To MFA, or not to MFA? That is the question...

When people find out that I'm enrolled in an MFA program, they often ask me if it's an essential part of becoming a part of the writing profession. And while there are some who believe that an MFA is necessary, I'm in the camp that says it might not be.

Which sort of makes me look like this.

You might be asking why I'm in a program at all. Simple. I'm in a situation where my MFA fits my lifestyle and doesn't break my bank (my body, however, is a different matter, but we'll get to that in a bit). Besides, I feel like I need it to grow as a writer.

So here, in my experience so far, are my suggestions if you're considering an MFA program:

Like I said before, don't break your bank.

In my MFA program, I'm surrounded by writers who are battling huge debt, loans, broken-down cars, and other horrors. While I'm sure getting a writing degree has been the right choice for them, I wouldn't recommend it if you're not a situation where you have to break your bank to do so.

With my librarian job, I get a tuition discount, which basically adds up to about $100 or so a class, and I work in a job where my time is somewhat flexible. So if you're in this kind of position, and you're looking to grow, that's when an MFA might be the right thing for you. (But I also know many people who have been successful writers without one.)

Surround yourself with other writers, but keep writing on your own, too.

A lot of my classmates tell me how astonished they are with how much I write. Right now, I'm drafting a new project while working on an old one, because I'm making the time to do what I can, when I can.

Even some of my writing instructors are encouraging us to make time to write outside of class, which I'm thankful for. Some people are good at talking about writing (see the OA blogger typing to you right now), but my instructor mentioned this great book called, Do the Work, which encourages the doing rather than the talking.

So, write what what you can, when you can, no matter what your current situation might be.

Be open to learn new things, but only use the information that works for you. 

I'm lucky that I have instructors who are open (and sometimes even insistent) on plot-driven material. But this isn't always the case in MFA programs. A lot of times (perhaps more twenty years ago than now) literary writing is encouraged to be poetic more than anything else, and "commercial" fiction is sometimes looked down upon. I'm lucky that my program covers a lot of disciplines (fiction, nonfiction, poetry) and allows for flexibility in creativity. Just know that not all programs will emphasize this.

And so far, I've gotten some good guidance on how to help my writing grow. One instructor helped me see how I could make my characters more empathetic to others (and therefore more sympathetic to readers), and another encouraged me to "write with a heartbeat," because my prose tended to fall a bit flat. Both these suggestions have helped my writing immensely.

But if there's a guy either in your MFA class or critique group who wants you to change the plot because that's not how he would have written it, you can go ahead and tell him to suck his hot air.

Make sure you take care of yourself.

I'm mentioning this one last, but it's the most important, and one thing I've neglected lately. Ever since I've started my MFA program, whenever I had a week of vacation, or a bit of down time, I've always gotten sick. Even now, the scratchy throat and congested chest I have are so closely following my previous illness that I'm not sure if it's the same iteration of it, or something different. And while I did take the advice of my instructors to write in the morning, I didn't make the effort to get to bed at a decent hour and get enough sleep.

So here are some suggestions (especially while in a graduate program) that might help:

Get enough sleep.

Spend at least 20 minutes a day doing something that's completely unproductive.

Choose physical exercise that fits your lifestyle and routine.

Stop being so hard on yourself, you perfectionist, you.

That last one was mostly for me, but you get my point. Which brings me to my last one. Do whatever helps you grow the most as a writer, whether that means an MFA or not.

What's Your Story About? Exploring Theme in Fiction

That’s the question we get any time we tell someone we’re writing a (insert your form here – story, novella, book, space opera…) And that’s the question we’re told to have a ready answer to, just in case we bump into our dream agent in line for a McMuffin on the way to work, or in the elevator at a writing conference. It’s the log line, the pitch, the meat of the matter. But what is this critical nugget really? If the piece we’re writing has a shot at capturing the hearts and minds of an audience, it’s the theme.

When someone asks what your story is about, how do you answer? Do you give a brief summary of the action?

