If All Else Fails, There's Always IdeaMart

Sorry I haven't been as good with posting lately. I meant to get this posted over the weekend, but that didn't really work out. Oh well, better late than never, right? ;)

"Where do you get your ideas?" It's a question I come across in a lot of author FAQs and interviews. Popular answers include "my brain," "life," "everywhere," or, with a dash of irony, "that grocery store around the corner." I know it's a vague question, one especially difficult to answer for people who are constantly inspired, and yet I can relate to that sense of curiosity regarding writers' creative processes. I love reading posts about how people write. Sometimes I try to steal one or two of their tricks, and other times I just marvel at how personal and idiosyncratic the writing process can be. So here's my take on how I get story ideas, for those of you also fascinated by the writing process. I'm hoping this post will come in handy when I'm a rich and famous author and get asked that question all the time! ;)

When I was younger, my story ideas centered around characters I wished to be. I've mentioned before that I loved pretending to be a magical princess with my friend and sister, and we spun stories about our adventures that I tried (unsuccessfully, I'm afraid) to knit into a novel. Later stories I wrote featured wish-fulfillment protagonists, such as a recent graduate from the mages' university, a shape-shifter with golden eyes, or the new girl in town who wins the heart of the hottest guy in school (so yes, I can understand the appeal of Twilight).

I didn't stop daydreaming when I got older, but I did stop trying to turn them into stories for a while. By the time I began to consider writing again, my story ideas were no longer inspired by fantasies wherein I was a special snowflake. Instead, real life intruded, and traumatic emotional experiences became my muse.

Of course, "traumatic" is subjective. I'm fortunate enough to live a life that has been, for the most part, happy and trouble-free. I have not experienced the death or severe illness of a close friend or family; I have not been abused or assaulted; I have never been in want of food, or shelter, or love and support.  I am beyond grateful for the blessed life I live. Any difficulties I've encountered seem trivial in light of all the good I enjoy, but they nevertheless evoked emotional struggles that were real and significant to me. They marked me and forced me to grow. They inspire me to write.

There was the time I lost a close friend due to my own flaws. Maybe I deserved it, but it hurt, so much, to feel that I wasn't worth a second chance despite my apologies. It pained me that someone whose opinion I highly valued had deemed me irredeemable and found my worth as less than the obstacle of my imperfections.

There was that crisis of faith in my sophomore year of college, when I grappled with guilt and doubt and fought surrender. I tried to ignore the internal battle because I couldn't see how I could ever force myself to choose. It seemed impossible.

Or the time my family was on the verge of falling apart, and I hated myself for not being powerful or brilliant or strong enough to fix everything that was wrong. I cursed my helplessness and drowned myself in despair, unable to bear the burden I'd placed upon myself.

Small, perhaps, in the grad scheme of things, but these and other experiences mattered to me and shaped who I am. I saved up those feelings of hurt and anguish and anger, and amplified them by imagining greater stakes and harsher consequences. What if someone's crisis of faith could cause a war? How does someone face a responsibility, too great to bear, that could mean the life or death of hundreds? What would force someone to fight through feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness to save the world? Those heightened emotions become the heart of my stories, the dark moment my protagonists must face and conquer.

Some things flow easily from that kernel. Theme, for one, is closely tied to the greatest struggle the protagonist must face. I also consider what traits, values, personality, and experiences would make the decision the most difficult for someone, and thus flesh out my main character and her arc. These elements can influence certain worldbuilding decisions, and a few plot points come to mind, too, as the dark moment must be triggered by a crisis and bring about a climax and resolution.

Other aspects of developing story ideas are difficult for me, though. High-concept premises would be one; I try to come up with a cool-sounding idea separately and see if it can fit with any of the stories I want to tell. Settings have never been my strong suit, either, and beginnings tend to be nebulous since I essentially start with the ending.

I wonder what it says about me, that most of my story ideas come from inflicting an intensified version of my personal struggles on a figment of my imagination. Maybe I write as a form of therapy, as Biljana at LTWF does with her fiction. It's my way of writing what I know, and I hope that I can become skilled enough to take my readers on an emotional journey with my words.

So, enough about me. I want to hear how other writers come up with story ideas. Are you consistently inspired by certain observations, experiences, or media, or is it different for every project? What usually comes first when you get a story idea? How does that influence the way you develop the story? Feel free to leave me a link if you have a blog post on the topic!

Inky Linky Love 08.20.2011

Everyone was too busy with WriteOnCon to notice my lack of a post this week, right? :P I'd seen WriteOnCon around the blogosphere before but had no idea what it was. I was totally missing out! Once I found out how awesome it is, I deprived myself of sleep in order to go through all the vlogs and articles from last year, haha. Here are my favorite posts from this year's WriteOnCon, as well as some other blog posts I enjoyed recently.

