Suggested Reading

Writing the Novel from Plot to Print                 Lawrence Block
Spider, Spin Me A Web                                     Lawrence Block
Telling Lies for Fun and Profit                          Lawrence Block
Bird By Bird                                                      Anne Lamott
Adventures in the Screen Trade                        William Goldman
Living the Dream                                               Michael Seidman
On Writing                                                        Stephen King
The Complete Book of Scriptwriting                  J. Michael Straczyniski
Way of the Cheetah                                           Lynn Viehl

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters

Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten

I admit it. Like most writers I have a stack of how-to writing books—books on breaking in, breaking out, writing a winning proposal and developing a killer style—so many “rules” that sometimes trying to figure out which advice to follow makes me feel as though my head’s going to start spinning around the way Linda Blair’s did in The Exorcist.

But some of the best writing rules I’ve found came from a bunch of five and six year-olds I met when I read to their kindergarten class. Now when I finish writing something, these are the standards I judge it by.

1. A story has to have a beginning, a middle and an end, or it’s not a story.
2. It should be funny or scary but not just regular.
3. Stuff should happen, not just people talking all the time.
4. Don’t make it boring.
5. A good story is when you can see the pictures in your head.
6. Use words that everybody knows.
7. When you get to the end you should stop, because if you don’t it’s annoying.

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters

On Writing

One of my favorite movies is the Billy Crystal/Danny DeVito comedy, Throw Momma from the Train. In it Crystal’s character, a creative writing teacher, gives what I still consider is the best piece of writing advice, “A writer writes.”

I know it seems sort of obvious, but think about it. Writes. Not watches Friends re-runs. Not plays solitaire on the computer. Not sleeps late on Saturday morning.

A writer writes.

Not talks about writing. Not spends three months fixing up an office to write in.

A writer writes.

In November 2001 my first book was published. That happened because for months and months before, I was writing. I didn’t really have any time to write. I was a first-time mother to a beautiful thirteen month-old daughter adopted from China. And after my husband’s short parental leave expired, I was a single mom five days out of every nine.

I got up early every morning and scribbled on a lined pad at the kitchen table, part of my mind always listening for my baby to start babbling in her crib and then wondering if I was a bad mother leaving her there for just five minutes more while I finished a paragraph. I wrote at night after she was asleep, hunched at the computer on an old chrome kitchen chair that was too uncomfortable to fall asleep on.

The book was the story of the journey—literally and figuratively—that had brought me to my child. I wanted someday to be able to hand my daughter her story.

I wanted to write that book more than anything. More than I wanted to lie in a tub steaming with the scent of eucalyptus. More than I wanted to talk to someone with a vocabulary beyond “bye” and “up.” More than I wanted to sleep.

A writer writes.

Now I have a career as a writer. My baby’s in school. Her father is pursuing his passion for music. And I still don’t have any time to write. But I do.

A writer writes.

(Originally published at WritersWeekly.com)

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters

Getting Unstuck

Having a detailed outline is one way to keep from getting stuck when you’re writing. But not everyone is an outliner and even those of us who are, can write ourselves into a hole.

If I can, I go for a walk when I’m stuck. The moving feet and a change of scenery almost always help. Plus if it’s early enough in the day I usually have the walking trail to myself so I can mutter through the problem out loud.

If walking gives me an idea that’s what I start with when I get back. It’s the only way I know to really get unstuck: I write myself out of the hole, after all, I wrote myself in. Some writers I know can think their way out. I have to do it with pencil and paper or on a computer screen.

If the walking hasn’t generated any ideas or if I can’t get out for a walk because, say, the snow drifts are higher than my door, I try one or sometimes all of these ideas.

1. Change the point of view character for one.

2. Reveal a deep, dark secret about a character.

3. Show that someone the main character believes to be a friend, isn’t.

4. Show that someone the main character believes to be an enemy, isn’t.

5. Decide what the next logical thing to happen should be and write the opposite.

6. Put two characters together who have no connection and have them fight, share information, or get horizontal. You don’t have to write the details, just the lead-in and the fall-out.

7. Kill someone—the main character’s source, her best friend, her mother.

I don’t always use what I write, but it usually gets me out of my hole. And if it doesn’t—there’s always chocolate.

