Need A Little HIP Action?

So what did you really think I was going to write about? LOL ... A dancer, I am not. I like to dance to make my kids laugh, but that's about it. I keep telling my husband someday we are going to take dance lessons, but nah...we never will. We'd laugh too much.

I'm still reading James Scott Bell's book, Revision and Self-Editing and he talks about HIPs. Here is how he breaks it down:

HOOK: This is making your writing hard to put down. It is not just used at the beginning of your book, but all throughout it. You want to give your reader a reason to keep turning the page, so every scene needs to draw the reader into it. This can be done through the opening line, through dialogue, and setting. You want to start your scene at, or close to, the action of the scene. You also want to establish the viewpoint right up front.

INTENSITY: "The greater the trouble, the greater the intensity." You don't want any dull parts, whatsoever. You need to keep tension in every scene. It doesn't have to be high-end tension, but enough to keep the reader in anticipation.

PROMPT: To me, this is like a hook, but only at the end of your scene and/or chapter. This is where you prompt the reader to keep on reading. Here are a few of Bell's ideas: a mysterious line of dialogue, an image of foreboding, a secret suddenly revealed, and a question left hanging in the air.

So have you been putting your HIPs in action? A little rusty from disuse? Or do you have some great moves?


photo credit: Mirian-Fotos @pixabay.com
Article first published at sherrinda.com 11/2009

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Sherrinda Ketchersid is a born and bred Texan, preacher’s wife, mother of 4 children, and works part-time as a bookseller at Amazon. With the children grown and out of the house, she weaves tales of fierce knights and their ladies in a time where men were warriors and women had to be strong enough to keep them in check.

After taking time off from writing, she has returned with a new motto in place to spur her on. “Writers write. Everyone else makes excuses.” ~Jack Bickham.  No excuses this time. She is weaving her love of romance with history to bring joy and the hope of love to those who may one day read her stories. Her first book, tentatively The Lady's Masquerade, will release April 2019.

You can connect with her through:

Personal blog: sherrinda.com

Twitter: @sherrinda

Instagram: @sherrinda

Does Your Writing Have Rhythm?

If you think in the economy of words, you'd probably use as few as possible, right? But how often do we actually think about how short we should write instead of how many words we need to make a novel?

Less is more. 

One hour was simply not enough to soak up all that Brandilyn Collins had to teach in this too-short class I sat through at ACFW national conference several years ago. I could easily sit through an entire early bird on what she had to tell. 

Words fascinate me. More than just stringing them together to tell a story, but words that evoke emotions. Develop a setting. Show the reader what is happening upon the screen we call a page. 

And I use too many of them. 

Click on the photo to see the changes Brandilyn made to a certain section of my manuscript.

One hour was enough to show me that so much more can be said in a stronger way if we use less words and more powerful words.

The key to this is the power behind the words. For example, take the before and after of these sentences I rewrote after Brandilyn's class:

Before:

A warm hand cupped Ellie’s elbow and guided her back to the spot where the brown-tinged grass caved under the press of her black shoes.

After:

A warm hand cupped Ellie’s elbow, guiding her back to where the brown-tinged grass caved under her black shoes. 

How about another one? One that is a little more dramatic in the changes.

Before:

She wanted to stop them. Grab their perfect black scarves, coats, gloves. Make them realize this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. She was supposed to be able to learn how to be a good wife instead of a good widow. She would have planned better, tried harder had she known…

After:

Ellie wanted to stop them. Grab their perfect scarves and coats. Make them see this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. She was supposed to have the chance to learn how to be a good wife. Not a widow. 

Do you see that not only did I use less words, but I also used more powerful words? The second one packed more of a punch right? And because I actually used less words your brain didn't have to dig through all the extraneous stuff just to find the meaning to the sentence and the paragraph.

Sentence length also dramatically affects the rhythm and communicates without words to the reader their emotions. If your sentences are filled with descriptions and are long languid run-on sentences, and your scene is a fight, what emotion are you going to evoke in your reader? Not fear. In fact (and this happens to me too often), I'll be reading (or rather skimming) something and realize two paragraphs in that this was a fight/kidnapping/disagreement/argument and I had NO idea because the descriptions, word choice and sentence length did not cue me into the fact that there was something happening!

