Motivation: Making Your Characters Sweat

Goals. I have plenty. You should have a couple, too. You know, if you want to get ahead in life and stuff...

Anyway. Goals. Like I said, people have them. And so should your characters.

Why? Because whatever drives your character will drive the story forward. 

That's why I've chosen to talk a bit about character motivations today. 

There are 3 things you should consider whenever brainstorming character motivations:

1) The what- Character motivations come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe John Doe wants to buy his daughter a pony, but the specific pony the daughter wants is uber-expensive and is only sold in Denmark. Tough luck for John Doe. But even though his goal is hard to reach, he's going to sweat to get it. And since you like John Doe because he is so nice and funny and smart, you're going to keep turning those pages to see if he gets his hands on that Danish pony. 

Even though the what is very important, it's not enough. You also need...

2) The why- Mary Doe, John's daughter, is sick. She's dying a slow, painful death, and all she wants is a freakin' Danish pony. She's John's only daughter. The light in his eyes. The reason he breathes. And for that, he's going to grant her dying wish. Not only must you make your character's what something that makes sense for the story, but the why needs to be believable as well. Just think of my example: would John go through all this trouble for someone he didn't care about? Heck no. That wouldn't make sense. UNLESS that someone he doesn't care about is holding Mary Doe at gunpoint and makes John go after the Danish pony in order to save her. Either way, he's doing it for Mary, not for Random Character He Doesn't Care About. 

Okay. You have your what, then you discover your why. Now all you need is...

3) The how- This is where that whole speech on driving your story forward comes into play. John Doe has a goal (what) and a motivation (why), but how will he get it? Through choices. Every single step John takes to get closer to that Danish pony is the result of a decision. It can be something he already had in mind, or a spur of the moment kind of thing. Either way, you have to piece all those choices out on your manuscript in a cohesive way. For example, John will dig into his savings account, come up short for the trip expenses, so he sells his ginormous action figure collection. Bingo--one-way ticket to Europe. Okay. When he gets to Europe, he gets into a cab. The driver is cruising through a barely-lit tunnel, humming "California Gurls" by Katy Perry. But then the driver has a heart attack and steers the cab toward a wall. John Doe is left barely alive. How will he get that pony now????

For me, the how is the most frustrating and fun part about writing. But rest assured, you can do it. All it takes is a lot. Of. Patience. 

My advice for keeping readers hooked? Make your characters sweat. Make them want something that holds special meaning for them. And always make them choose ways that will help them get it. Even if you ruin the journey for them with a few curve balls. 

Have a great week, everyone!

Agent Jill Corcoran: Activate Your Story

Angela’s agent, Jill Corcoran of the Herman Agency, recently posted an amazing article about how to write an engaging beginning. She’s given Operation Awesome permission to repost it for all you awesome blog buddies.

 

Jill Corcoran of the Herman Agency

 

ACTIVATE YOUR STORY

I have been doing a lot of first 10 pages critiques lately, and I find myself writing…START YOUR STORY and ACTIVATE YOUR STORY on almost 100% of the manuscripts. Choosing where to start you story is so very important in grabbing your reader and willing him to keep reading, captivating him so he cannot put your book down.

Unfortunately, so many writers start in the wrong place. They start in what seems to me like they are taking to themselves, working out what is happening or who their characters are or what the back story is and putting that in the first chapters rather than starting where the book needs to begin. Starting right before everything changes for your main character.

Right before? Yes, I know you have heard so many times to start in the action, to start at the moment your character’s life is about to change, but by doing this we often do now know who your character is so we don’t care that their life is changing. We don’t care about who they are or what is their peril.

Don’t start by describing what is going on. Don’t start by having your main character ‘think’ about/tell us about all that is happening in their life. Don’t start with shot from a gun, waking from a bad dream, dialog of people fighting, random thoughts from your character that does not activate your plot and bring the character and the reader into the character’s world. Don’t write a passive, telling, descriptive beginning.

START YOUR STORY. Show your character in his world, interacting with other characters that give us a glimpse into who your character is, what problem is he facing and why this problem means something to him, and to us the reader.

