Archives for January 2021

Jeff Elkins is the author of twelve novels and leads the writing team for an innovative technology company that simulates difficult conversations for professionals to practice. In the Fall of 2020, Jeff began a new business, DialogueDoctor.com, that helps writers defeat mono-mouth by coaching them to build engaging characters and write realistic dialogue that will pull readers into their work and keep them reading over multiple books. Jeff lives outside of Baltimore in the United States with his wife and five kids.  

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #215 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So thrilled that you are here, extras super-duper thrilled because today we are talking to Jeff Elkins and Jeff is an old friend. He comes to me from the Writer’s Well, when J Thorn and I were doing that show and he’s just been around and part of my writing community for a long time. And he listened with horror as I was answering questions the other day on the mini podcast. And I was talking about how to make different voices of characters sound unique, which is something that I always add later in revision. He has a system of doing that and I am so excited to share this with you. It kind of blew my mind. It is truly unique, truly his, I know that you are going to get so much out of listening to it. I basically couldn’t wait to get off the phone with him in order to start implementing it into my work. And yeah, so look forward to that. That’s going to be Jeff coming up here in a minute. 

[00:01:24] If you ever watch me on the YouTube video that goes up only a few of you do that most of you listened to this in podcast form, but hopefully you will notice, even if you’re just on the podcast, that this sounds a little bit better. I have upgraded my recording studio here. And I actually have a mic that is much better. I was using a Samson meteor mic and I have moved up in the world. I’m actually using a pop filter and a shock mount and all of those things, which I have always known I should be using. And hopefully this will increase your listening audio pleasure. Let’s see what’s going, going on around here, writing wise, I had a migraine, so I had a couple of days off there. I am recovering have recovered, but I want to say that I did use some of my downtime while I had the migraine to think is when I’m on migraine, when I’m having a migraine I’m on a bunch of drugs and it does kind of free my mind to think about things and make connections that I possibly wouldn’t have before migraines are unique in that they are not just in the brain. They’re the whole body, the whole body is reacting to the migraine. Many people’s stomachs are involved, but for me also involved non drug dependent is the way I think I am able to kind of get back to this 30,000-foot view into a book. And think about it. So actually use some of the time, not a lot of the time because then my brain would drift away in pain but when I was able to, I was really thinking about the structure of this book that I am first drafting. I want to make that really clear. I am first drafting, so it is nothing but a hot mess.

[00:03:08] However, it’s going to be a book. That’s really something I am reveling in knowing right now that no matter how messy it is, it’s going to be a book someday because I know how to revise, no matter how messy your book is, no matter how messy your writing is, even if you don’t know how to revise yet, you can learn. It is a learnable process and it’s just super exciting. And I’m still, now that I’m back at the page, feeling better, I’m still just throwing crappy words out and one of my students said just this morning in RachaelSaysWrite she said, there is a level of freedom that comes with that knowledge. That means you can just screw around on the page. Have a good time, leave sentences incompletely paragraphs hanging, jumped from chapter to chapter, add characters, kill the characters off in the next scene because they weren’t a good idea in the first place, knowing that you can remove them entirely or add them even further when you get to revision. That knowledge of that freedom is so fun and wonderful. So I hope that if you were playing with first drafting, you are remembering that you can fix anything, anything, anything, anything. So I am doing that. 

