Best Writing Advice I’ve Ever Received: Rhythm in Writing Makes a BIG Difference

There are lots of questions we ask ourselves while we’re creating or revising a story. Is this scene flowing? Are my characters speaking in believable ways? Is this chapter about a three-legged poodle joining a street gang engaging enough? As careful and crazy diligent writers, we break our stories into tiny parts and investigate each one. The minutiae of choosing the right word or a strong sentence can consume us.

Ultimately, we want to know if we’re communicating effectively and if people “get” what we’ve written. Considering the rhythm of our words is one critical step. It can be the difference between someone reading your book in one day or in one month…same characters, same content.

And by “rhythm,” I’m referring to the combination of three things:

1) How Words Sound in Your Noggin – When the majority of people read, their brains reproduce the same sounds as if they were reading out loud. Crazy, right? This means one VERY important and albeit obvious thing… your writing needs to sound good when spoken. If you can, get a friend and read it out loud to her. Encourage her to tell you when something is confusing or sounds squidgy. While you’re reading you’ll come across all sorts of sentences that stick in your mouth like peanut butter. Change them. If you can’t even read them well, and you wrote them, what do you think they’ll sound like to others? Reading out loud is your first line of defense against suckage.

2) The Effect Sentence Length Has on Reading Ease – When all of your sentences are short, they sound choppy. When they’re all long, they become increasingly difficult to understand. Vary those puppies up. Sentences that are all one length have the sound equivalent of monotonous tones. And boring isn’t sexy. Monotonous sentences can kill your exciting content.

3) Writing the Way Humans Actually Speak – Most people worry about dialogue having a good “flow” and sounding realistic. We phrase our dialogue to be easily understandable and to roll off the tongue. But what about all the other sentences? In my opinion, every single sentence should be approached the same way dialogue is. They should be easy to say, interesting to listen to, and have a voice.

As far as I know, “rhythm” (in the way I used it) isn’t writing jargon. I made it up. But if I’ve explained it in a way that you could both easily understand and easily read out loud, then I’ve done my job. I’ve created something and convinced you of its viability and importance. I’ve told you a story.

Happy writing, everyone!!

Adriana Mather is the 14th generation of Mathers in America, and as such her family has their fingers in many of its historical pies – the first Thanksgiving, the Salem Witch Trials, the Titanic, the Revolutionary War, and the wearing of curly white wigs. Also, Adriana co-owns a production company, Zombot Pictures, in LA that has made three feature films in three years. Her first acting scene in a film ever was with Danny Glover, and she was terrified she would mess it up. Her first young adult novel, HOW TO HANG A WITCH, is forthcoming from Knopf/Random House in Fall 2016. In addition, her favorite food is pizza and she has too many cats.

Getting Unstuck: Tightening Your Story’s Saggy Middle

Oh, the horror of the second act! So many things go off kilter here. And when a story isn’t flowing it’s easy to get writer’s block, avoid editing, or give up on it all together. The solution can feel really confusing and just out of reach. I’ve done a lot of thinking on this section of a story and just recently changed my perspective on it. I now look at a saggy middle as no more than a simple structural issue that can be resolved with a couple of easy lists. I’ll explain…

Organization – A saggy middle is a plot problem. And it often means that you’re not tormenting your characters enough. In act one you put your main character (MC) on the edge of a cliff. In act two, you should be swinging at her with a sharp sword. It should get so bad that she falls and clings the crumbling dirt for dear life. That is until act three when she pulls herself up, picks up her own sword, and fights back. So the first question you want to ask yourself about act two is, are you swinging a sharp sword or a limp noodle? Is your character gripping the edge with white knuckles or is she sun-tanning with a mojito?

Know Thy Weapon – In order to be an effective sword-swinger, you need to first know what types of threats/conflict/abuse work on your MC. So here comes the first list; on it goes: 1) your MC, 2) what your MC wants more than anything in the world, 3) what your MC’s weaknesses are emotionally, physically, and situationally.

Sinister Plotting – Now comes the really evil bit where you use your MC’s weaknesses against her. Here comes the second list divided into three columns: emotional, physical, and situational. And in each column you list as many obstacles and conflicts that you can think of that accomplish two things: 1) keep your MC from getting what she desperately wants, 2) take advantage of her weaknesses (from your first list).

Brandishing Your Steel – Once you know all the ways you can make your MC suffer, taking full advantage of her vulnerabilities, you have to organize them. This is a personal choice and will vary by story. You can put them in escalating order or they may organize themselves organically based on your plot arc. But the point is to list them out and know exactly which ones you are gonna use (the most difficult ones). The more these lists make you cringe and feel bad for your MC, the better.

