M.B. Weston's Blog, page 31

The Writing Process Part 8 – Using Advance Readers

Your most valuable writing asset isn’t your computer, grammar knowledge, or storytelling ability. It’s your arsenal of advance readers.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked via Twitter: “Mrs. @mbweston, what’s your writing process?” To answer his question, I’ve been writing a series of blog posts about how I go about my personal writing process. So far, we’ve covered:

The Writing Process: Part 1 – Getting Your Inspiration
The Writing Process: Part 2 – The Conflict
The Writing Process: Part 3 – Plot: Your Story’s Skeleton
The Writing Process: Part 4 – The “Pre-Draft”
The Writing Process: Example of a “Pre-Draft”
The Writing Process: Part 5 – The First Draft (A)
The Writing Process: Part 5 – The First Draft (B) Description
The Writing Process: Part 6 – Cutting Your Darlings
The Writing Process: Part 7 – Editing for Grammar & Style

Have you ever applied an update to a software program or a smartphone app only to have it crash immediately (or worse, lock up your device)? How frustrated did you feel? I usually end up yelling into my computer or phone, hoping the software developers can somehow hear me. “If only,” we think, “they had tested this on a few people to make sure it worked before they released it to the world!”

This is why many companies have beta users: people who volunteer to test the software to see how it works before it reaches the public.

You don’t want your cell phone company to send you an update without first testing it. In the same way, you shouldn’t consider your manuscript complete without letting a few people read it first. This post will discuss how to use your advance readers (or your beta readers, depending on what you call them).

Why you need advance readers:

You already know exactly what is supposed to be happening in your manuscript. An advance reader doesn’t. You see your story clearly in your head. You know what your characters look like and how and why they react the way you do. When you read your own writing, you already know exactly what is going on. You will never be able to catch whether you’ve actually communicated what is going on without help from someone else. For instance, I still remember when one of my advance readers told me she had no idea what Gabriella, one of my main characters, looked like when she read my first book, A Prophecy Forgotten . I read through the manuscript and discovered I had never described the poor girl. I saw her clearly in my head. I just forgot to tell the reader about it.
You have seen your own writing too much to catch all the mistakes. You’ve read over the though when it should be through at least ten times. You need another pair of eyes. I cannot tell you the amount of mistakes my advance readers have caught that I skipped over, even after several editing runs.
You might have written something that, well, stinks or needs rewriting. You might think your story is the greatest in the world, but if you are the only one who likes it, you won’t make many sales. You need some outside opinions of how your story works before you drop it on the general public and make it open to Amazon reviews. After testing my second book, Out of the Shadows , a few of my advance readers told me they didn’t feel compelled to root for Tommy—one of the most important characters in the Elysian Chronicles series. I had to rewrite almost a third of the book to make Tommy a more compelling character.
You want the criticism before you send your manuscript off to the publisher. After that, it’s too late.

Look for these types of readers:

The Best Seller Reader. You want someone who reads tons of best sellers to read your manuscript, especially if you eventually want your name on those lists.
The Fan Reader. Once you have established a fan base for your works, you need to get one of them to become your fan reader. The fan reader will let you know when you’ve gone too far when it comes to killing off a character, etc. I changed the order of my prologue in Out of the Shadows around because my fan reader almost had a heart attack when she thought I had killed off my main character, Davian.
The Director Reader. If you can find someone who likes to direct movies, get him or her to read your manuscript. They will find places where your action is lagging or where you’ve shown instead of told. My director reader, Steve Burton told me to “raise the stakes” in one of my scenes in A Prophecy Forgotten, and following his advice helped the story.
The Literature Lover. You need one of these. They love to read classical literature that the rest of us snore through, and they love art films. They will catch your thematic issues and character development problems. Just be sure to ignore most of their advice when it comes to action scenes.
The Genre Reader. If your manuscript doesn’t appeal to those who read your genre, you have a problem, which is why you need a genre reader to look over your manuscript. Genre readers can also give you some great ideas you haven’t thought of, and they can let you know if your writing style is too much like another authors’.
The Grammar Snob. You need one of these to read your final copy—the one you create once you adjust it after listening to your other advance readers’ comments.

Your readers need to be willing to criticize your work. You don’t want someone who is too afraid to tell you what they think. You want someone who is willing to say, “This sucks, and here’s why.”

