Happy Holidays, Writers!

Here are some simple low-stress projects to keep you going. Just have fun with these!

Show-Don’t-Tell with Sensory

Go sit at a mall, beside a seasonal skating rink, at a holiday concert. Notice the sensory details of the setting, and write a short piece that incorporates your best Show-Don’t-Tell skills.

Dialogue Is NOT the Same as Real Talk

At that office party, neighborhood cook-out, or local basketball game, eavesdrop and focus on the authentic sounds of dialogue. If you can do it without looking creepy, take a notepad with you and jot down the exact words that people are saying. Transcribe it later and turn it into a short scene by studying how to change real speech into dialogue that matters. How can you use dialogue to imply information, emotions and relationships?

Play with Opening Lines

Print out this list of excellent opening lines. Over a several day period, take your Work-in-Progress and mimic each of the 12 types of opening lines. Try to write at least a dozen opening lines, but better, write 100 different opening lines for your story.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Debut Novel: Spreadsheets Used for Plotting and Revising a Novel

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

Trinity Faegen, THE MEPHISTO COVENANT, YA, Fall 2011

Revisions: Literary Fast Forward

Guest post by Trinity Faegen

Ironically, I’m writing this just after receiving the editorial letter and line edits on my first YA novel. The editor has an issue with my timeline and asked me to extend it.

How long is your story from beginning to end? A day? A week? A year? Mine is about a week, and he feels this is too short, that I need to extend it to ten days or even two weeks, but how can I lengthen the timeline without adding extraneous scenes that read like filler?

The answer is the literary equivalent of fast forward.

First, I’ll find one or more areas within the manuscript that are already transitional, such as the end of a scene that draws a subplot to conclusion, or one that ends a dramatic confrontation. I’m fortunate because one of my plot elements involves a character’s need for information, which can’t be had quickly. I will find a scene ending that lends itself to a lapse of dramatic action until things begin to happen again. I’ll add a few paragraphs to the beginning of the next scene, in the appropriate point of view, to let the reader know time has passed, but nothing happened off-screen. The characters ate, slept, went to school, lived their lives, until now, when we are picking up the pace again.

The paragraphs might read something like this:

“After her miserable first day at Telluride High, Sasha didn’t think it could get worse. She was wrong. As the lie Brett told about her spread, it morphed into something even he, in his twisted, pervy little mind, couldn’t have dreamed up. Not only did everyone believe she had sex on the Internet, they now thought she did it for money. She was like a leper, always alone, everyone avoiding her as if she was contagious.
By Friday, her fifth day in Hell, she’d had enough. Somehow, she had to turn the tables on Brett, and since she had not one single friend to help, she’d have to do it alone.
First period began like always, Mrs. Redmon calling on another victim to read from The Metamorphosis. Sasha could feel Brett’s eyes staring at her, knew he was smirking, smug and pleased with himself. She waited until….”

You get the idea. I’ve skipped ahead four days, in two paragraphs, segueing into this comeuppance scene where new drama will unfold. Sasha’s home life is also horrible, but I established this earlier in the story, so no need to cover it again. Even though I don’t mention it, the reader can intuit that her nights were as dreary as her days during the time we just skipped over.

When revising, literary fast forward isn’t difficult, but it’s important not to fall into the trap of telling, not showing. A little bit of exposition goes a long way. Just make sure all you’ve skipped showing is the passage of time.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Replace Abstractions with Concrete Detail!

Guest post by Geoff Herbach

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

What’s wrong with this passage?

Bobby was such a nice boy. He would help people who needed to be helped. But something wasn’t right. Bobby felt sad everyday of his life.

It’s dead. You can’t see, feel, or smell it. It’s all tell, no show. What makes the passage that way? Abstractions!

In writing, abstractions are words that symbolize a notion. For instance, in the passage above, what does nice mean? What does helped mean? What does sad mean? Abstract is good in math (math describes reality using symbols, which are by nature abstract). Abstraction can be really cool in visual art. Check out Mondrian’s work Broadway Boogie Woogie, a series of lines and blocks of color meant to represent Midtown Manhattan. You get a different idea of Manhattan through abstraction. Abstraction does not work in writing, though!