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters

Getting Motivated

Hugh Grant hanging out with Destiny Brown.  Donald Trump’s hair.  Britney Spears’ lack of hair.  If this were Jeopardy the question would be: “What the heck were you thinking?”

Take another look at your current manuscript.  Are readers going to ask you that question?  At some point in your story will they throw up their hands or just throw the book across the room?

Motivation.  It’s one of the ways readers become invested in a character.  Science fiction writer Nancy Kress was the fiction columnist for Writer’s Digest magazine several years ago.  I can’t remember her exact words, but she explained motivation more or less like this: In real life people do things for silly, illogical and outright weird reasons. Or for no reason at all.  But in a novel, characters need good reasons for what they do--if you want to keep readers hooked. Believable, realistic characters—characters who feel like real people instead of paper cutouts, don’t just react to drive your story.  They behave like the people you created them to be. 

Have you ever watched one of those hokey old movies where the heroine is alone in an isolated house when the power goes out?  And of course, what does she do?  She heads down into the pitch-dark cellar to check the fuses where the serial killer/vampire/escaped-prisoner-with-a-chainsaw is waiting.  And watching we groan or throw our popcorn at the screen because who does that?  In fact, who hangs out alone in creepy isolated houses in the middle of nowhere in the first place? 

If you want your main character to do something that she (and anyone with any common sense, like your readers) wouldn’t normally do, you need to give her some compelling motivation—a reason that makes sense for that character in that circumstance.

Maybe the heroine is at the spooky house in the woods because she’s hiding from her ex who dislocated her shoulder and broke two of her ribs the last time she saw him.  Maybe she heads for the basement when the lights go out because she knows he’s in the house, she knows he’ll follow her down there, she’s banking on that because she’s set up a little booby-trap on the fourth step from the top.

Or maybe the heroine is at the house because she needed a week away from her mother who keeps trying to get her to marry a nice boy and make babies before all her eggs shrivel up to dried out DNA.  And maybe she heads to the basement when the power goes out because she knows there’s a quart of Rocky Road down there in the freezer and she just got off the phone with Mom. 

Motivation can get tricky in mysteries where the main character isn’t involved in law enforcement in some way.  Remember Jessica Fletcher?  Okay, I confess I watched the show, but c’mon, the woman fell over a dead body every week and managed to catch the killer as well.  After a while people should have been running the second they saw her coming.  This is where you need to watch out for the lame excuse masquerading as motivation.  If I see the guy who murdered my best friend while I’m shopping for shoes at the mall, yeah, I want him caught.  But I’m going to dial 911, not chase him through the end of season clearance racks at the Gap.

Tim Cockey, author of the Hitchcock Sewell mysteries (Hearse of a Different Color, Backstabber) made Hitchcock an undertaker so the character would have a legitimate reason for being around so many dead people.  Add to that a weakness for beautiful women in trouble and a deep loyalty to the friends who make up Hitch’s “family” and Cockey has some decent motivation for his character always being tied up in a murder investigation.

Margaret Maron’s Deborah Knott (Hard Row, Bootlegger’s Daughter) is a judge with a huge rowdy family, a husband in law enforcement and a father who’s often on the wrong side of the law—lots of ties to crime and lots of motivation to get mixed up in murder.

Keep in mind motivation is different for everyone.  A mother won’t do something that puts her children at in danger, but she’ll face any danger to protect them.  A loner will take different risks that someone with a big circle of friends.  A younger person will probably take more chances that someone older--who is more likely to act on loyalty and longtime friendship.

Give your character a logical reason to act, a legitimate reason to get involved.  And if you’re sending her down into the cellar make sure there’s a quart of Rocky Road down there in the freezer.

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters

Getting Started

In general, writers fall into one of two groups; those who outline and those who don’t.  I’m an outliner.  When I start writing I already know a lot what’s going to happen in the story.  Writers who don’t work from an outline--seat-of-the-pants writers--just start writing and discover the story as they go. 

I outline because I’ve learned the hard way that if I try to wing it, I’ll never get to the end of the story.  It’s why I have to follow a map when I’m traveling, so I can actually get to Montreal or Boston, instead of ending up at the Museum of SPAM* in some town I’ve never heard of.  The one time I wrote a book without an outline I ended up with a story I couldn’t sell and no clue how to fix it.  Every writer learns—through trial and error and a few melt-downs in front of the computer—what works best for her.  (Or him.) 

