Goodbye from O'Abby

The time has come... This is my last post as O'Abby.

I have been a part of the Operation Awesome team since May 2019 and it has been an absolute pleasure to have been a part of everything from Pass or Pages competitions to  A-Z Challenges and most of all, helping out writers as O'Abby.

I have learned so much in this role because many of the questions people have asked were outside my area of expertise.  To be able to answer them, I had to do research and talk to people with skills and experience in areas of the writing and publishing process I am unfamiliar with. 

So thank you!  I appreciate every one of you who has written in with a question and everyone who has commented on an O'Abby post.  Sometimes the advice given in the comments has been better than anything I could have come up with!

So, thank you once again for being a reader.  If you want to keep in touch or just find out more about what I'm up to, you'll find me on my personal blog here.  Would love to see you stop by!

I wish you all the best with your writing and publishing journey.  You are all awesome!

X Kate (AKA O'Abby)

Somehow, about Lunch Tables: Farewell from Karis

I'm bad at making decisions. Bad at changing my life, doing things that will be hard for me (even if they're good for someone else), putting the wheels in motion to alter my reality.

Sometimes though, you know in your gut it's the right choice. And as hard as it is, you have to just dive in, no matter how breath-stealingly cold the water is, and hope you're able to swim rather than sinking.

Yes, friends, this probably terrible metaphor means one thing: I've made the decision to leave the Operation Awesome team.

I applied to be an OA blogger last February because my friend, Jaime Olin (remember her? She's awesome!) was on the team and has posted there was a vacancy. At the time I was unemployed, depressed, bored, anxious for more writing projects to help me fill the void in my life.

And I was excited to be a part of something, to not be alone anymore on this writing journey. I think that's the thing about being a writer, even a blogger, that can be hardest, if you're just starting out or unsure how to navigate all the churning waters of Twitter, Instagram, BookTube...it's the eternal question of where do I belong? who will I sit with at lunch?

Operation Awesome was my lunch table for a little over a year. I wasn't always the best lunch-table-person: I got distracted by a new job, and then I got depressed (really, really depressed), but I tried. And I found that my lunch table partners are good partners. They were always there to support me, to tell me it was okay if I fell off the grid for a bit; that it's okay to be depressed; that it's okay to not be perfect.

These are the truths I tell others; sometimes it's nice to hear them myself.

Oh man, as far as blog posts go, this one has been all over the place!

I guess what I want to really say is this: sometimes we do things not forever, but for a period. We join a group blog and we hope it'll last forever but circumstances change and it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the team, so it's in everyone's best interests to leave. And decision-making might be so hard for me, but in the end it was realizing I was letting the team down that pushed me to say, "okay, it's time to go."

And the other is: put yourself out there. If you feel scared or alone or lost in the big wide world of writing, find a team. It helps.

Love y'all, can't wait to see where things go with the rest of the OA crew!

Adios, Adieu, Goodbye, and Thanks for Everything!

I have thoroughly enjoyed the past 20 months I've spent as an Operation Awesome blogger. Among other things, I've critiqued 27 synopses for the site, participated in a bunch of Pass or Pages rounds, and answered your questions as Dear OAbby. I've loved getting to know this writing community and helping writers get to the next stages in their careers!

It became clear recently that I have a few too many irons in the fire. I'm now faced with the difficult decision of what activities to cut, and sadly, felt I had to pass along my OA blogging duties in order to have more time for my own writing, as well as my obligations with other mentoring programs. I'm leaving you in extremely capable hands with veterans J. and Karis, along with our new bloggers, Kate, Nathaniel, and Amren. I can't wait to visit this blog as a reader and see all the cool things these folks are going to contribute to the community!

Please feel free to follow me on Twitter (@jkolin27) and I wish you all the best!!!

Jaime

So long, and thanks for all the words

I started out on Operation Awesome about three years ago. I thought I would have a platform for sharing the many thoughts about writing that had been piling up in my head. I had no idea what else I would be getting.

I made some amazing friends, both on the team and through the blog readership. I learned how to critique query letters, and had the opportunity to help so many people with theirs through my Tuesday Museday feature. As one of the co-creators of Pass Or Pages, I got to help even more people get amazing feedback, and from literary agents, too! Pass Or Pages is unique in that way, and I'm proud of the role I played in creating it.

