Creating Real Characters

I’ve been focusing mostly on character this week. As I’ve been revising the beginning of Broken Mirrors, I’ve watched how I introduce my characters and how I convey their personalities. I want to make them three-dimensional from the beginning, even the minor characters, so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to achieve that.

Clearly, dialogue can say a lot about a person. The words they use, the inflections in their voices, the way their words vary when they talk to different people. I’m paying attention to what they say, how they say it, and whom they’re saying it to. For example, Brigitta, one of my MCs, has a fairly snarky, witty inner voice, but she only feels comfortable using it with her brother. With everyone else, she is quieter and less challenging.

I’m also focusing on the physical details of these characters. Not just what they look like, but how they move (well, how the narrator perceives them to move), what they wear, and their expressions. I want to give them all a distinct style, and I try to add details that will help me do this. For example, there is one girl at Snow White’s castle who always has perfectly coiffed hair and seems to float from room to room. Brigitta can’t stand her.

It’s been wonderful reacquainting myself with these characters, and I want to do them justice. Does anyone have more advice about making a character spring from the page? Have any characters from books you’ve read stuck with you?

Fenway Park and Snail Mail

Things that make me happy, even on a Monday:

1. Fenway Park. Just such a cute ballpark.



2. The fact that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is on Hulu. They’re playing one season per month, and I absolutely adore watching it and pretending that I’m thirteen again. My love for kickbutt female characters basically started with Buffy.

3. Getting mail. Real snail mail. It makes me feel important.

4. Long bus rides. When I lived in New York, I was traveling to Boston quite often, so I had a love-hate relationship with Greyhound and Megabus. But there’s something nice about being forced to sit for four and half (once, in a snowstorm, ten) hours and reading or staring out the window.

5. Trying to discover a new hobby. I’ve decided I want to learn more about photography, or at least take more pictures, so if anyone knows a good resource for learning about it (or is a good resource for learning about it), I’d love to know!

Writing Goals for the Week!

Diving back into Broken Mirrors has made for a pretty fun week. It may sound weird, but I’ve really missed these characters, and I got very excited about the plot changes I’m planning. I took out most of the scenes or paragraphs that no longer fit, cutting the 89,000 word manuscript down to about 40,000. Now I just have to add, for the most part! So, my goals for the week:

-Add 15,000 words. I won’t be too upset if I don’t meet my word count goal, but it’s a good place to start. I want to fill in the holes I’ve left in the beginning of the story and make sure it has a strong foundation.

-Cultivate character development. Since I’ll be working mostly on the beginning of the novel this week, I want to make sure my characters are presented well. I’ve already built a substantial character bible for each of them, but there are some new ones, and I need to tweak some of the existing ones. I want them to be as fully fleshed out as possible, even the minor ones, so I’ll be focusing on their voices and personalities.

So we’ll see how these revisions go. It’s always disheartening to hack out such large parts of the book again, but I’m getting more and more excited about what I have planned, and I know the story will be the better for it.

I hope everyone has a productive week! Does anyone else have any goals, whether writing, reading, or personal?

Two-Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt

Courtney can’t believe her parents are making her go on the road trip she planned with Jordan. Back when they were a couple, before he dumped her for some girl on the Internet, they had planned to drive from Florida to Boston, where they’re both starting college. Now they have to spend three days in a car together. Jordan, though, has been keeping a big secret about why they broke up, and he may not be over Courtney just yet.

This book was thoroughly addictive and fun. I even found myself carrying it around from the living room to the kitchen and back again because I didn’t want to stop reading. It was like my blankie. Courtney was a little too control freak for my case (pot calling the kettle, I know, I know), but I adore stories about cross-country road trips. And Jordan was interesting. And dreamy. The structure is a bit confusing, since it flashes from the road trip back to scenes from Courtney and Jordan’s relationship, but overall, I think it worked. And I loved that we got both of their points of view. If you’re looking for a fun beach read, or something for a long car trip, I highly recommend this one.

Publisher: Simon Pulse
Source: library

Five Random Thoughts on a Friday

1. I’ve never been a big fan of cupcakes. I think it’s because I hate portion control. I’d rather have a whole cake, then get to choose how big a slice I want. Plus there’s never enough icing on a cupcake. Clearly, I’m very picky about my sugar intake.

2. I have (sort of) been getting into the World Cup! I’m watching Brazil vs. Portugal right now, and it’s amusing. I keep it on mute, because those vuvuzelas are crazy annoying, but I do enjoy watching the fans dance around.

