Molly O'Keefe's Blog, page 55

working backwards

I never start at the end. Sounds like a stupid thing to say, but a lot of mystery writers start with the resolution of the mystery and work backwards to figure out the right clues, without giving away too much.

I start with the setup, the major turning points and then I get to the end. But as I start to plot the next book, with a whole set of new monsters and two different worlds to work through, I'm starting with the end, at least where it comes to characterization. What do I need her to to be at the end? And then work backwards as if she's a mystery to figure out what she needs to start like. I will need to give her a set of skills to navigate both worlds, and a set of drawbacks.

I think back to the Hunger Games and the skill set that Collins gave to Katniss that made her the perfect person to win those games without stretching incredulity. I need the same, but tailored for my world, and so as I start, I'm really thinking about the ending and where she needs to be and then how she gets there.

It's a change in my process, and I'm not sure if it will work or not, but I'm excited to try. Anyone else work backwards?

Just kick the damn ball....

I watched the Women's World Cup on Sunday as many did. I'm a sports fan but I'm not a soccer fan. My brothers played soccer, my nephews played soccer, my nieces played soccer. I have seen a lot of soccer. In one tragic attempt where my family thought they could turn me into an athlete I played soccer.

I don't like it. But when the World Cup rolls around, and certainly women are involved, I have to watch.

A) Country

B) Dynamic women winning stuff.

I'm totally in.

I have two guys I work with who are former soccer players. (Soccer is all around me!). We were talking about the game and I was actually admitting that I thought the game was exciting and interesting and it held my attention. Of course I added my neophyte spin.

"But there were so many times when they had shots and missed… why couldn't they just kick the damn ball straight!"

Soccer guy number one smiled. In that way he does when he knows I'm wrong. Soccer guy number two immediately went into counter attack mode. He presented me with an analogy.

"Your lifelong dream is to write a book that millions will read?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Here is your chance. Now. Do it. Just do it. How hard could it be? You're a professional – like these women. You have an opportunity to "win" - like these women. Through hard work and dedication you have abilities – like these women. So now in this one moment with the world watching… Just do it!"

Did I mention I hate NIKE commercials? His point was made. No matter how simple something looks, like writing a book about a wizard or a vampire or kicking a ball into the net – we professionals know how hard it is.

Hard to perform on command when deadlines are pressing. Hard to make the shot (book) perfect when you need to. Hard to achieve every goal you set out to do… like publishing, awards and lists.

Hard.

So here is to the US Women Soccer team who tried. Here is to the Japan Women Soccer team who won. And this is a reminder to everyone struggling to make their "dream" happen.

Dreams are hard. For a reason. Sorry.

It's Not Freaking Dystopian!

Those of you who follow the young adult market will know that there are a gaggle of books coming out this year and next that are either dystopian or post-apocalyptic. Thing is... a lot of people are calling them all dystopian and it's making me a tad crazy. Something I clearly need to get past.

These are two genres of fiction (not exactly genres) that have been around for a while (and I'm too lazy to look up how long). But for dystopian, think books like 1984 and for post-apocalyptic, um, The Road.

Okay, I have resorted to some "research" now and here's how Wikipedia, the most reliable source on the planet, defines dystopia:

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek: δυσ-, "bad, ill", and Ancient Greek: τόπος, "place, landscape"; alternatively cacotopia,[1] or anti-utopia) is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Dystopian societies feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, various forms of active and passive coercion. Ideas and works about dystopian societies often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and humans individually and collectively coping, or not being able to properly cope with technology that has progressed far more rapidly than humanity's spiritual evolution. Dystopian societies are often imagined as police states, with unlimited power over the citizens.

And look! They even cited 1984 like I did. (I feel so smart. I went to high school. :)

My point is... For a book to be truly dystopian in nature, I think there needs to be some sense of the society considering itself utopian... And many of the books being called dystopian (like The Hunger Games) aren't exactly dystopian in my mind. Sure, the people in The Capital might think they're living in a utopian society, but, um, most of the people in that world would not agree. And I got the distinct feeling that even people in the capital knew that everyone in the districts was being mistreated and punished for past digressions. That is, that they didn't believe that isolating people into districts like that was "perfect". Okay. Debatable. But to me, the world in The Hunger Games is more like a post-war society than a dystopian one.