For example, “my story is about this poor girl who is harassed by her evil stepsisters until her fairy godmother comes and turns her into a princess so she can go to the ball and meet her prince and live happily ever after.”

That is, after all, what Cinderella is about. Isn’t it? Maybe not.

Try this: “my story is about the belief that by putting goodness and love out into the world, goodness and love will be returned to us. It’s an exploration of the golden rule, set in the world of princes and fairy godmothers.”

Which one do you want to read?

The first tells us what the story is about in terms of action. The second, though, tells us what the theme of the story is.

The Importance of Theme

Let’s look at the idea of theme for a moment. Have you ever finished a book and put it down, asking yourself what the point was? Maybe there was great action, and a rollicking plot, but at the end you’re left feeling like it was hollow somehow. That, writers, is the absence of theme.

All stories should have a theme – from literary (where sometimes the themes seem to take over all action and bring the plot a standstill) to genre (where occasionally theme suffers for the sake of the plot.) It was easy to identify a theme in fables or parables – the theme was the moral or teaching. But in fiction, we don’t always seek to teach.

Think about it this way – the theme of your work is the concept that links the story to the audience. It’s what makes the story universal. It’s what elevates it from a good story to a story that will keep readers thinking long after they’ve put the book down.

As I’ve written more, I’ve learned to build theme into my work somewhat organically. I’ve even discovered that I have themes where I didn’t intentionally place them. But the best work, I think, develops when a writer has a theme in mind as they craft the story, allowing it to work in and out of the words, wrapping itself intricately through the scenes and chapters and adding an extra layer of complexity to the story.

How do you approach theme? Do you build it in intentionally, or have you discovered your themes after the fact? Can you think of any books you’ve read recently that have done a nice job with building on a theme?

Joining the Fun

Hi there! I'm Delancey Stewart, and I'm so excited to be here. I've followed Operation Awesome for a while, and I was very flattered to be asked to join. I will be honest...it was Awesome.

Anyway, I figured a brief introduction might be in order.

You've probably figured out that I'm a writer. And like most other people brave enough to call themselves "writer," I've been writing in one form or another for most of my life. I majored in English in college, and really believed that one day I'd sit down and write an amazing book that would take the world by storm and change my life. At 22, I really believed that was how it would happen. Some magical inspiration would strike, and everything would be different from that point forward.

If you've ever written a book, you probably know this isn't what happened at all.

Instead, I worked for a big publishing company for a year. Then I got a teaching credential, and then I had a chance to move to New York City, so I did that. In New York, I did marketing, working in the burgeoning Internet world, until the World Trade Center fell on 9/11. Pretty much everyone I knew was laid off either before or after that horrible day, and so we spent a few months wandering the city, day drinking and collecting unemployment. When I was fairly certain that no Internet marketing jobs were hidden beneath bar stools in the city, I packed up and returned to California.

I lived with my parents for three months. I was 28. It was a low point. My parents are lovely people. But...

Luckily, I found a job as a pharmaceutical rep and moved to San Diego. I met my husband, a Marine. We got married. He deployed and I decided to become a personal trainer. And then, when he got home, we started moving all over the place. At some point in that process, we had two boys and I took a job as a tech writer for a company that contracts to the government. I just celebrated my five year anniversary with that company.

The point of that long history is that at no point in those twentyish years did I write an astounding novel that changed the world. And about two years ago I was 39, facing a landmark birthday, and still holding on to the belief that I was meant to write books.

But at that point I had a bit more perspective. And I knew that the things I'd valued most in my life had been the things that I'd worked hard to achieve. So I put myself to work.

And I wrote a paranormal YA novel that was... pretty horrible. But it taught me a lot. I spent about six months on it, writing, revising, even querying. And then I set it aside and focused on craft. I took some more writing classes, read lots of books and began writing short stories. And I started editing manuscripts for two small publishers. And realized that genre fiction was lots more fun to write than literary, and perhaps easier in some ways because there were established formulas for some genres. I was editing romance, and learning a lot about tropes and structure, so that was the way I went.