All my books begin with a what-if.  In the case of Responsible, my latest young adult novel, the what-if was, What if you did the right thing and it messed up your life?  I started thinking about this person who had tried to do the right thing and Kevin Frasier began to take shape.  He was tall and needed a haircut.  His mother was dead.  He was a mediocre student who didn’t really fit in anywhere. 

Some writers create pages of background for every major character in a book.  Not me.  What I need to figure out before I start writing is who the person is—what does he need, what does he want?  Kevin wasn’t a jock, a brainiac or into drama.  He was a bully by default.   

Once I knew Kevin I could work out the rest of the story.  At this point in the outlining process I know where the story starts and how I want things to end.  And I usually have a couple of what I call “crisis points” figured out for the middle.  I start with the first scene, work toward the last scene and keep asking, Now what?  Having those crisis points figured out for the middle makes it easier to work my way through the giant black hole between the beginning and the end of the book.  After I’ve figured out the main story points, I go back and think about the other characters in the story. 

I write down everything that occurs to me as I’m outlining--lines of dialogue, even an entire scene—but for the most part the outline lacks all the details that make a good story.  Here is how a scene from Responsible was described in the outline.  Just two sentences: Kevin sticks a dead mouse in Erin’s locker.  Erin confronts Nick and stuffs the dead mouse in his pocket.

Here’s the same scene from the finished manuscript:

I slid the burger box out of my pack.

There was a mouse inside, gray and black with a long hairless tail and blood, dried brown on its neck. I looked at it, curled in the bottom of its Styrofoam coffin and I thought, I could just shut Erin’s locker and tell Nick I hadn’t been able to pop the lock after all. No. No. I could tell him the janitor had been doing the floors and I couldn’t even get to her locker.

I looked down at the grungy gray and yellow tiles. Nick wouldn’t believe that. No one would believe that.

I could just shut the locker, throw the box in the garbage and go home. Of course I’d never be able to come to school or go anywhere else ever again. I’d heard rumors about what Nick did to guys who went up against him. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get a mouse like this stuck in my locker. I’d probably be the mouse, curled up in a ball with blood on the side of my head. It was me or her. What the hell else could I do?

I hauled my sweatshirt down over my fingers again and picked up the mouse. I thought it would have been stiff, but it was as floppy as a stuffed toy. I set it on Erin’s math book, right at the front of her locker so she’d at least see it first thing. That way she wouldn’t be feeling around for her books and get a handful of dead rodent instead. She was going to freak no matter what.

I felt like the mouse was looking at me, sitting there on the middle of the locker shelf. A cold shiver rolled from my shoulders all the way down my back. “Sorry,” I whispered as I closed the locker door. I wasn’t sure if the sorry was for the poor dead mouse, or for Erin.   

I couldn’t get going in the morning so by the time I got to school it was almost first bell. Nick was standing at the bottom of the main stairs with Zach and Brendan and some geeky kid from grade nine who talked way too much. I thought his name was Oliver. I knew Nick was just hanging there waiting to see what happened when Erin opened her locker.

I walked over to them. I just wanted to go to my locker or homeroom, but it would have looked weird if I had. I didn’t look down the hall. We’d know soon enough when Erin opened her locker.

Nick was going on about video games and playing Doom Master. He thought he was hot stuff because he’d gotten to level six in the game. I’d gotten as far as level fourteen. That wasn’t something I’d ever told him, though.

I didn’t see Erin until she was right behind Nick. “Uh, Nick,” Zach said, pointing. I looked around. It seemed like half the school was hanging around, watching. I wondered if Nick had put the word out.

Erin was holding the mouse up by its tail with her bare hand. If she was scared I couldn’t tell. In fact, she was sort of smirking. “Geez, Nick,” she said. “I thought you could come up with something better than a dead mouse.”

Then she reached over and stuffed the mouse in the pocket of Nick’s Zipperhead tee shirt. “Here you go,” she said, giving the pocket a pat. Yeah, she was definitely smirking.

Nick jerked. He grabbed the mouse out of his pocket and hurled it down the hall. It landed with a splat by the water fountain. He wiped his hand on his jeans. He was breathing hard and there was sweat on his forehead. Erin wasn’t afraid of a dead mouse but Nick sure as hell was.

