From Peter Greenburg, travel editor for CBS News:
From conference founder Don George:
There are many methodologies and techniques for writing a novel. Perhaps one of the most respected and potentially useful is Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method.
•
A guidebook is something you depart from.
•
Look for the hidden gems when you travel. “First thing off the plane, I go to the fire department. They know all the best places. And I always talk to the hotel maids.”
•
Focus on the wonder of the place, not the gripes.
•
Develop a passion for language
•
Look for the larger connection that makes your story universal.
•
A sidewalk café is not a waste of time. Sit, see, absorb-and don’t tweet! Turn off all the machines and just listen to the earth breathe.
•
Travel writers must be more specific now than ever. Facts! Facts! Facts! What side of the street should you walk down if you’ve never seen Notre Dame?
•
Observe during the days. Write your notes at night.
•
Always carry a corkscrew; never pass up a bathroom.
By Ellen Cassedy
By Anne Sigmon
There are many methodologies and techniques for writing a novel. Perhaps one of the most respected and potentially useful is Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method.
by Laura Brennan
by Arlene Mandell
by Brittany Behrman
by Reed Farrel Coleman, Author of Hurt Machine
by Chris Baty
by Ray Gustini Jun 02, 2011
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/authors/ray-gustini/
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/authors/ray-gustini/
by Joseph Bates
Author of The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time
Author of The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time
by Jeffrey Small
Author of The Breath of God
Author of The Breath of God
From Georgia Hesse, doyenne of Bay Area travel writers, and founding editor of the San Francisco Examiner travel section:
by Victoria Zackheim
by Francine Garson
You look good. Did you lose weight?
Or maybe…
Did you lose weight? You look good.
You look good. Did you lose weight?
Or maybe…
Did you lose weight? You look good.
by Stephen Bakalyar
Talking for Writers
National Novel Writing Month's Secret Weapon
5 Ways to Get Noticed and Earn a Full-Time Writing Job
Here Are 15 Excellent Tips for Writing a Book
The Art of the Follow-Up
Checking for Plot Holes
Writing Tips From A Pro
The Snowflake Method Ten Step Process
Who Cares About Your Family Story?
Ten Tips to Ensure Readers Will Care
Ten Tips to Ensure Readers Will Care
•
Always write for yourself. That’s when you get engaged emotionally. The story must be important to you or it won’t be important to readers.
•
Adding personal details about your experience lends depth to the story. But the “I” shouldn’t dominate. Write about others, too.
•
Enrich your writing with sensory details; transport the reader to the place you’re writing about.
•
Great travel writing helps both the reader-and the writer-understand life.
Tips From the Travel Writing Pros
The 2013 conference will be held August 8-11 in Corte Madera. Registration information is available on the Book Passages website.
“This conference is no private party for the travel-writing elite or some secret society of travelerati,” says Lavinia Spalding, editor of the Best Women’s Travel Writing series from Travelers Tales. “It open to anyone and hands down the most exciting writing event I've ever attended. Consider this: there's no application process, no previous publishing credits required. No judgment, ego, or cliques, and absolutely no limit to the connections you can make.”
Anne Sigmon writes about her adventures-and misadventures-as a stroke survivor and autoimmune patient who still tromps through the wild: to Burmese jungles, Syrian deserts, backpacking with llamas in the Utah wilderness.
“This conference is no private party for the travel-writing elite or some secret society of travelerati,” says Lavinia Spalding, editor of the Best Women’s Travel Writing series from Travelers Tales. “It open to anyone and hands down the most exciting writing event I've ever attended. Consider this: there's no application process, no previous publishing credits required. No judgment, ego, or cliques, and absolutely no limit to the connections you can make.”
Anne Sigmon writes about her adventures-and misadventures-as a stroke survivor and autoimmune patient who still tromps through the wild: to Burmese jungles, Syrian deserts, backpacking with llamas in the Utah wilderness.
1. Write a one-sentence summary of your novel.
2. Expand the sentence to a paragraph describing the story narrative, any major events and the ending.
3. Now consider the main character and write a one page summary for each, considering the following points:
• A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline.
• The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?).
• The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?).
• The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?).
• The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?.
• A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline.
4. Go back to the summary you wrote in 2 and expand each sentence into a paragraph. Randy’s advice here is:
“Take several hours and expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends.” http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
5. Write a one-page description for each major character, which tells the story from their point of view.
6. Expand your one page plot synopsis into a four-page plot synopsis.
7. Expand your character descriptions from 3 into full ‘character charts’.
8. Using the expanded synopsis, make a list of every scene you will need to write to complete the novel.
9. Using the scene list, write a multi-paragraph narrative description of each scene.
10. Write your first draft.
This post is a summary of Ingermanson’s thinking and ideas. I strongly suggest that if you wish to apply the Snowflake Method that you go to http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/ to find more details.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Writing memoir instead of fiction? The same method should work and should help you write the whole story as opposed to a one-sided version.
This article originally ran at http://bubblecow.co/author/bubblecow/. BubbleCow is a family business founded by novelist Caroline Smailes.
2. Expand the sentence to a paragraph describing the story narrative, any major events and the ending.
3. Now consider the main character and write a one page summary for each, considering the following points:
• A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline.
• The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?).
• The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?).
• The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?).
• The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?.
• A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline.
4. Go back to the summary you wrote in 2 and expand each sentence into a paragraph. Randy’s advice here is:
“Take several hours and expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends.” http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
5. Write a one-page description for each major character, which tells the story from their point of view.
6. Expand your one page plot synopsis into a four-page plot synopsis.
7. Expand your character descriptions from 3 into full ‘character charts’.
8. Using the expanded synopsis, make a list of every scene you will need to write to complete the novel.
9. Using the scene list, write a multi-paragraph narrative description of each scene.
10. Write your first draft.
This post is a summary of Ingermanson’s thinking and ideas. I strongly suggest that if you wish to apply the Snowflake Method that you go to http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/ to find more details.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Writing memoir instead of fiction? The same method should work and should help you write the whole story as opposed to a one-sided version.
This article originally ran at http://bubblecow.co/author/bubblecow/. BubbleCow is a family business founded by novelist Caroline Smailes.
Longtime Wired writer Steve Silberman, is about to start work on his first book, a piece of non-fiction based on an article he wrote in 2001 about Asperger's syndrome, and he's solicited advice from 22 authors about the process of bookwriting. The responses run the gamut from practical advice about how to get organized to ruminations on the art of writing long. These 15 struck us particularly useful, and applicable to both fiction and non-fiction.
• Use Scrivener to write your book. Awesome organizing tool as well as word processor. -- Mark Frauenfelder (The Mad Professor)
• "The first tip is that readers expect books to be exhaustive on their subjects. That doesn’t mean they want the books to be long - it means that they expect that you will cover all the basic ground that needs to be covered to understand the subject, even if they know some of it already. This piece of advice may or may not be relevant to your subject. In my case, with a very idiosyncratic book on viral culture, it led to people asking me at readings why I hadn’t included an analysis of X or Y viral phenomenon in my book. “Because you already know about it,” the magazine guy in me always wanted to respond. But in the book world, people want to see you mention the stuff they already know, at least in passing (or to knock it down)- otherwise, how can it claim to be a book on the subject? It’s worth taking that point of view seriously." -- Bill Wasick (And Then There's This)
• "I tried, not always successfully, to start each day with some discrete goal I wanted to accomplish: write 200 words, or get through a certain amount of research, or conduct two interviews, or whatever. If I set out to spend a day “writing,” that would be so overwhelming I’d end up just farting around online all day instead of starting the climb the mountain." -- Seth Mnookin (The Panic Virus)
• "Planning. Planning. Planning. It’s a campaign. I used some project management tools in the end to put some order into the vastness. That’s the thing about the bigger scale. It requires more management to support the creativity. Cultivate a good relationship with your editor from the beginning. He/she is going to be your task master at some point. That’s going to go so much better if he/she is also your friend, colleague, supporter, and fan. The campaign of writing a book can get so lonely sometimes, you need a good attaboy just to remind yourself of why you’re doing it and that you’re not the crazy loser who needs to get out more." -- Barry Boyce (The Mindfulness Revolution)
• "When I’m writing a book I only read other books that somehow inform my book. If it doesn’t serve my process - no matter how much I want to read it - I don’t. I suspect there are a lot of people who will give the opposite opinion (take a break from reading about your subject matter, etc.), but I’m not one of them. This is your time to be completely and justifiably obsessed. So go ahead - bask in the madness." -- Peter Conners (Growing Up Dead)
• "Do as much research as possible away from the Internet - with living people, in real places." -- Carl Zimmer (The Tangled Bank)
• "Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly." -- Josh Shenk (Lincoln's Melancholy)
• "Write when the book sucks and it isn’t going anywhere. Just keep writing. It doesn’t suck. Your conscious is having a panic attack because it doesn’t believe your subconscious knows what it’s doing." -- Cory Doctorow (Makers)
• "I do not write from the beginning to the end. I write in the order that particular parts take form in my mind and I enjoy mulling them over… I mull and mull and imagine I am explaining them to someone and then I write them down. I have the order in mind, so I write whatever part is bubbling energetically in my mind, print it out (always) and begin a stack on THE BOOK on a corner of my desk into which I can add pieces (in their proper order) as they get written and so I have a visible proof at all times that something is happening." -- Sylvia Boorstein (It's Easier Than You Think)
• "Develop a very serious plan for dealing with internet distractions. I use an app called Self-Control on my Mac." -- Ben Casnocha (My Start-Up Life)
• "Get feedback - oodles of it. Along the way, show pieces of your book to lots of people - different types of people. Ply them with wine and beg them for candor. Find out what’s missing, what’s being misinterpreted, what isn’t convincing, what’s falling flat. This doesn’t mean you take every suggestion or write the book by committee. But this process will allow to marry your necessarily-precious vision with how people will actually react. I find that invaluable." -- David Shenk (The Forgetting)
• "I find it helpful sometimes - and still to my surprise - trying to explain to someone what it is I’m trying to write about, usually someone bright but in a different intellectual zone, and not a writer. Or, likewise, in a letter or email to such a person." -- August Kleinzahler ( Cutty, One Rock)
• "The process of lining the book up, giving it a bedside manner, asking 'Is this what it is about? But what is it really about' was a plunge. I had to explain the work to myself in more and more elementary language. I came to enjoy doing this. It helped when I realized that the discovery process was part of the writing and I didn’t have to be through it already." -- John Tarrant (Life Inside the Dark)
• "Advice from a Newsweek editor I worked with in the ’80s, Nancy Cooper. Roughly my age, but so much smarter and more worldly and sophisticated. I was worried about writing the opening story of the nation section. And she sent me a note that read: ”You just start working and you keep working til it’s done. That’s all there is to it; no mystery.” -- John Schwartz (Tall)
This article originally appeared on The Atlantic Wire, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2011/06/so-youre-writing-book-heres-15-tips/38428/.
