Jane Austen's Fight Club

This is SO AWESOME. (Oh, but PG-13 for one F-bomb.)



"The first rule of fight club is one never mentions fight club. No corsets, no hatpins, and no crying."

Read more: http://jezebel.com/5595473/welcome-to-jane-austens-fight-club#ixzz0yVJObJPC

(The comments on Jezebel are worth checking out.)

iLesson: Tension (the good kind)

Every books has scenes in it where "nothing happens." No explosions, no dead bodies, no break-ups, no make-up, no make-out... no ninjas dropping from the ceiling.

Sometimes you need a scene just to get information across to the reader. This may be:

1) Clues to the mystery that don't seem important at the time, but will be vital later.
2) Character development.
3) Establishing the value of a place, situation, or relationship so that the reader knows how important it is before you, the author,  either destroy it mercilessly, or put it in jeopardy.

The problem is, those are YOUR goals as the author. The reader doesn't care what YOU are trying to accomplish in the scene. He or she only cares what the character is trying to accomplish in the scene.

Even in ninja-less scenes, something *does* have to be at stake for your character. It doesn't have to be a BIG something, but it has to be A something.

Say your (author) goal is to have your knight in shining armor chat with the princess a bit so that when the princess is later kidnapped by the Evil Sorcerer, we will care that the knight gets her back.

He (Sir Dauntless) still needs a goal to give the chit chat tension. Does he like her and want to impress her? Does he want to NOT like her because she's off limits? Or maybe his goal has nothing to do with her: Does he just want to get through dinner without humiliating himself?

I wrote a scene recently where the heroine's only goal was to get from one side of the room to the other, but people kept interrupting her to tell her or ask her things--about her sister, about her mother, about a rumor going around town (that would, coincidentally, be extremely important in the next chapter).

My heroine wasn't trying to learn these things. She was just trying to get to the bathroom. But giving her a goal, ANY goal, gave the scene much needed tension.

Ideally, the reader didn't (wouldn't) notice what I did there. Half of what we do as writers is subliminal. She probably wouldn't notice if I just had my heroine wander around the room with people randomly stopping her to chat and drop nuggets of useful exposition in her lap. But side by side, one scene has energy, and one is obviously an excuse for me to exposition.

So add a little tension to your scenes by giving your character something to accomplish (or try to accomplish) in every scene. 

Following/Friend policy

This seems like as good a place as any to park this policy while I'm thinking about it.  I mean, I know I need to start a FAQ page, and about eleventy other things. (Which doesn't even count the personal stuff, like take my dogs to the groomer and do something about my hair.)

Following and Friending: Okay, this isn't so much a policy as the way it seems to be shaking out due to my general distraction. (I'm not an absent minded person, I just have a LOT to try and keep track of.)

Twitter:  I don't automatically follow back, but I do generally answer mentions (with an @ so I'll see it). And if you reply to or mention me, the chances go up I'll follow you.  I usually follow readers, other writers, book bloggers/reviewers, librarians and other book people. And also @russellcrowe and @nathanfillion.

But let's face it, if you compliment my books and don't try and sell me something or get me to visit your site to see your sexxxy pictures, chances are, I'll follow you back. I'm easy that way. (But not any other way.)


Facebook: If I'm pretty sure you are a reader (or a book person as mentioned above), I'll friend people on my FB page until I run out of spots. If you're not obviously my audience (i.e., young adult and generally female) it helps if you drop me a message along with the friend request telling me you're a reader, or that we met at a writer's conference, or we're in YARWA together. But make sure you "like" my writer page, too. One, because I need people to like me to bolster my self image. And two, that's where I (try to) post updates about signings, appearances, new book news, etc.


Now I have to think about what else to put on a FAQ page. Other than: "Will there be a Splendo(u)r Falls sequel?"

Unraveled!

Gena Showalter’s YA series, Intertwined, featuring paranormal magnet Aden Stone continues this September with UNRAVELED. To celebrate her new release, Gena and her author BFFs are hosting a 4-day scavenger hunt on their blogs; including this one. Three grand prize winners will each win a $100 Visa gift card, plus Miss Gena’s giving away signed copies of UNRAVELED to five lucky runner-ups! All you have to do is find all eight letters, unscramble them and email the word to Contests(AT)KnightAgency.net. Easy peasy. Today, P.C. Cast and I have our letters up front and center. To get the skinny on where the other letters are hiding in the great internet universe, click here for a contest road map and rules.

Participating UNRAVELED hunt blogs include superstar authors Rachel Caine, PC Cast, Marley Gibson, and Tina Ferraro and Linda Gerber. This contest runs from Monday, August 30^th to Thursday, September 2^nd. All entries must be received by Monday, September 6^th at midnight ET. Happy Hunting!