[00:04:27] Another thing that I’m doing, it will be almost back by the time this airs. So I feel comfortable saying this. I am tomorrow going away by myself. A friend of mine owns a beach house in one of those fancy, fancy beach areas. And she doesn’t look right at the water, but it’s a one-minute walk to the water, basically around this little corner and I’m going there for four days alone. 100% alone. My wife is going to be here taking care of the sick dog and the other dog and the two cats and I am going away. And yes, I have guilt about this. However, she knows she’s also allowed to go away whenever she wants and can do so. And I pointed out to her when these plans were made. I said, do you realize that when I’m gone, you are going to be alone too. And she just brightened because neither of us have been alone since March. You might understand this, it seems like there’s this, it’s not easy for anybody. The people who are alone are very, very, very alone. And I cannot imagine what that is like. And then the people who are together are very, very, very freaking together. And I need to be not together for a while. My wife and I have both always very much enjoyed and valued our alone time in really big ways. Like we are very comfortable saying, I need you to leave the house because I have not had alone time in, you know, four days. I need you to go somewhere, go to the movies, go to the store, go to the cafe. And we can’t do that anymore. We haven’t been able to do that since March, so I’m going to be alone. And I think I’m going to work. I am planning on getting a lot of words. Oftentimes when I go away kind of vacation like this or any other kind of time when I leave town, which I haven’t done since February. I don’t write. I failed to write. I, what I, what I really succeed in doing is lying around and reading and thinking and jotting notes and journaling and drinking tea and walking along the cliff and going down to the beach.

[00:06:26] But this time I’m bringing my office smart and I’m just going to play at having fun. And I’m also going to give myself grace if nothing gets done, because that is more of my typical emo, but I, I’m just going to feel my way into it. Speaking of feeling my way into things, I will let you know that one of the motivations for getting this new recording equipment is that I have a new podcast just call me J Thorn. Now my new podcast is called You’re Already Ready and it is really tiny, short bites of pieces that I’m putting up. Basically I am reinstituting my blog. I am writing some things that I’m thinking, and I’m going to put them out in this little 5 to 7-minute podcast, 3 to 5 times a week. That is my goal. So go give that a try. I know it’s find-able on iTunes or whatever it’s called now. I, iTunes podcasts or wherever, Apple podcasts may be on Google play podcasts. It’s kind of hard to find it is available and it’s there but it’s hard to get to, Stitcher I know it’s available. I think it’s already available at Spotify. So you can check that out. You either search for my name or search for You’re Already Ready and let me know what you think. There’s about five episodes up right now, and it is not written, written. It’s not made for writers. It’s made for creative people. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 215: Jeff Elkins on Making Dialogue Really WORK in Your Book!

Bonnie Tsui is a journalist and longtime contributor to The New York Times. She is the author of American Chinatown, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Her new book, Why We Swim, was published by Algonquin Books in April 2020; it was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Boston Globe bestseller, and an L.A. Times Book Club pick and bestseller. Her first children’s book, Sarah & the Big Wave, about big-wave women surfers, will be published by Henry Holt for Young Readers in May 2021.

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #214 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. And if you watch on the YouTube or you might just be able to hear the smile in my voice, I’m so excited to be sharing with you today my interview with Bonnie Tsui for, for her book, Why We Swim. As you may know, I have become a swimming aficionado in the last year and a half or so. I never would have taken winter off had I known that come March, I would not be able to keep swimming the way that I wanted to. So when I saw her book in the store, I had to have it, I grabbed it, I read it, I loved it. And she was kind enough to come on the show and talk about the writing and talk about swimming a little bit, and I just couldn’t be more thrilled to have spoken to her. So I hope you do enjoy that, which is coming up and around here, things are moving briskly. I am about 62,000 words into the book that I’m writing. And actually right now, today, I’m having a little bit of a panic moment where I realized as usual, I don’t have a plot and maybe I need to have a dark moment that I’m moving toward and maybe I need to have something that makes that dark moment happen.

[00:01:41] So this afternoon I will be spending some time actually thinking, using some of the intellection quality from the Clifton strengths that I need to write my books, so I’m kind of looking forward to doing that and rejiggering some things. What I don’t do in a first draft ever is go back and fix anything that would bog me down and I would never move forward. But I do need to remind myself of what’s actually in the book. So about at this point, every time during a book, I like to, I have a little process that I do to look over the book and kind of remind myself of what’s in there. What my goal was, who these characters are, it’s time to get in there and just touch these things again, so I’m kind of excited to do that. Also, it means that I don’t have to do my word count today because my work is actually going to be rejiggering. And I’m only going to spend a few hours this afternoon doing it, doesn’t need to be done again. And then tomorrow I’ll be right back into the first drafting again, which I’m still really loving. So, I’m a brand new person when it comes to that kind of thing. 

