If You Want to Take a Writing Class, Now is the Time!

I got this info today:

Anyone that signs up for How to Revise Your Novel (HTRYN) or How to Think Sideways (HTTS) between this coming upTuesday (the 25th) and November 2nd at 10:00 AM, will get the Motivation
video course ($50 value) and the Dialogue video course (another $50) for free.

I'd highly recommend getting HTRYN for post-nano. If you aren't doing nanowrimo, but want to learn how to tap into your muse and write a better novel, then HTTS is probably a better choice. If you're not sure which one is right for you, read the descriptions I've linked to. I've taken both of these courses and each one put my writing lightyears ahead. It's a great way to really push yourself and learn what works for you, while improving your writing dramatically.

I took the Motivation video course. It's interesting. It breaks things down and shows you what motivation is and how to conjure it. The best part is: it's applicable to anything, not just writing. I'm looking forward to the dialogue video course :)

I'll give more details as I get them.

Announcement!

A quick post right now before I dig into today's topic. Holly Lisle's courses: How to Think Sideways and How to Revise Your Novel are going to be offered early.

HOW TO THINK SIDEWAYS (my How To Write Your Novel and Build A Writing Career course) was supposed to be closed until June.

HOW TO REVISE YOUR NOVEL was supposed to be closed until November.

But they're both open now!

I strongly recommend that you don't join both at the same time. (There are rumors of heads exploding with students who tried that.)
;)

Seriously, BOTH courses are a lot of work, each uses different skill sets, and they're better approached one at a time than both at once.

I've taken How to Think Sideways. It teaches SO much, but the most valuable lessons I got were How to Find Your Ending and How to Find Great Ideas for Your Book. Oh, and How to Make Your Characters Matter. If you want to see a list of all the lessons, you can find it here.

I'm taking How to Revise Your Novel right now. I mentioned this before, but I revised Shadow Bound on my own about three times. I thought it was done, but it got rejected. (Very polite, personalized rejections, but still.) After I finish this course, I think it may be "the one" that gets me an agent. I can't believe how much more I see in my manuscript. It's unbelievable.

* Both courses apply to ALL genres. You do not need to be working in a specific genre to benefit from them.

* Both courses are "work-at-your-own-pace" with the added benefit of a community of dedicated writers if you choose to make use of it. (Community participation is NOT a required part of the course. The course is complete without it.)

* Both courses are online, with downloadable lessons and a student page that will keep your lessons for you.

* And with either course, you get every upgrade and new addition I make to the course, with no increase in the price you pay, and with no additional charges after you have finished paying.

How to Think Sideways and How to Revise Your Novel have accelerated my writing. They say you need to write a million words to get "really good" at writing. I think these courses will cut it in half.

Think about it.

Idea for a Contest Prize

I've been brainstorming some ideas. The holidays are right around the corner and I was thinking -- and this is just a thought -- that maybe I could offer the first two months of Think Sideways as a prize for a contest. I know some people that read this blog are already members, but for the rest of you, would that interest you?

I don't know what the contest would be yet, and I'd have to work out the logistics of how to get the course to the winner, but it could be fun.
What do you think?


Just so you all know, How to Think Sideways is going through some changes. If you want to take the course this year, you'll need to sign up before October 9. Otherwise, you'll need to wait until some time in 2010. Holly's only going to offer the course once every six months.

Prepping for NaNoWriMo

This past week, I've been working through Think Sideways from the beginning. I'm currently working through the (numerous) modules that come with lesson 7. I already have some good stuff brewing: characters with needs, I'm beginning to see some depth in my characters, I have a handful of scenes in mind, there's already a lot of conflict, and a ton of cause and effect.

One module has you take the main conflict and find "organic conflict" that sprout from the planned stuff. You match up characters' wants and actions and find the effects of those wants as they clash to create new conflict and new scenes. It's really fun to see what pops up from my Muse.

If I work hard, I think I can get through all the planning stages of Think Sideways before NaNoWriMo starts.

Are you going to do NaNoWriMo? Look me up! My username is jollygreen23.

Coping with Rejection as a Writer

The rejections are coming in. Some are more helpful than others. Each rejection tells me one of two things: either the story isn't a good fit for the agent, or my writing needs some improvement.

And I'm okay with that. No agent has told me, "Please never send me any more of your material. You'll never get good enough." I will get better. It may be that Shadow Bound is the book that will get me published. It may be the next book. Or maybe not. As long as each book is better than the last, I'm happy. For now. ;)

Whether I get an agent for Shadow Bound or not, I'm starting the early planning stages of my next project: Phantom. I'm so excited about this book. I've already worked through lesson 6 of How to Think Sideways, using whatever I can apply to this new project. I'm really pumped about this one. I'm really going to focus on voice and character with this one. There's always room for improvement with voice and character.

