Cool Blog Quote: Helping Your Writing Grow

Recently, agent Laura Biagi gave this bit of writing wisdom to Middle Grade Ninja in 7 Questions For: Literary Agent Laura Biagi:

"...don't keep reworking the same piece for too long. Your writing can only grow if you give yourself new things to write---much like a plant can't grow bigger if you keep it in the same pot."

Laura Biagi, 7 Questions For: Literary Agent Laura Biagi, Middle Grade Ninja, July 14, 2014

This really hit home for me, because I have one novel that I keep revising and still can't get to work. I'm a terribly persistent person and hate to give up on something. 

But when I read the new project I'm working on, I can practically see what I've learned, because it feels so much more natural and alive. I often wonder if revisions can be overdone, drumming all the best parts from a piece of writing. I think they can.

Tips on Revising:

Revise much? Over at MiG Writers, we're talking about revising for an editor or agent. I was really interested by what my writing partners had to say on this topic, especially since we are all at different stages of our careers. Here are the links if you're interested...

Revising for an Editor or Agent, Part 1

Revising for an Editor or Agent, Part 2

Risk-Taking and Revising

I can't believe the last week of August is already here! It's been a great summer, and I've learned a lot about my writing and especially about taking risks when revising.

If you're trying to decide whether or not to make a big change to your novel, I suggest you jump in and try it! You never know how it might turn out. [Here are a few tips on How To Make Revision Less Painful.]

In my household, we're all getting ready to launch into another year of school. Instead of writing or blogging about writing, this week I'm taking a break to focus on back-to-school preparations.

Wishing you a creative writing week!

Podcasts for Writers: On Writer's Block and On Revision

1) A quote from a useful discussion about the myth of writer's block:

 

“When your fingers are moving, your brain is working.”

Shirley Bahlmann, The Myth of Writer’sBlock with Shirley Bahlmann and Heather Ostler, Author’s Think Tank, Episode #11

The idea behind this quote is brilliant.  Even if you start out writing junk, your brain is working and is going to kick in and start producing something useful (and then you can go back and delete the gibberish). So to get past a place where you’re stuck, you just start writing anything, even something unrelated to what you want to work on.

Author’s Think Tank describes themselves as:  A think tank of authors helping each other reach their potential. Their site has a blog with writing tips and information, as well as a series of podcasts. I only discovered this site recently and have been enjoying catching up on their podcasts.

2) Here's a podcast about revision that has given me a lot to think about, especially in terms of my goals for my story and characters.

“It’s often useful to write out what you want the reader to feel about the character…that doesn’t always come through on the page.”

Cheryl Klein, Revision Techniques I by Cheryl Klein and James Monohan, The Narrative Breakdown.

Cheryl and James discuss some of Cheryl's strategies for helping writers revise, including writing "intention" letter about the story, making a book map and using character charts. I've heard about some of these techniques before and they are also in Cheryl's book, Second Sight, but it was great to think about how they apply to what I'm currently writing. This is a podcast episode I'd probably listen to again from time to time.

 

 

Learning from Revision

Happy Friday! I'm especially happy this week because I finally got through the first part of my revisions! It was the hard part, the part where I re-envison the story, adding in completely new scenes to keep up the tension and cutting out scenes that slowed the story down (or were confusing to anyone but me).

I haven’t done much to celebrate yet, besides eating a gooey chocolate dessert and planning a night of doing nothing but napping and watching T.V. My family said, “Napping? You don’t nap.” Ha! I do if I’ve spent every waking moment (plus some when I should have been sleeping) on revising my novel.

So, after that nap, I’m moving on to the next part of my revision process, where I work on revising for consistency. If you want to read more about that, I've blogged about it over at MiG Writers today.

Some things I discovered during my revision:

1. Doing a little work on the book every day does eventually get me to the end.

2. Making big changes and taking risks leads to a much stronger story. Every time you write something, you're setting up a limitation or constraint that will affect the rest of the story. For example, in my earlier version, one of my characters was kept in a guarded room for some of the story. Re-visioning this situation to give her a bit more freedom opened up so many possibilities.

3. I use words like "much", "just", and "but" way too often.

4. Goat cheese and walnut ravioli

I hope you had a great week too!

Revision Tip: Take a Holiday!

Today's Tip:

One of the most commonly repeated pieces of advice for revising is to take some time between writing your draft and working on revisions.

What I usually do is set a story aside for a couple of months while I write the first draft of another project (because there are always more stories waiting for me to write). I don't like to rush. Revisions require incubating time as well as writing time.

