Surviving Thanksgiving

I should probably have titled this something else, since this year Thanksgiving was a relative breeze unlike the ghosts of turkeydoomsdays-past. We did dinner in the evening, rather than at lunch, so there was all kinds of prep time for the eleven-million courses. It's 10:35pm, and the last guest just walked to the car.

Highlight of the evening: my nephew(who will be 4 in 3 months) stopped in front of Grandma #2.
     Grandma #2: You look awfully nice today. That shirt is sharp!
     Nephew: YEA, IF YOU DON'T WATCH OUT, IT'LL CUT YOU!

He can't grasp the concept of what it means that I am his aunt(he also thinks I'm his sister because I'm his Daddy's sister), but at 3 he's already got a firm understanding of sarcasm. That's my boy!

Plottin like a fool...

I love plotting. I love brainstorming, asking what if, finding links between the GMC of the H/H. But, the more I do it, the more frustrated I become by my tendency to be vague about some parts of the story. Vague as in, I have an undefined idea(like 'Pull wacky hijinx') which I never really put into many words because I feel that part of the story is golden and doesn't need plumbed in order to continue on with the plot. I guess this is the pantser part of my process.

Except, sometimes these undefined ideas I'm sure will work, just don't work.

With current WIP, there's been something bugging me about the setup and I couldn't figure out what it was. Last night, before bed, I focused on that bit of the storyline and tried to put into words what bothered me about it. I had no answers, just a feeling that something was off. After writing down what bugged me, I went to sleep. During the night, my brain apparently wrestled that bear to the ground, and when I woke up this morning the solution was my first thought after "I'm awake." I promptly wrote it down.

Later, after some errands and Real Life stuff, I went to put my new solution into my plot, and ... my whole plot FELL APART. It's all farked up now. On one hand, I'm glad that I've spent time dragging my feet instead of writing much more of it. To feel like I wasn't just being lazy or unmotivated, I'm telling myself that my subconscious knew I'd have to rework the entire darned plot to make it work, and that it hates discovery drafts--that's why it kept saying things like... YOU SHOULD READ THIS BEFORE WE WRITE MORE...

As much as I love plotting, I hate when my plots fall apart and I have to start over. New Voices entry rewind: starting tonight on plotjitsu V. 2.0.

Recommending Reads

So, at the suggestion of a friend here, I picked up a book by Zoe Archer. I thought it would have paranormal elements. It didn't, so it was basically a Historical... but I still totally loved it. (Thanks Annabeth!)

I light of this lovely exchange, I'm looking for other recommendations! What's your favorite book? Who's your favorite author? Heck, even favorite fictional character? What do you like about them? They needn't be romances, or have romantic elements, though I do like romance I do read outside the genre :) (Total Michael Crichton fan...)

Disclaimer: I really don't like 1st person. It usually makes me want to kick puppies. Thus, though I am a True Blood fan, I dislike the Sookie books or Twilight.

Dreaming Stories

I dream stories. Always. The stories might be glimpses at my own special brand of insanity, but there's always a plot. There's always a goal, this relates to that(action and consequence), and there are themes. Themes that seem to have nothing to do with my daily life. For years, it's been a running thing with my family and friends, me telling my dreams. Frequently they are answered with: I would watch that or I would read that. A decade ago, when the idea that I could ever write was just a dyslexic fantasy, I ignored it every time someone suggested I write the dream-story down.

My husband, during pre-husband days, harangued me into making a character on the roleplaying game where he played. I didn't want to. I was terrified. Everyone would know I was a bad writer. No one would want to play with me. I made him make the character, and every now and then I would stumble onto the grid, run into someone, type a ridiculously bad sentence, and then flee. I did this until some storyline happened I couldn't bear not being part of, and that one story-arc got me addicted to the whole thing. That's what got me started writing.

Over the next several years, I worked on my writing chops on online text-based RPGs, and didn't consider that I could be a writer. Not until the past 3-4 years did I give it serious thought. Then, my dreams became a way for me to try and build some platform of confidence that I was pursuing an entirely reachable goal. God, the Universe, my subconscious... whatever your moral compass is directed by... wanted me to be a storyteller. It had been giving me stories for years, so I could do this.

