(Auction for refugee relief ended.)

Auction has ended. Thanks to everyone who bid! Altogether the Writing for Charity auction raised over $29,000, all of which will go to Lifting Hands International for refugee relief.

Hey, incipient children's writers, here's an opportunity to help refugees and have me critique your manuscript!

As part of the Writing for Charity auction to benefit refugee relief, organized by authors Shannon Hale and Mette Ivie Harrison, I'm offering a critique of a middle grade manuscript up to 75,000 words.

See the offer here.

Proceeds from the auction will go to Lifting Hands International.

There are tons of other items --lots of other critiques offered! Plus more cool stuff, including a pole dance by two award winning authors; I'm not making this up.

To bid in the auction, you'll need to set up an account.

Bidding closes at 1 a.m. on 5/3/16. I'm not clear on the time zone, but I'm going to wildly guess they mean Mountain Time, which would be midnight Pacific and 3 a.m. Eastern. To be on the safe side, bid early!
(And often.)

How and why to cut words from your manuscript

I’ve just cut 2,800 words off my current work-in-progress, a middle grade novel with a tentative publication date in 2016. (Katherine Tegen Books, HarperCollins, working title: Miss Ellicott’s School for the Magically Minded.) My goal was to cut 3,000, so I nearly made it. 

When I first taught myself to cut words, I did it mainly to get my manuscripts down to industry standard for middle grade. (For fantasy, under 75,000 words; for other genres, under 65,000.) But I learned so much else from the process of word-cutting that I now use it to identify other issues. 

Cutting words is a good idea even if you’re not over wordcount, because it helps make your manuscript leaner, cleaner, and more like the stuff that gets published.

Here’s the procedure. 

1. Decide how many words you want to cut.
2. Print your manuscript.
3. Divide the number of words you want to cut by the number of pages you’ve printed. In this case there were 202 pages, so my goal was to cut 15 words a page.
4. Take a pen and try to hunt out the target number of words to delete on every single page. Write your score at the bottom of each page.

Keeping score is important, because it gives you an incentive to keep hunting out that one little extra word you can do away with it. (You probably won’t meet your goal on every page, so you’ll need to exceed it on some pages.)

Here are some of the cuts I made, and why I made them. Underlined words are words I added.

“We can’t buy dinner.”
“Why should you need to buy dinner?”

Deleting the unnecessary repetion cuts two words. Sometimes repetition serves a rhythmic purpose. This one doesn’t.

He waved them through toward a high arched hallway that opened beyond the office.

It doesn’t matter exactly where the hallway is, so those five extra words can go.

Changing “them through” to “toward” saves a word, but it also saves misunderstanding. He’s not waving them.

 With a sigh, she thought of Miss Ellicott.

As I made cuts, I discovered my protagonist was doing everything with a sigh. Sometimes she ended the sentence with a sigh, sometimes she began it with one. After this week’s cuts, only three sighs remain.

 The fact was it was a very big city.

“The fact was” over and over again in this draft! No longer.

She gestured broadly with her arm. 

Yeah, what else was she going to gesture with? I mean, the choices are fairly limited. There’s no need to say what she gestured with unless it was something really unusual. Someone else’s arm, for example.

There were pools of water here and there in hollows on the rock.

This is only a net reduction of one word, but it gets rid of the vague “here and there” and replaces it with something more specific.

It was pitch dark. She couldn’t see a thing.

Since the second sentence describes exactly what we would expect, it can go.

“So you’re spying on me, are you?” said Mrs. Walters, standing in front of stood before the fireplace, hands on hips.

This is one I did purely to reduce word count. I don’t think the changes I made in this sentence add anything stylistically. “Before” isn’t a better locative than “in front of”. It’s just shorter.

You can usually remove a dialogue tag (said X, X said, X asked, etc) if it’s immediately followed by an action. The point of dialogue tags is to identify the speaker. The action accomplishes this.

 Men and boys were everywhere, rolling barrels that rumbled along the docks, shouting and singing. They rolled barrels that rumbled along the the docks.

This one actually results in a net gain of one word. But I had to do it. As it was, the barrels, since they were already the subject of the verb “rumbled”,  appeared to be shouting and singing. While this would be interesting, it was not the image I wanted.

Besides the above examples, there were many whole sentences and even some paragraphs I removed simply because they described something that was already adequately described.

On my next round of cuts, which will probably follow my next revision and immediately precede submitting the manuscript to the publisher, I’m going to be looking for places where I’ve overexplained, not trusted the reader enough.

A round of cutting generally takes a week of full-time work.

Anyway, I thought the above might be interesting to some people.

A few tips on writing believable disabled characters.

