R.L. LaFevers's Blog, page 7

DARK TRIUMPH Playlist

Here is the playlist I created for DARK TRIUMPH (including links to the songs on YouTube.) I’m pretty sure I would be mortified to have anyone know  the number of times iTunes tells me I listened to each of these during the period I was writing the book!

“Voodoo” — Godsmack

“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” — Green Day

“Baba O’Riley” — The Who

“Carry On My Wayward Son” — Kansas

“Awake My Soul” — Mumford & Sons

“Pumped Up Kicks” — Foster The People (The medieval version in my head substitutes the word arrows for bullets.)

“Little Lion Man” — Mumford & Sons

“Lightning Crashes” — Live

” ‘Til Kingdom Come” — Coldplay

“Howlin’ For You” — The Black Keys (Another medieval assassin substitution — aiming for you instead of howlin’ for you.)

“Thistle & Weeds” — Mumford & Sons

“I Gave You All” — Mumford & Sons

“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” — Sarah Brightman

“Roll Away Your Stone” — Mumford & Sons

And The Winner Is . . .

Sorry it took me so long to get the winners posted! The last few days kind of went off the rails for me. :-]

Oh, and did I tell you that by way of apology for the delay, I am giving away TWO ARCs? No? Well, I AM.

So without further ado, the two winners are:

Sarah K (@fullmetalwings)

and

Renee (@NovelNutcase)

Use the contact page to drop me an email with your address and I will get the ARCs in the mail!

And thanks to all who entered!

(I numbered the comments, then used Ye Olde Randome Number Generator.)

Dark Triumph Book Trailer Plus ARC Contest!

Today over on Entertainment Weekly’s Shelf Talker, the trailer for DARK TRIUMPH is up! Also a short interview and the playlist.

Which brings me to the details of the next Dark Triumph ARC giveaway!

To be entered, all you have to do is share the book trailer link on Twitter, Facebook, your blog or Tumblr! Then leave a comment here letting me know and linking to the share and you will be entered!

The contest will end at midnight (PST) on Saturday, February 9.

Good luck!

(And yes, it IS open to international entries!)

Conferences and Cons

Popping out of the writing cave to say HI! Book Three is chugging along, but never as fast or as brilliantly as I think it should be. Also, I have noticed working on a highly compressed schedule like this, I seem to be able to write the book OR write blog posts. Not very good at juggling both. BUT! I have created a Tumblr account because it feels like there’s many times I have something very short to say (but too long for twitter) or I just want to post a picture or quote I enjoyed, so I’m dipping my toe in the Tumblr stream. We’ll see how it goes. If you’re interested in following me there, by Tumblr is robinlafevers.tumblr.com.

Also, there will be a most awesome book trailer! Stay tuned for details on the big reveal over on EW soon!

As I mentioned over on Twitter, I will be going on tour for the release of DARK TRIUMPH for the first two weeks of April. I don’t have all the details yet, but I will be visiting San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Chicago, St. Paul, Cincinnati, Boston, and DC.

I’ve also got a number of conferences and conventions I’ll be attending this year, including some workshops I’ll be teaching.

First up I’ll be at Western Washington SCBWI’s annual conference on the weekend of April 19-21. I am SO excited about this one. I’ll be teaching a Master Class on Rediscovering Your True Voice, one of my favorite aspects of craft. I’ll also be teaching two workshops, one on Pace Yourself: Tools and Tips for Pacing Your Story and Architexture, techniques for adding layers, complexity, and texture to your novel. Oh, and I’ll be giving the closing keynote as well.

Next up I’ll be at the Texas Library Association’s annual conference in Fort Worth. On Thursday, April 25 at 3:00 I’ll be on a panel about New YA Literature to Entice Readers along with A. G. Howard, Andrew Smith, Mindee Arnett, and Joe Schreiber.

Then at the end of May, on the 18th, I’ll be at the 8th Annual Rochester Teen Book Festival in Rochester, NY along with a whole host of truly aMaZiNg authors!

After that, I will bury myself DEEP in the writing cave to finish up Mortal Heart.

