Michelle L. Levigne's Blog, page 156

Off the Bookshelf: NO DAWN FOR MEN, by James LePore and Carlos Davis

Sometimes you read a book blurb and your immediate reaction is WHATTTTT??????

Part of you immediately insists, "No way." And another part says, "I gotta read this. It's just too ..." And you can't finish that statement because you're not sure what it's "too" of ...

NO DAWN FOR MEN takes J.R.R. Tolkein (Hobbit, LOTR) and Ian Fleming (Bond, James Bond) and tosses them into pre-WWII Nazi Germany for a little Indiana Jonesing ....

When I mentioned it on my Speculative group on Facebook, one person's reaction was to picture Gandalf walking into the Prancing Pony and asking for a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred. Or Gollum doing a Goldfinger speech.

Bottom line: FUN read. Very clever. A few spots where you want to say, "Okay, so that's where the author got the idea" for that character/event/detail in one or another of their famous books. Then a moment later you say, "Uh, wait a minute, that never happened!" I don't want to give anything away, but there's a search for a dangerous item that Hitler wants, that has to be destroyed, and the person carrying it is worn down by the burden, and a beautiful girl, and daredevils and nasty villains and ... READ IT.

I really, really hope the authors weren't playing with us, and I wasn't reading too much into a casual line, and there will be another adventure of Prof. Tolkein and Mr. Fleming.

In the Spotlight: A LIGHT IN THE WINDOW by Julie Lessman

Today's spotlight is on fellow ACFW author, Julie Lessman, with her new novel, A LIGHT IN THE WINDOW.
One Woman. Two Men. One stirs her pulse and the other her faith. But who will win her heart? 
Marceline Murphy is a gentle beauty with a well-founded aversion to rogues. But when two of Boston's most notorious pursue her, she encounters a tug-of-war of the heart she isn't expecting. Sam O’Rourke is the childhood hero she’s pined for, the brother of her best friend and a member of the large, boisterous family to which she longs to be a part. So when his best friend Patrick O’Connor joins in pursuit of her affections, the choice seems all too clear. Sam is from a family of faith and Patrick is not, two rogues whose wild ways clash head-on with Marcy’s — both in her faith and in her heart. 
While overseeing the Christmas play fundraiser for the St. Mary’s parish soup kitchen — A Light in the Window — Marcy not only wrestles with her attraction to both men, but with her concern for their spiritual welfare. The play is based on the Irish custom of placing a candle in the window on Christmas Eve to welcome the Holy Family, and for Marcy, its message becomes deeply personal. Her grandmother Mima cautions her to guard her heart for the type of man who will respond to the "light in the window," meaning the message of Christ in her heart. But when disaster strikes during the play, Marcy is destined to discover the truth of the play’s message first-hand when it becomes clear that although two men have professed their undying love, only one has truly responded to “the light in the window.” 
Award-winning author of “The Daughters of Boston” and “Winds of Change” series, Julie Lessman was American Christian Fiction Writers 2009 Debut Author of the Year and voted #1 Romance Author of the year in Family Fiction magazine’s 2012 and 2011 Readers Choice Awards. She has also garnered 17 RWA and other awards and made Booklist’s 2010 Top 10 Inspirational Fiction. Her book A Light in the Window is an International Digital Awards winner, a 2013 Readers' Crown Award winner, and a 2013 Book Buyers Best Award winner. Contact Julie and read excerpts from her books at www.julielessman.com, or through Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, or Pinterest or by signing up for her newsletter.
URLS:VIDEO FOR A LIGHT IN THE WINDOW:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGKjHddYNeE&feature=youtu.beJULIE’S WEBSITE:  http://www.julielessman.com/BUY LINKS:  99-cent E-book: http://www.amazon.com/A-Light-In-Window-ebook/dp/B0091JZXXK/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1Paperback:  http://www.amazon.com/A-Light-Window-Julie-Lessman/dp/0988769158/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Letters to Kel: FILLING IN THE WHITE SPACES

Have you ever thought about all that white space on a standard screenplay page?