Word selection in and of itself is not enough. Once I started thinking about the length of my physical sentences, the sound of my writing started to change. You want the overall flow to match the mood of the scene, so keep this in the forefront of your mind as you are editing and changing. So often I didn't so much rewrite what I had written, but cut the extra words that were only drowning the important pieces of information. Once I started looking at my story in this way, I found plenty of places to cut the extra verbiage! 

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Casey Herringshaw is a homeschool graduate and has been writing since high school. She lives in colorful Colorado where she gets to live her dream stalking--er--visiting with her favorite CO authors. 

Discover your Brand Part 1 - from the Amazing Jim Rubart

Me, my daughter, and Jim

Sitting in on a class with Jim Rubart is an experience!

It’s 1/3 humor

1/3 excellent writing material

And 1/3 preaching.

And every 1/3 weaves beautiful one into the other. (Allen Arnold teaches this way too, if you ever get the chance to hear him)

In May, I had the opportunity to sit in on Jim’s Branding class and, needless to say, it was fantastic, so today I’m going to share a few tips from it for you. (And I’m paraphrasing because that’s how I take notes usually J

First of all, what is a brand?

                I love some of these answers our class discussed.

1.       Identity

2.       A Visual representation of who you are

3.       A promise you make to people

However, I LOVE Jim’s take on it. He says, “A brand is not what we create but what we discover”

Tweet: “A brand is not what we create but what we discover”

Isn’t that a great thought?!? Have you ever considered ‘discovering’ your brand?

The brand is not what I thought it was! It’s not your books or your tagline. It’s not your agenda or message.

You are the brand.

Authentically YOU!

How does God use your uniqueness to create stories for readers?

God is a personal God. He’s also extremely personal. He’s created each of us in a unique way to fulfill a purpose only we were designed to fulfill. Writing is a part of that. A ‘calling’ upon our hearts endowed by our Creator.

So…..what is your unique sermon that only YOU can tell?

A brand transcends genres and prescribed ‘boxes’.

It draws people in because it’s organically you not what you’re ‘selling’.

It’s much more personal than that. J

So here’s an assignment Jim gave to us to help us discover our uniqueness.

Email 5 people who are close to you and ask them this question. How would you describe me to someone else?

Then email 5 acquaintances and ask them the same thing.

Look at the results. Listen to what people are saying about how they see you. Start discovering how you are unique.

I’ll leave you with this idea from Jim’s class.

Remember what you enjoyed as a child. What you were passionate about?

We forget what we were born to be. We forget our identity.

Satan attacks at the level of our identity because at the core that assaults our purpose.

Rediscover who you are and it’s the first step to discovering your brand J

Share your thoughts. Do you KNOW your brand? How did you discover it?

Editing Tips: Under the POV Microscope

Photo Credit

Point of View (POV) isn’t that hard once you get the trick of it. It’s just the mastering of the trick that can prove difficult. ;-) But once a couple key elements have been identified, it’s simple to correct the errors and move forward with your story.

Be aware of head-hopping. You’ve probably heard this talked about in the escalators and elevators, in the clusters of attendees and lunch tables, not to mention classes—at conferences: don’t head-hop. Head-hopping is the big picture term. The root cause of so much evil in your novels. (Just kidding…sorta) Once you learn what to spot, it’s easy to see head-hopping in the future. Example: You’re in Mary’s head. Hearing her thoughts. Having a view from what she is seeing. She’s talking with Amy. When you are in Mary’s head, you can’t hear or know what Amy is thinking. You can only interrupt her body language and listen to her dialogue. Head-hopping occurs when we leave Mary’s head and jump into Amy’s thoughts without there being any break in the physical story layout on the page. It’s the most jarring and unsettling event for a reader.

Assumption is your friend. It’s actually your enemy in real life, but in fiction, your characters will have to assume a lot. Why? Because they don’t know what their fellow characters are thinking. A subtle shift of POV can come when the author makes a statement about a character whose head we are not in that scene. These statements can be as simple as “the light was too bright for her eyes”. No, no, no. It’s so tempting to make these comments and most readers might not pick up on it, but once you’re shown the problem, you tend to notice it glaring all the brighter. If the light was “too bright for her eyes” that means she is thinking that it is too bright. If we aren’t in her head, we cannot know her thoughts. However, what we can do is see her reaction. What would the character do if the sun was too bright? She’d squint. And that is definitely something your POV character can notice and mention in passing to the reader.  These little comments are the ones most likely to slip past us. The ones most likely to squirm their way into the story and start to take over.