 WRITEONCON

• Jodi Meadows on How to Write a Synopsis: love her idea for a verbal diarrhea pre-drafting synopsis!
• Taran Hudson on Pacing: her Chapter Sandwich is a good trick for making sure there's lots of tension and excitement
• Kendra Levin on Your Own Hero's Journey: how to balance your writing with everything else in life
• Carrie Ryan on Revision: great tip about starting with the big picture before looking at detail
• Martha Mihalik on Building Believable Romance: love her point that romance doesn't have to be stated directly
• [Vlog] Lisa Schroeder on Novel Beginnings: great point about being intentional with your starting point
• [Vlog] Lindsey Leavitt on The Debut Year: omg she's so adorable!

PLOTTING

• Marina Cohen wrote for Let the Words Flow about how thinking = plotting. I feel so much better about all the time I spend daydreaming!
• Jennifer Hubbard talks about why middles are marvelous. I think openings and endings are incredibly difficult for me, too!
• Patricia C. Wrede says you need to know where you are in order to determine if you can get to where your destination. Great analogy for plotting and knowing your story.

CHARACTERIZATION

• Juliette Wade muses on developing antagonists through story events.
• Lori M. Lee has a great post about the inequality of switching gender roles in YA fiction. Go read it!

SETTING/WORLDBUILDING

• Cam at The Empty Pen wrote intriguing posts on the personality of setting and how it affects characterization. Those posts made me more excited to think about setting — definitely one of my weaknesses.
• N.  K. Jemisin talks about colonialism in worldbuilding and how that affects culture and society in her books. 

In other news, I've realized that I should've spent more time plotting and planning before diving into Camp NaNoWriMo. I make a terrible pantser. But participating forced me to think about my project more and I've made a lot of progress in figuring things out (if not actual word count), so I'm glad I signed up! 

I keep thinking up potential plot events and scenes, but because I hate how everything feels like a muddle in my head, I bought a ton of note cards and sticky notes in order to storyboard the plot. I'm hoping that organization and getting the structure down first will provide a smoother writing experience down the road. I'm excited to see how it goes! I'll blog more about whether the note card method worked for me once I've gotten a chance to try it out.

Oh, and here's an interesting post from Slate about how to write faster. Are you a Beethovian or Mozartian drafter? I bet you can guess which one I am!

YA Romance Pet Peeves

Some of my friends say I'm a cynic, but I say it's only because I am a true idealistic romantic at heart. I love reading about romance. I want to follow along on a character's love life and vicariously experience the thrill and giddiness and sweetness of budding love (probably because my own love life isn't so exciting). I want the romance to be something I can admire and aspire to — something that feels real and solid and steeped in truth, even if it is fiction. I want to root for the characters as they spend time together, find that they complement and strengthen one another, and commit to the effort necessary for the relationship to blossom. It makes me so happy and gushy when I come across a YA romance like that!

I suppose I love true romance too dearly to have much patience for the obsessive, lustful infatuations that frequently pass for romance in YA these days. And so I thought I'd share a few my pet peeves when it comes to YA romance. Of course, this is entirely based on my personal reading preferences, so your mileage may vary. It's not a particularly unique or ground-breaking list, but maybe you'll find yourself nodding along with a few of these points. Or shaking your head vehemently. (Feel free to speak out in the comments!)

Here are the things I'd want to avoid in my own reading and writing:

Love at First Sight
I know some people believe in love at first sight, but I'm not one of them. I don't think love is something that springs up out of nowhere the second you lay eyes on someone. Attraction? Intrigue? Fascination? OMG-I-think-this-person-might-be-The-One? Sure. But until the characters get to know each other on a deeper level and have a relationship built on something other than physical attraction and chemistry, I'm skeptical about their "love." True love, in my opinion, needs a foundation of trust and commitment, and that takes time to nurture.

Lust-Based Relationship
This is part of the reason I'm not sold on love at first sight. Physical attraction is a wonderful thing in a relationship, but it shouldn't be the only aspect. After all, appearances can be deceiving, and people are so much more than their looks. Sure, I've harbored crushes on guys who had more looks than substance, but I never kidded myself that it was love. I prefer reading about protagonists who are more self-aware and realistic. If a heroine declares herself in love with a guy because he is just soooo incredibly hot, fails to mention any other reason, and never realizes how shallow she's being, she will lose major points in my book for being superficial.