In one of my favorite books, Gayle Foreman’s IF I STAY, Gayle does not start the book at the moment of the car crash. We first see the family together, we actually fall in love with the main character and her family so when the car crash happens, we are devastated along with the main character. Gayle starts the first line of the book with an intriguing sentence….a sentence that activates us to pay attention to this first meeting with the main character’s family. That foreshadows the doom and gloom to come:

            Everyone thinks it is because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that’s true.

And then we are back in her world.  A world where the main character is not telling us what is happening but shows us through other characters’ actions and dialog, as well as her own.

Look back at the first pages of THE HUNGER GAMES, SPEAK, LOOKING FOR ALASKA, CONTERFEIT SON, FROZEN STIFF, FYLING SOLO,STARGIRL, the list goes on and on.

These are captivating beginnings that establish voice, character, plot, setting without plunging us blindly into the ‘problem’, the ‘crisis’. They also do not bore us with little details that talk down to the reader to make sure they are going to ‘get it’, that make sure the reader knows everything they need to know so they can follow your story.

Often you have to finish your book so you can rewrite/re-envision your beginning. Often you have to toss out your first couple of chapters. Do not mourn those lost words.  Thank them for helping you get started, for helping you understand where you book is going, for activating you to write rather than spend your years like so many wannabees saying I have a story I want to write but I just don’t know where to start. Congrats. You started. You got to the end. Now rewrite that beginning. Activate your story.

Jill Corcoran represents primarily Chapter Book, Middle Grade, and Young Adult authors. For more helpful writing tips and industry news, check our her blog: http://jillcorcoran.blogspot.com/

The Geniuses of WriteOnCon: Jamie Harrington

We've got another special interview treat from our heroes at WriteOnCon! Those of you who follow her on Totally the Bomb have been waiting for this day, I know. 

Jamie Harrington (bio and pic from writeoncon.com)

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Jamie Harrington is a Young Adult Fiction writer represented by Mary Kole of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc. A former kindergarten teacher turned stay at home mom, you can find her online at her website, or on Twitter.

Katrina Lantz: WriteOnCon was seriously epic, historic, unprecedented! As one of its organizers, did you expect WriteOnCon to garner as much industry support as it did? To what do you owe this?

Jamie Harrington: No way! It was a total shock to me. I still sometimes look at the stats thinking I misread them! Really, we owe the numbers to the conference attendees. They did everything they could to really get the word out. It was totally one of those Field of Dreams moments.

Katrina: What were your thoughts on opening morning when thousands flocked to the site to participate in the first free online writer's conference?

Jamie: Well, I was asleep. We decided last minute to change up a bunch of stuff in the forums, and I stayed up until four in the morning getting it all organized. You know, until my phone started buzzing with all the frantic text messages from the other girls. :)

Katrina: What was the hardest part about WriteOnCon's organization?

Jamie: I think it was the not knowing. Here we were asking all these super important industry professionals to participate in this big conference, and we had no idea if anyone would show up or not. Plus, if the conference was a bust, not only was I going to look silly, but so would the other girls. It's one thing to put your own name on the line, but when you're putting your friends out there, too, well that's all sorts of stressful.

Katrina: What was the most important thing you learned this year that will help with future online conferences?

Jamie: I learned lots of technical stuff about how to do it better next year that I won't bore you guys with, but something else I learned was that writers actually wanted the conference. It was something the kidlit industry really needed, and next year I will make sure there's more opportunity for the participants to bond and network, because that's a really cool part of attending offline cons.

Katrina: What's next for WriteOnCon? The discussion forums remain active. What role do you see WriteOnCon playing between annual conferences?

Jamie: We're hoping to have a few live discussion panels, live query blogs, and things like that to keep people interested in the Con. We want to offer writers tools and resources they can't get from other sources--which is hard, because there are a LOT of sources out there! 

Katrina: We think it's amazing the work you all did to put on such an amazing conference, and for FREE! Will next year's conference still be free?

Jamie: Yes. Next year's conference will absolutely be free. That was such a big deal to all the WriteOnCon girls, and has never been up for debate. All of us owe many of our career successes to the online writing community, and WriteOnCon is our way of paying it forward. We have been asked by several people if we'd open up to donations, and we're thinking we might do that, but only to pay for the costs associated with running the site.


