Tag Archive | the loyal heart

How to Revise Your Novel – Part Two: Low-Hanging Fruit

Revising a novel can be almost as big of a challenge as writing it if you don’t have a plan of attack. Once you’ve finished a first draft, chances are that there are so many things that need attention that the whole prospect of working on it can overwhelm you. But I’ve come to love the process of revisions, sometimes more than writing the first draft. It’s always awesome to see the story really come together. And I’ve learned a few things about how to approach revisions along the way.

Last week I talked about the first step in revising a novel: the Read-Through. It’s important to read quickly through what you’ve got so that you can get a sense of flow (or lack thereof), what the big issues are and what needs to be done about them. I always do a read-through with a pen and pad of paper nearby, making notes as I go but not changing anything yet.

The next step is to look at those notes and tackle the problems you’ve found one at a time.

This can mean different things to different people. It’s all about knowing what your main weaknesses are. Every writer should be self-aware and willing to admit that there are mistakes they make every time. These are the big, obvious problems that will get in the way of making your novel into what it was meant to be. Because they are so obvious, they’re like the low-hanging fruit that you can pick without having to stretch too hard.

For example, one thing I am notorious about doing in my first drafts is what I call “editorializing”. It’s like exposition gone bad. I have a wretched habit of stepping back as an author and writing a lot about what the characters feel about the action of the story. It’s telling instead of showing on a microscopic level. I can fill entire paragraphs where the verb of every sentence is some incarnation of “felt”, “thought”, or “believed”.

I’m not saying you should never talk about how your characters are feeling or what they think of the situation they’re in, but with me it gets excessive. So out it all goes! And how can I tell when I’ve fallen into these horrible editorializing sections? The action slows down to a crawl and I drift off. As soon as that happens, the proverbial scissors come out. I’m particularly bad about starting each new chapter with a paragraph of editorializing.

That’s my big thing. For you it might be something different. Maybe you over-describe things or write too many dialog tags or have thousands of run-on sentences. Everyone’s major weaknesses are different. You’re not going to do yourself any good if you don’t dig out those weaknesses though. Your job as a writer is to seek them out and eradicate them! If you aren’t sure what your big weaknesses are, find some honest beta-readers to tell you. If you aren’t completely honest with yourself about the faults you have as a writer, you will never be able to overcome them.

This second pass through your novel is going to take a lot longer than the read-through. If you’re doing it right, there will be a lot of things to clean up. Remember all of those continuity issues and extraneous details and plot points that you changed your mind about? Those are low-hanging fruit too. I usually end up writing entire new scenes or removing scenes that don’t work in this second pass through. It’s time-consuming, but worth it.

I’ll tell you what I don’t do in this pass through though. I don’t correct the tiny, picky things. Some of them you can do as you go along without interrupting the harder work you’re doing. But unless it helps to fix a bigger problem, I don’t remove adverbs or rephrase sentences or paragraphs for flow and pacing yet. I save that for the next read-through.

Yes, there’s more than one! You have to move the big pieces around and take care of the major problems first before you can start to fine-tune. My first novel, The Loyal Heart, had gone through about eight drafts by the time I published it. And I’m sure I would revise it again if I wasn’t working on the next big thing. But I think that the more you write and the harder you work on your writing skills, the fewer drafts you’ll need to do before ending up with the final product. We learn as we go.

In the meantime, when you’re just starting out, you can’t have too many drafts. Yes, it’s time-consuming and most of the time you just want to be done and submit or publish the thing, but the more time you spend on it the better chance you’ll have of creating genius. Each pass through the book is like adding another layer to a great painting. You find things you missed each time you dig in.

So in a nutshell, after doing your read-through and writing down your observations about the story, go through the novel and tackle the biggest problems first. Those big problems are going to be the issues you found in the read-through and made notes about and the glaring, obvious problems you know you have as a writer. It will take time, but once you’ve banged the bigger pieces into shape you’ll be able to break out the finer brushes to make magic word-by-word.

So what are some of the weaknesses you know you have as a writer? Please share so that other writers who might not know what to look for can begin to get an idea!

