Hi. My name is Amy Atwell. I am a teller of stories.

You might have seen Part 1 of this blog two weeks ago, where I discussed my journey to publication and my realization that while the format of books may change, the concept of story remains the same. That realization had a big impact on me as I made the leap from not-yet-contracted to published in five short months.

Like many debut authors, I had to transition much of my online communication and, heck, my thinking, from trying to talk to editors and agents to talking to readers. I no longer needed to sell my one manuscript to a relatively small pool of industry professionals. Now, the goal was to connect as an author to a larger audience.

And here’s how story played into it.

For me, I view being published just like opening my own small business. I’m fortunate to have a non-profit marketing background (when you work in theater, you often do everything) as well as a production management background. This means I recognized that I needed to start with a plan.

I sat down in August, approximately three months before my release date, and I mapped out what I felt I needed to have in place for the big day.

1. Update my website and separate out my WritingGIAM group info from it
2. Create a personal blog to drive traffic to my site
3. Create a Facebook Fan page
4. Add more friends to my Facebook profile page
5. Figure out Twitter
6. Figure out the eHarlequin Community and build a presence
7. Update my presence on GoodReads and Shelfari
8. Build a presence on B&N and Amazon
9. Seek opportunities to guest blog around my launch date
10. Decide whether to join one of the group blogs that had invited me

All the above choices were predicated on the belief that, with a digital format book, I stood a chance of finding readers at any or all of them. Or, that readers would attempt to seek me out at some of these places.

There was only one slight hitch: I had no clear vision of how to present myself to readers. Presenting the book was easy, but I didn’t want to build my whole online image on that one book. I hope to write many more books, and don’t want readers to build an expectation of who I am as an author all on one story.

A quick example of my fear: growing up, I had a clear vision of what I thought a Cadillac was. It was a big four-door town car, very plush, very stylish. But now Cadillac makes SUVs—admittedly, plush and stylish, but I always shake my head over them. To me, SUV just doesn’t fit the image that I’d built of Cadillac.

So, I didn’t want to base how I presented myself to readers all on one humorous romantic suspense. I wanted to leave room to integrate different tones and different time periods in the future. This meant I had to sit down with paper and pencil and identify how I would “brand” myself.

Author branding seems to be a big buzzword nowadays. You’ve probably seen the taglines authors use in their signatures or on the website mastheads, something short and catchy that sums up their style and voice in 10 words or less. My recent personal favorite, erotic romance author Delilah Devlin uses Get in bed with Delilah. Everyone else has!

I cudgeled my brain for two days. Yes, cudgeled. I know there are scars. I listed all my manuscripts, even ideas I hadn’t started writing yet. With pencil poised, I wracked my brain (there were many implements of torture used during this process!). “My story is…” and I’d jot down a word, then cross it out. Words like love, romance, passionate, adventure, poignant. Each of the words might describe one story but not all my stories. I didn’t want to pigeon-hole myself.

Finally I wrote out “My story is…” hoping it would help me. And it did. The answer was right there.

STORY. I’d been thinking about it for days. Generations of storytellers conveying emotional stories to audiences. And so, I’ve tagged my brand: Getting to the heart of the story.

Some people might say it’s too vague, but I need the tagline more for myself than for anyone else at this point. More than a marketing phrase, it’s become my vision for how I work as an author. How I hope I’ll always work as an author. It’s a reminder to me of how to work with my story and how to work with my reading audience and fellow writers.

For my blog, I decided to focus on story, too. The goal at What’s the Story? is to create short posts that can launch some discussion, or not. I try to provide a lot of links to introduce or remind readers of terrific stories in lots of different mediums. The blog doesn’t generate a ton of comments, but I have steadily growing numbers on the RSS feed.

I’ve embraced this notion of being a sharer of stories in the social media, too. I share info about other authors’ releases, reviews, new covers, contests on Twitter and Facebook. I also share tidbits of my personal day and pictures of my two cats nicknamed Teabag and Squeaky. Um, the cats are drawing regular comments now on Facebook—and whenever I post about my cats, I gain new friend requests.
It’s a subtle dance mixing promotion with social networking. Like working an after-hours office party that goes 24/7. It reminds me of the days when I worked at my local community theater. There were times when I was absolutely working alongside my neighbors. But there were other times when I was just a local resident living life with my neighbors. Times when they needed my help, professionally or just as a friend.