Update: You can donate now to support the 2011 WriteOnCon, which is sure to be even more epic than the last. But the donation button is provided guilt-free, meaning you can come and participate even if you don't donate. 

Katrina: Do you know of any success stories (agents and authors who found each other during the conference)?

Jamie: I have heard a few requests, but I haven't heard of any official offers yet. (If that does happen, though I hope they email and tell us all about it. That would pretty much be the coolest thing ever!)


Katrina: And what do you think it is that makes a writer awesome?


Jamie: I think the thing that really makes a writer awesome is their willingness to try again and again (and again). Nobody writes an amazing first draft, but an awesome writer realizes that and is willing to spend hours editing and revising to turn every word of their book into something amazing. 

Katrina: I think I speak for the online writing community when I say THANK YOU! And we want to show our appreciation by spreading the word about WriteOnCon, as well as its organizers. 

Jamie: No, thank you guys! We had a blast putting on the Con, but it wouldn't have been near as much fun without everyone!

Find Jamie Harrington on the web:

Her awesome blog: Totally The Bomb

On twitter
Guide to Literary Agents: How I Got My Agent
Jamie's Author Success Story on Elana Johnson's blog
Interview Pre-WriteOnCon with Nathalie Mvondo
Bookanista Reviews/Cover Love

We have more WriteOnCon interview goodness to follow next Friday (our last one *sniff*), but if you missed the other organizers' spotlights, be sure to check them out. And don't worry, WriteOnCon isn't going away! Their monthly live events have already begun, and they are awesome!!


Psst! Don't forget to whip up a little something for our fan fiction contest to win the All White for Twilight limited edition books!! The deadline is October 31st at midnight.


And get warmed up for NaNoWrimo with Kristal's 1k a day writing challenge. Save the adorable buttons from our sidebar to post in yours as a daily reminder of your goal. 


One more thing: top sidebar holds an important poll (at least it's important to our owl). Orange owl needs a name, and he's counting on you to provide a good one. Don't let him down. ;) 

Useful Humility

Many people are poor judges of their own work. This may be old news to all you psychologists out there (both armchair and licensed), but I only recently read the study that proves it:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

This 1999 article by Justin Kruger and David Dunning of Cornell University shows that people who are incompetent frequently over-estimate their own skills because they are too ignorant to judge whether they are good or not.

That couldn’t apply to writers, too, could it?

Yes. It’s difficult for even good writers to judge their own work, so where does that leave the bad ones? Well, pretty bad off, not to mention indignant that the publishing world is rigged against their genius.

Self-editing can only take you so far before all the words run together into meaningless mush.

Don’t get me wrong – some people work best toiling alone in isolated garrets. I always thought I was one of them, and wrote my first novel by myself, without readers or feedback until I was agented. My agent helped me take my novel so much farther than I thought I could go. She thought I could do better, and I did. My book didn't sell, but everything I learned is going into the next one.

And that includes my new belief in honest, quality feedback. As someone who wrote in isolation, I can attest to the value of a critique group like this one. I was nervous about sharing unpolished, incomplete work, but it helped that I didn’t know the rest of Operation Awesome before we started. They got to know me through my rough pages – me at my writing worst.

And if I improve, it’s in part because they pushed me into writing better and pulled me through the tough parts. Because the flipside of being Unskilled and Unaware is the writer’s other curse – believing every word is hopeless trash. And that’s the other value of critique partners – not just to tell you what’s wrong, although that’s important, but to tell you what’s good and how you can make it better.

Expectations

Don't forget: The 'All White For Twilight' contest is open till the 31st of October. Remember to get your entries in for those exclusive UK limited edition white copies of The Twilight Saga. They are so pretty. Promise. :)

Oh, and a huge thank you for the awesome chat yesterday on magic limitations. It was frawesome.

And now back to your regular scheduled programme.

As kids we grow up being expected to do certain things.

Walk, talk, read, go to school and work hard. Then we have to get jobs, have relationships, maybe marry and have babies. The list is long (I can't see a cookie clause on there anywhere either).

Sniff.

Should we feel bad if these things don't happen the way we thought or follow a linear pattern? No, because we have a brilliant way of adapting to the twisty journey of life. We take it as it comes.