Why do they waste so much paper, indenting the dialogue on both sides, inserting parenthetical that are indented even more, in the dialogue?

Part of that is to help with estimating timing, to know how long the screenplay is going to be. Standard formatted screenplays translate to about 1 minute of screen time per page of script. Of course, there is some variation you have to allow for, depending on how much action there is versus how much dialogue. A long exchange of snappy one-liners between two or three characters, with not much else happening on camera, might take a lot less than one minute per page. And in an action-intensive movie, a single line, such as "Bandit's car races up the incline, dodging a long line of state trooper cars and jumps the river, hitting Buford's Cadillac with his back wheels as he lands," could take up two, three, four minutes on the screen -- depending on whether the director decided that scene needed to be done in slow motion to get all the impact he wanted.

So what is all that white space for, anyway? That's what YOU have to fill in, when you're translating your screenplay into a novel. Right now, I'm turning my screenplay originally titled "Walk the Wolf Trail" into CHARLI, the 6th book in my Quarry Hall series. The screenplay took up 100 pages on my computer when I uploaded it into Word. I'm 30 pages into the book now, and there are 116 pages -- so how did I gain 16 pages already? Especially considering those "extra" 16 pages are single-spaced and the lines go from margin to margin instead of maybe 20 characters wide in the center of the page.

I'm filling in the white space -- taking you inside the characters' heads and senses, showing you how they feel, what they're thinking, what sensory impressions they are experiencing. A line of script says, "Bright summer morning," as it sets the stage, but in the book, I can go on for a paragraph or two, describing the chill in the air, the dampness lingering from the storm the night before, the smell of mud, the sight of leaves scattered across the lawn, the scent of coffee brewing in the next room, the rumpled bed from the heroine's restless night, the books scattered across the office floor, where a gust of wind knocked a window open and pushed the books off the shelf. On and on. WHY describe the scene? To put the characters THERE in the middle of it, so they feel like they're there.

On a film set, the artistic director and the people in charge of props and costumes and sound effects and the set create everything for the audience to see -- you, as writer, are in essence fulfilling all those functions. You could just say, "Jasmine walked into the room," but your character would in essence be acting in a blank room. Would you sit through a movie where characters walked through empty rooms, no color, no sounds, no furniture, no props? Or worse -- a movie where things and people suddenly appeared a second before they were needed or someone had to join a conversation? I don't know about you, but I HATE books where you had no idea there were other people in the room until they entered the conversation, or you had no idea the characters were in the kitchen until someone reached over and poured himself a cup of coffee. You wouldn't watch a movie like that -- so don't make your readers endure a book like that.

FILL IN THE BLANK SPACES -- set the stage, fill in the details, let them know what your characters are feeling, seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, thinking, remembering.

While all those details can be left to the director and the designers in a movie, that's your job now. Don't give your readers a boring movie. And while yes, it's a good thing to engage them so they use their imaginations when reading your book, it's a little disconcerting when readers imagine your heroine is a tiny, curly-haired blond with pixie-like features and a voice like a lark, but in an important scene she suddenly picks up and swings a broadsword weighing 200 pounds, and roars out a war cry that makes the rafters shake, and the hero shouts to his sidekick, "Who is that raven-haired Amazon covered in blue and scarlet tattoos?"

Some surprises are good for readers, but not when your story constantly conflicts with the images they're been painting in their imaginations because YOU didn't give them any details. This is YOUR playground they've been invited into, and YOUR imagination movie they're watching. Make sure they see and hear and taste and smell and feel and experience the emotions and memories and thoughts that YOU did, when you wrote the story. NO BLANK SPACES, PLEASE!

Off the Bookshelf: ESTHER by Norah Lofts

Another book read long, long ago -- as I recall, I got it from the Middleburg Heights Library several times during junior high and high school -- which I obtained through that place that makes it so easy to yield to temptation, Alibris.

