J.T. Ellison's Blog, page 17
October 1, 2023
CRAFT TALK: THE FIVE COMPONENTS OF A GREAT LOGLINE
There are mystical aspects of writing, little tricks that some authors are able to do with their eyes closed, and some that leave us scratching our heads. For example, I’m excellent at titles but horrible at synopses. I can write on the fly, making up story as I go, but outlines give me hives. The 22 steps of John Truby’s THE ANATOMY OF STORY baffles me, but reading his new book THE ANATOMY OF GENRES was like slipping into my favorite jeans. We all have our strengths.
And then you have log lines. People, they are not my strength.
So when I deciphered the “What If” scenario, and Olivia commented, I asked her to come explain it to me, and to you. And she’s given a Masterclass below. So grab your notebook, and get ready to do some valuable story synthesis!
Take it away, Olivia…
After commenting on J.T. Ellison’s (@ The Creative Edge) blog posts on ‘What If’, she asked me if I wanted to write a post on what it takes to write a great logline. Of course, I would. 🤗 I wrote hundreds of loglines over many years while writing screenplays, and this assignment made me, in many ways, revisit my past. So, J.T. thank you for asking 😊. [[de rien, mon amie!]]
📚And if you haven’t yet, please check out The Creative Edge and J.T.’s so well-written and suspenseful novels.
And here we go:
Photo by Pereanu Sebastian on UnsplashThe Importance of a Logline for Screenwriters and NovelistsA logline is the essence of an idea in a sentence or two. If you can, try to condense it into just one sentence. The ideal logline is no longer than 60 words.
And why is a logline so important?
You can pitch your idea at any time → see ELEVATOR PITCH.
🔖 An elevator pitch is usually 30 seconds or less long. The term is often used in Hollywood when writers have the fortune to get into the same elevator with a producer or agent. However, it isn’t that easy, it rarely works. Timing is everything when it comes to deliver a convincing pitch.
You get a sense if your idea is expandable enough to turn it into a novel or screenplay.
You can also figure out what component is missing before you begin outlining, or if you’re a pantser before actually writing your first draft.
🔖 A pantser is someone who writes by the pants of their seats, basically with no outline. Some pantsers work with a minimal outline.
🔖Most screenwriters are plotters, as in screenwriting a dense structure is required.
A powerful logline can save you time and give you some direction.
Personally, I work with a flexible outline. I outline all my screenplays and books, knowing that I will make changes on the way.
The 5 Components of a Great Logline
September 29, 2023
Friday Reads 9.29.23
It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk about what we’re reading!
I’m deep into V.E. Schwab’s THE FRAGILE THREADS OF POWER. V will be in Nashville next week, and I’m interviewing her both for A WORD ON WORDS and for her event with Parnassus Books. I’m excited, because A - we haven’t seen one another in person for years, and B - this book is FANTASTIC. I’m enjoying it tremendously. Threads upon threads, all interwoven, past and present colliding, favorite characters revisited and new ones to love (and hate). It’s a lot of fun.
Another recommendation - my dearest Paige Crutcher has a new book out this week, WHAT BECAME OF MAGIC, which arrived while I was on my trip. I can’t wait to dig in!
And for funsies…Breanne Randall’s THE UNFORTUNATE SIDE-EFFECTS OF HEARTBREAK AND MAGIC made the NYT and USAT lists this week. There was a fascinating write-up on about her approach to social media (genuine) and how well it worked. Could you or I replicate this? Probably not. This is lightning in a bottle, the perfect storm of how social media SHOULD work to sell books. Authentic interaction. Debut novelist. Catchy hook. Publisher support. And if the reviews have it right, she’s got the writing chops to back it all up. I’ve enjoyed watching her success story. ⚡️
In another fascinating look into the inner workings of publishing, Kathleen Schmidt over at pulled together a sobering analysis of what KKR’s investment in Simon and Schuster could really mean.
