Lines from Linda

Just Write It!

Sometimes the reason huge projects, like writing a novel, don't get finished is because they don't get started. Writing fiction can be an overwhelming undertaking. I've read many articles about procrastination, and oftentimes, the writers spend more times stressing that procrastinators need to know "why" we procrastinate and offer a lengthy laundry list of things to do to prevent putting things off.

For example, write a personal mission statement. Now, I have nothing against personal mission statements, but if I'm already sidetracked from my "to-write" list enough to browse Internet articles on procrastination, then pausing to ponder over my personal mission will give me just one more "reason" to put off whatever it is I'm dreading doing.

Putting things off, for me, usually stems from being busy to the point I get overwhelmed and am often unsure where to even begin the projects waiting to be finished. But I find myself being more "busy" and less productive a lot of the time. I stumbled upon an idea that I hope will help.

Project management people use a term called "timeboxing" to increase productivity. Basically, timeboxing is a method where one sorts his or her projects into "boxes of time." Working for small segments of time, (30 minutes to 2 hours), puts a dent in the task at hand, easing stress and giving a quick sense of accomplishment. Continue to schedule more "boxes" of time until the project is complete.

Susan Messiner touches on this topic (without using the term "timeboxing") in her 300 pages in 30 days seminar. She discusses a plan for mapping out your novel into 30 segments (or, I suppose we could say, "boxes"). If your schedule permits completing one segment each day, you can have a 300-page draft in a month.

Whether your novel gets done in one month or 10, the point is to just write it!

Funny Thing, Research…

I've been working on another historical novel. I had an idea I liked, so I sketched out an outline and began fleshing it out a bit until I wound up with a fairly detailed five-page plot summary. One scene required my heroine, who is of the early 18th century French nobility, to be secretive about her means and appear as a commoner. I had this great plan for her to hide money by sewing it in her clothes or shoes. Problem is, I started doing research and found that due to the crash of the French economy just a few years before the date I'd picked, the use of paper money had ceased during that period. Back to the drawing board...

I'd remembered studying about France's economic woes before their time of recovery...before the revolution. However I didn't realize they had no paper currency. But I'm sure many world history buffs or those who are drawn to stories set in pre-revolution France (i.e. my audience) would have known, and had I not discovered this tidbit of information, my writing would have been totally discredited to many readers. Which is one reason we research.

So, how does one get started researching a historical novel? I found a good article by Shelly Thacker Meinhardt on this topic. I don't know Shelly and I've never read any of her fiction, but I found her article on research very helpful. In addition to a number of tips and insights into research, she gives a laundry list of general items to check on as you develop your story:

• Clothing & Hairstyles


• Crime & Law Enforcement


• Entertainment


• Food


• Furniture


• History (politics, wars, kings & queens, etc.)


• Housing


• Maps


• Medicine


• Money


• Religion


• Shops & Towns


• Transportation


• Travel & Inns


• Weapons


• Women & Marriage


• Words and Names common to your setting

She went on to say "list every source used" in your notes. This is excellent advice in case you need to delve deeper into a particular area or to prove a point to your copy-editor.

So, my research efforts sent one idea to the cutting room floor. However, the good part is that I've come up with many more ideas to replace it!

Facelift for Fiction Fundamentals

While I'm on this web site makeover kick, I gave my Fiction Fundamentals site a facelift, thanks to the guys over at Quommunication. I still have a few kinks to work out with the new theme.

For one thing, since I began blogging in the days before "Tags" were part of the WordPress platform (without the use of an external plug-in), I used "Categories" like tags. Now that the Tag feature is part of daily blogging life, it's best to use Categories like Departments, and picking one per post, and then tag the post to classify it with related posts.

Since the newer releases of WordPress include the Tag feature, I really need to go through all my old posts and re-categorize them and tag them. That'll be a chore, but it will make my sites more user-friendly. I'll add that to my to-do list.

The News Theme (pictured in the above screen shot) has a number of features, including Sub-Categories. I've seen Sub-Pages in many themes, but most don't support lumping various related categories under one heading. I did re-organize the dozens of categories I had on that site, and now just a few display across the nav bar with a nice drop-down list of the subs for each one. Pretty spiff!

Busting Editing Myths

Please welcome today's guest blogger: Sally Bradley.

Sally Bradley runs Affordable Novel Critique Service where she offers economical editing services for writers at any level. She and her family recently moved from Chicago to the Kansas City area where she’s adjusting to bugs and snakes in the summer and ice storms in the winter.

There’s often a debate amongst writers as to whether hiring a freelance editor is a waste of money or a learning opportunity. When I hear this debate, I often find that there are some myths involved...

Read the rest of this post at Fiction Fundamentals.