How to find advance readers. This part is easy. Just ask. You’ll find several people who love to read and who will appreciate the opportunity to read and comment on your writing. They will take being asked as a compliment.

Once you found about five advance readers, you need to get them your manuscript, and you need to do it cheaply because paper, ink, and copies are expensive. I take my manuscript, single space it, and divide it into two columns like a magazine. It’s easier to read single spacing in a two column format. I also shrink the margins to ½ inch, and I make the font 11 instead of 12. I copy everything front and back to shrink the amount of paper I use. (I have one reader who prefers to use Microsoft Word’s comment function, so I email him the actual double-spaced manuscript.)

Once I make my copies, I hand my advance reader a manila envelope containing: the manuscript, a red pen, and a note pad for them to write on.

Oh, yeah, and I also give them a letter that 1) gives them permission to hurt my feelings without retaliation, and 2) threatens their life and the lives of their family members if they breathe a word about my true villain to anyone. *wink wink*

Stay tuned for the next post in this series, which talks about dealing with your advance readers’ critiques…

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

Today’s Writing Muse: the Overgrown Fountain

And now it’s time for a new writing muse. I’ve found inspiration in some of the oddest places. This overgrown fountain (left) is located in downtown Dilsborro, North Carolina. I love how the fountain is covered in ivy, mainly because you can’t really see what is underneath. It sparks curiosity.

Finding inspiration in everyday items such as this is often as easy as asking yourself the six question words we learned in elementary school:

Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?

What is underneath the ivy? A statue? Te secret to long last treasure engraved in the stones? A secret entrance to an underground laboratory? (We’re writers. The answer should never be boring.) Why was the fountain abandoned? Is it haunted? Did the owners die? When did that happen? Who might be involved? Possibly the caretaker knows a secret about the fountain that only a few in history have been privy to. Where can I locate this fountain in my story to create atmosphere? Why does this fountain matter? (Don’t mention the fountain if it doesn’t have a purpose.) How can my character unlock the secrets of this fountain?

Questions like these can ignite the spark that will become the backbone of your story. If you need inspiration, take this fountain make it your own. Unlock the story behind it, and let it unfold before your eyes. (Make sure to share what you did with it in the comments if you end up using it.)

Ready? Set? Write!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

Tools for Writing: A Mini-Thesaurus

Why keeping a cheat sheet of common words will help your writing.

When I posted a blog on:  The Writing Process: Part 7 – Editing for Grammar & Style, I mentioned using a thesaurus. I also posted a section about minimizing your characters’ common gestures, where I said,

An advance reader of mine counted the instances where my character, Davian, crossed his arms. The tally: once every three pages in a 400 page manuscript. Your characters may not cross their arms as much as Davian, but they probably smile, frown, and laugh once every page. Change it up.

I discovered a few years ago that I was continuously looking up the same words in my thesaurus, and most of them dealt with my characters’ gestures, movements, and facial expressions.  I created a list of the words I needed synonymns for the most and keep it near when I’m editing. I figured I would share it here. If you know of more words to add, please feel free to add them in the comments section. Also, you will notice that I have a Products of Fire section. My writing includes warfare and explosions so I found that necessary. You might not need that section, but feel free to create sections that fit your stories.

Frown: Glower, Glare, Scowl, Grimace, Mope, Sulk

Glare: Glower, Scowl, Frown

Smile: Grin, Beam, Simper (smug), Smirk, Look amused, Look delighted

Sigh: Moan, Groan, Exhale, Breathe, Pant, Whisper, Huff

Eyed: Look at, Gaze at, Stare at, Contemplate, Study, Survey, View, Inspect, Scrutinize, Scan, Glance at, Regard, Behold, Eyeball, Ogle, Lear, Make eyes at, Give the eye to

Walk: Stroll, Saunter, Amble, Plod, Trudge, Hike, Tramp, Trek, March, Stride, Step out, Pace, Hike, Toddle

Run: Rush, Hasten, Hurry, Dash, Sprint, Blot, Dart, Gallop, Scurry, Scamper, Scramble, Scoot, Jog, Lope, Scuttle

Yell: Shout, Cry out, Howl, Scream, Shriek, Screech, Squeal, Roar, Bawl, Whoop, Holler, Bellow

