Apologies and Update

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I had a fun post for today in honor of the Royal Wedding, but that will have to wait until Monday. My sickness finally caught up with me yesterday and I spent most of the day unconcious.

When I wasn’t, however, I managed to start writing Fragment of the Moon! I’m really excited for this book. It’ll be darker than anything I’ve written so far.

I think I’ll make up a schedule where I work on Fragment during the week and Narrator on weekends. And all of this when I’m not doing homework. Well, faint heart never won fair novel. Or something like that.

Publisher Branding

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You know the name of the book you’re reading right now. You probably know the author. But do you know the publisher?

Most publishers haven’t done much to promote a brand – Harlequin being a good counter-example (I’ve even noticed their branching out as Harlequin Teen). You might recognize names like Scholastic or Penguin, but do you have an idea of what exactly they publish?

Since entering the industry, I’ve started to pay more attention to who publishes my books. With the exception of Firebird, which publishes out of print fantasy, I don’t know anything about them. Is this their fault or mine? (After all, I had to go to the Firebird website to figure out their niche.)

Some industry experts are arguing that publishers need to start developing stronger brands to stand out to readers. I’m not sure if it would help. I love some of Firebird’s books and hate some of their others. And authors are so different that I’d be hard-pressed to figure out the over-arching similarities in a publisher’s list.

What do you think? If you’re more familiar with a certain publisher, are you more likely to buy their books? I would guess possibly. But I would make a stronger wager that you would buy whatever books you liked, regardless of who published them.

Planning. Check.

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I have finished my Ultimate Beat Sheet of Doom!

I may have fudged a bit. Instead of breaking down a battle scene into when I switch points of view and who does what, I just say “throw down with X.” I haven’t decided where exactly to put certain scenes for Arianna and Pennington’s storylines, but I think once I have a better idea of the length of each quarter of my story, that will sort itself out by which needs more scenes.

And now – to the draft!

Story Engineering School

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A Review of Story Engineering, by Larry Brooks

“Welcome to the breakthrough in your writing journey you’ve been looking for.”
- Larry Brooks

Couldn’t have said it better myself. In fact, the review that pushed me to buy this book said that if you only had one book about writing on your shelf, make it this one. And I whole-heartedly agree.

Brooks outlines the essentials of writing, what he calls the Core Competencies: concept, theme, character, story structure, scene construction, and voice. Four are skills, two are talents. A story can exist without one, but you need all of them to make your story excel.

The story structure section alone made this book worth it. It’s all the important things your creative writing teachers never bothered to teach you – and it’s a lot more complicated than inciting incident -> rising action -> climax -> resolution. I finally saw what wasn’t working with my drafts, and now I have the knowledge to fix it!

The other sections held many interesting insights, admittedly a lot more than I could absorb in one reading. So as soon as I’m done lending this book out to my writer friends, I’m going back through it.

This is where you stop reading my post and go buy this book.

Go!

My Rating (out of five stars)
★★★★★

Subtlety is Your Friend

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In case that was too subtle for you, I’ll say it again: subtlety is your friend.

If you’re worth your salt, you’ll throw in some hints of the Big Bad, the great reveal, and a few foreshadows. But if you’re not subtle about it, you can ruin the experience for your readers.

Just imagine. You crack open a bestselling mystery, fall in love with the main character, joke around with his best friend, and – oh. That guy did it.

Either the author wanted you to know that, or – more likely – they were trying to set up some clever hints and went overboard.

I’ll use a basic example. Remember the boggart scene in Prisoner of Azkaban? The boggart’s zooming around, showing everyone’s worst nightmare, and it stops in front of Professor Lupin. The text just calls it an orb, and later you hear one of the students wonder why he’s scared of crystal balls (this is even reinforced later, when we hear that he practically fled the divination teacher when she offered him a reading). But it’s not until later when we find out it was the moon.

The movie fails here – it’s obviously a moon, complete with clouds. Not subtle at all, that.

See, a light touch is all that’s needed. A truly clever hint won’t be recognized for what it is until it needs to be. A genius hint won’t be recognized until a re-reading.

You don’t need that many either. If you pepper too many hints throughout your story, you risk the chance of having your reader put the pieces together before your major reveal – and that’s just plain anti-climactic.

