A is for Amazon AND Authors

Whats going on? Posting almost EVERY DAY?

(Please visit Monkeys Need Love Too for my post on character emotion - and cute monkey pics) Yep. Found a challenge on Tossing it Out suggesting we all blog 26 times this month AND make our blogs alphabetical. Who am I not to aimlessly follow every suggestion? What's that? Bridge? Would I jump? Sure, there's candy at the bottom, right? So bringing on today's blog, brought to you by the letter A.

Amazon

Amazon have been in the media a lot lately for their forceful tactics in trying to control pricing of e-books for their Kindle readers. If you haven't heard about the removal of the 'buy' button for Macmillan books (I believe it's all back to normal now), then check out these articles I found:

Has Amazon Moved Your Buy Button 

Game On: Amazon Removes the Buy Button for all Macmillan Books

There have been lots of responses complaining about how the author suffer from these wars, and they're right. But there is another side to this. As a reader and purchaser of many Kindle books for my Mac and iPhone, I WANT the prices kept low. I argue that these are digital files and should be no where near as expensive as paperbacks. Some Kindle books are even more expensive than the hardcopy!

Since finding Kindle books, I probably buy at least six times as many books per month as I did before. I am more likely to purchase a book under $10 without hesitating. More than that and I'll think it over. 

How do you feel about e-book pricing as a reader and/or as a writer? As you'll note from the start of this blog, I'm easily swayed - so convince me! :-)

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Monkeys Need Love Too

I was thinking about emotions and how we reveal them in characters. Now I'm not a big romance novel lover, but I always assumed there would be lots of 'oh darling, I love you!' as the big climatic (he he - pun) ending.

In a recent post I talked about 'who-ness', the element that individualises your character from the others, you can see that post by visiting: James Baldwin and Character Who-ness, but today I'm thinking specifically about how characters express love.

LOVE. It's one of the big novel themes; finding love, losing love, loving the one you're with, love can heal all wounds, love is where you find it... etc and etc. Then of course there's romantic love, family love, friendship love and the love of a pet.

Love is a fundamental need. Harlow is well known for his experiments on baby monkeys, raising them in isolation chambers without a mother. Some of the babies were given terry cloths as a substitute and during times of fear those monkeys would cling to and hide behind the terry cloth, they would also hug it for support. Overall it was found that monkeys raised with a mother lived longer than those without. Monkeys need love too.

So all characters are in someway affected by love in their lifetime, even if it's from a lack of love, but how do you express that?

A good friend of mine was telling me that her father doesn't say things like 'I love you', he's just not comfortable with those emotions. What he does instead is always check if her car is running okay when he sees her, or when they talk on the phone he asks about her car. That's his way of saying 'I love you'.

My mother shows her granddaughters love by buying them loads of toys, she also supplies and endless amount of junk food and ice-cream follows every meal, in fact ice-cream usually follows ice-cream. This is her love.

Sometimes love can be revealed in unwanted ways, perhaps a teen character is being controlled by a mother and not allowed to socialise the way other kids can. But if you look into the mother's background you might find that she was raped as a teen, which explains her fear of letting her teenage daughter out at night. Now you have emotions that move the narrative forward.

So really think about your characters, can you think of any ways they express 'I love you' without words? Baking? Cleaning? Beating? (it doesn't have to be positive to be truthful). Share some of the odd ways they show love with us :-)

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Blame the Environment

What Does Your World Do?

I've come across some more insightful information about settings and worldbuilding that I wanted to share with you. You can see my recent post on settings here: Using Settings Effectively For Fiction.

Do you know why your story unfolds in the setting you've chosen?

• it seemed like a pretty place
• you live there, and you know all the locations
• it's a fantasy so you made it up

Any of those sound familiar? You might choose a setting for your own reasons, but WHY is that setting important for your characters and your story?

My current WIP is a mystery set in 1939 in a remote town of Victoria, called Warracknabeal. My reason for picking this location was because an interesting event occurred in this country town at that time. This sparked my 'what if' thoughts and a story idea formed. 

BUT, I could have easily changed the location to suit my story needs. I could have made the location an inner-city football club, or a Polo-club in England instead of the country town racetrack. Changing the location would change my characters, their motives and the way they interact with their surroundings.

I'm re-doing Holly Lisle's writing course How To Think Sideways and applying the steps to my current murder mystery, The Warracknabeal Kids. In lesson 7, Holly addresses the process of worldbuilding. Simply put, she suggests you can avoid a lot of superfluous writing when doing your pre-writing work in building your background world by asking two questions:

• Does this bit of worldbuilding create a conflict for the story?
• Does this bit of worldbuilding force a primary character to change?

Conflict and change. That's it. These are the elements that will add a good pace and interest to your story. The scenery, weather, culture, etc, it's all has to contribute to the plot.

Sometimes there is an obvious connection. The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) protagonist's family hides a Jewish man in their basement, and the story explores how this both risks and enriches their lives. This is set in Germany during WWII, and without this setting the story would loose the strong tones of fear, defiance and hope it carries so beautifully. 