• Use Scrivener to write your book. Awesome organizing tool as well as word processor. -- Mark Frauenfelder (The Mad Professor)
• "The first tip is that readers expect books to be exhaustive on their subjects. That doesn’t mean they want the books to be long - it means that they expect that you will cover all the basic ground that needs to be covered to understand the subject, even if they know some of it already. This piece of advice may or may not be relevant to your subject. In my case, with a very idiosyncratic book on viral culture, it led to people asking me at readings why I hadn’t included an analysis of X or Y viral phenomenon in my book. “Because you already know about it,” the magazine guy in me always wanted to respond. But in the book world, people want to see you mention the stuff they already know, at least in passing (or to knock it down)- otherwise, how can it claim to be a book on the subject? It’s worth taking that point of view seriously." -- Bill Wasick (And Then There's This)
• "I tried, not always successfully, to start each day with some discrete goal I wanted to accomplish: write 200 words, or get through a certain amount of research, or conduct two interviews, or whatever. If I set out to spend a day “writing,” that would be so overwhelming I’d end up just farting around online all day instead of starting the climb the mountain." -- Seth Mnookin (The Panic Virus)
• "Planning. Planning. Planning. It’s a campaign. I used some project management tools in the end to put some order into the vastness. That’s the thing about the bigger scale. It requires more management to support the creativity. Cultivate a good relationship with your editor from the beginning. He/she is going to be your task master at some point. That’s going to go so much better if he/she is also your friend, colleague, supporter, and fan. The campaign of writing a book can get so lonely sometimes, you need a good attaboy just to remind yourself of why you’re doing it and that you’re not the crazy loser who needs to get out more." -- Barry Boyce (The Mindfulness Revolution)
• "When I’m writing a book I only read other books that somehow inform my book. If it doesn’t serve my process - no matter how much I want to read it - I don’t. I suspect there are a lot of people who will give the opposite opinion (take a break from reading about your subject matter, etc.), but I’m not one of them. This is your time to be completely and justifiably obsessed. So go ahead - bask in the madness." -- Peter Conners (Growing Up Dead)
• "Do as much research as possible away from the Internet - with living people, in real places." -- Carl Zimmer (The Tangled Bank)
• "Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly." -- Josh Shenk (Lincoln's Melancholy)
• "Write when the book sucks and it isn’t going anywhere. Just keep writing. It doesn’t suck. Your conscious is having a panic attack because it doesn’t believe your subconscious knows what it’s doing." -- Cory Doctorow (Makers)
• "I do not write from the beginning to the end. I write in the order that particular parts take form in my mind and I enjoy mulling them over… I mull and mull and imagine I am explaining them to someone and then I write them down. I have the order in mind, so I write whatever part is bubbling energetically in my mind, print it out (always) and begin a stack on THE BOOK on a corner of my desk into which I can add pieces (in their proper order) as they get written and so I have a visible proof at all times that something is happening." -- Sylvia Boorstein (It's Easier Than You Think)
• "Develop a very serious plan for dealing with internet distractions. I use an app called Self-Control on my Mac." -- Ben Casnocha (My Start-Up Life)
• "Get feedback - oodles of it. Along the way, show pieces of your book to lots of people - different types of people. Ply them with wine and beg them for candor. Find out what’s missing, what’s being misinterpreted, what isn’t convincing, what’s falling flat. This doesn’t mean you take every suggestion or write the book by committee. But this process will allow to marry your necessarily-precious vision with how people will actually react. I find that invaluable." -- David Shenk (The Forgetting)
• "I find it helpful sometimes - and still to my surprise - trying to explain to someone what it is I’m trying to write about, usually someone bright but in a different intellectual zone, and not a writer. Or, likewise, in a letter or email to such a person." -- August Kleinzahler ( Cutty, One Rock)
• "The process of lining the book up, giving it a bedside manner, asking 'Is this what it is about? But what is it really about' was a plunge. I had to explain the work to myself in more and more elementary language. I came to enjoy doing this. It helped when I realized that the discovery process was part of the writing and I didn’t have to be through it already." -- John Tarrant (Life Inside the Dark)
• "Advice from a Newsweek editor I worked with in the ’80s, Nancy Cooper. Roughly my age, but so much smarter and more worldly and sophisticated. I was worried about writing the opening story of the nation section. And she sent me a note that read: ”You just start working and you keep working til it’s done. That’s all there is to it; no mystery.” -- John Schwartz (Tall)
This article originally appeared on The Atlantic Wire, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2011/06/so-youre-writing-book-heres-15-tips/38428/.
I accidentally founded National Novel Writing Month back in 1999. Since then, I've watched, amazed, as the event has grown from 21 overcaffeinated friends into a literary block party with over 200,000 participants every year.
So what's the secret?
I think it really comes down to that 30-day deadline. Month-long deadlines, whatever the goal, are very powerful beasts. There's a reason why so many self-help books are built around a 30-day schedule-it's really the biggest chunk of time that I think human brains can effectively plan around. To me, the power of a 30-day deadline for novelists comes down to three factors:
1) A month gives you enough time to get a draft done, but not so much time that you start procrastinating. Procrastination will kill creative projects the same way rust eventually locks up gears on an abandoned bicycle. Isaac Newton was absolutely right when he said that objects at rest will stay at rest. Which is why people who give themselves a month to write a novel draft are-strangely enough-more likely to finish it than people who give themselves a year. The thirty-day deadline gets those gears moving immediately, and forces you to come up with a realistic schedule that breaks the daunting task of writing a first draft into a series of manageable, daily writing goals.
2) A month-long deadline forces you to abandon perfection and shoot for completion. This is exactly where you want to be on a first draft. Because if you give yourself enough time to analyze every word you write, nothing is going to be good enough. You'll spend so much time beating yourself up about the quality of your sentences that you'll never around to getting a story down on paper. When it comes to first drafts, the best thing you can do is turn off your inner editor and just commit to getting a beginning, a middle, and an end down on paper. Was that page the worst thing you've ever written? Good! Now go write another lousy page. Then another. And another. Hundreds of thousands of writers have edited a bad first draft into a great novel. But no one has ever edited a blank page into anything but a blank page.
3) A month-long deadline brings out the cheerleaders. Imagine a marathon without supporters or spectators. Just solitary runners moving silently through empty city streets. If they drop out of the race, no one notices. If they cross the finish line, no one cares. This, essentially, is the state in which we write our books. Most people don't know our writing project exists, and those who do tend to stop asking about it after a couple months. The manuscript becomes something we grapple with alone, usually at the times of day when we're most exhausted. Is it any wonder so many book projects get abandoned?
When you're writing a book on a month-long deadline, people get excited. They want to help. There's something about the folly of the endeavor that brings out cheerleaders, and you'll find everyone from your local barista to your normally grumpy boss eagerly wanting updates on your progress. Significant others also have an easier time embracing the month-long novel, and will swap childcare or chore duties for one month so you have more time to write. That encouragement (and increased writing time) is priceless, but the real gift you get from your cheerleaders is commitment. I guarantee that there will come a point in the month when your manuscript looks like a total disaster and all you want to do is quit. The only thing keeping you going will be the fact that you don't want to disappoint all those people who believe in you. So you grudgingly keep at it, logging your daily word count while cursing the whole concept. And a few thousand words later, you stumble on some great twist or character and you're in love with our book again, and you're so thankful you didn't give up.