3. I’m going to try to work in a coffeeshop today. It’s gonna happen. I’ve never felt all that comfortable writing in public, but maybe if I find a place that’s fairly quiet and has other people writing, I won’t feel so self-conscious. It’s a gorgeous day here, and I don’t want to spend it in my apartment.

4. I went with one of my roommates to see Knight and Day last night, which was absolutely hilarious (in a good way). Tom Cruise, I have new respect for you. Plus, a lot of it was filmed in Boston, which made it all the more fun.

5. I’m dreaming of Italy again. I want to learn Italian this year so that I can go back to Italy and pretend I’m a local. I really just want to go back to this beach on Positano:

Happy Friday, everyone! Any random thoughts of the day?

Why I LOVE reverse outlines

It turns out writing my thesis in college actually taught me something (besides a whole lot of random facts about historiography in Henry VIII’s court, of course). As I was revising it, my thesis advisor encouraged me to make a reverse outline so I could see the paper as a whole. It’s become one of my favorite and most trusted tools.

For Broken Mirrors, I’ve made a reverse outline for every round of revisions. I type up what happens in each chapter of the draft I’ve written until I’ve condensed the book down to two or three pages. It really does help me see the pacing of the plot, any timing problems, the growth of the characters, etc. I turn that outline into what I want it to be, and then I start revising to make it look like that. It never fails to show me the problems in my structure. Once I’ve finished the revision, I make another reverse outline to make sure everything has worked out the way I wanted it to.

Does anyone else use this?

Nerd Rap and Scribbling

Things that make me happy, even on a Monday:

1. Snuggling in a blanket with a mug of tea as it thunderstorms outside.

2. "Daisy's Lullaby (The Great Gatsby Rap)" by Will Thwaites (CLICK HERE to see it on Youtube). This song has been stuck in my head for about a month now. I have a soft spot for nerd rap.

3. Friday Night Lights. Specifically, Tim Riggins and Matt Saracen.

4. Freewriting. Sometimes just writing down every little thing in my head is incredibly cathartic.

5. Buying new journals for new story ideas. This is my journal for a novel I haven’t started yet (but am dying to).


I'd love to hear the things that make you happy!

Goals!

Alright, time to switch gears. I’ve pretty much got a complete first draft of the Sophie WiP (yay!), and I want to get back to revising Broken Mirrors, my WiP about Snow White. Broken Mirrors is a story that questions the happy ever after of the Snow White story, told from the perspectives of Snow White and Brigitta, a villager. I’ve gone through four rounds of revisions (two by myself, two based on the comments of a very helpful agent), and I’m hoping to complete this new revision by the end of July.

I’ve spent the day going over the newest draft and making notes about the changes I had been considering. I can already tell that the two months I took off are helping me see the draft much more objectively, and I’m excited about the changes I’m planning on. So, this week, my goals are:

-Finalize the potential outline of the new revisions. I’m changing several things about the plot and the structure of the novel, and I want to make sure I have a clear view of what needs to happen. This outline will change as I start cutting and adding to the draft, but I love having some kind of guide.

-Start cutting. A lot of the draft has to go, much as I hate to do it. I’ll be pasting all of my deletes in a separate word document, so at least nothing will be truly lost, but it can be a disheartening (though necessary!) process.

-Start adding! There are several new scenes I want to start writing, especially the ones at the beginning of the novel. Maybe this will make me feel better about needing to cut so much of the previous draft!

So I’ll be fairly busy this week, but I’m excited about getting back to this story. Anyone else have goals for the week, writing or reading or otherwise?

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

Sophie Mercer knows she’s a witch. But when she tries to perform a spell to help a classmate, things go very conspicuously wrong, and her absent father sends her to Hex Hall. Hex Hall is a reform school for Prodigium, creatures/people like witches, faeries, shifters, and the occasional vampire. Sophie quickly develops a pesky crush on a warlock and discovers that someone has been attacking and killing students on campus. When her vampire friend and roommate is blamed, Sophie is drawn into the mystery.

I absolutely loved this book, which I didn’t expect: I haven’t been all that excited about many paranormal YA books lately. But Hex Hall was a thrilling, addictive read, and the writing was wonderful. I felt like I was there at this strange school on an island off the coast of Georgia, because Hawkins has a great eye for detail. It didn’t hurt that Archer, Sophie’s crush, has the whole cute snarky thing going on. The story as a whole captivated me as well: I wanted to find out who was attacking students. And, of course, I have a fondness for the name Sophie.

I ended up getting completely caught up in this book, and I can’t wait for the sequel. Thanks, Jen (CLICK HERE to see her awesome blog about writing and life) for recommending it!

