Friday, October 19, 2018

Exploring Theme in Your Story: How Wounding Event and False Beliefs Intersect with Theme

Theme answers the question:  So what?  That's pretty harsh, but it's what readers need to know soon after they pick up your book.  Theme is the meaning and the message, the purpose of your story.  Not just entertainment, although that is usually part of good writing.  But we look for meaning now, in our literature and in our lives, more than ever.  Publishers know this, agents know this, readers crave this.

Nonfiction writers can tell us the theme, or meaning, of their books.  They can stand on a platform and present the message quite frankly.  If you do that in fiction or most memoir, you alienate readers.  Characters and narrator can rarely be on platform and still keep readers involved in the story.  So theme is trickier for those genres.

Friday, October 12, 2018

Online Classes and How They Help with Feedback

I haven't always been a fan of online learning--for many years, I liked the face-to-face best, especially when it came to feedback on my writing.  But in the past ten years I've grown very fond of online classes and how they actually enhance writers' ability to give and receive feedback.  I regularly take them for motivation, accountability, and the helpful responses I get for my work-in-progress.

I think there's a great use for them, in the journey of a book, and that's often in the generative and early revision stages.  I don't find as much help when I'm closer to final revision, because seeing only parts of a manuscript is less helpful then.

Friday, October 5, 2018

To Storyboard or Not to Storyboard: How This Cool Planning Tool Compares to Outlines, Charts, and Maps

I'm working on my third novel, my fifteenth book, and I'm approaching it as many writers do:  from nowhere!  It's an exploratory process, and I don't really know what the book will be about.  I have a good idea, a handful of characters I already love (and hate), and a kind of plot.  But I do have my storyboard, and that's gotten me a lot further along than I would be without it.

You've probably heard of the plotter versus pantser continuum in writing.  Plotters like to know where they are going, in every degree, before they begin.  Pantsers are the opposite--they feel their way along, following the nudges and ideas that come as they generate writing.  I fall somewhere in the middle.  I don't think I would've gotten thirteen books published, fourteen written, without some planning.  But I also know I gained a tremendous amount by letting the muse direct some of my steps as I went forward.