Back to School and Fresh New Starts

Although the weather is still hot and dry here, the subtle (and not so subtle) signs of autumn are all around me: the burning bush is turning red, the stores are displaying Halloween decorations, and the kids are back to school. I don't know about you, but I always equate the autumn with new beginnings, a fresh start, a chance at a new adventure. When I started each new school year with a stack of blank notebooks and sharpened pencils, I vowed to myself that this year would be different. This was the year I was going to (fill in the blank here.) Depending on the given year, it could be get better grades, be more outgoing, try out for sports, or as simple as not procrastinate. Usually by mid-October, however, the shiny new promises I made myself were as scuffed and neglected as my back-to-school shoes. Walking around in life puts a few smudges and dirt on those idealized vows.

Nonetheless, I still make new plans and search out new opportunities in the fall and this year is no different. Since I've been struggling with my present work in progress (or WIP for short), I'm tempted to jettison the tiresome task for something fresh and new. There is nothing like starting out a new work, be it a short story, novel or poem, when the fire of inspiration is on you. The words seem to fly like electricity from the brain cells through the arms to fingers, words of sheer genius madly spilling across the computer screen or notebook page. Then you hit the slump, the saggy middle, the problematic plot stopper, the self-critical editor...the mid-October blahs. What then? How do you get that "back-to-school" new beginnings promise back into your work? Do you buy a new, fancy pen and notebook? Do you look through pictures to inspire or turn to your writing manuals on plot and characterization? Sometimes. Or, do you jump ship and start a new project and just pray that the old one will come to life again in the future? Every writer has a different answer to this same dilemma.

I'll tell you what I'm doing now with the old WIP when I'm sorely tempted to fall in love with a fresh, new project instead. I'm doing something to help me become intrigued by my old characters, to re-discover and re-invent the theme that originally inspired me, and to get back to the "butt in seat, hands to keyboard" discipline that any writer needs to not only succeed but just finish a book! Not unlike bringing a horse back into work which has been laid off due to sickness or injury, I've had to start slow and review the basics. At first I took my story which had been on "stall rest" and lost all its muscle out for a ride and found it just couldn't keep up, so I went back to the barn and did a complete assessment of where the weaknesses were. Having identified two-dimensional characters, stilted scenes, plodding plot points, I fixed or eliminated these "lamenesses" by drawing up entire profiles of my main characters or by painstakingly mapping out timelines or sequences of events. Surprisingly, by doing these "fundamental exercises" I not only improved the story I had, but also became excited about it again. I gained new insights into the characters' motivations, I saw new ways to keep the suspense turned up, and I fell in love with this old WIP in the season of new beginnings. I guess those old, scuffed shoes still have a lot of miles of adventure left in them after all. What's going to inspire you this fall during the season of starting over?

Making Words Count: Don't Be Boring!

by Toni Leland

A few years ago, I had a great Skype session with my then-13-year-old granddaughter, who is an avid reader and was a great help to me with a YA book I was trying to write.

Anyway, she asked what the next few scenes would be and I mentioned that my main character would be taking a trip to another state. She nodded, then leaned forward so I could see her expression on the Skype screen.

"Well, okay, but leave out the boring stuff."

This caught me off guard. What would a young teen find boring about a trip? So I asked her, and she didn't hesitate at all.

"You know, sitting in the plane, taking off, all that stuff. If you use the plane trip, make it exciting. Like, if the plane crashes and she's the only survivor!"

Okay, I can see that this child will not be fooled by filler. And if she isn't, then neither will the thousands of other young readers we hope to woo with our tales.

So, back to boring. In the early stages of my fiction-writing career, I attended a workshop given by a successful writer in which she outlined the parts of a novel and their importance. She focused on the "sagging middle" because that's where many authors have problems. She talked about breaking up the story into mostly equal word counts to achieve the final goal, and how to dole out the story points through the whole thing.

Could I keep my mouth shut? Nope. During the Q&A session, I mentioned that my story was finished, but I only had 65,000 words and the required count was 85,000. How could I fix it? Without missing a beat, she said, "Come up with more story." It was the right answer, but what she didn't include was HOW to do that. I had to learn that on my own.

A story arc has three "acts" made up of scenes. Each scene should tell the reader something new and move the story forward smoothly. A story outline can give the author a map to follow and, like a road trip, should include some scenery and attractions along the way. Building the story world is one way to expand word count, but add too much and you'll have readers skipping through the narrative. Extensive character description can also expand word count, but most readers prefer to visualize a character themselves rather than read about all the physical details. Hair and eye color, body structure, any quirks – those are good, but the rest is filler. Dialogue is one of the best writing techniques for carrying a story, but make every word golden. Lots of dialogue is good and provides plenty of white space on the page that gives one the feeling of reading quickly. But dialogue that tracks every reply and grunt and "Hi" and "Yeah" and "Fine, how are you?" is boring! We write stories not about real life as it boringly is, but real life as it is interesting. Conflict is the foundation of every story, so use it to the fullest. Make your characters work for their goals and desires; give them obstacles.

