Going with non-stop action to keep things lively is a temptation, certainly, but like in life, your character will need a moment to breathe and reflect. So does your reader.
The length of your sentences, the depth in which you explore character emotion will slow or quicken the pace. If you need to slow your pace, you can craft longer sentences. To speed up your pace and convey action, consider writing shorter sentences.
Word choice can also affect pace. “Tropical” may convey relaxed, while “boiling” may feel more urgent, even though both words are synonyms for hot.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 173
The Big Misunderstanding!
Remember: If your plot can be solved with two characters having a simple conversation, their conflict is too weak. You can deepen any conflict in a number of ways. Here are three.
Up the emotional stakes. What do they have to lose?
Connect the conflict to a past event to deep the emotional responses.
Retool a character’s motivation to have a hidden agenda.
Focus. Magnify. Accomplish. Triumph!
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 174
The Trees Did What Now?
Make sure your word choices match the tone of your scene. “Trees knifed toward the sky” might not convey the right tone in a romantic comedy, but it could work in an action adventure.
As you write, you can leave messages to yourself in the book itself, noting the mood you hope to convey in each individual scene. Then, when you go back to edit, you will automatically know to check whether your word choices fit that specific mood.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 175
Reflect and Catch Up
Don’t compare your career to anyone else’s. Your writing schedule, your ideas, your highs and lows, are all for you. No one else can write your stories.
–A.C. Arthur
Day 176
Challenge Accepted?
Challenge yourself to learn a new word today and use it in a scene. We’ll help get you started. Are any of these words unfamiliar to you?
Dauntless
Alfresco
Satiated
Scarce
Render
Egregious
Abate
Complacent
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 177
Creep Out!
If you want to write a creepy scene, you can use your setting to freak out your reader. Think strange noises and shadows. Howling wind. A fetid scent. You can even use setting to foreshadow bad things to come. A murder took place in that spot centuries ago…and it’s soon to happen again…
What setting related things have freaked you out in the course of your life?
Your assignment: Double your daily word count! Write roughly 500 words for your novel.
Day 178
Rose-Colored Glasses
The more we get to know someone, the more beautiful or ugly they can become. You can apply that principle to your fiction, letting the reader see these types of personality/appearance changes through the eyes of your characters.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 179
Payback Time!
If your character is not doing as you wish and you’d like a little payback, consider giving them exactly what they want—then taking it away. Fine! You can do this even if you love your character and just want to up the stakes.
GENA: I did this with a reader favorite character, Kat from the White Rabbit Chronicles. Throughout the series, she suffered from kidney disease. The same disease that killed her mother at a young age, in fact. (Foreshadowing!) All Kat wants is to get better. So, just when they find a way to cure her...she dies in a tragic accident. And no, I didn’t kill her off because I wanted payback. I loved and adored this character. But the story had a lot of action, with fights taking place between slayers and zombies, as well as slayers and other slayers. There had to be consequences and casualties to these battles. I decided to kill two birds with one stone.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 180
The Tides and Timelines Wait For No Writer
To help you keep track of days within your story, write key events in a calendar. You can also track your days by writing chapter numbers in the calendar. If chapters 1 - 3 three take place on Monday, September 1st, mark September 1st with a 1. 2. 3. That way, you will know how much time has passed during any given scene.
JILL: Not keeping track of story days came back to haunt me in At The Heart of Christmas. I mentioned something that happened on the December Solstice...and then had one too many days between the Solstice and Christmas Eve. To fix it, I had to reorder a few scenes.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 181
A Dash of Excitement
When you lose your excitement for your story, consider taking a break to brainstorm new ways to elevate the tale.
Just like senior slump or post vacation letdown, that first brush of excitement with your manuscript can fade the more you work on it. This is completely normal. Double check that your hesitation to write has nothing to do with feeling like a pretend writer (imposter syndrome), a lack of research or fear of tackling an emotional scene. Take a breather. Then power through.
