Have you signed up for 750words.com yet? Or will you try doing 750 words on paper? I’ve just completed my 36th day of doing 750 words!

If the first task of Think Like a Writer is to observe the world around you, the task of the fiction writer or the novelist, is to create, then observe the world of the story. The exercise is the same, but this time you draw upon imagination. What does your character see, hear, taste, touch, feel as s/he moves around in his/her world?

As a writer you can create this purely from imagination, or you can draw upon observations about places you’ve visited. For example, I spotted this praying mantis on the Great Wall of China.



Thinking like a writer means to notice the small things like this, because often, it is the smallest details that make a story come to life. Yes, I observed the usual things while climbing the Wall, but the praying mantis is one of the special things I remember.

Details of Your Story’s Setting

Today, think like a writer and create the sensory environment of your story. Like yesterday, write out what the characters See, Hear, Feel, Taste, and Touch. Then write a paragraph using those details; don’t feel like you have to use every detail you wrote, just select the ones that work; add anything else that occurs.

Does the story come alive better now?
What writing exercises or prompts do you use to make a setting fresher and more alive?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Yesterday, December 31, my friend Charlie Woods rode his bike 60 miles and finished his yearly goal of 10,000 miles. That’s an average of 27.8 miles per day and he’s been hitting that goal for over 3000 days. Yes, without fail. Rain or shine (he has a stationary bike for bad-weather days), sick or healthy, he never misses.

It makes me think about my commitment to writing. Do I write every day? Almost every day. But EVERY day? No.
And what does this say about how I think about my life? How does a writer think?
I want to strengthen my thinking as a writer, I want a deeper commitment to writing.

A new tool I’ve found to do this is the website www.750words.com.
It’s simple. You log on the write 750 words every day. That’s it. Simple and easy. As the website says, it started with the idea of “morning pages,” but Buster wanted to create something online to do this. The 750 words you write every day are “private, unfiltered, spontaneous, daily.”

I’ve done it now for 33 days and earned several “badges“. No, they aren’t Girl Scout badges and really, they don’t matter much, except to me.

• Everyone starts out with an egg, a big fat zero.
  
• Writing 3 days in a row gets you a Turkey
  
• 5 days is a Penguin
  
• 10 days is a Flamingo
  
• 30 days is an Albatross
  
• 100 days in a row is a Phoenix.
  

I’m working on my Phoenix now! 35 days down, 65 to go!

In addition, I’ve earned these badges

• a Cheetah (fast typist)
  
• a Hamster (typing without distractions–no pauses greater than 3 minutes)
  
• The Early Rooster (because I type early in the morning) (There’s also a Night Bat, but I’ll NEVER win that one.)
  
  

It’s fun. I want that Phoenix.
For more information see the FAQ on 750words.com

Here’s my New Year’s Challenge to you! Join me in becoming an Albatross.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll post a daily prompt, which you can use, or you can do your own prompt, if you’d rather.

30 Days to Thinking Like a Writer Prompts

What I’m doing is using the 750 words as an exercise, like playing scales on a musical instrument. I want to sharpen my skills and the prompts will be something that encourages you to spend 30 days Thinking Like a Writer.

Day 1: Thinking Like a Writer

The basic exercise for writers is to observe the world around them and accurately reproduce it in their writing. As humans, we know the world around us by using our senses, what we see, hear, smell, touch and taste. For this exercise, just think about a place you’ve been recently. Maybe you’re sitting on a park bench, eating popcorn when a truck flies by.

Type, SEE. Then record specific observations. Specific is important. Not a truck. But a steel-blue Ford F-150 with mud streaks. The more specific you can be, the better.

Repeat for each sense; here’s an example.

• SEE: Steel-blue Ford F-150 with mud streaks
• HEAR: squealing tires, high-pitched, lasted 3 seconds
• SMELL: burning rubber, contrasted with the smell of popcorn popping
• TOUCH: chilly wind
• TASTE: buttered, salted popcorn

Some senses will be harder than others depending on the situation. You may not have a smell or a taste. Think of TOUCH as temperature and texture. This isn’t emotional, such as “I felt scared.” It’s the actual physical sensation of touching something; it can also be the kinesthetic feel of moving through space. Also, search for great verbs for each sense: shivered in the chilly wind, tires squealed, dropped the slick popcorn bag, clapped greasy hands to my ears. For HEAR, try for Onomatopoeia, whenever you can.

Once you have the sensory information recorded (I call this a sensory details worksheet, the most important prewriting activity for a narrative, fictional or real), then use the information to write a paragraph or two. Add any information that occurs to you as you write and don’t feel compelled to use every detail. Just use what works.

