Kate Lowell's Blog, page 29

Three Dirty Birds Talk Story Trumps Structure Ch. 23 and Kitty Was Confused

We’re over at Zoe’s blog again today, talking about revelation and transformation as it applies to characters. (I didn’t see the point, but you should read it and see what you think.) We also talk a little about How Many POV’s Is The Right Number?

Filed under: Tuesday Tickle, writing

Tuesday Guest Tickle: Saving Kane by Michele Rakes

Buy it here!

Loose Id





Michele’s Blog

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Michele’s Twitter: @MicheleRakes

















What’s the story about?

A twenty-something paramedic suffering from PTSD and a failing relationship with his high school sweetheart becomes embroiled in the tragic life of a young, gay man brutally beaten, raped, and left for dead.

Kane Abel can’t help falling for his caregiver, the handsome paramedic who saves his life, but he’s resistant. The one time Kane throws caution to the wind, he’s left with a wired jaw and a tracheostomy. He can’t take much more hurt. With his attacker’s promise to return, Kane lives in a constant state of fear, and with the ever-present paramedic, arousal.

Garrett Young struggles with the question of his sexuality, unable to get Kane out of his mind even as he fights against the demise of his long-time engagement with his girlfriend Amanda. Every day is complicated by his ongoing battle with PTSD and alcoholism, compounded by his fear for Kane’s life.

What MT, a staff member at Loose Id had to say about it:

Saving Kane is the debut story from new-to Loose Id author Michele M. Rakes. It’s m/m, and it’s not a gentle story. I like lighthearted books but I also like stories that have hard-luck characters who overcome odds and obstacles, and endure the angst and sometimes ungentle, unkind actions that come with it. Right now I’m sort of skimming as I format, but dayum, this looks good. Prolly not something you can gulp right down, but I reckon the story will stick to your ribs, so to speak.

A little preview:

The days all blend together. Two weeks feel like two months. Garrett’s the only one who makes the days stand out. By my bedside, during the night, schmoozing the night nurse into letting him stay. Sometimes, he sleeps in the chair.

The day nurse, Yolanda, enters my room. Her voice is full of cheer, and her Brooklyn accent’s so much easier on my nervous system. “Hey, you! Nice to see you again. Did you know Kane’s going home today?”

“Is he?” A low, familiar rumble fills the room, sending my skin into instant ripples of gooseflesh—a dark-chocolate voice.

Garrett’s back. The surprise of him in my room this early in the afternoon floods my body with a rare heat. Did he know I was leaving the hospital today? Did the night nurse mention something to him? I didn’t tell him. My instinct’s to play possum, always unsure of how I’m to behave with Garrett. I prefer to simply listen to the man talk, especially when he thinks I’m sleeping.

The ice pack over my eyes blocks everything except a vague light. I can’t see Garrett, but I imagine he’s in his usual spot. Long legs spread wide, his muscular form makes the chair appear small, and his uniform is rumpled from a night’s work.

I still don’t like the lights on; so much easier for me to hide in the dark. Garrett doesn’t mind. Yolanda urges me not to look in the mirror yet. I haven’t seen my face, avoiding the moment with diligence. I must be gruesome. I wonder what Garrett thinks of me, although at night he doesn’t seem to notice. Is he horrified by me in the light of day?

“I thought you might be his ride. I gotta say, you’re the only one who’s showed up.” Yolanda prattles on, filling Garrett in on all my secrets.

“He hasn’t had any other visitors? All this time?” Garrett asks, pinpointing my loneliness with a skewer of doubt.

“Oh, no, honey. You’ve been the only one today. Some guy visited him yesterday, but Kane had to send him home. The young man was a mess. Crying and carrying on like he’d been the one attacked. Poor Kane had to console him. Kyle or Lyle?” Yolanda’s voice lowers to a whisper. “Anyway, he talks about you. You’re his angel.”

Filed under: Guest Releases, Tuesday Tickle, Uncategorized Tagged: firefighter, gay bashing, hurt/comfort, mm romance, paramedic

Three Dirty Birds talk about Chapter 22 and More Characterization

Today the Dirty Birds are talking about character attitude, quirks, idiosyncrasies, intention and motivation. That’s a lot! Good thing we’re good talkers, right?

Zoe: This was the anti-character-worksheet chapter!

Kate: I didn’t find much in this chapter, to be honest. A few things were good, but I really had to work to keep my mind on it.



Zoe: I actually really liked the doubts, shame, secrets, and desires questions he gives. It comes right before he puts down all those tedious character worksheets, and while I was reading the questions, and I was thinking, “THIS IS WAY BETTER THAN CHARACTER WORKSHEETS,” because the questions actually got you thinking about the inner workings of characters, instead of their favorite colors and what car they drive.