I want to tease you for an upcoming post here on the Edge, too. As requested on my post What If, my friend, screenwriter and author wrote us a piece on log lines. As always, paid subscribers get the craft posts first, so consider subscribing! It should come up in your feeds Tuesday.
And you can watch or listen to my latest A WORD ON WORDS interview with none other than the queen of Italian cooking herself, Lidia Bastianich!
So how about you? What are you reading this weekend?
FYI: These posts are free to read but may contain affiliate links which means we get a small commission that helps keep the kitty in cat food. Thanks for the support!
Friday Reads
It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk about what we’re reading!
I’m deep into V.E. Schwab’s THE FRAGILE THREADS OF POWER. V will be in Nashville next week, and I’m interviewing her both for A WORD ON WORDS and for her event with Parnassus Books. I’m excited, because A - we haven’t seen one another in person for years, and B - this book is FANTASTIC. I’m enjoying it tremendously. Threads upon threads, all interwoven, past and present colliding, favorite characters revisited and new ones to love (and hate). It’s a lot of fun.
Another recommendation - my dearest Paige Crutcher has a new book out this week, WHAT BECAME OF MAGIC, which arrived while I was on my trip. I can’t wait to dig in!
And for funsies…Breanne Randall’s THE UNFORTUNATE SIDE-EFFECTS OF HEARTBREAK AND MAGIC made the NYT and USAT lists this week. There was a fascinating write-up on about her approach to social media (genuine) and how well it worked. Could you or I replicate this? Probably not. This is lightning in a bottle, the perfect storm of how social media SHOULD work to sell books. Authentic interaction. Debut novelist. Catchy hook. Publisher support. And if the reviews have it right, she’s got the writing chops to back it all up. I’ve enjoyed watching her success story. ⚡️
In another fascinating look into the inner workings of publishing, Kathleen Schmidt over at pulled together a sobering analysis of what KKR’s investment in Simon and Schuster could really mean.
I want to tease you for an upcoming post here on the Edge, too. As requested on my post What If, my friend, screenwriter and author wrote us a piece on log lines. As always, paid subscribers get the craft posts first, so consider subscribing! It should come up in your feeds Tuesday.
And you can watch or listen to my latest A WORD ON WORDS interview with none other than the queen of Italian cooking herself, Lidia Bastianich!
So how about you? What are you reading this weekend?
FYI: These posts are free to read but may contain affiliate links which means we get a small commission that helps keep the kitty in cat food. Thanks for the support!
September 26, 2023
Travel + Research: The Perfect Combination for Writers
Every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café.
“Montparnasse” by Ernest Hemingway
I’ve just returned from a 15-day trip to Europe and the UK. It was a whirlwind of experiences, and it will take me a few weeks to analyze and sift through the memories, the photos, the inside jokes.
But one thing is certain. What I saw, what I felt, what I smelled and tasted and heard, will make it into several books and stories. Ireland especially was fruitful: Westport House in Westport, Ireland goes into a holiday-themed short story. The empty Trinity Library goes into Jayne Thorne #5. The Croaghaun Cliffs of Achill Island will be in my next standalone, albeit transplanted into a fictional town. I was playing Tetris with the memories I was making, slotting experiences into different stories as they came. It was delightful, invigorating, and overwhelming.
I wonder, though, if it’s easier on the noggin to be focused on a single story, researching deep and thoroughly, as my friend was? I’ve learned when a place speaks to you, you must return to experience it fully. There are places from the past two weeks I will definitely be returning to in the near future.
The last intense European trip I took, Paris was my target. I had no idea where it would lead me, as I don’t know where the past two weeks will lead me now. Here’s what I wrote the last time I was processing the trip of a lifetime.
Hemingway’s morbid poem aside, nothing speaks to me like the idea of 1920s Montparnasse. It’s so utterly romantic, a generation’s best and brightest living, breathing, creating, loving, drinking, eating, fighting together. And a Parisian backdrop… what could be better? The “moveable feast,” as he referred to it, has always seemed to me the height of collaborative creativity.
