Monthly Archives: November 2008

Planning a Heart-Stopping Story

Posted on November 28, 2008 | Leave a comment

Part VII of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series

By Holly Lisle

Over the last six lessons, you’ve figured out your theme, and you’ve worked out at least one and possibly several subthemes. You’ve learned how to use blended scenes, intercuts, and cliffhangers to work both themes and subthemes into your work. You have great conflict waiting to happen. What do you do next?

All of our discussion of themes and subthemes comes down to this. It’s time to figure out how your story is going to go.

After more than 17 years of writing novels as my full-time job, I’ve tried every method I could find for getting my stories into order without so overworking them during the outline process that I no longer wanted to write the book. This is the method I currently use, and am still refining. It’s simple, it’s quick, and it’s flexible—all three advantages which make writing more fun, and keep your work fresher for you. This is going to seem like the strangest imaginable way to get a passionate, compelling, suspenseful story on the page…but it completely blows away waiting for your Muse to inspire you in terms of effectiveness.

I am a heavy user of plot cards—3×5 index cards or the software equivalent–upon which I write one single sentence for each scene. That sentence outlines the characters and the conflict that will occur in that scene.

(Don’t understand scenes? The Scene Creation Workshop will help you get the hang of them. http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/scene-workshop.html )

To write your novel, you’ll need to know:

  • How many plot cards/ scenes you’ll need for your book,
  • Which theme or subtheme (or blend) you’ll be dealing with for each scene,
  • Which characters will be in each scene,
  • Who the POV (Point Of View) character—the person through whose eyes the story is told—will be.

You’ll start with basic arithmetic plus your themes and subthemes to do this to figure out how many scenes you’ll need.

An average first novel in the current market is around 90,000 words long (if you’re writing for the adult, not children’s or YA markets).

  • So we’ll start with 90,000 words as our target length.

For this example, we’re going to assume that you have one main theme and two subthemes that you’ve decided will each run the complete length of the book.

  • Theme: HEROINE sets out to win a writing contest and prove to her dubious husband that her dream of being a writer is not a waste of time.
  • Subtheme #1: HEROINE meets man at work who encourages her writing, and her pursuit of fulfillment, leading her to consider leaving her current relationship.
  • Subtheme #2: HUSBAND watches his wife’s life change as she pursues her dreams, and he starts wondering what happened to his own dreams.

Let’s further say that you’ve decided your scenes will average a thousand words each, so you’ll need about ninety of them to get a full-length novel. (In real life, the math is rarely this easy–mine scenes generally average 1500 to 1750 words each, but every book and every scene is different.)

  • Target Length of Book ÷ Average Length of Scene = Number Of Scenes
  • 90,000 ÷ 1000 = 90 scenes for the book (PLEASE NOTE: This is an APPROXIMATION. Books are not so cut and dried that you’ll end up with exactly ninety scenes, nor will each scene be a thousand words long.)

You want to give a lot of the story over to your main theme. We’ll figure 50% because it’s a nice, easy number, but it could just as easily be 60%. Or 73.8%, if you like to make things complicated. Let’s not go there, though.

  • 50% for the heroine’s main story.

Then we’ll divvy up the other half of the book between Subtheme #1 and Subtheme #2. Say you decide that you want the heroine to dump her husband for the man at work. You’ll probably want to give #1 more time and space than #2. If you want her current relationship to grow stronger because her pursuit of her own dreams has inspired her husband to pursue his, then you’ll want to put more work into #2. And if you want to keep the reader in suspense about which way she’s going to jump, split them down the middle.

I think the suspense angle is interesting, so I’m going to give:

  • Subtheme #1 25% of the book, and
  • Subtheme #2 25% of the book.

Multiply 90 (Total Number Of Scenes) by .5 (50%–the percentage your main theme gets). You’ll get 45.

  • 90 x .5 = 45 Main Theme Scenes

Now multiply 90 (Total Number Of Scenes) by .25% (the subtheme percentage).

  • 90 x .25 = 22.5

You’ll get 22.5, which basically means you round up for one subtheme, and round down for the other one. Or write two short scenes. Or don’t worry about the remainder, because this is just a rough technique to give you a quick picture of how you’re going to break up your story. I’ll give subtheme #1 22 scenes, and subtheme #2 23 scenes, just because I’ve decided the husband reawakening his own dreams is a better story than the dude at work hitting on someone else’s wife, and at the end of the suspense, I’m going to have the heroine stay with her husband.

