Booklist
In our writing TBR pile:
How to write a Damn Good Thriller (Status: Reading)
Creating Characters (Status: TBR)
Creating Characters: How to Build Story People (Status: TBR)
Author Offerings
Three women haunted by horrors from their pasts. Four men who want to show them there's Nothing to Fear by Lacey Savage
Dragon Slayer now available at Noble Romance Publishing
About Us
Award winning author Lacey Savage (AKA Hunter Raines) pens erotic tales of true love and mythical destiny, peopled with strong alpha heroes and feisty heroines.
Fiona Jayde is an author of kickass, action packed romances and when not plotting murder and mayhem enjoys steamy romance novels, sexy spy thrillers, murky mysteries and movies where things blow up.
We love to talk about writing! Here, we share the "nuggets" we've culled from our huge collections of writing books, and chat about what makes us want to roll our eyes or raise our eyebrows.
Interested in guest blogging on Tips and WIPs? Contact us!
So apparently Holly Lisle (who offers writing courses and awesome writing how-to clinics) does regular free podcasts! I discovered them at Itunes and they are great:) There are also podscasts from The Writing Show, and all sorts of other interesting podcasts. I’m still trying to figure out how to get them onto my 2006 Ipod Shuffle, but that’s just me being a dork.
I also saw a couple of classes coming up in September which caught my eye:
Tech Tips for Busy Writer at the Writer’s U
Show Don’t Tell class at Yosamite RWA chapter
And I just discovered that you have a first chapter sent to your Kindle for free at Amazon! This is the biggest money saver ever – because I’m super picky lately about what I’m in the mood for:) (I swear I don’t get a commission from Amazon – but I do adore my Kindle!)
Now I have the daunting task of unpacking my books and getting my writing cave in order. Mucho fun!
I was reading a blog post as Dear Author about reader wants and came across this comment from Joy …’I would say this feeling of “Wow! These people really love each other” is the primary reason I read a romance’…
This got me thinking – how do we portray love on the page? Lust/desire/arousal is a physical reaction, and I suppose love can be as well? Is it the actions of what characters do for each other that make us readers believe they’ve fallen in love?
Authors and readers – how do you perceive characters falling in love – in favorite novels or your manuscripts?
I’ve discovered a great tool which some people may call cheating:) I don’t know if it’s cheating or not, but it was certainly helpful in my latest MS.
I’ve discovered a book called Flip Dictionary which is basically a large thesaurus. Since I tend to constantly repeat a word or two in an MS (and they change with each MS!) the Flip Dictionary is a terrific tool for finding alternative words or phrases and inspiring me into a new hopefully “sharper” prose.
Its also a wonderful way to build up vocabulary:)
Snowflaking is a verb. Really. My friend Beth Kery made it up:)
Actually “snowflaking” or rather The Snowflake Method is a plotting method designed by a software engineer turned writer Randy Ingermanson who basically approached it the same way as he would managing a large project: starting from top or high level view and working outward, getting more detailed in the process. You guys can check out the main idea behind the Snowflake method here.
For those of us who really like structure in our daily madness of writing, this is a terrific tool to get organized and not let our own creativity stifle us. (My pantser friends are shuddering in horror just about now). As a die hard plotter, I tend to freeze up when I hit a plot hole – and using this method, I’m finding my plot-holes before I even start writing.
Since I’m also a huge geek, I jumped at the chance to purchase the Snowflake Pro software – which is basically a “self guiding” plotting method. (While the article about the snowflake method is free for all to use, the software is a little pricey… Though worth the price in my humble opinion, especially since you get free upgrades for life, and if you purchase Fiction for Dummies and get a 50% off coupon)
So far, I’m seriously loving it. I love that everything is one place , and I don’t need to jump back and fourth between my Excel file and m character note cards and my synopsis. I also love that it makes me think in terms of structure and not just random plot points that can happen at any time.
I highly recommend the Snowflake Method as a plotting method, and I’m loving the Snowflake Pro.Do you guys use other software/organization tools you want to recommend?
I often lament (read: whine) to Lacey about my fear of writing a full length novel. Its so confusing and full of subplots and twists, and well… long! So Lacey gave me a truly brilliant suggestion: take something by one of your favorite authors and outline it – scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Outline it in terms of subplots, and tension and why YOU enjoy the work so much.
