Kate Lowell's Blog, page 19

It was a good week :)

We were stormed in for the better part of a week. Being your typical introverted author, I loved it. :) A whole week where I didn’t need to go out and wear myself to bit talking to people. A week away from the day job and the crap that’s going on there. And, best of all, a week to see if I’d truly lost it, or if all my creative mojo was being sucked out by the dayjob.

The verdict?

The dayjob sucks, in every way you can imagine.

Here’s my wordcounts for the past couple of days.

This is closer to my normal daily wordcount. The last value was taken about four hours ago, so it’s changed some too. But it’s nice to look at it and think that I am one day away from clearing my February word commitment, and maybe catching up on a disastrous January.

I wish I thought that I could keep this up after the storms have passed, but it’s not likely. Still, it’s promising, or a promise perhaps. I know now that, once things slacken off, I’ll be able to write at something better than a hundred words a day, or less. It’s reassuring, because I was coming to the conclusion that I’d already had my run, and I was going to be one of those ‘one-hit wonders’ no one ever wants to be. But no, it’s not a lack of whatever it is that creates more-than-one hit wonders, but a lack of time and the emotional energy you need in order to write a good story.

This too shall pass. But summer is coming and, with it, the promise of longer days, less shoveling, and more time to devote to my characters. And the end of this sucky dayjob.

All hail spring!

Filed under: Random Weirdness Tagged: dayjob, hope, writing

Three Dirty Birds and Part 2 of Outlining

Three Dirty Birds and Chapter 2 of KM Weiland’s Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success is over at Ana’s blog today!

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk Tagged: outlining, writing advice

Tuesday Tickle: Rise of the Alpha Squirrel

Still muddling along, struggling to make the words come out. Spent most of the last couple of days dealing with weather related emergencies–the top of my head is now higher than the barn when I get up on the drift between the house and the paddock. (It’s a heck of a snow slide, though! Wheeeee!)

Thought I’d throw this little bit out there, introduce you to Charlie, the werehummingbird. (Hey, it’s not as weird as a werecockroach.)

Nathan moved the coffee cups to one end of the table and sat. ���Pull the shorts up, Charlie, for the love of walnuts, and sit down. And don’t get any bright ideas about my coffee.���

���Tasted funny anyway. Not enough sugar.��� Charlie pulled the shorts up and awkwardly straddled the seat. ���That yours?��� He jerked his chin in the direction of the tent.

���Yes, he is. No bright ideas about him, either.���

���No wonder you were trying to give me the slip at the store.���

“Then why didn���t you take the hint, birdbrain?���

���Don’t call me that! And if you were being that closed-mouthed, I figured it had to be something pretty good.��� Charlie propped his head on his hand with a satisfied grin. ���It totally is. He���s hot. He got a brother? I don���t mind a little inter-species dating.���

Filed under: Nutty Romances, Tuesday Tickle Tagged: mm romance, shifters, werehummingbird, weresquirrel

Three Dirty Birds and the Dreaded Outline of Doom

The Dirty Birds are back with a new book! K.M.Weiland and her advice in Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success.

Zoe: So this will be an interesting book given the range of pantsing/plotting we have among us birds.

Ana: Yes, I think I���ll take the role of the skeptic.

Kate: I���ve already been cheesed-off by someone in the second chapter. (Not Weiland entirely)

Zoe: I should probably actually read those interviews at the ends of the chapters, huh?

Ana: I don���t think you���re missing too much by not reading them.

Kate: Nope, not a thing. Grrrrr!

Zoe: I looked at the interview questions asked, realized they were the same for every chapter…realized I didn���t much care. The actual chapters though have some decent stuff.

Kate: Yeah, the chapters themselves aren���t bad. When I go through them, I remember doing some of this stuff for Bite Me Tender, and not really thinking of it as outlining. But I guess what that comes down to is–outlining is what you make of it.

Ana: I have to say reading these chapters it sometimes felt that the assumption she was working off was that pantsers don���t know ANYTHING about what���s going on in their books or what���s going to happen.