  • 22 Subtheme #1 Scenes
  • 23 Subtheme #2 Scenes

Anyway, I now know I’ll need 90 3×5 index cards on which to write out plot cards, and I’ll have 45 of them for the heroine’s pursuit of her dreams, 22 for her entanglement with the man from work, and 23 for her relationship with her husband.

NOTICE that nowhere in here have I addressed POV (Point Of View)—that is, which scenes are shown through which character’s eyes. The theme and subthemes do not select POV for you. As you write out plot cards, you’ll have to select the best POV based on what is happening in each scene. Let’s do a few now, and I’ll show you what I mean.

  • Jenna, cleaning the attic on a rainy Saturday afternoon, discovers one of her journals from her teenage years in which she promised herself that she’d be a famous novelist by the time she was 25, and something stirs in her at the sudden, sharp memory of that dream. [POV-Jenna] (Main Theme)
  • Kevin Hobart hears Jenna talking to a co-worker about her crazy desire to write a novel, and does a good job of faking casual as he invites her to a meeting of a writers’ group to which he belongs. [POV-Kevin] (Subtheme #1)
  • Mac watches Jenna reading through piles of books about writing, taking notes and writing things down, and tells her she’s going to get her feelings hurt when she does all that work and no one wants what she’s done. [POV could be either Mac or Jenna] (Subtheme #2)
  • Jenna meets Kevin at her first meeting, and even though she brought something she wrote to read, is intimidated by the process and refuses to read when her turn comes around. [POV could be either Jenna or Kevin] (Blend of Main Theme and Subtheme #1)

You may not get all 90 scenes when you first start outlining. That’s okay. You may not, in fact, get much beyond the first third of the book. That’s fine, too. You have a plan, and you can build and change things as you go. The greatest advantage of figuring out and using plot cards is that when you discover a better direction for your story, you can toss a 3×5 index card or two, and replace them with better, rather than tossing several thousand or more already-written words.

I realize it’s unnerving to look at the mechanical processes behind creating edge-of-the-seat fiction. It’s more romantic to imagine typing like a wild thing, writing without a plan, tossing balled-up pages in the wastebasket from across the room…and dressing all in black, and drinking espresso in a coffee house while lamenting being blocked, too. Passion is in what you put on the page, though, not in how artsy you look while you’re doing it.

In the final installment of BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE, “Life, Passion…Deadline,” you’ll learn how to hold on to your story and its heart while working to a deadline.

About the Author

Full-time novelist Holly Lisle has published more than thirty novels with major publishers. Her next novel, THE RUBY KEY, (Orchard Books) will be on shelves May 1st. You can receive her free writing newsletter, Holly Lisle’s Writing Updates at http://hollylisle.com/newsletter.html

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Christine Kringle Plot Contest

Posted on November 27, 2008 | Leave a comment

Christine Kringle Plot Contest

Entry Fee: FREE

Deadline: January 31, 2009

Guidelines: http://www.christinekringle.com/win-5000.html

Christine Kringle, the novel by Lynn Brittney, is looking for a one page synopsis of a plot for the next book in the series. Christine, a member of the Yule Dynasty, is the only daughter of the world famous Kriss Kringle. Her job is to help with bringing gifts to children around the world. Your job is to plot her next adventure. If your synopsis is chosen, the prize is $5,000. You receive no rights to the book and no royalties. However, your name crediting you for the plot will appear on the front of the book.

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Finishing NaNoWriMo

Posted on November 26, 2008 | 2 Comments

I finished NaNoWriMo Monday at just over 52,000 words. It felt amazing. I have the skeleton of my newest novel, Eidolon, completed. Now I’ll spend the rest of November adding more character and setting details to the skeleton, fleshing it out with the meat of the story, checking and strengthening all the plot and subplot threads. By the end of the month, I’ll have a very rough first draft.

 

In writing, I use Karen Weisner’s First Draft in 30 Days model. It seems to work well for me. I took her class last summer, and it helped clarify some of the techniques she introduces in her book. She is very much a left-brain writer, organized and logical. That kind of planning works for me. I wrote the feature article NaNo Applied for Wow! Women on Writing, giving tips for success.

 

If you haven’t finished NaNoWriMo, never fear. You have one more weekend to put the final words on your manuscript and cross that 50,000 word line. You can do it! When you finish, celebrate your success!