So, to gather up my tumbling thoughts, here’s what you might glean from my experience:

• Identify who you are as a writer. What’s your recurring story or theme, and is there a way to fashion that to communicate to your prospective audience?
• Identify your comfort level with promotion. Which, if any, social media will work for you?
• Weigh money vs time. I chose to do all my web design myself because I wanted to fully understand how to update it. I saved money, but lost writing time. I have a consistent graphic look, but a professional designer could give me something better.
• Even if you haven’t sold yet, if you plan to use Facebook, Twitter or other social networks for any promotion, join now and figure out how to use them efficiently.
• Build a consistent look across all your social media “real estate.” Your website, blog, social network profile pages can all share a similar background, profile photo and bio information. Make it crystal clear for readers who don’t know you to recognize you. And be sure to work in your recurring story or theme. Tell them who you are.
• Protect the work. By this, I mean don’t let social media and blogging take over your time (this is a case of do what I say, not as I did—LOL). I would have been far better off if I’d started this process a year before I sold instead of packing it all into two months.
• Make a plan and assign deadlines. Like writing goals, your plan can be revised, but map out how often you want to blog, how often you’ll update your website, what times of day you want to get onto Facebook or Twitter and when you’ll write.
• Track your progress. Just like your word count grows on your wip, you should check your progress with social media. How many followers do you have on Twitter? How many friends on Facebook? How many RSS feeds subscribe to your blog? How many unique hits on your website? (I track my numbers every Monday and keep a log.)
• Understand that progress when you first start out will be slow. Go for steady growth. Occasionally, you can schedule an hour or two to go find more friends and followers.

I hope some will find this useful. I’ve met so many authors who do some or all the social media, but they do it haphazardly. They blog at random intervals with no clear motive—many say they were told they should. They have Twitter accounts but they find it overwhelming, so they avoid using it. They complain that it’s a drain on their time and it’s not effective. I think it’s hard to measure effectiveness if you haven’t established a plan at the beginning.

How about you? Do you have a tagline or “vision statement” for your writing? Do you plan your promotional efforts? Do you think social networking is effective in building an audience for your books?

Amy Atwell worked in professional theater for 15 years before turning from the stage to the page to write fiction. She now gives her imagination free rein in both contemporary and historical stories that combine adventure and romance while using her instinct to plan and organize in running the WritingGIAM online community. An Ohio native, Amy has lived all across the country and now resides on a barrier island in Florida with her husband and two Russian Blues. Visit her online at her www.amyatwell.com, What’s The Story? and Magical Musings blogs, Facebook, Twitter and/or GoodReads.

I have been toying with the concept of “who is my readership” and where do I find them?

You might believe that once you come to “The End” and congratulate yourself for a job well done, your next task is merely to find an agent, publisher or venue to capture your words between the covers.

Foolishly, you think the hardest part of your job is writing the book, and once you finish the first book, you can happily hand it over to someone and go back to the boards to write another.

The process of getting your book from your hands to the hands of your readers is the topic of hundreds, perhaps thousands of books, magazine articles and blog posts, written by thousands of successful authors, agents, publishers, editors and bloggers.

You must first know your genre. This helps everyone from the agents to the booksellers place your book in the hierarchy of the book store. On what shelf is your genre? Romance, Young Adult and Mystery are three of the largest categories, sell the most books, get the best visibility in the store.

For today, let us assume each of you is secure in your genre, you are comfortable when writing that one line in your query letter:

… Alice Go Lightly, humorous women’s fiction, finished at 90,000 words is about Alice in the shot glass about to go belly up to the bar.

Next, you need to know your market place. To whom do you send the query? Do you target the top six publishers? Then you must first break through the invisible line of summer interns, swim through shark invested waters, climb over twenty foot brick walls and slip between the cracks of the thick oak doors leading to the secret chambers of the “literary agent.”

However, you still need to know your readership.

My readers are mainly women over the age of reason, or women grown up enough to use reasoning in their thought processes.

I target women 35 years of age, plus. It’s the plus part I love so much. It’s round and plump and filled with tremendous possibilities. Plus can be a larger than life woman who has lived long enough to enjoy herself without guilt.

Plus can be a larger piece of the demographic market share or expenditures made by women of discerning tastes. Plus can also means more than, greater than and plenty more where that came from.

