Why You Need to Stop Rewriting

 “Every time my computer has ever crashed in the middle of writing an unsaved scene, and I had to rewrite it all from word one, it’s turned out better. There’s a lesson in that, and I think it’s this: I don’t need a muse; I need a less dependable computer.” –James V. Smith, Jr. from The Writer’s Little Helper.

Photo credit: Abizern on Flickr

The very first writing book I ever purchased was The Writer’s Little Helper by James V. Smith, Jr. When I came across the quote I started this post off with, it stuck with me. I thought it was an interesting observation, although I secretly hoped it was one I’d never have to make myself. Over the years I did a lot of writing and editing and even some rewriting, and as I tried to rewrite sections of my WIP, I would occasionally think back to that quote and silently thank my computer for not crashing on me so I had something to reference while I was rewriting.

Then, as I continued reading books on the craft, I started to notice a pattern.

In many of the exercises that included completely rewriting a scene in The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass, one of the steps included a variation of, “Without looking at your original draft, rewrite this [x]” (x being passage, scene, exposition, etc). And in Plot & Structure byJames Scott Bell, these two quotes stuck out to me:

“Let your characters have their way. Let your secret life be lived. Then at your leisure, in the succeeding weeks, months or years, you let the story cool off and then, instead of rewriting, you relive it.” –Ray Bradbury (page 173)

“Relive your scenes. Not rewrite. Relive.” –James Scott Bell (Page 203)

I have to admit, I initially resisted the thought of reliving versus rewriting scenes, but this really hit home for me when one of my critique partners suggested I rewrite a scene from my last WIP. Even though I’d already rewritten it, I took her advice and rewrote the scene again and submitted it to her to take a look at once more to see if it had improved. I was hoping she would say it was better so I could move on, but she didn’t. She suggested I rework it. Again.

I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t frustrated. I was. But as I sat down with my notebook to try to rewrite the scene yet again, I remembered what I’d read about reliving the scene rather than rewriting it—and at this point, what did I have to lose? So I did. I relived it and got the new version of the scene on paper. And while the scene played out the same way, it was different this time. I felt more directly connected to my protagonist’s experience and the writing showed it.  

So when my hard drive died the other day and I lost a new WIP idea I was working on (which I hadn’t backed up yet), I’ll admit I was less than happy. I may or may not have even written a few passive-aggressive tweets and Facebook posts about it. But part of me instantly remembered the quote I started this post off with, and I thought, well, I guess now I’m going to find out how true it is. So I replotted everything and started over. And I have to say, even if I do manage to get those files back, I don’t think I’ll need them anymore.  

Have you ever tried reliving a scene? If so, what was your experience? If not, do you think you will? 

How (Not) to Write Amazing Villains

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Darth Vader. Lord Voldemort. President Snow. Professor Umbridge. These are names that will forever live in infamy in our minds—names that struck fear in the hearts of more than a couple characters.

As writers, we often like to analyze the best of the best to discover their secrets so that we too can write characters worthy of being listed with them. After much research, I have uncovered the keys to brilliant villains, and because I’m a generous person, I’m posting them for all of you to see.

So, without further ado, here are the only tips you will ever need to write the perfect villain.*

Ten Keys to Writing Amazing Villains:

1. Evil name. No villain can be successful without an evil name. This is why Peter Pettigrew will never be listed beside Lord Voldemort. He was doomed from the start with such a silly-sounding name (sorry Peter, but Lord Pettigrew just doesn’t have the same ring to it).


2. Evil eyes. The eyes—oh! The eyes! Unless your villain has terrifying eyes, how can you expect him to terrify the other characters with a single glance? Don’t handicap your villain by giving him normal (or worse—pretty) eyes.


3. Evil monologue. This really goes without saying (because we all know how crucial the monologue is), but monologues make or break your villain. If your antagonist doesn’t go on for at least five pages about his nefarious plot to destroy the world with his excruciatingly evil death ray and how there’s nothing your protagonist can do about it, then it doesn’t matter how evil his eyes are because he (or she) has failed as a villain. 


4. Evil lack of hair. No one will take your villain seriously with a full head of hair. Can you imagine Lord Voldemort with hair? Exactly.


5. Evil mustache. The twirly kind, so your villain can spin his finger in it while monologing. (And yes, even the female villains require one).


6. Evil laugh. Case and point: MegaMind. 


(via Dhruv1sCeLT on YouTube) 


7. Evil smile. To be revealed just before your villain does something particularly nefarious, so that your protagonist knows something horrific is about to happen. And just to be creepy. Because all villains are creepy.