The amazing thing about Operation Awesome is that it persists through member turnover. Even though the team changes, Operation Awesome is always the same: a place for writers to find craft tips and encouragement no matter what stage of the publication journey they are on. I know it'll be in good hands when I leave. Will they be yours? Fill out the new member application here.

Operation Awesome has given me so much, and I wish I could give it more of me. But sadly, there are only 24 hours in a day, and I cannot do all the things I'd like to. Something had to give, and this time it was Operation Awesome. It was a hard decision, but it was the right one.

I hope the next time I'm on here it's for one of J's Debut Author Spotlights! Until then, I wish everyone reading this the best of luck with the next step in their writing journey.

Five Years With You

When Kristal Shaff and I got together and started a critique group in 2011, we decided to call ourselves

Operation Awesome! 

The name was Amparo Ortiz's idea, and it just fit. It was the era of WriteOnCon and Query Shark and Querytracker forums, where Kristal and I "met." Pretty soon after forming our little group, we decided to start blogging together, having no idea how this little adventure would propel us into the heart of the writer-blogger community and connect us to the pulse of the industry. Kristal invented Oliver, that adorable owl to match the blog background we'd nicked from thecutestblogontheblock.com, and an institution was born.

We launched with our first Mystery Agent contest, judged by Mandy Hubbard, author of Prada and Prejudice and agent with D4EO Literary Agency. Now she heads up the Emerald City Literary Agency.

Most of our operatives over the past five years have published books and moved on to various exciting endeavors beyond the exciting busy-ness of Operation Awesome's debut author interviews and agent-judged contests. I've been so blessed to know them and to work with many of them behind the scenes of this blog. Life has changed so much for me personally since those early days of patrolling the Mystery Agent entries and twitter-stalking agents.

When we started, my family looked like this:

Today, my family looks like this:

I am the last of the original OA founders, but the current operatives are continuing our original hope of connecting with and giving back to the online writing community through this collaborative project. As community projects and family are now blessing my life with nearly constant activity, and my own writing ambitions have changed significantly from what they were in 2011, it's time to say my goodbyes to this blog's readers. It's been amazing getting to know many of you and reading your work. You inspire me in more ways than one. I will still write reviews from time to time and you can contact me at katrina.lantz@gmail.com.

Thank you for the opportunity of connecting with you through writing. 

Stay Awesome.

Farewell Post From Donelle

Sometimes a leg of a journey is long and sometimes it's short. It’s not the length of time that matters, but the quality of the experience. I expected my stint on Operation Awesome to be longer than this, but life has a way of throwing things into your path that you hadn’t planned for.  I learned a good deal while part of this team and I’m grateful for the experience. 

I’m not disappearing. You can still find me blogging (mostly sporadically) on my own blog A Little Dversion. You can find me on Twitter and Facebook, and on my illustration website. If I'm not posting or tweeting, I'm somewhere writing and drawing, pursuing publication.

It was great to have this opportunity to connect with you all, and great to be part of a writing blog. Here's a sketch of Mr. Bean to brighten your day.

How to Infuse Tension into a Scene Without Vivisecting Your Plot

Hello there, writerly reader, and thanks for stopping by. Today I'm going to be talking about a little something called microtension, which was at one time mysterious and confusing for me, but that I'm pleased to say, upon mastery, is not that difficult to understand or incorporate.

I had heard the term floating around for a while, but one of Donald Maass's books finally explained it to me. I was about to go look up which one, but instead, I'm going to recommend all his stuff. The two I read this past year are Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling and The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great, and I have a couple more sitting waiting for my attention. If you want to be a better writer, gobble up everything he's published. I'm serious.

So what is microtension? It's any tension infused into a scene that keeps the reader wanting to know the outcome but that is not directly related to plot.

First I'll explain what it's not: What's the antagonist going to do next? How is the hero going to get out of this bind? What's the killer's identity? What's the resolution of this chapter cliffhanger? Those are all good things that make your audience read on, but they're not microtension. They're plot. If you removed them, you would lose a key piece of the story you're telling.

But sometimes you need to impart information that could be boring (back story, world-building), and you're not in a great position to enhance the plot while you do it. That's where microtension comes in.