In the movie Avatar, we see the visual splendour of the alien planet's environment, not to show us pretty landscape but to make a clear binary for the destruction caused by the humans. We are technology, they are nature and the protagonist must choose a lifestyle because you can not infinitely pass between the two, something must force a change. And it does.

An important thing to remember about your story's world, or setting, is that it includes the location, time and history. A location's past contributes to the story.

Great, you know the setting needs to push the story forward but how can you find ways to do that?

James Frey in How to Write a Damn Good Novel suggests once you've made a decision to set your story in a certain time and place, you should do some research to provide ideas for conflict and subplots. For example, while researching Warracknabeal and Australian life in 1939 I came up with a few interesting elements to add to and push the story and subplots:

• The infamous Victorian 'Pyjama Girl' murder was still unsolved, but new information led to newsreels being shown in cinemas. 
• On the 13th January 1939, the 'Black Friday' fires affected approximately three quarters of Victoria.
• Films released in 1939 (I'll have to dig deeper to find when they came to Australia) included; The Wizard of Oz, Gulliver's Travels, Another Thin Man (a mystery) and Gone With the Wind.
• Australia was still recovering from the Great Depression.
• WWII would break out later that year.

Those are just a few points that I can work into my story. This is not just to give the reader a glimpse of country life in 1939, but to create an understanding of the characters, their motivations and their limitations. I like the idea of backdropping my story with the 'Pyjama Girl' investigations and updates, and the experience of the fires would have an impact on residents and may create a lynch-mob attitude to a firebug in their own town.

You could also do up a map of your setting and see what physical barriers and opportunities there are. Google maps is always a helpful tool for that. If you're at the edit stages of your story already, this is a good way to find ways to link the various plots of your story and to revise with setting value in mind.

Old picture of the main street of Warracknabeal

A movie clip I found about the early days of racing in Victoria:

Disappeared Racecourses

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When Riff-writing Works

Dog-gone, where'd my creativity go?

Some days one little thing happens and it's like your brain has had the delete key pressed (I imagine a little old man with glasses rummaging through the dusty, spiderweb-ridden storage room looking for that good idea, but ultimately just shaking his head at the sorry state of my mind's hopeless filing system). 

Today was like that for me. I have three dogs, and I'm constantly advising would-be pet owners, that is one too many. This is especially the case when you have one dog that decides to be mean to another. Long story short, there is now a lot of sulking and soreness in separate corners. This small but stressful event is enough to leave me brain dazed.

The unlikely villain: 'Fossil'

So what should I do? Stare blankly at the screen and not write? Nah. That's when it's time to see writing as a task and... just do it anyway. 

I started to write in my journal, just riff-writing (writing without control of the direction, just putting down whatever comes to mind) and I was surprised at what I got. At first it was all about the dogs fighting and how angry and shaken I was. Not surprising because that's what was on my mind, but then my thoughts wandered to my father's dog that passed away this week after an amazing 17yrs. I remembered all the funny stories about this dog and then started to remember things about my childhood dogs. I also remembered reading a newspaper story about my dad when he was a young boy and he adopted a dog from the local pound.

Although at the time this seemed irrelevant, now that I think about it, I would like my 12 yr. old protagonist from Warracknabeal Kids, to have a dog. He's a boy growing up in the country, he has no mother - he should have a dog. Some of my riff-writing will be of value to my story. I'm excited now too, because I love writing dog characters.

So I'm suggesting when you hit those times where you are stressed or tired and you just 'can't think', don't. Write instead.

I did get a nice treat this week when I received this pretty 'Silver Lining Award' from Niki at: 

Wool' N 'Nuts a fun blog about writing and farming and more :-)

It was most appropriate and reminds me to see the silver lining in today's events :-)

I'd like to pass the award onto (well, everyone really, but here's a couple I picked out):

Mary at Play of the Page

Ann from All Write with Coffee

Rosslyn at Inkhorn Blue

My Dad's Best Mate, Clancy 

(named long before I met my husband and became Mrs Clancy)

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My Take on Premise

Most definitions of 'premise' seemed to use the word premise to explain premise (???).

Let's start with what premise is not. It is not theme. Theme is more than a singular words, like LOVE or WAR. If I said the theme of my novel Dog Show Detective is IDENTITY, you would be right to ask 'what about it?' If I said 'Identity is based on perception' or 'Identity can be misleading', then I would be getting closer to relaying my theme.

What about premise?

Premise is more specific than theme. It tells the reader/potential publisher/anyone who will listen, exactly what your story is about. Premise is the basis of your story.

I found a great blog that covered Premise at: Screenwriting Tips for Authors

Alexandra Sokoloff said: "That sentence really should give you a sense of the entire story: the character of the protagonist, the character of the antagonist, the conflict, the setting, the tone, the genre. And - it should make whoever hears it want to read the book."

Based on Alexandra's explanation, my premise for Dog Show Detective would be:

Kitty Walker is a shy 11yr. old, she thinks entering her Miniature Schnauzer in shows will impress her busy mother, but she could never imagine she would find a valuable missing dog, which the owner claims is an impostor, or that someone is trying to keep the dog's identity a secret at any cost, even murder.