12 Steps to a Great Critique

Note: This post is an article I wrote for the October 2007 issue of American Christian Fiction Writer's Ezine, Afictionado.

Multi-published author Ginny Smith never studied writing. She credits her success in print to her critique partners. While some may cringe at the word “critique,” Ginny explained that evaluating another writer’s work is not only an act of service, but also benefits the critiquer. But she adds a caveat: If it’s done correctly. “Because,” she said, “critiques can range from the good, to the bad, to the really insulting.” ...read the rest of this post on Fiction Fundamentals.

Experiencing Contests

(It's a new year, and spring is "contest season" for many groups, so I decided to post a guest blog I did in November for my friends from The Seekers, a blog all about contests.)

I must confess, I’m not the contest junkie that some writers are...

(Note: Today’s blog is over at Fiction Fundamentals. To finish reading, please visit that site. Thanks!

A Little Bit of Research…

Research is another way to liven a plot. Take a date, for instance. Many events are likely to have happened on that date, and by snooping back in time, you can find a lot of ideas to liven your plot. For instance, today, October 11. What's the most exciting thing that happened on this day? (And I don't mean the wedding of Bill & Hillary Clinton!)

On this date in 1887, a patent was issued to Dorr Eugene Felt for his invention of the Comptometer, a mechanical device that could perform four mathematical functions quickly and accurately. There are a lot of ways to continue researching at this point. The Comptometer preceded our modern-day computers. So, if the evolution of technology is important to your story, you could research about additional advancements along the path toward today's computers.

Or you could look into the life of the inventor. Did he invent anything else of significance? Yes. In fact, after leaving his family farm in Wisconsin at the age of 14 with 50 cents in his pocket, Felt trained as a machinist and was granted many patents for his inventions. He became a multi-millionaire. So far, this line of investigation seemed more interesting than tracking the history of transitors and microchips, so I read more about Mr. Felt.

He bought a few hundred acres on a lake and built the 17,000 square foot Felt Mansion, complete with a third-floor ballroom. From here, history mingles with legend, and you can place a multitude of tales in a hat and pick one, because apparently no bloggers or web masters are in complete agreement about the fate of the Felt Family. Shortly after the home's completion during the height of the roaring 20s, Mrs. Felt left her bed, climbed the stove pipe, and jumped from the roof to her death. Mr. Felt died from a stroke shortly afterward. Many believe their spirits still roam the rooms, and the home is features on Michigan's ghost tourism web sites.

The children held the property for a few decades after their parents' deaths, but sold it to a Catholic school, which used the outbuildings for classrooms and housed students in the mansion. One site claims a priest committed suicide in the main house. The school sold to the state prison system, which purportedly hung a number of prisoners in one of the property's large trees. I don't remember when public hangings ceased in this country, but I think it was before the 1960s, so this storyteller's claim could be false.

The Felt Mansion sat empty for years and somewhere around 1990, was sold for $1 to a community foundation with the purpose of restoring it to its roaring 20s glory. The restoration process is underway.

Now the anniversary of a patent issue sounds boring at first, but just 30 minutes of web browsing produced a host stories--just from that one lead. Unless you're writing an historical about the Felt Family or home, the facts don't matter--just glean plot ideas from your research, start "what iffing," and adapt those ideas for your own stories. Who would have known that a simple adding machine would be fodder for a great suspense plot?

Twisting the Plot

Today marks the 194th anniversary of Giuseppi Verdi's birth. This Italian composer's operas are still popular today. The Triumphal March from Aida is one of his most famous pieces. Aida's story was first penned by some guy with an unpronounceable name and has an interesting, albeit tragic, plot twist at the end. Verdi adapted the tale to music, and now Elton John and company have developed a modern version of the timeless love story.

A plot twist is an unexpected development in the story, a change of direction. As the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus would say, "And now for something completely different..." Some of the most well-known movie plot twists include:

• Citizen Kane's "Rosebud"


• The ending of the movie "The Sixth Sense"


• Darth Vader reveals his true identity to Luke in "The Empire Strikes Back"


• The moment we meet Norman Bates' mother in "Psycho"

So, how do we come up with those memorable moments that leave the reader riveted? I suppose one could use Serendipity's handy-dandy plot twist generator. I gave it a whirl to see what would happen and here is my list of suggested story contortions:

• At this juncture a domineering police officer arrives, with several children in tow.


• At this point a grumpy businessman arrives, carrying a backpack.


• At this point a sketchy librarian arrives and attacks your protagonist's sidekick.


• At this point a snooty window washer arrives and orders everyone to leave.


• At this point a street vendor arrives and grabs your protagonist by the shirtfront.


• At this point a wild-eyed wizard throws a tantrum.


• Clearly, it is time for a blizzard.