The natural progression was to begin writing romance -- that's what I read, after all. But I don't dream romance stories. I dream science fiction, almost entirely. Aliens? Yup. Psychic phenomena? Yep. But I also dream anthropological, alternate-universe, society-based science fiction. If my whateveryoubelieve-spiritual-divining-rod gives me stories, and I use that fact as some kind of guidepost to assure myself I'm finally doing what I am supposed to be doing, shouldn't I be writing that kind of story?

Do you dream stories? Do you ever incorporate real dreams into your plots?

JUDGMENT DAY... DUN Dun dunnnn

So, the first round at New Voices has ended, and I am relieved(the list in a couple posts below is out of control!). About mid-week last week, I thought the number of entries was going to roughly match last year's, but the entries started pouring in the last three days. It took 3 weeks to get to 466 entries, and the last five days of the contest added a couple more than that total(some uploaded and were taken down just after closing bell).

• 1090 first chapters uploaded, the rough equivalent of about 109 of the shorter length category romances

Currently, the judges/editors at Harlequin Mills&Boon are trying to cull 20 from the herd, and advance them to round two. The math on this is not pretty.

• 1.8% of all entries will advance to round 2 -- or --
• 1 in 55 chapters make round 2 (slightly less scary for some reason)

Those are not good odds. It's better than the lottery or being hit by lightning, but if you had a 1.8% chance of surviving an operation, you wouldn't sign up, yea?

Thankfully, there are other wins to take from the competition:

• The comments. 
• The chance to see the competition so you can decide if you're bringing your A-Game when you submit. 
• The chance to learn from the mistakes of others. 

These are the 'thanks for playing' prizes(which is part of why I've been managing that list -- some folks have gotten a wealth of comments, and some have not gotten any. Granted, most of those without are from the last 3 days of uploads, but still... everyone deserves feedback regardless of when they bellied up to the bar.)

The suspense is killing me. I didn't call any of the semi-finalists last year, and when I read them some of them were actually quite surprising to me... so I'm curious to see if my eye has been honed at all, and also to see what currently is catching the editor's attention.

The list goes live Thursday, and then I will return to this WIP on a more normal schedule, and hopefully to posting regularly. It's about time for the Spiderpocalypse report--the warmer weather has kept them mostly out of sight so far, I think. but around Halloween when it always gets quite cold, they'll be inside. A flipping beetle got into my room the other night and about drove the cat crazy(which was totally fun), so: flipping beetles seek warmer accommodations before spiders do -- bless their little clumsy hearts.

Genre Mashups

So, I've been gone(ish) for a week or two, constantly updating one post with New Voices information, but doing very little else here.

Today, I'm back(ish). And I have absolutely no insights to give or share, instead I have some big crunchy questions:

Aside from the whole, 'we don't know what to catalog this manuscript as because it crosses genres...' thing(which seems to be more bookstore related and maybe not such a big deal now that there's so much self-pub/epub), is there any reason NOT to storm ahead and from the outset determined to write across a couple-three genres?

Are there any rules for crossing genres? Any you feel are done to death? I know that when they go poorly, they REALLY go poorly... but are there guidelines to doing it well?

I asked Amazon, and they had no craft books to offer me on the subject. Instead they were all... hey look at THAT book over there, isn't it shiny? So I'm askin' you fine people!

Writing Lingo for New Writers

Some of my fellow NV peeps have been confused by the terminology often used in the comments on their stories. This is not a comprehensive list of the terms/shorthand writers use in critique, but should give a quick and dirty explanation for the more common ones that have been causing confusion.

Backstory: Backstory is anything that has happened to a character that informs their way of thinking/emotions regarding what is going on in the present action.

• Example: Your heroine was once bitten by a dog, or witnessed someone getting mauled by a Rottweiler. She developed a healthy and very understandable fear of dogs. Only now, twenty years later, she's losing her vision and needs the aid of a seeing-eye dog to keep her independence. That fear of dogs is going to inform how she reacts to the new seeing-eye dog. Those things that happened in the past and caused this fear are her backstory.