Products of fire: Ash, Brand, Charcoal, Cinder, Cinders, Fumes, Smoke, Soot, Spark, Stub

People: Folks, Humans, Commoners, Individuals, Societies, Crowd, Folk, Humanity, Inhabitants, Masses, Mortals, Persons, Plebeians, Rabble, Tribe, Public, Men and women, Adults

If you have any other words to add, please be sure to let everyone know in the comments!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

The Writing Process: Part 7 – Editing for Grammar & Style

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked via Twitter: “Mrs. @mbweston, what’s your writing process?” To answer his question, I’ve been writing a series of blog posts about how I go about my personal writing process. So far, we’ve covered:

The Writing Process: Part 1 – Getting Your Inspiration
The Writing Process: Part 2 – The Conflict
The Writing Process: Part 3 – Plot: Your Story’s Skeleton
The Writing Process: Part 4 – The “Pre-Draft”
The Writing Process: Example of a “Pre-Draft”
The Writing Process: Part 5 – The First Draft (A)
The Writing Process: Part 5 – The First Draft (B) Description
The Writing Process: Part 6 – Cutting Your Darlings

Note: I recognize that every topic I’ve mentioned in this series deserves more intense discussion. I hate rushing through these items, and I guarantee you I will be covering them in more detail later.

Also Note: My next writing process post discusses using advance readers. To save time, you may opt to get your manuscript to your advance readers before the “editing for grammar and style” step—especially if you’re on deadline. On one hand, if you end up needing massive re-writes, you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time editing. On the other hand, however, you don’t want your advance readers finding all your grammar mistakes instead of looking for important storyline issues.

Editing your final draft for grammar and style is like polishing a fresh-cut diamond. At this stage, you should have completed the structural changes in your manuscript. Like the diamond, your story only needs the final polish to make it sparkle. In this stage, you will concentrate on revving up your weak verbs, increasing your manuscript’s vocabulary, and fixing your remaining grammar mistakes.

Required tools:

Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. It’s the only grammar book you will need, and it’s really short. Buy it, read it, refer back to it.
At least one thesaurus. You can never have too many thesauruses. I use four. If you use Microsoft Word, you’ve got 1) a thesaurus built into the software. (Right-click on a word and choose synonyms.) I also use 2) www.thesaurus.com [http://thesaurus.com/], 3) a thesaurus app on my iPad and iPhone, and 4) my handy-dandy, old-fashioned, hard-copy Webster’s thesaurus.
A good dose of perfectionism. Channel the picky person who annoys you the most. Remember, that person is probably the editor deciding whether or not to buy your manuscript.
Patience. Good editing takes longer than you expect. If you’ve written a novel, it will probably take you a week. Expecting the editing to take a while when you begin will keep you hammering on even after you become sick of your manuscript—if you aren’t sick of it already.

Grab your red pen and a caffeinated beverage of your choice. Tell your family and friends to leave you alone for a while, and hunker down.

What you’re looking for:

Grammar mistakes. This requires basic grammar knowledge. If you don’t feel comfortable with your grammar skills, start reading some books on grammar.
Do a find/replace search on your common grammar issues. Do you use there instead of their or you’re instead of your? Use Word’s find/replace tool. Find your which’s and that’s, and to, too, and two. You know your weaknesses. Seek them out.
Improve your manuscript’s vocabulary. Make your nouns and adjectives as specific as possible. Don’t say, “It smelled delicious.” Say, “It smelled like cinnamon and raisins.” Don’t tell everyone the car was red. Make it scarlet, candy-apple, or hot-rod red. Use your thesaurus/es to help you find better, more descriptive words. The words you choose and their connotations help the reader form a picture of your story in her head. Make them good.
Eliminate words used twice or in a section—within reasonable limits of course. Some words you just can’t change. But if you find yourself using computer five times in a few paragraphs, try using monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. Trust me, your advance readers and your editor will be asking you to change it so you may as well do it now.
Use strong verbs. The verb is the most important part of a sentence within a work of fiction. We read fiction to find out what will to happen next. Happening implies a verb. Get rid of your being verbs (is/are/was/were/been/being) and other blah verbs when possible. Don’t say, “The dark tower was tall.” Say, “The tower loomed above them, casting shadows across their path.” Your characters shouldn’t walk. Walk is boring and implies fifteen different ways of walking. Be specific. Your characters should saunter, trudge, skip, or stroll. Make your verbs paint pictures in your reader’s mind the same way your adjectives and adverbs should.
Try to eliminate those adverbs. An adverb modifies a verb. If your verb needs modifying, you can probably choose a more specific verb and eliminate the adverb.
Eliminate passive voice. Do a find/replace search on there, is/are/was/were/been/being, and by: the key words in most passive voice sentences.
Minimize your characters’ common gestures. An advance reader of mine counted the instances where my character, Davian, crossed his arms. The tally: once every three pages in a 400 page manuscript. Your characters may not cross their arms as much as Davian, but they probably smile, frown, and laugh once every page. Change it up.