Anyway, I know some of you are dealing with rejection, so over the next couple of days I thought I'd share some posts that I've found helpful.

More Plot and Structure - 34 events

I know I already did a piece (or three) on Plot and Structure, but I couldn't keep this website to myself. Gerhi (who is taking How to Think Sideways) was analyzing some novels. (This is one of the HtTS lessons, and it's very extensive.) Anyway, Gerhi found 34 events you can use to write your novel. Pretty cool stuff.

How to Cope with a Writing Workshop

I had my first Advanced Fiction Workshop this week, and I think I'll keep going. Our first assignment is people-watching, which I need to do more of. This class will be good for me. Looking at the assignments, I can see that there's a lot that I would never do on my own.

We'll be writing a short short story (2-3 pages--yikes!) every WEEK for the first half of the semester.

I'm intimidated. Getting a full story in three pages is just plain scary. Not to mention the fact that I need to come up with a new story idea on a weekly basis...

ON TOP OF revising and rewriting Shadow Bound AND planning and writing my phantom novel.

Our last day of class is November 30th. How inconvenient. This means crunch time falls right in line with NaNoWriMo. I'll definitely have my hands full.

But it's worth it. I'll grow as a writer and I'll get to use some techniques from Think Sideways. In the first month of the course, we're taught to "summon lightning", or a story idea. I did it, but I wasn't looking for a new story idea at the time. Now I'll get to put it to good use. :)

There's also a later lesson on using "spies" -- basically, people who know more about what you're writing than you do. For example, I ask a doctor about hospital procedures so my writing is more authentic. Well, guess what? One of our assignments is to write a story that requires research and an interview. Nice how that works out.

Preparing to Revise My Novel (aka: Cramming)

This week I'm preparing for my big edit. Yes, the once-over. This involves printing out all my note cards, chapter notes-to-self, and advice from my critique group. I'm also flying through my Think Sideways lessons as fast as I can so I have as much stuffed into my head before I dive in.

The process makes me feel like I'm cramming for a final exam. I have that fuzzy, tired feeling behind my eyes that demands that I stop staring at words on my computer screen.

But it's worth it. I'll get into my manuscript, tear it apart, and come out with a polished draft that's ready for submission.

My biggest problem right now is trying to remember everything I need to edit. Grammar, character, scene, plot, sensory details -- and that's not even half of it. I'm probably forgetting the other half.

I'm guessing it'll take three weeks. We'll see.

What Every Writer Needs to Know About Plot and Structure, Part 1

Let's start with classic story structure. Basically, this covers myth, legends, fairy tales, epics, etc... It has been repeated many, many times.
(Star Wars is famously known for using this.)
According to Jospeh Campbell, many plots contain the same elements and structure. You may be familiar with the Monomyth or Hero's Journey. He lists 17 stages of the monomyth, including:

1. The Hero is called to adventure
2. The Hero Refuses
3. The Hero Receives Supernatural Aid
4. The Crossing of the First Threshold
5. The Road of Trials
6. The Ultimate Boon (hero completes the quest)
7. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
8. (The hero is a) Master of Two Worlds

Then there's Vladimir Propp's 31 functions (his is my personal favorite).
For you Harry Potter fans out there, I believe J.K. Rowling used each of the 31 functions repeatedly in her series. If you don't believe me, or would like a challenge, the 31 functions can be found here.

These are based on classic storytelling and archetypes that, according to Carl Jung, every human being has a connection with. Nina Munteanu has an excellent article on classic story archetypes.
She also has an article where she takes The Hero's Journey and gives multiple examples in her Journey's Map.

The pros of classic structure: it has the tools for a perfect story arc, something that settles nicely with everyone, happy ending and all.
The downside is that it's been done millions of times. Readers want something fresh. The trick is to use elements of classic storytelling, while putting your own twists and turns, red herrings, and other goodies into your writing.
Which will be covered in part 2, part 3, and part 4.

Mind Mapping Fairy Tales

Yesterday, just for fun, I did some mind mapping. I wanted to tap into my creative side and make sure my Muse was happy :)

Anyway, I used bubbl.us to start a new map and got a little carried away on a Fairy Tale tangent. I love fairy tales. I always have. They're beautiful and magical and classic. The imagery in some of them is incredible. When I read fairy tales, I find myself drawn in by the symbols and archetypes.

Can you tell I get excited?

So I decided to post part of my mind map, which will be added to my exerise for Lesson 2 in How to Think Sideways.

Click the picture to enlarge. It may take a while. There will be some Zoom options in the top left corner.

This exercise is meant to tap into your Muse--what she likes, is drawn to, gets excited about (as well as what she fears and hates). This is part of my map. The section that stemmed off from I am drawn to... familiar stories... fairy tales.