Ana: I was going through this chapter thinking: Yay, character sheets are a waste of time. I don’t need to feel lazy anymore!

Zoe: I liked his line, “A character with an attitude is always more interesting than a character with a history.”

Ana: Best line in the chapter.

Kate: It was an excellent statement, because a character’s attitude encompasses the whole of their previous experience.

Zoe: The “intentions differ from motivation” section…part of me kept thinking, “This is interesting,” and the other part was thinking, “…or it might be if I was sure I understood what he was saying.” I may need to reread that section sometime.

Ana: I’m not sure I agree with what he said about motivation. I mean, yeah, I do want to know why my characters are doing what they’re doing / why they have certain goals.

Kate: I think he was wrong here. Motivation is very important, not just for the author. If the reader doesn’t see that the motivation is consistent, then the character actions lose that connecting thread that pulls the reader along. So, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he meant that it doesn’t need to be stated explicitly but should be understood, and assume he simply had difficulty getting that all out.

Ana: Yeah, I was trying to understand his motivations, but it was kind of difficult. I agree with him that character motivation is complex and can’t be distilled into one word, but who’s saying it has to be?

Zoe: What I got out of what he was saying was that, okay—you have a character who’s looking for Pepsi. That’s both his “need” in the scene and what he’s actively doing. His intention is to slake his thirst, and his motivation is why Pepsi in particular. So the reader needs to know his intention, but not that Pepsi reminds him of childhood days with PopPop. I don’t know. Like I said, I was half-confused through the whole section.

Kate: It wasn’t one of his shining moments. I did like what he said about using setting as more than a location, but that could just be me patting myself on the back, because I like to do that a lot.

Ana: No, I agree. When I was writing my first novel actually, and I gave it to my friend to read, she pointed a chapter out to me and said something along the lines of, this is an epic scene, it shouldn’t play out in an office, that’s way too boring. She basically made me rewrite the scene for location alone, but in the end, she was right. It was much better after I changed it.

Kate: It think it’s important to remember the psychological effect of the setting on the characters and on the readers, and how changes to that setting can foreshadow, or mirror, changes occurring in the characters. I have one story where the setting starts out very clinical–steel and glass and organized–and gradually moves toward a more organic model, with wood and leather and softer edges, as the relationship between the characters progresses.

Zoe: (I’d participate in this part of the discussion, but I’m busy scribbling notes for something I forgot to do setting-wise in my W.I.P.)

Ana: Yeah, Zoe almost wrote a sunny horror story. Can you imagine?

Kate: I’m horrified. :)

Zoe: Dodged a bullet there. Thanks, guys.

Kate: Anything else to discuss from this chapter? We’ve already hit all the points I found interesting, or even lucid.

Zoe: Nope, that does it for me.

Ana: I was just thinking about the setting in my last novel, and how I didn’t even really have a setting at first. It’s definitely something I have to keep reminding myself of. For some reason though I used a lot of sea and coastal metaphors throughout the story, which I wasn’t aware of until my editor pointed it out. So we moved the story to a city with a harbor…

Kate: That was your theme, right? The mutability and hidden depths of human emotions?

Ana: That’s what I’m going to say the next time someone asks me about it.

Kate: Okay, so that pretty much wraps up that chapter. Next one up is Depth: Revelation vs. Transformation

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

Three Dirty Birds Talk about Character Status (Ch. 21)

The Dirty Birds are over at Ana’s blog to talk about Story Trumps Structure Chapter 21, which is all about character status, what makes some characters feel like cardboard, and tips and tricks to make your character a high-status player in the story.

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

Checking Out Publishers, Part 2

I’ve narrowed down the pool–it’s pretty shallow at this point, which is the way it should be. Now, beyond checking out sales rank, I’m into the next stage–checking out editors.

At this point, I’m eternally grateful for Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ feature, because it saves me a pile of money. (Blatant plug here –> :D )

Find a bunch of recent books by a publisher under consideration–recent because editors move around a lot and you want to get an idea of what the current editorial staff is like. It’s best if you can find books that are in your genre. If you write contemporary romance, then you want to look at the contemporary romance editors; scifi, you look at scifi editors.

Then, look them up on Amazon.

Within a couple of pages, you should be able to tell if the editor is going to be able to catch things that you don’t notice when self-editing. Or you may be aghast at the quality of the work and wonder how it got out there. Or, if you’re lucky, you may end up making some purchases.

Things I look for, that I notice in other people’s work but don’t always catch in my own, are things like prepositional phrases, or too-quick changes of motivation on the part of a character. I look for a lot of telling, which isn’t something I do frequently, but does occasionally get past me. I look for clarity and ease of reading, because these are basic editorial skills. I look at the line editing, because a good publisher will have more than one editor work on your story.