Obsessive Mooning
Another reason I hate reading about purely lust-based relationships is that I don't want to read the protagonist talk about "his dark, brooding eyes" or "his ripped muscles" or "this inexplicable connection between us" or anything else along those lines FIVE MILLION TIMES in the same book. And if she must think about him, why can't she think about something else besides his looks or how she's so mysteriously drawn to him? Why can't she be blown away by his kindness? His integrity? His courage? His intelligence? Why can't she admire those traits and be inspired to cultivate them?

Lack of Personality
Because some protagonists can really use a bit of self-improvement. I know some authors write with an everygirl in mind so the reader can slip herself into the place of the heroine, but personally I prefer reading about heroines I can admire and learn from. Sometimes I wonder why every guy in certain novels is infatuated with the protagonist when she doesn't seem to do much of anything. I want to know that the guy loves the protagonist for her strengths and personality and admirable traits. I want to see these traits in her thought process and actions, not by authorial decree.

Excessive Angst
One major tip-off that the protagonist has no personality would be if she spends all her time angsting about her relationship(s). As much as I love reading about romance, I'd prefer if the heroine has other things going on so she's not spending every. waking. moment. thinking about her love life. I'm not particularly interested in spending time in the head of a character who lets thoughts of a guy take over her entire life (particularly if she just met him). Even worse if it's a constant reminder that her relationship is made of nothing but lust and insta-connection.

Love Triangles
Protagonists in this category are the most likely to be guilty of the previous point, because two guys = double the angst. I know lots of people like to indulge in the fantasy of being fought over by two hot guys or cheer for a favorite team, but I'm not a fan of love triangles. It can be done well, I'm sure, but it's been overdone to the point that I'm relieved when a novel doesn't boast one. There are so many things that can go wrong with love triangles (and by "go wrong" I mean "annoy me to death"). I think it's awful when the female protagonist leads on two guys. I hate finding myself on Team Other Guy because I want to see him happy but I know he's doomed by the author not to be. And when compounded with other things on my list, the entire situation is likely to make me want to destroy something in frustration.

Betrayal
To me, this is the worst part of love triangles. I cannot stand reading about betrayals of a friend or a significant other and, worse, being expected to root for the guilty party. I know people make mistakes, but I wish there were more characters who did the right but difficult thing by telling the truth and facing the consequences, rather than giving in to their passions and then trying to hide it by lying to loved ones. I am a big believer in the importance of commitment, honesty, loyalty, and communication in relationships, and I find it hard to apply the label of "love" to anything that lacks those elements. That goes for friendships, too.

Selfish, All-Consuming Passion for No Reason
Basically, this sums up my gripe with many YA romances. Characters meet, fall in lust, become entirely obsessed, and throw everything else to the wind. They can't see anything else but each other, and make decisions without considering the bigger picture of other things going on in their lives, or caring if they will hurt the people closest to them, or taking into account the consequences of what they're doing. Or maybe they do think about it, but selfishly decide that their "love" trumps all. I get so annoyed with these characters I want to shake them and tell them to open their eyes and think about what they're doing. But I'm sure they wouldn't listen anyway. Sigh.

Examples of Classic Romances I Can't Bring Myself to Love
Since I don't want to bash any recent YA novels by name, I decided to list classics as examples (ok, I may have cheated on the last one). I know these are all widely-beloved stories and have heavily impacted our culture, but I cannot stand the romances in these works. Of course, you may feel differently about them, and if you do, I'd love it if you share why in the comments!

• Romeo and Juliet: I have no idea what they saw in each other besides physical attraction, and their double suicide was tragic in its wastefulness and not my idea of romantic at all.
• Tristan + Isolde: OMG I hated the movie version. I yelled at the characters for being so selfish and superficial and for betraying their king, who adored both of them. (I think I kind of alarmed my friends with the intensity of my frustration.)
• Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot: Similar to the above. Another love triangle and betrayal of someone loved and admired by the lovers (well, depending on the version, I guess). Anyway, just not the kind of story I enjoy. 
• Twilight: I think this is enough of a cultural phenomenon to count as a classic. Plus it's the one that spawned all the paranormal angsty love triangles so popular in YA right now. I neither liked nor hated the first book, but I couldn't get myself through New Moon without wanting to strangle Bella multiple times. So I never read the sequels.

Further Reading

• Enjoy reading long rants? Here's one I wrote on my personal blog called In Defense of the Good Guy, in which I complain about how the romance plays out in the DreamWorks animated film, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (contains spoilers).
• Here's a great post from Beth Revis about obsessive love versus true love. She makes thoughtful points about both, and I definitely recommend reading it for an interesting perspective on romance in YA.
• Rachel Stark at Trac Changes talks about how YA romances affect teen girls and the kind of romances she'd want to acquire as an editor.
• Sarah Furlong Burr at Starving Novelist writes about her pet peeves in Harlequin romances. Not about YA, but some of her points still apply.
• Lisa Shroeder gave tips for writing great YA romance with the acronym CUPCAKE in this vlog for WriteOnCon 2010. Spot-on points for how to write amazing romance.
• Want to know what guys think of YA romance? Here's a fun post by Bryan at Boys Don't Read on love triangles. (Thanks for the great link, Adam!)
• I can't seem to stop myself from adding more links! Fun post by Nicole at WORD for Teens on Disney princesses and love. It's DISNEY! How can you not go check it out?