Sometimes They Just Don’t Get It

Feb22

So I’ve been feeling really bad this week. And not just because I have a touch of a stomach bug, although that doesn’t help. No, I’ve been feeling bad because I had to leave a bad review on someone’s book. I’ve upset someone and insulted their baby.

Here’s the thing. Bad reviews happen. They’ve certainly happened to me! And yes, I was deeply upset for a week when I got my first 1-star review. And let me tell you, it was a thousand times worse than the 2-star review I left on the book this week. That review still irks my taters. It also taught me the valuable lesson of accepting that not everyone is going to love everything I do every time.

Before I go on, I want to share this super awesome article that one of my Twitter friends, Catie Rhodes, shared with me a couple of weeks ago when I whined on Twitter about a mediocre review:

5 Reasons You WANT Negative Reviews

Cool, eh? And so true!

But that’s not exactly what I want to talk about today. Today I want to talk about that wince-worthy problem that authors sometimes run into that generates not-so-great reviews.

Sometimes people just don’t get it.

I love my medieval romance trilogy, The Noble Hearts (points to the right-hand side of the screen). I think of them as swashbuckling romantic adventure … and here’s the important part … a la A Knight’s Tale. Yep, that was exactly the feeling I was going for when I wrote these books.

Have you ever seen A Knight’s Tale? It’s basically a rollicking medieval-pop flick with modern music, modern dialog, and modern mores. THAT’S what I was going for. Deliberately anachronistic, hip, fast-paced.

Several reviewers haven’t understood this. Their reviews are generally positive, but mention that the stories are full of anachronistic dialog and that they didn’t feel the way a medieval novel should.

Yep.

They didn’t get it.

And you know what? That’s okay. I knew I was taking a risk by writing in a unique style. I’ve never been interested in writing just like everyone else or mimicking what people expect to read. I’ve always wanted to be a little off-the-cuff, a little avant garde, a little different. That’s me.

But with risks come … risks. People don’t get it. That’s nothing new to me. I’ve felt as though people don’t get me on many levels and never had. Why? Because I’m different. I’ve always known I was and I always will be. But it’s taken a long time to make peace with that.

Writing is a tough gig. We are never going to hit the bull’s-eye with everyone all the time. And our books are always going to fall into the hands of people who don’t like our style, our characters, our choices, whatever. There will always be someone who doesn’t get it. Guess what? That’s awesome! Think about what that means for the diversity of this world. It’s a wonderful thing.

So no, I don’t jump for joy when I get one of those reviews – and I know I’ll keep getting them – that say my medieval novels were anachronistic and that I obviously don’t know what I’m doing with my history degree. The rest of the content of those reviews is pretty good, overall, and there are some people who definitely got the books all the way.

The moral of the story? That first time that someone posts a negative review and you see that they’ve totally missed the point of what you were going for is a badge of honor! You’ve stretched beyond your own immediate circle! You’ve dared. And that’s what counts.

Writing With “What If?”

Jan30

So last week I read Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card for the first time and loved it. As I mentioned in my review on Sunday, it was one of the best character books I’ve ever read. Card is just so good at creating characters with depth and emotion and breathing life into them. So yes, it is possible for a Romance writer to learn about the craft of characters through reading Science Fiction.

But there was another aspect to Ender’s Game that proved to be invaluable to my writing craft: the introduction. I was lucky in that the version of the book that I read had a long introduction by Card that talked about how he came up with the story and characters of Ender’s Game and the response that he has received to the book.

I love reading writers’ stories of how they engage in their craft, be it Stephen King’s On Writing or C.S. Forester’s book that he wrote about his experience of penning the Horatio Hornblower novels. So of course I devoured Card’s introduction eagerly. And I recommend that any time a writer includes an introduction with their book, anyone calling themselves a writer on any level should read it and take note.

