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January 1 - August 1, 2024
Does each chapter start with a compelling action or image? Does each chapter end with both satisfaction and forward motion?
Are you showing more than telling, and choosing when telling is needed?
telescope time like Tayari Jones.
There’s room for Wild and A Walk in the Woods.
Remember that therapy gets your feelings out and lets you process. Memoir brings out the reader’s feelings and inspires them to personal growth.
Reconsidering our trauma can indeed be cathartic. Writing it with confidence and purpose makes it worth reading. Don’t be “brave.” Be amazing.
Write those turning-point scenes first. (You don’t have to write a book in order!)
Why are you telling this story? What’s your connection to the material? Who needs to read it? Who is going to love it? Who will be moved by it? Why are they waiting for your book right now? Do you love this book enough to finish it? Even when you need to go back and do yet another draft? Write down some things you love about this story, so you can remind yourself why you’re here when the writing gets tough.
Story is the actions characters do, why they do them, and how they change.
Stories are not meant to “send a message” or “educate the reader.”
Plot is the events happening to or around the characters, or resulting from their actions.
Structure is how the plot is revealed through the order and format you use to tell the story.
“Plot is the route you take, story is the journey you make.” And I’ll add, “Structure is the map.”
Answering “So what?” moves your story from personal to universal and makes your journey powerful and life-changing (or a beautiful reflective experience) for your readers.
This does not mean writing self-help, but showing specific, actionable steps the reader might be inspired to take.
Wild inspires taking a physical journey to purge our past.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
In a world…where I’ve screwed up my relationships, taken too many drugs, and slept with too many people…I must walk 2600 miles to find myself. (Wild) In a world…where my mom is rooting through a Dumpster and I just drive on by…I must make my peace with the rotten past that made me who I am. (The Glass Castle)
Your main character doesn’t have to state her objective flat-out. But you, the author, need to know what she wants, so that she can spend the rest of the book fighting to get it.33 I want to challenge myself physically to see if there’s a better “me” in here. (Wild)
Most families send their kids to school; mine didn’t. (Educated)
I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster. (The Glass Castle)
Start your book strong, start from the first page, and start a story. Start with SUCK.
Your dramatic situation is world-building and background. Your story is how that situation personally changed you.
true: Once you’ve found the satisfying solution to your book’s mystery, you may need to go back and plant more clues to the big payoff that’s coming up. Now that you know the gun goes off in Chapter Ten, go back and
Don’t tell the reader your answers—make them ask themselves the questions.
add a villain or heighten the villain’s opposition provide discovery or knowledge that illuminates the past, or (better) will be needed to solve the overall problem show learning or practicing a skill that will be needed to finish the quest add a tool or weapon to the protagonist’s arsenal (doesn’t have to be literal: “self-confidence around my crush” is also a tool) test the preparedness of the protagonist or team cause a setback to the protagonist or team, or damage the villain handicap the hero by causing a significant and lasting impairment
Novels are life with the boring bits left out. If everything is fine, don’t tell us, unless it’s a rare moment of rest in a headlong flight. If it’s nothing special, don’t put it in a book.
I’m good with where I am, so I’m OK with how I got here. Taking away past pain would diminish the work I love doing now.
Character-you moves toward change blindly, but writer-you knows when you got there. “I’m worth more than I thought I was” is a dark goal. Structure invests events and moments with deeper meaning than they might have had at the time.
Eat, Pray, Love is a circular memoir, and Elizabeth Gilbert raises the stakes in each round: Eat to recover from a bad relationship; Pray to rediscover herself and her spirituality; Love to move forward in her life as a healed person.
The character’s primary Ability and main Weakness.
The character’s Passion for what they want most, and the Foible55 or personal failing that stops them from getting it.
A protagonist’s Passion and Foible pair the same way. The thing they want is directly jeopardized by who they are.
Existing state: Who were they when the book started? What were they like? How did they see themselves and how did others see them? What did they want? 2) Change: What causes them to change who they are? Is that change generated within themselves or by someone else seeing them differently? How does this change result in people treating them differently and them acting differently? What do they want now? 3) Resolution: What does this change lead to? What action do they take that they wouldn’t have taken before? Did they get what they want, and how did getting it or not getting it affect them?
Whenever possible, avoid explaining details that can be learned from context. When there’s a guidebook or a manual in the middle of the action, the reader gets distracted and mentally moves away from the characters and their immediate situation. Give only enough detail to understand the plot—let the reader make discoveries.
Oh, facts. Those pesky things that get in the way of a good story.
Unconscious incompetence—we don’t know what’s not working in our writing. Conscious incompetence—we feel crappy about the ways our writing is not working.67 Conscious competence—we must repeat and remember and remind ourselves to write well. Unconscious competence—after practice, our best writing comes more naturally.
Young Adult: 50,000-90,000.
The best voice for an author, as we say in memoir, is “like you’re telling the story to a friend, but better.”
Experiencing the atmosphere of a well-written scene is more powerful than being told the author’s feelings.
His hands were gnarled. Better yet, show it in an action: He ran a gnarled hand through his grey hair.
It’s OK to make the reader work a little to understand! Part of why they’re reading is to come into your world, not to force you to explain everything at the level of their own experience.
If possible, go to a physical bookstore and see where your book will be shelved. Dip into the books that will be next to yours. If your research is primarily online, search for books like yours and others “recommended” or “also bought,” and read the sample pages. Describe your book to an avid reader or librarian—what books do they remember that are like yours? Read at least a few pages.
Use the listener’s name: “Hello, Marta,” shows it’s not Marta speaking, so it’s gotta be the other person in the room. Speaker can do something: “Hello, Peter.” She flipped her towel and spread it on the sand. Speaker can take an action toward the listener: “I thought you’d want these.” Peter handed Marta the snapshots. Use the location: She rolled over in the sand. “What did you ask?”
speak. If the texts are italicized and indented, and you’ve got phrases like: Woke up frm weird dream u were in it Then it’s clear it’s a text, and characters can just check their phones without having to announce, “I had a text from Rania,” in their dialogue or narrative.
Opinion-Size-Age-Shape-Color-Origin-Material-Purpose Noun.
will stand out like overalls at a wedding.
When you’re ready, print your draft. Mark it up. Cut it apart. And then retype. Your fingers will tell you what belongs. If you can’t face that prospect, something may be wrong with the book. To figure out what, just retype the whole manuscript. If you’re not feeling it, or you’re in a rush, that’s OK—just retype the whole manuscript quickly.
Jana said, “I’m not sure what you mean by—” Nikolai slammed down his fork. “I mean you’re cruel!”
It’s easier to receive feedback when I already know I’m going to sulk about it before I can use it.