In Holly Lisle's course on writing a novel, How To Think Sideways, this is called the 'Sentence'. Holly goes on to use the sentence in How To Revise Your Novel, (one of my favourites courses), where every scene is given its own sentence. This technique has made revising much easier for me. For example, one scene-sentence from my novel is: 

The Walkers tend to the mess left by the intruder and wonder why nothing is stolen until Kitty realises Hitchcock [the mystery dog] is missing. 

I'd be happy to leave my premise as these examples. But there is another step. James Frey in How to Write a Damn Good Novel explains premise as a "statement of what happens to the characters as result of the core conflict of the story". He goes on to say you then take the elements and break it down into a message that is proved by your story.

For example, a Winnie the Pooh animation I saw with my kids would have had 'the sentence' of: 

Pooh and his friends must go on a dangerous adventure to find their beloved Christopher Robin, they each doubt their ability to succeed, but must prove themselves wrong. 

The Premise?  

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. 

Ok, I stole that line from Pooh quotes. Perhaps it could be: You can surprise yourself with what you can achieve if someone you love needs your help.

'You are braver than you believe...'

Another take on Premise comes from Sandra Scofield in her audiobook course, Writing from Premise (available in iTunes), with the suggestion that Premise must be when one element or action in your story LEADS TO a set conclusion (which could be positive or negative). One example given is: Unconventional love leads to new life. This was a premise given for a story about a woman who falls in love with a younger man despite her misgivings and enjoys the journey.

Taking this advice, my premise for Dog Show Detective could be: Making assumptions leads to being deceived. And, I probably have a premise of: Believing in yourself leads to surprising achievements.

Many experts have implied a lack of premise leads to failure in a novel (oooh, that's a premise!), but I believe if you have a 1st draft of a story, you can always revise your novel with a premise. Once you have your premise, make sure every scene moves towards either proving your premise correct, or being the exception to the rule (one character's subplot might act as a binary to the premise). If you find a scene that has no relation to the premise, perhaps it needs to be cut?

Remember: Having a premise leads to a 'damn good' novel!

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James Baldwin and Character Who-ness

James Baldwin

I had one of those special moments when a speaker's comment makes sense on a deeper level. James Baldwin, a revered writer featured on the audiobook Writers Speak: A collection of interviews with writers on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, stated simply yet poignantly that before he could write he needed to detach himself from labels and focus on 'who' he was rather than 'what' he was. 

This got my wee little brain ticking. When I create characters I usually start with the descriptors: age, race, gender, eye colour, etc. It's after I decide if they are a school girl or an ageing minister, that I wonder what they're like. Perhaps this is going about the task backwards. Perhaps we could start with thinking about 'who' our character is, and then wonder what they are. After all, it's the WHO that makes us human, the WHO that separates us.

Sure your story might have a mother, a child, a villain and a superhero. One might be tall, another short. Perhaps one shouts and one whispers, one wears green lycra and the other only white cotton. But those things are just traits and descriptors. They might all seem different in their descriptions but will just blend into each other if there is no individual WHO. Try making it tricky on yourself - what if all your characters had the exact same descriptions, what if they were all the same WHAT? 

In Richard Adam's Watership Down almost all the characters were wild rabbits. Now with a multitude of bunnies hoppin' about everywhere, how are you going to feel for each character? Yet Watership Down made many reader shed a tear for the little critters, and why? Because they had an element of human about them. 

Next time you watch Avatar (and admit it, most of us WILL watch it again), look at the scene where the natives are fleeing the destruction. James Cameron manages to take a huge number of characters and make their reactions unique. Some are angry, others fearful and some carry children and wail in anguish. So irrelevant is the 'what', the main character changes his 'what' from human military soldier to communal native villager with the help of a generated body.

I've done work on character profiles before that look at what the character's likes and dislikes are, but it needs to go deeper. I need to think about every appearing character and what they each yearn for, what they cherish from life and what they fear the most.

These insights into your character's souls can be revealed in many ways. In The Boleyn Inheritance, Phillipa Gregory paints Katherine Howard (young bride to Henry VIII of England), as a teenager obsessed with pretty things and appearances (hmm, how unlike today's teens). She seems vain and petty but you can not help but have your heart break for her when in the tower she is asked what she would like brought to her the night before her execution. Katherine requests the wooden block, so she can practice putting her head on it. She wants to make sure she looks nice for the audience when her head comes off. Even if we don't agree or like this character's persona, we feel her human quality.

In Dog Show Detective, I have a few characters that are acting more like 'extras' so I want to search a bit deeper and see if I can discover their 'who-ness'.

The most recent film I saw, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, had a character inform the young vampire: "Being human's not about what you are, it's about who you are". Make your characters human (even if they're aliens or vampires). Just add WHO.

PS - I still have Google Wave invites to share. If you would like to set up a Google Wave account, read my last post: Competition - Get Your Google Wave Account!, and because I've noticed my followers list growing (hello new followers!) I'm browsing for suitable prizes to have a  fun competition when I reach 100 followers.

