Plotting Assist

I had all these ideas for SciFi book 2, but they kept swirling around in my brain, getting all tangled up in each other. Finally, I pulled out a plot points template that I'd made for myself a couple of years ago. It worked for me again (in getting my thoughts sorted out) so I thought I'd post about it here in case it helps anyone else.

It's just a word doc with a series of rectangles on it. Each rectangle is for one event or aspect of an event and it basically just helps me keep things ordered and flowing logically from one event to another. It's also a place to make notes about the character development, not just the action. Here's what's in each rectangle:

Brief description of event/scene/activity

• Prerequisite -
• Accomplishes -

A few examples are as follows:

Street kid tries to steal Professor's purse

• Prerequisite - Professor has put drinking glass for evidence in purse
• Accomplishes - Showcases Professor's discomfort around kids and how she tends to freeze around violence. Glass gets broken - evidence is gone and they're back to square one.

Brainstorming about bad guy's motives

• Prerequisite - All other avenues have led to dead-ends. The good guys are revisiting everything, trying to figure out what they're missing, or if there are different ways all the events could fit together.
• Accomplishes - Jump-starts the investigative process again. Secondary character (Clark) makes mental leap to motive based on similar experiences he had as an MP in the armed forces. We get some more insight into Clark's past and personality.

Debut Book Review - Child of Fire by Harry Connolly

Guy urban fantasy novel for the win! Not a bit of softness to this one and it was great. Did I enjoy Child of Fire? Yep. Will I buy his next one (Game of Cages coming out in August 2010)? Yep. So why, those of you who know my Pollyanna-like reading habits might ask, did you like it, oh champion of romances? Because one cannot live on Marshmallow Fluff alone. Sometimes you need ribs and hot wings. First, let me talk about this one from a reader perspective and then I'll tell you why the writer in me thought it rocked.

This was a very involved novel featuring a magical thug, Ray Lilly, and his Very Scary Boss Lady with an uber-delicate name - Annalise. She's even more magical than he is. And scary. Very scary. Like Scary McScary. They're on the trail of someone who's welcomed a predator to our world (not like the movie). Predators are supernatural beasties from other worlds who want access to ours to sate their hunger for... something. Whether their dream buffet involves children, plant life, Circus Peanuts, blood, or DeWalt power tools is dependent on the particular monster, but they're all ravenous for something. Mmmm, power tools.... Ray and Annascary end up in Hammer Bay, town of weirdness. You get a whole town of creepy characters as a cast for this novel, but Harry keeps you from getting confused by making sure that no one has really similar names (thanks for that one!) and by leaving you subtle bread crumbs. e.g. You run into a lady and she's still wearing her diner uniform from earlier, so you can remember that, oh yeah, she was our waitress at the diner! What were the pluses of this novel?

• the plot was engaging if creepy
• the characters distinct and interesting
• the dialog made complete sense
• the emotions were spot-on for the situations
• there was some good humor (I especially liked Ray's smart-ass comments to attackers)
• there was a nice mix of mundane, spooky, and action stuff.

The only disappointment for me was NO EPILOGUE!!! I don't know what the fall-out was. At first I thought we'd have to wait until the next novel to carry on, but from the teaser at the end of this one, it looks like the next book picks up many moons after this one, so any resolution will have to be done by dropping snippets here and there. Very sad. I want to know what happened to the trapped predator - did the society send someone down to take it out once the henchman was out of the way? Was it successful? Did the town recover or dry up and blow away? Did the people regain their memories? How about the surviving members of the Hammer fam - what happened to them? Gah!

Okay - from a writer perspective, Harry Connolly's novel is an incredible example backstory without the Info Dumptruck. You'll find this out on your own within the first few chapters, and it's not spoiling this story, so let me give you a brief run-down. Ray is a less than sterling character who has a bad history with Scary Boss Lady - he betrayed her for a friend who turned out to be in league with a predator. Ray ended up killing said friend and trying to fix the fall-out, but of course, innocents were hurt and killed, most especially, Annascary's best friend from childhood. He went to prison, and was released for this mission. She HATES Ray now, and wants him D-E-D, dead. In addition, he's sure that someone from the society is going to kill him after this mission anyways because of his past transgressions. He's a dead-man walking with a boss who despises him. It makes for a tense partnership. But never once did you end up with a paragraph like I just had to tell you all this. You get it as the story goes along, in bite-sized doses that kept you waiting for the next helping. Well done, sir! I hope to be able to do that some day.

Anyways, gentlemen, I highly recommend that you pick this one up. I was very impressed. If you'd like to read an excerpt, try his blog here or click the B&N link to the novel above and catch it there.

And for the record, I don't really like Marshmallow Fluff anymore. Circus Peanuts, yes. Fluff, no. Hot wings, yes.