How Alibris works is it connects you with probably thousands of used bookstores and other such vendors around the world, listing the book or movie or music you want, the prices charged by the vendor, and the names of the vendor. So if you have 6 copies of a book at 6 different vendors, and you have another book you want with 15 copies at 15 different vendors ... common sense says to save on shipping charges and get both books from the same vendor, if possible.

Anyway ....

ESTHER is, as the title makes clear, the story of the Hebrew girl who becomes Queen of Persia through what was essentially a beauty contest. From her story comes the phrase, "for such a time as this," meaning you may be in the position you're in, whether good or bad, to fulfill a specific purpose in God's plan. I was surprised to realize this story of intrigue, politics, revenge and a dash of romance, was written in the 50s. A well-told story never goes out of style.

The author doesn't stick strictly to the facts listed in the Bible, but it's easy to forgive her. The gist of the story carries through. I was delighted to finally get my hands on a copy to put in my library, and reread again in the future.

In the Spotlight: LONDON HOLIDAY

Today's Spotlight is my newest novel, and the newest addition to the Neighborlee, Ohio fantasy series published by Uncial Press:

LONDON HOLIDAY

The Internet + an unusual camera + a college project + Divine's Emporium = London Holiday. But who--or what--is London Holiday?

It started with an overnight stay at Divine's Emporium and a high school computer programming assignment. Athena found an unusual video camera, hooked it up to her computer, and video taped her cousin, London, whom everyone called Doni. She thought nothing of it, after all the other odd events of that night.

After all, Neighborlee, Ohio was the weirdness capital of the United States, and Divine's Emporium was the
caretaker, the way to control all that weirdness and keep the magic tamed. At least, that was what everyone who saw the strange things and people and events chose to believe.

Three years later, in an experimental computer class in college, Athena and her teammates chose to create a social media site as their project. The site, called FlopDrop, needed a hostess. Doni agreed to be the foundation for all the images of the hostess, whom they named London Holiday.

To the surprise of the team and the class -- and the disgust of their rivals and enemies -- FlopDrop took off. London Holiday and her CGI friends became overnight Internet sensations. London seemed to take on a life of her own.

By the time Athena and Doni realized that their artificial person had become a self-aware Artificial Intelligence, they weren't quite sure what that harmless experimentation three years ago had created. Were they midwives at the birth of a new lifeform … or repeating Dr. Frankenstein's mistakes on an even bigger scale?

Fortunately, all this was happening in Neighborlee, where outsiders didn't seem to notice the background weirdness, and residents either shrugged it off as, "So what else is new?" or had a good idea what to do to fix the problem.


ALERT!
ALERT!
Check out Uncial Press books at Untreed Reads on CYBER MONDAY for great deals.
40% off all titles
It's your chance to get LONDON HOLIDAY and other Neighborlee, Ohio novels at sale prices.
And if you can't make up your mind, no worries -- come back between December 17th and December 24th for 50% off all titles.

Letters to Kel: YOU'RE THE DIRECTOR -- Script to Novel

Happy Thanksgiving!
Are you thankful for your writing gift? If not ... maybe you're not doing it right.

Back to the subject of turning a screenplay into a novel....

One of the first books on screenwriting I read, back in college when I wrote my first screenplay longhand, on notebook paper in a three-ring binder, the book told me NOT to put down any stage directions unless it was absolutely vital to the movement of the story. Such as: "Jake picks up the talisman and puts it in his pocket." And then later, "The demon appears, streamers of evil magic shoot out his fingers and yank Jake through the wall from the next room, as the talisman glows red-hot in his pocket." Kind of vital to the action and the story progression, ya think?

WHY was this rule handed down in all capital letters and bold face? (not really, but I was at the neophyte stage where I memorized any and every rule given me by people with experience)

Because it is the director's prerogative to decide what the characters/actors do, how they react, and to sometimes even put the thoughts and emotions in their heads, affecting how they deliver their lines, how they react to each other, and all the "side business" that they attend to when the camera is focusing on someone else. Essentially living their own characters' lives while the story follows someone else.

