Powers Most Super

On a long car drive back from New York this weekend, my older daughter asked my husband and I what we thought were some of the coolest fictional powers we’d seen in books, TV, comics, etc. (This is, by the way, an awesome way to make about half an hour pass without noticing.)

The conversation segued to me giving a rundown of some of the powers the various major characters have in my WIP fantasy YA, along with a brief summary of each character’s core conflict (because for some of them, their powers are inseparable from their conflict). When I was done running through them, my younger daughter asked, “Wait, are you talking about your book, Mommy?”

Yes, I said, this is the book I’m working on now. Why?

“I thought it was a professional book!”

My husband and eldest made “Ouch!” noises, but hey, I take it as a compliment. 🙂

My takeaway from the larger conversation, however, is that a lot of the time what we thought was so cool about the fictional powers we liked best was not the power itself, but how the author handled it.

They had the characters using their powers in an intelligent way, coming up with clever applications to deal with tough situations. They had considered and shown the impact of that power on the character, the people around them, and on society at large. Or they had wound the character’s power into their own inner or external conflict in some way, making it a problem as much as a solution.

And that was what made it so interesting. Not the design of the power itself (and certainly not its apparent magnitude), but how it played out in the story.

Using Setting to Establish Character in the First Page

I’ve been working on a multi-POV novel lately, and I’ve had to introduce several new viewpoint characters. I’m discovering that one of my favorite ways to quickly immerse readers in each new character is through the setting.

The great thing about this trick is that your words can do double duty. When you introduce a new viewpoint character (right on the first page of the book, if your book only has one POV), you’re often also introducing a new setting. By showing the setting through the character’s eyes—showing their reactions to it, opinions of it, how it makes them feel—you can create a strong mood through setting while simultaneously revealing things about your character. You can ground your readers quickly and efficiently, right at the start of the book, giving them what they need to orient and immerse themselves.

For instance, let’s say your first scene is on a busy city street. Rather than describing your setting through tired, generic “city bustle” description, or by Googling the particular intersection in the exact city and faithfully noting real world details you could observe there, show us how your character feels about being there. What do they notice? What do they focus on?

A jaded city native heading to work might complain about annoying tourists jamming up sidewalk traffic, avoid a panhandler she sees on the same corner every morning, or weigh the benefits of grabbing a coffee and bagel against the risk of missing her train. She isn’t going to gawk at city landmarks or be overwhelmed by the sights and sounds—but this is a great chance to let us glimpse her routine (before you disrupt it forever, naturally). Is that routine sacred to her, and does she cherish the little fussy details of it, chafing at any disruption? Or is it frustrating, and is she glancing longingly at the planes overhead, wishing she were on her way to Hawaii?

A kid coming to the city for the first time with his parents might see totally different things. He could be focused on not letting his ice cream cone drip as he walks, or stare at bird poop on the arch of a street light, or be riveted by street performers or purse dogs. He might be excited to be in the city, trying to tug ahead of his parents and check everything out; or he might be nervous and overwhelmed, clinging close.

If you’re writing in 1st person or even a close 3rd person POV, you can give us snatches of their internal monologue, too—a character who’s critiquing the fashion choices of passerby is very different than one dreaming of how she’d sketch them, or thinking how easy they would be to kill. A character faced with a closed subway entrance might dither primly, cuss angrily, or accept it as yet another thing gone wrong in their pathetic life with a morose sigh.

Taking a moment to focus on setting can be a great way to establish character, voice, and setting all in a mere paragraph or so. It can vividly ground your reader and pull them into the story, rather than leaving them flailing around looking for handholds (a danger of starting with action or dialogue). You can even weave character goals through the setting, letting it be an obstacle or an aid to what the viewpoint character is trying to accomplish.

It’s worth focusing your character’s lenses on what’s around them on that first page, even if just for a moment. Give your reader a place to stand and let them see who’s standing there with them. Then take off running.

The Power of Story

January was a rough month for my family health-wise—nothing serious, but an assortment of plagues that left everyone exhausted and uncomfortable.

To console and distract my sick kids, I started re-reading them Harry Potter. Even though they’re old enough to read the books just fine on their own, cuddling together and reading them aloud for hours on end was lovely (though I needed a lot of tea to get through hours of Hagrid voice with a cold).

Rewind to a couple years ago, when my eldest daughter got her first migraine. Lying in her bed in the dark waiting for the pain to go away, she was frustrated more than anything at having nothing to do. So I grabbed a book light and opened up a new book: Anne Nesbet’s wonderful The Cabinet of Earths. This book is perfect to read in the dark, with lovely language building a slow sense of dread and wonder. By the end of the first chapter, my daughter’s migraine was forgotten, and what could have been a miserable experience turned into a magical one as we continued to read in the dark together, words building mystery around us.

This is the power of story. To make us forget pain, and to transform a foul and miserable day into a warm and cherished memory. This is why I write.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Last year was crazy busy in real life, and a roller coaster for our family. For my writing life, however, it was the Year of Revision. While I did new writing too, of course, I think it’s safe to say I did more revising in 2015 than in any previous year in my writing career. And let me tell you, I learned a lot.

