Big Sur Children’s Writing Workshop

Happy Halloween, everyone! I’m not wearing a costume this year. Even though my boyfriend and I bought amazing Life Aquatic Steve Zissou Adidas shoes off of Etsy a while ago, we have yet to flesh out the full costume with the pale blue jumpsuits and red beanies. Maybe next year we’ll join Team Zissou. Or maybe we’ll just wear our matching kicks around the neighborhood. Because why not. The other reason I’m not dressing up is to teach myself a lesson. Every year, I vow to buy an awesome Halloween costume for the following year in early November, when they’re on sale. Every year I forget until about…early October, when everything’s expensive and everywhere is a zoo. Let’s see if a little guilt/shame will help me start planning next year’s costume early!

Anyhow. I’m writing with more important news than the contents of my shoe closet. If you’re working on a manuscript, have completed a manuscript, or are curious to learn more about children’s books, it’s time to sign up for December’s Big Sur Children’s Writing Workshop. This amazing weekend is the brainchild of my mentor and former boss, Andrea Brown of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

I taught at my first Big Sur in December 2009 and, after that, you couldn’t pull me away. The workshop consists of small groups of writers–two groups of five to six writers each that meet twice over the course of the weekend–led by a faculty member, either and agent, editor, or writer. Attendees get their work critiqued by both other attendees and faculty, and the low student-faculty ratio means you have a chance to meet and mingle with the agents and editors throughout the weekend.

Big conferences are great: you hear presentations, you practice your pitch, you network. But there is nothing like personalized and specific attention on your manuscript in a small group workshop setting. Even though my days of teaching at Big Sur are over–only Andrea Brown Literary Agency agents are invited, for obvious reasons–I still recommend this retreat in beautiful Big Sur, CA more than any other conference for transforming your personal writing craft and getting one step closer to your publication dreams.

This year’s faculty includes: Jordan Brown from HarperCollins, Kate Sullivan from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, and Melissa Manlove from Chronicle Books. Authors on faculty include Ellen Hopkins and Lewis Buzbee. Please click here to learn more and register!

In book news, check out a blog review of the book as well as an interview with me for Teaching Authors!

Out Tomorrow: A SMIDGEN OF SKY by Dianna Dorisi Winget

You read about this project here first, when I posted about the sale of A SMIDGEN OF SKY by Dianna Dorisi Winget (then titled Fly A Little Higher, Piper Lee) from Harcourt. Now the moment is finally here (tomorrow) when you can read all about spunky Piper Lee in this irresistible middle grade!

Order your copy and crack into this tale of growing up, dealing with change, and what it really means to be a family. Congratulations, Dianna!

Writing Flashback

Alex wrote into ask the following question about writing flashback:

In your webinar you briefly hinted that you weren’t against the idea of using flashbacks in creative writing but I have listened to lots of other tutorials (through Writers Digest and others) that suggest flashbacks are a big no-no. What is your view? If they manage to still keep the forward momentum of the book, then could they still work?

Why Flashbacks in Creative Writing Have a Bad Rap

The reason that flashback in creative writing have a bad rep is that they’re often overused or used without much skill. That’s why so many people have been recommending that writers avoid them: because we’re sick of seeing this technique butchered.

But a well-written flashback at the appropriate time in a manuscript can tactfully weave in backstory to flesh out the present moment without bogging you down in an info-dump and stalling action.

Remember, most fiction is a balance of action and exposition in writing. When you use flashback, you are taking us out of the present moment to introduce information. Pacing stops. Action stops. You have to keep that very much in mind and, first and foremost, keep flashbacks short. (Additional tips on writing backstory here.)

Writing Flashbacks Intelligently

Second, they should be pertinent to the action at hand. If your character is having a fight with their father, you may want to include a flashback that flies counter to the present moment in order to enrich our understanding of the daughter-father relationship. But don’t then go off on a tangent and string together five memories plus a memory about the mother, to boot. That’s excessive.

So not only does the length and style of flashback count, the information contained therein is important. It really needs to add something to our understanding of the present moment, or our sympathy for the character, or our understanding of the world which you’re building (for books with fantasy elements) or a historical period (like a flashback for the sake of contrast to the excess of the Roaring 20s if your character is now suffering through the Depression).

Sustain the Present Moment

Third, you don’t want to keep yanking the reader out of the present moment for too many flashbacks. You should use a light touch, to the point where the reader may not realize how many flashbacks you’ve employed as you take them through the story. Pick only the most important information to go into flashback and you should be fine.

Finally, you want to be especially careful when you’re approaching how to start writing a book. I’d avoid flashbacks in the first chapter, if possible, because you want to hit the ground running with a really strong sense of the present moment in a novel. If your present moment is constantly being interrupted by flashbacks, the reader (who is brand new to your story) may not get an adequate foothold in your narrative and get as involved as they should be.