Not happy at work? Get a new job/career/or switch departments.
Hate the wallpaper in the living room? Redecorate...or get some small child to draw a mural on it in crayon.

So when we write are our expectations any different?

We set out to write a story and expect our novel will turn out a certain way. We give birth to these characters, and they live through our words. We create their world around them.

As literary parents we help them grow. We expect they'll run into some conflict, meet someone, fall in love, get their hearts broken...maybe even fight some sort of giant squid monster who wants to rule the world.

That is, until a plot twist surprises us, and we go in another direction.

A character pops into our heads we weren't aware of and throws us off course. Or our MC says, 'Are you crazy? I wouldn't do that.'

Should we feel bad for not following the specific course we set out on?

I've learnt that writing doesn't always go from A to B. It likes to be mischievous. Sometimes it forces us to take a trip through G, D, F and back to A before reaching B.

It also raises questions on the expectations we have before we enter the world of edits, queries, submissions and the hundreds of other things that go with the author journey.

That isn't A to B either.

There's a whole world of perseverance, re-writes, edits (and more queries) before we reach our agent destination. Or, Agent Avenue as I have named it. :)

Then the journey begins a new path...Publication Road.

So why do we do it? Because we know the destination is at the end, but the journey can take as many paths as you are willing to walk to reach Bookshelf City.

And, maybe even, re-evaluate our expectations to get there. :)

Succeed Through Faliure

 

Sooo, how is everyone's 1k a Day going? Getting your word count every day? 

(crickets)

Mine hasn't been the best either. I've been getting in about every other day. Most days I write, but I don't always achieve the 1k. Some days I have to delete so much that I get no positive word count at all.. So does that make me a failure? To some, yes. For me?   No.

I want to share with you a little bit about goals. I am not the type that often achieves my goals. It's because I set goals that are often out of reach. I tend to shoot for the stars.


Let me explain in a more presonal way.

My son has autism. Every year we sit down with his teachers and set his IEP goals. We could set nice low markers for him, to be sure of his success. Instead, we set our sights on percentages he probably won't achieve. Why is that? Because if we don't aim high, his improvements would be minimal.  It is the results that are important, not necessarily meeting the mark.  We set high expectations for him to get the highest levels of improvement. And in the end, he benefits more though his failure.

So 1k a day. I've been reading comments along the line of, "Oh, I can't do that."  I knew it would be a stretch for me, especially since I am getting back on my writing horse. Let's just say that in the last year I've had stretches, months at a time, where I've written nothing. But if I only challenged myself to 100 words a day, I would've never gotten the 1k.

So where are you aiming? How much word count do you expect of yourself? What expectations do you have on your progress, on your goals of publication? Do you only aim for things that you can see, that you know you can reach? Instead of insuring your success, why not shoot for the stars to see how far your arrow will go.

Note: Tonight is our chat on Magic Limitations. There will be awesome door prizes as well. 

Also, don't forget our Twilight contest. Tweet it out to all of your Twilight friends.

Writing Tip: Be The Cheater

Don't forget to enter OA's latest contest for a chance to win special edition Twilight books! Trust me. Those suckers are g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s.

Okay. Now for my writing tip. 

I know I say this on my personal blog a lot, but I'm a huge TV fan. Obsessed, some would say (don't listen to them...). I like to think I've learned a ton about writing through the screen. And today I'm going to give you an example.

Ladies and gents, I give you The Boreanaz:

That, my friends, is actor David Boreanaz. He starred in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is currently on Fox's hit, Bones. His character on the Fox show is an FBI agent who was once a Marine. He is related to John Wilkes Booth (not a great reputation...), and is the father of an adorable boy who asks a lot of questions. 

In real life, David Boreanaz is a cheater.

Yep. He cheated on his wife. Multiple times. And I stopped liking him.

Until I sat down to watch an episode of Bones, like I do every Thursday at 8pm. The man on screen wasn't David Boreanaz, folks. He was Agent Booth, the ex Marine who falls for a forensic anthropologist and keeps quiet about it. The man who has a ton of insecurities, but hides them with a smile. The man who fights the bad guys every day and doesn't wince when a gun is pointed at him. 