8. Evil cat/snake/pet. Voldemort had his snake, Umbridge had her kitten obsession and the Grinch had his dog. Coincidence? I think not.


9. Evil lair. Living in a normal home or suburb will slowly leech away your villain’s evilness. This must not happen. Give him a lair—preferably one with skeletons hanging on the walls and horrific torture devices and his death ray pointed at the sky. That way, when he captures your protagonist and brings him back to the lair, his evilness with literally resonate off the walls. 


10. Evil evil. This is the MOST IMPORTANT point. It doesn’t matter how evil his name or eyes or cat is if your villain’s evilness is not appropriately evil. Your antagonist must not have even a single redeeming quality, or his whole character will be ruined. Ruined! Your villain must live, breath, think and eat evil (cauliflower will do. Cauliflower is very evil).  The moment your reader starts to sympathize with your villain is the moment he has lost his credibility. Whatever you do, don’t let your villain show even a glimmer of un-evilness.

So that’s it. You now know how to write the most evil, terrifying villain in existence. Now get to work.

*= Assuming you want your villain to be so cliché-ridden that no one will be able to take him seriously at all.

What evil keys would you add to the list? 

How to Survive the Query Wars

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Maybe it's because summer is finally starting or maybe it's just a coincidence, but I've noticed more than a handful of writers mentioning that they've finished their WIP and will shortly be entering the trenches of the query wars as of late.

Querying is not an easy process for either party—for agents and publishers it means reading hundreds (or even thousands) of letters a month in search for a story that refuses to be passed up, and for writers it means researching agents until your eyes are about ready to fall out and forcing yourself to write letter after letter to be sent into cyberspace only to sit back and... wait. And wait.

No, it's not easy to send out query letters (or even write the darned things for that matter) nor is it easy to wait for responses and receive inevitable rejections (because regardless of how good your story is, it's very near impossible to avoid receiving any rejections).

However! There is hope! It is indeed possible for writers to survive the query wars—in fact, slews of writers do it all the time, and with these easy tips, you can too.

How to Survive the Query Wars: 

• You will be rejected. Accept this. I'm not being a pessimist when I say you're going to be rejected, nor am I saying that everyone you query is going to reject you. What I am saying is that as a writer you're going to face a lot of rejection throughout your career, both in the form of form letters from agents and publishers and in the form of reviews later on. You are a writer. Rejection is part of your life, now. But that's ok, because every writer has faced it—even those who went on to become multi-billion dollar successes (*cough* J.K. Rowling *cough*). 


• Learn to discern. Not all rejection letters are created equal. Receiving a form rejection means something a little different than receiving a personalized rejection (more on that here), and when you receive the rejection (i.e.: upon initial querying, after a partial/full request, etc.) speaks volumes about you might need to revise to get more positive responses. Remember: personalized rejections are a good sign. It means it was a near miss. Don't lose hope. 


• Write something else. I sometimes forget how important this is, but remembering to write something entirely unrelated to whatever project you're querying truly is essential. Working on another project accomplishes a few things: 


• It distracts you: distractions are worth their weight in gold during the query process. The less energy you spend worrying about that query letter you sent, the more energy you can spend on your writing.


• It reminds you that even if this project doesn't work out, you are a writer and will write again


• It takes the edge off rejection:I can't tell you enough how much easier it is to accept that your current project might not be ready for publication (or might have to go in the drawer) when you're excited about another new WIP. 


• As a bonus, if you get an agent or publishing contract, you now have another WIP with publication potential for the future.

Finally, when you do get that coveted agent or publishing contract...

Celebrate! 

Seriously. You've done it! Now go get some drinks, or have a nice dinner, or bake some cupcakes (or all of the above). You've gone through the query wars and came out on the other side whole. Now go celebrate.

What tips do you have for writers entering the query wars?

Do Your Characters Make Enough Mistakes?

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After re-watching The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King for the umpteenth time, it occurred to me just how crucial character mistakes are to the plot—and not just in The Lord of the Rings, but in nearly every bestseller that I can think of. And I’m not talking about minor character mistakes, either—I’m talking plot-changing horrendous errors that cause death and maiming. These characters make mistakes that they can never take back—mistakes that leave them scarred in more ways than one.

Let’s take a look at a few examples (some of these are a little spoilery, so proceed with caution):

• The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien)—Paranoid about people trying to take the ring from him, Frodo sends Sam away, follows Gollum into a rather eerie tunnel alone and nearly gets eaten by Shelob, the giant spider. And he sort of decides at the last possible second that he’s not going to destroy the ring after all, so Gollum has to bite his finger off to get it away from him.