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject. Now I'm really curious about what you think! Do you also get annoyed by the issues and examples I've listed, or are there some you actually quite enjoy, and why?

Inky Linky Love 08.07.2011

Oops, kind of late with the linky post this time. But since I'd banned myself from Google Reader for much of the week, I had hundreds upon hundreds of posts to wade through, and that's basically what I spent yesterday doing. I think next week I'll go back to checking the reader when I have a spare moment; it's too daunting to tackle so many at a time.

But wow, there are so many beautiful posts on the writing journey in the blogosphere lately. These amazing writers are open about the struggles and challenges that accompany being a writer while being incredibly inspiring with their perseverance and hard work. I hope you'll check out these posts if you haven't already:

AWESOME POSTS ON THE WRITING JOURNEY

• S.J. Kincaid wrote a beautiful post on Ellen Oh's blog about why she wouldn't have changed anything about her writing journey, despite being obsessed for years with a manuscript that would never be published.
• In a similar vein, Natalie Whipple recounts her journey to publication on Adventures in Children's Publishing, sharing her struggles and heartaches and how she fought through them.
• On her own blog, Natalie explains why she's not jealous of Kiersten White's successes and how to deal with jealousy in general.
• Speaking of which, Kiersten is amazing as well. This week she wrote a post on talent versus hard work and why both are important. 
• And the fabulous C.J. Redwine wraps everything up — the journey, the hard work, the success, and how to handle others' good news — in this post on what it feels like to get a book deal.

Amazing articles, right? And here are posts on everything else. It kinda kills me to throw them all together instead of organizing them into separate categories as I usually do, but if I did that I would mostly have only one link per category, and that would annoy me even more. Thus, this compromise:

EVERYTHING ELSE

• Worldbuilding: Adam Heine has a great post with tips on creating your own fantasy slang.
• Dialogue: Sara Furlong Burr gives advice on how to write compelling dialogue.
• Characterization: Savannah Foley talks about writing realistic, flawed characters by harnessing your inner contrarian.
• Plot: Juliette Wade talks about balancing tender and terrible moments, and Kat Zhang underscores the importance of consequences to character decisions.
• Revision: Danyelle Leafty at the Query Tracker Blog provides a great step-by-step pre-revision guide.
• Growth: Beth Revis shares about the writer's learning curve, and the Storytelling by Ira Glass video she embeds in her post is so inspiring.
• More Linda: Over on my personal blog, I wrote a post about why I won't tell you to "be yourself" — I see that advice all the time on writing blogs, but I don't find it particularly meaningful or useful.

Oh, and there's a new tab under my header, featuring awards and memes I've been tagged with. It's entirely Carrie Butler's fault that I had to make one of those. Thanks for thinking of me, Carrie! Though I'd appreciate a less awkward one next time. ;)

In other news, I am still horribly behind on Camp NaNo. But I don't feel all that guilty about it, haha. I think the best part about participating is learning to develop a consistent writing habit, so even if I don't make it to 50k (I'm pretty sure I won't), I'm happy as long as I'm making some progress on my WIP and knocking out a few hundred words every day.

Hope your writing plans are going better than mine, and have an incredible weekend! :D

Villains

I'm a little bit (ok fine, a LOT) behind on Camp NaNoWriMo, but since I'm dying from my self-imposed Google Reader ban, I thought writing a post would help take the edge off blogosphere-withdrawal. At least I'm producing words, right? Can't wait until the weekend when I'll let myself catch up on blog posts (all several hundred of them — yes, I peeked a few times) regardless of word count!

I'm always on the lookout for great articles about villains and antagonists since I have such a hard time with them. I really liked the amazing Jodi Meadows' post about Villains You Like because it resonated with me and got me thinking more about the different types of villains out there. Here are some of my thoughts:

Generic Villainous Overlords
When I was in elementary/middle school, this was the kind of villain I thought up with my friend and sister. We'd play pretend and spin stories where we were magical princesses rebelling against an evil stepmother (so original, I know). I think she also had an evil sorcerer ally.