Use a light touch and keep them relevant, and flashback in creative writing can be your friend!

Struggling with flashbacks in creative writing? Hire me as your manuscript editor. I’ll help you balance your action and information in a compelling way.

Hurricane Sandy and WRITING IRRESISTIBLE KIDLIT

After a great weekend at the Kansas SCBWI conference with Jay Asher, Arthur Levine, and many more talented faculty and writers, I’m back in NYC for Hurricane Sandy. Some people with flights out yesterday were stranded, so I made sure to take one at 6:30 a.m. just to get back home. Now, despite being very close to the evacuation zone here in Brooklyn, both me and my boyfriend are hunkering down for a cozy day.

Just an update on WRITING IRRESISTIBLE KIDLIT, it seems like it is shipping from Amazon now, in addition to being available from the Writer’s Digest Shop. If you see the book “out in the wild” at a brick and mortar bookstore, I would love it if you could take a picture and send it to me via email or on Facebook. If you have read the book and loved it, please tell your writing friends, and (if you are feeling really ambitious) leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads to help spread the word.

I’m thinking of getting some labels printed for “bookplates” to sign and mail around to people who want a signed copy of the book but aren’t nearby. Would any of you take advantage of that?

Back to our regular programming on Wednesday…

Plotting: Minimize Guessing and Misunderstandings

Wondering how to write plot? A key point of plotting to remember is that before a reader will believe your plot and story, they need a good reason to buy in. Plots that have a guess or a misconception at the heart of them are very difficult to pull off because there is not a lot for your reader to hook into and believe in. Let’s say that you’re writing a book where a girl goes after a boy because she thinks he is the serial killer terrorizing the town. Thrillers are more popular on shelves today and this is a premise that’s bound to have some romantic tension. Great.

how to write plot, plotting — How to write plot: Plots that have a guess or a misconception at the heart of them are very difficult to pull off.

Plotting: Building Protagonist (And Reader) Buy-In

But the author in this example must do a lot of work when beginning a novel to make sure that her guess seems reasonable and logical to the reader. “I just knew it in my bones that he was the Shady Pines Strangler” isn’t going to convince your reader to go along for the ride. Telling isn’t going to do it (show, don’t tell). Something needs to happen in the action of the plot that makes your character–and, by extension, your reader–sure. A tangible event or something seen with one’s own eyes is as close as you can get to concrete facts in fiction. So your audience will need nothing short of that to be convinced that your protagonist is on the right track…and to want to follow her on the plot.

Misunderstandings and Misconceptions Aren’t Satisfying

The same goes for misunderstandings and misconceptions. It is very difficult to suspend disbelief and follow a plot that hangs on a misunderstanding (that’s why characters in denial don’t work well). Especially if the reader knows that the character has made a mistake. Let’s just give a quick example here. A girl is in the cafeteria and a boy yells out that she looks like a fat dude in a monkey suit. She spends the rest of the story building a complex revenge scheme to humiliate him…and it turns out that, the entire time, he had been hollering over her head at a fellow basketball player. They laugh about it and, surprise surprise, fall madly in love and wear gorilla suits to their wedding, etc. etc. etc.

Despite the sarcastic ending to this pretend tale, I hope you can see why it wouldn’t be satisfying. The misunderstanding bit is way too weak to pin an entire plot on. This is extremely prevalent in romantic comedy style novels, so if you’re writing one, make sure you’re not relying on this trick too heavily. Weak plot also comes from character guesses that aren’t backed up by concrete evidence via action or something that happens in the physical realm of the story. In a fantasy novel about faeries, you can’t just talk about faeries for the duration of the book, telling over and over again about the magical atmosphere in the woods. If there are faeries, we better see some faeries. If the hot new guy in school is a serial killer, we better see brown traces of dried blood under his fingernails and smell a suspicious odor coming from the trunk of his car. (More about writing YA fantasy here.)

Otherwise, in both cases, your readers might see your character as jumping to conclusions…and you don’t want to make them feel like they’re going on a wild goose chase. With everything you write, you should make their investment in the plot more, not less.

Struggling with how to write plot? Hire me as your developmental editor. We can dive into your manuscript together.

Praise for WRITING IRRESISTIBLE KIDLIT

My book has arrived at the Writer’s Digest warehouses and I got to see and buy a copy of it at the Writer’s Digest West conference this past weekend in Los Angeles. Hooray! Now it is only a matter of time before it gets out to bookstores and online retailers. Crazy, right? If you have pre-ordered it (thank you!), I have no idea when it will ship, but I’m guessing sometime in the next two weeks rather than on December 4th (as is stated on Amazon). If, in the meantime, anybody sees the book in the wild at a bookstore or receives their copy, take a picture and send it my way–I would be thrilled to see it!

