Well, it's been almost a month since I've blogged. What have I been doing in that time?
School. Lots of it. I added a non-credit Mandarin class to the mix, so now instead of super-busy, I'm uber-busy! With the two little dottie things over the U. Uber.
And I had Lillie for a week, which was amazing. She's getting so dang big! And on Thursday my house almost caught on fire. So that was fun. I had to stay in a Motel 6 for two nights while the furnace got fixed, and I had to bring my two cats and dog with me so they didn't get stuck in a fire should the furnace NOT get fixed. It's been a fun couple of weeks!
I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Mostly Shakespeare and various psychology texts, but also a couple of How-To writing books I got from the library. I absolutely love (and subsequently purchased) Donald Maass' "Writing the Breakout Novel." Amazing. I'm looking into his workshop/conference dates to see him speak, and anxiously awaiting next months' "Fire in Fiction," which sounds promising. I'm also currently reading Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman's "How NOT to Write a Novel." I'm only 61 pages in but it seems promising also.
Here are examples of what to expect from the above-referenced books:
"Who lives in Unpublished Novelville? Many of its most prominent citizens have no traits at all... Even the protagonist has all the depth of a sock with a faec drawn on it in magic marker" (Mittlemark and Newman 61).
"While a revelatory moment at the end of a novel that causes the reader to think back and understand everything in a whole new light -- oh, it was the uncle telling the story the whole time! -- is a fine thing, you may NOT inform the reader after three hundred pages of quotidian realism that the scrappy puppy the hero saved from the fire in Chapter Two is really a magic, mind-reading puppy from another planet, who has just been waiting for the right moment to reveal his superpowers and save the day.. This type of ending is a special instance of deus ex machina, known as the folie adieu, which is French for "Are you FUCKING kidding me?" (Mittlemark and Newman 45)
How NOT to Write a Novel also includes things to avoid, such as "The Underpants Gnomes," "The Manchurian Parallax of Thetan Conspiracy Enigma," "The Second Argument in the Laundromat," and "The Benign Tumor." Intrigued? Then I recommend reading.
I've actually found two things my current WIP is guilty of (err, I'm guilty of placing in my WIP)... and since this is How NOT to Write a Novel, I don't think that's a good thing!!!
From Writing the Breakout Novel:
"To break out, simple plot structures need high stakes, complex characters, and layered conflicts" (Maass 162).
"Think hard. Be honest with yourself. Are the stakes in your current manuscript as high as they possibly can be? Can you define them right now? Can you point to the exact pages in which the stakes escalate, locking your protagonist into his course of action with less hope of success than before?" (Maass, 58)
"Conflict grows and grows until it seems to have no resolution" (This is somewhere in Chapter Six: Plot, and though it really inspired me, I can't tell you what page it's on at the moment).
"Interweave character relationships" (Maass 197) -- This means don't just let the MC have a best friend, a husband, a doctor, a lawyer, a realtor, and a dog. And have her husband cheat on her and her best friend have a breakdown and.... all this stuff. Interweave the relationships to make them more complex: The husband cheats with the best friend, who happens to be the MC's realtor, and the MC and her cheating husband are looking for a new house; even though the best friend/realtor knows this isn't the best time to look for a new home together -- hence the breakdown. And maybe the best friend's husband is the MC's doctor... you get the picture. This was a random, made-up example from my own crazy mind, but it's what I took out of the chapter on Multiple Viewpoints, Subplots, Pace, Voice, and Endings.
That's it for now. I have to study and read and drive myself crazy. If you're a writer, I hope you take a look at these two books. I really recommend them.