+++
Chris Baty is the Founder of NaNoWriMo, and the author of No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days.
So what's the secret?
I think it really comes down to that 30-day deadline. Month-long deadlines, whatever the goal, are very powerful beasts. There's a reason why so many self-help books are built around a 30-day schedule-it's really the biggest chunk of time that I think human brains can effectively plan around. To me, the power of a 30-day deadline for novelists comes down to three factors:
1) A month gives you enough time to get a draft done, but not so much time that you start procrastinating. Procrastination will kill creative projects the same way rust eventually locks up gears on an abandoned bicycle. Isaac Newton was absolutely right when he said that objects at rest will stay at rest. Which is why people who give themselves a month to write a novel draft are-strangely enough-more likely to finish it than people who give themselves a year. The thirty-day deadline gets those gears moving immediately, and forces you to come up with a realistic schedule that breaks the daunting task of writing a first draft into a series of manageable, daily writing goals.
2) A month-long deadline forces you to abandon perfection and shoot for completion. This is exactly where you want to be on a first draft. Because if you give yourself enough time to analyze every word you write, nothing is going to be good enough. You'll spend so much time beating yourself up about the quality of your sentences that you'll never around to getting a story down on paper. When it comes to first drafts, the best thing you can do is turn off your inner editor and just commit to getting a beginning, a middle, and an end down on paper. Was that page the worst thing you've ever written? Good! Now go write another lousy page. Then another. And another. Hundreds of thousands of writers have edited a bad first draft into a great novel. But no one has ever edited a blank page into anything but a blank page.
3) A month-long deadline brings out the cheerleaders. Imagine a marathon without supporters or spectators. Just solitary runners moving silently through empty city streets. If they drop out of the race, no one notices. If they cross the finish line, no one cares. This, essentially, is the state in which we write our books. Most people don't know our writing project exists, and those who do tend to stop asking about it after a couple months. The manuscript becomes something we grapple with alone, usually at the times of day when we're most exhausted. Is it any wonder so many book projects get abandoned?
When you're writing a book on a month-long deadline, people get excited. They want to help. There's something about the folly of the endeavor that brings out cheerleaders, and you'll find everyone from your local barista to your normally grumpy boss eagerly wanting updates on your progress. Significant others also have an easier time embracing the month-long novel, and will swap childcare or chore duties for one month so you have more time to write. That encouragement (and increased writing time) is priceless, but the real gift you get from your cheerleaders is commitment. I guarantee that there will come a point in the month when your manuscript looks like a total disaster and all you want to do is quit. The only thing keeping you going will be the fact that you don't want to disappoint all those people who believe in you. So you grudgingly keep at it, logging your daily word count while cursing the whole concept. And a few thousand words later, you stumble on some great twist or character and you're in love with our book again, and you're so thankful you didn't give up.
+++
Chris Baty is the Founder of NaNoWriMo, and the author of No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days.
Holding a job that distracts you from cultivating your true talents is a frustration for anyone. Fortunately for those who possess a passion for writing, it’s possible to refine your writing skills while earning a living doing so.
Showing potential employers your value as a writer is paramount to getting ahead of the competition. Because it’s not always simple to craft a job-winning portfolio, I’ve compiled a list of the five ways that I successfully built my resume and satisfied my calling to write for a living.
I appreciate the chance to share these tips with the readers of Writer Advice; I hope that they will help you in advancing your skills while supporting yourself through your writing!
Read the tips here: https://www.ecollegefinder.org/pdfs/ecf_5wayswritingjob.pdf
+++
For years after Brittany Behrman earned her degree in 2009, she spent her time searching for work. In her job hunt, she perfected these tips and used them to find a position writing for the online colleges portal eCollegeFinder.org.
Showing potential employers your value as a writer is paramount to getting ahead of the competition. Because it’s not always simple to craft a job-winning portfolio, I’ve compiled a list of the five ways that I successfully built my resume and satisfied my calling to write for a living.
I appreciate the chance to share these tips with the readers of Writer Advice; I hope that they will help you in advancing your skills while supporting yourself through your writing!
Read the tips here: https://www.ecollegefinder.org/pdfs/ecf_5wayswritingjob.pdf
+++
For years after Brittany Behrman earned her degree in 2009, she spent her time searching for work. In her job hunt, she perfected these tips and used them to find a position writing for the online colleges portal eCollegeFinder.org.
For the past five years, I’ve taught a summer class in writing-How To Write Genre Fiction or How To Write A Novel-at Hofstra University on Long Island. It’s a three-credit class open to regular students, graduate students, and continuing education students as well. Furthermore, it’s an accelerated class in that I must teach a full term’s worth of material in two consecutive weeks-four hours a day, ten days in a row. In order to accomplish this I had to learn how to reduce lessons down to their most impactful, economical forms.
Then, two years ago, Larry Light, the current Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America-a position I once held-came to me and asked me to lead an effort to develop an idea called MWA University. This was to be a program where Mystery Writers of America would offer six hours of college level writing instruction on a single day as a member benefit. Six hours sounds like a lot of time, but in reality it is very little to teach the basics of fiction writing. Again, I was forced to concentrate my lesson plans even further. Here are just some of the bits of writing advice I give to my students that I have developed along the way.
Narrative: New writers are often flummoxed by this concept. Here's an exercise: Download the late Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" or "Taxi" or "W-O-L-D". In these songs, all about five minutes in length, Chapin perfectly exemplifies a complete narrative. There is a beginning, middle, and end with deep characterization, and emotional story arcs. If he can tell stories this complete in five minutes, imagine what you can do in three hundred pages.
First or Third Person: First person allows for an intimacy between the narrator (usually the protagonist) of the story and the reader that is unachievable through third person. However, first person can be very limiting because all the information to the reader must be delivered through the narrator/protagonist's experiences. The reader can never know what is going on in another character's life when that character is not with the protagonist. It also means the protagonist must be constantly "on screen". Third person allows for broader experience in that the reader can have a greater sense of the complete picture. It may even allow the reader to know what is going on in the lives and minds of several characters even within a single scene. The price a writer pays for writing in third is lack of intimacy and potential confusion.
To Outline or Not To Outline: Fiction writing is an odd combination of comfort and discomfort. I, for one, never outline because it robs the spontaneity of the writing experience. I feel once I've done an outline, I've already written the book and I have no desire to write it twice with no surprises. On the other hand, many successful authors do rigorous outlining. They feel they cannot enjoy the writing process if they haven't gotten the heavy lifting of plot out of the way. Just as with routine, experiment. Find out what works best for you and stick with it.
Rule of Three: A difficult issue for new writers to make sense of is how to handle critiques and criticism. On the one hand, you can't change a manuscript to suit every individual bit of criticism you receive. On the other, as I mentioned earlier, you can't remain stubbornly wedded to your manuscript as if it was biblical scripture. When seeking feedback or when you begin the search for an agent or publisher, follow the rule of three. If three people mention one specific weakness in your manuscript -- The protagonist wasn't likeable. The plot was confusing. Your antagonist was one dimensional. -- you might want to pay attention.
© 2011 Reed Farrel Coleman, author of Hurt Machine
Author BioReed Farrel Coleman, author of Hurt Machine, is the former executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America. He has published twelve novels -- two under his pen name Tony Spinsosa -- in three series, and one stand-alone with award-winning Irish author Ken Bruen. His books have been translated into seven languages.
Reed is a three-time winner of the Shamus Award for Best Detective Novel of the Year. He has also received the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards, and has been twice nominated for the Edgar® Award. He was the editor of the anthology Hard Boiled Brooklyn, and his short fiction and essays have appeared in Wall Street Noir, The Darker Mask, These Guns For Hire, Brooklyn Noir 3, Damn Near Dead, and other publications.
Reed is an adjunct professor at Hofstra University, teaching writing classes in mystery fiction and the novel. He lives with his family on Long Island.
For more information please visit http://www.reedcoleman.com/, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.
Then, two years ago, Larry Light, the current Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America-a position I once held-came to me and asked me to lead an effort to develop an idea called MWA University. This was to be a program where Mystery Writers of America would offer six hours of college level writing instruction on a single day as a member benefit. Six hours sounds like a lot of time, but in reality it is very little to teach the basics of fiction writing. Again, I was forced to concentrate my lesson plans even further. Here are just some of the bits of writing advice I give to my students that I have developed along the way.
Narrative: New writers are often flummoxed by this concept. Here's an exercise: Download the late Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" or "Taxi" or "W-O-L-D". In these songs, all about five minutes in length, Chapin perfectly exemplifies a complete narrative. There is a beginning, middle, and end with deep characterization, and emotional story arcs. If he can tell stories this complete in five minutes, imagine what you can do in three hundred pages.
First or Third Person: First person allows for an intimacy between the narrator (usually the protagonist) of the story and the reader that is unachievable through third person. However, first person can be very limiting because all the information to the reader must be delivered through the narrator/protagonist's experiences. The reader can never know what is going on in another character's life when that character is not with the protagonist. It also means the protagonist must be constantly "on screen". Third person allows for broader experience in that the reader can have a greater sense of the complete picture. It may even allow the reader to know what is going on in the lives and minds of several characters even within a single scene. The price a writer pays for writing in third is lack of intimacy and potential confusion.