I agree that the lines can get blurry, but having written a post-apocalyptic set YA thriller of sorts, (that I hope to announce good news about soon), I rankle a bit when all these books get labelled dystopian. Yes, my world does include some strict rules and repression, but it's not freaking dystopian! Everyone in my world knows life is hell. It's just that some are abusing power to have a slightly better version of hell.

And some other recent bestsellers:

Matched? Dystopian. In that world someone has decided that society would function better if people were mated (and all decisions were made) based on the statistical analysis of data. Someone's idea of a utopia.

Forest of Hands and Teeth? Post-apocalyptic. Zombies.  Most of the world dead or destroyed or crawling with zombies. Characters desperate to survive. Rules that have been set up (that some might claim seem a lot like dystopian rules) were put in place, not out of some vision of an ideal world, but for survival. To keep the zombies out and to avoid inbreeding in a closed-off society.

Divergent? Dystopian. We're not certain at the end of the first book why the part of society we've seen has been isolated from others by a wall, (maybe there are post-apocalyptic elements too...), but certainly whomever decided that society should be divided up according to factions representing positive human traits believed it was to create a better society.

Delirium? Dystopian. Haven't actually read it, yet, but it's set in a world where love is considered a disease to be cured and that sounds pretty darned dystopian to me.

And I would argue that The Hunger Games trilogy is largely post-apocalyptic, not dystopian. And that my trilogy in progress is also way more post-apocalyptic than dystopian.

I saw a great (and funny) flowchart this week done by YA author E.M. Bowman. I'm very sorry I missed the twitter discussion she talks about (guess I could search the #isitdystopia hashtag) but I LOVE this flowchart. :)


If it's too small to read... try over on her blog. :)

And my upcoming book is not a freaking dystopian! (Although I realize that when it comes out, (and I hope it will), I'll have to get past having it called that by some...)

Why My Writing is like My Mother's Wheelchair

At the moment, they're both a little stuck. The left wheel of my mother's electric wheelchair has stopped turning, leaving her to whirl in tiny wheelchair circles a la Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. My book feels like it's doing the same thing.

I spent about an hour on Sunday flipping levers on the wheelchair, checking wires, connecting and disconnecting little connector things and, in one fabulous clusterf*ck, running over my own leg with the wheelchair. It's still going in circles. I have a largish bruise that is not nearly purple enough for how much it hurts.

I spent several hours writing on Sunday also, but I can't seem to get a good flow going. I've been looking at my outline (such as it is), picking scenes that I know how to write and getting those down on paper. The pages are starting to mount up, but there's a lack of linear flow that's making me fretful and frustrated. It's kind of like writing in circles.

Luckily, we have a wheelchair repairman who's going to come check out my mother's wheelchair. His name is Raphael and he's Italian. I so wanted him for my sister, but apparently he's married. Unfortunately, I do not have a book repairman and even if I did, I wouldn't want to show this to him (or her). It's that much of a gloppy mess.

So . . . should I just keep getting pages down and hope it will all fall into place before the beginning of September? Or should I start trying to beat it into submission now?

Now is the time to turn your inner critic off

I was lucky enough to go see Hugh Jackman in concert this week, and he was great. Great in a campy, musical theatre, jazz hands kind of way. Who knew Wolverine loves show tunes and not only that, but can sing them brilliantly. And sure, he's not hard on the eyes and he's charming and witty, but more than anything what I took away from the show was how committed he is to every moment.

He never for one moment doubts what he's doing on stage. He laughs at himself, the audience, he ad libs and even stumbles, but he never stops to think, maybe the audience won't get this, maybe they won't like it. Or if he does, it's so far hidden that I never even suspected. And because of that, because of his absolute assurance I was completely absorbed.

At my first national conference I went to a St. Martin's publisher spotlight, where Jennifer Enderlin said something that frustrated me intensely when I first heard it, and I'm paraphrasing, badly, Write one thing and write it brilliantly... be it suspense, romance, adventure.

It took me a long time to figure that out, but I think I get it now. You can't get everything in a book, but pick what you're best at, and don't edit it down. Push the boundaries of it, whether it's an emotional romance, or a horrific suspense. Sure, add in other elements, but not at the expense of the core of the book. At least that's how I'm interpreting it.

And Emmy noms came out and Friday Night Lights finally got nominated. Finally!! Along with other great shows like Mad Men, and Parks and Rec. Now the race comes down to who deserves the emmy for best actor, Kyle Chandler, or Jon Hamm?

I'm Tweeting... a little bit.