The point of doing this is to keep your stakes and suspense high. Ask yourself every step of the way if the conflicts are as bad as they can be or if you can make them worse. This makes the resolution of act three so much more gratifying and keeps readers up until 3AM desperate to know how your book ends. Of course, there are lots of other elements that need to connect in act two, but this plot structure will give you a backbone on which to accomplish them. And if you find yourself writing a scene that resolves your character’s tension… imagine me calling you a “limp noodle” in your head and then press the delete key.

Happy writing, everyone!

Query Lessons Learned the Hard Way

This is a continuation of our series on queries and the query process.

So this is the post where everyone gets a good laugh at my expense. And it’s also the post where it becomes clear that despite stepping in it a few times, you can still get an agent.

In my previous post, I described how I broke down my query and why I included what I did. But I did not include my blunders, because who would do such a thing publicly? Um, right.

It goes like this…

Dear Ms. – Before I sent out my first batch of queries, I asked a couple of agents who were my alumni to evaluate my query and give me their honest opinions. I didn’t know this wasn’t usual, and wrapped in my blissful ignorance, I sent out casual emails to people starting with “Hi!” and “Hey!” I can feel you all cringing for me already.

I had no idea that I was supposed to start emails to literary industry folks with Dear Ms. and Mr. I work in entertainment, and all of our emails resemble texts. So I rightfully got an email back saying, “I dislike the expression ‘reach out,’ emails that start ‘Hi’ and being addressed by my first name by someone I don't know. There's brutal honesty.” Needless to say, I never did that again. In fact, even when I write emails to my mother now, I question how I should address her.

Grammar Police – I know it’s captain obvious to double-check your grammar before you send out a query. I did. All my commas where in tip top shape. But, I made one critical error and got this response, “I'll get over my initial winces at ‘hung’ for ‘hanged’ and read your query letter.” Yes, my book is called How to Hang a Witch. And yes, this mistake was not only repeated in my query three or four times, but it was in my MS about a gazillion times.

With my tail between my legs I learned that people are never hung; they are hanged. I also learned that it is worth it to find a couple of grammar whiz friends and run important things by them.

Format Shmormat – When I got my first full request, I almost fainted from delight. I jumped in the air, clicked my heels together, and pressed send. Surprisingly, even though query dos and don’ts are addressed everywhere on the interwebs, the format used when sending a full or partial is not. I sent mine single-spaced with no title page. Nuff said.

The sound of my forehead hitting my desk could be heard down the block. But, despite all of this brouhaha, my request rates were good. And I’m not sorry I made these mistakes. I’m actually really glad I did. They taught me right up front that there are all kinds of things about querying and the literary industry that I don’t know that I don’t know. Because of these blunders, I joined writing groups and developed a whole network of knowledgeable people who would ultimately save me from myself.

If you have any embarrassing query experiences that you feel like airing out, please share! 

Breaking Down the Query (the story of a colorful noob getting results)

This post kicks off our series on queries and the query process. Stay tuned for more awesome. 

My path into traditional publishing wasn’t typical. I’ve only written one book, which I recently sold to Knopf in a two-book deal. So, my journey was littered with firsts, and blunders that would make the queen’s guard cringe (but that’s for another post).

When I sat down to write my query, I knew absolutely nothing about them. What surprised me was that I spent as much time researching and writing my one-page query as I did 30K of my novel. I gotta say, though, it was worth it. I sent it to 17 agents, got 7 full requests, and 5 offers of representation.

Below is a breakdown of all of the sections I used and how I arrived at each one.

The Mini-Synopsis – aka make my book sound fantabulous in ten seconds

The idea of cramming my entire novel into a measly paragraph gave me agita. See, I thought the mini-synopsis needed to paint a complete picture of my story, and was super happy to discover it was actually a teaser to inspire an agent to read on.

Once I understood, I found my way to agent Kristen Nelson’s blog, Pub Rants, where she broke down the back of a book-cover into five or six manageable sentences. She explained the purpose each sentence served in a plot description – which was something concrete I could replicate for my own story. My logic was that a book cover serves the same purpose for a reader as a query does for an agent.

Then, I took my pitchy synopsis and compared it to the stuff the fine folks of QT wrote and the honest critiques on QueryShark. I told my ego to “shut up” and I revised, listened to feedback, and revised some more.

The Bio – I wore a skirt suit and tie to my fifth-grade school picture (true story)

Dun dun dun… I had NO writing credits or degrees and was narrowly eyeing this section like it was challenging me to a fight. I had read warnings to omit my multitude of cats and how I hate wet socks. Instead, I made a list of things that represented me best as an author and as a human someone would want to work with.

That list included clubs and organizations I was in (or could join) that related to my book subject matter or target audience, skill sets that would be useful in promoting my work, and any real-world experience that made me the right person to tell my story.