In August, I will be teaching a week long intensive at the Antioch Summer Writing Institute in Santa Barbara. The class runs from July 28 to Aug. 3, and you can find more details HERE.

I will have a few more events this fall and I’ll post more details on those as they develop!

And that’s it for now!

 

Ismae’s Christmas List

Dearest Saint Nycholas,

I would willingly forsake all material desires this Christmas if only you could grant me the following wishes, which would aid me greatly as I serve St. Mortain. You understand, these are not selfish, worldly requests, but rather the tools and answers I need in order to serve my convent to the best of my ability.

I humbly request the following:

 

Proof that Duval is not lying to me.

A lock on my chamber door.

To know what the old duke’s whore is planning.

For Vanth to quit trying to peck my eye out every time I try to send a message to the convent.

To find out where the reverend mother sent Sybella.

To understand why the reverend mother refuses to send Annith out, even when she is more skilled than Sybella or I.

A new poison, one that would only work on those who were guilty of treason.

For the cursed mummers to cease their infernal blowing and screeching on their trumpets and sackbuts.

For Mortain to marque Comte d’Albret’s black heart so that I may kill him and be done with it.

 

[from the Grave Mercy outtake file . . . ]

Best Book Lists, New Review, and Dark Triumph Countdown!

(photo by flickr's tuli nishimura)

Just popping in with some news. Well, lots of news, actually.

I’m HUGELY thrilled to report that GRAVE MERCY has made a number of year end, BEST OF 2012 lists–Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal, and Amazon! My sincere thanks to each and every one of you who read this book or blogged about it or recommended it to a friend. Truly, this entire year has been one amazing milestone after another, and seeing my name on those lists with so many authors I have admired for so long is just…gobsmacking.(I have been using that word a lot this year.)

Not only that, but it’s also on the Texas Library Association’s  TAYSHA’s list as well!

And speaking of the Texas Libarary Association, I have an exciting travel schedule shaping up for 2013 and will be going to lots of lovely places! Maybe I’ll even get a chance to meet YOU! (And no, that wasn’t a non-sequitur as I will be at TLA in 2013–so it was a totally logical segue.)

Aaaaand, the first official review for Dark Triumph is IN. It’s from Booklist, and it’s a STAR!!

My two favorite lines. Well, okay, three favorite lines…

“. . . in this book, the wounds are deeper as Sybella must come to terms with her past and how her secrets tie and untie her to a knight who is the bane of her existence and her hope for the future. LaFevers is that wonderful sort of storyteller who so completely meshes events, descriptions, and characters that readers get lost in the world she’s concocted. It’s a place where history mingles with mystery and love is never expected.”

::happy sigh::

And lastly, there is now a handy-dandy countdown widget for DARK TRIUMPH!

Get the Countdown Creator Pro widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info)Feel free to add it to your blog!

We had a very fun Dark Triumph ARC giveaway on Twitter last week, and I will be having more in the coming months. I’ve also created a Facebook page for the His Fair Assassin books, so if you prefer to get your information and updates on Facebook, please feel free to LIKE the page. (Or even if you don’t–consider liking it anyway because it makes my publisher SO happy…)

Pre Writing Step #3: Structure—Creating the Foundation

Even though I still consider myself to be in the pre-writing phase, the next thing I need to do is to create a foundation that will support the shape and heft of the book. I know that might seem like kind of a left-brained thing to do in the pre-writing stage, but I find if I don’t do it, I run out of steam after about 50 pages and the story just lays lays there, staring at me with accusing eyes.

However, if thinking about plot or structure makes you tense or nervous or doubt yourself or break out in a cold sweat, by all means, back away from the computer and ignore this post!

To make plotting feel less left-brained, I remind myself that at this stage, structure is merely a way of thinking about what sorts of scenes go where. Since character transformation happens through action, the plot is simply the actions our characters go through in order to grow and change, and looking at structure helps me brainstorm the sorts of story events and scenes I will need to be thinking about.

The thing is, we have all been studying plot since our parents first began reading Good Night Moon or Harold and the Purple Crayon to us. Ever since our first cartoon, we became consumers of story, and most classic story comes with a plot.

