5 Ways to Jumpstart Your Novel

Maybe you're staring at a blank whiteboard, wondering when the plot fairies are going to appear and start making bullet-pointed outlines for you to fill in.

Maybe you're staring at the bland first chapters of a new novel that sounded great when you started it...but after the initial enchantment faded, you're left with a limp rag that seems utterly incapable of transformation into a magic flying carpet.

Maybe you're almost there, with great characters and a tightly woven plot... but it just seems to lack that "spark" that will make it explode across the sky.

Here are 5 tips that have worked for me when it comes to brainstorming, transforming, or injecting adrenaline into a novel:

1. Read outside the box. If all you read is YA, and all you write is YA, your writing probably isn't going to stand out from the crowd. You can't put celery and carrots in a blender and expect cookies and cream milkshakes to come out. You really wanna bring something new and fresh to your genre? Read outside it. Fiction, non-fiction, comic books or coloring books--doesn't really matter. The point is to expand your reading repertoire in order to expand the limits of your own imagination.

2. Watch a documentary. Or three or ten. You'd be amazed at how many ideas can come from something like Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking or Colony: The Endangered World of Bees. Or if you're in the midst of a novel, find documentaries related to your subject. Our world is stuffed with incredible true stories, science, and facts. Learn them. Use them.

3. Read the dictionary. No, really. Do. A single word can carry a host of other words in its shadow. Think of words like redemption, holocaust, or grief. Words like these are almost stories in and of themselves. Get out a thesaurus and explore the vastness of the English language. Go to Visual Thesaurus and get lost in maps of words.

4. Get involved in theater. Call me crazy if you want, but one of the best things that ever happened to my writing was the four years I directed and acted for my college drama club. The experience of body movement, vocalized dialogue, and other actors in conjunction with a written story is wildly invigorating. Even if you have stage fright (to which I would normally say "Get on stage, face your fear, then get over it") you can get involved in other ways like prompting, directing, or just sewing costumes. Theater is a whole lot like writing--only it takes things a couple steps further by actually putting the story into physical action. You'll leave the stage with a new arsenal of writing weapons that will make you see your novel in a whole new way.

5. Live a little. Thoreau said "How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live." Ouch. Get away from your computer, away from your house, and do something. And I don't mean go haunt a bookstore for a few hours--that doesn't count. Live adventurously. Talk to strangers. See new places and try new foods and, as that great sage Dr. Seuss said, "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose... So get on your way!" Let your own life inspire your writing, and it won't just be your book that benefits.

What about you? Have any of these strategies ever worked for you in the past? What are some ways you brainstorm? Please comment--I'm always looking for new things to try! :)

The Gutitor : Every Writer's Secret Weapon

Here's a new one for ya:

*****LISTEN TO YOUR GUT*****

I know. So original, right?

But, seriously, meditate on this for a while. 

You see, it's my sincere belief that every writer has an inner editor, located roughly between the navel and the pancreas.  So, basically, in your gut. An editor in your gut = a "gutitor."

Terrible puns aside, I am speaking to all those writers who dread the revision process. Who approach the second draft with a sense of doom. Who would rather let well-intended but truly inept beta readers decide a manuscript's worth for them. People like, um, well, ME.

I have this little voice, who, whenever I approach my first round of revisions, hisses, like a cockroach, "But how can you possibly evaluate your own work honestly?" And I listen. Every darn time. I am certain that since I wrote the miserable rag of a story, I'm the last person who's qualified to read it with an objective, fresh perspective.

FALSE.

You see, every writer worth even a drop of ink comes fully equipped with this awesome weapon (located between aforementioned navel and pancreas): the READER. Every writer is also a reader. Agree? (Say yes or henceforth stop following my blog, because you are a LIAR.) But seriously: we writers love to read. That's probably why we're writing in the first place. (Unless you're writing a memoir for money. Like Barack Obama. Or Sarah Palin. Or Casey Anthony.)

So when you finally face that big, scary, hairy monster called Self-Evaluation, you aren't entirely defenseless. You are armed with your inner editor who is--here's the big reveal, folks--nothing more than your inner reader.


Just read, doggonit. (note: wait two, three, four weeks or more before doing so. Absence makes the mind forget. Wait a while. Read other books. Write other books. Then come back to that old love cold and cruel and heartless.) Read the book. Read it like it's someone else's book. And your inner editor will lift his sleepy head, yawn, blink, and get to work.