Five Random Thoughts on a Friday

1. I keep thinking about my WiP’s before I go to sleep at night, which is just a terrible idea. Because inevitably, I’ll think up a brilliant plot point or line or character secret or something, and then I have to turn the light back on, find a pen and piece of scrap paper (you think I’d learn to keep some by the bed), and write it down. There is no way I will remember that idea if I let myself go to sleep. Sometimes, if I’m really tired and don’t want to deal with the hassle of getting back up, I’ll try to think of mnemonic to remember it, but without fail, I will have no idea what I wanted to remember when I wake up. So frustrating! Does this happen to anyone else?

2. Maggie Stiefvater has been writing these amazing posts about revisions on her blog (CLICK HERE to see the most recent one). It’s like a creative writing seminar in every post!

3. I had a friend from home in town this week, so I got to go do a bunch of touristy Boston things I’d been wanting to do. We followed most of the Freedom Trail, hung out in sports bars, and walked around a large chunk of Cambridge. And watched a whole lot of World Cup soccer. I got to tour Paul Revere’s house and the North End again:


4. So upsetting that the Celtics lost the championship last night!

I went to a sports bar near TD Banknorth Garden (the Celtics stadium) to watch the first half, and as we were leaving, we saw buses FULL of cops in riot gear traveling around. There were also groups of about eight cops on every corner waiting for people to spill out of sports bars when Boston won. Boston was ready for riots! Funniest thing I’ve ever seen. This picture didn’t really come out, but this is one of the buses:

5. I’ve become addicted to HGTV’s House Hunters show. You get to shop for a home vicariously through people! It’s always entertaining to see property values in different places and learn what people are looking for in a house. Whenever I buy property of my own, I’m going to be prepared!

I hope everyone has a great Friday, and an even better weekend! Go USA soccer!

A Little Help

I have this overwhelming tendency to put crutches in my novel. Little details, magical help, etc. that make it easier for the main character to achieve her goals. Details that stop her from true personal growth. In Broken Mirrors, for example, I wanted to give my protagonist Brigitta a magical intuition, a way to see people’s secrets. She would get a sudden instinct for what people were trying to hide, and this steered the plot along. The agent who’s been helping me with revisions pointed out that this means she would never truly figure out anything on her own. She would never have to work to understand the mystery behind Snow White’s reappearance. She would never show her own worth. It would distance her from the reader, as well, since I don’t know anyone who has magical instincts about people.

I’ve done this in my other WiPs, too, and I’ve had to go back and do major overhauls. It’s so easy to put these crutches in. They seem interesting, and they help a great deal with the plot. But it’s the characters who are supposed to be propelling the plot, not their abilities or their destinies (my crutch for the Sophie WiP used to be that she was “The Prophesied One”). As a reader, I want to be rooting for these characters, and that gets cheapened if the character and the author are relying on something other than her personality and will. I want Sophie to go on a personal journey from thinking she cannot do anything useful to realizing that she can have an impact, and this can’t happen if she’s just fulfilling her destiny.

What do y’all think? Are some crutches useful?

Playful Ducks and Chocolate

Things that make me happy, even on a Monday:

1. Ducks! So much fun to watch.


2. The wild, earthy smell of a forest after it rains.

3. Making fun of those suggestive chocolate commercials. I mean, really? Chocolate’s great, but it’s not that good.

4. Watching the Bachelorette and yelling at her to not trust that guy, to pick that guy, etc. I get way too involved.

5. Mashup trailers on Youtube. CLICK HERE to see Glee go Twilight! Best part: very, very scary animal.

Hope everyone has a fabulous, happy Monday!

Yay for Goals!

I got a lot of good work done this week on the Sophie WiP. I went back through the first half of the book and wrote all the scenes that I had skipped over the first time, and I also paid a lot of attention to my sensory descriptions and to my character development. I’ve thought a lot about my characters this week, especially about the way their histories influence their personalities.

My goals this week:

-Come to a good stopping point on the Sophie WiP. Hopefully, this will mean getting through the second half of the draft, writing all skipped scenes, and finishing up with a complete manuscript. It’s time for me to turn back to revisions of Broken Mirrors. Next week, I want to start polishing that manuscript to within an inch of its life.

-As I come to this stopping point, I want to focus on the pacing of the plot. I tend to write the last quarter of the plot really, really quickly, because I get all excited about the climax and wrapping up everyone’s stories. I want to make sure I haven’t written it too quickly, though. Pacing’s always a funny thing for me: I know when it’s right and I know when it’s wrong, but I can’t really explain the difference between the two. Is that weird?