Mondrain: Broadway Boogie Woogie, Low-res used under Fair Use

You might have had an English teacher or writing instructor ask you to “show” not “tell”. Often they’re asking you to replace your abstractions with concrete detail.

Reading should be a visceral experience. You should feel it in your guts. If I say I am nice, do you know what nice really means? No way! You can’t see it, feel it, or smell it. If I say every morning I get up at the cold crack of dawn, roll out of my warm covers so I can trek three miles to my disabled grandma’s house to help her make breakfast, do you know what nice means? Oh yeah. You can see and feel it.

Circle Abstractions. When I am revising my work, one of my steps is to go through the manuscript and circle every one of my abstractions. After I do that, I’ll think about each instance and decide if the abstraction serves the story or takes away from the reader’s ability to “see” what I mean. Almost always I’ll replace the abstraction (showing what nice means) with concrete details like getting up at the cold crack of dawn or making breakfast for my grandma.

If I replace every abstraction in that initial passage, I get this:

Every morning Bobby woke up at 5 am so he could cross the wide street in front of his house and serve Old Lady Grisham a breakfast of poached eggs and apple smoked bacon before he left for classes at Golden Prairie High. Still, even though his parents hugged and smiled at each other every time they looked at Bobby – they were so proud, each morning that spring, in first hour English, Bobby’s stomach twisted and his face reddened and he excused himself and went to the bathroom to talk himself out of crying.

Now the passage is alive. Abstractions are replaced with concrete detail that shows who your character is, where your character exists, and how your character is nice, helpful, and also sad. What an easy trick!

So, as one of your revision steps, make sure you locate where you use abstractions, and consider replacing them with concrete details!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Setting: “Where am I? And why should I care?”

Where are we? Lake Michigan, January 1 for the Polar Bear Plunge

The Importance of Sensory Details

Almost everything you’ll need to know about setting and description can be encapsulated in a single exercise about using sensory details. Let’s go over the exercise first, then see how it applies.

Before you start to write a scene, it’s helpful to stop and think about the sensory details of the situation. That is, what would your character see, hear, smell, taste or feel? Using the senses is self-explanatory, except the feeling sense, where you want to emphasize temperature and texture, or the kinesthetics of how it feels for this character to move in space.

I like to stop, close my eyes and imagine that I’m the character – a young girl, and that I’m at the opening of a cave about to go in.

• See: Moss clinging to the rock overhead, water oozing/trickling over rock, a slow dimming of light until it’s just darkness in the distance
• Hear: water dripping, heart thumping with fear
• Taste: damp air, musty air
• Smell: musty air, onion-stink of sweat
• Touch: slippery rock, uneven path, sweaty palms, a cool breeze from the cave, rocking back and forth from heel to toe

Once I have the details firmly in mind, I start to write:

I hesitated, my heart thumping, at the boundary between light and dark. From the overhead clumps of moss, cold drops plopped into my hair, a water clock ticking away the precious seconds. The musty smell, was it from bats? Or was there something more sinister in this cave?

I don’t worry about using all the sensory details I wrote down in the exercise, and I rearrange them or add to them as I write. What I’ve accomplished, though, in 46 words is to tell the reader where we are: at a cave opening, in a fearful place, under a time constraint, at a crossing point and maybe a point of no return.

Sensory details are the basis of active fiction that puts the reader directly into a story. David Morrell, author of the book about Rambo entitled, First Blood, and over 30 other thrillers, says he tries to anchor every scene with details from at least three different senses. This grounds the fiction in our common experience as humans: it is through our senses that we encounter and understand our world.

You can easily evaluate how well you’re doing on using a variety of senses. Assign a color to each of the senses, then use markers to highlight the sensory details you used in a section of your story. Often, writers tend to use one sense more than the others. If you’re a visual learner, you may include great visual details, but few auditory details. If you’re an auditory learner, you may emphasize sounds to the exclusion of visual details. Everyone struggles with smell and taste. It partly depends on the setting of your story whether there are any appropriate smells or tastes. Certainly, a Christmas banquet would allow for a deeper exploration of these senses. But even in our cave setting there were some smells and tastes. Push to find these, because they’ll add richness and evoke strong memories in your readers. Think of the smell of cinnamon at Christmas.