For me the task is simple. The central characters and themes of my work have appeal to both baby boomers and Generation X’ers alike. Those girls and women I grew up with, added to those girls and women I helped raise.

These are the same women who buy most of the romance and mystery for themselves, and YA books for the young adults in their life. When mom goes to the bookstore, chain or discount, she will get the latest urban fantasy or other YA books for the kids, and some women’s fiction, romance, mystery, humor or erotica for herself. Are you in the mood for Janet Evanovitch or Charlene Harris? Is today a day for Eve Dallas or Lucas Davenport?

Mom buys for everyone and mom is my reader.

Knowing your readers makes it easier to find them when you want to shout about your book being on the market. This brings us to your blog, web page, twitter and Facebook.

Does social networking actually increase your visibility? Can you find your readers in such places as Facebook or Twitter? Will you become one of the hundreds of bloggers out there who captures the imagination of thousands of people? But that is another story.

And in the end, it all comes down to …

Can you tell a story someone wants to read?

____________________________________
Florence Fois. I am a full time writer seeking a literary agent. My novels are about NYC women on the edge of discovery, danger and fun. I am learning how to write the perfect query and synopsis, the best first sentence, the tightest first twenty-five pages and ultimately the best ready-to-wear manuscript. Visit me at: http://ramblingsfromtheleft.wordpress.com/

When I learned that the first RWA-WF critique training would take place during my son’s season-ending baseball tournament in Orlando, Florida, I considered waiting until the next one came along to participate. However, as the emails to join the training kept arriving in my inbox, I decided to carve out some “me” time during our pseudo-vacation.

Turns out the only “me” time occurred after everyone in my family had passed out from a blend of heat stroke and baseball induced exhaustion and the clock ticked perilously close to midnight. Since I’ve never been one to let a little sleep deprivation keep me from something I want (I am a writer, after all), I submitted my two sample critiques, read over the other submissions with interest, and a short week later became a member of my very first online critique group.

I should preface this discussion of my RWA-WF critique group experience by mentioning that I already belong to a live, in-person critique group and have for over two years now. My local critique partners and I have become very close friends and conference roommates. There is no better support system for a writer than another writer. So as a satisfied member of a very successful critique group, why did I choose to participate in the RWA-WF online critique? Because as many of you already know, feedback is essential in this business and I believe honest, supportive and helpful critiques can improve a writer’s work, no matter how far along we are in our quest for publication.

We started with a group of four writers from different parts of the country and different stages of our career. We had one agented author and three un-agented authors. Some of us had been at this for awhile, while one member was pretty new to the game. We began by further introducing ourselves through emails and very briefly describing our works-in-progress. When I say brief, I mean brief; we wanted our stories to unfold for each other as they do for a reader. Two months into this process, I still feel as though not sharing too many details of our story was a very good decision. My local critique partners know my stories so well they may overlook holes in the plot or other errors because they already know where the story is going and are way too familiar with my habits.

Unfortunately we did lose an author from our group when someone’s feelings got hurt by a critique. RWA-WF’s uber-VP of Programs, Maggie Marr, guided us in the critique training to use the sandwich method of critique: positive comments first, constructive advice for improvement second, and a final encouraging wrap-up. When implemented successfully, this method allows the author who submitted pages to begin and end what can be an anxiety filled exercise with positivity. That being said, potential participants in any critique group need to understand their role in the group as both submitter and critiquer. One of our group’s members recently quoted Sol Stein from Stein on Writing,

“It took some time for me to learn the lesson that a writer, shy or not, needs a tough skin, for no matter how advanced one’s experience and career, expert criticism cuts to the quick, and one learns to endure and to perfect, if for no other reason than to challenge the pain maker.”

In the end, I think we will all be better writers and critiquers because of having gone through this experience. If you are willing to put yourself out there in order to better your work and the work of your fellow RWA-WFers, then I highly recommend participating in the training. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Christy Hayes

“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”
–Ursula K. LeGuin

I write alone. I sit at a very messy, old wooden desk that I inherited from a surveying concern in Perth, Ontario, and I write. Writing alone is a necessity for most of us. Sure, there’s probably that one woman you know who can plunk herself down in a food court and cover pages of her notebook with sterling prose, but she’ll be sorry when the IOU comes due on her soul. While you generate your words, at your desk or on your sofa or in bed, a profound amount of information sifts through your brain, both consciously and subconsciously. There’s everything you can remember about craft, the fact that the market may not know what to call your book, envy for the food court woman, a blast of irritation over forgetting a chore, a child or two demanding your attention (or not–which might be worse), the plot point you want to reach before you call the scene done, and the nagging suspicion that you may in fact be writing the worst book in the world. You juggle what you know of your characters with what you don’t know, what you guess might be true. You hope that, when you guess, you’re listening to the voice of intuition and not the voice of the crazy woman inside you.