Added bonus: The longer you practice finding these mistakes, the less you will use them when you are writing future manuscripts.

What can ruin your editing time:

Exhaustion. If you’re exhausted, you simply won’t catch the incorrect there, their, or they’re, nor will you worry about changing blue to cobalt. I once stayed up for over 48 hours to write a 6,000 word short story. I turned it in, thinking I had done a great job of editing. When reread the story in a well-rested state, I found several grammatical problems. Get sleep.
Getting too “into your story.” If you catch yourself playing your manuscript’s scenes in your head as though it were a movie, hooray for you! You’ve written a story that keeps even you, the author who has read it over three hundred times and knows the ending, captivated. You’ve got a problem, however. You can’t catch editing mistakes if you are enjoying your plot. Do whatever it takes to stay outside the story. Take breaks; turn on dissonant music; do pushups if you don’t catch any errors for three pages. If you have to read the story backwards do it.
Getting lazy. Edit your last page with the same intensity as you edited your first.

Enjoy your editing, and may you always be blessed with a pen full of red ink!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

The Writing Process Part 6: Cutting Your Darlings

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked via Twitter: “Mrs. @mbweston, what’s your writing process?” To answer his question, I’ve been writing a series of blog posts about how I go about my personal writing process. So far, we’ve covered:

The Writing Process: Part 1 – Getting Your Inspiration
The Writing Process: Part 2 – The Conflict
The Writing Process: Part 3 – Plot: Your Story’s Skeleton
The Writing Process: Part 4 – The “Pre-Draft”
The Writing Process: Example of a “Pre-Draft”
The Writing Process: Part 5 – The First Draft (A)
The Writing Process: Part 5 – The First Draft (B) Description

FACT 1: Your 2nd draft will probably have more words than your final edit.

FACT 2: If it doesn’t, you didn’t cut enough out of your 2nd draft.

We’re writers. We love words. We play with words. We try to outdo someone else’s words. Words are our playground, and this love affair causes us to use far too many of them. We add unnecessary scenes because they are “cool.” We over-describe things. We create redundancies just to make sure our readers “get the point.”

Once you’ve added in your description, you must face the most feared part of the writing process: the chopping block. You will need to cut scenes, sentences, and sometimes even characters, and you will hate it. But you will carry on with your task because you know it will make your completed work a tighter, more concise piece of literature. So just do it, and don’t look back.

Okay, I’m done giving myself a pep talk for my own writing projects. Let’s talk about editing and “cutting your darlings” as Stephen King calls it in his book: On Writing.

First, create a folder called “Deleted Scenes” for your specific writing project. Put your deleted scenes here. Why?

It feels much better to move a scene from one place to another instead of sending it permanently to the recycle bin.
You or your editor might decide to put it back in.
You can always post it on your writing blog later. (See below)
You might use it in a future book within your series.

Once you have created your deleted scenes folder, it’s time to start cutting. (You can put a box of tissue and make sure the number to your writing pal is on speed dial if it helps.)

Read back through your manuscript and cut anything that isn’t necessary. This is tricky because you will insist to yourself that everything is necessary. To illustrate, here is a scene from Out of the Shadows that didn’t survive to the final draft. Note that the language is a bit silly. I cut this scene before the final edit, which I will discuss in my next blog. (For those of you who have read OOTS, this takes place in the Outer Command Tower.)