Everyone should add more touch details, it’s a neglected sense. Kinesthetic details are usually translated into strong verbs, for example: She swung her arms in a wide circle.

Your characters are moving around, doing things, reacting to things and you should search for strong verbs to express this action. In the cave paragraph, what if I reworded the opening a bit?

My toe caught a rock and I stumbled, catching myself against the slimy wall. My heart thumped. I was at the boundary of light and dark.

A final tip in using this exercise is to be as specific as possible.

• Poor visual detail: a dog
• Better visual detail: a pit bull

Once you have a specific noun, then you can add modifiers – and not before.

• Poor use of modifiers: a scary dog
• Better use of modifiers: a scarred pit bull that limped

It works for verbs, too. Choose specific, precise verbs.
<

li>Poor verb choice: Water fell onto my head.
• Better verb choice: Water plopped onto my head.

Once the verb is specific, then you can add modifiers – and not before.

• Poor use of adverbs: Water fell quickly onto my head.
• Better use of adverbs: Water plopped rhythmically onto my head.

SENSORY DETAILS CHANGE WHEN THE SETTING CHANGES

The sensory detail exercise is flexible and allows a writer to quickly orient readers to a variety of settings.

1. Specific Location
   A friend was writing a story about a school in Barrow, Alaska. The school itself wasn’t a problem, the story put me inside a school building. But that school could have been picked up and set down in Hawaii or Arkansas. When she rewrote the story, a student looked out the window toward the sea. She wrote something like this:

   Jagged stalagtites of ice hugged the shoreline, marking where the ice floes slammed against the shore.

2. strong>Time of Day
   Often, a story starts and we have no idea of the time of day, or even the season of the year. Another friend was writing a story about an estranged couple. For various reasons, it was important that the story was set in December. Yet, there were no Christmas decorations, no Christmas music playing at the stores they entered, no discussion of holiday celebrations or parties. In short, it could have been any time of year. When he added in the Christmas details, the story became more poignant as this usually happy time of year counter-pointed the breakup of the marriage.
3. Historical time period.
   What if you wanted to immediately tell show-don’t-tell that we are in Medieval France, about to enter a cave? The actions can be almost the same, but it’s the selection of details that will change. In addition to the details above, I might add these.
   • See: homespun robes, torch made from rags soaked in pitch
   • Hear: melodic voices with French accent or occasional French word, hiss of torch
   • Taste: rough country food
   • Smell: (can’t think of anything different for smell)
   • Touch: the flap of rough homespun fabric on her knees

   Very little has changed here, except the homespun robe, torch and occasional French words. But the reader needs to know immediately that we’re in Medieval France, not in contemporary America.

   I hesitated, my heart thumping, at the boundary between light and dark. Fumbling with my pouch, I pulled out my flint and struck a spark. Would it light? Oui, just so. The torch sputtered, then flared. From overhead, cold water plopped into my hair, reminding me of my hours in the dungeons under Bordeax castle. The pungent torch hissed, an insistent whisper: time was running out. The musty smell, was it from bats? Or was there something more sinister in this cave?

   The language needs more work to give it a French flavor, but you can see how the torch and the brief hint of a castle and a dungeon adds orientation. Notice that the homespun robe didn’t get in there and that’s fine. The exercise of listing sensory details is meant to jumpstart ideas and to give you choices; it’s not a taskmaster.

4. Phase of the relationship
   If your opening involves dialogue or characters meeting, one orientation for the reader is a hint of the relationship.

   Let’s give our cave visitor a friend:

   I hesitated, my heart thumping, at the boundary between light and dark. Luc fumbling with his pouch, pulling out a flint. His eyebrows lifted in a familiar gesture. I nodded and he struck a spark. My tar-soaked torch flamed brightly. From the overhead, cold water plopped into my hair, reminding me of my hours in the dungeons under Bordeax castle. The pungent torch hissed, an insistent whisper: time was running out. Luc slipped his hand in mind and squeezed. The rough callouses, his strength–they reassured me. Together, we took a step toward the dark. The musty smell, was it from bats? Or was there something more sinister in this cave?

