Writing Hacks for the Creatively Stunted

Over the years we pick up tidbits of information, useful tips and tricks we think (or pray) will help us through everyday life. Some people call these life hacks. I call these "nuggets of wisdom from people with more time on their hands than me to think this stuff up because I'm too busy worrying how I'm going to do all this stuff to be able to sit down and think of these awesome ideas."

Too long?

So, years ago I started a file on my computer with hacks, hoping I'd be able to use them more and organize my life.

Until I forgot I had a file full of these freaking awesometastic ideas that were supposed to make me wonder-wife and super-mom!

Well the same thing happened to me with my writing life. I'd come across these really nifty hacks or compilations of writing tools and I tucked them away in a file on my computer. And every time I sit down to write words, I never ever think of them. EVER. I forget the folder even exists until I come across one online somewhere and go to save it in that file.

So, as 2016 lays down its carpet of brand new possibilities....I'm digging in to this file folder and sharing with you what I've saved over the years and calling it......

WRITING HACKS FOR THE CREATIVELY STUNTED

1. I found this gem recently. Here's some ideas on how to give your characters a quirk. You want your characters to be relatable and real, and if you give them a humanized quirk it'll help your reader attach to them. Try and think outside the realm of lip biting and nail chewing.

2. Body Language! Showing body language is a biggy. It is important in scene blocking and can also be as communicative as dialogue between the characters. It helps the reader solidify how you're presenting a scene. If your character's lying, we may not know as the reader by her dialogue, but if she's shifting her feet or if he's not making eye contact these help give the reader clues and deepen the point of view.

Another way to use body language is also if your character has an illness or disease or if you've given the some kind of quirk. Let's use anxiety as an example. If you consistently remind the reader she has anxiety, for one, that's telling. But also, it'll stick out like a sore thumb and be hit home so hard it'll annoy the reader. Instead, try showing the results of her anxiety with body language instead.

3. Showing vs. Telling. It's a hard skill to nail for a lot of writers. But I found these cool little hacks of descriptors that helps fill in those blanks when you're trying to bring narrative to life and let the reader experience the scene with the character versus being told.

For instance....Telling - She had long hair.  Showing - Layered mousy brown hair framed the edges of her heart-shaped face, setting off her jade eyes.

      

           

4. And last, but not least, emotions. They play a huge roll in our characters development. And at some point in your book your character will probably hit all six of the major emotions. But in order to take your character deeper and really strengthen their arc, try narrowing in on the different levels each of the major emotions has. As you can see by this nifty chart below, there's far more levels and facets of each emotion. If you zero in on one, it can help you take your character to a deeper point of view and explore.

Happy Hacking....er....I mean writing!

Be A Tease!

Everyone loves a tease. That tiny morsel of goodness to whet your appetite and leave you begging for more. The build up of anticipation for something, whether it's food, books, movies, a hot date...it's what keeps your attention and focus, leaving you aching for more.

Teasers are an important part of book marketing. Done right, you can grab a brand new reader's attention in less than a minute. Done wrong, you can turn a potential reader away for life.

Here's a teaser for my new book out today, ELUDING ILLUSIONS

Sometimes teasers can be done using a tagline or a "hook" for your book. Here's another using a tagline for my book, VEXED.

Sometimes teasers can be lines or quotes from your book.

You'll notice in the teaser above I put my copyright info and gave credit for the picture to the owner of it. NEVER use pics of celebrities or steal pics from the interwebs to use in teasers. You can get in serious legal trouble without express written permission from the rights holder of the image. There are many stock photo sites you can buy images from to use in your teasers. 

And if you don't want to buy images, some photographers will allow you to use an image if you credit them in the photo, as I did above. But you must have their permission to do so. Or you can use plain backgrounds and make your own using images from your book cover art files as I did in the first two teasers. Ask your cover artist for help if you want banners made up or blank teasers you can manipulate using your cover art files.

A teaser can even be as simple as just an image and your release date to start getting your cover in front of your potential reader audience, like the one I did above.

Also, please remember when making teasers to keep the fonts legible.

While those are cool fonts and it makes it eye catching, it's somewhat hard to read. Teasers should entice a future reader, not make them work for it or get frustrated because they can read only every other word because of font, or colors blending in over background images. 

Try can keep them as crisp and eye catching as possible.

Remember to change up the teasers. 