Davian Marcus, Copper, Lorne, and Klous entered the banquet hall for dinner, and Davian heard laughing and clapping inside. Once they entered, Davian saw the reason for the laughter.

Tyce and Theo were dancing together on top of the tables, kicking their feet up and locking arms as they balanced arrows on their noses. The soldiers passed articles, from daggers to sunstars, around as they wagered on how much longer the two could keep it up. Gabriella sat at the table laughing with the rest.

Marcus growled. “Looks like the boy forgot the lecture you gave him this afternoon.”

Theo’s arrow finally tumbled off and fell into Gabriella’s hand. Tyce pushed Theo aside and raised his arms as the champion. Applause thundered throughout the banquet hall. Tyce’s smile broadened when he saw Gabriella holding the arrow. “That means you have to dance with me!” He scooped Gabriella up and began twirling her around on the table.

Davian felt his insides turn around.

Tyce picked Gabriella up by the waist and flung her, spinning, into the air—a typical cherubian dance move, and Gabriella reacted appropriately. She tucked her head and crossed her arms and ankles so she could spin as fast as possible. She was supposed to open her wings the moment she began to fall. Unfortunately, both Gabriella and Tyce forgot her wings were broken. Gabriella’s arms flailed grasping only air as she plummeted to the ground.

Tyce grabbed her arm just before she hit the floor, pulled her up, and caught her in his arms. He laughed, spinning her around once before he set her down. “Sorry, my lady. I forgot your wings didn’t work.”

I tried to convince myself to keep this scene for these reasons:

It shows that Tyce likes Gabriella and is flirting with her.
It shows that Theo and Tyce are jokesters.
It shows that Tyce is disobeying an order (previously given by his commanding officer because he has a sore foot that needs to heal). I wanted the reader to see Tyce showing disrespect to Davian, which is integral to Tyce’s behavior later.
It also shows that Tyce, though he likes Gabriella, doesn’t really care that much for her safety. He tosses her into the air even though he knows her wings are broken. He is careless with her. That shows something to the audience.
I just liked it. It’s a fun scene with a little bit of flirtatiousness in it, and we ladies like flirting scenes.

I overruled myself by asking myself the questions below, which are questions each writer should ask of a scene during the cutting process. (And yes, editing makes you feel schizophrenic.)

Is this scene necessary to my plot?
Is this scene necessary for character development?
Is this scene necessary to my theme/s?

Is this scene necessary to my plot? Does it move your plot forward? Does it add information your characters will need later? Your plot is the integral part of your story; all scenes should somehow affect the plot. If the scene doesn’t help the plot move forward, you need to cut it, no matter how much you like it.

I can make a good plot argument for keeping the above scene. Tyce’s advances toward Gabriella are integral to her decisions later in Out of the Shadows and Book III. (I’ll bet a bunch of you who are waiting for Book III are mad at me—and Tyce—for throwing that one out there.) However, the scene doesn’t move the central plot forward, and I had already included other scenes with flirting. Hence, the axe…

Is this scene necessary for character development? If your scene doesn’t progress your plot along, you might be able to salvage it for character development purposes. Does it show something about your character that reveals more about who he is? Does it change your character or show him or her changing?

My earlier arguments to myself for keeping my deleted scene in the story were mostly based on character development. The reader saw a bit more of Tyce and Gabriella and the development of their relationship. However, as mentioned earlier, I already had several scenes that showed all of that.

Bottom line: the character development provided in this scene was not valuable enough to warrant keeping it. Hence, the axe…

Is this scene necessary to my theme/s? Treat your thematic content the same way your treat your character development content. If the content isn’t valuable enough to warrant keeping the scene, axe it!

The same goes for characters themselves. If the character isn’t necessary story, axe him or her.

Have I already done this before? If the same thing is happening in a different location, axe it.

Am I holding on to this scene because it develops part of my fantasy or science fiction world? This is one of my most common reasons I try to hold onto useless scenes. I want readers to experience my fantasy world. I must constantly remind myself that my reader doesn’t want to hang out in my world unless something interesting is going on there. If a scene’s only purpose is world development, axe it.

NOTE: If a scene contains key character development, world development, or thematic elements that you want to keep, you can rescue them in one of two ways:

Move those elements to a separate scene that is integral to the plot.
Make the scene central to the plot. Add in some information that the reader needs. Stage a nice battle or a fight. Add something in that the reader will need to recall at the end.