I’d dreamed about it, read about it, but I’d never visited, not until my husband surprised me with a birthday trip in 2014 (so much for the seven years of French I took in school, right?). I fell in love, naturally. Paris is a hard city not to adore. It has a vibe of its own, like New York, and London. Unique unto itself, impossible to describe properly to those who haven’t been there.
That trip, we saved Montparnasse for last. My expectations were utterly unrealistic, which I realized the moment we stepped off the Metro and were greeted by…a Starbucks.
Where is the romance in a Parisian Starbucks? Where were my ghosts? Where was the creative spirit I knew lingered in the city’s dark recesses?
Photo by Léonard Cotte on UnsplashWe had a snack at Le Select and then wandered off to look for Sarte’s grave, which we couldn’t find, and decided the whole afternoon must be an existential joke, then decamped for Montmartre and Sacré Coeur, with its lovely views of the city.
I stood there on that windswept hill, bereft. What I was searching for was down there, somewhere in the city of light. I knew it. I could feel it reaching for me. But my time in Paris was up. We had to leave in the morning.
That evening, sitting at a little café we’d been frequenting all week, running the day over in my head, my disappointment both with Montparnasse and with myself for not experiencing it properly, a woman sat down a few tables away. She was so utterly and completely French that I had to write her in my notebook. After a cursory description, my writer’s mind took over. Several pages later, I’d sketched a strange little story about her and what she was doing in Paris.
This became the basis for my novel Lie to Me. It seemed my brief encounter with Montparnasse had given me something after all.
Back home in Nashville, as the book got underway, I made plans to return to Paris. This time, I wasn’t going to rush into Montparnasse with high expectations. I was going to spend time there, get to know it, write in its cafés, experience its shadows and light. Montparnasse is a special place. It wants to be coaxed into showing you its best side. Rushing in was never going to work. I needed to follow in Hemingway’s footsteps, to drink and love and create on-site.
Trip two, we were leisurely in our approach. We ate in all the restaurants in the 7th, walked the streets morning, noon, night. We bought fruit from the markets and got lost down alleyways. We spent a whole afternoon at La Closerie des Lilas. Inside the dark, silent bar, the tables all have plaques, a veritable who’s who of creativity and history, all placed by their favorite seats. I’d found the ghosts of Montparnasse, at last. I located Hemingway’s plaque, sat in his seat, drank champagne and ate olives, and existed. And then, I wrote.
And as I did, I realized there was something there, in the room with us, an energy I could feel like water on my skin. I tried to capture it in my words. I got very teary and overwhelmed at one point, not like me at all. It was incredibly special. I came home rejuvenated by the experience and finished the book, which I can honestly say was my most challenging to date. The scenes I wrote in the dark bar made it in, as did many from that week.
I still feel like that afternoon in Paris turned the tide for me, both as a writer, and for that particular book. I achieved a lifelong dream, to write a book in Paris. Parts of one, at least.
It’s amazing how expectations can ruin the journey for us. If we’d only stop and smell the roses, quite literally, what would we experience? It was a great lesson for me, as a writer, and as a human. To exist within the place, instead of thinking it will come to you.
Do you have a special place, a place of the heart, that you’ve visited, or want to? Tell me about it!
The Creative Edge is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
September 19, 2023
Putting Myself Back Together
I’m in the waiting room of my Orthopaedic surgeon’s office, awaiting X-rays of my right knee and right foot. I’ve been nursing these two appendages along for months now, gutting it out, wearing braces and doing truncated workouts and otherwise babying my leg, but we are going on vacation that’s going to involve walking and hiking and general frivolity, and I’m in desperate need of something to get me through. Something being a VERY long needle full of cortisone and lidocaine.
This is what happens to former athletes—our bodies begin betraying us, and we need medical intervention to continue a normal lifestyle. I’m also exploring testing to determine if I have Ehlers-Danlohs syndrome, a genetic disruption of collagen in the body. It explains my double-jointedness, my propensity for joint tears, sprains, and now, arthritis, and the bonkers heart issues that started after my COVID vaccines (3) and subsequent infections (2).