What struck me the most about Card’s explanation of how he came up with the idea for Ender’s Game is his use of the question “What if?”. As Card explains, he was a major fan of Asimov as a youngster and devoured all of his books. He knew all along he wanted to write, but he grew (and apparently grows) increasingly impatient with authors who are only trying to recycle Asimov or Tolkien, retelling the same story with different characters and settings. This is not, he says, the point of writing.

Card came to the idea of Ender’s Game by focusing on tiny aspects of Asimov’s work and asking “What if x, y, or z had happened differently?” This seems so simple, and yet it forms the basis of all really great writing.

We have to start with the assumption that there are no original stories. At the same time, we can’t be like those writers Card loses patience with who tell the same story over and over. The key is to take some well-known aspect of a genre or a particular story and riff on the idea of “What if this happened instead?”

I think that the Romance genre is ripe for this kind of riffing. In Romance we’re working with a known set of parameters. In order to be defined as Romance the story must be about the development of the relationship between the hero and heroine and the hero and heroine must get together at the end with an emotionally satisfying conclusion. Anything else and it’s not Romance.

You might think that those parameters preclude any originality of thought, but I definitely don’t believe that. Romance is criticized because everyone knows going into it that they hero and heroine will end up together in the end. Yes they will. But it’s how they get there that truly matters, and there are a thousand different ways to reach an HEA.

I am particularly fond of this idea of “what if?” because that’s what launched my career as a writer. I’m grateful to Card for talking about it openly, because I’ve received a wee bit of criticism for my what-if-ing. My first novel, The Loyal Heart, has been compared favorably and unfavorably to the Robin Hood legend. That was both deliberate and unintentional.

The Loyal Heart started with two big What If’s. The first was “What if the Robin Hood story were told with the actual history of the time period instead of the propagandized version that most people think they know?” The second What If was “What if the heroine fell in love with the bad guy?” The first question was a direct riff on Robin Hood, the second was a riff on just about every one of the many Romance novels I’ve ever read.

Incidentally, The Faithful Heart started with the What If of “What if the goofy side-kick had to man-up and be a hero?” and The Courageous Heart began with “What if you woke up one day and realized you were an asshole who had ruined everyone’s lives?”

I know of a few people who encourage writers to begin their query letter for a given novel with that What If question. I’m not actually in favor with that, but I am in favor of beginning the whole novel-writing process by asking “What if?” When you hit the ground running, when you start the whole thing with a question that you are burning to find out, you’re going to have an easier writing experience. You’re going to go places that you wouldn’t otherwise have thought to go. Most importantly, you’re going to have a good time doing it.

Asking questions leads you to answers. Asking “What if?” leads you to realms of imagination that will keep you busy for weeks asking and answering even more questions. The beauty of it all is that no two people will come up with the same answers. Card could start with Asimov and ask “what if?” to take him to someplace entirely new.

I personally think that just because you start with a known story, like Robin Hood, “what if” will quickly take you out of the known and into the unknown, into the original and personal. I’ve been asking myself “What if Sarah didn’t remember the words to the poem at the end of Labyrinth and lost the bet with the Goblin King?” since I was a pre-teen. I’ve got a whole fantasy world of spells and tricks that has nothing remotely to do with Labyrinth now. There are a million ways you can answer a single question about a single story.

So thank you, Orson Scott Card, for helping me to see that daydreaming about someone else’s story is not only okay, it can lead to a whole world. Anything is possible when you ask “What if?”

What are your favorite “what if?” ideas? Are there any stories you’ve told or would like to tell that started with “what if?”

2012 Year in Review

Dec31

As a Historian, I’m always a sucker for those year in review things that people do at the closing of each year. And since 2012 was an exceptionally eventful year for me, here’s my own personal version. And so I give you, 2012, a year I will be happy to see the back of!

January started out deceptively quiet. Not too much going on. But 2012 hit me upside the head with a brick on February 1st at 9:15 am when the company I work for did layoffs. And since I’m not allowed to talk about that or the mess of incriminations and back-stabbing by coworkers that happened later in February and in March because they now spy on my blog from time to time…. Heh heh heh….

Moving right along.

After all that I still had a job, but things were about to get a lot worse. Worse? Really? Yes.

