The Writing Process
ABC's
I'd like to teach you a little bit about the writing process. You see, I wrote for a long time before I got my first book published and I've decided that there are two different facets to being a writer. 1) The love of storytelling and the mindset to follow through, sit still and tell it. 2) The craft or the writing process. You can learn the craft, there are all sorts of ways to master the details of writing a book. But the love of storytelling mixed with the ability to sit still—you're either born with that or you're not. It's a weird—and probably unfortunate—combination of a hyperactive mind and a sedentary body. For better or worse, I have that. If you've got that, I'm going to give you some basics about the writing process that will help you with Part Two. Things you need to know before you sit down and start typing… "It was a dark and stormy night…”
Set the Scene:
When you’re writing, you’ve got to Set the Scene. This is something I had trouble with. I have always enjoyed dialogue. I like my characters moving, talking, sassing each other. That’s fun for me. But setting the scene during the writing process was a weakness…as I was told many times in judge's comments. ‘I don’t know if you’re inside or outside’. ‘What are your characters wearing?’‘What does the room look like?’ ‘are they standing or sitting?’ 'are they in Chicago or New Orleans or a ranch in rural Texas?’ The scene descriptions are not allowed to drag on either, so really consider that during the writing process. It slows the story. So you choose your words very carefully, insert them in bits. Tag dialogue with, ‘she shoved the sleeves of her favorite, black Harvard Law School sweatshirt up to her elbows.’
The Five Senses:
The Five Senses in the Writing Process: This is amazingly important. While the scene setting needs to be subtle and quick, the senses are what really draw the reader in. If your heroine smells smoke when the house is on fire—sure you’re going to mention that. But there's so much more. Are the trees overhead rustling in the wind? Is traffic whizzing by? She inhaled the scent of fresh hot coffee and warmed her hands on the heavy white pottery mug. The touch, scent, vision, sound, taste bring a reader deeply into the book in a way that’s kind of hard to explain and is easy to skip as a writer, but it’s really effective. Use your sense, use the senses. (Hey, that’s like a novelist fortune cookie!)
POV = Point of View:
This is something that is IMPORTANT and CONFUSING especially in a world where so many established authors break this rule during their writing process. POV is; Whose head you’re in? One POV per scene. And no, Nora Roberts doesn’t obey this. But news flash: You’re not Nora. Obey the writing process rule. You’re in the heroine’s head, you can only KNOW what she’s thinking, feeling. There are ways to show what he’s thinking/feeling through her POV, though. She saw his eyes brim with tears and knew he had never gotten over the death of his first love. A handy thing about this is she can ‘know’ what he’s thinking and be completely wrong…so you, as the author, need to let the reader know she’s wrong, and you can do that later when you’re in HIS POV. “He remembered the moment they’d talked of his first love and he’d had to fight back tears of relief that the battle-ax was dead.”
So now we’ve got the reader inside everybody’s head--but in their turn--one at a time. The characters can be mixed up but the readers can be clear.
POV is tricky. And one POV per scene is the rule.
Back Story Dump:
Next comes Back Story Dump. This is just an almost uncontrollable urge every author on the planet--including me--has to tell the reader what brought the characters to where the story begins. You’re supposed to begin your book with an explosion. Not always an actual explosion, an emotional one is fine…but honestly, I prefer if something really blows up. Bring on the dynamite. Well, we can’t be blowing things up now can we if we’re locked inside the heroine’s head while she’s driving along remembering her mother’s death, her fiancé’s betrayal, and her boss firing her for not submitting to his disgusting advances. Now she’s penniless, almost out of gas and there are wolves howling in the dark woods through which she is now driving.NO! Stop thinking about the past and explode the story.
Here’s the thing with back story. You need it. You wouldn’t have made it up during your writing process if you didn’t need it. So, you’ve got to assume you need it for a REASON. Therefore, that back story is going to wind its way into your story somehow. Seriously, it makes its way in. You do NOT need to write a three page back story, certainly not. Not even a one paragraph back story. Try half a sentence per page for the whole book.
Dialogue:
Get OUT of her head and make her talk. If she’s fighting for her life then, okay, she is allowed to NOT talk, but otherwise, get her a friend or a dog or a teddy bear or something so she can talk not think. Thinking is very slow.