Kate: I found it kind of dismissive of anything that wasn���t linear. (Why, hello, big red button. Who���s pushing you today?) The fact is, as a very happy pantser, I still know most of what���s going on in my story before I start. And I like jumping around in the story, creating puzzles for myself, having new ideas pop up that I never considered. That���s not to say I wouldn���t like to have an outline for one story and have it all mapped out before I start. Except I have a sneaking suspicion that my brain would be all ���okay, we���re done now. Next plot bunny!��� and that would be it. So, I���m in a Catch-22–do I try it with a good story idea that I���m eager to write and risk losing that story, or do I try it with one I don���t much care about and risk my own disinterest sabotaging me? Or do I just say, ���Stuff it!���

Zoe: I don���t feel so much like I���m all done now when I outline (though I don���t actually use the word ���outline��� when I���m doing it). It���s more like a really short first draft (really short–maybe 10-15 pages) where I���m just telling myself the story. Then I do the real first draft, where I fill everything in…and completely change what happened in the outline. :)

But you could try outlining an idea you don���t even have yet, so there���s no bias either way. Just start with the premise chapter and work your way through something from utter scratch. Maybe you���ll wind up with a story you want to write; maybe you won���t.

Ana: I���m probably going to try the things/methods described in this book to outline, or try an outline for my paranormal. Right now, I���m somewhere between outlining and pantsing. Where spending 3 months on an outline makes me want to go hide in a cave somewhere and give up writing all together, while not having any idea at all before I start? That seems daunting too.

Zoe: She spends longer writing an outline than I spend writing a first draft.

Ana: YES.

Kate: Lol, me too! But I love that first part.

Zoe: I just don���t know how I���d take that long to plan something.

Kate: I think she must like a really detailed outline. My outline for Bite Me Tender was more of a brainstorming session that lasted about fifteen minutes, scribbled all over the page, and then the story I actually wrote had nothing in common with it except the names and Levi was a werewolf. Go figure.

Ana: That���s often how it goes for me. I have this amazing idea for this brilliant story! And then by the time I���ve written it, the story has very little in common with that original idea. (In fact, I could probably write the story I���d first thought of too, and sell them as separate stories and no one would know!)

Kate: Two birds with one…word processor?

Zoe: I think not using what���s in your outline isn���t a bad thing���you eliminated those things by thinking of them first.

Kate: And I think that���s part of my process. I know, doing the rewrite on Knight, there���s a lot of changing happening there. Every rewrite makes some fundamental changes in the way I present material, and what scenes I use to get my points across.

Zoe: I have a new book to start on the first. And no idea what���s supposed to happen in it, so I���ll be using this book and the next two weeks to try and get a handle on it.

Kate: That sounds like a plan. You can keep us updated on how it���s working for you.

Have we actually talked about what���s in this chapter yet? :P

Zoe: Ha. So, chapter one covers the misconceptions of outlining, which we all have heard (or held), and the benefits of outlining. And…I���ll admit I just skimmed because I don���t need to be sold on it; I want to get to the meat of doing it.

Ana: I highlighted a part where she talks about how much she hates discovering that she has to do rewrites. I love discovering that I have to do rewrites, but mostly, because for me that goes hand in hand with realizing how I can make my story stronger, so I���m initially all excited.

Kate: Me too. I rewrite all the way through the story.

Zoe: That���s how I feel too. Writing a story (including the rewrites) is kind of like doing a puzzle. Or a painting, I suppose. You keep going back and figuring out how to make it even better. (Actually I think I have that backward: you keep figuring out how to make it even better, and go back and do it.)

Ana: The next part I highlighted was where she said that an extensive outline was a first draft (which I agree with), but that it only took maybe a quarter of the time. I think that���s a very individual thing. My first drafts certainly don���t take as long as her outlines. (And I cringe to think that her first drafts take a year, when you do the math.)

Kate: Considering the way publishing is going now, one draft a year isn���t a sustainable pace, if you want to make a living (or even a decent part-time job) off writing. We���re not all George Martin.

Zoe: (Thank goodness! The pressure that man is under���)

Ana: Then I think, reading on, that her writing process as a pantser must be very different from mine, because she describes frequently writing 5k word segments only to realize they lead her to a dead end. I can honestly say that usually doesn���t happen to me. I usually think at least that far ahead. (For example, when I get an idea that I want to try following, I make a quick flow chart for myself to see if it even leads to any outcome that would help my story.) Pantsing doesn���t have to mean you never think about what you���re doing.