[00:02:47] What else is going on? It has been just very busy lately as I closed out one section of 90-days-to-done and 90-day-revision, and this is your official announcement. It is probably, I’m going to say almost, most definitely your only announcement that you will get, if you have been thinking about joining 90-days-to-done, I actually opened two sections this time because of demand and the first one is full. It filled up almost instantly. And I have about four slots left in the second section. So I’m going to tell you a little bit about what 90-days-to-done is about. So this is, this is what it is. The section that is open, we’ll meet on zoom starting January 1st, going through March 31st, we’ll meet on zoom at, on Tuesdays at 4:00 PM Pacific time, 7:00 PM, Eastern time. So if that doesn’t work for you, you can just tune this out. But this is what we do in 90-day- to-done. It is for people who want to write their books and it’s just been taking them longer than they thought. It is for people who have never put up word on the page. It is also for people who have half a book, 75% of a book, but just can’t get to the end. It is for novels and memoirs. What it is not a useful class for is nonfiction. 

[00:04:12] That is about, you know, how to start your business, that kind of really straight up nonfiction. But if you’re writing a novel or a memoir, this class is for you. It is creativity within constraints. You have 90 days, you don’t have six months. You don’t have a year. You are not wasting time. You do the work because of this constraint and be, and what is the really magic part is that it will be better. Your work will be better because of that constraint. I like to remind people that it is never easy to find the time to do the writing of your heart. And it only gets harder as we move forward in our lives. So the time is now, if you want to do this, what else are we doing in this class? I’m just looking at the page here. If you are interested in this, you could go look at it rachaelherron.com/90daystodone the number 90, nine-zero days to done, what you get in it is accountability. You get the one hour weekly live class where there are, a rotating hot seat where we talk about your work. Each meeting is recorded and shared afterward in case you can’t attend live, but I do expect you to attend most of them live because that’s where, so much of the good juicy-ness is, is talking with each other about our work. You get a detailed plan of action every week I teach something new, while at the same time you are writing your book. There is homework, it’s a doable word quota based on your goals. There is no critique in class. However, you, there is a way that you can share some of your work with me. First drafts are too early to critique that kills writers, it stalls writers in their tracks. This is not the class to do that. But the accountability, that action plan is there and you get community, these communities that I put together in 90-days-to-done, they stick together. They stay together. 

[00:06:13] My classes that ended last week have already met this week without me to continue meeting together and supporting each other. Just wanted to share a couple of testimonial quotes, and then we will jump into the interview. But Beverly Armie Williams said about 90-days-to-done; “This wasn’t the first novel I’ve ever finished, but it may well be the least painful one I’ve written. Don’t get me wrong, I love to write, or rather, as the saying goes, I love to have written, but if I’m going to have written, I got to write. And 90-days-to-done provided the space, helped me carve out and commit to the time and built a supporting, supportive writing community in order to get that novel finished. Best of all, Rachael offered craft lessons, useful as a brush-up if you studied writing and priceless if not, answered any and all questions without making me feel dumb and a weekly meeting that was the cornerstone of our community. Rachael’s lessons and handouts are clear, smart, and sensible. Just what a writer needs during the thrills and bumps of getting a novel done in 90 days. And actually Beverly just finished 90 day revision with me too. So that was awesome. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 214: Bonnie Tsui on Finding Flow in Writing (and in the Water)

Melissa Storm is a New York Times and multiple USA Today bestselling author of Women’s Fiction, Inspirational Romance, and Cozy Mysteries. Despite an intense, lifelong desire to tell stories for a living, Melissa was “too pragmatic” to choose English as a major in college. Instead, she obtained her master’s degree in Sociology & Survey Methodology—then went straight back to slinging words a year after graduation anyway. She loves books so much, in fact, that she married fellow author Falcon Storm. Between the two of them, there are always plenty of imaginative, awe-inspiring stories to share. Melissa and Falcon also run a number of book-related businesses together, including LitRing, Sweet Promise Press, Novel Publicity, and Your Author Engine. When she’s not reading, writing, or child-rearing, Melissa spends time relaxing at her home in the Michigan woods, where she is kept company by a seemingly unending quantity of dogs and two very demanding Maine Coon rescues. She also writes under the names of Molly Fitz and Mila Riggs.