• The Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)—Over the course of seven novels Harry makes some judgments about Snape and accuses him of more than a couple horrendous crimes, and we all know how that turned out. Oh, and there’s also that nasty habit he has of running into situations unprepared that often leads to people dying.  


• Divergent (Veronica Roth)—Tris refuses to forgive a certain depressed teenager and says some horrible (if not deserved) things to him and shortly thereafter he commits suicide.

These are just a few examples, but the list goes on.

There’s something to be learned from these characters’ less-than-stellar decision-making skills, namely, that characters make mistakes just like their real-life counterparts—except their mistakes often have more dire consequences.

But character errors are more than just a chance to make our readers want to slam their heads into walls: they provide opportunity for character growth, great tension-filled plot points and a chance for our readers to relate to them. We all make mistakes, and reading about a character who never makes mistakes not only misses a whole slew of plot possibilities, but also makes the character significantly more difficult to relate to.

In short, I encourage you to make sure your characters make plenty of errors along their journeys. Don’t be afraid to let them royally mess up or make the consequences of their actions dire.

Because just like reality, mistakes are essential for our growth, and unlike reality, they make the plot significantly more interesting.

What do you think? Are character mistakes important? Do your characters make enough mistakes?

The Gift Writing Gives Us

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“I think that is the gift that both reading and writing can give us; the gift of escaping the prison of ourselves.” –John Green

Although I couldn’t attend BEA (Book Expo America, for those of you wondering what all the talk about BEA is about), I’ve been listening to a lot of the live streamed and recorded events on the Book Expo America website, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the BEA staff that’s made those videos available online because the information they’ve recorded is pure gold (so if you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend it. With italics).

I especially loved listening to the Author Breakfast that featured a panel of Chris Colfer, John Green, Lois Lowry and Kadir Nelson, because between the laughs and heart-wrenching stories, the authors shared some really powerful advice. An example of this is the quote I started this post off with. You see, after Green joked about the progression from his first novel, Looking for Alaska, in which he shared quite a few traits with the main character to his most recent novel, The Fault in Our Stars, in which he didn’t share any traits with his protagonist, he said the quote that I included above, and I thought that he pointed out something really special about writing.

Because yes, we often hear about writing what we know and while I still think it’s useful to do so at times, what Green emphasizes is the unique ability writing gives us—the ability to escape ourselves and step into someone else’s life.

Writing gives us the chance to be and do whatever we want—and there are no limitations.

This is why we need to take chances as writers to explore new worlds and characters and ideas that are entirely different from our own circumstances. This is why Mary Sueism is more than just the sign of an undeveloped writer—it’s the sign of a writer who hasn’t yet discovered the true gift that writing gives us. This is why, as writers, it is our job to set out on uncharted territory and come out with a story that we might not have thought ourselves capable of writing.

Because, as John Green points out, the gift is for more than just writers—it’s a gift that we can share with our readers. A gift that can really make our work special.

So I encourage you to take a risk and step outside the prison of yourself. You might just return with your best writing experience yet.

Now it’s your turn: What other gifts do writing and reading give us? 

Why Writing Books Are Essential for Writers

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It goes without saying that most writers are also pretty avid readers (and those who aren't read anyway, or at least they should). While writers don't often have to be reminded to read books in their favorite genre or whatever genre they write in, it can sometimes be easy to forget another very important genre that all writers should be frequenting, namely, writing books.

Books on the craft come in all shapes and sizes—from enormous writing kits, to pocket-sized writing prompts and tips. Some cover a huge gamut of writing topics, while others focus on a specific aspect of writing like dialogue or plotting. What kind of writing book you choose will depend on your current goals or obstacles that you're trying to overcome, but the point is that you read them and, even more so, you actually do what they say.

What I mean is most writing books (and IMO, the best of them) include various exercises and prompts so that you can practice the new techniques and tips introduced throughout the book (a great example of this is The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass, as I mention later), and if you don't do any of them, then you've basically wasted your money buying the book to begin with.

Because the point of reading writing books isn't so that they look pretty on your bookshelf (although if they do, I suppose that's a bonus)—it's to improve your writing. It's to learn new techniques and tips that will ultimately lead to tighter, better-written manuscripts. But reading writing books without applying what you've learned is like taking a class and completely ignoring everything that's said—in which case you would have been better off staying home.

But if you read books on the craft carefully and actually do the exercises and apply the techniques to your work and—dare I say it—re-read them and highlight especially relevant information, I think you'll find that you'll get a lot out of the experience, and, better yet, your writing will start to improve.