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Competition - Get Your Google Wave Account!

I pretty much figured I was one of the last to join Google Wave. After critiquing a twitter friend's first chapters, I was generously offered a wave account last year, and boy was I excited.

To find out a little more about Google Wave (if you're not already onboard) you can check out an earlier post I did called: Wave to the Writer. I was very excited at first and saw a great opportunity for writers to form writer's groups and critique online. During NaNoWriMo this was a great tool, but admittedly my attention has strayed (so unlike me - ooh look, a puppy!) and I've barely been on Wave this year.

Now I have been granted a limited number of Waves to pass onto others. I'm hoping this will grant the opportunity to boost the number of writerly/readerly people I know in my Wave groups. 

Soooo... If you have joined as a follower on my blog (or you'd like to follow now), and you could use a Google Wave account, simply leave a comment and I will invite the first ten responses from my followers - I'll need to get your email addy, but we can do that after the ten are up, you won't need to post it on the site if you don't want to :-).

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Clustering for Clarity

Some impressive clustering

Anyone who popped in yesterday, would have seen my blog in various stages of chaos. Slowly but surely I rebuilt the blog and now I like this design more anyway - so from accidents great things can form. This is one of the messages put across in Gabriele Rico's workshop: To Write Is To Know, on unlocking the creative part of your mind.

While editing Dog Show Detective, I let the creative writing go, my mind had a mission of restructuring this narrative. Now I'm starting to work on the novel The Warracknabeal Kids (or possibly The Warracknabeal Mystery... or... or...), I've found getting in the flow of writing difficult. Stuck on where to start, I needed to kick-start my imagination.

To Write Is To Know was a little slow getting to the exercises, Rico spoke about chaos and patterns, which would have been interesting to anyone less impatient than me (which is just about everyone). I was also a tad sceptical when the first exercise involved clustering but with no instruction. Rico believes if she gives you even a hint on 'how' to do it, that will crush your own creative flow. Clustering is a pre-writing technique to stimulate ideas and involves starting with one word and seeing what connections your mind comes up with. 

More sites on clusters:

How To Use Clustering To Jump Start Your Writing

Rico Clusters.

In the first exercise (clustering words from 'turn') I came up with a huge cluster but no real ideas. I think that might have been my brain warm-up. Because in the second exercise we began by drawing a toy with our non-dominent hand (I'm right-handed so I used my left) and then we clustered from the word Toy. This had much better results for me with ideas for the role toys play in my MC's life forming.

Then came the cluster for 'I remember'. To make it a little more interesting I used bubbl.us, it's a free site for clustering where you can save and share your results. If you'd like to see an example this is what I got, you can click and drag to scroll around the cluster (or go to my bubbl page):

From random memories of childhood I stumbled upon a forgotten one of my Great-grandfather:

Thin, grey and blind. He'd pull out his little metal tin and feel each note stored inside to see how much it was worth, this was a twenty, and these were the fives. He'd always claim he was short, "Who's taken my money?", he'd ask. We'd giggle and run away. Probably someone was taking his money, for lollies or cigarettes.  It's easy to hide in a crowd of suspects. 

Rico goes on with several more exercises, some involving poetry. I did feel I got value out of the course.

I should also tackle Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Edwards) as the book has been sitting on my shelf, and maybe find time to write as well?

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DON"T PRESS THE RED BUTTON!

I blame Emily. If she wasn't off at school camp, then I wouldn't be feeling forlorn and I wouldn't have started messing with my blog to distract me from wondering what activity they are doing right this minute (snorkelling in the harbour) and I wouldn't have deleted my blog design by mistake. Sigh.
So here I am, messing around, just trying to get it back how it was, or at least back to 3 columns.
If you logg on today and find it all a big mess, please come and see how pretty it will be tomorrow :-)

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Using Settings Effectively for Fiction

Where in the World is your Story?

This week in my editing course, I have been going over the settings used in my novel, Dog Show Detective. The basic idea is to go through the index cards that identify each scene and make a note of the setting, background items or gimmicks used that relate to the world the novel takes place in. 

What does this tell us? 

The purpose of our setting and how it shapes the characters and story. And it should shape them. In psychology we are taught the importance of nurture vs nature in forming the human psyche (and all living animals). Anything that happens in your novel is bound to be from the seeds of the environment, if a bird flies south for the winter, then it's probably getting pretty darn cold in the north.

I saw a tele-movie recently about a mystery that took place at a dog show. Needless to say I was pretty excited to watch it as my mystery also takes place in a dog show. My mystery took place in the show because that's what the mystery is about. Clues involve breeding of dogs, microchipping, breed related illnesses and more. The movie I watched only barely related to the dog show, it was a murder that could have happened anywhere, but the writers said 'hey, let's stick it in a dog show'. My point is, if your world is not part of your story, but just a background then you may as well have your story play out on a stage with no sets, because it will look fake.

Think about each scene and where it takes place. WHY does it take place there? What would happen if it was somewhere more public or more private. How might that change what happens, or what is said. What obstacles could appear from your location? And how many setting do you have - does your manuscript read like a play on a single stage or is it overflowing with location changes that could confuse the reader?