The key to spotting problem POV areas is to think in terms of, “is this a thought or an action that my character might do?” If it’s not the POV character and it’s something you would stand on the street corner and think, it can’t be in your book—unless of course your POV character is a mind reader. Which, I don’t know…maybe he/she is. ;-) So flip the thought on its head and do an action/reaction: what is the action that your non-POV character is thinking about and what would their reaction be to that thought? Like squinting in the bright sun.

Action is always more powerful than thought. It’s an extension—sometimes involuntary action of their thought. Like a knee-jerk reaction, it can’t be stopped or helped. And how your POV character interprets this becomes a fascinating and fun dance for the reader as the characters clumsily tango across the page.

POV only has to be as difficult as you want to make it. Once the key points are exposed to the light of an editor’s eye, it becomes easier to find those problem areas and edit them clean—usually with minimal work at best.

What are your biggest POV struggles?

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Casey Herringshaw is a homeschool graduate and has been writing since high school. She lives in colorful Colorado where she gets to live her dream stalking--er--visiting with her favorite CO authors. 

A Pitch to Build a Book On

Contest and Conference season is closing in and one of the main things we learn as budding or published authors is ‘the pitch’.

First of all, what IS a pitch?

Well….very loosely, it’s the best pick-up line for an agent or editor.

You’re trying to win them woo them with your story J

For a perfect pick-up line, what do you need?

Here are a few of my ideas – and I hope you all can add some more to the mix J

You’re serious about your story

Lots of people can come up with a story idea, but very few end of writing a book. When you write a pitch, you want to have enough of the story written to show you’re serious. If you’re an unpublished author, you need to have the entire book completed. That in and of itself shows seriousness.

If you’re a published author, your pitch should be strong enough to show you’re committed to the story. I prefer having a solid outline for the book before I pitch it, or at least a sure grasp on my characters’ motivations.

Your concept is clear and interesting

A pitch gives a clear (and succinct) heart of your story. I’m writing a new novel series and just finished working on a proposal for it. Here’s the pitch:

A small town tea shop owner with a sweet-tooth and a devil-may-care Englishman with more savory tastes join forces to cater an England-themed wedding.

A wedding planner with dramatic flair and country charm teams up with an aloof undercover prince to create a fairytale wedding for her best friend.

He’s trying to find a hero within and she’s pretty sure it’s a lost cause, but sparks are sure to fly when this opinionated country girl and an arrogant city boy team up to save a children’s clinic from bankruptcy.

A young inventor who chooses crime fighting instead of matrimony and a handsome detective trying to prove his worth team up to stop the illusive Jack the Ripper before someone they love becomes his next victim.

In these, I HOPE I’ve established a few things.

1.       A little hint of the hero and heroine’s personalities

2.       Possible conflict

3.       Uniqueness of the story

So, how about you try?

                You need a hero (and if it’s a romance you need a hero and heroine)

                                                A little personality touch

                                                                A purpose

                                                                                And a twist

How about you? Share your pitches OR share your tips for pitch writing!

STORYCRAFT

During the recent ACFW Conference in Dallas, TX, a few other writers and I started chatting about our strengths and weaknesses in writing. Usually it’s pretty easy to point out weaknesses in ourselves, but strengths? I think for most of us that is a little more difficult.

Which got me thinking….

One of my strengths is ‘storytelling’. You probably don’t want me for a line-edit (grammar is NOT my strength), but as far as seeing the big picture, the story concept, I’m pretty good at that. In fact, one of my favorite things to do with writer friends is brainstorm!

Let’s step back and take a look at S.T.O.R.Y.

Yes, I’m a big fan of acronyms (give me a break, I work as an SLP by day so I’m always trying to think of memory-helps J

The hallmarks of a good story can be summed up into some basic components:

S – Solid characters

                At the heart of every good story is either one…or usually more, strong or powerful characters. The best stories take us on a journey with believable characters who are flawed, wounded, and determined in some way or other. Do you know your main characters? Are they engaging? Does the reader have a reason to like them? To cheer for them? Or at the very least, are your characters interesting enough (even if they’re not good) to draw the reader in a make them want to come along on the journey.

T – Tale

                Is there a story? The best books aren’t about people being thrown together with nothing to do (okay, unless we’re talking about The Great Gatsby ;-) Seriously, what is happening in your story? Have you created a world? Do you have something to tell to bring the reader along? A journey to make with these amazing characters? The next one will help us out with this problem.

