Writing 101: How Much Blood is Too Much Blood?

I had to take a break after finishing a chapter in my first draft last weekend, and I realized that maybe, just maybe, I crossed a literary line. So now I’ve got to ask myself, how much blood is too much blood in a book? 

Let’s Get Drenched

A certain amount of violence is to be expected in certain types of stories. Can you imagine “The Princess Bride” without the exciting swordfighting? How’d you like to read the Harry Potter books without the wizard dueling? Or maybe you’d be jazzed to crack open a copy of “Divergent” without all the battle scenes and training? Of course not, there would be nothing left. So sometimes, a little bit of violence is required. Or even a lot. But plenty of books don’t get gruesome about it. That makes it tricky for other authors to find out where that line is located. Do you know where it’s at?

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Writing 101 Redux: Are Prologues Really That Bad?

Some say that prologues are the worst, but are they right? 

Read this week's Throwback Thursday Writing 101 post to find out, and see how you feel about prologues at the end.

Writing 101: First Draft, Version 2.0

Recently, after many nights of struggle, I managed to finish the final chapter of the first draft of my next novel. But I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I finished the first draft, because I haven’t. For this particular book, I found there was really only one way I could write it and manage to get anything accomplished: sloppily. So I say to all you authors with ugly first drafts, welcome. We are as one.

Building a Book

Did you ever build a model of something for school? I was once tasked with creating a sculpture out of trash, an assignment that lots of people get that I personally think is in poor form. But my grades in Science were always questionable, so I made the sculpture. It was a telephone, because I’m a girl. I started by gluing the popsicle sticks together to create a flat base first. Later, I put together my bubble gum wrapper chain and cut a foam cup to make an ear and mouthpiece. I didn’t add the spray paint until it was all assembled, and it wasn’t until that moment that it looked like something worth looking at. And yes, this bizarre anecdote has a point. A good one.

Writing 101: Catching Up a Series

Catching up a series is the chore you have to face the moment you begin book number two. The problem with writing a series is that you have to begin each book as if your reader hasn’t read the other books in the series. But you also have to write it in a way that won’t annoy fans who are all caught up on all the other books so far. If you can balance yourself on this writing tightrope, you can create a great series. It’s actually much simpler to do than you probably think.

The Story So Far

I’m not going to lie: I’ve read book series out of order. It’s not my fault if book 1 isn’t available...or I don’t feel like reading it. I can’t help it if I’d rather skip straight to the last book than to start all over. Maybe I’ll get to that, eventually. The point is, I may not always be current on your book series when I pick up that book. What are you going to do about it?

Writing 101: The Mini-Cliffhanger

There are some books that feel impossible to put down. You can’t stop turning pages. You keep on reading because you’ve got to find out what happens next. These are the books that readers remember. These are the type so books you want to write. And there’s a trick you can use it make it happen: the mini-cliffhanger.

Hanging By a Moment With You

Lots of readers hate cliffhanger endings in a book, but you can put all sorts of mini-cliffhangers in your book and still wrap things up neatly at the end. If you want to keep your readers turning the pages, put your cliffhangers where they belong: at the end of chapters.

Writing 101: Unnecessary Storytelling

So I’m not going to point fingers at any authors, but I will say that lately I was exposed to some unnecessary storytelling...and I’m kind of mad about it. Misdirecting your readers is one thing, but wasting their time falls into a whole new category. So let’s find out if you’re guilty of unnecessary storytelling, because maybe you are.

Writing and Writing

For every author, there is that moment when thought no longer even seems to apply. Suddenly the words are just pouring out, so hot and thick your fingers can’t even keep up with them. And you’re in such a zone, Mount Vesuvius couldn’t possibly shake up your concentration. You are writing, and it’s going well. Iit’s when you’re in this zone that unnecessary storytelling might start to sneak in. It happens more often than you think.

Writing 101: Being a Sadist

Have you ever tortured a man until he broke down and cried? Killed a person and watched them die? You have if you’re like a lot of authors, because sometimes being a writer means being a sadist. If you write books, you’re going to end up doing a lot of terrible things -- all on the page, of course.

Sadistic

Characters in books start to feel a little like friends, don’t they? I know Anne Shirley well. I would feel totally at home sitting with her in a turn-of-the-century Canadian kitchen, drinking raspberry cordial. For authors who create those characters, the connection is even stronger. And it’s really hard to make terrible things happen to those characters, to allow those characters to feel the pain of it all. But you have to. When you’re writing, you need to get sadistic.

Writing 101 Redux: Toward vs. Towards

Should you be moving toward your dreams, or towards them? Today's Throwback Thursday Writing 101 will answer that question conclusively.