Another thing to consider with your world is how you portray it to the reader. Don't just describe the room, have a character make an action that interacts with the setting, like picking up an outdated magazine from the side table and glancing at the other patient pretending to be interested in Woman's Day's news that Nicole Kidman was splitting with Tom Cruise. 

Dialogue is an effective tool for describing the location or setting. Having your character order a coffee and cake would pretty much let the reader know where they are.

I've been a little addicted to the podcast Writing Excuses lately, they're informative and funny. There is one on 'roleplaying'. This is a new concept to me (although it's been lurking behind my back for some time). In relation to novel writing, it is when you have actors (or in my case - family) act out a scene you've written to see how well it works. The podcaster suggested a need for flexibility and improv (letting the actors come up with their own lines). This is a great way to find action lines and dialogue to show your setting. 

I'm going to give this a go as soon as my MC, uh, I mean daughter, gets back from her school camp. I should also get a few inspirational actions or lines from her sidekick Miniature Schnauzer (or maybe he'll just nap through it). If nothing else, it should be fun. 

My Muse(s)

I've made the commitment to Scrivener after using my free trial. The biggest selling point for me was that each document you create (which can represent a chapter or scene or just a section of your manuscript) comes with an index card for you to record a synopsis of that section. Then you can view all the index cards and swap them around during editing to get the layout you want for your novel. In both the writing course and the editing course I do, we use index cards for identifying elements like conflict and character. If you are a Mac user and you would like to check out this program go to Literature and Latte - Scrivener and watch the tutorials.

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Changing Characters

I've been checking out Scrivener. At first I was disappointed when I realised my program Plot Builder wouldn't work on my new Mac. I begrudgingly downloaded Scrivener and promptly declared it 'too hard to figure out'. There were tutorials available but... pfft. who has time for tutorials?

Of course once I gave in and watched some of the tutorial clips and played around, I've found that it's now my top pick for fiction writing. I can even make onscreen plot cards to use in the How to Review Your Novel course. I've a lot to learn, but I'm loving Scrivener.

With the edits of Dog Show Detective coming along, I have now attacked my characters. Viciously. I've gone over when they first enter, how important they appear, and the big one: WHY are they even in the story? Some characters needed to be given more important roles - or get axed. Holly Lisle has a good system for these revisions, she uses a points system in her course (How to Review Your Novel). 

For example: The character name; 'Tommy' vs 'little Tommy snot-nosed Williams' - using the first suggests a smaller role in the narrative. There are other methods of weighing your characters in this course and making sure you don't put too much emphasis on characters you won't be using much, but make important characters stand out enough.

Another thing to consider about your supporting characters is what do they have invested in this story? What's their motivation for helping or hindering the protagonist? What do they hope to gain? You don't want hanger-ons or submissive personas just taking up space. Every single character counts. You might think because you have a young protagonist then you need to include parents, possibly, but they still need a role in the protagonists journey. Either they make the goal harder to reach or they have their own reasons for helping.

I've also been revisiting my audiobook version of Chris Vogler's Using Myth to Power The Story. This looks at traditional storytelling of the journey of the hero. There are a pool of traditional roles for characters, such as Mentor, Trickster, Hero etc. You can find out a little more about these archetypes at: Using Archetypes to Write Meaningful Characters. Using archetypes as guidelines for your character list can help make sure you don't end up with characters that are too similar. And don't forget every character needs flaws, you can read more about that in a previous blog post: Creating Character Flaws. I wouldn't take the archetypes too far, you don't want a story that seems too formulated or it might end up like this movie trailer:

(not as raunchy as the image looks)

To Write Is To Know (Gabriele Rico) is my most recent audiobook download and I've found it filled with creative writing exercises to get you making new connections. I'm going to try some of these exercises to get some new material for The Warracknabeal Kids and will report back the results soon!

Do you have a favourite book, podcast or course to help you through editing? I'm always looking for more!

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It's Like... You Know.

Happy as...

 

Imagery is essential to good fiction writing and effective descriptions. As I re-read Dog Show Detective for the umpteenth time, I notice I have barely any similes or metaphors, they don't come naturally to me and when I do attempt them they are usually cliché (as above).

This week I needed to research ways to use similes and metaphors. Similes basically say something is like another whereas metaphors will describe the subject as being another thing.

Similes:

A simile compares your subject to anything you want to use to strengthen a descriptive point. For example, we could say Lucille Ball's hair was red, or (a line that was used in her TV show) like looking at a beautiful sunrise through bloodshot eyes.

You can also use simile to clarify the ambiguous or unfamiliar. An example used by Grammar Girl is "...a podcast is like a daily radio show that gets delivered to your iPod, instead of over the radio." Even if you were explaining this to an old lady who'd never heard of podcasts, she would probably understand.

Perhaps you're only trying to compare one or two aspects of your subjects such as the colour or speed, which is why you would opt for a simile over a metaphor.

For example I might make this simile:

Nanna was as white as the bleached hospital sheets she lay on. When I looked in her eyes I could see the life flickering weakly like the old fluorescent bulb above us, struggling not to go out forever.