I also had the pleasure of judging and/or mentoring in a couple of contests, and it was great fun. I learned a lot from that, too—seriously, nothing will teach you about getting stakes, voice, and dramatic tension on the page better than critiquing a couple dozen solid first pages & queries—and I got a sneak peek at some really neat stories I hope to see on bookshelves someday.

Looking ahead into 2016 (or the rest of it, at any rate), I’ve got some fun stuff coming up. I’m restarting my current WIP, and am very excited about the character and story insights I’ve had that prompted me to restart. I’m hoping to volunteer for more contests and do more critique giveaways to give back to the awesome writing community. I’m also planning to carve out more time for reading—with work, kids, and writing eating up my day, it’s hard to keep up with my TBR pile (it doesn’t help that there are SO MANY SHINY WONDERFUL BOOKS that I have to keep adding to it).

Best wishes to all of you on your current projects, whatever they may be! May 2016 be a fantastic year for creativity and creative people.

Thanksgiving Post

Thanksgiving is here, so it’s time for some gratitude! I’m thankful for a ton of stuff in my life, of course, but here are some things I’m thankful for as a writer:

A husband who supports my writing career and understands the time it takes.

Kids who totally have my back, including an eldest who beta-reads for me.

Amazing CPs and beta readers who give truly insightful and useful feedback.

A writing community that never ceases to be incredibly supportive and full of deep wisdom and awesomeness.

An agent who totally GETS my writing, suggests brilliant edits, is both professional and easy to talk to, and is an all-around fantastic champion.

Writing can be a lonely muse, but WOW is it better and easier and plain more successful when you have awesome people backing you up. I am so glad to have all of you. Thank you.

When to Trunk?

The horrible thing about being a writer is that rejection is, plain and simple, part of the business. There’s no way around it. You are going to get rejected. And unless you are one stone-cold badass, it’s going to hurt to at least some degree every time.

Learning to shrug it off and move on is a critical skill, but like an action hero, you’re going to at least wince briefly when you pull the bullet out of your shoulder before you jump back into the fray, literary guns blazing.

After you’ve taken a lot of those hits, eventually the question begins to haunt you: is this ms too full of rejection bullet holes? Should I trunk it?

This is a dangerous question. It can undermine your confidence. It can lead you to chase your tail in an ouroboros of revisions that don’t improve your book, until you’ve devoured everything that was good about it. It can drive you to give up on a book too early, when it could have scored you an agent with one more solid revision pass, a better query, or even just a bit more perseverance. And because we know those potential consequences, this can be a paralyzing and terrifying dilemma.

Well, fear no more! I’m here to give you a simple answer to this question that applies 95% of the time.

  • Always be working on the next book.
  • When the next book is better than this one, query that instead.
  • Until the next book is better, keep revising and querying the old book.

Ta dah! There you go. Problem solved.

So next time you get a bunch of rejections without a matching bunch of requests, stop and assess. Is this book you’re querying still your best work? If not, query the one that is. That’s a no brainer.

If it is still your best, and your WIP isn’t ready yet, then take some time to revise and improve this ms before sending out more queries. Get feedback if you’re not sure how to improve it. Remember, it can always be better… even your shiniest, newest, most awesome book can always be better. It’s absolutely worth the time to make it that way. Don’t trunk a book out of despair after a few rejections, or even 50 rejections. If you figure out why it’s getting rejected, you can probably fix that. Not only will your book get better, but you’ll become a better writer by doing the work.

But if you have another book that’s already better, for sure, and not just because it’s new and you have a new book crush, switch your focus to that. You’re not abandoning the old book; you’re just putting your best and most ready book out there, because why would you ever NOT do that?

If you’re not working on a new book, you should be. It’s the perpetual hope at the bottom of the Pandora’s box of publishing. And it’s what makes you a writer.

Writing Time

Time is a tricky thing. I’ve had lots of friends ask me how I find the time to write, as a mom with a day job and various other commitments and responsibilities.

The answer has always been simple: sacrifices. There are so many hours in a day. If you’re serious about writing, that writing time has to come from somewhere. Work, sleep, time with family, relaxation time—every writer is giving something up to bring their stories into the world.

I’ve promised myself not to sacrifice family time. Work and sleep sometimes take hits, but I try to take their claims on my day seriously. I mostly don’t watch TV anymore—that was an easy thing to give up compared to the other options, though sometimes I hear about a really awesome show and have regrets. (Someday, like when my kids go off to college or I retire, I am going to have a hell of a catch up TV marathon.)

I have my routine, and have usually fit in writing in the evenings, before bed, plus whatever other hours I can steal throughout the day. This Fall, a new school schedule for my kids has taken away that evening time (I have to get to bed earlier), and I’m working on forging new habits, carving out a new inviolate writing time I can count on every day.

There will be new sacrifices, no doubt. But that’s okay. Everything worth having costs something. Stories are no exception.

