Nicola Marsh's Blog, page 82

Off the market

After years of speculation, it has finally happened.

Prince William is engaged to Kate Middleton, and while the Brits get excited about a royal wedding, we'll get our fair share of media hysteria here in OZ too.

The endless speculation on the frock, the flowers, the food...let's hope it's a short engagement!

S.W.O.T. analysing your story

Another great post by the folks at StoryFix about using Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to evaluate your story.

The questions raised really help you think about the story you've written.

Check it out.

Nurturing writers

Yesterday, I was an invited guest at the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild 20th anniversary celebrations.

Had a ball catching up with people I hadn't seen in years, some people I 'knew' via Twitter & Facebook, Haylee Kerans from Harlequin office in Sydney, and author buddies like Fiona Lowe, Joan Kilby, Anne Gracie and Ebony McKenna.
(MRWG head honchos Elvina Payet & Serena Tatti, with moi)

I'm a past member of MRWG, the group that nurtured me when I first started writing in 2001. While there are many new faces, the old ones (and I mean that in the nicest possible way!) are still smiling and happy and giving.

Long live writing groups like this these.

(Elvina Payet, YA author Ebony McKenna, moi, Emmie Dark, Harlequin Super-Rom author Joan Kilby)

(PS. Serena, if you're reading this, thanks for saying you can see I've lost 3kg!)

Weekend Book Club: Theodore Boone

Doing things a little differently today.

I'm not reviewing this book, though I did read it last week (if anyone has read it, please feel free to share opinions.)

What I find interesting is the number of well known authors who are hopping on the YA bandwagon.
Yes, YA is hot at the moment.
Yes, YA is selling and selling well.
Yes, it makes sense for the author and publisher alike to make the most of a hot trend and get their big name authors out there in another subgenre. Money talks.

While big name authors are on bestselling lists for a reason, I don't think everyone can write with a convincing YA voice.

Thoughts?

Dateless

Can you believe Halle Berry has ditched this guy for Olivier Martinez, Kylie's ex?



Any takers?

Lessons learned from Harry Potter

I love finding nuggets of writing gold and here's another from Nathan Bransford (who I can't believe has retired from agenting!) with his post yesterday on writing tips from reading Harry Potter.

He elaborates on these 5 writing tips:

-You can accomplish amazing things with a third person limited perspective

-Don't be afraid to show your characters' flaws

-Making it look easy is really really hard

-"You might try and go easy on the adverbs when the emotion is apparent from the dialogue"

-Have fun with your world

It's a great post. Check it out.

THE WRITE WHISPER: Speed writing with a bullet

As many writers are working their fingers to the bone this month with NaNoWriMo, I thought this link might help speed things up a little.

From the fabulous Storyfix blog, the basic summary is this:

-you've written about 20K words & are finding the going tough
-stop writing narrative
-start writing story exposition bullet points
-keep adding bullet points till you know where your story is going/you're excited to keep writing it/etc...
-with these points already jotted down, you can write with added speed as each bullet defines what happens in a scene.

This method is called beat sheeting (each bullet=story beat=scene) and there's load more links in the article if you want to know more.


Happy writing!

Getting a feel for it

Still revising my retro book.

Check out these cool pics I googled before I started writing the book to get a feel for it.



Might post some more tomorrow.

Use your imagination

Revisions for RETRO-A-GO-GO are coming along beautifully.Here's one of the dresses Lola wears in a key scene.Gorgeous, huh?I love layering lushness with words but fear my descriptions don't do dresses like this justice.Hope you've all got good imaginations!

Weekend Book Club: The Sleeping Doll

I only started reading Jeffery Deaver recently, within the last 6 months or so, and boy, am I glad I did. I love a good thriller. It would be my first choice of genre to read (surprised you, huh?)And Jeffery Deaver does thrillers very, very well. Here's a blurb: Jeffery Deaver is back with a dark and multilayered psychological thriller about a vicious killer's escape from a California super-prison and the mysterious and deadly quest he embarks on once he's free. Making her first appearance in The Cold Moon (2006), special agent Kathryn Dance—a brilliant interrogator and body language expert—stars in The Sleeping Doll, where she and her partners at the California Bureau of Investigation hunt down escaped killer Daniel Pell, a self-styled Charles Manson. Deaver's most frightening villain to date, Pell is a master of control, who mesmerizes, seduces, and exploits people for his own murderous ends. To track down Pell before he destroys more lives, Kathryn Dance must enlist the help of people from the killer's past: the three women who lived under his sadistic sway in the cult he once headed, as well as the young girl known as The Sleeping Doll, the only survivor of her family's slaughter at Pell's hand. Filled with masterful plot twists: Jeffery Deaver creates plots with so many twists and turns they could "hide behind a spiral staircase" (People), and The Sleeping Doll has Deaver's trademark twists in spades. It is guaranteed to keep readers guessing right up to the breathless end. This story is a ripper! A page turner from start to finish, with enough twists to keep you riveted. Thankfully, my mum bought Jeffery Deaver's latest, 'The Edge' last week. I'm hurrying her along to finish it! What are you reading this week?