The Audience is Always Late

The audience is always late to the party. When I sold The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman, it was three years before a reviewer ever saw the book. It received starred reviews from Kirkus and BCCB. It was an Irma S. and James H. Black Picture Book Award Honor Book. In fact, I have a file that lists the awards this book won. And it will be released in paperback in February!

In reality, when I sold the book in 2000, I was an “Award-Winning Author.” It’s just that no one knew it until 2003, when they saw the book.

The audience appreciation is always way later than the creative process.

Pay Attention to the Creative Process

On days like today, when I have a tendency to look at reviews, royalties, agents, awards, sales, speaking engagements, or any other outward measure of success, I have to pull myself back. They only speak about yesterday’s projects, not today’s.

The only thing that matters TODAY is the current project. And the writing went really well yesterday on my WIP, as I finally started figuring out the tricky POV. The writing is going well! And that is reason enough to throw off the stirrings of depression and rejoice. The writing went well yesterday and it will go well today. Rejoice.

Choosing a Point of View Character

Here the main character (MC) needs to be housebound because of a flu epidemic. But the plot requires several events to be happening. Fortunately, the secondary character (SC) is still moving around and could do these events, but then there’s the question of whose POV to use?

NOT the MC, because he won’t be there. But I’ve been writing all this story in 3rd person MC’s POV. Now, two-thirds of the way into the story, I need to use the SC’s POV. And it came out in 1st person. OK. That can happen. A story can have some chapters in 3rd, some in 1st. But then, I rewrote the SC’s POV, trying for an edgier voice and — WOW, I found a great voice for this story.

I’ve been trusting the process to find the voice I needed for the story and suddenly, there it is. But it’s in the SC’s POV. I’ve tried the Voice in the MC’s POV and it works. But does that mean I’ll write alternating POV chapters? If so, how do I distinguish between the MC’s and SC’s voices?

So, I’m struggling. I can’t move on until I make some decisions, because POV and Voice determine so much of a story. It’s not a matter of just “translating” what I’ve done into the new Voice.

Voice Trumps Everything

At this point, I’ve got to revisit some basic decisions about the story, because Voice trumps everything.

So, here are some of the basic questions I’m re-visiting:

• Whose story is this? Who hurts the most and has the most at stake?
• Will the story work with alternating POV? If so, who is the lead character?
• What is the main story I want to tell? If I add in the SC’s POV, then how much more story development does that POV need? I would imagine lots, but the story is already long enough and doesn’t need more length. I’ll need to refocus the story.
• Can I return to what I’ve already got, but replot so the MC can be moving around during that flu epidemic? Do I really need to do all this change? If I stick with the original, will the Voice change be enough? Will it really work for the MC, instead of the SC, where it originally arose?

It’s unsettling times for this story, but there’s no looking back. Voice trumps everything, so I’ve got to tackle this head on and not avoid it. It’s a major detour, but a necessary one.

Stacy Nyikos: Class of 2K8

REVISIONS – WHERE THE REAL WORK BEGINS

If the first draft of a book is akin to putting up the frame of a house, then revisions are definitely all about building the house around the frame. They can be extensive – a one storey ranch can turn into a three storey Victorian. They can also be minimal. Some books really are written in less than two months. Jean Craighead George wrote My Side of the Mountain in five weeks. I’m still waiting to write a book like that myself, but I haven’t given up hope.

Until then, it’s rewriting and rewriting. Sigh.

Tongue and cheek aside, with some books, revisions can be fun. For my picture books – Squirt, Shelby and Dizzy – revisions were about taking rhyme and making it sing. I really enjoyed them. Each time I came back to the story and revised, the tale got a little better, and my characters, a little funnier, goofier or more endearing.

For Dragon Wishes, revisions were tough. The story is based on a very real emotion for me, loss. My daughters were in a near fatal sledding accident about five years ago. When they crashed into the back of a parked horse trailer, my life came to a crashing halt. I stopped writing. I became depressed. My personal life began to suffer.

It was writing that pulled me back out. I had an emotion, a very real, very big emotion – the near loss of my children – that yearned to become a story. Dragon Wishes was born.

Very briefly, Dragon Wishes is about a twelve year old girl, Alex, and her younger sister, Isa, who lose their parents. They are sent to live with their aunt and uncle. The aunt, who is from Taiwan, tells a story set in ancient China. It is about a young girl, Shin Wa, who begins a quest to find the last surviving dragons in order to save all of mankind. While Alex is struggling to get through each day, Shin Wa journeys across dangerous country, finds the dragons, flies with them, and ultimately, faces the enemy with the dragons at her side. Alex tries to find guidance in the legend, but in all the wrong ways.

The climax of the story comes when Alex can no longer run from the loss of her parents. She has to deal with it. Her aunt wants to help her, but Alex is so afraid of letting anyone into her life again. Despite her fear, she opens up. It is the best moment in the story. It was also the hardest to write and the most painful to revise.

Alex’s fear was very real to me. Rewriting and reworking that section until her struggle became believable meant staying in that fear and molding it. I experienced my characters’ struggle over and over again, as well as my own after my children’s accident. There were days when I got depressed. When I cried while I was writing. Yet Alex’s fear and loss give the story its heart. The rawness of her emotions makes her struggle real, and her choosing to open up to her new family so rewarding.

