Month: January 2014

Pete, a few months ago you piqued my curiosity when you mentioned female serial killers.  In the book I’m currently working on, Victims of Love, my villain, Jillian Black, is a female serial killer. Now that the holidays are over, I’m going to prevail on you yet again, because I found what you had to say very interesting and I’m curious to know if I got the female aspects of her profile down.  So where do we start?

Good question, Diane.  Maybe we start with you!

Me?  What have I done?

Well, you ARE a woman, and the last time I checked, everything about women is different than men.  And when we launch into the virtually-unknown realm of female serial killers, the first stopping off point we arrive at is just that – those differences.  Everything about men and women is different, including their thinking, their methods, and when it…

Recently, the eight ladies celebrated the completion of Justine’s first draft. Like most of us, she’d been struggling with the last third of her book. After months (well really over a year) of hard work and dead-ends, she finally had that breakthrough moment we all dream of, the moment when she discovered her perfect ending.

It’s great when a friend and sister-in-arms succeeds (congrats to Nancy, too!). Not only does she move that much closer to her ultimate goal, but her success is an inspirational battle cry for the rest of us, too. My perfect ending is out there somewhere; I just need to discover it. I already have a general idea of what happens:  Cheyenne will get her HEA (Happily Ever After) and she’ll win the conflict over the family house and land that she’s embroiled in with her Uncle Hawk, but how all of that happens is still a…

Whenever I blog about craft, I’m coming from the perspective of a long-time editor. I do understand that the creation process is vastly different from the editing process. I know this because I’ve been on both sides. But, if you want to minimize revisions and rewrites, it helps to have some basic editorial skills in your toolbox.

Since many of you might want to pursue self-publishing, you’re wise to hire an outside editor. The cleaner the text, the lower the bill. Even if you want an agent or to traditionally publish, the tighter the writing, the better the odds your work will earn positive attention.

Line-edit is important and no longer my area of expertise. I put commas everywhere and pay other editors the move them where they need to be. Typos happen even to the best of us. Right now, I’m editing my almost 100,000 word mystery-thriller and *head…

by Susan Squires

Whether you’re just starting out or under contract, being productive isn’t easy. There isn’t enough time. Or enough space. Or enough quiet. Or enough organized thinking. There isn’t enough something, always.

How many times have you heard writers say, “I sure wish I had more_______. Then I could write.” If wishes were horses we all would ride, as my mother used to say. It being the New Year, you might think making resolutions will do the trick. But we all resolve every year to get more writing done. The problem is, resolving to write more is too vague.How will you accomplish that goal?

I’m here to tell you, it’s all about identifying your barriers and negotiating your way out of them.

1. Broaden your definition of Negotiation

I can hear you say, “I’m not a corporate raider or a diplomat. What does negotiation have…

After wearing a “Least Likely to Succeed” label all her life, Roxanne Eberly is hell-bent on making her Red Light Lingerie store successful. Although the residents of small-town Shelbyville, Texas, are a little…lingerie-resistant, she’ll win them over eventually. So when a former employer sues her, putting a major wrinkle in her careful plans, she reluctantly accepts help from hot-stuff Houston attorney Jamie Wright.

Jamie’s on track to become his firm’s youngest partner, but discovers an unwritten prerequisite—marriage. Turns out, the only woman he wants is Roxanne, but peddling thongs and sex toys isn’t a suitable career for the spouse of an up-and-coming attorney.