To Outline or Not To Outline: Fiction writing is an odd combination of comfort and discomfort. I, for one, never outline because it robs the spontaneity of the writing experience. I feel once I've done an outline, I've already written the book and I have no desire to write it twice with no surprises. On the other hand, many successful authors do rigorous outlining. They feel they cannot enjoy the writing process if they haven't gotten the heavy lifting of plot out of the way. Just as with routine, experiment. Find out what works best for you and stick with it.
Rule of Three: A difficult issue for new writers to make sense of is how to handle critiques and criticism. On the one hand, you can't change a manuscript to suit every individual bit of criticism you receive. On the other, as I mentioned earlier, you can't remain stubbornly wedded to your manuscript as if it was biblical scripture. When seeking feedback or when you begin the search for an agent or publisher, follow the rule of three. If three people mention one specific weakness in your manuscript -- The protagonist wasn't likeable. The plot was confusing. Your antagonist was one dimensional. -- you might want to pay attention.
© 2011 Reed Farrel Coleman, author of Hurt Machine
Author BioReed Farrel Coleman, author of Hurt Machine, is the former executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America. He has published twelve novels -- two under his pen name Tony Spinsosa -- in three series, and one stand-alone with award-winning Irish author Ken Bruen. His books have been translated into seven languages.
Reed is a three-time winner of the Shamus Award for Best Detective Novel of the Year. He has also received the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards, and has been twice nominated for the Edgar® Award. He was the editor of the anthology Hard Boiled Brooklyn, and his short fiction and essays have appeared in Wall Street Noir, The Darker Mask, These Guns For Hire, Brooklyn Noir 3, Damn Near Dead, and other publications.
Reed is an adjunct professor at Hofstra University, teaching writing classes in mystery fiction and the novel. He lives with his family on Long Island.
For more information please visit http://www.reedcoleman.com/, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.
Ingermanson has constructed a 10-step process, which I have summarized below. This process is based around the idea that a writer begins with a simplistic Deep Theme and then, over time, develops and adds complexity. This makes the formation of the novel a conscious process, rather then a random creative exercise.
I am not saying that this is the ‘best’ method to write a novel. In fact, I feel many writers will be horrified at such detailed levels of planning. However, some writers will find an affinity with the Snowflake Method. If you are a writer that plans, this post might just change your writing life!
I am not saying that this is the ‘best’ method to write a novel. In fact, I feel many writers will be horrified at such detailed levels of planning. However, some writers will find an affinity with the Snowflake Method. If you are a writer that plans, this post might just change your writing life!
If you want to get published, you must practice the art of the follow-up. Let’s say you’ve sent out 23 poems, 11 short stories and five essays in the year 2011. Some were rejected with a polite note. Others disappeared into the Internet ether, perhaps with the publication itself. There’s a lot of that going around. A few pieces were accepted.
You should have an Excel spread sheet or simple yellow pad where you keep track of your submissions, rejections and acceptances. And now you wait . . . and wait. .
Don’t be too impatient, as most editors are paid little or nothing and have to earn a living doing something else. Six months go by. Three poems and a short story that were supposed to be published do not appear.
If you’re the laid back type, you might wait longer. But eventually you should find out if and when your carefully crafted work has been/will be/will not appear in print or on line.
You may want to add another rhinestone in your tiara, or to send your excellent work somewhere else.
Do not call, even if you have their phone number. They won’t remember you. Instead, write a polite email to the editor. Attach another copy, in case the original has been misplaced.
If the piece was to be in an anthology, you may want to contact the publisher. Nine months or a year can elapse between the time the anthology’s editor submits the manuscript and the actual publication appears.
I really do practice what I preach. On a recent rainy morning I spent an hour on follow-up activities and learned:
• Marco Polo Quarterly has a new website. My short story would appear in mid-September. The editor thought he had emailed everyone.
• The editor of Hudson View had mailed the Spring 2011 issue with “Jacques & Allegra,” a poem about ballet dancers, but it never arrived. She sent another copy.
• An anthology, Israeli/Palestinian Poets Respond, which accepted a poem in 2010, had experienced delays when some of the Palestinians pulled their work out (!) It is now scheduled for publication in February 2012.
Several well-respected writing coaches in Sonoma County, CA, call me the “most-published writer.” This doesn’t mean I am or will become either rich or famous, but it does mean that at 71 years old, I take my avocation seriously. Are you taking yours seriously as well?
+++
Arlene L. Mandell, a retired English professor, at last count has published 505 works a total of 686 times, including 17 anthologies with three more in the works. This does not include anything that appeared during her years as a newspaper reporter or writer for Good Housekeeping magazine.
EDITOR’S NOTE: When I notified Arlene that we were using her article in this issue, she said, “For the ultimate follow up, four years ago I had a memoir segment, "Everybody Loves Saturday Night," accepted in a publication with music-related themes. The editor was busy with other things, but we keep in touch sporadically. Two days ago he e-mailed that he's getting ready to publish another edition and my piece is included. Four years later!”
You should have an Excel spread sheet or simple yellow pad where you keep track of your submissions, rejections and acceptances. And now you wait . . . and wait. .
Don’t be too impatient, as most editors are paid little or nothing and have to earn a living doing something else. Six months go by. Three poems and a short story that were supposed to be published do not appear.
If you’re the laid back type, you might wait longer. But eventually you should find out if and when your carefully crafted work has been/will be/will not appear in print or on line.
You may want to add another rhinestone in your tiara, or to send your excellent work somewhere else.
Do not call, even if you have their phone number. They won’t remember you. Instead, write a polite email to the editor. Attach another copy, in case the original has been misplaced.
If the piece was to be in an anthology, you may want to contact the publisher. Nine months or a year can elapse between the time the anthology’s editor submits the manuscript and the actual publication appears.
I really do practice what I preach. On a recent rainy morning I spent an hour on follow-up activities and learned:
• Marco Polo Quarterly has a new website. My short story would appear in mid-September. The editor thought he had emailed everyone.
• The editor of Hudson View had mailed the Spring 2011 issue with “Jacques & Allegra,” a poem about ballet dancers, but it never arrived. She sent another copy.
• An anthology, Israeli/Palestinian Poets Respond, which accepted a poem in 2010, had experienced delays when some of the Palestinians pulled their work out (!) It is now scheduled for publication in February 2012.
Several well-respected writing coaches in Sonoma County, CA, call me the “most-published writer.” This doesn’t mean I am or will become either rich or famous, but it does mean that at 71 years old, I take my avocation seriously. Are you taking yours seriously as well?
+++
Arlene L. Mandell, a retired English professor, at last count has published 505 works a total of 686 times, including 17 anthologies with three more in the works. This does not include anything that appeared during her years as a newspaper reporter or writer for Good Housekeeping magazine.
EDITOR’S NOTE: When I notified Arlene that we were using her article in this issue, she said, “For the ultimate follow up, four years ago I had a memoir segment, "Everybody Loves Saturday Night," accepted in a publication with music-related themes. The editor was busy with other things, but we keep in touch sporadically. Two days ago he e-mailed that he's getting ready to publish another edition and my piece is included. Four years later!”
There’s a famous story that illustrates how even masterful storytellers can end up with glaring holes in their plots. It concerns Raymond Chandler’s classic detective novel The Big Sleep in which the killing of a chauffeur helps launch a series of complex mysteries involving drugs, pornography, blackmail, and murder that Chandler’s hero, Phillip Marlowe, must solve. When the novel was later made into an equally classic film starring Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe -- with a screenplay by William Faulkner -- the crew realized during production that there was one last question to resolve: Who killed the chauffeur? As the story goes, director Howard Hawks first called Faulkner wanting to know, who had no idea, so Hawks wired Chandler, the source, and asked him who killed the chauffeur. Chandler’s response, as he later recalled, was to-the-point: "Dammit, I didn’t know either."
To make sure your plot is as solid as it can be -- before some legendary film director discovers a plot hole while trying to adapt your work -- consider the following questions and see that you have them answered in your novel.
• Have all subplots and supporting character arcs been concluded? You might want to go back through the novel and mark those moments with subplot and supporting cast that seem to demand revisiting later . . . and make sure you did revisit and conclude them in some satisfying way.
• Do you find any of your characters indulging in excessive monologue toward the finale? Late-novel monologues often indicate that certain information should have been introduced earlier but wasn’t -- and now your character is trying to catch the reader up on that omitted information in one big breath. These one-breath wonders suggest a hole in the plot that the character is now trying to plug, poorly. Be aware of any such information dumps you come across, and consider how you might plug the hole yourself earlier in the text.
• Do the events in your novel follow the rules of the story as you’ve set them out? We already discussed rule breaking in terms of the "twist" ending, but the same applies to every turn your story takes. If your protagonist is launched on his adventure when he saves a young woman from drowning, but then at Plot Point 1 he lets the antagonist get away because he’s not a very strong swimmer, that’s obviously a problem, and everything that comes after that point will be looked on with suspicion by the reader (if he's still reading at all).