   Luc is familiar, he takes her hand easily and it reassures her.

5. Emotional setting, or mood
   Finally, you can completely change the mood of a piece by the selection of sensory details.

   I hesitated, my heart thumping, at the boundary between light and dark. Luc struck a spark and my tar-soaked torch flamed, casting a merry yellow circle. From the glossy moss overhead, cool water trickled into my hair, refreshing after the day’s heat. The pungent torch sizzled, a reminder of the castle feast to come this evening. Luc slipped his hand in mind and squeezed. The rough callouses, his strength–they enticed me. I tugged him, almost skipping forward in anticipation.

   The mood now is one of anticipation, not dread. Notice the different details: the torch flames instead of sputters; the glossy moss, instead of overhead clumps of moss; and so on.

   You can change the mood entirely by your choice of sensory details. Notice, too, that these changes are often reflected in the verb choices: cool water trickled instead of cold water plopped; the torch sizzled instead of the torch hissed; and so on.

Purple Prose: Don’t Overdo Your Details

Can you go to far with this idea? Of course. The famous example is Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s opening sentence from Paul Clifford, written in 1830.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

It accomplishes the purpose. We know that it’s night, it’s stormy, that we’re in London, the lamps suggest a previous historical time period. However, most agree that this is overwritten. In practice, I find that few writers give enough detail and should push toward more. But if you get to this level, you may want to back off a bit.

When you open a story, you must answer the question, “Why should I care?” within the first couple hundred words. But don’t forget to orient the reader, too. “Where am I?” can easily be developed by the right choice of sensory details. Don’t forget to re-orient the reader when a setting changes or at the opening of every chapter.

OPENINGS TO STUDY:

Read each famous opening below (100 Best Lines from Novels http://www.darcypattison.com/revision/opening-lines/ ) and think about the questions, “Where am I?” and “Why should I care?” Does the author accomplish one or both in this opening sentence? Are sensory details used or not?

In the examples above, I used a variety of sensory details to make a point. Here, it’s clear that often it’s the choice of a single sensory detail, a single word that makes the difference.

1. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust, 1948
2. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, 1963.
3. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts, 1933.
4. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922.
5. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, 1966.
6. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled. William Gaddis, J R, 1975.
7. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984.
8. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage, 1895.
9. Psychics can see the color of time, it’s blue. Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away, 1986.
10. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, 1900.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Develop Your Character Inside and Outside

I’m working on a revision of an older story and am finding that my character is flat, lacking emotion.

Here’s what should happen: action, reaction, thought and/or emotion.
Here’s what is happening: action, reaction.

Of course, there’s lots of variation and times when either might be appropriate. But overwhelming, I’m finding that I try to imply the emotion by the reaction, but it’s not always working.

There’s this tension in writing between Telling and Show-don’t-Tell.

Telling

The tendency is to tell: he was upset.
This type storytelling was popular before the invention of the modern novel, when storytellers created as much by their own voice and body language as anything.

The storytelling mode allows you to tell something and leave it at that. Listeners expected little else.

Show-don’t-Tell.

But with the novel, we are able to delve deeply into a characters thoughts, emotions, psyche. That’s why novels will never be replaced by film, because you can’t go deeply inside a character in any other way. Telling may still be used in bits and pieces, to summarize unimportant parts of the story.

But now, we expect thought and emotions to be forefront. Even more than that, though, we expect novels to be full of action and for that action to demonstrate the emotion/thought, so there isn’t so much telling going on.

Novels, then, go deeper into story by delving into the thought and emotions of a character; but also, by demonstrating those thoughts and emotions with concrete actions. It’s the concrete actions that create the Show-don’t-tell parts of storytelling.

Full Zoom: Inside and Outside

One way to think about it is that a scene is where the “narrative camera of words” zooms in. You get the full sensory details of the story situation and full details of character emotions/thoughts. In other words, the inside and outside of the story are in full zoom.