At this point, I have two self-published romance series out -- The Wine Country Romances, and The Company. I also have two contracts for other romance series with publishers. One of those series is the Girlfriends of Gotham (based on the time I lived in NYC in the late 90s). The other is a historical new adult series that I'm really excited to have out in the world (early 2015).

I still work as a tech editor for the government contractor, I still take freelance editing work from other writers and some of my long-standing clients, and I still have two little boys. So writing, in my life, happens very early in the morning and sometimes on the weekends if the little guys are quiet long enough for me to put a sentence together. That said, it's the thing that I am about. It's the thing that I think about when other things aren't great, and it's the thing I'm most proud of. It's my passion, and I'm so glad I put in the work to pursue it.

My question to you is this -- when did you (or will you) define yourself as a writer? What kinds of shifts did you have to make to acquire that title? (Mental, physical, environmental...)

Reason for Requesting: Voice

My past two posts have been about reasons for rejection. But today, lets take a more positive approach and look at something else. Reasons why I request submissions, because I request a fair amount. I'd say that, on average, I request about 1/4 submissions I read. What makes that one submission stand out from the other three? What grabs hold of me and keeps me wanting more?

There are a lot of factors of course, but the number one reason is: Strong voice.

This is a hard answer to hear, I find. Mostly because 'voice' is so gosh darn hard to define. Every writer has a different voice and every character as well. Its hard to get voice just right. Try too hard and it sounds manufactured and contrived. Don't try hard enough and your pages will read as dull.

I define voice as this: when everything just reads 'right'. That's it. Voice is that magic element that helps all the others, including character, plot and setting, click into place. Its the super glue of writing. And yet its the hardest thing, in my opinion, to learn how to perfect.

So how do you improve your voice? In two steps:

1. Read books that you think have 'a good voice'. What do they do right? Why is the voice memorable? Is it because of the sense of humor? Is it the visceral imagery? What about the first page of your favorite novel sucks you in. Try to figure out what 'strong voice' means to you and that will help you to find your own writer's voice.

2. Practice. There's no better way to improve your writer's voice than practice, practice, practice. Write a few short stories and see what they have in common. What are some tropes that you like to use? What stuff sounds natural and what doesn't? Keep on writing until you hit your sweet spot.

These tips aren't exactly the end-all-be-all key to a good voice. But that's because no one else can find your writer's voice for you. Its something you have to find yourself. But once you hit it, trust me, the requests will start pouring in.

Old English and Other Sins

One of the things that makes me cringe when I read my early writing is my inflated language and tendency to overuse adverbs.

Instead of saying, "He shivered," I might instead write, "Without thinking, he shivered unwittingly, sending a chill up and down his spinal cord."

For some reason, and I think this is fairly common, I believed that the fancier the language, the better received the work would be. I had excellent English teachers who encouraged me to choose strong, straight-forward words rather than flowery prose. Still, I managed to...

insert within my initial manuscripts verbosity fit to rankle even the most patient, longsuffering, and nurturing of English teachers. 

See what I mean? I think it comes also from reading too much. Can you read too much? Probably not in general, but if you read too much of the classics, or of fairy tales, or of anything old, you're likely to run into the same problem I had: a propensity toward flowery language and grotesque verbosity, the likes of which are rarely seen this side of 1800.

Sneaky little, old phrases and usages may find themselves squashed between your more modern lines of dialogue... like, "Upon seeing her, he ducked behind the conveniently located gumdrop barrel." Or maybe... "Initially he stiffened before softening under her magnanimous touch."  

Now, I'm not saying these are wrong ways of writing. I'm simply saying they are a very specific style of writing, and as writers we need to be careful our style of writing is conducive to the genre and age category. If you're writing regency romance, for instance, ignore this post entirely. Or go laugh to yourself about how liberating it is to use the word "thine" without having to mask it with irony.

But if you happen to write for kids, consider conscientiously filling your own mind with kid speak so that what seeps out when you sit down to write is more... palatable to your chosen audience.

What do you think? Have you ever read an old classic and wished children's writers still wrote like L. Frank Baum or Lewis Carroll?