As you read--now this is very important, don't miss this--wait for the TWINGES. Yes. The twinges. Those little jerks located, as you no doubt have guessed, between the navel and pancreas. You never know when they'll hit. I'll tell you what they are: they are the scratching of your inner editor's red pen. You read a sentence. You feel a twinge. You circle the sentence. You move on. Maybe for you it isn't twinges. Maybe it's cringes, the wrinkling around the eyes and the tightening of the lips. I get both, and when I get both at the same time, I know then and there whatever I just read has GOTTA GO.

These physical reactions to your writing are spontaneous, honest, often surprising, and surprisingly reliable. They tell you when a certain turn of phrase is weak, or when an analogy is just not working, or when a quote is flat, forced, or unjustified. They tell you when a scene is crap. Heck, when the entire last fifty pages are crap. Hey, I been there.

The swell thing is, you really DON'T have to sit and agonize or obsess over every little piece of your work. Don't overthink it. Overthinking it leads to forced and stilted writing. Let it be organic. Let it be spontaneous. Let the red ink flow; don't shake the pen until it spills crimson all over the manuscript and all over you.

Those small physical clues are your secret weapon to some truly great revision work. They are the response of your inner reader/editor on top of your own inner writer's instincts--a truly winning combination. The trick is to recognize them when they happen, to trust them when they do, and to understand why they happen when they do.

Try it. Just once. I dare you. Listen to your inner editor. Wait for those navel-pancreatic twinges. See what happens. Don't force it; wait for it.


Spontaneous.

Photo credit: cellar_door_films / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Fine-tune Your Writing: Focus on the Particular

Good and worthy story problems derive from the small and the particular and the individual.

- Les Edgerton

Hooked

You wake up one fine summer morning, trundle into the kitchen, and pour yourself a cup of hot, black coffee. You breathe in that rich coffee smell, deep and pure and invigorating, and then plunk down in front of the computer, where you're greeted by a screensaver cycling through pictures of LOL cats or your kids, or maybe, if you're really dedicated, photos of your favorite authors. It's a new day, a new future, and time to start a new book. So you say to yourself, "Ah... let's see. I think I'll write a book about freedom."

And... STOP. Back away slowly, and don't touch that keyboard.

Let's suppose, for just a brief, whimsical moment, that you are one Harriet Beecher Stowe (if you don't know who that is, you better back up even further. Like maybe to junior high). So, Ms. Stowe, here you sit, ready to embark upon a sweeping epic on the timeless and resonant theme of freedom. It's June in 1851, of course, and freedom is a hot topic. Everyone's talking about it. It's the perfect time for a novel about freedom to hit the steam-powered printing presses of New York. So what do you do, Ms. Stowe? You start outlining what will become a massive polemic on the evils of slavery, complete with a cast of thousands, as you begin in Mississippi and work your way east, north, west, covering the continent from San Francisco to Tallahassee. Not a single one of the 31 states of the Union escapes your blazing pen. You are Icarus, soaring to the sun. You are Prometheus, bringing the fire of the gods to the hands of mortal men. 

And you're making a terrible mistake.

Thankfully, neither you nor I are Harriet Beecher Stowe. Thankfully, Ms. Stowe didn't write a sweeping polemic on the evils of slavery. Instead, she wrote about people. Individuals. An old slave named Tom. She focused on a particular person and his personal struggles, and consequentially, she wrote one of the most poignant and influential novels about freedom ever penned.

In his priceless little book Hooked: write fiction that grabs readers at page one and never lets them go, Les Edgerton gives an example of how powerful details can be. A parent tells their kid to eat their spinach because "There are eighty kazillion people in China who would love to have what you're wasting." When Edgerton asks his creative writing class if this question ever actually persuaded them to eat that spinach, the reply was a nearly unanimous no. "'Now,' I say, 'what if your mom or dad had said, "Junior, eat all of your spinach. Old Lady Smithers, who lives just two doors down, has lost her job and her unemployment just ran out. Just last night, I caught her going through our garbage can looking for scraps of bread. She'd sure like that spinach!"'" A good deal more convicting, wouldn't you say?

"Eighty kazillion starving Chinese" is a faceless, meaningless problem. It's impersonal. Distant. But we can see Old Lady Smithers digging through garbage cans, and we can feel her pain--because she's close and real and cannot be ignored.

Get your writing down to the level of individuals. Don't write about sacrifice; write about a young single mom who works three jobs on two hours of sleep each night just so her kids can have new shoes for school. Don't write about the horrors of war. Write about a skinny Libyan boy running from refugee camp to refugee camp, trying to find his lost parents and instead finding himself forced to become a child soldier. Write about people, not ideas; if you want to talk about ideas, become a politician or something. You're a writer. Your job is to reach your audience on a close, personal, unavoidable level. Don't give us China; give us Old Lady Smithers.

