Eavesdropping for Action!

I think I've mentioned before what an effective tool eavesdropping can be for getting authentic dialogue. That's not to say that you should include, verbatim, every conversation that you hear, but heading down to the mall and just listening to the way teens (or adults, if you don't write YA) talk to each other can really help you write more authentic dialogue. Take the best of the best of what you hear and stick it in your book.

But lately, I've started a new (and much creepier) kind of eavesdropping - observing for emotional action. As I go through my MS, I'm focusing on getting rid of any of the instances of "telling" and making them all "showing" - for a basic example, changing something like "fear rose up in me" to "a chill ran up my spine." Taking the actual emotional word out of the phrase and focusing instead on how the emotion makes the character feel - the character's physical reaction to the emotion - makes some of the bumpier scenes better.

Usually, I get the ideas for emotional reactions by thinking about how I would react in those situations. I close my eyes and imagine a time when I was scared, or happy, or nervous, then think about what my body was doing. Of course, that doesn't always work because 1. I'm not my characters, and we don't react the same way, and 2. Eventually, I run out of reactions, since I tend to do the same things. So I've started looking at the way people react physically as well as their dialogue.

And I'm getting so much great material!

Yesterday, I was in my local Super Target grabbing a coffee, and two women nearby were discussing the recent divorce proceedings one of them had gone through. They were going through the judge's or lawyer's report line by line, reading it out and reacting to (and dishing on) and it said. (Why they chose the cafe in Super Target to do this? No clue.) It was fascinating to watch, because things had obviously gone in the woman's favor - she was jiggling her leg, clasping her hands in front of her smiling mouth, and looked as if she were going to explode out of her chair at any second. I took my time pouring my cream and sugar into my coffee so I could watch their excited reactions and make a mental note of their physical clues, then when I came home I wrote the actions down in my writer's notebook. Now, when I need a character to act happy or excited, I can refer to my list, and maybe, if it fits the character, she'll be modeled after the woman in Starbucks.

So, yeah. I'm a creepy stalker. But hey. It's for art. And it totally works.

Writing (and Revising) the Hard Scenes

A lot of bad stuff happens in my WIP.

I mean, that should really go without saying. It is a dystopian/sci-fi. There are very clear villains. And the premise involves killing.

So. Yeah. A lot of bad stuff happens.

But when I started writing the book, I never realized how hard this stuff would be on me. Because it's not just the villains who suffer in my book. The good guys suffer, too. They go through some painful stuff - physically and emotionally. There's one scene that makes me cry every time I read it - and when you put your very first word on the page a year ago, you end up going through a lot of readings. There are other scenes that make my stomach turn because...well, they're kind of gory.

Every time I read some scenes, I consider changing the outcome. Even though I've always planned for things to turn out that way, even though I know they work better if I leave it as is, I can't help but think to myself, "What if I just tried it another way?" And maybe I even let the result play out in my head...but it never works as well.

And that's how I know I'm making the right choices. Because even when it kills me to do mean things to my characters, I know, ultimately (as strange as it is) it's for the best. Kids don't grow up if they're coddled, and the same goes for characters. You have to let them deal with the hard stuff, with the heartache. And it's so rewarding to see how they change because of it. (Did I just compare my characters to children? YUP.)

So don't be afraid to write the hard scenes. Let your characters suffer. You'll be glad you did.

To quote my Wise and Sage friend Jessica...

"Writing a novel is hard."

That is all.

(Except for this plug for Jessica's YA book review blog, which you should definitely visit, because it is awesome.)

Revisions and Reading Aloud

A few nights ago, my husband had a stomachache. He always prides himself on being someone who "never gets sick," and mocks me endlessly whenever I get sick. But as he was getting ready for bed, he started getting queasy, and a few minutes later he was curled up in a little ball on our bed, practically crying. This makes me giggle a little because he's a third-degree black belt, and he's so pathetic when he's sick that he turns from this guy:

Into this guy:

So hubs is there, curled up and whining, and I offered to rub his back and read him a story. I had a ton of picture books at the time since I've been reading them for VCFA. But since I was trying to put him to sleep, I knew I needed to keep it dark in the room. So, for the first time ever, I pulled out my MacBook and read hubs the first chapter of my WIP.

I have to say there is nothing that will bring out the flaws in your manuscript than reading it aloud. Suddenly, all those repeated words, adverbs, and awkward phrases will jump out when you're actually saying the words. Since I was reading the story to someone else and wanted him to actually enjoy it, I had to prevent myself from stopping mid-sentence and editing out the words I thought didn't work. It was SO hard! As a writer, whenever you realize that something isn't working, you want to fix it as soon as possible. But I held back, though I vowed to read the chapter aloud to myself again at another time. I'd heard of people doing this before, but I'd never done it myself.