In its most simple form, plot is merely a beginning, a middle, and an end. And really, as a reader as long as one act pulls you along into the next act, you’re golden. But as writers, we have to think about how we make that happen.

I use a four act structure rather than a three act structure so that my true middle doesn’t get lost amid a looooong second act. It’s like when two people stand and hold a long piece of rope. It takes much more effort and concentration to stretch the rope across a fifty foot space, whereas it takes considerably less to stretch it across ten feet. J

FIRST ACT

Set up – Section of the story that gives a sense of who the character is, what is missing from their lives, and what they will need to change and grow.

Inciting Incident – what forces the character to engage in the elements of the plot, where the trouble starts, the day that is different

1st Turning Point (TP) – What propels the protagonist into the next act

SECOND ACT

Increasing Conflict/Dramatic Action – action that has some meaning or purpose within the greater context of the story as opposed to simple physical action.

Rising action – scenes increase in dramatic tension as the plot progresses. Also causality. This happens, because something else happened, which in turn forces even more conflict to happen.

2nd TP – MID POINT – this scene propels the story into the next act, but it also is the point of no return, the hero cannot go back to who they were, must go forward, which is why I think it needs to be marked on its own.

THIRD ACT

Continued Rising Action (Protagonist and Antagonist engaged in escalating struggle)

Final TP – the moment when everything coalesces to propel the hero toward the final showdown

FOURTH ACT

Climax – the final confrontation (either internal or external but preferably both) that the story has been building to.

Resolution – how the newly changed character, using skills and knowledge acquired through the course of the story, fixes the problem or comes to terms with the situation.

So that’s the basic four act structure. Another structure I use a lot is the one from Blake Snyder’s SAVE THE CAT, a book I highly, highly recommend.

At this early stage of the process, this is the perfect template for me because it is vague enough that I don’t feel forced to ink in actual scenes and turning points yet, it mostly just reminds me what type of scenes and action should be happening at each stage of the book. A brainstorming template, if you will. And again, while it might seem a bit left-brained to bring in at this stage, I have learned that by seeding some soft, left-brained stuff in early, it actually becomes incorporated by my right brain’s creative process.

The template looks something like this:

(ETA: Okay, here is a quick and dirty explanation of the steps as talked about in SAVE THE CAT but for a full explanation you will need to read it and, again, I highly, HIGHLY recommend buying this book.)

You will see that some of these steps correspond pretty closely with the four act structure. It mostly just reframes the way we think about those parts of the story.

 

Setup (pgs 1-40) Section of the story that gives a sense of who the character is, what is missing from their lives, and what they will need to change and grow.

Catalyst (48 ) where the trouble starts, the day that is different

Debate (48-100) – This corresponds with the ‘refusal of the call’ stage in the Hero’s Journey and is simply the protagonist weighing his options, trying to decide which fork in the road to take, trying to stay in denial, or mentally and physically preparing himself to step out onto that journey.

Break into Two (100) What propels the protagonist into the next act

Fun and Games (100-200) – this is the point in the book where the “promise of the premise” is played out.

Midpoint (200) – the point of no return, the hero cannot go back to who they were, must go forward

Bad Guys Closing In (200-300) – This is where all the negative forces that have been stirred up by the protagonist’s actions now begin to close in on him. They don’t have to be actual bad guys, but antagonistic forces, the hero’s own issues coming home to roost—whatever is acting as the antagonist in your story.

All is Lost (300) It looks like our protagonist has lost.

Dark Night of Soul (300-340)  He takes a moment and lets that failure sink in.

Break into Three (340) then something, some inner strength he didn’t know he had, some inner demon he finally faces, something gives him the courage to dig down deep and find the will to try one more time.

Finale/Climax /Resolution (340-400)

Those are the target page numbers I’m using for a 400 page mss, but if you were working on a 50,000 word novel, you’d just cut those numbers in half.

So, that’s some thoughts of structure that will hopefully spark ideas for all sorts of scenes to put in the novel. And that’s the last of my pre-writing posts. I do have some more writing posts I’ll put up throughout the month, but for now, Good Luck!