I’m still working on my elevator pitches for all my WiPs, so hopefully I’ll settle on those this week, too. Should be a good, productive week.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer

Book review and cappuccino time! (CLICK HERE if that makes absolutely no sense to you.)

I, along with about half the world, read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner this week. I read it online (it’s up for free HERE until July 5th, I believe), which was interesting but not something I ever really need to do again. When I worked in publishing, I loved my Sony E-Reader, don’t get me wrong, but that was easier on the eyes. I stare at a computer screen enough all day.

So, anyway, Bree Tanner: we start off with Bree living in a basement full of unruly new vampires. She’s learned to make herself as invisible as possible, since the vampires around her tend to rip each other to shreds over any disagreement. Bree hardly remembers what her human life was like, but she does remember that she was a runaway and that the terrifying female vampire whose name she doesn’t know turned her. As Bree begins making friends, the leader of the new coven, Riley, tells them that a strange golden-eyed coven is threatening their territory. And then, well, wartime.

This novella will only make sense (and really, only be entertaining) if you read Eclipse. I was not really excited about the story or about Bree, but what interested me was the reason behind this whole thing. Stephenie Meyer had written a day in the life of this very minor character to understand the character better than Bella could, and she turned it into this novella. Since all of the Twilight books (except, briefly, the last one) are written in Bella’s POV, there’s not as much of a view into vampire life, and Meyer wanted to make Bree and the other newborns as fleshed out as possible. I love this tactic of writing scenes through other characters’ eyes or writing their backstories—it really does help me feel more connected with all of my characters, and I can craft their personalities and reactions much more clearly. It’s so interesting for an author to know secrets a reader won’t necessarily know, and for that reason alone, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner fascinated me.

Five Random Thoughts on a Friday

1. I’ve started making a concerted effort to write at my desk this week. Usually, I camp out on the couch in the living room, with my feet up and my laptop in my lap. Which is nice and comfortable and all, but I don’t think it’s helping me be all that productive. So I’ve spent the week at my desk, and I’m pretty sure it’s working. It makes me feel more productive, at least.

2. I’ve stopped buying celebrity tabloid magazines like People and US Weekly, magazines I used to read every time I had a plane ride. I still read EOnline religiously, don’t get me wrong, and I know way more about celebrity lives than is probably healthy for me, but I am beginning to cut back. I go for Conde Nast Traveler or Real Simple or Saveur. Maybe I just want to pretend like I’m more grown up.

3. I’ve been craving naps this week. From about 3 pm to 5 pm every day, I’ve started yawning and staring at my bed. I’m trying to combat it by taking a walk or running an errand around that time, because I’m not going to get much work done then anyway. And if I let myself nap one day, I’m going to want to nap at that time very day after that. Slippery slope.

4. I want to start watching World Cup games. I remember watching them in high school—waking up at four in the mornings to drive over to a friend’s house and watch all the cute guys run around. Because, okay, I don’t know anything about soccer, but it’s still entertaining.

5. There was a huge storm here in Boston last weekend, and tons of trees were torn down along the Charles River. So glad I wasn’t outside when this happened:

The Elevator Pitch Problem

I hate it when people ask me what my book is about. Not because they’re asking—when someone tells you they’re writing a book, of course the next logical question is to ask what it’s about—but because I never really developed that elevator pitch that I was supposed to. So I stand there and kind of mumble something about Snow White or Sophie until the person’s eyes glaze over. I should have boiled the plot of my WiP’s down into one gripping sentence, but I’ve never managed to find a sentence that fits.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the elevator pitch lately. As in, if I were riding an elevator with a potentially interested agent, how would I sell my book in four floors or less? Nathan Bransford has a great post about how to structure that crucial sentence: CLICK HERE to read. He suggests that the one sentence relate mostly to the plot, the story that will draw your readers in. Which makes complete sense. I just haven’t found that sentence that describes the plot perfectly. How do you boil down all of your work into just one sentence?

So I’ve decided that, even though I don’t plan to ride an elevator with an agent any time soon, I should come up with pitches for all of my WiP’s this week. There’s going to be a lot of scribbling in my journal until I find the best way to encapsulate my story. That way, at least I won’t feel so silly the next time I’m at a party and declare I’m a writer.

Good Books and Shirley Temples

Things that make me happy, even on a Monday. Feel free to share your own in the comments!

