. Hopefully not longer than about 4 weeks, but I'm not sure. So now I'm giving you a chance to miss me. :P)

Being Me

"Be Yourself!" How many time have we heard that, in terms of our writing? It brought to mind a scene from this movie version of "Anne of Green Gables", where Anne Shirley has convinced her friends to send her down the river in a leaky boat in a dramatic reenactment of Tennyson's poem, "The Lady of Shalott". Watch this, and then I'll continue my thought.


You just have to laugh, but Anne typifies something so similar in us writers. Anne dreams the big dreams, the ones that are just so far away from her own reality, but then real life comes to wake her up. Not that our big dreams of being writers can't come true, or that we can't write about fantastical things. But what Anne had to learn, both in life and as a writer, is that what really sells is not "high-falutin'" talk, but characters based in reality. What would a real person do?

That's where we can mine our own experience to build our characters. Even if you are writing about pixies or ogres or an elf prince, they still have to have have personality traits that your reader can relate to.

Buon Lavoro!

"Double, Double Toil and Trouble"

This classic quote from Shakespeare's Macbeth is indicative of my topic today..."(Lead)Read on, MacDuff!"

Yesterday during a chat on fmwriters.com (come join us anytime, Nanoers or not!) I was complaining about how the "in between" scenes give me major stress. I know the major plot points of my story, where the story makes right turns in the action and character development, but how they get from point A to point B is sometimes a struggle.

And someone reminded me that when you have a scene that feels stagnant, like the action isn't moving the plot forward, ratchet up the tension. Add something to story to bring another aspect of your story to life. And it reminded me of a writing book I'd purchased last year, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, by Donald Maass.

I bought the workbook instead of the book so I could write in it, and use the exercises that he uses in his workshops. It's been so instructional to me, helping me break down the different aspects of my novels, and polishing up each individual part.

I wanted to share some of the things I'd gleaned from it, in terms of tension. He broke "tension" down into three problem areas to identify in your writing and fix.

First, make sure that any scene that happens in a kitchen, someone taking a shower, drinking and thinking, or driving a car from one place to another, is actually necessary. Especially look at the first 50 pages. If you have such a scene, CUT IT.  And if you can't cut it, add tension to it...make the scene about the underlying tensions between two characters, add critical information to the scene that the reader needs to make them want to keep reading.

Second, backstory. Telling us how your character was born, and basically sitting them down on the therapist's couch and letting them spew their issues isn't compelling reading. So Mr. Maass's suggestion is to find somewhere in the first 50 pages, any scene that establishes setting, sets up the situation, or is otherwise backstory. Then cut and paste it into chapter 15, or the chapter past the midpoint of the story. Does it belong here? If not, does it belong in your story at all? Could you find another place for it, also after the midpoint of the story?  These scenes should remain in the novel only if it answers some long standing question, something that illuminates some character that can't be answered any other way.

There's one more element to adding tension to your story, but it's a doozy, so I'll leave that for next week. Think about it, about your story. Where can you add tension? Where are you diluting tension by having your characters do unnecessary things? Rehash things the reader already knows? Telling us how cool your world is, when all the reader cares about is what happens next?

Think hard, 'cause the next part is a killer.

IMing Your Way Into Your Character's Head

(This is a repost from my own writing blog...we've got a bit of illness going around, and Mom caught it, but this is a great writing tip I hope comes in handy, especially for those of you that are doing NaNo or struggling with knowing your characters. Write on, my friends!)

So I have a great writing pal that is taking an online writing course. For one of her assignments she had to have a conversation with someone as if she were the character. She asked for volunteers, and we had a two hour chat, via IM (instant messaging) this morning, me as my character, her as hers.

Wow. I mean I knew my character pretty well, but I discovered things about her that I didn't know as we talked. How she comes off as icy and a control freak, but inside she's a mess. She has doubts about her current relationship that I (as the writer) didn't know. She's also afraid she's too damaged to ever have true love, or be truly open with someone.

I got to know more about her motivations and internal feelings than I had after all this time working with her. It was fabulous. Thanks tons, Anne!

"If you have the means, I highly recommend it." Ferris Bueller

Seriously, if you're struggling with getting to know a character, find someone who can do this with you. You'll be glad you did.

Working the Words

At this time of NaNo, it brings out into the open the dirty underbelly of writing. Internal editing, that horrid little voice inside our heads that keeps us from putting anything down because we're sure it's all trash.

But writing 1600 to 2000 words a day means that we have to write, write, write, and refuse to allow that nasty internal editor to come in and camp out.