I've since discovered that evil villains out to take over the world for no good reason tend to fall flat and be utterly boring, so I'm glad I know better now. Imagine my surprise when I came across one in a recent debut! The one-dimensional villain actually claimed "I'm evil" as sole motivation for world domination, dashing all my hopes for an interesting and nuanced antagonist. It was hard not to groan or roll my eyes. (Oh well, the book pretty much nosedived into terribleness halfway through, anyway.) So yeah. No cliché, boring evil villains, please!

Sympathetic Villains
I guess it was so shocking to encounter such a lackluster villain because it seems that sympathetic antagonists are all the rage these days. And for good reason — characters that the reader can relate to are so much more engaging than cardboard cut-outs, no matter where they fall on the good/evil spectrum.

One way to add complexity to a villain is to give him or her a redeeming quality, vulnerability, or troubled past. A villain with motives that are understandable, or even almost noble, would make the protagonist's inner struggle that much more difficult (and who can say no to more conflict?). And who knows, maybe the villain actually thinks he or she is doing the right thing, even if the protagonist strongly disagrees. Jodi's example was Magneto from X-men: First Class; he's a likable character with an understandable motivation, but he's a villain because he wants to exterminate normal people (something I imagine most people would frown upon).

We (as in magical princesses) did later try to do this for our evil stepmother character. We decided she was our late mother's adopted sibling (heaven forbid we're related to her by blood!), jealous of our mother all her life, in love with our father, and basically out to take for herself everything her gorgeous, saintly sister ever had. Oh fine, I guess our attempts to bump her up to "sympathetic" wasn't all that successful, but we did try to give her some personality and motivation. (I think evil sorcerer remained irredeemably evil, though.)

Villains You Love to Hate
I think this might be where our poor evil stepmother ended up. These sorts of villains are dastardly, selfish characters who, through some twist of fortune, ended up with more power than is good for them to have, and then proceeded to annoy the heck out of everyone else. And you can't wait until this villain is defeated because he or she is just so despicable and pathetic. Not to mention rather useless once stripped of power. (I think they tend to be pretty wormy. You know, like Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings and Wormtail from Harry Potter. What is it about worms?)

These villains are probably best as irritants in the path of the hero and not as the Big Bad. I think I'd get pretty frustrated if the protagonist is fighting someone like that for an entire book. But maybe it's all in the execution?

Villains with Flair
These characters are not-very-nice people who become fascinating on the strength of their personality. Not a literary example, but I adored Regina George in Mean Girls. She's a lying, cheating, manipulative b— ah, witch who insulted and played everyone around her. But her confidence, charm, and determination to get what she wanted made her a lot more fascinating than Cady, the actual protagonist. (Plus, Rachel McAdams is gorgeous!)

Or take Artemis Fowl. He's a kidnapper who exploits the fairies for money and amusement. But because he's so brilliant, we can't wait to see what he has up his sleeves, even kind of hoping he'll succeed despite the fact that what he's doing is so wrong. It also helps that he's the main protagonist.

[*EDIT: Thanks to lovely comments from Mike and CanaryTheFirst, I think I'd put Artemis and their examples in a new category: Villains as Protagonist. What do you think?]

Villains can become attractive despite their moral flaws if they have personality traits the reader can admire. The danger with these villains is that they may steal the spotlight and become more interesting than the protagonist, so you'd have to make sure your protagonist is up to the challenge! I think it'd be a lot of fun to write such a character. :)

Villains that Give You Nightmares
These are the sadistic, genius serial killers of pure unadulterated evil. The crazed monster from the underworld who delights in bloodlust. The creepy clown, or alien predator, or that girl with the long hair crawling out of the TV... ok, I seriously need to stop before I scare myself witless.

Why? Because I am a total wimp. (I assure you, it pains me to admit it.) I avoid horror flicks and books as much as possible; even thrillers might be too much for me. I have an overactive imagination and do not appreciate having images of menacing evilness roaming my mind at night. So while others might love reading or writing about this sort of villain and enjoy the thrill of being thoroughly scared, I'm afraid (har, har) they're not for me.

Not-a-Villain
Of course, not every book has to have a villain. Some stories have antagonists that are made of sunshine and loveliness, and so sweet you want to gag — except their goals happen to conflict with that of the protagonist. Or maybe the antagonist isn't quite that innocent, but more morally ambiguous than outright evil. A lot of antagonists fall into this category, but it's fun to think about evil characters once in a while and consider how to make them interesting to the reader.

What other types of villains can you think of, and which ones are your favorite?

Odds and Ends 07.31.2011

Not exactly a linky post, just random stuff I wanted to share:

ONE

I got a bloggy award from Yahong! Thanks for your kind words and all-around awesomeness. :)

TWO

Sophia is running a 48-hour internet fast marathon. 

