Jennifer R. Hubbard's Blog, page 129

Spring break and news

In writerly news:

Heidi R. Kling, author of the upcoming SEA, has been inviting others to join her for Author Appreciation Week, in which people celebrate some of their favorite writers on their blogs. On Twitter, the tag is #AAW.

Next week is the Library-Loving Blog Challenge! There's still time to sign up, if you're interested. And one brave challenger has already put up the first in a series of fund-raising posts, plus a book giveaway. To get a jump on the festivities, please go comm...

Kids doing mean things

I almost called this post "books about mean kids," but one issue that's covered in all of these books is how victims can become perpetrators, and "mean kid" therefore seems unfairly simplistic.

I recently read Burn by Suzanne Phillips, Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood by Eileen Cook, and Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers.  All three books cover bullying or abusive peer relationships.  Burn is told in third-person present tense with a male main character, Some Girls Are is first-person present t...

New books for early March

It's time for another installment of the Books of 2010, featuring recent debut young-adult and middle-grade novels:



Tagged, by Mara Purnhagen (March 1). Young adult. Kate Morgan investigates vandalism and finds the trail leading to someone she knows.



Hex Hall, by Rachel Hawkins (March 2).  Young adult.  Young witch Sophie Mercer is exiled to Hex Hall, an isolated reform school for witches, faeries, and shapeshifters, after a prom-night spell goes wrong.  Humor makes this novel stand out in the ...

Reading

A lot of the tips and writing tools I discuss on this blog are things I apply when I'm revising and editing.  They're tools that I make conscious decisions to use; they're parts of a deliberate strategy. 

But one thing I always say when I teach writing workshops is this:  Read a lot.  Nothing will ever do a better job of showing you how to put words together.  Reading teaches us pacing and rhythm.  It even teaches us the basic mechanics:  the general length of a paragraph, for example.  Imagi...

Big moments that seem small

Last week, I had an idea for a scene in my work-in-progress.  It was about an undertow, a thread that ran through this scene.  I wrote two and a half pages from that spark--and I ended up keeping one line.

But it's a really good line. ;-)

What I like about the line is that it captures a certain tension between the characters; it's a moment where one of them realizes something about the other that has gone unspoken.  It has started me thinking about subtle key moments in stories, the little gest...

A list of student favorites

Some good things:

The crocuses have come up in our front yard.  Along with the witch hazel and snowdrops I saw the other day, they are the first harbingers of spring.

I received a wonderful packet of thank-you letters from a school visit that I did.  This is unquestionably one of the best parts of being a writer.  An item I thought my blog readers might be especially interested in, since many of you are YA writers also: many of the students named their favorite books, and these are listed belo...

Tension: Desire and Obstacles

Nothing keeps a story going like tension.  I'm thinking of tension as desire balanced by obstacles, as forward movement into dark and twisty corridors where we're not sure where we'll end up.  It's the electricity between two people who want to kiss but are afraid to, or forbidden to.  It's the push-pull between haves and have-nots.  It's the competition between rivals for the same prize.  It's a quest: for answers, or love, or revenge, or forgiveness, or vindication, or anything worth seekin...

Paradoxes

A writing student asked me how to be original in the shadow of all the millions of words that have been written already.  My agent, Nathan Bransford, recently blogged on this topic, which gave me some ideas.  I also note that Kelly Fineman blogged about Shakespeare's Sonnet 65, and whenever Shakespeare comes up, I marvel that we are still reading and discussing this guy's work more than 500 years after he wrote it.  Certainly Shakespeare's plots were not particularly original--but something a...

Imperfection

Anna Jarzab, author of ALL UNQUIET THINGS, blogged recently about unlikable characters.   I recommend reading the whole amazing post, but here's a taste: "Unlikable is an opportunity in disguise, because it forces you to think about exactly what it is that bothers you about the person, and why that is–and, really, that’s what unlikable characters are there to do: stir up discussion about the things that make us human, which are, of course, our flaws."

Interestingly, flaws can also endear us to...

Listening

It often happens that what I read in other people's blogs is so much more brilliant or amusing than anything I have to say, and I know when to shut up and listen. (And gank their links for my blog, so you can enjoy them too.)

Just as I was thinking about listening as a theme for today's post, I ran across Cheryl Renee Herbsman talking about that very thing. All week I've been listening.  I'm working on a deep revision, and I am listening to the story and listening to the characters, especiall...