Cutting scenes that you have so lovingly created stings, but it’s necessary. My heart goes out to each of you struggling with this part of the process. Just remember, it only hurts for a while, and you can always blog on it! *wink wink*

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

M. B. Weston’s DragonCon 2012 Panel & Autograph Schedule

M. B. Weston will again be attending DragonCon as a panelist this year. Her schedule (subject to change) is as follows:

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Title: Coming of Age

Description: YA authors talk about the books they read as teens.

Time: Fri 10:00 am Location: A707 – Marriott (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: Villains in the Potterverse

Description: A discussion of those characters you love to hate: the bad boys and girls in Harry Potter’s world.

Time: Fri 02:30 pm Location: International South – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: The Hunger Games- From Page to Screen

Description: So you’ve read the Hunger Games books, and you’ve seen the first movie. How did it fare in the transition from book to movie?

Time: Fri 05:30 pm Location: Hanover C – E – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: Belief Systems in SF and Fantasy 102

Description: A further exploration of the various kinds of belief systems found in sf and fantasy.

Time: Sat 02:30 pm Location: Fairlie – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: Tolkien & Lewis

Description: Lewis and Tolkien and Fantasy and Faerie. Author M.B. Weston, Professor Constance Wagner and more!

Time: Sat 07:00 pm Location: Hanover C – E – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: Reading: M.B. Weston

Time: Sun 10:00 am Location: University – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: Autograph Session

Time: Sun 02:30 pm Location: M301 – M304 – Marriott (Length: 1 Hour)

Please note that Ms. Weston will not have a booth this year, but you can still purchase books at both her reading and her autograph session.

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

M. B. Weston to be Featured in Kerlak Publishing’s Dreams of Steam Steampunk Anthology

M. B. Weston has entered the world of steampunk! Kerlak Publishing has officially accepted her short story, “The Survivor,” for publication in Dreams of Steam III, the third book in their award-winning Dreams of Steam steampunk anthology series.

Stay tuned for more information, including the release date of the series and a possible sneak preview of Weston’s story.

Click on the pictures below for more information on previous books in the series:

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

The Writing Process: Part 5 – The First Draft (B) Description

 

Few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked via Twitter: “Mrs. @mbweston, what’s your writing process?” To answer his question, I’ve been writing a series of blog posts about how I go about my personal writing process. So far, we’ve covered:

The Writing Process: Part 1 – Getting Your Inspiration
The Writing Process: Part 2 – The Conflict
The Writing Process: Part 3 – Plot: Your Story’s Skeleton
The Writing Process: Part 4 – The “Pre-Draft”
The Writing Process: Example of a “Pre-Draft”
The Writing Process: Part 5 – The First Draft (A)

You’ve written your pre-draft. You’ve gone t fixed the logic loopholes, made a few scenes more fluid, etc. You’ve got your rough cut. Now your story needs some polish. That’s where description comes in.

Description makes your story come alive in the reader’s mind. It’s what separates the good stories from the great ones. It’s what leaves your readers begging for another book in your series. I don’t have time to cover description the way I would really like, so I’m going to cover the most important issues. (And I’m going to try to do it in 1000 words or less…)

First, focus on the goal of good description: You want your story to come alive in your reader’s imagination. Your story and the world you created should “haunt” your reader. It should follow your reader after she closes the book and leaves for work. Well-crafted description can make that happen.

To really nail description, we must understand how we human beings experience the world: the five senses.

Sight
Sound
Smell
Touch
Taste

In real life, if we can’t experience something through at least one of those senses, then we don’t experience it. Likewise, your readers won’t truly experience your story unless they too are experiencing it through their five senses.

This means two things:

We must try to include sensory details—all five if possible—in our writing.
We must eliminate instances of telling and instead show the reader—through the five senses.

Include sensory details—all five if possible—in your writing. After I write my scenes, I take five highlighters—one for each sense, and I highlight the instances where I used some kind of sensory detail. When I look back over my work, the frequency of each color tells me what senses I need to add in. Yes, it sounds formulaic, and it probably is. However, it helps me realize what I am putting in and what I am leaving out.