How long an outline ends up depends on the book.  I’ve written outlines as short as two pages and as long as eighteen.  I keep going until I know the story.  And by that time I’m usually getting itchy to write the book.  For me, this is part of the creative process.  There are a zillion decisions to make writing a book.  I like to get a lot of them out of the way before I start writing. 

• There really is a Museum of SPAM.  It’s in Austin, Minnesota

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters

Writing in the Spaces—Finding Time to Write

When I wrote my first book—A Mother’s Adoption Journey—the munchkin was a baby, just over a year old.  Her father was away five days out of every nine working in another city.  There wasn’t a lot of time to write.  One of the things I learned back then was if I waited for inspiration to hit I’d never write.  And the other was that I had to take advantage of whatever bits of time I could find.  I call it writing in the spaces—taking advantage of all those chunks of lost time in a day—time waiting for someone or something else.  Five minutes here, fifteen there can very quickly add up to a page a day.  And in a year a page a day becomes a book. 

Take time where you find it.

I carry a notebook with me most of the time.  Several of my writing friends never go out the door without their Alphasmarts.  I’ve spent time writing in the doctor’s waiting room, at the orthodontist’s office, at the Diabetic Clinic, and at the back of the school gym during a speech by the principal—she was a little long-winded that day. 

Inspire yourself.

I’ve been hit by the boom on a sailboat, by a soccer ball, a two-by-four, a car door and a sewer pipe—which is partly why I’ve spent so much time writing in my doctor’s waiting room.  I’ve rarely been hit by inspiration.  But I’m often writing something in my head while I’m doing something else—which might explain all those “non-inspirational” whacks to the head I have suffered. 

When I’m scrubbing the kitchen floor I’m also writing a scene in my mind.  Waiting at the express checkout in Wal-mart I’m trying to fix a plot-hole in my outline.  And if you notice me mumbling to myself when I’m out on my daily walk that’s because I’m working on dialogue—or practicing to sing back-up for Rascal Flatts.

Don’t finish that thought.

Whether you’ve been writing for ten minutes or two hours, when you stop, set up your next starting point.  Scribble a few notes about what happens next.  Read the next paragraph in your outline.  Some writers swear by stopping in the middle of a scene or even the middle of a sentence. 

Just do it.

Don’t waste time staring at an empty page or blank monitor.  (Which you won’t have if you’ve already set up your starting point.)  No checking emails just one more time or warming up your fingers with a quick game of Solitaire.  When you have time to write, write.  Don’t worry about exact grammar or finding the perfect adjective.  Get the words down on paper.  Churning out words without obsessing about every one may feel weird at first.  The more you do it, the easier it gets.  I swear.

Maybe you’ll end up with a scene you’re certain is badly constructed, poorly written drivel.  Maybe next month when you’re looking at the same scene in rewrites you’ll be surprised at how good it was.   

Don’t write.

Yep.  That wasn’t a typo.  Spending every spare minute writing or thinking about writing will turn you into a twitching, stressed out drudge.  Make sure some of those free minutes in the day go to your family, your friends and you.  Have coffee with a friend instead of your notebook sometime.  Once in a while spend those few minutes standing in line imagining yourself chatting up Matt Lauer on the Today Show.  (Love you, Matt!)
So how about giving it a try for the next month?  Five minutes here, twenty there.  At the end of the month see if you’ve written more than you usually do.  That’s it.  Let me know how it works. 

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters

Building A Career

What’s the difference between being a writer and building a writing career?  It’s a lot like the difference between your original idea and the finished manuscript.  If you’re in this for the long term here’s a list of things I’ve learned the hard way, things your mother would tell you, except she’s not a writer.

1. Writing for a living is not the same as getting published no matter what. The desire to have your book in print—to be able to wave it in the face of all those nay-sayers who’ve delighted in telling you it was never going to happen—can be enough to make otherwise intelligent people act as though their brains just fell out of their noses.    If what you want is to make writing your career, stop pouncing on every gimmick and dubious opportunity that pops up.  Set goals.  Make a plan.  If you don’t take your writing seriously neither will anyone else.

2. Writing is a profession.  Behave professionally.  Trashing your agent, your editor, your publishing house, or that writer you know who just signed a contract with a lot of zeros, in any public forum, will come back to bite you.  With pointy teeth.  In a place that hurts a lot.  A conference is a public forum.  So is a book signing, a workshop and a critique group.  So is a blog.  When that big vein in your forehead starts throbbing think twice about where you blow off steam. 

