Karen Sandler

Tag: rewriting

  • Get Out that Broom (or a Shop Vac) to Tidy Up Your Writing

    Vac O MaticThis week on YA Highway, Road Trip Wednesday asks, What do you hope to “clean out” from your writing? What habits/tropes/words, etc do you want to eliminate?

    Before I even clean anything out of my writing, I’d like to clean up my act regards my Internet obsession. My e-mail checking, tweet reading, Facebook status browsing, YahooGroups message scanning, time-wasting habits. Some of what I do on the Internet is legitimate (I’m really working hard to make my social networking become a better marketing tool), but when it’s a political blog I’m clicking over to, or Google news I’m poring over, or an irresistible cat video I’m watching, my writing train has gone off its tracks.

    Assuming I continue to battle that time-wasting impulse, there are a few things I’d like to sweep away in my writing. Sometimes I struggle with pacing. I can write a pretty exciting scene, but then I worry when the one after it maybe drags on a bit more than I’d like it to. I’m lucky to have fab editors to clean that up, but I need to focus more on pacing even before my editor gets to it. So get out the Dust-Buster for those draggy scenes.

    Awakening Final cover-s
    Aren’t those a great pair of eyes on the cover of Awakening though?

    Next, I’m weird about eyes, and all the things they do. Glance, glimpse, stare, glare, look, and plain old see. I use eye action a little too much sometimes. I’d like to get out the shop vac for that.

    I am thoroughly in love with ellipses…and em dashes– Often on the ends of sentences…when it often doesn’t need to be used–when it might work better just to break up the sentences into multiple ones where I’ve inserted the ellipse or em dash. Sweep those little buggers out the door (or, rather, the manuscript).

    I still have a bad habit of too much throat clearing at times (taking too long to get to the point). This kind of goes along with pacing, but it’s often at the start of the book, or maybe even the start of a chapter. It’s as if I’m having to hack up all those words to get a sense of where I’m going. It’s later when I realize (or someone points out), Oh, I don’t need all this info dump in here. Get out the blower and whoosh it away.

    There’s probably a few more odds and ends of writer’s spring cleaning that I could do, but this is all that comes to mind at the moment. I have to say, I am so grateful for 2nd drafts (and 3rd, 4th, etc), and other pairs of eyes on my manuscripts.

    Especially when those eyes are glancing, glimpsing, staring, looking, and plain old seeing what needs to be fixed.

  • RTW – Staring Down the Deadline Monster

    This week, as November looms, YA Highway asks the question, Are you doing NaNoWriMo, or have you ever? Does having a deadline inspire you?

    No, I’ve never done NaNoWriMo. By the time the National Novel Writing Month came along, I’d already been published and was regularly writing books under contract. I was too busy working on those contracted books to take the time to start something new in November as NaNoWriMo requires. Me starting a NaNoWriMo book would have been a little like a busy home construction contractor in the middle of building a house dropping everything to run off and build a little cottage somewhere just for fun.

    Deadlines, on the other hand, are an entirely different beast. That is, I worship at the feet of the deadline monster. It’s not so much that deadlines inspire me, but I respect them completely. Those deadline monsters are very much the boss of me. They stand by my bed in the morning, glaring at me to get up. They point their monstrous fingers toward my desk and demand that I turn on the computer. They keep their beady eyes on me to make sure I’m producing sufficient wordage each day so that I can reach their lofty goals. And heaven forbid if I take a peek at Facebook when I’m supposed to be working. The deadline monster never believes me when I say, “But I’m just doing some research on the web.”

    So, yeah, deadlines are a powerful influence on me. I have only slipped a deadline a couple of times, both times by less than a week. I do try to front load success with my deadlines, negotiating with my editor for a reasonable amount of time to finish a given book. But I take them seriously and keep my eye on the calendar as I work.