Kate: See, in my head, my stories are a web of connecting events. Some events don���t show up at first, because I don���t yet that I need them, but once I get to the one they should connect to, it becomes obvious. I���ve never written 5K words only to say ���This isn���t going anywhere.��� (Actually, I should qualify that. During my complete mental funk this year, when I forgot how to write, I did do something like that. Only because I was writing a sequel, and I left too much time in between the two stories. I reread chunks of the first, but missed some stuff that my subconscious mind remembered. And it blocked me once I got so far. Once I clued to the problem, the ���block��� went away. I know exactly where I���m going with it now.) When I���m on my game, I never run into that problem.

Zoe: I���ve written 40k, 50k words that haven���t gone anywhere. I���m happy to write even when I have no idea what I���m doing with it. Someday I���ll steal stuff from those manuscripts.

Ana: I have written entire drafts that didn���t go anywhere. But it wasn���t because they led me to dead ends. It was just that by the end of those, I���d come up with a much better story than the one I���d told.

Zoe: Mine were dead ends. :) (Gah, the entire first few drafts of Man Made Murder were dead ends. I kept taking a long running start and ending up in the same unworkable spot.) Once I changed nearly everything���it worked! :D :D

Ana: Yay! The next bit I found interesting was her claim that foreshadowing was impossible when pantsing. That doesn���t hold true in my experience. During my first novel I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but my brain kind of pulled it together in a way that made sense by using seemingly unnecessary details I���d put into the story to tie it up. So when I reread the whole thing there was a lot of unintended foreshadowing.

Kate: I found that weird for her to say. I���m convinced that her definition of pantsing and ours are not the same. If I know a certain scene is coming up, stuff just comes out on the page in earlier scenes. Even my throwaway fantasy already has foreshadowing in the first chapter. It needs tweaking, but the space is there.

Ana: I also had some objections to her saying I didn���t know which POV to use unless I outlined.

Kate: Like you wouldn���t know what the conflict of a scene was, or who had the most to lose before you get into it.

Zoe: Yes, I think she oversells outlines here, and she probably didn���t need to. Outlines do have benefits; you don���t have to make it sound like pantsers can���t do anything to talk people into trying them.

Kate: I really think this comes down to her definition of a pantser. The more I read, the more convinced I am that, to her, a pantser is someone who sits down at the computer with an idea–���Two guys meet at a coffee shop and it turns out one used to be the best friend of the other���s brother.���–and then just starts without thinking about it. I���m baffled as to why she talks about how a story bumps around in her head for a year or two before she writes it. Have either of you ever sat down to write a story the minute you got an idea? I haven���t. Admittedly, mine don���t always take a year, but…

Ana: I have, but only short stories. I have also done two NaNo���s without thinking about either story much prior to writing it. One, I trunked. The other I did a complete rewrite of. (But, the first draft only took a month, so��� worth it.)

Kate: I can���t even do that with short stories. *sniffs sadly* No seat-of-the-pants writing here.

Zoe: I used to seat-of-pants stories, back when I was doing fanfic.

Kate: Now I���m beginning to question my membership in the pantser club.

Ana: It just works differently for all of us.

Zoe: Not just for all of us, but for every story. You never know what you���re going to wind up doing to get a story written.

Ana: True, but that���s what keeps it interesting.

Kate: Yes. If it was the same every time, I���d get bored. You know, I was just rereading the part of the chapter where she says that pantsers think that outlining takes too much time. I���m not sure it���s that. If it���s something you don���t enjoy doing, why spend that much time on it? I want to come to my stories with joy, not dread. If outlining isn���t fun, if it doesn���t put me in my happy place, why spend that time? I���d rather go back and revise and tweak and play with my words (FUN!) than trudge through an outline (NOT FUN!). Completely aside from the fact that if you aren���t enjoying doing it, then you���re going to find excuses to not do it. And the story doesn’t get written.

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk, writing Tagged: How to Outline Your Novel, KM Weiland, outlining, pantser, plotter

Cover me, I’m going in!

And by going in, I mean I’m finally screwing up my courage and starting Z. Rider’s Suckers.

I’m terrified by horror novels (I’ve still got scars on my psyche from Stephen King’s Dreamspinner).

If you’re wondering where to donate for my therapy fund, Zoe’s in charge, since it’s ALL HER FAULT. :)

(This was supposed to go up yesterday, because I messed up and forgot we weren’t Dirty Birding this week. Tuesday Tickle will following later on in the week. I’m too wiped tonight to try to figure out what I’ve posted already.)