I have to admit, I have a penthouse apartment for my internal editor. She comes and stays for months on end. I've been trying to evict her for years, but I keep forgetting that she has a spare key to the back door.

But today Nikki, as part of the Mormon Mommy Writers yahoo group, issued a word challenge. Write as much as you can in 20 minutes. Set the time and just go.

So even though I'm not officially doing NaNo this year, I am working on a new project and I thought as long as life is holding steady in limbo, I could try to work some on it using this challenge. So this morning I gave it a shot. (I have to confess here that even though the writing was all in 20 minutes, that period of time was interspersed in about a 2 hour period as the demands of motherhood interfered, but I didn't go out of that 20 minute allotment.)

It was HARD. I wanted to fiddle and fix, and when I wasn't sure about a fact I wanted to go and do some research. My internal editor (her name it Mitzy, by the way. Don't ask me why.) was screaming the whole time to slow down, examine things, noting how many times I used the word "looked" and shouldn't I go and find a better word and rework that sentence, shouldn't I be trying harder to vary sentence length and I definitely had to add some more description here so better go back and fix it.

But when I was done, I had over 750 words on the page. And I could fix and fiddle all I wanted with them...so now I just need to kidnap Mitzy and secure her with copious amounts of duct tape until the 1st draft is done. Then she can edit to her heart's content.

So even though I'm sure you've heard this before, give yourself permission to write page after page of garbage before you let your editor loose (whatever his or her name is.)

One Track Mind

So I don't know about the rest of you, but I tend to fixate. I am not one of those people who can mulitask when it comes to something I love. (Dishes, housework, and laundry do not count, so I CAN do those things while thinking about others.)

I love writing. They haunt me, these stories in my mind. I wander around most days in a slight fog, registering that there are things to do, kids to care for, chores to be done. Right now we are waiting to hear if my hubby finally has a job (any day, ack!), but all I can think about is writing. And cursing my crazy life right now that is going to keep me from doing NaNoWriMo (Nation Novel Writing Month for all you newbies out there).

Do you want to know how crazy it is? The other day I drove into the Walmart parking lot, the radio on to my daughter's favorite station. Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" came on, and as I listened to the story told in that song, a image came to mind. A petite blond walks into a bar, her wallet and ID out to show the bartender because even though she's thirty, she still could pass for twelve, and this isn't her regular place. She's there to meet a new client and as a PI only a year into the business, she can't afford to turn down work, even though her ex boyfriend, a police detective and also her ex partner, had proposed several times. She keeps turning him down.

I pulled into the parking stall and it was pouring rain. I grabbed an envelope from the mail I'd picked up before I left for the store and pulled a pen from my pocket. I used Nikki's fabulous tip from last week about plotting from the ends to the middle, and in about 10 minutes, I had the bones of this story. I wandered the store, picking up who knows what because all I could think about was this story, fleshing out details in my mind. I came home and made dinner and babbled at my hubby for half an hour about this story because I was so excited about it. And now all I want to do is NaNo and take this skeleton and fill in the muscles and brain and heart of the story.

Please, PLEASE tell me that I am not the only one like this. Of course, if I am, you can tell me that, too, and I'll quietly go find a therapist to help me find normal again. :)

That Darn Voice!!!

Voice. That ever illusive, I-know-it-when-I-read-it voice. We talk a lot about voice, about what it means, how to develop it, release it, expose it like a da Vinci sculpture (I can't find the exact quote, but he's supposed to have said when asked how he carved such remarkable figures into stone, "I simply reveal what was already there.")

Sometimes I have it. In some of my works it sings out, surprising me and everyone else like Susan Boyle's "I Dreamed a Dream". The package is less than ideal, being a rough draft and all, but when the pages are pulled back, a big reveal happens. I sit back and wonder at it, thinking "That was in there the whole time?"

But when us newbies ask other, more established writers how to find that ephemeral thing, or even ask agents and editors what they mean by voice, we get a bunch of blah, blah, blah answers. By this I mean we can't understand them because it's like trying to describe the color blue to someone who's never seen it. You know it and mark it in your memory when you see it, but you can't turn around and describe it to someone else.

Through my tiny bit of study, these are the things I've come up with for find a writing voice:

1. Read everything you can, from picture books to how to retile the bathroom floor. As you do, you'll discover there are words and phrases and sentences that appeal to you, that call out, that SING. Study those things. Dissect them, shake their little froggy legs until you've figured out what it is about those sentences that you like.