Joining RWA-WF means that you’re eligible for a chapter-based critique group. The benefits?

*If you ever intend to sell that book, someone else is going to have to read it. It’s much nicer for that someone else to be a person who won’t send you a form rejection.

*Everyone reading your work has an interest in women’s fiction, not just romance. Your group can help you develop the personal journey of your protagonist in a way that honors her conflicts and struggles. These are not books about finding a partner–they’re about a woman finding herself, and using your voice to do it.

*A critique group will help you identify your bad writing habits–repetitive words, misused words, starting sentences with conjunctions (that’s mine). Everyone has writerly tics. A crit group will gently–gently!–point them out. By squelching that one bad habit another might pop up in its place, only for your group to still be gentle.

*A critique group may have people at various points in their careers–published and unpublished, writing in various styles, under varying circumstances, with varying opinions. You can’t get a perfect sample of your target audience, but you can get people with different experiences from you, and their opinions will run the gamut from completely confused to bolt-of-lightning insight. Even the confused opinion can be helpful; better to clarify now before you confuse paying readers. RWA-WF’s critique method ensures that your work will be treated with respect and kindness from critique partners who’ll expect the same consideration from you.

*Your family and friends may love you too much to be honest about your work. But your critique partner doesn’t have to live with you after telling you that Chapter Four is indulgent writing and that you could probably cut the whole thing out to tighten your story.

*One of my own critique partners, Ann Warner, puts it this way: “The most exciting thing about [critique groups] for me, is that sometimes (often if you’re really, really lucky) a crit partner will say something that allows you to see your work in a new way… so that when you begin another revision, it truly is with a new vision.”

I have to admit that I haven’t yet shared my own work with my RWA-WF critique group. (It’s my turn in eight days.) When I signed up for the training, I expected to submit work in September, so I became my group’s moderator in the interim. I’m glad I joined right away and didn’t opt out of being placed into a group, because I have learned so much from the women whose work I’ve been reading. They are all writing very different books than I am. As I reread the chapter that I’ll submit when it’s my turn, I look at it now with a sense of what my partners tend to notice in the work of others. I’m able to go through and slash other things besides my Ands and Buts, to write tighter and leaner, to cut to my story’s emotional core. If you’re writing alone, you may find yourself loving the occasional sentence or paragraph that does just what you want it to. At the same time, it’s still little black marks on [the modern equivalent of] wood pulp. Think about it. It just might be time to let your work become a live thing.

_____
Kim Samsin grew up in Pennsylvania and has lived in the southern and southwestern US. She currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario and is at work on a multigenerational women’s fiction novel. She blogs and workshops at http://www.thedeepolddesk.com .

Finish the damn book. You’ve all heard that phrase, right? I bet among the members of this chapter, we could compile a million words from unfinished stories. Shoot…I could probably scrap together two hundred thousand all by myself! But I find myself facing an interesting situation and wondered if I’m weird—wait, I mean unique, if I’m unique.

I am 52,885 words into a 55,000-60,000 word manuscript. Excellent! I’m just about there, except I’m having trouble finishing. I know what happens. I know who does what to whom and why. I know the black moment. I know the ending. I love the ending. So why can’t I get there?

Obviously this is a topic we writers know well. I’ve looked online for answers and found a multitude of blogs, including these ones by Holly Lisle, Sam Horn and Suzannah Windsor Freeman.

Holly Lisle
Sam Horn
Suzannah Windsor Freeman

The internet is full of advice and hints. I could spend days searching and reading advice. (The internet could also be a contributing factor to my problem. That’s why I’m going “off the grid” on Twitter, Facebook, blog surfing, etc until after National Conference!)