In the end, hubs enjoyed the chapter. His stomachache was gone in the morning. And I came up with an excellent way of revising my WIP. So if you've never read your MS aloud to yourself, I definitely recommend you include that as part of your revising process. I thought my first chapter was more or less done - but reading it aloud helped me find those last few places that were especially weak. I read the chapter aloud to myself last night and let myself stop to mark the things that needed to be fixed. The words flow much more naturally, and I think, finally, chapter one is done. Hopefully the rest of the book will be done by the end of the month (eek!). The very last thing I'll do before I consider the book completely finished will be read it aloud, start to finish, without stopping.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

I'm in the process of making some major changes to my plot, thanks to some input from my crit partners. It's not anything HUGE, like so big that I have to rewrite the whole thing, but it is big enough that every single sentence needs to be reevaluated under the new terms. Which is a major task, of course.

Before I started, I was freaking out a little. How do you even start something like this? My last round of revisions was much less intensive - trim the fat, add in some new scenes, and make sure everything was consistent. But that was before anyone else had seen it, so naturally my WIP was still a mess.

I decided the very first thing I needed to do was make a list. I thought this would be the best course of action for several reasons:

1. I love lists.
2. A list would help me organize my thoughts, and get down all the major revisions I wanted to do in one quick cheat-sheet. That way I could easily reference it as I went to make sure that it all matched up. 
3. But mostly I just love lists - especially the part where I get to cross things off. (I even sometimes put things on lists that I already have or that I've already done just so that I can cross them off.)

So I headed into my office for an assortment of colorful Sharpies and index cards. We didn't have index cards, but we did have bright pink shimmery envelopes left over from my wedding, which already have our wedding monogram on them (complete with date) and therefore can never be used again, but like a hoarder I refuse to throw them away (even though they were hella cheap) because I am convinced they will come in handy some day - and today they did.

I used one envelope for plot changes, and one for character changes. I'm going to start with a plot pass, and work my way through the end of the book, cleaning up all the messy ends that don't make sense with my new direction. Then I'll go back through and look at my new character directions and make sure every thing every character says and does matches exactly with their intentions. And hopefully my plan of attack will work and get me a totally, 100% shiny novel by SCBWI-LA. Which is a little less than two months away. 

I better get revising.

So, that's my plan of attack. How do you handle major revisions?

Why Home Decorating is Like Writing, Part One

I have a confession: I have another hobby.

I know. It seems totally impossible that someone with no time to sleep actually has time to consider doing something aside from writing in the few waking moments that she has, but, what can I say. I like to torture myself. Anyway, lately I've been getting into decorating and renovating my house. Since I'm on a serious budget (and I mean serious) all of my "new" decor is really stuff I find in thrift stores or consignment shops and fix up to display in my house. And every time I go through the process, I can't help but be reminded of the writing process.

Take, for example, the lamp I recently found at my local Salvation Army. I'd been looking for a good lamp for weeks, ever since I refurbished an adorable end table and decided it needed a lamp to sit on top of it. I wanted one with a nice, interesting shape, but also one that wasn't totally huge. Finally on my third weekly visit to the store, I found the perfect lamp. It was just like searching for the perfect idea for your next novel - I didn't know what I was looking for, in particular, but as soon as I saw it I knew it was the one.

I really wish I'd taken a before picture, because this thing was pretty hideous. Much like the first draft of a WIP, it had great bones, but it was speckled with awful brown spots, almost sponge-painted on. Just terrible, classic thrift-store tacky. But after some primer, a can of yellow spray paint, and an incredibly adorable (and possibly too girly for my husband's tastes) shade from Ikea, I transformed my thrift store find into this:

It's so cute I want to die a little.  And it just took a little bit of revision, and the ability to look beyond the hot mess of what the lamp was and see what it could be. (If that doesn't remind you of the writing process, I don't know what does.)

But then, as I was putting the final touches (literally, the very last spray) on my lamp, disaster struck. I got a little overzealous, came a bit too close with the paint can and bam! Drip city. Oh noes! What to do? Hm...what would a writer do when there's a plot problem that seems a little bumpy? Research! So I did a Google search for "Removing spray paint runs" and found some useful information. Since my runs currently look like this:

It's obvious I have a little more sanding, then some painting to do before I can finally display my lamp for all the world to see. But if writing's taught me anything, it's that revisions are a long and painful process, so waiting a week to show off my adorable lamp hardly seems difficult.

The best part about doing all these little paint jobs (including a totally botched dresser and nightstand set, which may make up part two of this post) is that painting really lets me clear my head and think - and whenever I'm thinking, my brain always turns to my WIP. Some of my best ideas have come to me while I'm refurbishing something, or browsing the aisles of the thrift store. So even if this new decorating craze has taken some time away from my writing here and there, in a way it's also helped me connect to it again.