There are things they don’t tell you about getting older. We’re all so attuned to our bodies, but perhaps not in the way we should be. Regular exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, wearing sunscreen, eating your veggies, limiting alcohol and sugar, getting plenty of sleep and clean water, we all know these to be divine truths. But the flexibility and weight-bearing portions are often overlooked. Taken for granted. Your feet. Your knees. Your shoulders.
If I could go back in time, I would hie myself to the nearest yoga studio daily. I would have let those Dry Januaries become Dry Life sooner. I would invest in the best possible shoes and arch supports and weight train religiously. These are the things that will become your preventative best friend later in life. Inflammation is the enemy, in all its many guises.
[[Hold please. They’ve called me back.]]
Oh my.
That is my knee. It’s not supposed to look like that. It is not what I wanted to see, but it is as I feared. He said the nastiest two words I know.
Knee Replacement.
Not the news I wanted to hear today. After 4 meniscal tear surgeries—2 in my teens and two in my late 40s—there’s just no meniscus left on the interior of my right knee. My leg is starting to bow inward, a phenomenon I’ve been weirdly aware of lately as I climb stairs and walk. It’s like my ankle is pronating but from my knee. That kind of structural abnormality will have me all out of wack soon. You know the song…
…Your leg bone connected to your knee bone
Your knee bone connected to your thigh bone
Your thigh bone connected to your hip bone
Your hip bone connected to your back bone…
As it is, I can’t go more than 1/2 mile without stopping. And believe me, I like walks. Walking is my creative gasoline.
Surgery sucks. No doubt about it. And I’m young to be considering a replacement. Young enough that I’m going to gut it out a while longer, another six months at the very least, because I’ve *just* gotten my creative sea legs again after the back-to-back knee surgery in 2019, and anesthesia fucks me up. And I’ll admit it: I’m scared of the pain. I’ve seen it firsthand; my mom’s done this more than once. It. Is. Not. Fun. I don’t want to have to do this again, and the appliances don’t last forever. Twenty years, tops. But I can’t wait too long, or the cascade of issues will catch up to me.
Listen. Joints fail. Minds soften. Bodies ache. This is the privilege of aging. As my 89-year-old father, who golfs three times a week, says, getting old isn’t for the faint of heart. My beloved, recently retired ortho has a slightly different axiom—growing up is hard.
But I’m telling you this today because I want you to avoid this conversation for as long as you can. We writers are sedentary creatures. Sitting in front of a computer for hours a day is not good for us. We need to move our bodies. Breath deeply. Nourish our souls and creativity with fresh air and movement. It’s not until those simple pleasures are taken away that you realize how much you take for granted being able to walk without pain.
So if you can, get off your phone, step away from your desk, and go for a walk. If you can’t, join me in some lovely stretching and deep breathing. The work will be there when you finish.
(And if anyone has opinions about joint replacement versus other, experimental treatments, I am all ears.)
September 12, 2023
The Lure of the Boarding School Mystery
I have a new short story out today in a wonderful collection called IN THESE HALLOWED HALLS: A Dark Academic Anthology, edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane. I have to admit the dark academia trope is one of my all time favorites. I thought I’d share an essay I wrote for CrimeReads for the release of another dark academia title of mine, Good Girls Lie, to celebrate this awesome new collection!
Bastions for the wealthy or the truant, keepers of secrets and lies, boarding schools are a fascination of mine. I was a near-miss on shipping off to one for high school—the lovely Madeira School in McLean, Virginia. Madeira had a scandalous history and the shockwaves were still reverberating when I was admitted. In March of 1980, headmistress Jean Harris had a bit of a psychotic break, pocketed a gun, drove five hours north to New York, and murdered her lover, Scarsdale Diet founder Dr. Herman Tarnower. Madeira would have been such a stimulating environment, but at the last minute, I staged a coup and ended up at the local public high school. I’ve always regretted not agreeing to board at Madeira for at least one semester. Eventually, I attended an all-women’s college in southern Virginia that was situated on its own insular campus, with a major admissions requirement––all unmarried students had to live on the grounds, in the dorms. Those years satisfied my boarding school desires. Evermore, the moment I hear a book is set primarily in a school, it goes on my list.