Filed under: Random Weirdness Tagged: horror novel, scaredy pants, Suckers, where's my mommy?, Z.Rider

Three Dirty Birds vs. the Revision Checklist, Part 3

We’re over at Zoe’s blog for the last part of our discussion of James Scott Bell’s Revision and Self-Editing for Publication. Tune in next week to see how I handle working through a book on outlining.

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk, writing Tagged: editing, Revision and Self-Editing, writing advice

Three Dirty Birds, Checking Things off the Checklist, Part Two

Part Two of our discussion of the checklist James Scott Bell provides at the end of his Revision and Self-editing for Publication. Meet us over at Ana’s blog!

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk Tagged: editing, revision checklist, writing

Tuesday Tickle: The Emperor’s Favorite (or, that’s what I’m calling it at this moment)

In an effort to get myself back into writing (now that I’ve decided dayjob can bloody well wait on stuff), I’ve let myself start sketching out a new story. Being a pantser, my version of ‘sketching out’ means actually writing parts of the story.

So I have this low fantasy story (why am I obsessed with low fantasies?) that I’m just toying with, because it’s still in the easy, brand-new stage. (As opposed to the “There probably only a couple thousand words left in this one, but now I have to make all the bits meet and match and OMG it’s hard!” stage that most everything else is in). I know, it could be considered a bit lazy, but I prefer to think of it as psychologically constructive. At some point, I’ll put this to one side and have a go at the stuff that’s close to being finished, and then I’ll be able to come back to it. In the meantime, though, I hope it’ll keep the ‘author pilot-light’ burning. :)

So here’s the first couple of paragraphs, introducing one of my MC’s. Apologies for rather sketchy worldbuilding, since I’m still trying to figure out exactly what this country looks and feels like. (Really bizarre, since we’re only in this country for a couple of chapters in the book. But I do like a well sketched out world.)

Don’t know if he comes off as a bit of a jerk or not–I tried to catch a bit of the old brotherly rivalry, as well as lay the groundwork for something that I think will be happening much later in the story.

For his fourteenth birthday, the day he would officially take on at least some of a man���s responsibilities, Krystiye Onil received the traditional gift of money. His eyes had nearly fallen out of his head when he saw what his father was holding out to him–a whole silver cub. It didn���t by any stretch make him independently wealthy, but it was more money than he���d ever owned, a fortune even for the Ancel���s second son. Two entire days he debated over what he would spend it on, until his older brother Leighdin grinned and punched him on the shoulder.

���Go to town and waste it. That���s what it���s meant for, a last day of childhood. Then, come home and take over the running of the eastern reaches, so I don���t have to look after them any more.���

And so Krys had planned a trip into town.

Krys and his younger brother Ecotrad broke out of the trees and cantered toward the cliffs that edged the north side of the bay. Krys grinned and put his heels to the sides of his gray mare and raced past his brother, whose blood bay stallion was more showy than useful, and was having considerably more trouble with the rocks and uneven soil between them than Krys���s plainer but more sure-footed mare.

He leaped her over a rough section of turf, landing easily. Behind him, he heard Trad���s horse stumble, then catch its balance, and he grinned again.

Should have listened when our father said he wasn���t a good horse for the terrain. Krys had listened when it came time for him to have his first real horse instead of a pony. The mare was plain, but sure-footed with plenty of bone, and she never went lame. She was also, Krys thought, smarter than he was, which was useful on an estate at the far reaches of the kingdom. He could trust her to pick a safe way across rocky ground or through one of the local bogs, with their deceptive appearance of solidity.

Filed under: Tuesday Tickle Tagged: fantasy, first draft, medieval, mm romance

Three Dirty Birds on James Scott Bell’s Checklist

The Three Dirty Birds are chatting about James Scott Bell���s Revision and self-Editing for Publication. We���re down to the end of it now, with just his Revision Checklist to go through. (And, by the way, he has a downloadable version of this checklist at Writer’s Digest, if you want to check it out.)

Kate: The checklist really was the book condensed down to however many pages it was. A nice concise set of questions (I love questions!) to use as you go over your manuscript after it���s been finished.

Ana: Why do you love questions?

Kate: Because it flips my mind into ���find the answer��� mode, which is way more efficient than just telling me I should make my character more likeable.

Ana: Why?

Kate: I like to solve problems. Question marks are problems waiting for answers. I dunno–it���s just how my brain functions (when it functions).

Zoe: Yeah, it makes for a good cheat sheet. And if Ana asks ���why��� one more time, I���m going to flick her off her perch.

Ana: Could you really be so cruel?

