Breaking Rules to Break In or Break Out

by Allison Brennan

On Saturday, I presented a workshop with J.T. and Bantam editor Shauna
Summers called "Breaking Rules to Break in or Break Out." I've given
this workshop many times and it changes each and every presentation.

Three years ago, the Orange County RWA chapter were the guinea pigs for
this workshop. I had been frustrated by the so-called "rules" imposed on
writers that I felt stifled creativity and weakened an author's voice.
So I polled published authors I knew and asked for their first sales
stories, specifically what "rule" they broke that they felt helped them
sell. Some authors blended genres in a way that others told them
wouldn't sell, some authors set their story in an "unpopular" time era,
others pushed the envelop with story or characters.

The workshop has evolved, largely because I hate giving the same
presentation twice. I've given it at RWA, at the New Jersey RWA
conference, and on-line via email loop. The primary purpose is to teach
writers that we all have rules we adhere to, because they are OUR rules.
For example, because I write romantic suspense, my personal rules is
that 1) the hero and heroine must survive in the end and 2) they must be
closer at the end of the book, so the reader can believe that they have
a HEA in their future. I also ensure that the bad guy gets what's coming
to him, because justice-for me-must be served.

But other rules I've been told by some critique partners or contest
judges or even reading the advice of other published authors, agents,
and editors, doesn't work for ME. For example, I like writing in
multiple viewpoints--sometimes more than four, six, eight, ten. The most
I've used is thirteen. My only rule is that transitions must be clear.
My editor helps keep me on the straight and narrow there. But some
people will tell you never write in more than (insert arbitrary number
here, usually 3 or 4) POVs.

Following rules that don't fit you or your voice conforms your writing
to match everyone elses. What's the fun in that? Why will an editor buy
your book if it sounds like the hundred other submissions she just read?
It's the stories that practically sing with character and voice that
draw an editor, agent, reader in . . . Not whether you followed all the
"rules."

Rules are important, but breaking rules is fun. But more important than
being fun and creative, is that rules-or the lack thereof-is crucial in
developing voice and style and making you stand out from all the other
writers writing in your genre.

I always learn something at every conference I go to. Otherwise, I would
probably stop going. But seriously, no matter how many times I go, I
pick up something I can apply to my own writing life.

What did I learn, or was reminded about, in my own workshop? Editors
generally buy on voice and character. Don't break rules just for the
sake of breaking rules, break rules with a purpose. Too many cooks (or
critique partners or contest judges or well-meaning friends!) will
destroy your story. As Stephen King says, write with the door closed and
edit with the window open. Meaning, write for yourself first, but don't
let everyone in during editing--only those you completely trust.

You will never please everyone. There will always be people who hate
your book. I'd rather have people who love my book or hate my book than
people who are lukewarm about my book. (Of course, I really want more
people to love it than hate it!) So write for yourself, edit smartly,
ignore the rules that don't work for you or the story, and in the end,
your story will be stronger for it and you'll be happier.

But the one reminder that I needed now more than ever came from Nora
Roberts in her "chat." No excuses. Put your ass in the chair and write.
Stop whining, stop complaining, stop blaming. No one said it would be
easy, and you have to want it. You have to be hungry for it, have
passion for it, be willing to make sacrifices for it. What is IT? For
many at RWA it was simply "being published." But for the published, what
is it? I had to think about that. For me, it's writing a better book
than my last, to stay focused, to simply be a stronger, better writer.
And sometimes that's hard to believe possible. We all doubt. But that's
the excuse. My goal is now to DO. No more excuses. Put my ass in the
chair and write.

I'm traveling home today and hope to check in periodically between
flights. I hope you'll chat about something you've learned at a
conference that you've applied to your writing life and to what result?

The Valley of Despair

by J.D. Rhoades

Right now, I've just cracked 45,000 words in my current WIP. Given the length to which I usually write, this means I'm deep into the middle section, or, as I call it, "The Valley of Despair."

If you ask around, I suspect you'll find that a lot of unfinished projects died at around the 30-40,000 word mark. That's the point at which you have your characters, you have your situation set up, you've reached your first crucial turning point, so everything should be a gallop, right? Except there are few things happening.

For one thing,  unless you write very quickly, you've been living day in and day out with these people as houseguests in your head for a month or more. Like most houseguests, you're not as crazy about them as when they first moved in.

This is also the point where doubt creeps in. Do I really have enough story to make a novel out of this? Am I really a good enough writer to pull this off?

