Laura Whitcomb's Blog, page 14

Resist resolution . . .

To keep your scenes full of tension, resist the temptation to resolve things. If a character says something terrible to someone she loves, don't have her apologize. Yet. Let the suspense of that fracture in the relationship span over into another chapter. Or several. Let the readers feel the full impact of the hurt and the betrayal.

 

 

 

One of my favorite examples of creating tension by leaving something hurtful hanging is from the movie The Queen of Hearts (1989, screenplay by Tony Grisoni....

Make the bad stuff worse . . .

When I landed my excellent agent, Ann Rittenberg, and she offered me advice for rewriting my manuscript so it would sell well, one of the general notes she gave me (that absolutely made A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT a better book) was . . . make the bad stuff worse. When I asked what she meant, she told me to look at all the bad stuff that happens to the characters in my story and make those things even harder for them.

If you suspect you might be treating your characters too kindly (a common...

Backtracking . . .

Another tip for getting a rough draft down faster is to go back and change your path when you start to feel like you don't love what you're writing. In my earlier years I would plod along even if I was slowed by the feeling that my story wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. With age and experience I learned to avoid those periods of sluggish writing by stopping when I feel like I hate my sentences and paragraphs. I learned to backtrack.

Now as soon as I get that "crappy writing"...

Skipping transitions . . .

When I'm trying to write a rough draft of a novel fast, as so many people are at this very moment for Nanowrimo, I sometimes find I can get more done if I skip from one scene to another and don't worry about the transitions.

I list all the scenes I have left to write in the whole book (jane and joe meet at park, jane visits her father at the shop, john gets a call from the priest, and so on) and I simply choose the one I feel like writing at the moment. I don't worry about the transition from...

To self-publish or not to self-publish . . .

Every day it gets easier (and less expensive) to self-publish your writing. And under certain circumstances, it can be a great idea.

Your title here?

Self-publishing is good for people who have a specific topic they teach. They want their students to be able to find their research/examples/philosophy in a concise package. Good idea.

It's good if you have a niche of special interest you can share with other enthusiasts. My brother, for instance, has researched the possibility of discovering...

Book By Book

After A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT was published, I was honored to be the guest at a Mother-Daughter book club founded by Cindy Hudson. These women and their girls had been reading and exchanging their thoughts about literature since the daughters were in elementary school. And they had great insights, fascinating questions. I loved the experience.

 

Now Cindy shares her advice on how to start your own Mother-Daughter reading club in BOOK BY BOOK published by Seal Press in September. Visit her...

Culling the Poetry

The Heartstorming part of the Shortcut to the Scene exercise (from my last blog) may be a new concept for you. If you're having trouble letting go and allowing your inner poet to babble, you could try this poetry exercise as a warm up.

          Write a stream of consciousness page on something other than a scene from your novel. It doesn't matter what you say, but try using a topic that holds plenty of emotion. Something frightening or heartbreaking or hilarious or inexplicable.

         ...

Shortcut to the Scene

The exercise from my book NOVEL SHORTCUTS that I found the most useful was Shortcut to the Scene. Using it I found I could write scenes about three times faster and yet the end result needed less rewriting. So, in case some of you Nanowrimonians would like to try it, here is the exercise.

STEP I: THE SCENE OUTLINE

First you write down what needs to happen in the scene: the action, the goal, the conflict. You don't need to go into a lot of detail. Put down the essentials. Leave yourself space...

November Give-Away!

The winner of the October Give-Away (a signed copy of YOUR FIRST NOVEL) is Tim of Edinburgh, Scotland! I'll mail that book to you tomorrow, Tim. Congratulations.

This month, in honor of Nanowrimo (the National Novel Writing Month) the Give-Away is a signed copy of NOVEL SHORTCUTS, my new book on craft that came out in April. To enter the drawing, email me your name and address (use the "Email Laura Whitcomb" link on my website at www.laurawhitcomb.com) and let me know if you do NOT want to be...

Prepping for Nanowrimo . . .

For all of you who are brave enough to climb aboard the National Novel Writing Month, all November I'll be posting writing tips. To warm up, here is my take on enhancing your story by clarifying the placement of your novel's most crucial moments. 

CROSSHAIRS

In every great novel there are many great moments but there is always the most important moment; I call this the crosshairs of the story, like the crosshairs in a rifle sight or a camera lens, the center of the focus of your book. For me...