O – Objectives

                What are the goals of your characters? What does he want? What drives her? The Bible says ‘without a vision the people perish’, well in many ways the same can happen to your story if your characters don’t have a goal. Many times there is both an internal and external goal.

R – Real Conflict

                What’s going to stop your excellent characters on this amazing journey from reaching their goals? Conflict! And more importantly, conflict takes on many hues. In the best books, there is both internal and external conflict, keeping the tension high and moving the story along at a solid pace.

Y – Your voice

                This is what makes your story….your story. The YOU factor! Your voice, your style, your turn of phrase, and personal storytelling skills. The call you have on your heart for this story. Your humor or drama. Your personal experience and imagination. All of these things are special pieces of your STORY that only YOU can bring! Do you know why you want to write this story? If you don’t know….your characters might not either, and it will show.

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by this new info and would like some help, I have a special treat!!

Today I’m going to offer a brainstorming session on StoryCraft to one commenter. Please indicate whether you want to be a part of the drawing or not (and leave your email address).

What it will entail is:

A form you complete on your story

A 15-30 minute chat related to information on the form

And a follow-up email reviewing what was discussed

Share your thoughts! How have you used the elements of STORY to write your own?

             

Beauty and Brokenness

I write romance. Whether as the main binding of my novel or a smaller thread, romantic elements are a staple in almost everything I write. I love…love. Why? Oh, there are so many reasons. The emotional high, the subdued gentleness, the tender service, the transforming power.

Love makes a difference - 

Especially when we add the element of God’s love into our fiction.

But what makes these ‘love stories’ so meaningful? What changes our stories from a simple, two-dimensional fairytale-like story to a tale that brings our hearts to life or inspires us?

Well, I’ll venture an answer.

Brokenness.

Every major character we bring onto the page has been broken in some way. Even the highly adored Mr. Darcy was broken!  Yet, he is a most loved character BECAUSE he was broken, and then we got to watch love turn him around :-)  (However, Mr. Knightley might very well be perfect. Just sayin’ J)

In a world of broken things, we have little use for perfect people. Perfect people, if you've ever read them, fail to grasp our hearts and emotions as well as the broken ones do. Why? We can relate with broken people because we’ve all experienced some element of brokenness. Big or small, we know the sting.

In fact, I’m pretty sure we struggle with some form of brokenness on a daily basis.

Think about some of your favorite book characters? What made you fall in love with them? Perfection?

If you’re like me, these characters captured your heart because of their growth through brokenness.

Whether in romance or other fiction, brokenness is a key element in character development.

Brokenness provides the wound which only love can heal.

Now, I’m not quite singing along with the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love, but I am saying, as we create powerful characters, we are taking them from a place of brokenness to a place of healing by the end of the story.

Isn’t this what usually happens in most stories? It’s one way conflict and the character arc work together.

Can brokenness be beautiful?

Why do we love happy endings?

Because on the other side of brokenness, love brings a deeper joy.

How different the story of Cinderella would be if she traveled to the Ball with her stepmother and sisters, caught the prince's eye, and was swept away to marry him. Sweet story, but depth? Beauty of the ending?

Not quite as poignant, right?

What about if Rapunzel crawled down from the tower and went straight to the castle to find her parents?

What if Angel in Redeeming Love tossed away her old life as soon as Michael Hosea walked into the brothel?

Sweet endings, sure, but we get something EVEN BETTER.

We get the 'conflict', struggle....the brokenness to make that ending all the more beautiful.

This idea is fresh in my mind as I finished edits for my December release and am currently working on edits for my February release. Both of my heroines were significantly broken in the beginning of the books. One was aware of it. One wasn’t. What makes each of their journeys more powerful is the way their brokenness shapes them in the beginning of the books and the way love transforms them by the end. It’s a constant battle between living in brokenness and learning to live in love.

What a beautiful experience. Both realized the sweetness of love in a deeper way than they would have without the brokenness to frame their vision.

Love changes things.

Especially God’s love.

In our writing, in our lives, the power of God’s love transforms broken pieces of a life and places them back together to make a masterpiece…more beautiful than before. At the heart.

So tell me – what are some great ‘broken’ characters you’ve read? Written?

Are you like me? Do you think broken characters are more beautiful?