1. Oversized coffee mugs with coffee up to the brim.

2. Finding a book I absolutely cannot stop reading. A book so good that I start re-reading it as soon as I finish.

3. Trying to tell a really funny story but not being able to because I’m laughing so hard. This happens a lot.

4. Shirley Temples. Still amazing.

5. My reading nook. Definitely my favorite part of my room.

Hope everyone has a happy Monday!

Goals!

The writing has been…different this week. I’ve spent most of the week going over what I’ve written and tweaking sentences, adding description, changing large portions of scenes that now no longer fit. I definitely didn’t reach my word count goal of 15,000, but I still feel like I’ve done good work. And this week will be more of the same. My goals:

-I’m not setting a word count goal for myself this week. Instead, I’m hoping to polish up the first half of the book—write all of the scenes I had skipped before, make sure all the characters are introduced well, and keep the pacing exciting.

-I want to focus on adding sensory detail this week. Valerie Kemp wrote a great post on her blog, I Should Be Writing, about using three out of the five senses when setting a scene. It’s been pretty entertaining to imagine what places would smell like, what they would feel like, etc. CLICK HERE to read the post.

So hopefully everything will come together this week! I hope everyone’s enjoying a wonderfully lazy Sunday.

Sophomore Switch by Abby McDonald

Due to a last minute study abroad switch, American Tasha spends a semester in Oxford, while prim and ambitious Emily ends up at UC Santa Barbara. Both are trying to escape—Tasha has gained notoriety after an Internet video of her and a TV reality star surfaced, and Emily’s boyfriend dumped her. Tasha struggles to prove herself at Oxford, while Emily tries to find a way to relax and let things go.

It’s not quite a YA book (both characters are about nineteen), but it has the same search for identity that makes YA such a great genre to read. Tasha, when she falls in with a militant feminist crowd at Oxford, has to decide for herself what the true meaning of feminism is. Emily has to figure out what kind of future she really wants. The girls have witty, distinct voices, and I ended up rooting for both of them. All in all, this book is a fun, light read, but it also has a lot to say about how women are perceived and their relationships with men.

Publisher: Candlewick Press
Source: library

Five Random Thoughts on a Friday

1. Tons of book bloggers have been singing the praises of Jandy Nelson’s The Sky is Everywhere (CLICK HERE for Tahereh’s beautiful thank-you letter to the author and a chance to win one of three copies of the book). I’ve been trying to request it from the library, but they apparently have only one copy. Well, I have a Borders coupon and I’m not afraid to use it. CLICK HERE for a link to the Amazon page for more description of the book.

2. If you know me, you know that I tend to ask my friends very random questions sometimes. Often out of the blue. Like, “If you had a hippopotamus, what would you name it?” (Flower Power. That’s what I would name my hippo, just in case you were wondering). Well, I’ve decided that my answer to “If you could only watch one TV series ever for the rest of your life, what would it be?” is Friends. Friday Night Lights is a very, very close second, but Friends never fails to make me laugh. And I figure a life deprived of television at least deserves some laughter. What would yours be?

3. Thunderstorms are now officially my favorite background writing music ever. It was thunderstorming last night as I wrote some of the climax scene of the Sophie WiP, and it totally made my writing more dramatic.

4. I know it’s summer, and I should be getting iced coffee drinks whenever I splurge and buy coffee. But I’m just so not a fan. Even when it’s 85 degrees outside, I want my cappuccino or latte.

5. I’m making a list for things I want to do this summer in Boston. I want to walk the Freedom Trail one more time. I want to spend a day writing in a Harvard Square café. I want to go to tons of book signings and events at the independent bookstores around town. And I want to go back to Walden Pond, to see the most melodramatic statue ever:

Happy Friday, everyone!

1st Person vs. 3rd Person

I’ve been working a lot on honing Sophie’s voice this week. I’ve gone over most of what I’ve written up to this point and tweaked things to make sure she stayed consistent and sounded believable (and not too much like me). This discovery of someone’s voice is one of my favorite parts of writing. I love crafting a first person voice because it allows me inside a character’s head, and I feel more connected to her. I learn her secrets, the reasons behind her actions, the way she views others—everything is open.

There are advantages to third person narration, of course, whether it is limited or not. You can get a greater sense of other people’s motivations and thoughts beyond just what the protagonist observes. You can also explore actions that the protagonist doesn’t experience, which can move the plot forward and help the reader understand the setting better.

As a reader, though, I’m always drawn to characters more than plot. I feel like this explains why I prefer first person over third person: I want to be connected to the protagonist, seeing everything from his or her eyes, and so I want to be inside that character’s head. What do you prefer?