It's a Personal Record

My current Work-In-Progress is flying out of my head and onto the page at an astounding rate. I'm averaging 3,000 words every writing session.

Yesterday, I wrote 7,000 new words in a four-hour session. That has to be a new record for me! At this rate, the book will be finished by October 1, taking a mere 1.5 months to complete. Of course, that doesn't include the months of stewing in my brain before I sat down to write anything. . .

Question for you, faithful reader: what's your personal record for the most words written at one sitting?

-Sonja

Nothing Better

A new story idea came to me a while back, but I shelved it because my latest WIP needed attention. But the new idea kept simmering in the back of my mind, waiting for the right moment. Now I'm in the midst of the dreaded waiting game with the publisher--who received my latest WIP last month--and that new idea's time has come.

Last Thursday, I wrote 4,000 words. I took a few days off from writing to brainstorm a bit and create a simple outline. Yesterday I wrote 6,000 words. Today I've logged another 6,000.

I gotta say: nothing beats the frenzy of a new writing project! At this rate, I'll have this novel knocked out in record-breaking time.

Question: have you experienced this euphoric frenzy, where the words just spill out so fast your fingers can hardly keep up?

-Sonja

That's What Brandilyn Said

Back in May, I promised to pass on the wisdom I soaked up at the Christian Writers Renewal Conference. Here's the second part of Brandilyn Collins' lecture on creating dynamic suspense: CHARACTER EMOTION.

I'll start with the blurb that described the lecture: Human emotions are interconnected and multi-layered. They force action, which in turn produces more emotion. Often authors don't go far enough in creating character passions. The result is a ho-hum story. I want you to leave this hour understanding more about emotion than you ever have before.

So here's what Brandilyn said:

Passions are multi-layered. The greater the passion, the more diverse the layers that comprise it. Find those layers and portray them in the story to give the reader a stronger emotional response. Here are two ways to do that:

1) Find the passion's components. What are they? What do they look like? How do they show in char's life?

Example: Anger is a secondary emotion and arises from other emotions. What fuels it? Frustration? Jealousy? Greed? DON'T focus on the anger. Explore all the emotions that lead to that anger, then reader will understand the anger when it shows.

2) Find the passion's opposite. Contrast makes the emotion pop.

Example 1: Cross-walk attendant adores children. As she's helping a small child cross the street, a truck comes right at them; the driver isn't paying attention, doesn't see the attendant and child. Attendant is terrified, willing to sacrifice her own life to save the child. The truck stops at the last second, and her emotion turns to immense relief. Then it turns to anger and she lays into the truck's driver. After she's spent that, she turns to see if the child is okay, hugs him in relief, then yells at him that he's supposed to RUN when there's a truck coming toward him! Love is shown in through all these other emotions.

Example 2: Wife thinks husband is having an affair. She wants to win him back, so she asks him to be home by 6. He promises he'll be there. She puts on a tight red dress and high heels, fixes a fabulous meal, lights the candles, and waits. At 6:00 she's excited. At 6:05 she's disappointed. At 6:30 she's worried that he's been in an accident. She's getting cold, so she puts on a sweater. At 6:45, she's getting depressed. He's out seeing his lover. Her feet hurt so she kicks off the shoes. Dinner's ruined. At 7:00, she decides she doesn't need him after all – he's hurt her so much, so doesn't care anymore. At 7:15, she's in full-blown hatred. When he walks in the door with a dozen roses, she rips them from his hands and stomps them on the floor. The hatred at the end came about because of her love for her husband, and the reader went along for the ride so she can FEEL all that hate and love.

-Sonja

More from Brandilyn

Last month at the Christian Writers Renewal, I sat under the teaching of Brandilyn Collins. I promised some highlights from her class on Getting into Character.

The first class was Character Desire. As an author, I need to know my character's insides first. Why is he the way he is? What drives him? What's his Super Objective? What does the character WANT more than anything? This drives his thoughts and actions, especially in moments of high stress. Conflict is opposition against desire, so conflict is necessary to contrast with the character's desires.