I can’t say I followed that advice – as brilliant as it was – until last week. But man, did I learn a lot. I used my favorite book: Ice Blue by Anne Stuart as my guide.
Ice Blue is exactly the type of book I’d like to write – edge of your seat romantic suspense with smoking hot sexual tension and characters that I can’t stop thinking about even after I close the book. I have this amazing obsession with assassin heroes – and the women who bring out the human in them.
I outlined the book an Excel file, with columns for scene, chapter, pov, pages in the scene, description of the scene, sexual tension and when I remembered, plot “hooks”. The hardest part was putting the book down to get to the damned computer to plug in the scenes:)
I learned some remarkable things. For one, I learned how to slow things down while keeping the pace taut. (since I write short, my stories tend to go at a breakneck pace, and a recent very favorable review compared my writing to a highway where you have to grip the wheel with both hands…ie: Gripping but you can’t take your eyes off the road lol )
I learned how to seriously coil up sexual tension – my favorite part in a romance. And I learned how to interject subplots – without slowing down the pace too much – and keep those subplots relevant (which is always an issue with me – there are some brilliant books where I skip over the subplots because they don’t have any real connection to the HH until the very end… )
In all, I’m thrilled with what I learned, and looking forward to repeating the exercise.
My biggest problem is getting out of the book long enough to actually absorb technique instead of devouring the story, and this technique allowed me to do just that. What do you guys do to learn from your favorite authors?
I picked up a number of excellent tips and tidbits at the Romantic Times Convention which I’d love to share:) I’ll do my best to attribute them to the right person, but after a week of decompressing my memory isn’t a hundred percent:)
1. Throw out the writing books and read what you want to write.
This is from my conversation with thriller author Robert Gregory Browne at the Book Signing Fair.
2. Get out of the mindset that a story is over just because you typed “the end”. You may be asked to add in a scene or two – and if you’re mentally “done” you’ll have a hard time coming back to that world.
This from a conversation with an Ellora’s Cave editor – very practical I thought.
3. Research is one thing but to really get into the mindset of a certain “profession”, read biographies of people living similar lifestyles.
This was either said byRick Mofina or Barry Eisler- my apologies for not quite remembering which thriller author said this, but brilliant advice non-the-less. It was said at one one of the thriller workshops – and really got my mind whirling. Time to renew that library membership!
4. Feel free to keep the “little darlings” until the final draft, and let your editor decide which to keep or toss.
This was from a conversation with thriller author Brett Battles about inserting tidbits of your own cleverness into a manuscript and being reluctant to remove them.
5. Read more. (Duh right?) I’ve been sadly lacking in that department.
6. As you read, note or highlight (hopefully on the Kindle) the areas which you feel you could improve on.
This by our very own Lacey Savage 
You guys got more tips (from RT or otherwise) to share?
I just returned from the Romantic Times Convention. For those of you who don’t know, this is one of the largest gatherings of romance authors and romance readers. It’s an annual conference, and it takes place in a different city each year. This year, it was held in Columbus, Ohio.
I’m going to skip over my horrid travel experience and just say that the conference was wonderful!
I presented on three panels this year, and they all went very well. By far the workshop I gave alongside Mechele Armstrong, Samantha Kane, Trista Ann Michaels and Liddy Midnight was the best attended. The workshop was entitled THE MÉNAGE PLOT: THE GLUE THAT HOLDS THREE (OR MORE) PEOPLE TOGETHER. We nearly packed the room. There were tons of questions, and at the end people came up to talk to us. A number of them said this was the panel they got the most out of from the entire conference, so I was thrilled. Since the panel was Friday, I left on a high note.
I also attended a few workshops myself — two of which were unbelievably good for me. One was on goal setting and productivity, with Vicki Pettersson. Absolutely amazing workshop. She was engaging, fun, genuine, and she gave me a ton of things to think about. I think attending that one workshop will do more for my productivity in the next year than anything else I could have done. The second was on conflict, and it was given by two historical romance authors: Robyn DeHart and Tracy Garrett. They made me think about conflict in ways I never had before, and I’m not new at this writing thing. Just when I thought I couldn’t get much more out of craft workshops, along comes something like this that makes me dig deeper than ever. I’m very glad I attended both of those. (This just goes to show that you never know where your next critical tidbit will come from. Take every opportunity to learn!)