A bio wasn’t necessary and it’s debated how much info should go in there. Personally, I was a fan because I considered it an opportunity to pitch myself. Something I realized later when talking to offering agents was that they googled me, visited my website, and even knew the names of my business partners. It’s important to agents to work with someone they feel confident about, and I used my bio as a place to accomplish that.

The Comparison – Twilight Potter meets Divergent Hunger

I really liked this bit. It was an added bonus where I got to use other people’s radness to make my book look good. I read on lots of sites to avoid gigantically successful stuff and esoteric stuff. Problem was, I couldn’t think of books I wanted to compare mine to. I blame this on my bad name retention and my mother… ‘cause, well, I can, right? I wound up comparing my novel to two movies. The advisability of that is questionable.

Word Count/Genre – transcending boundaries

So, this was a no bueno situation. I couldn’t definitively pinpoint my genre. Therefore I didn’t know what my corresponding word count should be. What I did know was that I didn’t want to be rejected on a technicality. After reading genre definitions, I discovered that the wiggle room was to my benefit as long as I accurately represented my work.

My story, for instance, could be considered YA Contemporary with magical elements or YA light Paranormal. Now, Contemporary was selling well and Paranormal was being treated like the ugly stepsister. Having some working knowledge of the literary market made a difference. Publisher’s Weekly was a great place to find sales info, and lots of industry folks had wonderful blogs about this sort of thing. 

The Personal Intro – where I believed stalking agents was normal

Now I was in eel-infested writing waters. Having a sentence or two telling an agent why I queried her was something I wanted. After all, I spent lots of time choosing agents who would be great at representing my book, had integrity, and had agreeable personalities. But, I had also read all over the interwebs that the personal intro was a gamble, because it’s easy to come off as a cheesy nutter who’s trying too hard.

Of course, I’ve never been afraid of being a cheesy nutter; so full steam ahead. Trusting myself was the most important thing I learned in query-writing. I don’t think my query was successful because it was perfect or followed all the rules. In fact, I broke a bunch of them. I think it was successful because it was intentional, because I did my homework, because I asked for help, and because ultimately it represented me and my writing.

My query was only one variable in gaining representation, but it was one I could control. I couldn’t control market preferences, an agent’s schedule, or how many mss an agent had on her plate. There were also agents that were great candidates for my query, but they already had similarly themed books on their lists. For me, it wasn’t about getting bogged down with the unknowables, but having fun presenting my story.

I felt confident when I emailed my query to agents that I had done my part. I also felt confident that not everyone would find me fabulous. But, I wasn’t just looking for an agent; I was looking for someone who was an excellent match for me.

Writing Productivity Tip: The Mini-Outline

This is a continuation on our series on tips to make the writing process and your writing career more organized, less stressful, and more effective.

The mini-outline is a thing of beauty for those of you that are plotter pantser hybrids like me. My personal mini-outline came about because the thought of writing out the arc of each chapter hurt me. But then again, so did having to rewrite my entire book. I had to find a way to define and structure the heart of my story while keeping it fun enough that I didn’t give my outline the middle finger half way through. Mine goes like this:

Characters – I always start by writing a paragraph about each primary (and sometimes secondary) character’s backstory and quirks such as, “Roberta is obsessed with grape soda and wears two pairs of underwear on road trips.” It’s also a great place for me to put a reference picture. Plus, it’s easy to give to an agent or editor as part of a proposal.

Setting – Just a quick paragraph (or more if it’s SFF) to work out the rules of the environment. The best case scenario is if I can make my setting into a character itself that my MC has to wrassle with at some point.

Themes – This is my absolute favorite. Identifying thematic layers can create more plot complexity. Also, defining the characters and situations that work within each theme generates all sorts of ideas for dialogue and conflict.

Tormenting My Main Character – To begin with, I identify my MC’s primary objective in my plot. My acting teacher always said that overarching objectives should be simple – find love, right a wrong, protect family.   

Then, I have to figure out how to systematically threaten my MC’s objective in every way I can think of. I make a numbered list of the crappiest mental, physical, and situational obstacles I can throw at her to keep her from getting what she wants. Finally, I put them in order of escalating conflict.

It feels kinda evil while I’m doing it, but it saves me from a saggy middle and from going easy on my MC when I shouldn’t. Knowing the subplots and transitions from one obstacle to another is something I like to discover as I go. I’m not a fan of squeezing every bit of mystery out of a story. But, I’m not interested in doing structural surgery on my story cause it lacks momentum, either.

In total my mini-outline is really only a couple of pages. It tackles the fun stuff, so my pantser-self enjoys writing it, yet it has enough substance to keep my plotter-self confidently on track. It’s a huge time saver.

Now, I’d like to believe that I made up this particular mini-outline, but I’m sure others have done it before me. However, I’m perfectly happy to live with the self-delusion that I’m a snowflake.

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