3. Writing is a business.  Educate yourself.  Agents, publishers, genres, trends, marketing-- find out the basics about all of it.   Read.  Take workshops.  Go to book signings.  Make friends with librarians and booksellers and other writers.  Ask questions.  It takes years, a lot of studying, a lot of hands-on work, and more than a few shocks to become an electrician.  Building a writing career isn’t a whole lot different.

4. Other writers are not the enemy.  The publishing business is not like a cake. If Sandy and Liz and Julia and Sharon and Lonnie get to a cake first it’s likely there won’t be anything left by the time I show up—especially if it’s chocolate.  But if Sandy and Liz and Julia and Sharon and Lonnie all get book contracts it doesn’t mean there’s no longer anyone who wants my book.  I admit I’m not that highly evolved a person that I haven’t felt some twinges of jealousy, or eaten half a cake when a writer I know signs with the hotshot agent or gets a multi-book deal.  But the feeling doesn’t last.  And it gives me the push to get back at it, so that next time I’ll be the one with the good news. 

5. Published writers don’t have some inside knowledge that gets them published and keeps you out.  There’s no secret handshake or special code we add to our correspondence.   We don’t say, “The scarecrow walks at midnight,” when we meet an agent or an editor so they’ll know we’re part of the club.  We just write.  We write the very best book we can.  Then we send it out into the world and start writing another one. 

6.  Write the book.  This one seems so simple but it’s also what messes up a lot of writers.  You have to finish the book.  And that won’t happen if you never get past chapter twelve.  “But there’s this voice in my head that keeps telling me it’s all a pile of dreck,” I’ve heard more than one writer say.  It’s your head.  Ignore the voice. Kick it out.  Tell it to go do something anatomically impossible.

And that’s it. 

Go write. 

That’s what it takes.

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters

The Internal Editor

One of the things you have to deal with on a long project, like a book, is the Internal Editor, that annoying little voice whispering in the back of your head that’s never satisfied with what you just wrote. The Internal Editor is a sneaky, ingratiating creature who always wants you to go back and “fix” the last thing you wrote. I always picture him, and you’ll notice I say him, as the guy you hooked up with in high school who you knew deep down inside was going to be trouble.

He’s the guy who kissed up the side of your neck and whispered in your ear, his breath warm on your hair. Then the next thing you knew your underwear was on backwards and you weren’t really sure what had happened.
Ignore him.

Keep writing.

Don’t listen. Keep writing. Eventually he’ll go stick his tongue is some other writer’s ear.

Just keep writing.

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters

Creating Characters

The best characters are the ones you remember after you’ve finished the book. They feel almost alive. You know how they think, you know what they’re going to do to make things worse before they do it.

“You should always know more about [your characters] than your reader will,” writer Lynn Viehl says. She’s right. You need to know your characters’ secrets to make them come alive. That’s what makes the difference between a character who feels like a real person and one who has about as much life as a paper doll.

This is where some writers get stuck. They know all the surface things about a character; how long her hair is, what color eyes she has and every item of clothing in her closet, but they don’t know what her secrets are. Ask yourself what your character is hiding. Ask yourself what she doesn’t want anyone else to know. For example, maybe in that closet she has three pairs of jeans that are size eight, plus a pair size four and a pair that’s size fourteen. A woman with three sizes of jeans in her closet is a different person from the woman who has five pair, all a perfect size six.

Maybe you’ll share some of your character’s secrets with your readers. Maybe you won’t. Knowing them will help you figure out who she is and how she’ll act. Maybe all your readers get to know is that your main character has long, blonde hair, while only you know it’s courtesy of L’Oreal. You may tell your readers that your hero has a university degree but keep to yourself the fact that he flunked kindergarten.

What scares your character? What embarrasses him? What is he afraid of losing? What does she lie about, even to her closest friends? What happens in her nightmares? What makes her laugh? Who broke his heart?

When you can answer these kinds of questions you’re a lot closer to knowing your character and your character is a lot closer to life.

Suggested Reading —— Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned in Kindergarten —— On Writing
Getting Unstuck —— Getting Motivated —— Getting Started —— Writing in the Spaces —— Building A Career
The Internal Editor —— Creating Characters