GENA: I recently lost all my excitement for a manuscript. I had to sit down with my critique partner—Jill!—and brainstorm changes I could make to spice up my storyline, ways I could torture my characters, and different roads those characters could travel. The possibilities sparked my imagination and suddenly I couldn’t wait to work on the book again.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 182
Reflect and Catch Up
The Strength of Personal Entertainment or How To Recognize Good Storytelling
Judging your own writing can be very hard when you’re a new writer. I’m not talking about the quality of your craft here, but rather the depth and stickiness of your storytelling. That X factor that makes a reader keep reading. This is the ultimate question of… Is this book good? While that sense improves with your maturity as a writer, the bottom line always comes down to what I like to call personal entertainment.
Basically, are you entertained by your own work? Do you want to keep writing to find out what happens? Are you looking forward to your next writing session? Have you laughed or cried or gotten angry while writing? (I laughed out loud a lot and even occasionally applauded the book when I was writing The Vampire’s Mail Order Bride.) Emotions are a strong indicator that something “good” is happening in the writing. And there’s a high probability that if you’re entertained by your own words, readers will be too.
Sure, this method isn’t foolproof. You might think your Great Aunt Bertha’s tale about meeting your Great Uncle George at a swap meet is riveting, but that’s because you’re family. What we write has to be universally appealing, or at least appealing to our potential readership.
So how do you hone that sense of what works in the beginning? Read in the genre you want to write. Read everything. The good, the bad and the ugly. Ultimately, your capacity to know what’s working and what’s not will develop into one of your most useful tools.
Until then, don’t hesitate to ask a friend. One who you know will tell the truth.
– Bestselling author Kristen Painter
Day 183
The Flukes of Fate
Coincidences can be a hard sell in fiction, because they come across as a convenience for the author. Two people accidentally arriving at the same place at the same time. Possible in real life. Too easy in fiction?
What about eavesdropping at the perfect moment? Or finding the perfect solution at the last minute just because someone else says or do
es the exact right thing?
If you write a coincidence in your story, make sure readers can suspend their disbelief. Is there a logical reason for this to happen? Two characters accidentally arrive at the same place at the same time...because they were both invited by different people within their group of friends. Eavesdropping at the perfect moment...because the character has been hiding under the bed, waiting and listening. Finding the perfect solution at the last minute...because they’ve been working and building to the moment.
Are there any coincidences in your story? Is there a logical reason for each one?
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 184
An Inconvenient Convenience
We talked about coincidences. Now we’ll discuss conveniences. If you are amazed by an easy, convenient solution to a plot problem, that solution might lack excitement or complexity.
How can you shake things up? Should you keep thinking of possible solutions and go a more surprising route, letting your characters struggle for a bit?
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 185
Slipping Thread
Be careful not to drop plot threads. If you introduce an element to your story, make sure:
There’s a reason for it.
There’s progress for it throughout the novel.
There’s a conclusion if it isn’t going to be addressed in another book.
Otherwise it can come across as a mistake on your part.
Note: If you are writing a series, some plot threads may need to remain open to be solved in a later novel.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 186
Golden Thread
Anytime you make a change in your manuscript, be on the lookout for the domino effect. How will that one teensy weensy change affect other aspects of your story? You might be shocked at the far reaching complications, so be sure to consider every angle of the change.
GENA: When writing The Glass Queen, I originally pictured the heroine Ashleigh with two sisters. Since she is the embodiment of Cinderella, I felt she needed to have two stepsisters in order stay true to the original fairy tale. As I progressed in the story, however, those sisters never came into play. And the fairy tale roles were not literal, so the evil stepsisters didn’t have to be Ashleigh’s actual stepsisters. With an already large cast of characters, I decided to cut her sisters and deleted every reference…
Or did I?
I forgot to check the reference she’d made about her family as a whole, and there were places where Ashleigh mentioned having a family of five when it should have been three.
The domino effect got me.
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 187
Reminder: Make The Time
If you aren’t making time to write, your story isn’t progressing. If your story isn’t progressing, you won’t be able to finish it. If you fail to finish it, you won’t publish and possibly make money.