I think it's absolutely insane. I'm too much of  a wimp to sign up, but I do kind of want to give it a shot. Maybe 24 hours would be more doable? I don't know. I meant to try it yesterday but got sucked into TV tropes and didn't find my way out of it until hours later (and look, I am such a good friend I'm not even linking you). On second thought, maybe I really, really need to participate in this marathon. The internet is a dangerous, time-sucking, productivity-wrecking thing, I tell you.

Sigh. I think the only way I can do this is if I cheat and let myself use email. But then I will see blog comments and Twitter mentions (at least I turned off Facebook notifications) and gchat, and Google Reader is only a click away and I'll want to comment on stuff, and... yeah, I can see why it'd be a slippery slope. I guess I'll have to think about it some more.

THREE

Krispy somehow talked me into doing CampNaNoWriMo (basically NaNoWriMo in the summer, which I think works a lot better for me than November). 

I seriously have no idea how that happened. Um, hello, self, are you completely crazy?? This is not going according to plan. I do not have a nice, detailed outline. I have no idea what I am doing. I have never completed NaNo before despite my previous (and very pathetic) attempts. I am sure I will fail.

But you know what? It's ok. I already have quite a few ideas for what happens in the beginning, middle, and end of my story, so I'm not starting with a total blank. I'll mostly be using NaNo to develop my ideas. There will probably be a lot of messy freewriting, things out of order, random scenes, and ramblings on worldbuilding/backstory stuff that nobody needs to know but me. Afterward, when I've discovered most of the things I want to say, I'll organize all my ideas into an outline and use that to write a draft that actually reads like a story. (Who knows, maybe I'll do that for the official NaNo. :P) So I guess it's not that far off my plan. I'm just brainstorming more intensely and starting to write a bit sooner. 

And even if I don't make it to 50k words, or only manage to generate a ton of junk, I think it'll be a good learning experience. I'm terrible at commitment and discipline, so this is a good challenge for me.

So yeah, August will be pretty crazy. I'll still be posting at least once a week (at least, I hope to), and I might also post writing updates. We'll see.

What are your writing goals for August? Any tips for turning off the internet or writing 50k words in a month? Anyone want to join me? :P

Critiquing

When I wrote this post last week, I had no idea I would be asked to critique again before the end of the week! I felt incredibly honored to be asked and was glad that I'd been thinking about how to be a better critiquer, but I still think I wasn't as encouraging as I'd hoped to be. Definitely something to work on.

A couple weeks ago, I agreed to look at my friend's med school personal statement for her. It wasn't the first time this year; another friend had asked the same thing a month ago, and I'd looked at hers, offered several comments about what could be improved, then returned it with a note along the lines of "Great job! A few tweaks and you're there." (Although she did later tell me that she was shocked by the amount of comments I gave her, despite my encouraging note at the end.)

So I was hoping this time would go that smoothly too. But as I opened the document and began to read, my heart sank. She'd asked for feedback on awkward sentences, unclear sections, and rough transitions, but her essay needed a lot more than line editing. In my opinion, it would take a major content/structure overhaul for it to become an effective essay.

I'm pretty sure nobody ever likes to hear that their writing isn't working. And I didn't relish being the one to tell her, either. At that moment, I wished I were one of those readers who always found everything perfectly fine, and said so. It would make things sooooo much more comfortable for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, I am not one of those readers, and I thought it was more important that she knew the truth, even if her feelings got hurt. So I resigned myself to my task and drafted a long email to (hopefully) prepare her for the comments I was going to make on her essay. Things like, "I'm not doing this to hurt you, but to help you improve your essay," "take a deep breath before you read my comments," and "I know this will be hard to swallow, so brace yourself."

Then I annotated the document with comment bubbles everywhere. I wrote down my thoughts and reactions as I read and commented on almost every sentence; by the time I was finished, the comments I made added up to be much longer than her essay.

I attached the document to the email I'd already drafted, edited what I'd written, typed in her email address... but, in a sudden fit of — thoughtfulness? restraint? sleepiness? —  something, decided to wait until the next morning to send it to her.

And I am very glad I did. I tend to be straight-forward and blunt when critiquing. Combined with my critical eye and high expectations, my comments can seem harsh even when I don't mean for them to be. I have to work at being encouraging; I tend to forget to point out the good parts until the end, when I realize I need to balance my comments with praise so I don't get stabbed to death by the writer. (Not that it would've been easy for her to do so, since I live on the other side of the Pacific. But still.) Some people may process criticism fine this way, but I knew it would have been too much for my friend to handle.

So. Good thing I didn't send it. But then what? I couldn't lie to her, or give her the silent treatment. She needed to know her essay wasn't working, and why, so she could improve it. But how could I do it without making her hate me?