Suddenly, it dawned on me. I love Agent Booth.

But I hate The Boreanaz. 

That's why this week I'm telling you to be The Boreanaz--be the cheater. Whether you're writing in first person or third, you must get into your character's mind. You are not you when you're writing. You are someone else. You leave you at the door and get to work. 

You need to make your readers believe that someone else is real (in The Boreanaz's case, he needs his viewers to forget about the cheating scandal and focus on Agent Booth, who would never cheat. Not even on a Calculus quiz). How do you do that? Think about how that someone else would feel if X or Y happened to him/her. How does he/she see the world? What's their biggest fear? Do they want justice? World peace? To slap Lindsay Lohan?

This process, what I like to call channeling your character's voice, is tough. But it can be done. Maybe not on the first try, or the second, or third. But someday, you'll get it right... just like The Boreanaz. 

Now tell me: what do you do when your characters aren't speaking to you?

Quick Revision Checklist

Quick Revision Checklist

-Watch for repeat words and phrases.

-Avoid passive verbs.

-Make sure your novel is right for the market you’re targeting.

-Have you maintained the correct point-of-view?

-Does your dialogue sound natural or forced?

-Is interior monologue realistic? Make sure they really are thoughts and feeling the character would have.

-Are your characters motivations clear to the reader?

-Are your character names different enough so they don’t all blur together? Henry, Henrietta, Harry, Hampton.  

-Have you offered enough description to give the reader a sense of setting?

-Do you have enough conflict to keep the reader interested?

-Is the story as clear to your readers as it is to you?

-Have you used all five senses where appropriate?

-Have you attended or used an online critique group for feedback?

I hope you find this checklist helpful.  I’m sure you’ll have a few of your own questions as well. Good luck and happy writing!--Angela 

Twi-Contest: All White For Twilight

Attention: I have hijacked the blog from the fabulous Katrina. Okay she let me, but it was for a good reason. Promise.

Okay, sometimes I hate missing the new releases of books that the US get first, but after reading this from The Bookseller I did a happy dance.All white for Twilight

Stephenie Meyer's blockbuster Twilight series is to be republished this Christmas with a new white jacket design.

(Pictures from http://www.play.com/)
The four limited-edition titles: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, will be published by Atom on 14th October as £7.99 paperbacks, available only in the UK and Ireland, and Little Brown's territories including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. The white editions will not be available in the US.

The white titles will only be published between October and Christmas 2010, replacing the usual black jackets. The titles will have crimson-edged pages and crimson back covers, with text confined to the spines.
Can I say WOW?

So, being a kind hearted British gal, I thought of you guys. I’m hooking you up with a chance to win two sets of the white cover Twilight Saga. Yes, all four of the white cover Twilight saga copies will be sent to you. And yes, I have already ordered my own.

So, how do you win these pretties? Well it is simple -- write.

Write a 200 word piece of fanfic starring any Twilight character on why you should win the books, and post it in the comments. Us Operation Awesome gals will pick the winners.

And don’t worry about rushing. The contest will run until Midnight (GMT) on the 31^st of October 2010, so you’ll have lots of time to think of something. The two winners will be announced soon after. And I promise I’ll keep the books safe.

So please feel free to spread the word. Tweet, blog, add us to your sidebar, shout it from the rooftops...tell a cookie. Okay, the last one is just me, but you get the idea.

Oh, and did I mention these books are only out in the UK?  This is your chance to win this limited edition.

Ready. Set. Write.

Happy Friday.

Awesome Word Rainbow

How cool would it be to have a rainbow made up of all of YOU! 

Your words.

Your imaginations.

Umm, it would be freaking awesome!!

So here's what we need from you:

Write four lines of poetry, or a quatrain (it can rhyme or not) about your favorite color:

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green 
Blue
Indigo
Violet
White
Black (I know, not technically in the rainbow, but some people think it's the new pink)

Wax poetic. Write your soul. Or just muse about a funny color. If we get every color, we'll have a very lovely word rainbow that represents all of you, our favorite people on the whole blogosphere. *happy sigh*

I'll do my favorite color for an example:

Yellow of daisies or buttercups,
Tulips, sunshine, roses, and pups:
No symbol as sublime as thee.
You cast out winter, shadows flee.