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #213 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Thrilled that you are here with me today because I’m talking to Melissa Storm. Melissa is a force of nature in the amount of things she does and the sheer number of books she writes plus, she runs these incredible writing surfaces for authors, which I have personally used and loved. So it was really, really fun to get to talk to her and, I know you’re going to get a lot from listening to her. She’s one of those people that I just kind of glommed onto as a side effect of being obsessed and infatuated with Becca Syme, you know how I am and, yeah, it was a great interview so please hang out for that. 

[00:01:05] What’s been going on around here? Well, gosh a lot, I guess. I won NaNoWriMo which was incredible. I don’t think I won last year. I don’t think I won the year before that, I normally participate in some form or fashion, but this year I was doing it a little bit differently and I know that I was talking through this as November went through, but, I wasn’t aiming for 1,667 words a day. There really wasn’t. I was aiming for whatever I got in an hour to an hour and a half of just sitting down and writing. And when I was writing the whole NaNoWriMo, all of those words were written on the Alpha Smart Neo2. And I know that some of you might be rolling your eyes and saying that is a ridiculous old, archaic machine that you can get for 50 bucks or 60 bucks on eBay. I realized what it is that, that little machine has unlocked for me. You can only see the four lines of text at any time that you’re writing, that’s the key. Not only can I do nothing else on it, it’s not connected to the internet, obviously, it is just a keyboard emulator, which then you can plug into any other computer and dump the words in but the fact that it keeps me from looking back at what I’ve just written, I did not know how much my brain is doing when I’m writing on the computer on the laptop. While I’m writing a sentence, my eyes naturally, and have always done this for as long as I can remember, I guess, that I’ve been on computers. My eyes are always going backwards to see what the paragraph set up there. Am I answering the question? Did I ask a question in dialogue? Do I need to answer it here? Am I doing that? What a, there’s a part of my brain that is processing 9, you know, 7 sentences ago. Is that the best way to say that? We need to go back and make that more clear on the Alpha Smart you can’t do that.

[Read more…] about Ep. 213: Melissa Storm on Writing with OCD

Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree, and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and The New York Times Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. His new book, Memorial, is the book he wanted to read, the one he didn’t see out in the world. Something that was funny and sexy and yet at times startlingly emotional, featuring people of color, queer people of color, living their lives and dealing with break-ups and falling in love, dealing with being sick, with a parent’s death, with confronting who your parents are as you become an adult, with the meaning of family. He lives in Houston.

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #212 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So thrilled you’re here with me today as I talked to Bryan Washington, it was a treat to talk to him about his book, which I really, really enjoyed. And we go pretty deep into why setting matters and how setting can act as a character, which is something that I get asked about a lot. So I know that you will enjoy this interview with Bryan. What’s going on around here, NaNo is continuing a pace. I am still ahead of schedule. Who Am I? I’m never ahead of schedule. So that is great. Although I got to admit that today, I just don’t want to write, which means I will write eventually. I have come up with a theory and it’s called The Bra Theory. The Bra Theory of getting your work done, getting your creative work done and it’s a Patreon essay. I’m going to be sending out this week and really it goes like this: You need to set yourself up for success. Feelings don’t matter. Your feelings will always tell you that you don’t want to write, that you don’t want to do your creative work because doing other things is always going to be easier.