How To Think Sideways Lessons

I recently looked up some information for the How to Think Sideways Course that I'm taking. I wanted to know when I would get the full details on how to edit and revise a first draft. Well, it's going to be a while. I'll go ahead and edit as planned. I just may have to do it twice. No biggy for a perfectionist like me :)

Anyway, I thought you might like to know what lessons are offered, so I compiled a list. Some of the titles are a bit vague, so if you have any questions, then by all means leave a comment. I'll answer it to the best of my ability.




Lesson 1: How To Break The Four "Thinking" Barriers To Your Success
Lesson 2: How To Discover Your Writing "Sweet Spot"
Lesson 3: How To Generate Ideas On a Deadline
Lesson 4: How To Recognize And Build On Good Ideas
Lesson 5: How To Define Your Project's Needs (The Dot and the Line)
Lesson 6: How To Discover (Or Create) Your Project's Market
Lesson 7: How to Develop Your Personal Project System
Lesson 8: How To Plan Your Project While NOT Killing Your Story
Lesson 9: How To Write From Inside Your Story
Lesson 10: How To "Plan" Surprises That Surprise Even You
Lesson 11: How To Design Compelling Queries, Proposals, And Sample Chapters
Lesson 12: How to Create, Complicate, And Solve Problems
Lesson 13: "Can't I Just Kill Them All?" How To Fall In Love With Your Project A Second Time
Lesson 14: How To Find And Use Your "Planned" Surprises
Lesson 15: How To "Hire" Spies, And Why Your Project Needs Them
Lesson 16: How To Assess Your Progress And Make Mid-Course Corrections
Lesson 17: How To Use Story Gravity To Get To Your Ending
Lesson 18: How To Find The RIGHT Ending
Lesson 19: How To Write The Ending That Sells The Next Book
Lesson 20: How To Work With Editors, Agents, Marketing Departments, And Artists, And NOT Wreck Your Project
Lesson 21: How To Plan Your Revision
Lesson 22: How To NOT Fix What Ain't Broken (While Still Fixing What Is)
Lesson 23: How To Deliver What You Promised And What They Want On Deadline
Lesson 24: How To NOT Be A One-Book Wonder: Learn to Produce Repeatable Results

Bonus Lessons
How NOT To Write A Series---And Why You Don't Want To includes:

Lesson 25: Why Write A Stand-Alone Instead Of A Series?

Lesson 26: That's Why... What About HOW? (the six critical reasons why HOW you get to the end of your novel is NOT the point)

Lesson 27: The Ending Before THE END



All the lessons I've taken so far are fantastic, no doubt about it. But the ones I marked in blue are the lessons that I've taken and I think are exceptionally awesome. The ones marked red are the ones that I haven't taken yet, but am super-psyched about. Either I've talked to people who are ahead of me and have worked through those lessons, and/or it's something I need, and/or I've gotten samples of Holly's methods in those areas and am eager to get more details. Most of them, it's all three.

Improved Scenes Done!

Hurray!


I finished my Sentence Lites! I can't tell you how good this feels. But at the same time, I’m itching to jump right in and start editing my manuscript. I want to take a good two week break to clear my mind. This should help to prevent burnout. (But we’ll see.)

What does this mean for the blog?


Lucky you, you don’t have to hear about my progress each week! Instead, I’ll compile lists of helpful links and tools to help you with your writing journey. I guess I’ll have to live vicariously through my readers.


The first series of links is all ready to go. It's about conflict. This is something I’ve had to focus heavily on, since conflict is the bread and butter of scenes. I hope these articles and tools help you as much as they’ve helped me.



By the way, here is the last improved scene:

Improved Scene: Answers for Protection

It took me some time, but I finally sliced my way through to another sample scene. This one went from info dump to a hostage situation. (Okay, not quite as exciting as that. Nathan keeps information hostage.)

Improved Scene: Lisa's Crush

I made a lot of progress today with my Sentence Lites. (I'm past the halfway point!)
And I edited another sample scene:

(The old sentence is at the top)

This isn't a great scene to begin with, but it's short and necessary. I'll make a note to add more suspicious activity to make it really worth it :)

My Muse knew it all along

You know that creative voice inside you? Some people call it the right-brain. Others (including myself) call it a Muse. (You know, the singing demi-gods that inspire artists?)

(It's okay if you think I’m crazy, personifying my creative side. I’ll wait for you to stop laughing.)
Anyway, I was working on my scenes, rewriting my Sentence Lites when a problem I’ve been struggling with just solved itself.

Basically, without giving too much away, my main character has issues. And those issues drive a wedge between her and Nathan. Well, in my rough draft, these issues seem to pop out from nowhere. That's a problem.
But I wasn't even thinking about this problem while I was working.

