Thursday, June 26, 2014

My Story is Boring

I think this is a problem most writer's face. You get to that spot in the story where everything slows down and you're certain it's boring. What to do? I'm facing that problem today. One solution is to raise the stakes. There are at least five different kinds of stakes that I know of, and any one of them can pull the story out of the blahs. Let's look at them.

1) Spiritual. My character's religious beliefs can be thrown into question somehow. Is it okay to steal food if my kids are hungry? Will God really be displeased with me if I tell a lie (we all lie in real life, so characters should lie, too--and not just when it's convenient. A good whopper out of nowhere can really shake things up). Does kissing this guy who's not my husband mean I'm an adulteress? Is it still murder if the thing I killed is a life form from a different galaxy and I'm not even sure it was sentient? Okay, I'm getting silly now, but you can see where I'm going with it.

2) Emotional. Just when my character thinks life might be going fine, introduce an element that causes an extreme emotional response. Her child almost got run over by a car (or DID get run over--that'll shake everything up for the rest of the novel). His co-worker stole his great idea that lead to the co-worker's promotion--and there's no way to prove it. Her sick Grandma just won the lottery, and that money would be ultra useful to get out of a jam--and then the guilt kicks in for getting greedy over Granny's money. Those emotions can be fun to play with, so slather them on thick.

3) Mental. Thoughts, attitudes, understandings, expectations, we all have these things in real life. So does your character. Explore one of them, then twist it up so it's no longer useful. She thought he loved her and would buy her a ring--until she saw the new pick-up truck he bought with his savings. He truly believed he'd get chosen to be on the team, but when the roster was posted, his name wasn't on it. Misunderstandings can be especially useful to shake things up.

4) Community. Family members are the best for mucking things up, but there are also friends, neighbors, and that guy at the park you see every time you go jogging and you don't know his name but you recognize his face and smile at him. And because they are all people, they can shake up a character's carefully ordered world. Maybe your character is planning on going into business with younger sister, but she elopes and moves to Cancun. Or your protagonist is planning to spend that tax refund on a new golf cart, then one of the kids spills a gallon of paint on the hardwood floor in the living room and lets it dry instead of cleaning it up. Of course, all this physical excitement will lead to mental and emotional stresses, which raise the stakes even higher.

5) Global. Your character is cruising along through life, everything's going good, then out of nowhere, Canada declares war and bombs Seattle. Or maybe it's the Koreans. Or the Rusikans from Theta Seti 5. Or a tornado touches down and rips up the neighborhood. Unless your character is the president of the country, there's nothing that can be done about a national or international crisis. 

Now I must go fix my boring story by raising some stakes. Are there any helpful things in here? Any other stakes you can think to raise?

-Sonja

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

An Interesting Character

I enjoy Pinterest for a bunch of reasons, and one of them is the humor. I find funny sayings, pictures, posters, quotes, you name it. Today I saw this photograph:


It was easier to post the picture than try to explain a sandwich-board sign coated in chalkboard paint... or maybe not. I don't know who took the picture or where it's from, so if anyone knows, fill me in and I'll give due credit to the source. For those who can't read the tiny font, it says, "Congratulations, you made it out of bed. Come in and celebrate."

My first reaction was to smile. That's pretty cute. Then I thought, does this person really exist? We all like to joke about how hard it is to get up in the morning, or how we don't function until we've had our first cup of coffee, but most of us aren't really this extreme. 

This would make an awesome character in a novel!

I see story elements in nearly everything I see, do, and read. Have you ever driven by a remote spot and thought, "What a great place to hide a body!" Have you ever seen a child laughing so hard they quit breathing and thought that scene had to go into a book? Have you seen a T-shirt with a sarcastic saying on it and knew which of your characters would proudly wear it?

Am I all by myself in this? What would you do with this character who must buy a coffee in response to successfully getting out of bed on time?

-Sonja

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Writing Prompts

Over on Pinterest, interesting writing prompts pop up once in a while on my feed. One especially interesting one caught my attention, so I followed the link. It's called Reddit Writing Prompts. Go check it out, I'll wait for you.

The one that jumped out at me on Pinterest is this:

> On your eighteenth birthday, you shoot a mystic bow that is said to kill whoever is destined to kill you, three seconds before they do. Eight years later, your arrow strikes your SO's heart, right as s/he says "I do."

A little melodramatic, but intriguing. And heart-breakingly sad. I don't like sad stuff, but this one got me. Wouldn't that make a great short story?