Have a notebook when you are in bed watching TV. Jot down any scenes that come to your head. In the car, you can use a voice recorder app to record as you speak out scenes or bits of thought and dialogue. Waiting in line? Write!
When you do block out time to write, look out for distractions. If you need to turn off your phone’s ringer and/or shut off social media for a bit—do it!
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 188
Not Likable, But…
Are your main characters sympathetic in some way? Can readers relate to them, even the slightest bit?
Have you ever rooted for the bad guy to win? Maybe he had a more relatable backstory or motive than the hero. Readers don’t have to like your characters, but it might be nice if they understand why your characters do what they do. That way, readers can root for them. That’s why we try to give our most unlikable characters at least one redeeming quality.
A love for animals, perhaps, or kindness to children. Be creative. A ruthless assassin who always bakes his grandmother a cake on her birthday. A grumpy old man who secretly visits his wife’s grave every day to tell her about his life. A mother who criticizes the appearance of others, but cries when she sees herself in the mirror.
How are your characters relatable to others?
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 189
Reflect and Catch Up
Just keep writing. Again, that's something I've heard said over and over. That's because it's true. I've now written over 40 stories that have been published. I have half a dozen or more that never sold, but that honed my craft. With each story, I like to think I get a little better, that I learned something new while writing the previous book that I can draw from on the new one. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. It's easy for life to take over, for doubts to take over, a writer has to make time and write. No matter what.
–Bestselling author Janice Lynn
Day 190
What’s The Big Idea?
On Day 146, Gena shared a time she woke up to an email she sent to herself. That email simply stated, “Make paper dolls and pretend they are real.” Ultimately, she opted not to run with that idea, which leads to the question—How do you know if you should pursue an idea or not. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Are you able to brainstorm a decision tree off of the idea? (Day 90)
Can you layer, layer, layer, layer? (Day 96)
Can you see or create the theme? (Day 6)
Will you be able to develop a full RANGE for your characters? (Day 10)
How about SEARCH? (Day 11)
Will this idea sustain your interest?
How much research will it take? Sometimes the amount of knowledge you must know to write this story might take the time you could spend writing another book. Maybe you can hire someone to do the research, or keep the idea on the back burner, letting it percolate until you’re in a position to write it.
Lastly, discuss your new idea with your critique partner or someone who “gets” your writing. (But beware! Taking this step can also be a confidence killer, if you start before you’re ready.)
Your assignment: Double your daily word count! Write roughly 500 words for your novel.
Day 191
And...It Just Got Worse
Sometimes it’s fun to make your main character decide between a bad choice...and an even worse one. This is reminiscent of an ethics thought experience known as “the trolley problem.”
The problem goes like this: A runaway trolley is heading down the tracks. Up ahead, five people are tied to the tracks. You have two options. 1) Pull a lever to divert the trolley to a second track... where only one person is tied down, but it’s someone you love or 2) Do nothing and let the five people die.
Which option do you choose? Either way, someone dies, so you must decide between something horrible and something terrible.
Consider shaking up your story with an ethical dilemma for your characters!
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 192
Know Before You Know
Is there an event you need to magnify and foreshadow?
As a reminder, “foreshadowing” is hinting at something major to come. Is today a good day to foreshadow danger or something wonderful?
Your assignment: Write roughly 250 words for your novel.
Day 193
This Way...No, That Way
Knowing all the answers isn’t necessary to begin a book, a chapter, or even a scene. It’s okay to figure things out as you move forward. Use whatever process works best for you.
GENA: I often change my mind as I’m writing a rough draft. I’ll be headed in one direction and realize I don’t like the destination, so I’ll change tracks. This creates a domino effect, as we mentioned, which means I’ll need to go back and make
other changes to ensure the old direction properly leads to the new one. But I digress. By the end of the story, I’ll have everything figured out. So, once I finish that draft, I sit down and figure out everything the new direction changes about the rest of the book, making notes along the way, then I go back to edit the book, making sure everything lines up.
All Write Already: Year Of Your Book Page 16