2. Write lots of different things. Write poems (that you will burn so your children will never be embarrassed reading them later). Write picture books. Write whole chapters to novels you will never finish. Write a how-to pamphlet to show the best way to bathe a pig. Write until you find that little gem glowing somewhere in your work, then...

3. Reveal your voice to yourself by dissecting and identifying what aspects of your writing shines, sings, PERFORMS for you. As you take those bits and pieces and analyze them, you will see the patterns of your own "voice", so you can duplicate it again and again.

This sounds like a lot of hard work. And it is. But isn't our work, aren't our novels, aren't WE important enough to take the time to really know what our voice is?

Your Life in Your Writing

bu Megan Oliphant

Now I'm not talking using an experience verbatim (though that can work sometimes, too). I mean how often do you take some experience from your life, mix it up a little, interject it into the life of one of your characters, and POOF! You have a part of you left in your story.

Example: (and yes, truth is stranger than fiction sometimes) It's April, and cold. A stinging breeze whips over the mourners at the graveside of my grandmother. Someone in the large group of relatives hands out pale blue ballons to all the grandchildren and great grandchildren, to be released after the closing prayer. We stand there, the wind twisting and banging balloons together as we huddle under the warmed tent, the noise of them so loud I can't hear the bishop or my grandfather as they speak.

My one year old thinks it's a game, and even though my husband and I pass him back and forth to keep him out of range, he succeeds time and again in grabbing the strings and squealing his delight. My three year old keeps asking, "Mommy, I can take it home, right? I love balloons. I can take it home, right?"

Eventually the service is over, and we stumble out, tripping on the fake grass carpet laid under the chairs. Shuffling to a clearish spot in the pine tree studded cemetery, we release our balloons in a ragged bunch, as some people don't hear the announcement to let them go.

The balloons bang into the sudden snowflakes that have appeared, and the wind, with a whistling laugh, sweeps the balloons into the waiting arms of the pine trees, popping them and leaving their carcasses like droopy Christmas decorations.

Totally true story. Needless to say, this little scene has made it into one of my novels, changed up a bit.

So here's your question: Do you separate your life from your fiction, or do scenes like this work their way in to writing?

Characters Coming to Life

by Megan Oliphant



So right now it's about 2:50 am, and I just got home from seeing the Twilight Trilogy at our local theater with my 14 year old daughter. (So I apologize profusely if this is incoherent.)

It was fascinating for many reasons, but what I enjoyed most was people watching (or people listening, since we were in a darkened theater.) Our crowd was definitely "Team Jacob", with lots of cat calls, whistles, and various other outbursts of approval every time he came on scene. Especially with his shirt off.

It made me wonder about Jacob as a character, and what made him speak so clearly and so well to so many. Or Edward, for that matter. Or Harry Potter, or Elizabeth Bennet. All these characters are from a book, but books that are so well known, so beloved, that somebody had to make a movie about it. Had to visually realize what millions of people pictured in their heads.

As a writer, that's what I want for my characters. I want them to be as real to others as they are to me in my head. When I first started writing, I thought that meant describing their physical appearance, so the reader could see dark hair, blue eyes, and glasses on an oval shaped face above a perfect male body. Or whatever. It took me a long time to understand that no, I didn't need to create an actual picture with words, I needed to leave an impression strong enough that the image could carry the reader through the scene, or chapter, or the entire book. I struggle with this in the visual arts, too, trying to be so accurate that when all that's really needed is a hint of color or highlight.

That's the type of thing we have to practice as writers. Creating hints and highlights, not a realistic photograph. We have to leave enough up to the reader's imagination that they want to keep reading because the story and characters have become their own. We as the authors have slipped into the background and let them step into the story.

Think about that this week as you work on your own writing. Are you adding enough to be clear, but not so much the reader is bogged down with explanation? Do you trust the reader enough to "get it" or are you so preoccupied with creating the "perfect picture", that you bore them?

Buon Lavoro!

Acceptable Influence

Last week I talked about finding my voice and balance between myself and absorbing the flavor of the authors that I read.
This week I wanted to introduce one of the writers whom I've actively admired and tried to emulate (not too much, though.)