• Have a sexy one if it's a romance novel. 
• Have a more serious and dramatic one that shows the depth of the book as well. 
• Have a tagline hook as we mentioned earlier. 
• A PG level one for general audiences is also a good idea. 
• Have one as well that gives perspective and insight into the personalities of your characters. 

Like the one below for my novel, VEXED, it gives you a sense of the banter between the main characters.

Teasers can also can turn a potential reader into a lost sale. Remember that a variety of people will be seeing your teaser. So, unless you're posting in a specific group of people, please make your teasers for a general audience. If you write BDSM or Erotica, make sure you have a teaser specific to those audiences, but don't post those in a general FB group using graphic sexual references. Have a cleaner version for the masses and put a warning that the book itself will contain language, violence, or graphic sex. 

Also, please, for the love of all humanity, make sure your teasers don't have misspellings or typos. It's a reflection on you as the author. Put your best work forward.

Go forth and tease the world!!

Good to be BAD: Why We Love the Villain

Every story needs a troublemaker. Have you ever wondered why the most enduring stories have the worst villains? Ever put down a book because you just didn’t care about the story? Maybe the stakes weren’t high enough. Maybe the bad guy just wasn’t…bad enough.

Several years ago someone gave me this advice: to write a strong plot, start with the antagonist. It sounds backwards, right? But from a storytelling perspective, it makes perfect sense to start with the villain. Here’s why:

The villain is often a twisted version of the hero. Strong villains have a motive that opposes your main character’s goals. If your hero wants to eat ice cream, your villain is blowing up ice cream delivery trucks because of some deep-seated sundae phobia. Both hero and villain have similar interests, but on opposite sides of the issue. They are two sides of the same coin.

The best villains have a tragic backstory. When we learn about these defining events in the villain’s past, we begin to understand why they act that way. Maybe the poor guy hates ice cream sundaes because his psychopathic mother forced him to eat giant sundaes every day until he got sick, while he was locked in the basement staring at decomposing rats. We sympathize. It’s a complicated and yet compelling feeling, to care about the villains even as they do horrific things.

Villains reflect the evil we see in ourselves and others. Let’s face it, there’s a villain in every one of us. Fictional villains just take it to a whole new level of badness, often with cool stage makeup and special effects. Fictional villains offer a safe way to voluntarily process the deep, philosophical horrors that play out in our own communities. Like that dark and terrible day when Blue Bell recalled all the ice cream because of the dread villain Listeria. There is evil in the world, Aurora.

Villains provide creative freedom. As writers, we spend hours developing the character qualities of our protagonists. For those of us who write series fiction, we need to stay within the confines of our main characters because they are the anchors that hold the whole thing together. But introduce a new villain to the mix, or give your existing villain a new toy, and all bets are off. Ice cream trucks explode. Banana splits ooze with poison syrup. Anything can happen.

And finally, the main reason we love a good villain:

Villains are unapologetically selfish. Hell-bent on getting their own way, villains are determined, driven, and will stop at nothing. Killing? No biggie. Blowing things up? Sure. Allowing gallons and gallons of delicious Blue Bell ice cream to go to waste? Whatever it takes. We might not agree with their methods, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we admire a villain’s commitment. Go hard or go home.

Next time you sit down to write, turn the monster loose. Make your villain more evil and powerful, so your hero can get stronger. Up the stakes. Give us drama, make us cringe, incite tears. Back your hero into a corner, give the villain the upper hand, and then see what happens. Can your hero overcome the strongest of villains? 

Now that’s a good story.

Reasons For Rules: An Agent's Perspective

By Mary C. Moore

Having been an unpublished author seeking an agent, I know how daunting a task this can be. Each agent has different submission guidelines and there are so many RULES. It seems as if you break any of these sacred RULES your query will go right in the physical and metaphorical trash, never to be seen again and you as an author will be laughed out of any possible opportunity to be signed. And when those rejections start rolling in, you question yourself and your writing. What RULE did you break? Then you get angry and frustrated. Why are the RULES so dang important anyway? Isn't it about the writing? Shouldn't they see you for the amazing talent you are and brush all that other stuff away? You start reading about authors who have broken the rules and been hugely successful and you  lurk on online forums to commiserate with other writers that are feeling as bruised as you are. Pretty soon you are convinced that agents have too much power and that their RULES are just petty ways of making authors jump through silly hoops for their own amusement. 