I announced last week that I had at least logged on and got an account. I'm officially @StephDoyleRW. So for now the guilt at not doing what I need to for my publisher has gone away.

And here is what I'm learning – I definitely like twitter more than facebook as a publicity tool. For me facebook is intimate. It's family and friends. It's my nieces and nephews. It's the people I work with. Talking about writing or my opinions on various different things… I don't know feels odd to me. Like if I had something to say I would just call anyone of those people directly and say it.

Twitter feels different. Like you're sending your voice out into the vast and infinite universe and if people hear and respond – great. If they don't then that's okay too. I know the point is to build followers but I find I like just sending my message out into the world.

I don't care for it as much as blogging here. Not enough words to work with. You should have seen me try to make that – sign go away. Maybe this will help me improve my sentence structure. Still, it's been interesting and something that won't be a burden to do although check back with me in a month.

The trick will NOT be doing it after wine. WINE + TWEET = BAD.

I need that sign hung somewhere over my computer.

Power -- Another Dynamic of Characterization

I read an interesting article recently that I've been thinking about and will (I hope) continue to ponder as I start my next WIP.

The article suggested a way of thinking about characterization that I hadn't thought of before, and in hindsight was kind of surprised that I hadn't.

The author of the article (once again I'm embarrassed to admit I can't remember who it was and don't have a link) was pointing out how, in most situations, one person has more power than the others. And this might change depending on the situation. Example off the top of my head... A mother and a five-year-old: usually the mother has the power in that dynamic, but in a stressful situation, in public, the five-year-old might actually have more power temporarily (and realize he can manipulate mom into buying a treat to hold off a temper tantrum.)

The suggestion was to use this power dynamic to add 3 dimensionality to characters. The boss might be a powerful person, used to always getting his way, but put him with his mother or sister, or older brother, or lover and it might be different. (Or even more extreme.) Point is, he would react differently to different people an in different situations.

Also, playing with the power dynamic clearly creates and/or escalates conflict.

I suppose this is just another way of looking at things, but I found it interesting. Reading the article made me think about my last ms and it's something I'll keep in mind as I do my final revisions for that ms and start the second book in that series. My main character has some serious trust issues. She's been orphaned for 3 years and although she's only 16, she's used to making all the decisions for herself and her brother. When she's thrown into situations where she needs the help of others, in my first draft I mostly made her belligerent, which made sense to me. I figured the way she'd react to losing her power to control her brother's safety would be anger and distrust and stubbornness. What I don't think I thought about enough was showing her in situations of power more often, or portraying more clearly how she feels when she loses power... At least I'm worried that I didn't show those things well enough.

Is the question of who's got the power something you ever think about when writing/revising scenes?

Eileen's Summer TV Round-Up

Ah, summertime. A time to soak up sunshine poolside and drink beer by the barbecue. It used to be a time to wander lost through the land of TV reruns, but no more! Over here at the Rendahl Ranch, we look forward to summer.

Tops on our lists are definitely a whole slew of shows from the USA Network. We love In Plain Sight, Burn Notice, White Collar and Covert Affairs. They're fun and quirky and sexy and fast-paced. There's banter. We love banter. They've added a couple of new shows this season, Suits and Necessary Roughness. They're . . . okay. Maybe USA is becoming a victim of their own success. Maybe I only have attention for so many tough and accomplished, yet vulnerable and growing, smart heros/heroines.

We totally grooved on last fall's Walking Dead and right now we're getting our post-Apocalyptic fix with Falling Skies. It's not perfect, but I like the way they started the series (the world is already decimated and we join the resistance fighers) and the way they're building the characters (is Noah Wylie ever anything but earnest and adorable?). It reminds me a little of Battlestar Gallactica and all the decisions that had to be made about what kind of society they were going to be with the limited resources they have to fight and build.

Combat Hospital is basically Grey's Anatomy meets M*A*S*H*. I've only seen the pilot episode. It's not perfect either, but I kind of liked it. Now let's see if I can get the rest of my family on board . . .

Which brings us to Wilfred, which I originally described to my sweetheart as the show with Frodo and the dude in the dog suit. It's pretty clear that the main character (Elijah Wood) has had a major psychotic break and now sees his neighbor's dog as a guy in a dog suit who teaches Elijah life lessons. Some of these lessons involve taking a dump in his neighbor's boot. It's possible that the only happy ending to the story would be that someone finally realizes that Elijah's gone off the deep end and gets his committed and put on heavy-duty psychotropic drugs. My nineteen-year-old is convinced that Elijah will learn the life lessons he needs to heal himself from Wilfred. I'm just hoping that our neighbors take their shoes in at night.