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As a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Pepper Basham enjoys sprinkling her Appalachian culture into her fiction whenever she can. She’s an award-winning author of both contemporary and historical romances, mom of five, speech-language pathologist, and lover of chocolate. She resides in Asheville, North Carolina with her family. She is represented by Julie Gwinn and her debut novel, The Thorn Bearer, released in April 2015. Her first contemporary romance novel, A Twist of Faith, released in December. You can connect with Pepper on her website at www.pepperdbasham.com, Facebook-  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pepper-D-Basham or Twitter at https://twitter.com/pepperbasham

When to Kill the Character...

And when NOT to kill the character ;-)
(btw, Amy Leigh Simpson would probably have some different comments to say about this :-)

I'm on deadline for my second book in the Penned in Time Series so my mental abilities, time management skills, and patience are being tested to the brink.

So before you think I created this title because of the pressures of deadline, I'll put your mind at ease...I didn't, mostly.

As tempting as it might be, in all actuality this blog post evolved from a very real experience while writing a few weeks ago. I needed to decide whether someone in my WIP needed to die or not.

For some writers, it's a no brainer.
If you write books where no one ever dies, this blog post might not pertain to you.
For other writers, lots of people die in their books so the answer to this question might always be 'yes, kill 'em off."

But for those of us who write somewhere in between, there might be a real time when you have a dilemma about whether to kill off somebody or not. Which is what happened to me.

When creating stories we are constantly bombarded with the idea that we need to increase tension and conflict.

Make your hero bleed! Make your heroine weep! Break them until the black moment reduces them to a puddle of emotional puddy on the floor!

And though it's true that conflict increases tension and therefore may also increase the power of your story, there are times when killing off that person or causing that tragedy or increasing the suffering, might be too much.

Here are two ways we can make too much tension...too much!

Playing the Job Card (I struggle with this one so I put it first)

There's something to be said for solid, organic tension. Conflict that arises from your story and makes sense in the overall growth of your characters, is a beautiful sight to behold, but when bad things happen just because bad things happen, or just because you feel like tension is low, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the right time...or the right tension.

The best conflict comes from the natural storyline. In other words if killing off that person grows your character in the direction you want, or moves the story along as it should, then maybe you should kill off that person.

Otherwise, should murder really be in your future?

Bloodbath Analogy

Unless you're writing the next horror bestseller, Game of Thrones remake, Zombie apocalypse 10000000, or sparkly teen vampire romance, then there is a point where too much tension is too much tension.

I found myself at this place a few weeks ago.

I was planning on one of my secondary characters dying in a house fire. To me it would have given my heroine another way to deal with suffering and trust God, deepening her character development. Good reason, right?

The choice would have been an organic one from for her character arc, however I knew the future too. I knew my heroine had just finished dealing with the death of someone she loved and I also knew she was getting ready to face one of the most heart-wrenching battles of her life, so I begin to second-guess killing off another character. Why? Because it was just too much.

No, it wasn't conflict for conflict's sake. It would have given added depth to her growth, but it somehow felt a little contrived because of the intensity of consistent pain (and I'm not a pansy about killing characters or causing fictional pain, btw)

Some people may disagree with me on this choice, because they think any tension must be good tension, but I disagree. Maybe it's just my reading preference but when I get to the point where all I feel is loss, loss, loss in a story, then it's too much for me. Besides, sometimes killing off a person isn't what will cause the best tension. Sometimes, there something much worse that will have great impact to the overall story.

So, how's that for a happy Monday post! :-)

 I'd love to hear some of your opinions about tension, killing characters, and went to much is too much.
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Pepper Basham is an award-winning author who writes romance peppered with grace and humor. She’s a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mom of five, a speech-language pathologist, and a lover of chocolate. She enjoys sprinkling her native Appalachian culture into her fiction whenever she can and loves annoying her wonderful friends at her writing blog, The Writer’s Alley. She is represented by Julie Gwinn and her debut novel, The Thorn Bearer, released in April 2015. Her first contemporary romance novel, A Twist of Faith, released in December. You can connect with Pepper on her website at www.pepperdbasham.com, Facebook-  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pepper-D-Basham or Twitter at https://twitter.com/pepperbasham

Writing Personality with No Holds Barred with the amazing Rachel McMillan

I am SO happy to welcome Rachel McMillan to be our guest at The Alley today! Besides being an avid Sherlockian, intelligent wordsmith, popular book reviewer, and all-around classy gal, she is also an author. The first of her Herringford and Watts series, The Bachelor Girls Guide to Murder comes out in early 2016 with Harvest House. I was thrilled to meet Rachel at ACFW 2014 and love our mutual weirdness.
But she's also brave - because she sent her words out into the world and now they're on the road to publication!