I also try to “get into my main character’s head.” I ask myself “What does he feel? What does he taste? What does he smell? What does he hear? What does he see?” At first, this will seem foreign, but if you do it enough, it becomes such a habit that you will find yourself including sensory details on your first run through because you can’t help it.

Here are a few sensory details this I either added or refined to the pre-draft scene I posted earlier. I’ve italicized the sensory details:

I shoved a piece of bread speckled with mold into my mouth. I convulsed as I chewed and forced myself to swallow. [Sight, touch, taste. Notice, I don’t say, “The bread tasted moldy,” but that is implied and shown when Peter convulses—also a “touch” sensory detail.]
The patrons’ voices and the soft clinking of silverware comforted me. [Sound]
I had not bathed in weeks, and my tattered clothes—once a dress-shirt and pants—reeked of perspiration and filth. [sight, smell, and touch if you count the implied griminess in the clothing]
Though it was only late afternoon, the December air hovered near freezing. [touch]
Glass shattered at the end of the alley. [Sound. Note that it is a scary sound, which affects the audience’s mood, but that is a different blog post.]
Only my breath turning to fog betrayed my existence behind the dumpster. [sight, and adds to the touch sense of cold weather]
My body tingled with adrenaline. [touch]
I ran my hand down [the tomcat’s] fur, ignoring the fleas and dirt. [touch, sight]

Most of these are the big three: sight, sound, and touch. You will use taste and smell less—especially taste. Please don’t make your writing sound forced by putting taste into your story when it really doesn’t fit.

Eliminate instances of telling sensory details and show them instead (i.e. show don’t tell). Why tell the reader, “It was cold outside,” when you can show it in a unique way? Someone’s breath turning into fog implies cold, and it brings your story to life. It’s an added detail your reader probably did not picture until you mentioned it.

In my second novel, Out of the Shadows, my hero, Davian, is imprisoned during the prologue. I wanted readers to fear the dungeon, but saying, “This dark and scary dungeon was someplace Davian didn’t want to go because terrible things happened inside,” is telling, not showing. I wanted my reader to experience the dungeon the same way Davian experienced it.

Here are a few sensory details I used to imply the horror of the Dungeon of Enbed.

The mornachts dragged him inside the mineshaft, beating him until he collapsed in a pool of mud [sight, touch]. The cracks of other whips echoed [sound] deep inside the shaft, followed by screams [sound], more whips [sound], and then silence [sound]. A moment later, Davian heard only water running along the wooden beam above, dripping in a puddle next to him [sound, signt]. A cool drop hit his forehead [touch].

“Drink it now, Seraph,” hissed one of the mornachts. “That’s the only water you’ll get in here.”

Davian obeyed, letting a few grimy drops hit his tongue [taste, and the grime implies touch].

The mountain creaked [sound] once more. The mornachts cackled [sound] and pulled him to his feet, forcing him to watch the door swing shut. The last sliver of moonlight disappeared [sight], and the sound of the door colliding with the mountain thundered [sound and touch with the implied vibrations] through the shafts.

Do I add this many details in each scene? No, definitely not. Your use of these details depends on the purpose of the scene. Here I wanted the reader to feel fear. In other scenes, I might only want to deliver information about whodunit or simply show action. My tip at this stage is to put it in now, because you can always take it out later during your final edit.

So get those highlighters out, start getting into your character’s heads, and give your readers a sensory experience they won’t want to forget!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

 

Today’s Writing Muse: Nature’s Claw

Do you need some inspiration for writing? Do you need a story starter or something to keep your novel going? Take a stroll outside and see what you can find in nature…

As I was walking home after my jog the other day, I noticed this branch (left) sticking out of the bushes. Out of the corner of my eye, it looked just like a make-believe claw from a tree in an enchanted forest. (Or if you are into science fiction, it could belong to an alien… Your pick.)

This, my friends, is today’s muse. Grab your pens or your computers. Ready? Set? WRITE!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

The Writing Process: Part 5 – The First Draft (A)

A friend of mine asked via Twitter: “Mrs. @mbweston, what’s your writing process?” To answer his question, I’ve been writing a series of blog posts about how I go about my personal writing process. So far, we’ve covered:

The Writing Process: Part 1 – Getting Your Inspiration
The Writing Process: Part 2 – The Conflict
The Writing Process: Part 3 – Plot: Your Story’s Skeleton
The Writing Process: Part 4 – The “Pre-Draft”
The Writing Process: Example of a “Pre-Draft”

You’ve had your initial inspiration. You’ve figured out your central conflict. You’ve got a basic idea of your plot points, and you’ve finished either your Pre-Draft (pantsers) or your outline (plotters). Now it’s time to begin your First Draft.

