Janice Hardy's Blog, page 85
January 15, 2019
Uncovering the Mysteries of Narrative Flow in the Opening of Stephen King's 11/22/63
By Jeanne CavelosPart of the How They Do It Series
JH: Studying the masters is a wonderful way to improve your own writing, and Stephen King is certainly one of the masters. Please help me welcome Jeanne Cavelos to the lecture hall today, to learn more about how King uses narrative flow in his novel, 11/22/63.
Jeanne Cavelos is the director of the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization devoted to helping writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror improve their work.
Jeanne began her professional life as an astrophysicist working at NASA. After earning her MFA in creative writing, she moved into a career in publishing, becoming a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she edited award-winning science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels and won the World Fantasy Award. Jeanne left New York to pursue her own writing career and find a more in-depth way of working with writers. She has had seven books published; her last novel was Invoking Darkness , the third volume in her best-selling trilogy The Passing of the Techno-Mages . Her writing has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award.
Jeanne is currently working on a near-future science thriller, Fatal Spiral. Since Jeanne loves working with developing writers, she created the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 1996, which quickly became one of the most respected programs in the world for writers of the fantastic. In 2010, she launched Odyssey Online Classes; live, intensive, interactive courses that use the techniques that have proven so effective at the workshop. Three online classes are announced each fall with application deadlines in December. The class Getting the Big Picture: The Key to Revising Your Novel will include the issues discussed in this article. Jeanne is also an English lecturer at Saint Anselm College, where she teaches fiction and nonfiction writing.
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads.
For more information about Odyssey, check out this YouTube video.
Take it away Jeanne...
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
January 14, 2019
Titles: The First Impression a Novel Makes
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy A new mini-feature starts this week here at Fic-U--the Afternoon Rewind. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'll pull an article out of the archives that still offers useful advice, even if it's been gather e-dust for a awhile. Today's rewind is all about how titles affect our novels.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with titles. They either come to me like bolts from the blue, or I spend months struggling to find the right one. Usually, the easier the title comes to me, the more well-formed the story idea is.
When this happens, I know I've tapped into a critical element of the story, and that element will likely resonate throughout the entire novel. That's the power of the right title.
The cliché says you can't judge a book by its cover, but readers do judge them by their titles. A great title will catch the eye and entice a reader to pick up your book, while a bad title will keep readers away or attract the wrong readers for your story.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
Three Ways Moral Dilemmas Can Strengthen Your Novel
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Moral ambiguity can bring a lot to a novel.
For me, writing is a bit of a psychological experiment. I love creating morally gray situations and seeing how my characters react to them. What they do, what lines they cross, how far they’re really willing to go to get what they want. It’s a wonderful way to learn who they are and tell a richer story.
When situations aren’t so back and white, it gives us more opportunities to explore our story’s themes and characters. We can push boundaries to make a point or illustrate an idea. We can raise tensions and provide the emotional depth that keep readers invested. Life is messy, so why not take advantage of that with the tales we tell?
Here are three ways moral dilemmas can benefit your novel:
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
January 12, 2019
Real Life Diagnostics: Is This Fight Scene Working?
Critique By Maria D'Marco Real Life Diagnostics is a weekly column that studies a snippet of a work in progress for specific issues. Readers are encouraged to send in work with questions, and we diagnose it on the site. It’s part critique, part example, and designed to help the submitter as well as anyone else having a similar problem.
If you're interested in submitting to Real Life Diagnostics, please check out these guidelines.
Submissions currently in the queue: Zero
Please Note: As of today, RLD slots are open.
This week’s question:
Is this fight scene working?
Market/Genre: YA Fantasy
On to the diagnosis…
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
Sunday Writing Tip: Clean Up Your Dialogue Tags
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Each week, I’ll offer a tip you can take and apply to your WIP to help improve it. They’ll be easy to do and shouldn’t take long, so they’ll be things you can do without taking up your entire Sunday. Though I do reserve the right to offer a good tip now and then that will take longer—but only because it would apply to the entire manuscript.