Goal, Motivation and Conflict: Phoebe North

As a recovering poet, words come easily to me. I've long been able to luxuriate in scene descriptions, laying out the intricacies of my world for readers. And yet no matter how beautifully written my early novels were, readers of them were often puzzled. Though there was some semblance of a plot present in those books--my characters moved from one scene to the next--there was often a sense of narrative disconnect. It was years before I realized why: my characters lacked clear motivation and goals, and so my stories were therefore lacking in forward momentum.

To writers who are plot-driven or character-driven, the idea that one's protagonist and even secondary characters must want things might seem to be self-evident. But for me, it wasn't. Asked to describe my characters, I would often say something like, "She's shy, passive. More a listener than a doer." That's not to say that one can't write passive characters, but even shy people want things: to be understood, to make friends, to talk to the cute boy in the band without turning red as a beet. In truth, I was using these passive characters as a shield to avoid areas of narrative that challenged me. My wallflower characters kept me in my comfort zone, the place of pretty words and places. But they didn't lead to good books.

Now I try to keep my characters' motivations at the forefront of my mind in drafting. In any manuscript, your protagonist, particularly, must have overarching desires. These are often grounded in familial background or childhood. Your character might want fame (because they were ignored); they might want love (because they were an orphan). In each scene, these desires will manifest themselves in different ways. In one, your heroine might want to steal a magic ring from an evil wizard--but this is probably rooted in her desire to liberate her people from an evil empire. In every case, awareness of a character's macro desires over the course of a novel informs a character's micro desires in any given scene.

And it's through these micro desires that conflicts arise between characters. Your evil wizard might want to hold on to the ring because she's power hungry (perhaps due to feeling powerless, always standing in the shadow of her more powerful sorceress sister). Knowing this will add life to your narrative--depth. These character conflicts are what keeps a narrative moving and developing organically, and what persuades a reader to stick with you through the novel's climax.

It's a funny thing; now that I've learned to focus on character motivation, I don't have a lot of time to let my characters chew the scenery any more. I'm too focused on telling their story to fritter my wordcount away.

PHOEBE NORTH was born on her sister’s fifth birthday–December 26th, 1983. She spent the first twenty-two years of her life in New Jersey, where, in the shadows of the Watchung Mountains, she lugged innumerable library books home to read in the bathtub, at the dinner table, in front of the television, and under the blankets with a flashlight when she should have been asleep.

She was a dork: obsessed, variously, with Star Trek, Star Wars (who says you can’t love both?), renaissance festivals, The X-files, Andy Kaufman, Alien Nation, dragons, and Mystery Science Theater 3000. In high school, she dyed her hair every color you can think of–but a Tenctonese can’t hide her spots.

After college, she departed for warmer climes, enrolling in the University of Florida’s MFA program to study poetry. But it was in Gainesville that she learned to embrace her inner dork. After studying children’s literature with scholars Kenneth Kidd and John Cech, she started writing books about magic and love and aliens for teenagers. And realized she loved it almost as much as she loves Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

She now lives in New York State with her cat, her husband, and many licensed novels. She likes to cook, watch Degrassi, sew, take her cat for walks, and, of course, write. Despite many soaked pages, she still loves to read in the bath.

She is represented by Michelle Andelman of Regal Literary. Her first novel, STARGLASS, is forthcoming from Simon and Schuster in July of 2013.

 

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My darling daughter,

Know that I never would have left the Earth if it hadn’t already been doomed.

The generation ship Asherah coasts through space, bound for a planet its passengers have never even seen. On the eve of their arrival, sixteen-year-old botanist Terra discovers that her orderly society has fractured. Walking home one night through the long-abandoned engine rooms, she witnesses the murder of an innocent man. Now, called on by the Children of Abel, a group of rebels intent on destroying the High Council, Terra must prove her mettle–assassinate the ship’s rising captain. In order to carry out her task, Terra must betray her father, deceive her teacher, and challenge everything the Council has ever taught her was true.