A chill wind blew steadily and I hunched under my trench coat, crunching my popcorn, when suddenly, a steel-blue Ford F-150 sped down the road, just as the stop light turned yellow, then red. Wheeeeeeeee! The high-pitched squeal from the truck’s brakes blasted the quiet day. It stopped. Halfway through the intersection, but just short of a red Miata convertible, with a crazy driver who thought such a chilly day was a good day for driving around with the top down. No, the crazy driver was behind the wheel of the Ford.

Not great writing, maybe, but specific and detailed. That’s what you want when you do this exercise, practice your scales, write your 750 words.

Try it with me. Either on paper, computer or online at www.750words.com (it’s 3 typed double-spaced pages, if you do it offline). I’ll post prompts daily for 30 days as we Think Like a Writer and earn your first albatross!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Need to know how well your writing, editing and revisions are going? Here’s a variety of checklists to help you evaluate where you are in the writing process.

1. Checklist of 17 Character Qualities
2. 10 Checkpoints for a Scene
3. Style: Checklist For Fiction Writers
4. Editing Checklists for Story, Plot, Characters, Dialogue and more.
5. A Novel Writing Checklist
6. Story Plan Checklist
7. Synopsis Checklist
8. The DUMMIES Checklist for Writing a Novel and Getting it Published
9. The Checklist for Critiquing a Novel (Things to Look For)
10. Revision Checklist for Novelists
11. Writer’s Editing Checklist
12. The Expanded Power Revision Checklist

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Guest post by Carol Fisher Saller

Writing Eddie’s War, which consists of 76 prose-poem vignettes, wasn’t easy. I’ve chronicled elsewhere the trouble I got myself into by writing the scenes every which-way in random order without first outlining a plot or getting to know my characters. I’d think of a scene and write it—mostly little slices of life. Here’s a short one:

May 1939
Sarah Mulberry
In the first grade
she was Sam,
not even all that much
a girl.
Smile as wide as her feet were long,
feet made for puddle-jumping,
fence-hopping,
running from boys.
She could bat a ball and fling a cob
with the rest of us.
In junior high, though,
she became Sarah,
still flashing that smile,
but avoiding the cob fights.
Unless she was
provoked.

Sometimes I’d think of a new character and write a scene for him or her. Sometimes I’d build a scene around something that happened in the 1930s or 1940s, like the crash of the Hindenburg, or the invasion of Poland, or the movie Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This is a terrible way to write a book. But I did have a few characters who kept coming back to me, and two or three story lines that began to emerge. The character of Eddie started speaking in the first person. And I at least had some historical facts in the background that forced a measure of chronology.

And that’s when my group came up with the sentences. (Actually, as I remember it, I was the one who thought it up, and since I’m the one blogging here today, I’m sticking to that.)

The idea is to write a single sentence for each scene or chapter in your book. Include the main plot point and the name of every character who appears in a memorable way:

January 1934, Eddie learns to read newspapers at the library.
May 1937, Eddie and Thomas find some baby foxes and Dad tells them to kill them.
July 1938, Eddie and Gabe argue a moral point.
July 1938, Gabe becomes a hero when Curtis Ray falls out of the tree fort.
September 1938, Dad tells a story about an early experience with a shotgun.
September 1938, Eddie remembers Grampa Rob in the duck blind.
(and so forth)

My list took a couple of pages. Then, in order to see the organization more clearly, I used a different color to highlight each character’s name. (I didn’t color Eddie, since he’s in every scene.)

Plot with summary sentences.

• I put a * in front of any scene that included historical or farm-season facts, so I would be mindful of that when rearranging scenes.
• I put an H in front of scenes that had some humor so I could inject some into the dry spells.

My sentences were becoming an outline! Once I had an improved plot summary in front of me, I decided to make use of the character names in another way. From the sentences, it was easy to make a list of all the scenes a character was in. I called these threads:

• Sarah
• Junior High
• In the Ditch
• Typing Contest
• The Date
• The Hat

In the case of Sarah, by studying her thread along with the SENTENCES, and I could see that she was important but underwritten and that her scenes were clumped awkwardly. I saw that there was nothing about her early on, when she was small, and that I needed some scenes of tension between her and Eddie—I couldn’t let love run smooth!

I added plans of scenes to my list of sentences, like “November 1938: Toddler Sarah dazzles toddler Eddie,” and “May 1944: Sarah and Eddie, tense but funny; he tells her about Jozef.” I used square brackets [like this] to indicate scenes that weren’t written yet.