True emotions make writing hard and revisions really hard, but my hope is that they create characters so real, they linger in the hearts of my readers long after my story is finished.

Read more about 2k8 authors

March: Jody Feldman
April: Zu Vincent
April: M.P. Barker
May: Sarah Prineas
June: Daphne Grab
July: N.A. Nelson
August: Laurel Snyder
September: Nancy Viau
October: Ellen Booraem
October: Kristin O’Donnel Tubb
October: P.J. Hoover
October: Courtney Sheinmel
November: Stacy Nyikos

How to Write a Great Novel Hook

The indomitable Miss Snark suggested that you structure a hook for your story along these lines:

X is the main guy; he wants to do:
Y is the bad guy; he wants to do:
they meet at Z and all L breaks loose.
If they don’t resolve Q, then R starts and if they do it’s L squared.

• X: give the main character a specific name and explain what s/he wants.
• Y: give the antagonist a specific name and explain what s/he wants.
• Z: this is the setting or context of the story; what event is taking place?
• L: of course, X can’t get what s/he wants right away! What prevents, stops, slows X in his/her quest?
• Q, R, L: these are references to what is at stake in the story. Q talks about what happens if X fails — it’s the “so what?” of the story. R is the complications and escalation of stakes — how can you make this matter more?. L discusses the payoff for X (and the reader) when X finally succeeds.

And, my friend DH reminded me of this: how does this stand out in today’s crowded market?

Related Articles about Writing a Synopsis

Synopsis is often used as a synonym for a hook. I see more as a longer document that explains everything in the story, scene by scene.

• Overcoming the Fear of Writing a Synopsis This approaches a synopsis more as a hook.
• 5 Steps to Writing a Synopsis But this article approaches a synopsis as a scene by scene summary of the story.

Here’s the result.

How Do You Refer to Yourself?

With 19 people voting, the results are clear:
10/17 - 53% Writer
4/17 - 21% Novelist
4/17 - 21% Author
1/17 - 5% Picturebook author
0/17 - 0% Wordsmith or other

The majority refer to themselves as writers.
It would be equally interesting to do a poll of readers and see how they refer to those to tell the stories in books. I wonder if the two opinions would match up? Any librarians around who want to run a complimentary poll?

The retreat was great. There were about 40-45 people there and they were split into two groups. Group A came to me, while Group B went to Patti Gauch, then we swapped for the same presentation again. I sorta knew how Patti would approach voice (and I might have done many of the same things if she hadn’t been there), so I deliberately took a different tack and I think it enriched the experience for the participants. Then, I did a short intro to writing with scenes, more a reminder that this is an option than an indepth study.

The Alderbrook Resort was a great venue, right on the Hood Canal. From the restaurant, you could see a small stream feeding into the canal and we watched salmon swimming up the stream to spawn. Wow! Amazing to this land-locked Arkansan!

Thanks to Jolie Steckly and Sara Easterly for a fabulous job putting this together. (And to Sara’s new daughter, Violet Grace, for giving great cuddles.) And of course, thanks to Jamie Temairik, their assistant and fabulous illustrator.

And Thanks to all those who attended and inspired me with their energy, love of words and attention to detail!

Say Hello

• Weekend on the Water, Western Washington SCBWI Professional Retreat. This retreat, I’ll be teaching about Voice and Scenes.
• Arkansas Curriculum Conference, Little Rock, AR. Geared toward teachers, I”ll be presenting PAPER LIGHTNING: Prewriting Activities to Spark Creativity to English Language Arts teachers and talking about using The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman and Searching for Oliver K. Woodman in social studies classes.

Sign up for RSS feed

When the retreat and conference are over, we’ll be celebrating my mother-in-law’s 85th birthday. So, I’ll be offline for a couple days. Sign up for my RSS feed, so you don’t miss me when I get back.

New Page for Downloads

Meanwhile, to make it easy for you, I’ve put all the downloadable FREE files and Ebooks onto one page. Look here.

Vote Today

My Dad fought in WWII as a 30-something. When the Phillipines fell, he was a Japanese prisoner-of-war for three years. While in the camps, someone had a copy of Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They spent hours reading and analyzing that poem. It kept their minds busy, kept them from thinking about their circumstances. In a very real way, I’m here today because of literature. Because Daddy came home from war, married, and had eight children, of which I’m the fifth. In spite of three horrible years, he had a long and full life.

I vote today to honor my Dad, who fought for my right to vote.

Write Today

I also write today because a poet named Longfellow kept my Dad alive in the midst of overwhelming circumstances.

Katherine Paterson says:

I was writing — learning and growing along with the children — until eventually I was writing fiction worthy of publication. It might have happened sooner had I had a room of my own and fewer children, but somehow I doubt it. For as I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.

I write today because of my family — and just writing that brings an overwhelming flood of emotion.
I write today because life is indeed full, and a writing life isn’t busy — it’s full.

Write for Tomorrow

But partly, I write for tomorrow. Just as literature kept my Dad alive, so literature can, in so many ways, save those who come behind us, if we give them something worth reading.

Still and all, every night we does the Tell, so that we’ll ‘member who we was ans where we came from. . . But most of all we ‘members the man who finded us, him that came the salvage. . . And we lights the beacons, but not just for him — for all of ‘em that are still out there. . . ‘Cos we knows there’ll come a night when they see the flickering light, and they’ll be coming home. . .

(Special kudos to anyone who knows the source of that quote. )