First things first. Get down on your knees and say a quick thank you to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for making the computer available to individual idiots like us. Otherwise you’d be retyping the whole darn thing!

Now it’s time to get that First Draft ironed out. Before you can start, you need to know what you’re dealing with. This means you’ll have to re-read your Pre-Draft. Grab a red pen and a legal pad or your 5-Subject notebook dedicated to this particular manuscript and start reading. When I find a problem on a manuscript, I write a number next to it and enter notes with the corresponding number in my notebook. Examples: 1) make sure Gabriella doesn’t seem so ditzy. 2) Marcus is too angry here. It’s not in his character. Tone it down. 3) Picante’s bow is currently in the human dimension. Gabriella can’t grab it in her dimension. Fix this. 4) This is the 4th time on this page that Davian has crossed his arms and frowned. He needs a new way to express his anger. 5) The nickname “stinkers” is sounding really childish for RSO’s. Change it.

While you are reading, this is what you will be looking for:

Logic Loopholes. Real Life Example: In A Prophecy Forgotten, I originally had Davian drop his knife up in the command bunker. He then chased the villain into the munitions cellar, got himself involved in a nice little wrestling war, and threw his knife at the villain. That’s right. The same knife that was currently lying upstairs in the command bunker. And I didn’t even catch that one. Someone else did. That’s a logic loophole. These will plague you even after you send the thing to the editor, but try to catch as many of them as you possibly can.
Character Development Issues:Character Development is in a tie with Plot as the most important part of the story. If you character doesn’t stay in character, your audience will sense it. If you are like me, your characters will become more clear to you as the story develops in your Pre-Draft. You need to make sure 1st Chapter Marcus is the same as 30th Chapter Marcus (aside from Marcus developing and changing through the story). You also need to make sure you have rounded your characters out and given them time to show themselves.
Storyline Issues: Maybe you now realize your prince needs the help of the frog to find the princess. Maybe you’ve decided that the climax will be much more fun if you disable the spaceship. Pay attention to your story. Does it make sense? Does it flow? Did you leave something out? I’ll give you an example of a huge storyline issue that I discovered in A Prophecy Forgotten: Marcus didn’t exist. Yep. No Marcus. I read through my pre-draft and figured out that I needed to develop more of a team with Davian, Eric, and Snead, and I created Marcus and Josephi. Talk about a re-write. This is the toughest part of turning your Pre-Draft into a first draft, but be glad you’re doing it now with just the skeleton of the story than with a full-length manuscript.
Scenes that don’t make sense or need to be deleted/added: Now that you’ve looked through your pre-draft, you will see things that are missing and things seemed really cool when you first started but now don’t really make sense. Check out your scenes and make sure they work. I could take an hour just talking about how to know if you should keep or delete a scene, but I am running out of words. Here’s the cardinal rule: Each scene should 1) move the plot along and if possibly 2) show character. If it fails in either one of those areas (especially plot), fix the problem or eliminate the scene.

What you aren’t looking for:

Grammar Mistakes. You will find and fix those later. If you see them, fix them, but don’t avidly seek them out. You will spend a week just finding grammar mistakes at the end of the process. You’re not there yet.

Once you have finished taking notes, now it’s time to start wading through that pre-draft, fixing the brackets, filling in the blanks. Your Pre-draft (or outline) was stage directions, emotion, and dialogue. Fill in some of that prose. Other characters may be in the area. Let them chime in. Flesh it out. Fix the dialogue to make it sound more realistic. Get rid of cliches. Make it read like a First Draft.

Note that this process might take you three to four run throughs. That’s okay. I have two storage boxes devoted to old drafts of A Prophecy Forgotten and two for Out of the Shadows in my garage. Editing is what makes your writing sparkle.

You are still missing one vital part of the process: sensory details, description, and landscape. I add those in once I’m comfortable with my plot, and we’ll be talking about that next.

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.