Know ahead of time what your genre expects for word count and include it in your initial story plan. I found a great explanation of word counts; it made life much easier for me. To figure out how to achieve your desired word count, look at each scene or plot point and ask yourself, "What else can happen to make this more interesting?" This is how you "come up with more story."

Now, about that plane crash...

Writing and Riding––and Free Books!

by Lisa Wysocky

Writing about horses is a lot like giving riding lessons. Both make me think through a sequence of events. Both, over time, require me to achieve progression, and both allow me some creative freedom.

If a rider has trouble keeping her heels down, I might instead ask her to point her toes to the sky. Trouble posting the trot? Try a two-point, then dropping into the saddle before bouncing up, rather than sitting and then trying to get up. If a fictional character needs a new horse, I can invent a way to put the perfect equine into the story. Or, I can find a creative way to give a horse an interesting character quirk that ties into the plot.

I am currently finishing my third equestrian mystery (The Fame Equation, fall 2015). It has been wonderful to reconnect with my characters and help them problem solve through another murder. My characters also help stretch me out of my equine comfort zone from time to time, so it has become an educational process, too.

Why would an otherwise healthy horse blow bubbles in a water bucket, or lie in an odd position? What does a circling behavior in the pasture really mean? Those and a thousand other questions have to be researched and solidified in my mind before I can distill it down to a sentence or two, and still make it interesting for the non-horsey reader.

I research everything, even things I “know,” just to be sure. For the most part I am right, but the research often broadens my scope of knowledge, or adds one new bit of information that I can then use to move the story along.

When I finish this last edit of The Fame Equation, I will once again lose that intimate connection that an author has with her characters. Fortunately, my Cat Enright mysteries are a series, and I will soon enough be able to pick up the connection with them in a new adventure.

I have been fortunate that my series has won a number of awards, and thrilled that it has been optioned for film and television (fingers crossed). But, the mechanics of writing it have made me a better riding instructor, and have made me a better horse person.

In preparation for the fall release of The Fame Equation, my publisher has agreed to send readers of this blog a digital kindle or epub file of the first two books in the series, The Opium Equation, and The Magnum Equation. There are strings however (aren’t there always?)

1. The offer is only good through May 12, 2015

2. The publisher strongly hopes the reader will write an honest review on Amazon.com, BN.com, Goodreads.com

3. The files must not be shared with anyone else

I am thrilled with this offer, and hope you will be, too. To request your files, send an email to cooltitles@comcast.net with your name and the file format that you need.

Until next time: happy reading!

Lisa

An exercise in prolificacy

By Kate Lattey

I’ve got a new toy, and I can’t stop playing with it. Over the long Easter weekend, I decided to see how quickly I could write an entire (albeit short) novel. I had a rough story outline and no other commitments, so I gave myself four days, sat down at my laptop, and started to write. To keep myself honest, I first declared my intentions on Facebook. I put each chapter up on Wattpad as I wrote it, so that people could check in and follow the story in real-time. It was a challenge, and it was fun. And even better, people really liked the story. 

The characters were a mix of old and new – some who’d shown up in my previous books, some who’d never been heard of before – but they all leapt off the page, and the writing just flowed. I don’t want to say effortlessly, because let’s face it, writing is never effortless. But I didn’t get bogged down or stuck in the story, I just wrote and wrote and wrote. Posted another chapter, and wrote on. And so on, until suddenly on Sunday afternoon, I was done. And with a whole day to spare!

What else to do, then, but start the sequel? Or even better...make it into a series! After all, if I can write one short novel in a weekend, I should be able to get one book done each month, right? Well, life's nothing without challenges, so I put my thinking cap on, came up with a concept that I loved, and the Pony Jumpers series was born.

The first book, First Fence, is told from the perspective of a character named AJ, who is struggling with her pony until she befriends Katy, another young rider who has a wealth of experience. Katy and her mother Deb give AJ the help she needs to get her pony on track for a successful competition career, something AJ, who comes from a completely unhorsy family, has only ever dreamed of before.

The sequel Double Clear is then told from Katy’s perspective – and while she turned out to have a strong voice and plenty of storyline, she also turned out to be a far more complex character than I’d ever anticipated. It was almost as though once I got inside her head and she started to trust me to tell her story, she realised she didn’t have to put a brave face on all the time, and everything that was bothering her just came pouring out. Katy has a lot of issues to work through, and at times the book was heart-wrenching to write. But there are so many threads to her storyline – outside of the pony-centric A-plot there are at least five other sideline plots to follow through with in the upcoming novels. I’m excited to see how she progresses over the course of the series. 

So, the series. I can’t say for sure how many books I’m going to write, but I have the basic plots and timeline sketched out to get myself as far as (brace yourself) twenty novels. Ambitious, for sure, and whether I ever find the time to write them all, I can’t say. But I have committed myself to the first eight by the end of the year.

