Tag: writing tips

How do you get your ideas?

A reader emailed me today with a question that all writers get asked all the time, but this reader was so polite and thoughtful by the way he asked, that I’m sharing both Q and the A:

Q:

Dear Marsha,

I really enjoy your books. I’m currently reading “The War Below,” and I really admire your writing. You make your work come alive, and I can visualize every little bit in my head.

I have considered writing a novel of my own, and I’ve decided I am going to do it. But there is one problem, and that is that I cannot think of an idea.

Did you ever experience writer’s block? If you did, I was wondering how you thought of ideas. I would really love your help.

Thank you very much, and I love your work.

A:

Dear __,

A really good way of getting ideas is by talking to people about their lives. I asked a lot of questions of all of my grandparents, my parents and my husband’s parents. That kickstarted a lot of my stories. I also ask a lot of questions when I meet someone new. I want to know what it would be like to be them. To be a writer, you need to be able to step into another person’s (actually, many different people’s) shoes and figure out what it would be like to be them on a day to day basis.

You generally can’t just start asking a total stranger to tell you everything about them, but you’ll be amazed by what you learn by asking open ended questions and just listening. People who have lived through war or trauma often have a world of story bottled up inside but you can’t just come out and ask them. I like to get around it sideways. For example, if I’m talking to someone much older than myself or from a different cultural background, I ask them something about their past that will evoke a comfortable memory, like the first day of school, or a memorable celebration. Their anecdotes about that can give you ideas for other questions.

That’s not all there is to writing a book, but that’s a way to get some ideas. You may have noticed that a lot of writers are not big talkers, and that’s because they’re asking questions and listening.

I have other tips for writing on my website here:

Writing Tips

Three bad writing habits

There are lots of bad habits that can mess up a manuscript, but here are three that often show up in early drafts.

ONE: Exclamation marks

Don’t use them. 

You can always go back and sprinkle some in later but try to get away with as few as possible. They are a crutch and each time you use one their effect is diminished. Avoiding them will force you to be a better word-selector.

TWO: Fancy and extended dialogue tags


Don’t laden your dialogue tags with description, (ie she said angrily as she took a sip of her hot cider). The words you put in your character’s mouth should imply the power of their wants/needs/loves/hates and the dialogue itself is implicit action, or SHOWING, whereas dumping info into the dialogue tag is by definition TELLING — and should be avoided. 

A quick way of cleaning up about 60% of this is to do a global search on “ily” because you’ll find a lot of the adverbs that way and adverbs are all about telling. Trust your power of good dialogue and avoid the temptation of second-guessing yourself by adding into the dialogue tag what you already make clear with your choice of words and tone in what your characters say. Less is more.

THREE: Dialogue instead of scenes


Do you have pages of solid dialogue? This is a red flag for action that happened in the past. If you find sections of your story that are almost entirely dialogue, check it to see if you’re using dialogue as a scene avoidance technique. While conversation is nominally action, over dependence on dialogue is a way to unconsciously avoid writing a scene. 

Every paragraph in a story should include at least one powerful action event. Don’t waste action potential on a scene with two heads yakking at each other after the fact. Plunge your scene in the middle of the action, and then chase your characters, keyboard in hand. Your readers will thank you for that.

A young reader asks how to get published: my answer

Dear xxx,

Congratulations on being such an avid reader and writer. That’s wonderful! As to the process of having a book published, it is a long and complicated thing. If you google how to get a book published you will encounter all sorts of scammers who just want to steal your money with the end result that your book might get printed, but that’s not the same as getting published. The difference is this: anyone can write a story and get the story printed and bound into book form, but the only people who would ever read that are the people you give it to. When a book is published, the writer crafts a unique story with wide appeal that a publisher (which is a category of business) buys and the publisher has the author work with editors to make the story even better. That part of the process alone can take several months. The publisher also works with marketing people and designers etc etc, and then gets a printing company to do the actual manufacturing of the book. The publisher also sends out advance review copies of the book to reviewers across the country. They read the book and then give it a rating and they write a review of it and those reviews get published in various places and readers read those reviews and it makes them decide whether they want to buy the book or not. The author doesn’t pay for any of that to happen and they’re really not involved in the business end of it. The author gets paid. How much? On a $10 book, an author would be paid $1. So the way to have an income as an author is to write a book that a ton of people will buy. Publishers are very picky about the books they publish because it’s such a complicated and expensive process for them. In fact, a publisher might get thousands of people sending them book manuscripts in a year and they only publish one out of maybe 10,000.

To put it another way, what if you were interested in being a veterinarian? No matter how gifted you were in science, you still wouldn’t do surgery on a dog, right? You still need all the training. It’s the same thing for being an author. There are lots of people who are talented in writing, but they still need the training.

My advice to you is to take your time and learn about the craft of writing now, rather than trying to get published right off the bat. A good way to prepare yourself to be an author is to read widely, which I know you’re already doing. Set yourself a goal of reading 1000 books in the same genre as what you’d like to write. I know that sounds daunting, but reading widely is the way to expose yourself to all sorts of story techniques and give yourself ideas of what may work for you. It’s a pathway for you to develop your own unique writing voice. People who haven’t read widely risk sounding like the last author they read.