What is it about boarding school stories that we find so compelling? The glimpse behind the curtain into wealth and privilege? The coming-of-age stories? The characters’ isolation from the real world? The hierarchical, sometimes militaristic structure—from the boards to the headmistresses and headmasters to the teachers who seek refuge in the private environs? Or the privileged or tyrannical students who scream for mutiny? Perhaps it’s the often-times scandalous history behind the schools, the esoteric educations, the inevitable clashes between students––many to the point of death. Or is it the knowledge that a torrid past lurks, and our innocent protagonist will be in terrible danger? Are we so morbid? Well, yes. It’s all of these elements, and more. In my opinion, there is nothing better than a mysterious story set behind a gate, and we need more of them. Here are some of my favorites.
Kazuro Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
I don’t think there’s ever been a book that disturbed me quite as much as Ishiguro’s. It starts with such a matter of fact tone that when the real purpose behind Hailsham is revealed, it seemed so inevitable and yet so horrifyingly twisted I immediately queued up the film (impeccably casted with Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Kiera Knightly) to experience it all over again. Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy play and study and love like normal children—but have been designed for a singular purpose. As the mysteries of Hailsham slowly unspool, the dying innocence and hopefulness of the characters make the sinister reality of Ishiguro’s dystopian world even more heartbreaking and terrifying. This story is a humanity lesson for us all.
Carol Goodman, Lake of Dead Languages
A quintessential boarding school mystery, Jane Hudson returns to her alma mater, the Heart Lake School for Girls, as the new Latin professor. But Heart Lake School has a dark history, and from the moment Jane arrives back on campus, it seems determined to repeat itself. Every aspect of this story––from the nature of the schooling, the gothic setting, the frightening history, and the imminent danger Jane finds herself in, ticks every box. Bonus read: Goodman’s ARCADIA FALLS––another wonderful boarding school story where the past haunts the present.
Simone St. James, The Broken Girls
A ghostly tale of murder and deceit set not at a school for privileged girls, but one built for the outcasts of society: the very haunted Idlewild Hall. Idlewild is for the unwarrantedly-labeled bad girls, the ones who have fallen from grace or embarrassed their families by participating in some behavior that, for the times, violates the social mores. Journalist Fiona Sheridan’s elder sister died on the school grounds, so she is quite interested when the school is bought and a restoration begun, and decides to write about it. This sweeping saga is so layered and nuanced, I could never quite put my finger on the truth. With its ghostly intonations, it’s especially effective on audio.
Christopher Swann, Shadow of the Lions
A spectacular debut novel that takes place at a fictionalized Woodberry Forest, Swann captures the intensity of friendships spawned in a single-sex environment, both in current day and in the past. When fallen-from-grace writer Matthias Glass deigns to accept a position at his central Virginia alma mater, Blackburne, the mystery of his long-missing former roommate Fritz rears its head. Elegant and compelling.
J.K. Rowling, The Harry Potter series
No list of boarding school books would be complete without Rowling’s Hogwarts. The castle school on the Scottish moors is what I dreamed of as a child when I thought of boarding schools—turrets and libraries and dark hallways and generational portraits scowling down at recalcitrant students. The school’s function heightens the insular nature: to teach magic to a bevy of students who will soon be forced to choose between good and evil. It’s perfection.
Technically, this is a college book, but the campus of Brakebills University isn’t only behind a gate, but also behind a magical wall. The intensity of the classwork and the characters’ journeys qualify it for this list, plus, bonus points for the allusions to Narnia, with the Chatwins and their adventures to Fillory. This is also a book within a book, another favorite device of mine.