Writerly Links

I haven't been snooping at all my usual publishing industry blogs in a couple of weeks, so today I spent some time hitting the intarwebs and have some links for the rest of you who also haven't had the time.

• Lit Agent Nathan Bransford had a whole slew of links on Friday's post, so I'm just copying and pasting here on a few that might help aspiring writers.

In agent advice news, Janet Reid has an awesome checklist of things you need before you query, divided between fiction/memoir/nonfiction, Jessica Faust at BookEnds writes that unless each book can really truly stand alone, it's probably not a good idea to write a sequel to an unpublihsed first book in a trilogy, and Rachelle Gardner surveys ten query mistakes.

• Kristin Nelson had lots of good advice as usual, but this one about prologues was a great breakdown and one topic that I haven't seen discussed to bits already.
• This is one by Paperback Writer that's from the end of Jan, but I've thought back on it almost daily since I read it a couple of weeks ago - it's about coining new words for your fictional worlds and how you might go about doing that.
• Also from Paperback Writer, some submission opportunities.

As a side note, I'm really glad I decided to catch up today, because I saw that the February Secret Agent contest was getting ready to start over at Miss Snark's First Victim and one of my genres was being represented. The contest opened at noon, I hit Send on my submission at 12:03 and I was one of the last entrants to sneak through before she hit the 50 entrants mark. Yippee! I'm looking forward to the input. The last time I entered a writing contest at MSFV, the feedback was painful but helpful. Here's hoping for less pain and more "you're on the right track" this time. :)

Left Behind and Loving It gets rolling!

Lynn Viehl (aka Paperback Writer and author of mundo SciFi (S.L. Viehl), Paranormal Romance, Christian Fiction (I think) and I'm sure other stuff) is starting her Left Behind and Loving It (LB&LI) virtual workshops today. Everyday this week she's having writing workshops online at her Paperback Writer Blog and giving away some incredible prizes to anyone who goes and participates in the comments section. She's also encouraged other writers and wanna-be writers to hold workshops of their own, so at the bottom of each day's post you'll find links to that day's workshops at other sites. Go. Learn. Become a better writer (or just learn something about the process of writing. Win prizes.

Synopsis - Not What I Thought

Yeah, after doing more research, the synopsis isn't quite what I originally thought. Now, I remember looking into this a few years ago, and I distinctly remember coming away thinking that it was a really long (like 12 pages) dry breakdown of the story. All character names were supposed to be in ALL CAPS, certain conventions needed to be followed when mentioning something for the first time, blah blah blah. Either things have changed or that was all just a dream for me.

There are two different kinds of synopses. There's a short one and a detailed one. I guess my previous data is closer to a description of the detailed one, but it still shouldn't be dry. Most of what the agents I'm looking at are expecting is the short one (like 2-3 pages max), so that's good news. Anyways, after my research from Friday, I've added another set of links to the sidebar noting some helpful synopsis how-to pages I found from literary agents and their assistants. The Miss Snark ones will be most useful if you bring up the condensed results, note which entry you want to read based on the comments of what people got out of it, and then bring up the full list of entries to find the one you want. If you don't take my advice, but instead want to cherry-pick through 99 entries all on your own, be my guest.

Okay, off to work now. I've got sanding, priming and painting on tap for today, along with my writing, maybe a little sewing, cleaning, laundry, printer/keyboard ailment diagnosis, and about a dozen other things. Wish me luck. And best wishes on your work/home/play week.

Slack Blogger

Yeah, I haven't done much writing of any sort this week. I'm kinda depressed all around I guess and not really feeling up to doing... anything. I have stuck to my guns as far as writing something everyday, even if it's not much and it sucks. But I haven't moved forward much in any of my works. I tried reading to get me in the writing mood, and that helped some - it's the only way I got anything worthwhile written.

How does that work, you ask? I've found reading to be very useful, depending on my mood. 

• Some days, it helps to read something bad. You toss the book down, get on your "Heck, I can do better than that" horse, and voila! 
• Other days, you want one that's super. You sit back, content at the end, and think to yourself, "Man, I want to be able to leave people with this same feeling. If I'm ever going to get this good, I'd better get working on my own stuff." And off you go.
  
• It's good for getting the pacing in your own work right. Sometimes it's tough to start writing cold and get a fast-paced action scene flowing well. Get yourself in the right frame of mind by reading a portion of another book with similar pacing to what you're trying to achieve. (That's what I did this week)
• Having problems with dialog? Pick up a favorite book and study how they did a particularly good section. How much description did they put in? Is yours getting bogged down with too much detail on facial expressions, stomping around, or throwing hands up in the air when the dialog itself conveys the emotions adequately to some extent (don't yank out all the description, but some of it could probably go).

So there ya go. Give it a try next time you're stuck. But don't get lost in other writer's great work. You've got to get your own done too.