Why eight? Well, after Katy’s story is told in book #2, I’m switching it up again to a different protagonist for book #3, Triple Bar. Not that she’s entirely new – Susannah has been showing up in my books for years, and has appeared already in the first two books in this series. If Katy is a complex character, Susannah is a veritable kaleidoscope. There is a lot going on behind closed doors in her life, and I’m looking forward to exploring her side of the story, since we’ve only seen her through other people’s eyes up to now.

And then there’s book #4, Four Faults, which will shift perspective yet again to get a fourth character’s perspective. This character has turned up already in the first two books, and will have been introduced sufficiently by this stage however that hopefully the reader will be intrigued to find out what’s really happening in her life as well, before book #5 shifts back to AJ, and the cycle begins again. (If I only write the first eight, then I’ve at least written each character twice, see? But I would really love to manage all 20 books - that’s only five each, after all…)

If this sounds incredibly complicated, it gets worse. Not only will each of these books tie into each other, but as mentioned, Susannah has turned up in my books before. As has Katy, for that matter. So they have fixed backstories, and part of my challenge is to keep track of their history as well as planning out their future. (I already almost tripped myself up badly until I went back to check my references to Katy in Dream On and discovered what was at the time a throwaway line that completely contradicted some of what I’d written in Double Clear, so I had to go back and fix that one.) I have a complex spreadsheet that keeps it all straight and explains the timeline, which I have simplified into a graphic on my website, since I’ve failed at writing the stories chronologically as I originally intended and I was getting readers confused. (Hey, it all makes sense in my head!)

So it’s complicated, but it’s also fun. For years, I wanted to write for television (I would still love to, in fact). I love the episodic nature of television drama, so this series of books is like my version of a TV show. Some episodes might be stronger than others, some will necessarily be more dramatic, there will be cliffhangers and there will be little, subtle moments. (And lots of dialogue, because I always write a ton of dialogue. Perhaps that’s the TV writer in me trying to get out!) 

I also – and this sounds completely nerdy but it’s true – love episode titles. Some of my favourite TV dramas have great episode titles, whether they’re a play on words or a quote from Shakespeare, or just really gorgeously poetic. And you’ve probably noticed the theme that I’ve already started with my new series of numbering the books within their titles. (Four Faults will be followed by Five Stride Line, then Six to Ride…and so on. I had so much fun coming up with them, and yes they go all the way up to 20.) I designed and created the covers myself, using Adobe InDesign. The cover photo of First Fence is an iStock photo, but the cover images for Double Clear and Triple Bar were taken by a friend of mine for a school assignment several years ago and she has generously allowed me to use them. (I also used my borderline Photoshop skills to swap out the background on Triple Bar which was originally shot on carpet, not wood. Hopefully you can't tell!) I have placeholder images for the rest, mostly from Shutterstock, which will be purchased as required. And the colour theme of purple for AJ’s books, yellow for Katy’s, pink for Susannah’s etc will continue throughout the series.

And so this is my ultimate challenge: to write 20 books of fewer than 40,000 words, that all fit into a fixed timeline and don’t contradict each other, told alternatively from the perspective of four very different characters leading four very different lives, bound together by their passion for show jumping. And each novel also has to have a strong A-plot that carries the reader’s momentum forward throughout, combined with several interesting B-plots, like whether AJ can find a way to get along with her autistic sister, whether Katy can forgive her father for abandoning her, or whether Susannah can find a way to integrate her brother back into her life after her parents disowned him. (I’m keeping my fourth protagonist under wraps for now, though eagle-eyed readers can probably predict who it’s going to be.) Oh yeah, and to also integrate each character as seamlessly as possible into each book, whether or not it’s their turn to be the protagonist…

Not for the faint of heart, then, but I’m loving it so far. And I have had so many comments from readers saying that they love the way that the books tie into each other, which is really encouraging. But it means that I have to have these characters straight in my head, starting with their disparate writing styles - details that range from the language and euphemisms they use, to their level of introspection, to precisely how they tend to structure their sentences. Not to mention the names of their family members, their pets, their nicknames, what subjects at school they’re good at and what they struggle with, their favourite foods, whether they’re a heavy sleeper, what kind of music they like, their hair and eye colour…and of course, every little detail about their ponies...

It’s a good thing I thrive on a challenge! And so far, it seems to be working. As a friend told me this morning: 

“I feel like these kids actually exist and I’ll get to meet them all someday…like I’m just reading an account of their lives. An excerpt from each of their diaries or something. It’s heartbreaking to realise they’re all fictional.”

I took that as a huge compliment. When people believe in my characters that hard, I must be doing something right.

But for now, I have a third book to write…

First Fence and Double Clear are now available for purchase on Amazon at US$2.99 each. The first chapter of Triple Bar is also included at the end of Double Clear to give readers a taste of what’s to come!