Fortunately, things turned out ok. I talked to her on gchat and tried to figure out where she was in her writing process, and whether she wanted to hear what I thought. I then went over the essay with her through IM instead of sending her my comments, which allowed me to rephrase my comments more gently.

I was alarmed when she got defensive at first, but as I moved on, she came to understand and agree with many of my points. I pointed out why certain sections wasn't working, made suggestions for revision, and helped her brainstorm new ways of spinning her stories so they conveyed what she meant. (I also told her to get lots and lots of second opinions.)

I was so relieved when she said that she appreciated my efforts and knew that I was pointing out the flaws not to put her down, but to help her. Yay, crisis averted! I really do need to learn to be more encouraging though. And I should put my work out there more often, too, so I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of critiques.

[While we're on the subject, here are some great posts I came across regarding critiquing and being critiqued: James Killick offers a few tips in his post on how to write critiques that don't kill (or get you murdered, heh). Beth Revis wrote a post on how to critique that made me glad I'm nit-picky and honest about my thoughts. For those being critiqued, Jane Lebak at the Querytracker.net blog writes about how to argue productively with critiques (hint: not with the critiquer).]

Anyway, the whole thing made me wonder how people deal with similar situations in the writing world. 


What do you do if you discover the manuscript you'd agreed to critique for a friend needs a ton of work? Do you use the sandwich method and try to balance criticism and praise, or are you brutally honest?

Inky Linky Love 07.23.2011

Time for another link roundup post! (I know they're kind of random. But at least they always show up on a Saturday?)

Lots of amazing worldbuilding links, since they inspired many of my thoughts in my last post. Be sure to check them out, as well as the other writing posts I found thought-provoking or helpful:

WORLDBUILDING & SETTING

• Sherwood Smith at Book View Cafe wrote an insightful and in-depth post about worldbuilding, internal consistency, and things that pull her out of the reading experience. Definitely made me want to write a secondary world that's logical, despite how much work it is!
• Steven Popkes, also at Book View Cafe, applies evolution to the movie Avatar and comes up with some interesting conclusions. Great thoughts about how flora and fauna of your world should make evolutionary sense.
• Juliette Wade posted a TTYU retro about how descriptions should have relevant support structures. Love her points about keeping the viewpoint character in mind and slipping in the worldbuilding subtly.

CRAFT

• Kristen Lamb uses the acronym LOCK to help writers test the strength of their story ideas. This showed me that I need to give some more thought to what my protagonist really wants.
• Janice Hardy provides some great tips on maintaining believability. Nothing is more jarring than implausible plot points or character decisions.
• Alicia Rasley at Edittorrent talks about how drawing out a scene can increase the emotional payoff. I think it'd be great for surprises, too.

PLOT

• I adore the INTERN's posts on breaking down The Hunger Games! I love that book and I enjoyed reading her analysis of what makes the book so addicting. Part one is about structure on the sentence/scene/chapter level, and part two is about video games (yes, really).

DIVERSITY

• Kate Hart does an amazing job of creating cool info-graphics to analyze the covers of 2010 YA novels in her post, Uncovering YA Covers: How Dark Are They? The answer to her question? Not very. In fact, they tend to be overwhelmingly white. I'm hoping there will be more diversity in YA in the future!

That's it for this time. Have a great weekend!

Settings and Worldbuilding

I got a bit distracted with the excitement of winning a blog giveaway last week, but here I am, back to blathering about stuff I like and don't like to see in novels. So far I've talked a bit about protagonist and plot... what's next? Ah, yes. The setting.

Patricia C. Wrede wrote in her blog post, Big Three Redux, that most writers can easily pick out their strongest and weakest suit among the three biggies of character, plot, and setting. When I read that, I immediately thought, "She is so right! I bet I'll totally suck at setting." (I did not, however, think I had any strong suits to speak of — because I'm just super humble like that. :P)

When I think of settings, I think of those long descriptions I skim so I can get to the good parts — you know, action, dialogue, things happening. I only need a general gist of where the scene takes place, and my mind fills in the rest. I mean, cool settings are neat, but they don't make or break novels for me the way fascinating characters or mind-blowing plots do. So yeah, I don't pay much attention to settings. Which means I probably won't be good at conveying my mental image of a scene to readers. Definitely something I'll have to work on.

But there's more to setting than making sure scenes don't take place in a void, now that I think about it. After all, why else would I be so drawn to fantasy, if not for the secondary worlds full of magic or talking animals or unfamiliar cultures? Why am I so excited when aspects of a secondary world are not only fun and quirky but also clever and sensible? I might not be very enthusiastic about flowery descriptions of rooms and landscapes, but I find worldbuilding fascinating (probably why I adore Juliette Wade's blog).