Doubt is followed by certainty: No, there really isn't enough to make a novel out of this. If the first act is "chase your protagonist up a tree" and the second act is "throw rocks at him," you see your pile of rocks diminishing, and you start to panic. That's when the real fear begins: no, I'm not good enough to pull this off. I suck. I'm a fraud. I really should go back to the day job. 

Or, there's the danger of  getting distracted by what writer Lynn Cahoon, blogging over at Elizabeth Lynn Casey's joint, called "The Bright and Shinies": new ideas that pop into your head for something different. Ideas that make you think "maybe the problem is I'm writing the wrong book.  The science-fiction-vampire story is the one I really should be doing right now."

So how do you get past this? How do you climb out of the Valley of Despair to reach the sweet, pure exhilarating  air of the  Mountains of Climax?

Well, first, go back to the basics. It's very easy, in the Valley, to forget your fundamentals. Therefore, I  cannot recommend Our Alex's "Story Elements Checklist" highly enough. Go back and look at it.   You don't have to follow it (or any advice) blindly, but as a springboard for ideas, you can't beat it.  Could the story use a "training sequence?" Maybe some new allies could be picked up? Is there a big reversal coming up and how do we lay the groundwork for it?

Another aspect of going back to basics is to remind yourself that the story is driven by want: the desire of the characters, and how, knowing them as you do, would they go about getting it? Make a list: What does the protagonist still want? What about the antagonist? The secondary characters?

Which leads us to a great idea I picked up from a lecture by top screenwriter Steven J. Cannell: turn around and be the bad guy.  "When you get to this place, go around and become the antagonist. You probably haven't been paying much attention to him or her. Now you get in the antagonist's head and you're looking back at the story to date from that point of view."

Oh, and that story you think maybe you should be writing? Make some notes, maybe write a scene or two to get it out of your system, then put it down. It'll still be there. And you know darn well, if you drop what you're doing and start the new, 'bright and shiny" project, you'll be right back at this same place with that one in a month.

So, most of all, keep going. And give yourself permission to suck. It's the first draft. Push your way through the Valley. Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain, etc.

Anyone else have any tips for slogging through the Valley of Despair? Or does this just never happen to you?

Brave new e world

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Well, Tess said something apocalyptically frightening in her post on Tuesday:

E-book land is going to be a busy, anarchic universe with a dizzying array of great books sold along with bad books, and lord knows how it's all going to shake out.

And hanging over us all will be the one thing that could doom us all.  Piracy.  Once books can be copied and disseminated for free, there will be no way to make a living in the writing profession. I fear that it's only a matter of time before that happens.

And we will look back on this era as the last age of the professional writer.

Thanks, Tess, just what I needed to hear going into a new year.

I guess it’s no big secret anymore that the publishing industry is undergoing a revolution that has us all in shock, awe, fear, or simple paralysis.

One of the components of this revolution is the e reader, as Tess talks about in her post.

At the end of the year, along with my agent, I made the decision to publish Screenwriting Tricks For Authors, the workbook I wrote based on my blog and the story structure articles I’ve posted here at Murderati, at the Kindle store.   It’s now up for sale here.

There were a million reasons.   Well, okay, not a million, I just always like the sound of that number, and I’m a Pisces and can’t count to save my life.

But some of the reasons are –

- I TRULY needed to get the information on my blog into a coherent order, and a blog is not the greatest format for what I am trying to convey.

- I’m being asked to teach a lot, these days, and I can’t possibly take the time anymore to print the workbook at Kinko’s for distribution to my students, and when Amazon started making Kindle books available to PC users, and is promising a Mac version imminently, that made Kindle publishing the easiest instant solution.   And a Kindle or PC version is far cheaper for students to buy than a hardcopy version, about a third of the cost.   That part was just a no-brainer.

- I am constantly adding to the info on my blog and with Kindle, you can republish a new version any time, instantly, without cost.   Now that is cool.

- It’s not huge money, but a LOT more in royalties, comparatively, than other options.

- Publishing on Kindle doesn’t tie up other publication rights – if I am offered a good book contract for the workbook, I can just take it.

- Peer pressure from Joe Konrath, who has a lot to say about Kindle and other e publishing, but you could start here.     