Donna Tart, The Secret History
This is another cheat book, but the setting of Bennington College is home to one of my all-time favorite mysteries. Tartt’s story epitomizes the genre: the isolation of New England’s Bennington College sets the stage for outcast student Richard Papen to fall in with a group of misfits who study Greek and the Classics. The small coterie dine in self-inflicted squalor on the finest china plates, have money to burn, and an unceasing curiosity about the world, and become Richard’s obsession. Oh, and they cause the death of a fellow student and friend in their attempts to experience a true Bacchanalian and spend the rest of the book in an agonized cover-up. No school-set book will ever resonate so much with me.
This sly coming-of-age tops almost all boarding school lists for a reason—Sittenfeld captures the scope of the prep school experience in Lee Fiora’s journey from gawky freshman to accomplished senior—and chronicles her fall from grace just as unflinchingly. It’s not as much a mystery as a classic coming-of-age tale set in exactly the right environs with just the right amount of angst and intensity. Sittenfeld is such an accomplished author one can overlook the lack of murder and mayhem.
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
One must mention Holden Caulfield, expelled from Pencey prep school—driven crazy?—in the ultimate loss-of-innocence story.
Lastly, three honorable mentions from my To Be Read pile, boarding school books I’m saving for a rainy day:
John Green, Looking for Alaska
Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Karen McMannis,
One of Us is Lying
Tell me some of your favorites!
And don’t forget to grab your copy of IN THESE HALLOWED HALLS.
The Creative Edge by J.T. Ellison is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
September 8, 2023
Friday Reads 9.8.23
It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk about what we’re reading!
I will be finishing Scott Alexander Howard’s THE OTHER VALLEY tonight. I can’t tell you enough good things about this book. It has the poignant dread of NEVER LET ME GO, such a tragic innocence about it, playing with the notion of grief, of loss, or the warping of time and the morality of how we grieve. It’s remarkable, and you will see it everywhere next year. I scored a galley, and it will be a reread for me; I can already tell. The premise:
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she'll decide who may cross her town's heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it's the same valley, the same town. Except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it's twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
Just think about that for a second. Fate. Free will. And what is death, really? And think of the delicate balance of what might be, what was, what could have been. It’s mind-bending and delicious and sad and mournful and intense, and I can already feel a reveal coming that’s going to blow my mind. Incredible.
And the rest:
We’re barreling into fall—so thinking about color palettes, how do you feel about revisiting the 70s in your decor?
Some sobering news for writers. Things are changing, but remember, publishing is cyclical.
A really interesting piece from Substacker Emma Gannon and Caroline O’Donahue on about scrapping a novel.
A podcast from Cal Newport I heard this week has me thinking about how I approach everything. I wrote about it in my September newsletter which will be out next week. You can subscribe to it below. I may have to combine this blog with the newsletter soon because of Substack’s subscription rules, so join up and I’ll make sure you get all the things. Part of the realignment I’m considering is the consumption of data, so don’t be surprised to see less ahead as I take a sabbatical to think through some big ideas on my creativity.
So how about you? What are you reading this weekend?
FYI: These posts are free to read but may contain affiliate links which means we get a small commission that helps keep the kitty in cat food. Thanks for the support!
Friday Reads & Links
It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk about what we’re reading!
I will be finishing Scott Alexander Howard’s THE OTHER VALLEY tonight. I can’t tell you enough good things about this book. It has the poignant dread of NEVER LET ME GO, such a tragic innocence about it, playing with the notion of grief, of loss, or the warping of time and the morality of how we grieve. It’s remarkable, and you will see it everywhere next year. I scored a galley, and it will be a reread for me; I can already tell. The premise:
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she'll decide who may cross her town's heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it's the same valley, the same town. Except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it's twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
Just think about that for a second. Fate. Free will. And what is death, really? And think of the delicate balance of what might be, what was, what could have been. It’s mind-bending and delicious and sad and mournful and intense, and I can already feel a reveal coming that’s going to blow my mind. Incredible.