And a little intimidating, too. I mean, have you seen this list of fantasy worldbuilding questions?? And readers expect everything to make sense and be internally consistent! (Well, I kind of do, at any rate.) Every plot point I think up results in tons of implications about how thing work in the world in which the story is set, and getting them all to form a cohesive whole, with plausible causes and effects, can be so overwhelming that the task seems impossible.

Still, that doesn't stop me from dreaming of crafting a fantasy secondary world with its own histories and cultures, and then having the world evolve over several books. I'm not a fan of trilogies or storylines that require multiple books for resolution, but you know what I think would be super exciting? A series of standalone companion novels that take place in the same world, though in different eras. I'd want to see how technology and magical knowledge advance, how fashions and speech patterns change, how borders and international relations shift. I want the characters' actions to affect not just themselves, but the characters that live in the world after them.

Of course, none of those things should take center stage; they'd be part of the worldbuilding, and only recognizable to those familiar with other books in the series (ideally, that is). Character and plot should still take center stage (since they matter more to me), but I'd love for there to be subtle references and connections. Like if one character's joke becomes the basis of a popular idiom generations later. Or if a decision made by a character in one installment effects the tense political climate in a book set years after the incident. Or if an innovation that defeated the villain in one book brings about drastic changes in the lifestyles and attitudes of the people who came after. You get the idea.

Doesn't that sound fun? But, alas, this will probably involve wayyyyy too much work. There are authors who have pulled it off, but when I think of the outlining and planning ahead and research and familiarity with the social sciences required... I think I'm crazy for wanting to make things so complicated. But hey, as long as I'm dreaming, might as well dream big, right? :)

Despite my grand plans, I'm going to start small. I've already decided the one non-negotiable thing about the world I'm going to create for my characters: it will be a world where people who look like me exist, and matter. And we'll see how things go from there, based on what I learn about the world from the plot and characters.

Hey, this might actually be fun! Well, until I hit a wall while trying to fit everything together and then want to pull out my hair. But I'll worry about that when I get there. :P

How about you? How much attention do you pay to settings when you read? Do you enjoy worldbuilding?

OMG! (and, Why You Should De-Lurk)

Interrupting my series on vision to say: OMG I WON A BLOG GIVEAWAY CONTEST!

Ok maybe you think it's not a big deal. But it's NATALIE WHIPPLE'S contest! :D And this is the first time I've ever won a blog contest in my life, so I'm super excited because I never thought I would win one. YAY!

I could not believe my eyes when I saw my name in that post. I stared at it for a long time to make sure it said what I thought it said. And then I scrolled through all 300+ comments on the contest post to make sure there wasn't any one else with the same name. And then I stared at the post some more, while thinking lots of calm and sensible thoughts such as "OMG OMG OMG" and "is this really happening? to me??" and "OMG I get to email Natalie!"

Seriously, the part I was most excited about was emailing Natalie. I know I probably could have emailed her at any time in the past two years I've been reading her blog to let her know how much she inspires me, but I've only started commenting on blogs recently... and I'm still a bit nervous when it comes to talking to someone as popular and amazing as she is. It just feels so different being invited to email her with a legit reason, you know?

So I wrote her an email. And honestly the first half of it was pure fangirling about how much I admire her. (I wonder if she gets that a lot?) 

And you know what awesome thing happened after that? SHE WROTE BACK. *squeee* :D

Ok, I know I'm starting to sound crazy because, duh, of course she'd write back. But still! I hadn't thought that far. It definitely put a huge grin on my face. And of course I wrote her back and gushed about her some more.

Which brings me to the part about de-lurking. You should seriously consider it, if you are currently a lurker. (No, I'm not just saying that to get more comments on my blog. But I certainly wouldn't mind if you want to comment! Hehe.) 

First of all, if you never de-lurk, you will never know the joy of winning a blog contest with a comment. That should be obvious. The second thing is, if you lurk for a really long time and finally start talking to awesome bloggers you've been cyber-stalking for years, you will not be able to stop yourself from behaving like a fangirl/doing something dumb because you're nervous/generally making a fool out of yourself. Because all those comments you wanted to make but never did? Yeah, no way they're going to organize themselves all nice-and-quietly so you can express them in a sane and thoughtful manner. Not after all those years of repression. No, my friend, they will burst out of the breaking dam, pour out in a waterfall, and rush happily away — to freedom! — and it will look so fun your dignity will decide to tag along, too. Whereas, if you'd been commenting all along, you wouldn't have that problem, see?

So yeah. Important things to consider, there. Of course there are also other reasons for de-lurking, like building relationships with people, supporting your favorite bloggers, getting your name out there, etc., but this post is mainly a Public Service Announcement concerning the specific hazard of excessive gushing.

Now excuse me while I go refresh my email. :D