• Do the events in your novel follow, and account for, the rules of logic? If it's revealed at the end of your novel that your time-traveling hero has fallen in love with his own grandmother and is now his own grandfather, your reader will likely either scratch his head or kick your novel across the room, depending on what kind of day he's having. It's absolutely true that, as an author, you control the powers of time and space in your book -- see the section on pacing on page 147 -- but even so you're still bound by the general rules of logic; what you do has to make sense. Thus anything that doesn't seem possible, or at least believable, is a problem you'll need to fix.
Sometimes we get so caught up in the momentum of our story, in the fun of telling it, that we forget to properly account for, explain, or excise inconsistencies along the way; even Raymond Chandler can let a dead chauffeur slip past him. But the smallest plot hole might still be big enough for your reader to fall straight through, so be mindful that your plot be as solid as it can be. And if there's anything in the story you can't reconcile, you may want to consider what the offending element is doing there in the first place.
The above is an excerpt from the book The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time by Joseph Bates. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.
Copyright © 2010 Joseph Bates, author of The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time.
Author Bio Joseph Bates's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The South Carolina Review, Identity Theory, Lunch Hour Stories, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, and Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature and fiction writing from the University of Cincinnati and teaches in the creative writing program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
For more information please visit www.nighttimenovelist.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.
To make sure your plot is as solid as it can be -- before some legendary film director discovers a plot hole while trying to adapt your work -- consider the following questions and see that you have them answered in your novel.
• Have all subplots and supporting character arcs been concluded? You might want to go back through the novel and mark those moments with subplot and supporting cast that seem to demand revisiting later . . . and make sure you did revisit and conclude them in some satisfying way.
• Do you find any of your characters indulging in excessive monologue toward the finale? Late-novel monologues often indicate that certain information should have been introduced earlier but wasn’t -- and now your character is trying to catch the reader up on that omitted information in one big breath. These one-breath wonders suggest a hole in the plot that the character is now trying to plug, poorly. Be aware of any such information dumps you come across, and consider how you might plug the hole yourself earlier in the text.
• Do the events in your novel follow the rules of the story as you’ve set them out? We already discussed rule breaking in terms of the "twist" ending, but the same applies to every turn your story takes. If your protagonist is launched on his adventure when he saves a young woman from drowning, but then at Plot Point 1 he lets the antagonist get away because he’s not a very strong swimmer, that’s obviously a problem, and everything that comes after that point will be looked on with suspicion by the reader (if he's still reading at all).
• Do the events in your novel follow, and account for, the rules of logic? If it's revealed at the end of your novel that your time-traveling hero has fallen in love with his own grandmother and is now his own grandfather, your reader will likely either scratch his head or kick your novel across the room, depending on what kind of day he's having. It's absolutely true that, as an author, you control the powers of time and space in your book -- see the section on pacing on page 147 -- but even so you're still bound by the general rules of logic; what you do has to make sense. Thus anything that doesn't seem possible, or at least believable, is a problem you'll need to fix.
Sometimes we get so caught up in the momentum of our story, in the fun of telling it, that we forget to properly account for, explain, or excise inconsistencies along the way; even Raymond Chandler can let a dead chauffeur slip past him. But the smallest plot hole might still be big enough for your reader to fall straight through, so be mindful that your plot be as solid as it can be. And if there's anything in the story you can't reconcile, you may want to consider what the offending element is doing there in the first place.
The above is an excerpt from the book The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time by Joseph Bates. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.
Copyright © 2010 Joseph Bates, author of The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time.
Author Bio Joseph Bates's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The South Carolina Review, Identity Theory, Lunch Hour Stories, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, and Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature and fiction writing from the University of Cincinnati and teaches in the creative writing program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
For more information please visit www.nighttimenovelist.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.
After six years of writing, rejections, rewriting, more rejections, getting a big agent, even more rejections, losing my agent, and rewriting again, my first novel, The Breath of God, hits bookstore shelves in March.
Publishing The Breath of God has been the most difficult project I've ever tackled. For all of you aspiring novelists, I thought that I would share some of the lessons that I wish I'd better understood when I embarked on this journey of heartache, of three hundred pages of discarded prose, and of elation at seeing my book in print.
1. Write one page at a time.
The thought of writing 400 pages of a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end that has all sorts of twists and turns is intimidating to point of being paralyzing. Novels, however, are not written in one fell swoop. Each day, I had to sit down and begin by starting with a single page, just as twelve step programs encourage their members to take one day at a time. Rather than focus on the end product, or even the challenges that might face me in the next chapter, I set a modest goal for myself: 1000 words a day, about four or five days a week. But I always starting with that first single page. Day by day, the pages began to add up.
2. Turn off your self-critic.
Okay, you've completed your research; you've taken notes on your characters; and you've outlined your plot; now it's time to start writing that initial draft. For me, the most difficult part each day was beginning. Getting those first words out was torture. My favorite method of procrastination was to read over my previous day's work. Doing so would then lead to the temptation to edit my writing. I could rationalize that by editing I was still working. Although a number of successful authors edit as they go along, I discovered that it was too easy to get lost in trying to perfect my earlier prose, a endless process, and thus risk never finishing the book. Once I gave myself permission to write badly, to accept that my first draft would suck, then it became easier to start writing something. I had plenty of time when the first draft was finished to fix it.
3. A frustrated protagonist is a happy reader.
When I began The Breath of God, I understood the basic requirement in fiction that conflict is good: bad things must happen to your protagonist. I had lots of conflict: unusual murders, chases in exotic and dangerous settings, unhinged characters. My problem was that I tended to resolve these conflicts too early and too easily. Because my characters lived in the imaginary world inside my head, the conflict they experienced made me uncomfortable, and I wanted to relieve them of this discomfort. Tension and frustration, however, keeps readers turning pages. As I rewrote, I began making the conflicts more difficult to resolve. I also employed the common technique of introducing a new conflict as soon as an earlier one was conquered. And, yes, I ended each chapter with an open conflict or question.
4. The antagonist must oppose the central aim of the protagonist.
I'm not quite sure how I screwed up this simple bit of structure in my first draft. I had lots of conflict, my protagonist was often frustrated, and I had an antagonist who was colorful and frightening. But as I dove into the story, I realized that the antagonist was often pitted against secondary characters or the situation in general, rather than specifically out to thwart the objective of my protagonist. As I looked even deeper, I had to admit that for the first half of the book my protagonist did not even have a clear central aim. These realizations caused me to completely rewrite both my protagonist and antagonist characters.
5. The purpose of fiction is to entertain not to educate.
If you want to educate, write nonfiction. This lesson was the most difficult for me to handle. An early editor who read my novel told me that I had written two books in one: a suspense novel and a non-fiction book on comparative religion. I'd always loved the thriller/suspense genre, but I wanted to write one that made people think. I grew up a Tom Clancy fan. I loved how he interwove the technical details of military strategy, espionage, and cool hardware into his thrillers. I wanted to do the same with the topic of religion. The danger with such an approach is that the non-fiction elements can take precedence over the fictional ones. The book can become preachy or, worse, boring. People read fiction to be entertained. It took me many drafts to strike the right balance: a balance that puts primacy on story and character.
© 2011 Jeffrey Small, author of The Breath of God
Author Bio
Jeffrey Small, author of The Breath of God, graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He holds a master's degree in the study of religions from Oxford University. Jeffrey is an acclaimed speaker on the topics of rethinking religion in the twenty-first century and the common spiritual themes in the world's religions. Jeffrey also writes for Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-small
For more information please visit http://www.jeffreysmall.com and follow the author of Facebook and Twitter
About the book: The Breath of God, by Jeffrey Small follows grad student Grant Matthews on a journey through the Himalayas as he pursues an ancient legend that promises to tie the world's religions together. Facing a murder at the Taj Mahal, a kidnapping in a sacred city, and a desperate chase through a cliffside monastery, Grant confronts a conspiracy of zealots who will stop at nothing to suppress the truth. A truth that his university colleagues believe is mere myth. A truth that will change his life forever -- if he survives. -- Find The Breath of God on Amazon.
Publishing The Breath of God has been the most difficult project I've ever tackled. For all of you aspiring novelists, I thought that I would share some of the lessons that I wish I'd better understood when I embarked on this journey of heartache, of three hundred pages of discarded prose, and of elation at seeing my book in print.
1. Write one page at a time.
The thought of writing 400 pages of a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end that has all sorts of twists and turns is intimidating to point of being paralyzing. Novels, however, are not written in one fell swoop. Each day, I had to sit down and begin by starting with a single page, just as twelve step programs encourage their members to take one day at a time. Rather than focus on the end product, or even the challenges that might face me in the next chapter, I set a modest goal for myself: 1000 words a day, about four or five days a week. But I always starting with that first single page. Day by day, the pages began to add up.
2. Turn off your self-critic.
Okay, you've completed your research; you've taken notes on your characters; and you've outlined your plot; now it's time to start writing that initial draft. For me, the most difficult part each day was beginning. Getting those first words out was torture. My favorite method of procrastination was to read over my previous day's work. Doing so would then lead to the temptation to edit my writing. I could rationalize that by editing I was still working. Although a number of successful authors edit as they go along, I discovered that it was too easy to get lost in trying to perfect my earlier prose, a endless process, and thus risk never finishing the book. Once I gave myself permission to write badly, to accept that my first draft would suck, then it became easier to start writing something. I had plenty of time when the first draft was finished to fix it.