• Clearly, it is time for the Loch Ness Monster.


• Just then a aviator arrives and pulls a gun.


• Just then a domineering bartender arrives, in hysterics.


• Just then a undertaker arrives, disguised.


• Just then your protagonist's spouse turns on the television.


• Only a tornado can save this story.


• Suddenly a melodramatic dwarf arrives and pulls the plug.


• What you need now is flying monkeys.

Nessie and flying monkeys aside, with a bit of brainstorming, some of these actually have potential. One of the best tools for developing a great twist in your plot is the use of two words: What If?

• What if, when the spouse turns on the television, the president is addressing the country about an imminent enemy invasion?


• What if the street vendor is a secret agent and wants to warn your hero that the RBG (really bad guys) are after him? (Come on, stuff like that happened to Maxwell Smart all the time!)


• What if the grumpy businessman's backpack contains a bomb?


• What if the children brought in by the policeman are from your H/H's love interest's previous (and up to this point, unknown to your H/H) marriage?

You can "what if" some more thoughts on your story, with or without the plot generator, but for the best way to write an effective plot twist is to consider what would be "expected" at this point in your story and write something "completely different."

Blog Series: Creating Memorable Characters Part I

Robin Miller begins her characterization process with a 7-section outline, which will be presented in this post, for each main character. After covering the basics in her outline, she goes into depth in her character development. Future posts in this series will cover more of Robin's process and include characterization tips from other sources, too. You can use whatever wordprocessing, spreadsheet, or desktop publishing program you prefer to design your own character profile worksheet using Robin's suggestions and adding your own ideas.

As you fill in these blanks, thoughts of how various characteristics can be used in your story may pop into your mind. Jot those ideas down in your writer's notebook and then keep them together with your character's profile, once you complete it.

Section 1 consists of the character's physical description:

birthday/age
height
weight
color/style of hair
eye color;
scars/body markings, etc.

Section 2 delves a bit deeper and is titled "Personal traits & characteristics." Keep your character profile worksheet handy, as these characteristics can come into play when you begin plotting the story. In this section, she includes:

Sense of humor & type
Basic nature
Ambitions
Philosophy of life
Hobbies (can be used as special skills the character may need in the story)
Music/Reading preferred
Style of dress
Favorite colors
Strongest character trait
Weakest character trait

Section 3 explores the character's background, kind of a "character resume":

Educational background
Current occupation
Work experience

Section 4 is where Robin lists her character's personal possessions:

Description of home
Vehicles
Special belongings

Section 5 digs deeper, looking at plot complications:

Present problem
How it will get worse
Deepest fear
Goal
Motivation
Conflict
How the character will change (often referred to as "character arc")

Section 6 introduces your character's relationships:

Parents
Siblings and/or children
Best Friend
Significant Other
Enemies (and why)
Pets

Section 7 gets specific in a few more areas:

Habits
Likes
Dislikes
Annoying traits
Sees self as...
Seen by other as...

Blog Series: Characterization (Introduction)

Many have asked, "Which comes first--the characters or the plot?" When I wrote my first novel (before I had any clue or training in novel-writing), I started with setting. It was a travel journal of sorts and I began by outlining each location the characters would visit along their route. Then I chose some sort of mishap or problem that would occur at each place. Finally, I added some people to my notes and wrote the book. The problem with this approach was, I could have placed anyone in those roles and the story wouldn't have changed. My characters were plain vanilla, b-flat, run-of-the-mill, ordinary folks. B-O-R-I-N-G.

I took that same story and did some character work, developed them into spring-from-the-page, realistic people with goals, quirks, conflicts, faults, and frustrations. The story took shape, became interesting. And recently, it finaled in a contest. In fact, one judge commented, "If this piece doesn't win first place, I'll be surprised." So, my take (and the belief of many other novelists) is that the answer to the chicken/egg, character/plot question is this: Character IS plot. Fully develop your characters and your plot will be developed, too.

Our local writers' group, Arkansas Inspy Writers, met recently and were blessed to have Robin Miller, president of American Christian Fiction Writers, conduct a workshop on characterization. She explained that once she's done with her character work, she doesn't even have to "write" a synopsis--she simply cuts & pastes from her character worksheets into a new document and viola! her synopsis is done. This shows that plot and characterization are inseparable.

So, the big question is--how does one fully develop characters? Excellent question! And one Fiction Fundamentals intends to answer through this blog series with the help of Robin Miller, who has graciously allowed me to use notes from her workshop and present that information here. Each Monday and Friday (beginning July 23), I'll post a segment from the characterization workshop until we've brought our characters to life. (Sounds Frankensteinish!)

Please be sure to visit Fiction Fundamentals and contribute your comments so we can all learn together. And be sure to tell Robin thanks!