Karen Sandler

Tag: writing

  • Taking a Risk

    My husband and I spent the week before last helping my son and daughter-in-law move into their new house. New to them, that is. The house is close to 90 years old, and has many of the “glitches” you’d expect an old house to have. Maybe more than glitches in some cases.

    I knew there was another house they’d looked at in the area and from what I recall from the Realtor’s photos, it was a newer, less glitchy home. I really liked the looks of that house and the fact that it was right next to a park. But when I asked my son about their choice between the top two, he said, “Well, there was the safe house, and there was the interesting house. We chose the interesting house.”

    I bring this up because it made me think of the whole issue of taking risks, not only in life, but in writing. If I’d been the one choosing the house, I’m pretty darn sure I would have picked the “safe” house. Yes, it was more of a suburban tract home. It didn’t have much in the way of intriguing features (unlike the “interesting” house, which has wonderful windows, a stately entry and living room, and a dining room with a cool little built in china cabinet). The safe house looked comfortable, but it was a bit blah.

    To connect this to my writing, what if I always chose the comfortable, but blah? Would I have ever sold a book, let alone the 20 that I’ve sold in my career? Would readers have eagerly looked for my books, read them with enjoyment, sighed with the satisfaction of experiencing a good story if I’d stayed “safe?” I’m thinking not. I’m thinking I’ve been better off taking the interesting road rather than the safe one.

    How about you? Do you take risks in your writing? Do you create characters, scenes, stories that are safe, or are they interesting? It might end up being more work, a more difficult endeavor. But in the end, when you take the interesting path, you have a much better chance that the book you’ve written, the literary house you’ve built, will be wow and anything but blah.

  • RTW – Dream Writer’s Conference

    This week YA Highway‘s Road Trip Wednesday asks, What book and/or writing conference would you love to go to? I’ve been lucky to attend tons of great writers conferences over the years (the majority of them RWA annual conferences when I was a member). And this year I’ve attended two already (LTUE & Spring Spirit) and have a couple more great conferences planned for the latter half of the year (the SCBWI annual summer conference and the 2012 Novelists, Inc conference).

    There are a couple of conferences I dream of attending every year. The first one looks like I will only be able to attend in my imagination–the Maui Writer’s Conference. A quick search on Google tells me that after 17 years, Maui Writers has died. No new conferences since 2009.

    But it always sounded like the coolest (albeit quite expensive) conference ever. First of all, who wouldn’t want to go to Maui? It was always over Labor Day weekend, so you already had that extra day off. And I know of one author (James Rollins) who told me he sold his first book thanks to the Maui Writer’s Conference writing competition.

    Well, putting aside now imaginary writer’s/books conferences, on to reality. I’ve attended BEA once and that’s a conference I’d like to attend again. Also, ALA, which happens to be in Anaheim this year and I ought to attend since it’s reasonably close. (Note: Tip from a conference-attending pro. If the conference is a short drive or plane ride away, scrape your shekels together and attend).

    In the farther away category, I’ve always thought it would be cool to attend one of the big foreign rights book fairs. London, Frankfurt, or Bologna would be great destinations for a combo author’s business trip and vacation. I’d love to see what one of those big international book fairs are like, even thought they’re not geared towards authors.

    This wasn’t part of the original question, but of the conferences I’ve attended, I’d highly recommend the RWA conferences (expensive, but plenty of good general information), LTUE for speculative fiction, and the SCBWI conferences for children’s lit, of course (smaller local ones can be especially valuable). Wear comfortable shoes and layers for the over-air-conditioned rooms and you’ll have a great time.

  • Kill Your Darlings

    When William Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings,” the darlings he referred to were those elegantly composed sections of prose you adore beyond reason. They do nothing for the story, they stick out like garish jewels on an otherwise humble hand, and they must be killed (i.e., deleted). It’s difficult to say goodbye to those intricate metaphors and precious phrasing, but they have no business being in your manuscript. Sorry, gotta go.

    There are other kinds of problem children that we sometimes insert into our prose, that also have a bad influence on our work.  For instance, words we have a compulsion to use often and liberally (redundantly even) in our books. Punctuation we have a special affection for. Turns of phrase we throw in at every opportunity.

