Friday Speak Out!: A Novel and a Skirt

by June Trop

What’s the difference between a novel and a skirt? Not as much as you might think. Both are subject to the fads and fancies of the marketplace. If you’ve recently picked up a classic novel—I picked up Middlemarch by George Eliot—you might find that although it’s been touted as a masterpiece of English literature, its underlying themes, pace, and tone are dated.

In today’s market, the author competes with various entertainment options for readers who typically have little time. Did you know the average person today decides whether to read a book within just a few minutes of opening it? To hook your reader, some event has to topple your protagonist’s stable world quickly, within the first scene. Likewise, the first sentence has to plunge your protagonist into the story, arouse curiosity, and promise trouble. For example, I started my first novel, The Deadliest Lie (Bell Bridge Books, 2013), with this sentence: “I wondered what lie I’d tell as I approached the great mahogany doors of my father, Isaac ben Asher’s study.”

The story has to move quickly. Today’s successful authors trust their readers to be able to jump from one scene to the next without a lengthy transition. They use dialog and short paragraphs (lots of white spaces) to make their readers’ eyes fly down the page. Remember dialog is also action.

And rather than long expository passages, which tend to bore readers, authors keep their descriptions brief, with just a few telling words incorporated into an action. Yes, I’m talking about that old saying again: Show don’t tell. Instead of telling how fastidious a character is about his appearance, show his manicured hand brushing an imaginary speck of lint off his shoulder.

So, launch your story with both a provocative first sentence and an action-filled scene and fold your descriptions into your action statements. Then, unlike this poodle skirt, you'll be current with today's fads and fancies.

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June Trop is the author of the Miriam bat Isaac Mystery Series set in first-century CE Roman-occupied Alexandria. Her books have been cited for excellence at the New York Book Festival, by Wiki Ezvid, the Historical Novel Society, and as a 5-star Readers’ Favorite. Kirkus praised The Deadliest Thief for its “vibrant imagery and an entertaining plot ending with a most unexpected twist.”

As an award-winning middle school science teacher, June used storytelling to capture her students’ imagination and interest in scientific concepts. Years later as a professor of teacher education, she focused her research on the practical knowledge teachers construct and communicate through storytelling.

June, an active member of the Mystery Writers of America, lives with her husband Paul Zuckerman in New Paltz, NY where she is breathlessly recording her plucky heroine's next life-or-death exploit.

Connect with June on her website www.JuneTrop.com or her Facebook page: June Trop Author.

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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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1 comment Friday Speak Out, hook your readers, June Trop, novel writing, novel writing tips

How To Win Contests (Or At Least an Honorable Mention)

I sometimes get the opportunity to critique manuscripts for contests; I might be asked to give feedback on essays or short fiction or novel excerpts or even picture book manuscripts. It’s not always easy to find the best manuscript, but there are two basic flaws that’ll quickly kick your work out of the competition:

Same Old, Same Old

I don’t care whether you’re writing an essay or a picture book, you’ve got to bring something unique. But that doesn’t mean you have to write about something that’s never been done. You just have to find a way of making the same old, same old different.

Take, for example, something as simple as fingers and toes. There have been a gazillion picture books written about ‘em because—big surprise—little kids and the adults who read to kids are downright smitten with fingers and toes.

So you want to write about these darling digits because it’s a proven seller and also just because you love the idea of fingers and toes. How can you make your book different from all the gazillion of books already out there? Start with making sure you know what’s already been written and then let your imagination go wild! Don’t worry about being “wrong” so much as just letting your creativity run rampant. That’s where the golden best-sellers are born.

Because here’s the bottom line (which is always about money, isn’t it?): there’s a strong correlation between uniqueness and marketability. So when an agent tells you that it only takes a first page, or maybe even a first paragraph, to know if they’re interested, it’s because of the uniqueness/marketability factor. The same old, same old will get a pass every time. Bring something unique to make your manuscript stand out and you’re halfway to the prize. (And as an added bonus, you’ll probably have found your hook.)

But Is It A Story?

Do you have a friend who loves to tell stories but at the end of one of these “stories” you find yourself asking, “Is that it?”

Oh, dear. Some people just don’t know how to tell a story. But good storytellers do; they know the way story works. They start at the beginning, with a character who’s got trouble. So much trouble! You can’t help wondering, “So then what happened?” The storyteller continues, building tension, until you’re on the edge of your seat. And finally, the story comes to a gratifyingly good end and you’re all like, “Wow!” Or maybe you laugh or cry or sigh. The point is, a good story always has the reader asking, “So then what happened?” Until the story finally comes to an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

You can play around with all the elements, whatever your form. Maybe your protagonist is a force of nature, maybe you have four different points-of-view, maybe you time travel, going back and forth in settings from one century to the other. But through it all, you have to have a good story. Without a story, you’ve just got observations. And possibly an agent who says, “Is that it?”