Really, this is a revolution, and while I’m not personally comfortable publishing a novel on Kindle, at least not yet, I am excited to stick at least a toe in the water by publishing this workbook.   Anyone can take the time and click through links on my blog and get a lot of the same info for free, but if you find what I’ve written on the subject is useful,  $9.99 is not such a huge chunk of change to put down to have the whole deal in coherent order.   Plus, you know, supporting an author whose information you are using is good karma.

So this is a New Year’s experiment, which I’ll keep everyone posted on.  So far the only drawback I've experienced is intense complaining from non-Kindle, non-PC (meaning Mac) readers who want the book downloadable or in hardcopy for them NOW.  

In the meantime I’ll keep blogging about craft, because God knows it’s exhausting – if not outright terrifying - trying to keep come up with posts on your personal life. 

So I’ve been teaching another online class these last two weeks.   NOT the greatest time for an online class, actually, because everyone is still so dazed from the holidays and just trying to get back in the swing of things.   Um… especially me.  Still, I am as always finding the teaching completely inspiring  – I love hearing other writers talk about their stories and characters and writing processes.   And new writers have all that, you know - hope.

The discussion so far has completely reinforced my belief that the best thing that you can do to help yourself with story structure is to look at and compare in depth 5-10 (ten being best!) stories – films, novels, and plays - that are structurally similar to yours.

The late and much-missed Blake Snyder said that all film stories break down into just ten patterns that he outlined in his Save The Cat! books.  Dramatist Georges Polti claimed there are Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations and outlined those in his classic book.

I think those books on the subject are truly useful – as I say often, I think you should read everything.  But I believe you also have to get much more specific than ten plots or even thirty-six.

(I also think it’s plainly lazy to use someone else’s analysis of a story pattern instead of identifying your own.  Relying on anyone else’s analysis, and that for sure includes mine, is not going to make you the writer you want to be.)

For example, in the class that I’m teaching now, without giving details of anyone’s plots, there is a reluctant witness story, a wartime romance story, an ensemble mystery plot, a mentor plot, a heroine in disguise plot.   And others.  

Each of those stories has a story pattern that you could force into one of ten general  overall patterns – I guess – but they also have unique qualities that would get lost in such a generalization.  And all of those stories could also be categorized in OTHER ways besides “reluctant witness” or “hero in disguise”.   

Harry Potter, for example, is what you could call a King Arthur story – the chosen one coming into his or her own (also see Star Wars, The Matrix…)  but it is told as a traditional mystery, with clues and red herrings and the three kids playing detectives.   It’s also got strong fairy tale elements.   So if you’re writing a story that combines those three (and more) types of stories, looking at examples of ANY of those types of stories is going to help you structure and brainstorm your own story.

If you find you’re writing a “reluctant witness” or "accidental witness" story, whether it’s a detective story, a sci-fi setting, a period piece, or a romance, it’s extremely useful to look at other stories you like that fall into that “reluctant witness” category – like Witness, North By Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Conspiracy Theory, Someone To Watch Over Me.

If you’re writing a mentor plot, you could take a look at Silence of the Lambs, The Karate Kid, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, An Officer and a Gentleman, Dirty Dancing, all stories in completely different genres with strong mentor plot lines, with vastly different mentor types.

A Mysterious Stranger story has a very specific plotline, too:  a “fixer” character comes into the life of a main character, or characters, and turns it upside down – for the good, and the main character, not the Mysterious Stranger, is the one with the character arc  (look at Mary Poppins, Shane, Nanny McPhee, and the Jack Reacher books).

A Cinderella story, well, where do you even start?  Pretty Woman, Cinderella of course, Arthur, Rebecca,  Suspicion, Maid to Order (I think that's the one I mean), Slumdog Millionaire.

A deal with the devil story – The Firm, Silence of the Lambs, Damn Yankees, The Little Mermaid, Rosemary’s Baby, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Devil’s Advocate.

And you might violently disagree with some of my examples, or have a completely different designation for what kind of story some of the above are…

But that is exactly my point.  You have to create your own definitions of types of stories, and find your own examples to help you learn what works in those stories.   All of writing is about creating your own rules and believing in them.

So I guess that’s what I wanted to say today.   Identifying genres is not enough.   Identifying categories of stories is not enough.   What’s the kind of story you're writing – by your own definition?

When you start to get specific about that, that’s when your writing starts to get truly interesting.

So what kind of story ARE you writing?  Would love to hear some, and brainstorm some great examples.

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

- Alex

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Related posts:

What’s YOUR structure?

Meta Structure

Fairy Tale Structure

What is High Concept?