Top Ten Best Things About Having an Agent

Ever wondered what it’s like being an agented writer? Well, in the spirit of David Letterman, I’m here to tell you the top ten best things about it.

10. Finally have something to put on author web page

9. Sound like a pretentious ass when you say “my agent” at parties

8. 15% discount at participating Starbucks

7. Someone awesome has your back in case you’re attacked by hungry bears

6. Eligible to judge pitch contests instead of working on your WIP

5. High-tech gadgets from Q

4. Learn secret Agented Author Handshake: shake, mysterious smile, then uncontrollable sobbing

3. Access to “Agented Writers Only” bathrooms at airport

2. Only need to be neurotic about emails from one specific person

1. Now that you’ve finally climbed that hill, can see 9328 more goddamn hills

Setting Ain’t Nothing Without Character

A while back, I was writing a scene set in New York, and it was no good. I’d put in all these little details I’d actually seen in New York myself, and I’d used the internet to double check everything I remembered, and made heavy use of Google Maps… but it still didn’t seem like New York. I couldn’t figure out why.

Then it hit me. New York City isn’t just a collection of details—even carefully-chosen, evocative details. It’s a feeling. And that feeling is different from person to person. It’s a completely different place for my brother (who lives there and loves it) than it is for me (who only visits and is a bit of a country mouse). The same street might be vibrant and exciting to one person, overwhelming and intimidating to another, or full of daily nuisance and utility to a third.

What I needed to capture wasn’t some quintessential, factual, accurate New York. I needed to evoke how New York felt to that particular character at that particular time.

Here’s another example. I like fantasy, and one setting piece you see all the time in fantasy is the Market Scene. We’re going to the market, or riding through the market in a new city, and now we must stop and tell you all the sounds, sights, and smells of the market. There will be people, food odors, and nasty odors. There will be garbage and various exciting things to buy (though we’re actually not going to stop and buy them right now). There will be yelling and maybe a scuffle somewhere.

Far too often, all these markets blend together into one generic ur-market, no matter how lovingly the author describes the exotic spices in the air. And that’s because they’re trying to describe the market from some neutral, external perspective.

Nobody just goes to a market and looks around passively and drinks in the sights, right? If you’re trying to pass through because you don’t know the city well enough to avoid a high-traffic area on your way to the castle, you’re not going to be sniffing the air and admiring the colorful costumes, you’re going to be cussing about the crowds. If you’re scared and running from the authorities, you’re going to see everything in terms of hazard or safety: witnesses, cover, distractions. If you’re a little kid, you’re going to fixate on this one marionette at a toy-seller’s booth and not think about anything else until someone drags you away kicking and screaming.

I’ve often heard the excellent writing advice that you should select details to describe based on what your character would notice, since how they see the world tells us a lot about them. The converse is also true: you can only truly show us a place when you show it through the eyes of a character, with all the emotions and associations that character invests in it.

On Letting Characters Be Smart

Last night I was reading a good book, quite absorbed as it ramped up toward the climax, when certain telltale signs began to appear.

“Aaaand here’s the part where we fail to share crucial information for no good reason,” I thought. And sure enough, there it was.

Now, this was a great book I really enjoyed, and it wasn’t so glaring a failure of motivation that it spoiled things for me. But it got me thinking about all the classic cases of authors making characters do dumb things to drive the plot along: not sharing important information, making bad decisions, trusting people who are obviously evil, not figuring out things that are glaringly obvious to the reader… all writing sins of which I’m not innocent, mind you, and easy traps to fall into.

Of course, characters can and should do dumb things when it makes sense for them to do so. If characters never made mistakes or bad choices, what would we write about? But their errors need to spring from the character’s particular flaws or the forces that drive them—or at least from a plausible moment of confusion, panic, or weakness. Not solely from the author’s desire to push the plot in a certain direction.

The thing is, most of the time The Dumb isn’t even necessary. In the book I was reading last night, the character really didn’t need to hold back the key information to make the plot work. The problems she was facing were big enough that the people she could have told couldn’t have fixed them, and the plot could have played out pretty much the same. There was no reason not to let her be smart.

Some of my favorite books feature characters who are smarter than me about the plot. THE WESTING GAME is one of the most awesome middle grade books of all time, and part of the reason I loved it as a kid and love it now is that Turtle is razor-sharp smart. Sherlock Holmes also regularly figures out things before the reader does, and it certainly never hurt his appeal.

There’s plenty that can go wrong to thwart even a character who’s being smart. By all means, throw obstacles into their paths to keep them from sharing that crucial secret. Put pressures on them that force them to make choices they know they’ll regret. Let their own drives and beliefs blind them to the truth. But when your character is being oblivious or doing something less than brilliant, ask yourself these two questions:

Is this decision coming from the character, or from my plot outline?

What would happen if they did the smart thing instead?

I’ve been surprised at the interesting directions the latter question can take me. Sometimes I can even land my characters in more trouble than they’d find by plunging ahead on the Path of Dumb I’d originally laid out for them.