[00:01:29] So we set ourselves up for success and we don’t ask questions about our feelings. That is what I have been thinking about a lot. And it’s helpful to remember that I cannot feel like writing, and I could do it anyway. And the truth is, and you know this, is when your fingers are on the keyboard or when your pen is in your hand and your body is in motion and you are making words, that is when the muse comes to tickle your brain pan. That is when she shows up. She doesn’t show up when you’re hoping. That she shows up to bring you to the page. I think there’s this, there’s this myth that the muse takes you by the hand and gently cresses your brow and gets you to do the writing. Absolutely not. You must tempt the muse to you. You must do the work that brings her, to whisper those ideas in your brain that you wouldn’t have had if you were not working.

[Read more…] about Ep. 212: Bryan Washington on How Much Setting Matters

In this mini-episode, Rachael Herron answers how to write dialogue for characters who aren’t like you at all, as well as how to breathe life into an old, almost-dead book, and what the heck is the difference between a collection of essays and a non-chronological memoir? 

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron, and this is a bonus episode brought to you directly by my $5 Patreons. If you’d like me to be your mini coach for less than a large mocha Frappuccino, you can join too at www.patreon.com/rachael

[00:00:14] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #211 of “How do you Write?” Today is a mini episode where I answer the questions that you send me. I am your mini coach and I will answer anything that you want. Just become a member of my Patreon at the $5 a month and up level, and you get access to that. So I would like to say a heartfelt and heady and grateful, thanks to everyone on my Patreon, who are my patrons at every single level. You really make the difference in my life of me being able to sit down and do this podcast and to write these essays. I am about to send one out to this morning on, the bra theory of getting your work done. And it is not just for a sis female folk who might or might not wear bras. So doesn’t that peak your interest on you want to read that essay? You could read it for a dollar a month or pay $5 a month and get me to answer some of your questions, which is what I’m going to do right now.

[00:01:19] So, Allen asks here goes, this is a first question from Allen. Allen, thank you very much. As a fairly laid back and sometimes quite taciturn person, that’s a good combination. I like it. Laid back and taciturn. I just had to think about that. Okay. That’s a fairly laid back and sometimes quite taciturn person, I find it difficult to write dialogue for more gregarious, outgoing characters. How do you write for characters whose instincts differ dramatically from your own and still have them sound natural? So it is a fantastic question and it is something that I think writers on the whole generally struggle with this idea of how to make character voices sound distinct and unique, especially when they are not in our own natural voice. So I have been thinking about voice a lot in the last week or two, just as some students have asked me some questions and it strikes me that, are, as I’ve said often before, our voice is our voice, when it comes to writing, you will never be able to hear it. It is like your accent. Everyone else can hear your accent, but you can’t. You kind of have to be told what your voice in writing is because it’s like the fish who lives in water, but doesn’t know that water exists because they are in the water, our brains are always talking to us in our own particular voice language. So when we put our own words down on the page, when we put dialogue down on the page, it is automatically what is just in our brains all the time. And for that reason, it can read as boring or dull or all the same, and we’re not being different enough.

[00:03:07] And that is worrisome. So I understand that feeling, but I don’t actually think it’s something we need to worry about it too much, because it is so easily fixed in revision. And you probably knew I would say that, but what I do with my books is I write them as the book falls out of my fingers and onto the page. And I make that sound like it is easy. It is not. A book never falls out of my fingers, but books do get typed pretty quickly by me and by a lot of other writers and we type it badly, we type it not well. Our books, no book ever comes out into a first draft without needing significant amounts of revision in order to be a good book in order to be publishable quality.