Think about your favorite books. How many of them are charged by the lofty and the grandiose? Do you fall in love with an entire army--or the lonely, terrified soldier who just wants to go back home to Birmingham? When you watch the news, do you pay more attention to a story about how widespread an earthquake in China is--or a close-knit Chinese family displaced and separated by the catastrophe? 

Let your ideas be side effects of your story. Freedom was a side effect of Uncle Tom. Obsession was a side effect of Moby Dick. Love was a side effect of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. As soon as you sacrifice your characters and plot to your idea, however noble it may be, you have sacrificed the work itself. Write stories, not treatises. 

As Les Edgerton concludes: 

Always get your story down to the level of individuals. We can see individuals. We can't see the forces of Capitalism vs. the forces of Communism.

The Magical Mash-Up

How's this for a cheery thought?


"What has been will be again,
   What has been done will be done again.
     There is nothing new under the sun."
                            Ecclesiastes 1:9

No, I'm not here to tell you any attempt at originality is doomed to fail; I'm here to offer a back door to it. Or maybe even a sewer pipe; you may have to crawl, you may have get dirty, but look at the bright side--no one's expecting you to come climbing up through the shower drain! And isn't that what originality is all about? No, no, not showers--stick with me here--but surprise. Unpredictability. Spontaneity. Originality.

If you're like me, you've probably had head-banging sessions over this word. And not the Rolling Stones kind. The literal banging-your-head-into-the-wall kind of thing. The pressure to be original in a world where there is "nothing new under the sun" can be agony--if you're trying to get through the front door. 

But if you follow me through that sewer pipe--or back door, if you have a sensitive stomach--then maybe, after you've slapped on a few band-aids, you can save yourself and the wall a lot of needless pain and step into a future positively shiny with new possibilities.

Okay, disclaimer: this isn't some kind of new idea; it's been done before, many, many times by many, many people in literature, film, television, Glee, and everyplace else. Which is exactly why I'm bringing it up now. It works.

The mash-up.

I have a deck of cards. They don't feature stoic queens and kings who look in dire need of some Pepto-Bismal; they feature genres. I have a card for steampunk, and western, and post-apocalyptic, and dystopian, and farce, and forbidden love. Sometimes, when I'm bored, I take them out, shuffle them, turn them all face down, and play Match.

The results can make me cringe, laugh, and--sometimes--gallop across the room to the computer, where I can set the magical pair down in the stone of MS Word. 

The thing is, this can work with practically anything: movie titles (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days meets Alien, anyone? Or how about The Godfather meets Toy Story? Meh...) books (God forbid, do not say Twilight meets The Hunger Games), or heck, even people, places, and times (Marie Antoinette in 1940's New York)! Okay, the mix-ups won't always work, and sometimes they just plain stink, but the potential here should be invigorating to anyone with pen, paper, and a little imagination.

I know you are all very intelligent people, so I know you can see what the point of all this is. But for those of you who just love zingy one-liners which crisply summarize everything pizzazzily (yes, it's a word--I just invented it), here you go (no promise of zinginess or pizzazz): If you want to be original without the agony of being original, try a mash-up. 

And then imagine the glorious tones of James Earl Jones (Trekkies, don't shoot me, but honestly--who else could it be?) booming across a starry night sky: Mash-ups... the final frontier... 

And off you go.

Oh, and always keep in mind: There are some mash-ups which should really never, ever, ever be let out to roam free and terrorize the general populace:

Be a Writer Site Ninja!

There are so many fabulous writing websites out there, and I’m sure I’ve not even discovered half of them. Each one is a little bit different from the others, it seems, and is pertinent to a different stage of the writing process. So wherever you are with that first, second, or nineteenth novel, there’s a site for you!

What I’ve done here is list the websites I’ve found most useful for each of the stages of writing a novel, and the order in which they can be used.

PHASE: Writing

Okay, let’s face it, this is the longest and most grueling part of the process. It involves draft after draft, a pile of scrapped chapters, failed characters, ruinous endings. It takes time, tears, energy, and often you must sacrifice a little bit of every other area of life to it. Your grades fall, your house stays a wreck, your friends wonder if you died and didn’t even take time off from writing to schedule your own funeral. You feel like you’re writing in circles. You’re stuck in the reincarnation cycle, and you can’t find that door labeled “Nirvana” anywhere.