Now if I tried to make it a metaphor:

Nanna was the bleached hospital sheets... what? She's flat and stiff and scratchy? You can fold her? The problem here is sheets provide other images and attributes. You could say Nanna's skin was snow, cold and white, it just needs the clarification on the end.

Metaphors:

Where possible, I like metaphors. Mainly because they are more direct than similes. They can also help you replace adjectives and adverbs.

The most common problem with metaphors is using clichés like it's raining cats and dogs or people drowning in each other's eyes. These overused metaphors rip me out of a story I'm reading because it's like seeing the strings on puppets, I can't be lost when my mind is adding 'blah blah bleh' after these clichés. They could be used effectively as dialogue for a character that would use a lot of trite expressions.

Another problem is when metaphors are mixed in a sentence or paragraph and provide conflicting or confusing comparisons.

For example: I could see by her expression she was a crazed dog with a chip on her shoulder. I tried to leave the shop but she drove at me like an angry bull. There are too many different images here that do not organically sit together well. The safest route is to keep metaphors simple, just one comparison for a passage, however, clever writers can continue with a metaphor and keep the flow cohesive. Take this example from English Essential (Mem Fox & Lyn Wilkinson): Writing is a bumpy road, full of obstacles, potholes and loose stones. ...If you can avoid these problem areas your writing stands a better chance of reaching its destination without being wrecked on the way.

So how do we master the extended metaphor?
In Manuscript Makeover, Elizabeth Lyon suggests:

• Use riff-writing (explained in an earlier post) to explore the connections that come naturally when you write without restriction.
• Look up your word in a dictionary and thesaurus to expand your 'language' on it.
• Consider your character from different angles, not just what you 'see'. Think about the geographical location, era, setting, and emotions. 

My plan will be to start a section in my writer's notebook for cool metaphors and similes. I'll copy down ones I find in other narratives that work well and try to add some of my own. If you want to build up a bank of metaphors/similes try doing some writing exercises finding metaphors for commonly used adjectives and adverbs. For example, find a metaphor/simile for fast, slow, happy, evil, white, black, red and whatever else you can think of.

Some other links for metaphors/similes:
Copyblogger
Writer's Community
Infoplease


 Finally, a big thanks to Shannon at Book Dreaming for passing on this award to me:

Now I apparently have to share 10 things that no one else knows. I'm afraid there is nothing I know that most people aren't already clued in on. But maybe these aren't well known:

1. I lied when I was 9 and pretended to my class that I was moving interstate. They threw me a going away party and it took about two weeks for them to find out I was lying. It was horrible and I ALWAYS try to tell the truth now.
2. 1950's movies are my favourite, everyone seemed so clean.
3. Chooks can sometimes produce chickens without a rooster. True.
4. Kenny Rogers IS cool. 
5. I can touch the tip of my nose with my tongue, a fact discovered in primary school during a 'whose got the longest tongue competition' held by the teacher (I can not remember WHY?).
6. I have stuck my hands in to separate fighting dogs at off-leash parks, no fear at all, but am terrified when clipping the fur off a Persian cat and it's tail starts wagging.
7. It always takes me about five goes to pronounce 'onomatopoeia' for my poetry classes.
8. I do not multi-task, I 'focus-task'.
9. I don't know how a car works, you magically turn a key and then it runs.
10. I generally suck at similes and metaphors

I gleefully pass this award onto:

Inkfever

and 

The Chocolate Chip Waffle (for being my most recent follower)

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Get a Little Conflict in Your Scene

Editing research has had a central theme of conflict this week.

How To Create Conflict - Step # 12: bathe a cat

The course How to Revise Your Novel had me identify (on my little index cards) the conflict from each scene (not just the chapter but every single scene). A couple of cards had 'no conflict' scrawled on them, and I wondered what would become of that scene, but I think we all know *imagines the axe falling*.

When I write I need to keep the flow. I excuse myself from checking that each scene 'works' and I just keep going. That's the only way I can finish. Holly Lisle explains this is because the writing we do for ourselves, but the editing? That's for the reader. Editing is the stage where we let go of our hold on the writing, we detach ourselves from becoming sentimental about phrases and characters and we tie it all together in a functional format. Come on, no tears, you're an editor now.

But surely having some scenes without conflict is practical, doesn't that make it more realistic? After all most of us don't have constant conflict in our lives (or maybe I do but I'm too lost in my stories to notice). Well, unless it's going to be one of those postmodern pieces with the whole book as the internal dialogue of a lady shopping for melons that I usually don't 'get', it's not meant to be real life, it's fiction. That means leave out the boring bits.

In Revision and Self-Editing, James Scott Bell suggests asking the following questions about your characters in EVERY scene:

• Are they understandable, human?
• Are they on the way to being pressed to the limit?
• How can you show, subtly or overtly, the pressure?
• What will be the consequences of the explosion?

So if I really don't want to slash those non-conflict scenes, I'd better find a way to make them more interesting. 