[00:03:53] So, my answer for this is I don’t worry about it. I, everybody in my first draft sounds the way I sound with my voice because I have- I don’t even know who these characters are a lot of times yet I’m learning about them. I might learn that this one might want to be more chatty than I normally am. This one might be more taciturn than I usually am and I don’t worry about it. Once the first draft is done is when I start thinking about, well, sometimes it’s after the second draft, honestly, I usually make this into a pass of my own work is differentiating dialogue and on a really logical level, and Allen you’ve, you’ve shown this is we were able to ask ourselves logically using the logical, rational, revision brain we were able to ask ourselves, what does this character need to sound like? And what do they sound like now? And we can answer that question because we are good at reading we can say this character sounds just like all the other characters, but I want her to sound more gregarious, more chatter boxy. And then that becomes a pass where you can just go through your book, look just at Gloria’s dialogue and make Gloria’s dialogue more chatty than it came out in that first draft or make Diana’s dialogue more taciturn, more quiet shorter sentences, or give this person longer sentences.

[00:05:21] It is such an easy thing to fix in revision that I never worry about it upfront. So if you are struggling with that, make yourself a note that that’s going to be one of your passes is a dialogue pass to make sure that your characters sound the way that they want, that you want them to. One thing that I find very useful when I’m thinking about characters’ voices, and I’m talking about characters who are not my main point of view character, for the most part, although this does apply to those two, is think about what they do. Think about how they see the world. If she is a baker, she’s going to see the world in terms of flavor and measurements and really using words that apply to her as a baker, same thing with the sailor, same thing with a tax accountant that does inform who our characters are and if you push it a little further, it’s fun to play with those ideas.

[00:06:17] A tax accountant, of course, we would think they’d be buttoned up and tight and very precise and know where all the bodies are buried at all times, but what if this particular tax accountant is different and he loves numbers, he loves what he does. Right, he hates what he does. But in this part of his life over here, he is sloppier or messier or more hands off play with I think I’ve gone from voice into actual building of characters who are not our main characters, our main characters, demand rigorous exploration and rigorous thought about their character arc, the smaller characters that are moving around the board. I really have a good time playing with how they might fit into their own trope or how they might break out of it, how I can play with their language and their dialogue later, after the first draft, every once in a while, I will get a character who comes to me with their own voice. And that is always a gift. And I would say it happens one book in 10 for me. So when it does, I really, really enjoy it. So, I hope that that helped Allen. In other words, don’t worry about it until you’re in revision and then it will be easy to fix. That’s one of those easy to fix things. 

[00:07:34] All right, this is from Maggie. Hello, Maggie, sending you lots of love. Maggie, these are personal questions, but hopefully relatable. Number one, when you’ve ditched a whole novel you finished about a year ago because it has so many problems, but now want to jump in and salvage the basic book characters and about 20% of the writing, what would your approach be?

[00:07:58] Okay. So I have done this and I have seen students do this too. I, I do it exactly the same way I approach a major revision and I believe the revision episode for this, the kind of the way I do revision, I believe it’s episode 108 of “How Do You Write?” You can listen to everything I believe about revision. What it comes down to for me is making that sentence outline of what’s in the book and then I use story structure to kind of re-outline what I want the book to be. And then if it is this big, affects, I kind of just start a brand new document and I bring in very little, I just kind of start rewriting the book. And I know that’s painful to hear that is, but you know, what you have said is that you might want to save 20% of the books. So, 80% of that is first draft. Tell yourself, oh, I know it’s painful. Tell yourself that this is a 100% first draft rewrite of this book. That’s the only thing that worked for me to salvage the book that I salvaged. I just started rewriting it every once in a while. I would go dip into the book because I knew where everything was. I had done my sentence outline I knew what was in that old book. And I could go in and grab out a paragraph or two, I honestly grabbed A lot fewer words than I thought I would, because as I wrote the book was changing all the time, so I couldn’t save all the words I thought I could, but I do treat it like a normal revision. And I go in, start with that first scene. Is it the way I want it to be? If not, write a new first draft of the first scene, keeping in mind that all of these things can change later, not holding on too tight. Sometimes when we do this kind of major, major, major, major revision we do get set in our head that this is a revision. So therefore I should be making things better. I think in this kind of major revision, it is better to have beginner’s mind, first draft mind, where you’re just doing a crappy job. You’re doing a crappy job and you’ll fix it later in revision. And that kind of gives you the freedom, the hands-off, the ability to let go and just kind of lean into this first drafting process of the play and the fun and the weirdness and how nothing fits together yet accepting all that and moving forward, I think might be really, really helpful. 