3. A frustrated protagonist is a happy reader.
When I began The Breath of God, I understood the basic requirement in fiction that conflict is good: bad things must happen to your protagonist. I had lots of conflict: unusual murders, chases in exotic and dangerous settings, unhinged characters. My problem was that I tended to resolve these conflicts too early and too easily. Because my characters lived in the imaginary world inside my head, the conflict they experienced made me uncomfortable, and I wanted to relieve them of this discomfort. Tension and frustration, however, keeps readers turning pages. As I rewrote, I began making the conflicts more difficult to resolve. I also employed the common technique of introducing a new conflict as soon as an earlier one was conquered. And, yes, I ended each chapter with an open conflict or question.
4. The antagonist must oppose the central aim of the protagonist.
I'm not quite sure how I screwed up this simple bit of structure in my first draft. I had lots of conflict, my protagonist was often frustrated, and I had an antagonist who was colorful and frightening. But as I dove into the story, I realized that the antagonist was often pitted against secondary characters or the situation in general, rather than specifically out to thwart the objective of my protagonist. As I looked even deeper, I had to admit that for the first half of the book my protagonist did not even have a clear central aim. These realizations caused me to completely rewrite both my protagonist and antagonist characters.
5. The purpose of fiction is to entertain not to educate.
If you want to educate, write nonfiction. This lesson was the most difficult for me to handle. An early editor who read my novel told me that I had written two books in one: a suspense novel and a non-fiction book on comparative religion. I'd always loved the thriller/suspense genre, but I wanted to write one that made people think. I grew up a Tom Clancy fan. I loved how he interwove the technical details of military strategy, espionage, and cool hardware into his thrillers. I wanted to do the same with the topic of religion. The danger with such an approach is that the non-fiction elements can take precedence over the fictional ones. The book can become preachy or, worse, boring. People read fiction to be entertained. It took me many drafts to strike the right balance: a balance that puts primacy on story and character.
© 2011 Jeffrey Small, author of The Breath of God
Author Bio
Jeffrey Small, author of The Breath of God, graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He holds a master's degree in the study of religions from Oxford University. Jeffrey is an acclaimed speaker on the topics of rethinking religion in the twenty-first century and the common spiritual themes in the world's religions. Jeffrey also writes for Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-small
For more information please visit http://www.jeffreysmall.com and follow the author of Facebook and Twitter
About the book: The Breath of God, by Jeffrey Small follows grad student Grant Matthews on a journey through the Himalayas as he pursues an ancient legend that promises to tie the world's religions together. Facing a murder at the Taj Mahal, a kidnapping in a sacred city, and a desperate chase through a cliffside monastery, Grant confronts a conspiracy of zealots who will stop at nothing to suppress the truth. A truth that his university colleagues believe is mere myth. A truth that will change his life forever -- if he survives. -- Find The Breath of God on Amazon.
I love books based on family stories - especially those that provide me with a perch, a home, an intimate place from which to experience a larger culture or a bygone era.
For me, the vibration between the ordinariness of everyday life and the sweep of history is not only a pleasure but also a political and a moral matter. Observing what happens from the point of view of unfamous people, we learn that human history is made not only by generals and kings but by each one of us.
That said, who cares about your family story, or mine? Here are ten ways I’ve discovered to keep readers engaged with the story that engages you.
1. Step back.
When my book first began to take shape, what was foremost in my mind were my own feelings. On my family roots trip to Lithuania, the land of my Jewish forebears, shivers went down my spine in the old Jewish cemetery, and tears overtook me in the now-empty market square.
I was writing about what I cared about. But that - simply that - was not a story, and certainly not a book.
Paradoxically, what enabled me to shape my raw experiences into a narrative was detachment.
When I stepped back, I was able to place my family story within the broader context of a nation’s encounter with its “family secrets,” its Jewish past.
My particular family story came to illuminate something larger. And that’s what made it a book.
I came to be motivated by my responsibilities to my readers - which leads to the next point.
2. Take care of the reader.
Telling a true story, rather than inventing one, can make it harder to see what you know that your reader doesn’t. Put yourself in her shoes.
As my journey progressed, I kept a diary, writing down everything I was seeing, learning, and thinking day by day. That way, even when my journey was over, when I knew how the story would end, I could look back and see what my readers would be wondering at any given point along the way.
3. Give the reader a home, or homes.
In the difficult moral and historical terrain into which I led my readers, I realized my readers would need places to catch their breath - familiar touchstones to hold onto, places to rest.
The classroom at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, with its rows of battered wooden desks, became one such place, and my kitchen table in Vilnius, with its knobby cucumbers and its loaf of black bread, became another.
These recurring images gave my narrative a rhythm, like the refrain of a song.
4. Create vivid characters.
With a first-person narrative, you must create yourself as a character. Ellen Cassedy, the reader’s trusty guide, has to be as vivid as Uncle Will with his grizzled chin and his secret past, or Ruta, the passionate young woman who drives a Holocaust exhibit around the country in her pickup truck.
5. Create vivid scenes.
Just like a work of fiction or a play, a memoir needs places where the narrative slows down and draws the reader in close.
In addition to jotting down in my diary everything I could see, hear, and smell, I took pictures with my camera.
Later, at my desk, when I was conjuring up, say, the old man who wanted to speak to a Jew before he died, I could see his green cap, his aluminum cane, and the blood-red gladioli that framed his front door.
6. Focus.
In writing a story from life, I found I was less a builder than a sculptor, carving away everything not needed.
My side visit to Poland had to go. The amazing yoga class in Vilnius had to go. Even my discovery of my great-grandfather’s grave had to go. Deeply moving though it was, it didn’t advance what had become the real story.
7. Create suspense.
In my first draft, I revealed Uncle Will’s fearsome secret on page 3. Now I make the reader wait till page 51 for even the first clues.
8. Blend the personal and the historical.
Break up what Ursula LeGuin calls “the lumps in the oatmeal.” Instead of requiring the reader to swallow background information in big chunks, find ways to stir them in. Make them go down easy.
9. Be honest.
It’s been said that “writing begins with taking notice.” That means noticing what’s going on inside you as well as outside.
In writing my book, I trained a microscope on the minutest details of how I was beginning to let go of the cross-cultural hatreds I’d been taught as a child.
10. Pay attention to every word.
It goes without saying that I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote. Because I cared - and I wanted my readers to care.
+++
Ellen Cassedy developed her “Ten Tips” while writing We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, 2012).
For me, the vibration between the ordinariness of everyday life and the sweep of history is not only a pleasure but also a political and a moral matter. Observing what happens from the point of view of unfamous people, we learn that human history is made not only by generals and kings but by each one of us.
That said, who cares about your family story, or mine? Here are ten ways I’ve discovered to keep readers engaged with the story that engages you.
1. Step back.
When my book first began to take shape, what was foremost in my mind were my own feelings. On my family roots trip to Lithuania, the land of my Jewish forebears, shivers went down my spine in the old Jewish cemetery, and tears overtook me in the now-empty market square.
I was writing about what I cared about. But that - simply that - was not a story, and certainly not a book.
Paradoxically, what enabled me to shape my raw experiences into a narrative was detachment.
When I stepped back, I was able to place my family story within the broader context of a nation’s encounter with its “family secrets,” its Jewish past.
My particular family story came to illuminate something larger. And that’s what made it a book.
I came to be motivated by my responsibilities to my readers - which leads to the next point.
2. Take care of the reader.
Telling a true story, rather than inventing one, can make it harder to see what you know that your reader doesn’t. Put yourself in her shoes.
As my journey progressed, I kept a diary, writing down everything I was seeing, learning, and thinking day by day. That way, even when my journey was over, when I knew how the story would end, I could look back and see what my readers would be wondering at any given point along the way.
3. Give the reader a home, or homes.
In the difficult moral and historical terrain into which I led my readers, I realized my readers would need places to catch their breath - familiar touchstones to hold onto, places to rest.
The classroom at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, with its rows of battered wooden desks, became one such place, and my kitchen table in Vilnius, with its knobby cucumbers and its loaf of black bread, became another.
These recurring images gave my narrative a rhythm, like the refrain of a song.
4. Create vivid characters.
With a first-person narrative, you must create yourself as a character. Ellen Cassedy, the reader’s trusty guide, has to be as vivid as Uncle Will with his grizzled chin and his secret past, or Ruta, the passionate young woman who drives a Holocaust exhibit around the country in her pickup truck.
5. Create vivid scenes.
Just like a work of fiction or a play, a memoir needs places where the narrative slows down and draws the reader in close.
In addition to jotting down in my diary everything I could see, hear, and smell, I took pictures with my camera.
Later, at my desk, when I was conjuring up, say, the old man who wanted to speak to a Jew before he died, I could see his green cap, his aluminum cane, and the blood-red gladioli that framed his front door.
6. Focus.
In writing a story from life, I found I was less a builder than a sculptor, carving away everything not needed.