Useful link:  Jessica over at Bookends Literary Agency gives an agent's perspective on taking time for revisions.

Happy Holidays! This is my last revision tip for the month -- I'll be back in January (well-rested and with a good chunk of my novel revision done).

Revision Tip: Choose the Right Details

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

 Today's Tip:  

Details add sparkle to the story (and can sometimes cut down your word count).

It's a little weird to think that putting in details can actually make a story shorter. But one of the things I’ve noticed while revising is that sometimes a carefully selected word or phrase can replace an entire sentence.

I think it’s important to make sure the details you choose are ones your main character would notice. For example, my current novel has a lot of smell-related details since my main character has a keen sense of smell. 

Watch for:

 - sentences where the main purpose is to state a description (often starting with "It was..."). These can sometimes be eliminated by using a descriptive phrase or by showing how the character reacts to the description.

 - sensory details that are vague, rather than specific. For example,  It smelled delicious vs. It smelled like the gingerbread cookies her grandmother used to bake.

 Cool Quote:  “Description does nothing to move a story forward on its own. It’s how it interacts with the characters that makes or breaks it.”  Janice Hardy, Description 101: Is Your Description Helping Your Story or Holding It Back?  The Other Side of the Story, April 21, 2011

Over at Chocolate for Inspiration, my critique buddy Christina Farley talks about her revision process – she has one phase of revision that's just for getting the details right.

Revision Tip: Experiment, But Save It

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

Today's Tip:

Make good use of your technology.

Since I’m writing on a computer, I easily can make as many drafts as I like and no one will see them. That gives me the freedom to try things out in a different way to see if that makes for a stronger story. I can cut out a character, add new chapters etc. Sometimes I save separate paragraphs of bits of the story that I liked but didn’t fit with my new vision. Then if I need to, I can go back to them or use them somewhere else.

Watch for:

-  save different versions of the file under a different name

-  backing up files is critical

Cool Quote: “…unless you make big changes, a revision isn’t worth doing. If you go out on a submission round and get roundly rejected, you’re not going to solve your problem by going back to the page to tweak a few words here and there.”

Mary Kole, Big Revision, December 7,2011

Revision Tip: Scenes as Building Blocks

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

Today's Tip:

Each scene is a step towards the final big event that happens at the end of the story.

Can you tell I’ve been learning from The Plot Whisperer? One of the things I do as I revise is to check my story, scene by scene, to make sure each scene has a purpose.

I also think about the characters in each scene, what their goals are for that scene and how the scene contributes to their overall goal. I’ve been noticing some interesting ways my character’s goals interact, leading to scenes that have more than one purpose in the story. Watch for:

- scenes with no apparent purpose:  they need to be cut or amped up (even if the writing is amazing)

- scenes where too much is happening: sometimes they need to be broken up

- scenes that repeat in terms of the pattern of events or structure 

Cool Quote:

 “…it wasn’t until I learned to see scenes on a micro level—as needing goals, obstacles and turning points of their own—that I became a publishable writer.”

 Lena Coakley,Some Thoughts on Scene Structure, posted on her blog November 30, 2011.

Revision Tip: Working on Structure

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.


Today's Tip:

Learning about book structure from reading and analyzing published books in your genre can be really helpful. I find I get the most out of this process if I do it myself, but there are some great ones out there on writer blogs (for example, see Laura Pauling's Plot Busters posts). When I get stuck on a plot issue, I often turn to one of my novel analyses to see how other writers manage to get their plots to fit together.

Cool Quote:  "Analyzing a book through dissection turned out to be one of the most concrete and most helpful revision strategies I tried...the power of the dissection process was that I came to these same conclusions on my own by analyzing how writers I admire created books that I love."

Katherine Schlick Noe, Revision: Turning Spilled Milk Into Ice Cream blogging at From the Mixed Up Files on August 5, 2011.

Revision Tip: Telling in Dialogue

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

Today's Tip:

It's easy to hide telling in dialogue. It can also create situations where your dialogue feels off, because you are telling something in your dialogue that doesn't match with what is being shown in the story. Watch for:

- adjectives that explain character emotions, e.g. she said in surprise

- attributions that explain dialogue, e.g. he barked

Cool Quote:  "Every time you insert an explanation into dialogue, you're cheating your readers of a little bit of one of your characters. Do it often enough, and none of your characters ever comes to life on the page."

Renni Browne and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.