So before you spend days, months, or years of your life fixing a wonky rhyme or making a character more engaging, make sure your manuscript is worth it. Give it something unique and make sure you have a story. And then sit back and start winning contests (or at least an Honorable Mention)!

~ Cathy C. Hall

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6 comments Cathy C. Hall, elements of story, hook your readers, marketability, plot, writing contests

How to Hook Your Reader: 3 Tips for Novelists

by Diane O’Connell

Recall the last time you were perusing your local bookstore, or looking at books online. If a new book intrigued you, you’d be compelled to flip it over, or click to read the novel’s “flap copy”—the short description that tells you what the book is about.

This copy is, essentially, an author’s sales pitch to readers. When written well and conveying a strong and unique story idea, flap copy can be an author’s key to grabbing readers. When a story’s vision has big weaknesses, on the other hand, a potential buyer will lose interest and go off in search of another book.

Honing in on what really piques a reader’s interest lies in maximizing your novel’s potential for dramatic change, and creating something readers haven’t seen before.

The following 3 tips will help you in both crafting a compelling story and a solid pitch for a completed novel.

What makes a novel sell:

1. An original Concept

I often describe the vision for your novel as the spark that ignites the story idea, inspiring a full-fledged novel. Think of this as an author asking, “What if?” and the novel exploring the question in depth. For example, Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games series, was channel surfing one night and caught glimpses of a reality TV competition and then war footage on the news. The compelling contrast sat with her, and in answering the big “What if?” in detail, she developed the dystopian—and fresh and original—vision for her novel.

To maximize your novel’s chances of standing out in the market, make sure the big idea for your novel is solid and completely original, not hitched to an already popular bandwagon, like vampire romance novels. For tips, read 6 Ways to Generate Ideas For Your Story.

Ask yourself: What about your vision makes your story truly different from other novels out there?

2. A dynamic main Character

Many first-time authors make the mistake of having a main character who snags the main spotlight or the most “screen time” in a novel, but without really putting him to the test. The main character of any compelling novel must be forced to make choices he hasn’t had to confront before. Your main character must also have something very vital at stake: life or death, honor, love, vengeance, etc.

This element of risk is what can really hook a reader into wanting to know more. Readers want to see characters tested to limits, facing countless roadblocks and changing drastically over the course of a novel.

Ask yourself: Would the changes my main character undergoes make her near unrecognizable by who she was at the beginning? Will readers want to see how the character faces up to difficult tasks?

3. A hard-to-solve central Conflict

One of the greatest problems I see with first-time novelists is that the central problem of their story is not big enough. This doesn’t mean every book needs to have a literal ticking time bomb, or bodies piling up a la Hollywood blockbusters. The conflict must be deep, difficult to fix and meaty enough for readers to be intrigued by for an entire novel.

Most people actively try to avoid conflict in their day-to-day lives. But conflict is what novels need to succeed—it’s why readers pick up books in the first place, to dive into a story world where characters face obstacles. A good novel’s central conflict shouldn’t be something that can be solved easily under the story’s other circumstances, or make a reader question, “So what?” For instance, if an author’s central conflict starts out as a nerdy boy wanting to date a hot girl, a reader may think this conflict stale and overdone. But if the boy’s father is suddenly marrying the girl’s mother, there’s another hurdle adding another layer of intrigue.

Ask yourself: Is my novel’s problem so big that readers will ask, “How is the main character going to get out of this one?”

Concept – Character – Conflict: If you keep these “three C’s” in mind when writing your novel or your pitch, you’ll be sure to have readers hooked!

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Diane O’Connell is a former editor at Random House and author of six books, including the award-winning The Novel-Maker’s Handbook: The No-Nonsense Guide to Crafting a Marketable Story. As editorial director of Write to Sell Your Book she has helped dozens of authors achieve international publishing success. Diane’s passion for helping authors improve their craft and for the entire process of writing and publishing has made her one of the top editors in the field and a sought-after speaker at writing conferences and workshops throughout the US. She also conducts a twice-yearly Guided Novel Writing Retreat in Lenox, MA. To find out more about Diane, her book, and her retreat, please visit: http://www.writetosellyourbook.com

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Leave a Comment character, concept, Conflict, Diane O'Connell, flap copy, hook your readers, novel writing, The Novel-Maker's Handbook

Give Your Reader Space

Give your reader space to move through your story.

