The hardest questions

Finally, there’s these, which will really make you (and me!) think:

1. What isn’t being seen?
2. What’s the most important question?
3. What’s dangerous in this world?
4. What problem (external conflict) does the external situation present? How can the protagonist eventually resolve that conflict?
5. List three obstacles that stand in the way of the protagonist resolving this conflict.
6. How will the protagonist grow because of confronting these obstacles?
7. What do you want to happen at the end of this book?
8. What will have to happen to the protagonist against his/her will to make your ending come about?

My answers:

1. This is another tough one for me, since it’s pretty obvious what’s going on. The end of the world is coming and things are going to bad, worse than they are, which is already bad. But. What I’ve discovered thus far is that sometimes secondary characters surprise you, and by digging into their motives, you can see things from a new and interesting perspective. I’ve got two characters like that and I’m still learning about them.
2. Ah, the most important question. For which I have no answer – yet!
3. Everything is dangerous in my world. The whole world has gone to hell and leaving the sanctuary of the designated safe towns (DSAs for designated safe areas in my story) would be extremely unsafe – not to say there’s any guarantee inside a DSA. After all, it is the apocalypse…
4. The apocalypse presents the main issue of survival. When the world ends, how does the government function? Can it? And how does everyone who’s left mange without the convenience of electricity, the local grocery store, heat, not to mention all the unpleasant people left who don’t care about getting along or working together. The problem is Seth can’t resolve the apocalypse or make it go away, he and everyone else are going to have to try to survive it.
5. I do have some obstacles in mind for Seth but I’m not going to reveal them since that would be a total spoiler. But this is an easy question for me. I can always think up bad things to do to my characters.
6. I’ve designed these obstacles to be growing experiences for Seth. I mean really, everything that happens has to change him, and hopefully those changes will enable him to survive.
7. That’s another one I won’t answer so not to spoil things. But I do have an answer!
8. Bloody Hell. Back to a tough one again. I have to admit, I often have a hard time with this question. One thing I do know, Seth is going to have to make some hard choices if he wants to live, the kind where something bad will happen no matter how he chooses.

Now it’s your turn and feel free to share as much or as little as you like.

The harder questions…

 As promised, I’ve got more questions to make you think about what you’re writing. This is all stuff I found elsewhere, either in books, on people’s blogs, or websites. They all make me think about what exactly I’m writing, and who my characters are. But, some of them are hard…

1. Does this character like himself/herself?
2. What if anything would he or she change about their life?
3. Strongest/weakest character traits
4. How can the flip side of the strong points be weaknesses and vise versa?
5. Talents?
6. How is the character ordinary or extraordinary?
7. How is the situation ordinary or extraordinary? 

As you can see these are harder questions, making you think more about your character than their name age, appearance, and basic back-story.

My answers:

1. Hmm, this is hard. I don’t think Seth likes himself, or maybe I should say he doesn’t think highly of himself.
2. Seth wishes his sister never died and he could’ve lived happily with the family he used to have.
3. Seth isn’t spontaneous. He thinks things through. And even though he’s in the ALT Ed program at school, he’s smarter than average, as evidenced by the tree house he built out of salvaged material. Seth’s weakness is that he feels weak, trapped first by his family situation and now by the absence of normality.
4. Maybe Seth thinks too much sometimes, I’m not sure. This is another tough question. Some character strengths and weakness can easily be reversed, others, not so much.
5. He’s good at figuring things out, solving problems, and even though he’s afraid sometimes, he plows through.
6. I think Seth is ordinary, after all, there’s lots of kids who have crappy home lives and attend the ALT Ed program.
7. I’m hoping that the situation (the apocalypse), which is extraordinary, will also make Seth extraordinary. We’ll see.

Now it’s your turn. Feel free to share in the comments!

And now for something completely different…

Okay, maybe not completely, ie, we’re still going to be talking about writing this week, but I want to try something to see if it will make you all think. Some of these things I have trouble with and some I find easy. But let’s start at the beginning shall we?