Please help me in welcoming her to our blog today!

A Writer’s Tale:

Once upon a time there was a girl who scribbled fastidiously for over 20 years. During that time, she amassed full notebooks and USB keys chockfull of words and ideas. But she was scared. She was scared to show anyone so she kept these words  and ideas under lock and key.

 

“What are you writing?” her parents/siblings/friends who ask as she took pen to paper in the back of a high school classroom, or on the subway or in a coffee shop.   But she would press her notebook to her chest and gulp her secrecy.

If I tell, then they’ll know.  If I let them see and I am terrible, then this lovely little secret that is mine and fills my brain and jolts my nerves and fills my heart with joy…will just fizzle. If these words are terrible then I am terrible, she equated self-worth with her passion for inky fingerpads and imagined worlds.

 

So, she wrote in silence. She wrote in secret.  She finished novel after novel.

Two years ago, she decided after hundreds upon hundreds of books read and thousands upon thousands of words written, that she would finally take the plunge toward publication.  She mapped out a book that she thought the CBA would like. She measured it, she populated it with characters and phrases and statements indigenous to the market she had studied and learned for most of her life.  She wandered under the misconception of a safety net.   She sent the book out into the world.  While the first chapters secured her an agent, the final product was passed at every publishing house in the CBA.   The feedback, rather than being full of scary rejections that would force her unwillingly back into her secret cave, was sound and encouraging. She took it to heart for its promise and not for guided limitation.

And she started writing more, believing ( as she still does) that a writer should always have something in their back pocket. Even while her first novel was still making the rounds of submission and eking its way to committee meetings (alas, to no avail) her agent sparked a fuse upon return from ICRS and the idea that the writer infuse her next story with her lifelong passion for Sherlock Holmes.

But this, thought she, is rather surged with something close to my heart, the winnows through me, that is so anomalous to me.  Can I possibly write something with so much of me in it?

With no holds barred and with no thought toward rubrics and metrics, imagined or not, she typed and tapped away and presented the final work to her agent…

Who was surprised. What writing classes have you been taking? Her agent wondered. What has changed since you first gave me that initial manuscript a year ago?

 

The writer hadn’t taken any classes. She had done nothing different except…except…..write a book sizzled with her personality and heart.  A book sprinkled with shards of her! She wrote a book in her voice, peppered with her thoughts, pierced with her vulnerabilities, trembling with her desires and ideas and wonderings.

She wrote it jubilantly….elated with the giddiness of crafting this sunny world with live, snarky, brilliant, zesty characters whose strings she jiggled like a puppeteer who just breathed to life.  She wrote while snifflingly realizing someday she would have to send her book friends out into the world with their quirks and depths and idiosyncrasies. She cried when she finally pressed send. She missed her book friends as they experienced the rounds of submission and meetings.

 

But she started something new, aware that…

Writing the book you want to read now meant splay your personality on page.

And this crazy book which coloured outside the lines of any imagined structure the writer thought existed was the project that landed her first book contract.

 

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Writers---write for yourselves first and foremost. Be savvy enough to study the industry, to read voraciously in a myriad of genres, to stay connected to the community, but write also knowing that what may be forging your path to publication is your indelible thumbprint.

Write uniquely.

 Write like no one is watching.  

 Looking back on my reading life, I am aware that the writers whose work orbits closely around my heart are the writers whose personality is embroidered into their pages. 

 Whether you be striving to hit publish on your first Indie book or whether you wait and wade through the uneven tides of traditional publishing, the secret to garnering the first loyal reader and to skimming the top of the dreaded slush pile is you! Wonderful, unique, zany, creative, human and insecure you.

 Zing your books with your personality, even while cognizant of the market you are writing for.

And send that snippet of yourself into the world like Polonius (“To Thine Own Self Be True”) and see what happens.

It could be something awesome.

And it will be you….all you.

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Rachel McMillan is a keen history enthusiast and lifelong bibliophile. When not writing, or reading, she can most often be found drinking tea and watching British miniseries. Rachel lives in bustling Toronto where she works in Educational Publishing. She is a frequent contributor to Breakpoint and Novel Crossing. Her first novel, The Bachelor Girl’s Guide to Murder releases with Harvest House in early 2016.

www.rkmcmillan.com

 

The Trilogy - to Write or Not to Write by Rajdeep Paulus

So happy to have Rajdeep Paulus back with us on The Alley.