Growing Plot From Character

Once I know my character’s emotional landscape, it’s time to see how to shape that into an arc that will work with the story idea. How can I turn all that I’ve learned about my protagonist into the beginnings of a story?

In order to understand what actions will effect a transformation in your character, there are a few things one needs to know. Debra Dixon addresses this brilliantly with her concept of Goal, Motivation, and Conflict, and if you haven’t read the book, I highly, highly recommend it. She talks at length about needing to have both an external GMC (plot) and internal GMC (internal growth arc).

Goal – What your character wants.

Motivation – Why do they want it? Why are they pursuing this goal?

Conflict – What is standing in their way.

Ideally you should be able to answer those questions on an external and internal level for your character.

One of the things I constantly stumble over is giving my protagonists an actual, bona fide goal. It takes me a while to figure out what they want, and sometimes I realize they don’t actually want anything. Or at least anything that they could articulate to themselves or anyone else.

However, it finally occurred to me that sometimes simply allowing oneself to want something can be a dramatic act all its own. In fact, I wonder if that’s one of the reasons I write kids books, because they are immersed in learning they have the right and the power and eventually the responsibility to act, not just observe or get carried along. Maybe that thematic issue kind of clusters around kids books. Or maybe that’s just one of my personal themes. Not quite sure about that…

Anywho, sometimes I have more luck by asking myself what my characters needs or longs for. Those words seem less self aware than goal, and especially with a younger protagonist, having an unarticulated need seems a more realistic way to drive their actions. At least initially.

Often I will start with just the germ of an idea: (I’m using one of my middle grade novels instead of Grave Mercy so I don’t risk spoilers for anyone.) What if a girl could see curses and black magic on artifacts in a museum that no one else could see? AFter I’ve rooted  around in her psyche using the questions from the last post, then I massage and poke and scratch my head until I have at least some semblance of GMC. For Theodosia, it was pretty easy.

Goal: To neutralize black magic and curses before they harmed anyone

Motivation: Because it was nasty, vile stuff that could cause great harm to those she loved; plus she was the only one who could see it, so the responsibility landed in her lap.

Conflict: She was only a child, with few resources; no one would believe her if she tried to explain; and certain bad guys wanted to let use that magic for their own gains.

Knowing that allowed me to begin to design the framework of the structure of the novel; what the inciting incident would be, what the turning points might look like, how the conflict and tension would rise.

But that was only the externals. To give the novel depth, I had to find a way to put what I knew about Theodosia emotionally onto the page. These physical events had to force her to some new understanding or awareness on her journey to becoming an adult.

I knew that one of the things that Theodosia hungered for was her parent’s attention as she was often overlooked. (Luckily, there was a fairly hands-off child rearing philosophy in 1907, so her parents didn’t appear to be horrid people.) She also wanted their professional respect, perhaps simply an extension of the above, since her parents were consumed by their professions, she felt that would be the best way to gain their attention, with her professional expertise.

For me to be able to develop the internal GMC, I often have to look to my character’s wounds or scars; what is lacking in their life, what hole are they trying to plug up, for those are often what drive our actions. So the internal GMC might look something like this (and notice how I word them differently so they make sense to me):

Goal (Emotional need/longing/desire): To be reassured that her parents really do care about her.

Motivation (Why she has that longing/Emotional Wound): Emotionally abandoned by her parents

Conflict (What prevents her forward growth): Parent’s preoccupation with selves, lack of child-centric perspective

Dixon has designed a nifty little GMC table that looks a lot like a tic-tac-toe square and goes something like this:

And then I try to fill in those blanks for my character.

A couple of additional things: Goals can be to NOT want something, to NOT move, or NOT go to a new school. They can also change over the course of a book as they character grows or acquires new knowledge.

Once I have that grid filled out, I try to brainstorm five or six concrete steps the protagonist will have to take to move toward achieving those goals. Then that pre-writing step is completed.

 

Once I have that nailed down, it’s time to sort of kick the tires of the whole thing and see if it is big enough, with enough inherent conflict, to sustain the sort of novel I’m hoping to write. So then I ask these questions:

Now that you have a handle on the character’s goal, is there a way to make this matter even more? Can I think of a way to raise the stakes so it is even more important for the character?