If it happened in the past, but it's very important to understanding what is going on with the character's current emotional/mental state(must be directly linked to the scene at hand), it needs mentioning.(See also: Info-dump)

Cliché: Generally these are common(and loved) conventions(or tropes) to any particular genre. But with repetition, they can get old--familiarity breeding contempt and all that. A stamp of originality or an unexpected twist can breathe new life into old conventions. Cinderella with her wicked step-sisters and step mother could be called a cliche, but if you put a twist on it(like a CinderFella) it breaks from expectation and becomes something new. Heroine in danger, hero lawman comes to protect her is a common trope in certain subgenres--you could make it new by making the Heroine coming to protect the hero. Unexpected twists derail a trope from becoming a cliche.

Conflict: There's oodles of stuff online and in books about conflict, so just a word: There are two kinds: internal and external. External is physical, Internal is emotional. Both the heroine and hero need internal conflict, ideally their conflicts should interact so that they propel the story. External conflict is usually what forces them to continue interacting, and ideally will be something that futzes with their internal conflicts. 

Cute-meet: Okay, this is one I'm not entirely certain about! It refers to the way the H/H meet at the start of the book, but I think negative sentiment gets attached to cute meetings when the meeting is coincidental as well. I'm not entirely sure about that, but that's what my gut says. But my gut also says pickles and pizza are AWESOME together, and people flail a bit when I say this usually so your cute-meet mileage may vary. 

Erotic romance vs Erotica: Erotic-anything is explicit, no metaphors, writing. Naughty stories that could set an eReader on fire. Erotica does this without emotion/connection/romance. Erotic romance does it within the confines of a romantic story/situation, with or without the implication of an HEA.

HEA: Happily Ever After, the long walk off into the sunset expected at the end of most romance. Used to mean marriage, but it can just be a committed relationship now, with or without the bouquet-tossing. 

Head-hopping: This refers to switching from the POV of one character to another throughout a scene. There are different arguments regarding how frequently you can change POV without it becoming jarring to the reader. To some, one POV per scene, that's it. To others, it's okay to switch off while in the same scene. It's all in the execution, but it's probably not something you want to overuse. When you change POV from one character to another, make sure that the change gets onto the page in an obvious way, so the reader doesn't get confused as to who is speaking/thinking at any time. 

Info-dump: Info-dump is shorthand for a big blob of text relating to the past that interrupts the current scene. In order to keep the current scene from becoming a flashback, or--referring the example above--from becoming the story of the genesis of her fear, those backstory references need to be very small. A sentence here, a sentence there, enough to clue the reader into something going on, but not so much that it overshadows current action. Besides, if your character knows all about something that happened to her in the past, when she thinks about it, she's not going to go through the whole memory, blow-by-blow. She's going to mentally reference it in a handful of words, a long phrase, a sentence... and then get right back to what she has to actively deal with in the current scene. 

POV: Stands for Point of View. This is used in two ways. One can simply mean which character something is being viewed from: Who's POV is this, Jack's or Jills? The second way deals with narrative style. Since those explanations are very long, I'm doing only a brief explanation and a link to Wikipedia for more information.

• 1st person POV: The main character is the narrator, and instead of all he/she pronouns, I/me is used. Traditionally, this type of narrative is limited to one character throughout the novel, however there is another type that alternates between different characters.
• 2nd person POV: This method is infrequently used. It is the equivalent of the narrator telling the reader her own story. So instead of I/me used in first person, You is the primary pronoun(unless speaking of other characters--they'll still be he/she). I can only think of one example of 2nd person--the Choose Your Own Adventure books for children rely on 2nd person. So, I suppose any adult interactive fiction would probably also do so, but I haven't actually read any.
• 3rd person POV: There are a few kinds of 3rd person POV, but the basic tenant is some narrator is telling a story about others. The pronouns are He/She, not I/me(1st), not You(2nd). Most romance is written 3rd person limited, which allows you to experience a scene, or a sequence of action, through the eyes of one character at a time. That character can only feel/think her own emotions/thoughts. Other characters actions/expressions are passed through the filter of your POV character. The POV usually swaps back and forth between the hero and heroine in contemporary romance(see also: head-hopping)

WIP: Work In Progress - Unfinished manuscript you're working on.

That's all I got right now, hope it helps! If you are confused by a term, there are dozens of sites out there you should be able to find at least a definition, but if you have further questions, I'm happy to explain(if I know!) or have anyone answer in comments.