Phoenix retreat

It was 110 degrees in Phoenix this weekend for a Novel Revision Retreat. If you’ve never attended one, I’ll try to give you an idea of what it’s like.
First, it’s limited to only 20 people at a time, purposely kept small so there’s lots of interaction. Before the retreat, they are divided into groups of [...]

Novel Diagnosis–Voice

Novel Diagnosis Series
Introduction
Characters
Dialogue
Scenes
Voice
VoiceRevisited
Plot
It’s been interesting trying to find ways to easily diagnose novel problems with short, easy-to-do activities. I’ve written lots here about Voice, but I’ve never thought about a short activity to diagnose how well you’re doing.
So, this is a proposal and I’d be interested to see how well it works. Try it out [...]

Rain

Rain, rain, go away.
Come again another day.

Novel diagnosis–dialogue

Novel Diagnosis Series
Introduction
Characters
Dialogue
Scenes
Voice
VoiceRevisited
Plot
How are you doing on the novel diagnosis? Finding that you have strengths you didn’t know? Finding areas on which to concentrate as you revise?
Novel Diagnosis-Dialogue
Dialogue, people talking, is a thing of the ear. There are mechanical things that often need revising, such as overuse of a participial phrase or [...]

Revision metaphor

Sara Holmes blog talks about the work of an artist named Claudia Tennyson, who repairs cracked pottery by gilding the cracks. Instead, of letting the pottery go to the trash heap, artists deliberately emphasis the cracks by filling them with gold: the repairs increase the value. Sara suggests that it’s an apt [...]

Novel diagnosis–scenes

Novel Diagnosis Series
Introduction
Characters
Dialogue
Scenes
Voice
VoiceRevisited
Plot
Please read the Novel Diagnosis–Introduction about competencies.
Long stories, like novels, are usually written in scenes. A scene is a contained unit of action that has a beginning, middle and end and usually builds toward a mini-climax. This implies that a character has a goal they are striving for and someone/something is [...]

Novel Diagnosis–Characters

Novel Diagnosis Series
Introduction
Characters
Dialogue
Scenes
Voice
VoiceRevisited
Plot
Please read the Novel Diagnosis–Introduction about competencies.
Characters are the lifeblood of a novel. Populating your novel with characters who have a strong inner life, a unique voice and a life full of conflict is important.

Self-Diagnosis–Characters
Time required: about 5-10 minutes.
Look only at the first five pages of your manuscript, or about 1000 words. [...]

Novel Diagnosis–Introduction

Novel Diagnosis Series
Introduction
Characters
Dialogue
Scenes
Voice
VoiceRevisited
Plot
When a writer sets out to revise, perhaps the hardest thing they face is knowing what to revise. This is often because they are Unconsciously Incompetent in one or more areas.
Does that sound insulting? I don’t mean it that way. One way of describing the learning process is in terms [...]

Voice Friday: Lawyers

by Darcy Pattison
How would you start to create a voice for a character?  For example,  if you had a lawyer, you could list the cliched attributes of a lawyer’s voice:

overuse of passive voice
legalese jargon
overuse of qualifying prepositional phrases
long, complex-compound sentences

For example, a cliched lawyer might say, “Johnny was desirous of throwing a ball, a baseball [...]

Revise or Start Anew

Decisions
I’m trying to decide what to do next. Revise a novel or start a new one. Yes, I do have to write a first draft sometimes, or I won’t have anything to revise!
Here are some things I’m considering:

Past reactions to my mss submissions. I have an animal fantasy novel, PAS, that I [...]