Why can’t the character have/achieve what she thinks she wants? Who or what is standing in her way?

Why can’t the character have/achieve what she really wants? Who or what is standing in her way?

How does this person or thing block or push against the character?

How could they make things even worse for the character?

What’s the worst possible moment for things to get worse?

What will cause the character physical and/or emotional hardship?

Secondary characters: Can I think of secondary characters who will complicate things or create more friction for the protagonist? Can be friendly or antagonistic.

What about Setting? Is there someplace I can set the story (world, location) that would resonate with my themes or add inherent conflict to the story?

Then once I have all that information, I begin looking at structure–which I will tackle in a separate post. (Have I mentioned I do a ton of pre-writing? )

Pre-Writing: It’s All About The Character

I usually have at least a vague kernel of an idea as to who my main characters are, a kernel which I will be able to dig around in and coax into some sort of personage. Although with MORTAL HEART, I do have a decent sense of Annith and the other characters in the book since they were secondary characters in the previous two books.

This is also the stage wherein I pull out two fresh, shiny unused notebooks. (Have I mentioned I am a notebook junkie? Lest you doubt, I have included a picture of ALL my His Fair Assassin notebooks.) Not sure why I always start with two; sometimes one is for my official ideas and the second one is for playing around with ideas, or sometimes one is for the stuff I know is absolute, not-changeable, and the other is more of an evolving canvas.

For me, the writing of a book begins with character. Even though I have a core idea, I need to spend some time with the main character, getting to know her, understand her and what sorts of experiences have shaped her. Sadly, very little of this makes it into the book in an overt way, but it is essential in how it shapes her world view and character.

I have a variety of sources I draw from for these initial questions, but some of my favorites are from Donald Maass’s WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL and from a Michael Hague workship I took at the RWA National Conference a couple of years ago.

Hague suggests that the internal journey of a character is a transformation from persona (the construct that they show the world) to their essence (their true nature), which feels very ‘true’ for me and the sorts of books I enjoy.

So, onto the questions.

What is the character’s longing? What is their deeply held desire they’re only paying lip service to, that they’re not pursing. Now some characters are so shut down or disconnected from their selves that they don’t even have a longing. Instead they have a need, a hole inside that must be filled.

And that hole is usually caused by the answer to the next question…

What is the character’s wound? What past traumas have shaped them and profoundly altered the way they see the world?

I spend a LOT of time journaling about that, building the character’s past (or uncovering it) so that I can intimately know them and their strengths and weaknesses.

Another set of questions revolve around, What is the character’s warped belief about themselves or the world? How has my character’s wound shaped his way of seeing the world? Of seeing other people?

So for example, Ismae’s core belief is that her only value or worth is in her usefulness as a tool to her organization. In fact, she clings to the fact that she’s a tool and uses it to disconnect from her emotions, her self. If she clings to the fact that she’s a tool—separate from the needs and desires other people are subject to, then she doesn’t have to admit they are lacking in her life, or that she doesn’t feel worthy of them.

This belief is used by the character to keep their emotional fears at bay.

The next set of questions is, What is the characters’ identity? That answer  is often found in the answer to the belief question.

Then I have to dig around some more and ask: What is the character’s essence? When you strip away all the roles they play and the beliefs they protect themselves with, what are they at their core?

Sometimes, early on, it’s hard to know what the essence of the character is, so I rephrase the question as: Who would the character be if she had the courage? If she wasn’t afraid of anything?

And then of course the story will be about the character’s movement from persona to essence, learning to step away from one and embrace the other.

 

On Mash Ups, High Concepts, and Writing to the Trends

A Google Alert landed in my inbox the other day, pointing me to a blog that was talking about GRAVE MERCY in conjunction with a recent Publisher’s Weekly article that had mentioned it (which I had totally missed, so YAY!) The PW article was about current trends and the increasing number of mash ups being published. The blogger was (rightfully!) trying to keep from being disheartened by the whole push for bigger, greater, more KAPOW!