For example: I have a scene in Dog Show Detective where my young protagonist, Kitty Walker, is grooming her dog for the upcoming show. There was conflict in the last scene with the identity of the missing dog and the next scene will propel towards more action, but this scene is definitely non-conflict. Here's what I'm thinking, I could have Kitty expect her mother to groom the dog (it's a tricky task), but her mother is too busy writing her book about grooming dogs (obvious irony?), so Kitty decides to do it herself. The end result is a dog with bald patches only a few days before the big show.

It doesn't matter that I'm writing a kids' mystery novel and not an adult thriller, if there's no conflict the reader will just lose interest. The stories my 12yr old are reading now are The Sea Monsters by Rick Riordan and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, both she tells me are filled with conflict and action.

So what do you do when there is a necessary step in the narrative that does not involve action or conflict? Bell tells us this is one of those rare times in your story where you should tell and not show. 

For example: You may have a teen novel with twin sisters fighting over a dress to wear out to a school dance, where they know the boy they both like will be. SHOW the fight and the jealousy, but when it comes to getting dressed, putting on shoes, make-up, checking you have cab-fare, brushing your teeth, etc, just summarise: Forty-five minutes later Jessica walked out the front door, purse in hand and the victory dress hanging off her like a seductive trophy. She'd won. Or at least she thought she had until she got out front and realised her sister had driven off without her. (Never make it easy on your characters!).

Making sure you have some conflict in each scene does not mean every scene has to be a new world war, it can be internal conflict, or just an obstacle that makes the character's intended action more difficult.

In a recent interview, Alan Baxter (writer of supernatural thrillers) said writers can make fight scenes more realistic by having some good old running-away, that this is a more natural reaction. So your conflict could be your character trying to avoid conflict.

No conflict to see here folks... unless you disturb my nap

My conflict this week was struggling with my ill-conceived resolution not to buy any more books until I've read at least half of the ones I have piled around the house. But...

My inbox included a $10 voucher from Fishpond this week, and I was tempted by discounts and free delivery offers. I'm now awaiting:

The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life by Noah Lukeman
Description and Setting by Ron Rozelle
and
Dialogue: Techniques for Crafting Effective Dialogue by Gloria Kempton
I've also started listening to Jack Wakes Up - a free podcast novel on iTunes
and got me the Kindle version of Saving Rachel by John Locke.

Then there was the pleasant surprise of another award! Yay, hooray! from Shannon at Book Dreaming (I'll post it later in the week, so this post doesn't get too long for you all). Plus, I have the exciting news of a shiny new counter installed on my blog! I love seeing which countries the visitors are coming from! (okay it's only been up a couple of days so it doesn't have a whole lot of visitors yet).

My next post will be about language, similes, metaphors and the like (which would be a simile?), and as I watch my follower numbers starting to grow, I might plan a fun competition for when it reaches 100 (right, I'll need sticky-tape, scissors, a tutu and whole lotta paper).

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First Impression & Lasting Impact.

Dog Show Detective edits are coming along nicely. I owe this completely to the resources I've found on editing that turned a daunting task into an achievable process. This week I've been looking at position and placement.

'cause position matters

(pic found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/68003527@N00/254633689)

Position, Position, Position!

By now you all would be knowing about the ol' opening hook necessity (or you can see a previous post I did on hooks here). The opening hook can get your reader interested in starting your novel, but it won't be enough to keep them going. There's no point in letting the rest of your story drag through.

In Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore, Elizabeth Lyon explains the importance of certain positions throughout your novel. This guide (which I've found very practical) suggests spending an entire round of revision on 'power positions'.

What is Power Position?

"When a word, phrase, or sentence is in a first position, it serves as a hook to draw the reader in. The impact of the last position should cinch the meaning of the sentence or paragraph, and create suspense and curiosity leading to the next hook." Are you at least thinking carefully about where you pack the important stuff?

Examples:
Miss 8 was today writing a story about a valuable piece of paper missing from the museum. Her story started by telling me all about Greg, the man in charge of guarding the valuable piece. I heard about his family and his work habits and then finally about the day he discovered the piece of paper was stolen. I suggested she start with the discovery, and then tell us about Greg. The re-write started by expressing the concern in finding such a valuable piece missing and what it might mean for his job, then we learn who 'he' is.

Miss 11's story would be about a thief who is escaping a detective and during the pursuit get's hit by a car. After learning about 'starting with the action', she decided to begin with the impact of the car hitting the thief and then explaining how he got there. This shows how the opening paragraphs of the chapter would have the hook, the excitement, the puzzle and the closing ones would explain and deepen the curiosity of the reader.

In Dog Show Detective, I've been working through my chapters and paragraphs to see how I go on position placement, but I think a big change will be for the placement of chapters in the book. I start before the action, I figured I needed to 'inform' my reader of what was going on. Wrong. I can inform them later, right at the start I want to make them wonder what's going on.

My other main source for editing has been How to Revise Your Novel. 

I know I rave about this course, but it has broken the process of editing down to weekly steps. I'm not sure what's coming up, but so far I've been able to complete the steps without difficulty. 