Her newest novel, Soaring Through Stars, is the final installment of her trilogy and has met with wonderful remarks such as "a beautiful whirlwind plot", "heart soaring", "compelling" and "hopeful". One reviewer said it is "a perfect conclusion".

What a wonderful delight then to have Raj with us to talk about writing that tricky trilogy - especially the kind which involves the same characters.

Welcome, Raj!

I recently attended a panel discussion by authors who wrote Young Adult series. A few had written a sequel to their first book and the rest had written a series. One particular author claimed that the trilogy was the perfect formula for a successful teen story. Her break down summed up like this: Book One – The problem, Book Two – Lead characters make out, and Book Three – Good triumphs evil and good wins.

 

Although humorous, I found her understanding of the trilogy rather simple and limiting. In fact I can think of many reasons why an author should avoid writing a trilogy. Here are my Top Five reasons to STOP yourself before you commit.

 

 

1.      Why say in three what you could have said it in one? Don’t drag the story on just to fill pages. If the story can be finished, don’t test your readers’ attention span and force them to walk down random alleys (YES-That was an intentional shout-out to the Alley Cats! J ) and side streets to get to the ending.

2.      The love story can taper off and become repetitive once the main characters have hit it off. How many more romantic scenes can you write in there that don’t repeat the same kinds of lines and try to evoke the same emotion from your readers from that first scene. Three books later and it is no easy task to keep the romance fresh and memorable.

3.      The villain must continue to be a threat, and unless we’re talking the kind of character whose name shall not be said that tends to disappear and resurrect every book, we’re likely to run out of ways to invite the antagonist to continue to evoke the suspense and setbacks of the first book.

4.      The cliffhanger ending of each book in a series is a tough one to swallow when your readers start giving you feedback and reviews. Accusations of “unfair” and “too many unanswered questions” follow you until the next book comes out. Questions are good. But every question an author lays down must be followed by an answer or a very good reason for not answering it.

5.      The third book let down. Sometimes, that third book just ends and there’s little sense of satisfaction and a feeling of betrayal, because the build-up of books one and two fills a reader with expectations of a grand finale. And when that doesn’t happen, you feel like the characters forgot who they were. The author rushed and had to turn the book in. Or, someone else wrote it. Not good.

 

BUT sometimes you MUST write on. A sequel. And the trilogy. Sometimes there’s room for more and here are several reasons an author should write on.

 

1.      The story demands more. There were questions in Book one too vast to answer in one book. The answers were too long to squeeze into a quick ending or epilogue.

2.      The characters’ voices needed to be heard. Sometimes a POV needs to change so readers can get to know the other key players in the story better. Sometimes that calls for another book.

3.      New characters and new settings are introduced. But not too new and no one that wasn’t sort of hinted at along the way, else chance falling into that side streets-distractions category. New members of the story create new interactions with the original team and lots of exciting things can happen.

4.      Character growth happens in stages and just because your lead character tackles and overcomes one challenge that helps him or her become more brave or more kind or more honest, there are still other areas he or she can grow in. This can lead to depth and complexity. And readers draw closer to the characters as they change, falter, grow and blossom.

5.      Readers will ask. Bear in mind: the answer isn’t always supposed to be yes. But if it is, send your characters to places that stretch them, push them to new limits, and find that most amazing journey that leads them to a place where you can walk away as a writer like a parent sending off her kids to college. Not that fictional characters can write their own happy endings [Did you catch that Regina? #OUAT,] but if we leave them in a place where readers can walk away with the words “Wow, just wow” on their lips—mission accomplished.

 

As an author of her first trilogy, I can honestly say that I never intended for Talia and Jesse’s story to turn into three books. BUT, I am so glad they hung around a little longer for me to find their journey of courage and hope. I never want to be that author who ties up every loose end and leaves a book with a bow neatly wrapped around it at the end. I also never want to be that writer who writes the story readers are expecting. Because life is full of the unexpected! And complex characters get permission to be larger than life when they walk through the door marked Fiction.

 

So go forth. Write on. Write well. And may the power of great stories be ever with you. J

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Rajdeep Paulus, Award-Winning author of Swimming Through Clouds, Seeing Through Stones, and Soaring Through Stars, is mommy to four princesses, wife of Sunshine, a coffee-addict and a chocoholic. As of this June 2013, she’s a Tough Mudder. To find out more, visit her website or connect with her via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram.