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Posts from the ‘Craft’ Category

Sep 26

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How a reverse outline can make your story stronger

Recently, I decided to turn a minor theme in my memoir into a major one. I knew this would involve another edit of my manuscript, which I was loath to do because I wanted to work on my next book. Plus, it’d been awhile since I read the manuscript so it would take a chunk of time just to immerse myself in the flow of it again.

I decided the quickest, most efficient way to do this would be to create a reverse outline (one that’s created after your manuscript is finished).

I didn’t create an outline when I began the memoir, because I didn’t know what my story would be. I’m sure that sounds strange—to not know what the story of your life is, but we all have multiple stories inside us—who we are and what has shaped us. Writing is an act of discovery and as time went on, I realized I needed to build out one of my themes to reflect the evolution of my story. Read more

Sep 23

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Five tips to find your unique writing style

Writing style is all about the decisions you make to express yourself on the page. Style is a blend of many elements, including sentence length, rhythm, and vocabulary. It has to do with how you apply description, dialogue, and characterization. It’s a reflection of your individuality.

Consider these guidelines as you develop your unique style:

Don’t purposely try to mimic another writer. You can’t develop your own style if you’re trying to imitate someone else’s. Read other writers and observe their style as inspiration, but don’t copy them.

Let your writing flow. Don’t overthink style. Just go with the flow. Style is a mix of conscious and unconscious decisions. Write naturally, letting your unique personality and instincts guide you. Read more

Sep 21

Test your manuscript to see if it’s a page turner

Why are some books so riveting, while others are just okay? What qualities of a story make you want to stay up all night reading even when you know the dreaded alarm will be going off at o’dark thirty?

If your goal is to write a page turner (and whose isn’t?), test your memoir, short story, or novel against these criteria to see how close you’ve come.

1. Create characters readers will care about.  Grab your readers’ attention with fully developed characters. If readers are attached to the characters, empathize, or even hate a character, they’ll want to know what happens next.

2. Make sure that something important is at stake. What does your protagonist stand to lose or gain?

3. Start chapters with a sense of drama, mystery, or trouble. Create curiosity. It helps to start with your manuscript’s first line.

In “After the Game,” from Selected Stories, author Andre Dubus begins: “I wasn’t in the clubhouse when Joaquin Quintana went crazy.” Read more

Sep 19

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Try this revision trick to polish your prose

Are you deep into revisions? Maybe you know you need to cut a few of your little darlings. Or maybe a few thousand? Whatever the case may be, here is one technique from Jane Yolen, the legendary children’s and young adult author.

Take a chapter of your manuscript and break it up into breath spaces as though it were a poem. Read more

Sep 16

How to make your book’s setting come alive

Ever read a novel that you were really into and then suddenly hit a dry patch of description that made you start to nod off? I have. If the story is really good, I might put up with it and skim over those parts. But if the story isn’t stellar, the author is in grave danger of losing me.

I used one of author and writing teacher James Scott Bell’s tips when I began writing my memoir. Though I grew up in the small town featured in my memoir, I visited the area again once I started writing the story, snapping pictures and traipsing through back roads.

Through research and immersing myself in the location, I discovered interesting facts about our town that I didn’t know growing up. It was helpful to go back, because as an adult and a writer, I have a different perspective.

Bell has produced a short video on how to make your setting and writing come alive. He gives tips for turning your setting into a character.

Read more

Sep 15

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Find your story’s emotional throughline

Even though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, an incident as a teenaged babysitter taught me one of my first lessons about subtext and story.

I was babysitting a nine-year-old boy who was literally out of control, a human tornado. He wouldn’t listen. I had plenty of babysitting experience, but I’d never dealt with a child like this. At one point, he found a cigarette lighter and before I could grab it from him, he’d flicked it on and burned his hand.

Later that day, after I had gone home and was walking down the street with a friend, the boy’s mother drove by. She stopped and started screaming at me about her son’s injury. While it wasn’t good that he had hurt himself, her response was extreme for the superficial nature of the burn. I tried to explain how hard it was to manage him, but she just drove away. Read more

Sep 14

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How to fully imagine your memoir

As I recently edited my memoir for the umpteenth time, I struggled over how to best fill in certain blanks in my family history. I didn’t want to present information I didn’t know as true. And I wasn’t out to embellish anything —not a good thing to do in memoir—but I lacked important information.

I remembered reading Debra Marquart’s memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild In the Middle of Nowhere,and how she handled information missing in her family tree. I went back to her book to see what she’d done. Here’s an excerpt: Read more

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