In lesson 2 I looked at the weight of each character and item mentioned in the narrative and making sure it directly links to the story and hopefully propels it along.

This week was lesson 3 and I had to summarise each scene into an impact sentence and write them on individual index cards (without knowing what Holly Lisle will want me to do with those cards, I have already found scenes that will be surplus). So far this course has had me identify problems and I haven't had to actually rewrite (yet - I KNOW that's coming!)

As well as editing, I have been working on my plotting for my next book (possibly named The Warracknabeal Kids). In 1939 a fire swept through the Warracknabeal racecourse, burning down the old decrepit clubhouse and providing much-needed insurance funds to build a new one. I'm using this as a setting for my story about a kid who struggles with morality and understanding that sometimes you have to do wrong to make things right. I think this is my favourite part of writing - planning. I love research and finding out more about my MC's world. Today I'm going to get a Google Maps pic of the small town he lives in.

I also received a Kreative Blog award (from Ann at All Write With Coffee - thanks!), the idea is that I pass it on, but you know what? I've decided if you follow me, or I follow you - then that means I love your blog and would like you to accept this award (I realise most of you probably already have it). Feel free to post it up and share ten things about yourself (I won't do that because I did it last post and things about me actually run out at 12). So for all my followers and followees - your award:

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Pass it on...

 A while ago I received this award from Book Dreaming, a great site about reading and writing that I love to visit. Book Dreaming receives quite a lot of these awards, and it's easy to see why! The catch is: I tell you ten things about myself, and pass the award onto ten other bloggers. How hard can that be? #famouslastwords 

In no particular order....

1. I tweet too much. Sometimes 20 tweets a day. I tweet links about writing, reading, educating and just random fun sites, I tweet about my process in writing and editing, and I tweet about my purchase patterns as a book consumer and blog follower. I figure this stuff is helpful, but have had close friends in the earlier stages of twitter threaten to stop following me because I fill up their screen with tweets. I have now found I can keep them on Facebook and my ramblings on Twitter.
2. When I start laughing, I can't stop for a really long time. This usually starts when I go to bed, my neighbours must feel sorry for my husband (I'm not laughing at you baby, with you, with you).
3. This almost seems sacrilegious for a book lover to admit, but I now prefer Kindle and e-books to physical books. I have many crates of books in my shed that won't fit on my shelves, I LOVE electronic books and would be happy to have every book I own on Kindle or audio-file format. *ducks as angry paper-book lovers throw heavy texts*
4. I will sign up for ANY course (even if it's something I suck at) crafts, arts, accounting, education, marketing, etc, etc. I think the weirdest thing I've studied is a dog groomer's course via correspondence (it's really hard stuffing those finished Shih tzu's in an envelope).
5. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Never have. 
6. Truth: When I was 13, a friend and I co-wrote a book that turned out to be quite dirty. We thought it was hilarious but knew it could never see the light of day, so I hid in the bottom of my craft box. I was horrified to come home one day and discover my mother had donated the box to the elderly lady next door. Nothing was ever said about my shameful 'book' *still blushing*.
7. My husband keeps me grounded. Without him, I honestly believe I would be one of those crazy ladies with over a hundred dogs in her house. We have just 3 dogs, a cat, 5 chickens and a bunny (don't tell him but I want just one more puppy).
8. When my kids ask if I have a band-aid in my purse, I remind them I'm not that kind of mum. I'm the kind of mum that drags mattresses into the lounge room on a Saturday night so we can have a slumber party and watch movies all night. I also do not ever get school forms in on time.
9. I love jelly-beans, the special little fancy ones. My favourite flavour is buttered popcorn.
10. I have an endless number of fears, just a few of those are: flying, hairy spiders, typing the word spiders (*shudders*), balloons, identical twins (not the people, just the idea of a person genetically existing twice at once), the sun/earth exploding/imploding (yes, I've contemplated this), telephoning strangers, milk more than 24hrs old, going into banks, a knock on the door, and, as it turns out, a man over 60 wearing a superman t-shirt in the supermarket (I had to keep changing isles to make sure I was never in the same one as him).

Then came the catch, finding bloggers who didn't already have this award displayed on their blog (kind of reminded me of the chain letters we used to write each other as teens):

1. Michelle McAlleer - Actress, teacher and dog lover, wonderfully honest and humorous life blog.
2. http://theinnocentflower.blogspot.com/ - because I saw my friends book on her site (check out Amy's The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Dogs)
3. The Write Words - This blog has a contest for 200 writing minded followers!
4. http://penultimatepage.com/ - another contest for 200 followers 
5. Inkspot - I love some  of the mystery covers of their books!
6. http://www.suspensebyanne.blogspot.com/ - another blog with contests
7. http://jenniferswriting.blogspot.com/ - a writer's journey
8. Play of the Page - this is a lovely blog where the writer shares her thoughts, writing and family with us :-)
9. It's a Mystery - because I love mysteries, lists and the Friday cartoons
10. Breakthrough Blogs - the latest addition to the list of blogs I follow.

Next blog we'll return to the subject of editing, in particular word and sentence placement and priority (let the fun begin).

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