Some fellow writers have suggested I’m having trouble because I don’t want to leave my characters. They’ve become my friends, and when I give them their well-earned HEA, I have to leave them for new characters…make new friends (sort of like moving to a new school and having to make new friends all over again.)

So how about you? Do you have trouble finishing the book when you’re this close? How do you do it? What advice can you give me?

Cyndi
Cynthia D’Alba

Last month, we discussed how I see POV by levels, each one on a little deeper level than the previous. If you missed that post, you might want to go back and read what I said before going on.

This month, let’s talk about getting into the character’s head, actually becoming your character. In some ways, it’s a lot like being an actor. You are no longer “you”, but are someone else, with that person’s background, life experiences, education, prejudices all influencing character response.

Let me give you a real life example. Last weekend, I was at my local chapter meeting, i.e. Diamond State Romance Authors in Arkansas. We were sitting around chatting about how unusually heavy the traffic had been. Amy said, “It’s because of all the vets driving through town as they leave. It’s slowing everything down.” My reaction was, “Why are a bunch of veterinarians driving through town? Leaving after the racing season is over, I guess.” DD and Shayla’s responses were, “Why are there groups of military veterans driving through town?” What Amy was talking about was CORVETTES driving through town after a Corvette convention. My response was triggered by the fact I had just spend $200 on my dog at my vet’s office. DD and Shayla are both military veterans. Each of us had a different response backed on our personal experiences.

Writing from your character’s POV should be much the experience. Another example, a friend was writing from the POV of a physician. She (the author) has a non-medical background. She made a comment about the doctor’s heart “lurching” at the sight of the heroine, but we are in his POV. A medical person wouldn’t think “lurch.” We’re trained to think “skip a beat” or “palpitate”. A response is second nature, something that happens without thinking. So her doctor’s heart would probably “skip”, not lurch, although they mean the same thing.

If your character if a gardener, (s)he might think in terms of flowers or plants or dirt quality when analyzing. A chef might think in terms of flavors, or aromas, or spices, but a chef probably wouldn’t think in terms of dirt quality, as a gardener probably wouldn’t describe something in terms of flavors.

So can you think of any examples (good and bad) of where the author disappeared and the character’s POV really shown through?

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope my thoughts have helped with your Point of View problems.

Cynthia D’Alba

http://cynthiadalba.wordpress.com/

It’s midnight before Easter as I write this. That’s probably cheating for a blog due on Monday but, unfortunately, the days all run together and if I hadn’t had this on my calendar, I would have completely forgotten I had it coming due.

Today was one of those days that quite simply did not stop. Up at Target by 830 for shoes and dresses for the girls. Strike out on shoes, mall doesn’t open til ten. Managed to get everything at mall and get home by 1. Both girls are acting funny but I just figured they’re tired. No sooner did I set oldest on couch with water does she pull a Linda Blair. All over the couch. Couldn’t she at least have aimed for the floor? Got her cleaned up, couch cover (thank heavens) in the wash, then hubby comes home and wants to do yard work. The major kind that involves transplanting trees and bushes. That gets done, then youngest starts heaving. Oh and forgot about housework in between shopping and yard work and dyeing Easter eggs. And that was before I ran back to the store at 9pm because I had NOTHING for Easter.

So how the heck am I going to write a sexy, loving scene at midnight after a day like this? Well, to be quite honest, I’m not. I’m going to write a murder. A vicious stoning in an Iraqi village that my hero and heroine have to try and stop. (This WIP is not my women’s fiction project, in case you were wondering;)

But the only reason I’m writing that scene is because a, it needs to be written, b, I’ve been avoiding it for a week, and c, I can’t move forward on my revisions until I get it done. Oh and I’m not tired yet, either.

Getting into the mood after an insane day is a tough one and honestly, it’s not easy. I usually have to go back and reread where my characters were the last time I left them is one way I slip back into the scene. Looking at notes frantically scribbled either on my note pad or document notes also helps pull me back into the story.

Music is one way that is almost guaranteed to put me in the mood. I have soundtracks made up for each of my books. For my women’s fiction WIP, the song that will put me right there in the scene, whichever scene I need is Red’s Mystery of You. Its a haunting song that symbolizes everything about the trouble between my hero and heroine.

Finding the right way into your piece after an insane day where you’re lucky you can take a long enough shower to shave your legs is tough but we’re writers, right? That’s what we do. So I’d love to hear how you slip into that scene and find the right mood when what you’d rather be doing is sitting on the couch drinking a beer.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a character to stone.