In the comments, tell us what you’re working on:

1. Working Title if it has one
2. Genre
3. Intended Age group
4. The main character, or if multiple, the one you thought of first. Tell us something about him/her in one short paragraph.
5. Current word count
6. Where are your characters right now? What are they doing?
7. Do you know how it all ends?
8. Plotter? Pantser? Somewhere in between?

My answers:

1. RUN
2. Apocalyptical
3. YA
4. Seth, age 17, lost his sister in an accident that ruined his family, mom somewhere unknown, dad a mean drunk, which led Seth to build a tree house in the woods near his house…
5. 38,697 (I’m a slow writer)
6. They’ve just attended a quasi town meeting in which Major Baldwin informed the townsfolk of the impending blackout, and holds up three of his men as heroes for bringing in much needed supplies. One of them is an especially unpleasant fellow Seth and Lola met earlier in the story. Lola decides to leave the safety of the town.
7. I do have the very last scene written (though it goes without saying it may change), but getting there is going to be an adventure.
8. Pantser with some plotting thrown in plus character questionnaires, and novel questions – more of which I’ll be sharing with you later in the week.

These are the easy questions, Wednesday I’ll have some harder questions for you :)

What I Wish I Had Known

Since many of us are participating in the April Blogging A to Z Challenge, I thought we would keep things simple this week. Let's simply talk about some of the things we've learned during the course of this writing journey we're on.

Today I thought it would be great to share some posts I stumbled on that I wish I had read years ago before starting out as a writer. Perhaps they would have helped me enter the path with a better sense of reality. (I mean, come on! I write fiction for crying out loud. Reality is just a thread sticking out of my sweater sleeve.)

I'll also ask you to share what you wish YOU had known before becoming a writer.

• I wish I had known how time intensive this process would be. 
• I wish I had known how hard it would be for my family to support my desire to give this "hobby" a try.
• I wish I had known from the very beginning that my writing style doesn't (and probably never will) fit perfectly in a well labeled box. It would have saved me much heartache.

I'm glad I didn't know what wonderful friends and support I would find in the online writing community. That's one surprise that helped me to press forward.

Links:
21 Thing I Wish I'd Known Before I Started Writing by Robin Black
What I Wish I Knew Before I was Published-- a list from many authors
5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Author--I love #3 even though I don't drink. :)
And this most excellent post...
Nice Things I Wish I'd Known About Publishing by Alison Cherry

So, comment now. What do you wish you'd known about writing, getting published, marketing, etc?

Some Publishing Basics

This week I'm giving advice to the new member of my writers' group. Feel free to chime in with anything I miss.

Most of the discussion we had on his first meeting had to do with publication. Sure, he knew the novel wasn't quite finished, but he's anxious to get it out into the world. He found a "publisher" that would put together his book... for a fee. And now he's been getting emails from them urging him to submit his novel.

We directed him to step away from the vanity publisher...

The first thing to do is to finish the novel. And by finish, I mean it should have been read by critique partners and/or beta readers. It would be a good idea to have an editor take a look at it (this is one thing to definitely pay for).

Then, once you're sure you're ready... (Are we ever truly ready? There's always more tinkering to do. But at some point we must dive in.)

You must decide what route you want to take. You can submit to traditional publishers or do it yourself. (Last week we had a great post on the differences in publishers. Thanks, Carol. Perfect timing.)

Which is the right way to go? Well, that's a very individual decision. There are pros and cons on both sides, so I'm going to open this question up to you.

Did you (are are you planning to) publish with a publishing house (large or small), or did you go it on your own? Why? If you could go back and do it differently, would you?

Writing It

The new member of my writing group had completed a first draft. He's in the process of editing it. Rewriting.

He gave the manuscript to his wife who's offering her feedback. But they're kind of flying blind.