Here are three examples, curated from movies and TV because it's easier to give those examples, and that's what I noticed when I was mastering this concept. Hey, you can learn a lot about storytelling from movies and TV.

(I have tried to leave out any spoilers that aren't absolutely essential to my explanation of microtension in case you haven't seen these.)

Example #1: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Rey and Finn have stolen a junk ship from the planet of Jakku. Something's going wrong with a gas leak below the floorboards, Rey is attempting to fix it with Finn and BB-8's help. If she doesn't fix it quickly, they're going to die. That is the microtension.

During this entire scene, in which we the watchers are worried that the poison gas is going to kill them, she and Finn talk about what they need to do. They talk about the map that BB-8 is carrying and where they could possibly go next. That is the boring but important plot information.

If the poison gas leak was removed from the scene, you would lose no vital plot information; however, if you removed the discussion about BB-8's map, you would. The microtension makes it (more) interesting than if they were sitting in the cockpit with their feet up on the console.

Example #2: The Sixth Sense

Child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe meets Cole Sear in his apartment for the first time. Malcolm wants to talk to Cole about the difficulties he's been having at school and elsewhere. All in good fun, Malcolm says he's a psychic and he can figure out what Cole is thinking. Malcolm makes a bet that if he gets answers correct, Cole will step forward, and when he gets to the chair, he must sit down and talk to Malcolm. That is the microtension.

As Malcolm asks questions, we unravel some interesting information about Cole. He's seeing and hearing things. We find out that what Malcolm is assuming about Cole (that he's a disturbed boy) is not correct; we discover that Cole does actually see dead people. That is the boring but important plot information.

During the scene, we want Cole to move forward and sit in the chair. Well, I did. Maybe if you're that kind of person, you didn't want him to, but the point is the same: you had feelings about Cole moving forward or backward. But if you removed the bet from the scene, it wouldn't make any difference to the outcome. Cole would impart some back story, and Malcolm would get stressed out about it.

Example #3: House, M.D.

I actually don't remember the details of this one all that well because it was just another House episode wherein House is being House. They're trying to figure out what's wrong with a patient, and for whatever reason, Dr. House decides to make Dr. Cameron (a female) come into the men's room while he pees in the urinal. She's obviously uncomfortable with this, but she goes along with it. That is the microtension.

She and the three other doctors talk about a possible diagnosis. That is the boring but important plot information.

I wanted to include this example even though the details have faded from my memory because it illustrates that microtension doesn't have to be something particularly intensive. Make a character uncomfortable and want something--to escape, to tell off the person being a jerk, to quit their job--and you've got microtension.

To Wrap Up

I hope that these examples helped illustrate what microtension is, and I hope you can see the immediate applicability to your writing. They're not a substitute for engaging plot, and I would always encourage you to trim away as much of the non-essentials that you can. But if you're got something that you think, "Ho, hum, this is important but sort of not interesting," you can use microtension to fix it.

In fact, you can use microtension to fix things that are already interesting. Don't have too much going on, but if something is just slightly saggy--hey, slap some poison gas in that room.

One Final Note

Thank you for sticking around to read to the end of this post. Before you go...

I didn't want to take up an entire blog slot with just this information, so hopefully the previous tidbits on microtension are useful to you.

It is with mixed emotions that I'm announcing that I'm leaving Operation Awesome. It's been a whirlwind year, and I'm glad for all the connections I've made and writers I've (hopefully) encouraged. Thank you all for your participation in the Friday flash fiction contests, and I'm sorry I didn't pick better books to engage more people in the monthly book club. ;)

I will be helping behind the scenes during the upcoming Pass or Pages, although I don't want to take credit for it or anything--our awesome team of Operatives that are sticking around will continue to be here and support that. We had a GREAT turnout this time, and we're all so glad this contest is beneficial to you.

I'm not going anywhere writing-wise. A stand-alone book in my Fallen Redemption series is coming out in October, I'm trying to finish up the last book in the series before the end of the year, and I'm looking to start writing a whole new series soon. I've got over a dozen short stories on submission, with several in second-look piles (oh great, did I just jinx myself?). I've decided to whole-heartedly pursue self-publishing, which means marketing replaces querying. I'm slush reading for Flash Fiction Online, and I'm volunteering as a Netgalley approver/other miscellaneous for SFWA.