1) The objective is an action verb. Not  "I want to be rich" but  "I want to raise to the top of the structure in my law firm."

2) The objective must be very specific. "I want to build trust in my marriage by never lying again to my husband so that..." Make sure the "so that" creates conflict. It's gotta be strong!

Answering End: What the character gets if he achieves his desire, or gets close to his desire. Sometimes it costs too much and he realizes he doesn't want it, after all. "I want to build trust in my marriage by never lying again to my husband so that he won't leave me for a younger woman and I'll be all alone."

3) The objective must be absolutely correct for the character and the story. "I wish to build trust in my marriage by never getting caught lying to my husband" says something completely different about the char than the original version. Find out characters inner values and core beliefs. Make sure they fit. Then use them to thwart the objective.

Example: Steinbeck's "The Pearl" - father finds a magnificent pearl. His objective is to sell the pearl for it's full value so that his son will have a better life and won't live in poverty. If the father didn't already live in poverty, this wouldn't fit. If the son hadn't been endangered by a scorpion in the first bit of the book, it wouldn't fit. If father was willing to sell pearl for significantly less than it's full value, then it wouldn't fit.

4) Desire arises partly from the inciting incident and partly from the character's personality. Put the character in a problem before the inciting incident happens. Then his desire conflicts with the previous problems. In The Pearl, the son is stung by a scorpion and almost dies. This builds in the father a fear for his son's life. Then when he finds the pearl, he sees a way past this fear that's built up within him.

Protagonist has conscious and unconscious desires. Throughout the story, the unconscious desires come into play and character must choose. In the moment of greatest stress, the character realizes what he REALLY wants: the unconscious desire. (Note: the conscious and unconscious desires should be diametrically opposed.) Note: Show glimpses of the unconscious desire at the beginning of the book so the reader doesn't feel cheated.

In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett's conscious desire is to marry Ashley. Unconsciously, she wants a manly man to tame her. That would be Rhett. When she finally gets her shot at Ashley, she realizes she doesn't want him because he's a wimp. She really wants Rhett – and it's too late.

Next time I'll highlight Brandilyn's discussion on Character Emotions.

-Sonja

It's a Contest!

I usually don't post twice in one day, but it's your lucky day. Or mine. There's a writing contest called "Dear Lucky Agent" for fantasy or sci-fi book-length novels. I found it at Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents blog (www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog). Submit the first 150-200 words of a completed novel and keep your fingers crossed! Because the Top 3 Winners get a critique of the first 10 pages of the work AND a free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com.

The contest runs until May 26, so get your submission ready and head on over to Chuck's site for all the rules and regs. It's easy, and someone gets to win.

-Sonja

Shameless Name-Dropping

It's time for my favorite post-conference blog entry, when I shamelessly name all the famous, near-famous, or infamous people I actually met. These aren't listed in any particular order, other than they came out of my head this way. Here we go:

1.) Brandilyn Collins, who proved to be an excellent keynote speaker, engaging teacher, and down-right gracious lady. At the beginning of her class, she personally greeted each student with a hand-shake and a word of encouragement. Classy. On a completely unrelated note, her hand and facial gestures reminded me of the actress Patricia Heaton. She's famous, too.

2.) Jesse Florea is the editor of a Focus on the Family children's magazine and a published author. He was sitting all by himself at lunch the first day, so I asked if I could join him. We were soon discussing the future of speculative fiction in the CBA and out popped Jeff Gerke's name (you CAN'T talk about spec fic without Jeff showing up in some fashion). Jesse is so passionate about his magazine, he almost talked me into writing a short story for kids. I still don't know how I resisted.

3.) Jim Rubart joined Jesse and I at the lunch table. Jim is most noted, in my mind, as the author of the spec fic novel ROOMS, the MC for the Reality Panel of Publishing Experts (held after lunch on the second day), and most importantly, a runner-up in Chip MacGregor's Bad Poetry Contest 2010. Jim proved he can pen utter tripe while showing true deepfulness and reflectivosity. He's also a really great luncheon conversationalist.