He contacted local universities to find classes on how to write a novel, but the people he talked to were no help. They offered basic English classes. He knew he needed more, and that's how he ended up joining our group.

How does one write a novel? Are there classes? Or do we all go into this and just see where it takes us?

There is no one way to write a novel. We all do it differently. We must find what works for us and go with that. We'll figure out how to tell our story. There will be road bumps along the way.

He has done the two most important things. Things that many writers starting out have not done:

1. He wrote a draft.
• This is huge! How many times do we hear people moaning that they have a novel idea, but don't have the time to write it? He sat down and pounded out the pages. 
2. He joined a writing group.
• He's found us now, and we're a resource to help him on his journey. As we are there to help each other.

So, while he might not think that he knows what he's doing, he's made a very good start. But as he's not sure where to go from here, it's time to point him in the right direction. He doesn't feel his novel is finished, but mostly because he needs the feedback of other writers.

Other things he could do: 

• Read books on writing
• Join online writing groups 
• Find beta readers and critique partners
• Follow good writers' blogs

What else can you think of? What have I missed? Do you have any good books to recommend? Any other tips?

Where to Start?

A new member joined the local writing group I'm a member of. We hadn't quite started, so he was asking us all sorts of questions about writing, editing, and publishing. He joined the group because he has been working on a novel that has turned into a trilogy, and he wasn't sure what to do next.

As I listened to his questions, I realized that I haven't been spinning my wheels all this time. I've actually been learning something. From you all. From around the Internet. From books. From writing.

I guess if you plug away at it long enough, you do get better at it.

We all had different advice for our new member, and I commented that there's a lot out there on the Internet if you go looking. He had been searching, but he wasn't finding anything that was helping him. I offered to point him to some good writing sites...um...two months ago...  

When I sat down to do it, I realized there was so much. I didn't know where to start. I kind of got overwhelmed by it. And I wanted to formulate it into something that made some sort of sense.

So, this week all my posts are for him. It's novel writing and publishing for novices. And since the rest of you are experts, I'm counting on your help as well. Because he had a lot of questions, and I think we all know how it feels to wade into this thing called writing.

What do you wish you had known after finishing your very first (and/or second) draft? What's a good site for someone who is new to all this to visit?

Ask Chrys

Dear Unicorn Bell Readers,

My posts Dear Uninspired Writer and Dear Time-Strapped Writer gave me an idea that I hope you all will enjoy, support, and find useful.

I’ve always liked to help writers in whatever way I can. That’s why I started blogging in the first place. And after I got an email from a writer looking for advice, I knew I wanted to help even more than I already am. Therefore, I am extending an invitation to Unicorn Bell readers (and all writers, really) to email me their questions and concerns if they are seeking advice about writing. I’ll reply back to every single email I get and will select 3-5 to showcase on Unicorn Bell when it’s my turn to co-host.

Think of it as an advice column for writers in the blogosphere.

Do you have a writing insecurity?

Do you want advice on something writing-related?

Please email me at ChrysFey(at)yahoo(dot)com and put “Dear Chrys” in the subject line. I don’t claim to know everything, but I’ll help you as much as I possibly can.

If you do email me, and I think other writers could benefit from the advice I give you, you could see your question designed as a post right here like my previous two posts.

I look forward to your emails!

Xoxo

Chrys

P.S. I'm revealing the covers for my two short stories over at my blog, Write with Fey. Come check them out! :D 

All Ask Chrys posts so far:

Dear Withdrawn Writer

Dear Time-Strapped Writer

Dear Un-inspired Writer

Dear Blocked Writer

Dear Degree-less Writer

Dear Young Writer

Dear Aspiring Author

Dear Confused Facebook Author

Dear Scrambling Writer

Dear Writer Not Writing

Author of Hurricane Crimes, 30 Seconds, Ghost of Death, and Witch of Death. Blogger. Reader. Auntie. Vegetarian. Cat Lover.

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