So, are you behind the curve and wondering what UNRAVELED is all about? ;-) Read on to learn more about Aden:

For once, sixteen-year-old Aden Stone has everything he’s ever wanted:

A home.

Friends.

The girl of his dreams.

Too bad he’s going to die... Since coming to Crossroads, Oklahoma, former outcast Aden Stone has been living the good life. Never mind that one of his best friends is a werewolf, his girlfriend is a vampire princess who hungers for his blood, and he’s supposed to be crowned Vampire King – while still a human! Well, kind of.

With four – oops, three now — human souls living inside his head, Aden has always been “different” himself. These souls can time travel, raise the dead, possess another’s mind, and, his least favorite these days, tell the future.

The forecast for Aden? A knife through the heart.

Because a war is brewing between the creatures of the dark, and Aden is somehow at the center of it all. But he isn’t about to lie down and accept his destiny without a fight. Not when his new friends have his back, not when Victoria has risked her own future to be with him, and not when he has a reason to live for the first time in his life.

--

Ready for the secret letter?  

*Cue Secret Letter Revealing Music*

Now go on to P.C. Cast's blog and get the next one!

Blue Monday

TGIF is wasted on me, and Monday is usually something I look forward to, since it means the house will be quiet so I can work. (Well, this is relative. Mom is talking to the dogs right now. Mom is convinced that if she speaks loudly enough, they will suddenly become obedient.)

But so far to day I have:

1) Overslept

2) Spilled coffee all over my desk

3) Fed the wrong dogs the wrong food (which they didn't mind, but I will, much later in the day)

4) Gotten stung by a wasp...

5) ...on the bottom of my foot...

6) ...right when the carpet guy knocked on the door.

So the only thing worse than being in excruciating pain is having to hobble around trying to crate barking dogs while reassuring a workman that no, it really is safe to come in and just excuse me for a minute while I hop around on one foot and curse a lot.

iLesson: Storytelling voice

Think about when your mom or dad told you a bedtime story. Or your camp counsellor told a ghost story at the campfire. Or when your dad told you about meeting Elvis while he was in the Army.  Or your grandmother told you about the Nazi occupation of The Hague. 

The storytellers probably didn't use perfect grammar. They weren't following any rules. If it was a good story, well told, it held your attention. If they lived the story, then the emotion in their recollection, the rate of their speech, or the way they drew out the story in some places and skipped over the boring stuff in others... or even where they skipped over the bad stuff, giving you only a hint of how bad it really was... that's the story teller's voice. 

When you write a story, you have a voice, too. Instead of inflection and rate of speech, you have long sentences and short ones. Your descriptions are lingering and detailed or stark and bare. You have delicate, sparkling dialogue or raw, gritty action. 

Or any combination in the world. 

Voice is one of the hardest things to teach. You can't read in a book how to have a good voice. You can have a natural 'ear' for it, like a musician has an ear for pitch, or a ballerina may have natural grace or dexterity, but you still have to train and practice.  In a way, you're developing your ear for language, and your grace and dexterity with words. 

The only way to do that is hands on. A singer with a good ear may recognize good music when she hears it, but but she still has to train her instrument. 

How do you do that? 

1. Write and write and write.
2. Read all different types of writing.
3. Reread a book that you love and pay attention to how the writer draws you in to the story, how she choses to handle emotional moments, action scenes, or description. 
4. Experiment with different styles. 
5. Mimic other writer's voices, and see what 'feels' good to you. 

And finally...

6) Combine what you like most from what you've read and written into a voice that's uniquely yours. 

Wednesday

Do you like how I’m coming up with some really creative blog titles this week? That’s because the new book is going to have chapter titles instead of numbers, and all my title creativity is going there.

Of course, right now those titles are something along the lines of:

Amy Falls Down a Hole

and

Phin and Amy Fight. Again.

Is this making you want to read the book?

I must be feeling pretty confident about the rewrite, because usually I don’t like talking about my projects until it’s in the can, so to speak, and I can’t waffle any more. (Yes, I’m a pancake girl, until it comes to my writing, and then I am the World’s Biggest Waffle.)

Take for instance the chapter:

Nothing Happens In This Chapter

which after a full day of work was subsequently titled:

Big Major Clue Buried Deep In This Chapter

but then became:

BMC Buried TOO Deep

which lead all the way back to the newest title:

People Will Think Nothing Happens In This Chapter And Mock Me On the Interents.

And on that note, I will get back to work on the latest chapter:

Scary Ghosts Are Scary. Hopefully.