Writing 101: Confessions of an Absentee Author

In a perfect world, I would write every word of my books from the proper typing position, in a comfortable room all alone. I would have an endless supply of coffee and Mountain Dew. And I would type on my laptop, watching the story unfold before my very eyes. This is not how I write my books. I’m about to tell you the truth of how I manage to write books while working an 80-workweek. The truth is, I almost never type books on my laptop. These are the confessions of an absentee author.

To Tell the Truth

Last Thursday, I worked for 16 hours straight. I do mean straight. I don’t take breaks to eat, because clearly I haven’t got the time for that nonsense. I eat one-handed and drive the mouse with the other so I can still get some work done. The Wednesday before last Thursday, I worked for almost 14 hours. Every day, I work all day. When I get finished, I want to sleep. It would be ideal if I could just go ahead and crash then and there with the laptop still on top of me. That way, when I wake up I can just get right back to it. But that’s not very practical, because I still have to brush my teeth. So I don’t go immediately to sleep when I finish working. I may have to fold laundry or clean something up. I’ve got to wash my face and floss. And here is where I find the time to write my books. If you can call it that.

Writing 101: Focus

When you want to write a book, it really helps if you’ve got a good vocabulary. You’re going to need something to write on, and I recommend a lightweight laptop with a full-sized keyboard. It’s always useful to have a good imagination, to have the ability to visualize and picture things. But it is absolutely essential that you have one ingredient, or you will never, ever, ever finish that book: focus.

What’s That Over There?

Seriously, the other stuff can be dealt with. You can buy a thesaurus, right? You can learn typing techniques. Heck, there are classes online for free that teach technique. It’s even possible to improve your imagination. The more you use it, the more it works. Focus...that’s something that you either have, or don’t. And lately, I don’t have it. Do you?

Writing 101: What Do You Know About Insanity?

At some point, you may want to write a murder mystery, or just insert a murder into your story. You may need to have a character behave in a way that’s inexplicable, or less than normal. You may need to write a character who’s crazy. But what do you know about insanity?

Crazy is as Crazy Does

To simply write a character who is “crazy” is going to feel unsatisfying. Being crazy is a motive for killing someone or running around the street naked and screaming, or doing other things that just plain don’t make sense. But it’s not an explanation, and your readers are going to crave an explanation. How is this character crazy? Why are they insane? Because what you have to remember is this: the character doesn’t know they are insane. To them, everything they are doing makes perfect sense. So before you write it, you have to get inside of their crazy.

Are you ready to make yourself insane? Because if you’re going to write crazy, you need to know it.

Writing 101: You, and Your Writing Environment

I've always said that writers have to know how to tune out the world if they're going to get anything done. You have to know how to write in a noisy room, in crowded rooms in a house with pets running around and people underfoot. Your writing environment may be imperfect, but a writer soldiers on. But it has come to my attention recently that you can learn how to shut out the world, ignore those other people at Starbucks, pretend the phone isn't ringing and stay away from Twitter for one more hour...and still struggle in your writing environment. The most important space you will ever work in is your own head space. And if that space isn't right, nothing will be.

Check Your Head

Every book you will ever write is inside your head. You have to pull it out of your brain, word by word, and sometimes it's painful. Sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes you've got phones ringing and stereos blasting and cats screeching. And sometimes, you won't. You could have a perfectly silent room with blank walls and a big desk to write behind with no distractions whatsoever, and you can still be unable to pull those words out of your brain. Because sometimes, it's your own head that's too noisy, and cramped,and cluttered...and messy. This is the writing environment you need to control. And of course, it's the hardest one you'll ever have to control. 

Writing 101: What Hasn’t Been Written Yet?

Why aren’t your books selling? It could be that your book is too similar to books that are already out there. Lots of authors find themselves telling the same stories over and over, and I maintain that anything that Shakespeare didn't write, the Greeks already wrote. To that end, lots of Shakespeare stuff looks like the Greek playwrights. So if you’re looking for a new idea anyway, look around the book market. And ask yourself this question: what hasn’t been written yet?

A Tale of Two Writers

So, you probably don’t think of Julia Child as a writer. If you think about her at all, it’s most likely you’re thinking of Dan Aykroyd. That’s what I think about: a tall woman with a high-pitched voice, showing me how to cook a turkey. But Julia Child was also an incredibly successful writer, and not just a world-famous chef. She noticed a book that didn't exist, and she wrote it. That’s pretty much what all authors want to do, and she succeeded at it.

Writing 101: Juggling Books

Staying focused on a single book is a good way to immerse yourself in that narrative and fully realize the world you’re creating. But as I have proven to myself, it’s not always possible to write under ideal circumstance. Lately I’ve been juggling books, but I think I’ve figured out why sometimes it’s necessary to do so.