I started the proposal in July of last year, sold the book on September 9th, 2011 and now it’s more than a year later and it’s a real thing rather than a Word doc on my computer. A lot of books have come into the world as a result of my efforts on behalf of clients, but none have yet been my own. It’s a trip.

For those who don’t know, I took a WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL by Don Maass approach to the guide and excerpted thirty-four middle grade and young adult novels to make various points about character, voice, setting, etc. I find that it’s a lot easier to teach with examples rather than simply sprout off on a topic. I recently contacted most of the authors whose books I talked about and offered them a review copy of my guide.

The legendary author Karen Cushman, whose book ALCHEMY AND MEGGY SWANN is excerpted, was kind enough to read and write a quick review of my guide:

On quiet afternoons, I love to sit curled up in a chair and read books about writing (really!). I’m a writing book nerd. Mary Kole, literary manager at Movable Type Management who blogs at kidlit.com, just sent me a copy of her new book, Writing Irresistible Kidlit: The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers. And ultimate is right. I can’t think of a topic Mary doesn’t cover. The book is lively and helpful—my only quibble is the term kidlit in the title. It’s my pet peeve, but a pretty minor quibble for what is a terrific book. If you want to write for children or are a writing book nerd like me, take a look at Writing Irresistible Kidlit. I recommend it.

The original review is here. I am flattered and grateful for her kind words! I’ll cross-post more reviews as I receive them. You can see what I have to say about Karen Cushman’s work and the writing craft in general by pre-ordering my book today!

Speaking of more, well, uh, speaking on the writing craft, I’m teaching my Middle Grade and Young Adult Craft Intensive webinar with Writer’s Digest on Thursday, October 25th at 1 p.m. Eastern. As with all of my webinars, you don’t actually have to be available and logged in at that exact time and date to participate, but you should still register. All registered students, regardless of whether they attend the live event or not, get a recording of the session after the fact (audio and video of the PowerPoint), the opportunity to get all of their questions answered in a class-wide PDF, and a critique of the first 500 words of your MG or YA manuscript.

It’s important to note that this might be my last time teaching on this topic for a while, so get in there while you can. Find out more and register here.

Dialogue Spacing

I’ve been doing critiques recently and wanted to give writers some pointers about dialogue spacing.

Dialogue Spacing

The most important note that I’ve been giving is that you need to put every piece of dialogue and/or action that belong to the same character in the same paragraph. If a character is speaking only, that’s one paragraph. If the character is acting and not speaking, that’s one paragraph. If a character is both speaking and talking in one moment, that’s one paragraph.

You break for narration, if there is a narrator, and description, or to switch characters.

Dialogue spacing seems like a no-brainer to some of you, but I just gave this note about five times in a row and it seems like there are people out there for whom this isn’t second nature. (Find even more dialogue tips! Learn punctuation rules for dialogue.)

Dialogue Format: Tags

Also, to go along with this note: You don’t need a tag for every piece of dialogue if there are only two people in a scene. If you follow the above tip, your readers will be able to follow who’s talking (more on writing realistic dialogue here). You should only go heavy on the dialogue tags if there are three or more people in a scene, because things could get hairy there.

Follow the link to learn more about dialogue tags. Finally, another post about how to write dialogue. You can never be too careful or judicious with your dialogue tags or dialogue spacing. This is one thing that could either support your scenes beautifully or be completely distracting.

Hire me for fiction editing. I will comment on all facets of your manuscript, including dialogue spacing.

How to Begin a Novel in the Present Moment

Wondering how to begin a novel? You’re not alone. Starting is tough. Getting the opening right is even tougher. One of the most important notes I can give to an aspiring writer is a gentle reminder that they should start in the present moment when they begin their story. Often, a story will start with generalizations or philosophy. Maybe a description of the weather or a person’s mood. Perhaps physical details or action that hasn’t really been given a time or place.

For example, take this:

First days of school were always the worst. They made Caylee feel bad. Nothing was ever exactly how she wanted it to be, and she supposed that was the point of life. But first days were the worst, because they combined a hope she should’ve probably learned to ignore by now with the eventual disappointment of growing up.

Not only is there telling about emotion (“They made Caylee feel bad”) but the writer here (me) is hitting the reader over the head with the coming of age theme of growing up and tempering expectations (more on writing kid characters here). Yawn. Notice that we don’t have a concrete place yet, nor do we have a specific time (it’s the first day of school but is the character at home in the early morning, on her way to homeroom, reflecting on it at night, etc. etc. etc.).

The reader is in limbo and, without any additional action that could potentially make this clunker of an opening go down more smoothly, there’s really nothing here to hold on to in any serious way.