When you write, don’t tell your readers everything. Leave space for them to make the story their own. That’s a common enough piece of advice, but what does it mean?  You can read a great example in Sandra Havriluk’s “Five Words,” a runner up in the WOW! Summer Flash Fiction contest. If you haven’t read it yet, and are likely to have a tantrum about spoilers, go read it now.  Seriously.  The next paragraph is riddled with spoilers.  

“Five Words” is a story about a woman who had to make a choice.  She had to decide whether to have her addict brother arrested or not. She chose “not” so her husband took their son and moved out. He has filed for divorce and she must decide if she wants to sign the papers or fight for her family. The problem is that fighting for her family will mean revealing painful childhood secrets.  In the end, she reaches out to her husband, sending him a text. Do they reconcile?  We don’t know. Readers have the space to spin their own conclusions about what happened after she sent the text.

Sandra and I have already discussed this but I’m a reader that loves wide open endings. If you want me to like a piece, don’t just stop. Instead, give me enough detail that I can extrapolate an ending. Don’t leave me hanging. 

That’s the kind of open ending that Sandra has created. Things aren’t neatly tied up, but the ending is still satisfying because we know something about the characters. Because of this, we can imagine how the story will end. It’s open but not formless.

The ending isn’t the only place that you can leave space for the readers.  You can also do it in how you describe the character’s emotion. Get it. I said describe the characters emotion.  Don’t tell us the character’s emotion. Trish was frightened. That’s too easy. Instead show us how Trish is reacting to the ongoing situation. How is her body reacting? You don’t have to make a big deal about it but slip in a detail here or there. Trish’s hand shook as she reached for the door. She struggled to draw in a deep breath as she pulled on the handle, the door slowly swinging toward her. This doesn’t tell the reader how Trish feels but it gives enough information for the reader to come to that conclusion.

Don’t spoon-feed your readers every detail.  It’s good advice, but it isn’t the sort of thing that you’re going to manage in your first draft.  It is only going to come out in subsequent drafts as you look for ways to leave spaces for your readers to occupy as they move into and through the world of your story.  Those are the spaces that they will use to make your story their own.

--SueBE

Sue is the instructor for our course, Writing Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults. The next session begins on March 21, 2016.

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2 comments character emotion, Endings, hook your readers, story details

Catch Blog Readers With a Title and Hook

You know how you can make one of those ridiculous professional mistakes, and you’re all set to kick yourself in the pants, but then you figure out something terribly important from the mistake? Yeah, that happened to me the other day.

It all started a year ago, when I’d accidentally disabled the publicizing feature on my personal blog.

But then last week, I realized the mistake and got to work, getting all my promotional tools up and running again. That’s when the terribly-important figuring out began. (I mean, besides the terribly important thing I figured out about checking the status of your publicizing tools on various social media.)

First, I noticed my blog post titles. When I double-checked my blog feed on the afore-mentioned various social media, and saw my blog title pop up, I had this moment where I thought, “Would I stop to read this blog post based on that boring title?”

Well. It was a humbling moment, friends. I’m a creative writer, for crying out loud. I should be coming up with extra-oomph-y titles, right? But I’d been taking the lazy route, falling back on same-old, same-old title patterns.

To be honest, I suspect my faithful blog readers would probably read my posts no matter what I titled them. And yours probably will, too. But do you really want to get in the bad habit of penning ho-hum titles? That’s a writing skill you need to hone whether you write fiction, non-fiction, poetry or blog posts.

And for bloggers like me, there’s another reason strong titles are important. I’m in the business of bringing new readers to my blog. Maybe you’d like to build your subscribers, too. But how can we expect to pull in new readers with ordinary titles? After all, we’re competing with a ton of information (not to mention a ton of cute cats) out there amongst the social media. We’re going to need a title that will grab a reader’s attention—and fast!

Then there’s the first line of the post, the line that also comes up in the blog post feed. I was not too impressed with my first sentence hook. If I were actually fishing with that hook, I’d starve to death.

In the end, I realized that if one is going to go to all the trouble to publicize one's blog posts, it’s terribly important to put one's best foot forward. A strong title can get the casual reader to stop scrolling. A first line with a hook can get that reader to a blog. And if the rest of the post offers something of value to that reader, one is very likely to land a subscriber.

Which is way better than getting a kick in the pants.


~Cathy C. Hall

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9 comments blog advice, Cathy C. Hall, hook your readers, titles