Now, being on the other side of the fence, I find myself spouting off RULES to hopefuls at writer conferences, online forums, on Twitter, and everywhere in-between. I have unintentionally become a gatekeeper, because on this side, the RULES have REASONS. Oh. So for your sanity and mine, I am going to explain the REASONS behind the seemingly random RULES. I'm sticking to fiction literary agent RULES to keep it short. 

Rule #1: Follow each agent's individual submission guidelines down to the letter.

Reason: Every agent has a different system for shifting through submissions. Their guidelines are based on what will help them get through the slushpile in the most efficient manner. By not following the guidelines, you are causing a disruption in the system, which means it will take longer for the agent to consider your submission and respond to you, in effect wasting their time and yours.  

Rule #2: Word count, 55k-75k for YA, 80k-90k for most adult, up to 125k for historical or fantasy.

Reason: Word counts are a throwback from traditional printing. There was a standard specification for print book sizes, which meant if your book fell outside those specifications, it was less likely to be picked up. Because of this, readers got used to a standard book length. And although publishing mediums have since evolved, the standard has yet to change. Thus, your book is easier to sell if it falls within the word count parameters. 

Rule #3: Classify your work as only 1-2 genres, plus age group. 

Reason: We want to know what genre your book falls into, so we know which editors we would place it with. Do not say "it's a unique new genre," not only is this not true (trust me, after slogging through the slush, I can say with confidence, you are not the first to come up with whatever concept you have come up with) it shows us you do not read within your genre, and do not understand it. We are looking for experienced authors who grasp who their reader audience is. 

Rule #4: Address the query to the agent you are sending it to.

Reason: Not only is this courteous, but it shows you've at least done a bit of research before querying us, which means you think we would be a good fit for your manuscript.  

Rule #5: Only query agents who represent your genre. 

Reason: We as agents, develop relationships with editors and publishing houses. If we specialize in a genre, that means we are experienced both in reading/selling said genre, but we also know exactly which editors would be right for it. That being said, there is no harm in querying an agent you are not clear on, especially those who list "commercial fiction" as one of their genres. Just try to avoid querying an agent who only represents thrillers and mysteries with your inspirational memoir.

Rule #6: Have your manuscript finished, edited, and polished before querying.

Reason: Although a lot of agents will do edits before shopping your manuscript, their time is limited. They are not going to be willing to do extensive edits on a project, so if you send out a manuscript before it is finished, you are essentially setting yourself up for rejection. 

Rule #7: Do not mention how well the book will do, or what great writing it is, or how you plan to be the next JK Rowling. 

Reason: The reality of publishing is much harsher than the success stories of JK Rowling and EL James. Most authors don't start making a living off their writing until after their fifth or sixth successfully published book (this is true for self-published authors as well) and even then you're probably not going to be able to buy that island. On average it takes years/decades to become financially successful as an author. We are looking for clients that understand that and are willing to put in the time and energy toward that goal. 

Rule #8: Keep your bio to simply your experience as a writer as well as any relevant experience to your novel (i.e. if you're writing legal thrillers and are a lawyer, mention this). Leave out the names of your pets, your dreams of stardom, your inner demons, and any other personal/professional background.

Reason: Agents are professionals, and they are looking for professional clients. Your query letter should have the same information that a cover letter for a job resume would have. Relevant experience only. Of course once we've signed you, then the relationship may evolve to a more personal level, but there will always be a professional line. 

Rule #9: Keep the query short. 

Reason: The slushpile is no joke. There are hundreds of submissions that an agent or agent's assistant have to read on a monthly basis. If a query is too long, out of necessity, we will skip most of it. 

Rule #10: Only nudge an agent if you have an offer of representation or they have not responded past their posted response time.

Reason: Again, the inbox is flooded already. If you nudge, odds are we won't read the email until after we've seen your original query, (unless in the subject line are the words: OFFER OF REP), so you are just adding to the pile and possibly being annoying. However, things do slip through the cracks. Usually in the submission guidelines, an agent has posted their normal response time. If it is past this date, go ahead and nudge. If it's a full manuscript, nudging after six months is reasonable. 

I hope this post has helped you make sense of a seemingly random set of parameters and given you more confidence to keep going. It is good to remember that most agents are hopeful that authors will follow these RULES, but we are also human and understanding. We may reject you because you didn't follow one of our RULES, but that doesn't mean you are blacklisted and we never want to see your face (or pen) again. In all honesty, we are so inundated with queries, we probably won't remember your particular RULE-breaking query in the first place. So don't be nervous, just do the best you can. 