So, I’m reworking some scenes, changing around the points of view for some of them, and then I get to the scene where Rachel first starts to have problems. Guess what? She hasn’t held the point of view for several scenes. Not since before the incident that's causing her issues! So it isn’t coming out from thin air; it's been developing this whole time and we never really notice it because we’re too focused on the other characters’ problems!

My Muse is brilliant. I think she's known about this for a while now but decided not to tell me until just now.

Improved Scene: Car Crash

I got through my 17th scene today, including one of my sample sentences:


Mostly, this was just a bad scene. A lot of getting ready, talking, and traveling. When I boiled it all down to the real conflict, I realized that the scene was really just a lead-in to the next one: The Car Crash. So I shortened it, got rid of the boring stuff and used only what I needed to carry the bare minimum of the little pre-conflict into the big conflict. Here's the new card with the Sentence Lite:

The protag, antag, etc are really just my thought process as I came up with the new sentence. I'll go back and fix them later. The important part is that I have a focus for my scene when I come back to revise it.

Improved Scene: Mom, Meet Nathan

Okay, I have about ten Sentence Lites done. (There are a lot of really short scenes in Chapter 2.) One of them was a bad sentence that I posted earlier:

So as a reminder, here's the old Sentence:

And here is my new card:

Not perfect, but switching the POV definitely helped. At least there's a conflict now.

Sample Scenes: Good and Bad, and How to Fix Them

For the past couple of days, I've been working on Lesson 8 of Think Sideways. So far, I have written a Sentence Lite describing each one of my 54 scenes (a few of which haven't been written yet). As I mentioned before, some of my scenes have everything they need.

Others have been found lacking.

So as part of my process I've decided to post some of my less-than-savory scene sentences. As I revise them, you should be able to see an improvement (I hope).
WARNING: SPOILERS. Stop reading this post if you don't want to read them!

But first, so you can see 1) what does work, 2) what I'm aiming for, and 3) that there is some hope for me as a writer, I'm going to post a couple of sentences that I'm pleased with.

Here, we have protagonist (Nathan) against the antagonist (burning wreckage) in a conflict (fighting to save Rachel's life) with a twist (Nathan is a ghost, but is somehow able to pull Rachel to safety). The setting is embedded in the antagonist: burning wreckage.

The protagonist (Rachel) against the antagonist (the shade) in conflict (an attack that causes Rachel to lose consciousness) with a twist (the shade was waiting for her).
This one isn't quite twisty enough and could use some tweaking.

So here it goes. My crappy scenes:

Okay "introduces" and "explaining" are not conflict. They are boring. There isn't an antagonist. I suppose Nathan's unique situation could be a twist, but it's not a very good one. See the fixed version here.

Again, a conversation isn't conflict. For there to be conflict in dialogue, they have to want different things or there has to be some subtext that causes conflict. The improved scene is here.

While this is great news for Lisa, there isn't much conflict. The scene needs some work and the sentence needs a LOT of work. Mostly, Rachel is suspicious of Kevin, but doesn't want to disappoint her friend. That's the conflict, but it could be better. Improved scene: here.

Learning is not conflict. Nor is a discussion. There needs to be more tension. There needs to be something at stake here. See the improved version of this scene.

I think the scene is okay, but the sentence needs reworking. The verbs aren't very strong and don't convey any tension. Here's the improved scene.

So there you have it. 5 scenes in desperate need of a makeover. Let's see what I can do.

Here are the before and after shots of my first three scenes.

Okay, New Plan

I just finished Lesson 8 of How to Think Sideways and, to be honest, I'm a little overwhelmed. Basically, the lesson says to write a sentence (called the Sentence Lite) for each scene that describes the protagonist, her conflict, the obstacle/antagonist, the twist, and maybe the setting. If you don't have these, then the scene is incomplete. Thinking back, I'm glad I have SOME scenes with all of these elements, but there are a lot of scenes that don't.

So, I need to go back, make a plot card for each scene with the complete Sencence Lite on each one, and figure out how much I have to revamp.

This is really going to help my writing. Now that I'm more aware, the scenes with all of these elements are the best scenes in Shadows. Now I have the tools to make every scene just as good. This is going to be a challenge.

I knew I'd have a lot of work to do. Don't get me wrong. But now that it's time to get crackin' I'm nervous. How much will I have to cut? How much will I need to rewrite? Will I have enough time to plan my phantom novel before November?

Stay tuned.

Free Intro: Create a Plot Clinic

I found a nice little freebie from Holly Lisle. Her Think Sideways course is a bit pricey, although I can say from personal experience it's worth every penny. Still, for those of you on a budget, she has a number of writing clinics, which I've mentioned before.
For those of you on a tight budget, I found a free intro to her Create a Plot Clinic:
Click Here To Download

I've bought and used the entire clinic and it is fantastic. It takes you through the ins and outs of plotting a novel no matter where you are in the process. She gives a number of techniques and gives lots of examples. Anyway, hope you find it helpful.