You’ll likely look for other things, because every writer has their own Achilles’ heel.

If enough books get past this test, I’ll buy a few that seem closely related to my own. If I can finish them with few or no reservations, then I’ll check out the page that lists the editor. If there’s no editor listed (and some pubs don’t list editors), that moves the pub a notch down in my ranking. I will have to look at a much wider range of books from them, because that implies a certain turnover of editors, which means that I might have just caught a few good books, and that editor might now be gone. If I can’t be sure that an editor I like is still with the company, then I need to know that the standard is high across the board, which is something one of the pubs I was considering failed recently.

Once I have a list of editors that I think would mesh well with me, my hang-ups, and my weaknesses, I’ll look them up online, see what they like, what they’ve edited, what they’re looking for. I’ll check out their social media, because I’ve been turned off one seemingly capable editor after a Twitter episode that revealed a pretty unpleasant and unrealistic side to her personality. Which then made me realize this is someone I would probably avoid if we lived in the same city–no matter how good an editor she was. (The lesson here, boys and girls, is be careful on social media.) You spend too much time with your editor to have to worry if they’re suddenly going to go off on you about something. (This goes beyond normal kvetching on the internet–everyone has to vent. And some people need to be vented about. :) But you know the saying: The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.)

Now, I know I may not have a choice in who my editor is, but the more you know, the less you’re surprised. And the likelihood is that an editor who has previously edited books like yours and is still looking for more will pick yours up out of the slushpile. It’s what happened to me at Loose Id, essentially, and I’m very happy with The Editor in Question. And I knew to send to Loose Id because I’d done my homework, right up to and including speaking with authors at the pub and asking how they liked dealing with them.

Doing the research may not guarantee me the kind of editor I want, but it sure does improve the odds of putting the manuscript where the right editor can stumble over it.

Filed under: writing Tagged: editors, publishers, research

Three Dirty Birds Talk about Meaning in Books (Ch. 20 of Story Trumps Structure)

We’re looking for meaning and theme, or maybe not, over at Zoe’s blog. Flap on over!

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

Conversations With My Editor

Me: My mother is coming to visit the end of the week. So if you get a really big UPS parcel, open it quick. I’m a little claustrophobic.

Editor: I’ll keep an eye out. Make sure you make enough air holes for yourself.

Always looking out for me…

Filed under: Conversations With My Editor Tagged: fun stuff

Tuesday Guest Tickle: The Swan Prince by Erin Lark

Publisher: Evernight Publishing

Length: 149 pages

Price: Only $.99 right now!

A slightly different shifter romance, riffing off the old fairy tale, The Six Swans. Remember that one, where the princess had to live in poverty and weave coats of nettles to return her brothers to their human form? And if she spoke a word before the spell was broken, they were doomed to that form forever? Not exactly the same story here, but the influences are obvious.

Trapped between his royal heritage and swan shifter status, Oliver struggles to find happiness in the life he was born to. But when he’s caught in the crosshairs of a trigger-happy hunter during migration, he takes human form and seeks shelter in an old barn. Healing from his wound so he can fly soon will be hard enough…and then he’s discovered by the barn’s owner and realizes the mid-season shift left him mute.

Bastion’s spent the better part of his adult life caring for a bunch of bullheaded stallions, but this is the first time he’s ever found a naked and gorgeous man in one of his stalls. Despite the mysterious stranger’s suspicious wound, Bastion takes Oliver in, clothes him, and nurses him back to health.

When passion flares, Oliver must decide…follow his heart and stay? Or join his flock and fulfill his royal duty?

Filed under: Guest Releases, Tuesday Tickle Tagged: mm romance, paranormal romance, swan shifter

Three Dirty Birds Perched on the Horns of a Dilemma

Three Dirty Birds, back chirping up your Tweet (and blog) stream. Today we’re talking about Story Trumps Structure, and what Mr. James says about putting your characters on the horns of a dilemma.

Zoe: This was another chapter where all of my notes had to do with my story instead of thoughts on what he was saying.

Kate: Haha, me too! I think I know better how to clarify Glyn’s problems now.

Ana: I liked this chapter, even though I felt that he took a lot of words to get his point across. I liked what he said about finding the third way. Basically when I’m plotting I just try to make things as bad as possible / as impossible to resolve as I can, and only then I let myself worry about how the hell my MCs are going to get out of that mess. I’m always a bit nervous about it, but I mostly manage to find some way out that I hadn’t anticipated.

Kate: That’s been pretty typical through the entire book–good info, buried in a lot of words. I thought it was good that he pointed out that you have to force the character to choose between two things that are very important to him or her, things that create an impossible dichotomy for the character. That the issue doesn’t come from outside the character, but from inside. (and then we get into foreshadowing, and characterization, and setting up the reader’s belief in ‘this is how this character would react’.)