I have to say, it felt great to come to the laptop every morning and have an assignment waiting between those little brackets instead of just a churning feeling that I would never be able to finish the book. Quite honestly, I’ve never been drawn to writing exercises, but approaching my writing problem as one of organization, I surprised myself by finding that organization can lead to inspiration.

I’ll stop here, but if anyone has questions about this technique, I’d be happy to try to answer them. And if anyone would like to know more about Eddie’s War, I hope they’ll visit my website.

http://www.carolsaller.com
Carol Fisher Saller is a senior manuscript editor and assistant managing editor at the University of Chicago Press and editor of the Chicago Manual of Style Online’s Q&A. She has also worked as an editor of children’s books at Cricket Books (Carus Publishing) and has published several books for children. In addition to Eddie’s War, she is the author of The Subversive Copyeditor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself) (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and currently writes for the Lingua Franca blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Writing is rewriting

Guest post by Anastasia Suen

For years I have been saying that writing is rewriting, and now I have a book that shows it quite clearly, my new picture book, Road Work Ahead (Viking 2011).

This picture book is short, like most of my books. It’s only 120 words, but those words have been rewritten over and over again. Yes, this one has been a lo-o-o-ong time coming. I started this book when my son was 2…and now he’s 27!

Picture Book Inspiration

When my son was 2, he loved to look at all of the trucks and machines along the road, so I started snapping pictures for him. I made him a “look book” that later turned into a picture book. I loved the story in that book, so I sent it out to editors, but it kept coming back, over and over. Editors said they loved it, too, but it wasn’t quite ready. So I kept rewriting it and sending it out…and now 25 years later, it’s finally a book you can hold in your hand.

The 6 Ws of Story

So what made the difference? I used ALL of the 6 Ws this time. I made sure the story had who, what, when, where, why and how. Using all 6 Ws made it a story, not just a list of machines along the road. Stories sell, but lists…well, not so much.

New Beginning and Ending. After the story finally sold I thought it was ready to go, but my editor thought it needed something more. She asked me to write a new beginning and ending, so we knew why the little boy was on the road looking at all of the road work. That also added a who, by showing us the little boy before he got into the car.

So I added my mother and her famous homemade oatmeal cookies to the book. (We used to eat them right after they came out of the oven. Yum!) Driving to Grandma’s house for fresh, warm, homemade oatmeal cookies is definitely a reason to keep going despite all of the traffic delays due to the work along the road. And when you get to eat them at the end of the book, ah, sweet reward! Adding 2 short stanzas was all it took.

The change I made was used by the Publishers Weekly reviewer to describe the book.

“A batch of Grandma’s homemade oatmeal cookies beckons, but for this backseat narrator, the sights and sounds along the road to her house are equally compelling:
“Road work ahead./ Move over. Go slow./ Jackhammers crack./ Look at them go.’”

The text quoted in the review was the original beginning of the story. I had jumped too far into the action. What worked better was taking a few steps back and letting the reader know who the narrator was and why he was on the road in the first place.

Yes, writing is rewriting! (And a good editor makes ALL the difference. Thanks, Regina!)

For more on writing and revising picture books, see WriteaPictureBook.com

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Guest post by Dana Lynn Smith of The Savvy Book Marketer

• ATTEND the Random Acts of Publicity event on Facebook.
• Read the FAQ.

One of the most effective ways to help out an author is to write an endorsement, testimonial or review for their book. Here’s a brief description of each:

• Authors usually request endorsements (recommendations) from key influencers in their field or genre prior to publication and use these on the book cover, inside the book and on promotional materials.
• Testimonials are words of praise from readers who enjoyed a book and want to recommend it to others.
• Reviews are a little longer than testimonials and usually include more information about the content of the book and what the reviewer liked (or disliked) about it. Reviews can come from readers, colleagues, or professional book reviewers.

You can post your testimonials or reviews in online bookstores, on virtual reader communities like Goodreads and LibraryThing, or on your own blog if the book’s topic is a good fit for your audience. You can also post brief testimonials on social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

It’s important for reviews to sound authentic. One way to do that is to mention something specific that you liked about the book, or share a tip from a nonfiction book. If you are not sure quite what to say when writing a book review, study some good reviews for similar types of books and read this helpful article about how to write a book review by Nick Daws.