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Teaching Tip: Be Flexible

Posted on November 25, 2008 | Leave a comment

chalkboardOf all the qualities teachers should have, one of the most important is, they must be flexible. That way they won’t get bent out of shape when things don’t go as planned. Most days, in a classroom of 32 students and 1 adult, things are not going to turn out according to plan. There are a myriad of ways that a schedule can go awry, but here are a few examples that require flexibility:

  • A bee flies into the room
  • A bird hits the window
  • An unscheduled fire drill, earthquake drill, or lockdown
  • Students from another class want to make a presentation about something
  • Someone gets sick and doesn’t make it to the bathroom
  • Someone gets into a fight or argument
  • Parents call or stop by the classroom
  • The principal or administrator comes to observe

The list can go on, but by now, you probably get the idea. For example, if a bee flies into the room, all teaching stops, the bee must be chased away, (with much screaming and laughter), then a conversation must be had telling stories of anyone in the classroom who has ever been stung by a bee. For a truly flexible teacher, it can be turned into a learning lesson about science, art, or even writing. After telling all the stories, have the students write their best bee story; (how do you think The Bee Movie got started?)

 

Looking at this as an opportunity to build relationships, rather than an annoying interruption, will make it not seem to be a problem. Teaching is messy. Things rarely go as planned. But the excellent teacher is flexible and goes with the flow. In the end, the messy teaching moments are the ones the students remember the most.

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Interweaving Your Novel’s Themes and Subthemes

Posted on November 21, 2008 | Leave a comment

Part VI of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series

By Holly Lisle

When you’re writing a book, you want every page to drag the reader to the next one, even if she’s late for work, even if it’s two o’clock in the morning and he needs to be up at six, even if the plane has landed and your weary traveller really must get bags in hand and get off the plane. You want what you’re writing to be compelling. Enthralling. Un-put-down-able.

And that’s where the themes and subthemes we’ve been working on come together.

First we’ll put together an example where our main theme of rage against misused power, by now well disguised, becomes the story of a heroine who has been wrongfully accused of murder and must prove her innocence. We’ll have a subtheme of unhappy divorce, wherein the heroine’s two children are being told by her ex what a horrible person she is.

We could do an enormous number of things with these two storylines, and I know dozens of ways to meld themes and subthemes together and use them to play off of each other, but I’ll give you my three favorite techniques here.

THE BLENDED SCENE

Start with the heroine discovering the body of a stranger in her basement. Since she and her husband split up, there hasn’t been anyone down there but her and the two kids, who are five and eight years old. She carries a load of laundry down the stairs, trips over the the body, scatters laundry everywhere, and goes racing up the steps to call the police, just as her ex arrives to pick up the kids for the weekend. She’s frantic, her husband first thinks she’s joking, then thinks she’s hysterical, and finally goes into the basement and comes out as she’s calling the cops. He’s not sympathetic—he wonders what’s going on in that house since he left, what sort of atmosphere she’s raising his kids in, and when the cops arrive, he gives a statement, then hustles the kids out of there fast, wondering aloud if she’s had men in the place while his children were there.

  • Locate the characters—other than the main character—who are involved in the theme and those involved in the subtheme. In this case, those characters are the police (theme), and the ex-husband and kids (subtheme).
  • Decide how to create ties between theme and subtheme–in this case, the husband ties the police into his vision of his ex-wife as a bad mother by suggesting she’s been entertaining strangers in the house with his kids present. The police, meanwhile, will tie the husband into the story as another suspect.
  • Get elements of both theme and subtheme into one scene.

THE INTERCUT

Now we’re going to play with time and space. We’ll write four alternating scenes, two from the point of view (POV) of our heroine, and two from the POV of her ex. In each scene, we’ll work either the theme or the subtheme, but not both.

First, we have the heroine being questioned at the kitchen table, denying any knowledge of the man in the basement or how he got there, honestly describing over and over how she found the body, and then we have a forensics guy telling the cop in the background that the man had a note in his pocket signed by someone with the same name as the woman, and they’re going to need pre-existing handwriting samples.

Next, to the father driving the kids home, who’s asking his kids who comes over to the house when they’re there with mommy, and the kids saying no one, and the father asking if mommy told them to say that.

Third, back to the heroine, who is asked to go to the police station, and who is seated in an interrogation room, where, as soon as she’s left alone, she gets up and starts pacing, trying to work through where the man could have gotten a note from her, who he might have been, how he ended up in her basement, why he was dead, and who was responsible for his death.

And back to the father, who gets the kids to admit that, once they’re in bed, they don’t know if anyone comes over, and yes, mommy does have music on sometimes, and maybe someone could have been there, and while they’re at school, they don’t know what she does. Except for laundry. They’re very firm that she does lots of laundry.