I also attended other events: the parties in the evenings, the agents’ panel, the editors’ panel, some publisher spotlights. If you have an opportunity to attend an RT conference, or any writers’ conference, for that matter, take it. It’s a fabulous way to network with industry contacts and to learn, learn, learn!
What was the last writers’ conference you attended? If you’ve never attended one, what’s holding you back?
Related articles to check out:
- Quick Romantic Times Recap (whatever.scalzi.com)
- Overheard at Romantic Times 2010 (smartbitchestrashybooks.com)
I’ve been plugging along happily at my WIP, getting massive word counts and generally patting myself on the back. Oh, it’s not that the book is perfect. Far from it. In fact, I know it’s going to take a significant amount of work during the revision stage to get it into shape. But I’ve been choosing to ignore that in favor of getting a rough story down on paper.
You see, I don’t plot my books out ahead of time. I like to discover the story as I write, and let the characters tell me what needs to happen next. The problem with this technique is that sometimes, the characters stop speaking altogether. Mine were joyfully humming in my ear… until about 10 pages from the end of the book. I have one scene left to write, one scene in which to wrap up the story. And I have no idea what’s supposed to happen in this scene.
That’s a major problem. I can’t turn in a book with no ending to my editor. But no matter how long I stare at the monitor, or how often I tap my fingers on the keyboard, I still have no idea what’ll happen in that last scene. A major character has a choice to make. He can either say yes, or no, and that will affect the outcome of the story. Both choices are valid. He could go either way. And I have no idea which option he’s going to choose.
Frustrated, I turned to an online class I took in 2009. Holly Lisle’s How to Think Sideways is a fabulous intensive workshop. I’ve gotten a lot out of it, even though I don’t follow the step-by-step plotting process Holly recommends. I remembered that Holly has quite a few chapters dedicated to writing endings, so I thought I’d have a look through some of my printouts to see if anything there might help. And then I came across a brilliant technique.
Holly calls it the “Skip the First Draft Ending“. And it’s exactly what it sounds like. You call your draft “done” without having written an ending. Holly says:
“You are not lying, you are not deluding yourself, and you will be okay. You have finished the first draft of your book.”
Of course, she’s not recommending submitting the story in its current state — far from it! But Holly assures me that after a thorough revision process (which can sometimes take me longer than writing the book itself), I’ll have found the perfect ending for my book.
This feels right to me. I’m going to type “A Clever Ending Goes Here” at the bottom of the last existing page of my manuscript. Then I’ll take a day off, let the story breathe, and I’ll return to the revision process confident that there is a great ending for me out there, and that I’m going to find it.
Wish me luck.
I’m reading How To Write a Damn Good Thriller by James Frey (An excellent book in a series of excellent books) and I had a minor epiphany: I want to write thrillers! All these books claiming that a first step for any author should be figuring out their genre and subgenre were absolutely right. My Genre and Subgenre is Romantic Thrillers!
It doesn’t really change anything for me in terms of traditional labels – I’ll still write a contemp today and a Urban Fantasy tomorrow, but now I know how to identify that feeling of “something missing”, and what to do about it:)
Plus, if someone asks me what I write, I don’t need to stammer between “romantic sci fi or suspence or time travel or fantasy” I can just say “Romantic Thrillers in various subgenres”. As long as I’m impressing myself, right?
How did you guys come to figuring out what you wanted to write?
Before I get into the review, I have to admit that I broke my goal of not buying more writing books until I read the ones already on my bookshelf. But the majority of my new acquisitions have to do with book marketing, a whole different topic, so they don’t really count… right? Right. Moving on.
Red Hot Internet Publicity is authored by Penny Sansevieri who runs Author Marketing Experts specializing in book marketing and promotion. The book deals with an extensive variety of topics from optimizing an author’s website, to developing a readership by creating a presence in various social media venues (twitter, facebook,et), and many other ways of achieving online exposure which could translate into sales figures.
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