Ana: It reminded me of something I read in another writing book, I’m not sure which one, but it said that readers want to see characters struggle with choices that they wouldn’t want to be forced to make themselves.

Zoe: The third way thing is going to keep me up for a month. I was thinking about my WIP as I read it, and in that, the main character is faced with a hard choice at the end that looks like an easy choice—it’s almost a “damn the costs” kind of choice, so the reader’s expecting him to do that, and of course (because foreshadowing) he doesn’t. And now I’m wracking my brain: is there a third way??? *sigh* (But also this chapter helped me clarify some things that get the main character to this choice, and to his eventual difficult decision.)

Ana: I think having hard choices where the reader can’t anticipate what the outcome is going to be helps raise a book above the mediocre nothing-special status.

Kate: It’s what makes the book stay in the reader’s mind after they’re done.

Ana: Because as a reader, you wonder what you would have done in an impossible situation like that.

Zoe: Yes, especially when all the options have huge stakes.

Kate: Coming up with stakes is, I think, one of the places that beginning writers don’t always get quite right. And I think it comes down to liking your characters a lot, but not enough to give them truly challenging character arcs. Or liking them too much to cause them that much pain. Once you’ve nurtured your little streak of sadism, your stakes will get much higher. If you aren’t crying with your character, the stakes aren’t high enough.

Ana: Or in other words, stop being an overprotective parent and let your characters grow up.

Zoe: :D Also, especially in romance, you have the opportunity to put your characters through a real wringer…knowing that in the end it’ll come out okay. So do it! Give them real, honest-to-goodness challenges—not “miscommunication” and whatnot.

Kate: I just finished a book that had tremendous potential, but every time things got a little tense, the author solved the problem for the characters. Why? I bought it to watch the characters grow through suffering. And everything was so easy, the only reason I finished it was because I was snarking about it to the other two Dirty Birds.

Zoe: (That’s what we do in our spare time, read at each other.)

Ana: (You mean we’re having educated discussions about books, analyzing their finer points.)

Kate: If you want to call it that…(this is why I never apply to be a reviewer on any of those sites–once the floodgates open, i’m afraid of what will happen)

So, Mr. James had some good ideas about how to create dilemmas and how to force the issue, though I found his ideas on letting genre influence your dilemma a little restrictive and not particularly creative.

Zoe: Which is what we’ve come to expect….

Ana: Also, cheating does often not make a good dilemma in romance…

Kate: No. It can be a pinch in your plot, to make your character uncomfortable and set the stage for other decisions, but it certainly isn’t a dilemma. He cheats, you kick his ass to the curb, end of story. How is that a dilemma?

Zoe: But but but True Love!

Kate: Twoo Wuv, you mean? (I think I really need to rewatch The Princess Bride). Anyone who cheats isn’t your true love. (I tend to file them under Waste of Space)

Zoe: Right—the dilemma there is “Do I live without this asshole who cheated on me, or do I live with someone who has no respect for me but, hey, the sex?” I don’t know. It’s overused and underwhelming.

Kate: And very rarely ever a good plot for a story. I certainly don’t respect the character any more for taking the cheater back. Which kind of reduced the stakes for me, because at that point I don’t really care if he gets his happy ending.

Zoe: Right, because he’s getting it with someone who doesn’t deserve to share it with him.

Ana: So to sum it up, if you put cheating into your romance you have to anticipate strong reader reactions (which may or may not be what you want them to be.)

Kate: The little summary on the second last page was nice, though I’m not sure I totally agree with how he put it. I do like the idea of turning expectations on their heads as a way to create a dilemma, though it’s something I tend to do for the entire story. Making characters give up one thing they value for something else they value should be a standard. It shows character growth, or even just who they are at the core of themselves. Making a character draw the line on something is a better dilemma than cheating, even in romance.

Zoe: I was thinking about how dilemmas work through the entire story as I read the chapter. I have a few sticky notes filled with the various dilemmas my characters face in my WIP, because it’s not just One Thing At the End. There are choices all along the way. (How else would they get into trouble?)

Ana: I’m guessing without those choices throughout you wouldn’t have a lot of tension. It’s funny he doesn’t point that out, since he loves tension.

Kate: I suspect he feels that he’s covered that already in an earlier chapter. Has anyone else noticed how he seems to link certain chapters, then other ones are left out of the loop, even though the connection seems obvious to you?

Zoe: (Sometimes the connection doesn’t seem obvious to me. Like the next chapter…)

Kate: Hoo boy…

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

Three Dirty Birds on Polishing Your Prose

Check out our Chapter 18 discussion over on Ana’s blog. :)

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