4.) Holley Gerth also joined the lunch table. She's an editor at Dayspring Cards, but what made her famous (to me) was her name tag. It said she was from Arkansas. When I told her my husband's family was from a tiny town in Arkansas, she proved to me, yet again, that this is a small, small world. She's from the same small town as all my husband's relatives. And she knows them. I don't know if I should be proud or take pity on her. . .

5.) Sandra Bishop is an agent at Chip MacGregor Literary Agency and blogs periodically. She shredded my pitch, told me how to fix it, then sent me off to conquer the next editor. Who was. . .

6.) Nick Harrison. He works at Harvest House, writes a great blog, has published several books, and taught an excellent course about selling fiction in hard economic times (see previous post). He patiently listened to my pitch and politely said, "No, thank you." I chalked it up as another learning experience.

7.) Clint Kelly was the MC for both evening sessions with Brandilyn. He's a funny guy with tons of published books to his credit and a great singing voice. He also works with my second cousin, Ray, proving that this is a REALLY small world. 

8.) Chris Miller, the genius behind the Hunter Brown series, sat with me for the evening meal on the second night. His brother, Allan (the other half of the writing dynamic duo), couldn't make it to the conference (wedding anniversary, or some such nonsense) so Chris held down the fort on his own. We had some intriguing discussions about spec fic (Jeff Gerke showed up again) and the fabulous books we'd both read recently. Then we entered a highly controversial debate over the correct term for "a series of four books." We finally turned to Brandilyn, at the next table, and she gave us the correct term: quadrilogy. Now you know. 

I could also bring up Luke Hinrichs, fiction editor for Bethany House (he liked my pitch!); Greg Johnson, who works with Rachelle Gardner (her blog was rated one of the Top Ten in the Publishing Industry); Les Stobbe, agent-extraordinairre, whom I didn't actually meet so much as run into in an elevator (didn't have my elevator pitch ready, so the opportunity slipped by. Plus the fact that cornering an agent in an elevator is almost as rude as cornering him in the restroom, which I would probably never do); Athena Dean of Winepress Publishing, who's got such a cool name I may have to steal it and put it in a novel; and Shannon Woodward, a published author and master conversationalist.

That concludes my trip down the star-studded conference line-up. For what it's worth.

-Sonja

What Nick Harrison Said

Nick Harrison, senior editor from Harvest House Publishers, taught a class entitled "How to sell Your Fiction in Tough Economic Times" at the writer's conference last week. If I may be so bold, I'll share with you ALL the ideas he shared with us:

1. Look toward future events and write books that WILL BE WANTED in two or three years. Example: in 2012, the Mayan calendar ends. It's also the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Two different authors pitched books based on these two upcoming events, and both books will be published in late 2011 or early 2012.

2. Be willing to enthusiastically jump on trends. If you can write a great Amish Romance, you will be published!

3. Use Writer's Edge (an on-line listing) to get your fiction noticed. (Note: Nick said he looks at this site--and others like it--all the time. But other editors don't bother with it. This one's a stretch, in my opinion.)

4. Once you finish writing a novel, send out queries and diligently work on getting it noticed. Then start writing your NEXT novel. Keep a healthy career plan, and have plenty of books in your arsenal. Maybe your writing style will catch an editor's eye, but he doesn't like the story you sent him. You'll have a lot of others to pitch to him.

5. Self-publish your excellent book, sell 10,000 copies, then approach a royalty publisher. Numbers like that catch their attention.

6. DO NOT WRITE message-driven novels or memoirs. They don't sell. (There are exceptions, like "The Shack" and "In His Steps," but they are few and far between.)

7. Next huge wave in the CBA: Southern Historical Romance. Write one of these and you'll have a good chance of getting published.

Some of these tips, like #1 and #4, are valuable to me. Unfortunately, I couldn't write an Amish romance or a southern historical romance if my children's lives depended on it, so I won't get to take advantage of tip #2 or tip #7. Hopefully you'll find something in here to help your career!

For what it's worth,
-Sonja