For sensory details, you must fully imagine being the character in this situation and what they would see, hear, smell, touch and taste. For emotions, we should know intimately what s/he is going through.

For me, it’s not Show-don’t-Tell; instead, I like Show-then-tell-some.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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When you revise your novel or story do you look at what you wrote before or start totally from scratch?

Revise Previous Text

Usually, I’ll work with the text that I already have written. The idea here is that I’m close, but it isn’t quite there yet. In this case, I’m refining the text and story as I go. The story gets minor improvements in specificity with more Show-don’t-Tell sensory details. Or, the pace is quickened or varied more. The text itself is revised to eliminate extraneous words, while listening carefully for the rhythms of the paragraphs, the exactness of word choice — in short, for voice.

Searching for Someone

Keep the Idea, but not the Words

The revision I’m doing currently is a drastic revision of a story. A reader liked my story line, but not the voice of the piece. I’m not sure I agree that the voice is in need of improvement. But I’m always willing to experiment.

In this case, I’ve written out one sentence for each major scene. Now I’ll put away the old draft and re-envision the story. I’ll start by writing ten different openings. Hopefully, number six or seven or eight or so will jump start a totally new voice. I also expect the story itself to change, because voice dictates so much about pacing and events in a story. But it’s a good place to start. I also expect to do a good many of the previous kind of revision before this story comes together with its new voice.

Of the two, I think the hardest revision is to keep the idea and search for a new voice, a new way of telling the story. But all writing is a risk. Who knows if this new approach will work? But ya gotta try.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Guest blogger, Joni Sensel writes about cutting her story so much that two books became one. I read an ARC of this new book and loved it — the novel revisions worked!

Why Cut Out Important Parts of a Novel?

Originally I thought my new middle-grade adventure, THE FARWALKER’S QUEST, would be two books of a trilogy, in part because the first draft was 121,000 words.

Cut out 20,000 words. Nope. Among my agent’s earliest feedback was that I needed to combine the two halves, prop up sags, and try to get it under 100,000 words. Once I managed that, my editor wanted it trimmed even farther. The final book is just under 93,000 words. Though I wouldn’t have thought it possible when I started, I cut more than 20% from the original and upped the pace considerably. In the process, I learned to rely on several techniques that go beyond the standard advice to slash adverbs or use one perfect description rather than three. Even if you’re not as long-winded as I am, cutting virtually always increases pace, and few stories suffer from too fast a pace.

6 Techniques for Cutting a Novel’s Length

• Use chapter breaks. What can you leave out between chapters? THE MARK OF THE HORSELORD by Rosemary Sutcliff taught me a huge lesson. This favorite of mine makes huge leaps in story time between the end of one chapter and the start of the next. In some cases, she left out things I wanted to see. (But did I need to see them? Obviously not.) Generally, it worked well and kept the action hopping. I think we tend to live with our characters minute by minute, but readers only need the relevant moments. Examine your manuscript with the big picture and key events in mind, and give your readers credit for being able to make accurate assumptions about what happens in the interim. This approach helped me cut some of the travel with my characters from one plot point, mood, or physical location to the next.
• Similarly, rethink scene transitions. My favorite screenwriting trick is to start scenes later and leave them sooner. Readers will correctly assume the mundane things that happened before or after the good (unexpected) stuff. For instance, if we know the main character plans to or is headed to visit another, that scene can begin with an important line of dialogue from the middle of their conversation instead of the arrival and broaching of the subject. You’ll still need transitions, of course, but you can cut significantly this way.
• Streamline action details. Particularly in scenes of physical action — for instance, a scene in which Ariel has a knife at her throat — I have a tendency to imagine and write what’s happening in great detail because I don’t want the reader confused. But with prodding, I’ve realized that sometimes, details obscure. A firm suggestion to shorten the scene often reveals that I’m telling the reader things they’d assume anyway. When those details are removed, the action feels more intense because the whole scene moves faster.
• Remove dialogue attributions (“he said”) in favor of action lines that, if not already there, are often not far away and can be moved. For instance, “Scarl!” Ariel called. He looked up. She ran forward.” can become “Scarl!” Ariel ran forward. Attributions for longer lines of dialogue can be less obvious but just as easy to cut. They add up.
• It can be okay to tell. Both editors I’ve worked with have told me, in essence, “Sometimes I wish ‘show, don’t tell,’ had never been invented.” Writers who have already learned to do a good job of showing can save words by occasionally telling. Choose judiciously. Sometimes, Ariel didn’t need to have her skin go clammy and the nape of her neck prickle — she could just be scared.
• Do multiple passes. Even after I think I’ve squeezed out every spare word, I still see more I can live without. Would I prefer to keep that word or line? Sometimes, yes, but I choose my battles. Other times I can see immediately that shorter is sweeter. The reward has been readers who have told me my books were page-turners. Hearing those words makes it worth cutting a few thousand others.