So if you read my rant on the portrayal of disabled characters in middle grade fiction last week, you may have been left with the impression that it was safest not to write a disabled character at all. Sorry about that! Of course you should write MG characters with real believable disabilities who kick A and take names. We need more of those!

I realize that some of the tropes I described last week come, originally, from a place of compassion. An author thinks about the disability that s/he's given the character. And maybe as soon as s/he thinks about it, s/he wants to solve the problem for the character. And the easiest ways to do that are to deliver a miracle cure (trope #4) or a superpower (trope #5) or to pretend that the disability doesn't really matter (trope #6).

But a writer's job is to dig deeper.

Acknowledge that the disability is part of your character's life, probably a permanent part, and that it presents challenges which the character lives with every day. Show us that the character's life is good and meaningful.

Here are a few ideas.

Ask yourself how the character's disability affects the story

If your disabled character is the protagonist, what is different for him/her because of the disability? How does it change the challenges s/he faces? How does it change the ways s/he deals with the challenges? If the disability were removed, would the story change at all? (If the answer is "no", consider scrapping the disability.... or working on it some more.)

If the disabled character is not the protagonist, make sure s/he has a story arc of his/her own. S/he shouldn't be there just to teach the protagonist compassion, or to make the protagonist feel grateful not to be disabled.

Remember the "able" in "disabled"

What can your character do? What's s/he good at? The character needs the same complexities as a non-disabled character-- flaws, good qualities, the works. Hopes, dreams, things that annoy the hell out of her. And like the rest of us, s/he should have a special talent or two... one not related to the disability, please. She might be ace at manipulating a wheelchair in tight spaces, but consider making her ace at factoring quadrinomials as well. Or make him a train buff with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the US freight-rail system which proves useful when push comes to shove. Whatever suits the story.

Research your character's disability

The external manifestation of a character's disability usually occurs to us fairly quickly. The character has a visual or hearing impairment, or wears a leg brace, or has one arm, or uses a wheelchair. But what caused the disability? A genetic syndrome, a disease, an accident?

Is the disability you've given the character one that actually exists? (It's surprising how often this comes up!)

What are the less-visible aspects of the genetic syndrome, disease, accident, etc? What treatment was required, is required now, will be required? Is this going to get better in the future? Or worse?

When you're researching the disability, you may discover things that you wish weren't true. Resist the urge to change the facts. You don't have to use all the facts in your story... but don't rewrite science.

Once you've done your research, of course, you should treat it like any other research you do for fiction, ie apply it with a very light touch. After all, if your readers wanted to read a treatise on osteogenesis imperfecta (or the Battle of Agincourt, or gemstone cutting) they'd go do the same research you did. Remember, the story is king.

Research is a vassal.

Try it yourself

Avoid the common authorly tendency to have characters scale Mount Everest in a wheelchair. (That's only a slight exaggeration.) To give yourself a sense of what your character will and won't be doing, try it yourself. When an author has experimented with wearing a blindfold or earplugs, or using crutches or a wheelchair, or avoiding using his/her hands, the details come through much more clearly and realistically in the book.

Experiment with due regard for your own safety and that of others! Don't walk around upstairs with your eyes closed, or try to cross streets in a wheelchair if you're not a skilled operator of same.

When you use this experience in your writing, be sure to think about whether your character's disability is new or old. If new, the character is likely to have the same difficulties and reactions that you had. But if it's old, the character will be used to some things and may not give them much thought. S/he may be skilled at tasks you found difficult (like carrying a cup of hot tea while on crutches) but stymied by others (like taking said cup of hot tea up a spiral staircase).

Consider the Mechanics

Humans make many things, and the things humans make are generally imperfect. Leg braces chafe, break and malfunction. They also weigh several pounds. Prostheses can cause sores and ulcers. Wheelchairs are as subject to breakdowns and damage as are other conveyances.

Figure out which aids your character uses, and research them. Make sure you consider the aid in the context of your story's setting. Will your character move easily on a ship, a sandy beach, a steep cliff, an icy lake? If your setting is historic, what aids would your character have used during your novel's time period?

Sensitive Language

Whether you're writing a disabled character or not, be aware of words and terms that are outdated and/or offensive. Such words and terms should be avoided in the authorial voice. If they're used in dialogue, they should be dealt with as an issue.

These include:

- cripple, crippled, and crippling (including figurative use, eg "A crippling blow" or "The crippled ship limped into port")

- retard, retarded (including figurative use, eg "A retarded idea")

- former medical terms that have become insults, eg mongoloid and spastic (also avoid "spaz")

- slang nicknames, eg "Pegleg"

- Disabilities used in a figurative sense. ("What a lame excuse," "He's blind to her faults." )

- "confined to a wheelchair" (a wheelchair is not a cell)

Consider the social aspects of the disability

Your character's interactions with others will be affected by the disability. The ways in which people-- children and adults-- react to disabilities are myriad, many-faceted, and bizarre. You may have seen and experienced this in your own life. If not, watch for it.