I haven't investigated the site well enough to know if these prompts are supposed to help you come up with a new novel idea, or spark a short story idea, or just get your creative juices flowing. There is a place for you to share the story you made up, contests, and a chat room. Maybe one of you has perused the site more than I have and can enlighten us all? I was thinking they'd be great prompts to get my son writing.

Let me share a few more interesting ones:

> You're a monster hiding under the bed. You're just about to burst out and frighten your victim when the father bursts into the room and starts mercilessly beating his own child.

> You are the first person ever to enter a black hole. When you come out the other side, you are back in the world exactly as you left it, but nobody seems to remember you.

> You'd always thought your house was haunted. One night, you're attacked by an intruder, but something defends you.

> You are the Chief Magical Officer at a retirement home for wizards witH Alzheimer's disease.

That's just a sampling, and I tried to grab different genres. There are TONS to choose from. Maybe someday when you're feeling writer's block or can't come up with a great idea for your next novel, give this site a try and see if that helps.

Comments?

-Sonja

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

What Is a Log-Line, and Do You Need One?

Kristen Lamb wrote an awesome blog post yesterday called "How to Tell if Your Story is On Target--What is Your Book About in ONE Sentence?" It's awesome. Go read it (I put the link in there), then come back. Or just stick around, because I plan on hitting the high points and adding a few bits of my own.

The meat of Kristen's blog is that every author needs a log-line. Don't know what that is? It's a one-sentence pitch that summarizes your story. It's the one sentence you can tell people when they ask, "What's your book about?" Don't ramble on for 20 minutes giving a play-by-play of the plot. Give the log-line. Go to IMDB (that's a website) and look up your favorite movies. Odds are, there's a one-sentence summary to get you to watch the movie.

Here are some examples:

"The Green Mile is about the lives of guards on death row leading up to the execution of a black man accused of rape and child murder who has the power of faith healing."

"A vengeful fairy is driven to curse an infant princess, only to discover that the child may be the one person who can restore peace to their troubled land." (That's Maleficent, and I've heard nothing to great reviews about this movie so far.)


"A reluctant hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, sets out to the Lonely Mountain with a spirited group of dwarves to reclaim their mountain home--and the gold within it--from the dragon Smaug."

The log-line tells the core idea of your story in a way that is emotionally intriguing and piques a reader's interest. It can take time to get it right. Kristen suggests trying it out on lots of people, even strangers in the coffee shop. If their eyes glaze over, your log-line isn't ready yet. If they lean forward and ask when that baby will be published, you know you're on track.

Here are the components of a successful log-line (according to Kristen--I didn't come up with this on my own):

1) a protagonist
2) an active verb
3) an active goal
4) an antagonist
5) the stakes

Check it out in action: 

Luke Skywalker (protagonist) joins forces (active verb) with a Jedi knight, a cocky pilot, a Wookie, and two droids to save the universe (active goal) from the Empire's world-destroying battle-station (the stakes), while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia (another goal) from the evil Darth Vader (antagonist.)

Here's another one, from the movie X-Men: Days of Future Past (which I saw last weekend and thought was pretty good):

The X-Men send (active verb) Wolverine (protagonist) to the past in a desperate effort (active goal) to change history and prevent an event that results in doom for both humans and mutants (stakes). 

Notice the antagonist isn't mentioned in this log-line, but it's kind of implied in "the event."

Now let me try it on one of my own stories, Cassandra's Curse:

Cassandra Christofides uses her gift of precognition to stop a sniper who intends to kill Cassandra.

I'm fairly happy with this one. The hard part is knowing what stakes to put in there, as the sniper kills a bunch of people in the book, but I thought the most pressing stake in Cassie's mind is her own demise. This comes at the end of the book, though, so don't use your log-line as the blurb (that's the sentence on the front of the book or the paragraph on the back of the book that's supposed to entire readers to buy/read the book).

Now try writing a log-line for your book. If you feel brave, share your results in the comments section. You might get some helpful feedback.

Questions? Comments? Frustrations? Share them all!

-Sonja

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Reading Truth #297

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Excellent Quote

"I don't have a muse. I have a mortgage."

-Jim Butcher


No commentary necessary.

Research for a New Novel

My good friend Aggeloi asked me to blog about a recent research venture. It began, as it usually does, with an idea. This one happens to be for a children's story. I've never written for children, but that's a topic for another blog. The story needs to be set in a small town, preferably in Washington state so I don't have to stray too far out of my comfort zone. The small town needs to be large enough to have an elementary school nearby but secluded enough to have a large (5 acres or more) old-growth forest nearby. After taking multiple trips to Seattle to research sites for previous novels, I decided that the small town in my newest novel needs to be within easier driving distance: thirty miles max. That'd make life much easier for me.