Action:
Which brings us to action. Make her MOVE please. Make someone move in the process of your writing. If your book starts with her driving along for ten pages, reflecting on her whole life up to this point—alone—with no five senses—in an
omniscient POV,
you’re are about to lose your reader in the process and you need to fix it. “Fighting the high wind and blinding lightning on the heavily wooded rural highway distracted Madeline Blodgett from plotting revenge. Something dashed into the road ahead of her and she instinctively jammed on the brake and wrenched the wheel to avoid impact. The nose of her rusted out Chevy Cavalier slammed into a rock alongside the road. The hood of her car blasted straight up and flames shot skyward. The car went into a spin. Lightning revealed a cliff directly ahead. Fighting the handle, Maddy wrenched the door open and threw herself out rolling, sliding along on the heartless, frozen pavement. The choking smoke from the car burned her lungs and sparks rained onto her head. The car launched into midair. Momentum carried her after the car. Clawing at the frozen ground she tore her fingernails to bloody stumps. A slender branch slapped her face and she snagged it, stopping her fall. She tasted her own blood as she.
blah, blah, blah… I’d have her dangle, fight her way back up from the edge(the word cliffhanger came from somewhere!). Some blood drip in her eyes, a wolf howl, I'm picturing sleet to wed the 'frozen' with the 'lightning'. You know, the regular opening for a sweet Christian romance novel….
Dragging herself back up onto the bridge, she raised her eyes and looked straight into the dripping fangs of the alpha male of a growling wolf pack. He was going to tear her to shreds and eat her flesh. Even so Maddy knew the wolf would treat her ten times better than her back-stabbing, cheating, lying, slimeball ex-fiancé.
That’s it. That’s all the back story you get for this page. We need a hero to jump between her and the wolves about now, don’t you think? Although I'm a big fan of heroines saving themselves. Still, this is a really tight spot. I'm sure she had a shotgun but it went over the cliff with her car. The hero had better show up and be tough but have a real bad attitude. Why the bad attitude? His own back story. But please, please, please don’t tell me about it yet. And you can’t anyway because we’re in her POV. And here's the bottom line, if there is anything about these basics of the writing process you don’t understand—go learn them. You have to. Have toGo look at your book. Are the senses there, the dialogue? Is the back story gone? Did you explode your beginning? Who’s POV are you in?
Being a storyteller is fun. The craft of the writing process is a lot of hard work.
Speaking of the writing process,Mary's latest release is The Husband Tree which, coincidentally, has a woman chased by a pack of wolves. However, there's no car involved, just a historical, romantic comedy with cowboys. Here is a little bit about The Husband Tree.
Belle Tanner buries her third worthless husband and makes a vow over his shallow grave. She’s learned her lesson. No more men. Silas Harden just lost his second ranch because of a woman. The first deserted him when times got tough. Now he’s had to quit the whole state of New Mexico to avoid a trumped-up shotgun wedding and the noose of matrimony. He’s learned his lesson. No more women.Belle needs hired hands to move a cattle herd late in the season and there’s no one around but seemingly aimless Silas. She hires him reluctantly. Silas signed on, glad for the work, though worried about a woman doing such a thing as hiring drovers, only to find out he’s the lone man going with five woman, including a baby still in diapers. After the cattle drive is over, he might as well shoot himself to speed up the process of being embarrassed to death. A fast approaching winter. The toughest lady rancher you’ve ever seen. A cynical cowboy who has to convince five women he’s right for their ma. . .and then convince himself. And one thousand head of the crankiest cattle who have ever been punched across the backbone of the Rockies.
Mary Connealy writes romantic comedy with cowboys. She is the author of the Lassoed in Texas series, Petticoat Ranch, the Christy Award nominated Calico Canyon and Gingham Mountain. A new series begins now. Montana Marriages, Book #1 Montana Rose, Book #2 The Husband Tree and Book #3 Wildflower Bride. A stand alone romantic comedy with cowboys, Cowboy Christmas released in September. Black Hills Blessing a 3-in-1 collection of sweet contemporary romances is in bookstores now. Also an avid blogger, Mary is a GED instructor by day and an author by night.find her online at:
Seekerville
Petticoats & Pistols
Mary Connealy's Blog
My Website
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