In addition to helping the authors of the books you review, you can gain exposure for yourself and your own books by doing reviews of books that appeal to your target audience. Novelists can review books in the same genre as their own, and nonfiction authors can review books that are similar, but not direct competitors of their own books. Here are some benefits of doing book reviews:

• Authors may promote your review on their social networks or blog, giving you exposure, or agree to review your book in return.
• Posting reviews on online bookstores like Amazon gives you visibility directly where people are shopping for books similar to yours.
• A book review that has been keyword optimized may attract visitors to your blog through online searches.
• You can even earn money from your book reviews by signing up for the author’s affiliate program (if they have one) or joining the Amazon Associates affiliate program.

When reviewing books, it’s important to avoid the appearance of being overtly promotional, and of course you don’t want to disparage your competitors. It’s possible to make subtle references such as these:

“As a thriller author myself, I really appreciated the twists and turns of the plot…”

“As a book marketing coach, I know how important social marketing is, and this book does a terrific job of explaining how to gain a following on Facebook.”

Mentioning the type of books that you write makes you look like an authority on the subject and gives your review more credibility. You can also sign your name at the bottom of the review, along with your book title, but some people think that is too promotional. Do NOT link to your own book when posting a book review on Amazon. It’s against their rules and it looks tacky.

Before you start writing reviews, be sure to update your Amazon “signature” on your personal profile. That signature will appear after your name at the top of each review that you post. You have about 25 characters to showcase your specialty, genre, or brand name. For example:

• Romantic suspense author
• Social marketing expert
• The Productivity Pro

Book reviews are a great way to help your fellow authors while helping yourself. Give it a try!

Excerpted from How to Get Your Book Reviewed, by Dana Lynn Smith. To learn more about book reviews, follow the virtual book tour for How to Get Your Book Reviewed.

Random Acts of Publicity Week was created by Darcy Pattison (www.darcypattison.com), writing teacher and author of Prairie Storms (www.facebook.com/PrairieStorms) , as a way to help create an atmosphere of fun and collaboration in marketing books. It occurs each September, the four days following Labor Day.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

2011 Random Acts of Publicity FAQ

• ATTEND the Random Acts of Publicity event on Facebook.
• Read the FAQ.

1. Who can participate?
   Anyone who wants to help a book get noticed by readers. We are focusing on helping a Friend’s book get noticed, but you can also choose to help your favorite book get noticed.
2. What do I do?
   BLLuRT or Post. Or both.
   • BLLuRT (http://bit.ly/RAoP2011). The basic tasks for book marketing online remain the same, BLLuRT! Do one of these each day for your Friend’s book or for your favorite book.
     1. B is for Blog. Blog about a book, the author or anything related.
     2. L is for Link. (http://bit.ly/RAP-Link) Link to something about the book, the author’s page, the book selling page, anything.
     3. L is for LIKE. (http://bit.ly/RAP-Like ) LIKE the book’s Facebook page, the author’s page. Or Add them to your Google+.
     4. R is for Review. (http://bit.ly/RAP-R ) Review a book. Some experts suggest that books tend to break out when they get over 25 reviews on Amazon, GoodReads or other booksites.
     5. T is for Tell or Talk. (http://bit.ly/RAP-T )Tell someone about a book. Your friend, a teacher, a librarian, anyone. Talk about the book—why did you like it? What excited you about this book? Why should I read it?
   • POST. It’s also a great week to post something about book marketing, perhaps a personal experience, a tutorial, a tips sheet or a case study of book marketing. Put the URL of your post in the Random Acts of Publicity Facebook page for others to read
3. What books should I talk about this week?
   Your Friend’s book or your favorite book. We are focusing especially on new books or less well-known books. Focus on a great book that not many readers know about.
4. Can Publishers participate?
   Yes, you can BLLuRT about books, too. We ask that you focus on mid-list or new authors, those who could benefit from a boost during Random Acts of Publicity week. We know it’s your job to BLLuRT about the front-list, that and much more; as an individual working in book publishing, though, we are asking that you champion a dark horse during Random Acts of Publicity Week.

Random Acts of Publicity Week was created by Darcy Pattison (www.darcypattison.com), writing teacher and author of Prairie Storms (www.facebook.com/PrairieStorms) , as a way to help create an atmosphere of fun and collaboration in marketing books. It occurs each September, the four days following Labor Day.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Novel Revision Retreat in a Book

This year, there are four debut novels coming out of the retreats and three so far for 2012. (BTW, I”m booking retreats now for 2012, email for details at darcy at darcypattison dot com.)

One reason to revise the workbook is that I’ve slowly added sessions to the retreat, especially a session on Scenes. I’ve written a series, 30 Days to a Stronger Scene and I see what a difference this attention to the details of creating a scene can make. I want to add some practical activities to the workbook on creating scenes.