The key to not getting burned out? There are several.

www.hatrack.com The Forum on this sight is small, tight-knit, and friendly. It’s also very helpful. Most Attractive Feature: you post your first 13 lines and get feedback on just those lines, based on the theory that that’s as much time as an agent is going to give you before they toss your ms—and your dreams—into the dumpster.

http://www.newpages.com/literary-magazines/ Want to build up those publishing credits before you start querying? Send out short stories! They take a day to write, a day to revise, and a minute to email. Send them out in droves; chances are someone will pick one up. And voila! A publishing credit! And sometimes—and arguably even sweeter—a cool 7 cents per word payment. Those 7 cents add up quick.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/home/index.html Just so you can check back every few days and remind yourself that yes, people are selling their books every day, so it is possible, now stop stalling and get back to your ms.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ Just because its fun to imagine your book on the home page. A sort of private pep rally, y’know. At least, it is for me.

PHASE: Feedback

Your manuscript is finished… but is it any good? You need beta readers, baby! Here’s where you can find them:

www.authonomy.com This site, run by HarperCollins, is going to require as much giving as taking. If you want feedback, you’re gonna have to give it. Best idea is to get connected in the forums on the site and find crit partners through that. But there’s a sweet little reward for those who put in the time and make a lot of connections: If you’re book becomes one of the most-backed books on the site in a given month, you get a free read and review from HarperCollins!

http://www.critters.org/ This runs on a kind of karma system. You crit, you get credits, you get critted back. For a novel, you can put in an RFDR (request for dedicated readers) which will get you a few faithful readers who will go chapter by chapter and give you their feedback.

***Whatever way you decide to get beta readers, remember you’re going to have to give as much time as you ask for, and sometimes more. It’s only fair. Be prepared to do as much reading as you do writing. And it’s good for you! Critiquing others’ work and making contacts with other writers can be one of the greatest rewards of the writing process. Enjoy it!

PHASE: Query Writing

Ah, the dreaded query letter. They say you should take an entire month just to work on your measly, one-page query. Yikes much? But its true. The query is everything, unless you plan to use the back door of self-publishing. And do not send out a query until you’ve had a lot of feedback. I can only recommend one site for this:

www.agentqueryconnect.com A wonderful site with great feedback, and fueled as always by the give-and-take karma principle. These people are nice, but they can be brutal. Good practice for the next phase, querying—toughens up your skin a bit. But take the critiques graciously and with a pinch of salt, and know your query will be all the better for it.

PHASE: Querying

The query is polished, gleaming, riveting… everything you dreamed it would be. Now it’s time to put on the old armor and prepare to do battle with the publishing world. Okay, well, maybe not battle. Let’s be optimistic here. It isn’t You versus The Agent… but sometimes it does feel that way. Be prepared to receive rejections, both helpful and many generic forms. Keep the armor handy and don’t let anything make you give up. The key here is perseverance, just like you learned on those TV shows as a kid. When it comes to querying, it always comes to research. These are the sites you’ll need to be acquainted with:

www.agentquery.com

www.publishersmarketplace.comBoth of these sites have agent directories, and lists of agent contact info, recent sales, preferred genres, and other pertinent information.

http://www.pred-ed.com/pealf.htm Are all your agents trust-worthy? Find out here.

http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/meet_the_editor.asp Great advice on finding an agent and a lot of great agent interviews.

http://motherwrite.blogspot.com/ Lots of great interviews with agents.

By FAR the most helpful site I’ve found for this phase of the process is:

www.querytracker.net

It lists thousands of agents and publishers, as well as any other sites where additional information on the agents can be found such as interviews and marketplace listings, as well as agents’ personal websites, blogs, and twitter accounts. Plus, other querytracker users will leave frequent and helpful comments about their own querying experience with each agent. You can also run reports on how often an agent asks for partials or fulls, their average response times, and what genres they most often ask to see. There is also a forum on the site which helps you get feedback on your first five pages, your query, your synopsis, and other things. The best thing is that you can keep track of each query you send, the responses you get, and the agents you still want to query. You can personalize your list of agents you want to contact and keep track of the queries as they go out and come back in. Immensely helpful, especially if you are by nature unorganized. And it sure beats an Excel spreadsheet!

Whatever phase you are in in the writing process, there’s probably a site out there that will help. Beware anyone who asks you for money, though, unless it’s a proven service like Writer’s Digest or Publisher’s Marketplace and you want all those extra fancies that come with paid membership.

Have fun, be wary, and write on!