So what are you watching?

"The Good News is You Write for Harlequin...."

"The bad news is, you write for Harlequin." This was one of my favorite lines from the RWA conference. Super Agents Gottleib and Steve Axelrod said it during the PAN keynote address on the State of the Union.

This was their answer regarding the outrage a lot of Harlequin authors have and had about the change in royalty rates for digital books. For those that didn't know Harlequin has been paying the same royalty rate for digital books as print, while the rest of the industry has been paying % of net sales. This has outraged Harlequin authors and for pretty good reason - it's less than the industry standard. So, before Nationals, Harlequin changed it to 25% net for single title authors and 15% for category authors. And they made it retroactive.

Harlequin thought they were doing a good thing - and they were. Making it retroactive was more than they needed to do. But still...there was outrage.

1. Harlequin handled it in sort of a ham handed way. They sent a letter to agents. Almost no author got a letter directly and many authors don't have agents. So, instead of handling the release of this new information - it exploded on author loops where rage and paranoia breed like crazy. And I think because Harlequin thought they were doing a good thing (and they are) they had in the letter an opt out date. So, if you don't want the 25% you have to notify us in writing. Well, for people who have been writing under one of the most unchangeable nonnegotiable contracts in the publishing world - this was sort of...laissez-faire.

2. The discrepancy between category and single title was a shocker for a lot of writers. I don't think a lot of women knew that there was a discrepancy in royalty rates between HQN/MIRA and series imprints. Harlequin's rationale is that reader's of series romance read according to line - not according to author. And so some of that money needs to be kicked back to maintaining the brand.

This is true is broad strokes. For the most part people don't seek me out. But they sure as hell seek out BJ Daniels or Karen Templeton. But I think Harlequin starts to fall apart when it comes to this mandate and the digital world. Sure, lots of people do a one click buy of all the Presents books in a month - but that is changing by the minute. By. The. Minute. And I think Harlequin knows that. There sure as hell are plenty of authors hammering on their doors willing to tell them.

All the publishers know that. Another one of my favorite lines was Steve Axelrod telling the publisher of St. Martin's that everything will change when publishers realize they've been underpaying their authors on digital rights.

Right now romance digital sales are keeping Economic textbooks in warehouses and paying the printing costs of those literary novels no one ever reads.

Part of the optimism felt by everyone at Nationals was due to everyone feeling like they've cornered their role in the digital world. Authors can self-publish, agents can help authors do that, and publishing houses have all opened digital first lines, hoping to get new talent and new money in their doors.

I'm a sit around a wait kind of gal. Or maybe it's lazy. Or maybe I don't see the point of getting too riled up until we really see how things are going to shake out. I don't know, but I can't get super wound up about the 25-15% thing. Maybe it will change. I hope it will. I hope the women shaking their fists understand the repercussions of waking up the monster. Because the only thing I really know is - 'the good news is, I write for Harlequin. The bad news is, I write for Harlequin.'

How to train your dragon and world building

One of the movies I've adored in the past few years is How to Train Your Dragon. It wasn't pixar, or disney, so I don't think it came out to huge announcements, but I've since watched it several times and every time I marvel at the imagination that went into this story.

A viking world, in which the vikings fight dragons. And perhaps the dragons aren't all bad. As a concept it's pretty simple, and it could translate into so many genres, Fantasy, YA, even romance.

And as new ideas fight for space in my head and the sense from the conference that anything is possible, I come back to the simplicity and imagination of this movie. There was enough there from popular culture that the writers didn't have to explain the world too much. We all know vikings to some degree and we all know dragons, and from there they expanded on the ideas, by giving us classifications of dragons, and a school for dragon fighting and a hero who is smaller and weaker, but smarter than those around him. Simple and smart, yet imaginative.

And those have become my guidelines for the next WIP. Simple and smart, but imaginative. If I stick to that guideline, I'll have a book I'm excited to write, and really, at this point, that's all I care about.

On an entirely different note, anyone watching Tru Blood? I am really enjoying it, because it feels campy this season. They are the opposite of simple, as seasons move on, they keep introducing new elements, fairys, witches, were-panthers, and sometimes the stories feel a little too crowded. Simple is harder, simple is Mad Men during the last season, where they distilled the storylines and characters to a few concepts. Right now Mad Men trumps Tru Blood.