[00:10:17] Number two question from Maggie, a different book, advice on revising the first 10 to 20 pages when you realize the tone and pace is quite different than the rest of the book, the voice is the same. I wrote it that way to set how oppressive her, her normal life is. So there is market change by the end, but now it feels like a barrier for people to get past those first pages, which can be so important for readers/agents, et cetera. As always thank you, as always Maggie, you are welcome. I think that’s a really good and interesting question. So it is important in our books to set up the status quo. We need to see our characters in their normal life and their status quo for a while. Because we need to establish empathy for them, connection, and understanding the reader needs to understand what they’re in before the inciting incident happens at which point they decide to do something different and enter a new world. So we do need to see them in their old world in order for that to mean something to the reader. Knowing that, they could be in this really awkward, uncomfortable beginning place. There’s a couple of ways to ensure that this doesn’t bog down the reader too much and it both, both methods come down to wedding the readers’ appetite. First off you could have a very quick prologue. I, you know, a page or two, which shows your main character at a critical, interesting point in her future that you’re going to get to in the book, that shows that particular how did you put it a particular tone and pace of the rest of the book to tell it was basically guarantees the reader.

[00:12:04] Look, I’m going to get to this tone and pace. We’ve got to go backwards a few steps, see our character in her status quo life. And then I’m going to get you there. Or, you can do that in a smaller way by showing your character inside that tone and pace of the rest of the book. Just for a little bit maybe as something arises, some kind of situation, which requires action in this hook at the beginning of the book show her acting that way. And again, it’s this tacit unspoken promise that you’re making to the reader. Like I’m going to come back to them and we’re going to get there I think you’re being very smart to think about it, but I also think that’s not a but, I think you’re being very smart to think about it. And I also believe that readers, even when they’re unable to explain this out loud, which is most of the time readers who are readers don’t understand this stuff, they just know what they like they understand that this is status quo and that this person is going to change. So they do, they can kind of lean into, Oh, this sucks, right? This sucks where this character is. I wonder how she’s going to get out of it. So you have a little leeway and some play there, which will allow the reader to keep reading. So, what I’m saying is I’m glad you’re thinking about it and don’t worry about it too, too much so hope about hopes. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 211: How to Write Dialogue for Characters Very Unlike Yourself

Pam Rosenthal has written award-winning sexy historical romance and award-winning brainy BDSM erotica, as well as occasional essays and reviews for Salon.com, the SF Chronicle, Dearauthor.com, and Socialist Review. She stands behind the quality of her product, but confesses that her writing process has been more than a little bit fraught. Currently, she’s looking toward making peace with that process, while she continues to work with her husband and longtime creative partner at their copyediting business — not to speak of working her ass off to elect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and a Democratic Senate.

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers!

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 210 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. Thrilled you’re here with me today. Today, I’m talking to the fabulous Pam Rosenthal who has a lot of great stuff to say, including on why you shouldn’t let the page know that you’re scared of it. But let me tell you a little bit about my history with Pam. I, it was probably one of my very first national RWA’s: Romance Writers of America conferences, we were in Orlando, I believe it was bloody hot. And she won the Rita. I believe for historical novel. She won the Rita. That is like winning an Oscar and say what you will about the implosion of RWA that has occurred in this last year. I am no longer a member. I’m no longer on the board. I’m all the way out, but RWA was so pivotal and so important for a lot of people in learning the business and craft of writing. And that was, we’re not even gonna get into the RWA stuff. I’ve talked about it before, but I’m at this conference, and this woman walks into our suite holding her Rita and I got to hold it. And she was so modest and self-effacing, and really, I could tell she was surprised that she had won it.