Kate: Better change the subject, quick!

Zoe: Everyone ignore that squawk you just heard. She���ll pick herself back up. Meanwhile, the chapter opens with a section on Character. Which immediately made me anxious. By the time I got to the third question���Do my characters sufficiently contrast?���I was doing the fetal-position roll-on-the-bed going, ���STOP!��� (I write a lot of friends, long-time friends. People grow to be like each other after a while, so…I get nervous.)

Kate: But notice that he says ���enough���. All you need is enough differences to help drive the plot, they don���t have to be polar opposites.

Ana: Friends can contrast in subtle ways. I know a lot of people think my best friend and I are pretty much the same. Hell, I���ve been called ���Alex��� more times than I can count, but I know there���s a lot of ways we actually think very differently about certain topics. Maybe you just need to find one or two of those.

Zoe: Is it strange that sometimes I find sanity with you otherwise nutty birds?

Ana: What, you get to ask questions and I don���t ?

Kate: Uh oh, I think I see some more perch-flicking in the near future.

Zoe: There���s one exercise in this section that I���m tempted to half try, the Chart Character Change one, where you highlight all the passages of the characters��� inner life. I think it would be interesting to read through. (I���m just not going to transfer the trajectory to a chart.)

Kate: I was looking at that one too. It makes me cringe a little, dissecting the work like that, but I can see where it would be immensely useful, especially for a pantser like me. That���s the worry I always carry with me, that the story is still ���lumpy���, that I didn���t fill in all the holes that were left in it.

Ana: I think writing a synopsis can help with that.

Kate: I���m thinking in terms of making character choices obvious to the reader. (Maybe obvious isn���t the right word, but I want readers to go, ���Yeah, I see why he decided to do that.���)

Zoe: With the one I���m working on now, I���m worried that readers won���t make the connections (because they���re in my head instead of on the page). That���s probably more of a plot issue…which is the next section!

Kate: I liked his part on the opposition characters (and i like that he doesn���t just call them the villains). I don���t see it quite so often now, but it used to happen a lot that the ���bad guy��� would be this one-dimensional character that was only there to get in the way or cause trouble for the MC. Or maybe I just stopped reading those authors. But the idea of writing a biography of your opposition character from the point of view of his loving mother made me laugh, and then say, ���Hey, that���s actually a good idea.���

Ana: I can see how it would help you sympathize. I���ve had the problem that I felt too sorry for my opposing characters before. I love getting into their heads.

Zoe:~hides her WIP behind her back and whistles~

Kate: Lol.

Ana: No way Zoe is plotting anything sinister.

Kate: Never. There was a good reminder in there too about making your opposing character as strong or stronger than your MC, which kind of brought me back to Story Trumps Structure again, because he talked about that too.

Ana: I kind of liked what he said about adhesive. You know, what makes your MC continue to deal / put up with your opposing character instead of cutting them out of their lives. I thought the same was true for love interests. (Especially in stories where you have a lot going against that couple.)

Zoe: That���s a good point. And I loved the Don���t Hold Back On Making Trouble sidebar. I can sometimes have trouble with that. (Not with the current WIP, but sometimes.) (Oh my poor characters in the current WIP.)

Kate: I always feel sorry for Zoe���s characters, because I know just how mean she���s going to be.

Ana: Seeing as you���re a cat, I���d be especially careful.

Zoe: No cats are injured in this book. (But men may want a stiff drink before they get into the meat of it.) (You may hear my husband scream when he beta reads it. Just ignore him. He���ll be fine.)

Ana: That���s what you said when you flicked me off the perch. My feathers are still ruffled. One of them may never be the same again.

Kate: That���s okay, Ana. We���ll get you a prosthetic.

Zoe: You���ll be fine. (And I just realized the Don���t Hold Off on Making Trouble is in the next section. My pages flipped when I wasn���t looking!)

Ana: I like the part about the calendar. I always mess up my timelines. Always.

Kate: I���ve seen that happen. And I���ve had to make last-minute adjustments because ���oops!���. That���s what I like my whiteboards for.

Zoe: I���ve used both spreadsheets and dated chapters to keep track. And timelines in Scapple! (With a vampire one, I used colored backgrounds on my timeline to denote when it was night and day.) I���m so glad the current WIP takes place in one evening.

Kate: That���s a cool idea, Zoe. I keep meaning to try out Aeon Timeline, because it looks like something I would like, but the learning curve seemed kind of steep when I downloaded the trial, and I never really got anywhere with it.