My goofy, vibrant brother Kelly

My older brother Brian Kelly Farmer passed away very suddenly of cancer in early May. We got the call in mid-April that he had been diagnosed, and once we were told how bad it was, my younger brother Stewart and I rushed out to Ohio to be with Kelly. Well, what we discovered was not only a brother suddenly dying, but a family in dire distress. I’m not sure I can even talk about the week of pure insanity – literally – that we experienced. Between my mentally ill sister-in-law making poor medical decisions on my brother’s behalf, Kelly’s obvious pain and eventual decline into a coma, and my beautiful and brilliant but also belligerent 16 year old niece and a trip that ended with my sister-in-law threatening to call the cops on me if I didn’t leave my brother’s house where I had been taking care of my niece and nephew for a week … it was bad.

I still don’t think I’ve recovered from that nightmare. I may never recover. But things did start to look up again. I had a book to write.

First, in June I published Our Little Secrets, which I had worked on and finished way back in January before things got crazy. I had started The Courageous Heart early in the year too, but I had stopped when the rollercoaster ride began. By June I knew my deadline with my editor was looming and I had to get serious about writing. So I went into a focus mode the likes of which I have never seen. I was diligent about writing the first draft of that book. I have never worked so hard in my life. But lo and behold, I pulled it out by the end of July. And it was terrible. But there were still revisions to do.

Then came my personal high moment for the year – out of nowhere, I might add. On a whim I decided to offer The Loyal Heart for free for my birthday. Long story short, about two weeks later I had had over 50,000 copies of the book downloaded! And I proceeded to sell more when it went back to regular price and to sell several copies of the sequel, The Faithful Heart. Huzzah!

Add to that the fact that my brother Stewart FINALLY proposed to his girlfriend, my best friend, Kristine, on June 23rd, and the summer was pretty good.

Of course, my awful car threw a spanner in the works in September by breaking down and costing me $3000 to replace the transmission. And then two and a half weeks later it wouldn’t start and I had to spend another $300 on starter sensors or whatever that was. And two weeks or so after that it had another issue, although I can’t remember exactly what that one was, just that it cost me. Throw into that a car-induced incident in October that was one of my major low points for the year but that I won’t talk about because it’s still too painful that involved a family member I thought was close MAJORLY letting me down and showing their true colors….

But the end of the year was redeemed by preparations for Stewart and Kristine’s wedding. The wedding was just this past weekend, on Saturday the 29th, and it was fantastic! Kristine was beautiful, Stewart was awesome, and everything went off without a hitch. It really was the best wedding I have ever gone to.

Granted, I hate what I look like in all of the wedding pictures I’ve seen so far and I think that when I smile like that my teeth take over my face and my face looks five times as fat and wide as it actually is, but hey, you can’t win them all.

So that was 2012. Aside from the good book stuff and the wedding, I’m happy to see it go! Too much loss and too much trauma. I am ready for 2013. My horoscope says that things will be much, much better in 2013 because of something having to do with where Jupiter will be and the fact that Pluto is no longer conjuncted with something? All I know is that I could use a break. I’m supposed to have romance in 2013 too. Okay, I could deal with that, although I have the worst romantic luck in the history of the universe. But we’ll see.

Here’s to 2013! May it be full of new beginnings and easier times.

A Writer’s Worst Enemy … And Best Friend

Nov28

I can tell you the exact moment when I knew I was serious about this writing thing. Sure, I’ve been writing since I was ten and realize it was something I could do for fun outside of school. And I kept writing all through my teens and well into my twenties for entertainment and as an escape. I always had the vague idea that I wanted to be a Writer (with a capital W). But the day that I knew I was serious was December 21st, 2007. That was the day I turned off the TV.

TV is a serious time-drain. It’s just so daggone tempting! We can spend hours sitting in front of it, letting it entertain us and suck away our creativity. Many an hour that could be spent in writing is, instead, spent being a couch potato. The modern world makes it so easy to watch TV too. What’s the flashiest item offered for sale on Black Friday? Giant TVs at massively discounted prices. What does everyone talk about at work that involves the entire department? TV shows. (Specifically American Horror Story where I work, which absolutely creeps me out … and I haven’t seen a single episode!) What is the velvet rope that keeps modern people bound in inaction? TV.