How to Begin a Novel the Specific and Well-Defined

When you’re planning how to begin a novel, you’re dealing with Prime Real Estate. Not only do you want to start strong and grabby, but you also want to get away from the vague, get away from the general, get away from the philosophy, stop writing bumper sticker expressions of your theme, and go toward the specific and the well-defined. In that vein, a reboot of the above example could be something like:

Caylee tried to close her locker but the stupid thing stuck. Only five minutes before homeroom on yet another “first day of school” that she was supposed to be so excited about. She imagined what it would be like to walk in late and have everyone staring at her. Suddenly the brand new white toes of her brand new pink Converse felt fake–like she was obviously trying way too hard. She kicked the locker door closed and scuffed her right shoe. Great. A visual reminder of how perfect-seeming days usually ended in disappointment.

How to Begin a Novel With a Sense of Time, Place, and Character

A bit melodramatic, perhaps, but we know exactly when and where we are, and I’m still working with some of the same emotions and ideas. Notice how the much more specific thoughts about them really help do away with that limbo/hazy/floaty feeling inspired by vague statements like “the eventual disappointment of growing up” and “First days of school were always the worst.” These same issues have now become much more specific to the time and place, and also to the character.

Make sure when beginning a novel, within the first two paragraphs, the reader can always point to exactly where and when your story starts. If you need a lot of time to get to grounding your reader, you haven’t found your beginning just yet.

Are you struggling how to begin a novel? Hire me as your novel editor and I’ll help you develop a compelling opening.

Writing a Bully Character

Let’s get this right out of the way: bullies are horrible, bullying is universal, and writing a bully character is a great way to establish an underdog character. They’re also a very important topic for kids to read about. After all, who doesn’t want to comfort a bullying victim or see a bully change their ways? However, if you’re writing about bullying, you’re not the only one. Far from it. One query recently made me almost fall out of my chair laughing when it read: “Since bullying has become such a big national issue…” (or something close to this sentiment).

Bullying Isn’t a New Issue

First of all, “has become”?! Where has this writer been? Bullying has existed since the dawn of time and, unfortunately and despite the heavy media attention it’s been getting in the last few years, will continue to exist. Kids (and even some adults) need to try out power dynamics, push boundaries, and be bad people in order to figure out how to (we hope) be good people. Often at the expense of others. It’s human nature. And even those who consider themselves universally bullied can be the villain in another even more put-upon kid’s story (as 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon discovered when she went to her high school reunion). It’s a horrible cycle and not even all the authors in the world writing about bullying will make a difference. Sad? Yes. True? I think so.

Writing a Bully Character Who’s True to Reality

So, how do we approach writing about bullying in a way that pays attention to reality? Let me just say, the bullying topic/character/plot in my slush pile is so tired that even a five-shot espresso drink won’t perk it up. Writing a bully character doesn’t mean you’re exempt from all the tips out there on creating multidimensional, complex characters. Especially if they’re the primary antagonist. But most of the bullies I see are invariably large, physically, dull, mentally, and disturbed, emotionally. The girl versions are always mean, pretty, and popular. The second an aspiring writer begins to weave a school scene, I know I’m going to invariably meet a) the quirky best friend and b) the bully, who slams around the hallway, slamming people in to lockers.

Bullies Aren’t Obligatory

Think differently about writing a bully character (especially their motives and actions) and about your bullying scenes. And don’t feel like you need to include the obligatory bully/bullying dynamic in your story just because it’s popular or realistic. Characters you force yourself to write are the flattest of all to read. If you want to truly go there and portray bullying, you need to do more research into what actually goes on in today’s halls, relay it unflinchingly, and try not to force a candy-coated resolution at the end. And make your bullies real people who can, on a certain level, command their own sympathy from the reader.

If you manage this, you’ll be far ahead of the pack. I, for one, would actually like to read a complex bully character and a realistic bullying scenario. Until I find one, query letters promising to address this “recent” epidemic most often get an eyeroll from me because there is no bigger stereotype in the schoolyard canon.

When you hire me as your children’s book editor, we’ll create a customized plan to help you achieve your writing goals. If you’re struggling with fleshing out your characters, I’ll give you actionable tips to make them more authentic and complex.

Happy Release to THROUGH TO YOU!

Yesterday was the release day for THROUGH TO YOU by Emily Hainsworth, a standalone young adult novel from Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins. If you aren’t curled up reading it, I’m glad you’re reading this, since it might inspire you to go and buy your copy.

To learn more about how I sold THROUGH TO YOU and Emily’s journey, check out my Story of a Sale post. You can also order TTY from Amazon or Indiebound. Please feel free to review it on Goodreads. For Emily’s website, click here. I’m so very proud and excited for you all to read this amazing book!