Category Archives: Non-writers just don’t understand

8:00 pm - June 11, 2014 - sjcarlson

What’s the hardest part of a novel to write for you?

For me, with each of my manuscripts, it’s been the first chapter. Hooligans in Shining Armour follows two POV characters, Fiona and Danny. Danny’s first chapter has never been questioned. It’s solid. Fiona on the other hand….

The first several drafts, nothing changed with Fiona’s. Then a number of people from my writer’s group, including a bunch who read the whole thing, said the first chapter was too slow and introduced the readers into a world that they promptly left and never saw again. Too much “ordinary world” before “inciting incident”. That it didn’t feel connected to the rest of the story. So I cut the first chapter entirely and stuck little bits of important stuff from that chapter elsewhere. Fiona’s first chapter was basically a paragraph hinted at ordinary world then BAM! inciting incident. Then I sent it to the editor. She said that she didn’t feel connected to Fiona’s old life or her quest to return home (ha now, inciting incident too soon, not enough ordinary world). She wanted to get a sense of her life in Madison before she went to Belfast.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get a first chapter together, knowing that that’s the first thing agents will read. It has so many jobs to do: establish tone/voice/genre, introduce protagonist and other main characters, show us what Fiona looks like, give us a glimpse into Fiona’s psyche, hint at what the Fiona’s journey will be, show us the world/s she lives in, and other things, too. All while being engaging and having some kind of tension on every page to keep the reader going. If the first page, the first paragraph, the first sentence isn’t attention-grabbing, you risk turning off agents and readers.

Anyway as I was sitting at the airport waiting to welcome my sister to the wonderful world of Singapore, I think I figured out how to solve both issues at once. I always get this giddy feeling when I finally solve a story conundrum and I really think I’ve done it this time with a little mix of both. Hopefully I’ll get Fiona finalized soon so I can post it! To learn more about Hooligans and read Danny’s chapter, click here.

What’s the hardest part to write in your novel? The beginning? The sagging middle? The perfect ending?

Categories: Non-writers just don't understand, Writing Tags: getting published, writing

10:02 am - June 6, 2014 - sjcarlson

“What’s you novel about?” ….Oh crap, I haven’t thought of a log line yet!

What’s my novel about you ask?

Have you ever had that moment where you’re like, crap, how do I explain to a most-likely-only-politely-interested person my entire life’s work for the past months or years? And then you’re talking and watching their face and their eyes are glazing over and it’s obvious that you’re making NO sense. That leaves you like, okay, crap how do I gracefully end this conversation without just doing this:

After it’s all said and done, it may leave you feeling like, wow, if I can’t explain my novel in an interesting, coherent way, who’s ever going to want to read it? What is the meaning of my life even?????

Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but….

Honestly, I sometimes even have a hard time explaining after I’ve written my synopsis and query letter. I’ll over-explain or under-explain or tell too much about subplots or secondary characters. It’s hard to quickly, coherently explain a novel in a few sentences, but we have to have our “elevator speech” ready if we’re going to pitch to agents or even self-publish. Oh, the joys of being a writer. We can’t just write a novel and be like, YEAH! IT’S AWESOME SO READ IT! We have to persuade people with very short attention spans that our novel is worth hours of their time. That’s a whole different art.

Have you ever had this happen to you? How do you prepare your “elevator speech” or log line?

Category: Non-writers just don't understand Tags: creativity, getting published, writing

8:28 am - June 2, 2014 - sjcarlson

Opening that email from your editor….

Ermahgerd!!

Okay, so it’s not actually 123985 changes… Just 2100 on a 180 page single-spaced document. Eek! Heart palpitations! Actually, that’s part of why I’m writing my third post in 24 hours. I’m having a hard time looking at more than a page at a time. So overwhelming and scary! Especially since one suggestion was to consider cutting one of the two POV characters and having only one POV!

I sent this away three weeks ago and got it back today. This was specifically “development editing” which means it’s meant to look more at overall structural things and I was specifically looking for cultural and linguistic feedback. I’ve kind of skimmed through it a bit and it appears she’s also made quite a few punctuation suggestions. Bonus.

Anyway, that’s what I paid her for, right? So….

Okay, let’s do this!

Have you ever used a professional editor? What was your experience like?

Categories: Non-writers just don't understand, Uncategorized, Writing Tags: creativity, getting published, writing

8:32 am - May 30, 2014 - sjcarlson

Writer’s brains are awesome…we hold God knows how many other worlds in our head. How many are in yours?

This isn’t so much me, but I know a lot of other writers often have more than one WIP. Yep that’s how awesome our brains are. We can hold our reality (hopeful) along with one to you tell me how many other worlds that we create.

I posted this before and I’m going to post it again just because it’s that funny.

What are you working on right now? How many WIP? What do you tell your friends when they ask how that novel’s coming?

Categories: Non-writers just don't understand, Writing Tags: creativity, Humor, writing

4:39 pm - May 23, 2014 - sjcarlson

34,000 words in 4 days omg my brain is exploding!!!

So my brain has been on fire the past four days! Writer’s high to the max, Ideas just itching and itching to get out of my head.

I finally made myself get started on the prequel to the other novel I’m wrapping up right now (which is off at a development editor), Hooligans in Shining Armour set in modern-day Belfast. I was putting it off because I don’t know why, probably because I didn’t feel like researching, but I finally found my spark. I’d already plotted it out a bit, which helped immensely. Plus as I was writing this, I found out I loved this character even more than I ever knew!

Anyway… Have you ever written a sequel or a prequel? What did your process look like for that? Is it easier or harder to write than the first?

Categories: Non-writers just don't understand, Writing Tags: creativity, writing

Sarah J. Carlson

Contemporary Young Adult Author