[00:01:42] So, I read her book and it was astonishing. She’s such an incredible writer. If you’re looking for incredibly smart, incredibly sexy, erotic books that have true depth and meaning, and are also joyous and fun. I’m saying, go pick up a Pam Rosenthal. So I was elated to get the chance to interview her for this. So you’re going to enjoy that, now that I’ve built her up as she deserves. What’s going on around here? Well, I am happily NaNo-ing along, I am, I think about 30,000, 32,000 into this new book. And I just kind of want to talk for a moment about what a crappy first draft looks like, because I hear from students a lot that they think they are writing the crappiest first draft that has ever existed. I’m sorry, you can’t, because that is what I do really, truly what my words look like on the page are a gobbledygook mess. The one thing I do not allow myself to do is ever go back and edit or revise anything. The one exception to that is if I need help getting into writing for the day, I’ll go back and look at the previous day’s writing and kind of smooth that a little bit, you know, correct all the misspellings, put things into Italics that I had put into caps because I’m using a program that won’t allow Italics. You know, I’m generally writing on the alpha smart nowadays. So there are no Italics on that, doing that kind of thing, but otherwise, I have a whole books worth of snippets, fragments, sometimes I have a whole scene. Sometimes I have a whole really good scene, but more often I have these fragments of scenes that I don’t know what I’m going to do with. I don’t know if they’re going to fit. I allow myself to stop writing a fragment of a scene at any point. As long as I don’t go back and edit, I can do anything.

[00:03:42] I generally don’t write out of order. And this is just me, when it comes to jumping ahead. But I do write out of order when it comes to jumping back, because as I’m writing forward, I often have a really good idea for something that should have happened before. And I will sketch that out. It’s not, it still counts to me as moving forward because it’s brand new words. And I don’t go back and look where in the book it should go. I just usually write in all caps, fit in somewhere. And then I write the little snippet of the scene that I see that could help me later. And then I write in all caps going back to, and then I go back to where I was. Nothing has to be pretty, nothing has to be smooth. And in fact, you’ve heard me say this a million times and I’m going to argue for it again. I think that nothing should be beautiful or smooth. The more beautiful you make your writing in a first draft, the more impossible it will B to C, that that particular scene or scenes do not fit in the book you actually end up writing. We always think we’re writing one book. It’s never true. We are writing a different book and we will not know that until after two, three, four, five revisions, then we’ll know what the book really wants to be. And if we’ve made the language beautiful, if we’ve made those scenes really strong on their own as a scene, it’s much more painful to lift them out later. 

[00:05:07] And indeed, sometimes it’s impossible to see that you should. It’s much easier for me if I have a bunch of crappy scenes, when I’m in revision to apply my brain to the problem at hand and see, oh yeah, that really doesn’t. That seems not doing anything for me. It’s a bunch of crap. It is very easy to put into the trash pile. So that is why I do this. That is why, why I think this is best practice for most writers, not all writers, but for most writers I’ve ever, ever dealt with this is best practice for them. Don’t make any of them pretty, until you know, it has earned its place in your book and you cannot know what kind of scene, even what kind of character, even what kind of plot belongs in your book until that big first draft is done and until your elbows deep in the second draft and making it make sense for the first time. Your first draft should not make that much sense in a lot of ways. And it is still how we do it and can still be so fun. And I just feel like this book has been kind of gift like to me in the everyday when I sit down, I’m having fun. It’s just still a good time. I have no idea what’s going on. I am headed toward the midpoint. I know what’s going to happen there. I have no idea what’s going to happen to the rest of the book. I haven’t figured it out. I have love interests. Don’t know what to do with her. Not a clue, but she’s sexy. And I’m liking that I’m writing. This is really my first time writing a gay love interest in a mainstream book. So that’s been super fun. It’s not a romance, but it has a romance in it because life has romance in it. So I dunno, I’m having a great time. 

[Read more…] about Ep. 210: Pam Rosenthal on Not Letting the Page Know You’re Afraid