My side visit to Poland had to go. The amazing yoga class in Vilnius had to go. Even my discovery of my great-grandfather’s grave had to go. Deeply moving though it was, it didn’t advance what had become the real story.
7. Create suspense.
In my first draft, I revealed Uncle Will’s fearsome secret on page 3. Now I make the reader wait till page 51 for even the first clues.
8. Blend the personal and the historical.
Break up what Ursula LeGuin calls “the lumps in the oatmeal.” Instead of requiring the reader to swallow background information in big chunks, find ways to stir them in. Make them go down easy.
9. Be honest.
It’s been said that “writing begins with taking notice.” That means noticing what’s going on inside you as well as outside.
In writing my book, I trained a microscope on the minutest details of how I was beginning to let go of the cross-cultural hatreds I’d been taught as a child.
10. Pay attention to every word.
It goes without saying that I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote. Because I cared - and I wanted my readers to care.
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Ellen Cassedy developed her “Ten Tips” while writing We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, 2012).
See How Easily You Can Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method
Every so often, I’m asked to speak about pitching to a group of writers. This is easy for me because I love pitching and I love writers. I also love making people cry, and that happens, I am not kidding, about sixty percent of the time. Not everyone, of course - it’s not like I force them to sit through Terms of Endearment. But one person in the room, one person with a story she believes to be unpitchable, oh, yeah. Pass the Kleenex.
Why? Why is it so amazing to hear your story pitched? I do think there’s a certain amount of relief in realizing that it can be done. But I also think we are all desperate to be heard. When a pitch is right, it conveys exactly what you want the world to understand about the heart of your story. You get heard. That’s very powerful.
So how do you get to that? How do you pitch your story? Here are the steps:
1) Be accurate. Do not worry about what the elusive “they” want to hear. Be honest. No one likes a bait-and-switch.
2) Set up their listening. What I mean by this is, prepare them for what they are about to hear. Is it a book, a webseries, a feature, a play? If the form is understood - if you’re at a mystery book convention, for instance - let them know the subgenre: thriller, cosy, procedural, paranormal. If they don’t know what to expect, they won’t be able to connect to your story. I once found myself performing in a gruesome, dark, emotionally-exhausting scene in what the judges expected to be a comedy competition. Funny only in retrospect, trust me.
3) Take the time to tell your story. There is a difference between a logline and a pitch. A logline is usually a sentence long and its only job is to get them to say, “Tell me more.” Your pitch is what you say after that, and its job is to get them to request the script or book proposal or manuscript. Don’t rush, don’t skimp. You’re a storyteller; you’re already good at this part.
4) Only tell the essence of your story. This is the tricky bit. Figure out what the heart of your story is and convey that, and only that. The details, even the character names - they don’t matter as much as you think they do. Take whatever time you need, but don’t squander their good will by being unfocused.
5) Don’t be afraid to insert your own passion and your connection to the material into the pitch. What drew you to tell this story in this way? That’s fascinating and engaging. Share.
Speaking of sharing, that’s how you’ll know if your pitch works. Share it with friends and family. Watch their eyes. Notice when they start to glaze over. Rework those bits. Also, say it out loud to yourself. If you get goosebumps, you’re on the right track.
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Laura Brennan is a writer, producer and pitch consultant. Learn about the help she offers at http://www.pitchingperfectly.com/about.html.
Why? Why is it so amazing to hear your story pitched? I do think there’s a certain amount of relief in realizing that it can be done. But I also think we are all desperate to be heard. When a pitch is right, it conveys exactly what you want the world to understand about the heart of your story. You get heard. That’s very powerful.
So how do you get to that? How do you pitch your story? Here are the steps:
1) Be accurate. Do not worry about what the elusive “they” want to hear. Be honest. No one likes a bait-and-switch.
2) Set up their listening. What I mean by this is, prepare them for what they are about to hear. Is it a book, a webseries, a feature, a play? If the form is understood - if you’re at a mystery book convention, for instance - let them know the subgenre: thriller, cosy, procedural, paranormal. If they don’t know what to expect, they won’t be able to connect to your story. I once found myself performing in a gruesome, dark, emotionally-exhausting scene in what the judges expected to be a comedy competition. Funny only in retrospect, trust me.
3) Take the time to tell your story. There is a difference between a logline and a pitch. A logline is usually a sentence long and its only job is to get them to say, “Tell me more.” Your pitch is what you say after that, and its job is to get them to request the script or book proposal or manuscript. Don’t rush, don’t skimp. You’re a storyteller; you’re already good at this part.
4) Only tell the essence of your story. This is the tricky bit. Figure out what the heart of your story is and convey that, and only that. The details, even the character names - they don’t matter as much as you think they do. Take whatever time you need, but don’t squander their good will by being unfocused.
5) Don’t be afraid to insert your own passion and your connection to the material into the pitch. What drew you to tell this story in this way? That’s fascinating and engaging. Share.
Speaking of sharing, that’s how you’ll know if your pitch works. Share it with friends and family. Watch their eyes. Notice when they start to glaze over. Rework those bits. Also, say it out loud to yourself. If you get goosebumps, you’re on the right track.
+++
Laura Brennan is a writer, producer and pitch consultant. Learn about the help she offers at http://www.pitchingperfectly.com/about.html.
We’ve said it. We’ve heard it. We’ve thought it. But is weight loss, moderate weight loss that is, always a good thing? I wanted to turn that question upside down, look beyond the obvious answer, and challenge some common assumptions. Thus, “The Book Group” was born. Or rather, the ending of “The Book Group” was born. My job would be to write toward it.
My first task was to envision a setting. I imagined a group of women with a connection but not a close friendship, who met regularly but not daily, and who shared interests but not secrets, in other words, a book group. (And yes, it is easier to write what you know). Perhaps the most important part of building the setting was the selection and creation of the small details that would bring the reader into the scene. The limited word count of this particular contest forced me to restrict those details to only those that I thought would anchor the reader as efficiently as possible…homemade brownies, a fistful of spoons, a pile of coats on the couch. I thought that in the end this process of paring my writing down to its essentials did make for a stronger story.
The casual, chatty dialogue also became an integral part of the setting as well as a way to move the story forward. I did, however, struggle with the number of characters in this piece. I thought that a book group with fewer than six members might have seemed unrealistic. Yet the flash fiction format didn’t allow for any real character development beyond that of Lisa. Still, I was convinced that this particular story could best be told in a flash. My solution was to allow each of the individual characters to remain sketchily drawn. In a sense, the entire book group (minus Lisa) became a single character whose purpose was to form a believable backdrop against which Lisa’s experience, feelings, and secret could emerge.
I hoped that Lisa’s growing sense of discomfort with the conversation would provide the subtle clues and create the tension that would make the disturbing end unexpected, yet emotionally true, and that the story would “continue beyond the page.” (Jayne Anne Phillips said that, but I wish I did)!
And then, I left the reader…to question, to think, and to feel.
A former college administrator, Francine Garson has published a short memoir on worklifegroup.com. Her fiction has received recognition from several contests, including Writer Advice's Fifth Annual Flash Prose Contest. Read her story here.
Francine lives in New Jersey with an even-tempered husband and a moody cat. Her almost grown children occasionally return home for food and clean laundry.
My first task was to envision a setting. I imagined a group of women with a connection but not a close friendship, who met regularly but not daily, and who shared interests but not secrets, in other words, a book group. (And yes, it is easier to write what you know). Perhaps the most important part of building the setting was the selection and creation of the small details that would bring the reader into the scene. The limited word count of this particular contest forced me to restrict those details to only those that I thought would anchor the reader as efficiently as possible…homemade brownies, a fistful of spoons, a pile of coats on the couch. I thought that in the end this process of paring my writing down to its essentials did make for a stronger story.
The casual, chatty dialogue also became an integral part of the setting as well as a way to move the story forward. I did, however, struggle with the number of characters in this piece. I thought that a book group with fewer than six members might have seemed unrealistic. Yet the flash fiction format didn’t allow for any real character development beyond that of Lisa. Still, I was convinced that this particular story could best be told in a flash. My solution was to allow each of the individual characters to remain sketchily drawn. In a sense, the entire book group (minus Lisa) became a single character whose purpose was to form a believable backdrop against which Lisa’s experience, feelings, and secret could emerge.
I hoped that Lisa’s growing sense of discomfort with the conversation would provide the subtle clues and create the tension that would make the disturbing end unexpected, yet emotionally true, and that the story would “continue beyond the page.” (Jayne Anne Phillips said that, but I wish I did)!
And then, I left the reader…to question, to think, and to feel.
A former college administrator, Francine Garson has published a short memoir on worklifegroup.com. Her fiction has received recognition from several contests, including Writer Advice's Fifth Annual Flash Prose Contest. Read her story here.
Francine lives in New Jersey with an even-tempered husband and a moody cat. Her almost grown children occasionally return home for food and clean laundry.
It was winter of 2005 when I heard the phrase the other woman and my life changed. I had never been the other woman, nor suffered her, yet I thought: What a great anthology this could be! So how do you go from a good idea to publication? Here are some ideas.
What makes a good anthology topic?