And the rest:
We’re barreling into fall—so thinking about color palettes, how do you feel about revisiting the 70s in your decor?
Some sobering news for writers. Things are changing, but remember, publishing is cyclical.
A really interesting piece from Substacker Emma Gannon and Caroline O’Donahue on about scrapping a novel.
A podcast from Cal Newport I heard this week has me thinking about how I approach everything. I wrote about it in my September newsletter which will be out next week. You can subscribe to it below. I may have to combine this blog with the newsletter soon because of Substack’s subscription rules, so join up and I’ll make sure you get all the things. Part of the realignment I’m considering is the consumption of data, so don’t be surprised to see less ahead as I take a sabbatical to think through some big ideas on my creativity.
So how about you? What are you reading this weekend?
FYI: These posts are free to read but may contain affiliate links which means we get a small commission that helps keep the kitty in cat food. Thanks for the support!
September 5, 2023
Craft Talk: What If?
I interviewed the divine Ruth Ware last year, and during our discussion, she remarked about finding the “What If” behind the story. And of course, that sent me to my notebook to identify the “What If” of my novels.
This is a super method for distilling your story to its core. What if? leads you directly to the infamous — and dreaded — elevator pitch, which, if you’re trying to land a deal/find an agent/get readers interested in your work, is essential to be able to identify. They’re hard to do, but if you can nail down your story in a sentence or two and express that in a dynamic, exciting way, you’ll be golden.
September 1, 2023
Friday Reads & Links
It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk about what we’re reading!
But first… I FINISHED THE BOOK! Finished it, revised it, polished it, took comments from my trusted Alpha readers, revised it again, polished it again, and sent it in! It’s always such a terrifying and bittersweet moment when the book leaves my hands and goes to the editor. The first step in making things real. From it being my book, to becoming yours.
Now that I’ve met this deadline, my last quarter of 2023 is shaping up nicely. I’m working on book the 29th again. Yes, I went out of order. 29 was drafted, it’s the 4th Joss Walker title, but I had to put it on hold to finish A VERY BAD THING in time for my new deadline. So it’s back to THE PROPHECY OF WIND, which has to go to the copyeditor by Sept 9. Then outlining a short story for another anthology, a Christmas themed one this time, and then outline book 5 of the Jayne Thorne series and of course, get cracking on the the next JT title! I want to be working on 40 Scenes for that book by November 1.
A very full schedule, for sure. But the days of juggling an gazillion projects are slowing, and I am settling into new routines and new schedules, which makes me a very happy girl.
So, to the books. After I finished Lisa Jewell’s unsettling new book (and I say that as the greatest compliment!), I needed to jump genres to clear my head.
THE WINTER DUKE by Claire Eliza Bartlett - a very fun fantasy about a young woman forced to lead before her time, and the magic and mayhem that ensues. You know how much I love stories about women finding their power…
BEYOND THE WAND: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up A Wizard by Tom Felton - You might better know Felton as Draco Malfoy, but by all accounts, he couldn’t be more Malfoy’s opposite. Lovely and a fun inside look into a cultural phenomenon.
And I’ve started a galley of a book I’ve been dying to read, THE OTHER VALLEY, by Scott Alexander Howard. I saw the PM announcement of this title, and the editor, Loan Lee, is remarkably talented, I’ve enjoyed many of her authors, so I reached out and begged…and holy smokes!
Here’s the rest:
When life imitates art—and it really gives you the sequel to your novel. I can easily see Park doing this, can’t you?
This was your grandmother’s Instagram - The Preppy Handbook lives!
A fun round of of writing stacks and advice from Create Me Free.
Cal Newport has a new piece in the New Yorker about the ongoing culture wars between the socials.
I absolutely loved the book Red, White, and Royal Blue, and the movie adaptation was incredibly faithful and so sweet. Really great!
So how about you? What are you reading this weekend?