    I kind of suck, discipline-wise, if there is no deadline. Right now, I’m between books. I’ll have to start working on Revolution, the last book of the Tankborn trilogy, the moment my editor gives the thumbs-up. Once that happens, I’ll be busy-busy-busy for close to a year. But for the moment, the only thumbs doing anything are mine, twiddling.

    Yeah, I could work on a spec book I’ve got that needs editing. I could even write some short stories like my son suggested. But it’s really hard to muster up the gumption to write. I can be a real slug when the deadline monster is taking a sabbatical.

    So, although I’ve never done NaNoWriMo myself, I’m a big believer in the concept. Because it gives you a deadline. You have only the 30 days of November to write those 50K words. That’s quite a lot of work, a lot of words to write per day to reach your goal. And working fast like that, you learn a valuable skill–how to turn off the editor and just write. That one ability, to temporarily silence your internal editor, will get you to THE END, to a completed manuscript, better than anything.

    So, are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? If so, much luck to you. And be sure to stock up on the deadline monster treats. All that glaring and pointing are hungry work.

  • What do you mean, I need conflict?

    I’ve been trolling through my storehouse of articles I wrote in the past, looking for likely material for my blog. This is partly out of sheer laziness (easier to rewrite something already written than write new), but also because there are some pretty decent musings on various writerly topics.

    The most recent one I’ve pulled out has to do with conflict. Creating genuine, difficult to resolve conflict between my characters used to be the bane of my existence. Okay, sometimes it still is. But it’s also something I enjoy doing because it’s part of characterization, which is my favorite part of writing.

    This particular article came about when a writer related to me how editors would tell her they “couldn’t engage” with her characters, that her characters weren’t sympathetic or dynamic enough. When I first started writing novels, I received similar feedback from editors and it was always a bit maddening because it seemed so vague.  As a consequence, it was difficult to put a finger on what it was about my characters that didn’t pass muster.

    What I learned after years of writing, rewriting, getting feedback, rewriting, etc., is that what was likely missing in my characterization, where it was lacking the “zing” that the editor was looking for, was lack of development of my characters’ backstories and conflicts.  While judging writing contests, I’ve read so many promising, well-written manuscripts that fizzled because the main characters lacked powerful internal conflicts. These internal conflicts, paired with complex external conflicts (e.g., they have to save the world from blowing up) are what invest your reader in your characters and therefore in your book.

    What is an internal conflict?  It’s a problem within a character that only he or she can solve.  Something so deep-seated, it informs every choice the character makes.  Something so enormous, it should seem to your reader that nothing will ever heal that wound. The issue may not completely resolve at the end of the story, but there should be enough of an arc such that the character at a minimum has new insight into this difficulty. Otherwise, your reader may feel dissatisfied with the story’s resolution.

    I like to use as an example my hero Lucas Taylor in the first book I wrote for Harlequin, THE BOSS’S BABY BARGAIN (yes, a bit of a goofy title, but the thing sold like hotcakes).  Lucas’s mother was an alcoholic and he spent his childhood in and out of foster care.  His mother let him down countless times, getting sober long enough to regain custody of her son, then falling off the wagon and losing him again.  Then, when his mother finally seemed to have her act together, was staying clean and sober, she was killed when their apartment caught fire.  Lucas was badly burned while trying, and failing, to save her life.

    Think about the load Lucas was carrying.  He fears caring for anyone–they might disappear from his life at any time.  He doubts the power of love–it neither kept his mother from drinking nor saved her life.  And his guilt over his inability to save his mother is a thousand pound weight on his heart.

    These are big, big issues that will require a novel-length story to resolve.  The trick is to make a sympathetic character out of this harsh and hard-edged man.  I had to make sure there were moments of generosity and kindness that demonstrated his true nature, showed the reader the man Lucas might have been if his life had not been so tragic.

    I always think hard about my characters’ backstories, what in their past has built the walls around their hearts.  I try to make those conflicts seemingly insurmountable, but as the story proceeds, to show glimmers of the characters’ true selves through the chinks in their armor.  Hopefully, my reader will care enough about my characters and my story to read all the way “THE END.”