Jessica Scott
www.jessicascott.net

Hi RWA-WF World! I’m Cynthia D’Alba and I’ll be here every fourth Monday of the month. Remember that anything I write during my blogging time is my opinion. Feel free to point out the errors of my ways. This month and next, I’m tackling one of the hardest concepts for new writers to grasp – Point of View.

I’ve heard POV described many different ways from many different authors and lecturers. I’ve thought about it, read books conscious of how the author is using points of view, and I’ve finally decided this is how I view POV. I’m not saying I’m right nor am I an authority on the subject, but for me, these varying levels of POV work for me. Maybe they’ll work for you, too.

Now I’ll be honest with you. When I first started writing, I had no idea what the abbreviation “POV” meant. Even after I heard the phrase “point of view” all the ramifications of being in a character’s POV meant very little. The first story I wrote (which I must confess, I thought was BRILLIANT, at the time…not so much now!) had five (yes, you read that right…FIVE!) POV changes in the first ten pages and two of them were dogs. Sigh. I had so much to learn. After hearing about, reading about, and trying to write good stories with clean points of view, I’ve decided that POV can be different depth or levels.

For the examples in this month’s blog, I’m pulling from Chick With A Charm, Vicki Lewis Thompson, ©2010.

LEVEL ONE: The first explanation for point of view –and what I consider to be a level one understanding—was one we have all heard…point of view like looking through the lens of a camera. What you see through that lens is what your character sees. If your character can’t see it, then you can’t write it in character POV. Well, that’s a beginning but it’s far from everything POV can entail.

This example is from Griffin’s POV: Lily, dressed in a tight black top, skinny jeans and boots was already on her way to their table with smiles for everyone and an extra wink for Griffin. This is what Griffin is seeing. Level One POV. A description of scene in front of him.

LEVEL TWO: This tier engages the character’s senses other than sight, pulling from the other four senses to draw a more complete picture of the character is experiencing in addition to sight.

In this example, we are in Lily’s POV: From inside the shower came the sound of a washcloth slapping against wet skin. She can’t see the action, but she hears and interprets what she hears or what she thinks she’s hearing.

LEVEL THREE: But to really get into your character’s POV, we need to dig a little deeper. How does your character interpret the sensory input from levels one and two? If your character grew up active in scouting, spent many nights camping under the stars, cooking over an open flame, the smell of wood burning might evoke a pleasurable mood. However, if your character’s home burned down and she lost everything in the fire, the smell of wood burning might evoke a flight or fight response, so a romantic bonfire becomes something much different. Or if your character is a fireman, the smell of burning wood might spring him/her into a call to action.

This is one of the reasons we writers spend so much time learning about our characters’ histories. Without knowing your character, you can’t know how he/she will interpret the sensory inputs from level one and two.

For Level Three, I have two examples. Continuing with the scene from Level Two above, (after Lily hears the washcloth slapping against wet skin) Her libido perked up, but she told it to calm down. The reader is getting Lily’s response to the auditory stimulation.

For the second example, we’re back in Lily’s POV: But as she climbed the stairs, cradling the mammoth vase and surrounded by the heavenly scent of roses, she realized she’d have to call Griffin. Lily perceives the scent of roses as heavenly. They evoke a sense of pleasure, of caring. For someone else who’d had a prior negative experience with roses, such as smelling the roses at a loved one’s funeral, the scent of roses might evoke dread or even fear.

Next month, we’ll talk about digging deeper into POV by getting into your character’s head.

Join me then.

Until then, drop by my other blogging gig… http://cynthiadalba.wordpress.com/

CORRECTION, in Joyce’s blog dated January 29, 2010 , WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE STUCK ON PLOTTING, Donald Maass should be credited as the author of WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL and the material quoted from it: “What is one thing that the protagonist would never do?” Blog contributor, Joyce Wells, apologizes for the mixup, and blames her faulty notetaking.

After I volunteered to write on the subject of plotting, I wondered whatever made me think I could write anything useful about the subject. Then I took a few deep breaths and realized that I’d finished eight novel manuscripts, published two, and taught Fundamentals of Fiction for Writers Digest Online Workshops for nine years.

