Okay, I know I already posted today, but I just couldn’t restrain myself. I’ve been sitting on this news for weeks and it’s finally official. I sold my first book!
Here’s the listing in today’s Publishers Marketplace:
Anna Staniszewski’s debut MY UN-FAIRY TALE LIFE, about a 12-year-old who goes on missions to save magical kingdoms — but with bloodthirsty unicorns, manic clowns, and an insanely useless gnome sidekick, she’s not sure she’s cut out for the job anymore, to Rebecca Frazer at Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, by Ammi-Joan Paquette of Erin Murphy Literary Agency (NA).
Woohoo! I can’t stop grinning. I could go on and on about the details, but for now I’ll just say how excited I am that my little book found a home! And what better way to celebrate the birth of a book than with more books? Yup, I’ll be having a celebratory book giveaway, so stay tuned for more details. In the meantime:
Last week I posted about the game of 20 Questions my friend and I played with my WIP. The session was immensely helpful and got me excited to work on the story again. On top of that, my friend offered to read part of my story to help me figure out if I’m on the right track.
When I read over his comments, they were right on and gave me a lot of food for thought. But there was one that made me want to hit myself upside the head. At the end of one scene he wrote: “I think something needs to happen here…beyond exposition.”
When I looked back over the scene, I realized he was right: the scene was pretty much all exposition. How had I not noticed that before? The truth is, I had. I’d just told myself that it didn’t matter if nothing happened in the scene because we were still getting to know the character. Um. Right.
So I guess the moral of the story is, no matter how long you’ve been writing and working on your craft, sometimes you have to be reminded of the simple things, like the fact that things need to actually happen in scenes!
How are you all doing with your WIPs? Any stumbles or triumphs you’d like to report?
Yesterday, I was talking to a friend online about my WIP. Well, “talking” isn’t really the right word – “whining about” is more accurate. I was telling him how stuck and uninspired I’ve been feeling. After he asked me some questions about my story and my characters, I finally realized this: “Sometimes it feels like I’m forcing my characters to do things.” And there it was, my problem in a nutshell.
This explained why the romance element of the story has been so difficult to get right: I’ve been pretty much forcing my characters to develop feelings for one another instead of letting it happen naturally. It’s like I’d put them into an arranged marriage and just assumed they’d learn to like each other. No wonder I was feeling so stuck! I wasn’t letting my characters be their own people.
If my characters are really supposed to develop genuine feelings for each other, it has to be because they find comfort in each other or they discover something they have in common or they make some sort of connection. Ultimately it has to come from them, not from me; characters aren’t simply action figures that you can place wherever you want. If the motivations and feelings aren’t genuine, your characters won’t buy them and neither will your readers.
Of course having my characters develop genuine feelings for each other means more work for me, but anything is better than wanting to smack my head against the wall every time I sit down to work on my WIP. And at the end of the “writing therapy” session with my friend (I told him he should start charging a fee!) I definitely felt more hopeful.
So I guess the lesson here is, next time you’re feeling stuck, get a friend to play twenty questions with you about your WIP. You never know what you might discover!
In other news, check out my article for Vision Magazine on cutting characters (it’s based on one of my older blog posts). Have a great weekend!
One of the things that makes speculative fiction so fascinating is setting. Often you want to give the reader a sense of the setting right away, but how can you do that without boring her? Well, as I was reading Dark Life by Kat Falls yesterday, I realized she does this very well. First off, she starts with this opening line:
I peered into the deep-sea canyon, hoping to spot a toppled skyscraper.
Already we start to get a sense of the world. The scene that follows shows the main character interacting with the environment so we see more of the dystopian world he inhabits and we also see him in action. If you’re interested, you can go read the opening pages on Google Books.
Often we’re told to start with action, but we need to also give a sense of the character; otherwise readers watch things happen to a person they don’t care about yet. Trying to work in setting while also pulling readers in is a challenge, but it’s vitally important if the world is unlike our own.
Something that Falls also does well is create suspense by introducing danger and mystery right from the beginning. Even though we might not know everything about our main character yet, we see how he handles stress and thinks on his feet. The one thing I wasn’t sure about in the opening pages was the gender of the main character, but you can’t always fit everything in, right?
So I’m back from NYC, tired and rejuvenated at the same time. We did all kinds of fun things like biking around Central Park and watching the World Cup with a bar full of strangers. I didn’t write a word all weekend and you know what? That was absolutely fine. What’s funny is that ordinarily, if a couple days go by and I haven’t written, I start to feel really guilty. So I’ve been wondering what the difference is. Why did not writing this weekend feel okay?
I think it comes down to giving myself permission to take a break. Ordinarily when a couple days have gone by and I haven’t gotten any writing done, it’s because I’ve either been stuck (or procrastinating) or because real life has gotten in the way; whatever the reason, writing feels out of my control. But as we were heading out Friday morning, I was already in that mini-vacation mindset which meant it was okay to be unproductive. And as we walked around and people-watched and sweated (oh, the sweating) I didn’t feel guilty at all; instead, I felt inspired.
So next time I’m feeling guilty for not writing (which is what that little puppy is feeling, I’m sure), I need to remind myself that some breaks are actually deserved. Okay, now that I’ve gone on about how inspired I am, time to go write!