There are many more RULES that crop up in all aspects of publishing: formatting, grammar, design, editing, writing, contracts etc, even self-publishing, and I'm happy to give REASONS for these in the comments below. 

As for the RULE-breakers out there. You know what they say...

Turbo Mind Booster: Exercise Your Brain

Your brain, like many other parts of your body, requires a constant workout. Sometimes, when you're stuck or facing a wall, the best way to get out is to exercise your brain.

And so, I present to you, Turbo Mind Booster 3000! (Because honestly, doesn't that sound super difficult and exercise-y?)

Exercise One: Restaurant Dialogue

Stuck for dialogue in your MS? Next time you're in a restaurant take a notebook and write down the snippets of conversation that you hear. Nothing is better than hearing real life, candid conversations.

Exercise Two: Brutal Ending

Can't figure out how to start your new WIP? Start from the ending. Write that brutal death of the main character that's been percolating in your brain. Start with that fatal last line. Figure out the overall goal for your MC. Will you keep the ending? Probably not. Will it be utter trash? Maybe, but it will give you direction for when you start.

Exercise Three: Diary of a Journalist

Stuck on how to write your character? Try writing a blog or diary from their perspective. Go through their day to day.

Exercise Four: Group Therapy

Take a few people you know, five to ten and write one sentence about them. Strive for things that make them unique or noteworthy.

Exercise Five: Talk Radio

Record five minutes of a talk radio show. Write the dialogue and add narrative and action as if you were writing a scene.

Exercise Six: Room to Room

Write 300 words about a room in your house. Make sure to pick out things that describe you and your personality.

Exercise Seven: From 1st to 3rd

Take a scene from your WIP and rewrite it. If you're writing in first, try writing it in third and visa-versa.

Exercise Eight: Tabloid Break

Flip through the tabloids at the local grocery store. Choose a story that sticks out in your mind and write it. The story may end up crap, but it'll sort of reset your brain.

If all else fails, hop on a treadmill with your favorite jams and hope that you don't end up like the guy above.

Got any writing exercises and getting away from the writing wall? Leave it in the comments below.

Pitch Perfect

With the advancement of the interwebs and social media, the publishing world has exploded with opportunities for aspiring authors to get their work in front of editors and agents. Sure, the tried and true query method still works. But gone are the days of mailing off a sample of your manuscript and waiting six months to a year to hear back.

Oh wait, I lied. Some agents and pub houses still take six months to a year to give you a response. And then, it's most likely the ugly form rejection letter via email. With the influx of querying via email, those poor agents and editors are often inundated with queries. Some getting up to 10,000 a year! And having friends on both ends of the spectrum, I now understand the necessity of the form rejection.

So, what's a poor author to do to get your work in front of those amazing agents and editors?

Well, here's one idea we can explore today....contests. But, where do you find a contest? Your biggest asset in today's day and age is social media. You will find out all about the many contests you can enter. Now, beware. Not all contests are created equal.

Do your homework. Research your options. <----you just knew I was going to throw that in there, didn't you.

There's partial manuscript contests that you can pay to enter a sample of your work, usually the first 5000 words or so. A lot of these are done by RWA (Romance Writers of America) chapters, and they use the entry fees to help support their chapter. So it's a good investment because your partial will be seen by a number of pubbed and aspiring authors in the first round. And if you're lucky enough to make it to the next, your manuscript will be seen by agents and editors!

There's also the free contests around the world wide web. There's query contests, first 250 word contests, Twitter pitch contests. The big daddy of them all, Pitch Wars, run by the immeasurable Brenda Drake, is one you should definitely have on your radar.

Query Kombat, Pitmad, Pitchmadness, Pitchmas, Nestpitch, Sun vs. Snow, Nightmare on Query Street are just a sample of the great contests that you can enter!! Now some of these may have already passed for this year, but keep them on your radar for the next submission period so you can prepare. 

So, that being said, each contest has it's own rules. Some require just a 140 Twitter pitch, like Pitmad. Some require a query and the first 250 polished words of your manuscript. Some require a 100 word blurb only. Some are query only. 

Yeah. What's the difference between a blurb, a pitch, a query?

Well, let's see if we can dissect that.

A query is what you should always have at the ready for your book baby. You'll need it pretty much no matter what avenue you're taking to get in front of an agent or editor. There are so many websites, books, seminars on how to write a good query. The best place I can recommend is Janet Reid's Query Shark blog.