This week, delete unnecessary dialogue tags.
Dialogue tags are important, but not every spoken line needs a “(s)he said” after it. Too many tags in a row sound clunky at best, melodramatic and silly in the extreme. Go through your tags and decide if you truly need it or not. In most cases, it’s clear who’s speaking, or there’s already stage direction or action attributed to the speaker.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
January 11, 2019
The Literary Tour Guide: How Much Do You Need to Describe Your Setting?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy This week's Refresher Friday dips into 2012 to heavily update one of my favorite pieces on describing your setting. Enjoy!
Description is a blessing and a curse. Setting the scene is vital to help readers immerse themselves in your story world, but too much of it can bore readers and encourage them to skim past it. But find the proper balance between words and word pictures, and readers feel as though they've stepped into the book and live in you world.
How much do you need to describe your setting?
The pat answer is, "enough to make it feel real without bogging the reader down in too many details," but that isn't very helpful. How do you know how much detail is too much? Where is that fine line between immersive and oppressive? And the really frustrating part, is that there is no clear cut right answer. What is "enough" for an epic fantasy is usually too much for women's fiction, and what a thriller needs is different from a middle grade contemporary.
Let's look at a few guidelines.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
January 10, 2019
Three Things to Consider When Designing Your Novel's Cover
By Ray FlyntPart of the Indie Author Series
Have you made your New Year’s Resolution yet? I gave up on the usual “lose weight” resolution about 35 pounds ago. I hope you’re planning on sharpening skills on the business side of being an indie author. Columns in Fiction University’s Indie Author Series are designed to share best practices and stimulate your thinking on HOW you can do just that.
As you read, please consider topics for Indie Author’s that you’d like to see covered in the coming year. Share them in the comments section below.
Last month, we discussed book covers. This month, let's look at three things to consider when designing your novel's cover.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
January 9, 2019
An Easy Tip for Tightening Your Novel’s Plot
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy A loose plot can easily unravel, but tying up the threads strengthens the entire novel.
One of my favorite things about writing a novel is when I make a connection I hadn’t realized before, that fits so well it makes it seem as though I’d planned it all along. It’s my subconscious working in the background no doubt, but it dawned on me that I didn’t have to wait for my inner writer to clue me in—I could consciously look for those connections.
Once I started looking, I found multiple “hidden connections” per book that deepened the plot and made it more unpredictable. The obvious characters became red herrings for the more subtle ones lurking in the background doing “plot things” and making the story work.
Plus, it’s a ton of fun.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
January 8, 2019
5 Inspiring Books for Writers
By Laurence MacNaughton, @LMacNaughton Part of the How They Do It Series (Contributing Author)
JH: If you're looking for a little inspiration to get your year started, here are some great books to grab.
Did you resolve to finish your novel this year? I salute you. The bad news is that 80% of those who set New Year’s resolutions give up by the second week of February, according to U.S. News. If you need a little help staying inspired this year, here are the best books to keep you going.
I'm always on the lookout for new books to add to my shelf. What titles have you found to be especially useful, interesting, or inspiring? Leave me a comment below, or contact me on my author website at www.LaurenceMacNaughton.com.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
January 7, 2019
Is Story Structure Strangling Your Writing?
By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy Recently, two things happened that made me think about structure and storytelling. Jami Gold talked about writing rules and the pros and cons of following them, and a fellow writer expressed frustration over structure killing their story. I’ve spoken to enough writers in my career to know that for every rule, structure, or process out there, there are people for whom it just doesn’t work—or worse, has negative effects on their writing.
I think a lot of the frustration stems from the idea that writing has a formula, and if we just do it “right” we’ll be successful. It’s not story structure that’s the problem, it’s the template idea. Follow X rules and you get Y. Fill in the blanks and you can write a great book. Every story contains the same basic parts.
The kicker…is that this is all true, and it’s all false.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com