Now that's not to say that by reading writing books you're guaranteeing publication or a best-selling indie title—regardless of what anyone tells you, there's never a guarantee like that in this field (or any field, for that matter). But if you want to improve your odds and you want to become a better writer, I can't recommend writing books enough.

Now this post would be pretty useless if I didn't give any examples of great books on the craft, so here are my top five favorites, in no particular order. I've also included the subtitles as they effectively summed up the purpose of their respective books:

1. The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass— "Passion, purpose and techniques to make your novel great."
   
   I actually wrote a review that explains in better detail why I enjoyed this one so much, but in short, it covers a large variety of writing topics and the exercises are fantastic.


2. Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell—"Techniques and exercises for crafting a plot that grips readers from start to finish."
   
   This is one of the many writing books from the Write Great Fiction series and it's one that's pretty well known for its great techniques and insight on plotting. Great for plotters and pantsers alike.


3. Revision & Self-Editing by James Scott Bell—"Techniques for transforming your first draft into a finished novel."
   
   This is also part of the Write Great Fiction series, and it's one that I found so incredibly helpful that I re-read it with a highlighter. Not only does it have fantastic advice and tips on how to revise your manuscript, but it has great quotes throughout the book with little extra nuggets of wisdom.


4. Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress—"Techniques and exercises for crafting dynamic characters and effective viewpoints."
   
   This is another from the Write Great Fiction series that I found so helpful that I re-read it with a highlighter in hand. The sub-title describes it pretty well, but this book is chock full of character development gold.


5. Your First Novel by Ann Rittenberg and Laura Whitcomb—"A published author and top agent share the keys to achieving your dream."
   
   You don't have to be writing your first novel to benefit from reading this one. Although it's a little outdated as it was written before the indie explosion, it still has great advice on getting your book written, and fantastic insight behind the traditional publishing curtain and what exactly an agent does.

Writing books are a hugely important resource for writers— one that every writer would benefit from taking advantage of.

So those are my top five favorite writing books. Now it's your turn: do you read books on the craft? If so, which are your favorite? If not, why not?

What Makes a Great Final Sentence?

"Your first chapter sells your book. Your last chapter sells your next book."—Mickey Spillane (from Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell).

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I wrote a post a while back about what makes a great first sentence, but it occurred to me that I never followed it up with an equally important discussion on the second most important sentence in your novel—the final sentence.

I think what Mr. Spillane said about the first and last chapter of a book applies to the first and last sentence—while the first sentence is largely responsible for hooking the reader, the last sentence must resonate with your readers, or else you risk losing them to an unsatisfying ending. That's not to say that a terrible ending can be completely saved by a stellar last sentence, but the final sentence is like the final note in a composition—it should echo and leave the reader with a certain tone. If done correctly, the final sentence provides closure and often mirrors the beginning, creating a full circle.

But of course we can't talk about final sentences without examples, so I've provided some sentences that I thought were especially effective. The sentence(s) in brackets are the ones that come before the final sentence that I included to provide a little context:

"[I am no longer Tris, the selfless, or Tris, the brave.] I suppose that now, I must become more than either." –Divergent by Veronica Roth

"[It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years.] But there are much worse games to play." –Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

"[The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years.] All was well." –Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

What I love about these examples is the way they echo overarching themes that repeated themselves throughout the book or series. For those who haven't read it, much of Divergent was about Tris (the protagonist) trying to choose her identity between two factions: the Abnegation girl her family raised her as, which values selflessness, versus the Dauntless girl she had chosen to be, which valued courage. Her acknowledgment that she must become more than either both confirms one of the great revelations of the novel (without spoiling anything—that Tris is different from most) and points to the future books where we know she will have to be strong to survive.

In two of the three examples I purposely included the final sentence of a series because they so effectively wrapped up not just their respective novels, but the series.

In the case of Mockingjay we all know what games Katniss is referring to when she says, "there are much worse games to play" and it leaves the reader nodding in agreement while thinking back to the events of all three books.

In the Harry Potter example, the throbbing of Harry's scar was a foreboding sign throughout the series that became more and more frequent throughout the course of seven books as Voldemort became more powerful. To say that Harry's scar hadn't hurt him for nineteen years really confirms the final sentence that all is (finally) well.

So in short, a great final sentence does two of three things:

1. Reflects elements from the novel/series.
2. Wraps up both the book and series OR wraps up the book while leading into the sequel.

Once your final sentence accomplishes both of those things, you know you have a great final note on your hands.

Now it's your turn: What else do you think a final sentence should do? What are your favorite final sentences and what made them so memorable?