**Starting Tomorrow: Don't forget to snag your buttons (save and post from our sidebar to yours) to show your commitment to the One K a Day October challenge {or one page a day for the time-challenged} which starts tomorrow!! Join Kristal in blogging your daily word count.. To join a write-a-thon, waltz cheerfully into the OA Writing Lab and type your favorite username. The password is awesome. 


Woot for CONTESTS! Come back tomorrow because the gorgeous Lindsay has something that will really get your creative wheels spinning. You will want this prize. Trust me. ;)

A World Of Imagination

Come with me, and you'll be in a world of pure imagination...

Sorry, I had a Willy Wonka moment there.

I have a kind of vivid imagination. And, as a child, Roald Dahl was one of my favourite authors. So, naturally, I loved the Gene Wilder version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I want one of those gardens with the sweets. I want it now! Yeah, there's a bit of Verucca Salt in me. :)

The line from that song makes me wonder about imagination. All of us have it. As children we use it everyday in the games we play, the stories we tell etc. So when we are adults where does it go?

Do we lose the ability of imagination? Do we forget because we don't want to use it and life is taken over by the practicality of work?

As writers we seem to hold on to our imagination. It grows along with us.

We store those ideas and tap into them. We create worlds, characters and stories. We live with our MC in this world. We share their pain, triumphs and disasters.

Maybe we're eternal dreamers. The word charmers of old changing folktales into bedtime stories.

Perhaps imagination is a gift bestowed on all as babies, but only utilized by those who still see the world around them. They want to shape it and set it free for others to enjoy.

Imagination has a spark. A catalyst that helps us turn our idea into a plot, and that plot into a novel. We want to do it.

Perhaps that is what separates writers' imaginations from others. We all have it, we never really loose it, but only some want to use it.

Like Mr. Wonka says.

If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to...do it. Want to change the world? There's nothing...to it.

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there you'll be free. If you truly wish to be.

Awesome Chat: Magic Limitations and 1K a Day update.

AWESOME CHAT:

Next Tuesday, October 5th from 5-6pm EST, come join the Operation Awesome girls in the OA Writing Lab (password: awesome) for some tantalizing discussion about magical limitations in your writing. The OA bloggers LOVE their magical story elements. In fact, I think every single one of us is writing a sparkly-magical story right now, so we have lots of opinions/tips/thoughts about how to do it convincingly, and we'd love to hear yours as well.

Door prizes include:

1. Prada and Prejudice by Mandy Hubbard 
2. Voice of Crow by Jeri Smith-Ready 

1k a Day:

As promised, here are the buttons for the 1k a Day challenge. Put it up on your blog as a way to commit to this challenge. Also, if you post about the challenge on your blog and then post a link to that post in the comments under this thread, I'll give you a chance at winning your choice of either a blog button, banner or a ten page critique by yours truly.

Edit: I've been having some technical difficulties getting the text box to link the buttons. For now, you can save the images and post them on your site.

Here is the button for 1k a day

And for the less ambitions, here is a 1 Page a Day tag.

It's not how much you write that is important, it is writing consistently. So if you can't pull off the 1K a Day, make a go for the 1 page.

How To Plot Your Awesome Novel

In case you haven’t heard, Kristal’s started an awesome 1k a day challenge. This challenge got me thinking about a bunch of stuff (like how I’m procrastinating… a lot… please don’t tell my crit partners…). But mainly, it made me ponder something I’ve recently become a fan of.

Outlining.

I know, I know—a 1k a day challenge is no place for pre-plotting. BUT I’m not here to tell you to map out everything beforehand. I’m here to share some uh-may-zing tips on what to keep in mind while you’re writing.

Confession: Heidi Willis is a genius. She blogged about what a novel’s plot should consist of, but in a way that even I understood it (yep, I’m sort of slow with the technical stuff…). Since it was such a great post, I decided to share it with all you pretty people.

Here’s how Heidi breaks down plot:

3 Act Method

Act I (25%) Set up characters, motivations, backstory. At the end of this section, a dramatic event propels the main character into conflict

Act II (50%) In the middle of this, the MC discovers a secret, by the end is the start of big confrontations with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Conflict rises steeply.