I started out to write a long list of examples here, but I've gone on long enough, and it will be more useful to you as a writer to make your own observations.

(In R.J. Palacio's Wonder, the social aspects of the protagonist's disability are the main focus of the novel. And kids love it.)

Anyway. I hope the above will prove useful to writers who want to write stories with well-rounded, multi-faceted characters with disabilities. Please do! We need more of them.

How to Plan for NaNoWriMo, part 4: Index Cards

Hi! Over the last couple weeks I've shared some of my favorite tricks for planning a story, bubble-mapping and drawing. Both of those are strategies I use for brainstorming and planning a story. This next strategy focuses on organizing your ideas so that you're ready to write.

Equipment required: Colored pens, index cards*, and tape.

It's likely that as you've thought about your story, some of the story's moments have become very clear in your head. Examples: Your hero meets her mentor. Your hero steals a golden apple. Your villain hacks into the NORAD computers, and thinks he's undetected.

Write each of these idea-moments on a separate index card.

Notice that I've used two colors on this card. Each major character has his or her own color. That way, when I organize the cards, I'll be able to follow each of their storylines and see any gaps. (When a major character is offstage, as, for example, the wizard Simon is in parts of the Jinx books, you still need to know where s/he is and what s/he's doing.)

Now look at your bubble-maps. (See last week's post.) Read through them carefully. Identify anything in your maps that looks like it should be a scene or a story-moment.

Make a separate index card for each of these story moments.

Keep making index cards till you run out of scenes and story moments.

(Note: If I have a lot I want to write on a card, I sometimes start out with a Sharpie, but finish with a ballpoint pen.)

Now, it's time to play with your cards.

Sort through them. You'll notice that some of the scenes clearly belong at the beginning of the story, others near the end. Lay them out on a flat surface, in the order in which you think they might occur. The beginning of the story goes at the top, the end of the story at the bottom. If two or more ideas seem like they should happen at the same time, put them side-by-side.

Keep moving them around till you think you've got them where you want them.

You'll probably find some of your cards don't fit in anywhere. That's okay. It may be that those scenes don't actually belong in the story, or it may be that you'll figure out a place for them later.

You may also find gaps. Don't worry about that right now either.

When you think you have all the cards in the right order, tape them to the wall.

In the picture above, I have the scenes taped to the wall in order, top to bottom, but there are things missing. There are some thin spaces at the top. At the bottom, just before the closing scene, there's a gap that goes right across... I've got nothing. It's possible you'll have similar gaps in your own story. (Example: your hero is captured by the evil villain, and then she is welcomed home. But you're missing the escape scene.) 
Now it's time to fill in those gaps.

Take some more blank index cards. Think about what scenes you might use to fill in the gaps. Jot them on the cards, and add them to the wall.

Read through what you've got.

Now look at the storyline for each of your main characters. (Just follow his or her color-code down the wall.) Do any individual characters have gaps? It's okay, for now, if they do. They may end up having gaps in the story. Just remember that you've always got to know where the major characters are, and, if they leave the story in the middle, you have to know what became of them. If a major character is left hanging, fill in an index card to show what he's doing.

When your wall of cards is finished, you're ready to write.

You can start writing your novel directly from what's on the wall.

Or you can divide your wall into chapters, hanging a slip of paper with the chapter number on it next to each section on the wall. (I've done that in the last picture above.)

Or you can use your wall display as a basis for a traditional written outline.

I've tried all of these, and they all work.

And there you have 'em, as Casey Kasem used to say. My three main strategies for pre-writing a novel. I hope you find them useful for planning your own.

Good luck!

*Some writers use sticky notes instead of index cards. I like the index cards because they're sturdier, easier to rearrange, and cheaper.

How to Plan for NaNoWriMo, part 3: Bubble Maps

Hi! Last week I shared one of my favorite tricks for planning a story, drawing. I'm happy to have heard from several people that they've tried this and found it useful.

This next strategy, like the drawing, should enable you to plan your story without your internal editor getting in the way. It has various names; I call it bubble-mapping. Over the course of a novel I'll usually make about 100 bubble maps-- about 25 of them at the planning stage.

Here's what one looks like:

This is one of about 20 bubblemaps I did about the Bonemaster (an evil wizard in the Jinx trilogy) over the course of writing the three books. There was a lot I had to find out about the Bonemaster, so I kept asking myself questions about him. (The different colors are color codes I assigned to different characters or aspects of the plot. This is optional. More about colors next week.)

Let's build a bubble map from the ground up. Start out with the central idea of your story... the thing you want to write about. Ask yourself 4 questions about it:

These questions are just examples. You can make up different questions if you like. Answer each question with whatever pops into your head:

Don't think too hard! Just let it flow.