Ana: Something in me stupidly resists being organized.

Zoe: I haven���t tried Aeon Timeline, but I have found that I prefer freeform tools over purpose-built ones.

Kate: I like the concept of AT, but couldn���t really figure out how to get it to do something in a form I could read after. I���m sure I���m doing something wrong, but it���ll be a few months before I have time to play with it again.

Ana: I also liked the ���add a character��� bit. I���ve saved at least two novels that way after a horrific first draft.

Kate: Sometimes you need that extra personality.

Ana: Or that extra conflict.

Zoe: ���Add a character��� saved Man Made Murder. He wound up being an equal POV with the original main character. (It also added a whole second plot.)

Kate: I just added a brother into my ���entertainment for now��� story. I knew I needed a character to do something, but I realized that it would break the story if I had the older brother do it. (And, weirdly enough, I���ve already identified the theme of this book. Go figure.)

Zoe: I figured out the theme of mine last night while doing my reading for this morning!

Kate: Woohoo! Go themes!

Zoe: I was going, ���La la la this book doesn���t actually have a theme…oh wait.���

Kate: i liked his ���Act, then Explain���. I thought that if someone followed that rule, it would do a lot to get rid of the info-dump first chapters you see so often.

Ana: I sometimes overdo that.

Kate: As long as you go back and fix it before you send it off to the editor, then it���s okay. I know my first draft is, a lot of the time, me kind of taking notes for myself. I strip info out of the chapters I write first all the time, because it���ll come up in a chapter that happens earlier in the timeline, but was actually written later in real time. So my early stuff is really kludgy.

Ana: Haha, I have to write in order because otherwise I can���t keep track of all that stuff. He also mentions having too many characters in your opening chapter. It���s definitely a problem I���ve been struggling with in my first novel.

Kate: It���s hard when you have a character in transition, or a character who is being introduced to a group. I usually change my start point when I run into that problem.

Ana: Making it start any earlier is kind of pointless��� starting it later would be even more confusing. The only thing I could do is delete characters (at least one might maybe be able to go)… or find some way for them to pop up later in the story.

Kate: Maybe combine some?

Ana: Nah. I���ll just have to spread out their appearances somehow. I���ll figure something out.

Kate: I have faith in you. :)

Zoe: And then Bell gets into middles, which is always my favorite part to see in a writing book, because it���s the part I���m always looking for magic answers to. I don���t know if his advice is ���magic,��� but it is useful.

Kate: Anyone else think he did a better job on Middles in the checklist than he did in the book? Like, it���s longer than the section in the book, and has more meat in it?

Zoe: Yes.

Kate: Very practical. Upping the stakes, adding in the potential for disaster.

Zoe: Making sure your opposition is strong enough.

Kate: Add in a subplot (always fun! Think it���s gonna be easy, MC? Haha, take that!)

Zoe: I thought the ���Add Research��� subsection was an odd fit for this part. It seems like more of an overall thing than a middle issue, and by putting it here, you���d almost think he���s saying that research is the way to strengthen a sagging middle.

Kate: I suspect he put it there because the middle is where a lot of change is happening in a book, in terms of plot lines starting and stopping, and this is where it���s easy to get caught up in making them work and forget that the setting needs to work too. (It also seemed like something that was aimed at pantsers. I���ll admit to doing minimal research beforehand, and looking up stuff during the writing.)

Zoe: I���m still mentally moving it to the ���Polish��� section.

Kate: It works there too.

I liked how he broke the stakes down into Plot, Character, and Societal. I���ve never really thought about it that way, and now I���m looking at WIP and wondering how I can add in some Societal stakes. I have Character stakes galore, and some Plot stakes, but Societal? Hmmm���

Ana: I don���t think I���ve used Societal stakes so far. Always been looking for more personal stuff. Oh wait, I had an ���if you don���t do this, the world may end��� scenario in my first novel, it just never seemed that important. ��� which says a lot about my characters��� priorities.

Kate: Lol.

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk, writing Tagged: James Scott Bell, Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, revision checklist, writing advice, writing books

Three Dirty Birds on The First Read-Through

We’re over at Ana’s blog, talking about what we do after we’ve finished our first draft, and what James Scott Bell recommends.

Filed under: Three Dirty Birds Talk, writing Tagged: drafting, first draft, revising, Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, writing advice