The other thing to do is to write every day, which I suspect you’re also already doing. Keep up the good work! Just like a marathon runner trains for a race by running, an aspiring author trains by writing.

If you get your whole book written, the next thing to do is join a critique group where others who are writing books give you feedback on your story and that helps improve it. Writers need to be humble and to realize that they can always improve. It’s a hard profession.

I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was in 4th grade and I wrote my first novel in 8th grade but my first book wasn’t published until I was 42 years old. I did have other stuff published before that though. For example, I was the editor for the school yearbook in 8th grade and wrote for the high school newspaper and was a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines before writing books. I also went to college and did a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a master’s degree of Library Science. When publishers look at manuscript submissions, they also look at the writer’s background. They are more likely to be interested in a story written by someone who has been published before and who takes their writing so seriously that they study in college to improve themselves, so taking these steps at the beginning can lead to long time success.

Good wishes with it all and big hugs to you

Marsha

Writing historical fiction

I finished the first draft of Making Bombs For Hitler in February and I’ve gone through two substantive edits since then. It is scheduled to be published by Scholastic in 2012. That first draft took four intense months.  The edits were easier, thanks to SB, my fabulous editor!

Many people are daunted at the prospect of writing historical fiction. Here are some suggestions on how to begin:

Do preliminary research of the era you want to write about and try to imagine yourself living in that time. Non-fiction children’s books are a great preliminary research tool. Also encyclopedias and textbooks. At this stage you just want to gather enough background to get the general lay of the land.

In order to come up with a premise for a novel, ask yourself: What would happen if…

Think in terms of a dilemma for a person in your historical era.

As an example, for my 2008 Armenian genocide novel Daughter of War, the question was: If you were pregnant by rape but survived a genocide, would you want your fiance to find you?

If you can’t boil your novel idea down into a question like that, it’s too unwieldy a concept.

Do an outline. I hate outlines, but it is amazing what you can pre-organize by doing a one or two page point form plotting of your entire novel.

Try writing a sample chapter or two. This will help you narrow down the point of view, as well as voice and tone.

After you’ve done the outline and initial chapters, do more research.

Do read memoirs, diaries, newspaper articles, recordings, interviews, maps, city directories of your era. Look at photographs. If people are still alive, talk to them.

Do not read novels set during your era. If you do that, you may unconsciously pick up inaccurate bits, or you could unwittingly copy the author’s style or turns of phrase.

Try to get opposing points of view of the same situation. As an example, when I was researching Daughter of War, I consulted both Armenian and Turkish memoirs, as well as those of missionaries and medical personnel of the time. Inter-library loan and abebooks.com are great resources for this sort of item.

Over-researching is great procrastination technique. Not only do you waste time, but you’ll also be tempted to use everything you learn, which makes for a very boring novel.

I like to do commando research — ie — only as much as I’ll need for the next 20 pages or so. When I dry out, I do more research.

Now start writing!

Think in terms of scenes. You don’t have to write the story in order. I like to start with the scene that is most vivid in my imagination. As I write each scene, I decide whether it comes before or after that first one. As the writing continues, the story develops like raindrops forming a puddle. Don’t worry about sticking to your outline. Let your characters take you to new places.

Goal one is to get the first draft finished.

Set yourself a schedule. It might be to write one new page a day, or maybe to write just one new paragraph a day. I like to write one scene a day. Butt in chair (or feet under tread desk) and get those words out. Don’t get up (or get off) til your goal is achieved.

Don’t give in to excuses. The most lame one is that you’re too busy to write. Writing can be done in a steno pad while waiting in line at the grocery store or watching your kids play baseball, or on the subway. My favourite writing place is at an airport.

Do not keep going back to page one in an attempt to make it perfect. That is just a procrastination technique. First drafts aren’t supposed to be perfect.

Once you finish your first draft reward yourself!

It is a huge achievement to be able to write The End. Go to the movies, Eat chocolate. Drink wine.

Let that first draft cool off for a couple of days before looking at it again. Once you’ve given your brain a chance to clear, print your draft and read it aloud, carefully, a few pages at a time. You will be amazed at what you can catch when you speak your words and read them on paper instead of the screen.

There are many more steps to revision, but that’s another post.

question about picture books

The other day I had an interesting question via email:

“In your writing tips, you warned against submitting photos or pictures with the text — commissioning your sister-in-law to paint some pictures for the book, for example, is a bad idea.
However, what if the pictures are your own drawings, and you want to be an illustrator as much as you want to be a writer?”

Here is my answer:

There is one exception to never sending in illustrations, and that’s if you’re a professional artist. Even so, the best way to handle it is to submit the story without illustrations, but to mention in your cover letter that you are an artist. If you have a sample that can be viewed online, give them the url.

Another way around it is to submit your art portfolio without your story.

If you’re an illustrator, consider making up postcards and sending them out to editors.

The reason you don’t want to submit both at the same time is because it gives them two reasons to reject you. What if they hate the story but love the illos or visa versa? That said, there are some publishers who specifically request submissions from people who are both author and illustrators. Those ones should be on the top of your “to submit” list.

Good luck with your submissions!