For every answer, try to expand with more information or more questions as they occur to you:

Keep going till you run out of space on the paper. By that time you should have discovered some interesting points that you want to explore further.

Pick one of these points, take another piece of paper, and start a new bubble map:

The new bubble-map in this example is based on a question from the old bubble-map. ("Constitution?")

Note the question "When?" in the new bubble-map. I'm already wondering whether this story takes place before the election, and is about Silvia's run (scamper?) for the White House, or whether it takes place after the election, when Silvia's won in a landslide and the Secret Service has to outwit enemy cats and owls. Is this a story about an election, about a constitutional crisis, about one mouse's struggle to change the world, or about an alternative USA in which a mouse is president?

This was something I didn't think about till I started bubbling. I can make more bubble-maps to explore it, but I won't really worry about it till the next step of the process, which we'll look at next week.

Watch this space!

How to Plan for NaNoWriMo, part 2: Drawing to Write

Hi! In my last post I promised to share a few tricks I use to help me get ready to write. I call them tricks because they all do the same thing-- they fool me into disconnecting my internal editor. None of them involve writing words that will actually appear in my book.

I use all these tricks in the pre-writing planning process, before I begin a manuscript. They enable me (and hopefully will enable you) to forget about writing and focus on story.

Tonight's trick is drawing.

Doodling, sketching, scribbling, coloring. This is the very first thing I do to help a story come toward me. I draw pictures. I start out drawing the main character. Then I draw the other characters. I sketch in their surroundings, give them something to stand on, something to hold. Every single sketch tells me something new about the story.

Usually when I share this technique with other writers, they say "But I can't draw."

Well, really, as you'll see below, I can't either. But that's okay! Nobody has to see your picture but you. And you're a writer, not an artist, so it doesn't matter if the picture's not of professional quality.

If it will help, just draw stick figures. But do try it. Give it 15 minutes. If the 15 minutes go okay, give it another 15 minutes. You'll be surprised at what you learn about your story.

When I first started planning to write Jinx, I thought the main character would be Elfwyn. I drew pictures of her, of Dame Glammer, of Simon and Sophie... pictures of scenes that never occur in the book. Then I drew this:

 

As you can see, I wrote in a few descriptive sentences that occurred to me as I drew. These sentences didn't end up in the manuscript. Neither did the drawing, of course. But the scene it depicted ended up in the first chapter of the finished book.

In each picture, as I drew, the trees were becoming larger and larger. I began to realize the trees were going to play a very important part in the story, that they were a constant presence and had their own opinions. They even had laws.

Here's a picture for a story that's been kicking around in my head. I don't know if it'll ever get written.

And here's a character who has yet to find a story to be a part of, although I'm hoping her day will come:

Eh, so I have a little trouble with feet. Anyway, as you can see, the point here is not to produce great art but to completely free your mind from the need to Write Something. Draw to explore the world of your characters.

Think about the story you're planning to write for NaNoWriMo. Imagine the main character. Draw him or her. Add some more characters to the scene. Draw their surroundings.

Have fun with it!

In my next post, I'll share another pre-writing trick that I find even more useful than this one... and hopefully you will too. Watch this space!

How to Plan for NaNoWriMo, part 1. Watch This Space!

So, NaNoWriMo is coming up. NaNoWriMo is a challenge to draft a novel (or rather, to write 50,000 words) during the month of November. I took this challenge in November of 2009 and drafted JINX, which was published by HarperCollins in January of 2013 as the first book of a middle grade fantasy trilogy.

NaNoWriMo is a good way to motivate yourself to write if you're having a hard time getting off the dime. But many folks who start out on November 1^st just don't make it to 50k, and it usually seems to boil down to two reasons, both having to do with planning.

The first is simply time. Writers do the math: 30 days hath November, which means that if you write 1667 words a day, you're good. The problem is few people can really write every day. You run into Thanksgiving (in the US), emergencies, and days of just plain not being able to fit it in. It's better to plan on 2000 words a day. That gives you five floating days off to cope with life's exigencies. (Of course, if a really serious emergency crops up, one has to throw in the towel.)

The other thing that stops people from getting to 50k is that they hit a point – often around the 25k word mark-- where they run out of story. And I think this usually happens because they haven't done enough planning prior to November 1st. I have heard that writers are equally divided between planners and those who write by the seat of their pants, but I don't think it's true. I think pure pantsers are extremely rare, and that most writers need to plan to at least some degree. We may not necessarily want or need an outline of the kind we learned in school. But we need something.

So if you're going to go for the gold this November, it would be a good idea to start planning now. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be sharing some of my favorite planning methods. Hopefully you'll find something useful that you can incorporate.

Watch this space.