But YOU are turning your screenplay into a novel, so now YOU are the DIRECTOR. YOU have the power. YOU know what your characters are thinking, why they have to pick up the gun on page 40 so they have the gun to shoot the terrorist or be caught with it and arrested for carrying a concealed weapon or hit the mugger over the head with it on page 100.

Do you know what your characters are thinking, why they react to the sight of cornbread dripping with maple syrup as if it reminds them of the greatest tragedy of their lives (because it does -- and you need to handle those insights and flashbacks delicately -- another topic)? Do you know what brought a secondary character into town in time to trigger a bar fight that results in the hero being shot so he's in the hospital when his ex-girlfriend -- who didn't tell him she was pregnant -- is rushed to the hospital to give birth?

You better know -- YOU are the DIRECTOR! (And because audiences, by and large, hate "lucky" coincidences.)

And while some directors are such geniuses that they can just wing it, a lot of directors are geniuses because they plan ahead (and then some pretend to just wing it). They think about each character and each scene, and they create background, they know the histories and reasons and feelings and reactions and what chemical reactions will create the bomb blast they need in the climax scene and how the hero can defuse the bomb without any training -- and how to insert that information early in the movie so the audience doesn't say, "Yeah, right, like THAT's believable?" when the hero saves the day.

You need to know these things. You need to plan ahead. You need to have conversations with your characters and get to know them. Whatever it takes. One author said in a workshop that she sits down and has coffee with her characters. She knows them well enough to know who will want plain black coffee and who will want a caramel mocha frappe with extra whipped cream. THAT is when you're ready to be the director and move your characters around like the genius the rest of the world needs to know that you are.

You are the director. Get ready to direct. It's gonna be a great movie -- whether it's on a wide screen or inside your reader's head.

Off the Bookshelf: LIFTER by Crawford Killian

Ever have a book you really enjoyed a long time ago, enough that you remember the title and the author, but you can't find it now?

That was the situation with LIFTER, by Crawford Killian. An Ace book from the "classic" period when so many good, smaller books just came out constantly.

Problem: Alibris and other online used bookstores are DEADLY. I'm talking dangerous. I'm talking almost any book you're looking for, at any price. If you're willing to pay it. I bought two old books I've been wanting to re-read for years, for 99 cents each ... but the postage and handling was ... well, not a problem, per se, but I really hesitated to pay more for postage than I paid for the books. Worth it, though!

What's LIFTER about? A boy dreams of flying ... and when he wakes up, he's floating 2 feet above his bed. He learns how to turn on the Lift Effect and then how to teach his girlfriend how to do it, and then his ability starts changing his life. He goes through lots of questions and concerns, such as whether it's dangerous to teach the rest of the world his new ability, whether he should keep it quiet, and whether the rest of the world will let him keep it quiet.

Fun book. Read it if you can find it!

In the Spotlight: SWEPT AWAY by Cindy Loven

Today's spotlight is on another new friend in ACFW: Cindy Loven, and her new book, SWEPT AWAY.

He survived a life-altering event. She is facing one.
Sara Jane Morgan is trying to balance teaching with caring for her grandmother who doesn't want to be cared for. When school lets out for the summer, the plans are for Grandma to teach Sara Jane to quilt as they finish up the Appalachian Ballad quilt Grandma started as a teenager. But things don’t always go as planned.
Andrew Stevenson is hiding from his past -- and his future. He works as a handyman to pay the bills, but also as an artisan, designing homemade brooms. When Sara Jane’s grandmother hires him to renovate her home, sparks fly between him and his new employer’s granddaughter.
It doesn't take Sara Jane long to see Drew isn't what he seems. Questions arise, and she starts online researching him. What she discovers could change her life -- and her heart -- forever.
Cindy Loven, an avid reader all her life, is seeing her dreams fulfilled, with the publication of her first novel, Swept Away Quilt of Love.  She co-authored this novel with Laura V. Hilton.  Born and raised in Arkansas, she loves her home state and is happy to live there with her husband of nearly twenty-nine years and her adult son. She and her family are very active in their local church, serving in many volunteer positions. She and her husband are very serious about informing parents about the dangers of the choking, after loosing their youngest son to this dreadful 'game' in 2009.  When not busy with church or her job as a “pr gal” for another author, you can find Cindy in her craft room, sewing, crocheting or making cards.