I've been driving up and down the Hood Canal all my life (family used to live up north), so I have a basic familiarity with all the small towns along Highway 101. I thought of using Lilliwaup, but it's too small. So I went south just a bit and chose Hoodsport. It met all my criteria, as far as I knew. So last Memorial Day, with nothing better already planned, I asked my husband to drive me up to Hoodsport to look around. Normally before field trips of this sort, I'd use Google maps and Google Earth to scout the area to make sure it was close enough to what I wanted. I didn't have time to do that this time. We packed the kids in the van and headed out.

Hoodsport is a wonderful and unique town. The first thing we did was drive down the main drag and find a parking spot somewhere in the middle (it's a really small town). Before we even got out, we checked Google maps and found out that Hoodsport doesn't have a neatly planned grid-like system of streets. It's got one main street (Highway 101) paralleling the canal, and two other main streets that run up into the hills, perpendicular to the highway, for a couple of miles until they join up and run out to Lake Cushman. There are several smaller side streets, most of which dead-end, and no "neighborhoods" of houses parked in a row with front and back yards and alleys and whatnot. That's a big deal for my story, so I made note of it.

(This is the dock at Hoodsport)

We got out of the van and walked down the main drag, stopping in all the stores that were open. Most of them catered to tourists. I found two great history books on the area: one is the story of one of the original settlers to the town of Hoodsport, and the other is an account of the early settlement of Lake Cushman. They were pricey, but I bought them anyway. During our walk, my husband took tons of photos: store fronts, the view of the water, a panorama of the main drag, and all the interesting, unique things you don't find in other small towns. The Hoodsport dock is amazing. The walkway shoots out over the beach and the water (by the time you get to the end, you're 20 feet above the water), then a steep ramp shoots you down to the docks. When the tide is in, that ramp isn't quite as steep, but when we were there, the tide was out and I was too chicken to try walking down that ramp. Anyway, back on shore there was a box for mooring fees. Yep, just a box. So trusting to leave something like that out in the open and unguarded. Hubby took a picture of that. There was also a unique circular concrete table with attacked benches (also circular) that was rustic, charming, and would fit wonderfully into my story. 

(This is the bench)

After that short tour of the "downtown corridor," we got back in the van and headed up the hill on one of the side streets. We saw a few houses tucked back into the woods, then came across the visitor's center. We parked and I headed inside. A friendly elderly man and his dog greeted me. It told him I was writing a story set in Hoodsport and asked for a map of the area. He didn't have a street map of Hoodsport, but he gave me several maps of the entire area. Then he told me a story about how a local place got it's name. If I didn't have hubby and kids waiting in the car for me, I'd have taken a seat and listened to that guy talk all day! Sometime soon I'll have to go back with a picnic lunch and hear more stories, as I'm sure that kind of background would be useful.

When I left the visitor's center, we shot down a little side street, but seeing nothing but trees and a few scattered houses, we went back to the highway and found a realtor's office. She was so friendly! She had this fat book full of street maps that she used for selling properties. When I told her I was writing a story set in Hoodsport, she got excited about helping and started photocopying pages from her book. I ended up with two street maps of Hoodsport and one of Lake Cushman. She told me where to find the elementary school (it was 15 minutes down the road), and wished me well with my book.

We left Hoodsport and drove to the elementary school, just so I could see where it was and what it looked like. Then we drove to the Skokomish Tribal Center. My story features a Skokomish grandmother who tells stories, but I don't know any Skokomish stories, so I was hoping to meet someone at the Tribal Center who could help me. Sadly, it was closed for the holiday. I later sent an email to the center and asked for contract information. So far I haven't heard back, but when I do, I'll drive out there to interview some people and look around a bit more.

When I got home, I took all my maps, books, and ideas to my computer so I wouldn't lose them. That's when I looked at the area using Google Earth. I found a fabulous spot to my my protagonist's house, not too far from an immense stand of timber (I don't know if it's old-growth, but I'm allowed to make stuff up in a story, aren't I?) and within walking distance of the downtown area. For a spur-of-the-moment research trip, I gathered a lot of what I needed to make my story work.

Have you ever visited the town where your story takes place? Did you interview locals to get a feel for the community? Did you take pictures and try to imagine your protagonist (and antagonist) living and struggling there? Lastly, did this summary of my research venture help you in any way? I appreciate your feedback.

-Sonja