Jamie’s tangled up in Roxanne’s lawsuit, her life and her lingerie. But if they’re ever going to make it work, Roxanne’s big-city boy will have to decide what he values more: the career he always thought he wanted or the woman he never thought he’d fall for.

~~~*~~~*~~~

EXCERPT

Today’s post is about twists, turns, and surprises in fiction, and what can make them feel “gimmicky” as opposed to delighting readers in the way we authors expect and hope.

We all know “gimmicky” when we read it: something feels lazy, forced, or somehow not genuine, because characters aren’t being true to who we believe they are (who they’ve shown themselves to be.)

I’ve written one post about suspense tactics turning gimmicky, but this post is different. In many ways, surprise is the opposite of suspense. And that explains the first reason surprises in fiction can feel gimmicky:

1. THE STORY DOESN’T SET UP FOR THE SHOCKING REVELATION

Suspense is all about building tension, based on knowing only PART of what’s going on. You know a killer is in the house, but you don’t know when he’ll strike. You know the bad guy is up to something, but you…

by Susan Spann

Last month, I kicked off a new #PubLaw guest series here at Writers in the Storm with a brief look at copyright law and the rights it covers.

When authors learn that copyright protection is automatic and attaches to qualifying works at the time of creation, many assume that means the author owns those copyrights.

How could I not own my copyrighted works? Many authors ask. I wrote them, so I own them. Right?

Usually, but not always.

Copyright law recognizes several types of copyrighted works which are not owned by the creator, or which are owned by the creator in partnership with another person or entity.

Let’s take a closer look:

1.The General Rule: creative works are owned by their creator.
As a general rule, ownership of copyrighted works, and all the related rights, belongs to the author or creator.

However, an author may license…

We’ve been talking about some heavy stuff the past several posts, so I figured it was time for a bit of levity. We writers are different *eye twitches* for sure, but the world would be SO boring without us.

You Know You’re a Writer When…

You’ve learned that regular people are cute, and no longer get offended with this conversation.

Regular Person: What do you do?

Writer: I’m a writer.

Regular Person: No, I mean, what’s your real job?

You’ve come to understand that writers are a lot like unicorns. Everyone knows about them, they’ve simply never seen a REAL ONE.

You Know You’re a Writer When…

The NSA, CIA and FBI no longer bother with you. Likely, they know you by name and now outsource to the creepy ice cream truck to just make a few passes and check to make sure you’re still at your computer.

You Know…

The eight ladies have been writing to a theme this week, and the theme topic is “New Year, New Writer.” I panicked,  because, hey—nothing like a little pressure to be a new writer in the new year. When I stopped hyperventilating, I decided there’s no rule that says I have to be new. So here’s my theme within a theme:

New Year, Same Old Writer.

To my classmates who have had transformative experiences with their writing in the McDaniel program, I salute you. I wish that I, too, could say my writing has been transformed. But it hasn’t.

In a perfect world, I wouldn’t need to send a rejection letter. Over the years, I’ve written so many that I’m confident there’s a chair with my name on it in that fiery place below the River Styx. So just to pave the way, I’ll give you some insight into my rejection letters. While I do take notes with each submission, I tend to use the same sentences over and over (not always). 90% of the projects I turn away have the same problems, and there just isn’t time to go into much detail.

Here are my top–but not only–phrases in order of most used:

1. The pacing is inconsistent… So, the first chapter moves quickly. Second and third chapters, not so much. I will then go to the middle of the book and read from there. Every novel has a lull or two (hello, Gone with the Wind

By Orly Konig-Lopez

Querying authors know the feeling: Your email pings with an incoming message. It’s from one of the agents who requested your manuscript. Your heart beats in your ears, you close one eye, tilt your head to a 35 degree angle and squint at the words. Maybe this is “the one.”

“Thank you for sharing, blah blah. I liked blah blah. But … ”

You groan. It’s a rejection.

You keep reading anyway. This is where the “but” gets interesting. There are notes. Detailed notes. And a request to resubmit after you’ve made the revisions. Whoa!!!!!!!

Once you’re done with the “it’s not a no” dance (and get an ice pack for the muscle you pulled – not that I’m speaking from experience on this), you sit down to pound out those revisions.

Wait! Back away from the keyboard. Seriously. Hands up. Scootch back. This is not the…

As a teenager, when I thought about the life of a romance writer I had a vision of Barbara Cartland leaning back on her chaise lounge in a flowing gown, easily dictating a story to her waiting secretary.   Once I began to write, however, I realized just how much of a fantasy that image was.

One of the most important–and perhaps toughest– aspects of writing good fiction is crafting characters that have a life of their own, that feel believable as people in the world they inhabit, and that genuinely can catch and hold the interest of readers.

So what IS reader interest in a character? Well, we all want readers to care what happens to our characters. We want readers to connect with them on some basic, human level, even if their personalities are very, very different.

Just as important as what” reader interest in a character” is, though, is what it isn’t. And it isn’t these three things.

1. YOUR READERS HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER(S)

Can the way you tell a story about an intriguing, interesting character raise questions about that character’s motivation or background that you only resolve toward the end of a story?

Definitely: please don’t think I’m saying otherwise.

Whether you are just now entertaining the idea of writing a book or have been writing for a while, all authors need certain tools if our goal is to publish and make money with our work. Now, if your goal is to simply create a piece of literature that “says something deep and probing” about society or life or is esoteric and selling the book doesn’t matter? Then that is a noble goal and I wish you the very best.

There are works that have broken all the rules and come to be known (usually much later) as classics. I will, however, respectfully point out that the majority of those who follow this blog want to write commercially and make a decent living, so my list is geared toward a certain group of authors.

What this means is that anything can go in writing. Rules are not to be a…

by Shannon Donnelly

There are a lot of crimes a writer can commit—the torture of sentences, the mangling of meaning, the wrecking of words through using the wrong one at the wrong time. However, the greatest of these is the crime of lack—to forget to put in the emotion.

Now, emotions come in lots of ways and there are lots of opportunities to layer them in, but you have to remember you’re not just putting down words. You are constructing a believable scene with what should be memorable characters (people in other words). And people come with emotions.

Let’s look at the ways to make sure you get the emotion into your scenes.

1. Add emotion through actions.

This goes back to the old ‘show, don’t tell’ advice. You want to show your characters in action so the reader sees who your characters are. Does a character slam a…

I’m a newbie at the writing game, but I’m a lifelong reader. I always check out the acknowledgements page, which means I’ve read thousands of heartfelt thank-yous to critique partners and beta readers, usually along the lines of “they read this story when it sucked, so you don’t have to.” I knew before I ever put finger to keyboard that getting feedback was important, but as Justine discovered with conflict and Michaeline learned regarding revision, I had no clue what that actually meant. I had a vague idea that I should ask a few readers for comments and they’d tell me if they liked the characters and spot mistakes in the details. I imagined the contemporary romance equivalent of the online comments on the new Sherlock – the train carriage belonged to the wrong tube line, and the photographers in the press pack were using the wrong lenses.