I’ll also update the bibliography with new reference books. Any suggestions?

What else? What would you like to see in the revised version? What novel writing tasks would you like to have dissected, made visual, explained, doled out in parcels easy enough to understand and DO? I’d love your suggestions on how to make this the most practical and helpful workbook ever. Thanks for chiming in!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Scenes and Narrative Summary

While I’m working on ideas for a new novel, I’m also spending a couple hours a day revising an old one. For this revision, my goal is to make sure each scene is working. Some of the feedback I’ve gotten is that there’s still a bit too much Telling-instead-of-Showing. Sigh.

I agree. After reading the first 50 pages, I’ve found a couple muddy scenes and a couple long passages of narrative summary. So, what is narrative summary and when is it okay to use it? That’s what I’m struggling with this week.

Choosing the Right Scenes

Narrative summary. It is impossible to Show-don’t-Tell everything that happens in a story, it’s a matter of choosing where to zoom in. For example, the story of the 3 Little Pigs might include these scenes:

• Mom and Dad meeting
• Mom and Dad having that special moment
• Mom finding out she’s expecting
• The Delivery
• Multiple scenes from raising those Darling Pigs
• Decision Time: Should they send out DPs into the world or not?
• Telling the Pigs it’s time to grow up and leave home
• Pigs resisting change/excited about change
• Pigs walking out the front door
• Pigs scared of the Big Wide World
• Pigs meeting a Straw Peddlar
• and so on

What scenes do we choose to tell in detail and why those scenes?
The rest of it, we summarize or omit. Most tales of the 3 Little Pigs starts with the parents explaining that it’s time to move on. But you could back up and tell more. You could Show-Don’t-Tell those pigs in a fascinating scene in the kitchen right before Dad announces their adulthood. It could be a scene of characterization, Showing the relationship among the brothers, their attitudes toward Mom and Dad and the BWWorld and the Big Bad Wolf. It would be a great scene, setting up the action to come and foreshadowing their reactions.

But do we need it? Probably not. Certainly, the folk/fairy tale genre leaves it out because it mostly cares about roles in life, not full characterization.

Narrative summary: In The Scene Book, Sandra Scofield defines narrative summary like this:

“. . . that part of a story in which the author tells the reader what happened in a compressed form. Such a passage may summarize a day, a week, a season, a year, or whatever. Narrative summary is especially common in novels, when the author wants to cover a great deal of time economically. . .”

4 Ways to Deal with Narrative Summary

My story is a quest, with the characters embarking on a journey. I sure don’t want to cover the daily tedium of traveling, so I’ve used narrative summary. Appropriate. But too long. I have a couple options.

1. Omit or Edit Narrative Summaries. I’ll be looking to cut the narrative summaries from a page and a half to a mere half-page or less. What is the most important parts to convey and how can I do that economically?
2. Scene Cuts. http://www.darcypattison.com/revision/scene-11-scene-cuts/ I hope to find a couple places when I can just plain skip the summary and go straight to a new scene. It will mean some tricky transitions, but it should tighten the story and get rid of those clunky narrative summaries.
3. Dramatic Narration–Punch Up the Narrative Summary. They aren’t all bad, you know. I expect to keep some of the summaries nearly intact. After all, I need the reader the FEEL as if they, too, are on a long journey. Too many rapid scene cuts will make the story choppy and make it feel shorter. It will be a balancing act. However, when I do keep them, I’ll try to infuse the summary with a bit more drama, adding a scrap of dialogue, a touch of description. It will still be a compressed summary, but it will feel more active; I’ll still need to work to get to the next scene quickly. But it will serve the purpose of bridging two scenes in an exciting way.
4. Expand to a Full Scene. As I work through this revision, I may find a single sentence that really should be a full scene. There will need to be a compelling reason to expand it fully, but there will be multiple opportunities for this. For example, when the 3 Little Pigs meet the Straw Peddlar, it could be a full scene, taking up several pages, instead of the short scene we usually get.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Want to put YouTube videos on your Facebook?

ReelSeo has a couple tutorials for you:

• How to Add a Video to Your Facebook Welcome Page
• The Definitive List of Video Apps for Facebook Pages

Book Trailers: Is It Budget or Aesthetics that Matters?

On my sister-site, BookTrailerManual.com, I’m having a discussion with Melissa from YABookshelf about teen book trailers. What’s the most important thing in the success of a trailer? Is it the budget, how much you spend on the trailer? Or is it the idea, the aesthetics with which you approach the book trailer? Come and join the conversation.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win