Orson Scott Card is a famous Mormon writer. He's been around longer than he'd like me to point out, and while it wasn't his first effort at novel writing, Ender's Game was, in it's time, as amazing as Stephanie Meyer's Twilight is today.
I've read every book by Mr. Card, and own most of them (which is a serious investment with several kids to supply basic needs for.)
OSC has also written How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. Even if this isn't your genre, its principles apply to the basics of good writing.
Two things have stuck with me over the years about OSC's writing. First, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. Perfecting your dialogue, the voices of your characters through what they say is key. Dialogue, more than anything your characters do, will bring the reader closer to being a part of the story. Dialogue reveals more about the people in your novels, whether they are liars or perfectionists, sly or simple. Or all of the above. As much as we want to be able to put the things we see inside our heads on the page, we don't want to take up 1000 words of our novel to describe the view from the doorway. Our readers don't want that, they want to know what happens next. Dialogue propels the action forward. So the sooner we get a handle on our dialogue, the better.
The other thing that I've heard from him several times is that evil characters are boring. The whole “anti-hero” fad is annoying in the extreme because what really fascinates him in a book is when a good man (or woman) is faced with agonizing decisions, choices that have us as readers screaming at the book in heartbreak over these people we love having to deal with such horrible options.
I have to agree. I have a hard time sympathizing with characters whose motivations are so alien from my own. I don't mind reading about them every once in a while, but it's like looking at some odd creature of nature, safely behind glass at the zoo. I'll look for a while, but I won't ever fall in love with it.
So when I write, I try to have my MC be the kind of person that is good, faced with difficulties that seem impossible to overcome. Of course you need bad guys, and they can't be one dimensional, either. But they're the bad guys. They don't need to be sympathetic. They can be alien to our way of thinking. That's why they're the antagonist.
Next week I'll talk about another author who caught me young, and changed the way I thought about narrative in novels.

My Writing Voice: Who Am I?

I debated all week what to write. Should I write something inspirational? Personal? Instructive? Should I try to be all things to all people?
And so I came to my topic. Being a people pleaser. This is built in to my psyche. I never want anyone to be angry with me, so I try to accommodate them by being everything to everybody. (This doesn't seem to apply to my children, with whom I have no problem making angry and not caring one whit.)
When it comes to my writing, I write as eclectic as I read. In fact, I can't be a reader while I'm a writer. I tend to absorb the style of the author and it shows up in my own writing, both in cadence and genre. I'm very sponge-like in that regard. (I'm spongy in other ways, too, but we won't go there.)
I'm still discovering my voice. I know I like humor. A story doesn't have to be all funny, but a surprising twist that make me laugh out loud is something that makes the story memorable.
I also like mysteries. Even when the story isn't a mystery per se, I still like unexpected twists and being outsmarted by the author.
I'm a skimmer. I am not a page-after-page of description gal. I've ruined more than one reading experience by skimming over pertinent facts and being brought up short with a “What did I miss?!?” Then having to flip back several pages until I can track down the lane change in some paragraph I skimmed over.
There are a few authors, however, that have made it into my permanent pantheon of acceptable influences. In the coming weeks I'll explore these various writers and why I consciously choose to emulate them, hopefully creating my own voice in the process.

Buon lavoro! [A traditional Italian phrase that directly translated means “Good work!”, but is more like “You can do it!” I hope you don't mind if I finish off my posts with it. Because you can, you know. Do it, I mean. ;)]

Exposition Masquerading as Dialogue

Jenn's post yesterday got me thinking about some of the habits I've had to overcome since I began writing. One of my bad habits was thinking that because I'm using dialogue in a scene I'm showing and not telling. Unfortunately, that is not always true. This short article from http://www.tkkenyon.com/fiction-writing-exposition.html illustrates this common pitfall and how to avoid it. I'm happy to say that I wasn't quite as bad as this example, but oft times our flawed techniques are subtle, which can make them harder to overcome.

"As You Know, Bob." -- Exposition Masquerading as Dialogue

If your dialogue sounds too stilted, you may have exposition passing itself off as dialogue. Dialogue's one and only purpose is to elucidate tension between characters. It is not, ever, ever, to convey information. A bad example of what I mean:

Exposition masquerading as dialogue: "As you know, Bob, we've been stuck on this desert island for twenty years, eating only the coconuts that grow on the one tree and fish which we catch with our hands. We have several vitamin deficiencies, and you've been picking your nose this whole time. Stop it, or I'm going to kill you!"

Or:

Dramatized exposition, and one line of dialogue: Ted pounded the coconut open with a rock. It wasn't quite ripe yet, but he was so tired of fish, and his fingernails stung in the salt water where they cracked and peeled.

Bob sat on the beach a few yards away. He was picking his nose again. Again.

"Stop it!" Ted screamed and picked up the rock he had used to smash the green coconut into meaty fragments.