The rebels think that Terra has nothing left to lose. But when she falls for Silvan Rafferty, the boy that she’s meant to kill, Terra learns that “doing your duty” isn’t always as easy as it seems.

Advanced praise for Starglass:

Murder, rebellion, and spaceships done right: Phoebe North’s STARGLASS gave me the best kind of chills. I can’t wait to see what the sequel has in store.

-Jodi Meadows, author of Incarnate

Preorder STARGLASS from the following retailers!

Indiebound

Amazon

Barnes & Noble 

The Power of Absence

Absence

Sometimes the most powerful aspect of a character is his absence. 

Absence not only makes the heart grow fonder, but also more suspicious, anxious, and curious. A great example of this in a published book is Reth in Kiersten White's Paranormalcy trilogy. 

Kiersten White created a whole cast of compelling characters, but Reth stood out to me as particularly compelling.

As I read this book for the first time, I found that if Reth was on stage, I couldn't even put my book down to go to the bathroom! I just knew something incredible/freaky/twisted was going to happen before he vanished again. 

How did she do that?

Here are some thoughts:

• She limited his appearances: Reth only shows up when it matters. There's no idle chit chat with him. She doesn't show him going to the bathroom (if faeries even do that sort of thing).
• She showed other people's responses to him: We see the gestures of fear, hear the interior monologue of the MC whenever he's around--and after he leaves. Because we know how Reth makes her feel, we know how he ought to make us feel. 
• She made him round: We all remember from school the difference between a round character and a flat character. Flat is like Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter. She has no character arc, learns no lesson, makes no great change. She is who she is, and that's an evil pink dictator. Round, like Reth, is a character who is both good and bad, who has depth, who may change at any moment, or whom we are just now getting to know. Through the whole book, I think I know what kind of faerie Reth is, and then Wablammy! My perception of him changes with one well-placed revelation.
• She gave him a connection to the main character:  There's a reason I picked a side character for this little analysis. Main characters are almost always well-developed. We spend the most time with them, creating their back stories, giving them a favorite color, favorite TV show, favorite pet peeve. Reth is not the main character in Paranormalcy, but you get the feeling at times that it's his story, too. Kiersten accomplishes that feeling by giving him a very strong connection to the main character. He isn't just a possessive faerie, as he first seems. He's much more to Evie. Even before any grand revelations, we can feel that connection and it makes him important--compelling. 

Absence is also particularly powerful in love stories. Think Stephenie Meyer's New Moon. After Edward leaves (in order to protect Bella from his dangerous eating habits), she falls into a deep depression. Rather than going on for pages about how depressed she is, Meyer fills several pages with nothing. The only word on the page is the empty month it represents to Bella. 

October

November

December

January

The following chapter is called "Waking Up," but even as Bella comes out of the depression to enjoy a friendship with Jacob, Edward's absence remains the driving force in the story. It drives her to an obsession with motorcycles, which brings her straight to Jacob and a relationship that changes all of their lives. 

Absence did that.

In Harry Potter 2, the absence of letters from his friends makes HP's summer particularly painful. In Book 5, the absence of information and visitors drives Harry to become resentful for the first time in his adventures. Dumbledore's absence is repeatedly used to drive Harry, Hermione, and Ron toward danger. 

The absence of one or more parents has a profound impact on any character. Some of the best stories have stripped their heroes of all family, leaving them driven either for revenge or to get those family members back.

This week I've suffered through the absence of my husband as he works in California and I visit my family post-baby in Utah. Even though I'm surrounded by family, nobody can replace Bill. His absence impacts my every thought and action. My sister is here, a senior airman and military spouse, waiting for her husband's next assignment so they can be together again. For her, it has been much longer than a week. 

Absence is a powerful force. Think how it's affected your life, and you'll know exactly how to torture your characters. 

Happy Weekend Reading! 

What will you read this weekend? 

(I'm still working on Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass)

So You Want to Write a Novel

I am crazy busy this week trying to get a manuscript out the door, so I thought I'd share a funny little video I came across by David Kazzie. Enjoy! :)