It’s just so seductive! And yet the moment I turned it off my productivity shot through the roof. I finished the first draft of The Loyal Heart (all 250,000 original words!) within a month and a half of turning off the TV. All those hours that had previously been spent with wide, glassy eyes staring at those flashing pictures on my boob tube went into creating. Granted, I stopped watching when I did not to write, but because I absolutely hate political commercials and I knew that the only way to avoid them in 2008 was to turn them off. That worked, by the way. But more importantly, my journey to becoming a serious, published writer had begun!

Yep. TV is a terrible waste of time. It can mire you in inertia faster than you can say “Where’s the remote?”

TV is also one of the most potent sources of inspiration and the most brilliant resources for learning the craft of storytelling that has ever been invented.

I’ve learned so many things about story structure from watching TV. Your average hour-long drama, even a good half-hour comedy, is a textbook perfect way to study structure. Each segment between commercials is designed to convey a chunk of story with all the elements of introduction, rising action, reaction, climax, and denouement. The very best TV shows also carry a plot through an entire season, complete with foreshadowing, carefully placed bits of information, and satisfactory tying together of diverse plot threads. Good TV shows are the best writing tutorial you can get.

My all-time favorite TV shows are Lost, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, Northern Exposure, Band of Brothers (technically a mini-series) and the Russell T. Davies seasons of the new Doctor Who. Downton Abbey, New Girl, and Modern Family might also end up in the all-time favorites. We have yet to see if they will stand the test of time. Yeah, I know, I have wildly diverse tastes.

Take Lost for an example.

Best and most descriptive poster for Lost ever!

Aside from the so-so third season (in which the writers arguably lost track of the plot as the network tried to decide exactly how many seasons to let the show run for), Lost is a terrific example of plot structure both within an episode, over the arc of a season, and through an entire series. I would hate to give away any spoilers for this highly-suspenseful show, but as the viewer you start out knowing almost nothing about The Island or the people who have crashed on it. By the end you’ve learned so much that it feels like a real place. When you watch the series through for a second time you realize just how much the writers knew in advance and just how many clues they squeaked into each episode along the way.

(As an aside, watching Lost from a writer’s perspective, you can also figure out which plotlines they were forced to drop as external forces, like actor arrests, ruined their plans. The ways in which they scrambled for new ideas to fulfill the original purpose of the characters they had to drop is a great exercise in revisions under pressure.)

The same kinds of comparisons can be made for plenty of other shows depending on what you like to watch. Try watching an episode of your favorite show not for entertainment value but for story structure. How are the characters introduced? What sets up the situation for each episode? What kinds of complications are thrown in the way of the characters achieving their goals? How is back-story introduced? When does the moment of most tension come? (Hint: before the last commercial break) How is the episode resolved? What tidbits do you get as the credits are rolling?

Everything you see in a good TV show is going to teach you something that will improve your writing. It’s going to teach it to you faster than reading a bunch of books. BUT, watching TV is no substitute for reading. And all TV is not created equal. In fact, there’s a lot of completely useless junk on the air. The key is to find the good stuff. Fortunately, most of the time there’s a reason why things are critically acclaimed.

I can count the number of TV shows I watch these days on one hand, not including my thumb. I watch shows online so that I can watch when I want to and avoid commercials. For me that’s the best way to avoid the time-suck of useless TV and annoying commercials while still learning what I need to know for my writing. It’s the best of both worlds.

So what TV shows have you learned from and what inspires you? I mentioned Lost as one of my all-time favorites, and the Sci-Fi series I’m currently working on, Saving Grace, tips its hat to Lost’s storytelling style. And I can’t help but see some of the style elements of Dr. Quinn when I work on my Montana Romance series. But that’s just me. Where on the small screen do you find your inspiration?

Merry Farmer

An Historical Romance