Thanks to everyone who commented on Wednesday’s post. It was great to hear your advice and encouragement, and to know that I’m not all alone in the muck! A couple of you said a change of scenery might help me get unstuck. Well what do you know? The husband and I are actually heading to NYC this weekend. A couple days of seeing friends and wandering around the steamy city should get the creative juices going again.
The only bad thing about going away is leaving our new pup behind. Even though she’ll be in good hands, I’m afraid she’ll be a little miffed at us when we get back. You want to see more pictures of her? Well, if you insist. Here she is in her favorite cool-down spot (it was 90 degrees out yesterday):
Doesn’t she look like she’s standing up? Of course, then I had to get in her face with the camera again. Here’s a beauty shot for you:
Okay, I have to go pack but I’ll leave you with some writing links you might find helpful.
-Two great posts on showing vs. telling, one from author Janice Hardy and the other from agent Mary Kole
-The wise Gail Carson Levine talks about making characters distinct
-Show Some Character gives us 5 more ways to make characters sympathetic
-And finally, if you’re itching for more writing links, check out Adventures in Children’s Publishing’s latest roundup
Have a great weekend!
Things have been a bit sluggish with my WIPs recently. I’d hoped to get my fairy tale revision done by June 15th but things haven’t quite worked out that way. I know which areas need work, but figuring out how to fix them has been a bit daunting. I finally went back to doing some research, hoping it would inspire me; so far it’s been interesting but nothing’s really jumped out at me.
As for my other project, which we’ll call Island Book, I’m in this strange paradox that also involves research. I’ve realized that in order to work out certain aspects of the story, I need to do more research. But I also need to figure out more of my story in order to know what research needs to be done. So yes, you could say I’m a bit stuck.
My lack of productivity is starting to really grate at me so I have to find some way to break out of my stuck-ness. Maybe some free-writing will help? If I find a solution, I’ll let you know.
How are you all doing with your WIPs? Anyone else stuck in the muck with me?
In a recent post on Children’s Writing and Illustrating, David Caruba shared some of his “State of the Children’s Book Publishing Industry” presentation from this year’s NJ-SCBWI conference. There was lots of great info there, but what really stood out to me was his report on the middle grade market.
Middle grade stories remain strong, although their demand has softened a little over the past year. Some editors attribute the softening not to the market but to their own focus on building YA lists. Single biggest reported issue: middle grade stories without middle grade voices. “We always want middle grade but just can’t get it,” explained an agent. “People can’t write it.” Publishers report wanting MG stories with a marketing platform or media hook.
Since I primarily write middle grade fiction, this got me thinking about the “MG voice” and why it might be so difficult to write. In writing for children we always talk about the importance of not talking down to your audience and not setting out to teach lessons. But these are things you might not realize you’re doing, especially if you’re just starting out or if you’re not all that familiar with current MG books. That might explain the “middle grade stories without middle grace voices” the agent was referring to.
But the more I think about it, the more I think it comes down to something a bit more abstract. What makes a MG voice hard to write (similar to a YA voice) is that it can’t sound as if the author is trying to write a child character; the character has to be a child. It has to look effortless, even if it’s the result of a whole lot of work. For some of us this might come more easily than others. Since there’s part of me that seems to be a perpetual twelve-year-old, a MG voice feels more natural, whereas I really have to work to create a YA voice.
I’m curious to hear what you guys think. Do you find a MG voice difficult to write? Are there specific ways you’ve found to make that voice work?
I love creating other worlds in the stories I write. That’s why I’m terrible at realistic fiction; even when I set out to write realism, fantasy always creeps in. I guess I like having control over the world and its rules. But the thing about world-building is that you have to stay in the world 100% of the time, and even the simplest things need to all be informed by that world.
The fact that characters need to fully inhabit their worlds might sound like obvious advice, but I’ve read more than one story in which the characters used references that made me pause. “Oh my god!” says a character. Wait a minute – do people in your story believe in a god? Hm, can you even say, “Wait a minute?” How is time measured in this world? But it’s not just about physical and societal rules; it’s also about what your character knows (or doesn’t know).
In my fairy tale retelling, I have dual narrators telling the story in close third-person. I found myself writing this line the other day: “His hope evaporated.” Hm…does this character even know what “evaporated” means? Even though it’s third-person narration, he’s the focal character, so using a word he wouldn’t know feels like cheating. The challenge is to find ways of expressing the character’s thoughts and struggles in a way that’s true to the character’s reality.
In another WIP, my character has lived on a secluded island all of her life. One thing I’m still figuring out is how much she knows of the outside world. When it comes to showing her world, she can’t simply go around comparing her society to ours. References to the outside world need to be traced back to a source (e.g. a wise elder), otherwise we won’t believe them. Not surprisingly, much of how this character sees the world is shaped by the ocean because that’s her reality.
World-building essentially forces us to forget everything we know about our world and to reinvent the world of our story. This is true for any type of story; even if you’re writing about the “real world” you still have to write about it the way your character sees it. That’s why it’s essential to inhabit your character, to see what she sees and to know what she knows. Then the world will feel believable to readers because it’s the world the character actually inhabits.