  • With intercuts, you want to show facets of who each character is, and how they’re acting toward their own ends, whether those are good or bad.
  • You have to create change, but you are only creating change toward the specific theme you’re working on (at least visibly). The police don’t ask the heroine about her ex, they don’t visibly pursue interest in the ex. They want to know about her. Meanwhile, the father doesn’t mention or worry about the police. His focus is on his kids, and on finding out what’s going on over at their mother’s house.

THE CLIFFHANGER

Finally, we’re going to bring both of these themes into play again, as we have a scene involving the forensics folks. They’ve found a picture of both kids and the mother in the dead man’s pocket, and the picture is signed on the back, “Love, Lisa” (the heroine’s name). The signature matches the one on the note that was in his pocket. It’s not proof she was involved with him, but it certainly doesn’t look good for her. They call the police out of the interrogation room and let them know what they’ve found. The police go back into the room and ask her why the dead man had a picture of her and her kids in his pocket, signed by her, and she panics and starts crying, and can’t—or won’t—answer the question.

And that’s where you leave that scene. The reader is forced to consider the possibility that the heroine might have been lying, that she might know the dead man, that she might even have killed him. The reader could also suspect the husband, who could have had possession of notes and pictures signed the way these have been. But if the scene closes with the heroine in deep trouble, panicked, and not talking, the reader will have a strong incentive to keep reading to find out what happens next.

  • Use elements of both theme and subtheme in your cliffhanger (the mother and her connection to the dead man, and HIS possible connection to her and her kids)
  • Leave either the most important character of the theme OR the subtheme in desperate straits (in this case, the main character of the theme is in trouble…you can save trouble for the ex in a later part of the story).
  • Pick up the next scene with a character from one of your subthemes, and gradually work your way back to the character who was dangling over the cliff.

By carefully using blended scenes, intercuts, and cliffhangers, you can weave your theme and subthemes together in ways so exciting and compelling your reader will stay up late, miss his stop, be late for work. Cruel, yes, but it’s the sort of cruelty readers will thank you for.

Next time, in BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE, Part VII, Planning A Heart-Stopping Story, you’ll learn how to outline the bones of your story using theme and subthemes to keep things moving.

About the Author

Full-time novelist Holly Lisle has published more than thirty novels with major publishers. Her next novel, THE RUBY KEY, (Orchard Books) will be on shelves May 1st. You can receive her free writing newsletter, Holly Lisle’s Writing Updates at http://hollylisle.com/newsletter.html

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Suspense Magazine Writing Contest

Posted on November 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

Suspense Magazine Writing Contest

Entry Fee: FREE

Deadline: December 31, 2008

Guidelines: http://www.suspensemagazine.com/contest.html

Are you a suspense, thriller, or mystery writer? Suspense Magazine is sponsoring a contest with free giveaways of bestselling books by authors such as Allison Brennan, Greg Olson and Stuart Woods. Second and third place winners receive Amazon.com gift cards. Submit your story of 1,500 to 5,000 words in the body of an e-mail to contest@suspensemagazine.com. You may enter as many times as you like.

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Dig Deeper With Your Novel’s Subthemes

Posted on November 14, 2008 | Leave a comment

Part V of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE  Series

By Holly Lisle

By now, you have a solid grasp of the importance of having a theme for your story, of keeping it personal and hidden (to avoid writing the dreaded Message Book), and of hanging on to the courage of your convictions in writing it the way you need to, knowing that you cannot ever please everyone, nor should you try.

That’s a good, solid foundation for writing a book that people will read, and then re-read, and then recommend to friends, and finally buy as presents for people they really like. Which is, after all, the writer’s ultimate goal—to write a story readers love so much they’ll share it with other people who will love it, too.

But you can still go deeper, and make the work richer and more compelling, by layering in subthemes.

[Brakes screech, and someone mutters, "Wait a minute. You finally sold me on themes. But SUBthemes? C'mon, already."]

Subthemes are one of the best friends novelists have. (They’re far less useful for folks who write short stories, simply because subthemes add to the length and complexity of the story.)

Subthemes do three massively useful things for the writer crafting a novel—things a single theme alone cannot do.

1) They force the world of the story into three dimensions. If the book is focused on one theme—no matter how fascinating and wonderful that theme—and all the characters are focused on that one issue, and all the action revolves around that one issue, then, no matter how skilled the writer may be, the book will feel thin. Step beyond the borders of the main action, and no character has anything to do, or say, or think, or any reason to exist. Their lives are bordered by the main theme. By adding subthemes, you fill out your characters’ lives with needs and events that are important to them outside of and separate from the main story’s focus.