So…Yeah…

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Ever notice how when you’re sick you have neither the strength nor inclination to do what you want? Even if it’s something you love, like writing? Or even something simple, like not sleeping?

Yeah…

Sleeping vs. Writing

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In case you didn’t know, I am an insomniac. Always have been. It takes forever to get to sleep, and I wake up throughout the entire night.

Over the past year, I’ve developed the practice of doing crosswords when I can’t sleep, in an attempt to make me sleepy. But last night, thinking about how my time to write is steadily slipping away, I realized I could put my insomnia to good use!

Every time I wake up, I can pull out my laptop or a notebook and start scribbling. I’ll still be super tired in the morning, but at least I’ll have gotten a bunch of writing done!

Good plan, if I do say so myself.

What about you? Any little nifty tricks you use (or would like to) to get in some writing time?

The Ultimate Beat Sheet of Doom

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I am determined to only revise Narrator one more time. And I don’t mean little stuff, I mean a huge overhaul. So I have to make this one count.

Thanks to Story Engineering by Larry Brooks (to be reviewed either Friday or next week), this goal might actually be within my reach. I’m going to try to take everything I’ve learned from this amazing book and apply it to Narrator.

But first, the hard work of planning. Everything’s going into my Ultimate Beat Sheet of Doom.

A normal beat sheet lists every scene in a novel. My beat sheet will do that, plus include all kinds of things like whether the scene is new/old, written/in progress, what my notes are for it, as well as where it is in terms of story structure (see future review post), character arc, theme, and its mission.

Whew.

But hopefully, with all of this planning, I can finally be done with major revisions – and in a short while, to boot – and I can begin querying this sucker!

24th Birthday!

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Yesterday was my birthday! I feel the obligatory older and wiser – perhaps. But I never thought I would be quite this far after only 24 years!

I have a job I love, on a career path that makes sense for me. I’ve completely dived into my writing, and am (hopefully) improving by the day. I have a family that loves me, and good friends whose company I enjoy.

And I’d like to thank you, my reader, for sticking with me through the ups and downs of writing.

Here’s to another good year!

Writer’s Workshop: Theme

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I know. The dreaded “T”-word. Bear with me, though. I’m not going to ask you to analyze your novel – at least not conciously.

You can’t be afraid of theme. It’s going to creep into your story whether you like it or not. Have a bad guy? You’ve probably got good vs. evil. Does your main character have a family? Are they overcoming adversity? Yup. Those are themes.

Most themes – unless you’re one of those preachy writers – are added to your story subconciously. You may not even be aware of them until a reader points them out. Or maybe you’re able to figure out yourself after a read-through or two.

The point is: once you know them, you can use those themes to enhance your story.

For example, one of my themes in Narrator is reality. Is Calder the crown prince he was born to be, or the younger prince Calder made him? Tayryn hides behind a fake name and reputation. Saydie bounces back and forth between spy and ally, and it’s usually unclear which she is. Pennington is always there, manipulating the story in the background. And so on, and so forth.

Now that I’m working on my second revision, I can make sure to play up the reality angle to increase different conflicts. I needed more space to flesh out character development, so I put the gang in a setting (the dream world) where they were sure to question reality – and each other’s motives and desires. Small details like Tayryn’s illusion spells or a bard’s song might help to enrich the theme as well as the world.

So find out what your themes are, and figure out ways to use that and add layers to your story or build the conflict. Any other tips on theme you’d like to share?

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  • Welcome

    new haircut

    Hi, I'm Jenn, new grad student and old YA fantasy writer. I've long dreamed of being a novelist, and I bet you have too. I hope you find my blog helpful, inspiring, and maybe just a little bit fun. (But not too much fun. Writing is serious business, you know.)

    You can follow me on Twitter or Facebook, or email me at:
    jennifer.a.johnson7 at gmail dot com

  • Official Progress


    4/21 segments

    A narrator hijacks a cliche fantasy story, much to the chagrin of its characters.

    Status: Second revision



    1,639/70,000 words
    A young noblewoman with strange powers must choose: her king or her soul.

    Status: First draft



    1,087/70,000 words
    When a girl's heart is stolen, she's plunged into a world of magic and shadows - but can she get her heart back before she loses it completely?

    Status: First draft





  • All writing, unless otherwise specified, is the property of
    Jennifer Johnson © 2010