Find her on the web: Facebook BlogPinterestAmazon PageTwitter handle: @cndloven
Buy Links: Amazon Barnes and Noble Christian Books.com Deeper Shopping Cokesbury

Letters to Kel: RECYCLE!

There's a lot to be said for never throwing away anything you've written, no matter how incomplete or lame or full of logic holes it is.

Why?

Well, as a tie-in to NaNoWriMo ... you can take something you started years ago, revise it, and use it as a launching point for a new book. I'm talking about changing the names, even the genre, straightening out the plot that just wouldn't cooperate two, five, ten years ago, but now suddenly you know what went wrong.

For NaNo this year, I took a book I started writing more than eight years ago, originally titled "Hero Blues," and changed the title to "Hoax, Inc.," the next Neighborlee, Ohio novel.

(Blatant self-promotion: My newest Neighborlee, Ohio novel, LONDON HOLIDAY, was just released this past weekend from Uncial Press. Check out my publisher, or go to Amazon or iBooks or Kobo for an excerpt or to buy. Guaranteed fun!)

The first thing I did was change the major situation: A semi-pseudo-superhero is sick and tired of being taken advantage of by the mental midgets in the backwater town she has to protect. They've gotten so lazy, they don't pay attention to their gas gauges or obey the traffic lights, and complain loudly, to the point of threatening to sue her, when she doesn't rescue them from their own stupidity. So, she resigns and leaves town. And the story -- originally -- detailed how the superhero council tried to force her to come back to work.

Well, BIG changes when I turned it into a Neighborlee story. I wrote maybe 20 pages of new beginning before I get to the original start, and I added lots to that. Right now, I'm at 78,000 words on day 19 of 30 (the goal is 50,000 words) and I've almost quadrupled the original file, which was a lot of outline and notes to myself.

But I wouldn't have made as much incredible progress so far this month if I hadn't had that chunk of story that essentially fizzled once my heroine stopped grumbling and left the town. Yeah, there was a lot of funny stuff, silly stuff, grumbling ... and a lot of whining. Superheroes shouldn't whine, y'know?

Anyway -- NEVER throw away anything, no matter how bad it is. One of these days, you'll figure out why that rotten little chapter or 20 pages or outline that won't cooperate didn't work, you'll know how to fix it, and you'll be sailing along into a story that's FUN to write.

Off the Bookshelf: HOW TO DEVELOP STORY TENSION by Amy Deardon

[image error] Wanna keep readers turning the page, but can't figure out how to make the insertion of tension feel natural and work for your story?

Amy Deardon lays out simple techniques, with examples, in this short, useful book. This is her newest writing book -- at least, it was when I got it! -- and just came out this year.

Her introduction says it all:
"You can write your novel with perfect sentences, and deliver heartbreakingly beautiful descriptions containing profound metaphors, but if you don't have tension in your story your reader is likely at any moment to put it down.
"There are three fundamental reasons your story may not have tension:
"1. The narrative does not have an Outer Story
"2. The narrative's story arrow from the Outer Story is not clearly articulated.
"3. The narrative's story arrow is not moving forward.
"This ebook explores practical methods, including an amazing five minute trick that you can use to automatically develop tension in your writing."

Get it, read it, and start applying the exercises and tips. At the very least, you'll start looking at your scenes and the sagging middle of your book a little differently. Who knows? While you're reading, you might start getting brainstorms about the story you're working on right now ...