2) Subthemes add length and complexity. (I mentioned this above in the negative sense, but that which is the bane of the short story writer is in this case the boon of the novelist.) I receive the following question at least once a week from beginning and intermediate writers—”How do I make my story longer without padding it (and without trying to figure out more plot, because I’m out of ideas)?”

Subthemes by their very nature give you something extra to work into your plot—the unexpected pregnancy of the heroine adding complications while she is running for her life; the villain who in the midst of working mayhem discovers the mother he truly loves is dying; the harassment of the main character by the practical joker at work whose stupid jokes later become mixed up in the life or death issues already besieging the hero.

3) Subthemes allow you an extra opportunity to…um, for lack of a better word…vent. And get something good out of the bad things that have happened in your life. This is admittedly a strange side benefit, but just about every writer I know has SOME issue that repeatedly makes its way into his (or her) novels. The trick, always, is to keep YOUR issue out of the book, and make the issue really and truly related to the character, with different events and a different resolution.

So where do you find your subthemes?

1) Pick a subtheme that is distantly related to the issue driving your novel. If your theme is “Why do bad things happen to good people?”, and your story is about a father who comes to terms with the lingering death of his oldest kid after the boy contracts some terrible disease, a related theme would be how the father finds ways to bring happiness to the kid’s life (and his own) for whatever time they have left. Or how the kid makes a friend in the middle of his personal tragedy, or learns to do something he’s always wanted to do. Or how the father makes one thing his son has always wanted come true for him.(Man, this would be a grim book.)

2) Pick an unrelated issue, and give it, in disguised form, to primary or secondary characters. Using the example above, an unrelated issue that could become a theme would be how the father hangs on to a job when he’s both the sole provider (say the kid’s mother died, or just left) and his kid’s sole source of care and support; or how the kid sets out to win the science fair before he dies, and wins the respect of a teacher he previously hated.

3) Pick some train wreck in your personal life, THOROUGHLY disguise it, give it to people totally unlike the people who were involved in YOUR train wreck, change names, locales, and events… And then work though it the way you should have, or wish you could have, the first time. Using this method, the father could be going through your horrible divorce, but HE could find the good ending you didn’t get. Or he could give up his fantastic career as a professional poker player to be with his son, and could find something good from that loss, rather than the constant regret you have from a similar situation.

In every case, your priorities in using subthemes are to:

  • give yourself more story than what you’d get if you only focused on your theme,
  • give your reader something extra, and different, to take away from the book.

You and your story will benefit in more ways than you can imagine.

In BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE, Part VI, Interweaving Your Novel’s Themes And Subthemes, you’ll learn three of my favorite techniques for balancing themes and subthemes while writing your novel.

About the Author

Full-time novelist Holly Lisle has published more than thirty novels with major publishers. Her next novel, THE RUBY KEY, (Orchard Books) will be on shelves May 1st. You can receive her free writing newsletter, Holly Lisle’s Writing Updates at http://hollylisle.com/newsletter.html

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Words of Belief Holiday Writing Contest

Posted on November 13, 2008 | 2 Comments

Words of Belief Holiday Writing Contest

Entry Fee: FREE

Deadline: November 21, 2008

Guidelines: http://www.wordsofbelief.com/PromoPages/WOBContest.aspx

Words of Belief wants fiction and nonfiction holiday stories for this contest. You may enter up to three stories between 500 and 5,000 words. The Grand Prize is $500, Editor’s Selection Prize is $250, and there will be thirteen finalists published in the Winter Anthology. All winners receive a hardbound copy of the anthology, and all participants receive an e-book version of the anthology.

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American Short Fiction Story Contest

Posted on November 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

Entry Fee: $20

Deadline: December 8, 2008

Guidelines: http://americanshortfiction.org/

American Short Fiction is a high quality literary publication that has received two awards from the National Magazine Award in Fiction. Authors that have appeared in the past issues include Ursula K. LeGuin, Louise Erdich, Joyce Carol Oates, and Reynolds Price. The first prize in the contest is $1,000 and publication, so although the entry fee is high, the prize is substantial as well. You may enter an unpublished story up to 6,000 words in length, using their online submission form. The magazine is open to regular submissions on December 1, 2008.

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Writing Tip: Use Subplots to Build More Interest

Posted on November 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

Using subplots will build interest in your novel, making it a page turner the reader can’t put down. Subplots, while taking on a different course than the main plot, are the glue that pieces a story together.

Using subplots can be tricky, but following a few plot writing tips will make them shine for you, giving you an irresistible novel.

I’ve put the entire subplot article on my Suite101 page.

greatbook

Happy writing!

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