— Joni Sensel

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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On my WIP, I’m closing in on Act 3 of writing my novel and heading into the home stretch. This first draft, I’m focusing on the scene structure.

So, yesterday, I made notes about the scenes needed to finish the story. This is different from writing a synopsis of the story.

Differences in Synopsis and Scene Layout

A synopsis tells the story in a condensed form. But scenes are the actual events that will be used to flesh out the story.

For example, if you write the story of the Three Little Pigs, you could start at the beginning: a momma pig and a poppa pig have triplets. Starting from there, you could tell a long, convoluted story up to the point of outwitting the Big Bad Wolf.

Using scenes, however, forces you to decide what events are important, visual, exciting, dramatic. Writing a novel isn’t just about telling a story; it’s about telling a story in the most dramatic way possible to make an impact on the reader.

So, yesterday, I knew the rest of the story. But I tried to decide which parts were important enough to give over to an entire scene and which could be left to narrative summaries.

Criteria for Choosing Scenes to Include in Your Novel:

• Which events would connect with readers best?
• Which events have the most emotional power?
• Which events have the most visual interest?
• Which events BEST advance the action and SHOW what is going on with the characters’ lives?

Today, I’ll look over the list and reevaluate again. And then start writing the final scenes! Hurrah!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Western Washington SCBWI Retreat: Voice

The retreat was great. There were about 40-45 people there and they were split into two groups. Group A came to me, while Group B went to Patti Gauch, then we swapped for the same presentation again. I sorta knew how Patti would approach voice (and I might have done many of the same things if she hadn’t been there), so I deliberately took a different tack and I think it enriched the experience for the participants. Then, I did a short intro to writing with scenes, more a reminder that this is an option than an indepth study.

The Alderbrook Resort was a great venue, right on the Hood Canal. From the restaurant, you could see a small stream feeding into the canal and we watched salmon swimming up the stream to spawn. Wow! Amazing to this land-locked Arkansan!

Thanks to Jolie Steckly and Sara Easterly for a fabulous job putting this together. (And to Sara’s new daughter, Violet Grace, for giving great cuddles.) And of course, thanks to Jamie Temairik, their assistant and fabulous illustrator.

And Thanks to all those who attended and inspired me with their energy, love of words and attention to detail!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

NaNoWriMo is in full swing! That means over 50,000 writers are slugging out 50,000 words, working on the first draft of a novel, in the 30 days of November. But I’m thinking ahead to December when that first rough draft needs revision. Here are 3 things to keep in mind as you’re writing that first draft, so you make your life easier later.

• Character bible. Either open a new file, or keep a notebook beside your computer to keep track of character particulars. Does the character have blue eyes and red hair in the first chapter? You’ll make life easier if you jot this down, so you can keep track of it. Of course, you may want to totally change that in revisions, but a character “bible,” will help you know what you’ve got.
• Timeline. Every time you type a time word, make it bold. This will help later as you scan for bold (or red or underlined or whatever you want) to see if you can straighten up the time line.
• Voice. Take the liberty of writing different chapters in different voices. No revisions allowed until December, so this is a time where you can play as you get the story line down on paper. You could try three or four different voices as you write, and by December, one will emerge as the strongest, most interesting. Word count is important, yes, but so is the spirit of exploration.

And when you’re ready to revise, come back for more tips!
Good luck! Write fast!

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