But here’s the thing: When I first started writing GRAVE MERCY over seven years ago, I absolutely NEVER set out intending to write a high concept mash up that would set the publishing world on its ear. (Not that my book has done that—but it was also never even a glimmer of a thought of mine…) The truth was, I had no idea that the concept of assassin nuns in medieval France—for teens!—would be met with anything other than blank stares and mocking smiles. It was a complete and total gamble on my part. In fact, I was fully aware of the fact that if I ever did show it to anyone, it could easily be the sort of query or pitch that was mocked at conferences or on blogs for years to come.

It was a book I set out to write just for myself—a trick I use to be able to shut out industry voices and reader voices and thoughts of whether it’s good enough to get published or find an audience or whatever.  It’s a technique that allows me to just write the damn story in the purest form my writing skills are capable of.

Grave Mercy was absolutely born of me writing what I wanted desperately to read. It was a mash up, yes, but not of industry trends or genres, but simply a mash up of all the things I personally found fascinating—old religions, the Church, the tumult of the medieval period, but also the romance of the medieval period. The high stakes of every day life, the codes of honor and loyalty and fealty. And I wanted it to be a story of empowerment—because all my stories end up being about empowerment in one way or another, but in this story I wanted empowerment to take front and center.

I worked on the book between other contracted books and it was my creative sandbox, my play time. And the more I researched the more cool things I found to throw into the mix and the story ultimately took the shape it did.

Honestly? I think if I had set out to write something trendy and high concept, the book would have failed miserably, because it was my own passion for the subject that fueled me, and it was my desire to do justice to the story I envisioned in my head that pushed me to take risks and stretch my wings craft-wise.

Which is, I guess, a very long way of saying to write what you love to write. Write what feeds you. Concentrate on achieving mastery of craft and telling the most compelling story that you can, but make sure it is YOUR story.

I really can’t emphasize enough how that happened by accident. How it sprang out of my own need and desire to learn more about those things and read a story about them. It wasn’t until I’d been working on it for about four or five years that I even mentioned it to my agent, and I only mentioned it as something that was diverting my attention from other stuff I should probably be writing.  She asked to see some of it and so I showed her, and she got really really excited.

But then I had to shut the door—HARD—on her excitement and my excitement over her excitement and just hunker down with the writing and the story and the characters.

It’s really, REALLY hard to do that. In fact, I was recently talking with a Super Star Mega Debut YA Author who’s had phenomenal success with her first book and is now trying to write the second book amidst all that exciting and distracting success. And we talked about how we have to create this bubble for our writerly selves in order to protect the story and shut out the ‘author’ part of the job.

And the reason I thought I’d bring this up now is because I know a lot of you are going to be doing NaNoWriMo and were going to be starting books of your own, so I just wanted to address that whole idea of writing to trends or putting together a calculated mash up hoping to be the next big thing.

In fact, a lot of you have asked if I am going to be doing NaNo this year, and sadly I am not. For a couple of reasons. 1) I have already started Mortal Heart (the third His Fair Assassin book) and so I don’t have a new project I can start fresh for NaNo. And 2) for me and my process, the race to achieve 50,000 words doesn’t work. I get so obsessed with the word count that I don’t pay enough attention to if they’re the RIGHT words, or if they are moving the story in the right direction.  For me, if I start the story in the wrong place or take a drastically wrong turn somewhere, I quickly find that I am telling the WRONG story, and that defeats the whole purpose.

I know that Sarah J. Maass, Jessica Khoury, and Beth Revis are doing NaNo and even better, they have a very cool NaNoYA forum set up for other YA writers participating, so I highly encourage you all to check it out.

However, in celebration of NaNo (and because I have just begun a new book and it is all very fresh in my mind) I will be posting a series of craft posts over the next few weeks to help give ideas, tips, and inspiration to any of you who are looking for it. I’ll start with putting up posts about all the pre-writing steps I take so that when I do sit down to write, I have some idea of where to go and am sure I am writing the RIGHT story.

Also? I have DARK TRIUMPH ARCs and will be hosting a series of contests (at least three) with chances to win one, so stay tuned!