    Since confession is good for the soul, I’ll reveal mine here. I love em dashes. You know what they are–those long dashes that break up two clauses. When I do a final edit of my book, I search for all the em dashes and in most cases, I can either replace them with a comma, or separate the two clauses into two sentences. I also have a particular fondness for ellipses (also ruthlessly squelched), and am a recovering semi-colon-aholic. In the word choice department, adverbs are my bad actors. Really.

    In other authors’ work, I’ve seen overuse of the word mumble (a very useful word that loses its power when utilized too often), nervous characters chewing their lips so often it’s surprising their mouth is not in shreds, and the italic overload (IMO, italics are hard on the eyes and should be used sparingly). The exclamation point is also a travesty, although its overuse seems to be limited to newbies.

    The nice thing about all these pecadillos that creep into our writing is that once we recognize the problem, we can fix it on that final edit. I’ve acknowledged to myself that em dashes and ellipses are part of my process, how I get the words down on the page. I know I can take them out later, but in the draft process it works best to just let myself put them in. Same for my adverbosity. I’ll trim those back in a later draft.

    So what are your problem children? Metaphors you overuse, that character action you repeat ten times too many in your manuscript? Feel free to share.

  • Programming DNA

    In the world of my book Tankborn, Genetically Engineered Non-humans (GENs) are controlled via electronics installed in their nervous system and brain. I read an article this week which describes an intriguing study whose results I might just have to steal for a future book. The researchers have actually managed to program DNA itself.

    Stanford post-doc Jerome Bonnet worked with graduate student Pakpoom Subsoontorn and assistant professor Drew Endy to induce the DNA in microbes to switch direction so that they would glow a different color under an ultraviolet light. After three years of work getting the correct balance of enzymes which control the orientation of the DNA, they were able to create the equivalent of a bio data storage unit. They call the device used a “recombinase addressable data” module, or RAD. They’re only able to store one bit of “data,” but have plans to expand their research to an entire byte.

    While the scientists engaged in this study expect that this data storage ability would be used for worthy efforts such as studying cancer, my writer’s mind can’t seem to help going in an entirely different direction. If we could store data in DNA, couldn’t we pass ultra-secret messages that way? Or maybe it’s not just data, but actual programming in the brain that affects behavior. Maybe in a future world, it could heal a mental illness or something could go awry and the treatment would create someone with extraordinary mental powers.

    Okay, I’m letting my imagination get the best of me. These are all fictional scenarios. The actual science will take years to reach fruition. And in the real world, it will likely provide benefits, like to signal that cells are splitting too rapidly. Catch that early and we can prevent cancer.

    Still, it’s fun to take this intriguing study and run with it as an author. After all, who doesn’t want mental superpowers?

  • 3 Tricks to Energize an Expository Scene

    Has this ever happened to you? You’re working on your manuscript and you’ve come to a point where you need to reveal information to your reader. It might be something crucial to the plot, or a vital revelation about your main character. You start writing the scene, but somehow it’s flat and boring. It sounds like a couple of talking heads. You start to feel completely blocked.

    If it hasn’t happened to you, you’re lucky. I’ve experienced this scenario any number of times writing my 20+ books. Early on in my career, I would flounder for a solution, but now I rely on a few go-to methods to freshen and energize the scene.

    1. Change the setting

    If it’s not working to have your characters sitting in a restaurant while they hash over their next step in defeating the alien zombie-vampires, get them up and moving. Your characters can walk through a park, or drive in a car, or climb up the hill to where they think the talisman is hidden. Sometimes an intimate, static setting is appropriate—in her room, or hidden in the cave safe from those AZVs. But if the scene is coming off too blah, get your characters up and out.

    2. Change the POV

    If you’re using the point of view of more than one character, sometimes all it takes to brighten up a scene is to switch to another character’s POV. That other character will have an entirely different perspective on the situation. That perspective might generate more conflict, which is exactly what will keep your reader reading.

    3. Do it with action

    This is a step beyond just getting your characters moving. Write your expository scene as an action scene. They’re fighting those AZVs, and in the process shouting out to each other what the reader needs to know—that he’s the one who left her that love note in third grade, or she stole from the church donation box to post his bail. Or you reveal information with the action itself—that AZVs have to be staked, beheaded, and tasered to be destroyed.

    So if your expository scene is lying there deader than a staked-beheaded-tasered AZV, give these tricks a try and get your book moving again.