Act III (25%) Obstacles are overcome, MC must make choices

Percentage Method

Stage 1 (10%) draw reader in, identification with hero

Turning Point (10%) new opportunity, new journey often followed by MC refusing to take the journey or by into the opportunity

Stage 2 (15%) hero reacts, formulates plan

Stage 3 (25%) hero is overcoming obstacles

***Turning Point (at the 50% mark) hero must commit, there is no turning back

Stage 4 (25%) goal is more visible, stakes are higher

***Turning Point (at 75% mark) Major setback, a do or die moment

Stage 5: (15%) Final push; conflict becomes overwhelming, MC must give everything; accellerated pace; MC determines his or her own fate.

Stage 6: Aftermath, what life are they living now

When Heidi plots, she uses 300 pages as her guideline. Thus the above percentages would be:

p 1 - 30

p 30 - 60

p 60 - 105

p 105 - 180 (turning point at p 150)

p 180 - 255 (turning point at p 225)

p 255 - 300

I don’t know about you, but I feel all smart after reading that :)

Here’s the link to Heidi’s amazing blog:

http://heidiwillis.blogspot.com/

And here are some links to other plot-related posts around the blogosphere:

http://kidlit.com/2009/12/09/writing-a-hot-plot/ (by Kelly’s agent, Mary Kole)

http://storyflip.blogspot.com/2010/08/find-your-plot-fridays-what-to-do-what.html (by MG fantasy author, Janice Hardy)

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/08/how-to-write-novel.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NathanBransford+%28Nathan+Bransford+-+Literary+Agent%29 (by the ever-awesome Nathan Bransford)

Go get that 1k a day, everyone!

1k a Day: Write-a-Thon and Chat News

Yesterday, I posted my first 1k a Day word count on my blog. I'm glad to tell you, friends, that day one was a success!

(cue applause)

I credit my success to one tool that our OA gang loves. It's call the Write-a-Thon.

What is a Write-a-Thon? Well, I'm so glad you asked! A Write-a-Thon is when a group of writers join together in a chat room for the singular purpose of writing our butts off. What we do is set a timer for 20 minutes, and then take off and write...write...write. I'm not sure why it helps so much. Perhaps it is because one feels motivated when she knows others are writing at the same time. It also helps because it helps avoid procrastination; there are only 20 minutes to get things done.

When the 20 minutes are finished, we converge back in chat and report our word count. We chat for maybe like 5 minutes, get snacks, and then we go for another round. Last night, I was able to write 1,339 words in three rounds of Write-a-Thon.

So to help you all out--and me too--we've created a chat room for the sole purpose of writing. If you join the chat and nobody is talking, it could be they are in the middle of a serious Write-a-Thon. You are all welcome to join in the fun. And writing together really does makes it more fun! Try it out. Meet some new writers. Write with the OA gang.

FYI: I tend to write after lunch, around 12:20 or 1:00pm Central Time during the weekdays.

Here is a LINK to the OA Writing Lab. When joining, please come with the attitude of kicking word count butt.

Edit: The password to the room is awesome

Update. Update. Update.

Ah Sunday, that day of relaxing, eating, blog trawling and, in my case, inflicting way too much sugar on my poor system in the form of chocolate. Although last week it was the bag of Swedish Fish I bought on a trip to Ikea with my parents, brother and sister-in-law. Yum.

But I digress. Today I'm here to do a quick Operation Awesome service announcement. We loved the response to the 100 followers contest, but there are still a few we haven't heard from yet. :(

Here are the winners below. If you won, but if we haven't heard from you, please get in touch. There are some OA gals waiting to say hi.

Julie Weathers wins Katrina’s 10-page critique

Elizabeth Briggs wins a custom blog banner or button, and a 10-page critique by Kristal

Coffeelvnmom wins Kelly’s 10-page critique

Jared Larson wins Lindsay’s 10-page critique

Cali Davidson wins Angela’s 20-page critique

Rachael Harrie wins Amparo’s one-line pitch AND query critique

Happy Sunday to all. Now this little Brit gal needs to get back to Kristal's 1k a day challenge. Have you joined the fun yet?