Look around you: photos, friends, family. The Best Gift I Ever Received. The Worst Vacation of My Life. Things and emotions lost, found, shared. Somewhere, there is a gem waiting to shine.
How to proceed? Invite the authors.
You have this terrific idea, but which authors to invite? Women only? Men and women? Men only? Personal essays or short stories? A no-holds-barred collection with humor, rage, introspection, guilt? The decision is yours.
When I set off with The Other Woman, I wondered if I could organize an entire collection around infidelity. I never imagined that some of the top authors in the country-99% of them had never heard of me-wanted to write about it. As Jane Smiley announced during an interview we did with ABC's View From the Bay, "We were just waiting for her to ask!"
When you're inviting authors, you must be fearless.
However, there is a conundrum: Many editors will not consider buying an anthology unless there are sample essays; many widely published authors will not write on spec. (That is, writing first and then hoping the book will sell and they'll be paid.)
You'll find that many writers are happy to write the essay first and take a chance. (If your project doesn't sell, they still own the rights and can pitch the essay elsewhere.) Your agent can guide you in this area.
There are two primary approaches you can take:
1. A universal call for essays, either posted on a website for writers (such as www.redroom.com, www.shewrites.com, www.writersdigest.com). Be prepared to receive more essays than you need. It's important to choose only those that best relate to your theme. Mix funny, serious, poignant, touching...it makes for a better collection.
2. A personal invitation. Make a list of your "dream" authors-bestselling, A-List authors, writers you love to read-and contact them. Many have websites; most can be reached through their publisher. If you're not sure, read the Acknowledgments page of their last book. They almost always thank their agents and editors, so an email to either might elicit a response. Your invitation should be straightforward and short:
Dear XX, I'm putting together an anthology of personal essays on [theme] and would be honored to include your work. When the book sells, I'll let you know about deadlines, word count, and fee. Sincerest thanks, XXX
If you already have authors aboard, let the invitees know who they are.
After the great idea: the Agent.
We've all heard stories about acquiring an agent...it can take months, years! Keep in mind that agents are always looking for the book that sells. There are so many websites that list agents and what they're seeking. Choose ten agents and write a short note-fifty words or less-describing your anthology idea. If you have a few top authors who want to contribute an essay, all the better. If not, let the agents know that you're prepared to go after those big names. When I came up with The Other Woman idea, I contacted my "dream" agent: Sandra Dijkstra. I was thrilled when she assigned me to her associate, Jill Marsal (now of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency).
Write the proposal.
This takes time, but it must be done well. Your agent pitches your idea by sending this proposal to editors at publishing companies. In your proposal, include:
1. Introduction describing the book. (This can be revised later to become the intro to your anthology.) Word count: 200-400 words. If you have authors signed on, mention their names and a brief comment on their essay. ("Caroline Leavitt's essay on writing Pictures of You reminds us of the challenges of being a novelist.")
2. Bios of your authors, including writing awards and their media contacts.
3. A competitive analysis, listing a few similar books (use those that have been successful.
After your proposal is delivered, go on with your life and try not to obsess about which publishers are considering your project. It's crazy-making, to be sure, but you can't succeed if you don't try. Good luck!
Victoria Zackheim is the editor of four anthologies: The Other Woman, For Keeps, The Face in the Mirror, and He Said What? (2011, Seal/Perseus). She is the author of The Bone Weaver, a novel, and writer/developer of documentary films for On the Road Productions. Her play, based on five essays from The Other Woman, is now in development. Victoria teaches creative writing (Personal Essay) in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. She can be contacted at www.victoriazackheim.com
What makes a good anthology topic?
Look around you: photos, friends, family. The Best Gift I Ever Received. The Worst Vacation of My Life. Things and emotions lost, found, shared. Somewhere, there is a gem waiting to shine.
How to proceed? Invite the authors.
You have this terrific idea, but which authors to invite? Women only? Men and women? Men only? Personal essays or short stories? A no-holds-barred collection with humor, rage, introspection, guilt? The decision is yours.
When I set off with The Other Woman, I wondered if I could organize an entire collection around infidelity. I never imagined that some of the top authors in the country-99% of them had never heard of me-wanted to write about it. As Jane Smiley announced during an interview we did with ABC's View From the Bay, "We were just waiting for her to ask!"
When you're inviting authors, you must be fearless.
However, there is a conundrum: Many editors will not consider buying an anthology unless there are sample essays; many widely published authors will not write on spec. (That is, writing first and then hoping the book will sell and they'll be paid.)
You'll find that many writers are happy to write the essay first and take a chance. (If your project doesn't sell, they still own the rights and can pitch the essay elsewhere.) Your agent can guide you in this area.
There are two primary approaches you can take:
1. A universal call for essays, either posted on a website for writers (such as www.redroom.com, www.shewrites.com, www.writersdigest.com). Be prepared to receive more essays than you need. It's important to choose only those that best relate to your theme. Mix funny, serious, poignant, touching...it makes for a better collection.
2. A personal invitation. Make a list of your "dream" authors-bestselling, A-List authors, writers you love to read-and contact them. Many have websites; most can be reached through their publisher. If you're not sure, read the Acknowledgments page of their last book. They almost always thank their agents and editors, so an email to either might elicit a response. Your invitation should be straightforward and short:
Dear XX, I'm putting together an anthology of personal essays on [theme] and would be honored to include your work. When the book sells, I'll let you know about deadlines, word count, and fee. Sincerest thanks, XXX
If you already have authors aboard, let the invitees know who they are.
After the great idea: the Agent.
We've all heard stories about acquiring an agent...it can take months, years! Keep in mind that agents are always looking for the book that sells. There are so many websites that list agents and what they're seeking. Choose ten agents and write a short note-fifty words or less-describing your anthology idea. If you have a few top authors who want to contribute an essay, all the better. If not, let the agents know that you're prepared to go after those big names. When I came up with The Other Woman idea, I contacted my "dream" agent: Sandra Dijkstra. I was thrilled when she assigned me to her associate, Jill Marsal (now of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency).
Write the proposal.
This takes time, but it must be done well. Your agent pitches your idea by sending this proposal to editors at publishing companies. In your proposal, include:
1. Introduction describing the book. (This can be revised later to become the intro to your anthology.) Word count: 200-400 words. If you have authors signed on, mention their names and a brief comment on their essay. ("Caroline Leavitt's essay on writing Pictures of You reminds us of the challenges of being a novelist.")
2. Bios of your authors, including writing awards and their media contacts.
3. A competitive analysis, listing a few similar books (use those that have been successful.
After your proposal is delivered, go on with your life and try not to obsess about which publishers are considering your project. It's crazy-making, to be sure, but you can't succeed if you don't try. Good luck!
Victoria Zackheim is the editor of four anthologies: The Other Woman, For Keeps, The Face in the Mirror, and He Said What? (2011, Seal/Perseus). She is the author of The Bone Weaver, a novel, and writer/developer of documentary films for On the Road Productions. Her play, based on five essays from The Other Woman, is now in development. Victoria teaches creative writing (Personal Essay) in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. She can be contacted at www.victoriazackheim.com
Universal Call: How to Create a Winning Anthology
Spud Hilton, San Francisco Chronicle travel editor, calls it “summer camp for travel writers,” a place to learn, make contacts, meet friends and, sometimes, land assignments.
“Every year peoples' lives are changed utterly by conference,” legendary travel writer and editor Don George has said. “Every year I get a dozen emails from people who say their careers have taken off, or they've been inspired to travel around the world, or they've gotten a photo or a story published, or they've landed a magazine assignment or a book contract because of something they learned, someone they met, some connection they made, at Book Passage.”
I try to go every year. The sessions are jam-packed with insight, inspiration, and writing tips. Here are a few of my favorite tips gleaned from the 2012 conference:
From Larry Habegger, executive editor of the Travelers’ Tales anthology series:
“Every year peoples' lives are changed utterly by conference,” legendary travel writer and editor Don George has said. “Every year I get a dozen emails from people who say their careers have taken off, or they've been inspired to travel around the world, or they've gotten a photo or a story published, or they've landed a magazine assignment or a book contract because of something they learned, someone they met, some connection they made, at Book Passage.”
I try to go every year. The sessions are jam-packed with insight, inspiration, and writing tips. Here are a few of my favorite tips gleaned from the 2012 conference:
From Larry Habegger, executive editor of the Travelers’ Tales anthology series:
“The Book Group”… From Question to Setting to Story
A Chemist Gets Creative
Tough Lessons From a Debut Novelist: Motivation to Write and Other Tips
Whether you’re a travel writer or a memoirist, you’re sharing your life and helping others to understand their own. Here’s some advice from two strong writers who share their life and experience with others.
Every August, travel writers from around the country-and from far corners of the globe-converge on the Bay Area for the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference, called by The Huffington Post the finest travel writing conference in the world. The annual four-day event, sponsored by Book Passage Bookstore in Corte Madera, California, offers writing and photography workshops, talks, panels, and one-on-one discussions with the faculty. Plus, there are opportunities for networking with luminaries like Don George, Spud Hilton, Georgia Hesse, Robert Holmes, Tim Cahill, Jim Benning, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Phil Cousineau, Larry Habegger, Peter Greenburg, and many others.
