NaNoWriMo 2009

It's getting to be NaNo time. Who's in for this year?

Your World of Text

I wonder if this could be a useful brainstorming tool...

On the site "Your World of Text", you get an infinitely large, text-based, multi-user whiteboard to do whatever you want with.

Just add anything to the end of the URL, and it creates a new whiteboard with that name. Give the URL to others and they can edit it, too.

Try this one:

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/cosmonicans

Query Letter

Mike and I were talking at dinner tonight about the dreaded Query Letter. I wanted to share the post I made based on my notes from that session. Here it is!

Kindle - A great tool for writers

I'm starting to find a number of reasons why I love the Kindle, and none of them have to do with being a reader of books.
They all have to do with being a writer (aspiring):

• Preview this book: The Kindle store lets you download the first two or three chapters of almost any book, for FREE. Every time someone now asks me, "Have you read so-n-so?", if I haven't, I just go grab samples of their work. It's a great way to have a library of different writers at your fingertips. Study them!
• Annotations and Notes: I can add my own commentary and notes to anything I read on it. This is very useful for finding interesting passages later, without having to write on the physical copy.
• Reading my own stuff: I can convert a DOC or PDF easily, and put it on the Kindle. A nice way to proofread without having to sit at the computer, or print out reams of paper. The annotation feature above makes it easy to flag things I need to fix, without getting bogged down in fixing them as I find them.
• Pacing: The Kindle has an interesting dilemma; how to show where you are in a book. It can't show a page number, because you can change the font size to your liking. So instead it shows a percentage. I realized last night that this makes for an easy way to place the "beats" in a story. On the current book I'm reading, the Kindle says I'm 15% in, and I still haven't gotten to the problem our hero is facing. I knew it had felt kinda slow. I'm going to start watching for certain "beats" like a hawk, and seeing where they fall in books that work, and books that dont. Granted, it can be done by comparing page #'s in normal books, but this is quicker and can become intuitive.
  

From a pure reading standpoint, I still prefer a good old hard-copy. But as a tool for learning about writing, I am finding the Kindle very helpful.

"Heathers" Logline

I thought it might be good practice to write loglines for movies we see, and books we read.

Yesterday I watched "Heathers", so here is my take on it:

Veronica, drawn into a series of murders by the suave and manipulative J.D., must realize her school is worth saving in time to stop him from blowing it up.

Applying What I Learn

I decided to try writing chapter one of my new novel with mixed results - it passes the Bechdel test but came out a tiny bit too melodramatic.

Thinking about what went wrong, I remembered the earlier link about Vonnegut's advice:

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Part of the reason I had melodrama was I was trying to be super clever and hold back critical facts while having the characters obliquely refer to them.

Vonnegut's advice provides me both with a challenge and a template for fixing this chapter: write a version in which I stop trying to be clever and trust the audience with the information to make sense of the scene.

Body Language

This article is an examination of body language, which I thought was useful from the standpoint of writing. Learn the physical expressions your characters could make, to accentuate or contradict what they are saying.

On Character

• The following is a good 10-minute v-cast from the Scottish Book Trust on character creation. It recommends beginning your character with 1) talent, 2) an ambition and 3) a secret, 4) a confidant, 5) a enemy.
  
  
  
  
• Author Debbie Lee Wesselmann provides a few straightforward reminders about character (including that it is worthwhile to embrace contradictions).
  
  
• Open University has an article discussing methods of portraying character, which includes some concrete examples (literary) authors have used to display character.

MY TAKEAWAY: My characters must make decisive, and distinctive, choices, not just about the big things but also about the little things. Even the things that take place off-camera (the items they possess, the car they drive, the way they decorate their house) should reflect an active, and distinctive, choice.

Pass The Fucking Bechdel Test! & Other General Considerations

• Particularly for male writers: make sure you past the Bechdel test, and you pass it early. (The Bechdel test). In fact, I think it is worth making sure you pass it in your first scene with two women.
  
  
• Kurt Vonnegut's Eight rules for writing fiction includes general advice but a few interesting tidbits ("Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water," "Start as close to the end as possible.").
  
  
• We've shared it before, but I still like Elmore Leondard's 10 rules. I, particularly, like his cautions against overuse of description (#8, 9 and 10).
  
  
• As a part of the same series, one of my favorite authors, Carl Hiaasen discusses how to rip off the news.

"Feel Free to Write Crap - Give Yourself Permission"

This youtube clip of Professor David M. Harris a professor of English at Vanderbilt, is a particularly good place to start, particularly because it is philosophically compatible with nanowrimo.

There is nothing here we don't know, but there are good things to remember.