Well, how are you doing? Are you taking on the NaNoWriMo challenge? If not, are you working on your WIP at a reasonable pace? Good! Here’s what I love about NaNoWriMo. Fast drafting. There’s an entire movement in the writing world telling us, “You can write fast and get a book almost done!” We’ve been given permission to press on, forget editing, forget fixing and polishing! Just write. A professor friend of mine tweeted that she was participating in NaNoWriMo for the “fun of fiction.” How true. For one month, you get to just make up a story! She can have red hair on page one, blue on page 50 and brown on page 100. She can be write, black, Hispanic. He can be a doctor, then a lawyer and maybe […]
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Setting Up For Success, Part 1: Planning to Win!
We are getting down to the last few days of the year. Know what that means? Well, yes, there will be parties, gifts, over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go. In fact, that’s what most of us are focused on. Yet, just hours after all that tradition draws to a close, we usher in a brand new year. If you want to be successful in 2013—and who wouldn’t, right?—you would be wise to put some things in place now to make certain you reach your goals. Winston Churchill said it best: Fail to plan and you plan to fail. In fact, chances are there will be some readers of this blog who will say, “I’ll read this blog post later, when I have more time.” […]
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A Word From Your Book Therapist: It’s All About Craft, Baby!
If you’ve hung around My Book Therapy for any length of time, you know we focus a lot on crafting a novel. If you’re new to MBT, we are about crafting a novel. Dictionary.com defines craft as: an art, trade, or occupation requiring special skill, especially manual skill: the craft of a mason. skill; dexterity: The silversmith worked with great craft. Let’s tailor the definition a bit. The writer must possess a special skill to ply his trade. The writer worked with great craft. The statistic is 80% of all people believe they have a book in them. How many do you suppose actually write that book? My guess is less than 20%. Why? Time, heart, passion, skill, talent. Resistance and procrastination. Above all, lack of knowledge which means lack of craft. Recently I started taking piano lessons. My teacher is starting off with music theory. I find myself […]
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Brainstorming Strategy #7 – Brainstorming Stakes
As you begin to write each scene, determining the character goals is essential, but without stakes the goals will have no impact on your reader. What are stakes? Stakes are simply what your character has to lose if they don’t reach their goal. What will or won’t happen for your character if they miss their goal. Stakes help to build the conflict in your novel and make your reader care about your character. If the reader doesn’t care, the book is set aside unfinished. How do you brainstorm stakes? Identify Goal Determine why it matters to your character. Determine why the goal should matter to your reader. Identify Goal In order to develop stakes that work in a scene you must decide what your character’s purpose is in the scene. […]
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