But here's an example of a query from my own WIP, my Space Opera entitled CLANDESTINE CHAOS. I've entered this before in a few contests so if you've run the circuit you may have seen it before. 

Pre-med student Kadence Murphy's sole mission in life: get out of college and into scrubs. Struggling with a hormone-surged roomie, a two-timing almost boyfriend, and financial aid problems, the only thing keeping her from shivving someone is her part-time job in the campus library. She discovers a cryptic book that entwines its storyline with reality.

Kadence drops into Captain Jeremiah Colt's lap, interrupting his latest effort to redeem his floundering business. Now stuck on a dysfunctional transport-ship, Kadence learns she’s in an alternate version of 2013 where Earth collapsed as a result of a global meltdown from Y2K. The survivors took to the skies in an attempt to colonize and sustain human-life on other planets.

Colt itches to dump her aggravating hide on the first planet they come to. Kadence can't last five minutes in his presence without the driving need to stab him with a spoon. A fierce attraction lies beneath their bickering, making Kadence rethink her quest to get home. But a mutinous crew member has other plans, none of which include Kadence, and he isn't above murder to get rid of her.

Now, that's the meat of the query and it's all of 185 words. Agents/editors view so many queries a day, if you can't capture their attention in less than 250 words, you're out the door with a form rejection. So keep it succinct, short, and captivate them to read more. Goal is to keep it around 250 words tops, including your bio & writing credits and cat/genre/word count.

Do not try and turn your query into a full synopsis and hit every plot point and character arc in your story. You want to merely engage the person to request more to read, not shove it down their throat in one fell swoop. You're only asking for a rejection that way.

Ok, well what about a blurb? How does that differ?

Think of a blurb as the back cover info on a book. Short, succinct, overall pitch of the book to make you want to read it. Often it's about 4 or 5 sentences, tops. Something you can recite off the top of your head, not have to write it down to remember. 

Here's my 100 word blurb/pitch from CLANDESTINE CHAOS:

Pre-med student Kadence Murphy discovers a book that entwines its storyline with reality. She drops into Captain Jeremiah Colt's lap, interrupting his latest heist, finding an alternate version of 2013 where Earth collapsed from a global meltdown duringY2K.

Colt itches to get rid of her as soon as he can. Kadence can't last five minutes with him without the driving need to stab him with a spoon. A fierce attraction lies beneath their bickering, making Kadence rethink her quest to get home. But a mutinous crew member has other plans and isn't above murder to get rid of her.

So you start with your 250 word query and narrow it down to the meat of the story. Hit the high points, inciting incident and what's going to make us want to read it? Leave all secondary characters out of it, you can hint at them but stick with the names of only your protag or hero/heroine. What is their goal? What are the stakes? They must be clearly defined. 

Stay away from hypothetical questions in a query, pitch, or blurb. IT IS KRYPTONITE! 

Ok, so then there's the Twitter pitch. You think you have 140 characters to play with. But in reality it's actually less, because often times in a Twitter Pitch party you have to include a hashtag for the agents to peruse like #pitmad, #pitchmadness, #adpit etc. And many require you to put in the category and genre. So you have to get creative. There's some rules here to strictly follow in a Twitter pitch:

1) DO NOT spread your pitch over 2 or 3 tweets. Those hashtags move so fast your first tweet will end up being 140 tweets away from your second. Also, don't make the agent work for it, you need to capture their attention in one tweet.

2) DO NOT try and short spell stuff like 4ever, 2gether, 2night etc. While it helps shorten your tweet, it looks like a damn text message to your bae. It's unprofessional and hard to read. It sucks having to condense your 80,000 word novel into 120 characters. But it can be done. You're the author, get creative.

3) Always have multiple versions of a Twitter pitch. One may not catch a person's eye, but maybe another one of yours will. It's good to change things up and have at least 3 or 4 if you can.

So here's some examples of Twitter pitches for CLANDESTINE CHAOS:

Kadence falls into an alt timeline. Colt can't decide if he wants to kiss or kill her. A mutinous crew member may do it for him. NA #pitmad

Losing yourself in a book has new meaning when Kadence's reality is entwined w/one. Colt wants her heart someone else wants her dead #RTSlap

Firefly meets Outlander. A book dumps Kadence in an alt timeline. Stuck in space, the one man who can help her she wants to kill. NA #PitMad

Hopefully you can take this knowledge into the universe and use it for good instead of evil. May the pitches be with you!