Okay, you’d think I’d know a little about plotting, but truth is, I’m what we call a “pantser.” I write from the seat of my pants. Most of my ideas for novels come from fascination with a certain character. I think about character for a while, then figure out a location, and a specific incident that will hook the reader into the book. From there, things seem to flow naturally. But what happens when they don’t?

One of my favorite things to try is an online class from RWA, either an individual chapter, or from RWA Online Chapter, which I’ve joined. I find them invaluable, taught by pros with good clear advice and critiquing feedback. The other nice thing is the price. Compared to the online classes I instruct for Writer’s Digest, they are very affordable. You’ll find these classes promoted on the RWA-WF e-mail log as well as other RWA links. I took an RWA Online plotting class from Kara Lennox called Plot Doctor: Fixing Your Story. In this class she also discusses sub-plots for bigger books. If she repeats that class, take it. Even if it’s your fifth book, take it. It will be some of the best money you ever spend.

And you can check out other blogs for advice. Writer’s Digest has a newsletter they will send you free for the asking. At the bottom they have several helpful blog links containing advice about many subjects. It was WD’s blog topic of How to Make Your Novel a Page Turner, by Elizabeth Sims, that led me to volunteer to blog for our chapter this month. (And I’m mentioning that blog now because I’ll be using more ideas from it later.)

First Sims’ article speaks about the importance of suspense in plotting. Then she writes on the topic of PLOT FROM THE GUT. I realize that’s the way I do most of my plotting. And IT WORKS! Or it works most times, that is, the combination of always creating suspense in my work, and letting the plot come from my gut.

Apparently, my subconscious is working all the time on the plot and when I reach a certain point, it throws out some ideas that I pick up and run with. Sometimes they come in the form of dreams, sometimes daydreams. Sometimes I just sit down and my characters take over and plot happens.

But invariably, I reach a point where I get stuck. That’s when I have to stop trusting my GUT and look elsewhere for plotting help. There are books on plotting, seminars, classes and blogs.

A moment I remember distinctly occurred at a seminar I attended in 2009, where the speaker—Todd Stone, The Novelist’s Book Camp—said to ask yourself questions about your heroine. One question was, “What one thing would your heroine never DO?” Then have her do it. Write the scene about what your heroine would never do. My heroine in that book (which I’m revising now) would never go outside naked. She absolutely would not go outside naked.

What one thing would she never SAY? She’d never say, “I hate you,” to anyone. Okay, write a scene where she tells someone she hates him/her.

And what would she never THINK? She’d never think, I will kill him. She might think she wanted to kill him, but she’d never reach the point where she would say she was going to kill him. Wanna bet? Take your character past the point of no return and see what happens.

After deciding my heroine would never go outside naked—she would die first—I wrote a scene where she did just that. In the big climactic scene near the end where she is running from the “bad guys,” I put her in a canoe that she paddles out into the Potomac River. Over her cell phone, my heroine is told by the FBI that she has a tracking device hidden somewhere on her. They tell her to take off all her clothes and dump them, as well as her purse and cell phone, into the river. And she does. She’s naked when the FBI arrive. They haul her out of the water, and an agent puts his suit coat around her (which adds some humor when she asks if they always wear suits). The big scene in the book came from my brainstorming what my heroine would never do.

Elizabeth Sims’ blog for WD suggests that when you’re stuck, try brainstorming all of the life-shaping incidents that might threaten your heroine. Write them down individually either on 3 x 5 cards, or using a computer program. Then see where those incidents might fit into your novel. Just by writing them down and putting them on the screen or on poster board in front of you, your unconscious will absorb the ideas/events and figure out for you where they will fit into your plot.

Kara Lennox says in her RWA Online class that we need at least three major turning points in each book and they need to be interspersed throughout the book. The first one should be roughly one-fourth of the way through the book, one at the halfway point, and one at the three-quarter mark. Using these guidelines will help avoid the dreaded “sagging middle.” As writers of Women’s Fiction, we want to be certain our books don’t sag in the middle, or we don’t get so caught up in so much introspective angst that we forget to keep the plot moving in a way that will keep our readers reading.

Are you stuck on your plot now? Or have you been in the past and have some useful ideas you’re willing to share? If so, please scroll down to the bottom and start a discussion on this important facet of writing successful novels: plotting.

Joyce Wells, www.joycewellsauthor.com www.joycewells.com
The Peace Seekers
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