So, phew.

Being honest here, blogging is really not for me--I tried this and I struggled, so I'm moving on to things that I am good at. HOWEVER, I really love helping newer writers, so I do definitely try to give back to the community in other ways! If you need anything at all, a shoulder to cry on, advice on writing, some eyes on your query, hit me up on Twitter @Saboviec.

Thank you all for this opportunity. Whatever it is you're working on--make 'em cry.

***

S. L. Saboviec grew up in a small town in Iowa but became an expat for her Canadian husband, whom she met in the Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game Star Wars: Galaxies (before the NGE, of course). She holds a B.S. in Physics, which qualifies her to B.S. about physics and occasionally do some math for the sci-fi stories she concocts. Her dark, thought-provoking science fiction & fantasy contains flawed, relatable characters and themes that challenge the status quo.

Her short fiction has appeared in AE and Grievous Angel. She's a member of SFWA and a slush pile reader at Flash Fiction Online. Her debut novel, Guarding Angel, received an honorable mention in the 23rd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards. The sequel, Reaping Angel, is out now, and the stand-alone companion novel, The Impending Possession of Scarlet Wakebridge-Rosé, releases Oct. 3.

Grab your FREE copy of the short story "When Your Time Is Up" when you sign up for her newsletter.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | Goodreads

A Final Farewell...

It is with great sadness that I bid my final farewell to my Operation Awesome operatives. I am thankful to you all for your many contributions, and teaching me more than I could ever hope for.

In looking back over my past posts, I was reminded of one of my first, Sailing Through Fog: How Writers Can Chart Toward an Unseen Horizon. Yet again, I find myself in unfamiliar waters, navigating a new job and figuring out a new normal.

Fog Photo by Psytrom, courtesy of Photobucket

You'd think, two years after that post, I would have figured out all the bumps by now. But that's not how it works. You dodge a rock you think is there, only to run into a completely new rock on the other side. Then you have to re-chart again, because the reality you perceived wasn't there at all, and your certainty is dragged from your center until it becomes a delusion.

So you get knocked out of the boat maybe, and once you get back in, you're cold, wet, and irritated. But if you're in the right state of mind, you can start to see the new pattern so clearly that it turns into one that's familiar, and slowly, surely, you can sail forward again.

It's something we face time again, in writing, and outside of it. Something you tried didn't turn out the way you planned. Perhaps a book you wrote went off in a completely unexpected direction. Or your query flopped. Or a publishing relationship inexplicably went south. Or a marketing strategy you put a lot of work into tanked, and you're still not sure why.

All of these have one aspect in common: they all represent trials we have to go through in order to fully understand what we need to learn from them. And with that understanding, we're armed with a oar to do it better next time.

Sometimes we have to go through the same thing a lot of times before it finally registers. And that's okay. Even new mistakes are okay--because in them we can see where we've improved, what we've overcome, and what else we can learn.

So I leave all you wonderful readers in the hopes that you'll find as many new paths as possible, and when the river gets bumpy, remember we're are all sailing through this together, toward that unseen, misty horizon.

I'll let the Shakira song from the new Zootopia movie finalize my point:

Farewell for Now

Well, this is one post I never thought I'd be writing for this blog :) I've been a part of Operation Awesome for many years now and it's been an experience I've truly loved. I have met incredible people, both those I blog with here and of course our amazing readers. It's been a privilege to be a part of this "awesome" team :)

But there seems to come a point in many of our lives where we've got so many balls in the air that a few start dropping, and that point has come for me. I have a lot of exciting things happening, things I've worked very hard for over the years and am thrilled to involved in. But those things require time and until someone figures out how to add a few more hours to the day, I've found the need to step away from a few things.

I won't totally disappear. I'll still drop in to read the wonderful posts of my fellow OAers and maybe they'll have me back for a guest post now and then :) But for now, I'll say farewell. I wish everyone much success along their publishing journeys :)

If you'd like to keep in touch with me or see what I'm up to every now and then, I'm still all over the place so please come hang out! :) Here is where you can find me:

Facebook profile
Facebook Author page
Twitter
Entangled Publishing Author Page
Website/blog
Pinterest
Google+
Tumblr
Embracing Romance
Goodreads