Fridays We Wear Pink

Obviously it’s better to stick to one book from the minute you get the idea to the second you publish it on Amazon, and I’ve walked that route before. But sometimes, your creativity doesn’t always cooperate with your publishing plans. I’ve learned that there is a benefit to juggling books. Sometimes, you’ve got to work on the book that suits your mood.

Writing 101: Why Your Characters Need a Hobby

When the characters in your book feel more like real people, it’s a lot easier for readers to relate to them. That makes it a lot easier for readers to like your books. It sounds like a simple formula, but it’s not. That’s why it works to use little tricks throughout your books to humanize characters. This is why your characters need a hobby.

Humanizing Your Characters

All of your characters should be three-dimensional. That means they have hopes, dreams, fears, regrets, habits...and yes, hobbies. The more of this kind of everyday stuff you can integrate into your character, the more real they will feel. But you can’t give a character a hobby just for the sake of doing it. Everything you put in your book should be in there for a reason, and that includes the hobby that you humanize your character with.

Writing 101: Setting the Stage

I read about these women in Burma, once. They put these coils around their necks in order to stretch them out, starting from birth. The old women in the village have these long, extended necks with coils wrapped all the way up. I’m not from Burma, so it’s hard for me to comprehend why anyone would do this, but they think that long necks are beautiful. When you’re an author, you have to set the stage for your readers so they can understand your characters. If I’m from New York City, I may not understand what it’s like to be a farmgirl from Kansas or one of those women from Burma. It’s your job to make me understand that. Do it by setting the stage.

Staging the Scene

In the medieval era, the Church officially believed that women did not have souls. Women were not human beings. They were pieces of property, and their worth could be measured against something like a cow or a piece of land. It’s hard for a modern-day woman to understand that world, a world in which women did not often speak their minds and were not welcome to pursue the skills that interested them. Women were not often writers in the medieval era; most of them could not read. So if you’re going to write a book that’s set in that time, you’re going to need to make sure that I as the reader can understand it.

Writing 101: The Unexpected Outcome

It’s a pretty classic story: the underdog team claws and fights their way into the big competition, only to face off against a much more powerful opponent. Against all odds, the underdogs pull together and carry the day. Unless they don’t. Sometimes, the story ends with the unexpected outcome instead. The hero doesn’t always have to win, but if you don’t write the unexpected outcome the right way you aren’t going to win, either.

When the Hero Loses

Look, good guys don’t always finish first in life. The inspiring underdogs don’t always win, the hero doesn’t always defeat the villain, and sometimes the unexpected outcome is the result. But when the unexpected happens and the hero loses, you've got to be really careful about how you end the story.

Writing 101: Fake Memoirs

One of the best books I ever read was a total lie. I didn't know that for many years. It was called "Go Ask Alice," and it was a diary. The book was full of powerful imagery, and frankly talked about stuff that was really relevant to me: dating boys, worrying about skin care, coming up with new ways to style one’s hair. But mainly, it was a book about drug use. When I first read it, I didn't know there was such a thing as fake memoirs. But there is, and this can be a powerful form of storytelling.

Go Ask a Writer

There is no Alice, at least not as far as this particular book is concerned. It was published anonymously, which always made it even more intriguing, and the actual first name of the diarist is never revealed. Most believe, however, that it was written by Beatrice Sparks. She is the sole copyright holder, and she wrote several other so-called diaries that were supposedly penned by teens. But no matter who wrote it, the book is still good. I still really like it, and I've recommended it to others who liked it. People write fake memoirs because fake memoirs work. It might work for you, too.

Writing 101 Redux: Paragraph Indents

Do you use the tab button when you're writing a book? After you read today's TBT Writing 101 post, you won't do that anymore.

In today's Throwback Thursday writing tip, I'm going to explain why the tab space is the Devil's own invention.

Writing 101: Fear of Commitment

It isn’t easy to devote yourself to one story, just one story, when there are so many stories that want to be told. On Monday, you may get an amazing idea for a story that’s been brewing in your mind for a while. But on Thursday, you may figure out the answer to some nagging plot question on that novel you’ve been working on since January. When you find yourself writing a bunch of different projects at the same time and finishing none of them, you need to ask yourself a question: do you have a fear of commitment? 

Sticking it Out

I’ve worked on three different books in as many months, and when I look back at my progress for each one I’m always surprised by how little there is. I work on one story, start thinking about another and switch to it. It’s a good way to get all my ideas down when I’m having them. It’s a terrible way to write a book. Sometimes, authors need to commit to just one project. Otherwise, you might not get any of them finished.